Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo

by Selene Charles

  Cole’s deep laughter, which I’d found so exhilarating earlier, made my skin crawl as his scent of musk and lantern oil enveloped me.

  “The moment that moonlight rains upon him, you will feel my pain. You will know what it means to lose the thing that means the most to you in all the worlds. You and I, Scarlett, we’re so very, very similar. You fascinate me, vampire.” He said the last word as if against his will.

  He clenched his jaw, looking unsure and angry even as he tenderly brushed a finger along my jawline, breaking me out in a wash of tingling warmth.

  He strode in front of me, his dark, shaggy hair lying temptingly across his smooth, broad forehead.

  He was still one of the prettiest men I’d ever seen. Evil came in many forms, more often than not in the guise of beauty. His lips curved into a hypnotic grin, as if he knew my thoughts, as if he’d even heard them.

  I sensed Cole’s power from the moment I’d stepped through the castle doors. Such a young face for such an old soul. Again, I found myself drowning as though I were free-falling into an abyss whenever I stared too deeply into his eyes.

  My ears rang, the noise all around both hushed and buzzing. I could hear the frantic beating of Mercer’s heart, the only heart that was beating inside that giant tomb.

  Drugged, confused, I tried to fight the lethargy trying to drag me under, the sense of disquietude. I couldn’t begin to describe what was happening to me with any proficiency, but it was almost like that time I’d died.

  I recalled the night Boo slipped from my fingers, yanked away, killed before my eyes with a sharp twist of his neck. Though I’d seen the nightmare of death, I wasn’t able to move, frozen by fear, by the reality that that was how everything was going to end.

  In the blink of an eye, I’d seen a vision of my life scroll past, empty and shallow, with nothing to show for it. By the time I turned on my heel to run away, I felt my maker’s breath on my neck, then his fingers curled around me, cutting off my windpipe, filling my body with wet heat and agony.

  I convulsed beneath him as he sucked me dry.

  I’d stared up at the stars in the sky, feeling cold and detached but still cognizant enough to count each silvery pinprick above me.

  That was what I was feeling now: cold, outside of myself, with death breathing down my spine.

  Cole’s laughter was noxious, turning my stomach as my eyes latched to Mercer’s.

  He’d been the one to save me that night. My savior. My hero. My love.

  Tears of blood gathered at the corners of his eyes as his look devoured me. I was so angry at him, upset at all the lies. I wanted to hate him, wanted to slap him, punch him, kick his ass for never telling me how much I had actually meant to him: enough for him to mark me, enough for his wolf to claim me. I finally saw what I never could in my hurt.

  He’d done it all for me, to protect me.

  Always my protector.

  That well of darkness inside of me churned.

  Laughter tittered on the edge of my consciousness. I could feel the roll of intoxicating power rolling from the vampires surrounding us. None of them was looking at me.

  All of them were looking at Mercer, waiting for the first touch of the moon’s beam to bear down upon him. If he could survive the night, he could live to fight another day, but the shot they’d given him was too powerful to contain. Moon madness would take him and twist him. The vampires would ensure he never left there alive.

  Cole’s laughter was grating, rubbing my nerves raw.

  “Magnificent,” he murmured just as Mercer flexed his entire body, straining against his bonds, throat rippling and cording as he tensed his thick neck.

  The buttery yellow glow of moonlight danced over his magnificently naked body, kissing his foot, calf, thigh, cock, abdomen, arms, neck, face.

  Every inch of him was covered in moon glow. Red-tinged pearls of sweat beaded his flesh even as thick, coarse black fur tore like needles through his pores.

  My soul wept as his body contorted, twisting, breaking, snapping. The terrible sound of it echoed mutely through the hall. Then he cried out, howling in one continuous stream of agonized fury.

  My hands shook. The guards holding me up tossed me dirty looks, but I couldn’t stop from moaning, watching as the only man who would ever mean anything to me again was being physically ripped apart by dark magick, twisted and contorted into his most primitive and base form.

  The mood in the den was electric, tense, expectant.

