Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves (Southern Vampire Detective #1)
Page 1
Table of Contents
Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves
Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Other Books by Selene Charles
About Selene Charles
Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves
Meet Scarlett Smith, Southern Vampire Detective...
Well, at least that's what she is today. Not too long ago she was just a regular Southern Belle in love with her soldier, dreaming of a life full of babies and white picket fences.
Then she died.
Now she's a vampire in a shifter's world trying to make sense of her sudden thirst for blood and her strange ability to read the emotions off of others. Especially as it pertains to death—she and death have a strange affinity for one another now, but best not to dwell on that subject too long. She's still totally just a normal girl, except now she solves murders and drinks a little type-O on the side. No big deal, she's certainly nothing special or amazing...right? Except every once in a while she senses something stirring inside of her. Something dark. Something ancient. And something very, very powerful. But for now it's just easier to pretend she's nothing more than a vampire with a badge and a gun who just so happens to have the hots for not one, but two different shifters one of whom is her step-brother.
No one ever said being dead would be easy.
Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves
Copyright 2016 Selene Charles
Cover Art by Damonza
Formatted by D2D
My super seekrit hangout!
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, events, or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, Selene Charles, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in the context of reviews.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Selene Charles.
Unauthorized or restricted use in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patent Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2016 by Selene Charles, United States of America
Dedication
To Pandora. Because without you none of this would have happened. And to Dean, because you’re a heartless bastard, but I still love ya...
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Prologue
Mercer
25 Years Ago
He watched her.
He always watched her.
The way she’d tuck a strand of hair behind her ear when she laughed. How she’d sing beneath her breath when she thought no one was around. How almond-shaped her eyes were and the deep, bottomless brown color that seemed to hint at secrets.
The moon was out, and it was full, its buttery-yellow color lighting up the dimly lit park as though the sun had set only minutes ago instead of hours. Lavender and silver clouds gently kissed the navy-blue sky bursting with stars.
The night was redolent with the lush scent of honeysuckle in bloom. The humid Tennessee night was thick with moisture. But Mercer couldn’t tear his gaze off her.
Her.
It was how he thought of her. His mystery girl, who had become a woman. The female he’d been tasked since birth with keeping an eye on. She stood beneath the lamplight, wearing a sunny yellow sundress.
The girl who’d once loved and chased sunbeams had grown into a woman who still danced in their warm rays day or night. He knew her hair was naturally brown, but since her teenage years she’d been dying it a soft shade of gold. Her skin was sun-kissed, and she never wore makeup. But then, she’d never needed it.
She had a button nose, a full mouth with a slight overbite, and perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth thanks to three years of braces in middle school. Her favorite color was yellow. Her favorite music, country. Her favorite shoes, always cowgirl boots.
When she was a child, he’d thought her weirdly adorable. She was clumsy in body, moving not at all like the women of his kin, without grace or fluidity of motion, but it was that awkwardness that more often than not kept him looking and wondering and curious to learn more. She was not of his species. In fact, she was very, very human, and yet...there’d been something about her that, over time, he’d grown to like looking at.
Mercer could never have imagined that she would turn into a woman who’d make his skin burn and his blood hot. That he’d awaken at night with dreams of her. Of him.
She stood with a man. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Tall. Handsome in a way most humans tended to like. And dressed in a military uniform. He was nothing to Mercer, just another face in the crowd. Mercer had no love for humans. He cared not if they fought each other into extinction. Except for Her.
The man leaned in to whisper in her ear.
Mercer’s heart quickened as a smile slowly spread across her heart-shaped face, transforming her from a thing of beauty to one of the Veil. Beyond this world, more than mere flesh and blood.
A low growl tumbled through his chest. He wanted to break the man. Hurt him. Kill him for daring to touch her. But he couldn’t.
Her laughter suddenly stopped, and she stilled like a bunny, glancing over toward the bushes where he hid.
Inhaling deeply, he told himself to remain where he was. To not run to her. To deny every instinct in his body and wait. Because that was where he’d been sent tonight.
To an isolated graveyard in the middle of Silver Creek, Tennessee, where no one else roamed but the two lovers. She was so still, gazing through the leaves as though she could see straight through them to him.
A looming gray angel with outstretched wings towered silently behind the secret lovers, the gravestone seeming to look directly at him with a hint of a mocking smile on its concrete face. As if even it taunted him, telling him he would always be destined to remain outside looking in.
His pulse thundered in his ears, and a soft whine spilled off his tongue. He’d never allowed himself to be spotted. He knew the rules. Knew he could never go to her. Only watch her. Guard her. Until it was her time.
