It was impossible to believe that Carter was dead.
But then...he’d already been dead. For three damn years.
My heart thumped sluggishly. Still high on Jamie’s blood, I tasted an emotion I hadn’t felt since my rebirth—not just fear but primal, raw horror.
“You can’t escape death,” Lucille singsonged behind me before laughing madly. My skin rushed with prickles.
No, that wasn’t Lucille. Not anymore. I clenched my jaw, running toward the only place I could think of, disassociating myself from the woman behind me. I’d never seen eye to eye with the Alpha’s mate, but I’d never hated her, either. Would have never wished her this fate.
Snarls, snaps, and growls rang out behind me. Everyone was at that damned convenient picnic Lucille herself had been so fucking insistent that we put on. I had no pack telepathy. No way to reach out to Mercer. He’d never get to me in time. But even if he could have, what could he do?
Lucille gained on me.
Running purely on instinct, I followed my inner core. I’d laughed in Harlen’s face when he’d told me to trust that core. He’d sounded like a deranged hippie. Inner peace and light and blah blah blah...but he was right.
There was a fire inside of me. Something old and sure and insistent told me that I had to take Sharp Elbows to the haunted shack.
And I thought I knew why.
Sharp Elbows was a thing of the Veil. Something not of our world, that should never have crawled out of that primordial pit...not her and not Carter. She was ten times more powerful than I was right now, even with her body swollen and ripe with pending birth.
One last heart would get her there—mine.
The stupid rock might not beat well anymore, but it was rich with shifter blood. If she got my heart, not only would I die, but so, so many others would too when those demons were birthed.
I was flying, running so fast my feet barely touched ground. I no longer even looked behind me. I could hear her steadily gaining, feel the breath of her body caress the winds around me.
The world smelled of honeysuckle and cloves.
I was not sure why I was suddenly aware of that. But it was as if my subconscious needed me to understand that those smells mattered, that they meant something.
I shook my head. It was so not the time to think about anything other than getting there.
Mindlessly focused on the shack less than five hundred yards ahead of me, I never saw the stupid rut in the road.
It was as if I’d been sitting in a car, flying at over a hundred miles an hour, and hit a hole—except I did that while running. My ankle gave out. I fell. Hard.
Hard enough to create a massive hole when I landed, kicking up dust, grass, and clumps of stone.
Sharp Elbows was on me not even a second later, her hand reaching for my left breast, her claws extended and ready to split me in two.
I grabbed her wrist, digging my thumb into the vein and bleeding her instantly. Thick black blood spilled onto my chin and neck, making me hungry. Making me mindless, desperate.
I snarled, licking my lips as I tried like hell to ignore my vampiric reflex to dive in and drink.
“You can’t hurt me now, Vampire. I’m invincible. But you,” she snarled in the voice of a woman I’d once known, “you are not.”
But I hadn’t been aiming for the vein; I’d been aiming for the flexor tendons. In a second, I flicked my knife-sharp talon right through them.
Snick.
Snick.
Snick.
Rendering her fingers useless. She screamed, her eyes going wide as it finally dawned on her that I wasn’t so stupid after all.
“Good to know that shifter and demon anatomy aren’t all that different,” I gloated.
I rolled, trying like hell to get at her other hand. If I controlled her hands, she couldn’t get at my heart. I was giddy with adrenaline. Excited by my victory, knowing the fight was almost over, congratulating myself on a job well done...what an idiot I was.
In a move I didn’t see coming, she used that useless hand and slammed it over my temples. The blow was so fierce that it dizzied me. Not for long, only a second. But a second was all it took for her to take her other hand and drive those long claws from the hollow of my throat straight down to my breast, cracking me open.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
The worst was the poison that dripped from those claws into my tortured flesh. Hellfire raced through me. I screamed.
Every inch of me burned, raged with flame gone out of control.
If I didn’t fight back, I was dead. That was all there was to it.
