Mercy's Destiny: Montgomery's Vampires Trilogy (Book #3) (Montgomery's Vampires Series) (2 page)

I’d done some embarrassing things in my lifetime, but dating Mathew just might have been number one. Like residual trauma leftover from a bad perm, every time I thought of him I couldn’t help asking myself:
What had I been thinking?
I could only hope that he’d go away for good after I’d commandeered Robert’s fangs, but I wasn’t optimistic on that front. Mathew had the tenacity of a tick.

As I arrived at Lakeside Plaza, I was once again reminded just how silly it was of me to wish for a positive outcome in any situation that involved Mathew. My first indication that something was amiss was the group of shoppers gathered around the fountain. My initial assumption, of course, was that Mathew had gotten a head start on his meltdown. But how wrong I was.

I knew it was Mathew, and that he was dead, before I saw all of him. I knew this because of the sneakers, which were motionless and pointed skyward, and the only things I could see through the crowd. Mathew had worn the same brand for as long as I’d known him. While the style and stripes always remained the same, the color was ever changing. His feet were clad in tan suede today, though they were and stained red by the violence that had been inflicted upon him.

I instantly felt bad for having so many evil thoughts about Mathew during my drive over to meet him. It was no great secret that the love I’d felt for him had run out a very long time ago. That didn’t mean, however, that I’d wanted him dead.

Imagining how Mathew’s death would affect his mother and sister was what made me saddest of all. Mathew had been an absolutely terrible boyfriend—really, there was no denying it—but he’d always been good to his family. His father had passed away when he was very young, so Mathew stepped up to take care of his family. He’d become the man of the house at an age when most kids were preoccupied with little league tryouts and dance recitals, which I’d always respected him for.

I elbowed my way through the slack-jawed ghouls who were taking videos on their cellphones and gaping at Mathew’s body like it was a Rembrandt up for auction. Disgusting excuses for human beings, every single one of them. What if it was
their
deceased son on the ground?

I’d always found people who took videos of crime scenes perplexing. What exactly did they do with the footage—save it for occasions when they felt particularly nostalgic for that time they witnessed a murder? Human behavior exasperated me on so many levels, which was yet another reason why my boyfriend and best friend were vampires. Living people didn’t seem to
get
me. And I was okay with that, since I didn’t get them much, either.

For an insane moment I wondered if Mathew had committed suicide to get back at me. Maybe he’d taken a handful of pills, timing it perfectly so he’d keel over at my feet as I made my approach. His plan might have even worked, had he not been foiled by my tardiness. The theory was ludicrous, of course, because of the river of blood surrounding Mathew’s body.

I didn’t think Mathew had been in an accident, either. Accidents usually didn’t summon a motorcade of police officers and crime scene investigators. And there were plenty here. Whatever crime had been committed, it had evidently happened very recently.

It was awful, but I couldn’t help thinking about how fortunate it was that I’d showed at the fountain ten minutes late. I’d actually arrived at the plaza
on time
, but had needed to circle the lot twice before I could find a spot close to the fountain. No way was I going to risk having Mathew screaming after me as I walked half a mile to my car. Guess my worry had been unnecessary, considering.

I tried getting the attention of an officer, who ignored me at first, dismissing me as one of the rubbernecking ghouls. After I explained who I was and why I was there, however, he was suddenly mighty interested in getting to know me.

The officer ducked under the caution tape, leading me away from the crime scene and over to a bench a few yards away. The bench’s thin metal slats, chilled from the costal air, bit painfully at my skin through my sweatpants as I took a seat. I was wishing that I’d dressed better, as if my disheveled appearance somehow implicated me of wrongdoing, which was absurd. I waited for the officer to start with the questions. Perhaps I was getting wiser with age, or maybe I’d witnessed enough crime that I knew the drill, but I realized that nervously yammering on and on would be the fastest way to incriminate myself.

2

I was also mindful of my former enemies.

Mathew had gotten himself mixed up with some pretty cutthroat vampires, the Vampire Globalist Organization specifically, so I had to watch what I said. Now that I was finally in the VGO’s good graces, I didn’t want to go pissing them off by ratting them out to the police.

I wasn’t entirely convinced, however, that the VGO
had
been the ones who’d committed the murder, since
not
murdering Mathew had been a condition of the deal I’d struck with them. But if not them, who?

My reaction may have seemed calmer than what would normally be expected from a person who’d just come across their ex lying in a pool of carnage, but that was because this type of scene wasn’t new to me. Sadly, in the short time that I’d been involved with immortals, I’d witnessed violence that would make your hair curl. I didn’t, of course, voice this depressing reality to the officer.

I lost hold on my composure, however, after I made the mistake of glancing over at the fountain. It was in the water that Mathew’s head was bobbing around like an apple in a Halloween carnival barrel. And it was at that precise moment that a crime scene analyst pulled Mathew’s head from the pink water and bagged it. Naturally, once I saw . . . what I saw, I reflexively looked to Mathew’s body, which had been decapitated with such precision that it looked like a laser had been used.

