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MERCER

Mercer wasn’t alone for the morning after all. It had been almost nice to have his quiet day bombarded by the very vampire he’d matched with, hanging from the ceiling in a disastrously risqué position, but that single rush of fear and the feeling of violation that Rahil had caused had been more than enough—he didn’t need this one, too. At the sound of his own name shouted across his yard, the internal tremble returned to his hands. He could almost feel an impaling in his chest as the demand followed.

Holy silver .

Let’s have it, eh?

Mercer should have prepared better for this, but if he were capable of foreseeing the future, he’d never have watched Leah leave the house alone that night, waved and smiled as she pressed her red hair into a ponytail, not thinking for a moment about what veins she might be exposing. He grabbed the butcher’s knife again, the feel of it fitting right back into his fingers as though it and his anxiety had never left.

“Merc—” Rahil started, the fear on his face a direct correlation to what bloomed in Mercer’s chest, but Mercer cut him off.

“I’ll be back.”

Maybe he should have let the poor vampire down, but he was already pushing open the shed door just enough to shove his bulk out and closing it behind him. It locked automatically.

Not a moment too soon either, as the threatening customer—if he was even offering to pay for this metal—stormed toward the shed. He pulled up short at the sight of Mercer’s butcher knife. His hand went to the belt at his waist, where a large pocket knife had been clipped.

“Get off my property,” Mercer hissed. He had no room for games, his panic still coiled in his chest like a snake prepared to strike. Kat bayed from the back door.

The intruder seemed to size him up—they appeared about the same age despite the silver already taking over the other man’s full head of hair, but Mercer had to weigh twice as much, and he was a foot taller, his reach longer. It would take the man two motions to draw his knife, and in that time Mercer could—could what, stab him? He didn’t want to think about that.

He wanted the intruder to leave and never come back.

“Is that normally how you introduce yourself to a paying customer?” The man smiled, and he held his hand out. “William Douglas. I’m friends with a few of your former clients. I’d like to talk with you about acquiring a batch of holy silver.”

Mercer did not smile back and neither did he lower his knife. “I’m not in that business anymore.”

“You’re still a smith, clearly,” William replied, his voice smooth and bright as the metal he was asking after. “How much effort would it take to go back to it this once? A single batch is all I’m asking. I can make it worth your time.”

Mercer scowled. “I am not fueling whatever war you’re waging.” He thought of the flashes of Vitalis-Barron splattered across the news: allegations of hunters and torture. Whether William Douglas was one of theirs, a member of the vocal anti-vampire groups who’d risen up in their defense since the first exposé, or simply someone fueled by their rhetoric, he was still part of the problem.

William’s brow tightened. “I just want to protect what’s mine.”

Mercer shuddered as the justification hit a little too close to home—to the pleas that had gotten him into that godforsaken business in the first place. What if your wife had left the house with holy silver on her? Maybe she would still be alive today.

He refused to think of her the way he had then, pale and sweat-lathered, her throat too raw to scream as they handed her into his arms. He refused, and he failed.

“No,” he said, through the pounding of his own blood in his ears.

William propped his hand on his hip. Too near to his knife. He was still smiling, wide as a predator. “You must have some left over? Whatever you have, I’ll pay well for it.”

“I’m not going to repeat myself.” Mercer could feel the way the words slid through his teeth, feel the anxiety that pushed him to step forward, butcher knife in front of him, because it was either that or flee entirely, though he wasn’t sure he’d choose either of those things. This, he did choose: “Get the hell off my property.”

William’s cordial mask fell, leaving only the bitter baring of teeth. He stepped back. “I will make it worth your time.”

It was a threat if ever Mercer had heard one, and it lingered behind even as William retreated, each stride so confident that it felt like he was the one who’d won, somehow, not Mercer. As he vanished around the front of the house, Mercer was certain of it. He felt empty, pathetic, terrified in a brand-new way, like the danger had moved from a tangible source in front of him, something he had the potential to fight, to a lurking thing at his back, demanding his continued vigilance.

