Shifter Overdrive

by Scarlett Grove

  I knew I was being indecisive and immature. I couldn’t help it. I was so confused it brought the coy brat out of me.

  “Livi,” he breathed, moving closer. He cupped my jaw and wrapped his arm around my waist, grabbing my ass as he pulled me against him. His kissed me ferociously, his tongue thrusting into my mouth. I went soft and wet under his kiss, my nipples tightening into hard nubs.

  He broke the kiss and embraced me. Hugged me tight against him. Holding me. I could feel the heat of his love and affection, his need, his desire. His devotion to me. I could feel it radiate off his skin.

  I was falling into it—being swept away into an ocean of happily ever after. The passion and lust flowered into a blooming life of harmony and love. God it felt good. It felt so damn good.

  I pushed away. Why couldn’t I let myself have that? Didn’t I deserve to be loved? No. I didn’t. I didn’t deserve to be loved like that. I didn’t deserve Raven. A stupid tear slid down my face.

  “I’ll call you in the morning,” I muttered, pushing away.

  He caught my arm when I turned to go. “Livi,” he said. I glanced up at him and saw the pain in his eyes.

  “I’m a bad person, Raven. I’m just going to hurt you. I shouldn’t ever have let it go this far. I’m no good for you.”

  “Isn’t that my decision?”

  “I can’t let myself hurt you.”

  “You already are, Olivia. Stop walking away from me.”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  I stumbled away, my head and body ablaze with desire. The full body vision I’d had of my life together with Raven still throbbed through me. I gripped my head, trying to force it out. Why was this happening to me?

  I’d constructed such a simple life of solitude. I’d lived that way peacefully for five years. Now, after my second biggest failure, I had to be confronted with the biggest failure of my life.

  I’d let everyone down. I’d caused my father to be killed. I’d made my entire family hate me. I’d destroyed my one true love. There was no going back now. No matter how much they all seemed to want to invite me back into the fold, I could never forgive myself for what I’d done and what I’d become.

  The truth was that I’d missed them all every minute of every day. I’d never called or written. I’d never let them know I was okay. I’d done nothing. I didn’t deserve to be forgiven.

  I could never forgive myself for what I’d done. To me, I would always be the destroyer, no matter what everyone else told me or how much they wanted me or believed in me. I’d made my bed, and now I had to lie in it. I knew what kind of person I had become, even if no one else knew it.

  Chapter 27

  I got home, avoiding everyone in the house. Trudging into my room, I slipped out of my jacket and collapsed face first on my bed.

  Vincent was in town and he was kidnapping girls who looked just like me. What did it mean? Was he trying to mess with me? What kind of message was he trying to send? Was he taunting me? Did he still have feelings for me?

  I bit my lip and sat up, remembering the two weeks we’d spent together in Milan. I’d had no idea he was my target. The Council hadn’t told me, and they’d just let me get into a sexual relationship with the man I was there to kill.

  It wasn’t until after we’d been intimate a dozen times that they’d finally decided to share that information with me. When I’d found out who my target was, I didn’t want to believe it.

  The man who’d been wining and dining me and sending me to the moon with his tongue couldn’t have been the person they said he was.

  But it turned out my lover was a sadistic killer. He liked to enslave little children. He used them the way other vamps used groupies. But he didn’t just take a sip. He sucked them almost dry and let them recover, over and over again. Children as young as five.

  He kept them brainwashed and obedient in his various mansions around the world. The children’s bodies would finally give out, or he would just take them all the way to the end, leaving a trail of dead children behind him. The Council wanted to put a stop to it. It went so far beyond breaking their rules. He was one of the Council of Elders’ most wanted criminals.

  They’d been trying to nab him for years. They’d used me to get close to him. Why he chose to take up with me—who knew. Maybe he had a thing for tall brunettes before he ever met me. But I wasn’t a human; I was a dangerously powerful witch and an Executioner.