“Excuse me,” I said to the officer, and then I calmly leaned over the side of the bench and vomited into a bed of pansies. The officer fiddled with his phone until I finished, which made me eternally grateful. Really, there’s nothing worse than somebody watching you vomit, even if you have good reason to. I thought seeing my ex’s decapitated head pulled from a fountain was a pretty valid reason. The officer appeared to agree.

Once I was stable, the officer asked me a standard list of questions: What was my connection to Mathew?
He’s my ex, officer.
Why was I meeting him there?
He was returning something to me that he still had after our breakup.
What time had we planned on meeting? I faltered on this one a little, but I confessed to my lateness, since I had no reason to hide it. The officer seemed satisfied with the answers I’d given him. He was being fairly gentle with me, too. My vomiting on the flowers had probably implied that I wasn’t a diabolical assassin.

Then the officer asked a more difficult question, which caused me pause: “Do you know anybody who’d want to harm Mathew?”

Sure, about a dozen members of the VGO, my current boyfriend, my best friend and her husband, and the many women he’d spurned after we’d dated. Oh, and there was little old me—I hadn’t exactly made
my
animosity towards Mathew a secret. I hoped law enforcement wouldn’t gain access to Mathew’s emails, because I’d sent him some doozies.
Yes, officer, I know of lots and lots of people who would have enjoyed seeing Mathew suffer. But whether or not they’d taken the next step and actually
killed him
is debatable
.

Of course, I said none of this.

I sat back on the bench and pretended to reflect for a moment. When I felt that I’d been silent for a sufficient amount of time, I said, “In all honesty, I can’t think of anyone who’d want to murder Mathew.”
Beat the living shit out of him
was a different story.

The officer didn’t take the trouble to write it down. Apparently, he hadn’t really expected me to say yes. Still, he had to double-check. “You sure?”

Again, I pretended to mull this over. “Mathew wasn’t what you’d call an international man of mystery.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is that he wasn’t, like, a MI5 spy or a committer of corporate espionage. He worked in the sales department for a small business that specialized in commercial carpeting—office buildings and whatnot. He wasn’t the sort of person who would have enemies.”

I hoped my explanation sounded ditsy and convoluted enough to make the police scratch me off their list of potential suspects. Living with a vampire and having a standing contract with the VGO, an investigation into my life was the last thing I needed. I also worried for the officer, since the VGO were known to simply off a human if they became too much of a nuisance. If the police started sniffing around and asking questions about Mathew, the VGO might take it upon themselves “to end the investigation” (i.e. assassinate officers), even if they
hadn’t
killed Mathew.

“I see,” said the officer. He seemed to have another question on the tip of his tongue.

“Were there any witnesses at all?” I asked. “It’s odd that Mathew was murdered in such a public place—near all these people—but nobody saw a thing.”

The officer agreed. Yes, it was strange. But, no, there were no witnesses to speak off.

I wanted to ask about security cameras, but I didn’t want to press my luck.

Eventually, he asked, “You said that your ex had something of yours, right? That was the reason you were meeting him, correct?”

Uh-oh. I nodded. “Yes. That’s right.”

“What was it that he had? A sweater of yours or a CD or something?”

I couldn’t tell if the officer was trying to trick me by offering up suggestions. Maybe he assumed that I’d use his idea and say,
Yep, you guessed it! It was an old sweater.
Then he’d have me. The officer seemed pretty wily, so I figured being candid was the greatest course of action.

And I
needed
those fangs.

But how was I going to explain them? I was wishing that I could vomit at will, that way I could buy myself some time to think. But, no, the officer was staring at me expectantly. It was time to employ some acting skills.

I said, “This is embarrassing, and it’s going to sound weird . . .”

The officer shifted uncomfortably, like he thought I was going to start talking about a long-lost vibrator. “Okay,” he said with reservation.

“Back when Mathew and I were together, we took a tour along Route 66. You know, to buy turquoise souvenirs and visit Native American villages?” The part about Route 66 was true, but the only cultures Mathew had been interested in were the extraterrestrials he’d hoped to spot in the stars above Roswell, New Mexico.

“Okay.”

“It’s silly, I know, but we stopped at this tiny Apache village, where a man did an aura reading to find our spirit animals.”

The officer frowned. “Your what?”

“Our spirit animals,” I said, thinking,
Where are you coming up with this?
It was like I was possessed. I rarely lied, but when I did it seemed that I really went for it. “It’s the animal that represents you as a person inside an altered consciousness, like on a different plane.” That was right, wasn’t it? I had no idea. But it sounded good.

“Right,” the officer said, the subtext being:
Okay, fruitcake.

And yet I powered on.  “Anyway, my spirit animal was a—” quick, what had fangs? “—a . . . wolf.” I smiled a smile that was sweet but melancholy.
Oh, the bittersweet memories of my made-up trip with my late ex to the made-up Apache village to see a made-up shaman.

“So, what, Mathew had a stuffed animal wolf?” I could tell that the officer wanted me to wrap it up. Fine by me. I’d rather be dismissed as a flake over a murderer.

