The Vampire Went Down to Georgia

by Selene Charles

  I rubbed my cheek against his hot palm.

  I wasn’t the overly affectionate type in bed. Generally, after an orgasm, I was ready for sleep or whatever it was I would be doing for the day. Never in my dreams could I have imagined that I’d not only enjoy post-coital cuddling, but actively crave it. And never in my life would I have imagined my big, brawny Alpha male would turn into a downright pussy cat too.

  “I love you,” he whispered huskily. “Always.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat twice before I trusted myself to speak. My voice was scratchy when I asked, “Always?”

  Sometimes it was still unreal to me that he and I were together. After all the years of back and forth and denial, it was hard to accept that this was real and not some lovely dream that would turn into a terrible nightmare the moment I woke up. That for ever after, there would be days of nonstop, mind-blowing sex. I kept waiting, expecting the rug to be pulled out from under us. No one could be this happy for this long. It was like tempting fate every second we were together. But even knowing that, I couldn’t stop. I just couldn’t.

  He rocked gently inside me, pleasantly stretching my already-sore muscles. I sighed and opened myself further to him. I wasn’t into soft and gentle—I never had been—until him. I would do anything, be anything to keep him happy and content because his joy was mine too.

  The darkness inside me, the being of whom I’d only recently become aware, stirred. She’d been quiet during the fast and furious coupling, but anytime Mercer turned tender, she seemed to wake. Tenderness drew her out as if she were a curious cat, not sure what it was or even why she liked it, but like it she did.

  I felt a wave of warmth flow through me. She was falling in love with Mercer, too, or already was, but she was guarded and unsure. This was all new territory for her. My darkness was a killer, the stuff of nightmares. When she’d fully woken in me back at the vampire ball, I began to learn more and more about her, none of it all that surprising. She was as bad as I’d always known she would be.

  But there were layers there, too, layers that seemed to surprise even her. I still wasn’t sure I liked having another soul living inside me, but I was learning to accept her. To accept that, all my undead life, Mercer had lied to me about knowing the true origins of my past. I’d wanted to hate him for it, but I just couldn’t. It was impossible. Despite all the lies and deception, he had kept my true origins hidden to protect me.

  In fact, everything Mercer had ever done had been to protect me. Following me into OZ. Claiming me as his mate in the filthy, disgusting bathroom of a cheap motel room. Being my plus-one at the vampire ball that nearly killed us both. And defying a millennia-old hatred for my kind to become not just my guardian, but my lover and my whole world.

  The steps he’d taken had already cost him so much, and soon, it was going to cost even more. Mercer’s deranged, psycho dad would be back before either of us were ready for it. Clarence had been the acting Alpha of Silver Creek for longer than I’d been alive—as a human and an undead. But he’d become infected with moon fever and had been forced to abdicate his throne by the governing body of the Alphas.

  Neither Mercer nor I really knew what Clarence’s return meant for us. All we knew was that our honeymoon period was running out, and soon, nothing would be the same for either of us again. Soon, we’d be forced to face the consequences of our actions.

  But not today. Not right now. Like Scarlet O’Hara famously said, ‘Tomorrow is another day.’

  The stroke of his hot hand as he framed my slender neck in his massive palm made my heart flutter, but not with fear. With desire.

  I locked my eyes on his. Vampires could scramble the brain of anyone stupid enough to stare into our hypnotic gaze for too long. It used to be that I couldn’t trance a wolf, but I had the darkness in me now, and I could do a helluva lot more than your average vampire.

  I tipped my neck back. The checked strength in his hand was awe-inspiring. Shifters were the tanks of the Veiler world. There wasn’t much they couldn’t overcome just by brawn alone. Many a vampire had turned to dust beneath his powerful hands.

  I closed my eyes, losing myself in the ecstasy of his touch. Vampires had heightened senses, and I’d always been far more sensitive than most thanks to my empathic nature.

