Nightshade (17 tales of Urban Fantasy, Magic, Mayhem, Demons, Fae, Witches, Ghosts, and more)

by Annie Bellet

  I could do this. If I’d survived death and lived to tell the tale, then surely I could go in there and do this.

  There was a scratching behind the door. Like someone had shoved a desk chair back and was coming this way. If I was going to leave, I was going to have to do it now.

  And I didn’t know if it was courage or fear that held my feet fast to the floor, but I didn’t move when the door was suddenly flung wide and the comely Dr. Elijah Monroe filled my gaze.

  Thick, wavy hair that was a rich nutty-brown color framed a startlingly attractive face. His eyes were slightly far set, but wide, almond-shaped, and a striking shade of greenish-brown. His bottom lip was fuller than his top. There were eleven freckles on the bridge of his nose. His cheeks held the hint of pockmark scars from his teen years. His skin tone was velvety brown, reminding me of coffee with cream in it.

  I blinked, looking down at my feet before eyes that now saw way too much could see deep into the pores and blemishes undetectable to the mortal gaze.

  “You must be Scarlett Smith,” he said with the casual drawl of one who’d lived his whole life in the deep South.

  My lips twitched as I nodded uncertainly. “That’s me.”

  I could hear the smile whisper across his lips, stretching them tight. I was looking down at his leather-loafered feet when he stepped back.

  Judging by the rich color of them, I’d say they were definitely Italian imports.

  In another life, I’d been a budding fashionista with aspirations to someday become the next Michael Kors. But that was back when things like clothes and shoes mattered.

  Nothing mattered anymore except catching the monster who’d done this to me.

  With each step I took inside the office, my stomach sank lower and lower to my knees. I took a quick glance at the place, committing it all to memory in less than a second.

  White walls with only his graduation certificates on them. One potted fern on his gleaming mahogany desk. No pictures. But there was a laptop, and a pair of blue marble stress balls.

  The inside of this room was far richer than the utilitarian desks and chairs the officers used outside. Though the décor was sparse, it all smacked of quality and excellent taste.

  “Sit. Please.” He gestured kindly toward the dark leather couch.

  Nodding my thanks, I sat and clenched my knees tight together, squeezing my fingers into a fist on my lap.

  Dr. Elijah Monroe (I’m not sure why I continued to think of him that way instead of just Elijah, or Monroe, or even doctor…but there was something about the man that was almost larger than life, though he couldn’t have weighed more than a buck-eighty) sat in the upholstered leather chair in front of me and crossed his legs.

  I swallowed, waiting for him to break the tense silence.

  Back here, with his door closed, the noises were more muffled. I mean, if I really wanted to, I could have heard everything. Each conversation, right down to the gentle swish and scrapes of rat’s feet running beneath the floorboards of this centuries-old precinct.

  But I didn’t want to. Because sometimes hearing all that hurt too much.

  Shifting on my ass, I focused on the steel-gray suit he wore. The fine stitching of it, the impeccably groomed style of the doctor…he was much more than he seemed.

  Definitely not from around Silver Creek. From the quick glance I’d taken of his office, he’d gotten his bachelor’s from the University of Tennessee, but his master’s and his doctorate had come from Yale. The good doctor was from old money.

  So what the hell was he doing here?

  “Well, Ms. Smith. You’ve been avoiding me,” he said in that whiskey-smooth voice of his.

  Where once I’d known clothes, now I knew spirits. And if Dr. Elijah Monroe could be compared to one, he’d be like a Glenddronach 15-year-old revival, a sherry cask–matured whiskey with hints of coffee and burnt sugar. He was smooth, polished, and refined.

  Licking my lips, I shrugged noncommittally, picking at a loose thread on my shorts.

  “You’ve passed…no” —he held up a manicured finger— “you’ve excelled at every examination given you by the SCPD. But I have to say there are some major red flags when it came to the mental health assessment.”

  Working my jaw from side to side, I pretended to really focus on the thread, but I was keenly aware of the solid beating of his heart.

