by Sloan Archer
Jason opened the door and came bounding up to the edge of the mattress. “What’s up?”
“That depends on Mercy.” Richard said this to Jason, but he was looking directly at me. “Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way, young lady. I’m sure Jason doesn’t want to restrain you any more than you want to be restrained. Am I right?”
I nodded. Yeah, you’re right, you psycho.
“I must additionally warn you that my hands can get rather shaky when I’m agitated,” Richard threatened. “I’d hate to have the tip of this needle break off under your skin, if you continue to upset me.”
“You don’t have to bully me,” I growled.
I pulled up my sleeve and turned my arm so that the crook of my elbow was exposed to Richard. I purposely chose the opposite arm than the one Joseph had used, in case any signs that I’d had my blood drawn lingered. What would Richard do to me if he found out that I’d been giving my blood to the VGO? I was starting to feel like a human pincushion. I wondered how much blood a person could donate in a given week without drying up like a mummy. At least Richard was only taking a small vial and not a whole bag like Joseph had . . . I hoped.
I was feeling strangely and unexpectedly optimistic as I thought of Joseph, though I had no reason to be given my dire circumstance. But I had to think of something positive, or else I would curl up in a ball and die right there. I figured a little delusion wouldn’t hurt if it would keep me going. I wanted to believe that Joseph had located Robert, who was now safely at home and launching a search party to find me. Serena was behind bars, too, and would never again be able to abuse her power to hurt Robert. Jason was on my side, too; he was actually a spy sent by vampires to keep an eye on the insane escapades of Richard and Maxine.
Okay, maybe I’d gone too far with my delusion about Jason. The way he was glowering down at me—no way was he on my side. He didn’t seem to be on Richard and Maxine’s side, either. No, Jason’s only allegiance was to money . . . which my maniac family had given him, so he actually was kind of on their side. On their side but not behind their cause, I reminded myself, just to stay positive.
I wished that I had permitted the VGO to microchip me like a pet. My current location was so absolutely random. Anyone looking for me would never, ever search for me in Napa. Why would they? I had no familial ties or acquaintances in the area, nor did I ever frequent the area to shop or go out to eat. If my great-grandparents would have taken me to, say, my hometown in Pelville, Florida, somebody might then think to look for me there. But being in Napa? Might as well be in Mexico.
I was moved up to the director’s chair and told to sit still. As Maxine got busy trying a tourniquet around my bicep, I asked, “I don’t know how long you plan on keeping me here, but could you please bring me a book or something? I’m going out of my mind with boredom.”
“I brought you some magazines,” said Jason. “I also have breakfast for you. An egg muffin and some o.j.”
“Perfect,” I said, and my stomach growled. The whole constant stress and fear lifestyle was not befitting to me. I was either nauseous and vomiting from nerves or wanting to stuff my face because of mental upset. I would have been a pretty terrible stockbroker. I could just imagine myself at the New York Stock Exchange, vomiting into a wastebasket of tickertape every five minutes.
I scarfed down the breakfast Jason had brought me the instant my three abductors left. They still had given no indication if they were planning on letting me go or if they were going to kill me, and I didn’t press the issue. I was holding on to the gullible hope that they might magically forget any murderous plans they had, if only I didn’t remind them.
I was angry that I’d put myself in a position to be kidnapped. In view of all the evil deeds I’d recently witnessed, you’d think I’d have learned to stop being so trusting. On the other hand, if my existence ever became so bleak that I constantly suspected every single person around me of deceitfulness . . . Well, how awful would that make living? I was sort of thankful, in a way, that I hadn’t been so jaded that I’d looked at two seemingly harmless senior citizens and thought, “Careful, they might drug and abduct you.”
After I got bored of the magazines, which I gathered Jason had picked out because they were all on the subject of celebrity gossip (as if that’s all us silly girls read), I tried to take a nap. But I couldn’t fall asleep. All my worries played through my head on constant loop, the most repeated anxiety about Robert. Some part of me still worried that Robert had left with Serena on his own free will. Ridiculous, I realized, with all the proof I’d been provided. But with everything else that had happened, I was reluctant to leave myself vulnerable to bombshells.
Because that’s what you have to worry about most: leaving yourself vulnerable to bombshells. How about the fact that nobody is coming to save you? You’re on your own on this one, sister. Your life may depend on a plan of escape, which it seems you still don’t have.
No matter how many different ways I looked at it, there was no way I could escape. I really had only two options, both equally implausible. The first involved attacking Richard and Maxine, if they ever happened to visit me without Jason. I didn’t relish the idea of beating up the elderly, but if it came down to a choice between them—the psychotic hatemongers—or me—their innocent hostage—I was going to look out for myself. But that plan would never come to fruition, because no way in hell would my great-grandparents ever come into my cell without their bodyguard. The other option involved befriending Jason and then trying to reason with him. But that wouldn’t work, either, because then I’d have to tell him about the existence of vampires. He would also need to be sympathetic toward my plight, which he evidently wasn’t.
And I was once again back to square one.
With a groan, I threw back the blanket. I was uncomfortable—antsy—and felt just . . . scuzzy. After a moment, I figured out why: I was dirty. I’d been drugged and manhandled, and had rolled around on the floor of a stinky van. As much as I hated the idea of changing in to the clothes my captors had provided me (because to do so implied an acceptance of the situation), I figured I’d feel better if I took a shower.
