The Scarlet Deep

by Elizabeth Hunter

  “What do I do?” he asked Carwyn.

  “You go to London. You let Deirdre and Tom take care of things here,” Carwyn said, his blue eyes holding icy rage. “We find out who is doing these terrible things—”

  “And we end them,” Murphy said, standing and holding his hand out. “I will end them.”

  “You’re not alone.”

  Glancing at Tom and Declan, at Anne and Brigid, he nodded. “I know.”

  A knock came at the heavy metal door. Tom and Declan exchanged a look as Murphy grabbed his shirt to wipe the blood away.

  “Answer it,” he said. “They wouldn’t knock if it wasn’t an emergency. Not with the mood I left them in.”

  Murphy caught the words a moment before he flew into the night.

  “Garvey… body. Barely recognized… fire.”

  MURPHY made sure he was fully submerged in the dark river before he screamed his rage. The muddy waters of the Liffey curled around him, threading through his hair and brushing his face. A longing mother, she tried to soothe.

  He would not be soothed.

  Andrew Garvey’s body hadn’t been dumped in public. Whoever had killed the observant young man didn’t want to attract human attention.

  Just Murphy’s.

  Revenge? Simple frustration that their shipment and boat had been taken? Whoever killed the human had treated him like nothing more than a bug to be squashed. He wasn’t a person but an example. If the guard who’d found him burning in the skip behind Murphy’s new warehouse hadn’t been a water vampire, it was possible there would have been little left to identify Garvey in the end.

  Murphy climbed out of the river and walked to his car, snapping at his driver to open the trunk as he approached. Then he peeled off his wet clothes and stuffed them in a bag, toweling off his hair to remove the worst of the damp. He donned a pressed white shirt and wool trousers before he went to examine the body, because Andrew Garvey had pressed his shirt before he met with Murphy, even though the pocket had been torn.

  The human’s charred body had curled into itself, and the acrid smell of accelerant covered the area, but Murphy could see the single gunshot wound to the back of the head when Brigid turned over the body. At least it appeared that he’d been dead when the fire started.

  Murphy stared at the remains of Andrew Garvey in the early-morning hours, wondering how he was going to tell Mrs. Garvey that her husband, the father of her baby girl, was dead. Declan stood next to him while Brigid murmured questions and quiet orders to the guards surrounding the scene. Tom had been dispatched to double-check the security of the warehouse where the Elixir carriers were being held.

  “Arsewise, boss,” Declan said. “You warned him.”

  “This is not Andrew Garvey’s fault,” Murphy said, his eyes never leaving the body. “This was never his fault. He was a good man who was trying to do the right thing. The bastards who did this will die.”

  Declan shifted. “Murphy—”

  “I will kill them myself,” he said. “Human or vampire. I don’t care who they work for. If you find them, you will hold them for me.”

  Visions of blood were the only things keeping his rage in check.

  “Do we call the Gardai?” Declan asked.

  “If we do, we risk them asking questions about the ship we took. Risk coming under suspicion ourselves. We can’t do that.”

  “Whoever did this—”

  “Is likely long gone.”

  Declan said, “I’ll do what I can on my end while you’re in London. I’ve already tracked down the ship’s manifest and crew, but we both know the names are likely to be fakes.”

  “Is the reefer secured?”

  “It is.”

  “Tomorrow night you’ll go down and try to catch any scent trails left. I want a full investigation.”

  Brigid came to them. “I don’t see an exit wound on the body, which means we might get ballistics.”

  Murphy caught Anne’s scent though she said nothing. She came behind him and slipped a cool hand into his. He wanted her there, but he didn’t. It was ugly and reminded him too much of what his mate had to witness before.

  “Murphy,” Brigid said. “With all this happening, are you sure—”

  “You’re going to London with Anne and me. Declan knows how to run a murder investigation.”

  Brigid nodded. “I’ll get you the name of my man for ballistics, Dec.”

  “Thanks,” he said before he looked at Murphy. “And the ship?”

  “Go through the usual channels. Pay whoever we need to in order to make it disappear.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Declan and Brigid walked away, leaving Murphy alone with the one person in the world he wanted more than any other.

  The person who distrusted him the most.

  “Patrick, you had no way of knowing—”

  “No, that’s bollocks, Anne. I should have put a man on him. Should have known they might go after a human in my organization.”

  “He wasn’t in your organization.”

  “Fuck that. He was. I should have known.”

  He dropped her hand and walked away from the fire-blackened body and toward his car. There was nothing else he could do that night. He needed to take shelter, and he didn’t want to go to any of his homes. Didn’t want to face any questions from servants.

  His human driver got out and opened the back door for him just as Anne put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Patrick, please.”

  He stopped but didn’t turn. “I can’t be polite tonight, Áine. Leave me be.”

  She dropped her hand, and Murphy slid into the car, feeling the first ache in his bones that warned him of the sun.

  Where to go?

  His old driver, sensing his mood, asked him, “Campsite, sir?”

  “Good thinking, Ozzie.”

