He honestly had no idea how he’d gotten here.
He had no memory of taking the elevator, much less rappelling down the glass walls of the building to reach the ground floor.
He couldn’t move.
Well… he could move, in some ways.
He could breathe.
He could swallow.
But whenever he tried to speak, or move his foot, or his hand, to grab his sidearm, or his headset, or, hell… a grenade… he couldn’t figure out how to do it. It’s like the body he wore didn’t belong to him anymore. It felt like he’d completely forgotten how to use any of the mechanics of it. It felt like he’d been body-switched and they forgot to give him the new operating instructions.
For the same reason, when Holo saw Manny emerge from the aisle between the two rows of elevator doors, he couldn’t shout out a warning.
He couldn’t tell the Navajo human to go back––to make a run for the elevator and take it back up to the penthouse floor before the thing saw him.
He could only stand there, watching.
His body still hurt.
It was one of the only ways Holo knew it was still his.
He’d somehow left his bed and the private apartment Black gave him, on the floor just below the penthouse floor. His body hadn’t liked that. However Holo had gotten down here, his body likely wouldn’t have cooperated if Holo had been steering it.
That thing had forced the issue.
For the same reason, Holo’s chest hurt badly.
He felt bones grinding, his breath fighting in his lungs.
He watched Manny approach the creature standing just past the security guards.
He hadn’t expected to be able to hear anything.
He’d assumed the creature would simply read Manny, plumbing the depths of his mind to take whatever he wanted.
Now, however, he heard the thing speak.
“I am Vaari,” it said.
Holo watched Manny stop in front of it, his face uncharacteristically blank.
Then something seemed to click.
Expression bled back into his brown eyes.
Holo had always thought the human had pretty eyes. They were a light brown, decorated with darker flecks of color. They were almost a seer’s eyes.
Holo totally got why Yarli had been so attracted to him. Truthfully, Holo considered trying to bed the human himself before he noticed the way Yarli looked at him.
“I am Vaari,” the dragon repeated. “You are Mañuel, are you not?”
He spoke smoothly, in a low, cultured voice, strangely friendly, like how he’d been in Los Angeles. He sounded different now, though. He didn’t sound as blank here. There was more of a person in the dragon’s eyes than what Holo remembered from the drone footage while Black spoke to him inside the walls of that movie studio.
“I am,” Manny said, frowning.
He looked down at his body, that frown growing more pronounced as he seemed to take a kind of inventory.
“I can’t move my body––” he began.
“Yes,” Vaari broke in. “I did that. I apologize. But I need information, and none of those I asked seemed to know anything. That one…” The dragon motioned towards Holo with a hand. “He knows more… but he did not seem to have a very personal relationship with the other one like me. Or with our mate.”
Manny’s frown went from tense to tense and puzzled.
“Mate?” he said. “And who might that be?”
“Our mate,” the dragon said calmly, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. “All beings have only one mate. Even intermediaries. We are Dragon. She is our mate.”
He looked around the lobby of Black’s building, his mouth pursed.
“I felt her. I felt her on that other world… but she was gone. I went to look for her, and I could not find her. I found him, instead. The other one. He brought me here. He told me I would find her here. And I did. But then he took her away.”
Manny didn’t look away from the dragon’s face as he spoke.
Holo didn’t either.
His ribs were starting to hurt.
He could feel himself bleeding somewhere.
He could feel his chest compressing wrongly.
He fought not to think about his body.
He fought to listen to the being as it spoke to Mañuel.
“Where are they now?” the being asked. “I came… more presentably this time. I came to speak to the other who is like me.”
Manny grimaced, shaking his head.
Apparently the dragon allowed him that.
“He’s not going to share Miri with you,” Manny warned. “It’s best you go find your own mate, friend. Or it’s just going to bring a whole lot of hurt down on everyone.”
“That is not acceptable,” the being said.
Holo saw it struggling now, though.
The dragon’s facial expression contorted, like it was holding back some intense pain––like a migraine, or maybe a birthing cramp, or, more likely, a seer’s separation pain. The dragon struggled to push it back, whatever it was. Vaari grimaced as he gripped the arm of the human security guard standing next to him, using the human for balance.
The dragon gasped then, groaning.
There was a silence.
Then the weirdest damned thing happened.
Holo got his body back.
He collapsed onto the lobby floor, gasping, groaning in pain.
Briefly, he couldn’t see at all.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in so much physical pain.
He groaned louder, unable to make it stop. He fought to breathe. He fought to scream as it ran fire through his chest.
The pain grew so intense he closed his eyes.
Both things brought up a wave of nausea so acute, he let out a weak cry, his body wracking with a dry heave that made everything hurt so much he nearly screamed for real. He wanted to. He wanted to scream… but he couldn’t make a sound.
Now, however, his silence was no longer about the dragon.
He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t do anything.
It was more pain than he knew how to process.
