Page 21

21

RAHIL

It felt as though the ones Rahil had lost were truly haunting him.

For just a moment, the world had seemed right again, as he’d cuddled against Mercer’s chest, letting his lips be stroked, his fangs caressed and the venom within flow so freely that all signs of Mercer’s migraine had vanished. Some hopeful, traitorous part of him was convinced that things were meant to be like that: the two of them, hiding from the world.

The two of them, together.

But then that desire had slipped free in a term he’d forgotten was part of his vocabulary, as if he was lounging in bed with Shefali on a Saturday afternoon, the sound of the boys playing in the living room echoing up the stairs. This wasn’t his life partner, though—was, in fact, a man who’d declined his affections at every turn. It was incredible that they were even friends. And Rahil worried he’d ruined that too.

His attempts to retreat left Leah’s notebook spread across the floor, a picture starting up at him. Scraggly red curls and pale skin. It couldn’t be her . Surely, there were other redheaded women in the city of San Salud. Other redheaded women who’d died from a vampire bite.

Rahil couldn’t think through the frantic spinning in his head, and he fought just to breathe as he slid off the bed. He couldn’t be here. Not with Mercer looking at him like that—so guarded and serious—and the sudden epiphany Rahil didn’t know yet how to explain. He needed to get away. To figure this out.

Mercer had been right to tell him off.

And he was off now, standing in the center of the room, his gaze darting anywhere but at Mercer. “I’ll um, I’ll bring Lydia back. When I’m home.”

Mercer looked like he was about to stand, but he put a hand to his head instead. “I—Okay.”

“And I’ll bring Leah’s—her project, with me,” Rahil added. Whatever happened, he had to finish that. For Lydia. For Leah. He knelt automatically, piling the pieces atop each other. “I can work on it in my, whatever.”

“Okay,” Mercer repeated.

He’d seemed like an open book since Rahil had sat down on his bed, run his fingers through the man’s gorgeous curls and pressed against his beautiful skin, but now he was unreadable again, stoic and staring. He said nothing as Rahil scooped Leah’s technology into his arms, balancing the notebook awkwardly on top. The picture floated to the floor.

Rahil gave it one final look. Through the earthy, nutty tang of Mercer’s blood, he swore he could still taste a different person’s blood on his lips: sweet and spicy. Whoever she’d been, she had asked him. He’d thought he was doing the right thing.

Was there a right thing, where he was concerned?

Mercer kept staring at him solemnly, like the answer was no. Rahil had messed this up, like he’d messed up everything else.

He stepped out, stepped away. And then he ran.

Rahil's phone buzzed as he jogged, shaking and aching, through the front door of his house. He could hear Lydia and Avery, still clearly enjoying themselves somewhere above. He wanted nothing more than to ignore them both. Ignore them, and ignore the notebook he held, and pretend like there wasn’t the tiniest chance that his cancer victim and Mercer’s curly redheaded wife had been the same person.

Setting down the weight in his arms, he struggled for the easiest of his many two disasters. Upon opening his phone, he found the massive string of texts he’d been receiving wasn’t even from Mercer—and his heart sank despite himself. Instead of awkward requests to return to a solely business-related partnership, or worse, to not bother coming back at all, his phone was clogged with adorable pictures of a niece’s new puppy, complete with so many responses that he couldn’t even tell who’d posted the first one. Apparently, they were having an adoption party. Rahil was invited. Amira could pick him up if he needed the ride. They were even shifting the time to be closer to sunset, just in case.

Rahil felt sick.

He swiped through useless updates on the Wesley Smith-Garcia case—the jury was about to go into deliberation, it seemed—until he reached the one unrelated text.

Metal Daddy

Let me know when you’re home safely.

Between his sun-poisoning and whatever else the emotions of the day had stirred in him, Rahil suddenly needed to throw up. He grabbed behind him for the front door, but as his hand slid across the knob a knock came from the other side.

Rahil’s chest caught. His blood ran cold, then hot. Had Mercer…?

Despite all the issues it would create, all the emotions Rahil hadn’t yet worked through, he still wanted to throw the door open and find Merc there. He’d smile, small and crooked, and say hello, babe , or something just as cheesy, and then they’d—what? Live happily ever after? And what would happen to them then, if it turned out Rahil truly had—that he’d—

He drew a breath, steadying himself, and opened the door.

The woman beyond wore gloves and a scarf despite the warmth of the summer, her hood up against the sun and her braid pulled over one shoulder. He would have known she was a vampire even if he hadn’t noticed the trembling, or the hint of black blood-hunger in her eyes, or the way she flinched at every noise, like a hunter was about to creep around the corner.

“Rahil Babcock?” Her voice was raw.

In his present state of emotions, the surname made him flinch. “No—Zaman. Babcock was my wife.”

“But you’re Matthew Babcock’s father, right?” the vampire insisted.