  The whoosh, whoosh, hiss of every third beat… I wonder if Dr. Elijah Monroe knew he had a heart murmur.

  “Scarlett.” He said my name softly, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I imagined in another life my pulse would have been fluttering by now. Now it just sat like a cold, hard stone in my chest. Lifeless and unbeating.

  They couldn’t reject me. They just couldn’t. I needed this assignment. I needed it badly.

  “It’s only been six months, I’m not sure—”

  I frowned, finally daring to look up at him. “I’m fine now.”

  He sucked in a sharp breath and went ramrod rigid on me.

  I could only hold his gaze for so long before I had to drop it down again. I wasn’t strong enough to hold a mortal’s gaze without causing them serious damage.

  Like scrambling an egg, the sight of my steady gaze on theirs could scramble the wiring of a human’s brain to the point of mush. Merc told me, until I learned control myself, not to look up.

  I felt rather than saw him shudder and glance swiftly out the window.

  The heartbeat that’d been so steady just moments ago now increased its tempo. Not in fear. I didn’t taste the oily essence of that emotion seeping from his pores, but I knew he didn’t like losing control for even a second.

  The man had OCD tendencies. I noticed it in the way he arranged the pencils on his desk. From longest to shortest, but with all the points sharpened to a razor-fine tip.

  Blowing out a heavy breath, he tapped his fingers on the wooden armrests, and I felt the press of his stare shove against me like a two-ton weight.

  “I’m not going to lie, Ms. Smith—”

  I flinched. “My mama was called Ms. Smith. I’m just Scarlett.”

  My words trailed off. I’d not thought of Mama since that night. The night I’d died. ‘Cause she wasn’t my mama anymore. That was an old life. A past life.

  I had a new family now.

  “You sounded sad just now.”

  It wasn’t a question, and I could choose to ignore him, but I knew I’d do it to my own detriment. I knew the moment I’d taken the mental health evaluation I’d not done well. Not with the questions it’d asked.

  Have you ever wished to do harm to yourself or others?

  All the damn time.

  Have you ever attempted to harm yourself?

  Near daily.

  Have you ever committed murder?

  Yes. God, yes.

  I shuddered at that last one, squeezing my eyes shut for a brief moment as a powerful memory of hot, sweet blood rushing down my throat flashed through my mind’s eye. The way that strange woman’s hair had cascaded down my arms like a chestnut-colored waterfall, and the way her smile had slipped so gradually as I’d sucked the last of her life from her veins.

  His heartbeat had returned to a calmer measure now. If he only knew.

  I wet my lips.

  “I haven’t thought of Mama since that night,” I softly admitted.

  “Why not?”

  Why not? I snorted. Because to think of her felt like a small death to me. To remember her as I’d last seen her, with tears shining in her eyes. Her beautiful brown hair thick with silver wild around her face as her brown eyes, crinkled at the corners from years of laughing too much, now turned down with deep furrows of sadness.

  I didn’t like to look into the mirror too often. I’d always been told growing up I was the spitting image of Mama. Looking at myself was like looking at her; the only thing was, the woman looking back at me never smiled. Not like her.

  And she never would again.

  “Because Mama’s gone fro
m me now. And she always will be.”

  He’d grabbed a board and paper and was doodling something on it with a calligraphy pen. Judging by the scratches he made, he was drawing something.

  The lines of it were long and smooth, interspersed by little hash lines throughout.

  He nodded. “She saw you die. But you could go back to her, if you wanted. There’s nothing saying you can’t. Well”—he shrugged—”at least not for you.”

  I bounced my left leg nervously. “What would I say to her?”

  He looked up at me then. I kept my eyes just a little to the left of his so that we didn’t look head on, but I felt his gaze imprint itself all over my face.

  “Who you really are now.”

  “I don’t think Mama would understand.” I paused briefly, thinking of her hurt. Hurt too much. Best to never do it. Not no more. “I run with a different pack anyway.”

  He chuckled softly. “That’s one way of putting it. A vampire living amongst the wolves. Doesn’t that make you nervous?”

