Coven of Mercy Read online

  There was frost hanging from every word of my response. “I always work long hours.” And they were no one’s business but mine.

  “But you don’t always see people who aren’t there, Dr. Taylor, do you?”

  I could have argued that the stranger had been there, that I knew what I had seen, but I saw that Miriam wouldn’t be persuaded. I nodded an acknowledgement, thanked her and returned to the elevator.

  But I didn’t go home.

  I went to the cafeteria and nursed a coffee from the vending machine, reviewing everything I had done, seeking the error in my judgment. I always do this kind of examination, always try to improve my strategy.

  I’d done nothing wrong.

  I just hadn’t allowed for vampires in my statistical analysis.

  Vampires. Maybe there was something to Miriam’s concern. Maybe I had been pushing myself too hard. I was tired, there was no disputing that.

  But how can anyone sleep when the battle is so relentless? Cancer never sleeps and it takes advantage of every weakness. It would win, maybe even while I was sleeping, and I couldn’t let that happen. There already weren’t enough hours in the day.

  It was getting light when I ditched the cold coffee, then left the hospital. If nothing else, I’d shower and change my clothes at home before returning for morning rounds. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat to keep from looking back to Mrs. Curtis’s room. I ignored the cars of my co-workers pulling into their parking spaces.

  I was halfway across the lot when I saw the stranger leaning against the front fender of my car.

  Waiting.

  For me.

  He had that amused smile again, which was more than enough to set me off.

  II

  I was across the parking lot in record time, fury and exhaustion making me more volatile than usual. “You killed her!”

  The stranger didn’t move away from my anger. He leaned one hip against my car, his arms folded across his chest. He was dark and large and could have been carved from stone.

  No, he could have been sculpted from stone. He was beautiful, his dark eyes thickly lashed, his mouth sensuously curved. I felt an awareness of him and our proximity, an awareness I resented.

  He was a predator, a murderer, a vampire. He might as well have been on the enemy side.

  Micah. It was a name that suited him. Just a little bit different. Unexpected. Old and strong.

  I glared at him. “You did, didn’t you?”

  He inclined his head slightly. “Yes.” He moved slowly, elegantly, every gesture thoughtful. He closed his eyes briefly, his features touched with a sadness I didn’t understand.

  “How could you do that?”

  “I have to feed.”

  “Isn’t there someone else you could kill? A criminal or a wild animal? Someone who deserves to die?”

  “Everyone will die, deserving or not.”

  “But she was going to live. I was winning...”

  “Maybe she’s at peace now.”

  “No. She’s dead now.”

  He was amused again. “Not in heaven?”

  I was as impatient with this idea as ever. My father and I had argued this up, down and sideways and I knew my position well. “There is no heaven and there is no hell. There is life and there is death and everything else is just romance.”

  “Just romance?”

  “There’s no point in self-delusion. Get away from my car.”

  “You need to understand...”

  “I understand everything, thanks. You fed, and she died because of it. That’s evil.”

  He didn’t move. He frowned and averted his gaze, and I thought that maybe I had touched his conscience. But to my surprise, he spoke with regret and changed the subject. “Once I had a child,” he began softly, but his own history didn’t interest me.

  “No. I don’t care. No matter what you’ve lost, you have no right to decide whether another person lives or dies.”

  He met my gaze steadily and parted his lips, letting me see the sharp points of his fangs. “I have every right.”

  “No. No. Vampires don’t exist,” I said. I jammed my key into the lock of the door on the driver’s side. He still didn’t move.

  “Then who killed the woman?” he asked mildly. “You?”

  “No! I was the one who would have saved her. You stole that victory away.”

  “Victory?”

  I heard my own fears in that single word. “Sure, it was back, but it hadn’t won yet. I had a treatment plan prepared. We would have gone after it, hard.” I held his gaze, knowing my own was filled with accusation and anger. “I would have won. I would have saved her. But you stole her first.” I took a deep breath and glared at him. He watched me steadily, those full lips curving in that damned amusement. “You cheated me and you cheated Mrs. Curtis.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes!”

  But I wasn’t and he knew it. You can never be sure. Remission might be permanent or might not be. I’d been sure that Mrs. Curtis’s previous round of treatment would finish the cancer, but the blood tests don’t lie.

  He was watching me. “Don’t you want to know the rest of the story?”

  There was something seductive about his voice, something that I feared I would find compelling. There was something more seductive about the notion that he knew more than I did, and that he would share. Why did I recognize him? How could it be possible?

  How could I not remember?

  I felt charmed by him and didn’t trust the jumbled feelings I felt in his presence. I was aroused. I was furious. I wanted to know how he kissed. I wanted him to disappear forever. “No,” I said with a heat that was rare for me.

  His eyes twinkled, their darkness lit as the night sky had been lit with stars. “What if I don’t want to go?”

  I shoved him and he moved from the fender of my car. There was nothing virtual about him. He felt muscled, as if he worked out, solid and real, and I tingled in an unwelcome way.

  “You can’t stop the coven of mercy, Rosemary,” Micah whispered, his words making me catch my breath.