  Everyone was leaning forward, on tenterhooks as they waited with eager lust and anticipation.

  It took me back to when I was in the cage and the madness of the crowd had crushed in on me from all sides, that breathless, tingling moment of anticipation that everyone knew was coming.

  Metal cages were suddenly being raised through hidden catches in the floor. Each cage held a shaking, quivering body.

  They were all vampires.

  “What the hell?” I gasped through the pain bearing down on my middle, making me feel as though I was going to faint, to collapse from the overwhelming throbbing pain lancing through every inch of me.

  I was seconds away from giving in to the fire myself, moments away from slipping into unconsciousness. I could feel the madness taking me, spreading through me. Soon, I wouldn’t be anything but a raw and exposed nerve that sang with agony anytime anything brushed against me.

  My legs were trembling, the pain spreading like a slow-moving tide, inching closer and closer toward my heart, toward the beating, pulsing nucleus of me. Darkness was creeping through my vision.

  Something malevolent and twisted stirred deep within me.

  Mercer was howling, yanking on the cuffs holding his wrists. The metal groaned, and the wood of the torture rack throbbed like a living heartbeat. Time was slowing, just as it had for me in the cage.

  My reflexes sharpened, and I saw what the vampires had designed. They believed themselves so righteous, so... good.

  They would not kill Mercer until he had killed first.

  Five cages were sitting open. The bodies huddled within were on their knees. Their faces were covered in grime, sores, and dried blood. Their eyes glowed a muted shade of bloody red. They were vampires, too.

  Long stringy ebony hair covered the face of the female sitting closest to Mercer. Her body was lush, ripe, and curvaceous. Her gown was a deep crimson velvet that wrapped around her full figure like a glove.

  The skin beneath her eyes was jet black, though, and her flesh was the chalky white of a vampire who’d not fed in a while. She licked cracked and swollen lips. Her face was long, narrow, harsh, yet somehow pleasing in an altogether foreign and exotic way. She slowly made her way to her feet, and I immediately noticed her height.

  Her legs were nowhere near as long as I’d first imagined, and her waist was squatter than I’d noted when she’d been sitting. She had definite dwarfish features, but she didn’t have the typical dimensions of most dwarves. She had to be Carter’s Magdalena.

  My heart sank because I knew she wouldn’t be saved that night.

  When I looked at the faces and bodies of the other vampires, they all reminded me of her in some way, not so much in looks but in the hollowness of their gazes and the certainty in their demeanor that their end had finally come.

  Beside me Cole’s smile widened, and I was sick, revolted. He was sacrificing his own people to Mercer’s madness.

  “You make me sick,” I hissed, even as another spasm ripped through my center. My lashes fluttered as darkness teased at me. I was in such agony that my brain was literally starting to shut down over it.

  Cole didn’t even flinch. His smile only grew wider. The sadist didn’t care. He enjoyed my pain and suffering. The fucking prick had a hard-on, the evidence straining against his pants.

  I felt, all around me, that deviant sexual thrill I’d experienced back at the witches’ fight club. The more I suffered, the more he liked it, so I swallowed it, telling myself to show nothing even as I felt
myself fracturing. My gaze drank in the twisted, macabre form of Mercer.

  He was half man, half beast, but his shift was involuntary, so though I saw the eyes of my love resting in the face of his monster, I did not see the human, only the wolf.

  A terrible noise rumbled past his throat, and the monsters in the cages keened, a low sound of torture and agony.

  Mercer’s nostrils flared, and a light of madness pierced through his gaze. I shook my head but couldn’t speak. I couldn’t say a damn word, my throat felt paralyzed, my tongue two sizes too big.

  I knew I wouldn’t be able to remain lucid much longer. The only things keeping me upright were the guards. My head began to loll, but I fought to stay conscious, fought to keep my eyes focused on Mercer.

  I knew it was nonsense. I knew Mercer was no longer in there—it was just the beast, not the man. I looked, though, because deep down, I knew that the moment I stopped looking, the beast would pounce.

