Claimed by the Immortal (The Claiming) (9 page)

The next instant she had been tossed onto his back and was clinging for dear life to his shoulders and hips as the world spun dizzily by, leaving her with no impressions but flashes of light and shadow. After only a few moments, she closed her eyes to keep from getting sick and pressed her face against his back to keep it warm as the wind chill seemed to drop close to absolute zero.

She guessed that must be why vampires couldn’t feel temperature. None of them would be able to move fast for very far if they were susceptible to heat and cold.

Her mind rebelled at how fast they reached West Bolger. When next she could see something, Damien lowered her to her feet and she looked around, recognizing the neighborhood. This area was at the outer reaches of her precinct and the kind of place cops expected to have trouble.

Damien’s hands lingered as he lowered her, but she didn’t brush the importunate touches away. Feeling a little dizzied, she focused on getting her bearings.

Trouble, she had learned, accompanied poverty like fleas on a dog. It wasn’t that most of the people here were bad people. But it was a neighborhood full of despair, and despair created plenty of desperation and resentment. Fertile ground for gangs who could see no way out by remaining law-abiding. The Police Athletic League was strengthening its involvement here, trying mostly to attract youngsters to safer outlets for their time. Another organization had recently joined in to provide tutoring and other aftercare in the same building. Still, it would take years to fully win young minds and start the “upward and outward” movement that was the ultimate goal. Caro donated a lot of her free time to the effort.

But, she had to admit, this neighborhood seemed a lot safer by daylight than it did right now. Instinctively, she felt for her holster, then dropped her hand.

All of a sudden, she realized Damien was staring at her. “What?”

At least half the streetlights were broken, and the remaining few offered little light, but even so she could see the intensity of his look. A shiver, whether of apprehension or anticipation she could not tell, ran through her.

“Nothing,” he said abruptly. Turning on his heel, he headed across the street to a shop.

“It’s late,” she remarked. “We probably wasted this trip.”

“Some shops do most of their business during the midnight hours. Others never really close. Given the type of business this shop does, I suspect they answer their bell at any hour.”

She couldn’t ask why he suspected that as she was too busy racing across the street after him. Boy, could that vampire move. But she supposed she’d get her answer if the door opened.

He had to press the button twice, but finally there was some noise from within the tiny shop. Then a curtain twitched aside, behind a barred window, and an eye peeked out. For long moments it seemed they would be ignored, so Caro lifted her jacket, showing her badge. Fortunately, most people would open their doors to a cop rather than risk having it busted down.

The eye disappeared, and then she could hear dead bolts turning. Finally the door opened a crack, although it was still guarded by three chain locks.

“What do you want?” a wizened man demanded.

“Help,” said Damien.

“I don’t squeal.” The door started to close.

Damien’s voice changed, assuming that timbre that made Caro shiver. “Open the door. We mean you no harm. The information we want is in your books.”

The air seemed to change. Without further protest, the old man opened his door and let them in. As he made way for them and locked up behind them, he looked mildly confused.

But whatever control Damien’s voice had had over the man wore off quickly. “Better spend some money,” he grumped. “This place isn’t a library.”

The owner was not only wizened but thin and stooped, as well. He looked as old as Methuselah and hobbled his way behind a tiny counter that held an ancient cash register. There he perched on a stool Caro could barely see.

Dusty, dingy and right now the place was poorly lit, as well. At the moment it would be impossible for her to find a book or anything else by sight.

But Damien seemed to have no such problems. He wandered along a shelf of old books, running a finger along them as he surveyed titles. “Do you know anything about elementals?”

To Caro it seemed the man behind the counter stiffened. “I don’t dabble in what I sell,” he said irritably. “Fools mess with what they don’t understand.”

“I agree with you,” Damien said pleasantly. “But I need to learn about elementals, and you must know if you have any books or monographs dealing with them.” He turned from the shelf and faced the man. “Even if you don’t dabble, you surely must hear a great deal from those who do.”

