I sighed, feeling the lapse of time keenly. “Any particular reason why you’ve called me out here, Harlen? I have got to get back to—”
“That boy ain’t done it.” He shook his head and finally turned those violet eyes on me.
Vampires have a stare; we call it mesmerizing, where we look with the intent of bending your will to our own. It’s sort of a scrambling and rewiring of the brain. I’m pretty good at it too.
Harlen, on the other hand, he’s a master at it. Thing of it is, he isn’t pushing any power against me. I’d know it.
When you look into Harlen’s eyes, it’s like you’re witness to the start of time and the end of it. He grinned, blinked, and looked back down at his pipe.
I rocked back on my heels, trying not to shiver as I yet again wondered what in the hell this old man really was.
Clearing my throat, I nodded slowly, finally catching up to what he’d just said. “I know Mercer hasn’t done it. But there were fur strands—”
“Planted, a’course”—Harlen snorted as if it was obvious and I was too stupid not to have figured that out already—“But why?”
I paused, the question taking my mind back to the train of thought I’d been following back at the crime scene before Carter had interrupted me.
“Too perfect,” I murmured. “Gift wrapped. Set just so.”
Harlen rocked slowly and nodded. “Mmhmm. But why? Why? Why, vampire girl?”
I shook my head. “I don’t…” I trailed off, losing my train of thought again.
“Think,” he snapped, sounding aggravated.
Which pissed me off. “Why the hell do you care about Mercer? You’ve never cared before.”
I wasn’t exactly opposed to the help, I’d take anything I could get at this point, but I was frantic with worry though I was trying like hell not to show it. Any second now the council of Veilers could render judgment, and I was wasting my time here when I should be out searching for—
“I don’t care about any of them damn flea bags.”
Confused by the vehemence in his words, I stared at him dumbly.
“Then what?” I tossed my hands up, unable to even finish the sentence.
The phone in my pocket rang. I went to reach for it, but Harlen shook his head. “Don’t bother. They’ve voted. Mercer’s goin’ ta hang.”
I couldn’t feel my legs for a minute as all the noise in the world rushed out of me, leaving me feeling hollow, empty, and deaf.
I couldn’t fathom how any of this was real.
How this was happening so fast. So determinedly. One step to the other to the other. Like it was all…orchestrated.
I gasped, feeling as though I’d just taken a fist to my midsection. “No.”
Every niggling doubt I’d had suddenly had an answer. All the missing pieces fit in place; the answer was so deviously simple and yet horrific to imagine that it left me feeling cold inside.
Finally, Harlen’s rigid shoulders relaxed and a ghost of a grin whispered across his face.
“Now you understand. Better hurry, Scarlett Smith, hate to think of a world without you in it.”
There was no more time to consider his vague words or what he could possibly mean since it wasn’t my neck on the line but Merc’s.
Fishing my phone out of my pocket at the same time that I twirled on my heel and ran for my truck, I clicked on the message left for me.
Bianca’s high-pitched voice had me cringing. “Scar, it’s me. I don’t know how this shit has happened as it has, but Merc’s gonna be hung in an hour’s time, and Carter’s gone MIA. I swear to eff, something’s wrong here, vampire. I don’t like this at all. You’d better hurry before—”
Then the line went dead, and I knew that someone—likely several someones—was the reason for the interruption. They’d come to fetch Mercer. To hang him.
“Over my dead body,” I hissed, if I tried to take my truck to the fairy bridge I’d never make it.
I was in an all out sprint as I ran for the demarcation between worlds. As I ran, I called Emerson.
Emerson might technically be family, but we never saw eye to eye. He answered on the first ring, and I knew the only reason why he did was his love for his brother.
“What?” he growled, and I knew from the tone of his voice that he already knew the verdict.
“Emerson, tell me you’ve reached Clarence.”
There was a rustling on the other end as though he shifted his phone from one hand to the other and then a long and protracted sigh full of growl and weariness as he gritted out, “No. Fuck!”