  In the past, Mercer had always kept himself closed off to me, empathically. I hadn’t realized just how much he blocked me out until suddenly, he stopped and finally let me in all the way when we became mates. I wasn’t careful to keep my guard up around him either. In fact, I welcomed him into my mind with open arms.

  He opened himself to me now. Instantly, I was slammed with a tidal wave of feeling and emotions, one right after the other. The tenderness of desire that wrapped around me like the delicate strands of spider silk. Beneath that, the more robust warmth of lust mingled with something deeper and more full-bodied, something a shifter could only feel once in his or her life—the steely strength of the mate bond that tethered us both.

  I’d been a fool to ever have imagined that James could have given me more than he had. I knew that now.

  Mercer growled. “You would think about James right now? I’ll kill him,” he snarled.

  I chuckled low. “Gods, I do love you, you silly caveman. I’m not thinking about James as much as I’m thinking about what this mating bond does to us. How it makes us feel everything all at once. I’ve never felt anything so powerful in my life.”

  The flash of fury in his eyes was already gone, shaded now with tender devotion. “It is everything, Scar. You are everything.”

  I sighed as he rolled his hips, pushing in so deep that his velvet cock brushed against my womb. I banded my arms around his waist, holding on to him for all that I was worth, wishing like hell I could climb inside of him, where it was safe and warm and so damn wonderful, that the heat of tears burned behind my closed eyelids. I never wanted this to end.

  “Look at me,” he commanded, and I was helpless to resist. My lashes fluttered open, and I stared at him through a wavering sheen of wetness.

  His eyes were tender, his touch so goddamn gentle that I could no longer hold back the tears. They fell in a cascade down my cheeks.

  He never stopped thrusting, even as he lowered his head and reverently lapped up my tears, first from the left cheek, then the right. The sharing of tears between Veilers was sacred and never to be wasted.

  “We made the right choice,” he said, voice steady and commanding as only an Alpha’s could be.

  Our link was so strong that, often, Mercer could read my thoughts before I even knew them myself. I swallowed hard, brow furrowing as I realized that, though I hadn’t been thinking it, the seed of doubt rested like a ten-ton weight on my heart.

  I framed his whiskered cheek, holding his gaze fast. He never flinched or looked away, not even when I felt fear tinge my normally brown irises with vampiric red.

  “We say that now, but when they get here—and they will, sooner than we’d like—will you still be so sure? What if we were wrong? What if—”

  “Stop,” he growled, pausing in his movements and making me frown as I pressed his sweaty chest closer to me.

  A ghost of a smirk stole across his sexy mouth.

  “Listen to me, Scar”—and that ever present mate bond flared like a white-hot beacon in my breast, making me see only him, hear only him—“breathe. I know who you are, and you know who I am.”

  I bit my bottom lip hard, and though I was still tense, I could feel my pulse returning to something close to normal. Well, normalish for me. I never thought the shifter bond could be so strong with anyone outside their species. Never dreamed that after we exchanged essences, I could feel anything similar to the fabled mystic union between master and vampiric kinsman. But here I was, a wild, rabid animal, being lulled into tranquility just because he told me to be.

  “We will fight whoever comes against us. You, me, and your darkness—we are one, and together we are—”

  “I love yo
u,” I said swiftly, cutting him off.

  He blinked, looking startled for half a second before his eyes danced and a grin slowly curled his lips. Though I was calm, there was a nagging sense that we were a pot of water on the verge of boiling over. A sense that something terrible was coming, something not even we could anticipate or prepare for.

  When he noticed that I didn’t smile back, his smile slowly shifted, and a determined frown pinched his brows. I knew that look—the unflinching Alpha, the indomitable beast who would stop at nothing to get his way. So often, I’d seen Mercer set his will to something and succeed more often than not. I wish I could have that same level of confidence.

  And I did. In him. But I wasn’t sure I had it in us. I was afraid that Mercer wasn’t allowing himself to truly consider the possibility that, this time, we might not win.

  I clenched my molars, so damn scared that I felt choked by it.