  “How do you know my name?” He’d known which car was mine, too.

  “I know a lot of things.” He arched a dark brow. “I’ve watched you for a long time. Not everyone prefers solitude.”

  His words startled me, in more ways than one, but he didn’t have a shard of doubt. He was too smug, too sure.

  Maybe a little bit too much like me.

  I needed to get some sleep.

  “There is no coven of mercy and there was no mercy in what you did. Get away from my car.”

  “Is her death what’s really bothering you?” he asked, his words low. “Or is it that you lost a chance to win? Is this about the person or the score?”

  I slapped him then, hard, right across the face. His head jerked to one side and the red mark of my hand showed on his cheek.

  I was afraid then, afraid for a moment that I’d pushed him too hard.

  What he did next astonished me.

  He looked at me steadily for a long moment in which my heart thundered in terror, then he pivoted with the grace of a giant cat. He strode silently across the parking lot, toward the surrounding scrub of trees.

  The hospital was new, built slightly outside of town, surrounded by undeveloped land. There were scrubby trees and a little creek, a tangle of undergrowth and a nature trail. There was still snow there, caught in the bit of brush, and the tree branches were dark and bare.

  The sky was turning pink in the east by then, and my hands clenched as I watched his dark figure move away. His boots crunched on the snow, as real as I was. I was so angry that I was tempted to go after him, argue some more, shake him.

  Kiss him.

  A car door slammed near me and I jumped, surprised to find Dr. Bradley stepping out of his Subaru so close at hand. He ran the labs and was my boss. “Are you all right, Dr. Taylor?”

  “Good morning, Dr. Bradley.” I forced a smil
e.

  He didn’t smile, just came to my side, his expression concerned. “Have been here all night? Again?” He was paternal, a good twenty years older than me.

  I made a gesture of futility, not knowing how much I wanted to share and too tired to work it out. “I was just going home for a shower.”

  “And arguing with yourself about it.”

  “What?”

  “You were shadow-boxing when I pulled in.”

  “No, there was a guy here...” I recognized immediately that Dr. Bradley hadn’t seen the stranger.

  Just like Miriam.

  I stopped talking before I condemned myself.

  Dr. Bradley cleared his throat. “I know you’ve been working really hard lately, Dr. Taylor, but indulge me, will you?”

  I was wary. “What do you mean?”

  “You look exhausted and have for a while. I’m wondering about your iron and iron stores. You’re probably not eating well any more often than you’re sleeping well. And I’m probably being cautious, but your expertise is valuable to the team.”

  He smiled, softening the impact of his words, but I got the drift. No one was glad to have me around, but they liked my abilities. Someone like Dr. Bradley would never understand why a lack of human connection didn’t bother me.

  Even if, this time, it did. A bit.

  “Meaning?” I asked in my most professional tone.

  “That prevention is the best medicine. Indulge me and get a routine suite of blood work done. We both know that it’ll be easier to improve your iron counts sooner rather than later.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me. I just didn’t sleep last night.”

  “When did you last have a physical?”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t the only one who never got around to it.

  He smiled, the way he always did when he wanted something extra from his staff. For once, it worked like a charm on me. “Just humor me.” He winked and turned away, giving me a last wave. “I’ll leave the requisitions on your desk this morning. Promise?”

  “Sure, Dr. Bradley.” It wasn’t as if I was afraid of needles and test results. And I had felt as if I was running on empty lately. I knew I just needed more sleep, but it wouldn’t hurt to have my hemoglobin checked.

  I got in my car, went home and had a shower.

  Then I drank the better part of a pot of good coffee and came back to work. Cancer doesn’t need to rest, after all. The battle rages, even when we leave the field. Maybe it moves faster when we aren’t looking.

  Coven of mercy. What had the stranger meant?

  His name was Micah.

  Micah.

  Two days after Mrs. Curtis’s death, her last batch of test results came back from the lab. There was also a reminder from Dr. Bradley that I hadn’t given my blood samples yet. I crumpled the message and tossed it out. I’d just been too busy for details.

  I wasn’t going to look at Mrs. Curtis’s results, as I was still unable to accept what I’d seen. But on some level, I needed to prove to myself that I’d been right, that Micah had been wrong, just in case I ever saw him again and could tell him so. I needed data to argue my point of view.

  I knew this was ridiculous – that I needed to muster my resources to argue with a vampire – but couldn’t put it out of my thoughts. I argued with myself until close to midnight.

  Then I gave it up. I got a coffee from the vending machine, sat down at my desk and clicked through on the file. I stared at the numbers for so long that my coffee got cold.

  I checked them four times. I assumed initially that they had to be wrong, but they were completely consistent. The cancer had efficiently progressed while we’d thought we were killing every last cell.

  Against all expectation, it had turned even more virulent and metastasized. It had used the highways and byways of her lymphatic system to colonize every corner of her territory. Despite the treatment regimen. Mrs. Curtis had been so much more ill than she had appeared to be. The counts were staggering and impressive.

  Cancer had already won. I had maybe slowed its progress, but I hadn’t come close to stopping it.

