Miri looked about to speak, to ask him another question.
The dragon cut her off.
“I have no idea how I got here,” he said. “I have no fucking idea who any of you people are. I assumed you brought me here. Really, I assumed he brought me here.” The dragon seer glared pointedly at Black. “I’m still not convinced he didn’t.”
Miri frowned, her hand still gripping Black’s arm.
“Why him? In particular?” she said. “You claim you don’t remember anything. Who we are. How you got here. Why would you think he did this to you?”
She motioned with her head and hand towards Black, not taking her eyes off the strange seer.
“I don’t know,” the seer said. “Just a feeling. You and he are the only two who look familiar to me at all… who feel familiar to me. With you, that is a good feeling. You feel like a friend. Like someone I can trust.” He glared at Black. “With him… let’s just say, it feels different. The opposite, really.”
He continued to glare at Black.
His eyes shimmered with aleimic light.
Most of Black’s team, and Black himself, exchanged skeptical, deeply cynical looks. None of them spoke, at least not aloud, but Holo could almost hear the back and forth between them in the Barrier space––even though he wasn’t hooked into the same military construct as the rest of them, and shouldn’t have heard a damned thing.
Miri never took her eyes off the stranger’s face.
“Do you lose time often?” she asked him next.
There was a silence.
The being’s lips hardened in a frown.
“Fairly often,” it muttered. He looked at Miri then at Black. “Who are you?” he said. “Are you really not going to tell me where the fuck am I?”
Black and Miri exchanged another look.
Miri’s mouth pursed as she looked over the dragon with the pale gold eyes.
Resting her hands on her hips, she looked at him like she had no idea how to answer his question.
I slumped into a chair in the conference room, looking around at all the others.
I honestly had no idea what to say.
I felt exhausted… like I’d run a marathon.
Something nagged at me, too, like I was missing a huge piece of this, something important, something that I should be remembering… something I had to remember.
“What the fuck do we do with this guy?” Black muttered.
He slumped down in the leather chair next to mine, the one that sat at the exact head of the table. I watched him rub his jaw. His eyes didn’t focus on the room for a long-feeling few seconds as a good chunk of his team took seats around the rectangular, metal table with the monitors built into the polished surface.
“We can’t leave him here,” Cowboy muttered.
The seers and humans who’d been with Black in Los Angeles got here a few minutes after we brought the dragon-seer, “Vaari,” up to the penthouse floor. They’d been en route from the airport at the same time Black and I had been speeding across town, trying to get here before the creature killed Manny or Holo, or both of them.
Holo still looked like hell.
They’d needed a stretcher to get him back to the medical lab upstairs.
We still hadn’t called any of the seers or humans Yarli evacuated back yet, either.
Exhaling, I combed my fingers through my hair, looking at Cowboy.
“No,” I agreed, thinking about all of Charles’ seers, who we still had locked up in the building’s lower levels. “We absolutely can’t leave him here. It would be an unmitigated disaster.”
All it would take is this “Vaari” turning into a dragon long enough to collapse the building, and we had a whole new set of problems.
I had my doubts we’d ever be able to surprise Charles’ people like that again.
“Suggestions?” I said, glancing at Black, quirking an eyebrow.
It occurred to me only then how strange it was, Black being so quiet.
He looked at me at the thought, his eyes and mouth still hard.
“We’ll take him somewhere. Let the techs look him over first… then we’ll talk to him. Maybe he’ll be willing to just leave on his own.”
I nodded, biting my lip.
I didn’t want this Vaari guy in the building at all, honestly, but that horse had already left the barn.
Even apart from the danger of having Charles’ seers imprisoned here, I hated that he’d taken Holo and Manny. Plus, we were still getting bomb threats and whatever else from the Purity terrorists. They likely knew Black’s plane had returned to San Francisco by now, which meant we’d need added security at the front of the building, not to mention whatever fallout we’d have from the media after what happened in Los Angeles.
We were losing control over the narrative already.
I knew that would happen eventually, but nothing prepared me for losing control over all of it in less than twenty-four hours.
“Don’t worry about that yet,” Black said.
When I looked over, his eyes held a faint warning.
“I’ve asked Grant to fly to New Mexico in the next few days… to interview me there. He was open to it. I told him we’ll even do that thing while he’s there, if we can pull it together a few weeks early…”
“That thing?” Angel burst out in a humorless laugh. “You mean your wedding, Quentin?”
Cowboy muttered from next to her, folding his hands over his sternum.
“Not to mention our wedding, darlin’.”
Black scowled at both of them.
“Miri and I are already married,” he growled. “But yes. Our wedding. Your wedding. I’ll fly all of your people out early, too, if you’re okay with the new timeline. But you’re welcome to wait or speed things up on your end, whatever you want.”
Black glanced at me, firming his mouth. “As for us, we were already going to make it a media event. Now we’ll just make it more of one. We’ll let Grant bring his cameras along. It’ll help normalize things a little.”
“How much sooner are you thinking?” I folded my arms, huddled in the leather seat.
