Mercy's Debt (Montgomery's Vampires Series Book One) (18 page)
Read Mercy's Debt (Montgomery's Vampires Series Book One) Online
Authors: Sloan Archer
“You never had me,” I said coldly.
His face twisted, and he began to weep. It was
an act of humanity I didn’t think vampires were capable of, and seeing his raw emotion took the wind right out of my sails. These weren’t like Mathew’s crocodile tears; these were the real deal. It hurt to watch.
“I did not
want to lie to you,” he said softly. “Liz said that you would be angry if you found out that I had been asking her about you.” He wiped at the heavy tears streaming down his face. “She was correct. Also, I know how it would appear to you- Liz being murdered after coming into my home. I was worried that you would suspect me.”
“
Right
. It’s not as if Liz is around anymore to dispute any of your claims, is she?” I spat.
“What do I have to do to make you believe me?”
“There’s nothing you can do, Robert. We’re over.” I gathered my things up off the floor. “I’m leaving now and I don’t want you to contact me again, understand? If you’ve ever loved me, you will just let me go.”
“
Please do not do this
!” he begged. His voice was thick with desperation. “I would follow you anywhere, but I cannot go outside right now. You know that! Please, just stay with me for a few more hours, until the sun goes down.”
I pu
shed past him and marched out of the room, never once looking back.
He was still
weeping when I slammed the door behind me.
I startled the lawn maintenance crew
for a second time that day when I peeled out of the driveway, leaving a nasty pair of black skid marks behind. I swerved onto the main highway and headed back to the apartment. The idea of revisiting Liz’s murder scene made my blood go cold, but I didn’t plan on staying long.
During the drive, I contemplated just
what in the hell had happened to my life.
Within the time sp
an of just a few weeks, my situation had gone from horribly dire to wonderfully amazing, and then managed to dip down way past horribly dire, and land in a big, fat pile of steaming rhinoceros dung. My best friend had been murdered, my current lover- who was definitely a liar and possibly a killer- was a vampire, my ex-boyfriend had taken up the recent hobby of stalking me, and I had a job that required lying to the IRS. The coup de grâce? If Robert wasn’t the murderer, I still had a killer after me.
I was done.
I pulled over on the shoulder of the road and did a quick internet search on my phone. I found the number I was looking for and called it, pulling back onto the highway with the soothing sound of muzak playing on the line.
Twenty minutes later,
I pulled into the apartment complex. I parked my car, doing a quick check to make sure that it was all locked up.
I
ignored the blurred red slash on the front door and threw it open. I marched directly to the front closet and pulled down a suitcase.
I stormed into my room,
flung the suitcase in the bed, and filled it full of whatever random summer clothing I managed to quickly find. I changed into something more comfortable, and then lugged the suitcase into the bathroom, filling it with my toiletries in a single sweep of an arm.
Leaving the suitcase by the door, I went i
nto the kitchen and flipped on the light, horrendously conscious of the dark shadows in the room. If there was still a vampire after me, I would no longer be protected after sundown.
I
snatched the bucket from the pantry and threw it in the sink, filling it with dish soap and water. I grabbed the pail and a sponge, slopping bits of water on the carpet as I trudged my way to the front door.
I went out onto the porch and
scrubbed the blood off the door. I hated every minute of the task, yet to leave the mark would have felt like I was exhibiting a great lack of respect to Liz. I scoured as hard as I could, but I couldn’t restore the door to its previously white splendor; the blood had left a stain.
When I was finished, I dumped the pink
water out onto the grass and headed back into the kitchen. Locating my checkbook in a junk drawer, I filled out a check to Shady Brook Apartments, writing it so it would cover rent for the following two months. I drew
rent
on the top of my hand in blue ink, a reminder to mail the payment in the morning.
Two months
wasn’t that much time, but I hoped that it would be long enough for me to decide what in the hell I was going to do next.
In the meantime, I would distract myself in Pelville by cleaning out Grams’ belongings. Her trailer had been willed to me, but I’d left it untouched since her funeral, too dejected to enter the home I’d shared with her since childhood.
With the flight
to Florida departing in just a few hours, the last-minute fare had cost me an arm and a leg because the only seats left were in first class. Still, I could think of no better time to head back to my hometown and tie up a few lose ends, finally giving Grams’ cherished possessions the attention that they deserved.
I found a
notepad and began scrawling a message. I’d gotten as far as
Gone home to Florida
before it occurred to me that I didn’t actually have anyone left in my life to leave a note for. This was a very sad fact that should have made me cry, but, for the life of me, I couldn’t conjure up even a solitary tear. I was numb.
Feeling more alone than I’d
ever felt in my entire twenty-four year existence, I grabbed the note and crumpled it into a ball, throwing it at the wastebasket. It bounced off the rim and rolled to the corner of the room, adding yet another failed attempt at being a winner under my belt.
“Screw it,” I
muttered, leaving the ball where it was. It wasn’t as if I had anyone to impress with my cleanliness.
I flipped off the light and
grabbed my suitcase by the front door.
I gave the apartment a final
scan, and a bittersweet wave of joy, pain, love, and loss overcame me. I shut the door and locked it, the tears finally starting to flow as I strode towards the taxi pulling into the complex.
The drive
r threw my suitcase in the trunk while I settled into the back seat.
“See you around, California,” I
murmured.
We
pulled onto the highway just as the sun began to set, a brighter life in Pelville awaiting me.
EPILOGUE
Robert
was no longer weeping.
