Mercy's Destiny: Montgomery's Vampires Trilogy (Book #3) (Montgomery's Vampires Series) (13 page)

Okay, so how long had it been?

I hadn’t had my period since we’d been back from Bali, and we’d been home for about a month. And I hadn’t had a period before Bali or
while
we there, either, and we’d been there for well over a week, which meant . . .

I was pregnant.

Pregnant!

It was all clicking into place: my recent mood swings, the nausea and hunger, my breasts looking larger. I felt like a complete idiot. How had pregnancy not occurred to me sooner?

Because vampires aren’t supposed to be able to procreate!

“I can tell by your face, Mercy, that you are no longer in doubt,” Maxine said. “Which leads me to my next inquiry.”

“You want to know who the father is?” I asked. She’d never believe the answer—not that I’d tell her. That old bat could mind her damn business.

She shrugged. “Not really. Who the father is isn’t relevant, not at this moment. What I’m more curious about is what you were doing living with Robert. As Richard and I said earlier, we’d initially assumed that you had taken up residence with Robert to gain insider information. After meeting you, however, it appeared that you genuinely loved him and all other vampires. But now . . . Now we don’t know what to believe. You couldn’t love him that much, if you’ve been sleeping with a human on the side.”

“I . . .” If I lied carefully enough, maybe I could manipulate Maxine into believing that I’d become a supporter of their cause. But I was too exhausted, too hungry, and, mainly, too shocked to think up anything clever.

“So, what was it, then?” Maxine pressed.

“I’d like to be alone now,” I said. “If that’s alright. I’m not feeling so well.”

I could sense that Maxine didn’t want to leave, but she knew that she couldn’t
make
me talk, not unless she tortured the answer out of me. Richard, I assumed, would have no problem with this; Maxine I wasn’t so sure.

My great-grandmother eased out of her chair. “Very well. But I’ll expect an answer tomorrow.”

When she pulled open the door, Jason started to come in to hand me the bag of food. “I hope you like sweet and sour chicken,” he said.

Maxine stopped him, snatching away the bag. “No, Jason. Mercy gets no food until she decides to talk.”

“You’re going to starve a
pregnant woman?
” I cried.

“I doubt you’ll die of starvation by tomorrow morning,” Maxine said coldly.

My mouth dropped open in disgust. Jason bristled, too, though he made no comment.

Jason held the door open for Maxine and let her walk through, throwing me a parting glance. Once Maxine was outside, he reached into the front pocket of his sweatshirt and pulled out something encased in a shiny wrapper. He coughed and opened his hand, and then two fortune cookies fell onto the floor. He turned his back on me and shut the door.

13

I sat in stunned silence, crunching on the last of the fortune cookies.

I was eating my first meal since learning that I was with child, not that two dry fortune cookies and water slurped from the sink faucet constituted a meal—I still could not
believe
Maxine’s callousness.

I was also reading my first words as a new mother:

He who gets the credit also gets the blame.

Every end once had a beginning.

These pearls of fortune cookie wisdom, while mildly thought-provoking, did absolutely nothing to help my situation. It would have been a different story had they read:
There is a chisel underneath your mattress.
Or:
The secret to escape is to follow these three steps . . .

The way my jailers were treating me was getting progressively worse, and now I was being denied food. No way they were going to let me live. I knew this unequivocally. They’d made no attempt to conceal their identities. And now they knew that I was pregnant, a detail Maxine did not revere.

I wondered when they were planning on doing it—murdering me. Soon, I imagined. They’d already taken my blood, so there wasn’t much stopping them.

I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around the news that I was pregnant. I had mixed emotions about the whole thing. My biggest concern, of course, was
what,
exactly, was growing inside me. Robert was full human when he’d gotten me pregnant, but what if some of his vampy genes had remained in his sperm? What if the kid grew fangs while in my womb and started sucking on my blood from the inside?

And call me old-fashioned, but Robert and I weren’t married. I didn’t even know if we were still together. What if Robert
was
with Serena? (Unlikely, though I had to consider it.) In my heart I knew that Robert was an honorable man; he’d do right by the baby and me, should I decide to keep it, which I realized was what I wanted to do. Obviously, it was my choice as a woman, but Robert would support me either way, which only made me love him more.

I loved Robert more than any man I’d ever been with, not that there had been many. And there was no question in my mind that he’d be an excellent father. But did he actually
want
to be a father? We’d never discussed having children, since it hadn’t seemed possible.

And how would I be as a mother?

I was never the sort of person to throw around a fantastical term like “miracle,” but in a way it was. I’d gotten pregnant by my vampire lover during the few weeks he’d been human. But . . .

