“What?” I gasped, shaking my head even as he began to roll out from under me.
Now that I knew who he really was, I could see the way he moved, how he breathed, all of it was different. Less human, more lupine. He blinked.
I tackled him from behind, wrapping my arms and legs around his body as he started to walk out. But I could feel my strength wasn’t what it should be. The sun would soon rise, and I wouldn’t have the power to hurt even a flea.
“Stop!” I yelled. “You can’t do this.”
He turned, a shifter in his prime, and easily pried me off him, setting me down on my feet before glaring at me with burning neon eyes.
“Wolf does not wish to hurt mate, but Wolf will do what Wolf must.”
I hiccupped, unable to understand. “What must you do? What? Because this doesn’t make any sense to me. What’s happening at that castle? What about Steven? Have you forgotten your brother? You can’t do this! You have to talk to me, you have to—”
He turned, refusing to answer me.
Instantly, I saw red. My cheeks hollowed out and my fangs dropped. I yanked on his elbow, spinning him around, using up the last bits of strength I had as the weakness of death’s sleep began to slide through my bones. I had only minutes of awareness left.
But panic was eating at my insides, making me shaky and desperately sick to my stomach.
In a move I’d never seen coming, Mercer did the one thing I’d least expected out of him. As he reached for me, I thought for half a second that he was going to take me back into his arms and tell me it was all just a terrible misunderstanding, but he didn’t. Instead, using his razor-tipped claws, he ripped the mate’s mark off my clavicle.
I screamed, feeling white-hot fire lance through my veins, and I dropped to my knees. Tenebris also roared, turning me from flesh to a pillar of raging, swirling darkness as the pain consumed us both.
Then I heard another sound of rending flesh, and something warm and wet plopped onto my cheek. I shook, breathing heavily as I reached for the wetness and stared at his own mate’s mark.
My mind was empty, blank of all thoughts except one—it was over, and Mercer had not chosen me.
“There,” he growled with fury, “now Wolf cannot feel. Wolf will never feel again.”
I cried, sobbing as I clutched his mark to my chest. Tenebris’s thoughts were ugly, consuming me. She hated him. She loved him still.
She wanted to kill everything.
He leaned over, and I felt the press of his lips on my head. Hard. Heavy. Demanding. But I could no longer make sense of the chaos. Could no longer understand any of what he was doing.
He turned then and left us alone, sobbing in that room, with the horrific thought that War had stolen the only thing that had ever mattered to us.
Mercer
HE WAS ON THE HILL again, shivering, lost. So fucking alone that he was empty of anything and everything inside. She was no longer in him.
He was without his anchor and rudderless.
Then he sensed the presence of the beast, saw the golden form staring back at him, and he screamed, rushing the wolf with a hatred so consuming that he didn’t give a fuck whether he lived or died.
“What did you do? What the fuck have you done? Do you know what you’ve done? Do you have any goddamn idea what you’ve done? You’ve ruined me! You’ve broken me!” Mercer pounded his fists into the grass and dirt, naked and shattered completely.
Wolf said nothing, only stared at him with an animal’s gaze. Wolf had loved Scarlett and Tenebris. In fact, Wolf still did. That love beat like a dark drum in the night.
“Why?” he groaned. “Why have you done this?”
The blood from his wound seeped into the hill. Mercer just wanted to die and be done with it.
“Get up.” The voice wasn’t Wolf’s, and it was full of fury.
Mercer shivered, shooting to his knees as he glanced up into the bony visage of Death himself. The golden runes on his face burned bright in the night.
“Wolf did all I required of him, but now it is the man’s turn to do as he’s bid. Do you wish to save your beloved mate?”
Mercer sucked in a shallow breath, feeling dizzy and full of awful hope. “I can get her back?”
Death turned to stare into the darkness, toward where the shadow still loomed on the horizon, growing bigger and wider everyday, but still unable to come any further into the shelter of the hillside.