  I shouldn’t have, but I snared his gaze. He froze like a lamb to the slaughter. His pupils widened, bleeding through the iris so they were almost entirely black now.

  Sighing, I forced myself to look down at my boots. In the corner of the right boot was a dark red dirt stain. Except it wasn’t red dirt. It was the blood, my blood, I couldn’t take out from that night.

  “I should’a tossed these boots out like I tossed everything else out of my life that night.”

  It took him a moment, but he finally asked, “So why didn’t you?”

  “‘Cause they saved my life.”

  “You know what you have to do now, don’t you?”

  I squeezed my eyes tightly shut so that all I could see was a void of darkness. I didn’t want to do this. Not now. Not ever. The shrink already knew a little about me, but he didn’t know everything.

  Nobody knew everything.

  Not even me….

  His pen stopped scratching.

  “Open your eyes, Scarlett.”

  I knew what I would see the moment I did. I shouldn’t have been so scared. But I was. It was like the floor was about to open up and swallow me whole; I was losing myself to the haunting voices of that night.

  “Open your eyes,” he commanded again.

  This time I did, and I sniffed as the heat flared up my throat and rested behind my eyes as I gazed on the delicate drawing of a honeysuckle bush.

  “I read a little bit of the report from that night. But I’d like you to tell me the rest. If you think you’re able.”

  I wanted to shake my head no. Wanted to tell him to go rot in hell and die. Wanted to beg him not to make me do this.

  And I knew if I did those things, he’d get up, shake my hand, and tell me I was free to go. But I’d never get another chance like this. Never get another chance to work with the police in the paranormal investigative unit, and never get the chance to possibly one day find my killer and make him pay for what he’d done to me.

  “What did I draw, Scarlett?” His whiskey voice was velvety soft and hypnotic—I felt spelled by his words, compelled to crack open the darkness of my heart and lay my sins out before him.

  He was only human. Only mortal. But this man could sometimes terrify me.

  “A honeysuckle bush.”

  He nodded. “Yes. Why did I draw that?”

  Blood had splashed all over the snow-white petals. Drip, drip, dripping to the concrete path. The night had been so calm. Cool for a May night. Fireflies had danced through the air. I’d lain there, unable to move, lungs burning and on fire as my blood gushed from out of me, staring up at the navy-blue sky so full of stars I’d become dizzy by them and breathing in the sweet essence of honeysuckle memories.

  The last night I’d lived. The last night I’d truly been alive.

  “Because it’s where he killed me.” The words spilled from me almost trance-like.

  A corner of his lips twitched, as though with remorse.

  “How do you know it was a he?”

  I’ve tried to resist you…but I can’t. I can’t. God, forgive me, I can’t….

  “Because he spoke to me before he wrapped his hands around my throat.”

  “Why were you there? Who were you waiting for?”

  I’d snuck into the city gardens, my heart in my throat and my body alive with desires. Jimmy had come home from his military deployment, my old high school sweetheart.

  Boo, I’d called him.

  Blond hair, blue eyes, star track and field athlete. He’d loved me, and I’d loved him. But I was poor, and Jimmy’s family was rich. They’d not wanted us together, but he hadn’t cared, and neither had I.

  A tear rolled down my cheek. “Boo. I was waiting for Boo.”

  “And did he come?”

  I nodded slowly. “He came. He was beautiful. Dressed in his Marines regalia. With his blond hair buzzed short”—I sniffed as another tear fell—”he wrapped me up in his arms.”

  I wrapped my arms around myself, imagining for a second it was Jimmy’s arms. But mine were small and delicate, nothing like his strong ones at all.

  I shook my head and stared out the window at the trees beyond. A vivid-red cardinal sat on the outstretched branch of a massive conifer, just staring at me.

  Animals could look at me without harm. Their gaze was my only solace. And at the end of the day, it was also why I’d chosen to live alongside the shifters.

  “What happened then?”

  Hissing, I jerked my gaze up before quickly reminding myself not to make contact. The tips of his shoes pushed down into the carpet in a knee-jerk reaction as though to get away from me.

