Claimed by the Immortal (The Claiming) Read Online Free PDF Page A

flashlight beams. “It’s getting stronger, the feeling. The minute I stepped in here.”
    He turned, facing her. “Not good. Do you want to leave?”
    “And be alone outside right now? With this thing flexing its muscles?” She shook her head. “Let’s just get this done. And don’t touch anything.”
    “I don’t need to touch anything.”
    “What are you going to do? Smell it?”
    “Perhaps.”
    She felt her jaw drop a little but snapped it shut and followed him. He was already working his way from the kitchen to the front of the house. Interestingly, he passed the ground-floor study and headed upstairs first.
    “What I saw happen was downstairs,” she argued as she followed him up the wide, curving staircase.
    “But it started upstairs.”
    She couldn’t exactly argue about that. The guy had called and said his family was being murdered, and they had all been found upstairs in bed like shattered rag dolls who had been dumped where they had slept.
    She was grateful, however, for the thoroughness of the crime unit. Most of the grisly stuff was long gone, taken as evidence or to the morgue. What remained was some spray and splatter, and plenty of fingerprint dust, something she’d seen countless times.
    It would still take a special cleaning crew to make this house habitable again, but that was not the concern of city officials.
    In each room they stopped for a minute or two. The way Damien sniffed the air was a little unnerving, but Caro forced herself to ignore it and instead stretch her underused sixth sense to see if it could feel anything.
    Unfortunately, she recoiled almost at once. Death was very much in the air. Death and pain. It hit her like a blow, and she staggered out of the room.
    “Are you all right?” Damien was there, gripping her elbow. His golden eyes almost seemed to gleam.
    “Death. Everywhere.”
    “I smell it. The pain, too. It’s heavy in the air.”
    He could smell it? But why not? she thought miserably. Pheromones might linger as strongly as the stench of blood.
    “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll finish looking.”
    But she followed him anyway, hovering on the threshold of each room, trying to pick out anything useful from the waves of terror, pain and death imprinted on the space.
    She wondered if anyone could ever live comfortably in this house again. Or who would even want to.
    At last they descended the stairs, side by side.
    “Can you still feel the watcher?” Damien asked.
    “Oh, yeah. It’s right behind me.”
    He surprised her at the foot of the stairs, telling her to stop. “Just hold still. If Garner could sense it, maybe I can.”
    So she waited, curious, frightened and sickened, while he closed his eyes. This time he didn’t sniff the air. He simply stood stock-still as if he was waiting for something.
    Suddenly his eyes snapped open. “It’s done here. It left its work behind but nothing else. Let’s go.”
    “But you can feel it around me?”
    He hesitated. “Yes. I can. I can’t place what it is, but I think I encountered it once before. A very, very long time ago.” He shook his head in frustration. “But still I can’t place it. Now come.”
    He’d encountered this before? How was that possible? What exactly was he? Or Jude for that matter. They weren’t like any private investigators she had ever met before.
    Most P.I.’s operated to some extent like cops, gathering information for their clients. The difference was they mainly focused on things that were ugly in a different way, things that weren’t crimes, like infidelity, concealed assets and sometimes missing persons.
    Messenger Investigations seemed to operate in an entirely different ballpark. But that was why Pat had recommended them, she reminded herself. Because Messenger Investigations handled things the police couldn’t. Like invisible murderers. An unnerved bubble of laughter tried to rise in her throat, but she swallowed it. Laughter would not soothe what had happened here