Mercy's Danger: Montgomery's Vampires Trilogy (Book #2) (Montgomery's Vampires Series) (5 page)

“Why are you asking?” She was suspicious.

“I just am.”

“I uncovered these boxes only yesterday. I was clearing out Michael’s office to make room for gym equipment. Some of the decoys have taken it upon themselves to become pudgy . . .” She straightened. “Anyway, I don’t see why my timing should matter.”

She was too annoyed and perplexed to be up to no good. Coincidence, then. In a world where vampires existed, stranger things could happen. Still . . .

“I need a minute to think, Marlena.”

Marlena nodded with a surreptitious peep at her wrist. I nearly burst out laughing. Impatient as Marlena was, it wouldn’t have surprised me if she set her watch to ensure that I didn’t go over my allotted sixty seconds. She picked up the copy of
Vogue
sitting at the end of the table and pretended to casually flip through it. She reached for her glass of blood and raised it to her mouth to take a drink.

She froze with it below her lips.

I peered at her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost—”

“Hello, Marlena.”

I wheeled around to find Robert standing behind me, his eyes fixed on the journals. He’d obviously heard our little exchange.

“Robert . . .” Marlena sputtered. “You’re—”

“Yes, I know,” he said calmly. “Human.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “But . . . how?”

Robert shrugged. Marlena opened her mouth and then closed it again.

The three of us stared at each other in awkward silence.

Finally, I asked Robert, “You look flushed. Is your fever back?”

“It comes and goes. I feel okay now.”

Marlena gaped, “What in
the hell
is going on?”

More awkward silence.

Was I actually going to do it? Yes. Yes I was. “Uh, you guys . . . There’s . . . I’ve been kind of keeping a small secret about Michael’s visions.”

“A secret?” Robert and Marlena said in unison.

“It . . . I’m afraid it may put me in danger.” I studied my shoes. “It may also put you two in danger—for knowing it.”

Robert put his arm around my shoulders. “You can tell us. Isn’t that right, Marlena?”

Marlena nodded tersely. “Yes.”

“Mercy, uh, I’m no longer a vampire, remember,” Robert murmured in my ear.

“And?”

He tipped his head towards Marlena. “If something happens, I won’t be able to defend you . . .”

“For Pete’s sake!” Marlena huffed. She’d clearly heard, though Robert hadn’t tried all that hard to whisper. “You think I’m going to, what,
attack
Mercy?”

“Would you?” Robert asked.

Offended, Marlena snapped, “If you recall,
I’m
the one who saved her life!”

I said, “And you might be sorry that you did once I finishing telling you my secret.”

They looked at me expectantly.

“Aw, hell,” I muttered. “I need to make a quick call.”

“To?” Marlena demanded.

“Liz. I might as well let her in on it, too. No point in having to repeat myself.”

Liz came over in no time. She joined Robert and Marlena at the table, frowning at the journals. “What’s all this about?”

Marlena, who was Liz’s boss at Dignitary, shot her a suspicious glance. “These? These
journals
are you main concern? What about Robert? You can see him, can’t you?”

“Yes,” Liz answered. “Why?”

“And you don’t notice anything unusual about  . . .” Marlena pursed her lips. “You knew, didn’t you, about Robert being human?”

“Afraid so,” Liz said. “Sorry, Marlena! It wasn’t my place to tell.”

“At least we know that we can trust Liz to keep quiet,” Marlena quipped frostily.

Liz ignored her. “I’ll ask again: What’s up with all the notebooks?”

Marlena filled Liz in about Michael’s nutty scrapbooking while I fetched Liz a glass of blood, courtesy of the vegan college student.

When I returned, Liz’s face was horror-struck. She chucked aside the journal she’d been flipping through and it hit the table with a hefty plunk. Whoever that human had been, they must have kept Michael very busy.