Until today.
His claws dug into the soft earth, and the man warred with the beast.
Her stupid male leaned in again, touching her soft, creamy skin. So golden, so tanned. She laughed again. Forgetting about her instinct. About the bush.
About him.
“You know you cannot go to her, Shifter.” The voice was female, deep and throaty and famil
iar and coming in from over his left flank.
Giving himself a shake, and in the process ruffling the leaves, he didn’t take his eyes off Her. He couldn’t go through with it. Couldn’t stand by and do nothing.
“But you must,” she said in that deep, sonorous voice that shook with things not of this world. “This is her path. Her destiny. I sent you to guard her for this moment.”
He’d always asked the stranger in the black cowl why. Never understanding why she that meant the universe to him should have to die tonight. In that way. But the darkness hid her secrets well.
“You know I can never say. Deep down, you know it must be this way, do you not, wolf? There are forces at work here much bigger than her. Than you.”
His heart beat faster as he heard the first predatory footsteps of destiny turn the corner half a block away.
His claws dug in deeper, frenzied to rip up the ground and run to her.
“You will do as I say. None can know of this.”
Mercer growled. He’d given the darkness his oath before.
But she growled back, much fiercer than him. “Repeat it again, for tonight I bind your words with the night.”
Feeling his eyes glowing with rage, with a surge of wild adrenaline that had nothing at all to do with the conversation and everything to do with what came next, he glared hotly at the mysterious Veiler who could only ever be seen by him.
She was nothing but a figure wrapped in shadow. A mirage of a woman who he doubted was woman at all. She came to him in a form that he sensed she used to try to make him more comfortable in her presence.
Once he’d seen beneath her cowl, to the burning red eyes and the skeletal mask behind it, Mercer had never tried to look again.
I will never tell her.
“No, not with your mouth. But she will have talents in this next life. Should she ever discover who she really is—”
I don’t even know who she is! His mind snarled, feeling the old hatred and impotence when it came to she. To her secrets. He wanted—needed—to know all there was to know of her. Who she really was. Why she was so important.
Darkness snorted, and the air squeezed with the frost of her displeasure. “You know enough to be dangerous, wolf. Enough to cause irreparable harm to the tenuous fabric of this world. She must always believe herself to be normal.”
His nostrils flared scenting the creeping death on the winds. Her life would soon be cut short. Her beloved sunshine forever gone to her. To him.
“You will guard her in this next life as well as you have in this one. Her life won’t be easy, and it shouldn’t be. To survive, she must learn to be tough. She must see the worst of humanity. She must fight. She must be allowed to stumble. To fall. To hurt. To love.”
His blood rushed through his veins.
“But”—the heavy weight of her gaze descended on him like a vise, choking the air from his lungs and causing him to wheeze—“not with you.”
Her words slammed into his chest like a fist, causing a howl to rush up his throat. She was his. His for always. His need. His desire. His love...
Finally her gaze moved, and he could breathe again. Death slunk closer. Her laughter filled the breeze like a lover’s call.
Why not him? No one could love her more.
Darkness was silent so long he thought she’d vanished as quickly as she’d appeared. A heavy, rolling sigh that sounded like thunder spilled from her lips.
“The threads of our futures are balls of string running in many directions. Not all futures will come to pass; they are merely a suggestion of what could be, depending on the path chosen. When she is with you, I see two very clearly. I cannot take the risk. And neither can you.”
Mercer watched as death peeled itself away from the shadows hiding it. A tall, elegantly dressed man in suit and tie, he had large, gaudy rings on each finger. He had slicked-back black hair, with long, angular features that were pleasing to the eye.
Noting the pearl-white skin and the suddenly blood-red eyes, Mercer knew that death tonight had come in the form of a master vampire. A vampire of the vaunted House of Et Prochrae, Latin for “the beautiful ones.”
“You will watch with me. You will wait for my signal. Fate is a fickle bitch, wolf, but she must be obeyed in all things. When Scarlett is near the point of death, you will take her. You will heal her. You will feed her of your blood. And only your blood. But mix it with wolfsbane. Never feed her without it. If you do, it would be disastrous for you both.”
He heard the darkness speaking, but it was like listening to words under water. The vampire smiled, and Mercer knew he was going to rip its heart out when the night was through.
And then, in the blink of an eye, came everything he’d dreaded since the moment he’d first watched the toddler with a smile that lit up his hard soul. Who’d made him believe that there were humans worth knowing, worth saving. She slipped headlong into her dark destiny, and he could do nothing to stop it, only stand by and watch with his heart in his throat.