The chill in Rahil’s blood deepened. Why would a vampire want to know that? An unwarranted thought passed through his head: that this vampire was here now to tell him she’d been the one to kill Matt. That she hadn’t meant to.

That this was all just a misunderstanding.

“Do you want something?” Rahil managed, the words grating against his throat.

The vampire before him flinched . She tucked her arms across her chest, like she was trying to put up a shield, and her gaze wouldn’t quite meet his. “Matthew always said you were one of the rare good ones—someone who kept to their ethics and the law regardless of the circumstances. That if all vampires were like you, maybe we could live in peace.”

Rahil felt the burn of the tears before the emotion hit, jagged and aching in the center of his chest. Such a backhanded compliment, a complete misunderstanding of what drove this alleged abandonment of ethics in some vampires, despite all the nuance and compassion Rahil and his wife had tried to instill in their son growing up. He didn’t have room for this, not after everything that he’d already delved into today. With a short intake of breath, he wiped back the tears and tried not to feel it all at once.

His son had loved him. Despite the depths of Matt’s corruption and cruelty, somewhere deep down, he had loved Rahil—had let that love convince him that there could be goodness in vampires. And it still hadn’t been enough.

But then he’d reached out, and Rahil hadn’t reached back, and that hadn’t been enough. If Jonah had been there, or even Shefali, they would have known what to do to help Matt, but Rahil had sat in his decrepit house and let his son dig his own grave.

“I can go,” the vampire muttered, taking a step back, towards the sun. She shook so hard it looked like she might not make it.

“Do you need something?” Rahil asked, softer this time. He reached out a hand. “Of course you do, look at you. Come in. Please. Come in.”

Now she looked like the one about to cry. She moved slowly—hesitantly—and Rahil wondered how her life had been since she’d turned, for her to still be so skittish even around other vampires. She didn’t even seem to notice the desperate state of the house, her flighty gaze going immediately to the windows and doorways. She jerked at the sound of Avery cackling from upstairs. Her fangs slipped out a little, and he could see her fighting to push them back in.

“Come; I have something that will help.” Rahil didn’t give her a choice, ushering her past the stairway and away from the distant humans, until they reached the kitchen. “The freezing ruins a lot of their nutritional value,” he said, drawing the last two cubes of emergency blood out of the freezer, which looked a little wonky from the hours the power hadn’t been running the previous night, “but they should at least curb the edge until you can feed properly.”

She shoved them both in her mouth at once, cracking her teeth through the cubes like it was the first thing she’d eaten in days. By the state of her eyes and the blackness of the hunger already creeping into them, she probably hadn’t fed in even longer.

Rahil cleared his throat as she finished, leaning back against the counter. “Better?”

She still shook from sun-poisoning, but she seemed slightly more stable—less suspicious of him, if nothing else. “Yes. Thanks.”

“It’s no problem.” Rahil would just have to—somehow—get Tim’s coworker’s phlebotomist sister to draw Tim’s blood again to replenish the freezer, was all. Rahil gave a weak smile, trying not to exude as much awkwardness as he felt. “So, tell me how you knew Matt?”

“He mentored me, before…” She gave a slight lift of her upper jaw, letting the first tips of her fangs slip out before pulling back in.

So her turning had been recent. “At his Vitalis-Barron job?”

“Yeah.” The vampire shifted uncomfortably. She looked out the window, her expression twisting. “You know it’s not like I believed everything they were doing was fine. But if they were taking the bad sorts off the streets and progressing science at the same time…” She said it so defensively and readily that Rahil wondered if it was even him who she was arguing with or herself. She tucked her arms back around her waist. “Not all vampires are as decent as like, you, or whatever.”

“You’re right,” Rahil assured her.

It was clearly not the response she’d expected. Her mouth opened, then closed again.

“Most vampires act decent, but not all of them. They’re like any other group of people. In any population, there will always be assholes and abusers, people who make selfish and cruel choices.”

“Right,” she agreed hesitantly, like she knew the catch was coming, as the catch had clearly come for her already, with fangs and a bloodlust.

Rahil lifted a brow. “If you had shown up at Vitalis-Barron’s front porch instead of mine, do you think they would say you were one of the decent ones?”

Her expression cracked down the middle, and she sucked in a breath. From the way she wouldn’t meet his gaze, he knew her answer. He wouldn’t force it out of her, asking for something else instead. Something deeper.

“Why did you come here , kiddo?”

She did look at him then, just in time for him to see the full force of her breaking, the welling in her eyes, still tainted black from her blood starvation, and the juts of her cheekbones sharp with regular human hunger. The trembling beneath her skin turned to a sob. She curled inward.

After all the harm she’d clearly done to his people, Rahil could have let her suffer the weight of this alone, but he found he didn’t want to. She had been someone to his son, and been influenced by him, and that made her Rahil’s responsibility. He reached out with care, gently rubbing her shoulder a few times. “I’m glad you came to me. I’m glad I can help you, even if it’s just a little.”

