I crashed after that, unable to remember anything at all until the sudden jarring ringing of a phone.
Straightening, I groaned as I realized I was covered in drool and somehow still seated at my desk, my laptop opened in front of me.
The phone rang again.
Blinking, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and tried to remember where I’d put the damned phone. On the third ring, I felt my hip vibrate. Cursing beneath my breath, I answered.
“Scarlett, come here now.”
My heart, which had made me feel halfway alive the past few days after that massive feeding I’d taken from James, was suddenly sluggish with shock.
“Carter, where the hell have you been?” I snapped at him, jumping to my feet so quickly that I caused the loose sheets of paper on my desk to scatter and fly as through from an invisible wind.
“I’m at the Alpha’s house. Come here. Come now.”
Then he hung up, and I’m pretty sure my jaw hit the floor.
Still in the same clothes as last night, I took a quick sniff test. Not the most pleasing of odors but not the worst either. I spritzed some perfume on to try to cover up as best I could, groaning because Mama would have been heartily ashamed of me and then smiled softly, because thinking about her didn’t hurt as bad today.
I was just grabbing my keys and opening the door when I stared up at Mercer on the other side, looking as surprised as I felt.
Unlike me, he was freshly bathed. His hair was still gleaming wet. And his skin smelled of that delicious clean scent of soap I loved.
My heart lurched pitifully.
“Merc, what?” I frowned.
He was dressed in a neatly pressed green button-down shirt that caused his eyes to pop. Sexy jeans. And boots.
He frowned back at me. “You’re not ready to go?” He sniffed. “Did you even shower?”
Irritated, I rolled my eyes. “Leave me alone, Mercer. And go where?”
Looking at me as though I’d suddenly sprouted a third eyeball, he said, “The picnic. For your family, Scar. It’s for you. I mean, I’d think you’d remember something like this.”
“What? Oh God. Jeez, I forgot.” I groaned. “Mercer, I’m not going, okay. Just...tell everyone I said hi.”
I tried to move past him, keenly feeling the loss of time. But he held his hand out. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”
I ground my jaw. After last night, it really wasn’t any of his damn business. He’d made me search for Carter all by my lonesome. I might have been acting just a tad irrational at the moment, but I was running on fumes. My head was still pounding from last night, and my credit card bill was currently six hundred dollars higher thanks to a trip to Barbados that would never happen, and which I now hoped like hell I could get refunded.
I wasn’t exactly feeling peachy at the moment.
“Out,” I snapped like a churlish teen, heading to my truck before swinging the door open and hopping in.
He looked as though he was going to follow, and I held my hand up. “No. No way. You made it clear last night how you felt when you drew that line in the sand. You can’t just come stomping back into my life whenever you damn well please, Merc. That’s not how things are going to go between us anymore. Now I’m going out. And I don’t intend you should follow.”
His jaw clenched tight, and I thought right then that if I’d been a man, Mercer might have given my head a good clobbering. He narrowed his eyes, and I knew he didn’t like it. But he didn’t need to.
I was a grown woman. Lifting a brow, I shook my head. I wasn’t sure what to say after that. Mama always told me, If you don’t have anything nice to say, then you’d best not say anything at all.
I started the truck, revved the gas, and didn’t look back.
Chapter 20
Scarlett
I was getting ready to turn onto Clarence’s long driveway when a shadowy figure flagged me down.
Recognition hit me like a steamroller. I parked and rushed out of the truck before running to Carter.
He was dressed in a maroon tracksuit that looked unwashed and unkempt. He smelled even worse than he had the other night. His eyes were bloodshot. And he had a large enough beard going that I could have run a pick through it if I’d cared to.
I threw my arms around him and hugged him tight. “You dumb bastard. Don’t you dare make me worry about you like that again!”
His body stiffened, but I didn’t care that Carter might still be pissed at me. I’d come to some conclusions last night, one of them being that come hell or high water, I was going to make him forgive me eventually.
