“You’re the devil,” I told him, only half-joking.
“Maybe,” he said, quirking an eyebrow at me. “But I know all the best places for blueberry waffles at eight in the morning.”
Still smiling, he grabbed hold of the door of the shopfront, jerking it open and disappearing inside.
Groaning faintly to myself, and still muttering at him in my mind, I jerked myself back into a stumbling walk-jog to follow him.
* * *
HE WASN’T WRONG about the waffles.
It’s probably the only reason he didn’t get a fork in the arm at some point during the meal, after I’d more or less recovered from Black’s idea of a “therapeutic morning run.”
I knew I’d be sore the next day.
And probably the day after that.
“Only if you don’t run again,” he observed, plunking another forkful of blueberry waffles in his mouth. …Which isn’t going to happen, sweetheart, he added in my mind as he chewed.
He almost got a fork in the arm for real that time.
As it was, I could only laugh.
He ate waffles the way Angel did. Covered in about a quarter inch of butter, then another half-inch of maple syrup. He was shameless in his decadence.
“Should I be ashamed?” he said, his words muffled through his chewing. “Get me another coffee, sexy lady wife, and I’ll buy you a burrito on the way home.”
I laughed again, smacking his arm, even as I waved down the server.
Even the coffee here was fantastic. We didn’t settle for the normal cups of brewed, but each got our own small pot of French press. I ordered him another pot as I dug my fork into the next layer of waffle on my plate.
Black did have good taste in restaurants.
“We need to visit Cal,” he said, swallowing and taking a sip of my coffee while he waited for his. “He’s been bugging me to come down to his restaurant for a meal… and to bring you. He thinks I’m avoiding him after last time.”
I snorted, rolling my eyes.
“Are you going to threaten to beat him up this time?” I said.
“I’ll try to restrain myself.” He grinned at me, leaning back in his booth seat and stretching. “He does have a crush on you, though. He couldn’t even hide it on the phone.”
I snorted again, not bothering to comment.
Black leaned over the table, resting his weight on his arms, studying my eyes.
“Feel better, doc?”
I met his gaze.
Instead of answering flippantly, I thought about his question.
After a pause, I nodded.
“Yes,” I said.
He held my gaze, the scrutiny sharpening in his gold, cat-like eyes.
“Do you know what you want to do now?” he said.
Taking another sip of coffee without lowering my gaze from his, I thought again, then nodded slowly.
“Yes.”
He waited, folding his hands in front of him on the table. He’d decimated his extra-large stack of waffles. The empty plate, still swimming in syrup, had been pushed to the side, along with the sides of sausage and bacon he’d also inhaled.
“And?” he said, when I didn’t speak. “Are you going to share, my love?”
“It’s not all strictly… ethical,” I said.
“I’m all ears.”
Exhaling, I found myself copying one of his sweeping gestures, leaning back in my own booth seat, my coffee cup in my other hand.
“Okay. Then I say we bug all of the Tanaka’s phones,” I said, taking another sip of coffee. I held his gaze, toying with my coffee cup on the Formica table after I set it down. “I say we get records of their previous calls, and find out where that one call Yumi told us about actually came from, and see if there’s any way to get ahold of Homeland Security or other records that might tell us something. And I say we send seers over to read the Tanakas. All of them. His sisters, too. And his father.”
Black blinked.
His facial expression didn’t change.
“Can you do that, honey?” I said innocently, raising my coffee mug and taking a sip as I batted my eyelashes at him. “Your pals at the Pentagon record all international calls, right? I know they don’t look at most of those records without cause, but they have them, right?”
Black’s eyes sparked with a faint humor.
“That would be correct, my beautiful wife.”
“So?” I said, shrugging, taking another sip of coffee. “We trace all contacts. We listen to the originals where we can. Then we send our people to go get Brick.”
“And then?”
I set down my mug. My voice remained calm, despite the tightening of my jaw.
“Then we drain him of blood,” I said. “And skin him, until he tells us exactly what he did with Nick.”
There was a silence.
A faint smirk formed at the edges of Black’s mouth.
Leaning back on his own seat, he threw his arm over the back of the booth, taking a long drink of coffee.
“I’ve definitely corrupted you,” he observed.
I shrugged. “It’s for a good cause.”
“My corrupting you?”
“Sure.”
He chuckled, shaking his head.
“Any objections?” My voice came out a touch harder. “I’m not going to get some moralizing lecture here, am I, Black? About how vampires are people too, and––”
“Want to go swimming?” he said, apropos of nothing.
When I stopped, staring at him, he smiled at me, sipping off his fresh coffee cup as he studied my face. When I didn’t speak, he shrugged.
“I have the car coming to get us,” he said. “But do you want to jump in the ocean first? I know it’ll be cold, especially after Thailand, but I don’t mind if you don’t.”
