Mercy Valdez

Mortal Days

Mercy was the designated “third parent” in the household, three years older than her middle brother and six years older than the youngest. Serious and sober-minded to a fault, she recognized early on the sacrifices her parents were making on their behalf and was determined not to waste them, earning scholarships for the quality of her academics and athletics. She filled her few idle hours with volunteering at the local church-run food pantry, assorted library branches, and the parish youth group, and an insatiable appetite for fantasy and science-fiction novels. By the time she graduated at the top of her class from St. Ignatius, she had already been accepted into an ambitious, five-year, combined Bachelor of Social Work and Master of Social Work program.

Her life was not without its problems. Her middle brother, Gabriel, resentful of his “invisible” place in the family, grew rebellious as he got older, eventually choosing to enter the military instead of following his sister into academia, moving as far from the strangling confines of their tight-knit family as he could. Less than a year later, during Mercy’s fourth year in school, their father died of a massive heart attack. Gabriel refused to return for the funeral. Taking an academic leave of absence to support her mother and youngest brother, Abe, through the aftermath, she found herself in the position of parent again as her mother’s grief and depression deepened. When Mercy graduated, she moved back into the family home to help care for her mother while building her career as a specialist in educational social work.

Between caring for the needs of her mother and cheerleading her younger brother through his own demanding mechanical-engineering program in college, she continued her lifelong custom of volunteering, working with at-risk youth through the local parish, library branches, and CAP groups. Her colleagues despaired of getting her to go out for a drink after work or a movie, not realizing it was her focus on helping others cope with their distress that was keeping her own at bay.

Kindred Nights

It was Mercy’s dedication to service, to lifting up the community in which she had lived her entire life, that attracted the attention of her sire. Or, at the very least, that’s the impression she got from the garbled, incoherent memories she retains of a half-familiar face hanging over hers, someone she knew from one of the educational support groups that only met in the evening, telling her in a mix of English and Spanish that a world bigger than the one she knows needed her. Mercy woke to her new condition crammed under a dumpster, surrounded by garbage bags to keep stray sunlight from finding her during the day. Digging herself out, she staggered home, still in shock. Her first hunger frenzy was followed closely by her first anger frenzy, when the pendejo who turned her into a monster appeared and offered to help her dispose of her mother’s corpse. Shortly thereafter she had two corpses, one of which turned into a partially decomposed mess with unnatural speed, on her hands. Her younger brother helped her bury their mother quietly, and Mercy set to investigating this new society of which she was a part. Meanwhile, Mercy had to reorganize her entire life around her new condition, managing the mental, emotional, and financial fallout from their mother’s death, and making sure Abe actually graduated from college.

Her investigation attracted attention from at least two directions: the Nosferatu warren of Chicago, who made a point of monitoring excessive and focused interest in matters related to the undead, and the local Anarch community, who were searching for a missing member. The Anarchs found her first. They told her about Caine. They told her about the clans, about elders and neonates, and the bonds of blood tying them all together. They told her the clanless blood running in her veins would make her a perpetual outsider in the world of the Kindred, whether she wants to be or not, and that she should join them.

Mercy found their ethics and tactics severely lacking in terms of genuine community building and told them so, at length, inviting them to leave her alone and to keep themselves out of the neighborhood she considered hers. Her request has been honored, at least by the Anarchs, who are perfectly willing to let her get chewed up and spit out by the Chicago licks if it’ll distract from their own activities for a while.

Mercy continues to solidify a rather tiny power base of a couple of city blocks where the locals all know and love her, aware there are greater freakish forces at work in her hometown that could crush her like a bug.