“Gods, I love how cool to the touch ye are,” he murmured. “Always have.”
My stomach flipped. I couldn’t help wondering whether he’d thought the same with his Isobel.
After a moment, I felt relaxed enough to drop my hand to his head, sliding his thick wavy hair through my fingers. The texture was as soft as I remembered.
Not coarse like fur, more like cashmere.
I closed my eyes, and slowly I felt every inch of me relax enough to begin to near the creeping hand of death’s kiss.
It was his rumble of approval that caused my eyes to open, but exhaustion draped me like second skin. I wasn’t long for this night.
Somehow, without me even realizing it, he’d pressed his face to my breast and was inhaling deeply.
I knew I did not smell of his woman. No two scents were alike. Each body’s pheromone was as unique as a human’s fingerprint or a flake of snow. But I was too tired to tell him so.
I closed my eyes again and was at the threshold of sleeping when I felt the tentative touch of his tongue swipe against my right breast. The touch was feather light and not sexual, but it was claiming. Much as Mercer had done to me at the bar with Blue.
My brows drew into a frown, but then sleep’s kiss sucked me in, and I remembered no more after that.
~*~
I came to with a start, grabbing hold of my chest as a sound intruded on my privacy. Sitting up, I looked around in dazed confusion; normally waking was an easier process for me. It happened in stages, slowly and peacefully.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Shaking my head, I realized the pounding was someone’s fist at my door. I recalled last night with startling clarity. The Alpha’s brutal beating, Merc’s strange behavior, and finally James at my door.
Running my hand over the empty side of his bed, I frowned. Had he left? Crawling over the mattress, I glanced at the floor where his clothes had been tossed and noticed they were gone too.
“James,” I whispered, which would have been the equivalent of a scream to a shifter with their sensitive hearing.
No answer.
And a sniff test proved to me he really had left. Shrugging and feeling almost relieved that I didn’t have to face him after such an awkward night, I finally decided it was time to get up and answer the door that still hadn’t stopped banging.
“I know you’re in there, Smith,” Carter called. “That thing you call a truck is still in your driveway. Now open up.”
Blowing out a raspberry, I slipped my comfy robe back on before sliding my hair out from beneath the collar.
“Hold your horses, Carter. Can’t a girl even get a second to—”
“There’s been another homicide,” he said just as I opened the door.
The flippant words died on my tongue, and I stared into his amber-colored eyes full of stress and pinched with worry. He was dressed in his usual slacks, shirt, and tie but looked rumpled overall.
“Damn,” I muttered.
He gave a clipped nod, but his eyes were sad. For a man who saw as much death as he did, that look gave me chills. “Get dressed and come with me.”
Chapter 13
Scarlett
Carter drove us out of shifter territory a fair distance, but the moment he took the first left off Main Street, passing Buella’s diner, I had a sick feeling run through my gut.
I tried to tell myself it was just nerves, but I’d been working the beat long enough to trust my instincts. I’d tried getting Carter to talk, but all he’d kept saying was, “I’m sorry, Scar.”
I’d said no more after that. I didn’t want to know who it was. Didn’t want to deal with death on a personal level. There weren’t many people in my life—Veiler or otherwise—I cared about enough for Carter to say he was sorry. I knew it wasn’t a shifter. I’d have heard the wails the moment I woke up.
The options of who it could be were narrowed to a dangerously tiny field.
The moment he turned onto Cherry Lane, though, I felt all the blood in my body threaten to come up. I laid my hand against my belly, pressing in as though trying to suffocate the scream waiting to be birthed.
I already knew.
I already knew.
“Oh God,” I moaned. “Oh God, Carter. Please don’t tell me.”
Still he wouldn’t look at me.
In the movies, when the cops were walking up the long driveway and they were quiet, and the sad music was playing softly in the background but the protagonist was inside the house and laughing, eating, living—little knowing that in seconds their entire world was about to be rocked—the viewers were already sad because they knew what those unsuspecting people didn’t.
