Why had I never noticed it before?
How much he’d loved her—me? Why had I always been so confused by his actions? They were as clear as day to me now.
Mercer loved her, that woman on the ground, with all his wolfy heart.
I blinked, thinking of Boo’s question. “You are you,” I finally said, voice sounding detached and not my own.
He shook his head. “No, Scarlett, more than that. What am I?”
“A ghost.”
He nodded, as if it made so much sense, and suddenly it did. I looked around that alternate realm, a world within a world, and noticed things I’d not noticed before. Other spirits were hovering about, shades moving between the living with curious, aloof glances.
“This is a safe place,” he said, spreading his arms. “Disease, death, anger, pain... Nothing can touch us here. Do you really not understand why you’re here?”
I frowned. He made it sound as if I should know, but I didn’t. Did I? Suddenly, something caught my eye, a dark swath of shadow, but the shadow pulsed. It breathed. It lived.
As I studied it further, I felt it studying me back.
I cocked my head to the side, and suddenly it did too. I blinked, and it throbbed.
I knew that shadow. It was me, a part of me I’d buried down deep all my life. It was that darkness, that untapped source of raw power I’d always feared, always shoved away.
“What is—”
Boo stood beside me, pointing at it. “That’s you, Scar. The real you. You tethered me to you for one reason. For this. To find her, to know her.”
He spread his arms, and suddenly I understood. It wasn’t Boo that would save me, save us. My salvation had always been inside me, but I’d needed a place, a safe place to wake the sleeping monster.
I swallowed hard, shivering when I heard Mercer’s howl. I wondered what they were doing to him, what was happening. However, I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes from the pulsating blanket of ebony.
Boo said I’d done this—I’d set this whole thing up, but that didn’t make sense. Even as I thought that, though, I recalled the plethora of times I’d thought something else lived inside me. I remembered the madness that took me at the strangest moments, when I felt the need to hurt, to maim, to kill...
“Who are you? What are you?” It seemed like the most obvious thing in the world to talk to it.
Suddenly, that blob wasn’t just a lumpy mass anymore. It gathered, taking on a form, a body.
Its limbs grew long, its neck swanlike. Hair sprouted from its head, and a gown of living shadow poured over its ebony skin. Suddenly, I was staring at something both feminine and ancient.
Black stardust smiled back at me as its dark eyes raked down my form. “So you are what houses me? I feel quite... unimpressed.”
Its voice made me shudder and ache. It was deep and penetrating, melodic and gritty. I swallowed hard, not afraid, not really, but feeling more emotion than I had before.
“What are you?”
“I’m you. You’re me,” she said.
My tongue grew thick. “I’m not you. I’ve never been you.”
“Oh no?” She laughed, shaking the very foundation of that realm and causing the spirits within to scatter, sailing through swirling blue tunnels of light to other dimensions.
I didn’t know how I knew that, but I knew it. Death was simply a giant superhighway of portals and tunnels that led to the past, present, and future. Again, I wasn’t sure how I knew that. All I knew was that, all those questions about what happened after death, I knew the answers. However, they no longer seemed to matter.
The only thing that did was her.
She snapped her fingers, and around me, time stopped. It did not slow down. It literally just stopped. Everything froze.
Mercer was lying on the floor, blood pooling around him, with Cole standing above him, his face contorted in rage and vengeance as his fingers curled into a punch, ready to deliver the final blow.
I looked at the shadow.
“You’re really so weak it boggles the mind that Daddy would stick me in this prison,” she said contemptuously.
I was struck by the perverse beauty of her. Whatever Veiler she was, she was outside the realm of anything I’d ever encountered.
Then what she’d said struck me. “Your daddy?”
She snorted. “My maker, though he loves it when I call him Daddy. He’ll do anything to keep me away from my destiny. He’s always trying to win, but he never does.”
Her eyes darted toward Mercer, a quick but fleeting look, but I caught it and understood it, seeing in her eyes what I’d always seen in mine when I’d been alive.
“You like him,” I said.
She snorted, the sound angry and mighty, causing plaster from the ceiling to rain down upon the frozen bodies within the chamber.
She didn’t deny it, though.
“You love him?”
Her eyes shot in my direction, blazing with flame, literal flame, before quickly extinguishing. “Do not try to simplify me, dear. We may share a body, but my reasons are well beyond your capacity to understand.”
I had a feeling she’d just insulted me. Good thing I no longer cared about such nonsense. Otherwise, I might have been tempted to give her the bird.
“Then why are you here? Why am I here? What is all this?” I raised one arm. “I should have died and not become a spirit because I’m a vampire. I should have simply ceased to be. This realm of the spirits doesn’t belong to something like me. So why am I here?”
I felt Boo grinning and couldn’t quite understand it. The shadow dipped her chin.
“Cuz Daddy is a dick for keeping you in the dark, that’s why. I was placed inside of you at conception. My birthright is one of chaos and anarchy. I was created to be my mother’s right hand, to bring down the worlds. And so I always have.”
Her arms wrapped around herself, and she trembled, and I knew she was lying—not about what she was, that much was true enough. However, when her eyes shot back toward Mercer, I knew I’d been right all along.
