If she could be okay even after the worst had happened, then perhaps Mercer and Lydia would too. They were both brave and brilliant individuals. With the help of Leah’s protective device, they would be fine.
They didn’t need Rahil there to accidentally fuck things up for them.
Which was good, he told himself, seeing how he now had Nat to worry about instead.
Though she had agreed to come with him, he could see the hesitation in her stance, her dread and anger wrapped so tightly around herself that it seemed she was trying to protect herself with it. Rahil feared that those emotions could not form shields though, only blades.
The shed was beautiful in the darkness, lights streaming from the high window where Mercer had pulled up the shutters. Rahil could hear Mercer working inside, with the gentle cling-cling-cling of a hammer on metal. It sounded, weirdly, like being home: familiarity and warmth and affection.
Except that Rahil had ruined that affection with a thoughtless word. This place was never going to be a home, he reminded himself—even more so now that he had Leah’s notebook under one arm. He still didn’t know what he was going to do with it, but it had felt wrong not to at least bring it. Especially if this was going to be his last proper conversation with Mercer. With Leah’s device in his pocket, he just had to be here long enough to pick up the rest of the parts he’d need for it, and then the next time he returned, he could leave the completed piece on Mercer’s back porch without a word. It would be better for them both that way.
Rahil shoved the painful thought aside and led Natalie forward.
She tucked her fists tighter as they entered. Her gaze swept from Mercer’s broad form over the assortment of tools, and she looked just as Rahil had felt when he’d first laid eyes on those same instruments. She stopped in her tracks, shuffling between her feet instead of moving.
“Mercer!” Rahil all but shouted, hoping to move things along before he lost Nat entirely. “This is Natalie. She’s volunteered to test the unholy gold for you.” Volunteered, after Rahil offered to let her stay with him as long as she wanted, pretty please. But he would have done that anyway if it looked like she needed it, so it wasn’t as though he was giving anything up for Mercer.
Mercer smiled at Nat, small but warm—and this was what customers must have seen from him, this kind but contained stranger, wearing a mask of courtesy. Perhapsmaskwas not the right word, though. The benevolence Mercer was presenting was certainly genuine; it was simply that it hid far more beneath it. Rahil had seen behind that top layer, seen the man for who he was, and called himbabe, for the first and the last time.
Rahil noticed, dismally, how Mercer didn’t turn his customer-fronting face onto Rahil, as though Rahil wasn’t even a part of the conversation. He gave his smile, his handshake, his attention to Natalie only, warming her up as he guided her further into the space. Her fear seemed to ease some.
Maybe thiswasgood for her, then. Rahil tried to feel relieved.
“Yeah, I’ve run into holy silver a couple of times so far. It’s not fun.” She fiddled with the skin around her fingernails. Acouple oftimes. What was normal for a fresh vampire these days? Rahil wasn’t sure. He’d gotten fairly good at avoiding the kind of people who had access to the metal. Before Mercer, Rahil hadn’t felt its touch in years.
“I have customers coming soon, so we’ll make this quick. The unholy gold is in here.” Mercer tapped the top of a fancy box he must have retrieved just for this. So, he was a bit of a showman. Rahil wanted to tease him, but he knew it would go nowhere, and for once, that made the desire unbearable. He turned his attention to Natalie instead. “The moment you feel even the slightest pain,” Mercer explained, “tell me, and I’ll pull the metal back. Anything else you feel—anything that isn’t discomfort—remember it. I want to know that, too.”
“Okay, sure.” Natalie nodded. Her gaze was fixed on the box, and the nervousness of her expression had been replaced by a whole new tightness: curiosity.
Rahil’s gut twisted.
Her lips parted as Mercer withdrew the unholy gold from the box, and she inhaled, soft and slow. “It’s beautiful.”
—Oh no—
“It is,” Mercer agreed, but he seemed to be staring through it. Looking into the past, perhaps, to Lydia, or Leah.
He approached Natalie slowly. With each step, Rahil could see the change come over her, then feel it in himself—atop the dregs of his ever-present exhaustion was now an abnormal drop in his attention span, his vision, hearing, and muscles all weakening as his mind and body settled into a state that it seemed only his bones remembered. The worst days of being human, he thought: the constant pull of his cells toward the chaos of falling apart. It felt almost akin to not having fed in a few days, though during that stage, his vampire mutations forced his body to destroy the better parts of itself to maintain its ability to lunge and leap and tear, trading in the mind’s functionality for a stronger body.
As Mercer lifted the metal in front of Natalie, Rahil could see the tremble that went through her. She looked anything but afraid, though. Her fingertips danced over the edge of the unholy gold as she watched it eagerly. The intensity of her interest made Rahil feel sick.
He should not have brought her. What had he been thinking, really? That this would make hermorevampire, instead of less?
“I feel weakness, and a soft buzz,” Natalie described, still touching the metal, “But nothing else. No pain.”
Rahil should have been feeling happy that all Mercer’s effort had clearly paid off, but all he could think was: he had agreed to work on this—this thing that attracted a scientist, but also this woman who was so recently a Vitalis-Barron hunter. Who remained, in many ways, that hunter.
“I want to believe this will be good,” Mercer had said on the first day he convinced Rahil to work with him. And Rahil had believed it. At least, he’dchosento believe it, because he’d wanted a reason to keep standing beside Mercer. Now that their partnership was coming to an end, Rahil wasn’t so sure he could see the promise in the unholy gold the way he once had.
Mercer had assured him it wouldn’t be used outside of one single research study, but with the way Nat was looking at the unholy gold now, it made Rahil suspicious. Wouldn’t someone, somewhere, realize its potential for subjugation? Was this one slice of vampiric research worth risking people banging on Mercer’s door, begging for this “humane” way to defang their enemies, their neighbors, their coworkers… their family?
Mercer drew the metal back with a nod. He had no smile now, only somber relief as he slid his unholy gold back into the box. Natalie watched it go with a hungry look. It was almost bloodlust, and it twisted a knot in Rahil’s already unsettled stomach.
“Your work on this is amazing,” she said. “If we had more unholy gold, we could help regulate the less seemly parts of the vampiric community without accidentally causing anyone else harm in the process.”
The thought made Rahil feel worse than he had when the unholy gold was present. If the wrong people got hold of this metal, that was exactly the excuse they’d use.
Mercer shook his head. “I created it for scientific research, and nothing more. Any vampire who experiences it will do so willingly.”