For some reason, Caro felt compelled to take a step backward. It was as if some invisible force tugged at her, but it was not the power that had been following her. After that one step back, however, she forced herself to stand still. What was going on here?

“I hear all kinds of things from idiots,” the shopkeeper said. “Look around you. I don’t even go for the incense and crystals some hang everywhere. I sell the books. That’s it.”

Damien nodded. “So you’ve heard nothing about a bokor?”

At that the man stiffened. “No. Have you?”

“It’s been mentioned. And since a bokor may be troubling a friend of mine, I’m naturally looking for information.”

“Of course,” the man said. “Look, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t hold truck with most of this stuff, but it makes a living. Everyone wants some crazy knowledge these days, as if getting a little religion wouldn’t be enough.”

“It’s alternative religion,” Damien remarked.

“Apparently. But if you believe this crap, why would you want to get involved?” He shook his head. “I get lots of people, but most of them probably couldn’t manage to perform a ritual well enough to raise any kind of Cain.”

“Most likely not. But what if someone could?”

The shopkeeper leaned forward and arched his back as if stretching a painful muscle. “If someone could,” he said, “then I guess we’re in deep shit.”

“Any idea who it might be?”

A shake of the head. “I keep as far away from people who claim to be adept as I can. There are other stores like this, and some of them are run by people who buy their own sales pitch.”

“Meaning?”

“They believe, or say they believe in this New Agey stuff. Maybe some of them actually practice Santeria or hoodoo. I keep clear, and I don’t want to know.”

Caro spoke. “I’ve answered complaints about Santeria in this neighborhood.”

“I don’t doubt it. But what can you do about it? It’s not illegal to sacrifice a chicken anymore, although you’d think folks around here couldn’t afford the chickens.”

“They eat them afterward as part of the ritual.”

“So I hear. Which makes it no different than a creepy kind of slaughterhouse. I can live with it. I’m no vegetarian.”

“So you have practitioners in the neighborhood.”

The shopkeeper sighed. “Yeah. From what I’ve heard, nothing bad comes out of it. It’s a religion, and everybody says it’s about doing good. God knows, folks around here need something to keep their spirits up.”

Caro couldn’t argue with that. She also couldn’t escape the feeling that this man wasn’t going to tell them a thing. She could understand that. Living in this neighborhood was difficult enough without being under suspicion.

Then Damien spoke. “Do you ever get bored enough to read your own books?”

The man cocked an eye at him. “I don’t believe this shit, but I’m also not stupid enough to read about it. On the off chance there’s something to it, why do I want it in my head? What if just reading those things could make something happen?”

Superstitious,
Caro thought. Another thing she could well understand, although even a few days ago, she would have denied it.

“Then we come back to my original question,” Damien said. “Do you have any good references on elementals?”

Grunting, the man slid off his stool and came around to the tumbled and dusty stacks. “Like I said, this isn’t a library.”

“I’ll pay. Just get me your best ones.”

“You’re looking in the wrong place,” the guy muttered. “I
do
have some organization.” He disappeared around the corner of the floor-to-ceiling shelf and came back a few minutes later with two thin, tattered volumes. “Not a popular subject,” he remarked. “Twenty dollars each.”

Neither book looked worth that much to Caro, but Damien paid without complaint. “Are there any more of them?” he asked as he slipped his wallet back into his hip pocket.

“Not much call for elementals these days. People want bigger deals. Nasty deals. Not enough to call up a wood sprite anymore.”

Damien’s tone changed subtly, seeming to charge the air a little. “Then people don’t know what real power is.”

The man froze again, then closed his cash register. “Maybe so. The less I know, the better.”

The man wrapped the books in brown paper and tied the parcel with a string. Caro was charmed for a moment because it seemed so old-fashioned.

Then she and Damien were on the icy street again, listening to the door lock behind them.

“What do you think?” Caro asked him.

“Later. Let’s get away from here as soon as we can.”

They walked down a dark alley, then he put her on his back again and the night sped by too fast to see.

