And since I was hidden from prying eyes, I vomited. I purged myself of everything I’d had that day.
Emma.
Emma.
Emma.
Lost.
Lost.
Lost.
Gone. Gone. Gone.
The madness was trying to take me. To consume me. I sucked in a ragged breath, my body coated in sweat and trembling from head to toe. I couldn’t think about Emma then. Maybe not ever again. I’d done what I should never have done. I’d let someone in. And I felt as if I’d die from the pain of her loss.
But she’d told me to fight. And so I would fight.
Fighting to keep my body still, I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on something other than the cooling corpse lying back on that hospital bed.
The hospital looked like a war zone as cops and pedestrians ran in a dazed panic away from the monster. They moved in every direction.
But like a fisherman setting its bait, I waited, knowing they’d never think to look for me there.
When someone walked on my hand several minutes later, it was all I could do to bite down on the inside of my cheek and not scream out in pain. I tasted the person’s soul and shook my head. Pass. And so it went. One person, two, three, ten, fifteen, twenty...twenty-three.
I froze when I felt twenty-three.
Madness swirled in twenty-three.
Smiling, I shifted back from a twig to a hand, latched onto twenty-three’s boot, and with a small, whispered, “This is for you, Emma,” I released the toxin from the venom sacks in my nails and pumped the heel full.
In all the confusion of noise, and sound, and lights, no one paid attention to the death cries of the sexy brunette melting like wax before me. When she’d decomposed completely, in less than a minute’s time, all that remained was the skin. The skin was all I ever needed, anyway.
Forcing myself out from under the Dumpster, I grabbed her up. She smelled of expensive perfume.
Closing my eyes, I remembered my time with Emma, remembered her warmth, her laughter, and her unfailing faith and love for me. She’d always seen beyond the monster to the heart of the being that beat inside.
Shaking off those thoughts like shaking out a dirty rag, I set my jaw. It was time to work. My real body was too broken to stand, and sliding on the skin was a struggle, but I was determined to prove to Emma—in the current life or the next—that I would fight and that I would never stop fighting.
“For you, my sweet Emma”—my voice was a deep rumble—“I can do anything.” I ended in a sultry, feminine voice.
I sighed with relief as I slid my hands down my curvy body, no longer a he but a she.
“Mila Jones,” I automatically knew, a private in the US armed forces. Twenty-three, and a fitness model.
My lips curved into a sexy smile as I stepped away from the mess that’d once been human, and I ran naked, intending to head toward Mila’s apartment, until the sight of a dead body stopped me cold.
I sniffed.
The kill was fresh. My sister was close. She’d found me again, taunting me with her presence. Warning me there was nowhere I could go that she could not follow.
I looked at the corpse, debating whether to take the bait or not. My prey could have set a trap for me, but I didn’t think so. The kill was too fresh, the organs still perfectly preserved.
I wet my lips and was just about ready to pass on it when something metal tucked beneath the black leather jacket caught my eye.
Serendipity, fate, or just plain dumb-ass luck, but I’d just hit the jackpot of all skins. I’d seen this man before.
With the female vampire at his side. They’d been partners, which meant he was a cop.
I could infiltrate the SCPD. I could have legitimate access to files, to the vampire...the vampire who’d found me. She was smart. Keenly so. If we joined ranks, we could find Talanthia again. We could bring her down. Five centuries of searching could soon end.
It was a temptation too great to walk away from.
“Thank you, Emma,” I whispered to the winds, knowing my dear girl had had a hand in the miracle.
Glancing over my shoulder to make sure no one was around, and especially not Talanthia, I went for broke.
’Cause tonight was the kind of night to throw caution to the wind and give fate the middle fucking finger. Kneeling, I pumped venom into the already cooling body, decomposing all that was within until I had nothing left but a freshly preserved skin suit.
Shedding Mila, I tossed her behind the Dumpster and stepped into my new form. A better form. A perfect form to blend into the masses.