He forced himself to check around the front of the house, catching the back of what had to have been William Douglas’s silver truck as it barreled down the street, too big and loud for suburban roads. Mercer tried to exhale a sigh of relief, but it was hard enough just to breathe at all. At least Lydia hadn’t been home, he told himself. At least she was safe, with her friends, living her rebellious early teenage years as best she could with a single dad and a chronic illness.

At least.

Mercer checked the locks on his doors anyway, before returning to the shed to find Rahil hanging right where he’d left him. That was when the relief finally came, little and late, but the sight of someone who wasn’t out to get him helped somehow. And Rahil was quite a sight.

His luscious hair curtained the sides of his slender jaw and his long neck before draping down his back, so silky that Mercer felt a tingle in his calloused hands at the thought of touching it. Every part of Rahil looked just as soft and lovely, from the exposed line of his slim shoulder down the long length of his torso. Even his fingers were delicate little things, like they were meant to be gently caressed and squeezed, his fingertips kissed.

Mercer banished the thoughts with a jolt of something very much like shame.

You won’t go to hell for thinking vaguely sensually about a consenting adult , he told himself, but as much as the knowledge was there, he couldn’t seem to fully internalize it. He’d worked through his bisexuality with tears and stress and a temporary denial of everything he’d once believed, but this odd impulse lingered, kept around by the idea that no one should have to worry about just how they were being ferried through someone else’s mind.

Not that Mercer cared if Rahil was ferrying images of his naked body—he might as well, since it was the only sensual part of Mercer that he, or anyone else, was going to get.

“How are your fingers?” Mercer asked, still awkwardly holding the butcher knife. He had been intending to leave the vampire up there and out of the way until he was finished working—or it was dark enough for Rahil to leave—but he didn’t want him to suffer.

Rahil seemed oblivious to the numbness he’d announced earlier, though. His expression, Mercer noticed, was still layered in the fear he’d displayed upon William’s arrival, even now that the man was gone. Rahil swallowed once, curling his hand open and shut. His bound wrist twisted. “You make… holy silver.”

Oh, that would do it. He must have heard everything. “Not anymore. Never again.” Mercer finally set the knife back down, leaning against the counter. “It was… complicated.”

Rahil gave the tiniest snort, flicking his head in a way that made his hair flutter. “Yeah, making weapons that specifically hurt a marginalized community sounds really complicated indeed.”

“It wasn’t like that.” Mercer frowned. “I had a reason.”

“Do tell it, then?” Rahil drew back his lips, his fangs on full display. “You have a captive audience.”

Mercer’s expression deepened into a proper scowl. Why did he feel suddenly like the bad guy here? He wasn’t the bad guy. His stomach hurt again, and he had the creeping sensation of someone behind him so strongly that he had to remind himself not to turn around. He watched Rahil, and just Rahil, focusing on the pinch of his nose and the points of his fangs. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“Is that so?” Rahil snapped. “Can you be sure the metal you created never burned me ?”

That made Mercer’s nausea churn all the worse. He drew a breath and let it out. If he was not the bad guy here, then he had the responsibility not to act like one. “You’re right, I can’t be sure,” he admitted. “The holy silver I made has been used by others to harm a great many innocent people. And I regret that deeply. At the time, I genuinely believed that what I was doing was a net good for the world. Now I know otherwise, and I will never go back.” He dragged his gaze to meet Rahil’s. “Can you trust that, at least?”

Rahil stared at him, and the longer their eyes held, the more the vampire’s resolve seemed to weaken. Finally, he shrugged, looking away. “If you say you’re not in that business anymore, then you’re not.” His lips quirked weakly, and despite the expression still exposing the full length of one of his fangs, there was something soft, almost precious, about it. “Besides, you don’t have to worry whether your holy silver ever hurt me. I’m immune.”

Mercer swore he hadn’t heard the vampire right. “You’re what?” He leaned forward as he said it, staring at Rahil as if those long lashes and brilliant hazel eyes would tell him he was wrong.

