Forever Claimed

Linked to terrors she had been taught, but not at all repugnant in and of itself. Separated from her childhood training, the smell was actually pleasant. Even enticing.

Perhaps that was why she had been trained to avoid it. Because it might draw her in. By itself, there was nothing to cause repulsion.

God, she felt like she was losing her mind. The echoes of the attack still reverberated through her, and yet she was drawn to one of their kind. But that was how they operated, she reminded herself. Not by repelling, but by attracting. Like spiders weaving sparkling webs that looked like a safe place to land.

However alluring, there was nothing safe about a vampire. Hadn’t Luc said so himself?

Chloe excused herself to go make tea. She disappeared around a corner, and soon there were sounds of cupboards opening and closing, of water running.

Luc spoke, his voice pitched low. “Your eyes reveal too much, Dani Makar. As do your scents. You want me and you do not like it.”

She drew a shocked breath, horrified that he could tell so much.

He gave her a half smile. “You have few secrets when it comes to your feelings. I can smell them. Too bad you cannot smell mine.”

Her voice came out a broken whisper. “Why?”

“Because then you would know I want you, too.”

She couldn’t breathe. Her heart hammered so loudly it filled her ears. “I don’t …”

He shrugged. “It makes no difference. I have no interest in my wants or yours. Mine can be satisfied elsewhere, and yours … well, your reluctance hardly appeals to me.”

“I thought your kind liked that.”

“Some do. They are the ones we will have to fight. It’s never been much to my taste.”

She felt he was omitting information, but she was fairly certain she didn’t want to know what it was. Bad enough he’d been so blunt and exposed something she had scarcely faced herself. She had the worst urge to slap him or storm out, but knew she couldn’t do either.

She was trapped until dawn with a vampire who perceived too much, and feelings she hoped she would eventually be able to forget ever having. Her family would be so ashamed of her.

She swallowed hard and was so glad when Chloe returned with two mugs of hot tea. It gave her something to hold and something to do. The need to stay active grew stronger with each passing minute. The problem was she couldn’t imagine what she could do. She had no way to pursue her attackers. She couldn’t bring this to the police, who wouldn’t believe any of it, and she couldn’t fight a bunch of vampires, anyway.

Unless she made what her family would consider an unholy alliance.

But her attraction to Luc terrified her. Now that she’d been forced to face it, she wanted to find a hole to bury it in. It would have been nice to blame it on the shock of the attack she had experienced earlier, but she was quite certain that wasn’t it. Based on the attack, all she should be feeling was horror and repulsion.

She felt as if her beliefs and her feelings had been tossed into a cement mixer. The pattern of her own thoughts and reactions felt alien, as if they belonged to someone else. She needed solitude to sort herself out again, to settle all these shocks. But she would have none until dawn.

Luc spoke. “We should send you back to your family first thing tomorrow. Away from here, away from all danger.”

She had been trying to build a life, to escape depending on her family. To leave behind the constant yearning that gnawed at her, the yearning to be fully one of her pack. To go back before she had achieved her full independence and grown the confidence she had come here to find seemed like failure. Utter failure.

She was always failing. Did she want to again?

But when she allowed her mind to touch on the attack, she wondered if failure wouldn’t be better. If Luc was right, that those rogues would know she hadn’t died and that this was all about hating to be thwarted, she would certainly be on their list for coming nights.

She couldn’t stand against them alone. If she ran, she’d fail. If she stayed, she might die.

But somehow that last thought crystallized something in her.

Better to die than live a life of fear and self-loathing. She wouldn’t go back to her pack with her tail between her legs—even if she didn’t have a tail.

No.

Worse, if she told them what had happened to her to send her home, they might feel obligated to come down here and hunt for vengeance. Oh, there was no might about it. They would come.

“I can’t go home,” she announced. “I can’t. If my pack finds out what happened they’ll come here to avenge me. I don’t want them in the middle of your war.”

Luc nodded then sighed. “I doubt they would discriminate between the rogues who attacked you and the rest of us.”

“No, they wouldn’t.”

“Then it’s best not to let them know. Things will be difficult enough without a pack of angry wolves getting into it.”

“So what do we do with her?” Chloe demanded. “Cripes, Luc, you’re full of problems and don’t have any solutions.”

“Oh, I have a solution,” Luc said almost bitterly. “I’ll protect her. I can spirit her away if I sense a threat.” Then he looked at Dani. “If she will let me, of course.”