  Mercer’s movements were violent and spasmodic though the sickening crunch of breaking bones had finally stopped.

  His chest heaved like a bellows, deep, ragged breaths that caused his furred and sweaty abdominals to flutter. His eyes were manic as they raged through the room, looking, looking, looking.

  Then they latched onto mine, and my heart gave one powerful lurch. I saw the madness, but the wolf saw me, scented me. That’s when I knew, when I finally understood the real reason he’d marked me.

  A whine spilled from his throat, then... he tipped his head back and howled. In that song, I heard the madness of the moon and the knowledge that none in here was safe.

  Except for me.

  Chapter 22

  Mercer

  Adrenaline.

  Fear.

  The tang of it was like a drug for his senses. The wolf could think, could feel, but his emotions were rudimentary, basic.

  All he knew was he had to kill.

  Surrounded by ancient foes on all sides, he was cornered, exposed like a rat in a cage, the faces of his enemies bearing down.

  He wet his lips and tasted home, his mate, his Scarlett. Even though he’d not kissed her that night, her scent still lingered. It always would since he’d made her his. Her sweet, sexual flavor coated his taste buds, making him hungry for more, but threaded throughout that sweetness was something noxious, venomous, and it clung in the air.

  They wanted to hurt her, to kill her.

  “No!” both man and beast thundered inside his brain.

  A flicker of movement was it all took to unleash him. He jumped off the table, snapping the chains holding him. His body was strong, his mind sharp and clear. He whirled as a blur came at him.

  The smell was repugnant. He howled and without thought snapped his jaws around its marblelike neck. It broke in half, the thing’s claws scrabbling at his massive back for only half a second before it landed in a heap of rubble at his feet.

  More movement. More bodies.

  Knives tore into his form, blood gushing. The coppery scent filled his nostrils, but he didn’t stop. The wolf could never stop.

  They had his mate.

  They had his female.

  She was crying, sobbing. Every whimper, every noise was a call to him, a demand for him to move, to fight, to get to her.

  Hands wrapped around his neck and waist, dragging him backward. He was mindless, swiping and batting at anything, exhilarating in the crunch of bones and the implosion of chalky flesh.

  He howled, calling to her, moving toward her, always toward her.

  Protect the mate.

  Protect the female.

  Protect.

  Protect.

  Protect.

  “No, Mercer, no! They’re coming, they’re—ugfh...” The unmistakable strike of flesh on flesh, the tang of blood.

  Her blood.

  Spicy, dark, peppery autumn leaves mingled with the power of a cold one, intoxicating. Tossing his head back, he howled. The wolf would kill them all. No one could escape his rage.

  No one.

  The vampires’ strength was immense as they bore down on him, a living wall of power and might, tearing at his flesh and fur. Covered in his own blood, he mindlessly pursued his mate.

  The moon lashed through his blood like a drug, mainlining through his veins, whipping him to a mindless, frenetic frenzy. All he was, all he knew was the craving for death.

  Smashing heads together, he moved slowly but inexorably toward her.

  Only her. Only she matters. Only she ever has.

  Fire suddenly lanced his bones. Something heavy and cloying was draped over him. Reaching out, he grabbed hold as the howls and screams of the damned raged from his lips.

  ~*~

  Scarlett

  Mercer had gone wild, a shifter out of his mind with rage and bloodlust. Cole abandoned me, shouting orders to those still on their feet. My beast tore through the masses with single-minded determination, heading unerringly in my direction, leaving a wake of broken and fractured bodies behind him.

  Vampires as ancient as any I’d ever known were simply broken beneath the unstoppable wall of furious muscle.

  The guards holding me up had abandoned me a while before. Vampires scrabbled to escape, realizing the monster they’d unleashed was an Alpha unlike anything they’d ever known.

  They’d failed to realize, failed to consider that a shifter fighting for its mate was a juggernaut, an unstoppable force, but an Alpha fighting for its mate... Fuck, it was poetry in motion.

