The Vampire Went Down to Georgia (Southern Vampire Detective Book 3)

by Selene Charles

  I narrowed my eyes, curling my fists. James took an infinitesimal step toward me. But I wasn’t going to lose my shit.

  “Permission to speak freely?” I asked with a now-hoarse voice.

  He waved me on. “By all means. I told you we do not stand on ceremony in my chamber. So tell me, Scarlett Smith, why it is that a male of such raw strength and brutality would willingly throw his honor in with you?”

  His words were said conversationally, and even with a hint of amusement, but laced behind it was a faint but definite thread of disgust.

  I squared my shoulders. “So you think you know one vampire, and now you have all of them pegged, is that it? I think I’ve proven my loyalty already.”

  He snorted. “If you refer to your little show at the castle Infantes, then yes, I’m well aware of what you did that night. Bad vampire, don’t you know what kind of enemies you made? And why do it for a shifter who has now rejected you? Did you honestly believe you ever stood a chance with him?”

  Fire raced through my bones, but it wasn’t Tenebris getting ready to open up the mother of all cans of whoop ass on his royal pomposity. No, my sister was still unnervingly absent. Refusing to let him see just how much his words had fucking hurt, I grinned and was thrilled to note the glint of anger now glittering in his eyes.

  He’d not liked my response to his obvious goading. Well, screw him. I wasn’t giving the bastard an inch more. I was going to prove to him that I was a hell of a lot more than what he thought I was.

  “Where I stood, or stand, with Mercer makes no difference to me. He made his choice. I accept it.”

  “Do you?” He leaned forward, causing the sides of his shirt to spill farther apart, giving me a very good view of numerous scars and the discolored skin of his flesh. “I’ve heard a bride can never let go of her one true love. That rejection sends her mad with lust and makes her rabid, wild. That eventually she must be put down like the feral creature she really is.”

  It was my turn to scoff even as my soul trembled because I remembered clearly what I’d felt when I’d woken up again. I’d felt that wildness, that lust for blood and violence. I’d thought it had been Tenebris, but maybe it hadn’t. Maybe it had been me all along.

  “Yet here I stand, as sane as you. Perhaps I didn’t love him after all.”

  He leaned back and laughed to the rafters. The sound was pleasing to my ears, and I wanted to punch him for that. It had been so much easier to keep my focus with Cole, even as he’d electrified me with his vampiric hypnotism, because at his root, he’d been evil incarnate.

  But Declan was a whole ‘nother monster entirely.

  I wanted to hate him. I really, really did. But I understood him too well for that.

  “And now I think maybe I can see what drew him to you. If only a little. But I will not lie. I am glad he did as I told him and cut all ties with you now before this charade went on any further. You do understand that without the marks you are now free to leave, no?”

  I bit my tongue so hard that my sharpened incisors sliced right through the meat and flooded my mouth with blood. That frosty fire that had gone down like ambrosia back at the den wasn’t quite as potent as it’d been then, but the heady taste of it coated my mouth like a fine wine. Giving me clarity enough to focus.

  I was determined to win this dance of words. “Of course. But this is my pack that fights, and so I choose to stay.”

  He smirked. “You stay and Mercer loses; that means you forfeit your life. Are you telling me you’re really okay with this?”

  I had no clan. No allegiance to anyone outside of Silver Creek. I wasn’t afraid to die. But the truth was I wasn’t staying for Silver Creek, or James, or even Steven—because he was safe now. The only one I stayed for was Mercer. And I knew Declan knew it.

  I sighed and looked at the king. “Why, might I ask? He fought honorably, did all you required of him. Many shifters keep paramours on the side. If you felt it was just a bit of fun for us, why not let us keeping playing house? Why did the marks matter?”

  “Ah.” He lifted a finger and wagged it at me like I was naughty little girl. “But I thought you just said you didn’t care for him. What was it, then? Love? The cock? We are rather well endowed, I’ll grant you. Enough to keep a vampiress of the house of Et Prochrae honest for a while, I suppose.”