The water was surprisingly warm—not hot, but warm enough that bathing wasn’t uncomfortable. I didn’t wash my hair—no blow dryer, lest I try to hang myself with the cord or electrocute myself with it—but at least my skin no longer smelled of fast food, van floor, and expelled adrenaline.
I did a few squats, pushups, and crunches, simply because that’s what I’d seen badass women do in movies after they’ve been taken hostage. I was running out of ways to pass the time. It was already nightfall, which I knew because the light under the door had dimmed. There was no clock in the room, of course. Richard and Maxine (and the other psycho the house actually belonged to) probably felt it would be unnecessary to remind prisoners how much time they were passing in captivity.
I was hungry, cranky, and resentful that Jason had given me only a toasted bagel with cream cheese for lunch, served with an order to “drink from the faucet” if I was thirsty. A piddling egg sandwich for breakfast and then a bagel for lunch, after they’d taken my blood—what kind of fucking prison was this? What happened to the tuna foot-long, jumbo soda, and cookies? Maybe substantial meals were reserved for first-day inmates.
Whatever, I thought bitterly. Minding my weight wouldn’t be a half bad idea, anyway, since Richard and Maxine didn’t seem too concerned with providing me yard time. My resentment upped my reps to double-time. Now I was doing a jumping jack between each pushup. I will beat them—I will beat them—I will beat them, I repeated after each jump.
I’d halfway convinced myself that I was going to take out Richard, Maxine, and Jason with my bare hands like an enraged commando, when Maxine entered. She was with Jason but not Richard. Well, there went that idea, I thought. There’ll be no kicking ass tonight. I was very disappointed.
All the fight drained from my heart, I sighed and took a seat on the mattress.
“Did you bring me something to eat?” I growled at Jason. I’d pretty much given up on the idea of us becoming friends. How sad was that, that the only highlight of my day was stuffing my face with food my abductors brought me?
Jason held up the white take-out bag he held in his grasp. “Got it right here. Chinese.”
I reached for the bag. “Well, can I have it?”
“You can have it after we have our talk,” Maxine said primly. She waited while Jason set up the director’s chair so she could sit down.
Jason nodded at Maxine and headed out the door. “I’ll be just outside,” he said more to me than he did Maxine. I rolled my eyes to show him how offended I was that he’d think that I’d ever dream of hurting my dear great-grandmother.
“What would you like to discuss?” I asked once the door was shut.
Maxine laced her bejeweled fingers together and rested them on her lap. “I would like to discuss a very delicate issue.”
“Okay.”
She leaned forward and whispered, “It’s a female matter. A very delicate one.”
“Okay . . .” Ick! Was she going to ask me if I ever douched, like those women walking on the beach did in old school television ads?
“We’ve sent your blood out for testing,” she said. “We were trying to determine what it is that makes it so unique. We asked our lab technicians to look for mutated cells, disease—that sort of thing.”
It was like conversational déjà vu. I remembered having a very similar discussion with Leopold not too long ago. Now I was worried.
“You said it was a delicate female matter,” I stated. “Surely you didn’t find anything wrong with me. Not like an STD?” I shook my head with conviction. “Because there’s no way that’s the case.”
The only man I’d been with since the cheating Mathew was Robert, who, being vampire, was incapable of infecting me with diseases. And after learning of Mathew’s infidelity, you bet your ass that I’d marched straight down to the women’s health clinic and had myself tested for every sexual disease on the planet. The tests had all come back clean.
Flustered, my great-grandmother said, “Oh lordy, no!” So, it appeared drugging and kidnapping me was okay by Maxine, but her picking out the wrong kind of sweatpants was mortifying, and discussions about STDs were taboo. Such a sensible family I had.
I flopped back on the bed. “Well, that’s good news.” And then something far worse occurred to me. I sat up. “Do I . . . Oh no! Do I have cancer? Breast cancer? Cervical cancer?” Those were the only lady-specific cancers I could think of at that precise moment.
Maxine shook her head.
What in the hell was it, then?
She took a breath. “You’re pregnant, Mercy.”
I burst out laughing. No way that was possible. “Your tests are wrong,” I said with immense relief.
She reached into her jacket pocket and extracted a fax. Underneath my name was a bunch of medical jargon. But there it was, right at the end. PREGNANCY TEST: POSITIVE.
“Are you sure, dear?” Maxine let out an embarrassed exhale. “I’m sure this is uncomfortable for you to discuss, but really take a minute and have a think about it. When was your last period?”
“My period? It was . . .” When was it? I couldn’t remember, but that was normal. Some women liked to keep track of their periods on calendars, but that had never been my style. To me, knowing when my period was coming was akin to watching a storm report. It was going to happen regardless, so what good was stressing about it going to do? It wasn’t like I could board up my vagina for winter.
Now I was wishing that I had been keeping track. Typically, though, I got my period every twenty-eight to thirty days. But even if I had been counting the days . . .
It was just preposterous. It was physically impossible for vampires to procreate—
But there was a short time when Robert wasn’t a vampire, wasn’t there?
Still, it would be impossible.
Would it?
Okay, so Robert had been a full-fledged human for a short time, I thought with my hart hammering in my chest. Some of that time was when we were on the run from the VGO. And we’d certainly had sex during that time—a lot of sex—and it had never occurred to us to use birth control. It was just that Robert had been a vampire for so long, and we were on the lam, under constant threat of murder . . . And . . . And . . . Shit! Why had it never dawned on us to use birth control? We’d thought of everything else—forged passports, aliases, new email addresses—and had even managed to evade being assassinated by the most powerful vampire organization in the world.
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 mil
dly 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.