  “We will win this war, Scarlett. I vow it to the—”

  I placed my finger over his mouth, silencing him, and shook my head hard. “Don’t say it. Don’t bind yourself to an oath like that. Not for me. No matter what comes, Mercer, I’ll be loyal to you. I’ll always be loyal to you, but I fear we’ve glimpsed only the beginning of the darkness to come.”

  For so long that I thought he hadn’t heard me, he simply looked down at me, not moving, hardly even breathing. Then, just as swiftly, he started moving again.

  He pounded into me, slamming the full weight of his hard body into my yielding one. I gasped, arching beneath him, coming alive for him as he drew his fingers down the vee of my breasts, running along the mottled scar Sharp Elbows had left me as a souvenir what felt like forever ago. Not clawing at me, but raking me, letting me know he was there. Right there with me.

  He fucked me like a wild creature, as though he were trying by force to obliterate my fears, as if he were trying to hammer them right out of me. And even as I keened for him, as I curved and arched my body to accommodate his, the fear remained; a tiny fissure of darkness that spread deeper and wider with each punishing stroke of his silky cock.

  He grunted. “Come with me, silver flower. Come with me,” he commanded.

  There was no call of the Alpha behind his words, but I didn’t need to be entranced into obeying. My body burned for his, always had and always would.

  As one, we sank our fangs into each other. He bit near the mark on my shoulder that branded me forever as his. I sank into the same place on his own chest. The moment his blood landed on my tongue, it was like I’d swallowed lightning. Power—his power—mainlined through my veins like quicksilver. I screamed but never let go, greedy for more and more.

  Vampires and shifters should never want what we wanted, what we needed. And maybe this was why. The way he gripped me, held me with the frenzied fingers of desperate madness. How I also clung to him. We would gladly die this way. We were each a drug to the other, and neither one of us wanted to get clean.

  I’d never felt this for anyone. Not even James.

  And I knew Mercer had never felt it for anyone else but me.

  The little death washed over us both. Only then did we unlatch our fangs as we both tipped our heads back. The night rolled with the echoes of his howls and the music of my screams.

  When it was over, all we could do was hold each other and breathe.

  “I’m soaked in blood,” he said with a soft snicker. When I was finally able to work up enough strength to open my eyes and look at us, I grinned.

  We were a beautiful mess, it was true.

  The night smelled like us—the copper of blood and the tang of his essence and mine.

  Mercer rolled to a sitting position, taking me with him, holding me like precious cargo in his large, warm hands. I wrapped my arms around his waist, sliding them beneath the hem of his now-tattered shirt and sighing when I felt the rise of gooseflesh on his smooth back.

  He feathered tender kisses on my forehead, moving his hands slowly up until he framed my cheeks.

  “Look at me,” he said so softly that it was little more than a ghostly whisper on the breeze.

  My lashes flickered once; then I looked at him.

  Somewhere along the way, he’d lost the band holding his hair up, and the long, blond locks now flowed freely around his broad shoulders. I wet my lips and played with the silky tips of his hair. With the moonlight at his back and the halo of gold it cast around his head, he reminded me of some glorious Greek marble statue of an ancient Spartan warrior come to life.

  My eyes started to burn, and my throat squeezed tight.

  Pain scrawled heavy lines across his forehead. “Scar,” he whispered. “We’re going to be alrigh—”

  “You can’t know that, Merc. You can’t. We’ve pissed off the entire goddamn world just for wanting to be together. If you were just a wolf and I was just another vampire, maybe it wouldn’t be such a huge risk for us, but look what happened to James and his Isobel, and they weren’t anyone of consequence.”

  Reaching up, he gently took both my hands and folded his large ones around mine, holding them like a prayer. Neon green sparked in his cool turquoise eyes.

  “If you were just another vampire, I wouldn’t give a shit what happened to you. But you’re not just another blood sucker. You’re my Scar. My person. My world. Don’t lose heart or faith in me. I would burn the world down to keep you safe.”

