Mercy's Destiny: Montgomery's Vampires Trilogy (Book #3) (Montgomery's Vampires Series) (16 page)

“It gets worse,” Sebastian said. “While Violetta was sleeping, Caterina snuck into her daughter’s bedroom and stole the fangs. She then took Luther’s fangs and ground them up into a very fine powder. Caterina mixed the fang powder into the fruit punch she made every year for the celebration, on account of her owning an orchard.”

“Mm-mmm, fang punch,” I joked and Sebastian chuckled.

“Now, it wouldn’t have been so bad if the punch hadn’t been an integral feature of the harvest ceremony. But it was. What happened was this: The entire village gathered around the punch barrel, danced, and then took a sip from the barrel. Those who were too young to reach the barrel were given the drink by their parents.”

“So when you say that
the entire village
had the drink, you weren’t kidding.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Sebastian said. “The punch was blessed by a priest, so it was believed to contain miracles and protection. It was believed blasphemous to
not
drink the punch.”

I asked, “Why did Caterina grind up the teeth?”

“She knew that Luther could not rebel against the wishes of those who possessed the fangs. She knew this, of course, because of her eavesdropping the night before. And since everyone in the village but Violetta wanted Luther gone, she knew Luther would be compelled to stay away if the villagers each possessed a fragment of his fangs within themselves.”

“Which they got by drinking the punch.”

“Yes,” Sebastian clarified. “To foolproof her plan, Caterina told a few village elders and her husband what she had done, and they made a conscious and collective effort to ban Luther.”

“They, what, put out a vibe?” I said.

“Yes, something like that. So, Luther was not just banned from our village, but the surrounding villages as well. What Caterina did not realize, however, was that by drinking the spiked punch, the villagers had not only taken in Luther’s fangs but some of his vampire characteristics as well.”

“This is why you can’t age?” I asked, astonished.

“Yes,” Sebastian confirmed. “I don’t drink human blood, like a vampire must, but I will become deathly anemic if I don’t consume rare meat regularly. And if you think I had it bad being ten for sixty years, imagine what it was like for those who remained babies and toddlers for centuries. Many of them went mad.”

“How awful,” I commented. “But it must have been great for those who were adults.”

“No,” Sebastian said slowly. “None of the adults survived the aftermath.”

“What aftermath?”

“The story gets even more depressing from here, I’m afraid,” Sebastian warned. “Poor Violetta waited and waited for Luther to return. Every night she went into the forest and waited. She waited for six months, and he never showed. At first she believed that he was taking care of unfinished business in his homeland. And then she started to suspect that he had changed his mind about wanting to run away with her, especially because his fangs were gone.”

I said, “You mean, she thought that he’d slipped into her house and taken his fangs back?”

“Yes,” Sebastian confirmed. “People will believe all sorts of things when they’re heartbroken, right?”

I thought of my own situation with Robert. “Sure.”

“Finally, Violetta convinced herself that Luther was dead. She accused her family of murder, and then the townspeople as a whole, which you can expect didn’t go over well.”

“Wasn’t she married off?”

“No, the man Violetta was offered to no longer wanted her after she fell apart,” Sebastian said. “And it didn’t take long for that to happen. Violetta’s looks were first to go; her skin lost its happy glow. She became . . . washed-out. Her hair lost its shine. She stopped going outdoors—stopped all activities, really—so her physique was like that of a prisoner’s. She was essentially catatonic. Violetta only snapped out of her daze long enough to go into the forest each night to wait for Luther. Her sanity went last, around the time she started accusing the town of murder.”

“Bet Caterina felt pretty damn bad,” I quipped.

“Oh, she was beside herself. The whole family was. Their orchard stopped yielding fruit due to a bug infestation that later led to tree rot. It was like a black cloud had settled over their house on the night of the festival. And it never cleared.”

I was inexplicably angry—it wasn’t like I had known these people. “Caterina should have just let Violetta leave with Luther.”

