“In the end, I just kept pushing him to get help, over and over—fighting him, like that could bring him back.” Rahil’s massaging stopped, the tension in his grip brittle enough that it seemed a strong wind would break him. “I pushed him so hard that I pushed him over the edge.”
“Oh, Rahil.” For all that his head and stomach ached, Mercer’s body barely hurt compared to the thought of what Rahil had been through. He didn’t fight his instincts—didn’t think he could have won if he tried—just reached up to cup one of Rahil’s hands in his. He laced his fingers around Rahil’s and squeezed.
“They say that when someone chooses to leave the world early, that there’s a lot of little things that build up to it, but it’s also one specific moment, when inhibition is too low and life shoves too hard and the opportunity is there.” Rahil sounded as though he was choking, each word forced through a noose. “For him, I was the shove.”
“Rahil.” His name emerged like a prayer, a plea, and Mercer didn’t care. All he did care about right then was dragging that horrid agony off Rahil, of letting him breathe again. He turned, the cries of his body ignored as he pulled one of his legs onto the bed and gripped Rahil’s face with his other hand. “You could not have known.”
A stain of tears lined either side of Rahil’s cheeks, and his chest heaved like he was suffocating, no air coming forth.
“Your feelings—they’re normal, surely. I know that just the thought of Lydia…” Mercer couldn’t bring himself to even reach the end point; it was too excruciating to consider. A tremble went through him, and however much his mind refused to think the same about his own child’s bad choices, he spoke the truth anyway: “But it was Jonah’s decision.” He tried to be firm, but gentle—be the comfort, the reason, and the stability he’d received from Rahil when he was holding Kat on the kitchen floor, caught in a panic. “Would you have felt better after the same outcome, had you done less instead?”
Rahil didn’t answer that, just looked away. He breathed in, then out, and dragged a hand over his face. Instead of responding, he said, “Matt didn’t handle it well. He was rambunctious at that age, more likely to get into trouble than not, but with Shefali grieving and Jonah gone, I… I didn’t want to make the same mistake again. I let him go his own way.”
Mercer dropped his hands into his lap and gave him a nod to move forward with the story—perhaps this was what he needed. To get it all out there. “What happened?”
“Nothing, for a while. He graduated high school. He went through college, too. But somewhere around there, he started to pick up… ideas: that the reason life had given him pain was because certain people weren’t doing their part, or actively preying on the good and the hardworking. Not certain individuals, mind you, but certaincategoriesof people.” Rahil shrugged after, but the anguish on his face was nothing like dismissal. “Last October I was contacted as next of kin. He’d been killed in what was labeled a freak vampire attack.”
Like Leah, Mercer’s subconscious screamed, but he feared that this was not like Leah at all. Leah was the fluke, as he’d slowly realized over a mound of holy silver. Usually, when vampires killed people, it was either a tragic accident or they had a very, very good reason.
“When I realized he’d been working for Vitalis-Barron, I knew it was more complicated than a merefreakattack.” Rahil smiled in a way that was no smile at all, drained of life and the corpse possessed. “If he was killed while acting on the beliefs he’d been espousing, then I doubt it was the vampire’s fault. But he was still my kid, and I—”
“Rahil…” Mercer wanted to reach for him again, but the way Rahil held up his hand brought him to a halt.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t tell me there was nothing I could have done. I was his father, and a vampire, and I let him wander so far into the darkness that he became a threat to my own people.”
Mercer didn’t know what to say to make things any better, so he watched as Rahil’s expression bittered further, and felt his heart tear a crack down the middle to match.
“Matt reached out to me last summer. He said he just wanted to get a meal and reconnect, but I...” Rahil shook his head. “I was too afraid of what I’d find.”
“You might have been right. He could have been planning to take you to Vitalis-Barron.”
“Or I might have been wrong.” He stared past Mercer, at nothing and everything. “Matt took his mother’s surname after she died. He adored her. Even if they disagreed on many of the things he and I did, he adored her anyway.”
Mercer still didn’t know what to say, so he went for the only truth that he knew. Breaking past Rahil’s guilt and grief, he wrapped one arm around him, feeling for his bones beneath his skin like he was nothing more than a ghost, and pulling him back to reality. “You are not alone, Rahil,” he said, and hugged him.
Rahil shook. For a moment it was his only movement, those soft, pathetic trembles, but then his arms lifted and he wrapped them so timidly around Mercer’s back that he seemed scared of spooking him. The longer they stayed like that though, the tighter he held on, burying his face in Mercer’s shoulder and sobbing, gentle, soundless sobs. They did nothing for the pain in Mercer’s head, or his stomach, or his heart, but he found he was all right with that.
As Rahil stilled, Mercer broke the silence. “Sometimes I think, what if there was something I could have done to save Leah? What if I had told her to focus more on personal protective devices, so she had some way to fight off the vamp who bit her? Or gone to pick her up that night? There must have been one right turn that I missed along the way.”
Rahil’s hands snaked up to rub at the back of Mercer’s skull once more. His voice sounded weak, but surer, his head still resting on Mercer’s shoulder. “If there was, then it wasonechoice: one night—a single blind pick of the draw. You didn’t cause that.Youwere just unlucky.”
It felt wrong to be told so by the person unluckiest of all. In a way, Mercer could see the truth in it, though. He had no control over past mistakes he couldn’t have known would matter at the time. But now he did know. Now he had that choice—to protect and provide, or to let his little girl struggle towards the same fate. He stroked Rahil’s back gently, letting that touch, too, ease some of his discomfort. “I could have found the bastard who bit her, at least.”
He only realized how impolite that might have come off to a vampire after he’d said it, but Rahil only sighed, like the inevitability of the situation saddened him. “I’m sure they would have deserved it.”
His face was so near Mercer’s neck that Mercer could feel the gentle flow of his breath, each word a sensation amidst the pain. His skin tingled. OhGod. He swallowed and focused on the rhythm of his hands up and down Rahil’s back—not too low, not too suggestive. Comfortable. Comforting. They were just being there for each other when the other person needed it.
That was all.
“You know,” he said, softly, “Iamaware that most vampire bites are enjoyable events. And that it very rarely leads to a turning.”
“You have to drain most of the blood to reach that point,” Rahil agreed. His hands drew lower, thumbs massaging into the back of Mercer’s neck, before they paused. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to speak so callously—”
“I know what Leah went through. I made sure to know.” Mercer breathed in, then out. He wanted this. He had wanted this all morning, and all night, despite—or because of—the pain, and he was allowed to help a friend, if it was something they both wanted. “What I know of her turning shouldn’t change whether I allow myself to consent to something similar—not that this is similar. Thisisdifferent. And because it’s different, I shouldn’t hold it to the same prejudice.”
Rahil sounded like he’d swallowed the moon. “Itcanbe very enjoyable.”
“And you’re hungry,” Mercer added. “You are hungry?”