But Rahil only smiled wider. “Holy silver doesn’t burn me.”

“Impossible.”

“Improbable, you mean.” Rahil waggled his fine, dark brows.

Mercer crossed his arms. “How does your body do it, if you’re so convinced…?”

“Who knows. I may be a hot commodity, but I’m not a lab rat. Do you still have some of the silver?”

Mercer’s heart skipped, his instincts telling him this had to be some sort of trap, but no, Rahil seemed casually arrogant still. “A few pieces of the final batch, perhaps.”

Rahil outright smirked. “Then do your worst, torturer.”

Something about this felt like a trap all the same, but Mercer was intrigued now. This vampire had ensnared himself in Mercer’s shed, and seemingly accepted the sins of Mercer’s past, only to claim that this mythical, precarious alloy—the one thing no one else in the region could make—was useless on him. Mercer had to see it for himself.

He had to feel it.

Slowly, like he could take this all back at any moment, he drew out his set of physical keys. He could feel Rahil’s eyes on him as he knelt beside the tool counter, quietly unlocking the large bottom drawer of its lower metal cabinet. The power of the holy silver thrummed against his skin, not destructive—not to him—but clearly emanating its vampire-burning rays.

The pieces he’d kept came in a variety of styles: a few weapons he’d meant to melt down at some point, chains of various thicknesses, a few charms, a ring, and a couple slabs he’d never gotten around to shaping before he’d given up the endeavor. Mercer withdrew the smallest charm, holding it by its cord.

Rahil didn’t react, even as Mercer stood and lifted it between them.

Odd. Mercer caught it between his fingertips, cautiously moving it towards the vampire’s face.

This time a little shudder ran through Rahil, but it didn’t seem like the typical pain-reaction, the slight hitch in his breath almost sensual in nature. The tone of his voice certainly was. “Oh dear, you’re going to have to try harder than that.”

Rahil’s smugness only served to make him all the more beautiful. It should have been illegal, Mercer decided. He did not want to keep noticing these things, keep wondering what it would be like to reach out, to follow the lines of Rahil’s skin the way the vampire clearly wanted him to. Mercer knew what that would end in—a disaster . Lydia was enough to worry about. He would not add a stupid, beautiful vampire to the list of people he’d inevitably grow some nonsensical attachment to the moment he let himself.

Based on Rahil’s dating profile, separating the emotional from the physical was second nature to him, but that had never been possible for Mercer, and when he was being honest with himself, he didn’t think he wanted it to be. If he was going to be physically intimate, he could only cross that line for someone he loved, and he didn’t have room to think about loving someone as a vague general concept, much less this specific stranger who’d fallen into his lap.

Mercer wiped the thought away, clamping down on it like even the idea of someday having sex again was immoral—a skill for which he had years of religion-imposed practice, even if he wasn’t doing much practicing of the religion itself these days.

He was not doing this to get a reaction out of Rahil, no. This was merely an artisan’s search for knowledge. Which was why he didn’t touch Rahil with his fingers as he ran the tip of the holy silver charm over the crest of Rahil’s high cheekbone, down the curve of his face. When Rahil breathed out a sigh, his mouth opened, and Mercer couldn’t seem to stop moving, feeling the light cracks the dry summer heat had left in Rahil’s lower lip through each tug and slide of the metal.

Rahil’s eyes closed for a moment, his lashes fluttering delicately. “Ah,” he whispered, “that tingles.”

Mercer pulled back. He flipped the charm into his palm, holding tightly to its heat and power as he tried to settle the eruption of something in his chest. “It really doesn’t hurt you?”

“There’s a… a sensation.” Rahil shrugged. “But it’s not bad. It’s sharp and hot, and a little euphoric. And my skin is fine afterward; you can touch it and see.”

That was a thrilling thought, which Mercer ignored with a vengeance. “My eyes do just as well, thank you.”

“Oh, so you’re admiring my form, huh?” Rahil teased, his shoulders shifting so that his shirt fell, impossibly, somehow lower.