“Yes, well . . .” Sebastian raised his palms.
What can you do?
“Luther had been gone for six months to the day when Violetta threw herself off a cliff. She left a short note behind for her family to find:
May death join us.
”

“So sad,” I said, breaking out in gooseflesh.

“Violetta’s father went mad with grief. He was already starting to go mad, anyhow, because they had run out of money and were going to lose their land. Caterina went mad with something else: vengeance. She believed that it had been Luther, not her own actions, that had prompted the suicide. She blamed Luther for everything.

“On the night of the funeral, Caterina and the whole town summoned Luther. He was very fortunate that the funeral was being held at night, or else he would have burned to death in the sun. Luther
had
to obey the townspeople’s wishes, even at his own detriment.”

I said, “Because they had swallowed his fangs, thus ‘possessing’ him.”

“Precisely. Caterina’s plan was to murder Luther the instant he saw Violetta’s body. She knew that Luther would suffer, seeing Violetta dead, so some part of her must have grasped that Luther truly did love her daughter.”

“That’s so crazy. And awful.”

“Yes, but Caterina’s plan backfired in the worst way,” Sebastian said. “The townspeople had naively underestimated Luther’s strength. The average vampire is incalculably stronger than a human, Mercy, which you must know after spending so much time with them. But an
enraged
vampire . . . Nothing compares to it.” Sebastian’s voice trailed off. “I saw the massacre with my own two eyes. I’ve witnessed many appalling acts in all my years, but what happened in our village that night was the absolute worst thing I’ve ever seen. Ever.”

I opened my mouth to comment and then closed it. What could I say?

“Luther’s torment was as ghastly as his anger. He’d been under the impression that Violetta had been the one keeping him away, so when he travelled to the village that night, he anticipated seeing Violetta and working things out—having a talk with her. Luther had also been suffering from a broken heart. Just like what Violetta had assumed, Luther thought that his love had changed her mind about running away with him. He’d assumed that he’d repulsed her with his vampirism.”

I shivered. “He must have lost his mind when he saw that Violetta had killed herself so that she could be with him in death.”

“Absolutely,” Sebastian said. “And after realizing that it had been
the townspeople
keeping him away—not Violetta—Luther’s rage intensified. He wiped out the whole village within minutes, including my parents, who would technically be your great-grandparents. He spared only the children because he felt that we were innocent in his betrayal.”

“Lucky for you that Luther was sensible enough to do that.”

Sebastian said, “He saved Caterina for last so that she would witness the destruction. The final words Caterina spoke were a hex on Luther: ‘May the village children be a curse to your kind!’ She said this right before he ripped her limb from limb.”

“That was dumb,” I remarked. “What if her curse made Luther change his mind about sparing the children?”

“Maybe that’s what Caterina had hoped for, since all the adults were gone. She perhaps thought that we’d have an easier time if we were deceased, because at least then we wouldn’t suffer. But Luther dismissed Caterina’s curse as the desperate ravings of a superstitious peasant.”

“I didn’t think of the children, as far as them surviving without adults, “ I said. “How did the children survive, if all of you were so young?”

“The fires that Luther had created were so vast that surrounding towns came to our aid. This is one of the reasons why our Partial bloodline dispersed. We all went to different areas.”

“Did you hate Luther for what he did?” I asked.

Sebastian shook his head. “If I hated Luther, I might as well have hated Caterina . . . and maybe the whole village. They were all innocent but all guilty, you know what I mean? Luther only wanted to love Violetta. Caterina only wanted what she believed was best for her daughter and her family. And the village, well, they were only trying to protect their way of life.” Sebastian shrugged. “I’ve been alive for over a thousand years. Can you imagine what that would have done to me, carrying around all that hate for all those years?”

“It would eat you alive mentally,” I said.

“Harboring hatred for those who are in the past gets you nowhere. No, I made peace with my anger very long ago,” Sebastian stated, his voice a million miles away.

