Claimed by the Immortal (The Claiming) Read online

  But there was that thing, that energy or force he could sense but not identify. Much as he wanted to escape temptation, he feared leaving Caro alone with whatever it was.

  Maybe he could summon up one of the protective spells he’d learned so long ago. Make some kind of talisman for her protection. It would have been helpful, of course, if he weren’t so out of practice. Few vampires needed the powers of a magus when they had so many inherent ones.

  His skills and knowledge were now so rusty he feared to use them because he might misuse them. A lot of good he was.

  Caro broke into his thoughts by speaking. Her tone was reluctant, her words slow.

  “My grandmother,” she said, “claimed to be a witch.”

  He spoke cautiously. “Really?”

  “I don’t mean the kind you see everywhere now. I mean an honest-to-goodness witch with real powers. She said I was descended from a long line of witches and that someday I’d discover my real powers and harness them. She tried to teach me, but I didn’t listen very well. I didn’t believe her.”

  “No?” She had captured his interest, only on a different level than the one already plaguing him. “But you see auras. And you sense...other things.”

  She looked glumly at him. “Believe me, I try to keep that to myself. Besides, plenty of people claim to see auras and be a bit psychic. They call themselves sensitives, not witches.”

  “No, but a witch is a very different thing. A true witch.” Now he was on ground he knew well. “I’d hesitate to even use the term witch for what you’re describing.”

  “What would you call it?”

  He hesitated, seeking the term that would induce the least negative reaction in her. “That your grandmother was a mage.”

  She thought about that for a second. “Maybe. She was certainly right about your existence. But why not witch?”

  “Only because it’s become such a polluted word with so many different meanings attached to it by many. Witch is fine if you like. Mage is an older word, going all the way back to a Persian group of adepts. They were called mogh, and later Magi.”

  She looked thoughtfully at him. “You mentioned Persia. Were you a magi?”

  “Magus. Singular. Yes.”

  She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. “Wow. What just happened to reality?”

  “Nothing. You’ve just seen a part you resisted before.” He tried to take hope from the fact that she was talking to him, no longer waving her pistol at him, and that she no longer appeared furious.

  Her eyes snapped open. They looked strangely hot and hollow. “I need time to think. You can go.”

  “I’d like to try to remember some protection spell or talisman first.”

  She shuddered a little. “I know. It’s still here. What the hell is it?”

  “I wish I could remember, because I’m sure I’ve encountered it before. But I’m concerned about leaving you with no protection.”

  “If I remember right, you’re going to have to do that at dawn anyway.”

  “Yes, but the dark forces are weaker in the daylight. And this one seems reluctant to be observed.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Because,” he said simply, “it hasn’t attacked you yet. It may not have had enough strength right after the other murders. Perhaps you haven’t been alone enough. But now I feel it’s strong, possibly strong enough to attack.”

  “I feel it, too,” she whispered. “It has been growing.” She leaned forward, keeping her voice low. “Do you think the reason it attached to me was because I saw what it did?”

  “Possibly.”

  She knotted her hands together. “My grandmother left me a bunch of old books. Maybe I need to start looking at them.”

  “I need to do the same. It’s been a long, long time since I needed my skills.”

  “How old are you?”

  He hesitated, then decided not to evade the question. “I was born in Persia when it was still Persia, in the days when Magi were respected.”

  Her eyes grew big. “That’s a very long time ago.”

  “Yes.”

  Then she jumped up. “That does it. That’s all I can take. Do whatever you want. I’m going to sprinkle some salt around my bed and go to sleep.”

  He hoped sleep would find her and the salt would work. But because he was sure of neither, he remained where he was, searching the endless corridors of his memory.

  * * *

  Caro couldn’t sleep. She had locked her bedroom door and placed her pistol within reach, but those actions didn’t reassure her one bit. Not when a creature of myth sat in her living room and some shadow seemed to cling to her.

  After all that had happened, she felt as if her foundations had been shaken to the depths. Vampires. Some force that was strengthening and wouldn’t leave her be. A guy who claimed to be a magus and to have lived probably a few thousand years. Her grandmother... God, she wished her grandmother were still alive. If for no other reason than that she could tell her, “Grandma, I believe you now.”

  Too late. The world she had refused to acknowledge had camped itself right in her living room and she wasn’t prepared to deal with any of it because she had been stubborn and blind.

  Just a few days ago, her world had been so orderly: she chased down bad guys and helped people who needed her. Now it was all chaos, and she didn’t even know which strand to grab at for a lifeline.

  But even as she tried to sort through all the changes to her world, her mind kept drifting back to Damien. A vampire. A magus, or so he claimed.

  Her grandmother had spoken briefly of vampires. And while Caro couldn’t remember the details—other than that they evidently lived forever and could be dangerous—she did recall that her grandmother hadn’t entirely condemned them. But then, Grandma hadn’t really condemned much, except outright evil.