  Had Vincent known my role? Had he been playing with me all along? Those things I didn’t know. Nevertheless, I felt sick and used by the whole thing. By him and the Council.

  I’d been his lover. It hadn’t been a game for me. A diversion maybe. But it hadn’t been an attempt to get closer to my mark. Of course, Vincent would believe whatever he believed. If he thought I’d used our relationship to get closer to him so I could kill him, I could understand why he’d be pissed at me.

  The more I thought about it, the more I decided that he was just trying to get back at me for fucking him and then trying to kill him. It was rude. Really. I’d hate it if someone did that to me, even though I wasn’t a sadistic, psycho vampire.

  There was the sound of tapping at my window. I stood, gazing out into the moonlit glow outside. Black wings flashed against the glass, beak tapping. Claws scratching. I opened the window.

  He flew in, circling the room with a caw before materializing in front of me in the dimly lit room. He stood silently, his dark eyes sparking in the lamp light.

  “Raven,” I breathed. I was torn apart by my thoughts of what I’d done to Vincent. What I’d done to Raven. By what I’d done to everyone I’d ever cared about. Confusion batted my brain and a flush of vulnerability washed over my skin.

  He stepped toward me, slowly, until he was right in front of me, looking down into my eyes. I gazed up at him, feeling so close to tears I didn’t even recognize myself.

  Raising his hands, he brought me into an embrace. It was slow and tender, silent. He pulled me against him, crushing me to his hard chest.

  “Raven,” I said again, wanting to weep his name until my lungs burned. I wanted to use him to hide inside, to forget everything that had ever happened and everything I’d ever done.

  He backed me into the bed, and I was on my back below him in the span of a breath. His hardness pressed between my spread legs. My gun pressed into my back. Desire rose like a geyser. I didn’t want to hold back a second longer.

  Wiggling out of my weapons and clothes, I turned to him and pulled his shirt off and started at his pants. Raven went into overdrive, tearing off my clothes and his own before we were naked. He knelt between my legs, staring down at me.

  His cock stood thick and delicious in front of me. I reached out for him as he ran his fingers through my hair. Taking him in my mouth, he groaned above me, gripping my hair tighter.

  “Suck it,” he said, as he held my head and slowly moved his erection in and out of my mouth. My nipples pricked as my pussy throbbed for him. I was so wet I couldn’t stand it any longer. I wanted him inside me.

  Letting go of his cock with a pop, I lay back on the bed and invited him into me. Shit. No protection.

  “We need a rubber, Raven. I’m not going back to Iona again.”

  “Fuck. Wait.” He pulled one out of his pants and slipped it over his length. “I came prepared,” he said as he pressed himself against me.

  “You did,” I gasped as he entered me.

  “Livi,” he breathed, moving over me in a sensuous wave of his hips. I held his taut, muscled form, his slim waist. Tears streamed down my face and he kissed them away.

  The flood of my buried feelings twisted from inside me like a vine that twined around my gut and my heart, squeezing. I moaned, feeling the love I’d hidden from myself for so long. Goddamn it. I did love Raven. I loved him so bad it hurt.

  He kissed my face, my eyelids, and my forehead as he moved inside me. “I missed you so much,” he whispered in my ear.

  I was coming in the mindless haz
e of lust. I whispered, “I missed you too.” I gripped his shoulders. “I love you.” I said it so softly, I didn’t know if I’d articulated it or not.

  “I love you, Livi. I’ve always loved you.”

  Then he was coming, groaning and gripping my hips with his strong hands. We pulsed around each other, my body gripping his length as he released inside me.

  When he drew away, he pulled me on top of him, flicking the condom in the wastepaper basket beside the bed. I listened to his heart beating with my cheek against his chest, his arm wrapped around my curves.

  What the hell did I just say? Fuck. What now? I’d already been threatened by two of my sisters not to hurt Raven, and here I was fucking him and telling him I loved him. I wasn’t doing very well in the “don’t hurt Raven” department. I’d just have to chalk this one up to another relationship fuckup. No matter how much I wanted to keep him for myself. Forever. I couldn’t help hurting him.