Time slowed. I saw her hand curl into a fist, ready to smash through my ribs, to get at my heart. And though I knew that what she’d just done to me was bad—as in, “could probably kill me” bad—I fought.
Fought like hell.
Fought like the devil. I didn’t know where the strength came from. Not from me but from some place deeper, an untapped wellspring of power I’d never possessed before.
Ebony power that beckoned me. Told me to take. And so I took. I took and took. I felt my face transform, saw her eyes go wide. That fire rushing through me still ran out of control, but something else came with it.
Something I didn’t think was entirely good. Something that still crawled, still slunk and slithered and hid in places nothing and no one dared to walk.
“What are—”
I touched her, and all that power escaped me and sank into her. And she flew as if I directed the throw. Her body hurtled like a ball of light mere yards from the shack. She didn’t move. Smoke poured from her. Her skin had turned black. But it wasn’t enough. I knew that.
I didn’t know how I knew that, but I knew that.
Digging deeper into that ebony darkness, I crawled to my knees and forced myself to stand, ignoring the tunnel that called to me. The death that wanted me.
Each step was agony, but somehow I made it to her.
She moaned when my shadow loomed over her.
“My. Babies,” she moaned.
“Are hellspawns,” I spat.
I knew what I had to do, and I also knew that Mercer would never forgive me for it. Ignoring that painful thought, I yanked on Lucille’s hand and began to walk backward. Moving so slowly that every step was like walking through waist-deep concrete.
Lucille batted at me weakly, but already I could feel her strength coming back. I should have pumped more into her.
The ebony spring inside cried out for me to take more. But it scared me; there was something unnatural about it. That darkness. I’d already taken too much. Magick always came with a cost.
But you can end it here. Now...it would be so easy.
It taunted me. Tempted me. Teased me to do it.
It would be so easy. Just a little bit. Just one more time. Who would know? It couldn’t hurt, right?
It hurt, though. Moving. Dragging Lucille. I was tired. So, so tired.
Take, little vampire. Dark beauty. Do you know? Do you even know?
“Know what?” I whispered, shivering as I paused because something was very wrong with me.
“Scarlett, stop!”
Mercer.
I swallowed hard. How had he found me? Maybe I was hallucinating. I looked up. And there he was. Massive. Beautiful. Nude in the moonlight, his chest heaving for breath. His eyes burning like green neon. He held a hand out to me, and on his face I saw the panic. The terror. The whites of his eyes far too bright and much too large.
I’d begun moving again. My back hit the weathered door.
The shack trembled, and Delilah screamed.
“Scar, please.” I heard the terror in his tone, and it hurt me.
I shook my head. “I have to, Merc. She’ll never stop if I don’t.”
Her claws dug into my wrist, and it was my turn to bleed on her. Her grip was firmer. Stronger. I had only seconds before whatever it was that I’d poured into her, that helped hold her immobile, evaporated.
>
He shook his head and gestured at me to come. “You can’t go in there. You know that. The witches sealed the door, Scar. Come back to me.”
I heard a weird, strange whistling sound. I frowned. My head hurt. Why did it hurt so much? I breathed, and there went that whistle again. Next time I breathed, I realized it was air rushing through the gaping wound in my neck.
“Scar.”
The way he said my name like a prayer made me shiver. My lashes fluttered. They felt so heavy.
Everything was heavy.
“Hurts, Merc,” I said. Or at least I thought I did.
Sharp Elbows grunted, getting to her feet. She would kill me and hurt Merc. I knew it.
“Can’t happen.”
Darkness, I whispered.
Not I, little vampire. Not I...
Give me more.
I felt its greedy laughter echo in my soul.
Again that power filled my body, making me feel like a super-juiced battery. I touched the door behind me, and wood exploded outward, piercing through my body.
Sharp Elbows screamed, and I smelled so much blood. So hungry. So tired.
Love you, M.
Not sure if I said it or thought it. But I took the final step inside, and then the demons descended.
