But here’s the thing, I’d studied what they had on Mercer, all they had was the fur follicles. His tracks hadn’t been found at the scene. A cursory glance of him hadn’t revealed any scratches or markings on his person. Markings that always appeared when someone battled for their life.
The fae’s hands weren’t bloodied. There were no defensive wounds on him whatsoever. Why? Who in their right mind would just stand there while a shifter savaged their neck?
No one, that’s who.
And more than that…how was it that this murder was being processed so quickly? I hated to say there were dirty cops in the PIU, but I’d be naïve to think there wasn’t. Human-Veiler nature was such that even the good guys could be corrupted for the right price.
In this case, however, I wasn’t entirely certain the department had anything to do with this. Mercer was about as high profile a perp as they came. Shifter royalty. On top of that, there was a dead fae of some obvious wealth and class. So clearly they were working this fast to help keep a lid on this thing before they had a media shit storm on their hands.
Which could only lead me to conclude that if it wasn’t Mercer, and it wasn’t a pack of dirty cops than what I had on my hands was a good old fashioned frame job and that the killer had known exactly how to kill, who to kill, and what kind of evidence to plant. Or not to plant.
I highly doubted it was coincidental that the fae was scrubbed clean of all jewels, clothes, and even fiber scraps.
Death always leaves a calling card, if you know where to look. As an empath, I can pick up the final moments of anyone’s death so long as I can touch an item they had on their person at the moment of demise. The mere fact that the body was so clean was another clue.
Whoever had done this knew what I could do and wanted to make sure there’d be no interference on my end. Here’s the thing though, I can count the number of people who know I’m an empath on one hand.
The list is stupid short actually.
Mercer. James, my sometimes on again off again shifter lover. Carter. And I. Only problem is, none of us could have done it.
James is part of the Alpha’s contingent who followed him to Ireland for the annual Kilkenny conference. A super hush-hush meeting between the highest ranking heads of Veiler society. They left nearly twenty-four hours ago.
The body couldn’t be more than ten hours dead.
Carter has a kill chip inserted into his brain tracking his every movement. If he’d done it, we’d already know. Mercer was off the table. And so was I.
Which meant there was a new player who knew what I could do.
But who? If I could figure that out, I could probably figure out why to both questions and that would eventually lead me back to the real killer.
“Titania will want the body back,” Carter said, interrupting my train of thought.
“Huh?” I blinked myself back to the present and then shrugged, jerking my chin toward CSI, who’d kept a fair distance from us as we’d investigated the scene at our leisure. Humans and lesser Veilers dressed all in white slowly marched across the invisible divide as they came to finally collect the body.
“She might,” I said. Unsaid was the fact that on Silver Creek territory she had no authority to dictate anything. True, the fae was just barely on our lands. In fact, if the body had been found even twenty yards over, it would have been on sithen territory and subject then to the Queen’s whims. Those twenty yards were the only things that stood between Mercer hanging for a crime he didn’t commit, and freedom.
For now, at least, this fae belonged to me. Carter knew it, and so too, would Titania.
I sighed, knowing my night had only just begun. It was time to go check in on Merc and see if they’d found any new “planted” evidence.
I stalked through PIU headquarters, barely sparing a passing glance to the uniformed officers walking by, most were men, women, and Veiler I’d worked with over the years and liked to think I knew pretty well.
Though my gut led me to believe no one in here was on the take, I couldn’t be too sure either.
Moving through the main floor and down the hall, I took the stairs down to the temporary jail cell where only the baddest and worst of the Veilers were housed until they could stand trial.
Bianca, a raven-haired witch from the vaunted Romini line that went back hundreds of years, nodded in greeting to me as she took a giant bite out of her chocolate éclair. She sat at a rickety, wooden desk that was easily over a hundred years old, if not older, with her short legs propped up on the end of it as she flipped idly through the Wiccan Bizarre magazine.
