Mercy's Destiny: Montgomery's Vampires Trilogy (Book #3) (Montgomery's Vampires Series) (9 page)

They got out of the car as I neared, and I was able to see exactly how old the man in the passenger seat was. His skin was lined like a crumpled paper bag and his hair was whiter than virgin snow. His movements were slow and focused, one misstep away from hip-replacement surgery, although he did not use a cane or a walker. He was pushing a hundred, no doubt about it.

The woman, hair also virgin-white, was slightly younger. I placed her at maybe seventy, though wealthy women tended to age better than less fortunate spinsters who couldn’t afford bi-weekly facelifts. Her boney frame sparkled with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, most art deco in style. Wrists, fingers, neck, and earlobes twinkling, she was like a walking Christmas tree.
I hope she doesn’t go walking around downtown like that
, I thought. Talk about a mugging waiting to happen.

The couple was impeccably dressed. The woman was in an open tan felt coat with fur trim and a thick black wool dress underneath; the man wore a crisp tailored three-piece navy suit, polished opal cufflinks subtly flashing out from his sleeves. I imagined these two were the type to have gratuitous accessories of the old and wealthy: alligator house slippers, silk robes, monogrammed hand towels, leather driving gloves.

I relaxed some. Unless they pulled a gun on me, they were physically harmless. I could run at my slowest side-cramped, knees-a-hurtin’ pace and
still
get away by miles. Had the sun been down, I wouldn’t have been so trusting. It didn’t matter how old a vampire looked; they were lethal, white hair and all. 

“Can I help you?” I asked. I was ashamed of the way I’d spoken, like I was addressing a child. Before Grams passed away, she’d mentioned how a lot of young people tended to patronize the elderly, treating them as if they were feebleminded instead of older and wiser. And now here
I
was doing it to these people. Not good.

The couple exchanged a look, as if deciding who would speak up first. Finally, the woman gave a nod.

She reached a leather-gloved hand out to touch my arm and then withdrew at the last second. “You are Mercy Montgomery?” Even her speech was fragile, as if the very act of speaking was strenuous for her.

The iced coffee was cold in my grip, freezing my fingers stiff. I switched hands and the ice shifted in the cup. “What’s this about?” I made a point not to sound rude, but there was no way to make such an inquiry without sounding
a little
brusque.

The couple exchanged another look. The man gave the woman a smirk:
I told you this wasn’t going to be easy
.

“You
are
Mercy Montgomery,” the man said with irritation—a confirmation, not a question. He might as well just come out with: “Look, chick, my years left on this planet are limited, so I don’t have time for this horseshit. Got it? So just verify who you are so we can get on with things.”

Had it been anyone else, I would have been insolent with my response. But I’d been raised by Grams to respect the elderly, and they seemed harmless enough.

“I am,” I said slowly. “What can I help you with?”

The woman smiled shyly. “We were wondering if we could come inside and talk to you.”

“Inside?” I turned around and eyed the house. Why, I don’t know—it wasn’t like I didn’t know it was there. “Talk to me about what?”

The man stepped forward. “We—my wife and I—have decided that it was time we finally meet.”

The woman nodded and agreed.

“Okay,” I said. “But who are you?”

“You really don’t recognize us?” the woman asked. She turned her face, as if maybe I hadn’t gotten a close enough look at her.

I apologized, “No, I’m sorry. I don’t recognize either of you. Should I?”

“We were hoping that you would,” the man said, “since we’re your great-grandparents.”

“My great . . . Oh my God,” I muttered.

The woman reached out. This time, she did make physical contact, her hand curling over my forearm in a bony claw. “It’s so nice to finally meet you, dear,” she beamed. “I do hope you’ve been able to enjoy the money we put into your bank account.”

9

“I was under the impression you’d passed away,” I said as we settled in the living room.

My alleged great-grandparents were sitting ramrod straight on the sofa, their cups of tea steaming on the coffee table before them. They hadn’t touched the cookies I’d set out, and I doubted they would. They probably thought crumbs were uncivilized.

I moved the armchair, so that I wouldn’t have to holler at them from the other side of the room, and took a seat. I felt like a traitor being hospitable towards my two uninvited guests, considering the things they’d done to Grams. Or, rather, all the things they
hadn’t done
for Grams after she’d fallen pregnant with my mother back in 1970. They’d essentially given her an ultimatum: ditch the kid or be disowned. As a result, she was forced to move away from her home in New York as a teenager and start her life over in Florida.

The woman’s (I couldn’t consider her family just yet) smile was brittle. “We thought you might be.”

Feeling defensive on behalf of Grams, I said, “Do you know that
your daughter
has
passed away?”

They nodded solemnly. “We know,” the man said.