“You care. You didn’t want to, but you do. You love him the same way I did... do.” I shook my head, wondering at the strange dichotomy that existed in death. The release of pain was freeing, but the loss of love and the things that’d once mattered so much was confusing, and I knew that if I could think clearly, I’d mourn the loss of it.
She hissed! “You’re not worthy of him, that you could lose your desires, even in death.” She spat by my foot, but I didn’t take offense.
Being chill was easy when nothing mattered, but the echoes of what I’d once felt still lived inside me. The memory of how deeply I’d loved him, the depths I’d been willing to go to for him... Those were imprints not even death could shake.
“I knew you would fail here, female. You are nothing. Just a weak Veiler—no true power to call your own. I nudged you every step of the way, knowing what Cole would do, knowing each path you’d take, guiding you toward this very moment. You said you hated that shifter, but he was dragged into this game most unwillingly. I will not have him become a pawn in the games my parents play.” She took a step toward me. The scent of midnight jasmine and cloves saturated the air.
I lifted an eyebrow.
“He will not die. I will not allow it, but know this: what I do goes against the rules of the game. We are about to change everything.” Her full lips curved into a gleeful smile.
I cocked my head, studying the strangely beautiful creature before me, sensing her capacity for great violence, but beneath the obvious breathed something sublimely human: curiosity.
I grinned back at her, recalling the ease with which Boo had often teased and flirted back with me. I’d never been able to understand how it was that something that seemed so cold and callous in one breath was capable of such warmth and verve in the next, but I finally got it.
Death had turned me into an emotionally clean slate, but the memories were not so easily forgotten. “But what is li
fe without a little chaos?” I said.
A pleased glow suffused her ebony frame, making her gleam a rich shade of living, breathing shadow. She and I were complete and total opposites in every way.
I’d always feared the darkness inside of me, the depths of it, terrified of what I didn’t know. There I stood with it, though, face to face.
We fear the unknowable. It’s not the monster we see but the one we don’t that terrifies us. That’s the one that leaves us shaking and breathless.
I stood before the monster, looking into its eyes, and realized I’d always known her. True, we were dual, but we were also one. She cocked her head just as I did mine, a mirror reflection of me in so many ways, so tightly bonded that we’d leached personalities one into the other.
As a vampire, I’d always been capable of hardcore violence, reveling in it at times. The way I’d torn that fae apart in that fight club, high on adrenaline and blood, had eaten me up that night, making me question who I was. That had shaken me to my very foundation, but I knew now that hadn’t been me at all. It had been her.
My love and devotion to Mercer, my desire to keep him safe above all things, that was what pushed me. She blinked, and so did I, our lips curving into a sudden smile as we both finally understood the basic truth of us.
“You love him,” I said again, not a question because it wasn’t one.
She shook her head, causing the star-dusted hair to swirl enchantingly around her luscious figure. “He”—her eyes cut rapidly his way and then back again—“he pleases me.” She spoke as though forced to, against her will, admitting to me something I knew she’d never admit to another. “I like his darkness.”
“I like his light.”
She grinned. “And so we are in agreement for once. I do not like you much, vampire, and yet I find myself at a sort of crossroads. Four months ago, your body almost died. It was he that saved you.”
“I know.” I agreed with a nod.
Her face was stoic as she looked back to him. “I will tell you something no one else will. He has betrayed you, Scarlett. He has known of me since the moment of your conception. Though he does not know my name, or who I really am, he’s known of me.”
I frowned, knowing that if I’d been alive right then, that confession might have devastated me. I had known that, though. Deep down, I’d always suspected Mercer of keeping truths from me though I’d hoped it hadn’t been true.
She shrugged. “But so what? In the end, he did right by us. He protected me, as he was bound to do. But it’s never been me for him.”
I wondered if she was trying to comfort me. The thought was surprising, and I grinned. Once, I would have latched onto her words like a lifeline. Right then I simply found them humorous.
“I found love to be a truly confusing, even repulsive pursuit. In truth, I’ve never understood it. But in the last few incarnations, I’ve seen things that confound me greatly. Saw a man sacrifice himself for a demon. Saw a demon sacrifice herself for a man. And then Mercer, a powerful Alpha, what does he see in you? Why does he repeatedly throw himself down on the sword for a vampire?”
She sounded legitimately interested in my answer as she shook her head, but I had none to give. She wasn’t asking me anything I hadn’t already asked myself a million times over.
Thus, I shrugged, tossing up my hands in a gesture of bewilderment. “I don’t know.”
“But that’s the thing about love”—her lips curled as though with repugnance—“isn’t it? It makes no bloody sense at all. I showed myself to him.” She nodded. “Four months ago, after you nearly killed him. I revealed my form, hoping perhaps to answer my own questions, hoping he’d have the answers I sought.”
“And did he?”
She pursed her lips, giving a tiny shrug. “No. Not really. But I did walk away from that encounter with something of an epiphany.”
When she didn’t say anything else, I prompted her. “And that was?”
Her grin revealed a row of silver fangs. “I am an engine of chaos and destruction?” She said it like a question, as though she was confused, unsure.