Chapter 6

G
arner was at the office when they returned, and he made no secret of his impatience to talk with Jude.

“Where
is
he? He sends me out to do things, and now he’s not even answering his phone? What’s the point of always being in touch, like he demands?” Garner waved a phone. “Radio phones in case someone gets in trouble. His idea. And then he doesn’t answer?”

Damien stilled. “He didn’t say where he was going. Did he tell you?”

“Of course not! He never lets me know anything. I feel like a dog. Go here, Garner, go there, Garner. Cripes.”

Damien ignored the complaints. “What has you so worked up?”

“There’s been another murder!”

Now it was Caro who froze. “Who? How?”

Garner, clearly glad to at last have someone to listen, leaned forward. “That guy whose entire family was killed last week? The one you came here about? His brother-in-law bit the dust. But that’s not what’s so interesting. What’s interesting is that he lived alone, that he was inside a locked condo and that there’s a lot of street talk about how it could have happened. Where the hell is Jude?”

“Wait,” Caro said. “Did he have any relationship with the Pritchetts other than the marriage?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that the only reason they found him was because some friends started to get worried when he disappeared for three days and didn’t return calls. That’s why I need Jude!”

“Relax,” Damien said quietly. “Jude can’t answer his phone if he’s traveling fast.”

“It’s been a half hour. He can cross this entire city faster than that. It’s irrelevant anyway. I don’t see his car out there.”

Damien exchanged looks with Caro. “He
did
drive.”

“Yes.” Tension was winding her tighter than a spring, the kind of tension she felt when walking into a potentially deadly situation.

“Can you find out anything on the computer?” Damien asked her.

“I’d need a case number.”

“No way to get it?”

She jammed her hand into her jeans and pulled out her cell. She dialed a familiar number and heard a familiar voice. “Pat? I need some help. I hear Andrew Pritchett’s brother-in-law was found dead.”

Pat asked her to hold a minute, and shortly thereafter Caro could tell from the change in sounds that Pat had moved to a bathroom. When she hung up, she was able to answer Damien’s question.

“They don’t know if the death is associated. No information on how it occurred but Pat said the guy looked as if he’d been scared to death. That might indicate a weak heart. Regardless, she’s going to text me the case number.”

“Then you can get the reports?”

Caro hesitated. “It won’t exactly be legal, but yes.”

“In the meantime,” Damien said, turning back to Garner, “see what you can find on that machine about associations between Pritchett and his brother-in-law. Maybe they were in business together.”

“Why me?” Garner asked, regarding the computer as if it might explode. “Jude will have a fit if I mess something up. Why can’t you do it?”

“Because I’ve never bothered to master a computer. What would I need it for?”

“Plenty, apparently,” Garner muttered. “Imagine that. Thousands of years old and no computer experience.”

“Try this,” Damien said a little acidly. “Thousands of years old and only in the last few decades of that time have computers become meaningful at all to ordinary people.”

At that, Garner smirked. “Time to catch up, vampire.”

“I rarely waste time learning skills that are utterly useless to me.”

“Oh, cut it out,” Caro said irritably. “I’ll see what I can do as soon as I get the file number.”

“I’m still worried about Jude,” Damien said. “I wish he’d given us some idea where he was going.”

“Maybe,” said Garner, brandishing his phone, “he’s just not answering because it’s me calling.”

Damien lifted both brows but then pulled out his own phone and put it to his ear. “There you are,” he said after a moment. “Garner is having kittens because you’re not returning his calls.”

He listened a moment, then laughed. “No, you can tell him that yourself. Caro’s about to use your computer if you don’t mind. Really? All right, I’ll tell her.”

He disconnected and looked at Caro. “Jude said to wait. Terri is examining the body and he’s already been to the crime scene. He has information.”

“All he had to do was tell me that,” Garner observed morosely. “Then I wouldn’t have had to worry.”

Nobody answered him.

Caro started to remove her jacket as the chill from riding on Damien’s back began to slip away. Coffee. Hot chocolate. Then her hand found the stitched pouch she’d been carrying.

