Claim the Night

“Why …” Her whisper broke.

“Why what?”

She shook her head, still staring at him.

“You ought to sit,” he suggested gently. “You’ve had a shock. I’ll just stay over here and you can take that chair right by the door.”

But she still didn’t move. She just kept staring at him, and he could almost see mental furniture being rearranged behind her eyes.

“You’re a ruthless killer,” she finally said.

“Only when I have to be.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? What kind of excuse is that?”

“Would you kill to save your own life? Isn’t that what you were thinking about doing with that sword? Isn’t that what happened last night with Sam?”

She gasped, and a spark of something flared in her eyes. “Did you kill him?”

“Sam? No. I’ll admit I would have liked to, but no. I warned him away. I threatened him. But I didn’t even hit him.”

A shudder passed through her. Dragging the sword, she eased her way to the chair and sat. He managed to suppress a wince at the way she treated that beautiful piece of steel.

“I can’t believe this,” she muttered.

“It would be nice if that were true,” he agreed. “Unfortunately, you already believe it or you wouldn’t have reacted the way you did. So here we are. You know my secret. You can leave. Or you can stay.”

Her head shot up. “Why would I want to stay?”

“Apparently, you didn’t want to leave. I don’t know why. Maybe you don’t, either. And maybe you’d stay because you have more questions. It’s entirely up to you.”

Her eyes narrowed dubiously. “You’re just saying that. You can’t let me go now that I know.”

He couldn’t quite suppress a smile, recognizing that she was still having trouble coping with the fact that he was a vampire, and equally so with the notion that he intended her no harm. People often got repetitious as they struggled to accept a truth that violated their notions of reality. “Just who is going to believe you? A hundred years ago you might have been able to assemble a mob to come get me, but these days …” He shrugged.

“So nothing can hurt you?”

“Plenty can.”

“Like what?”

He shook his head slowly and this time he did smile. “We’re not intimate enough to share those secrets.”

She leaned forward, putting weight on the sword point and finally he couldn’t keep silent. “Don’t lean on it that way. Please. You’ll damage it.”

At once she straightened. “Why is it so important to you?”

“Because I carried it through an entire war. It saved me from serious trouble a time or two.”

“How is that possible? You’re immortal!”

“No one is immortal. I’ll even die of old age. Eventually. If I survive long enough. Unlike you, I can die more than once.”

“This is too much.” She shook her head several times, as if she wanted to deny what she was thinking, or what he was saying.

He remained still and silent. His primary concern was to get her past this shock. Then she could leave, try to pick up her life, and one of these days she’d probably even convince herself she had imagined all of this because it simply wouldn’t fit in her world.

Eventually, she spoke again. “If I struck you with this sword, what would happen?”

“You’d hurt me. You’d cut through flesh and maybe bone, depending on how hard you swing.”

“And then?”

“And then I’d heal, the way I’ve been healing for nearly two hundred years, and by tomorrow night you wouldn’t even be able to tell you’d done it.”

She lowered the sword then, laying it on the rug. The eyes she raised to him looked pained. “I can’t protect myself from you, can I?”

“Yes, you can. You can walk out. At any time.”

“But why?” she asked plaintively. “Why would you let me go?”

Damn the movies, damn the myths and damn Bram Stoker. He invariably had an uphill battle against those deeply ingrained stories, on the rare occasions he acknowledged the truth of his mere existence.

“Because—” and this time his voice held a note of steel, mainly because her scent was getting to him again, and self-control, long nurtured, was fraying a bit “—I have absolutely no desire to harm you in any way.”

“But that’s what vampires do!”

“Not this one.” He turned his head toward the door and barked, “Chloe. Garner. Get in here.”

The two appeared instantly as if they had been listening.

He glowered at them. “Are you undead?”

“Cripes,” said Garner. “Do I look like it?”

Chloe loosed a huge sigh. “No.”

“Not vampires?”

“Ugh,” said Garner. “I practically faint at the sight of blood.” He almost looked shamefaced.

“I’m certainly not,” said Chloe.

“Have I ever harmed either of you? Stolen your blood?”

A chorus of nos.

“What would you say if I asked if I could feed?”

Garner paled. “Oh, jeez, Jude, you know I like you, man, but that? I don’t think so.”

“Chloe?”

“I’d say yes, but nobody’s asking.” She tossed her head.

Jude looked at Theresa. “There you go. And now I’ve got a job to do, one that’s already been put on hold, so I’m leaving now.”

Garner brightened. “Can I come, too?”

“After what you pulled tonight, I’m thinking about getting you a gag and a leash. Did you find out anything today?”

Garner shook his head. “Still only the two cases we know about. But I still have the other half of the city to do.”

“Okay. Now, I’m going to give you some instructions and you’re going to follow them to the letter.”

Garner nodded eagerly.

“Stay here. Apologize to Terri for scaring her half to death. Apologize to Chloe for upsetting her. And then sit here and think about what possible earthly use you can be if all you do is give me headaches.”

Jude crossed the room swiftly, not bothering to conceal his speed, picked up the sword and restored it to its place of honor on the wall.

“See you by dawn,” he said, and was gone.

Theresa didn’t move for a long time. She sat on the chair, staring blankly at the back of Jude’s office. Chloe spoke to her a few times, even offered her a cup of tea, but she didn’t answer.

A vampire.

Everything inside her rebelled at the thought now that the earlier terror had passed, now that she’d had that oddly calm conversation with Jude who had actually admitted, admitted, that he was a vampire.

But there weren’t any vampires. Except … Except … He moved too fast. He had made those guys leave simply by telling them to go. His eyes changed color. And clearly both Garner and Chloe believed it was true.

She had either stumbled into a group of lunatics or … Her mind balked again. He moved too fast. She had seen it just a little while ago, when he had taken the sword and put it back on the wall. He had moved so fast that she hadn’t seen him at all until he stopped to replace the sword. All she had felt was the breeze of his passage.

And no matter how she tried to reconstruct it, she couldn’t see Jude where her mind had not seen him.

“Terri? Terri.”

At long last she blinked and looked at Chloe.

“We need to get to the station and look at the mug shots. We promised Detective Matthews, remember?”

Feeling stiff, and not at all like herself, Terri followed Chloe to her car, a considerably nicer model than what Jude drove.

“You look like you’re still in shock,” Chloe remarked as they pulled away from the curb.

“Maybe I am.”

“Believing in vampires is hard at first.”

“That’s just it. I don’t.”

Chloe’s jaw dropped and she hit the brake, pulling over to the curb. Once she parked, she turned to face Terri. “Girl, you were threatening to kill the man. You were terrified. What do you mean, you don’t believe it?”

“I don’t know what came over me,” Terri said, still feeling wooden and numb. “It was like I was possessed or something.”

“Hey, we at Messenger Investigations don’t joke about that.” A pause, then “What do you mean? I don’t get it.”

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