Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves (Southern Vampire Detective #1)

by Selene Charles

  I laughed, the sound high-pitched and slightly crazed. He had been using me. With my insides feeling as if they’d been shredded to ribbons, I shook my head.

  “Get. Out. Of. My. House.”

  I looked up at him without flinching, but inside, my shattered heart ached. His jaw set, and he shook his head.

  “I dinna think it’s him, Scarlett. If it’s any consolation, I’m getting ready to pen a letter to the four. But if you know something...”

  I gave another crazed laugh, one far more guttural and pain-filled. Betrayed twice by the same shifter, I was an idiot. An idealistic idiot. I’d told myself to keep him at a distance, but the way I was hurting, I knew I hadn’t. Knew I’d only lied to myself.

  “I don’t ever want to see you again, you hear me, wolf?” I pointed at the door and looked away.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw him stir, walk toward the door, and look back at me with anger and longing, but I hardened my heart and refused to meet his gaze. Refused to give him any more of me. I was through with stupid men.

  All of them.

  James opened the door, and a startled gasp caught my ear.

  I looked up. Carter stood on the other side with his balled fist held up as though readying to knock at my door.

  “Carter?” I asked in quiet confusion.

  He looked between the two of us and shook his head. He looked like hell. He had scruff on his face and smelled awful, as though he hadn’t bathed in a week. He wore jeans and a shirt, but they were crumpled, as though he’d been sleeping in them for days.

  “Carter? What the hell is going on with you?” I asked, my voice sounding rushed and fearful because this wasn’t Carter and I didn’t know when or why it had happened, and it bothered me. It bothered me a lot.

  I ignored James as I moved past him to try to usher Carter in, but my old partner was shaking his head and backing out. “You’re busy. Another time.”

  “Carter. Stop.” I grabbed his arm. But he was stronger than he looked and shook me off easily.

  Which shocked me so badly I didn’t walk after him. It wasn’t as if I’d used all my strength, but still, no human should have just brushed me off that way.

  “I said another time, Scarlett. Another time.” He kept muttering to himself before hopping into his black SUV.

  I half-heartedly gave chase after that, but he was already starting the engine.

  “Is it the case? Is it the bogeyman? More deaths? Carter, you look like hell. I need to know you’re okay.”

  He looked out the window. His eyes were bloodshot. He was exhausted. That much was clear. And my heart bled for my old friend.

  “No. It was personal. But it can wait. I’ll talk to you later, Scar. And don’t fucking follow me, either.” He jerked the SUV into gear and wheeled out of there, kicking up rocks, and flew out like a bat out of hell.

  I felt as if I’d been slammed up against a wall. I couldn’t believe what’d just happened. What had just happened? I still wasn’t even sure.

  The only thing I could think was that his cancer was back. My heart clenched. “Oh God.”

  I’d forgotten about James until he touched my elbow. But I was like a feral caged cat. I hissed, jumping clear of him, my face melting and transforming into a monster as I shook my head.

  “Get the hell away from me.”

  Clenching his jaw one last time, he nodded, then strode for his bike. In only seconds, he was gone too.

  And I ran.

  I ran for the den.

  For the one person in the world that I had to see. Needed to see.

  Chapter 18

  Scarlett

  When I got to the den, I looked high and low. But Mercer wasn’t there.

  No one had seen him tonight.

  I wasn’t sure where he was, but hanging around wasn’t going to help matters, either. The sun would rise in less than an hour. I had to get back home before I was crippled by weakness and sleep.

  I was just turning to go when a gorgeous redhead with piercing blue eyes blocked my path. She was about my height but with impossibly long legs. She had a trim waist and appeared more like twenty-five than close to a hundred. Dressed in jeans, a belly shirt, and some cool-looking vivid blue boots, she nodded.

  Lucille was looking at me in a way I’d never quite seen her look at me before. Laying a hand on my shoulder, she squeezed gently. Normally fresh-faced, Lucille was looking her age today. Not in wrinkles but in tight lines around her eyes and mouth. Noticing that, I also noted that she had bags under her eyes.