She pulled it out of her pocket and held it up. “Something affected me tonight when we were in that bookshop. Something made me step back from that man, and it didn’t feel like that thing that’s been following me. Could it be this?”

“It could,” Damien said. He took it from her hand. “I wonder if I was too trusting.”

“In what way?”

“Alika said you need protection. You do, but how can I be sure this will provide it? Maybe it’s not for protection at all.”

“Lovely,” said Garner.

Damien barely spared him a glance. “So now we have two questions. Did Alika give you this for real protection? If so, was it this that made you back away from that shopkeeper tonight? If not, why did you back away? Did you sense something wasn’t right about him?”

Caro racked her brains trying to figure it out, finally admitting, “I don’t know.”

“Great,” muttered the never-silent Garner. “Either one of them could be involved in this.”

“Or neither,” Caro said sensibly. “Don’t put on blinders, Garner. It limits investigations.”

“We still have more places to check out, too,” Damien added. “But I really want to know how the brother-in-law might be involved in this, and whether his death was from natural causes.”

“That’s important, all right,” Caro agreed. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that coincidences do happen.”

“Maybe in
your
line of work,” Garner argued. “In mine there are fewer coincidences.”

“So what are people saying on the street?” she asked to divert him from his irritability.

“Woo-woo stuff, which is only woo-woo if you’ve never seen it in action. It probably doesn’t mean much really. At least in terms of anyone knowing anything. So the condo was locked. Anybody walking out could have ensured it was locked up. The only mystery was that when the cops arrived, the door chain was still hooked up.”

“Really.” Caro sat on the chair beside Chloe’s desk. “No disturbed windows? Nothing?”

Garner shrugged. “I couldn’t get near the place. The only thing I was interested in was that this guy was related to the Pritchett family.”

Damien spoke. “Did you sense anything?”

“I sense things all over this town. There are enough nuts to supply a factory. All that matters is a scent I’m supposed to pick out. This one
might
have had the lingering odor of whatever was around Caro the other night.”

“Was?”
Damien repeated. “Is it gone now?”

“It’s not here. That’s all I can tell you.”

Damien held up the small pouch. “Maybe it
is
protective.” Then he frowned. “And if so, how would Alika know exactly what you needed to be protected against?”

“It was clear she’s sensitive,” Caro reminded him. “She knew when trouble was approaching and shooed us out.”

“So logical,” he remarked, but there was a gleam in his eyes that said he knew when she could be utterly illogical. She glanced away, hoping she didn’t blush.

That
was a memory she wanted to bury in a deep hole. Of course, memory was never that cooperative. Nothing like saying, “Don’t think about an elephant.”

Jude arrived at last, bringing cold air into the room with him. It clung to him as if he were frozen, sucking heat from around the room. Caro pulled her jacket over her shoulders, wondering how long it took a vampire to reach the ambient temperature. She hadn’t noticed it with Damien, most likely because she’d been nearly as cold herself upon their return.

“It wasn’t pretty,” Jude remarked. “But I got the important information, at least what’s available for now. Terri says the guy’s heart exploded. She was quite clear he didn’t have a vessel rupture or a collapse in the cardiac wall. His heart literally exploded.”

Caro felt tension squeeze her own heart. “That’s not possible.”

“In theory. There wasn’t a mark on him either, and the rictus of his face could be either pain or terror. No way to tell.”

He popped into his office and returned with two bags of blood. He tossed one to Damien, then bit into his own and began drinking. For the first time, Caro noticed that their eyes changed color as they fed—from black as night to golden.

A few minutes later, when they were done feeding, Jude took the bags into his office, then returned without them. “Okay, we missed something in the background check. I’m not going to call this a coincidence. No way. Not from Terri’s description of the guy’s heart. We now have six impossible murders, and every one of the victims was related to the rest.”

Caro’s phone buzzed, and she pulled it out. “Pat texted the case-file number.”

