Claim the Night

A block later she asked, “I interfered?”

So she cared beyond herself. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know that. I’m just … I’d hate to think someone else might suffer because you saved me.”

“Your danger seemed the most immediate.”

“Thank you. I was terrified.” And she sounded reluctant to admit it. “I’d have fought, but with four of them …” She let it trail off.

“I know.” He could still smell the fear on her, though it had faded considerably. Making it easier for him to maintain control. But the scent of her blood—there was a time he would have followed that scent around the globe.

With another squeal he took a sharp corner, then zipped into a parking space in front of his off ice.

“We’re here,” he said. “I’ll take you to Chloe.”

It didn’t look as if anything was alive or awake on the street, but one little light burned redly next to a doorbell a half dozen steps below street level. He guided her down, swiped his key in the security lock, and heard the bolt slide open.

He shoved the heavy steel door open and urged her in ahead of him. She seemed reluctant now, afraid again. Of course, the hallway was unlit out of deference to his night vision.

“Chloe?” he called out to reassure his companion.

A moment later a doorway opened in the dark hallway, and yellow light spilled forth. Chloe emerged from her office, dressed in some weird version of not-quite-punk, not-quite-stripper black leather and lace. She dyed her hair black and wore it in spikes. The whole getup was topped with an amazing amount of black eyeliner and dark shadow.

“Jude,” she said, her light, youthful voice sounding surprised. “I didn’t expect you for a couple of hours.”

“A little hitch,” he explained, motioning to the woman beside him. “She was about to be assaulted by some thugs.”

Chloe, for all she was weird—and to deal with him she had to be weird—at once surged forward. “Oh, my gosh! Are you all right?”

His rescued human relaxed at last. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“Take care of her,” Jude said to Chloe. “Get her home. I’ve got to go back.”

Chloe’s eyes leapt to him even as she wrapped a supporting arm around the woman. “You mean you didn’t …?”

“Not yet. I have to get back.”

Chloe started to shake her head. “It’s late, Jude. Way late. Let it go until tomorrow.”

He’d been dealing with the threat of sunrise for nearly two hundred years. He didn’t need anyone to remind him, or warn him. But when he checked internally, he reached a conclusion that displeased him.

“You’re right. It’ll have to wait.” The passage of the night hours somehow had engraved themselves inside. Hours before dawn he could feel the sun’s approach, and while he needn’t fear the light until the sun fully rose, he had learned to measure his nights by an internal clock.

His clock said there wasn’t enough time to retrace his steps and approach the man he’d been seeking. Not at the height of summer when the days were so long, the dawn so early.

He hated to let this matter wait. It had taken him a whole month to track down this one man. What if he moved again?

But truthfully, he would probably be able to follow the guy’s trail even if he moved all the way across the city. Because he had scented it, caught it, memorized it.

Much like he’d memorized the scent of the woman he’d saved. In some corner of his brain, she was catalogued, and he could follow her anywhere. Or recognize her again even if decades or centuries passed.

Hell. He swore under his breath, watching as Chloe settled the woman with a cup of tea and plenty of youthful mothering. Himself he took into the back office, a room without windows, one where he could work even during the day if it was absolutely necessary.

It seldom was a good thing, because the sleep of death was hard to resist. And when he did resist it, sooner or later he had to make up for it, usually during night hours that were rightfully his.

He pulled some blood out of the refrigerator by his desk, and drained the bag without bothering to use a glass. Cold, and not completely alive, tainted with anticoagulants, it never quite satisfied the craving, but it kept him healthy. One of these days soon he needed to call on one of his acquaintances, one of those who would let him feed. No substitute quite made up for the warm, pumping blood of a living donor.

When he finished draining the bag, he sealed it away in an airtight container marked Biohazard. Soon the drops that were left would begin to rot, and the smell of rotting blood was even more repulsive to him than it was to humans. At all costs, that sickly odor had to be concealed.

He’d made the right decision, he told himself. By dawn that nameless woman out there would probably have been a brutalized corpse. While he couldn’t read minds, he could smell intentions and emotions, and those thugs had been full of evil intent and a determination to leave no witness behind.

And something more. Something not quite right in their scents. Not drugs, which he could identify almost as accurately by scent as by a lab test. No, some other odor that left him feeling deeply disturbed.

He would have to deal with them eventually. Of that he had no doubt. But right now he was concerned about his more immediate target. The killer he sought was demonically oppressed, if not possessed, which meant the cops would never find him. Never. At least not until the demon was removed from the picture.

He drummed his fingers impatiently on his desk, and looked at the clock. It told him what his body already knew: not enough time, not tonight. For an ordinary killer, maybe he could squeak it in, but not a possessed one.

A knock on the door called for his attention. “Come in, Chloe.” He knew it was her because her scent wafted more strongly under the door.

She pushed the door open and stuck her head in. “Our lady friend doesn’t want to go home just yet, and Garner just arrived.”

“Garner?” Just what he needed: a visit from an inept hunter who was trying to win his spurs while making a complete nuisance of himself. And a rescued woman who now didn’t want to go home. A damn three-ring circus in his outer office.

“Sorry,” Chloe whispered. “I told him you were busy but he seems to know something about the, um, target.”

Things really couldn’t get any better, could they? he thought sarcastically as he pushed back from his desk. Garner mixing in with a dangerous case and that woman ….

Realizing he hadn’t yet shucked his leather coat, he tugged it off and tossed it over his chair. It was the kind of oversight a human might notice, and he didn’t want the woman to notice any more than she already had. Though he was fairly impervious to the ambient temperature, he kept the office comfortable enough for humans, like Chloe. That coat would appear out of place, and with Garner adding to the chaos of the night, he didn’t want one more damn thing to seem out of place.

He stepped into the front office, his gaze first going to the woman. Not only was her scent absolutely intoxicating, but she was far prettier than he’d noticed in the earlier chaos. Long inky hair, wide blue eyes and lips that seemed to beg for a kiss. She sat in one of the client chairs near Chloe’s desk, her legs crossed in a way that revealed surprising length in a woman so small. Her arms were folded tightly, but they failed to conceal the mounds of her breasts, not too small, not too large. She was as much a visual delight as an olfactory delight. Eminently desirable, eminently drinkable. A dangerous combination.

He dragged his gaze away and looked at Garner, who was leaning casually against the wall. Blond, barely twenty-four, Garner suffered from delusions of grandeur brought about by a Gift. The young man looked elegant, in a rough sort of way, and appeared composed, although Jude could smell that he was far from as calm as he appeared. “What do you want?”

“I know something about the, ah, target you’re after.”

“And how would you know that?”

Garner actually flushed a little. Since he wasn’t undead, he still had blood pressure that responded to his emotions.

“Get in my office,” Jude said impatiently. “And close the door.”

Garner didn’t argue, for once. He did exactly what he was told.

Then Jude returned his attention to beautiful and problematic woman. “Why don’t you want to go home?”

She bit her lower lip, revealing a glimpse of perfect, white teeth. “Because that guy who offered me a ride? He knows where I live.”

Chloe spread her hands as if to say, How can you argue with that?