When Holo could finally see straight again, he had no idea how much time had passed. Everything still hurt, but he was crumpled on the floor, holding his chest with one hand and arm, contorted so he could stare up at Manny and the dragon. Some part of him had instinctively tried to focus on the two of them, even while he was fighting for consciousness.
He still struggled to breathe, everything still hurt, but his mind started to clear.
That’s when Holo realized Manny stood over him, gripping one of his arms.
Holo felt the pressure of the human’s surprisingly strong fingers.
He was also fully immersed in the human’s light, so he felt his thoughts, even without reaching out. He felt Manny’s uncertainty about what he should do––if he should risk trying to pick him up and run with him to the elevator, or if he might hurt Holo too badly.
Manny was deeply nervous about trying to move him without a stretcher.
Holo felt Manny’s refusal to just leave him there, and felt a rush of affection for the human so intense it brought tears to his eyes.
“You should go,” he managed.
He felt more than saw Manny shake his head.
“No damned way, brother,” the seventy-something human said, gruff. “But I called Yarli. They’re sending someone down.”
That’s when noise seemingly erupted all around them.
Elevators dinged from the main banks.
More sound erupted by the glass doors to the street.
After a bare pause, the door slammed open from the garage.
Holo could feel Yarli on her way down, along with others who’d been on the penthouse floor. He felt Yarli’s terror for Manny, and wanted to reassure her that he was all right. He was about to try when suddenly it felt like he was surrounded.
He felt worried lights, seer and
human, cluster around him and Manny in a protective circle. He felt their cold anger, mixed with relief they were both alive.
He heard voices in the space, telling people to bring a stretcher down from one of the floors accessible by the main elevators.
Then Black spoke.
Holo had never heard his voice sound like that before.
Black wasn’t angry.
He was fucking murderous.
“Turn around, you piece of shit. Now. Or I’ll shoot you just to watch your head explode…”
Holo looked up.
He saw Black standing over him, a gun in one hand, his other hand gripping the hilt of a short, single-bladed sword. Black aimed the gun at the head of the dragon, who still stood near the fountain, only a few yards from the edge of the black and white tile.
Holo felt the protectiveness and fury coming off Black in a dense cloud.
Next to him stood Miri, looking equally furious.
“TURN AROUND!” Black snarled. “NOW.”
Slowly, the dragon-seer calling itself “Vaari” turned to face Black and his wife, along with a handful of guards who’d come up from the parking garage, and a wall of glass windows behind them to California Street.
As Vaari turned, the creature held up its hands warily, glancing over his shoulder at the twin elevator doors before frowning up at Black.
Once Holo could see the creature’s face, he frowned.
Behind Holo, still gripping his arm, the old man exuded puzzlement as well.
Manny felt utterly confused.
“That’s not him,” the older Navajo man said. “He was here… but he’s gone again. That’s someone else.”
Black didn’t look over, but Holo saw the boss’s well-formed mouth harden.
“What the fuck does that mean, Mañuelito?”
“It means look at him, Quentin.” Manny motioned towards the dragon seer. “Look at his face… his eyes. He’d not the same.”
Holo had to agree.
At the same time, he struggled to explain it to himself in coherent words.
The male he’d seen talking to Manny, just a few seconds ago, was gone.
Instead, he saw a strangely more likeable and relatable face.
A strangely more empathic and real-looking expression lived on that face.
Black stared at the dragon without lowering the aim of his gun.
His gold-flecked eyes clicked in and out of focus with a machine-like precision, telling Holo that Black was reading the dragon once more… trying to, anyway.
Slowly, then, Black lowered the gun.
He glanced at Miri, still frowning, but something in the frown had changed.
Before either of them could speak, the dragon himself spoke.
It wasn’t to defend himself. It wasn’t to explain himself, either.
Instead, he looked between Miri and Black in angry confusion.
The expression on his face hardened, right before he blurted words.
“Who the fuck are any of you?” he growled.
His voice came out openly hostile, thick with an accent Holo fought to identify. The accent wasn’t Old Earth seer. It wasn’t any human accent he was familiar with, which pretty much included any he’d ever heard, since he had a seer’s photographic memory.
Glaring around at all of them again, the dragon raised his voice.
“…And where the hell am I?”
20
Missing Time
Black blinked.
Then he matched the other’s angry scowl.
“This game isn’t going to work,” Black warned, his voice growing colder. “Do I need to pull out the gun again? Aim it at your dick this time?”
Holo suppressed a perverse, totally inappropriate urge to laugh.
Following that, he was gasping again, holding his chest in pain.
He knew he had to be in some kind of physical shock.
He could feel Manny’s shock, too, his realization of the lost time, of Yarli freaking out at his being down here. Holo couldn’t even feel relief yet, despite being surrounded by Black and his people; he was too fucking confused.
Instead he stared up at the dragon.
Strangely, Holo found he believed the male’s confusion.
Well, he believed it as much as he could believe anything right then. His own mind remained too confused, his body too wracked with pain, for him to trust what he felt.