Witches liked to surround themselves with old things. It was why they often wore robes, or vintage clothing, why they lived in houses that’d stood over centuries, and why they always seemed to be a step out of date. Bianca had told me once that the older an object, the more power they could draw from it. A witch’s power was generational, so the more generations they went back, the more potent the magick. The Romini’s were one of the three original covens.
The prettiest thing about Bianca were her eyes. They were dual toned, amber on the inside and ringed in a shocking shade of green on the outside. All Romini’s had the same eyes; it was their calling card. But at four foot six in a half she wasn’t exactly the most imposing of Veilers. She had a wild array of frizzy, black hair that she usually always kept back in a loose bun. A bit of a stomach, because she loved her sweets and a high-pitched, girlish voice that wouldn’t frighten a flea. But it was to anyone’s detriment to ever brush her off as insignificant.
The Romini line were what was known as black witches. Not in that they were evil, simply in that they dabbled in the dark arts of necromancy and spell casting. In the over three hundred years these cells had been here, not a single Veiler had ever managed to escape since the Romini’s took over the wards. To even attempt to do so would be to die a horrific and violent death.
“Scar,” she muttered as crumbs stuck to the corners of her slightly wide mouth. “Come to see, Mercer?”
She sat up, and then stood, dusting the crumbs off her scarlet robe.
I nodded. “They done taking the pictures of him?”
“I think so, yeah. He’s in cell block A. You know you can’t be here long,” she reminded me with a stern nod.
I wet my lips, nodding my thanks. “Ten minutes tops. Tell Nana Ro I said hi and we need to do tea again sometime, k.”
Bianca snorted. “Last time you came for a visit it took us all day to transfigure Nana back.”
“Hey, I wasn’t the one that made her cast that spell.”
Rolling her eyes, Bianca chuckled. “She thinks she’s still young when she gets around you. I think maybe we’ll wait at least a year before we allow you to visit again. Just to be on the safe side.” She winked back, and I chuckled.
Moving briskly by her I turned down the hall and continued the winding path down the set of stairs that led deep into the earth. This building had been erected long, long before the white man had come and settled this part of the world.
Even back then, the witches knew that some monsters should never be allowed above the earth. That some ley lines were strongest deep below it. I ran my fingers along the slick stonewall of the cell that pulsed with powerful dark magick.
Walking into, what I’d always affectionately called the crypt, still gave me shivers. I’m an undead who hates the thought of being buried alive. Irony much?
Taking the final step, my eyes immediately adjusted to the sudden flare of golden light. Not from torches set in the walls, but from the wards of magick set within the stones themselves.
Runes that looked old and ancient burst with radiant amber light from even intervals around the entirety of the cell.
Mercer sat kneeling in the center of it and looked up at me.
When they’d come for him earlier, he’d been wearing a nice pair of jeans that showcased the strength and steel of his athletic body and a red and white gingham pattern button down shirt.
His ash blond hair which fell to just past his shoulders was now caught up in a sloppy man bun. Mercer was a thing of unmitigated male beauty.
He was a throwback to a different kind of man. When men were hard and steely and more caveman than urbanized. At over three hundred years old, he’d never lost that raw edge of wildness to him that set him apart from the standard males of today.
When I’d first met him, I’d been struck dumb at the sight of him. He was all gristle and grit with hard chiseled lines and a face that would make a master sculptor beg to take his likeness.
Merc had penetrating blue-green eyes that burned an unholy shade of emerald when he shifted to his massive gray wolf form. He also had a Viking style beard that should have looked stupid on him, but somehow only added to his appeal. Shifters were far more hairy that just about any other Veiler, and as someone who’d hated the thought of chest hair in life, I was surprised by how much I actually loved the scruff.
At least on him.
As his stepsister, I shouldn’t notice these things, but I did. Because always in the back of my mind was the realization that he and I weren’t blood and never had been. Mercer had always been a sort of catnip for me, but a temptation I’d managed to ignore until a few months back when I’d nearly died, and he’d kissed me, confusing the hell out of me and reigniting an old passion I’d thought all but dead.