Now he was worried.
He gripped his phone and punched in Mercy’s number once again. It went straight to voicemail, netting the same result as the dozens of other calls that he’d made.
He made another circle around the room, muttering obscenities under his breath.
His only hope was that he could locate Mercy before her stalker did. It was just a matter of waiting out the clock until the sun went down. If there was one consolation, it was the fact that the killer was also immobile, another slave to the darkness.
His phone rang.
Damn it, it wasn’t her.
“Carl! Has she shown yet?”
he sputtered breathlessly.
“I’
m sorry, Robert, she hasn’t. I haven’t taken my eyes off her apartment since I’ve been here… But I’m afraid that she may have left town.”
“Why do yo
u believe this to be the case?”
“I just spoke with a neighbor of hers who said that he saw her dragging a
large suitcase to a taxi only a few minutes before I arrived. He said that he was going to offer to help, but then he noticed that she was crying. I also looked through the front window of the apartment, and the front closet door was hanging wide open. There was an empty space on the top shelf, a space about the size of a suitcase.”
“Did you ask the neighbor if he knew where she was going?”
“I did, and he didn’t. All he said was that she looked scared and upset, and that she kept looking over her shoulder as she rushed to the taxi.”
“Okay. I will head over as soon as the sun sets. It should only be a few more minutes.”
“You want me to come and pick you up?”
“No
!”
“Alright.”
“Please, Carl, just stay put,” Robert said in a quieter tone. “I want you to be there in case she comes back. I will take the Bentley.”
“I won’t move an inch.”
“Thank you, Carl.”
“Robert?”
“Yes.”
“The sun has just gone down…
”
Click.
“
Hello? Robert? Are you still there?”
Less than forty-five seconds later, a silver Bentley GT zoomed onto the highway and reached a velocity that was more than double the posted fifty mile an hour speed limit. Robert tightened his grip on the wheel and accelerated, sickened by the thought of his beloved being in the path of danger.
He
did not slow until he entered the inoffensive residential neighborhood, biting on his lip petulantly as the speedometer dipped just below sixty. At the last minute, he rocketed into the driveway of the apartment complex, nearly missing its entrance.
He found Carl, who was on the porch
and in front of the door, craftily picking the lock.
Carl
looked down at his watch as Robert approached. “A new record,” he said, noting the speedy arrival.
T
he latch clicked and the door popped open. Robert regarded his watch, then, too. “A new record,” he commented in return.
They walked into
the apartment.
“What? What is it, Robert?”
Carl asked, the disturbed expression on his companion’s face concerning him.
“
A vampire has been here. I can smell it,” he said flatly. “Not recently, but definitely within the past twenty four hours. It must be how the killer got to Liz. He waited for her inside.”
Carl scowled.
“Bastard.”
The two men walked into Mercy’s bedroom, peering into her closet. They noted her missing clothes.
They went into her bathroom next; her toiletries were gone, too.
Yes, they decided, she’d definitely skipped town.
They ambled through the living room and made their way into the kitchen. They immediately noticed the notepad on the counter with high hopes. However, their faces fell once they realized that it was blank. Robert ran his fingers over the empty page, feeling the indents from Mercy’s pen. He held the notepad up to the light, trying to make out the words. The marks were indecipherable.
It was
Carl who saw the small black object first. He picked it up from the dining table and silently handed it to Robert.
Mercy’s cell
phone.
“Goddammit!” the vampire
roared. “This explains why she is not answering.”
“We’ll find her,” Carl pacified.
“We’ll find her.”
Robert
set the phone down and touched his comrade on the shoulder. “Would you mind leaving me for a moment?”
“Of course not.
I’ll just wait outside.”
“Thank you, Carl. You have always been a good friend to me.”
Carl left the kitchen, and Robert busied himself by looking through every cabinet and drawer. He found nothing of use, not a single clue as to where Mercy might have gone.
Frustrated, he started toward
s Mercy’s bedroom; perhaps there was some clue he had overlooked. Remembering her cell phone, he turned and headed back into the kitchen.
He froze, seeing for the first time the crumpled paper ball in the corner of the room. He snatched it up from the floor and smoothed it out on the counter.
He let out a gasp and ran to the front door. “Carl! Come quick!” he called out, and then returned to the note in the kitchen.
He positioned the paper next to the
notepad, holding both up to the light. The indentations matched. This was the last note Mercy had written.
“What is it?”
Carl asked breathlessly, sprinting into the room.
“I need you to go ho
me and prepare my travel casket,” Robert commanded. “We are traveling to Florida to find Mercy.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sloan Archer resides in California. She has been penning fiction since childhood; her first books were horror mysteries inspired by the howling coyotes on her family's farm.
Sloan is a seasoned world traveler whose journeys have taken her from Madagascar to Indonesia, and many countries in-between. In 2007
, she founded a jewelry label, VIVI+VIVI, and received international recognition for her creations, her most coveted designs worn by celebrities and carried in Fred Segal. In 2012, she closed her business to focus on her true love, writing.
When Sloan isn't composing novels, she enjoys traveling, running marathons, painting, reading, and spending time at the beach. She is currently working on three books:
Mercy's Doubt
, the second installation of the Montgomery's Vampires Series,
Lilac Coma
, and
The Frightened
.
WHERE TO FIND SLOAN
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/SloanArcherWriter
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SloanArcher
Goodreads
: http://www.goodreads.com/SloanArcher
Blog: http: http://sloanarcherwriter.wix.com/sloanarcher
