Dead To Me

By Fae Merlin

Celeste is one of the most valuable members of the DELTA faction of the Vampire Vestels, a group of warriors whose sole mission was to guard the timeline.

 

Normally alone and happy about it, Celeste is called on a mission to travel back through time and stop a young man from making a devastating mistake. He doesn't see it as such and it will take a lot of convincing from Celeste to get him to change his mind. Her goal is to get him to stall until she can make him see how unwise his decisions would be.

 

If she fails, the deaths of billions could be on his hands… and hers. She must succeed.

 

It's only a matter of time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fae Merlin
• Release date: Aug 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223830047

Book preview

Prologue

Celeste woke abruptly . She jerked up slightly, her eyes wide open, scanning the dark room around her.

Something had woken her. It may be silent now, but she was alert, her vampire senses tingling.

The hum of electricity moving through the walls around her was normal. She heard no foreign ticks or beeps. She didn’t hear footsteps or sense the presence of anyone in her room.

Her little haven within the walls of Stopwatch was secure. She didn’t need to worry.

But she was worried. She sat up and swung her pale legs, so they hung over the side of the bed and gripped the edge of the mattress with her long fingers.

Something had woken her up.

She leaned forward and let her head hang down, so her straight, platinum blond hair fell like a curtain around her face. She stared at the floor, listening as closely as she could, reaching out with her senses to feel if anyone was on the other side of her door, out in the hallway, or perhaps in the lobby of this boarding house.

She sensed nothing.

Celeste wasn’t used to being confused. She was an accomplished vampire of rank in the Vestal Vampires, a group of female warriors assigned to Stopwatch for the purpose of security and battle. She had personally been assigned to duty by The Inquisitioners. To put it simply, they protected the timeline of Earth. Whenever a deviant tried to force a change in the timeline, it was the duty of the Vestal Vampires to go to whatever time where they needed, track down the deviant, and execute them, if necessary.

Celeste wasn’t afraid of anything.

So why did she feel fear at that moment?

Celeste

Her name was floating on air toward her...

Celeste whipped her head to the side and stared into the darkness. There was no light for her eyes to adjust to. All she saw was black. It was the only way she could get any sleep.

Celeste!

Her name once again called out, this time with a level of fear in the word. Celeste jumped up and spun in a circle. In the next moment, she was dashing across the room to the door to turn on the light. Her right big toe hit something on the floor, and she remembered she had a chair there. The chair had legs. She paused long enough to remember that her nerves felt little – had she still been human, then that would’ve hurt. 

Celeste, can you hear me? Can you see me?

Celeste squeezed her eyes shut to rid them of the few tears of blood. The pain in her toe had already gone. Before she opened them again, she saw light behind her eyelids. There was light in the room.

Her heart might have stopped if it hadn’t already. She relaxed her face but didn’t open her eyes immediately. What would she see? What had come into her home? What had invaded the safety of her haven?

She opened her eyes and turned them to the source of the light.

Although she was struck with shock, she pushed herself to her feet and stared at the apparition. It had to be a specter. It had to be a hallucination.

She was looking at a transparent version of herself. At least, she was pretty sure it was herself. The Celeste in the apparition was thinner, with shorter hair and she was wearing...

Celeste ran her eyes down the woman’s body. She didn’t look like a warrior. She didn’t have on Celeste’s traditional clothing. Even the black jacket was missing. Celeste never went anywhere without her jacket. She’d received it when she first joined the Vestal Vampires. It was her favorite jacket.

The Celeste in the apparition separated from itself and came back into focus as if it were an electronic signal that was randomly interrupted.

She was reaching toward Celeste, but there was no way Celeste was going to touch that thing. She might get electrocuted. Or worse, taken to some God-forsaken Hell hole where she would have to fight for her unlife every single day. She wasn’t giving up her haven for some lookalike.

Celeste! The woman screamed at her. Don’t kill him! Don’t go!

Celeste frowned. If this was some kind of sign or a warning, why did it have to be so cryptic? She should have told herself much more than don’t go. Don’t go where? To the Cathedral? To the Watchers? To the Outriders lair? Where? And who was she not supposed to kill? She didn’t