I powered on. It was difficult to keep my voice steady because of the rage simmering inside me. If Grams’s parents had hoped to show up and buy my forgiveness with their million stinking dollars, they had another thing coming. They could
keep
their damn money if that was the case. I hadn’t minded bruising my pride back when I’d believed the funds had come from Robert. But knowing now that it had come from these two—that it was their penance for turning their back on Grams in the most heinous way . . .

Well, I’d rather go bankrupt.

“Where were you all these years?” I demanded. “Do have any idea how hard life was for your daughter? For your granddaughter? For me? You left Grams high and dry—tossed
your own daughter
out of the house when she was
with child!
And why? Because you couldn’t stand to lose face with your friends?”

“That’s part of the reason why we’ve come here,” the man said. “We’d like to explain.”

“I don’t think there
is
a way for you to explain how you could do something like that,” I said, clamping my hands down on the arms of my chair.

They didn’t flinch at my harshness. They didn’t even blink. It seemed they’d come expecting this reaction.

Whether or not they expected, I wasn’t done. They
would
hear me out. “You two clearly have lots and lots of money. Do you know how tough it was for us financially? How much we scraped and scrounged to get by? Did you know that my mother—your
granddaughter
—died when I was just a kid and it was
your daughter
who stepped up and raised me?” I paused to catch my breath. “Grams was the most decent and honorable women to have ever lived . . . So how you assumed you could come here and try to justify throwing her out into the cold, pregnant and alone . . . It’s . . . It’s just astounding.”

The man took a sip of his tea. I was so furious that I wanted to snatch it from his pruned hand—
stop drinking my chamomile, asshole!
They shot me a patient look.
Are you done?
Right then I could see a bit of Grams in both of them, as she’d given me that look whenever I’d acted out as teenager.

“You are well within your right to be angry, Mercy,” said the woman. “We certainly could have handled the situation with Francine better. But perhaps you will consider forgiving us once you hear the entire story.”

I was confused. “Who is Francine?”

The woman frowned. “Uh, your grandmother—our daughter.”

“Oh.” I’d only ever known Grams as Tilly. She’d changed her name after moving away from these two jerks as a gesture of starting over. Come to think of it . . . “And what are
your
names?”

“Francine didn’t tell you?” the man asked.

“I never bothered asking,” I sniped.

“Fair enough,” said the woman. Her tiny bejeweled hand fluttered up to her breast. “I am Maxine.”

The man smiled. Sort of. “And I am Richard.”

“And what are your last names?” I inquired. “I’m assuming not Montgomery?”

Maxine said, “Your assumption is correct. My maiden name was Bowden. I became Nolan after Richard and I married.”

“Richard and Maxine Nolan,” I muttered. I should have been Mercy
Nolan.
What a trip.

“Richard and I would be so grateful if you’d hear us out, Mercy,” said Maxine. “Can we make an agreement? Let us stay long enough to explain. And if you still want us to go after we are finished, we promise that we will leave without a fuss. And of course the money is yours to keep either way.”

“It was never about the money,” I said. And it wasn’t. It was doing right by Grams’s memory. But I imagined Grams would have wanted me to hear them out, since I knew absolutely nothing about my roots. I hadn’t cared so much about it when I was a teenager, but now that I was a little older I felt that knowing
something
about my ancestry was important. And they had come all that way,
if
they were still New Yorkers.

I sat back. “Okay,” I complied. “I can agree to that.” But it had better be good.

“Oh splendid,” Richard and Maxine beamed in harmony, lower jaws jutted out slightly. I didn’t think people actually said it like that—oh
splendid
—but apparently they did. Mr. and Mrs. Nolan reminded me a lot of Leopold; he was a bit of a snob, too.

Maxine nodded at her husband. “I wasn’t born wealthy, Mercy,” Richard began. “My family was quite poor, actually. My father was a humble shop owner in New York City, and I was one of five children. I was born in 1919. To save you from doing the math, I turned ninety-four this year.” He looked every one of those ninety-four years.

I never knew what people expected me to say when they told me their age.
Congratulations on making it this far! Go you, for breathing all those years!
Or, as was the case with Richard:
You don’t look a day over ninety-four!

“Wow,” I said lamely. “Almost a hundred.”

Richard seemed satisfied enough with my response. “In 1932, when I was barely a teenager, Prohibition was still in effect. It would be a full year before it was repealed in New York. But, illegal or not, people liked their drink, they sure did. There were several speakeasies operating out of the city. Of course, the act of rum-running was highly punishable by law, which was why it was highly lucrative.”

What in the hell did this have to do with price of tea in China? I reminded myself that I’d promised to hear them out.

“As I said, my family was poor,” Richard continued. “My father had fallen ill, so his business was suffering. My parents were having a difficult time feeding all the mouths they’d created. As the eldest child, it was my job to step in to help the family stay afloat. A friend from the neighborhood was running rum for a small crime syndicate—there were a lot in those days. My friend helped me get a job delivering barrels at night to very exclusive speakeasies.