Carter was too important not to keep in my life.
“Scarlett, I need to talk to you.”
Laughing with relief—but also kind of pissed off too because I still owed six hundred bucks that I had no idea how I was going to pay off—I said, “What? What? But first how about you explain to me why you’re slinking around shifter territory in the dead of night and flagging down a vampire on a lonely stretch of road. Really can’t get more ‘too stupid to live’ than that, mortal.”
I mock punched him.
But he never even cracked a grin. His look was intense and serious and even pinched tight with something akin to fear.
No longer smiling, I cocked my head. “Carter, that was a joke. But seriously, what’s going on? Why’d you turn in your badge? Why are you at Clarence’s house? Do you know who the bogeyman is?”
He grabbed my flailing wrists, holding them tight.
And again I was struck by the notion that his grip was far stronger than a human’s should be. A stiff wind stirred, bringing the ripe scent of almonds with it.
My shoulders bunched, as if my body understood sooner than my brain what was going on. I shook my head.
Carter dropped my hands. “I have something to say to you. Something I’ve been wanting to tell you for years.”
Years?
I thought I’d only thought it, but I must have said it out loud because he nodded sadly.
“Yes, Scarlett. Years. I’ve been lying to you for some time now—”
I sucked in a breath, taking an instinctive step back, my body rushing with cold and endorphins.
“What?”
He closed his eyes. “I need you to listen to me. Listen to me and try to understand. Please don’t interrupt because we haven’t much time, but none of this will make sense to you unless you learn the truth first. And the only way I can do that is to give you this.”
He turned his palm over, opening it slowly to reveal a small golden cross.
I laughed, the sound of it ringing slightly insane. “I can’t be hurt by crosses, Carter, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
He growled. And again I was chilled to the bone by the feeling that it sounded far less human than it should have.
“At the end of the day, once you learn the truth,” he rushed on, “I want you to know one thing. The only person in this world I trust with this is you. Do you hear me? Remember that. And know that no matter what, you’ve earned my loyalty, Veiler.”
Confused, I dipped my brows. I wanted to ask more questions. Wanted to try to make sense of the noise in my head. But I wasn’t given that time, because suddenly that cross was thrust into my hand, and my world exploded with a vision.
~*~
They’re coming for me.
There isn’t much time.
No, scratch that. There’s no time left.
But I made a promise to her.
That she wouldn’t die alone.
For the past thirteen years, I’ve watched over her. Loved her. Guarded her.
“Emma,” I whispered, my voice choking up as the gravity of the situation rested heavy on my thin shoulders.
The breathing machine whooshed as it shoved life-sustaining oxygen through her almost atrophied lungs.
Grabbing her hand, I brought it gently to my lips. Her fingertips were cold. She would have hated that.
“Sweetheart,”
I whispered urgently, rubbing her knuckles along the bottom edge of my peeling mouth, “I know I promised you...”
I swallowed thickly, tears lodged in my throat.
I glanced at the heart monitor, and my own pulse sank as I saw the continual dip of hers flash across the screen. Maybe a day left, the doctor had said.
But her already light-yellow skin held a touch of blue and gray. My darling, precious Emma had one foot in the grave. It was only a matter of time for her brain to accept that reality and let her go.
I’d raised her as my own from the day I’d found her half naked and starving, alone on the streets of a filthy Bangkok alleyway.
I gave her everything. My time. My devotion. Everything.
From the moment I’d stared into those deep brown eyes, something in me had clicked. Some hard, cold place in my heart that’d never existed before her. I looked into the eyes of a human suffering and had felt a bond...kinship. I wasn’t sure.
All I knew was I’d have gone to the end of the Earth and back to keep my Emma safe. But this...this I couldn’t stop. This I couldn’t help, and it was tearing me up inside.
Emma might not have understood me at times. Might have even questioned my sanity for loving her as I did, but eventually she’d come to love me back. She was the daughter I’d never had.