I didn’t say goodbye, I hung up the phone and made one final call. A number given to me by the Queen herself. Technology did not work inside the sithen; fae magic twisted anything human into something other.
“Yel-low,” Gemini, the Queen’s messenger, picked up right away. Part leprechaun and sidhe, with a shocking head of bright orange hair, laughing blue eyes, and the pointed ears of his jester folk, he could rarely be counted on to be serious. Except when it came to the Queen.
“Gemini, you listen to me, you little rat fink, if you value your life at all you’ll relay this message to Titania as soon as I hang up. And goddess help you if you don’t.”
I heard him swallow hard.
“Scarlett, what’s the problem?”
I might have laughed hearing him so serious for the first time in my life, but there was no humor in me right now.
I told him what I knew. Where to find me. And to hurry. Then I ran like my life depended on it. I knew exactly what I’d find when I got to the bridge of light and twisted vines.
The shadow I’d seen outside of Green’s office waited for me.
But it was no longer slinking python coils; the shadow was a writhing mass of tentacles and thorns that shot at least two stories up. Again I smelled flowers and death.
I didn’t know what this was. But I knew it was fae.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I asked softly. “Why?”
The tentacles waved wildly, and for a moment I thought they meant to pounce me, but instead they moved away from the shining fae bridge and deep into the forest behind it.
Something in me knew it wanted me to follow. This could be a trap. Probably was.
But I’d run out of time and options.
I paced it, keeping just out of the range of its striking tentacles. The grass where it slithered shriveled, drying up and withering a shade of rusty yellow.
When the tip of it brushed against tree bark, all color and life leeched from out of it, turning a ghostly shade of grayish-white.
This shadow was death and like a fool, I was following behind.
I doubted I could touch it. Not without suffering fatal harm. I always kept iron bullets chambered in my Glock for just such an occasion; even the Queen herself hated the kiss of iron. She’d not die from it, but it was enough to slow her down.
And nothing in the fae world was more powerful than Titania.
I brushed my fingers along the powerful weapon, steadying my nerves.
Finally, the shadow stopped moving, and I knew that somehow it stared at me. Though I saw no eyes or face, I knew it studied me as I studied it.
Its shape had begun to shift again, forming into something more familiar, more bipedal.
A figure built of shade and darkness now stood before me with two arms and two legs, it cocked its head, causing a tumble of shadow to fall like a cascade over it’s shoulder.
“Scarlett Smith,” she said, for the voice could be nothing other than feminine. “Scarlett Smith…pretty, pretty vampire…”
My mind felt like it’d suddenly been scrambled. Like I was nothing, no one without that voice to guide me. To show me. To mold me and make me. I leaned forward on tiptoe, wanting more of it. Needing more of it.
Shadow stepped closer. “A vampire. Once human…but no no…who you? Me know. Do you?”
She laughed and the woods echoed with the strains of haunted, evil madness.
&n
bsp; I blinked, and suddenly shadow was on me. Leaning in so close I felt the brush of her lips feather against my own. I gasped, clutching at my chest at the electric jolt of her touch.
“Scarlett. Scarlett,” she breathed, “Do you know now?”
Every word she uttered made me want to retch, made me feel as though my skull had been cleaved and someone had reached inside and was scooping out my brains. I hurt, every inch of me hurt, and it suddenly made sense to me why the fae hadn’t fought back.
He couldn’t. This creature mesmerized even as it killed.
Shadow lifted her hand and trailed it down my cheek. My back bowed as my body exploded with sexual pleasure and unbearable agony. My nerves jolted with fiery explosions, making me howl and weep rivers of blood.
Chilling laughter echoed through the woods. “They said kill him. They told Nox do bad. Mercer no good. But it’s all about you. Me see that now. Scarlett. Scarlett. Nox see you…”
Finding some hidden core of strength, I managed to gasp out between lips that felt as though they’d been peeled down to the raw meat, “You killed the fae.”
Again the creature chimed with laughter, causing her amorphous form to subtly shift over and over again. A bird. A woman with wings. A dog with long sharp teeth…
“Who…who gave you his fur?”