That was me, and that was Carter.
He hadn’t said a word to me because he hadn’t known what to say.
The shakes started slowly at first but soon intensified, spreading from my calves, to my thighs, to my stomach, until finally I was shuddering my breaths and clutching onto the door handle, ready to rip the door off its hinges and fly out of there.
He parked on the long driveway, behind a maroon Jeep with faux wood trim. It’d been my very first car. It was also where I’d lost my virginity to Boo after prom.
Mama and Daddy had kept it in showroom condition; it gleamed from a fresh coat of wax.
“Scar,” Carter said softly.
Not Smith, not Scarlet, but Scar. The only time he’d ever called me that was when we’d been intimate and the world had ceased to exist for us. I swallowed hard.
Blinking through the fog of memories, I shook my head, staring at him numbly. He blew out a heavy breath, looking straight ahead as he tapped his fingers on the wheel.
“I thought that maybe you could come here and identify them rather than in the morgue.”
I shook my head and snorted. “Don’t kid yourself, Carter. You didn’t invite me here to be kind. You brought me here to try to get a hit. You’re a fucking prick.”
Maybe he didn’t deserve my rage. Maybe tomorrow I’d feel like a bastard for taking it out on him, but I didn’t care right now.
After shoving the door open, I got out, not bothering to close it behind me. My steps felt like lead as I forced myself to walk toward the Jeep.
The blood was thick, everywhere, worse than the other crime scene. I didn’t need to see it to know. I smelled it all over the fucking place. The sun was still an hour away from setting, the rays were weak, but I knew I’d never forget the sight of what lay before me—the way the blood dripped out one drop at a time from beneath the doorframe to the pool of it gathering on the concrete below. The shine of pinkish-red tinting the side and rear windows from inside.
Each step I took grew harder, like walking through quicksand. But somehow I made it there. I passed under the yellow-slickered CSI tape and marched past the humans gathering forensics. It was as if I moved in a daze, somewhere between dreaming and awake.
My mother used to always tease me about that. When I was growing up, it hadn’t been uncommon for me to walk into walls, lampposts, signs...my head always in the clouds, always woolgathering, as she’d say.
I wasn’t woolgathering at the moment. In fact, I wasn’t feeling much of anything right now. Not rage. Not pain. Not anger.
I was numb. Absolutely numb.
Someone whispered an apology to me. I wasn’t sure who. I didn’t really care. Instead, I stood there like a stone, my arms wrapped around my middle as I stared at the only two humans left in the world that I’d ever really loved.
I recognized my father’s corpse only by the two hands still gripping tight to the wheel, the right one still showing the faded image of the four-leaf clover between the meat of his thumb and fingers. He got his only tattoo when he was drunk, eighteen, and had just joined the Navy. The rest of him had simply been eviscerated. He looked like a mound of ground beef, just bits and pieces of something that once was.
He’d never been much for jewelry or any oth
er sort of adornments—in fact, he’d never worn a wedding ring except for the day they’d exchanged vows, but never once in fifty-one years had his eyes strayed. There wasn’t even a button left on the dangling threads of the sleeves he wore. I’d learn nothing from my father’s hands.
I looked at my mother.
She was still whole. Still lovely. That face, so similar to my own, almost peaceful looking. She’d aged beautifully, like a fine wine, only growing better with time. I smiled; I’d not been this close to her in decades. I took her soft hand in mine. I smelled the blood and gore, but beneath it, I smelled her familiar scent of lavender lotion, the same brand she’d used all her life.
The smell was home for me.
“Hi, Mama.” I breathed, playing with the bloodied knuckle of her hand. I picked off a bit of my father’s lumpy gray matter, knowing I was destroying the crime scene and not giving a rat’s ass.
No one said anything to me; they knew better.
She was still clipped in. Always the law-abiding citizen, she’d never even gotten a single speeding ticket in her entire life. Reverently I reached over and unclipped her.