Mercer had to look away in order not to stare. He slipped the holy silver charm back into its place in the drawer, shifting a few of the pieces around just to give his fingers something to do. “I admit you are distracting, though for very different reasons.”

The sigh Rahil released was tragic. “Fine, fine, I’m in the way, I get it. I could make it home now, if you’re willing to let me down.” He grinned. “Or don’t—you clearly have plenty of other torture devices at your disposal.”

Mercer followed his gaze to the bench of in-progress kink toys. For all his mind wanted to run wild, he kept his face stern, his voice as deadpan as if they were talking about the arrangement of his patio furniture and not sex. “Next time, perhaps.”

There wouldn’t be a next time, but Rahil’s expression was worth it: the soft surprise mixed with something very much like hunger. The vampire’s throat bobbed. “Yes. Next time.”

He still looked dazed when Mercer unlocked the trap’s app on his phone and hit the release. It let Rahil go slowly enough that he managed to pull his legs underneath him, but his limbs alone were clearly not enough to hold him up, his knees collapsing and his body slumping forward as he yelped.

Mercer moved on instinct. He caught Rahil’s tall, lean figure in both arms, wrapping one under Rahil’s shoulder and the other around his waist. Rahil leaned against him, breathing heavily. Mercer swore he could feel every inch of the vampire pressed firmly to his chest.

“Well…” Rahil’s breath fluttered over Mercer’s skin as he spoke, and Mercer was suddenly very aware of how close Rahil’s fangs were to his neck. “That was one way to get you to touch me, I suppose.”

Mercer stepped away from him so suddenly that Rahil yelped again, swaying before Mercer caught him by his arms, lowering him with far less contact onto one of the work stools scattered around the shed. “Easy there,” he murmured, one arm still supporting Rahil’s elbow.

Rahil laughed. It was such a soft sound, high and light and gasping. “I’m fine, I’m fine.” He winked, though his breathing hadn’t entirely steadied. “Perhaps your holy silver has some effect after all.”

Mercer narrowed his eyes on the area of Rahil’s face where the metal had touched. “Are you…?” He wasn’t sure what he was asking. The skin seemed normal, just as smooth and lovely a dusky brown as the rest of him.

“I’m fine, really,” Rahil replied, his gaze fixed on Mercer’s neck. “Though I wouldn’t pass up a drink, if you’re willing?”

Mercer could feel his own pulse pound in his veins. He stepped back. “You can keep your fangs in your mouth, vampire.”

“Or you’ll do what?” Rahil leaned forward, his pointed teeth exposed: not in a threat but a challenge, like he was begging Mercer to do something, anything, about them. But then he only laughed again, slumping a little against the bench behind him. “I meant water, Merc. I’ve had a blood meal recently enough—an entirely consensual one, if you’re worried.”

“I wasn’t worried. I’ve known enough vampires to not make judgements.”

Rahil glanced at the still-open drawer of gleaming metal behind Mercer. “Was that why you stopped creating the holy silver?”

Mercer had no reason to answer; did he truly owe that part of his life to a mere stranger, much less a vampire? But the longer he hesitated, the more he realized he wanted to talk about this. Perhaps it was how Rahil put himself out there in every way possible that set Mercer so at ease, or perhaps it was merely that there hadn’t been another adult in his immediate vicinity for this long in what seemed like a lifetime, but something felt right. Simple. Fated.

“I’ve never judged vampires,” he admitted. “I’ve struggled with biases, but I know the ins and outs of the ways our society abuses people for power and money, and I have tried my best to be aware of that.”

He breathed in, breathed out, and knew he could do it. A decade later, and he could finally, finally, say the words without shattering completely.

“But there is one vampire I hate, one vampire against whom I felt, for a time, like any amount of protection I could create was a necessity.” He stood there, staring at Rahil, but he could feel his body reliving that night, that ring of the doorbell, that drip of blood from Leah’s lips, as he said, “And if I ever find them, I’m going to thrust what’s left of my holy silver so deep into their throat that they’ll never bite anyone ever again.”