The Power of Mercy

by Fiona Zedde

  Stephen Redstone had been taken by someone he’d thought was harmless. Neither of his hands had any defensive wounds. His belly had been full of a good meal before the torture began—Indian spiced tea, cardamom cookies, a yogurt-rich dinner wreathed in spinach and supplemented with piece after piece of butter-slathered naan bread. He had been aroused at some point during the evening—Mai assumed it was evening since seductions of this sort usually happened under the cover of dark. Her uncle had always preferred the dark.

  He must have tried to bribe his way out of the situation. In addition to the piece of paper in his mouth with the scrawled I CONFESS were the torn halves of three different hundred-dollar bills. They were stuffed halfway down his throat. He must have choked on them as he screamed for his life, enraged that someone had gotten enough of a drop on him to… And that was where the ME’s details became vague, or at least began to seem like bald-faced guesses. Mai knew her uncle. He was arrogant about his physical near invulnerability, but that didn’t mean he never took precautions, just in case.

  He’d been tied up. Rough pieces of something abrasive and ropelike had secured him without being too tight. But after a while, he’d struggled against them, tearing at his skin and rubbing it raw. Thick, clotting blood and stripped flesh around both wrists and ankles testified to that.

  After he realized there was no point to his struggles or bribes or threats, that was when Absolution really got to work, slashing nearly every surface area of skin with what could have been a scalpel. Stephen’s penis had been severed and stuffed into his rectum with what could have been a Coke bottle or a butt plug. Mai was laying odds on the Coke bottle. She wouldn’t put it past this killer to know how much her uncle enjoyed his Coca-Cola. Right up until the very end, apparently. Or maybe not exactly “enjoyed.”

  But how had Absolution caught him? Mai snorted. With his dick, most likely.

  “You agree it was another Meta who did this?” Nuala asked her once the ME was done performing his macabre parlor tricks and dismissed them.

  Stephen Redstone’s telekinetic ability was the strongest Mai had ever known. Even with his body weakened, he should have been able to wrap his mind around any object in the room and at the very least, bludgeon his captor to death. But he hadn’t.

  “Yes.” Mai walked out of the room with Nuala at her heels.

  She pulled the surgical mask from her face and used it to wipe the now-warm eucalyptus gel from under her nose. Briefly, she squeezed her eyes shut. The images of her uncle’s empty body felt permanently seared behind her eyelids. A painful lump rolled at the base of her throat. She swallowed and swallowed but couldn’t get rid of it.

  Standing in the starkly lit hallway, Mai drew in even breaths, hoping Nuala wouldn’t notice. It was hard enough for her to ignore the fine shudders in her own limbs, the coldness settling into her core. The flimsy surgical mask fluttered with each tremor of her hand.

  “This Absolution Killer, this Meta, must be punished.” Nuala stood a little straighter as she aimed the words at Mai, her expression implacable, as if Mai herself stood between her and her intended prey.

  “But only now that they’ve killed one of us. Fuck the humans and the weak Metas who might as well be them, huh?” Slowly, Mai was beginning to regain her equilibrium, and with it came anger strumming gratefully through her veins to steady her hands, her thoughts.

  “Despite what you and Denali seem to think, humans are not our concern.” Nuala made a gesture as if flicking aside a particularly annoying piece of lint. Her face was granite. “As for your family, we need to make them think they discovered the news of the senator’s death on their own. It’s useful for us that they think their spies are effective.”

  Mai nodded, although she was still thinking of how easily Nuala had dismissed the humans. It meant nothing to the enforcer that Absolution had taken dozens of humans and maybe even a few weaker Metas, but now that it was one of them in the morgue, now the killer mattered. With her negligible power—at least negligible compared to what her mother and other full-blood Metas could do—Mai was close enough to human that she felt the sting of dismissal like it had been aimed at her own flesh.

  She straightened her spine. Okay. Despite the body on the ME’s table, this wasn’t about her. Her family was who she needed to confront, not the enforcers. She thought about the task ahead.

