Claimed by the Immortal

Feel within yourself. It’s sleeping now, dreaming of great things, but you can wake it at any time, my darling Caro. Belief is the key.

Belief? All her life she’d refused to believe in much beyond her five senses. Yes, she had a certain psychic skill, but sometimes she even convinced herself she was just good at reading people.

Even though she never quite believed that.

“Damien?”

“Yes?”

“When you were a mage—well, I guess you still are—but back when you practiced all the time, what did belief mean to you?”

“In what way? What I believed in? What I believed about myself? How I used belief?”

She hesitated, partly because the question wasn’t really clear to her. “I think my grandmother once said that belief is the key, and I think she meant to my power.”

“That would make sense. Do you want to stop for some coffee before we go to the first shop? You look cold.”

Well, of course she was cold, she thought wryly. He was protecting himself against her scents by keeping his window rolled down again. If she had to ride in the car too often with this guy, she was going to need better winter clothes.

But coffee sounded good, as did a brief break before they met another enigmatic shopkeeper who would seem determined to tell them as little as possible.

He pulled over and parked in front of a nearly empty diner. She noticed as they walked in, however, that Damien didn’t go unnoticed. Eyes immediately looked his way, and then almost subtly, people seemed to pull back a little as if they sensed something. It amused her to see people react so unconsciously to a man who appeared perfectly normal. She wondered what they were sensing.

When he looked around for a waiter, though, a middle-aged woman came hurrying over as if commanded. Could his glance do that, too?

“Two coffees,” he said, then turned to Caro. “Do you want dessert? You didn’t eat all that much.”

The thought of something sweet with her coffee sounded very good now that he mentioned it. She grabbed the plastic menu and scanned quickly. “Cheese Danish, please.”

When the woman walked away to get their order, she leaned toward Damien, who sat across from her. “Can you drink coffee?”

“I can drink and eat. It just doesn’t please me anymore. Most things taste about like dirt.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t sure she’d want to give up the joy of eating lobster or a pastry. “Do you miss it?”

“Never. Most of what you humans enjoy so much didn’t exist in my human lifetime. I ate a lot of lamb, fish, flat breads, fruits, figs and olives. And everything was full of sand.”

She laughed. “Sand would kind of kill it for me.”

“It was part of life. I didn’t think about it then.” He was smiling, though. “So I’ve never tasted most of the culinary delights you humans so enjoy now. How could I miss them?”

“Good question. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“When I served at temple and someone brought me a plate of figs or olives, they always poured water over it to rid it of the sand. Hopeless enterprise for the most part, but a nice gesture.”

“But I thought it was the fertile crescent, so full of plants and gardens.”

“Part of it was, although not all of it. We had swamps, too. But the winds would blow and the dust would come from elsewhere. Even today you get the Saharan dust on your East Coast at times.”

She nodded. “I’ve heard about that.”

“Usually not enough for you to notice. Being closer to the deserts, we experienced more of it.”

“You still haven’t answered my question about belief.”

Just then the waitress returned with their order. He waited until the coffee and pastry were served and they were alone again in their corner of the diner.

“Belief manifests in many ways and can be used in many ways. Often, as a priest, I played on the beliefs of our adherents. You see that often in religions even today. Your priest or minister says something and the congregation believes it as an article of faith. Things don’t have to be explained. Nothing is questioned.”

“Did you believe in what you were doing?”

“Of course. I became a priest.”

She nodded. “Okay, so you believed along with your adherents. But what else? What could my grandmother have meant?”

“Belief is indeed a key and not just to the minds of others. If you are a mage, as I am, it’s necessary to believe in your own power, Caro. You have to believe in your gifts to unlock them. You have to believe that you can repel a demon or cause a mountain to move. Whenever you wish to do something you can’t do by ordinary means, you have to believe you can do it by extraordinary means.”

“Belief is a difficult thing.”

“Very, if you weren’t raised to believe something. Jude’s wards are the ones he was raised to believe in— holy water and chrism, the sanctified oils. But ask yourself what empowers water that contains a bit of salt or olive oil into something that protects against evil.”

She nodded, swallowing pastry. “Belief.”

“Exactly. Jude is open-minded enough to take advantage of the wards that Chloe has learned. She believes in them.”

“So belief is the key to accessing power?”

“In a way. Belief is also what makes things powerful. I’m not going to say that forces don’t exist apart from belief, because they do. But to harness them, you must both believe in them and believe in your own ability to do so.”

“But I never believed in this thing that’s attached itself to me.”

“Until you saw what it did to that man.”

He had a point. She definitely believed the evidence of her own eyes and that there was a man lying on a morgue table that Terri had said couldn’t have been impaled that way by ordinary means unless he’d fallen on those horns. Had that helped make her aware of this force that watched her? Helped her to believe it was there? Was she making it more powerful by believing in it?

Damien spoke again. “Belief sometimes comes from experience and sometimes from learning. Sometimes it’s almost inherent. But no spell I ever worked as a mage worked if I didn’t believe it would.”

Caro ate another tidbit of pastry while she thought about that. “Did your belief grow with every experience that worked?”

“Of course it did. It’s a bit like a hump you have to get over.”

“So my grandmother was telling me something important.”

“She was telling you something essential. Two people can use the same spell. One merely hopes it might work. The other absolutely believes it will. Same spell, different outcomes. The person who hopes will probably see little result compared to the one who believes.”

Caro thought about that for a few minutes. “I’m a great believer in hope,” she said finally.

“Hope is what keeps us going. But belief, as your grandmother said, is the true key to our inherent powers.”

“Well, since I believe that thing exists, I ought to believe in my ability to send it away.”

“You should.” His smile was kind. “But the two are not necessarily interchangeable.”

* * *

Okay, she thought as they drove to the next shop, she certainly believed that force had killed at least five people and possibly a sixth. She certainly believed it had been dogging her heels since she had seen it in action.

So how great a leap should it be from believing in it to believing in her own power to drive it away? But she had to admit, it was a heckuva leap, right across a chasm she’d been avoiding all her life.

Rage had probably been the motivating factor in summoning the elemental, if that’s what it was. So how about she start with a little rage of her own in place of the fear and uneasiness she’d been feeling? Hadn’t her