She kept crying, her plea seemingly for the universe more than it was for him. “We were making things better. We were the front line. We were bringing justice where others couldn’t.”

He let her have her anger and her misery, gently adding after, “Are you sure that every vampire’s death you caused made the world better? Did you ever get it wrong?”

She held her trembling hands over her face. Her voice was so small. “I don’t know.”

“I do know that all people will get things wrong sometimes. That’s how life works. If, knowing we will make mistakes, we design a system that could let one of those mistakes irreversibly ruin someone’s life, or take it away entirely, then perhaps that system itself is wrong.” He hadn’t known how to say that to Matt—how to let himself get close enough to say it—but for this poor stranger, standing in his kitchen, the words were easy.

The vampire wiped her eyes, managing to look at him finally, her brow tight and her mouth askew. “What can I do about that?”

And that was the end of Rahil’s wisdom. He shrugged, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “I guess in this case, you chose not to participate?”

She gave a little snort. “I’m certainly not catching vampires for Vitalis-Barron anymore.”

“Well, that’s a good start!” Rahil smiled. “What are you doing, kiddo? Do you have a place to stay? A blood supplier?”

“Not really,” she admitted. “I…” She wrung one of her wrists, her shoulders raised defensively around her neck. “I’ve been sleeping in mausoleums and drinking what I can.” The sheen of liquid returned to her eyes, her cheeks darkened with the flush of vampiric blood. “I don’t want to be one of them . I want to be decent—”

“But it’s hard,” Rahil cut in, “when your only options are to be selfish or starve.”

Her tears spilled once more, but this time she made no effort to clean them, only nodded and stared morosely across the kitchen.

Rahil took pity on her once more. “There’s a blood charity in Ala Santa now. I can get you a cab—”

She stiffened. “No. They know me—knew me, before. If I appear now, they might…”

“Ah.” Rahil sighed. It was her own damn fault, yet that didn’t have to mean she deserved what was happening to her. That was the thing about fighting to make the system better, after all: it got better for everyone . It had to. “You’re right, they might not give you blood. They might try to come after you. Or they might see the very person they’ve set up this charity to assist and help you regardless. I don’t know; I don’t know them.”

She said nothing to that, but her tongue drew across the currently blunt teeth where her fangs were retracted, and she looked like a person on the verge of an existential crisis.

It made something catch in Rahil’s chest, new and familiar all at once. He gave her a soft smile. “You can stay here for a few weeks, if you’d like. We don’t have much, but we’ll see about getting you blood.” If they had to, they’d make it work. It wouldn’t be the first time, though he was pretty sure only Jim had been here on the last occasion they’d harbored another vampire. It would be better if she had somewhere more stable. Somewhere that didn’t rely on Rahil. “What about family? Partners? Old friends?”

“If Matthew was here, it would have been easier. He’d have helped me—he knew me, and he’d know I would never use my new fangs to hurt humans.” She looked embarrassed as she said it, like having that depth of a connection to someone was worthy of shame, not admiration. “That’s why I came to you. If he trusted you, then I hope I can too.”

Rahil wanted to argue with her—he was no better or worse than any of the vampires Matt hated, and neither was she. But this—this wasn’t Rahil’s kid. There had to be someone better equipped. “No one else?”

She looked away, chewing on her lower lip.

That wasn’t the whole truth, then. “Are you worried they won’t accept you? That they wouldn’t understand you’re still you, despite the fangs?”

She shook her head. “They know I’m me—that’s the problem. They know I’m—” With an inhale, she corrected, “They wouldn’t think of me the way Matt would. They’d accept me for my vampirism, but the things I did while I was human… I don’t know. I think they’d take me in anyway, but it would be out of pity; despite what they think of me, not because of it.”

Something with spikes twisted deep in Rahil’s chest, welling up a pain he didn’t want to look at. He had already told everyone. He had been accepted by his family long ago and was able to step back when their attempts to harbor him became too much. He didn’t have anything to be sad about.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “If I can just get on my feet, you know. I’ll be fine.”

Rahil didn’t think that was the whole truth either. Though he supposed there were many types of fine in this world. He could hear one of them echoing down the stairs in the short, snorted laughter of Lydia and another in Avery’s large, long cackles. Neither of them were what most people perceived as fine, either in health or situation or class, yet here they were, making the world more beautiful with every moment.

If this strange woman—this vampire—had decided she’d make things work, he hoped she was right.

“Well, then, welcome.” He paused, trying to scrounge back through the first moment when he’d opened the door to find her there. All he could recall was his flicker of hope that it would be Mercer, the horror that they might be connected in more—and more terrible—ways than Rahil had even considered, and the emotional dive of this strange vampire’s first words. “Did I miss your name?”

“No, sorry, I don’t think I said.” She played with the end of her braid and smiled weakly. “I’m Natalie Deleon. You can call me Nat.”