  Knowing the skill of the enforcers, the family was likely already aware of Stephen’s murder. They were pros at planting information. Her mother liked to think her network of spies was damn near all knowing and invisible. Enforcers held the ultimate power of law and justice in the Meta community, but at times, it served their purpose to allow certain Families to think they had some influence within enforcer ranks. Nuala and other enforcers only furthered that notion, making the Families feel self-satisfied and not question how easily they discovered things the enforcers supposedly didn’t want them to know.

  Only, Mai’s life was easy plunder for Mandaia and the family. Other than her shadow life as Mercy, she had no secrets from them, merely illusions of secrecy and of a private life away from her family’s all-seeing eye. Knowing that didn’t make it any easier to take.

  Mai made another move toward the exit, ready to be back in the curated quiet of her own apartment.

  Nuala nodded once at her, obviously done with the conversation. “We’ll be in touch.”

  “I look forward to it,” Mai said dryly.

  She turned to go, but something that had been gnawing at the edge of her consciousness pricked her mouth open.

  “I know you want this killer,” she began, “but don’t you wonder what horrible things my uncle and the other victims did to deserve a death like this?”

  “It is not our place to wonder, only to punish.”

  “Right.” Mai pursed her lips. “I’ll wait to hear from you then, Enforcer.”

  Nuala gave another imperious nod, and Mai turned to walk away. With each deliberate step she took from the body rotting in the morgue, the sorrier she felt. Not for herself, but for the murderer who the enforcers would eventually kill. There would be no absolution for him.

  Chapter 6

  Enforcers were a pain in the ass. Mai almost missed the time when she didn’t know much about them beyond what they chose to share, which was little enough. Before that long-ago night when Denali first approached Mai, she had only known the basics: enforcers were recruited at a young age, their members chosen from already-powerful or powerfully intelligent Meta not long after their abilities manifested. The chosen could either accept or refuse the invitation. Their ranks were few but influential, their tactics effective, their decisions final.

  After leaving the morgue, Mai made it back home on automatic pilot, taking an Uber instead of the rooftops. Eight o’clock had come and gone, leaving the day bathed in sunlight, so it would’ve taken too much camouflaging, too much work, to take the roofs back to her condo.

  She had the vague idea of getting back into bed and catching some of the sleep Denali’s call had stolen from her, but when she let herself into her apartment, the thought of sleep repelled her. After dropping the flash drive with her uncle’s autopsy photos and the Absolution case files into a ceramic dish by the door, Mai headed for her sun-filled den.

  As she walked, the illusion of clothes peeled back from her body like a receding tide, leaving her bare except for the boy shorts and tank top she’d worn to bed. She settled into the comfortable, overstuffed sofa perfectly placed in the middle of the room for sunlight to fall on her face and throat. But even the sweet burn of sun couldn’t stop the thoughts from coming.

  Her uncle.

  The enforcers.

  Her mother.

  Mai raked her hands through her hair and loosened the thick coils from their bun, a sigh rippling through her. Sunlight settled into the curves of her face and along her neck, sinking through the thin tank top and into he
r chest, her breasts, her belly. She turned her face even more into the light.

  Five years. Almost two thousand nights and days. Even if she tried, Mai could never forget the night she met Denali and the other enforcers.

  It had been an extraordinarily bad night. She’d felt particularly helpless and weak. Her uncle had just won another re-election, and she’d wanted to destroy everything in her path. She wanted to destroy him. But instead, she rushed out into the cool November night, her blood boiling.

  Mai walked until she nearly couldn’t anymore, her legs aching, exhaustion just a breath away. And then she felt it, a thrust of power, and she looked away from the night sky in time to see a dark green SUV fly through the air and then land, roof down, in the cold waters of the Chattahoochee River. Humans screamed, and on the road, a pair of Metas ran on, shoving and playing with each other like children who’d left a broken toy in their wake. They never turned around, and Mai couldn’t leave the humans to die.