“Three days? Four?” Black gave me a faintly apologetic look. “I was thinking this weekend. If we can make it happen.”
“What makes you think we could do that?” I frowned at him in disbelief. “You know you’re talking guests, catering, flowers, clearing out the resort three weeks early––”
“I have people who can handle the logistics of it, Miri.” He gave me a slightly more tense look. “Can we talk about that end of things later? I want to figure out what to do with this asshole. Preferably before he breaks my building.”
Pausing, he glanced around the table.
“What are our working theories on this right now? Interdimensional traveler. Obviously some manifestation of that dragon thing Miri found scattered over multiple dimensions. But what is he doing here? Why now?”
I nodded, thinking.
My shoulders relaxed as I put my focus on the problem.
“I figured the blackouts are a different manifestation of what happens to you with Coreq,” I said after another beat. I met Black’s gaze. “You don’t black out… but you said you can’t control things when Coreq is in charge, either. You said you felt like a kind of ‘passenger’ when it first happened to you inside those Pentagon labs. Like Coreq even had his own agenda… something apart from you, that you weren’t even fully privy to. He definitely has his own personality, and his own way of reacting to things. He even has his own aleimic fingerprint, and his own aleimic structures… or maybe just access to different ones of yours.”
Black nodded slowly, the frown still playing at his lips.
“Yes,” he said. “It was exactly like that. He hijacked parts of me. But I never lost time. I was there for all of it. I could even talk through it… at least when Coreq wasn’t using me to talk. Same with my light. I could use the parts of it that Coreq wasn’t actively using. I tried to tell Charles that. I
tried to warn him I was two people… that I couldn’t control the thing in my light controlling my body and aleimi…”
Remembering that, Black grunted.
“…He didn’t believe me. I’m pretty sure he thought I’d cracked. He also tried to talk to Coreq as if it was me, and Coreq mostly ignored him.”
Easton, the muscular, tattoo-covered New Mexican transplant, looked at Kiessa and Cowboy, then back at Black.
“Coreq?” he said, frowning. “What the fuck is a Coreq?”
I saw others around the table lean forward, too.
Truthfully, I was a little surprised when Easton decided to remain in San Francisco.
Most of the other New Mexicans had gone back to their home state.
They relocated out of the Raptor’s Nest not long after we all got back from the Thai island of Koh Mangaan.
Frank Blackfoot––who Black met along with Easton in a federal prison in Louisiana––now ran the White Eagle Spa and Resort, Black’s high-end hotel property in Santa Fe.
Frank hired Devin on the spot, bringing him on board as assistant manager.
Other New Mexican natives who’d come to live with us in San Francisco also returned to the Land of Enchantment. Magic, a teenager I’d been particularly fond of, and who was scary good with a longbow even before Dalejem started training her, got into the University of New Mexico and moved back to Albuquerque to study artificial intelligence.
Joseph, who was in his seventies, and his wife Geraldine, who was a few years older, moved back to a property they had with their kids on the Rez.
A few other younger kids went back to go to school.
I missed them, but truthfully, I was relieved when they went.
It didn’t feel safe for them here.
I liked knowing they were moving on with their lives, without the constant threat of vampire attacks and now dragon seers from other dimensions.
I’d been so excited when Magic got into college that I cried.
Honestly, a tiny part of me was jealous.
Maybe not such a tiny part.
I realized I was daydreaming about sitting in the bubbling hot tub I remembered by the glorious outdoor swimming pool at the White Eagle Spa…
…when it occurred to me the meeting was wrapping up.
I heard people pushing back their chairs.
Glancing at Black, I flushed a little when he quirked his eyebrow at me humorously.
It was kind of nice to see him smile, though.
I hadn’t seen a real smile on him since we’d gotten back from Hawaii.
You want to see me smile, doc? he sent softly. Let me kill this dragon asshole… and you and me fly to that damned resort. We’ll make Frank give us the honeymoon suite, get married inside that swimming pool, and fuck like rabbits for the next six months straight.
Pain left him in a rippling cloud as he let himself think about that.
Gaos. I’m not even kidding. I got hard just joking about that. Painfully fucking hard, doc. I haven’t been in this much separation pain since Koh Mangaan…
I felt my own gut clench.
Honestly, Black’s plan didn’t sound half-bad.
Except the killing-a-seer-we-knew-nothing-about part.
“Let’s go talk to him,” I said instead, speaking out loud. “Maybe we won’t have to kill him. Maybe we can just ask him nicely to piss off and go home.”
I fought back my own wave of separation pain as I thought about that.
I tried to think the rest of it quietly.
…but gaos gaos gaos, husband… I breathed inside my mind. I’m so completely and totally onboard with the rest of it…
When I caught him staring at me, I honestly couldn’t tell if he’d heard that last prayer-wish of mine, or not.
21
That Nagging Voice
Something nagged at me. It nagged loudly, persistently, maddeningly from the back of my mind, but I couldn’t make out any of the words.
I had no idea what it wanted.
