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

by Selene Charles

  A female gasp.

  He turned.

  Scarlett’s eyes were opened, and they burned with flame. Her mouth parted, and a deep and terrible voice issued forth. Immediately he shifted back into a man, wondering if maybe she’d returned to him.

  “And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies assembled to make war against Him who sat on the horse and against His army...”

  “Scarlett?” he asked softly, but she didn’t turn to him. Instead the ebony cloud only continued to envelop her, cushion her, lifting her into the air, causing the tips of her hair to trail like charmed snakes behind her.

  He tried to grab her, to pull her back down, but her flesh was alive with fire, and he howled, snatching his hand back. He looked and his skin had been peeled away, the red, angry tissue beneath still sizzling.

  “And the dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan...”

  She continued to drift higher and higher, and Mercer knew if he didn’t stop it, if he didn’t snap out of that shock, he’d lose her forever. Whoever she was, whatever she was...

  “I won’t lose you!”

  Gritting his teeth, he yanked on her floating wrist, and immediately the fire consumed him. But he didn’t let go. With an angry jerk, he bit through his wrist with his long canines, dripping his blood on her.

  She screamed as each sizzling drop landed upon her chest. But wherever it touched, the ebony scattered.

  “C’mon, baby. Take it!” he snarled, then using all his strength, he shoved his wrist into her mouth.

  Her movements were immediate, swift, and violent. Shoving her claws into his wrist, she pushed him so far into her mouth that it was as though she meant to consume him. Her face twisted into the mask of a monster—a soulless, remorseless monster that would kill him and laugh while doing it.

  His kind and her kind were always at odds, natural-born enemies. He trembled violently as she sucked his life into her, collapsing upon her a moment later but yet still cradling her to him with his one good hand. His back bowed and a wretched howl ripped from his throat, but still he didn’t move.

  Even if she killed him, he wouldn’t leave her.

  And that ebony that’d consumed her crawled like a slow-moving shadow over him, sinking deep into his pores, and he saw... the stars.

  The beginning and the end of eternity enveloped him.

  Scarlett fed, and Mercer’s heart stuttered sluggishly.

  He felt his life slipping away, felt himself starting to float...and then a female stood there in the cosmos with him.

  She was made of magick and shadow. She was tall and had graceful lines. Her body was built for sex and power, and his heart sped violently in his chest.

  Eyes as dark as the end and beginning of time studied him with a fierce intelligence.

  “And so you are he.”

  The words weren’t a question, but they hammered at him with raw, elemental power that dropped him to his knees.

  He didn’t know where he was. In the afterlife, in space, he didn’t have a clue. All he knew was he stood amid the stars with burning gases glowing with reds, greens, and blues all around him. He should not be here.

  Maybe he wasn’t.

  Maybe he was dead.

  The female shook her head. “I am not dead. You rescued me. Do you know what you’ve done, Mercer McCarrick? Do you know who I really am?”

  “Scarlett Smith,” he said, but he realized he’d never actually opened his mouth.

  She blinked, and immediately the setting shifted. They were back in the cabin, floating above themselves, and his heart raced at the image below.

  Scarlett still drew from him; he’d stopped moving at all. His flesh, normally tanned from the sun, was pale and blue.

  “She kills you, and still you let her feed. Why?”

  He frowned, finally tearing his gaze off the macabre sight below. She’d sounded genuinely curious and confused at the same time. Who was she? She was a part of Scarlett, but she wasn’t Scarlett? Or maybe she was and he’d never known her at all.

  Even now the female that was and wasn’t Scarlett stood before him as nothing more than an ebony-skinned shadow comprised of stars.

  “Who are you?”

  And though she had no features, he could have sworn he heard a smile in her voice as she said, “You entertain me, Shifter, though I did not think it possible. I meant to escape tonight. To be free again. To make them pay for what they’ve done to me. But I did not know this. I did not know I could feel such prosaic emotions as these. I find...that I wish to explore this further. You honor the female below, and so I shall honor you in return. You shall not die tonight.”

