Page 37

37

MERCER

The park was empty.

Of course it was empty. It was midday, late summer, the heat pouring down and Mercer’s response to William’s text unread. He hadn’t wanted to come in the first place—had almost chosen to ignore it and hope for the best—but with Lydia running off, the anxious storm inside him had been convinced that somehow, William had taken her. That he’d be at the park, a knife to her throat, and Mercer would—Mercer would—

He didn’t know. The cold, endless panic that hit him was too overwhelming to contemplate, though, and he’d ended up in the car without hardly a thought, the engine on and the house locked tight. He couldn’t turn back then. He couldn’t leave the figment of her trapped with him.

But William didn’t have Lydia bound and gagged on a park bench, and Mercer was left to panic in the parking lot instead, the sweat of his fear blistering cold against the car’s blaring AC. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he hadn’t wanted to ask Rahil for help without being able to properly apologize for the way he’d treated him back at the shed, but Mercer could barely forge the text he did send without his vision tunneling completely to black, the whoosh of his heart the only sound in his ears.

Mercer

I lost Lydia

William is making a play, but I don’t know what it is

Is she with you

That made sense. Did that make sense? It was already sent.

He couldn’t just wait for a response.

Mercer’s stomach boiled, and he leaned against the steering wheel, trying not to throw up. Think—just think. Lydia was going to find Rahil. Which meant going to Rahil’s house. Right? Right.

Dark, Victorian. Enough room for everyone who needed it. An attic and a big porch.

He started driving.

He stopped driving.

Did Mercer know a house like that?—Within a few miles of his, Rahil had implied. No. No? No.

No .

Because he did know a house in their neighborhood that fit that description, one he hadn’t even considered until that moment, because it was barely worth calling a home at all. It was the kind of place that people always theorized that junkies lived. Or ghosts. Or… vampires.

Fuck .

Mercer hit the gas, nearly careening onto the sidewalk as he made a hasty U-turn. Sorry, sorry, sorry , he whispered to every house he sped past, the jostling ride and his tunneled vision making his nausea all the worse. He blacked out whole streets, and when a slow car pulled out in front of him, his panic attack was so crushing that he nearly lost control of his own vehicle before they immediately turned into a driveway. But then he was there—he was around the corner, that threatening attic jutting into the sky and a lonely person racing through the front door.

His heart connected the dots before his mind could, the sudden rush of safety he felt only followed a few seconds later with his brain going, S hit, was that Rahil?

Mercer was going too fast though, the house’s gravel driveway coming up at blinding speed. The sidewalk bumped under his tires. He didn’t have time to make a choice before his body reacted on instinct, swerving him around the side of the house and careening into the brush. He skidded to a stop, gasping and shaking. His nails had left gashes in the steering wheel leather.

His feet hit the door before he remembered he had to open it, then the seatbelt yanked him back—when had he put that on?—but somehow he managed to tumble out of the driver’s seat. He could hear commotion from around the back, and he didn’t think, just ran, one foot in front of the other, his heart pounding in his ears.

Mercer shoved through the final line of unruly bushes and stumbled into the yard: barren, dead grass surrounded by dense trees on three sides with an awkward trail of stray rocks and a half-dug flower bed pit. Rahil stood beneath the overhang, his gaze on the roof as two figures rolled chaotically down it. Lydia .

“Puck,” Mercer whispered, because he couldn’t shout, couldn’t move, couldn’t save her as she toppled off the edge of the second story.

Rahil threw something at her.

It took Mercer a moment to process the gleaming device as it sailed through the air, another to understand what it was, and by then he could tell its trajectory was off: a little too high and to the left. Leah’s brilliance didn’t seem to think so, though. As the device sailed past Lydia, the cords shot out, most of them cradling Lydia’s body as the rest caught hold of the roof, gently halting her descent.

Four feet closer, William fell from the same height, grabbing for anything he could reach—the tiles, the gutter, the girl he’d threatened. He caught the edge of the roof with one hand. He dangled there, the toes of his shoes still eight feet above the ground. Lydia kicked him in the side.

William cursed her as he fell again. His legs gave out as he hit the dirt, sending him sprawling onto his side into the shallow flower-bed trench.

Mercer was moving before he’d even set his mind to it, stumbling past William’s body and shoving aside a shocked Rahil to reach for his daughter with both arms. The only piece of the world that felt real was the solidity of her arms and the little bubbled sob-laugh she gave as Leah’s device slowly lowered her down the rest of the way, letting her fall gently into Mercer’s embrace. He held her close, crying her name into her shoulder with what must have been very un-parental desperation, but he didn’t care. He had her. She was safe, and alive, and he had her.

Lydia’s fists balled into his clothing, and for a moment it was just the two of them—the only family Mercer had known in so long. Then Lydia’s body stiffened suddenly, her head coming up. Her voice cracked as she spoke. “William, he’s still—”

Mercer spun in time to watch William stumble out of the shallow pit with one of Mercer’s own holy silver knives raised, throwing his body weight toward Mercer.