(Why did there always have to be a
but?)
It wasn’t lost on me that both my mother and grandmother (and maybe my great-grandmother, too, for all I knew) had gotten pregnant out of wedlock. And now I also had.

What if Robert couldn’t be found? It was a possibility I didn’t want to think about, but it was a reality I might have to face nonetheless. What if Serena had hurt him?

No . . . I wouldn’t—couldn’t—fathom anything so awful.

And then there was the most glaring obstacle that I faced (other than my current imprisonment): Robert’s vampirism. Robert and I were already facing a tough challenge as a couple because of my inability to turn vampire. I’d decided long ago that I’d change over—I
wanted
immortality. It wasn’t a decision I’d come to lightly, but it was what I ultimately wanted. But I’d tried—three agonizing times—and it didn’t take. So how would we function with Robert being immortal and me (and presumably the baby) being human?

I was so confused.

And then my appetite intervened and cleared things up.

My stomach growled, loudly and painfully. I rubbed at my midsection, wildly outraged. It was that simple growl that changed my outlook. My sweet little baby (which is what I now thought of him or her—my sweet little baby) was being
starved
. It was ludicrous, of course; I was only a few weeks pregnant and it was probably no bigger than a peanut. (I knew absolutely zilch about pregnancy.) But, still, I envisioned a squishy pink baby that was handsome like Robert, with big grey eyes and a tuft of dark hair, locked in a cell, famished, with nothing but dry fortune cookies to eat.

I was seething. Those Nolan fuckers! They could deny me food all they wanted, but now they were messing with
my baby.

I had to get out of there. I would kill every single one them if I had to, but my baby and I were going to get out of there.
Alive.

I rubbed my belly and whispered, “Don’t you worry, my sweet peanut. I won’t let anything happen to us. I swear.” Look at me, I thought. My baby hasn’t even been born yet and I was making faulty promises.

I began pacing, which was essentially five steps forward and then five steps back, given the cramped space. It only took a few rounds before I started to feel dizzy. I had another look around the room for something that could be used as a weapon. I was getting creative, considering whittling the bar of soap into a shank and using it to stab Maxine. But, alas, it was too soft. Why couldn’t there be a piano in the room? Spies in books frequently used piano wires to strangle the bad guys, didn’t they? But if I was wishing for a piano in the room, why not wish for a gun or meat cleaver?

I sank down on the mattress and stared up at the ceiling. I wouldn’t necessarily need to kill my kidnappers—perhaps I’d been a tad hasty on that decision. I’d only need to distract them long enough to make a run for it. But I’d have to do it while the door was open, or else I’d have no chance of getting out past Jason.

But how?

How?

The exposed light bulb above was burning my eyes, so I turned on my side—

I sat up with a jolt. The light bulb!

It was one of those energy saver bulbs, twisted white and made of thick glass. If I broke off the tip, it would be a fine weapon. It wouldn’t be as solid or lethal as the end of a broken beer bottle, but it could definitely do some damage if I brandished it with conviction. While I hated the idea of doing it, stabbing Maxine in the gut when she came back in the morning would give me the best chance of escape. Perhaps Jason would be so preoccupied with tending to her wounds that I’d be able to slip past him and out the door.

Or perhaps I’d fail miserably and they’d retaliate by executing me. No! Thinking like that would do me no good, I told myself, and it would only give me pause when the actual time came. Any hesitation on my part would probably get me killed.

After I broke the light bulb, I’d have to commit, since there’d be no explaining
that
away. I got out of bed.

I was ready to commit.

First, I’d have to prepare. I got dressed in my own clothes down to the bra, and then set my ballet flats right next to the mattress for easy access. Here’s how (I was hoping) it would go down: Maxine and Jason would come into the room in the morning, where I’d be waiting behind the door with the broken light bulb, ready to strike. Once Maxine walked in, I’d stab her in the gut, catching her off-guard. She’d start wailing, which would cause Jason to rush in. At this point, I’d either push past Jason, or be forced to injure him too, with maybe an elbow to his nose. (I may have not been able to kick his ass, but I
could
temporarily incapacitate him.)

The only hitch to the plan was the darkness that would fall over the room after the light bulb was removed from the ceiling. Oh well. It wasn’t like I had a masterpiece to paint or anything.

The ceiling was low enough that I could reach the bulb without even having to go up on my tippy toes. I used the sweatshirt to grip the bulb, because that sucker was
hot
. There was a brief moment when my heart caught in my throat as I lost my grip on the bulb and it slipped from the sweatshirt. I held my breath and listened for the dreaded sound of breaking glass, but the room remained silent. The bulb must have fallen down onto the mattress. I took that bit of good luck as confirmation that it was meant to be. It was like I was
meant
to stab my great-grandmother in the gut with a broken piece of light bulb! Yes siree, Bob!