16

The wait overnight and then through the whole next day was unbearable.

Sebastian insisted that going to Robert’s at night would be our safest bet, the theory being that would-be attackers wouldn’t see us coming in the dark, since we were dealing with adversaries who were human and not vampire. I’d obliged him begrudgingly, though deep down I knew he was right. We had no idea where the Nolans were hiding. And I
was
pressing my luck, going back to the very spot where I’d been kidnapped.

As dangerous as it was, I needed my cellphone. It killed me, thinking that I might have missed a call from Joseph about Robert’s whereabouts, or maybe even a call from Robert himself. Plus, I had to warn the VGO about Richard and Maxine.

It was risky going to the VGO, because I would essentially be reminding them of the dangerousness of my blood. But I couldn’t stand by and let my grandparents commit genocide, which was what it appeared they wanted to do. They’d all but told me so. The VGO would probably kill them—unfortunate, but it wasn’t as if they weren’t asking for it. Richard and Maxine might as well have painted bull’s-eyes on their backs and run around screaming, “Here! Here! The vampire haters are right here!” Besides, they’d tried to kill
me.

When Sebastian and I pulled onto the street, we could see all the way from the end of the block that the house was lit up like a Christmas tree. I hadn’t known what to expect, but this certainly wasn’t it. Whoever was in the house was making absolutely no attempt to hide the fact that they were there. This was either a very good thing or a very bad thing.

I hoped it was good.

Sebastian slowed to a crawl to do a drive-by. I leapt from the car once I recognized a few of the vehicles in the driveway: Liz’s, Jerry’s, and Joseph’s.

Sebastian slammed on the breaks. “No! Wait, Mercy!” he shouted. “Wait for me!”

I trotted back to the car and told him breathlessly, “It’s okay! I know those cars!”

“It could be a trap,” he cautioned, and he was right. My trustworthiness was what had gotten me kidnapped in the first place. “Wait for me to park the car, okay? Thirty seconds of waiting won’t kill you.”

No, but it felt like it would.

I nearly ripped Sebastian’s arm off after he parked the car and joined me in the driveway. I pulled him toward the house and he stepped in front of me, seizing me by the shoulders. “Now, let’s not go bursting in there like two bank robbers,” he whispered. “We have no idea what’s waiting for us on the other side of the door. They could have your friends held hostage for all we know.”

“I hardly doubt it,” I whispered back. “They’re all vampires.”

“Still.”

I nodded to show that I was in agreement. With Sebastian leading the way, we crept up the walk and through the front door. Once we were inside, I could hear Jerry, Liz, and Joseph. They were in the kitchen, debating where to look for me. A fourth vampire spoke up and I nearly ran Sebastian over as I bolted past. The voice belonged to Robert.

When I appeared in front of my friends, there was a split-second when they all stood, unmoving, like I was a ghost that had materialized out of thin air. Then they were all screaming and cheering.

Robert charged forward, scooping me up in his arms. “My darling-my darling-my darling,” he muttered against my hair. “I feared that I would never see you again.”

“Me?” I said in astonishment. “What about you? I thought you’d left me for Serena!”

“Never!” he said with more anger than I’d ever heard in his voice. “Never!”

Hearing a loud commotion behind me, I pulled away from Robert. It was Sebastian, shrieking.

“Get them off me! Mercy! Help!”

My three vampire allies had been so stealthy that I hadn’t felt them fly past. Fangs bared and hissing, they had Sebastian pinned to the ground. Jerry’s mouth was at Sebastian’s throat, his fangs just breaking the surface of his skin. Liz and Joseph had their mouths open and were drooling, their fingers hooked into claws. These were my friends and they were positively terrifying.

“No! Don’t!” I screamed. I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “He’s okay!”