  The darkness inside my breast inhaled, expanding inside of me, filling all the empty cracks and crevices. She loved when Mercer threatened violence on our behalf.

  I trembled. I knew his words weren’t said carelessly. He meant everything he said, and had I cared less for him than I did, maybe it would be enough to lessen my fear.

  But I loved Mercer McCarrick more than I’d ever loved anyone or anything else in my life. He was my soul. My heart. My life. If he died, if anything at all happened to him, I knew the darkness would take me. It would consume me, and I would no longer be able to control myself or my darkness.

  I’d never considered what it was to love someone this much. What it meant to need someone so vitally that, without them, there was only madness. Only hate and fear.

  I hated to admit it, even within the privacy of my own heart, but sometimes I wished I’d never allowed myself to fall like this. I was terrified that love was weakness and that love would be the end of us both.

  His nostrils flared. “You think you’re the only one?”

  I cut my teary gaze to his. His image wavered as the blood-tinged tears fell heavily down my cheeks.

  He took my tears upon the tips of his fingers before splaying them slowly down his cheeks, painting his flesh in my essence. The beating heart I now owned because of him quivered within me.

  “Scarlett, I don’t know where this fear is coming from or how to convince you that I know we’ll make it through this one way or another. But if I must have enough confidence for the two of us, then I will. You are mine. I am yours. Always. And no trials or tribulations could ever separate us.”

  He brought my fingertips to his lips and pressed a tender, warm kiss upon them. I trembled, so cold that I felt I might never again know what it was to be warm.

  “Mercer, it’s her,” I whispered brokenly. “The fear, the anguish I’m feeling—it’s her. She stirs within my breast, whispering things I don’t quite understand yet. But I feel like something desperately dark is coming for us. For her. She is afraid for you, and so am I. What if we fail, Merc? What if I lose—”

  He growled, nose wrinkling like an angry wolf’s, and his voice was an octave deeper as he said, “You will never lose me.”

  I shivered and pressed myself tight to him, kissing his chest right above his heavily beating heart. His words were sure and strong, but we were bound now. One soul. One heart. So I tasted the essence of his own fear like an oil slick on the back of my tongue.

  He kissed the crown of my head, curling the tips of my hair through his fingers and holding me tight.

  His big body qu
ivered.

  Darkness went still within me, but memories of her past, images from other worlds bombarded my head. There was so much blood, fire, and ash.

  The destroyer of worlds wept within me.

  Chapter 2

  War

  She glanced around quickly as she parted the veil between worlds. Then she stepped out of the chaos and anarchy of her world and into one far less coated in blood and ash. War eyed the black silhouette of the gothic castle high on the honeysuckle-drenched hills of a place the humans called Four Devils, Georgia.

  The contingency had moved their tribunal from Dublin to Four Devils only recently. The fingers of fate had finally converged. After centuries of waiting and scheming, it all happened here.

  She smiled. Nothing would stop her this time. She’d destroy it all. For ages, she’d been waiting for the oracle’s spoken words to prove themselves truth. Four Devils would be the end of all things. The end of everything. Ecstasy filled War’s bones, making them tingle and her muscles quiver. All her scheming, all the threads she’d had to manipulate to bring the timeline to this point, and the time was finally at hand.

  The flickering of torches set within the castle’s massive walls and the lights that glowed like a beacon from within several rooms beckoned to her. War had always been particularly fond of relics from the ancient world.

  The humid night was rich with the scents of night flowers in bloom and the call and cry of mating insects. The low murmurings of a castle filled with life flowed through her ears.

  She knew she’d been spotted when the first sentry sounded the alarm—one long echoing howl that rang out like a lonely serenade in the night but was soon followed by another and another.

  Lightning crashed at her back as she sensed wolves with glowing brimstone-colored eyes prowling between the monolithic trunks of massive weeping willow trees. The trees’ long, twisted branches, covered in ropes of moss and leaves, dangled like gnarled green fingers upon the forest floor. Around them, the wolves moved into formation with the ease of well-trained warriors.