“Forward it to me,” Jude said. “I’m going to spend the rest of tonight researching.” Then he looked at Damien. “Take Caro home until dawn. This place is about to become a beehive, and she looks exhausted.”

“I can help,” she objected.

“Tomorrow. When you have some rest. I need everyone in top shape. That means you, too, Garner. You get back here in the morning to help Caro and Chloe. I’ll leave a list of what I learn and questions to be pursued.”

* * *

They took Jude’s car and Caro was grateful not to be out in the biting wind, moving at nearly supersonic speeds. Damien rolled down his own window a few inches, but this time it amused her because she understood why. Her scents drove him crazy. She’d never enjoyed driving a man crazy before, and she rather liked the illusory sense of power it gave her. She knew it was illusory, though, because she had no doubt this vampire could overpower her in an instant if he chose.

“Are you scared?” he asked.

“Do you care?”

“Actually, yes. There’s a great deal I can protect you from, but unless I figure this out I may be no protection at all. And that scares
me.
”

“I’m touched.”

He snorted. “Seriously, Caro, you ought to be afraid.”

“I don’t seem to scare easily. I have to be
in
a situation, not thinking about one. And then after the first burst of fear comes, adrenaline kicks in and I’m one of those people who gets the fight rather than flight response.”

“Just as well. From this thing there is no flight.”

“But Garner said he couldn’t sense it around me. So I don’t need protection, do I?” Although, strange as it would have seemed only a couple of days ago, she didn’t want this vampire to leave her alone.

“I take Garner with a grain of salt. He’s not perfect. And not sensing that thing around you at that moment doesn’t mean it won’t come back.”

She felt a trickle of uneasiness then. She really didn’t want to feel that thing watching her ever again.
Think of something else.
Like her irritation at not being able to work the case because Jude had sent her home to rest. Like whether Damien had any feelings beyond lust.

She turned a little in her seat, studying him as light from streetlamps flashed across his face. “Does anything frighten
you?
”

“Something bad happening to you on my watch.” He pulled into a parking place near her building and switched off the ignition.

“Cut the crap, Damien. I mean what
really
frightens you?”

“That was it.” He turned, putting his arm over the back of the seat. “As for other things...” He shrugged. “I don’t fear death. A vampire dies every morning. I don’t fear never resurrecting, because I’ll never know. I don’t fear pain because I heal so fast.”

“What about other things? What about your heart?”

“You mean my feelings?”

“Yes.”

He hesitated. “Long, long ago, after I entered the priesthood, I had to make a choice. I chose to serve even though it cost me the woman I loved. I was never permitted to see her again. It was a long time ago.”

“I guess. So you never loved again?” That seemed sad, but then she reminded herself that she’d given up such things for her job, too. At least for now.

“I never permitted myself to. Look at the way I live, Caro, and ask yourself how many would want to share my life except briefly.”

Before she could answer, he climbed out of the car and came around to open her door for her. One look at his face was enough to tell her that the subject was closed.

All the way up to her apartment, she puzzled the question. He seemed content enough with his life. In fact, he had told her it had benefits that made up for the sacrifices. So why did he feel it was so unlikely that anyone would want to share life with him?

“What about other vampires?” she demanded when they were inside her apartment. “Couldn’t you find someone who already lives your life?”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “We’re territorial. Finding two of us together is rare. That includes males and females. A few manage, and all of us can manage for brief periods. But for eternity? That’s rare indeed.”

She guessed she could understand that. “I’ve read that many human marriages start falling apart by the eighteenth year.”

“Thus you make my point. And for us there’s an additional complication.”

“What’s that?”

“Just get your sleep. I’ll wake you before dawn and we’ll go back to Jude’s.”

But she stood stubbornly still. “Are you saying you can’t divorce? Why would that be?”

“It’s not about divorce.” He sighed, and for the first time she saw him run his fingers through his hair in a sign of true exasperation. “Maybe you should know,” he said finally. “I keep telling you we’re playing with fire but then I only tell you half of it.”

“I’m not planning to play with fire again,” she said firmly.