  That fucking bastard! Ugh! I wanted to stomp my foot at his misogynistic attitude. Shit. Damn. I wished a lifetime of buggerings on him. I continued to scream at him in my head, wishing like hell I could just let it out. I held my breath, shoved my claws through my palms until they sank deep and left crescent moons behind. Only then was I able to regroup.

  Only then did I mockingly roll my eyes and titter through my nose. “Cock. Yes. Rather thick, powerful ones. Nothing at all to the shriveled up little pricks of the Cold Ones.”

  James coughed, and I smirked as I glanced at him from the corner of my eyes.

  Declan again looked displeased that I’d not risen to the bait.

  I spread my arms. “But as you’ve said, he rejected me. Tore the mark off my flesh with his own teeth and did the same to himself just like a good little soldier should do. I am utterly ruined now. So why does any of this matter to you?” I asked, keeping my words light even though everything I’d just said had been one hundred percent truth.

  I was ruined.

  I was hurting.

  So damn bad that I wasn’t sure I’d ever come back from this one. But I clung to a thread of hope still, for better or for worse. James had told me to hang on, to keep believing, so I would.

  “Yes.” Declan pursed his lips. “I can tell it’s cut you to the quick.” There was nothing but sarcasm in his words. My nostrils flared. “And this is why shifters and vampires do not mate. You feel nothing. You are a disease, a blight. Walking death covered in lovely skin.”

  He gestured dismissively at me. My heart, which only barely clung to a sliver of hope in me, trembled violently, and heat rose up in my throat.

  I would not react. I would not give him the satisfaction of reacting.

  “Why do I care? Curiosity, I suppose.” He wrinkled his nose and shrugged. “Makes no matter now. Mercer will win this tournament. I can see it. We can all see it. He’s by far the strongest fighter out there and the most ruthless, gods above.”

  He chuckled heatedly, eyes going blank as though he were recalling vivid details the fights that had made me so fucking sick to see. His reaction to them was completely different than my own.

  I blinked, and his gaze moved back to me, widening for a fraction of a moment, as if he’d temporarily forgotten why I was here.

  “Then he wins and gains back Silver Creek.”

  He sniffed. “I hear the hope in your words that he’ll come crawling back to you, an Alpha leader then. Maybe you hope he’ll mark you again, shove his cock back inside you. To be honest, I do not care if he does, though I’d think him a fool. No vampire pussy is worth all the hassle he’ll face. But that’s neither here nor there. What does matter to me is my daughter. He will win her hand, and she will be his mate.”

  I scowled. “How can you shove her off like that? She is your daughter. Doesn’t she get a say in this? This isn’t the goddamn eleventh century anymore.”

  “You are a freed vampire!” he boomed, rising from his throne and towering over me. “You know nothing of the rules of our world. That is why you are an impediment to him and will always be a thorn in his flesh. You think like a mortal. You act like a goddamn mortal! Because you are freed, you believe the rules apply to everyone, but they do not, child. Enora has been groomed from birth to know her place.”

  “But he doesn’t love her!” I screamed, forgetting to keep my composure.

  He rippled with amusement, laughing so hard that the sound echoed like cannon around us. “And you think he loves you! Feelings are irrelevant in matters such as these. The Campbells will move into the US territories. It will happen. And you, little vampiress, will have no more say.�
�

  “He won’t do it.” I shook my head swiftly, denying his words with every fiber of my being. “Mercer might have betrayed me, but he’ll never do this. He’ll never take her hand. He won—”

  “Ahh,” he said with a rumble, looking fully satisfied now, “you are an excellent actress, Scarlett, but I see now. You do love him. You do imagine yourself true to him. Gods, you are pathetic.” He snorted. “And you will break, just as I’ve promised, once you learn the truth.”

  My muscles were snapping and popping without control. I wanted to rake my claws down the bastard’s face, leaving my permanent mark on him. It couldn’t make him look any worse. If anything it might even be an improvement.

  Heat suffused my eyes. And his image wavered.

  I would not cry.

  I would not fucking cry.

  “What truth?” I whispered through a throat squeezed tight.

  I shouldn’t have asked it. I knew that the moment I said it, but it was too late to take it back.

  The Campbell snapped his fingers, and three figures emerged from behind the red velvet curtains at his back.