  No sooner did she speak the words than his consciousness was shot like a missile back into his body.

  Scarlett and he were thrust apart by unseen forces. He flew back against the wall, landing hard on his face.

  “Merc? Mercer!” she screamed a second later, and his chest ached with a mixture of fierce longing and even a sliver of fear.

  “Merc. OhmyGod, Merc, ohmygod, don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead,” she murmured, and he wanted to tell her that he was all right, but he couldn’t seem to move.

  A second later she was on him, wrapping her arms around his waist and helping him to sit up. And though he was weak and not sure of anything, he held her back, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to forget about the creature that lurked deep within her.

  “Mercer. My Mercer,” she murmured tenderly, brushing her hands down his back, and he trembled, because he’d always wanted what she was giving so freely. And he knew he should never do what he was about to do, but she’d almost died tonight and he along with her.

  He stopped thinking about what he should and shouldn’t do, and instead he turned his face toward hers as she turned toward him.

  Then with a sound that echoed with longing and dread, he claimed her lips, slipping his tongue deep inside her mouth, and she returned the fervency of his touch.

  Scarlett’s claws reflexively sank into his flesh, and though it caused him to bow his back and grunt in pain, he didn’t stop her.

  They kissed as they’d never kissed before, revealing raw truths too dangerous to speak out loud.

  Mercer knew Dean would never forgive him for this night, but right now, he wasn’t thinking about Dean, or Clarence, or his pack. He was thinking about her. About him. And about how none of it mattered without her in it.

  Tomorrow it would matter again.

  Tomorrow he would remember the creature she really was.

  Tomorrow he would stay away.

  But tonight...tonight he needed her.

  ~*~

  Dean

  Pandora inhaled deeply, and he could feel her stare upon him. Maybe they shouldn’t be here watching, but when he’d felt the shudders of destiny quake beneath his feet, he’d known the creature had separated from the woman.

  He’d been prepared for war. Instead he found the scene before him, and a ghost of a grin whispered across his lips.

  “That was a bold move to make,” Pandora said, turning to him. “What if the creature had escaped again?”

  He shook his head. “Then I would have done what I’ve always done. I would have contained her.”

  She sniffed, the sound a mix of disbelief and a chuckle. “At what cost, my old friend? You play a deadly game with those two.”

  He twirled on Pandora, taking her with him as he closed the plane between them and the couple sitting on the floor. They stood in his junkyard, staring out at Hellmouth’s flame.

  Pandora was quiet. Contemplative.

  He’d let her see the creature for what she truly was, knowing she would understand if no one else.

  “She is deadly, Dean. Are you sure of yourself?” She looked at him.

  And he stepped toward her, eyeing her speculatively, before finally and slowly lifting a hand to gently trace a finger down her left cheek. “Did I not choose once before to believe i
n another just as deadly?”

  She chuckled, cocking her head a little but enough to move away from his touch. He sighed, then turned to stare at Hellmouth.

  “You did. And I nearly ruined you for that choice.”

  “But you didn’t,” he stated with conviction, crossing his hands behind his back.

  “Dean?” she said quietly after a moment.

  He grunted.

  “She matters to you. Not in the way I did. Possibly even more.”

  Clenching his molars, he said nothing, but Pandora knew him in a way few others ever had. And only one before her. She read his silence as easily as she read him.

  “Does War know?”

  Rage and raw fear stretched through his limbs so violently and quickly that he transformed into the creature of bone and shadow. He twirled on her abruptly, and she took a half step back, cocking her head and looking at him as if he were a wild animal that’d just been set free.

  “She can never know.” He didn’t scream the words, but they were all the more lethal for their quiet intensity.

  Pandora shivered as she wrapped her broad lavender wings around her tempting form, as though for comfort.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, he forced himself to calm, to ignore the sudden speeding of his heart, and shook his head, transforming back into the devil-may-care handsome male who cared for no one and nothing.