“Boo, no!” Scarlett cried, reaching out for the man who’d been whispering into her ear all through the night.
The vampire snatched the one-hundred-and-seventy-pound man away from her arms as though he were a rag doll. Bending the man’s neck back, the vampire savaged the vein, spilling blood everywhere.
Scarlett turned on her dark red boots and ran. She didn’t scream. She didn’t flail her arms or act weak. She knew she was outmanned and outgunned, and she ran for her life.
Mercer’s tail thumped the ground hard as he belly-crawled forward, whimpering wildly with his need to go to her. To destroy the Veiler who dared to lay his filthy hands upon her.
“Wait,” darkness whispered.
In seconds, the life was gone from Scarlett’s Boo.
In another five, the vampire was on her back. Scarlett fought like a polecat, flailing her arms, trying to twist out of his grasp.
Mercer shook his head. There had to be another way.
“There isn’t another way. This is as it must be. She must die to be reborn. It’s the only way to keep her safe. The only way to prevent this from ever happening again. Do you hear me, wolf? Do not lose faith now.”
The vampire was far more brutal with her. He reached around her middle and tore his claws through her stomach, slicing her clean through. She screamed, choking on her blood and tears.
Then he laughed. The bastard laughed with the deep kind of mesmerizing laugh only a vampire could before he lowered his face and ripped through her neck.
The wolf screamed inside of him. Mercer howled.
The vampire paused. “Now, Shifter. Now you may get your taste of blood.”
Mercer exploded from the bushes less than a second later and was on the vampire just as quickly. He jumped and latched his muscular jaws around the fanger’s arm, and with one violent shake of his head, he tore it off.
The vampire screamed, bleeding out Scarlett’s blood he’d just ingested all over his pristine suit.
Scarlett’s cherry-red boots peeked out from beneath the honeysuckle bush, her blood filling up the night. She had minutes to live. But he could never allow that monster to breathe again. So long as he lived, Scarlett would be sired.
The vampire jumped at him and wrapped his one good arm and both his legs around Mercer’s middle, squeezing tight. Even gravely injured, he was a danger. Several ribs snapped beneath the straining pressure. The vampire was old, maybe even an ancient. Mercer felt the power in him.
But the Veiler in his haste to get the wolf away had made a grave mistake. Ribs would heal. The fucker should have torn his jaw off if he’d really wanted to stop him.
With eyes glowing a neon shade of green, Mercer drew on every ounce of power he possessed, and shoving his claws into the vampire’s chest long enough to keep him contained, he attacked the vampire’s neck. He took the head off with three savage bites.
But a vampire wasn’t truly dead until the heart was taken out. He fought as a wolf, and so the
death wasn’t clean or easy. First he had to crack the ribs. Then he had to shred the flesh. Even headless, the corpse shuddered violently, trying to shove him off with the one good arm.
His muzzle coated in blood and gore, Mercer finally reached the blackened heart, and with one sharp jerk, he yanked the damned thing out and spit the repugnant organ on the ground. Instantly the corpse ceased moving.
The arms and legs relaxed. In hours, the noxious beast would be nothing more than dust, aging to where it should have been all along.
Shifting was excruciating. Covered to his thighs and chest in deep gashes that he hadn’t realized he’d gotten in the struggle, he grimaced as he shuffled painfully toward Scarlett.
He all but fell when he finally got to her side. With an angry growl, he shoved the bush branches aside and got his first good look at her.
Her eyes were open and nearly empty as they stared up at the sky. Her body cool, her blood warm and tacky.
Burying his rage that still hadn’t abated even though he’d killed the bastard, he gently reached for her.
“I’ve got you, girl,” he said, his voice deep and full of grit. “I’ve got ya.”
She was dead weight in his arms, barely even making a noise or stirring. She’d survive. It was fated. And Mercer vowed right then that he’d never let her get hurt like that again.
Hefting her in his arms, he clenched down on his molars, stood, and stared at the darkness.
The flames of her eyes burned bright. “I will find you again, Shifter. Guard her with your life. If you fail, your life is mine.”
Then she held up her hand, and only her thumb and forefinger showed. Her claws were long and pearl white. Held between them was a purple flower. He recognized it immediately—wolfsbane.
“Eat this. And until she is freed, never stop.”
He took the flower, shoved it into his mouth, and chewed. Her fiery eyes glanced down, and that was when he realized that his thumb gently stroked the back of Scarlett’s bloodied thigh. Immediately he stopped.
Darkness shook her head. “Do not fail me, Shifter. Never think you can.” Her words shook with ominous undertones, and despite himself, he shivered.