Dani’s heart sank. She wanted most of all to get away from this damnably attractive bloodsucker who was making her feel things she didn’t want, making her want things that ought to make her shudder. Just looking at him sent a shiver of desire through her. The vampire magnetism, she told herself. That’s all it was. Hadn’t her family warned her?

Her reply, when it came, was heavy with dislike. “What choice do I have?”

“None, ma petite,” he said. “None. These rogues have narrowed the choices for all of us. They will get their war. And they will not succeed.”

“So sure?” Chloe asked acidly.

“No. But it never pays to go into battle full of doubt.”

With that, he appeared to draw into himself, to ponder whatever unhappy thoughts darkened his face.

Jude returned in the hour before dawn. His first words were “It’s begun. Four violent murders tonight.”

“Terri?” Chloe asked with instant concern.

“She’s at the morgue surrounded by enough people to be safe. Whoever the rogues are, they weren’t interested in following the bodies. And soon they’ll be going to ground.”

“Did you learn anything else?” Luc asked.

“Other than that the bodies reeked of vampire? No. From time to time while I was watching Terri on the streets, I thought I caught a whiff of them, but they seemed to have kept moving all night.”

“So they do not yet feel truly confident,” Luc remarked.

“That would be my guess. It may be that so far there are only those that attacked Dani.”

Luc waved a hand. “Perhaps. If they can’t gather others to their cause, they can deal with that quickly enough. Perhaps tomorrow night we’ll have fewer bodies. And the next night we’ll be dealing with newborns.”

Chloe gasped. Dani asked, “Newborns?”

Luc’s golden gaze had darkened a bit. “Newborns,” he repeated. “The newly changed. The most dangerous vampires of all.”

Apprehension prickled through Dani. “Why?”

“Because they’re the strongest vampires of all. Because they’re voracious and out of control. The last time I had to deal with a new vampire, it terrorized an entire city and it took two of us to execute it.”

Dani drew a long, shaky breath.

“You see,” Luc continued, “those are the stories which persuade your kind to see my kind as such a threat. Most of the undead follow certain rules. The newborns follow no rules at all.”

Chloe slumped at her desk. “No wonder you don’t want to change Terri.”

Jude spoke. “It’s possible to prepare someone for the change and make it easier by providing plenty of food. But if you leave them on their own, yes, that’s where you get true monsters. What a devil of a thought, Luc.”

“I’m trying to think of everything. How else can we prepare?”

“Damned if I know,” Jude said almost wearily. “All right. Time is short right now. You need a place to go to ground, Luc. Soon. And then it’ll be safe for Dani and Chloe to go home. That leaves darkfall to deal with.”

“I’m not leaving this office, boss,” Chloe said firmly. “I’ll sleep right here.” Then she looked at Dani. “Can you get home by yourself once it’s light?”

“Of course.” She sounded more certain than she felt, though. Yesterday she had felt completely safe in this city, and now she didn’t feel safe at all. Not even knowing the bloodsuckers couldn’t roam in the daylight eased her apprehension.

Chloe hesitated. “I’ll drive you home at dawn. Then I’m coming back here to get ready for the siege.”

Chapter 4

Luc waited for Dani outside the university building where she worked. Chloe had managed to get the information from her, and while he didn’t exactly want to be here, he knew no one else could promise Dani any kind of safety.

He smelled the approach of snow on the air and suspected that before the night was over, a white blanket would cover the city. It mattered to him not one way or the other, for he felt neither cold nor heat, but it might slow the rogues down a bit. It would be hard for them not to leave trails that even human eyes could read once it snowed.

He had donned clothing unfamiliar to him: a parka, rather than the leather that he preferred because it could stand up to the treatment he gave it, and jeans—the human preference for which he could not begin to understand. He hoped to blend in as he stood here waiting.

Already the city was on heightened alert because of the four murders last night, all of them grotesque, savage enough to hide any evidence vampires were involved. He didn’t want to appear out of place at all. Not now, not when he was here to protect Dani. Another time it would have made no difference to him, but tonight he could not take to the rooftops or vanish swiftly and without warning, not unless he wanted to terrorize Dani more than she already had been.

He saw her emerge from the building, wrapped in a long coat with a knit scarf around her neck and a knit cap on her unusual hair.

He forced himself to walk at a human pace toward her.

“Good evening,” he called, so his appearance wouldn’t startle her.

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