Rahil slammed into him. Mercer caught the flash of fangs, the tear of flesh, blood splattering against the side of the house as the two struggled. Rahil dislodged the knife from William’s hand just as the man threw him backward, tossing Rahil’s gangly body across the ground. William stood there after, gripping the gash in his neck while he held himself up with the side of the house, one foot twisted at a hideous angle. Despite all the pain he had to be in, his mouth still warped into a sneer.

Maybe it was that look which launched Mercer into motion or maybe it was a hundred other little things—the vision of William’s hands on Lydia, William’s blades tearing into Rahil’s bloody palms, his will turning Mercer’s holy silver into a weapon—but all Mercer knew was the cascade of fear and pain that slammed through his body, his vision blackening at the edges and his lungs catching tight in his throat, and suddenly he was moving, steady steps that felt so slow to him. But no one else reacted, no one told him to stop as he shoved William against the side of the house and slammed his knee into the man’s gut.

The blubbering groan that came out of William was as horrific as it was terrifying, and his struggles turned desperate and delirious as he fought to push Mercer off without letting go of the deep, ragged gash in his neck. Mercer could see himself in it, could feel that same fear entrenched in his own chest, his own life. And it scared him—scared him, not enough to let go, but to hold on.

“Fight me, I dare you,” he whispered, slamming William against the wall once more. “The first time you laid a hand on my family, you were already dead.”

William did abandon his neck wound then, his fists aimed at Mercer’s face, but Mercer grabbed him by the wrist, pinning William’s hand to the wall. William snarled again, struggling to hit Mercer with everything he could as blood poured freely down his chest. He went limp so fast, so suddenly, that Mercer was left staring at him, slowly taking in the weight of his flesh and the stream still pouring from the veins in his neck. Mercer’s arms shook, deep from the bones. He let go.

His lungs heaved open, then closed again.

Oh God.

Oh God .

He’d just—

Oh.

He took a step back, then another, watching William’s corpse slump to the ground, dead as the bat in the box. Mercer should have felt better—relief, something—but there was no change, his fear simply morphing its target. There were other threats still, other horrors. And he was one of them—he was—

A hand closed around his, smaller fingers tucking around his palm. He looked down to find Lydia, her expression solemn. She squeezed his hand. He squeezed hers back, and the world settled just a little.

Fuck though, he was going to be paying for her therapy bills for this for the rest of her life, wasn’t he?

Well, they’d cross that bridge tomorrow.

As some semblance of logic finally crept back into Mercer’s mind, he recalled the way that William had tossed Rahil to the side, and his whole world recracked for the moment it took to find Rahil, struggling to his feet so near that Mercer could reach out and touch him, grab him, if he wanted. Kiss him.

Rahil seemed to have wrapped strips torn from his own shirt around the wounds in his palms, and blood dripped from his mouth, but his lips quirked up, an awkward laugh coming under his breath. “Is it weird that I found that hot?” He dropped his gaze after, looking like he was scared of Mercer after all—scared of something entirely different: of rejection.

The uncertainty in his stance hurt, all the more because Mercer knew he’d put it there; not from violently ensuring the death of a man, ironically, but from refusing to listen. He had let his fear hurt the people around him. Wrapping one arm around Lydia, he held out his other toward Rahil. “Come here, babe.”

A smile lit up Rahil’s face. Then his whole body went as limp as William’s.

Mercer dove to catch him, a wave of sickening terror rushing back through his already wrung out nerves. No— no . Not this, not now. Not him—

Mercer’s legs carried them both into the house, under the deep shade of the unlit kitchen, hoping, praying as he set Rahil down—

Rahil drew in a weak breath, his eyes pinching in pain.

Alive. Okay.

Then what?

He wanted both to call an ambulance and to run for help, and even more to hold the second love of his life too close for the Grim Reaper to pull from his fingers, to descend into hell to bring him back, but he remembered Rahil’s reassuring hand on his shoulder when he’d found Kat much the same way and—

On impulse, Mercer reached out with his spark.

“William made him swallow something,” Lydia said, crouching on Rahil’s other side.

“Was it silver?” Mercer asked, feeling, feeling—

“Yes, I think.”

There . A tiny bundle of matter that Mercer recognized like his own hand, pulsing with an energy he’d instilled there himself nearly ten years before. As he broadened his senses, he could find the places where the holy silver had begun working itself into Rahil’s cells. If he was any other vampire, he’d already have been dead. Without the burning to eat him alive, though, Mercer could feel there was more going on inside him—something transformative.

But Rahil had not asked for this something , and the longer Mercer lingered, the more he could sense a simultaneous destruction—the sun-poison, he thought, though he had no way to be sure. Everywhere the holy silver pressed in, the poison followed, unraveling bonds in its wake. He’d have no chance of recovery so long as it remained.