Tonight had been far too close a call, a mistake I’d never make again.
Chapter 21
Scarlett
I was slingshotted from the vision as though I’d been hurled from a cannon. Bending over, I vomited.
But nothing came up. I hadn’t fed in days. Then like a flash, I remembered where I was and with whom.
“You.” The dawning horror of what I’d just seen, the sight of Carter before me, knowing he wasn’t Carter at all...I blinked, backing up slowly as the beast inside of me raged and screamed for vengeance.
Carter-Who-Was-Not-Carter reached out a beseeching hand. “Stop. Now. And listen to me.”
I stopped, responding to the authority in his voice. I knew that by the time the shock finally wore off, I’d kill him. Eviscerate him.
But I couldn’t seem to think beyond the fact that Not Carter was looking at me with beautiful savanna-sunset eyes and that I should have known. I should have known.
Not Carter jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Talanthia is here. I’ve tracked her, Scarlett. Traced her to these lands. To your people.”
I shook my head, feeling as though I was listening to words under water. Nothing was making sense.
“Stay with me, Vampire,” he said stiffly. “I need you more than ever now. And when this is done, I swear you can kill me. You can stake me. Burn me. I don’t give a fuck. But I need you because Talanthia is a monster. She’s taken over the Alpha’s mate.”
I gasped, swearing the night had suddenly begun to spin out of control. This couldn’t be happening; this couldn’t be real.
Lucille. Lucille with her wild mane of flowing red hair and her intelligent blue eyes. Lucille who hated me. Hated me and yet suddenly decided to make a truce? Who’d been hacking and coughing and who had told me she was sorry...
“Oh my God, she knew.” It was why she wouldn’t let me come over. Had the monster been hanging over her shoulder? Licking its lips in anticipation of what came next?
My stomach heaved again.
“Steven!” I hissed, looking up the hill and with terror pumping through my veins. “She’s got my brother. She’s got my—”
He stepped up to me, planted his hands on my shoulders, and gave me a firm shake. “Yes. Exactly. Now you get it. She’s taken over a form that none on these lands would come up against.”
I laughed, but the sound was dead and chilling.
Carter smacked my cheek so hard I felt the instant blossom of heat course through me, bringing with it clarity and focus. I was still numb from shock, but I could think again.
“You’re the only one, Scarlett. The only one who can go in there with me and fight this thing.”
“Where’s Clarence?” I asked numbly, only then realizing I hadn’t seen the Alpha in days. I hadn’t worried because I hadn’t cared. The bogeyman hadn’t gone after the Alpha as I’d feared, but then when had the exchange taken place?
How had Clarence not known what Lucille had become?
I looked at Carter. I hadn’t known. And no one else had, either. I trembled.
He shook his head. “I saw him head out earlier in his truck.”
I wilted with relief, but then the tension came back the moment I thought of little Steven alone in that house with that monster for company.
“She’s going to steal his heart. He’s dead.”
Carter clenched his jaw
. “Maybe. I won’t lie. I don’t know.”
I turned, rushed to my truck, reached under my seat, and pulled out a gun and badge. I wasn’t SCPD, but I was law on those lands. And this kill needed to be official.
“I will never forgive you for what you’ve done,” I said low and with an edge of steel, “but I will stand by you to bring this bitch down. And when this is done, Carter, I will kill you myself.”
He nodded once. “Fair enough.”
“Let’s go.”
~*~
Walking into the house that’d been the cause of such humiliation for me just days before was terrifying. My knees felt weak and wobbly. My stomach was a hard rock, twisting and grinding against itself.
Unlike before, though, I did not walk into a dark home but one lit warmly with lamplight and candles, making it all the more spooky because I knew what hid within the walls.
“Knock, knock,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as if I was ten seconds away from pissing myself, sniffing the air and praying with all my soul that I wouldn’t smell blood. Wouldn’t find Steven’s still, twisted body lying on the floor. “Just came to check in on you, Lucille. See how you and the boy were feeling.”
