Chapter 16

 

Mercy was waiting for us as we left Vilokan and entered Père Antoine Alley.

“Based on the look of the last asshole who passed through here, I’m guessing you ran into some trouble,” Mercy said.

“To say the least. That Bokor… I was just about to shatter the vessel and release all the souls…”

“That giant… thing he was carrying?”

I nodded. “Long story. It was one of Pauli’s old art projects.”

Mercy smirked. “Of course it was.”

“And he took the vessel at the last minute.”

“And based off the kind of magic he had coursing through him when he busted into the alley, I’m guessing he gave you fits.”

“To say the least. He’s fused with the soul of Alexa Windstrom.”

“Fuck,” Mercy said. “I mean, tons of respect. But still.”

“Respect?” I raised my eyebrows.

“To pull off harnessing a power like that, without it destroying you from the inside… yeah, it deserves respect. It’s one reason why I stopped fucking with you, Annabelle.”

“You stopped fucking with me because you lost your power of compulsion.”

Mercy ginned, showing off her fangs. “You don’t think I could still find a way to manipulate your will if I wanted to?”

I bit my lip. She had my parents—and now all my friends—at Casa do Diabo. She did have leverage over me, and she knew it. “I’m not saying…”

“I’m not manipulating you, Annabelle, because I came to respect you. What you did for Nico in the end. He loathed you—he’d loathed you for centuries. But you set him free. Even a heartless vampire like me has to respect that.”

“If you respect me so much, why not explain the whole heartless thing?”

“After I was turned—after I’d died—Nico waited around to see what I’d do. How I’d handle myself. At first, the blood cravings were intense. I snuck back to my family, fed from my own brother at night.”

“Damn,” I said. “That’s pretty fucked up.”

“The craving is fucked up,” Mercy said. “It’s unlike anything a human could possibly understand. Think of a junkie who needs a fix, and you’ll understand about a tenth of the power that a craving for blood has over a new vampire.”

“So how didn’t you end up staked?”

“I pretty much did. During daylight, a few of the townsfolk became wise to what I was up to. They took my body from the grave—it was in broad daylight, the middle of the day. They cut my heart and liver from my body…”

“And you didn’t die?”

“Not exactly. There was a witch among them—one whom Nico himself had, unbeknownst to me, planted in their church. She advised them to burn my heart and liver and feed it to my brother.”

“Nasty!” I said.

Mercy nodded. “His health returned for a short time. But he was going to die anyway. Not from my bites—not like they thought. He also had contracted consumption.”

“Tuberculosis?”

“One and the same,” Mercy said. “But what the witch had done was not a spell to heal him, it was a spell that gave me immortality, even as a vampire. When I’d told you I’d never been staked before, that’s not strictly true. Many hunters have tried and failed.”

“Because you don’t have a heart.”

“Not in my chest. My heart was given to my brother, and it lingers with his soul as a wraith in the land of the dead.”

“Wait, we were there. You told me to go there so we could rescue Ramon.”

Mercy pressed her hands together. “That was true. We did go to rescue Ramon. But I had another agenda. I hoped to locate my brother. I hoped to find a way to reclaim my heart and set his soul free. But then things went south, and we had to bail quickly.”

“Why would you want to do that?” I asked. “I mean, if you got your heart back, you’d be just a normal vampire. You’d be killable.”

Mercy shrugged. “After this many years I’ve learned enough, controlled my cravings well enough, that I felt I could take my chances against any hunter. Even against you. But my brother…”

“You wanted to set him free.”

Mercy nodded. “Maybe I’m not the heartless bitch you thought I was.”

“I was wrong,” I admitted. “And you do have a heart. At least in all the ways that matter. If you felt something for your brother, that’s the only heart you need.”

Mercy shook her head. “Someday I want to go back there. I want to try and free my brother again.”

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Don’t do any stupid shit. Help me defeat Kalfu. And once this is over, we’ll talk about it.”

“Deal,” Mercy said.

I nodded. “For now, take me back to my friends. We have Bokors to stop, and I’ll need all the help I can get to pull it off.”