Looking at him, I snorted another laugh.
“Does that mean the moralizing is coming later?” I said.
He shook his head, setting down his coffee mug with a deliberateness.
“No moralizing, love. I told you… the call is yours. I’m 100% on board with however you want to handle this. All of my resources are at your disposal. That includes whatever contacts I have left inside the Pentagon, as well as––”
“But what do you think?” I cut in, pursing my lips.
There was a silence.
Black met my gaze, his lips quirked in a faint smirk.
“Well… you might have just given me a hard-on.” He gave me a predatory stare. “Is that relevant? Or too much information?”
I snorted a laugh.
“…And my offer to go swimming just now might have a slight ulterior motive,” he added, gripping my hand from across the table and tugging it closer to him. “I might be angling for a post-run ocean fuck, just to see what it’s like in the Pacific… at sub-zero temperatures… versus that no-wave bathtub in Thailand. We’ll have to look out for surfers, though. And sharks. You’re not on your period, are you?”
That time, I laughed for real.
Even I heard the relief that came with it.
Black was going to back me on this.
He was going to back me all the way.
Sooner or later, we’d find Brick.
We’d find him, and then I’d get the truth out of him about what he’d done to my oldest friend––even if I lost my fucking soul in the process.
11
The Soft Approach
NAOKO STARED OUT through the iron bars of the cage. He clutched them in his hands, his fingers twisting, white-knuckled, gripping so tightly they hurt.
He was growling in the back of his throat.
He couldn’t help himself.
At this point, he barely knew he did it.
Hunger twisted his insides, pulling at him, making him sick with longing. His cock was hard. Saliva filled his mouth. His fangs were extended painfully, making the longing worse, bad enough that some part of him wanted to sink those teeth into his own wrist.
He couldn’t t
ake his eyes off the scene playing out in front of him.
He couldn’t close his ears to the sounds coming from it, the sickeningly sensual slurping and sucking sounds that seemed to fill the high-ceilinged room.
He felt dizzy with it. He felt drugged, lost in a level of desire he’d never experienced.
He wanted to scream at the other vampire.
No, he wanted to roar at him, to tear him limb from limb.
He wanted to throw himself against the bars of the cage until he bled.
He knew, though.
He knew if he said a word––if he raised his voice to the other male in any way, much less hurt himself, or threatened him, or swore at him––he would pay for it. He wouldn’t pay for it in pain, which he would have preferred. He would pay for it in hunger, in deprivation, in this fucking cage.
Frustration filled his mind, vibrating the very blood drying in his veins.
He’d been tortured before, as a human.
He’d been deprived of food, of water, of movement.
He’d been trained to deal with those things. He’d been captured twice while behind enemy lines, and he’d been forced to put that training into real-world practice. Even recently, he’d been caught on that island, and tortured in a sense, although that had been relatively mild in comparison, apart from the confinement, the darkness, the heat, the insects, the thirst.
Well, and having to watch Jem get beaten––
He cut the memory off without thought, but it came back within seconds. That time, it lingered strangely, confusing him.
His confusion worsened as the memory filled his mind, making him grimace.
Pain rippled his veins.
That pain wound through him mixed with crystal-clear images, a rising sick feeling in his gut. Within seconds, the images hurt to look at.
The emotions worsened.
He looked away from the feeding vampire for the first time, gasping as that pain filled his chest. He gripped the bars tighter, then opened one hand, clutching at his chest instead, fighting a sharp, knife-like reaction behind his ribs, a new pain, something he’d never felt before.
It felt like he was having a heart attack.
If he’d been human, he would have been sure he was having a heart attack.
In front of him, Dorian lifted his head.
Staring at Nick through the bars, he dropped the female human on whom he’d been feeding, letting her fall unceremoniously to the floor. She crumpled there, landing inelegantly in a sprawling kneel, whimpering in the back of her throat.
Dorian barely seemed to notice.
He stalked gracefully to the cage, then, in a single move, crouched in front of it.
“What?” He stroked Naoko’s fingers where his one hand still gripped the bars. “What is wrong, my friend? What is happening?”
“I don’t know,” Naoko managed. “Pain.”
He closed his eyes, shaking his head, fighting it.
“What is this pain you feel?” Dorian’s voice was soft, coaxing. “This is not from the blood, young brother. What is it?”
Naoko didn’t answer. He could only shake his head.
He didn’t know the answer to the vampire’s question, anyway.
He couldn’t comprehend any of it.
The pain worsened. He saw Jem behind his eyes. He saw the seer lying naked on black stone, being kicked, punched, thrown against the rock. Naoko winced with each hit, gasping, although he no longer needed air in his lungs.