  She pulled the humans from the freezing water to the sound of cell phone cameras going off from onlookers on the riverbank. By the next morning, she’d been christened “Mercy” on YouTube, and videos of her in a hastily created black leather onesie and mask were getting hits all over the world.

  Mai had saved those people that night, but she’d also saved herself, diving into the cold and merciless waters of the river to rescue vulnerable humans from careless Meta strength and cruelty, the way she’d wished a thousand times that someone had saved her. As her uncle’s re-election proved, the world was intent on elevating men like him, both Meta and human, praising them for being wicked. Mai wanted to bury him but brought the human victims up to the water’s surface instead. She saved her own humanity, however small it was.

  Later that night, as she stood on the roof of her building, Denali, one of three commanders of the North American enforcers, came to her. He’d watched the whole thing unfold in the river, he said. Although it wasn’t officially part of his job, he wanted to save humans from Metas too. He asked for Mai’s help. In that state of mind, she could only say yes.

  Five years later, she was still working with Denali and his enforcers, a secret kept from Mandaia and all the Meta Families worldwide.

  Coming back to the present, Mai blinked into the sun, eyes only half-open in order to filter the day’s golden light through her lashes. The warmed leather creaked under her shifting body. She drew in a single breath and breathed it out, then fell asleep.

  She opened her eyes to darkness, blinking. For a few exquisite moments, her mind swam beneath the shallows of sleep, only concerned with the sensation of soft leather under her nearly naked skin, the lingering warmth from the sun still radiating from the apartment’s walls. Then she remembered. Everything.

  Mai sat up.

  She blinked and saw again her uncle, spread out and opened up beneath the medical examiner’s tools. The mingled feelings of relief and then disgust and dread returned in a nauseating flood. Mai pressed a quick hand to her throat.

  She had to get out of the apartment.

  After a quick shower and change of clothes, she ended up at the café near the university. On a Sunday night, the twenty-four-hour café was still busy. It hummed with conversation and the occasional hiss of the espresso machine, the clink of coffee mugs, and the clicking of laptop keys.

  The café was all dark wood and wide windows. It was a comfortable and warm space with the smell of coffee and warm pastries, the familiar sight of students bent over their laptops, and a few couples leaning toward each other at the small tables while their drinks cooled between them.

  The café had two bars. One served food and hot drinks, while the other offered only alcohol. Two other people sat at the alcohol bar, where Mai found herself a stool. One was a man with an open letter spread under his limp hand next to a glass of iced white wine that was growing warm while he stared off into space. The other, a woman with her back to Mai, sat sideways as if she were perched on an old-fashioned sidesaddle. She was reading an honest-to-God paper copy of a book. Her graceful figure automatically drew Mai’s attention, but that wasn’t what she’d come to the bar for.

  One of the girls who’d been playing with her phone slipped behind the bar and approached Mai.

  “Hey, Professor.” She greeted Mai with a teasing grin and a pop of her bright-pink chewing gum. It was Beatrice from her Literature in History class. “What can I get for you?”

  Today, she was dressed like Harley Quinn from the movie Mai had accidentally seen part of a few months back. Two-toned pigtails, a tight T-shirt with Monster scrawled across the chest, sequined panties masquerading as shorts, fishnets, and black Doc Martin boots.

  Mai’s eyebrows skimmed toward her hairline. “Hello, Beatrice.” She didn’t look any lower than her student’s neck. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” The girl leaned on the bar until Monster was all but laid out for Mai to pick up.

  Mai didn’t touch it. “I’m sure,” she said. “For now, I’ll take a glass of Gewürztraminer, please.”

  “Sure thing, Prof.” Beatrice turned away with a wink to get the wine, aggressively switching her half-covered butt with each step.

  When she came back with the wine, glass cold and gleaming with condensation, she leaned over the bar again. “If there’s anything I can get for you just…” and the cheeky girl actually laughed at herself. “…put your lips together and blow.” She giggled and popped her gum.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Mai said, absolutely confident she wouldn’t blow anything within ten miles of that child.