“Close,” I said. “They were actual wolf fangs.” He frowned at this, so I swiftly added, “But don’t worry, the fangs were cruelty free. They’d come off a mamma wolf who’d died while giving birth.”

Soon, I’d need a shovel, with all the bullshit I was scooping. I smiled sweetly again—me, the innocent ex-girlfriend who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Or a wolf. And especially not
Mathew.

“Why are these wolf teeth so important to you?” the officer asked. “They must be, since you made a special trip here to get them.”

“That’s a good question,” I said. And hopefully I could come up with an equally good answer. “The fangs, well . . . It’s just . . . I suppose those fangs represent to me the last time Mathew and I had truly been happy as a couple. The split had been amicable, of course—” I had to bite down on the inside of my cheek to keep myself from cackling madly at that one “—but I guess . . . the fangs represent a fond memory. And now Mathew is gone . . .” 

The officer regarded me evenly, perhaps deciding if I was full of it. But the story I’d spun was so farfetched that it was nearly impossible
not
to believe. I hoped.

“So, if I could have the fangs, I’d really appreciate it,” I said. “They’re just so small; I’d hate to have them get lost in the mix.”

The officer considered my request. “We’ll have to hold the fangs as evidence for the time being, but I don’t see why you won’t be able to get them back after everything’s processed.”

I noted that the officer had used a less offensive term like
after everything’s processed.
It showed that he had made an effort to be tactful by not saying instead:
after the body is cleared
. This indicated that he was concerned about not upsetting me, which most likely meant that I’d succeeded in fooling him with my outrageous story. I doubted the police went out of their way make murder suspects feel comfortable.

“Did you see the fangs?” I asked, uneasy about how their treatment could possibly harm Robert. I had no idea how the whole fang thing worked and was nervous that they’d have an effect over him like a voodoo doll—that if somebody stepped on the fangs Robert would feel as if he were being crushed. When dealing with matters of the supernatural, nothing was certain.

“I don’t know,” the officer said, getting to his feet.

I blinked up at him. “It would break my heart—” and maybe Robert’s body “—if they were damaged.”

“Wait here, please.”

I could tell that the news was bad before the officer returned. I’d watched him searching and searching around the crime scene, but he’d come up empty.

Robert’s fangs were gone.

When I got home, I realized that Robert’s fangs weren’t the only thing missing. The rest of Robert was gone, too. This surprised me. I’d assumed that he would have wanted to quiz me about my meeting with Mathew, or at least offer up commiseration after I’d been forced to deal with his insanity.

I’d tried calling Robert on the way home to fill him in about Mathew’s murder and the missing fangs. The calls switched over to voicemail every single time I’d called, which gave me an icky feeling deep in my gut.

Unfortunately, my bad gut feelings were usually right.

I went into the kitchen and set my purse on the dining room table, which hardly got used, as Robert didn’t eat. I then realized why my calls had gone unanswered. Robert’s cell phone was sitting on top of the table, beeping like crazy with message notifications. This concerned me some, because Robert never went anywhere without his cell phone. When you ran your own corporation, like he did, being constantly available was simply a way of life.

I went into the garage to see if his car was gone. It wasn’t. I went through the entire house, starting at the back, and called Robert’s name. I became increasingly frightened as I ran out of rooms to search. Finally, I found the signs of struggle I was looking for, in the nook to the left of the front door. It wasn’t much—just an overturned lamp and an askew cushion on the lounge chair—but it was enough to persuade me.

I set the house alarm, in case the prowler decided to return, and then ran to get my cell. I’d tapped in 9 and 1, but then stopped before hitting the final 1.

Did I actually want to involve the law?

If I had been dealing strictly with human foul play, there would have been no hesitation on my part. I would have already been down at the police station, hollering for somebody to come help me find my man. But I wasn’t dealing with a human disappearance. And, although in my heart I knew that it was ludicrous to even consider such a possibility, there was still the slight chance that Robert had in some way been involved in Mathew’s demise.

But it just didn’t make sense. It wouldn’t be Robert’s style to murder Mathew, especially in such a public way, and then come home to stage a struggle. Okay, so then what had really happened?

I was particularly conflicted because Robert was—please forgive the pretention here—a Person of Importance. Anyone with a vague knowledge of finance (and the Sunday tabloids) knew that Robert was both wealthy and connected. Perhaps his disappearance had nothing to do with the fact that he was vampire . . . Could Robert have been kidnapped for ransom?

Again, I found myself doubting my theory. No human would have been able to overpower Robert, not even if they’d had help. A mob of ten bodybuilders on steroids wouldn’t have been able to take him down, not unless they’d come through the font door in a tank. Obviously they hadn’t. So that would mean, then, that a vampire was the kidnapper, which didn’t add up. Most vampires tend to have money. They may not have
as much
money as Robert, but kidnapping a fellow vampire who lived in the spotlight amongst humans wouldn’t be worth the risk. Most notably, Robert was now an ally of the VGO. No vampire in their right mind would have messed with Robert, not unless they were suicidal.