  I remembered how Mrs. Curtis had cheerfully suffered through her more recent bout of treatment, enduring more no matter how violent her reactions were. I had been so sure that short term pain would lead to long term gain. I had never underestimated the disease so much.

  I felt a bit sick that she’d gone through that for nothing.

  Just like my mother.

  Yes, my mother’s treatment had been just as futile. I’d found copies of the correspondence with her doctors in the house after my father’s death, when Rick and I were cleaning things out, still refusing to speak to each other. I had reviewed them with the eyes of a trained oncologist, seeing then the inevitability of her counts. She was diagnosed too late for the treatment protocols available then to turn the tide.

  I had known at twelve that she would die, even without that training, and I had been right. Later, I saw that there was mercy in the speed of the disease’s progression. Three weeks of knowing, two weeks of suffering, then the battle had been won.

  It wasn’t always that kind.

  I stared at Mrs. Curtis’s charts.

  Coven of mercy. I recalled Micah’s words and had to consider them. If Mrs. Curtis hadn’t died two days before, would these two days of treatment have been merciful? No, of course not. Chemotherapy and radiation are seldom easy, and we would have had to hit her harder this time. I had to face the truth.

  With counts like this, she would have been gone in a week or two anyway, barring a miracle.

  I felt a presence at my side and knew who it was. It was the warmth, the watchfulness, the scent of leather that gave Micah away.

  “You knew,” I said, without looking.

  “I knew,” he agreed.

  I spun in my chair to face him, surprised at his size and intensity. He was all male – brooding thoughtful male – and he filled the bit of spare space in my crowded small office. “How?”

  He frowned and folded his arms across his chest, scanning the floor as he sought the words. I liked that he didn’t dismiss my question, that he didn’t rush into explanations.

  I felt a strange sense of union with him and was struck by the fact that it was easier to talk to him than any other person I’d known.

  “We can smell it.”

  “Cancer?”

  “Death.” His gaze collided with mine, his eyes filled with enigmatic shadows. “You have to understand that it’s our biological need to feed on blood. Some of us choose to use that need for compassionate ends. Some of us choose to feed strategically.”

  “Why?”

  His smile was fleeting and his eyes gleamed as he watched me. “Some of us have an inexplicable fondness for humanity.” He shrugged. “Or maybe we just remember the pain of being mortal.”

  “You’re immortal, then?”

  He nodded.

  “But every day, you have to kill somebody?”

  He shook his head. “The hunger comes with some regularity, but not daily. Exertion affects the appetite, as does quality and quantity consumed.”

  It made sense to me, in biological terms. I could understand him as a different species better than as a fable. I looked at my computer screen again, fighting the sense that I could fall into his eyes and lose myself forever.

  I looked up. “We. You said we. How many of you are there?”

  “The coven has twelve members right now...”

  “Shouldn’t there be thirteen?” I joked but he didn’t smile.

  “Yes,” he agreed, then continued with his original point. “We are committed to mercy, to using our power to improve the lives of individual humans.”

  “To killing.”

  “Sometimes it is kinder to die. Sometimes suffering achieves nothing but pain.”

  That was a sentiment too close to my own recent thoughts. My tone was more sarcastic than he deserved. “So, you’re all stalking cancer wards and pallia
tive care units?”

  He didn’t respond to my tone, which only made me feel rude.

  “We all have our tendencies and our passions. Beatrice is sensitive to victims of abuse, perhaps because of her own history. She knows some scars cannot be healed. Adrian hears the anguish of broken children, and Lucinda shares her kiss with the old and infirm. Ignatius can be found in war zones, Petronella in areas struck by famine, Augustine near outbreaks of plague.”

  “And you?”

  That sad knowing smile curved his lips. “I have my own quest.” His words were soft and he seemed to have turned inward, away from me. I felt the loss of his attention and the weight of his grief and had to say something.

  To my surprise, I didn’t want him to leave. “Tell me about your child,” I invited. His gaze locked with mine, a familiar sorrow lighting its shadows, then he swallowed. “You said you had a child. Tell me.”

  Micah shook his head and stood, facing the window and the night. I was struck that he seemed overcome with emotion. I had thought that he would be a monster, a cold and calculating predator, but his anguish was raw.

  And I was astonished by my own wave of compassion for him. I stood, but couldn’t bring myself to go to him, to touch him.

  “Boy or girl?” I asked quietly, not expecting him to answer. He sighed – a shudder that rolled right through him – and glanced over his shoulder at me.

  That gaze, so filled with torment, caught at my heart. I couldn’t look away.

  “Elsebietta,” he murmured, reverence and love resonant in every syllable. He swallowed. “Her mother died in labor and they said she would be a sad child.” He fell silent for a moment, and his voice was thick when he continued. “But she was as radiant as sunlight.” He raised a hand, closing it on nothing. “She was my joy. The center of my world.”

  I had to ask. “Did you kill her?”

  The quick shake of his head was no lie. “It was before, before the coven.” He swallowed. “I had to watch her die, and then there was no point in living anymore.”

  “But you’re alive now.”

  “The coven came to me and I found their proposition appealing.”