The shadows hand was now on the flat of my stomach, running slowly, languidly upward leaving a trail of bone-chilling ice in her wake. I gasped, jerking and spasming with violent seizures as she neared my heart and curled her sharp claws into my flesh.
“You know. You know, smart, Scarlett. Pretty vampire. Pretty, pretty vampire who not vampire at all. Me want taste of power. Taste of you, kill the shell, bring you back. Nox see you now, vampire. Nox knows truth…”
A sudden flash of blue-green light rocked through the woods, and Nox howled, the shadowy form of the woman shattered into ribbons of darkness that screamed and tried to hide.
Grabbing at my chest, I gasped as I turned to look at Titania, the Queen of Faes.
She was a tall woman of nearly seven feet with hair the color of a golden, blazing dawn running down her back. Her eyes were slightly wide and completely alien looking. They were the color of life, white and yet full of every color of the rainbow. Her skin gleamed pearlescent, and her sensual mouth was curved into a tight thin line of rage.
A gown crafted of the deepest depths of the ocean blue and woven from starlight undulated upon the forest floor as she neared.
Dozens of ravens cried out in the trees. They were not birds, but her warriors transformed, her defenders. If I so much as neared the Queen they would descend upon me as one, I’d never stand a chance.
I may not have a heart that beats, but I still felt as though it’d been crushed and broken. Everything hurt, but I didn’t dare move.
She did not look at me, but at the darkness that spread beyond me. “My Nox! My killing shadow has done this! You’ve betrayed me, Nox. Betrayed your Queen. Take her to the keep.”
Several of the Ravens cried out as they rained over the shadow. A tornado built of light and dark whirled faster and faster, whipping up rocks, twigs, tree limbs, and dirt, smacking me in the face and forcing me to shield my eyes.
The twister didn’t last long, and once it was over, the Ravens and Nox were gone.
I shook my head. “She wasn’t yours to take, she must be tried, she must—”
Titania’s shoulders straightened, and she stared at me with violence in her white eyes. I’d gone too far, I’d said too much, now I would die, and Mercer would never be set free.
But I’d be damned if I died begging.
Notching my chin I glared at her, defying her to tell me I was wrong.
“Nox belongs to none but the Queen,” Titania’s words were low and cultured and full of vengeful retribution. “You kept my Midas from me. Give me what is mine and I’ll return what is yours.”
I shook my head; she had nothing of mine. But no more had I thought it than suddenly Carter was beside her, suspended in mid-air, hog-tied and shackled and covered in bruises and caked blood.
“I needed the body to prove Mercer’s inno—”
“Midas is mine, and your man will be freed.”
My stomach lurched and I almost couldn’t believe my ears. “Mercer?”
She clipped a short nod. Before she changed her mind, I called Bianca.
The witch picked up on the first ring. “Scar! What the hell is going on over here?”
“What?” The joy of just seconds ago flat-lined, leaving my mouth feeling numb and my tongue swollen. Fear hammered a painful tattoo in my chest. If anything had happened to Mercer, I would raze the whole GD town—
“The council has released Mercer, just like that. He’s going home. But Scarlett, I don’t like any of this, something’s wrong, I feel it.”
My relief warred with my deepening fears that whatever had happened tonight was just the beginning of greater birth pains for me and mine.
I looked at the Queen who glared frostily back at me.
Never taking my gaze off hers, I said, “Bianca, call Green and tell him to release the body immediately.”
I could practically hear her confusion. “What? But you can’t make that ca—”
“Now, Bianca. Do it right now. We’ll talk more later.” I hung up before Bianca could finish that statement.
“There,” I nodded to Titania, “it’s done.”
“Be careful to whom you swear fealty, vampire, and do not ever cross me again, I vow to the Ever tree that you do not want me as your enemy.”
I shivered as those words practically echoed in the darkness, then the Queen vanished in a wash of blinding, radiant light and Carter toppled to the ground with a groan. But at least Titania had freed him of his bonds.