The owners of three pairs of very curious eyes observed me, their emotions varied: impatience (Marlena), curiosity (Liz), and confusion mixed with hurt (Robert). I was most concerned about Robert’s reaction, as I suspected he’d be upset after learning that I’d been keeping such an immense secret from him.

“Uh, shall I begin?” I asked.

The vampires nodded. So did Robert.

5

Carrying the secret around had weighed heavy on my conscience. I hadn’t realized just how much until I finally came clean. I felt about fifty pounds lighter.

“In a nutshell,” I concluded, “Michael was convinced that the human responsible for the downfall of the vampire race had been spawned from a special bloodline. He believed I was that human.”

Robert, Marlena, and Liz spoke simultaneously. They all basically wanted to know the same thing: What qualified as a special bloodline?

“Michael told me that humans from the special bloodline—Cataclysmics, he’d called us—smelled different to him. He also said that the human responsible for the devastation would be in love with a vampire.”

Marlena, business as usual, enquired, “Us?’”

“Yes. Us.” I lifted my chin towards the journals. “Take your pick. Michael started hunting Cataclysmics from pretty much the time he’d been changed over to a vampire. If you look through those journals, I’m positive you’ll find that every single one of those humans was in love with a vampire.”

Robert’s face fell. “Is there a journal in that pile . . . one for Raquel?”

Raquel was the human actress Robert had been in love with during the 1920’s. She’d vanished without a trace on the night Robert asked her to be his wife. Robert had spent many years agonizing over her disappearance.

Marlena picked up a forest green leather journal and passed it to Robert with gentleness. “I’m so sorry, Robert.”

Robert took the journal and silently flipped through a few of the pages. When he looked up, his face was stiff with rage. “At least you killed the bastard,” he said to Marlena. “I’m only sorry that I wasn’t the one to do it.” He placed the journal back on the table and patted it lovingly. I was sad for him. “Please continue, Mercy.”

I looked at Marlena. “You thought that Michael’s murderous rage stemmed from jealousy—that he was jealous of other humans who had been able to find love with a vampire. That wasn’t the case at all.”

Marlena was stunned. “I . . . How could I have not realized what he was up to sooner? I was so blind . . .”

“You figured things out in time to save
my
life, Marlena. That most certainly counts to me.” I added, “And there was no way that you
could
have known. Michael was not just sneaky, but he was the only vampire on earth—that he knew of, anyway—who could detect the uniqueness of Cataclysmic blood. It was no coincidence that Michael happened to meet me on the night he gave me his card and offered me a job at Dignitary. He’d singled me out because of the smell of my blood.”

“Son of a bitch,” Marlena fumed. “It all makes sense, now. Michael brought in a few applicants that I’d wondered about. I never would have personally selected any of them.”

I continued. “Michael justified his actions by claiming that he was murdering Cataclysmics for the greater good of the vampire race. He would have continued killing until his visions stopped, if they ever would have. I’ve tried dismissing Michael as a garden-variety loony tune, but the general consensus amongst vampires seems to be that Michael’s visions were spot-on . . . Which is why I didn’t speak up sooner.” I took a moment to catch my breath. “I’m sorry that I hid this from you guys, but you all must understand why I haven’t been too eager to clear things up.”

Robert brushed my hair back from my shoulders. “No, sweetheart, I’m afraid I don’t understand why you’ve hidden this from me. Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I trust you Robert!” I gazed at Marlena and Liz. “And the two of you. I don’t know . . . I guess it was a mixture of things—shame and fear, mostly. I felt like I had to prove myself before I said anything, show you that I’d never hurt any of you. I could never live with myself if something happened to you guys.”

“We know that you’d never hurt us,” Liz told me. Marlena didn’t concur, but she wasn’t really the comforting type.

“There’s also the threat other vampires pose,” I said. “What do you think they’d do if they learned that you all were sympathizing with a human who was a danger to vampires as a whole? Think vampires would be cool with that? They’d not only kill me, but all of you as well. And I
dare
any of you to say otherwise.”

