Claimed by the Immortal (The Claiming) (23 page)

“As many as it takes. In less than a month my son and his family will lose their home. Where will they go? What will they do? The rich never think of these things. Pah!”

Caro had to admit some sympathy with the woman’s view. “But there has to be a better way to fight.”

“We went to the meetings. We argued for our homes. They didn’t listen.”

“How does this justify murder? You took the law into your own hands. No one has that right.”

“Easy for you to say,” Alika spat furiously. “You won’t be sleeping on the street.”

Caro gave up the argument. The problem here wasn’t that Alika was wrong about what was happening to all those families. No, she was simply wrong in how she was dealing with the problem. Finally she said, “Leaving people homeless is wrong. But murder is even worse, and it won’t stop what’s happening. There has to be another way. I’m sure there are agencies—”

“Pah,” Alika interrupted. “Agencies. As if they care. Believe me, they don’t care the way I do, the way my son does. How many homes will be destroyed? You tell
me
where there are homes these people can afford to move into.”

Caro didn’t have an answer for that. Worse, she wondered if anyone did.

“No,” Damien said quietly. “Don’t weaken yourself.”

She looked at him and realized she had lost the image of the corked bottle. The cold was creeping through her again. At once she mentally reconstructed the container and slapped the stopper on it. The elemental remained contained.

“Please,” she said to Alika. “Innocent children died because of your anger at their father. I might have died and may still. You need to recall this thing. What if it slips your control?”

Alika smiled faintly. “It’s in
your
control now, woman. What will you do with it?”

Caro didn’t have an answer for that. She had the thing bottled up inside her, but with no idea of how to get rid of it. If she even could.

Damien’s voice changed, taking on that eerie note again. He was trying to command Alika. “We both know the rules. You summoned it so you are the only one who can send it back. Send it back now.”

Alika shrugged. “You won’t kill me, because then it will never go back. And if you won’t kill me, you cannot stop me.”

“Woman, I am Magi. You don’t know what you’re bargaining for here.”

“Your powers are gone, vampire.”

“Actually,” Damien said softly, “they are not. Believe me, I can make you wish you’d never been born. Or perhaps you would prefer I make your son wish he’d never been born.”

Caro smothered a gasp.

“You can’t,” Alika said calmly. “It would violate your oath as one of the Magi.”

“Not when it will protect the lives of others. You threaten my lady. You’ve killed many already. You plan to kill more. Which way do you think my oath flows? To life or to death?”

Finally, something that gave Alika pause. She said nothing, her face frozen, for at least a full minute. “Leave Jerome out of this. I left your lady out of it.”

“Not entirely,” Damien countered. “It almost killed her despite your gris-gris. Are you strengthening it? Is it already slipping your control?”

Again Alika remained silent.

Then Damien moved faster than sight, and the next thing Caro could see, he held Jerome in his grip, with his hands behind him. “I have no desire to hurt your son. I have no desire to hurt you. But this must stop and it must stop
now.
”

“Leave Jerome out of this,” Alika demanded, shoving herself to her feet.

Jerome was beginning to look a little wild-eyed and his gaze kept darting to his mother.

“Then call off your elemental,” Damien insisted. “Send it back. I don’t even need my magic to deal with your son. He’s a mere human. Before you could do a thing I could snap his neck. Or rend him to pieces the way you did with the Pritchett children.”

Caro was appalled by the threats. She hated threats of violence. Yet this time she understood them. Others would die if Alika didn’t back down.

“Release my son or I’ll call on powers you can’t even imagine.”

Damien smiled, showing teeth. “You think I haven’t learned every one of those powers? You’re talking to a mage who has walked this earth for three thousand years. Your knowledge is that of a child’s compared to mine.”

“Let him go or I will kill her!”

Damien said nothing for a moment. He looked at Caro.

“Let her try,” Caro said, feeling a steely resolve grow in her. “Let her son go, and let her try.
I have had enough.
”

Whatever Damien saw or sensed about her, his smile widened. “Indeed you have,
Schatz.
” With that he let Jerome go, but stopped him with a word. “If you love your mother, talk sense to her before I have to act.”