  I gasped, quivering all over and knowing I’d exposed myself completely.

  Clarence stood to his right, wearing a proud, haughty smirk that made my blood run cold and turn to rivers of ice. He was dressed in a black tailored suit with his long hair pulled into a tight ponytail. Beside him stood War, dressed in an elegant gown of smoky pearl.

  But neither of them mattered right now because staring jeweled daggers at me was Mercer. Rage and hate burned through his gaze.

  I gasped, cutting my eyes toward Declan, who wore a proud smirk. “Oh, they heard everything, love. I do not think they’ll take you back now. So now, I give you one last chance to leave of your own free will or... not. But either way, fanger, you will leave.”

  Tears dripped hot and fat down both my cheeks. James gripped my hand, cautioning me with a soft growl. I shook my head.

  It wasn’t the lies I’d spouted that made me tremble this way. It was that I saw what the Campbell didn’t. A man I’d thought so clever and wily had fallen right into War’s hands.

  And so had my Mercer.

  “Oh gods, no.” I shook my head. “Mercer, no. If you’re in there at all, you can’t do whatever it is you’re about to—”

  He smiled, revealing even, white, and now sharpened teeth. He was still so beautiful, so heartachingly lovely that everything inside of me yearned for his touch, even as I knew that he hadn’t been tricked. Hadn’t been fooled by Clarence and War. He was too smart for that. The only way Mercer could wind up here was by his own free will.

  There was no hope left at all.

  “Vampire,” he said, voice cold and aloof.

  He could not have said anything else to me that would have hurt quite so badly. I winced, feeling as though I’d just been steamrolled.

  James wrapped his arm around my waist. And for one damn second, I wished and prayed with all my might that Mercer would care. That he’d go insane with jealousy like he would have before, that he’d threaten to kill anything or anyone that touched me that way. But he snorted instead.

  “Mercer, you do love me. I know you do. I wanted to give up on you. I did. But I can’t because I know the truth when it’s spoken to me, and what we had was—”

  “Scarlett,” he barked, silencing my words and making me shiver violently as his eyes cut angrily to mine and made me wince, “I’m not what you think I am. I’m not who you think I am.”

  “That’s not true!” I cried as the tears continued to stream down my face. My nose ran, and my face must have looked like a Dali painting, but I didn’t care. I rushed up the steps, damning protocol or any goddamn sense of self-preservation.

  If I could only just reach him. He would see. He would remember. I just needed to touch him. To hold him again. Then he’d see.

  “Scarlett, stop!” James roared, racing up behind me, his hot breath on the back of my neck.

  “No, James. No. He’s got to remember. He’s got to—”

  Mercer didn’t blink, didn’t look conflicted or remorseful. He just said, “Then you clearly need proof.”

  I grabbed hold of his hand, feeling that delicious warmth and the spark of my mate. Declan had been right—Mercer was my everything and always would be, regardless of whether he ever saw me as his again.

  But he spun out of my grip, and moving in a blur of light and shadow, he did the one and only thing that could ever break my absolute and unyielding faith in him.

  James never saw it coming.

  And neither did I.

  I stood there stupidly as Mercer shoved his fist through James’s chest, so powerful an Alpha now that he moved through my friend’s body like a hot knife through butter.

  My eyes grew wide with horror as I saw the blood begin to bloom around James’s shirt. James looked down at his chest, hands reflexively moving upward, but his eyes, they were vacant and filled with shock.

  “James?” I said in a whispered squeak. Then slightly louder. “Jamie? Oh my gods...”

  James’s quicksilver eyes were looking at me in astonishment, and finally, I felt the flutter of Tenebris move inside of me. I didn’t know if she’d slowed time down to a crawl, or if maybe the shock of the situation had broken my brain. But he smiled at me, and his smile was one of sadness but also overwhelming relief.

  “No. No. Nononononono,” was all I seemed capable of muttering as recognition of what was happening started to tear through the incomprehension.

  “Do not mourn me, sweet lass. I go to be with my beloved bride now. Nothing can hurt me again.”

  I hiccupped. “No. Fight back. Fight back, Jamie. Please. Fight back!”

