Claim the Night

by Rachel Lee

  “But why a vampire?” Terri asked.

  “Oh, to possess an immortal body,” Creed said bitterly. “So my granddaughter nearly died so that it could get at me in a weakened state. I’d like to send that thing back to the pits of hell.”

  “It may be attracted to our immortality,” Jude agreed, “but it may be more. I don’t have to tell you what kind of instruments of terror and death we can become.”

  Creed’s face darkened, but he nodded. “There are those out there in the night who already do such things. Why not one of them?”

  “Perhaps,” Jude said, “because they don’t care. No wedge.”

  Creed swore.

  Terri felt as if a knife were driving into her heart. She had to draw a deep breath to steady herself. “So it’s looking for targets that you two care about.”

  “For all I know,” Jude said, “it may have attacked you that night simply because it knew I was in the area and would respond. And maybe it sensed how attracted I was to your scent. I certainly noticed it before you were attacked by those thugs.”

  Terri nodded but said nothing. She’d rolled with a lot of shocks to her worldview in a relatively short time span, and just as she was getting her feet under her, coming to accept vampires, one in particular, and the idea that a demon may have been the source of her terrified childhood, one that may have come back to haunt her again, now things were turning topsy-turvy again.

  “So you’re saying that a demon may have caused those guys to threaten me in order to get your attention.”

  “Something like that. I mean, your scent already had my attention, but I would have moved on had I not heard you cry out and then smelled your fear.”

  “Fear,” Creed remarked, “is an almost irresistible call.”

  “It is?” Terri felt her jaw drop. “Fear?”

  “Yes.” Jude bit the word off.

  Terri watched him in pained puzzlement, trying to understand. Why would these beings be drawn to fear? That disturbed her at some deep level, and she couldn’t help her response. But she could also see that in some way Jude had pulled back from her, as if he felt she had judged him.

  Had she? Maybe. God, it was as if she were peeling back a veil all of a sudden. As if she had forgotten what he was over the last few days, and now she was seeing him in contrast to what she considered human. And humane.

  But, another part of her argued, even humans could be incredibly inhumane. Hadn’t she seen enough evidence of that in her work? Jude had done nothing, nothing at all, to prove himself inhumane. In fact, he had told her he struggled with urges beyond the ordinary in order not to become a monster.

  The conversation had swirled on around her, and she didn’t become aware of it again until Creed announced he needed to go back to the hospital and would see them that evening.

  Alone with Jude, Terri found him looking at her intently. Her skin prickled with awareness. Had anyone ever looked at her that way, with so much hunger, so much wariness?

  What could he have to fear from her? Plenty, she thought glumly. He’d probably smelled her every reaction, her every doubt, felt her response to everything he’d said. Hadn’t he told her that since drinking her blood he was intimately aware of her in ways she was certain she couldn’t begin to imagine?

  “Jude…”

  He shook his head. “No, Terri. No need to explain or apologize. I know what I am, and it’s only natural that you should question yourself and me. I’d be more concerned if you didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I couldn’t trust you. I’d have to believe you don’t know what you’re doing. So it revolts you that I respond to fear?”

  Feeling small somehow, she just looked at him.

  “Well, it revolts me, too. But it’s my nature. If I let myself, I can get high from instilling fear. How else do you think I could be a predator?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tell me something honestly.”

  “If I know the answer.”

  He leaned a little toward her. “Hasn’t your arousal been heightened occasionally by fear?”

  She gasped, instinctively wanting to deny it. But she couldn’t. The first time he had inhaled her scent while standing behind her sprang immediately to her mind. And there were other times. Moments when fear and arousal had trickled through her simultaneously. “Yes.”

  He leaned back. “I thought so.” But he didn’t sound satisfied, just accepting. “It’s just a matter of degree.”

  As a doctor, she could define the connection, too. She looked down at her hands then back at him. “I understand. But for you someone else’s fear is the key?”

  “It can be.”

  “So that’s different.”

  “Fear calls to me. That doesn’t mean I have to act on it. But my response is what it is.”

  He stood up so quickly she barely saw him move. The next thing she knew he was standing in the doorway of his office. “Garner will be here in an hour or two to watch Chloe. I’ll leave my door open. Just be sure to lock me in at dawn.”

  Chapter 11

  He lay on his bed, still dressed, wondering how Terri was going to take this. He was a fool to have ever let her get this close. In fact, he should have listened to himself to begin with when he thought he needed his head examined.

  He knew what he’d just revealed to her and understood her response to it. It revolted him, too. It was one of the impulses he hated most in himself. But he couldn’t deny it existed. And if Terri was going to remain in his life, for however long or short a period, she needed to know exactly what she was dealing with: a vampire, not simply a human who didn’t age.