Jerome approached his mother, taking her hand. “Mother, you always told me that using power for dark purposes would rebound. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Please, send it back.”

“And let dozens be homeless, including my own son?”

“We’ll find another way.”

“There is no other way. We tried and tried again. They don’t listen, those rich men who own the world.”

Caro felt the elemental in her struggling to escape. She guessed Alika must be calling it to take care of her and Damien. While it was contained so that it couldn’t hurt her, she could feel her strength draining as she fought to keep it in check. Was there no way out of this?

“In what way,” Damien asked, “are you any better than they?”

For an instant Alika’s eyes widened. Then they narrowed again. “If you’re so powerful, mage, send it back yourself.”

Damien looked at Caro. “Melt it.”

“What?”

“Melt what is inside you with everything you’ve got. Then release it.”

She stared at him, uncertain, then noticed that somehow he seemed to be growing larger. That wasn’t possible, was it?

“Caro!”

She nodded and tried to do what he said, although it was all guesswork at this point. She found the white flame inside her and imagined it growing hotter and hotter. Little by little she felt her insides warm. Little by little the container she had created to hold the elemental seemed to shrink. It was working! She focused more of her energy on it, until she felt it grow small and almost lukewarm.

“Now,” said Damien.

Mentally she pulled the stopper from the bottle. At once she felt the elemental recoil, pulling away from her and back toward Alika.

Alika gasped and took a quick step back. But then she seemed to gather herself. “So we fight,” she said.

“Not if you send it back.”

“I can call another.”

“Not while I breathe,” Damien said. “I don’t have to kill you, you know. I have other methods.”

Alika’s response was surprisingly fast. With a fingernail, she clawed her own wrist and let blood spill on the floor while she began to chant.

Caro looked at Damien, saw the inevitable flare of his nostrils at the scent of blood. Was Alika hoping the blood would distract him? If she was, it didn’t work.

Damien lifted his arms and blue lightning began to dance along both of them. “I am mage,” he said. “I am also vampire. You have no idea, woman.”

She laughed and continued her chant, pulling things from deep pockets in her dress and scattering them around.

Jerome, looking horrified, backed up. “Mother...” But she ignored him.

Damien began to chant, too, his voice growing thunderous. And before Caro’s eyes, he grew, becoming larger and suddenly appearing to her to be wrapped in some kind of white cloak. What was going on?

But then Alika grew, too, though not as big as Damien.

It was as if power was changing their aspects. Maybe only Caro could see it and she wondered. But she didn’t have time to wonder very long. She felt the elemental strengthening again, and with every ounce of will she had in her, she sent hot white light toward it.

Damien’s voice had begun to sound like the roll of thunder from a nearby storm. It drowned Alika’s chant, but as an eerie red light began to glow around her, Caro knew that she was still building power.

Jerome appeared to be wishing he could fade into the wall.

Caro watched with fascination, wondering what if anything she could do. When her skin started to prickle as if there was lightning in the air, she wondered if it came from Damien or Alika. Or whether it even mattered.

As the elemental stirred again, she sent more white light toward it and felt it recoil. Good. If that was all she could do, then she would do it.

Blue lightning spread all over Damien’s body. She could hear it snap and hum like a thing alive. Alika’s red glow increased until it looked like flames leaping outward. Should she direct white light that way, too? But almost as soon as the thought distracted her, she felt the elemental surge again, its power growing. Holding out her own arms, she imagined white heat flowing toward it, holding it in check.

Blue lightning met red flame. The bokor and the mage seemed to fill the room and reach beyond it, impossible or not. To Caro they seemed to become towering giants wrapped in their power, mythical beings no longer human.

As soon as their powers connected, a deafening crack sounded and the entire shop seemed to shake. Startled, she almost lost track of the elemental but quickly cornered it again. She watched as her own white light shot forth toward that force, but then her power did something odd. It seemed to twine around Damien’s blue light, adding just a bit.