I knew that.
She’d told me so last night while she’d still had a little lucidity left.
Down the hall of the hospital room, I felt the sudden disturbance of activity like a heightened awareness brush down my spine. I trembled as beads of sweat formed above my brows.
“Sweetheart, if you can hear me”—I leaned forward on the chair—“then I want you to know I’m going to stop, I’m going to stop chasing her. She’s too strong now, and I’ve grown weaker.”
My worlds trailed off as Emma’s fingers squeezed mine back. Not strong, not with determination, but she’d moved. My heart pounded almost painfully in my chest. She’d always wanted me to stop, always begged me to stop. Telling me that if I loved her, really loved her, I’d choose her. But I’d been consumed, obsessed with tracking down my female counterpart, and now I wished I could take it all back and have that extra time with her. I thought we’d had so many more years left.
But cancer, that fickle bitch, had taken my Emma in her poisonous grip and stolen her from me. And I could see how fruitless, how pointless it’d all been.
“Emma.” I breathed her name like a benediction, and my heart stopped cold in my chest when her deep milk-chocolate eyes stared back at me.
There was love, wonder, and sadness.
“I love you.” I gently rubbed her wrist with my thumb. “I’m stopping, Emma. No more. Like you asked me to, I promise you. I’ll let the police catch her. I’ll stop the fruitless searches. I’ll live. I’ll be good. I won’t kill anymore. This will be the last skin I take. I’ll die with you, dear Emma, as I should have many years ago.”
That brief spark of life that’d given me such hope began to waver like smoke over deep waters, gradually fading until almost nothing remained except the look of her bottomless brown eyes.
Her body could no longer fight the disease. Her chest rose and fell with each mechanized breath she was forced to take. There were no more days left to my beloved Emma, not even hours. We were living on seconds.
I sensed death creeping closer, felt his presence lingering in every shadow of the room. Dark, foreboding, and final.
A lone tear slipped out the corner of her left eye, and with a weakened shake of her head, she told me no.
“No?” I gasped, shocked to my core. “But...but, I don’t under—”
“You fight. You fight. She’ll never stop. Never. No one knows her like you do. You can’t stop, because she won’t...”
The very last words I’d ever hear from her brushed across my skull like the most delicate of caresses. She closed her eyes, and I knew I’d never see that same shade of milk chocolate again.
Footsteps were approaching cautiously. No doubt they’d secured the halls. In seconds I’d be taken into custody for murder. And not just one but bodies and bodies and bodies.
If I could have cried, I would have. But the tear ducts in my skin had dried up days ago. All I felt was a hollow aching void in my chest that made it hard to breathe right.
I stared at our intertwined fingers—hers bluish-purple, mine cracked and bleeding—as the skin began the separation process.
Sensitive ears picked up the heated whisper of voices just outside the door. My chin wobbling, I watched as the heart monitor fluttered slower and slower and slower.
“Fight,” I whispered in a daze.
I’d taught her how to mind-talk me years ago. And I was so grateful I had, because I still felt the resonance of her sweet voice echoing deep inside me.
Fighting was what’d gotten us to that point. Never being able to stop, being slave to my drive, my need to end the creature I’d once called sister.
“I’ll do anything for you, Emma. Anything.” Then standing, I set my jaw with determination and leaned over, giving her one final, tender kiss. “May your soul finally know rest, my little lotus flower.”
The door was tossed open, and guns were drawn.
“Stand down, monster!” a woman hissed.
A gorgeous woman with chestnut-brown hair and cherry-red boots aimed her gun unerringly between my temples. There was fire in her eyes, and her scent wasn’t human at all.
Backpedaling, I held my hands up. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled with a voice quivering from an aching sadness so visceral and deep that I wondered that I hadn’t died from it yet. “I don’t mean to be so evil.”
“I said, stand down!” she snarled, her lovely face contorted in rage.