Why had she deviated from her path?
My brow twitched. “And yet you chose to remain.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact. I knew she would. From the moment I’d latched gazes with her, I knew this strangely ethereal being would go nowhere. Mercer had awakened something in her, a fire, a curiosity, a burning to grow.
She shrugged a thin shoulder. “Until I figure it all out, I’m not going anywhere. Daddy should have never stuck me in you, Scarlett Smith. You’re far too interesting.”
I wanted to tell her she would never figure it out. Emotions were messy like that, complicated. I could see that very clearly since I lacked them, but I had a feeling my words would fall on deaf ears. That Veiler, whatever she was, whoever she was... She was dead wrong.
She wasn’t as emotionless as she liked to believe. In fact, I recognized the bloom of obsession shading her eyes whenever she gazed upon him. The irony was she’d never believe it, but a lack of emotion didn’t made one stronger—rather, the embracing of all the insanity and madness that came with it brought out that strength.
If you don’t know what’s good, how can you ever judge what’s bad?
Maybe she’d been inside me too long, but I had fundamentally altered her, and she didn’t even recognize it.
All those thoughts rolled through my head, but none would leave my tongue. One could not explain Shakespeare to an infant, so I simply nodded.
Her nostrils flared as her eyes burned bright with fevered power, prickling against my flesh. I felt the tight gathering of her might begin to wind through us, and I lifted my eyebrow.
“Would you like to know what true power tastes like, vampire?”
I was amazed what I was discovering about myself and the world I lived in when I no longer cared. That Veiler, a being of immense power, wouldn’t let me die—not yet, not then. She could have left if she really wanted to. All she had to do was let me die.
It was really as simple as that.
However, the foresight, the careful planning without even my knowledge or consent behind it, told me everything I needed to know.
Mercer was her compass, her true north. She might hate it, might even resent it, but as long as he lived, she would fight the devil himself to stay with him. I knew that idea should scare me, having something that powerful so obsessed with him, yet I found myself more curious than upset.
What could a partnership between something like her and someone like him lead to? And when I returned to my normal self, muddled emotions and all, would I recognize that learning to live with this monster was far better than living without her?
Would I be able to forgive Mercer’s betrayal?
Past the monochromatic veil of death, the answer was a very simple yes because my feelings didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
Harlen was the one who’d said it, who’d foreseen my going to that phantom zone between life and death, my meeting with the madness inside myself. I’d thought he was cautioning me to trust Mercer, but he hadn’t meant Mercer at all.
His words had been for her—for me. The clarity I had then was going to vanish the moment I reawakened, and a vampire’s volatile emotions would consume me, but I would fight to remember, to hold on to what I’d learned. I became aware of something she hadn’t said though I suspected it to be true, to the very marrow of me.
I cocked my head at the same moment she did.
“My knowledge of you has been almost entirely suppressed all my life. Only recently have I begun to sense something within me. Why?” I was pretty sure I already knew the answer, but I had to hear her answer all the same.
A pleased gleam shaded the corners of her eyes. “You are far more than you seem, vampire. Yes, knowledge of me was purposefully suppressed. Why? Because the moment I’m recognized, my power unleashes, and I crave that power, that death and destruction.”
Her words
trembled with a form of lust and desire that made even my body shiver—not for her or her body but for the raw, primal power of what she truly was.
She wet her lips. “Daddy hates losing.” She smirked.
“And he has always lost?”
She nodded, but tight lines bracketed her mouth.
“How many worlds have you destroyed?”
Biting onto the corner of her lip, she looked radiant with hot lust. Squeezing her fingers into tight balls by her sides, her voice took on a silky, smooth drawl. “I’ve destroyed every world I’ve been to.”
I eyed her slender form, but nothing about her was soft or easy. I knew she wasn’t lying, and I heard her disgust at the possibility that she might not obliterate my world too.
She wasn’t motivated by love, not the real kind. Novelty drove her, but again, this lowly vampire understood what she did not—often, it was novelty, curiosity, and inquisitiveness that led toward something deeper.
The answer was simple.
To save the world from her madness, I needed to make her fall in love. I almost laughed at the notion of something like her ever learning to love, but it wasn’t just her that needed to learn it, Mercer had to as well. Love not returned could often turn to hate.
I had to get back to my world. I had to let the emotions flood me again, had to learn to share this body with something sentient, even evil. I would change again. This time, though, I was the one making the conscious decision to have it so.
When I woke up, I would be furious, hate myself, and question everything, but it had to be.
“And if you choose this side, if you do not destroy this world, what do we unleash?” I asked.
Her laugh sounded like the delicate stroke of razor blades against flesh. I shivered.
“Mommy.”
That one word, said in defiance, dared me to blink, to shake, to sob and beg it not be so.
Hearing someone like her call her parents mommy and daddy should have been laughable. It wasn’t, though. At. All. I hoped to God I never had to meet either one of them.
I sniffed. “Then what are we waiting for?”
I must have said the right thing because her face transformed, looking wild yet heartstoppingly beautiful.
Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo (Southern Vampire Detective Book 2) Page 28