  After Beatrice sashayed away to serve another customer, Mai turned her attentions to her drink.

  The crisp, sweet wine had barely touched her tongue when a nearby voice said, “Are you another one of those?”

  The tone of the words, and the sense of scorn they carried, surprised Mai into looking up. She bumped into the hard gaze of Xóchitl Bentley.

  “Excuse me?” Mai narrowed her eyes at the woman who sat, sleek and untouchable, one stool over. In her attempts to stay away from Xóchitl, she’d never spoken to her before, to her occasional regret. She’d looked her fill plenty, but aside from a few brief words at the odd departmental meeting, she hadn’t had much opportunity to hear her speak.

  “Are you gonna take that kid home and fuck her in exchange for giving her an A?” The curse was jarring, tossed at her from a near stranger. “That’s the question I’m asking.”

  Xóchitl Bentley’s antagonism shocked Mai like a slap. She looked at the woman from the top of her perfectly styled hair to the pointed toes of her designer shoes. She felt her face go hard, the bones sharpening under the layers of muscle, tissue, and skin. Her eyes felt like flint.

  Her first instinct was to dismiss the other professor and her insulting question by ignoring her and going back to her wine. It was, after all, a question that showed Xóchitl Bentley really didn’t know who she was talking to. But after dealing with her uncle on the slab, and the feelings the sight of him brought up, she felt emptied of her normal responses.

  Her back stiffened, and she looked the woman over again, this time with a slow and insulting once-over that missed nothing, certainly not the slender body artfully displayed in an oversized, boatneck dress that paradoxically emphasized the beguiling shape of her. The graceful head and short haircut accentuated the regal tilt of her chin, her long neck, and the exclamation points of her collarbones.

  Xóchitl Bentley adjusted herself on the stool under Mai’s gaze, and the collection of thin bracelets on each arm chimed dimly. She looked like a queen, and despite Mai’s now-aggressive stance, Xóchitl’s question made her feel like a dung-covered peasant.

  “If I had planned on doing exactly that, do you want to intervene and offer yourself in her place?” The venom of the question spilled easily off Mai’s tongue.<
br />
  Xóchitl was absolutely poised, just as Mai expected her to be. If it hadn’t been for the slight twitch of the hand on her book, Mai would’ve thought she hadn’t even heard her. Xóchitl shifted again on the stool, and her scent, vanilla and oranges, reached Mai.

  “If that girl is what you like, I doubt you’d know what to do with a real woman.”

  “Is that what you are? I couldn’t tell with you sitting there like an ice queen judging someone you don’t know from high up on your throne.”

  “I’ve heard enough about you to form my own judgments.”

  Mai raised an eyebrow, an unspoken gesture for the woman to go ahead and regale her with everything she’d heard that had helped form her judgments. But Xóchitl Bentley only shrugged and went back to her book, leaving Mai to seethe in her own anger. She was vaguely aware of the man near them stirring out of his stupor to look in their direction.

  Her fury wouldn’t let her stay quiet. “It’s interesting that someone who is a professor of feminism and theory would allow petty campus gossip to inform her judgments about another woman, a stranger.”

  “So you do know who I am.”

  “Just as you apparently know who I am,” Mai said with a sarcastic bite. She settled more comfortably on her stool and sipped the crisp sweetness of her wine, but it immediately turned sour in her mouth.

  “Did I hear you whistle, Professor?”

  She almost didn’t hear when Beatrice slipped back behind the bar, fragile and human with her persistent flirtation that Xóchitl Bentley had apparently interpreted as signs of an ongoing affair between them. Strangely, the woman’s assumptions made her want to prove something. What, precisely? She didn’t quite know.

  “Not unless you interpret my intense desire for a real drink as a whistle, love.” What the fuck are you doing?

  Even as she spoke to her student, altering her body language to suit seduction instead of professorial distance, Beatrice stiffened, eyelashes fluttering in confusion as if she didn’t know what to do with this different version of her professor. Mai didn’t blame her. She needed to leave this place before she did something truly stupid.