I had no friggin’ idea what the hell it wanted from me.
Whatever that voice was, it gradually grew louder.
Like a worm burrowing deeper inside my brain, it frustrated me and made me manic and distracted me, all without illuminating a damned thing. I couldn’t think past it… not easily, or clearly… nor well enough to recognize what bothered me.
That distracting, vibrating warning told me not a damned thing about what I should feel warned about, not in the more conscious areas of my mind.
It was louder now.
Louder than it had been in the lobby, when I was too worried about Holo, and too angry about what that seer had done to him and Manny, to really be able to think clearly.
Now, things were quieter, and I still couldn’t figure it out.
Something was wrong.
Something had tilted things, just the tiniest bit… but enough to throw everything out of whack, including my aleimic light, including everything I felt off our people and Black.
Something was wrong.
“Miri?” Black growled. “Will you talk to this asshole? He sure as fuck won’t listen to me.”
My eyes clicked back into focus.
I glanced over at where Black scowled, standing next to a doctor’s padded exam table, the same table where the strange seer sat, now wearing a pair of light blue boxers and a white T-shirt. If it bothered him, sitting there in front of us, wearing only underwear, nothing showed on his high-cheekboned face.
“He won’t wear a collar,” Black growled. “He seems to think that my concerns he might suddenly decide to try and murder us all again, and abscond with my wife, aren’t ‘reasonable.’” Black grunted in annoyance. “Or not reasonable enough for him to wear the goddamned thing until we know more about what triggers these blackouts of his…”
I sighed.
Walking over to the seer, I folded my arms.
“What’s the problem?” I said.
“It will prevent me from jumping,” the male seer said at once.
He glared up at Black, then aimed a more subdued version at me.
“I must be able to jump. I will not tolerate making that impossible.”
I frowned, studying his face.
I could see the fear there, the absolute, immovable insistence that he have access to that escape route should he need it. I suspected he came by that fear honestly, but that didn’t change a damned thing from our perspective.
We might have to force the issue, Black murmured in my mind.
“I would not try it,” the seer snapped, glaring at him. “How stupid do you think me? You would not get it halfway around my neck before I would jump!”
“I would if I knocked you out with horse tranquilizer first,” Black muttered under his breath.
The being glared at him, his eyes and light furious.
I barely heard either of them. I frowned instead, staring at the tile floor, feeling that nagging thing jabbing at the back of my neck.
“Where did you come from?” I asked him again, refolding my arms. “What planet?”
“I told you.” He shook his head. “I cannot answer that.”
“I don’t mean where you were born,” I clarified. “I mean the last planet. The most recent one before this. Wherever you were before you jumped to this dimension.”
There was a silence.
“I don’t know what this is called, either…” he muttered.
He gave me a harder look.
“And I do not even know for certain it was the last place,” he added darkly. “It is the last place I remember. I suppose it is relatively logical to assume that is where I was when I blacked out and began to make the journey here… but there is no guarantee of that. After all, how would I know? How would I have any idea of how long the blackout even lasted?”
Black folded his arms, scowling down at the seer.
I waited, too.
But the other seer didn’t go on.
Exhaling, I fingered s
ome of my hair out of my face, trying again.
“Can you describe it? Was it an Earth planet? Like this one? Was it the same basic planet… but a different timeline / dimension?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think so.”
“You think so,” Black muttered, annoyed.
I gave him a warning glance, then looked back at the strange seer.
“What level of technology?” I said. “Cities? Mostly agrarian? Post-apocalyptic? Were there humans there? Seers? Vampires? Or some other dominant species?”
I saw the seer’s brow clear.
“Humans,” he said. “Agrarian. Definitely agrarian. They lived pretty simply. I don’t remember any other seers…”
His eyes slid out of focus as he stared off, obviously trying to remember.
Something about the look on his face made me nervous.
Nervous enough that I spoke sharply, jerking him out of wherever he’d gone.
“Can you show us?” I said. “Via the Barrier?” Thinking then, I considered another possibility. “Maybe you could just take me there––”
“No,” Black growled.
He stared at me after he cut me off.
I stared back, mostly surprised. Then, thinking about it, envisioning that scenario from Black’s perspective, I found myself conceding his point.
I looked back at Vaari.
“I think he’s right. If the same thing set you off as before, I wouldn’t be safe.” I gauged his eyes. “You get that, right? To you, you just black out… to us, you turn into a sociopathic monster who thinks I’m his mate.”
Vaari flinched, his eyes widening.
From his expression, he really hadn’t thought about it from that perspective.
Sighing, I looked at Black.
He didn’t have to speak.
My eyes returned to the strange dragon-seer.
“You’re going to have to wear the collar––” I began.
Out of nowhere, it hit me.
I knew suddenly, exactly what my light had been prodding me to realize.
I’d been to an agrarian world recently.
One without other seers. Without vampires.
Charles.
Goddamn it.
Black Of Wing: A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery Romance (Quentin Black Mystery Book 14) Page 18
