Mercy's Destiny: Montgomery's Vampires Trilogy (Book #3) (Montgomery's Vampires Series) Read Online Free Page A

missing. And when people (or vampires) panicked, they tended to act impulsively. What if they did something rash in Robert’s absence, like sell off his options or fire board members? The reality was that I had absolutely no idea how corporations like Robert’s were run, but in the movies it always seemed like a CEO got screwed when they were left in a vulnerable position.
    There was also something else I had to consider, which was that maybe Robert wasn’t even missing. The lamp had been tipped over, but what if Robert had done that unintentionally while running out of the house in a hurry? Other than the lamp and the cushion, I really had no proof that anything fishy had happened. There was no blood or broken glass—no signs of forced entry whatsoever. Though it was strange that he would have left on foot and without a cell phone, police would still insist that I wait twenty-four hours before filing a report. For all I knew, Robert could have run out the door to help a neighbor catch a runaway cat, however unlikely that was. I doubted Robert even knew the neighbor’s name.
    I regarded the phone, and for an instant—a very, very brief instant—I considered calling Robert’s maker, Leopold. I shook my head and set the phone down. No way that was happening.
    Both Robert and I were still pissed at Leopold for all the trouble he’d caused us when he’d gone behind my back and used my blood to create a serum for his own monetary gain. My blood, for whatever reason, contained a special enzyme or protein or something that made vampires turn back into humans temporarily. Leopold had manipulated my blood to make his serum, which he’d touted as a ‘cure’ for vampirism. That serum was what had landed me in hot water with the VGO, and their initial solution was to simply murder me for all the anxiety my blood had caused them.
    The VGO had worried that, in the wrong hands, Leopold’s serum would be a danger to the vampire race. The effect of Leopold’s serum, unlike my blood, was not short-term. It would permanently zap the immortality right out of the recipient, making it impossible for them to ever return to being vampire.
    It seemed outlandish to me that any vampire would actually want to give up their immortality. But some vampires, like my friend Jerry, had grown weary after roaming the earth for centuries. I’d given Jerry my blood back when I’d wrongly believed that the change it brought about was permanent, which of course I later learned wasn’t the case. The amount of time my blood took to alter a vampire, as well as how long they stayed human, depended on their age. Older vampires became human faster, but they remained human for less time. It was vice versa for younger vampires.
    The only way I’d been able to avoid being massacred by the VGO was by entering into a deal with them. I would, for a timespan that had yet to be determined by their chairman, give them my blood in exchange for their protection (though, paradoxically, the VGO were the only ones I needed protecting against). Now that the VGO were no longer out to murder me, I could appreciate their concerns about Leopold’s serum—it was dangerous. How Leopold had for one second thought that developing it was a good idea was beyond both Robert and me. Robert’s take on the whole thing was that sometimes Leopold did things simply because he could. Bored, rich vampires could be very volatile beings.
    What would become of Leopold, I didn’t know. Though he’d destroyed the serum and its formula, he was still on the VGO’s shit list. There was a reason why vampires the world over feared the organization, and that reason was that the VGO weren’t forgiving types.
    But I had bigger issues to ponder than Leopold’s foolishness, the most pressing being my missing boyfriend. I would have to deal with locating Robert’s fangs later, and then try to learn who’d murdered Mathew. I had a sinking suspicion that the two events were related.
    Between