~*~
Mercer
Delilah and countless others jumped the two women like a rabid pack of wolves.
Scarlett dropped, and panic clawed at his heart. The screams of demons and the two women would haunt him all the days of his life.
Mercer ran.
He wore a cross. A cross Dean had sanctified for him years ago. The metal burned like a hot coal against his chest. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he didn’t stop to think. Mercer ran inside.
Delilah was on Lucille, sucking the ball of soul out of her. Scarlett’s bogeyman was dead. Three other phantasms were at her stomach, ripping through her swollen flesh to get at the spawn. They were gone too.
Ten phantasms were on Scarlett. She shuddered with each swipe of their amorphous hands passing through her.
Dean had told him once that Scarlett was so much more than just a vampire, and he could see that now. By the way the demons gorged and cackled with glee, how they snarled and snapped at one another, desperate to keep all of her to themselves.
As he rushed through them, they scattered like bowling pins, howling in rage and pain at the flash of fiery golden light shooting from out of the cross on his neck.
“Scar. Scar. My Scar,” he said, his voice broken and cracking as he gently lifted her into his arms and he had a terrible flashback to another time when he’d had to do the same.
Then she’d been on the verge of death, and now, she was again. As he ran, he kept one eye turned to his surroundings and the other on her.
He couldn’t run as fast in this form as she could. But there was an old trapper’s cabin, forgotten by nearly all, where he could render first aid.
It looked as though every drop of blood she’d had in her system was already gone. She was pale, her lips were blue, her skin colorless and cold as ice. A gaping wound from the base of her neck to her heart mocked him.
“Close, damn you,” he snarled at the injury.
But not a lash flickered. Her heart was still in her chest. If he could just get blood into her. That was all she needed.
The trapper’s cabin, which was just a smaller version of the haunted shack, finally appeared over the next hill. With his heart in his throat, Mercer ran. He wasn’t gentle as he turned sideways and rammed his body through the door, busting it open and protecting her from the rough edges as he slipped inside.
There was a narrow cot that he tenderly laid her on. Her left hand dropped to the wooden floor with a dull thud. Merc had used the place as a sanctuary when he’d needed to get away from her. When he’d needed time to think.
He’d built it three centuries ago, and still it stood. Weathered and worn, but strong. He rushed toward a small fridge unit, tore the door open, reached inside, and scooped out the twenty packets of blood he’d called himself a fool for always keeping on hand.
He’d never had any intention of showing her this place, of bringing her here. And yet, he’d always stayed prepared.
Mercer had had to devise makeshift first aid for her in the past, but in his gut, he knew nothing had ever been as bad this. After grabbing tubing, gauze, and a needle, he rushed back to her side.
Merc had worked as a medic during the Civil War. After his time in the field, he’d made it a point to learn about the healing properties of herbs and weeds and anything else he could think of. There were doctors out there who could take care of his people just fine, but he’d trusted none of them with her life.
“Hang in there, baby,” he murmured to her still form as he prepped his work space as fast and as efficiently as he could. “Just hang in there.”
Few herbal remedies worked on vampires, mostly because they weren’t technically among the living. But willow bark did.
It was good for many things, and chief among them was pain control. He rushed to his supply cabinet, snatched up a glass jar of it, lifted the metal lid, and pulled out a long sliver of it. It looked like beef jerky and tasted like hell.
If she woke up midinfusion, she’d want it.
Vampires nearing the end began to calcify, turning into semipermeable stone, as it were. When he turned back to her, he scented chalk.
“C’mon, Scarlett, don’t do this. C’mon, sweetheart.”
She looked so peaceful, so still, a bloody, broken angel lying on that bed, and his heart lurched. His sunshine girl couldn’t go like this.
The wolf inside him paced like a restless, caged beast desperate to break free. It’d been some years since the wolf had decided, along with the man, that the vampire was more than just his. The vampire was his mate.