  Ozzie made his way out of the city and to the large protected campsite Murphy had set up years ago to appease his human kin. The leader of his clan knew who and what he was. Didn’t like it but accepted it. They were too superstitious to give him any problems. Outside of his Traveller clan, his caravan was known only to him and Ozzie, who was a distant kinsman. It wasn’t hard to conceal. Not even vampires were more secretive than Travellers.

  He noticed the playground had been torn up again when they pulled in. The meadow had been cut, but he could see trash lying about, likely from some other clan passing through. It wasn’t surprising.

  “Oz.”

  “I’ll take care of it in the morning, sir. Have a word with Old Keenan.”

  “The rubbish is one thing, but I won’t have them selling the children’s play set for scrap. Make that clear.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The windowless vardo back in the trees was painted a dusky green to blend in with the forest. It backed onto a small stream so he could hear the water running when he woke. The children did not play near it. There were horseshoes nailed into the trees around it, and mirrors and bits of bone hung from their branches. The old women had planted wild roses around his wagon fifty years ago, but he excused their superstition and chose to enjoy the fragrance instead.

  The caravan looked traditional on the outside, but the interior was modern. Ozzie would guard him during the day, but Murphy knew no one would dare bother him. He was safe as houses in the camp.

  He undressed and stepped outside to dunk himself in the stream. Braced from the water, he shook off and took refuge in the darkness of the wagon, opening a bottle of blood-wine he kept in reserve. It tasted sour and metallic on his tongue, but beggars could not be choosers, and Ozzie had donated blood to him the week before.

  A quiet tap on the door roused him from the stupor he felt creeping closer. It had to be Ozzie, checking to see if he needed anything before dawn. Murphy walked to the door and opened it, clad in nothing more than a woolen blanket wrapped around his hips.

  “Oz, I’m…” The words died on his tongue. “What are you doing here?”

&nbs
p; Anne said nothing, pushing her way into the vardo and shutting the door behind her. His body, despite his exhaustion, flared to life.

  “Did you think I’d forgotten this place?” she asked. “That I could ever forget this place?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well… I didn’t.”

  He stepped closer and leaned in, damning the dawn as he took her mouth. He dropped the blanket and threaded both hands into the windblown hair she’d tried to pull into a loose bun. He tugged at the pins until it flowed down her back, nipped at lips that opened softly for him.

  “I told you,” he said, his words slurred from exhaustion. “I won’t be polite.”

  She slipped her arms around his waist and maneuvered them closer to the raised bed enclosed by thick curtains. Pushing him back onto the platform, she slipped off her jacket and stepped out of her shoes, climbing into bed beside him and pulling the velvet drape closed.

  “You don’t have to be polite. Sleep, Patrick. We’ll talk in the evening.”

  And for the first time in one hundred years, Patrick Murphy fell asleep with his body and heart whole, his mate resting her head in the crook of his shoulder, blood of his blood beside him.

  Chapter Eight

  THE PROBLEM WITH TAKING a younger lover was those stolen moments before they woke. Anne had often wondered whether thirty years’ accumulation of moments had led her away from Murphy at the end. For in those quiet moments that age afforded her—when her mind was clear and his body at rest—she could think clearly about the man who’d stolen her heart and captured her soul.

  Still waters run deep.

  The old saying had no better example than Patrick Murphy. The calm, politic facade he showed the world concealed a depth of passion he revealed to precious few. When he woke, he would consume her.

  So in the precious few moments before he colored her world, she paused—leaving her hand resting over his heart—and thought.

  Why had she come to him?

  It had been automatic. The quick flash of anger had frozen her on the waterfront when he turned her away. By the time she’d processed his rejection¸ he had been gone. After catching the familiar profile of his driver—for surely that distinctive chin could only belong to one of Murphy’s kin—Anne traveled to the one place that had remained his refuge in life and in eternity. And she’d found him.

  Now what do you plan to do with him? a tiny voice in her mind nagged.

  She had no idea.

  Anne was so hungry. For blood. For him. She wanted to bite. Wanted to sink her teeth into his neck, his groin. Bite any hint of gentleness in his hard body and take.

  “I won’t be polite.”

  A part of her didn’t want him to be. Anne knew the urbane, sophisticated vampire lord of Dublin would not wake beside her. She’d sought him in the wild and found him. Her mate, as he admitted, was no settled man. He never had been. He simply knew how to wear the right clothes.

  Anne could hear the distant voices of humans outside, smell the roses that grew on the edge of the meadow, and hear the trickling stream that ran behind the old-style wooden caravan. She took a deep breath and calmed her hunger. She let her eyes drift around the wagon as low lights switched on, preparing for the gathering dark.

  A vampire vardo, of course. Lightproof. Secure. The curtain surrounding the bed was made of Venetian velvet, the bed beneath them eiderdown layered with silk sheets. Brass fixtures gleamed against mahogany cabinets and shelves.

  Only Murphy.

  Books and old records sat on the shelves. A few scattered pictures hung on the walls. Peeking into the wagon showed a picture of Murphy’s soul. A man who loved his luxuries but valued his people and memories above all else.

  She felt him stir. Not his body, but his blood came to life within her.