  My body was so broken from the beating earlier. I needed blood to heal properly, to be able to fight my way through them, free of pain. That was a luxury I didn’t have, though. No time was left for him or me. Somehow, I had to find the will to survive for us both. My knees were locked in place, my elbows feeling like stone. Feet stomped over my back as those inside ran for the doors and windows, trying like hell to get away, but Cole’s playhouse had turned into their prison.

  Then the vampires dropped a length of demon-dipped chain links over Mercer, and he’d fallen to his knees.

  The vampires were on him, biting, tearing, ripping. They would kill him. He was still powerful, still killing the ones that got too close to his hands, but their numbers were too great, and a one-man army could only last for so long.

  Darkness spread through my limbs and my head, blurring my vision, threatening to take me under. I fought it, telling myself I had to be with him, even to the ugly, bitter end, but with one final beat of my sluggish heart, I felt someone stumble over me, their shoe kicking my temple, and just before I collapsed, I grabbed hold of my crucifix.

  Closing my eyes, I sank into an endless yawning chasm of nothingness, where no fear, no pain, no hope existed.

  That was it for me and for Mercer. The vampires had won after all. They’d taken their vengeance, and I was too tired to fight anymore. I’d failed us both. That wasn’t how I’d ever imagined our story ending.

  Then I felt something stir—something old, something ancient and possibly even malevolent. I was inside my own head, but I wasn’t alone.

  It was the darkness, and it was back.

  Warmth spread through the icy cold, and I fought to shove it back. I wasn’t dead, but I wasn’t alive, either. I was somewhere between.

  Opening my eyes, I stared at a world I didn’t understand. I was in my world, yet I wasn’t. I was a shadow, a shade in a land of muted grays and black.

  Not only one person was there with me, but two.

  The ancient... and... I turned on my heel, and gasped.

  Boo was standing there in living Technicolor, no longer a blue spirit, but looking like flesh and blood, and he was grinning at me.

  “Death looks good on you, peanut,” he said warmly, and I shook my head, confused, slow to comprehend his words.

  “What?” I clutched at my bodice, and it was tangible, real. The now-empty gems threaded throughout scratched the palm of my hand, scraping the skin right off. “I’m not dead.”

  I looked over h
is shoulder, hearing the roar of battle and watching as Mercer somehow stood to his feet and fought through the agony of his wounds, ripping and tearing through the hands and fangs coming at him, but the doors had opened, and a sea of vampires was rushing in to take him out.

  I waited for panic to consume me, for terror to grip me, but I felt nothing but a quiet hum of detachment.

  Once, I would have admired the breadth of his shoulders and the power of his body, but I felt nothing other than a mild curiosity as to how I could still be there.

  My gaze shot to Boo’s, and I blinked. “But I’m a vampire. I can’t die from a couple of bruises and cuts. Can I?”

  He shrugged.

  I might not have been fearful, but I remembered the tang of it, the heart-pounding, pulse-rocketing sickness that had consumed me, stolen my breath, and made me feel as though I’d never know warmth again—the throbbing terror of knowing I would lose him.

  I remembered it all and knew that if I had lived, I would not like what was happening. I would fight for him.

  “You were supposed to help me,” I said without censure to my one-time love. “And yet you did nothing. What was the point of bringing you with me at all?” I cocked my head.

  That wasn’t an accusation but simply fact.

  Boo’s smile grew wider. “Didn’t I? How did you think I would help, Scarlett? Who am I?”

  His question confused me. From the corner of my eye, I watched as Mercer’s chest heaved, as blood caked his face and eyes, blinding him. He was losing his battle. An Alpha more powerful than I could have ever imagined, he’d left a sea of dead behind him, but even he could not hope to stem the tide much longer.

  His wolf howled a song of heartbreak as he turned to look at me—not the spirit me but the one still lying on the ground, cold and lifeless. He thought her dead, and I could see the fight leaving him, the fire going out of his eyes.

  Why had I never noticed it before?

  How much he’d loved her—me? Why had I always been so confused by his actions? They were as clear as day to me now.