“Bellum has come nearly into the fullness of her power,” Death whispered low, so low that Mercer wasn’t sure the words were for him at all. His tricolored eyes cut toward Mercer, and there was a stony look of determination upon his face.
“After tonight, this place will no longer be safe from her. I must have your word that you will do as you are required to do.”
Mercer stood shakily. “And just what the hell am I required to do? Huh, what? All I know is that tonight I”—he pounded his chest viciously—“cut out my own motherfucking mark and hers too. She’s not protected now. She’ll never fucking forgive—”
Death scoffed. “Forgiveness?” he said, sounding disgusted. “It’s completely irrelevant.”
“Irrelevant?” Mercer roared, breathing like a bellows as he glared at the being who’d made his life a living hell for far too long. “Fuck you! It’s the only thing!”
“Making her love you was the only thing, you fucking prick. Which she did, against my most bitter wishes, I might add. I cannot fault you for forgetting what we spoke of only a few nights past. I did after all wipe your mind of all traces of us. So I will share with you again why this matters.” He held up his bony hand and ticked off his reasons one finger at a time.
“One. Because she has to be completely broken. It’s the only fucking way to make her take that final metamorphosis that will make her strong enough to destroy Bellum.”
All the fire in him suddenly melted away as he listened to Death, remembering now what he’d forgotten before and finally understanding why it was Wolf had “betrayed” him. Wolf hadn’t betrayed him. Wolf had done everything Mercer had told him to because he’d known he wouldn’t be strong enough to do it.
“Two,” Death barked. “The sacrifice will take everything from you, but it’s the only goddamn way to make that bitch believe she really owns you. The only way”—he hissed as he took a step closer, causing the winds to roil angrily and rip through the trees—“and I mean the only way to win this is to lose it all. Pandora knew that. And now, so do you. You want to protect her? You want her to live? Then give me your soul. Throw all in with me, and then maybe, just maybe, she stands a chance in hell of walking away from that bitch.”
His chest heaved, and fire burned like hell flame in his eyes.
Mercer patted his chest. Just a second ago, he’d sworn he’d lost it all, but not even close. The only way to give Scarlett half a chance against War was to make her hate him so completely that she’d lose the last bits of desperate sanity she still clung to.
He squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing what felt like a pound of glass shards down his throat. He groaned.
Death’s voice lowered an octave as he said, “I imbued you with a sense of honor and loyalty above all else. The belief that if someone was worth fighting for, you’d go all the way. I am proud of the guardian you became, and I will not force this decision on you. The sacrifice must be willing, or she cannot win.”
He lifted his eyes. “But there are still so many more things that have to be done. What if Scarlett doesn’t do as you believe? What if Blue doesn’t uphold his end—”
Death shrugged. “Then it’s over.”
And there was the truth of it. The final nail in a shitty coffin, and the very reason Mercer had no other options left to him. For Scarlett to win, for Tenebris to do the impossible and overcome the temptation of going full Darkness, others had to be willing to lose it all to see her and the rest of the world safe.
It was why she’d always lost.
None had had the c
ourage or fortitude to make this choice.
Mercer looked at his Wolf, knowing what he had to do.
“War won’t learn of this? Are you sure? You can really mask—”
“I am stronger than her. I always have been. I’ve just never had Veilers courageous enough to take the leap. The question for you is this: What do you love more, your life or her? ”
In the end, there was only one answer left to give. There’d only ever been one answer.
“Her. Always. Always her.”
Death walked over to him, pulling him into the cage of his arms, and Mercer roared as his soul was cleaved from his body.
When it was over, and he was emptied of everything, Death looked him in the eye and said, “You will know nothing other than pleasing Bellum in all ways. When the time comes to do the deadly bidding of your mistress, you will obey. Swift and deadly will be your vengeance. Then Tenebris will turn from you completely. She will despise you. She will loathe you. When she does, you will attack Bellum, and it will all be over. Then you will rest. Your job will be done.”
“My job will be done,” he said in a monotone, stripped of anything that had ever made him him. He was a machine now. A killer. A monster.
Mercer McCarrick was dead.