Rushing over to him, I yanked him tight to my chest even as I stared deep into the woods, reaching out with my other senses to ascertain whether we were finally alone.
I’d never been more relieved at the mundane of night than I was now.
Carter groaned, and I murmured, “Can you get up?”
“They broke my legs,” he mumbled, and I realized that his skin was burning up.
Carter needed to heal, to do that he’d need to go home to his skins. I shuddered at the thought, but quickly pushed that to the back of my mind.
“Hold on then, cuz this is going to hurt like a sonofabitch,” I warned him, but he still cried out when I scooped him up and tossed him in a fireman’s hold over my shoulder.
I might not currently like my BFF much, but it still made me sick to know I was contributing to his pain.
The run to my truck took a little longer than it had earlier, by the time I got Carter laid out on the bed, he was shivering and trembling violently. Locking the gate, I patted it once and said, “I’m sorry they did this to you, Carter. I didn’t know.”
Opening pain-glazed eyes, he nodded once. “S’okay, Scar. S’ll’right.”
His speech devolved into fevered mutterings after that, and I won’t lie, I romped on the gas to get us back to his house as quickly as possible.
The drive was short but felt like it took forever. I was having a hard time thinking about anything at the moment. Tonight had been a night of revelations of the worst kind. My entire world had been flipped on its axis, and the worst of it was, I couldn’t tell anyone what I now suspected to be the truth.
When I finally pulled up to his apartment complex, I jumped out, leaving the truck parked in neutral and idling.
Carter’s flesh felt like living fire as I picked him up. There are worse things than death in my world.
Scooping him up as gently as I could, I walked to his apartment and opened the door with the duplicate key he’d given me almost a decade ago.
The apartment was sterile and practically empty, with only a few chairs in it and one small TV sitting on the floor. I walked past the empty kitchen with no food in the cabinets.
It might be hypocritical of me, conside
ring what I fed on, but I still can’t help but shudder to think about the things he has to do to survive. Moving down the hall, to the only bedroom I gently toed the door open. Just like the living room, there wasn’t much here.
There was a small full-size bed, nothing fancy, and a dresser. On that dresser sat one personal belonging, the only personal thing he possessed.
A framed picture of a pretty Asian girl with smiling, brown eyes. His Emily. The only thing in this life I knew he’d ever really loved. The thing that’d transformed a demon into something capable of love.
I laid Carter down as gently as I could, but he still screamed out when his back touched the mattress. He was bowing up, clutching at the sheets with his fists as he continued to seize.
Turning, I walked to his dresser and taking a quick breath; I forced myself to open the top drawer. The first time I’d seen his drawer of nightmares I’d wanted to kill him myself.
Wanted to slash his throat and drink his blood until my belly bloated with it. And now here I was reaching inside and pulling out a skin.
The fae had broken his true body. I’m not sure how they’d done it without tearing the skin he wore, but they had.
The only way for Carter to heal from this catastrophic damage was to slip out of what he now wore and into another.
Yanking out whatever I found first, I slammed the drawer shut and tried to pretend that I wasn’t currently holding the skin of a female who’d once been alive, who’d once been human and pretty like me.
He opened bloodshot eyes when I drew near, and I read more than just physical pain beating through them. There was a question there, one I didn’t know how to answer.
I shook my head, and he groaned pitifully.
Moved to compassion for the man I once knew and loved, I leaned over and kissed his hot forehead.
“I’ll see you in the morning, Carter.”
Then I gently unfolded the skin and laid it over his chest, turned on my heel, and walked out the door and tried to pretend that what he was about to do back in that room wasn’t happening at all.
By the time I got back into my truck and headed for home, I was shaking from head to toe.
I wanted to see Mercer with my own eyes, wanted to make sure he was okay, but every inch of me ached, and the sun was getting ready to rise.
Taming the Vampire: Over 25 All New Paranormal Alpha Male Tales of Contemporary, Military, Shifters, Billionaires, Werewolves, Magic, Fae, Witches, Dragons, Demons & More Page 128