She spilled into my arms, lax and soft. My parents had been killed only a short time ago; they still smelled fresh and clean.
“Scarlett, you shouldn’t—” One of the technicians came forward.
I hissed, twisting and exposing my dropped fangs, still gripping tight to my mother. Knowing I looked like the monster I truly was.
The technician was young, a new guy. He was barely out of college, with a mop of wheat-blond hair and wide, frightened brown eyes. I’d seen him around once or twice but didn’t know his name. He stepped back, holding up his hands, and I scented his fear, his terror.
I wanted to laugh at him. Wanted to rip his throat out and suck, drink him all in, every drop of him, until he fell at my feet. A sound like an animal dropped off my tongue.
Carter shoved the kid behind him.
“Scarlett, stop this. Remember who you are.”
I breathed heavy, fighting to take control of the monster and not the other way around.
“I know who I am. And don’t you dare try to stop me,” I hissed, spearing him with a deadly look.
He lifted his chin, his amber eyes stern and serious but also threaded through with pity. Pity for me. And I hated him for it.
“An hour, Scarlett. That’s all I’ll give you. One hour.”
I snapped my fangs at him, my posture threatening, telling him in no uncertain terms that he did not dictate shit to me. That he was nothing. Nothing. But he stood his ground, keeping his eyes to just below the level of mine.
Carter was brave. Stupid but brave.
The only thing that stopped me from tearing all their heads off was the woman I cradled in my arms.
With a cry that was ripped from the depths of my dark heart, I ran, returning like magic to the one place I always went when I needed solitude.
The haunted shack was calm tonight.
I sensed the spirits within, but Delilah wasn’t among them. The sun was just a spot of color over the horizon. Wheat stalks as high as my calves swished and swayed in the gentle summer breeze.
Finally I dropped to my knees, still clinging tight, holding my mother as she’d no doubt once held me. Then I rolled her over and hugged her.
No tears came; I merely shook. Powerful spasms cramped my insides but wouldn’t seem to stop.
“You deserved so much better than this. So much better.” The words came in a rolling litany between kisses I peppered to her bloodstained brows and cheeks. Her blood soaked into my shirt and jeans, but I didn’t care.
Gently, oh so gently, I laid her down, arranging her pretty pink dress around her calves for modesty. Mama had been a born-again Baptist but not one of those obnoxious Christians, either. She’d believed in letting people be people and loving them regardless of who or what they were or did in life.
She’d been one of the rare few souls that were just good to the very core. I’d hated her goodness growing up. Hated how she’d always make me check in when I went out with my friends. Hated her lectures on not smoking or doing drugs, hated the fact that she’d cared so much.
I crossed her arms over her chest in a sleeper’s pose to cover the gaping holes revealing her missing heart and liver. I breathed heavily, standing stock-still as I pretended that she merely slept.
“I didn’t die, Mama. That night when the man attacked me and the cops told you I’d been kidnapped and you cried yourself to sleep every night for a year straight, I wanted to come to you. I wanted to hug you and tell you I was okay, I was all right. But it wasn’t so. I couldn’t control the hunger too well. I was scared I would hurt you. Scared of losing control around you. But I think...” My voice trailed off, and the timbre turned soft and unsure, like a little girl’s voice. “I think I lied to myself. I didn’t go to you ’cause I was ashamed. Ashamed you might not love me for what I was now.”
And then the tears finally came, my voice cracked, and I sobbed. I stared at her soft smile, imagining that somewhere she heard me, that her version of an afterlife was real too, and that even then she stood over my shoulder, whispering in my ear, “It’s okay, my little darling. It’s okay, my precious girl.”
The wind brushed petal soft against my cheek, almost like a kiss, and I sighed, knowing in my soul of souls it was her.
Laughing through my pain, I brushed at my tears. “I’m a stupid girl, even as a vampire, I’m afraid. But I promise to you and Daddy that I’m gonna make this right. I’m gonna find who did this to you, Mama. I’m gonna kill them.”
