Besides, he was right. This would be better for me than lying in bed until ten o’clock in the morning for the fourth day in a row. It would be better than me staring up at the ceiling of our bedroom, trying to think up ways to spend my day that would allow me to avoid Angel and Jem and anyone else who might want to talk about Nick, or even just remind me of him.
Black hung a left when we hit the Embarcadero, taking me with him towards Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf, then west, towards Fort Mason.
It was strange being in the heavily-touristed areas of the city at what must be three or four o’clock in the morning, when everything was closed.
By then, I was sweating pretty heavily, but I also felt better.
The first few miles up the Embarcadero, every muscle in my body was screaming, loudly enough that I found myself worried that I hadn’t even bothered to stretch, much less warm up, before we started this. By the time we hit Ghirardelli Square and then Fort Mason, I’d found my rhythm somehow, in the mess of my stiff arms and limbs, and the fog that had fallen over my brain since we’d given up on Nick and come back from Europe.
We didn’t give up on him, doc, a voice murmured.
Thinking about that, I shrugged, my mental voice blunt.
I did, I sent. I gave up on him, Black. I decided he was dead.
Black didn’t answer that, not at first.
Nudging me with his mind, he lengthened his strides, angling us to the right after we left Laguna and Beach Streets.
He sped up his pace, taking us down towards the Marina.
Do you still? he sent, once we had the San Francisco Bay on our right once more. Do you still think he’s dead, Miri?
I bit my lip.
Emotion tried to rise at the thought, a cacophony of reasons why Nick could and couldn’t be dead. I heard all of my inner voices competing for air time, for space, for my emotions, but I believed none of them. It was the quiet part of me, the part that sat somewhere in the middle of my chest, that I believed.
Yes, I sent, after a pause. Yes, I do. I think he’s dead.
Black didn’t answer.
We ran in silence for a few seconds more. Only the heart pounding steadily in my chest, and my heavy breaths echoed in my ears.
Some part of me wished I’d opted to bring my music after all. Even now, I knew I needed that silence more, though.
I know that doesn’t make sense, I added, when Black still didn’t speak. After what his mom said, I should be hopeful. I should be happier. We should be going back to Europe, looking for him. But I don’t think we’ll find him there, Black. I don’t know if someone killed him deliberately, or if my uncle or Brick killed him on accident. I don’t know if we’ll ever know what happened to him exactly, but I think our only chance of finding him is to find Brick. And Brick won’t come out of hiding until he’s damned good and ready.
Briefly, the grief in my chest and head twisted, turning into a cold, hard fury.
It coiled through me like metal snakes.
I want that son of a bitch, I sent. Just like you, after Louisiana. I want him, Black. Maybe even more than you did then.
I considered sending more, elaborating in some way.
I didn’t.
There was no need.
Black remembered New York. He remembered the nightmares after he got out of that prison, how obsessed he’d been with hunting down Brick. He remembered the months of careful planning he’d put us through, all of it designed to draw the vampire king out of hiding.
I knew Black understood.
I do, he sent, cautious. I do understand.
He paused.
Do you think Brick killed him, Miri?
I bit my lip again, oblivious to how much it hurt.
Thinking, I shook my head, even as we were reaching the edges of the Presidio, where Marina Boulevard veered left. We took Mason Street on Black’s urging, running alongside Chrissy Field and towards Fort Point.
It was still pitch black out.
It struck me that I never would have done this, even a few years ago. Running alone, in a city in the middle of the night, wasn’t something I’d ever been able to do as a woman, not even with a male partner. It wouldn’t have been safe.
With Black running next to me, and both of us monitoring the space around us with our living light, it never even occurred to me that we might be in danger.
It was a strange thought.
I don’t know, I sent, answering Black belatedly as we ran through the dark. I know Brick has something to do with Nick’s disappearance. I know it.
Biting my lip, I added,
I also don’t think Brick just “accidentally” left Nick in that tree, because he couldn’t carry him out sooner with the others or whatever. If Nick is dead, he didn’t die that way. Brick took him… somewhere. I don’t know if he took him so he could turn him into some kind of vampire puppet, like they did to Uncle Charles’ girlfriend, or if Brick meant to keep him for blackmail and killed him on accident. I don’t know if it was Nick who called Mrs. Tanaka, or if it was a vampire pretending to be Nick, or if Nick was hypnotized to tell her all of that stuff and they’ve got him chained to a floor somewhere…
I grimaced, fighting a surge of nausea that made it to my throat.
The only way out of that nausea was rage.
Luckily, I had that in spades right now.
…I just know Brick is behind this, I finished after a beat. I can feel it. Hell, I can smell it. Brick did this. Maybe he took Nick prisoner and Nick fought back too hard. Maybe Nick only feels dead to me because he’s drugged out on vampire venom, locked up somewhere with Brick and his vampire pals, wherever they’ve gone underground.
I grunted, that rage flaring hotter in my chest.
And that’s the best-case scenario, really. That Nick is alive somewhere, getting fed on and raped daily by a bunch of psychotic vampires.
Black didn’t answer.
I felt a flicker of pain on him, though.
He also didn’t disagree with me.