  But Pandora had always seen below the bullshit. It was why he’d not been able to let her go when she’d died. Even now, years later, he would never let her go. Even if she begged him to.

  He did not love her in the sense that a man loved a woman. It was why he’d brought Asher to her. But he needed her. She was vital and essential to him; she was the conscience that he lacked.

  Lifting her chin, she shook her head. “How does the mother not recognize the imprint of her own daughter?”

  Pandora had never feared him as she ought to have. He was Death and his decisions never to be questioned, and yet she always had. He frowned and shook his head, refusing to answer that question.

  Her gentle touch on his chest turned him slightly toward her. “Who is the creature’s father?”

  His nostrils flared, and again he felt the need to become his other self, his true self. Pandora stripped him raw. Tonight the creature had told Mercer that he’d made her feel things...she was a thing born of madness and chaos. Darkness. She’d never had a conscience and no desire to gain one.

  He knew a little bit about that. In that, at least, he and the creature were similar—until Pandora had forced one upon him.

  “Do not ask me questions I can’t answer,” he said steadily.

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  He grinned, snorting softly. “Someday I think I might want to kill you, if only to rid myself of these damned tiresome feelings.”

  She chuckled, and the night echoed with it. “And so you keep saying, and yet here I still am. Who is she, really, Dean?”

  Once he’d made Pandora pay for any favor, any question asked. He turned toward her. She did not flinch from Death’s gaze, but then, she’d always been more brave than smart.

  He studied her face. She was a type of beauty that came around only once in a lifetime. Earthy. Exotic. But it had never been her beauty that’d made him reckless enough to keep her.

  It’d been the pure soul beneath that’d wreaked havoc on him.

  “Do not ever name the unnameable. For you do not understand the power that could be unleashed. Go home to Asher, Pandora, and leave me to my thoughts.”

  “And the boy?”

  He frowned for a moment, confused by whom she meant. Then he startled and shook with laughter. “You would call a three-centuries-old shifter, a boy?”

  She snorted. “Considering we are far older, yes, I would. Does he understand the rules of this game yet? Does he know how well you’ve played him? He is in agony over her.”

  Inhaling deeply, Dean grinned evilly. “Only the very best kind of steel can be forged in the hottest of crucibles. He did exactly as I knew he would.”

  “Moves and countermoves,” she said with a touch of awed laughter.

  He grunted but clipped a nod in acknowledgment of her rarely given praise.

  “What now, Dean?”

  He shrugged. “Now we wait and hope that none felt the whisper of her return this night. Good night, harpy.”

  Dean didn’t need to turn to know that she’d left him already. He stared at Hellmouth and smiled softly.

  Moves and countermoves, she’d said, and as always, she was right.

  “Your move,” he whispered to the breeze and felt its answering rumble in response.

  Epilogue

  Scarlett

  It’d been three nights since I’d almost died. Three nights of sitting in my home, alone, refusing to answer the door to anybody.

  The only male I’d wanted around hadn’t come, and I’d been too broken to go to him.

  Questions dogged me, keeping me wired and awake. Sharp Elbows had been sent but not for me. So why attack my family? Why come after me as she had? To get to whom?

  I thought it was Carter, but she’d seemed to indicate another.

  And Carter...I closed my eyes, my fingers shaking as I gently opened a jewelry box sitting on my bedroom vanity. I didn’t like thinking about him much right now. Looking at my reflection in the mirror, I studied myself.

  I looked the same. Brown eyes. Brown hair. Nothing all that unique. Pale skin. Short. I’d put on a pretty knee-length black dress, the best one I still had in my closet. It had a nice thick steel-colored velvet sash. The dress made me look young, winsome, and innocent.

  It had tiny seed-pearl buttons in the front, buttons that were opened and exposing my pretty silver bra and pushed-up breasts. But I didn’t care about bras or perky breasts. I traced the deep line of the scar that ran from the base of my neck to the tip of my nipple.