  But Mercer ripped his heart out with one swift movement, and just like that, the light emptied from my dear Jamie’s eyes, gone now forever. Mercer tossed him and his heart away like a sack of rotten potatoes.

  “Now do you believe?” he asked.

  And rage began a slow, but inexorable march through my blood, bones, sinew, and flesh, growing and spreading like a fire out of control.

  I shook all over as bands of deepest ebony began to swirl through my vision. My hate was Tenebris’s. My need for violence was now her own.

  War chuckled. “Well, that was supremely easy. Though we do have one final matter to attend to. Clarence, if you’d be so kind as to do the honors.”

  Even as my need for violence grew, I looked at Clarence, who was now looking at a similarly shocked Declan. His brows lowered, and I felt the movement of the guardsmen stirring out from within the shadows.

  “Oh no. I don’t think so, pets,” War crooned and with a flick of her wrist, unholy screams rent the night as she made easy work of the Campbell’s royal guards. “Do make it quick, my dear,” she whispered to a snarling, snapping Clarence, who was taking on his shifter form. “The room will be full of dogs soon.”

  Then her silver eyes looked at me, and I recoiled in horror at the sounds of eager rending, flesh being torn from flesh as not just Clarence, but Mercer joined him in the kill. Declan’s howls rang out.

  War grinned, looking at me. I couldn’t seem to stop shaking. And my breaths were choppy, trembling through me.

  “You are looking well, my daughter,” she said with a trace of a laugh in her words. “Very nearly there, I’d say, though not quite yet. But my betrayal looks lovely on you. Are you ready to take my hand yet? Fight for me with honor and courage? You know you want to, so just give in already.”

  “No,” I croaked. All the while, I heard the sound of feeding wolves. As in plural. As in... Mercer too.

  Snot ran from my nose, and I could hardly see her in front of me. But I could see the flash of annoyance in her eyes.

  “Stubborn, just like your father!” she snapped. Twirling on her heel, she moved like a thought to stand behind both Clarence and Mercer.

  And just as Mercer had done to James, now she did to them both. Instantly, the sound of frenzied feeding ended,
and two shifters slumped over the grizzly remains of what had once been a proud king.

  I looked at them.

  In War’s hands were two silent, bloody hearts.

  They were gone too.

  I blinked, and a horrible sound vibrated through the room like maniacal laughter mingled with unholy screams. It was me.

  It was me.

  Me.

  My Mercer.

  My Viking.

  My heartbeat.

  My everything.

  Sounds I’d never made in my life spilled off my tongue as I dropped to my knees and raised my hands. Bands of black smoke grew denser and tighter, becoming like ropes as they reached for Mercer.

  I couldn’t stop shaking as the ropes lifted him and brought him to us, stripping the skin off him. But his eyes were forever closed, and he was gone.

  Dropping my head, I pressed my lips to his. He’d taken everything from me. He’d stolen my heart. He’d stolen James. He’d stolen my life. All I wanted was for him to come back, even though I would hate him forever. Sobbing so hard that my entire body shook with it, I gently laid him back down.

  “I love you. I love you. IloveyouIloveyouIlove,” I moaned as my frame began to violently tremble.

  Then the rage inside me exploded. I screamed, and Tenebris poured her power out of me.

  “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! You fucking bitch!”

  I jumped to my feet, seeing her smirking face and the sword in her hand, now flaming and burning magma red.

  But just as I reached for her with a clawed hand, arms clamped down tight around me.

  Bony arms. So powerful, so frighteningly strong. Instantly, the power was sapped out of me. I slumped, a dead weight, and all I could do was breathe.

  “You should have let her come to me, dear. You will regret your constant interference. I vow it to you,” War growled.

  Death smirked cruelly back at her. “Is that what you believe, Bellum? That you’ve won?”

  “She is pathetic. Weak. And it’s all your fault.”

  “You killed her mate. You should never have done that.”

  War laughed, rolling her eyes. “Gods above, I’m shaking in my boots. Do you think I’m an idiot? Do you think I don’t remember what you did with Pandora?” She scoffed. “Fool me once, Death. But I was not fooled this time.”