Men—humans, no doubt—dressed in black tactical gear came rushing through the doors like ants, flanking either side of her.
“I’m not as bad as you think I am.” I never stopped walking as all the while their aggression grew.
“Stand. The. Fuck. Down!” the not-so-human female screamed, her face contorted with fury, and in her eyes I read satisfaction that I’d finally been caught. I’d known she’d been following me for years.
She was good at what she did. But I was better. Much better. I’d been doing the job over five centuries. She was just a babe by comparison. Strong but still green. She had no idea that I wasn’t the monster she chased.
I wasn’t the killer.
I took only life that was dark. Evil. Or dying. Talanthia was the true evil. But I’d screwed up, left evidence behind, and they’d been like a rabid dog on my heels ever since.
There was nothing worth smiling about in my life anymore. But I still grinned. Because Emma had told me to fight, and I was going to. I was going to bring ’em all hell. I kept moving back, and her eyes grew wider, bleeding through with red.
Vampire. Newly turned by only one or two decades, give or take.
They wouldn’t shoot me. They were in a hospital. Too many casualties, too high a risk for loss of civilian life. It was why I’d stayed as long as I had. Because I’d known they’d have to be careful lest the media get their hands on the story of the cops fucking it all up and gunning down innocent bystanders.
Her lips curled, and her fangs dropped. “I’ll end you, monster. Just effing dare me.”
She unlocked the safety, and the sound ricocheted like cannon in the room. She could shoot me, but that would only hurt. It wouldn’t kill. I think she must have known it too. It was why she hadn’t done it already. There was only one way to take down my kind, and a bullet wasn’t it.
The vampire’s words were cold, menacing, and calculating. The red rims of her eyes practically glowed like fire.
I stopped walking. The ants around her began to converge. They thought they had me dead to rights, I could see it in their eyes. But I hadn’t stopped for them.
I looked at Emma one last time. My beloved, beautiful Emma. The female of my heart and soul.
“Always,�
� I whispered.
And then with a move that stunned everyone inside, I turned into a blur of shadow, moving quicker than the speed of sound, using up whatever last dregs of reserves I had left to me. Depleting so much power that it caused my already rotting skins to slip and fall off at my feet like trousers being kicked aside at the end of the workday.
My natural form was monstrous, a thing of terror to gaze upon. But Emma had loved me, anyway. She’d loved me. The only one who ever had.
The first time she’d really seen me, I’d seen the terror. Just as there was in everyone else’s eyes, but there’d been more too. Awe. Curiosity. And then, finally, acceptance.
After sliding through the window, I jumped the four stories to the ground. I crashed into pavement and broke both my legs from the hip down. The pain was excruciating, but there was no time to focus on the stomach-churning queasiness threatening to bring up the meager contents of my lunch.
Screams and cries rang out everywhere as pedestrians slowly became aware that there’d been a jumper.
Using the unnatural strength of my arms, I ran, dragging my legs behind me. The moment I could feed, they’d heal. I just needed to feed.
The distressed screams from the people thinking I’d merely been a jumper morphed into something darker, deeper, and far more primitively terrifying as they realized they looked upon the form of a demon.
In the chaos and confusion, bodies came running out, the cops just a few minutes behind them. But I was who I truly was then. That body, as disfigured and grotesque as it was, came with a few advantages.
Crawling on bloody forearms, I made my way over to the alley.
The vampire detective, the one who’d been tailing me for years, she didn’t know what I really was. None of them knew what I really was, because there weren’t many of my kind left. We were little more than myth, relegated to a child’s cautionary tale.
She had cops everywhere. Cruisers in the parking lot, sirens wailing, lights flashing, even a chopper in the sky.
Biting down on my tongue because the next part was going to hurt like a mother, I compressed my body in such a way that I could easily slide beneath the small, tight space between pavement and Dumpster. And then I stuck my arm out, reshaping it so that it appeared to be only a dead twig.
Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves (Southern Vampire Detective #1) Page 25