I folded my arms across my chest. Nobody contradicted me.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Liz commented. “Michael said that he
thought
you’d be the Cataclysmic who’d destroy us. But his illustrations don’t even have you in them!”

Marlena spoke carefully. “Elizabeth, did you
thoroughly
look at those sketches in the journals? Study them closely?”

“Sure.”

Marlena shifted her eyes from Liz to Robert and then me. “Okay, you three, I’m picking up that there’s more you aren’t telling me.” She sat back in her seat and said to me, “You’ve confided in me this much. In for a penny, in for a pound, Mercy.”

I raised my eyebrows at Robert. “Well?”

“Go ahead.”

“Okay,” I said. “Well, you noticed how in those sketches the vampires were holding their fangs? That they had become human?”

“Yes,” Marlena confirmed.

I waved a hand at Robert.

Marlena’s mouth fell open. “You mean . . .”

Robert spoke up for me. “If you would have shown up yesterday, you would have seen a live performance of those sketches.” He opened his mouth to show Marlena his dull human incisors. “See. No more fangs.”

“So, you believe your recent change relates to Mercy?” Liz said with skepticism. “But how? There’s no way. She’s human herself. She doesn’t have mythical powers. I don’t care
what
other vampires believe about Michael’s visions. He was a total nutcase.”

I said, “I appreciate you sticking up for me Liz, but you have to admit that the similarities
are
pretty uncanny.”

“I guess,” she admitted. “What do you think, Robert?”

“I don’t see how Mercy could be responsible for turning me human.”

“And whatever this . . . disease is that you’ve been stricken with, it clearly isn’t airborne,” Marlena declared. “Or else Liz and I would have been affected.”

“Or we would have heard about it happening to other vampires at Dignitary,” Liz said.

“Exactly,” Marlena agreed.

Robert raised my fingers to his mouth and kissed them. “You didn’t put a hex on me, did you darling?”

“How can you possibly be joking around?” Marlena asked Robert.

Robert shrugged. “What do I have to worry about?”

Marlena was aghast. “You mean you actually
want
to be human?”

“If you want, I could change you back into a vampire,” Liz offered.

“That could be suicide, Liz,” Marlena said. “We have no idea what’s wrong with Robert. What if his blood turns you into a human? It could kill you for all you know. No, what has happened to Robert is not normal.”

“No, I don’t want to be human, Marlena,” Robert cut in. “And I appreciate the offer, Elizabeth. But I’m going to have Leopold change me back when he gets here.”

“Leopold is coming?” Marlena asked.

“Oh, yes. I nearly forgot that you two know each other,” Robert told her with blandness.

Marlena quickly returned to our main topic. She didn’t seem too thrilled about Leopold’s visit. “And what if it doesn’t work? What if Leopold can’t change you back?” There it was, Robert’s fear articulated by another vampire.

Robert waved a hand dismissively, though his eyes were anxious. “You’re being hasty.”

“And you’re being foolish if the possibility hasn’t crossed your mind, which I can plainly see it has,” Marlena retorted.

Liz said, “I still don’t see what any of this has to do with Mercy.”

Marlena folded her hands in her lap. “Let’s think about this. Have you done anything out of the ordinary lately?”

“You mean besides turn into a human?” Robert smiled.

Marlena sighed and then fired off a series of questions. “
Prior
to that. Have you sampled exotic blood?”

“You mean like tiger’s blood?”

“Or perhaps a heavy drug user?”

Robert shook his head. “I get my blood at the same place you do, Marlena. You know they test it a thousand times over before it hits the market.”

“Right.” Marlena thought a moment. “Have you been experimenting with tanning lamps, maybe built up an immunity to the sun?”

“As if such a thing is possible. No, I haven’t.”

“Injected human plasma into your bloodstream? Like with a hypodermic needle?”

“Do I even need to answer that? No.”