Chapter 13
Scarlett
“Och, lass, what has he done?” James asked brokenly as he stared at the devastation of the still-open wound on my collarbone.
The dream had been so good. So pure. There’d been nothing but blessed silence and darkness. But in the wakening, I remembered it all.
Something dark, something hateful had begun to sprout in my soul. I’d trusted him. Completely. Fully. Holding no part of me back from him. Even knowing our past and how many times he’d screwed me over before, I’d still believed that this time it was different.
But it hadn’t been at all. And because I’d been such a damned fool, I’d lowered all my guards with him, giving every bit of myself over to him. I’d handed him my glass heart and thought it had meant something to him. But he’d shattered it. Shattered me so completely that I wasn’t sure I’d ever recover.
I sat in the dirt contemplating the two options I had left. I could fall apart and allow myself to be weak and pathetic again. Or I could prove to myself once and for all that I was stronger than that.
The ice in my veins grew and grew. Tenebris sighed, and I felt her need for the darkness, for the protection of that hate to cover us again. With one word, she could end all of this. All of them. She could destroy it all.
I grinned and looked at James, empty and cold inside. Tenebris’s thoughts of hate and loathing scraped against the inside of my skull like sharp knives, and my grin grew wider.
Gods, it would be too easy.
Just like it had been at the vampire castle.
One word, she whispered to me. One word from me, and she could end this pain. She could help me breathe again. She could take it all away.
Mercer always told me it was my purity that had sucked him in. But that same purity and naiveté had led me directly here. Broken. Pathetic. Disgusting. I snarled.
Standing in one smooth motion, I tossed his mark to the ground. Covered in dirt and grime, soaked in his blood and tissue, it meant nothing to me. There was no more pain inside me. In a way, it was liberating not to feel the constant turmoil of nerves and anxiety for a shifter I’d once called mate.
James sniffed, looking at me strangely, like he wasn’t sure what to make of me anymore. I was still Scarlett, but something had snapped in me permanently. I wasn’t the same woman anymore, and I would never be again.
“Scar, are ye...” His words tapered off as he again sniffed the air.
I snorted and reached for my clothes, yanked them off, and tossed them over my shoulder, standing before him nude and unashamed. I would burn those clothes. Clothes he’d touched, left his scent on. I didn’t want them anymore. Didn’t need them to make me whole again.
“Lass,” he whispered, reaching for my collarbone before yanking his hand back and flexing his fist. “Gods,” he breathed. “Gods, he savaged ye.”
I glared down at the offending injury. The wound wasn’t as large as I’d thought, but it was deep, revealing shredded bits of tissue and the striation of lean muscle within. I curled my lip in revulsion.
“It will heal. I just need blood.” The echo of my sister shook in my words, and I felt her probe at me, felt her asking without words whether she could take this shifter as her own. Take him and make him give us what we needed.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
No, I whispered to her. No. He is innocent. It is Mercer that hurt us. Not James. Leave him alone.
And just like that, she was silenced, gone like a vapor in the wind. I couldn’t believe she’d listened to me, and I had to wonder if Tenebris even understood herself. But I was grateful she’d not made me choose. I looked at him.
James was completely still, head giving the very slightest of shakes as he took a step back. Though I thought myself incapable of feeling just now, I did. Seeing his reticence and instinctual rejection of me was like a fist to my gut.
I turned my back on him, refusing to let him see just how badly his rejection stung. “Go. Leave me now, James. If you honestly thought me capable of that, then you don’t know me at all.”
He growled, clamping a hand onto my shoulder and attempting to turn me. But I was like a caged wild animal finally let loose. I twirled, driving my palms into his chest and shoving him back. And because Tenebris was awakened, because she was crackling and snapping with fury inside of me, I tossed him far harder than I’d planned against the wall.
He landed with a dull thud, staring at me wide-eyed and shocked. He was a six-hundred-year-old shifter in his prime, and I’d just tossed him like a rag doll. James didn’t know about Tenebris. Only Mercer had. He didn’t know this wasn’t me. And he hadn’t known until just now that I was far more powerful than he’d ever believed me to be.