I moved slowly from the living room into the kitchen, which looked spotlessly cleaned. The sage-green cabinets, which Lucille had picked out with such pride just a few years ago, the amber-colored marble countertop, the white subway-tile backsplash. And vases full of award-winning roses rested all over the place.
All so familiar and at one time comforting to me, but suddenly I felt as if I walked through a stranger’s home. As if none of it were real. As if it were nothing but a hazy dream, a nightmare I’d wake up from soon.
I smelled ammonia. Ammonia and almonds. The scent of death.
I swallowed hard, the firm grip of the gun in my hand grounding and centering me.
“Steven,” I whispered.
And I heard the merest flutter of noise come from behind the pantry door. Carter apparently heard it the same moment I had. He turned to me and I to him. He was closest to the door.
I nodded and mouthed, “One.”
I aimed the revolver dead center at the pantry door.
“Two.”
I wet my lips and exhaled once.
“Three.”
Carter tossed the door open. Steven screamed, curling in on himself, and whimpered, “Don’t hurt me.”
His voice was thick and gravelly. And then he coughed, and I knew that one thing was true at least; the boy did have the whooping cough.
I rushed to my brother, dropping to my knees at the same moment I holstered my pistol.
“Steven,” I whispered gently. “It’s just me. It’s Scarlett. Where’s your mama?”
At the sound of my voice, he flung himself into my arms, crying and hacking loudly as another coughing spasm shook him.
He was trembling violently and clutching onto my neck with the strength of a budding shifter male.
“She’s not my mama. I saw her. She’s...she’s...”
“A monster,” I murmured, kissing his temple as I ran my hands over his slight, naked form. I felt no bones out of place. No bumps or bruises. Even his chest was intact. “Sweetheart, did it try to hurt you?”
He shook his head hard, causing his dark curls to tumble around his shoulders. “I covered my scent like you told me, Scar. I was quiet. And small. I did what you told me.”
The terrible sound of demonic laughter caused us all to look up at the same time. Lucille came gliding through the door, wearing a long grin, and came to a stop just behind Carter.
There was no monologuing, no posturing or threats, she merely shoved her fist through his back and ripped out a chunk of his spine.
Carter’s eyes widened, and I couldn’t seem to move.
Lucille’s bloodshot blue eyes stared at me as she then cocked Carter’s head to the side and bit out a chunk of his neck. Blood spurted everywhere.
Steven screamed.
And that finally woke me up.
“Go!” I told the boy. “Run, Steven. Now!”
He didn’t fight me. Didn’t beg me to go with him. The boy shifted and barreled out of the kitchen door behind us and into the night.
Lucille dropped a jerking Carter to the floor as though he were nothing to her. Blood poured down her throat. Her hand covered her stomach, and that was when I finally noticed the enormous bump of a pregnant belly. She might have stolen Lucille’s skin, but the monster couldn’t have hidden the pregnancy.
I looked at Carter.
He had a giant, gaping wound at his neck. Blood spurted from the artery with each beat of his heart, covering him in gore.
“It told me to wait for you,” she said, and her voice was Lucille’s, but she was not Lucille. “And so I have.” She cocked her head, and the movement reminded me of a snake’s. “I hear you’ve been looking for me, Scarlett Smith. How’d you like the game? It told me you would. Told me I would draw you out. How did I do?”
She walked, more like glided, toward me. She wore jeans and a shirt, but her movements were ethereal, like a diaphanous gown undulating in a gentle breeze. It was easy to see how she differed from Carter.
Talanthia was as alien as Carter was not. Carter had adapted. Talanthia never had.
“It who? Who told you?”
Running her fingers across her blood-soaked chin, she began to draw fluttering circles along her cheeks. “You have an enemy,” she practically sang. “Can you guess who?”
I began to back toward the open door. I seriously doubted bullets would stop the creature. But more than that, she wore Lucille’s skin. My brain screamed that Lucille was long gone, but my hand couldn’t seem to move to retrieve the revolver.