  I couldn’t help wondering why. If maybe she knew something about Clarence none of the rest of us were supposed to. Like an oath that’d been broken.

  “I just heard, Scar.”

  I swallowed hard, not sure what to say.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I clenched my jaw. It’d been a few days since my parents’ death, and though mentally I was doing better than I thought I would, it still hurt when I thought about it too long. Death came for the living. I knew that.

  My eyes burned.

  “I wanted to host a picnic next week. If you’d let me. In their honor. I wanted to invite you personally, and also, I wanted... want”—she cleared her throat, her soft Southern accent a melody to my ears—“to call peace.”

  I lowered my chin to my chest. A ceasefire? In eleven years, she’d never once cared to call one with me. She’d been one of my biggest antagonists, getting into Clarence’s ear and whoever else would listen to her that the vampire needed to go.

  And she was calling a ceasefire? Did she know about James and his investigation? About the four? Was she trying to flatter me into telling her something? Or worse yet, trap Mercer through me?

  The door behind us opened, and immediately I smelled bergamot and soap. A visible shudder rolled through me.

  Mercer tried to walk around us, but I didn’t let him. I snatched him up by the hand and held on tight.

  Lucille looked heavily at our joined hands with her lips thinned but said nothing else after that. She clutched her hands in front of her body, clenching her fingers so tight the knuckles whitened.

  Was Lucille nervous? She was acting nervous.

  In all the years I’d known her, I didn’t think I could ever recall a moment when the Alpha Bitch hadn’t been anything other than the epitome of poised and collected.

  “I’ll call you in a few days to set things up. Maybe we could even schedule a tea. Mercer.” She tipped her head in greeting before leaving us alone.

  “What was that about?” he asked, confused.

  I shook my head, my mouth gaping. She’d invited me over for tea? I was pretty sure I’d just died and stepped into some alternate dimension. I pinched myself. It stung.

  Nope. That had really just happened.

  Mercer eyed me as if I’d lost my mind.

  Blowing out a heavy breath, I shook my head. “Hell if I know. And just where have you been? Come with me.”

  I needed to get home, but I needed him with me. I wasn’t letting him go. Not now. Not ever.

  ~*~

  We got back to my house just as the sun’s rays started painting the sky a light shade of blue.

  I shivered, hating this time of day most. Hating it because I missed it so much. I’d tried once to watch the sunrise, but I’d had to crawl back into the house. I wouldn’t have died from the light, but it’d hurt terribly.

  Mercer was quick, rushing from one window to the next and slamming down the blackout blinds as quickly as he could, bathing my world in shadows once again. The witch who’d spelled my house had done a fine job. It was just light enough to be pretty without hurting too bad. I should be back in my room, but I’d missed him.

  More than I cared to imagine.

  “I spoke with Harlen,” I said for lack of anything better to say.

  He looked tired. “That’s good.”

  I sat on my couch, patting the seat beside me. He opted to sit on the recliner to the side of me instead. I rub
bed my hands on my lap.

  “Not gonna ask me how it went?”

  “I imagine it went as it went, Scar.”

  Why was he doing this? Acting like this? Hot and cold? Wanting me. Not wanting me. What was he doing to me?

  Those questions must have imprinted themselves on my face because he shook his head. “Don’t, Scarlett. There are certain lines we just should never cross.”

  “So why did you start in the first place?” I hurtled the accusation at him like a spear. “Why’d you touch me? Why do you make me feel the way I do?”

  He stilled, his blue-green eyes locking with mine. “How do I make you feel?”

  Like I’m everything and nothing. But I could never tell him that. “Am I alone in this, Merc? I have to know? ’Cause if I am, I’ll stop. And you won’t have to worry about me anymore. But if I’m not, then you’ve got to cowboy up and just for once be honest with me.”

  He looked down at his boots.

  He was so big. So sad. So beautiful. He was all those things and so much more. I loved him as I’d never loved any other male in my life. Even if he’d told me it was just me, I’d never stop loving him. I knew this.