I don’t know why, I went on, maybe needing to talk about it now, or maybe needing to talk over what I’d just said. I don’t know why, or where he took him, or who has him now… but I fucking know Brick did this. He’s behind this, Black. He has Nick. Had him, anyway.
Without slowing my pace, I turned my head, glancing at Black through the dark.
And I know Angel’s right, I added. Somehow, this is about you. He did this because he wants something from you. He thought Nick would help him get it.
There was no accusation in my mind, or in the thoughts I aimed at him.
There was no accusation towards Black, anyway. Even so, my own thoughts enraged me, without me being fully able to articulate why.
That wasn’t entirely true either, though.
I knew why.
It wasn’t just Mrs. Tanaka who blamed me.
I blamed me, too.
Not Black––me.
On Koh Mangaan, I was the one who felt something had gone wrong with Nick. I was the one who kept getting misgivings, warning pings, warning sirens, bright red waving fucking flags over my head about Nick being in danger. I felt those warnings and misgivings off and on for days, hell for weeks for all I knew, given how out of it I was at the time. I felt them for a good chunk of the time Black and I were in that bungalow together, and I did nothing.
I didn’t do a damned thing.
I knew something was wrong.
I knew Nick was in danger, long before Yarli and Manny came looking for us, and we finally did something about it. I could feel it. I could feel it had something to do with Nick, even though I didn’t understand what I felt.
I mentioned it to Black here and there.
I asked him to send someone.
But mostly? Mostly, I fucked my husband’s brains out. Mostly, I went swimming between bouts of gorging myself on food from Black’s personal, Michelin star chef, and taking naked naps on the floor of an air-conditioned bungalow on the beach.
Black couldn’t feel what I felt.
Black wasn’t to blame for any of this. It was my fault.
I did this.
“No.” Black grabbed hold of my arm.
He came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road, and I did too, almost before I’d thought about it.
“No,” he growled, staring into my face.
It was dark out still, apart from sporadic street lights. I could see his face in the faint orange glow of the nearest one, especially his eyes, which reflected gold light back at me.
“No! Goddamn it. Miri…”
His voice rose in frustration, mixed with a kind of helplessness.
“Miri, we weren’t in any condition to help anyone right then. Not Nick. Not Angel. Not Cowboy. Not anyone.”
I frowned, feeling my jaw harden.
I shook my head, but he talked over me.
“We weren’t!” he snapped. “Miri… there’s a reason bonding seers are sequestered. It’s because they’re not fit to be around other people. It’s because they can’t be trusted to be rational. They can’t be trusted not do crazy, reckless, nonsensical things. They’re certainly not fit to lead anybody. We only would have gotten more people killed.”
He shook me lightly by the arm.
“You didn’t do this. You didn’t take Nick! You didn’t kidnap him… or give him to vampires. Hell, I called Brick! I brought Brick to that island! If you want to blame someone, blame me!”
“You asked me.” I stared up at him, biting my lip, even though it hurt like hell, even though I tasted blood. “You asked me if you could call Brick. I said yes.”
“We were trying to get help to him––”
“We snapped out of it just fine,” I said, my voice louder, harsher than his. “When Yarli and Manny came for us on that beach, we were fine, Black. It wasn’t easy, but we were perfectly able to lead the team out to––”
“We were finished with the fucking bonding by then!” he exploded, gripping my arm tighter. He lowered his voice, but it still came out in a near-growl. “We’d finished by then, Miri! We were still dopey and kind of nuts, but we were able to snap back as soon as we understood there was a need. You didn’t do anything wrong, doc! Don’t you understand? Yarli and the others wouldn’t have let us take off into the jungle in that state. They probably would have hit us both with tranq guns… and they would have been right to do it!”
Releasing my arm when I didn’t answer, he placed his hands on his hips.
Exhaling, he clicked under his breath, staring around at the dark field.
“Fuck, Miri… I doubt we even would have found them without Brick. It would have taken us weeks, given what Kiko told me. Brick and Dorian could smell them. They hunt humans as food. They can track them in the physical, in ways we can’t. They bypassed all of that crazy mountain interference and just followed their goddamned stomachs.”
Tears welled in my eyes.
They came out of nowhere, blinding me, even as my breath caught in my throat and chest, suffocating me. I stood there, gasping, hanging over my thighs, and Black walked closer, enveloping me in his arms.
“Gaos, doc… I’m sorry.” Pain rippled through his light, reaching his voice. “I’m so, so sorry.” He clutched me tighter against him, pulsing that furnace-like heat of his into my chest. “I’ll do anything you want, Miri. Anything. Do you want to go back to Europe?”
Clenching my jaw, I shook my head.
“We wouldn’t find him,” I said, after I forced myself to take a breath. “We wouldn’t find him, so it doesn’t matter. There would be no point.”
My voice came out deadened, but the words felt true. I knew that, I knew we wouldn’t find them, but I didn’t know how I knew.
“We won’t find Brick until Brick wants to be found,” I said. I knew I was repeating myself, but couldn’t seem to stop myself from doing that either. “We won’t find Nick until Brick allows it. Or until he tells us what he did with him.”