Still, he did almost believe it.
The dragon seer felt and looked too angry to be faking his confusion.
The strange seer glared at Black like he thought Black had been the one to bring him here, that Black fucked with his mind, kidnapped him, wiped his memory, then pulled a gun on him… possibly when he’d tried to escape.
The seer seemed to hold Black personally responsible for all of it.
In Holo’s experience, most people, even seers, didn’t lie that well.
They would act befuddled or vulnerable or afraid, not face off with the people they were lying to, snarling at them like they were ready to rip out their throats.
Of course, if Holo was right, that made the seer more dangerous, not less.
If this dragon seer was afraid, if he thought Black had done something to him, or that he’d been kidnapped… experimented on, brainwashed, whatever… he could transform into a dragon in here and kill all of them.
Holo knew he couldn’t run if that happened, but some part of him couldn’t take his eyes or light off the creature, anyway.
“Speak!” Black growled. “You want to know who I am? Why not start with telling us who the fuck you are? Given that you invaded my home. Threatened my wife. Fucked with my friends. Hurt my seer brother over there. Incidentally, the wife piece of that alone is enough to make my trigger finger itch…”
Black flipped the sword around in a tight loop, brandishing it, one-handed.
He glared at the strange seer, and Holo felt another pulse of Black’s rage, vibrating off the boss’s living light, trembling the Barrier around them.
“Talk!” Black growled. “I would do it quickly, if I were you. I would much rather cut you than listen to you at the moment, given what you just did to my friends. Which means I’m going to find any way I can to rationalize it, brother…”
Miri laid a hand on Black’s arm, and he fell silent.
She must have done something else, not just to Black, but to the construct as a whole. She must have told them to stand down.
Whatever Miri did, the light around all of them changed.
It grew softer, calmer, less volatile.
Holo took a deep breath, feeling something in him relax, too.
Then Miri was staring at the new dragon.
Holo noticed she didn’t leave Black’s side, or take her hand off his arm.
Which was good, because Holo was pretty sure he would have flipped out on both of them if Miri approached that thing on her own.
Miri glanced at him briefly.
It was a bare look, but Holo saw the warmth in her eyes.
She sent him a pulse of affection even as he thought it. Holo felt the worry there, mixed with relief, mixed with fear for him, at the way he looked on the floor, even now. Holo felt her anger too––about him, about Manny, about this creature threatening their home.
Turning back to the dragon––the new dragon––Miri spoke.
She didn’t sound as overtly threatening as Black, and her voice lacked some of the underlying violence, but a thread of steel lived inside her words.
It was her “doc voice,” as Black jokingly called it.
This time, it contained an added bite, an added weight of authority.
“Who are you?” Miri demanded. “Where do you come from? My husband may not have voiced it very tactfully, but he is right. We deserve answers.”
The seer focused on her.
For the first time, Holo realized the new dragon had relaxed marginally, too––presumably due to whatever Miri had done to the immediate Barrier envir
onment.
“I am Vaari.”
“You told us that,” Miri said, her voice just as cold. “Your name means nothing to us, brother. Who are you? Where do you come from?”
“I have been in many worlds…” the being began.
Black emitted a low growl.
The strange seer glared at him, then looked back at Miri.
When he did, something in that threat in his eyes dimmed. It struck Holo again that the being seemed willing to talk to the doc, to give her real answers.
Talking to Black just seemed to make it murderous.
“That’s not an acceptable answer,” Miri said.
The dragon met Miri’s gaze. The pale eyes grew even less hard.
“I don’t know,” the dragon admitted.
It made a motion with its hand, in a manner Holo also didn’t recognize. The gesture was graceful, and struck Holo as more nuanced than it appeared on the surface.
The being held Miri’s gaze, his voice gruff, serious.
Before she could ask him again, he resumed speaking.
“I did not answer you because I do not know where I’m ‘from,’ in the way that phrase is normally meant. I jump dimensions. I don’t remember which was the first. I would not have a name for it, even if I did know.”
His words caused a silence.
Miri didn’t look at Black, but Holo could almost feel them communicating.
The new dragon looked between them, scowling.
“What?” he growled. “Are you going to pretend you didn’t know that about me?”
The silence deepened.
Looking around, frowning, the being added coldly,
“I don’t know how I got here.”
Miri frowned. “What do you mean by ‘here’? This dimension? San Francisco?”
“Either.” The being aimed his pale eyes back at hers. “Both.”
“Why did you come to this building? What do you want from us?”
The being scowled.
“I already told you that.”
The strange seer scanned the faces of the infiltrators and soldiers standing around Black and Miri, taking in each seer and human with his eyes. When he looked at Holo, towards the end, Holo saw absolutely no recognition in those pale gold eyes.
He saw no recognition when the being stared at Manny, either.
Black Of Wing: A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery Romance (Quentin Black Mystery Book 14) Page 17