  Sometimes, though not as often anymore, he wished he had died on that field at Waterloo. These days he didn’t wish it as often mainly because he’d found a way to live with what he was, a way to justify his existence beyond the merely predatory.

  But he’d seen himself reflected in Terri’s blue eyes out there, and he didn’t like what he saw. He was a monster. A controlled monster, but still a monster.

  He put his arm over his hypersensitive eyes, shielding them from the little bit of light that trickled through two doors from the outer office. Over the past few decades or so, he thought he’d come to terms with the way things were. He’d found a kind of peace with the self-control he’d practiced for well over a hundred years. He’d even learned to live comfortably in a constant state of need. He’d stopped pining endlessly for the things he wanted but felt he couldn’t morally take.

  He’d reached a compromise he could live with.

  And then he looked into one woman’s eyes and knew that no amount of self-control could change his nature, or make him anything but what he was: monstrous.

  “Jude?”

  Terri’s tentative voice made him lift his arm and look toward the doorway. He was actually surprised she had come this close. “Yes?”

  “Can I come in?”

  And torment him some more with her exquisite scent, her incredible beauty? “Sure.” He deserved the torments of the damned, he supposed.

  She stepped in. “Will the door lock if I close it?”

  “Yes, but you can still get out. It may prevent anyone from getting in here during daylight hours, but it doesn’t prevent anyone from leaving.”

  She turned and closed the heavy vault door. The locks automatically thunked into place, but simply pressing down the bar that served as a handle on the inside would open it. And whether she realized it or not, he had just handed her a way to kill him.

  She stepped closer, and her luscious aroma began to perfume the air around him. Not that it had ever entirely dissipated.

  “I’m sorry, Jude.”

  “For what?”

 
“For making you feel bad. I know I did. I was just…shocked.”

  “You have every right to feel shocked.”

  “Maybe.” She came closer until finally she stood beside him. She stared down at him, and he could hear her heart begin to beat heavily.

  Hunger rose in him, a force of nature he couldn’t prevent himself from feeling. Instead, he chose to remain perfectly still, for fear that if he let himself move even the least bit, he might do something he would never forgive himself for.

  “I’m amazed,” she said.

  “At what?”

  “At how you can control yourself. I’ve been thinking about it some more and I realized…you’re amazing.”

  “Actually, I’m a despicable monster.”

  “No. You’re not. You could be, but you’re not. And that makes you amazing. So, I’m sorry.”

  “You never have to apologize to me for having a human reaction to the fact that I’m not human. Trust me, I know what I am. And I know how most humans feel about it. Or would if they believed I exist.”

  “Vampires are quite popular in fiction.”

  “That’s the point, isn’t it? Fiction. Reality is altogether different.”

  “Yes.”

  Waves of hesitancy emanated from her. And damned if he knew what the right thing to do would be. Reach for her? Let her stand there until she made up her mind in some way?

  He just knew that having her this close was driving him nuts. Well, he should be used to that feeling by now, shouldn’t he? And what the hell was he doing in here with the door closed when he was supposed to be watching over Chloe? He sat up abruptly, swinging his feet to the floor.

  Terri stepped back.

  “I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on Chloe. I need to ward the office.”

  “Ward?”

  “Protect it.” Glad of some task to do besides think about himself, think about Terri, think about all the dark and unpleasant things that were so inextricably part of his life, he went to open the door.

  And once outside, he began to sprinkle holy water around the office, creating an unbroken circle of protection. Then he went into his office and returned with a cruet.

  “What’s that?” Terri asked.

  “Holy oils. Father Dan gave them to me.” Putting a little on his thumb, he walked around to trace a cross on every door, over every window, and on the walls for good measure.

  “This stuff really holds off demons?” she asked.

  “Remember what I told you about belief and faith? Yes, it works. Faith has power, Terri. Great power.”

  “I guess it does. I mean, I should know that already from what happened to me.”

  “That should keep it out,” he said when he finished. “At least until Garner arrives and crosses it. I’ll leave him a note to pour more holy water across the doorway.”

  “You mean it’s only good until it’s crossed?”

  “No. But it can be smudged. If he steps on it and carries it to some other part of the room, there’ll be an opening.”

  “So now Chloe is safe?”

  He nodded. “She should be.” He glanced at the clock as he felt his neck prickle warningly. “I don’t have much time.”

  “Do you hate that?”

  “Sometimes. Especially times like now. I’m useless during daylight hours.”

  “Nothing can wake you?”

  “Very little. I’m dead, Terri. Or as close to it as to make no difference. I got carted off to the morgue a little over forty years ago.”

  “My God! Really?”

  He had to smile. “Yes, really. I thought I was in a safe place, but apparently not safe enough. I assume they must have put me in a body bag before they moved me, or I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it. Obviously, I’ll never know exactly what happened, but when I resurrected I was lying in a locker in the morgue with a sheet over me and a toe tag on.”