  I frowned and stared back at the bird. But it was gone now.

  “You know what happened then. The man killed Boo, and he killed me, too.”

  “Then you woke up a vampire—”

  “No.” I shook my head as memories assaulted me.

  I hadn’t known Mercer then. I’d been drowning in the scent of honeysuckle and blood. The stranger—the vampire—had fled at the lone wolf’s howl.

  The last thing I’d remembered was glowing, jewel-green eyes, and then I’d passed out.

  “Why didn’t he kill you?”

  I snorted. A question I’d asked myself many times since. Mercer hadn’t needed to save me. In fact, he shouldn’t have.

  I hadn’t known him before that night, but he was the closest thing I had to family now.

  “My boots.” A ghost of a smile whispered across my lips when I said it.

  He’d seen them poking out of the bushes. My honky-tonk-lovin’ savior had seen my cowgirl boots and had decided to forgo a millennia’s worth of age-old animosity to save me.

  “A vampire raised by wolves.”

  I knew we’d come back to this topic sooner or later.

  I heard the genuine curiosity in his voice. What Mercer did that night had never been done before. And if the vampire had finished what he’d started, it would never have happened.

  I was leered at, sometimes spit on, but mostly given a wide berth by the shifters of Silver Creek.

  “There are worse things,” I muttered.

  “I suppose there are.”

  The cardinal returned, gliding in from the left and landing on the exact same spot he’d been in just moments ago.

  Setting the clipboard down onto his lap, Dr. Monroe took a deep breath and said, “I shouldn’t let you into the program, Scarlett. Having read your personal file, I know you’ve killed. Many times.”

  I swallowed hard as my heart sank to my knees. Mercer had warned me not to get my hopes up too high. Newborn vampires weren’t known to be the most stable of the bunch.

  And because my death had been far more grisly than a typical rebirth, I’d suffered worse. I was a vampire with no house, and no sire. Mercer had rescued me from my killer before he could enslave me forever to his whims.

  I was a freed vampire—a very rare and valuable commodity to the PIU, with my st
rengths and skillsets. Skillsets I’d not fully shown off yet. I’d be the only vampire on staff. They’d do almost anything to get their hands on me, I knew that, but I also knew I came with one giant hurdle.

  At times I could be unstable.

  With no sire to check me, my first month of rebirth had been nightmarish. I’d given into the blood lust with fatal enthusiasm.

  But Merc had saved me yet again. He’d found me, locked me in the dungeon of the wolf’s den, and reprogrammed me.

  I still lusted for blood. I wanted it now. I wanted to bend Dr. Elijah Monroe to my will and drink from his vein until he withered in my arms. Wanted to sink my fangs deep into that whiskey-scented blood and drown in the euphoric sensations of his taste and death.

  I couldn’t sweat, but I still wiped my fingers across my blue jean shorts as if I had.

  He was close to making his decision. Close to telling me they had no place in their unit for a homicidal vampire like me.

  “I stopped killing a month ago.” I said it swiftly.

  He cocked his head to the side like a curious bird of prey. “Have you?”

  I nodded. “Merc’s got me on a regimen of shifter’s blood.”

  The curl of disdain on my lips was involuntary. Blood was blood, but not all blood tasted the same. And I wasn’t exactly lying; I was on shifter blood. But only my brother’s.

  Mercer was anything but stupid, though; he gave me eight ounces a week, and all of it seasoned with wolfsbane. It tasted horrendous, but it’d done the trick.

  Now I had wolfsbane coursing through my body, so that any blood I took (regardless of who it came from) all tasted the same.

  Vile.

  “If I sign off on you, and let you onto the force, you do understand that one kill, and you’re gone. It’s only because of the”—his brows lifted—”pull of your father—”

  “Clarence ain’t my father.”

  Clarence was Alpha of the Silver Creek shifters and Mercer’s father. But he’d made it clear from the beginning that I was no kin of his. The only reason he ever did anything remotely kind for me was because of Merc.

  I owed everything to my guardian angel dipped in fur.