Black nodded.
I felt him agree with me.
I also felt that pain in his light worsen.
I could tell he believed the worst about Nick, just like I did.
He just didn’t want to say it.
Standing there, I let my light and body sink into his.
I fought to open to the pain, to at least open to Black himself.
I knew I was a million miles away from processing any of it, and not only because the last time I’d felt like this, it had been Nick who I first opened up to. Nick was the first person who really comforted me when my sister Zoe died. My sister Zoe––who’d also been killed by vampires. I wouldn’t have survived that without Nick.
Black’s arms crushed me tighter against him.
I felt love on him, anguish about Nick, grief about how helpless he felt to do anything about it, how helpless he felt to make me feel better in any way.
After another minute of that, he released me.
I watched him step back, wiping tears from his eyes. I still hadn’t managed to get much in the way of real tears out of myself. I’d cried once or twice in the shower when we’d been in Europe, but never for very long.
Never for long enough.
Clearing his throat, Black motioned his head back towards the road.
“Come on,” he said, gruff. “I want a good view when the sun comes up.”
We were on the west side of the city.
We wouldn’t see the sunrise from here, not well anyway.
But then, Black hadn’t actually said sunrise. He said a good view, so I supposed it didn’t really matter. There would be good views somewhere up ahead, even if we were on the wrong side of the city to see the actual sun rise up over the rim of the world.
Whatever Black meant or didn’t mean, I didn’t argue.
When he turned, and began to run, I just followed him.
* * *
WE WATCHED THE light rise from the edge of Land’s End, where a stone labyrinth lived just past the forested running track that wound around the edges of the Legion of Honor museum.
We stood on a sandy cliff overlooking the ocean, just before that ocean reached the mouth of the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. To my left, I could see more cliffs. I knew just beyond that lay the Sutro Baths, the Cliff House, and then Ocean Beach.
To my right, I saw more rocky shoreline, with the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, reflecting light from the early morning sun.
Standing on those cliffs, looking down at the crashing waves, we just stood there, not talking as the landscape grew visible around us.
I listened to the birds as they grew louder with the rising light, looked down to see seals all ready to start sunning themselves on the rocks. The white curls of foam rose and fell, crashing into the bottoms of the cliffs only to roll back and do it again.
We stood there for what must have been twenty minutes.
We stood there until we caught our breaths from the last few miles of up and down rises through the wooded areas of the coast, through the Presidio, along China Beach and then down the Coastal Trail. We stood there until I started to shiver a bit, as my sweaty clothes grew cold in the morning wind, sticking to my wet skin.
Black glanced over at me then, noting my arms wrapped around my torso.
“Come on,” he said, wrapping his hand briefly around the back of my neck and massaging the muscle there. “Breakfast is waiting.”
Without lingering to hear my reply, he turned on his heel, and began jogging up the path back towards the trees. After a bare breath, I followed him. Once we rejoined the main jogging trails above the cliffs, he aimed us right, in the direction of the Sutro Baths.
The muscles in my legs, which had been stiffening as we stood there, protested when I took the first few loping steps uphill after him.
They warmed up again slowly as I made my way with him down the hill, then past the Cliff House until we were above Ocean Beach.
Not long after that, he swung
to our right again, and we were running on the beach itself, right at the edge of the lapping waves, where the sand was the firmest.
By then, I was genuinely tired.
Panting, I managed to increase my speed enough to pull up alongside Black, who still managed to look like he could go another fifteen or twenty miles.
“I’m about done,” I told him, between gasped breaths.
He glanced at me, smiling faintly.
“Almost there, doc.”
Before I could protest, he shifted directions, taking us back up the sand towards the road.
The softer and drier the sand got, the harder it was to run in, until I was panting, sweating, fighting my way up the slight rise of dune to get to the beach wall and off the sand altogether.
When I finally reached the road, I groaned a little when Black grinned at me, motioning with his head for me to follow him across the street.
By then, we’d already run past the west entrance to Golden Gate Park.
Hurling and forcing my body back into motion, I followed him.
He loped across the Great Highway, heading back east now, onto Noriega Street.
I’m not running all the way back to Market with you, I informed him in my mind. You go, if you’re intent on running a full marathon today. I’m taking a fucking cab. Probably macking on a burrito and chili fries the whole way.
He laughed. I heard him with my ears up ahead, and in my mind.
Not that far, doc, he sent, pluming heat into my chest. Almost there. I promise.
You’ve been saying that, I grumbled.
We ran another few blocks up Noriega, until I really thought I would drop dead from exhaustion. I was just about to call a halt for real, when I saw Black slowing his long steps, until he came to a loping stop in front of a glass shopfront.
I stopped when he did, even though I was a good twenty feet behind him.
I stood there on the sidewalk, gasping for breath, my hands on my thighs.
He watched me pant, his hands on his hips.
He didn’t speak until I’d more or less managed to control my breathing, even though I was still gasping like someone on their last tank of oxygen.
“Come on, lazybones,” he said, grinning. “I’m hungry.”
TO BLACK WITH LOVE: Quentin Black Mystery #10 Page 14