  But I would be damned if I let myself become a slave to my emotions. I had an eternity to live, and I couldn’t live like this.

  He wouldn’t answer. Just as I knew he wouldn’t. I didn’t push him as I had with James because Mercer’s silence was all the answer I needed. I gave a pitiful-sounding chuckle.

  “Yeah. Okay. Roger that, wolf boy. On to more important matters. Did you know James has been sent by the four to investigate not just Clarence but you too?”

  At that, he finally looked up.

  God, he was gorgeous. I hated that I was so viscerally aware of him, but I was. The way he held his hands, how his big muscles bunched as he tried in vain to keep his temper in check.

  Mercer was explosive. He had a wolf’s temper. But he’d always been patient with me. Gentle, even. Lately I’d felt that begin to fracture. And I wasn’t going to lie, not to myself. The prospect of seeing him wild with me...it made me breathless. Excited.

  I wasn’t a delicate china doll, as I believed he sometimes thought of me. I knew Mercer’s passions would match my own. If he would only ever let himself feel them.

  I wet my lips, and he flicked his eyes away.

  “No, I didn’t know. But it makes sense. Why the Pack’s been so silent around me lately. Why Clarence is always on edge. It makes sense. Why are we being investigated?”

  “For being oath breakers.” My stomach hurt just saying the words.

  His eyes widened, and he blinked in shock, and I released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding because whether I’d wanted to or not, I had wondered if Mercer was in over his head. But his reaction said it all.

  “Scarlett, I vow to you, I haven’t broken any oaths.”

  I nodded gently. “I know, Merc. I know. I think James knows that too. He said he’s writing the delegates to let you off the hook. But that leaves Clarence.”

  His jaw clenched tight. Neither of us asked what he’d done. Neither of us knew. But it was serious. Deadly serious. What surprised me was that an investigation was happening about it at all. Once the oath was broken, the Oathbreaker came. Whatever it was, it wasn’t black and white, which possibly made it even worse.

  “Lucille invited me to a picnic,” I said, desperately reaching for anything to dispel the cloying silence between us.

  It was totally random, but I didn’t know what else to talk about with him. The one thing I desperately wanted to talk about, he wouldn’t. And so I was stuck with nonsense.

  “A picnic?” He lifted a brow. “You don’t eat.”

  I shrugged. “She says it’s a tribute to my parents.”

  “Scar.” His shoulders drooped, and I hadn’t meant to use my parents’ death to break down that wall between us.

  But when he got up and moved toward me, kneeling in front of me, his big body taking up all my space and charging the air with electricity and fire, I didn’t care. And it made me sick to think I could be so callous. That I could use my parents’ death this way, but I placed my hands on his shoulders and he shuddered, letting me in, and I knew I would do it again.

  And again.

  And again, if I had to.

  I feathered my fingers along his neck, delighted in the corded steel of barely checked strength.

  His hands fell on my waist. “I’m sorry about your parents, Scar. You shouldn’t have had to see that. I’ve been wanting to tell you that for days.”

  I cried.

  Because it still hurt. But I wasn’t crying for them. I was crying for me. Crying for Mercer. Crying because I knew things were going wrong between us, going down a path we might not be able to walk away from unscathed.

  I curled my fingers into the nape of his neck, drawing him into me. His cheek grazed mine, and his soft beard scraped against my smooth flesh. I hissed, arching my back reflexively, causing my breasts to shove against his steely chest.

  His breathing hitched, and his big, gorgeous hand drew up my spine.

  Mercer was so dangerous for me. Dangerous because he wasn’t even trying. If he asked me to steal, to hurt, to maim, to kill for him, I would. Without blinking.

  I wondered if deep down, he knew that. He knew that, and that was why he kept his distance. That was why he shoved me away, because if he allowed himself all the way in with me, there’d never be any getting out.

  James had told me vampires had extreme emotions. He was right.

  I kissed Mercer’s neck, nuzzling his skin, taking his scent deep inside of me. Wanting so much more. Wanting all of him.