  Her memories were populated with creatures of myth. Faeries, shape-shifters, leprechauns and even trolls. They had seemed like fun stories, but now she had the proof she had lacked back then. At least she thought she did.

  How did she know for sure that Damien was a vampire, except that he had moved too fast to be seen and had an odd aura? For all she knew, he was an alien from Sirius B.

  The only certainty was that he was no ordinary human, and that the desire he had awakened in her was still thrumming in her body like an unanswered call.

  She rolled restlessly beneath her covers, trying to ignore the desire. She didn’t want or need involvement with a vampire, however temporary. Heck, right now she didn’t want involvement with anyone, human, nonhuman, sexy or otherwise. Her career topped her priority list and she didn’t want anything to get in the way of it.

  However, the past few days had done a good enough job of that. Medical leave. Questions probably being whispered all over the precinct about whether she’d lost her marbles.

  Somehow she had to deal with this situation, then get back to work and keep her mouth shut. Forever.

  And getting laid by a vampire wasn’t going to improve one damn thing. Not even if she craved it.

  When she got to the part where she started wishing he would just come in and take her, she clambered out of bed and pulled one of her grandmother’s books off the shelf in the bookcase beside her dresser.

  Time to think about other things. Such as how to get rid of whatever was attached to her.

  She’d worry later about how to fit vampires and all the rest of it into her worldview. Belief had become moot. Now all that mattered was dealing with this mess.

  * * *

  Damien knew the instant Caro left her bed. With his extremely acute hearing, he could detect her movements. But something else shifted—that thing in the air—and it seemed to be redirecting itself toward her bedroom.

  He had no idea if the salt she had sprinkled around her bed had helped protect her at all, although it was an old, familiar belief, but regardless, she’d done something to renew the thing’s attention.

  Which
left him with only one choice: to become a witness. If his mere presence could hold the thing at bay because it didn’t want to achieve notice, then he and Caro would have to work out something before dawn, even though these kinds of powers tended to weaken in the daylight hours.

  Someday he intended to pursue that mystery of why so many things weakened in the daylight, but for now it was enough to be aware of it, and try to use it.

  He rose in a swift, fluid movement and went down the short hall, opening Caro’s door without knocking. As he did so, he felt her lock give and realized she would probably be angry about that, too. He sighed.

  She was wearing pajamas covered with little rosebuds, reading a slim book by the glow of her bedside lamp. She lay on top of the covers with her ankles crossed and looked startled when he stepped in.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded. “I locked my door for a reason.”

  “Witnessing. I hope.”

  At once she pushed up higher against the pillows. “What?”

  “You did something. That thing focused on you again.”

  “Crap.” She rubbed her eyes with one hand. “I broke the circle. I went to get a book, and I crossed it.”

  He walked around her bed, scanning the carpeted floor. “It’s scuffed,” he agreed. “Salt?”

  She pointed to the box of kosher salt on top of her dresser. He crossed the room to get it and sprinkled it all around her bed again.

  Then he waited, his senses on high alert. The energy did not pull back.

  “So much for salt,” he said, and replaced the box. “Can you feel it?”

  She closed her eyes briefly and nodded slowly. “What now?”

  “We wait. With any luck, it doesn’t want a witness.”

  He settled in a small chair in the far corner, aware that she was regarding him unhappily. But what could he do about it? He couldn’t risk her life. Apart from his own feelings about such things, Jude had practically assigned him to protection detail. If that meant sitting here and stomping down on his own needs—as well as hers, to judge by some of the pheromones emanating from her direction—then he would do it. Duty was seldom an easy thing. If it were, it wouldn’t be called “duty.”

  “What are you reading?” he asked, striving for distraction from the fact that he might be almost as much of a threat to her as that clinging force.

  “My grandmother’s diary. Well, it’s not exactly a diary. It’s all the things she wanted me to understand that I never wanted to listen to.”

  “Anything useful?”

  “Not yet.” She lifted a ribbon marker and placed it between the pages. “I may have heard her better than I thought, considering how much I resisted what she tried to tell me.”

  “How so?” He tried to look attentive, but the truth was that between her delicious aromas filling this room and the hovering threat, he was having a hard time paying attention to anything she said.

  Instead, he noticed how her lips moved, how plump and juicy they looked. He’d love to nibble on them. His eyes trailed over the beautiful pink of her cheeks, flush with life. He saw the pulse beating steadily in her throat, heard its rhythm and inevitably thought of how she would taste.

  “Every woman is different,” he heard himself say. As soon as the thought escaped him, he felt like an idiot. Had he lost every bit of his self-control? How did she do that to him?

  But she shocked him. She didn’t get angry. Instead, she looked curious. “How so?”

  “You humans walk around missing some of the things that set you apart from each other. It’s not that you each look different. You each smell different. You have your own unique scents. Even your blood is not the same, person to person.”

  “You’d know,” she said a little sarcastically. But then her sarcasm melted away. “There is nothing,” she said flatly, “that makes me any different. You just want me because I’m a human female.”