  I rose on my elbow to tell him that when his cell phone rang. He leaned over me and pulled it out of the back pocket of his jeans.

  “This is Hunter,” he said into the phone. “Yeah. I’ll be right there.” He put the phone away and started to pull his clothes back on. “A girl was nabbed right off the street. Black, unmarked SUV. She matched the description of the other girls.”

  I stood and started dressing, glad for the diversion. Not that a missing girl was something to be happy about, but at least I didn’t have to talk about why I’d just told Raven I loved him. Or deal with the fact that he’d said he loved me too.

  Chapter 28

  I threw on my clothes and strapped on my weapons before following Raven downstairs. My mother met us by the front door in her frilly bathrobe, holding a cup of tea. Did this woman ever sleep?

  “Raven, what are you doing here?”

  “I just needed Olivia’s help with something,” he muttered, laughter in his voice as he passed her, moving toward the front door. I smirked as I passed, suppressing my laughter. It felt like we were teenagers again.

  We went outside and he opened his passenger door for me. “Ride with me, Livi. It’ll be faster if we take one car.”

  “Okay, fine,” I said, closing the door of my Camaro. He was the cop. Might as well arrive in a cop car.

  We drove downtown to the location where the girl had been taken. Several uniformed officers were milling about on the sidewalk talking to confused witnesses.

  No one knew where the car went or had any description of the driver. “Did you ever get a lead on that messenger in the club?” I asked him after we’d questioned all the cops.

  “That’s what I was on my way to tell you about. The messenger matches the description of a homeless drug addict who we’ve picked up a few times for loitering.”

  “Where did this guy hang out?”

  “He had a couple different locations. Most of them downtown.”

  “So Vincent most likely picked him up around here somewhere?”

  “Probably. Let’s drive by the places where we’ve got records of him being arrested.”

  Raven drove around the darkened streets of Portland, the street lights glowing off the black pavement. There was still plenty of activity going on, even at midnight on a Friday night. Pedestrians and bikers darted across the wide streets between restaurants and bars.

  “He spent some time outside this brewery,” Raven said, pointing to a place that looked like a sports bar.

  “I doubt Vincent hung out around there.”

  “You think he took this guy from a place he frequented?”

  “Vampires don’t like expending extra energy. So, yeah. I think he was more likely to have taken someone from his usual haunts than to go out of his way.”

  “What about the girls?”

  “The girls all came from the vamp club.”

  “And the last one?”

  “I think Vincent is sending me a message.”

  Raven shot me a look as he came to a stop at a red light. “And what would that be?”

  I sighed. “I slept with the guy and then tried to kill him. I’m sure he’s pissed about it.”

  Raven didn’t say anything, but muscles in his jaw tightened as he gripped the steering wheel.

  We stopped in front of a drugstore. “Nope,” I said, taking in the neighborhood.

  He continued, driving into the main tourist area near the convention center. Tall luxury hotels towered above the night sky. Raven pulled up in front of a five-star hotel, warm light glowing over the glass doors at the entrance.

  “Um, yeah, why didn’t you bring me here first?”

  “Just covering all the bases.”

  He parked and I was opening my door as my phone pinged with a text from the witch network. Twyla.

  Help, was all it said.

  What the fuck? I showed it to Raven. “What do you think that means?”

  “No idea. Pocket text?”

  “I doubt it. I’m calling Mom.”

  I rang my mother’s phone, getting ready to get chewed out for one reason or another.

  “Olivia, why are you calling so late? And what was Raven doing in your bedroom?” We were fucking mother. Jesus, I am twenty-seven years old. But I didn’t say any of that.

  “Mom. Can you check on Twyla? I just got a weird text from her.”

  I heard the muffled sound of my mother walking up the stairs and opening the door to Twyla’s bedroom. “Twyla?” mother said.