“Who are
you,
kid?” Liz hissed at Sebastian. She was in full-blown attack mode, so she hadn’t heard me. She now held Sebastian’s head in her hands and was gearing to rip it from his body. I had to diffuse the situation fast, before poor Sebastian’s good deeds were punished by my three well meaning but rancorous vampire associates.

“Don’t!” I ran to where they had Sebastian pinned and tried to pull Joseph away, since he was the vamp closest to me. It was like trying to move a brick wall. “He’s my grandfather!”

I almost had to laugh, the way Liz, Jerry, and Joseph gaped up at me:
Eh????

Finally, their grip on Sebastian slackened.

“Yes, he’s my grandfather,” I repeated. “So if you murder him, you’ll be killing my family.”

Looking sheepish, my three vampire friends got to their feet. My poor grandfather was still too stunned to move. “Sorry,” Liz apologized to me, her fangs retracting. “We thought he was the one who took you.”

I said, “On the contrary. He’s the one who saved me . . . From my great-grandparents.”

“Can I get up now?” Sebastian asked with irritation.

“Sorry mate.” Joseph extended a hand to Sebastian and pulled him to his feet. “I guess we should have waited.”

Sebastian scowled. “You think?”

“Will somebody please tell me what is happening?” Robert said from behind me. “Mercy, how is this kid your grandfather?”

I held up my hands to calm everyone. “I will explain everything to you guys.” I turned to Robert. “But first, I want to know where you were. And I want to know if . . . if you and Serena . . .”

“Absolutely not,” Robert said with enough coldness to initiate a blizzard. “If I ever find her, I’m going to end her life.”

“You mean she’s still out there?” I screeched.

“Aye,” Joseph confirmed. “Unfortunately, she got away.”

“Did she hurt you?” I asked Robert. I let out a breath of relief when he shook his head.

Joseph said, “But she was planning on hurting us. The VGO.”

“Wait. I’m so damn lost. This is so surreal. I can’t . . .” I put my face in my hands and started blubbering uncontrollably. I was just so relieved. I held the pregnancy hormones responsible for my raw emotion . . . And the Nolans for trying to murder me. I hugged Robert. “I’m so happy you’re okay!”

Robert did that comforting back rub thing guys do when they’re soothing a woman in distress. “And I’m so happy you’re okay, Mercy.”

After I got a hold on myself, Liz asked, “Your great-grandparents took you? Why?”

“Why don’t we all go into the living room and have a seat,” Robert suggested, which made me ever so grateful. I needed to take a seat before my knees gave out.

Once Liz, Jerry, and Joseph doled out hugs to me, we all got situated. Sebastian was the odd man out, so I sat with him on one side of me and Robert on the other.

I said to Robert and Joseph, “I will tell everyone all about my kidnapping, but before that I want to hear what happened on your end.” I didn’t know precisely who to direct my request to, since I had no idea who’d played a part in Robert’s rescue. “Start at the beginning, please.”

“I owe my life to this vampire,” Robert professed, clapping a hand down on Joseph’s shoulder.

I immediately felt guilty, remembering the awkward kiss Joseph and I had shared. Joseph seemed to be thinking the same thing, because he quickly looked away as our eyes met. I was still on the fence about whether or not I was going to tell Robert what had happened. I wondered what good it would do, him knowing that I’d kissed Joseph. It wasn’t like I’d done it out of spite or to be deliberately conniving—at the time, Robert and I weren’t technically a couple. What had happened with Joseph was undeniably never going to happen again, with the two of us being repulsed by each other. I was also pregnant with Robert’s child. How would that make Robert feel, knowing that I’d kissed another man while his baby was growing inside my womb? It would only make him resentful towards me and homicidal towards Joseph. And, though Joseph was friendly with Robert and me, he
was
still a member of the VGO.

Confessing would only create unnecessary stress. And, really, the only reason I’d tell Robert about the kiss was to make
myself
feel better and to alleviate
my
own guilt, which didn’t seem fair. No, I decided, I wasn’t going to say a thing. And I hoped Joseph wouldn’t, either.