  He shook his head. “I wish it were so.” Oh, how he wished it were that easy.

  A faint frown knit her brows. “Why?”

  “Because then I could walk out of here and get what I want. Unfortunately, because you’re different, I could get what I need and not at all what I want.”

  She flushed faintly. Other eyes might have missed it in the dim golden light, but not his. He felt his pulse pound harder and had to force himself to remain in his seat.

  “You want me, too,” he said softly.

  Anger flared from her eyes, so strong he almost felt the sparks. “So? What does that matter? It would only make a messy situation messier.”

  He couldn’t really argue with that. Not with that energy hovering around. “That’s possible,” he agreed. “Or it might clear the air considerably.”

  “Sex never clears the air. It always adds complications.”

  “That’s a sad thing to say.”

  “Well, it’s true,” she argued, sitting up higher and clearly still angry. “It’s messy. Maybe men can just have sex and forget about it, but women are different. For us it’s always an emotional experience.”

  “For me, too, but perhaps in a different way.” He could, however, think of plenty of women who, over the centuries, had been happy to dally with him a time or two and then move on.

  “I’m sure it’s very different. Let’s talk about something else. You’re making me feel like I’m being stalked by a predator.”

  “I am a predator,” he said, his voice turning hard. “That’s what I am. The difference is that I never take anyone who is unwilling.”

  “Why should I believe that?”

  “Because I haven’t taken you.”

  He smelled it: the best aphrodisiac in the world. The room almost flooded with her response to his words, charging the air with sexuality and that delightful hint of fear. “You wanted to talk about something different,” he reminded her as she tried to glare at him.

  “Maybe you should just leave,” she snapped.

  “Not until I can’t stay any longer. Not while that thing is still around.”

  Her frown deepened, but her scent didn’t change. Ah, this one was going to be interesting. Supremely interesting after so many easy conquests. She was willing to fight herself as well as him. He liked it.

  “How old are you?” she finally demanded once again, clearly determined to divert him because she couldn’t get rid of him. She didn’t want him to leave her alone with that dark energy, so she was going to tolerate him.

  That amused him. No trouble accepting that he was a vampire but plenty of trouble accepting that he wanted her. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I stopped counting years a long time ago. What was the point? They just keep adding up.”

  “Do you really live forever?”

  “We age. Slowly. Some faster than others. I seem to have aged very little.”

  Her lips puckered a bit, nearly driving him insane. “Could that be because you’re a magus?”

  At once he stilled and forgot all about his hungers and needs. An intriguing question. “I hadn’t considered it. What made you think of that?”

  “My grandmother. Until the day she died, no one thought she was much older than thirty-five or forty. She always said dealing with powers kept her young. But you said you were rusty? Or something like that.”

  “I’ve forgotten a lot because I haven’t needed it. It’s been a long time since I practiced my arts as a priest.”

  “Because you’re a vampire?”

  He shook his head, smiling slowly. “There was a time when that was considered an advantage for my work. That time passed.”

  “So everyone knew?”

  “No, of course not. It was one of our temple secrets. Much better that way. Much more useful. We also severely limited our numbers.”

  Her brow knit momentarily. “Well, when you live forever, it would hardly make sense to have many of you.”

  “Exactly. Our numbers could make it very difficult to keep the secret, so we remained a small handful.”

  She gav
e a small shake of her head. “I can’t imagine the things you must have seen.”

  “Someday, when we’re past this, I’ll tell you some of those things if you want.”

  It wasn’t the time, he thought. Not now. Not when his neck was prickling with awareness of that energy, not when he could feel its heaviness in the very air. He changed tacks sharply.

  “We’ve got to think of what to do with you come morning.”

  “I thought you said it weakened in daylight.”

  “Most of these things do. But that doesn’t mean they’re entirely gone. Read your grandmother’s diary. Maybe it will jog something important in your memory. And I need to search mine. I’m sure there’s something there. I feel it.”

  She nodded slowly and once again lowered her eyes to her book.

  The tension in the room, though, was as thick as the sense of threat.

  Forcing himself to sit as still as stone, he focused his attention on the preeminent problem of ridding the threat to Caro.

  This thing was not an entity—it was an energy. Energies needed direction. That meant whatever it was had been summoned. The question was whether it was still being directed.

  He looked over at Caro and saw that she had finally fallen to sleep. He let time tick by until about a half hour before dawn. The back of his neck had begun to burn with awareness of the coming day. He couldn’t wait much longer.

  Pulling out the phone Jude had given him, he called his friend. “We’ve got to find a way to protect Caro during the day. And I’ve got to find out everything possible about the victims.”

  “Bring her over here,” Jude said. “Chloe can keep an eye on her today, if keeping an eye on her will be enough.”

  “It may be. I’m getting the sense that this energy doesn’t want to be witnessed in action. At least not yet.”

  “Then bring her here. For our edification, I have a background search running on the victim and his family. Anything else you want?”