Title: Mercy Killing
Author: Eve B. Hart
Rating: PG-13
Summary: If Death had a daughter, what would she
be like and how would she handle her father’s engagement?
Disclaimer: All characters that are not from the
Anita Blake series belong to me, while those that are belong to Laurell K.
Hamilton.
Chapter Four
“I
wasn’t going to shoot her,” I pleaded with Dad. He’d called that night to check
in and Donna had spilled everything about that afternoon. Donna didn’t know
that Dad was an assassin, since his only legal identity was “Ted Forrester,
bounty hunter.” She thought that I went to a boarding school in Kansas.
Something had happened a few months earlier that made Donna wise up a little on
who Dad actually was, but she didn’t know enough to expect me to aim a
semi-automatic pistol at her.
“That’s
not the point,” he snapped. “The point is: if you pulled your gun on her
because she called you by your middle name, Mercy, what little would take to
make you pull the trigger?”
“If
she had called me ‘Mercede,’ she wouldn’t even be breathing now.”
“I’m
telling you – curb your temper, or you’ll be back with Van Cleef and wedding
bells will be ringing sooner than you know it.”
Shit.
“It’s your fault, for leaving me here.”
“Mercy,
I don’t want to hear it. Now, put Donna back on.”
I
slammed the phone down on the counter and walked through the kitchen doorway
into the living room. Donna was on the couch, going over the books for her New
Age shop. She looked up at me.
“He
wants you again,” I said, before retreating to my room. I shut the door and lay
down on the bed, throwing my arm over my eyes. I didn’t know why I was even
doing this for my father. Number one rule of all assassins: don’t let anyone
get to you. So why was I letting Ms. Donna Parnell burn me up from the inside
out? Simple. Because I loved my mother.
She
wasn’t gone for me. I still sought her advice when I needed it, still thought I
heard her voice sometimes at night, still caught glimpses of her behind me in
the mirror. She was still here, and she was still the love of his life.
There
was a knock on the door. I’d just laid down, so it couldn’t be Donna. “Who goes
there?” I mumbled.
“It’s
Peter.”
I
lifted my arm from my eyes and sat up partway, supporting myself on my elbows.
“Come on in.”
He
opened the door and stepped inside prudently. “Hey.”
I
nodded at him. “Hey. What do you want?”
“You
hate my mom, don’t you?”
Like
he couldn’t tell. “Yes,” I answered honestly.
“Are
you going to kill her?”
I
raised my eyebrows. “My, aren’t you blunt,” I commented.
Peter
shrugged and came to sit in the chair beside the closet door. “It seems to work
for me. Like pulling a gun on my mom seems to work for you.”
“Yeah.
Sorry ‘bout that.”
“No,
you’re not. But don’t worry – I want to do that to your dad sometimes, too. But
I don’t because, well, he’s gonna marry my mother.”
That
made me laugh. He frowned confusedly before smiling back, which made me laugh
harder. Yeah, I definitely liked Peter Parnell.
_*_*_*_*_
I
went to the Outdoorsman, a shooting range on Cordova Road just off St. Francis,
around noon on Monday. The place closed at seven, and as much as I wanted to
stay all night, Donna required me to be home. She was going to some benefit and
wanted to make sure that I wasn’t running amok in the city.
I curled up on the couch with
Anna Quindlen’s Blessings – not an ideal read for most killers – when
Peter strode through the door. Donna was running late, since she refused to
leave me alone with Becca. But hey, I wouldn’t leave me alone with Becca,
either.
“Where have you been?” I
asked, after Donna had kissed her kids goodnight and left.
“Library – study date.” Peter
flopped down onto the opposite end of the couch, dropping a couple videos on
the coffee table. Becca abandoned her puzzle to come over. “What movies did you
get?” she asked her brother.
“Just stuff to keep you
occupied. Little Mermaid Two, Princess Diaries.” I rolled my
eyes. To me, he added, “You should have seen the looks I got from the clerk in
the store.”
I smiled behind my page.
“And then, something for us,
when Becca goes to bed at eight.” He handed over a third movie. I read the
words on the Blockbuster case – Resident Evil.
“Why can’t I stay up?” Becca
demanded. I had to hand it to the kid – she had a point. Mom used to let me
stay up however late I wanted to, especially when Dad was out on a contract. We
kind of helped each other not to worry about him.
“Because,” Peter answered
her.
The little girl stuck her
tongue out at her brother and set the movies down. “I want Little Mermaid.”
So we watched the first half
of Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. Was it just me, or was the
woman who did Morgana’s voice the same one who’d done Ursula’s in the original?
I’d look it up on the computer later – sad, isn’t it, that it bothered me this
much. I rolled my eyes at the mediocre music and tried as hard as I could to
ignore the stupidly redundant plot of the sequel. Finally, Peter stopped the
video and put a very unwilling Becca to bed.
He came back out and popped
in Resident Evil. “Have you ever seen it?” he asked me, sitting down.
I looked up from my book and
shook my head. “No. But I’ve played the video game a lot. It takes talent
getting past that first part in Resident Evil 2.”
I saw him roll his eyes as a
guy on voice-over explained about the Umbrella Corporation and what it did.
“Actually,”
Peter explained, “the movie is nothing like the game, except for the T-virus.
But I tell you, the Red Queen is creepy.”
It
was my turn to roll my eyes. I marked my page and stood up. “I’m gonna make
something to eat. You want?”
Peter
grinned amusedly. “Think you can handle some Ramen? After the incident with the
pudding yesterday . . . "
I
glared at him, blushing at the same time. Yesterday evening, I’d tried to make
Jell-O instant pudding, but somehow it ended up all clumpy. Peter finally had
to intervene, taking the whisk from me and whipping it to silkiness. “I’m not a
chef,” I said defensively, walking to the kitchen.
“Yeah,”
Peter called from the living room, “but how can anyone screw up pudding!”
Amazingly
enough, I made it through the Ramen noodles without incident. I went easy on
myself and just made a ham sandwich. Nice and simple – no appliances involved,
no utensils but a knife. Which I was good at using, anyway.
Alice,
played by Milla Jovovich, was just finding out about the stock of weapons in
the second to bottom drawer of her credenza when I brought the bowl and
sandwich into the living room.
“I
don’t watch a lot of movies,” I said to Peter.
He
nodded in agreement. “I don’t normally watch them, either, but once in a while,
if I find a good one, I decide to. This isn’t as bad as some others.”
I
nodded. The plot progressed, and was interesting enough, but so far, the music
was the creepiest part of it. Things got more interesting as a dead woman
floating in ocher water opened her eyes and her hand darted out to touch the
glass window.
“That’s
the Licker,” Peter explained about the dark, moving thing hooked to tubes.
I
shushed him. After venturing into a very angry tunnel with an awesome laser
that sliced-and-diced a few people, we met the Red Queen. And she was very
creepy. There is just something about children being evil that makes horror
movies so much worse, I don’t care if they’re just artificial intelligence.
That cinched it – Becca was never going to sleep in my room. Ever.