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6

MERCER

Mercer struggled to get anything else done that day.

He told himself it was because of the incident with William Douglas. He’d gotten far too many emails about holy silver, even a few phone calls, but this man had come into his yard—had violated the safe space he’d worked so hard to build for himself and his daughter—and demanded something of Mercer that he’d vowed never to return to. All while a vampire, whom William would have probably been thrilled to see that very holy silver used on, hung from Leah’s trap ten feet behind the door.

A gorgeous vampire, with a sensual edge that bordered on cheesy.

There had been a reason Mercer had swiped right when he’d first seen Rahil’s profile. It just wasn’t a good one. The romantic notions of his heart could leap for Rahil as high as it wanted, but that wouldn’t mean there was a place for him in Mercer’s life. Mercer was busy. He was accustomed to being alone. He had enough interpersonal trouble with Lydia’s sudden attitudes and disinterest in him. He didn’t even want to imagine her reaction if he had to sit down with her and tell her he was substituting her dead mother for a vampire .

He’d made it clear over the years that vampires were not the villains that society made them out to be, but they’d never talked of them beyond that. They had never watched media that featured vampires, never mentioned it when vampires appeared in the news—which was daily now that Vitalis-Barron protests were sprouting up and Wesley Smith-Garcia’s trial was ongoing—never even referenced them during discussions of nonhuman lineages and what it meant to come from an identity that held trauma in their bones. Mercer couldn’t ruin that easy truce by suddenly bringing a literal vampire into their lives, much less as a partner. Especially if people like William Douglas were going to keep showing up demanding holy silver.

The only thing worse than forcing Lydia to accept a new guardian figure in her life—and that was the only option Mercer wanted out of a relationship, not a quick fuck or a casual fling, but a genuine partner—would be to go through the work of helping her accept and build a familial bond with that person only for her to lose them, too.

All of this was going to give Mercer a migraine.

He wandered around the shed, making tweaks to one piece and notes for another, too distracted to truly get anywhere as the sun sank lower and the shadows shifted across the wall. Finally he ended up back inside, downing another two glasses of water and a granola bar, then popping an NSAID in the hopes that if something was building in his head, it might kick the incoming storm down a notch. He gave Kat a series of back rubs and a kiss on her muzzle, for which he received ten more kisses in return, then sent a check-in text to Lydia. He was grateful to see an immediate response come through, even if it included a rolling-eyes emoji and so much sass it could have killed a less stable parent.

Completely against his will, his fingers inched toward the damn dating app. Perhaps one last glance… He wouldn’t say anything.

Mercer nearly dropped the phone as his doorbell rang. Kat barked and bounded through the space between his legs. The frantic mishandling slid open the dating app anyway.

“Shit, shit,” he muttered, closing down the screen. He shoved the device into his pocket for good measure. Clearly, it belonged as far from his selfish, wandering gaze as possible.

The doorbell rang a second time, followed by a slew of knocks.

It doubled Mercer’s heart rate in an instant, and he could almost hear the officer’s voice the night he’d lost Leah, only now it was not his wife they were bringing him news of but—

He forced himself not to go down that road. He’d done it enough times, and always the terror had been a lie, a trap. Yet it still reared its ugly head whenever he least expected it. Mercer was afraid he knew exactly what to expect this time, though. One person had already found his house in their hunt for holy silver…

He debated going for the butcher knife again, but he was pretty sure he’d left it out in the shed.

The knocking continued.

Mercer crept up to the door, leaning down anxiously to peek through its tiny peephole. A middle-aged man stood on Mercer’s stoop, his brown hair pulled up in a bun to reveal the overgrown fuzz of his undercut. He tugged at his teal button-up with a scowl. A patch of sweat had already formed beneath his armpit in the heat. Mercer sighed, the anxiety draining out of him to leave a tingling dread in its wake.

He opened the door. “Good evening, Anthony.”