  Anne watched in anticipation. His eyes flew open and his chest rose. Murphy gasped; his first breath upon waking had always reminded Anne of a diver surfacing from the deep. He turned to her with bared fangs and hungry eyes.

  Without a word, he was on her.

  He framed her face with both hands, crouched over her like a feral thing, leaning down to put his face at the curve of her throat. He drew a deep breath, as if inhaling her into himself along with the night air and the scent of freshwater. He muttered something in Gaelic, his voice rough from day rest. Anne let her head fall back, submitting to the wild in him. His fangs scraped up her throat.

  “No blood,” she whispered.

  He snarled at her but replaced his teeth with sucking kisses and long licks. His hands clutched her hair, and his body pressed into hers.

  Anne let out a reluctant groan. Not much had changed about Murphy when he woke.

  She drew her knees up and let him rock into the softness of her body, arching back when she felt his arousal. Corded arms banded around her as he drew her closer. She heard her camisole rip at the shoulder.

  “Don’t bite my clothes,” she panted. “I didn’t bring a change.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have worn them to sleep.”

  Anne’s jaw ached. Her throat burned. The desire to take his blood—take everything he was offering, was almost overwhelming. He braced himself over her, anger and desire and longing warring in his eyes. It was a hard face. A desperate one.

  “Patrick—”

  “You’re here. You wake before me and you stayed. I told you”—he pressed into the heat between her legs, cocking one knee under her thigh to hold her in place—“I told you I wouldn’t be polite.”

  “I haven’t said yes,” she said, and he froze. “Yet.”

  His face softened. The warm brown eyes melted. His fangs didn’t fall back, but the corners of his mouth tipped up and he lowered himself, pressing his hard chest into her breasts. She inhaled sharply, the feel of him a drug to her senses.

  “Say yes,” he whispered, kissing the arch of her cheekbone. “Say yes, my Áine.”

  His lips traveled over her face, fluttered over the corner of her mouth, her eyes, the tender line of her jaw.

  “Say yes.”

  “I came to talk to you.”

  “We’ll talk after.”

  “Patrick—”

  “Bloody hell, Anne.” He groaned, rolling to the side and covering his face with an arm. “Why did you come here? Why?”

  “I told you, I came to talk.”

  “Really?” His eyes were fierce when he rolled toward her again. He propped himself up on one elbow and ran a hand up the inside of her leg, his amnis flooding her skin. He paused a few inches above her knee. “And if I keep going? Does your body want to talk as well? Or is it just your damned common sense?”

  “You’re acting like a spoiled child.”

  He bared his fangs again; his fingers dug into her inner thigh. “Admit it. You want me. I’m the only one who makes—”

  “You’re the only one,” she said calmly, trying to maintain her composure as her heart cracked open. “I haven’t taken a lover in years. You know that. You’re the only one I want. The only one I ever really wanted from the night we met.”

  The desperate light returned to his eyes. “Then why?”

  “We are more than our desires, Patrick. And it’s not fair for me to bed you—”

  “Fuck fair. I want you.”

  “—when I don’t know if it can ever lead to more than sex. I’m not built that way. I can’t separate. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work for me the same way it does for you.”

  He finally pulled away. “Was wondering how long it would take you to bring up the other women.”

  “I’m not harping.” Her face felt like a mask lay over it. “I’m not blaming you. I’m simply stating a fact.”

  “Then I want to state a fact.”

  “Fine.”

  He scooted away from her, leaning his back against the end of the wood-paneled trailer. “We’re not friends.”

  “No, we’re not friends.”

  “And we never will be.”

  Her heart broke open
a little more, and she pulled the sheet to cover herself. “I know that.”

  “What do you want from me? An apology? You want me to grovel for not turning into a monk because you left me?”

  “No, I don’t expect an apology.”

  Of course she wanted him to grovel, though she’d never admit it. She knew it wasn’t fair to him. She’d tried to move on as well. She squashed the petty, jealous part of her heart and remained calm.

  “Then what do you want?”

  “Did you intend to apologize when you came to Galway all those years ago?”

  He blinked. “You’re bringing that up after seventy years?”

  “No, you brought it up when you accosted me at the pub. You said as far as you were concerned, we never finished our last argument. So I’m asking about it. Did you intend to apologize?”

  A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Yes.”

  Yes.

  A single word. A single answer that could have changed everything. Anne forced herself to remain calm.

  “But you didn’t, Patrick. You threw all your conquests in my face and told me it was my fault that you’d fucked them. That you hated me.”

  “I didn’t…” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t hate you.”

  “You said you did.”

  He scrubbed both hands over his face and took a deep breath. “I said a lot of things then. I didn’t mean them.”

  “Then why did you say them?”

  “Because you drove me mad!” He tore at his hair. “You stood there, so calm. Not a spot of care on your face. Like I was nothing to you.”

  Still schooling her features, she asked, “How could you think that?”

  “You had so many walls, Anne. You let me in, but never completely.”

  Anne felt it like a physical blow.

  “I told you everything,” he continued. “Every twisted story. Every dirty secret. And there were times when it was as if I didn’t know you. Who were you as a human? Why did your father turn you? When did you decide to become a healer? I don’t even know your mother’s name, just that you still mourn her.”