Only one thing in the world could fracture a shifter’s sanity. Closing down on that desperate thought, he set to work. He knelt beside her and first slipped the willow bark under her tongue. She wouldn’t need to chew for the herb to take effect.
Then he lifted the hand coated in blood and draped it across his knee. Lacking any sort of tourniquet, he used the only thing he could, his hand, and grabbed hold of her bicep in a vise-like grip until the bluish-green vein stood out prettily against the grayish white of her flesh.
But when he tried to push the needle through the vein, her skin would not part. The calcification process had begun in earnest.
“Damn you, Scarlett, if you die on me, I’ll never forgive you,” he snarled and tried again, this time not being gentle as he shoved the needle through, ripping through her stony flesh and grimacing at the knowledge that what he did would bruise her.
But he could live with hurting her. What he couldn’t live with was losing her.
The needle wasn’t in as deep as he’d have liked, but he knew by the way the vein plumped up that it was in. Moving briskly, he released her arm then quickly hooked up the tubing and Baggies, manually pumping the blood in.
In the field, he’d have killed someone for doing things that way. No doubt he was pushing air bubbles through. In a human, the embolism could be fatal. But a vampire was made of heartier stuff. It would hurt like hell, but it was the quickest way to reverse the calcification process.
He pushed through Baggie after Baggie, horrified to watch as the life-saving blood, rather than rushing through her veins and feeding her, began to leak through every open cut and orifice.
From her eyes, her nose, her ears. Seeping out of her pores. But still he pumped it in. Adding Baggie after Baggie after Baggie.
It wasn’t working. His hands were slick with her blood and his sweat. He tore one bag off, attached another, and repeated the process ad nauseam but to no avail.
“C’mon, baby. Please.” He pleaded as tears tracked down his face. But still she didn’t stir.
He needed more blood. He’d had a shipment sent to the den earlier in the week. Lyle had probably drop
ped off a case of it tonight. But the den was thirty miles away.
He’d need to shift, and even so, running full out, he’d probably be gone an hour, if not longer.
He had no phone in the place, no way to call anybody and tell them what they needed. If he used pack telepathy, Clarence would hear, he’d know. He’d find out sooner rather than later what’d happened to Lucille.
His chest heaved as panic beat her furious wings at him. Shaking his head, he looked at Scarlett. She was hardly recognizable, as though she’d bathed in blood. The cot was coated in it. So was the floor beneath her as her body continued to leak every bit of the blood.
Turning his palms over, he realized he was soaked in blood too.
Lowering his head, he gently licked the blood off her cheek and sucked in a sharp breath. The pallor of her flesh was no longer white but deep gray.
Scar didn’t have an hour. She might not even have ten minutes left.
And then every cell in his body stilled as he scented honeysuckle and cloves. Twirling with a sharp and terrible growl, he shifted to his massive gray wolf, ready to tear into Dean because he’d promised she wouldn’t get hurt, and he’d lied.
But the mysterious Veiler wasn’t there.
Cocking his head, his wolf began to whine in confusion. The smell grew stronger. And it was only when he turned around again that he realized why.
That scent that he’d always thought of as belonging to the ancient Veiler wasn’t his at all but hers.
Curls of ebony smoke rose from her corpse as she began to slowly convulse. Outside, the winds howled and thunder rolled.
No! He screamed the word inside the wolf’s head. Only the truly ancient vampires turned to dust. Scarlett was only in her forties. That shouldn’t be happening.
The ebony was suddenly shot through with veins of winking silver.
The wolf, confused and desperate, began a low, plaintive wailing, but the man racked his brain for a way to stop it. There had to be a way. Something he could...
Why does it have to be the vein, Scarlett?
Because that’s the only time it makes me feel alive...
He expelled a harsh breath, and his eyes zoomed to the medicine cabinet. Particularly to the glass vial full of dried purple flowers on the third shelf.
Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves (Southern Vampire Detective #1) Page 27