  “She isn’t in her room,” she said into the phone.

  The sound of her stepping across the hall and turning on the bathroom light came over the phone. “Not in the bathroom either.”

  “Mom, check her room. The text said Help. I’m worried.”

  “That’s all it said?”

  “Yes.”

  The sound of the phone thudding on the floor and my mother screaming blared through my phone.

  “Mother! Mother! What is it?”

  Gasping, my mom picked the phone back up and shouted into the mouthpiece. “Olivia, get over here right now.”

  “We’ve got to go, Raven. Back to my mom’s house.”

  “But he could be up there.” Raven pointed at the hotel.

  I sighed. “Mom, what do you see? What is upsetting you?”

  “There’s a message. In…blood. On her wall behind her dressing screen. Oh my God, Olivia.”

  “Mother, what does it say?”

  “It says, ‘Hide And Seek.’”

  Great. “Do you see anything else?”

  “Someone’s taken her, Olivia. She was terrified before bed. Put up every ward she knew. I should have hidden her better.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered, Mom. The person who took her would have found her there. Twyla might be a psychic, but that’s no use against a powerful vampire with an ax to grind.”

  “Olivia, you brought this here. You go find your sister this instant!”

  “Okay Mom, will do.” I hung up the phone without another word. Like I needed to be talked to like that right now.

  “Vincent has Twyla.”

  “Let’s go take him out,” Raven said, going for his door handle.

  I hesitated. The last time I’d tried to take him out, I’d failed. Now Vincent had my sister and my ex-boyfriend was helping me kill him. This was all a total clusterfuck. Not the cleanest way to kill an ex-lover.

  “Come on,” he said, through clenched teeth.

  “Wait a second, I’m just preparing myself for this.”

  “What’s there to prepare for?”

  “Vincent is a very powerful vampire. He has an ancient totem that makes vampires almost impossible to kill.”

  “You have Benedictus this time.”

  “He was also my lover. I’m just trying to get my head straight. It’s a very confusing time for me.”

  “You still have feelings for him don’t you?”

  “Feelings…for Vincent? Are you insane?”

  “Admit it, Olivia. That’s why you’ve been acting li
ke a fickle teenager the entire time you’ve been home.”

  “I’m not admitting anything because it isn’t true. I betrayed Vincent. I think that’s the entire reason he’s after me, the reason he took those girls, the reason he took Twyla. Vampires like that don’t take betrayal lightly.”

  “So you’ve been stringing me along because you betrayed your lover?”

  “One doesn’t have anything to do with the other, Raven. Can we just do this now?”

  “Wait. Wait a minute. I want to talk about this now. You told me you loved me an hour ago. What’s going to happen tomorrow? Are you going to go back to acting like I mean nothing to you? Are you going to leave?”

  “I have no idea what will happen tomorrow. I don’t even know if I’ll be alive tomorrow.”

  “If you do live, what then?”

  “I’ll figure it out then.” I went to grab the door handle, but he pulled me back inside.

  “Please Raven, my sister.”

  “I love you, Olivia. Tell me you love me. Tell me.”

  “Goddamn it, Raven!” I put my hand to my forehead. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. I’ll always love you. I’ve thought about you every single day since I left five years ago.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I can’t. I’m a screw-up. I hurt everyone I love.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because I let my father die,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “Your father’s death was not your fault.

  “Yes. It was. If I’d been quicker. If I hadn’t hesitated. If I’d just accepted who I was to begin with.”

  “You were just a kid, Olivia.”

  “I should have taken the sword when he told me to take it. One split second, one hair’s breadth of hesitation, and I killed my father.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “The demon was coming through the portal. My dad told me to take the sword and kill it. But I didn’t want to be what I was. I’d tried to be something else for so long. I couldn’t accept that I was a killer. And when it mattered most that I play my part, I backed away. The demon tore Dad’s throat out. He died right there on the floor in front of us all.”