They’d left Mercer his jeans, but his shirt was gone. Revealing the heavy and tight musculature of a shifter in his prime. I wet my lips, noting the smooth, golden planes of his washboard abs and massive chest and biceps. Shifters heal quick, but not this quick. If he’d been scratched up, the proof, as they say, would be in the pudding.
“What’d they say?” I asked immediately when I got to his side.
Mercer stood in one smooth motion, without effort, and with grace. If I had a heart that still beat, mine would be going a mile a minute.
His scent of wolf, the wild, and a hint of bergamot made me fist my hands tight to my sides.
I or anyone else in law enforcement could walk through the wards. Mercer could not walk outside the sphere of it, though, if he stepped even one foot outside the pulsating runes, he’d be incinerated. The cell might appear open, with the stairway to freedom only yards away, but it was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Without a Romini to release him, he’d be trapped within this cell forever.
He shrugged. “They haven’t told me anything. Have you gotten in touch with Clarence yet?”
Clarence was his father, not to mention the Silver Creek Alpha. One word from Clarence and the PIU would be forced to release him. It would be almost impossible to reach him by cell even if he had landed already. The castle grounds where the Veiler delegates met was deep in the forest, where cell service was nearly an impossibility.
There were other ways to reach Clarence of course. Pack telepathy being one of them. But the distance was great, and if there were any chance that Clarence was still up in the air, it wouldn’t work.
“I’ve got Emerson on it.”
Mercer rolled his eyes. There wasn’t good blood between the brothers, mostly due to me. There weren’t many shifters—well, any really apart from Mercer—who’d ever taken a shining to the fact that they willingly harbored a vampire on their lands.
To say our kind doesn’t get along is a major understatement. The last great Veiler war had been fought to free the shifters from their evil overlords, the Vampires.
Made living here so much fun, let me tell you. But it was Mercer who’d found me after my death and rebirth, and it was Mercer who’d saved me. Who’d taken me away before the vampire could fully sire me, enslaving my will toward my house and master.
The only reason Mercer ever gave me for why he’d done what he’d done that night was that he’d taken one look at my cowgirl boots coated in my blood and decided right then and there to set aside a lifetime of hatred and species prejudice encoded into the very fabric of a shifter’s DNA to save me.
I know that’s not the real reason, but in almost twenty-five years that’s the only story he’s ever given me.
“Yeah, I’m sure he’s really trying hard,” he snapped, the growl of a wolf mingling with his voice.
His eyes were bloodshot, and there were dark circles under them. The stress of this ordeal had seriously gotten to him. It made my chest ache; I wanted to do so much more than I was. I felt useless and ineffective right now, but I had to keep trying.
I was literally Mercer’s only chance at getting out of here.
I grabbed his hand and squeezed, forcing his gaze to mine. “Hey, I’m here, Merc. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You have my word on that.”
“They have my fucking DNA Scarlett. Do you get that!” His fangs had begun to poke out, and I could see the mask of the animal superimpose itself over the face of the man.
But I wasn’t scared. Mercer would never harm me.
And I did get that. To the very depths of my soul, I got that. Unlike human courts which were long and drawn out and could take years to convict a perp even with absolute proof on their side, Veilers weren’t given that same amount of time.
An unbiased board consisting of delegates from each of the major factions of Veiler society—one shifter, one vampire, one fae, and one witch—would look over the evidence and render judgment.
Four hairs were more than enough to convict him. Time was running out for both of us. The only stay he could have gotten would have been from Clarence, but without the Alpha around to request it, royal blood or no, Mercer would be tried and hung within a day or less.
He didn’t let go of my hand as he looked down at our joined fingers and I felt the terrible strength he held in check.