“Not surprisingly, my father was not pleased with my illicit activities. But I was bringing in money that we desperately needed, so he turned a blind eye.”

Well, well, my great-grandfather was a criminal. This I had not expected.

“I’d been a delivery boy for about two months when I was attacked,” Richard said. “Running rum was dangerous not only because it was illegal, but because rival gangs would often attack one another during deliveries. When I was ambushed, I initially assumed that a rival had targeted me. I was with just one other boy that night—he was my friend from the neighborhood. It was timely that I was working with somebody I had camaraderie with, or else I would have been murdered.”

“You friend fought off the attacker?” I was confused as to where this was all leading. How any of this could be connected to Grams was questionable.

“He did indeed,” said Richard. “And I doubt anyone else would have stayed around to help me.”

“Why? He was armed?” I asked. “Your attacker?”

Richard shook his head. “Not at all, which is how we were ambushed.”

“So then how—”

“The attacker bit into his neck,” Maxine piped in. She’d obviously heard this story before.

I flinched. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought they hadn’t noticed. Could my great-grandparents be in the know about vampires? But how? And if they were, what a strange coincidence. I eased back into my chair.

“How do you mean?” I asked innocently. “He was a cannibal?”

“We know that you know,” Richard said.

“About?”

He gave me a look, like,
really?
“Vampires.”

“You . . . do?”

“I’m getting to it, Mercy,” Richard said.

“Okay,” I said, my head buzzing.

My long-lost great-grandparents could have shown up and said many things after being absent my whole life, but the last thing I expected was:
We’ve given you a million dollars, your grandmother’s real name was Francine, your true last name is Nolan, your great-grandfather was a rum-runner, we are aware that vampires exist, and, oh, we know that you are aware that they exist, too.

I had a very bad feeling about it all. They wanted something. I could just
feel
it. I no longer bought Richard’s story about him wanting to get to know me because he was getting on in the years, though I hadn’t believed it much to begin with. I had no doubt that the Nolans could have found me a lot sooner, if they’d really wanted to. With the amount of money they had, they could have hired a legion of private investigators.

Their sudden arrival was just that: sudden. Way too sudden.

I didn’t dare say more. They obviously knew
something
about my association with vampires, but
how much
they actually knew I couldn’t be sure. They may have known that vampires were real, but that didn’t necessarily mean that they knew that
Robert
was a vampire. Or Elizabeth. Or Joseph. Or Jerry. Or Marlena . . . or any of the other vamps I knew. Unless they revealed what information they truly had, I was keeping my secrets to myself.

“The attacker had come up from behind, which is the main reason I hadn’t seen him,” Richard continued. “I began screaming as he latched on to my neck. Sampson, my friend from the neighborhood, acted quickly, or else I surely would have been drained. He stabbed my attacker right through the heart. I also got in a few stabs once I was free. We carried weapons with us, you see, because of the threat from rival bootleggers.”

“Did he die?” I asked. “The vampire?”

“He did eventually,” Richard said. “Understandably, Sampson and I panicked. Two boys, one thirteen and the other fourteen, attacked in the street by a vampire in the middle of the night? You couldn’t expect much else.”

Richard let that sink in while he took a sip of tea.

He set the cup down and said, “We ran into the speakeasy and began telling our story to anyone who’d listen. Everyone inside, of course, dismissed us as two youngsters telling tall tales, even if we were covered in blood. The owner, a malicious crime boss you did
not
want to antagonize, thought we were trying to cover our tracks because we’d either drank or sold his rum. Sampson and I were nearly killed.

“The only way we were able to save our hides was by taking the group out onto the street where the vampire had attacked.” Richard chuckled. “Of course, if you’ve ever seen a vampire die, you can see why this did not help our cause.”

“Because he’d already begun to decompose,” I commented.

“Exactly,” Richard said. “Had it not been for the fangs, I doubt anyone would have believed us. But there they were, glinting on the street.” He took another sip of tea and then gently set the cup down on the coaster. “I kept them.” He lifted his arms so that his cufflinks were showing. They weren’t opals after all, but fangs.

He’d kept them like trophies.

“The speakeasy boss was a big occult aficionado; so were a few of his wealthier male customers. He took Sampson and me into his office with the men, who were now revering us like two tribesmen who’d put down a lion that had been terrorizing the village. The office was ornamented with big game prizes: rhinos, elephants, zebras, and tigers. He even had a chimpanzee rug.” He was saying the part about the animals with admiration, while I was reflecting on how grotesque it was. My great-grandfather was not scoring any points.

“They told us to describe the attack and we did.” Richard smiled sheepishly. “Sampson and I may have embellished a little about our battle, but the core of the story was true: We’d killed a vampire where they had failed.”

“What do you mean,
where they had failed
?” I asked. “Did they know about the existence of vampires?”

Richard nodded. “They did. As I would come to learn, the men were chasers of the exotic.”