Marlena drummed her fingers on her chin. “Wait a second! I just had an epiphany! Have you recently started drinking Mercy’s blood?”

Robert said, “I do drink Mercy’s blood, yes. But I’ve been doing so for a while.”

“How long?” Liz asked. I was glad it was Liz who’d pushed further and not Marlena. I could tell Marlena’s brashness was wearing thin on Robert’s nerves.

“I’d have to look at a calendar to figure out the date,” Robert answered.

“Uh, no you wouldn’t,” I told him. “Liz, not to bring up bad memories, but when were you changed over?”

Her mouth spread into an incredulous smirk. “You’ve
got
to be kidding me! You’re telling me that as my cold body was sitting in a morgue freezer turning into a popsicle, you two were getting it on? What the hell?”

“It was our first time being together,” I admitted sheepishly. “Robert was providing me comfort.”

“Sounds like he was providing you with a lot more than that,” Liz simpered.

“This is all very touching, but you haven’t answered the question, Liz,” Marlena quipped.

“It was sixty-one days ago exactly.”

“You sure?” Marlena asked.

“I’m positive,” Liz said with a nod. “I know because I’ve been counting the days down on the calendar. I’m planning on splurging on a piece of jewelry for my six-month vampire anniversary.”

“Here’s a theory,” Marlena began. “Suppose there’s something in Mercy’s blood that takes about two months to incubate and then it knocks vampirism right out of your system.”

“That’s a pretty farfetched theory,” Robert said. “And how would we test it?”

“Have any other vampires drunk your blood?” Marlena asked me.

“Only James.”

Liz frowned. “James?”

“Michael’s trusted hitman.”

“Right. The guy who was fried by the UV lamps in the pot warehouse,” Liz recalled.

“Yep.”

“So there’s nobody else?” Marlena charged on. “Nobody at all? Liz?”

Liz shuddered. “You’re asking if I’ve tasted Mercy? Ew, no. That would be way too creepy.”

“Yah, way creepy,” I concurred. The very
idea
of Liz sucking blood out of me . . .
bleh
. We were close as two girls could be, but even Liz and I had our boundaries.

“I suppose . . .”

“You suppose what, Robert?” Marlena demanded.

“I suppose we could have my blood tested.”

“Tested for what, though?” Liz asked.

“We could give a lab samples of my blood, and Mercy’s blood. And, if it’s okay with you ladies, we could give them samples of yours, too. That way they’d have vampire blood to test my new human blood against.”

“No way,” Marlena said. “I’m assuming you’re referring to human establishments?”

“Why wouldn’t we take the blood to a lab run by vampires?” I asked.

Marlena, Robert, and Liz looked at me like I’d suggested jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn.

“
Duh.
That was stupid of me.” I rolled my eyes. “You don’t need labs since you don’t get sick. So there aren’t any.”

“Vampires have labs, alright,” Robert said, trying to make me feel like less of a dullard. “But they’re used for developing medications for humans. It’s staggering how many vampires work in the pharmaceutical business. It’s a billion-dollar industry, so why not? But, no, we do not have labs used solely for running tests on our blood the way humans do.”

“We can’t go around giving out vials of our blood to humans, Robert,” Marlena scolded. “You
know
it’s strictly forbidden—the only exception, of course, being when they turn a human vampire. Furthermore, how would Liz and I justify the discrepancies in our blood? Our plasma would look a lot different than Mercy’s.” She sat back in her chair. “But
your
blood, Robert—who even knows what it would look like under a microscope?”

“I wasn’t suggesting giving our blood to just any old human,” Robert clarified. “I’m not new to vampirism, Marlena. I know the laws.”

“So then what are you suggesting?”

“I know a human who is . . . sympathetic to our needs,” Robert explained.  “Her name is Shelia Davies. She’s a medical examiner here in San Francisco. We can trust her to keep quiet.”

Marlena was dubious. “And how are you sure that we can trust her?”