Whatever you have to tell yourself, right?

It was easy to locate the bulb by groping around on the mattress for it, since it was sizzling hot. I cocooned it inside the sweatshirt, so I wouldn’t end up rolling over on top of it in my sleep and stabbing
myself
in the gut. I placed the bundle at the top of the mattress by my pillow. Now all I’d have to do is wait.

It took a surprisingly short amount of time to fall asleep. Was that what pregnancy was like, being hungry, nauseous, or tired (or all three simultaneously) every second of the day? I was just
so
exhausted . . .

Sometime in the middle of the night, the door flew open with a crash. I knew it was still nighttime because the moon was shining high in the background. I also knew that I wasn’t dreaming, because not even my worst nightmares were this bad.

The lights from the house were bright enough for me to see that my visitor held in his hand a syringe filled with murky yellow liquid. The pale moon highlighted it in the most gruesome way. My visitor was holding the syringe away from his body like it was poisonous.

Jason had come to kill me.

I jerked up on the mattress and screamed, frantically pawing at the blanket for the light bulb. I felt its cool glass against my fingers and closed my palm around the opposite metal end.

I got ready.

Jason lurched forward, grunting, the personification of the worst night terror most adult women have envisioned at some point in their lives: giant man at the edge of the bed, smack dab in the middle of the night, deadly intent.

Jason sounded winded, like he’d sprinted to the shed in a panic. He fumbled around for my limbs, disoriented. The one thing I had going for me was the light being out. Jason hadn’t expected the darkness, so he was thrown off his game.

I screamed again when he said, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to do this. But I have to.”

“You don’t have to do anything!” I shrieked, scrambling away from him.

“I can’t let you go. You’ve seen my face, you know my name.” Jason’s voice was eerily calm. I yelped as he seized my ankle. “I’ve got a wife and kids. I can’t let you go.”

I kicked out at him with all my might, careful not to knock the needle. I made contact with his nose and it crunched sickeningly under my foot. All those hours I’d spent doing TaeBo had
really
paid off—thank you, Billy Blanks.

Jason cried out but he did not release me. “Now, stop it, girlie! It will hurt much less if you don’t struggle.”

“No!” I wailed. “No!” I clawed out at him with my empty hand and he jabbed the syringe at me. “Please! I’m pregnant!”

“It’s gotta happen tonight! I’m so sorry about this—I’m so sorry—I’m so sorry,” he kept chanting.

Like that would make a difference to me when I was gone.
Yes, he did murder me, but, gee, he was awfully sorry about it.

“And I’m sorry about this!” I roared.

Shrieking like a Viking warrior princess, I jabbed the light bulb into my attacker’s neck. I had fear on my side, which Jason didn’t, and it had given me mighty, adrenaline-induced strength. For a hideous moment I thought nothing would happen—that the glass wouldn’t break against his elastic skin— but as the bulb made contact with his jawbone, it shattered.

The sound of that glass shattering was the greatest sound I’d ever heard in my entire life.

Groaning, Jason staggered away from the mattress, his arms flapping wildly. Dropping the syringe, he groped at his throat. I could hear shards of glass pinging down onto the floor as he swiped at his skin. His injury wasn’t lethal, but it must have hurt like hell.

Wasting no time, I made a run for the door. My chest burned as I sob-breathed tiny gulps of air. My ears were ringing with terror, but the sounds of my hysteria were worse. I slipped on one of the ballet flats and sent it skidding across the floor, tripping myself up. No time to stop and put on shoes, anyway. As anyone who has ever fled for their life can attest, running barefooted really is one of the last worries on your mind. The first—and only, as it was for me—concern you have is getting the hell out of there.

Jason’s giant meat hook flew up from the darkness and seized my calf. He yanked hard and, because I was already unsteady from the stumble, I lost balance. Instinctively, I threw my hands out in front of me as I fell to the floor. There was an awful pop, and then white-hot bolts of lighting shot up my left arm, where I’d landed on my wrist. My tongue hurt, too, where I’d bitten down on it.

Jason pulled me toward him. He had the syringe clamped in his teeth. His breath was coming out in from his clenched jaw in agitated snorts as he straddled me. I clawed out at him and he slammed my skull down on the floor.

“Stop fighting, goddammit!” he exclaimed.

I screamed . . . and screamed. “I won’t tell anyone who you are! I promise! I won’t talk to any—”

Bang!

Jason’s mouth fell open in shock. The syringe tumbled from his teeth and bounced down on my face. Fortunately it was capped, or else it would have stuck itself in my forehead like a unicorn horn.