Joseph seemed embarrassed by Robert’s appraisal. With awkwardness he said, “And the VGO owe many thanks to Mercy for bringing the situation to our attention.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“You alerted us to Serena’s diabolical plan,” Joseph said with a frosty smile.

I felt completely clueless. “What plan? What, her trying to steal Robert away from me?”

Robert and Joseph shook their heads.

“Mercy, I don’t think Serena even likes men,” said Joseph.

“She likes women, then?” I asked, feeling a relief so profound that I nearly fainted.

Robert said, “She likes only one vampire, and that’s herself.”

I threw my hands up in exasperation. “Okay, you guys are already losing me. Please, start from the beginning. Like, Robert . . . How did Serena capture you?”

“She snatched me when you went to see Mathew,” Robert began. “Do you remember when you and I were at the VGO headquarters and we were thinking about Mathew having my fangs?”

“Yes.” Like I could forget.

“Well, when you suspected that Serena had read your mind, you were right,” Robert said. “She bugged Mathew’s phone right after we came home.”

“Sneaky bitch,” I muttered.

Robert nodded. “She knew that Mathew had the fangs, but she didn’t know where he’d been keeping them. Also, Mercy, she wanted to get rid of you.”

“Get rid of me?” I said. “Like, kill me?”

“Yes,” Robert confirmed. “But she suspected that you would be under my protection at night, which, being a vampire like me, was the only time she could go outside.”

I said, “So when she learned that I was meeting Mathew alone to get your fangs—”

“She saw it as an ideal time to strike,” Robert said. “Her plan was to commandeer the fangs from Mathew and then murder the both of you.”

“Isn’t that just lovely,” I commented with disgust.

Robert put his arm around me and gave me a squeeze. “What’s lovely, my darling Mercy, is that you showed up late for you meeting with Mathew, didn’t you?”

“I did. By about twenty minutes.”

“I promise you now, my love, that I will never, ever,
ever
again give you grief for running late,” Robert smiled. “Because your lateness was what saved your life.”

That was not a thought I wanted to dwell on too much. “So, what happened? It was obviously Serena who murdered Mathew.”

“It was,” said Robert. “She waited by the fountain for you to show up. But then Mathew spotted her. She was more concerned with her identity being revealed than killing you, so she decapitated Mathew before he had the chance to call out to her, took the fangs, and then ran. She came here next.”

“Where she used the fangs to make you go with her,” I said.

“Yes,” Robert said. “But I didn’t go without a fight.”

“Which explains the tipped-over lamp,” I said.

“Yes. But the one shove I’d given her was all I could manage,” Robert said with regret. “Once Serena realized that I meant to cause her real damage, she used the fangs to control me.”

“What was it like, being controlled by her?” I asked.

“Awful,” Robert said grimly. “I was aware of my actions but incapable of controlling them. It was like . . .”

“Like being possessed by a demonic force?” I finished for him.

“Well, Serena is demonic,” said Robert.

I asked, “Okay, so wait a minute. If Serena wanted her identity concealed, then why would she go to the trouble of calling to taunt me about stealing you away?”

Robert shrugged. “She had to improvise, I imagine. She knew that you would look for me. Perhaps she worried that you’d go to the VGO with your concerns about my vanishing, if you didn’t know that it was one of their own that had me.”

“Son of a bitch,” I spat. “That was exactly what happened! I didn’t contact the VGO because I was afraid of offending them.”

Robert said, “Serena used my fangs to make me say those things to you, so you’d think we were over and move on.” Robert hugged me tight, which embarrassed our company, but I didn’t care. Being back in my man’s arms felt incredible.

“I was heartbroken,” I told Robert.

“And I’m so sorry for that,” he apologized. “I couldn’t control myself. She made me do it.”

Joseph cleared his throat, keeping us on track.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “So, where did Serena take you? I figured wherever you were was far, far away, since the number you called me from was foreign.”