Dr. Anthony Hilker’s face brightened, a smile blooming across it. He’d grown a little facial hair since Mercer had last seen him—and was that a bit of gray? He also looked far more worn out than he had during their last face-to-face meeting, nearly a year ago.

“Is something wrong?” Mercer stepped back. “Your most recent package arrived fine.”

“Production hasn’t been hindered; it’s something else.” Anthony shook his head. His bun bobbed, a little lopsided. “I apologize for popping in off-schedule, but I thought, with all that Vitalis-Barron has been in the news, it would be better if I spoke with you in person.”

That put Mercer right back on edge. He might have considered closing the door again, were Anthony not already walking through it, that charming twist of his lips a testament to how easily he got his way when he’d set his mind to something. Which had worked out great for Mercer so far. So far , being the optimal phrase. “Tell me you’re not wrapped up in this vampire experimentation shit.”

Anthony made his way through the front of the house, heading for the living room like it had been just yesterday that he’d sat with Lydia on the couch, joking about her favorite new cartoon as he drew her blood. He avoided the seat now, surveying Mercer’s book collection with a casual detachment. “Would it make a difference?”

On occasion, Mercer genuinely liked Dr. Hilker. This was clearly not going to be one of those times. “If you were hurting innocent people? Yes, it would make a difference to me.”

Anthony lifted an eyebrow. “You’d stop relying on me for your daughter’s medication, then?”

The heat in Mercer’s cheeks was sharp and sudden. He turned away, instead of stating the obvious: there was no one else he could go to.

No one else would even bother with a condition as rare as Lydia’s, much less get him the drugs she needed under the table. His own migraine meds cost more per month, and they worked a quarter as well. He tried not to think of Anthony at his job; tried not to think of how selfishly Mercer had worried about Vitalis-Barron collapsing and putting Anthony out of a place to illicitly make his custom drugs.

Mercer crossed his arms. “Why are you here?”

“I need something from you.” Anthony smiled again, and damn, he was charming. “Something only you can provide.”

“I won’t make you any more holy silver. I’m not in that business anymore.” He thought of Rahil as he said it: lips parted, eyes alight. The image made him shudder.

“Not holy silver,” Anthony assured him. “Something like it, but without the burning effects—without the harm it causes. Vitalis-Barron studies the vampiric cellular and genetic structure by damaging their—their specimens, lab rats, victims, what-have-you—until the vampire’s enhanced body breaks to allow them in. Holy silver is but one method, its weakening effects directly disrupting a vampire’s cellular defense systems. The study I wish to conduct, however, will produce an end product that’s for the vampire. Tearing them apart cell by cell for it does seem a bit counterproductive to that. If you could give me another way…” Anthony held up his hands, almost pleadingly. “Let me put it this way: If the vampiric body is a walled city, Vitalis-Barron has been studying them by bulldozering inside and sifting through the pieces as they go. I want to climb over the wall and take a few samples without harming the city in the process. A gentler form of holy silver would help me do that.”

Mercer wasn’t quite sure he understood the scientific aspects of all those words, but he thought he got the gist of it—Anthony wanted to learn why and how the vampiric body functioned without causing harm to the vampires involved in the process. It certainly sounded more ethical than whatever Vitalis-Barron was doing. He understood just how necessary research was if anyone was going to create the kind of pharmaceuticals that would help vampires in their daily lives; sunscreens, blood substitutes, perhaps even something to prevent the deaths that happened during the turning. He tried not to let that last thought sink into his chest like claws.

But regardless of how ethical this route might try to be, anything that paired research with vampires was still dangerous. Mercer had to focus on that . He’d lost enough for one lifetime.

“I suppose it’s a valiant thought.” Mercer shook his head. “But it’s not my place. I know how much tension there is around vampire research right now—around holy silver, too, and anything like it. I can’t get wrapped up in that. My kid has no one but me.”