I needed answers, and the only one who had them was a psychopathic heart thief.
“You killed my parents.”
She grinned, nodding happily. “It told me to.” She looked aside for a moment, as though remembering a distant but happy memory. “Nothing personal, though, Scarlett. I was mostly here for him,” she snarled as her eyes began to glow a bloody red.
“Carter?”
She snorted. “Him too. That bastard chose her. He deserves his fate.”
When she turned back to look at me, I saw my death reflected in her eyes. Finally my fingers found the pistol. Whipping it up, I shot a slug straight through the center of her forehead.
The blow kicked her back. I’d hoped she might drop like a stone.
Instead she laughed, and black ice skated down my spine.
A voice inside my head whispered, Run.
Chapter 22
Mercer
Mercer had opted not to go to the damn picnic after all. He couldn’t understand what’d possessed Lucille to think it a good idea, and without Scarlett there, it’d seemed pointless, anyway.
Dumping ten bags of trash into the metal bin out back, he frowned as he suddenly became aware of the frantic, heavy breathing of a young pup. The lungs rattled.
Frowning, he twirled, nearly barreled over by his seven-year-old brother. Steven’s eyes were wide, frantic, and the whites practically glowing.
The little wolf was howling, growling, snapping, and barking at him.
Mercer chuckled. “What’s the matter with you, whelp? You know I can’t understand you when you get this way. Besides, what are you doing out here? Lucille will tan your hide if she discovers you—”
Steven reared his neck back and howled, giving one as good as any adult of the pack, and the sound of it caused Mercer’s arm hairs to stand on edge. As a pup, the child could not join in on pack telepathy. Children’s thoughts were too jumbled and chaotic to easily understand. Not until he hit thirteen would he be allowed into the collective.
Grabbing the sides of his brother’s furry face, Mercer growled deep in his throat. “Shift now and tell me what’s the matter.”
Fear the likes of which Mercer hadn’t felt in over twenty-five years threatened to break him, but he held tight.
<
br /> Steven shifted, but the transformation was only half completed. A testament to his brother’s fear.
“Scarlett’s in trouble, Merc. Sharp Elbows. Sharp Elbows is here, and it’s got her.”
“Go to my office and stay inside! Tell James to go to the house. Now!” He turned, shifting as he ran, opening his mind and his heart, telling his wolf to seek its mate.
He and Scarlett had never declared themselves mates, and never would, but he’d claimed her. And once she was claimed, the wolf saw her as his.
He picked up her scent immediately. Honeysuckle and the sweet, spicy tang of her blood.
With a howl that rent the night, Mercer ran for her. Fear breathed down his neck, choking the breath from his body. His only thought was Scarlett.
~*~
Scarlett
The revelations of the night kept threatening to slide me deep into shock, but there was no time for that.
Lucille was chasing. Lucille. But not Lucille.
The eyes didn’t flash the green of the pack but the bloody red of the bogeyman. Twisting as I ran, I emptied a round of iron bullets into the creature behind me. I knew it didn’t help, but maybe it would slow the bitch down.
All of ’em kill shots. Another in the head. Four in the chest. And one in the neck.
She just grinned, exposing her fangs. A twisted amalgam of woman, beast, and demon.
I blinked, turned, and ran harder, using the preternatural strength of my body to avoid anything I might collide with at top speed. The world around me was a blur of shadows and colors.
My muscles flexed. My chest actually heaved as I sucked wind. My claws were long, and they were out. My face was a twisted mask, no longer the pretty girl but the vampire.
What the hell could I do to stop her? Carter would know.
I swallowed the bile threatening to come up.
He’d lied to me. All along he’d lied to me.
My mind flashed with the last image of him. Broken and discarded. Lucille had mauled him and left just the trace of the demon behind. The pile of skin that’d once been my partner no longer breathed, and hot blood slid down my cheeks from burning eyes.
Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves (Southern Vampire Detective #1) Page 26