  Whatever Talanthia had poured into me had prevented me from healing completely. I was marred. Ruined. I shuddered and with an angry snarl fastened the buttons, promising myself I’d never look at that scar again for as long as I lived.

  I’d pretend it didn’t exist, just as I pretended so many other things hadn’t happened, either.

  I was slipping a diamond stud into my ear when a quiet knock sounded at my door. My heart quickening as I scented bergamot and clean soap, I all but ran to open it.

  After the kiss in the cabin, Mercer had fled.

  Literally fled.

  He’d gotten to his feet, looking at me with a mixture of raw hunger and something else, something that’d scared me to the core, and then he’d turned and left, and no matter how hard I tried to find him, I hadn’t been able to.

  I’d even gone so far as braving the den, knowing that everyone in there was already gossiping and wondering about the ripples of death racing through the night. About what I’d done. What Lucille had done.

  I could not be killed for defending myself. PIU had found Lucille’s liquefied remains in the vast fields behind Clarence’s house. Sharp Elbows had killed her, not me.

  But the second I’d walked through the bar looking for Merc, it sure hadn’t felt that way. I’d felt their terrible stares, heard their whispers. Candy had told me that Mercer wasn’t there, and I’d believed her.

  Whatever had happened that night, it’d spooked him.

  I couldn’t remember much about that night other than him feeding me. And that kiss.

  Oh God, that kiss...

  I opened the door, and my heart lurched. Even after three days, it still beat as forcefully as it had after the feeding. I didn’t know how Mercer hadn’t died; I’d taken far too much blood. It should have killed him.

  I swallowed hard, studying him from head to toe as my fingers itched to bring him inside. Gods, he was beautiful, dressed all in black, with his honey-wheat hair caught back and his blue-green eyes sparkling like cut gems.

  I squeezed the door until the wood began to groan. “Where have you be
en?” The accusation in my tone was hard to miss, and he winced.

  “I had to think.”

  I wanted to ask him about what, but I knew. And the truth was, I was terrified of his answer. So I clamped my mouth shut and said nothing.

  “You going to the funeral?”

  He nodded jerkily, then turned to stare to his left before looking back at me, and what I saw in his eyes shattered me.

  “Scarlett, you and I—”

  With my soul feeling as if it’d just crumbled to dust inside of me, I did the only thing I knew to do. I smirked and laughed as though it were nothing.

  “Oh, please, don’t even think about it. We were just two people caught up in the moment. I almost died. You almost died. Even if we’d had sex, it would have meant nothing. Right?”

  I hurled that right at him like a spear, silently pleading with my eyes that he deny it. That he tell me he wanted me as desperately as I wanted him.

  His hands curled into fists, and though he smiled back at me, his chuckle didn’t come off as carefree as mine had.

  “Right. Of course. Just wanted to make sure you were okay, is all.”

  I wanted to punch him. It was all I could do to ignore the ache in my gut that threatened to double me over. “I’m fine,” I bit out. “Anything else?”

  He moved forward on the balls of his feet, and for a second my pulse fluttered, hoping that he’d reach out to me, take me in his arms, and devour me.

  I wanted him.

  Mercer had stoked a fire in my belly, had awoken me to sensations and emotions I’d never before known in my life.

  When he’d kissed me that night, I’d tasted truth between us. Something far deeper than just an explosion of gratitude for being alive. We hadn’t kissed each other simply because we’d been the only ones around.

  He’d kissed me, and I’d tasted fire, passion, and a profundity of emotion so overwhelming that I’d woken up from my slumber last night gasping and clutching at my chest as I’d cried velvet-red tears.

  Dropping his hands to his side, he stepped back.

  “Why are you here, Merc? If you’re just gonna push me away again, why’d you come?” I asked, my voice broken and full of all that pain and desire that he’d never allow me to breath to life.