Then I reached down and lightly brushed my fingers against her wedding ring, and I saw a face.
Matilda Hicks.
~*~
It’d been the hardest damn thing I’d ever had to do when I picked my mama up and took her to the morgue. There was a saying among the living, “Kids aren’t supposed to bury their parents.” Unfortunately, as a vampire, I’d known it was only a matter of time.
But I’d never imagined that time could be so soon. That in their seventies, their lives would be over. Gone just like that.
Shoving past a desk clerk raiding a box of jelly-filled doughnuts, I didn’t bother saying I was sorry. My Southern breeding flew right out the window the moment I’d seen them. It was all I could do not to set the entire damn town on fire.
After marching up to Carter’s desk, I slammed my hands down on the beaten-up top. The old metal frame warped, bending inward and causing stacks of files and pencils to tumble to the floor.
Carter, who’d been sitting with his back to me and on the phone, turned around slowly, again keeping calm and level.
I felt the fear from everyone else beating at my back. When someone acted like prey, the predator in me wanted to pounce, but I’d fought like hell to make the asshats in this place see me as something other than a monster, and I was trying my darnedest to keep doing that.
“Matilda Hicks,” I said. “Put out an APB. We got that bitch.”
His jaw dropped, and the phone dangled from his fingers. I heard a teeny female voice on the other line repeating his name over and over and asking if he was still listening.
“You got a hit?” he asked with a hint of surprised but welcomed shock.
I nodded.
He hung up the phone, cutting off the female midscreech. Any other time, I’d have teased him about it, but not now. I was laser focused on only one thing, finding my parents’ murderer and bringing her down.
“We got that son of a bitch, Carter. We finally got her.” My voice shivered with a mix of a growl and relief.
He stood, and I grabbed his elbow.
“No one but the trolls, wizards, or dwarves should approach, you hear me? She’s too dangerous for anyone else. No humans. You got me? And that means you specifically.”
He’d been chasing the bogeyman as long as I had. I knew what that catch meant to Carter, the reckless lengths he’d go to to make sure he was in the l
oop. Before, I’d have been around to stop him, but not now, and I needed to make sure he didn’t do something stupid that would make him wind up dead.
He blinked, rubbing the back of his head in a nervous gesture. “Yeah, yeah, I got you.” He shook his head, as though scattering marbles, and asked absentmindedly, “Where you going?”
“Home. To wait out your call. I’d give anything to be there for this one, but...” Without a PIU badge, I couldn’t technically be there.
Though if Carter asked, I’d jump in the squad car without a second thought. I’d give just about anything to take that sonofabitch down. I clenched my fists, fighting my instinctual urge for violence. I was barely holding myself together.
He nodded slowly but still absently, as if he wasn’t totally there. As if he was distracted by something. Maybe the phone call I’d interrupted? I frowned. Why wasn’t he more excited about the news?
“Scarlett, I—” And then he stopped. I stilled, waiting for him to finish what he’d started, but instead he shook his head. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“What? You’re sorry?” I turned my face to the side, still upset at him for taking me to the scene, knowing he’d wanted me there for the single purpose of empathing her, but he hadn’t deserved my words earlier. Though I was angry, Mama had taught me better. “Don’t be. You didn’t cause this. Wasn’t your fault.”
I glanced back at him, and he was shaking his head, as though rejecting my words.
“I—”
I stopped him this time. I couldn’t stand to hear him apologize. I didn’t want apologies; apologies made it real. I wasn’t ready to accept the situation as my new reality. Not yet. I’d have to eventually deal with it, I knew that, but if I could pretend for a little while longer that we were talking about another case, I could function. I could breathe.
“Stop. Just stop, Carter. Please, I can’t hear this right now. I’m working like hell just to remain standing, to think about something other than my own grief. So please, give me my dignity and just stop.”
“I...” he said and then sighed heavily. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Another time.”
Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves (Southern Vampire Detective #1) Page 16