I trembled, feeling like a rubber band two seconds away from snapping, and pointed toward the doorway.
“You need to go. You need to leave me right now,” I said, words shivering with so much pent up emotion that my voice was deeper and grittier, not sounding like myself at all.
His eyes were glowing the mercurial silver of his wolf, and the room now smelled of wariness and caution. The scent was sticky, clinging to my nostrils like wet tar. I’d never smelled those things from him before. Not ever.
I grimaced, wondering so many fucking things in that moment. Would he attack me? Would he despise me? Had I just lost him too?
I eyed him hard as seconds stretched between us. A low whine of frustration spilled off his tongue, and Tenebris hissed through my lips like a viper. His pupils dilated, then his wolf broke eye contact first.
I didn’t rejoice in that fact. I’d never wanted my friends afraid of me. I’d never wanted them to see me as the monster I really was, never wanted them to know me as anything other than just Scar. Their Scar.
He took a step, as though he was going to walk out the door. But I stopped him.
“She snapped on you, didn’t she?” I said low, watching as the muscles of his jaw twitched.
His body went ramrod stiff, his hands balled tight into fists at his sides, but he didn’t look back at me.
“That’s why you killed her.”
He turned on me, body vibrating, furious that I was picking at old wounds that would never completely heal for him.
“Who are ye, Scarlett? Will you become like her? Is that the fate of yer kind? Can even the best ones be broken?”
Red flashed in my field of vision as the fiery heat of anger rose up in me. My body quaked as I fought not to lose control of myself and release Tenebris’s killing smoke.
“How dare you! I’m not Isobel. I didn’t turn on him. He turned on me. He made a fool of me! He—”
“But we are not him! I have always been yer ally.” He poked his chest with his pointer finger har
d, canines exposed and dark black hair starting to sprout off his knuckles. “Don’t forget, Scar. Don’t fecking forget.”
“Forget what?” I tossed out my arm. “Forget that I dared to trust someone who could betray me so cruelly? I trusted you too. Will you do the same? Will you?”
He cringed at each of my words, as though they weren’t just words, but bullets tearing through him, bleeding him dry. His face contorted, shifting for a quick second from man to the ghostly visage of the beast before his lips pulled back. Turning away from me, he drew his hand back and punched the wall behind him, leaving a fist-sized hole in the rock.
I blinked, snapped out of my blind rage.
“Fuck ye!” He snarled and pointed at my feet with blood dripping off his knuckles. “If you think I take any pleasure in what I’ve found here today, then ye dinna know me at all.” His accent grew sharper and thicker in his rage. “I’ve no mated ye. I never can. But do ye not recall what I did at the Pink Lady after I killed Blanca?”
My mouth snapped shut, recalling with perfect clarity what he was talking about. He’d been his big black wolf, snarling, snapping, and ready to kill anything that crossed his path, completely consumed by the beast inside of him, high on the killing lust. But then I’d called out to him, scared out of my fucking head that he’d turn around and force me to fight him.
It had been the height of folly on my part. I knew that unmated wolves were unstable and dangerous in that state. I should have left him to the hands of fate, but I couldn’t. And I hadn’t. I’d been ready for a fight that had never come.
Instead of trying to harm me like a mad wolf should have, the beast had jumped me, shoving me down to the ground to protect me from the hoard of fae coming to kill us both. He’d done the impossible that night. He’d shoved down his monster to help save me.
I blinked, looking at him as cold spread through my bones. The heat of rage was completely extinguished, and I was back to feeling dead and weak inside.
James sighed, noticing the change immediately.
“Lass,” he breathed as he marched over to me and clamped his hands on my shoulders, squeezing so tight that I sucked in a sharp breath from his nails digging into my wound. Stars danced in my mind’s eye, but I didn’t move away because the pain helped me. It grounded me.
The Vampire Went Down to Georgia (Southern Vampire Detective Book 3) Page 17