  “How in the world did you get out?”

  “Those lockers aren’t exactly designed to keep something from escaping. You should have seen the look on the attendant’s face when I bashed my way free. Almost as priceless as when I took his clothes.”

  Terri giggled, and he was glad to hear the sound. It meant she was getting past the latest shock he had dealt her.

  “That couldn’t have happened here,” she said. “A story like that would become legend and I’d have heard about it.”

  “Not here. I have to move every ten years or so because people will notice I’m not aging.”

  She sat on the couch. “I never thought about that.”

  “Why would you? You age normally.”

  “What about the rest of it?” she asked. “Does your reflection show in a mirror?”

  “I’m a vampire, not a ghost. I don’t understand that lame-brained notion. For you to be able to even see me, I have to reflect light.”

  “True. The same for photographs?”

  “Same answer.”

  “And obviously you don’t turn into a bat.”

  “There are shapeshifters, but I’m not one of them.”

  That caught her. He enjoyed watching the wheels spin behind her blue eyes, so he leaned back against Chloe’s desk and folded his arms, waiting for the next question, curious as to what it might be.

  “Umm, okay, you did say shapeshifters?”

  “I did.”

  “Vampires?”

  “Not us, no. But there are other beings out there. And whatever form they happen to be in at the time, you’d never notice them.”

  “Like werewolves?”

  “Definitely, although the modern passion for exterminating wolves has reduced their numbers. You should read shamanic tradition sometimes. Shapeshifting rests at its core. Shamans take on the form of various animals at times. And then there are those for whom it is part of their natures. They’re born able to transform themselves. And like vampires, they keep it very much secret.”

  “Okay, you’re rocking my world again.”

  “I thought that might. This would be a good time to quote one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines, but I’ll spare you since I’m sure you already know it. Just take my word for it, there’s a lot about the world that you don’t know simply because you’re not invited to see it.”

  She nodded, a thoughtful nod. “I guess I have a lot to learn.”

  “Most of it you probably won’t ever need to know about or deal with. Those of us who live in the shadows generally prefer to remain in them.”

  He glanced at the clock again, confirming what his neck was telling him.

  “You’re going to sleep soon,” she remarked.

  “Yes. Unfortunately.”

  She looked at him, steadily, and then he smelled it: more than her intoxicating scent, the heady aroma of burgeoning desire. She wanted him again. And time was so short now that he figured it might be safe to give her what she wanted.

  Because he wanted to give it to her. He needed to give it to her, if for no other reason that it would prove she hadn’t come to find him repulsive. He was amazed at how much it pained him to think that she might.

  Most of the time, he didn’t care what anyone else thought of him. All that mattered was what he thought of himself, and oftentimes those thoughts were dark and ugly.

  But the reflection of himself that he saw now in Terri’s eyes was entrancing. She had accepted him just as he was. Even that ugly part about being attracted to fear. If she had not, she couldn’t possibly be looking at him the way she was now.

  As if he were a feast and she was as hungry for him as he for her.

  She rose and closed the space between them. He forced himself to utter stillness because he had to be sure, absolutely
sure, that what happened next was of her choosing. He needed, heart and soul, to know that she came to him freely.

  Unlike so many in the past.

  She reached up and cupped his cheek. “I like the way you feel cool, not cold. I didn’t know I’d like that. Your skin is so smooth.” Then she slipped her hand behind his head and pulled him toward her.

  But not to her mouth. To her neck. He almost froze in shock at what she was inviting, and squeezed his eyes shut as he battled not to grant her wish.

  His face came to rest in the hollow between her neck and shoulder. Her heartbeat was as loud as a drum in his ear, and his own heart synchronized to it, inevitable now that he had tasted her, and oh, so sweet when it happened.

  He filled his lungs with her even as he refused to take what she offered. Nor could he imagine why she was offering. “It’s too soon,” he said thickly.

  Desperate to save them both from her offer and his compulsions, he swept her off her feet and carried her to his bedroom. With a shoulder he shoved the door closed behind them, the sound of the lock barely piercing the drumbeat of his/her heart in his ears.

  So little time, thank God. He could give her one part of what she wanted and then fall into inevitable sleep before he could lose control of himself and take all that he wanted.

  For the first time in his immortal life, he actually saw the sleep of death as a saving grace.

  But something compelled him not to spare her. Not to leave her with any illusions. She wanted a vampire? Fine. He would show her at least part of what that could mean.

  She had no idea, for example, that he could move fast enough to strip her naked between one breath and the next. If she felt anything at all, it was the whispering movement of air, and then she stood before him wearing nothing.

  She gasped, and looked down at herself. Color stained her cheeks, and she looked up at him from beneath her lashes.