The metal was inside him, scattered throughout him. There were a thousand things that could go wrong, even when the holy silver was in Mercer’s hands. A thousand ways he could kill Rahil. A thousand ways Rahil could—

Mercer cradled Rahil into his arms, forehead pressed to his lover’s—his boyfriend’s —he, Mercer Bloncourt, had his first boyfriend —and fought past the fear into the present. He pressed his spark harder. Gentle as a surgeon, the force in his mind a scalpel, he tugged at the holy silver’s energy, thinking of nothing but the slow and steady reversion of the metal, cutting back all the power he had instilled in it, and guiding its pieces out of Rahil’s body. It seemed to all come forth in a gentle flow, chalky lines of the stuff flaking along Rahil’s skin. The change within was immediate, chaos settling, regular patterns returning, all things Mercer didn’t quite understand but gave him peace nonetheless. And God, did he need peace.

Rahil groaned, his eyes opening to cracks as he muttered, “If I die, it’s not your fault.”

“You’re too late, babe.” Mercer sobbed. “I already saved you.” He buried his face in Rahil’s hair, kissing him everywhere his lips landed: his forehead, his nose, his eyelids, his mouth, finally, soft and perfect.

Rahil laughed, so weak it could have been anything—but Mercer knew. He knew. “I was sure you would.”

“Liar,” Mercer grumbled. In this life, they were sure of nothing. He still wasn’t even sure how to deal with that fact, but perhaps the acceptance was half the battle. “You still look like a corpse.”

Rahil groaned. “I think I might actually sleep, for once.” He looked at Mercer, his eyes bleary and his hair a mess, and Rahil was still the most handsome thing Mercer had ever seen. “Will you be here—”

“You could not be rid of me if you tried,” Mercer replied, thinking of the days he’d walked into his shed to find a beautiful nuisance hanging from the ceiling, and wondering how he’d been so blind as to not recognize his own future. “Sleep, babe.”

“I love you,” Rahil muttered.

“I love you, too,” Mercer said, but he was fairly sure Rahil was already unconscious.

For what felt like an age, all Mercer could do was watch him, reminding himself with each rise and fall of Rahil’s chest that he was, in fact, alive. He was alive. Mercer was alive. Lydia was alive—her hand had appeared on his shoulder at some point, and he was pretty sure she was using it to keep herself upright just as much as she was offering him comfort. He wished she didn’t have to offer him anything at all. He squeezed her hand.

They both flinched as a female vampire limped into the kitchen. Blisters marred parts of her neck and cheek.

Rahil’s friend from the night before—Natalie, was it? She must have been one of the people Rahil lived with; Mercer realized he hadn’t actually asked. There was so much he still didn’t know about Rahil. So much he wanted to learn. Mercer could barely put together the thought in a coherent way in his mind, but his mouth still managed to ask, “Are you hurt?”

“I’m healing.” Natalie grimaced. “That fucking asshole with the holy silver, is he…?”

Oh. Right. A cold chill ran through Mercer. He managed to tip his head toward the backdoor.

Without leaving the shade of the building, Natalie glanced outside. She grimaced again. “For the best.”

Mercer knew she was right. Realistically, logically, so long as their justice system was built to protect certain members of society over others, this was the only way to ensure that William stopped causing harm to Mercer’s family or the vampiric community. But that didn’t mean he liked it. Didn’t make this moral.

And now— fuck .

Natalie watched him with a tight brow, and she must have been thinking further down the path that Mercer was desperately trying to avoid because she nodded toward the backyard. “Collect his holy silver and I’ll help.”

Right. Fuck. But he still had Lydia’s hand in his, her mouth grim and her gaze distant.

“Watch over Rahil for me,” Mercer told her. He would have begged if it came to that.

She nodded in a way that he tried to read as calm and contained instead of drowning in the depths of shock. There was nothing he could do about that now though, he told himself. And the way his body seemed willing to accept it, he figured he, too, was probably still in shock.

It was terrible work.

Mercer could barely remember the moment he’d moved toward William, just the weight of the man’s body going limp under his grasp, and that weight lingered, growing with each scoop of the shovel, digging himself farther and farther into the grave. And he thought maybe that was the way it was supposed to be.

If he had participated in William’s death, and that didn’t sicken him, it would imply something far worse than this.

Under the shade of the house’s gothic roof peak, Natalie rolled William’s body into the pit, sprawling him there, limp and unseeing, blood thick along the torn creases of his neck bite, and Mercer hurled up what little bile was left in his stomach. Then, he returned to work.

By the time he took his place back at Rahil’s side, he hurt in more ways than one, but he was alive, and Lydia was alive, and Rahil was alive, and so they would all remain. That, he decided, was enough. Enough, to let go.