  He growled, and I smiled, wanting his fire.

  “You fed.” His voice was rough and harsh.

  I closed my eyes. That was so not what I meant.

  “Why does it have to be the vein, Scar?”

  I heard his brokenness, and I wondered at it. Was it possible that it hurt him? All he ever did was push me away. And yet, right now, he was trembling in my arms. A barely contained rage that caused my adrenaline to pump and my fangs to ache because I wanted him to stop being so damn careful with me all the time. I wanted him to let the monster out to play.

  “Because it’s the only time I feel truly alive,” I admitted softly, damning myself every kind of fool as soon as I said it because I knew what he’d do.

  And he did it.

  Moving out of my arms as though he’d been nothing but smoke and shadows all along, he dusted his hands down his shirt, and that wall I hated was back and choking me.

  “I have to work, Scarlett. And you need sleep.”

  Leaning down, he kissed my forehead roughly, like a barely leashed beast, and my blood curled with longing.

  I watched him walk away from me but couldn’t say a word to stop him.

  Chapter 19

  Scarlett

  Four days passed with no word from Carter. I called his apartment twice. Both times he’d failed to answer. Which wasn’t in and of itself such a huge deal, until I called the precinct and was told that he’d handed in his badge five days ago and they hadn’t heard hide nor hair from him since.

  Five nights ago, he’d come to my door, looking panicked, broken, and terrified. A very bad feeling churned through my gut as I ended the call. I stared at my walls, looking at nothing as my mind raced.

  I’d briefly wondered that night if Carter’s cancer had come back. But that was as far as my concern had gone. I’d become too obsessed with my own life, my own needs, to have the time or energy to think of his.

  Carter had asked me for help with the bogeyman, and I had to admit—being one hundred percent brutally honest with myself—I hadn’t really given it. Giving him only a small part of me, leaving him to handle the rest on his own.

  Yes, my parents had died. Yes, he’d driven me to that crime scene to force me to use my powers. But was that such a bad thing? Carter wanted to stop the bad guy; that was all he’
d ever wanted to do. It had bothered me how obsessed he’d become with the bogeyman—or woman, as the case might be—but I’d abandoned him, leaving him with nothing but his work. His job.

  It’d become his life. His mistress.

  And then he was gone to only God knew where, and I knew that was partly my fault.

  The phone rang.

  Startled, I yelped, clutching at my sluggishly beating heart, and snatched up my cell.

  “Carter!” I blurted out without bothering to check the number, knowing in my heart it was him. That somehow he’d felt my worry through time and distance and was reaching out to tell me he was all right. That he was fine and to stop panicking.

  “Scarlett?” Lucille’s voice rang out in confusion. “Is this a bad time?”

  My mouth suddenly dry, I shook my head as I dropped to my couch, feeling overwhelmed by guilt and increasing worry.

  “Yes. No.” I shook my head. I felt as if my life was unraveling at a frightening speed, but I had to keep my head in the game. “What’s the matter, Lucille? Is Steven all right?”

  I knew she’d never call me concerning the Alpha, but every so often, when she’d needed to make a run and there’d been no other bitches available, she’d occasionally asked me to keep an eye on him.

  “Steven? No.” I could almost see her shaking her head as her brows bunched in tight. “The picnic, Scarlett. It’s tomorrow night. I was just calling to make sure that you’d planned to—”

  She coughed. The sound was deep and throaty and cringe-worthy. I grimaced at hearing the harsh rattle in her lungs.

  “Lucille, are you sick?”

  I didn’t know why I asked that. That cough could have just been food stuck in her throat, but it’d sounded nasty, and once I thought of it, she hadn’t looked all that good at the bar the other night, either.

  “Don’t tell Clarence,” she said in a soft wheeze.

  “What? Why?”

  “Just—” She sighed deeply, and even without the cough, I heard the rattle. Something was seriously wrong with her. “Scar, I just wanted to let you know I wouldn’t be able to make it to the picnic tomorrow after all. I’m sorry.”