Was she helping? She wished she knew. The only thing she knew for certain at that moment was that nothing must happen to Damien. Nothing.

Although given how large and powerful he looked right now, she doubted anything at all could harm him. He seemed to hurl blue bolts at Alika from his hands.
Zeus on a rampage,
she thought inanely.

To her it seemed almost as if time had stopped. Seconds and minutes became meaningless in a point of eternity. Blue bolts met red flames again and again until she wondered if the powers were evenly matched. Nothing seemed to change except for those bolts.

“Send it back now,” Damien thundered, “or I swear I’ll leave you with nothing!”

Then to Caro’s amazement, the blue lightning seemed to be sucking the red flames toward it. Oh, God, she hoped Alika wasn’t winning. Frantically she tried to think of what she could do to help.

But Damien, she realized, didn’t look as if this change bothered him at all.

“I told you, woman. I am mage and I am vampire. You have not met the likes of me before. Send the elemental back!”

Alika said nothing. She tightened her face, as if fighting with every ounce of her strength. For an instant the red flowed back to her. But only for an instant. Then it started flowing toward Damien again, and as it reached his blue lightning, it faded toward lavender.

“You’re running out of time,” Damien warned.

“I can leave it and you won’t be able to stop it,” Alika gasped.

“If you leave it, can you prevent it from harming your son? Or his family?”

More red flames disappeared into Damien’s blue aura. Caro blinked, as it seemed to her that Alika was shrinking a bit, that her fiery aura was fading.

“Do it!” Damien demanded.

Caro felt it happen. One moment she was holding the elemental back, and the next it was gone. Completely gone. While the air still sizzled with electricity, it had also grown lighter, clearer.

“Caro?” Damien asked.

“I can’t feel it anymore.”

“Wait a minute, and be sure.”

Alika continued to shrink, her aura growing dimmer. “Stop,” she begged.

“I’ll stop when I’m sure the elemental is gone.”

“It’s gone,” Alika groaned. “It’s gone.”

“Caro?”

“I really can’t sense it anymore.”

Another clap sounded, this one quieter. All of a sudden there was just an old woman sagging into a chair, and Damien, the Damien she had known all along, standing there.

Damien surprised her by squatting before Alika. He waited until he had her attention.

“I took power from you.”

“I know.”

“You still have enough. You can build it again but it will take time. But do not do this again, Alika. I don’t want to have to come back.”

“But the people,” she whispered. “My son, his family.”

Caro stepped forward. “If I may?”

Damien nodded and moved to the side a bit so Caro could squat beside him. “Alika, you tried to protect me. I know that. And while I don’t approve of what you did, I understand why you did it.”

The woman’s eyes, looking ancient now, stared glumly back at her.

“I’ll work with my friends on the force to find places for your son and all the other people to live. I can’t promise they’ll succeed, but I think everyone will want to help.”

Alika barely nodded.

Damien stood. “You’ll be all right, Alika. I just hope you didn’t pick up a lot of bad—what do you call it?”

“Juju,” Caro supplied. She, too, straightened and turned to Jerome, who looked as if he had aged a dozen years. “I’ll find a way to help you.”

He just nodded, but there was no hope in his face.

Outside on the street, Caro breathed the cold air, enjoying the freedom of no longer being stalked and watched. The city looked so damn normal that it was almost impossible to believe what she had just seen.

“Damien?”

“Yes,
Schatz?
”

“I have questions.”

“Of course you do. But let’s get somewhere warm first. You’re merely human, after all.”

She laughed, feeling so good all of a sudden. It felt even better when he lifted her onto his back, and along with Jude they headed back, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Someday she hoped to be able to actually see it, not just feel like she was riding a crazy elevator.

Then, in the midst of her relief and happiness, she realized something. Tomorrow, or the next day, she would have to return to her mundane life.

She loved being a cop, wanted to be a detective, but nothing in her life was ever going to be the same again. She wondered how she would mesh this new world into her old world. Surely there had to be a way to use her newfound skills and power in her job?