Claim the Night

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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.”