Anthony sighed, trailing his fingertip along one of the shelves. He stopped at a framed picture of Lydia, her hair in two chunky braids and her eight-year-old grin so large it seemed to take over her freckled face. “And here I didn’t think you’d be able to say no to me.”

The pit of Mercer’s stomach dropped. “Is that a threat?”

“Not at this time.” A shudder ran through Anthony. “I admit it is not beneath me, but it’s… I hope it doesn’t come to that, frankly. I’ve done similar things before and there are always unfortunate consequences.”

“You’ve done similar things before?” Mercer was distressed to find that it didn’t surprise him. Anthony Hilker had always given him vibes like the mafia—incredibly valuable to have on your side, and incredibly dangerous not to. Though, truth be told, Mercer suspected him to be more complicated than villainous. Complicated could hurt just as much as malevolence though.

“I’m not always this nice, Mr. Bloncourt.” Anthony smiled, the expression weighted. “But I like you, and I like Lydia, and the vampiric research I’m conducting is making progress in areas we’ve been ignoring for decades… and perhaps it’ll provide much for their community in the process. So, I was hoping that after all I’ve done for you, you’d be willing to try. Help me do some real good here.”

Mercer rubbed a hand across his cheek, holding back a groan. His mind was racing too fast, too hard. Anthony had said this wasn’t a threat. Or that it wasn’t yet . And there was that thought, small and sharp in the back of his head, telling him that if this research had only been done ten years ago, then perhaps… But it hadn’t been done. And so here he was. “I don’t know if I have the energy to do good right now.”

Anthony chuckled. “We’re not so different in that, I fear.”

He stepped away from the shelf—stepped toward Mercer, into his space until it felt nearly intimate. It was the closest another man—another human, beside Lydia—had come to Mercer in—in he didn’t know how long. Months? Years? It made the hair on the back of his neck lift in anticipation, and a flutter rise in his chest. Like a deer in the headlights, Mercer couldn’t move.

Anthony glanced out the window, then back. When he spoke, Mercer swore he could feel the man’s breath. “No one is supposed to know this, Mercer—I’m telling you because I trust you. You put your faith in me when your daughter’s life was on the line, and I respect that immensely.” His voice dropped, pleading. “The client I’m working for on this project has a child with vampirism—a child they want to help. You know what it’s like to be willing to do anything for your child. Help me help them.” He held out his hand, his palm up and his fingertips all but brushed Mercer’s chest. “Please,” he whispered.

It was the last straw, and Mercer knew it—knew it as the bleeding body in his mind shifted from Leah’s to Lydia’s; from a lost lover to the child who was still his responsibility to save. If being the cog that saved someone else’s kid also kept happy the man who’d saved his own, who saved her again with every pill she took, then so be it.

Despite his better judgment, Mercer shook on it.

Mercer’s hand felt clammy long after Anthony left, and he found himself with even less ability to work on anything. He paced the house instead, picking up as he went: his misplaced tools and perpetually lost earbuds, Lydia’s jewelry and endless supply of beanies, the dog toys that Kat would leave poking halfway out from under dressers and the corners of rugs. No matter how much attention he tried to pay to anything, he kept finding himself back on his phone, checking first for texts from Lydia, then that damnable dating app.

Too many times he swiped back into it, staring at Rahil’s profile like it might feed him something new if he looked once more; might update to a picture of the vampire trapped in his shed, shirt half off and fangs out. Mercer shuddered and closed his eyes, but somehow that was worse. Alone and behind his eyelids, physical intimacy didn’t have all the same barriers, no expectations, no reality. There, Mercer could be someone else as he peeled back the edge of that shirt, touched the tip of those fangs…

The sound of the front door opening was followed immediately by a customary, “Dad, I’m home! You can stop texting me now.” For the second time that day, Mercer nearly dropped his phone. He swore, adjusting his pants and forcing away the unnecessary vision. This was getting to be ridiculous. He had to stop it before it became something worse. Before he did something he regretted.

With shaking hands, Mercer deleted the app entirely.