Page 45 of The Vampire's Mercy

So much more.

I’d experienced a massive breakdown no ten-year-old should suffer, unable to stop crying, caught in a dark spiral of sadness. I wanted out, to be free. I even tried to escape, getting as far at the perimeter fence before Pearl found me.

Lucky, really. Because if one of the teachers found me, I’d have been beaten, starved, and Aidan only knew what else.

Back at the barracks, the two of us huddled under her covers because I couldn’t sleep alone, Pearl said, “Remember the words of Aidan:In every tear there is purpose. In every laugh thereis purpose. Remember purpose. Never shy away from it. Never lose sight of it. For a true heart knows where the light shall fall.”

Words to live by and then some. From that moment on, I remembered my purpose for breathing, reading my Aidan Tome every night. His words were always a comfort from then onward, my faith as radiant as Him.

I’d been charged with purging the fanged scum from Quintrealm, and I held on to that. Even when the world turned its back on us, I carried on with truth in my heart, never losing sight of the endgame.

Even after Pearl’s murder.

I groaned under the nauseating force of the dead flowers as I lifted my head. The area beyond the bars was dark again.

Good. I didn’t want to see Silvanus’s damn face watching the show.

Pearl’s death both haunted me and emboldened me. A real fucker of a monster on my back, with claws buried deep inside my soul. I hated the combination of sadness and determination. They didn’t seem to align, but also kind of did.

I lived for her.

I lived to kill.

Pearl and I could’ve changed the world together. We could’ve made a difference. After finding sanctuary with Suzanne, and bonding by betrayal, we planned our first retaliation with eight other executioners already there, along with Hal and Suzanne.

Our first target was an unsavory house in the east of Cosgrove where we’d discovered vamps throwing illegal feeding parties. They were drugging victims and taking blood without consent.

A victim came to us, hearing about the sanctuary on the grape vine. The poor woman met a vampire at a bar with her husband, looking to spice up their sex life. No blood stuff got discussed, only a threesome. Apparently, the couple haddonated blood before, but through voluntary extraction. They had no interest in attending a feeding ball.

The scumbag went back to their place, drugged them, and took them to the cesspit house. Killed the husband by taking too much blood, then beat her to a pulp, locking her in the basement.

Thankfully, she was a mage and managed to use a spell to escape with her life. Barely. No one believed her and the town’s guardians rejected her pleas for help, leaving her out in the cold alone.

Until she met us. Pearl assured her we’d take the house down. I mean, we didn’t need much of a reason to slay vamps, but fucked-up stuff like that only threw more fuel on our fires.

We all took turns scoping out the property, noting down all activity before we devised a plan which should’ve been a done deal.

Pearl died before we got a chance to implement it.

I found her mutilated body in the street outside our house in the morning. Her skin had been half-peeled from her face, stab wounds puncturing her body, every bone broken. Blood pooled beneath her, the January snow scarlet.

A message. A warning.

Once again, the guardians did nothing about it, turning the other way. Yeah, no shits given about my dead sister.

It was the day before our twenty-fourth birthday last year. We’d planned on going to the cinema to watch a movie to celebrate. I wasn’t a big movie watcher, but she loved them—especially the moody, werewolf-made ones.

To say her death broke me would be an understatement. I lost my shit, going on a week-long bender of drinking, fucking any guy who’d have me—vamps excluded—until I came to my senses.

Thanks to Hal’s kindness.

Hal.

Traitor Hal.

My behavior shamed my sister’s memory.

Vengeance honored it.