Vampires are powerful in their own right, but shifters as old as Mercer could easily take me down if he really wanted to.
I’m not sure if it’s because I’m not sired, but it seems to me that it’s far easier to kill me than most other vampires. Just a few months ago I’d very nearly died when a phantom had reached inside my chest and tried to suck my soul dry.
It’d been Mercer who’d rescued me. Who’d put his life on the line to save me. Who’d nursed me back to health.
Using his free hand, he brushed the edge of my jacket aside, revealing the long, jagged and silvery scar that marked my near death.
I sucked in a sharp breath as his fingers traced the long line that ran from the base of my throat to the very tip of my right breast. His entire body trembled, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he palmed my cold flesh. My stomach dove violently to my knees, and though I didn’t need breath, I sucked in air like a bellows.
I hadn’t fed in a few days, only when new blood coursed through my veins did I not feel dead to the touch. It was a vampiric trait even I hated, but Mercer never really seemed bothered by it.
I shook as the hand I still held clenched tighter.
Mercer had always been hands off with me, until recently.
“Scar,” he said, voice broken and gritty and I knew what this cost him. To be weak in front of me.
Shifters could never show weakness, to anyone or anything apart from their mate. I wasn’t Merc’s mate, but we were each other’s lifelines.
Moving into his bubble, until I was wrapped in his heat and scent, I sighed when he lowered his forehead to mine and inhaled deeply.
“I’m going to free you, Merc. I vow to the Ever tree that I’m going to fix this.” I breathed the words like a prayer because that’s exactly what they were.
There were objects of sacred power in this world, one of them being the Ever tree that blossomed perpetually within the fae lands, the tree from which all Sidhe life sprang. To make a vow to that tree, whether sidhe or not was a binding contract to the ancient powers of the above and below.
If I failed to do as I vowed within the next twenty-four hours, I would be hunted down by the Oathbreaker and killed.
“No, don’t—” he barked with fear, but I placed a finger
against his velvet-soft lips, stilling his words. I tried to ignore the way his mouth felt against my skin, making me feel hot and cold all over.
“The die has already been cast. And I meant every word.”
Jerking his hand out of mine, he framed my face and stared at me with eyes that now glowed with threads of deepest green. In his eyes, I read words I knew he’d never utter aloud and it felt suddenly hard to stand still under the weight of his penetrating gaze.
Our mouths hovered mere inches from one another’s; it would be nothing for me to lean up and claim him. He must have read that truth in my gaze because his body instantly stiffened.
Pretending like I hadn’t noticed, I shrugged lightly and affected a nonchalant smile as I said, “See you soon, bro.”
Then pulling away from his touch, I turned and headed to the stairwell without looking back.
Only once I was hidden deep in shadow did I allow myself to lean against the wall and shudder as hot tears gathered at the corners of my eyes. If I lost Mercer, I had nothing worth living for anyway.
It took me five seconds to gather myself; I was halfway up the stairwell when the lone wolf howled.
Chapter 2
Hopping into Betsy—my trusted steel bucket I called a truck—I cranked the engine. It purred to life, and I patted the dash. She was a 1950’s Ford F1 truck, once painted a vivid cherry red but was now a rusted amalgam of blues, reds, and dirty silver. And I loved her.
I might be able to run faster than Betsy could at top speed, but even in death, I still had style.
The body had to have been taken to the morgue by now. I’d go and see if maybe the lab techs had managed to find any scrap of anything on or around him other than Merc’s four strands of fur.
I seriously doubted it, but…
By the time I rolled into the darkened parking lot, I spotted not just the ambulance at the doors, but Coroner Green’s black Jeep halfway hidden behind the side of the building.
I hopped out, pocketed my key, and walked toward the entrance.
Taming the Vampire: Over 25 All New Paranormal Alpha Male Tales of Contemporary, Military, Shifters, Billionaires, Werewolves, Magic, Fae, Witches, Dragons, Demons & More Page 126