“Make it stop,” he managed, his voice a half-groan. “Make it stop… please.”
Dorian’s voice held understanding.
“You are remembering.” He didn’t voice it as a question. His fingers turned softer, gentler. “It is a part of being so young, Naoko. All of your memories will come back. It is gradual, at first. You remember information, but the feelings come back slower.”
Naoko looked up at him.
He fought to hold the vampire’s scarlet gaze, still fighting for air he no longer needed, still gripping his chest, grimacing from the pain. He saw sympathy in those scarlet eyes, which confused him more, but drained away part of his rage. He even thought he saw the scarlet fade somewhat, turning them the closest to clear Naoko had ever seen them.
“It is because we feel things so much more,” Dorian said, still stroking his hand. His voice was a murmur, lower than a whisper. “We feel so much more, my beloved. We could not handle our vampire emotions if we remembered everything all at once. So we remember the information first… the feelings come later. They come slowly, so as not to overwhelm us. They come, and we grow used to living as we really are. We grow accustomed to managing the full, unfiltered range of our emotions.”
Dorian turned, glancing at the girl on the floor.
She was holding her neck now, whimpering, her eyes wide and confused.
“They really are the children,” he said softly. “Living half-lives. Feeling half-feelings. They have no idea what emotions truly are. They don’t know the power of them.”
He looked back at Naoko.
The sympathy in those dark red eyes had grown stronger.
“I will get you something to eat,” he said, his voice softer still. “You will eat, and we will talk. Is that all right with you, Naoko?”
The younger vampire half-lay in the bottom of his cage now.
He gripped his chest, fighting to think past the pain, fighting not to burst out in a cry or a sob. He couldn’t comprehend most of Dorian’s words. He couldn’t comprehend how anything as ephemeral as a feeling could do this to him.
He couldn’t comprehend a name for the feeling at all.
He only gripped the iron bar so that Dorian would keep touching him.
“Yes,” he managed.
Tears came to his eyes as he stared up at that beautiful face.
“Yes,” he said. “Please, brother. Please.”
He’d barely spoken the words when Dorian rose, regaining his feet.
Before Naoko could blink, the blond vampire had vanished.
The only way Naoko knew he had left was the sound of the closing door, and the absence of his stroking fingers.
He was left there, alone, in the cage, groaning with pain, panting without taking in or expelling air, staring up at the shadowy patterns the firelight made on the ceiling.
He couldn’t keep the room in his sights for long.
Images of that cave, of Jem, of blood and water and cut flesh filled his vision. He felt each blow, over and over, wincing with kicks, with groans from the prone seer, from blood running down his chin. Naoko lay there, paralyzed with horror, with fear for the seer’s life, fear for Angel’s life, who he loved like a sister.
He would die here.
He would fucking die in this cave.
The darkness, the rattling chains, the taste of blood, the bite of insects and rats…
He gasped, fighting to breathe. He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t get any air.
He remembered dragons.
He remembered dreaming of dragons.
He half-lay there, feeling broken, gasping without air, paralyzed with the onslaught of emotion, with the onslaught of sensations so intense he couldn’t comprehend anything outside of them. He didn’t know how long he lay there, reliving every second of those memories in the cave, but without any of the cushion, any of the numbness, any of his previous defenses.
Somewhere in that endless-feeling stretch of time, he realized something else.
Dorian had taken the human woman with him.
Naoko really was alone.
* * *
HE HAD NO idea how long Dorian was gone.
The memory of the caves passed before Dorian returned.
The emotions softened, growing bearable.
Naoko remained slumped in the bottom of the cage, naked, fighting a restrained panic that the memory might come back, or a new one might hit him before Dorian returned.
He had a lot of memories.
He could list them off.
He could describe every memory like a multi-faceted diamond, living somewhere in the recesses of his mind, every detail intact. He remembered the facts of them in exquisite detail, but really only the bare-bones information of them, like Dorian said.
He knew the facts of his life.
He recounted those facts and timelines much more clearly now, in terms of the specific, concrete details of every second he’d lived up until now. Naoko remembered dates, names, faces, locations, specific things that occurred, actions he took, actions and events he witnessed, his own specific reactions and thoughts.
He could list off his own emotional reactions to those events in a way he couldn’t recall ever having done as a human––
But Dorian was right.
Naoko couldn’t yet feel them.
If Dorian was right about the rest of it, that would change soon.
The thought fucking terrified him.
Like Dorian said, humans walked through a perpetual fog. Their senses were dulled. Their vision was poor. Their hearing was even poorer, not to mention their sense of smell, and taste. They half-existed. Half-experienced.
Half-felt.
At the moment, Naoko envied them that.
He wanted that ability back.
He wanted his previous coping mechanisms back, too––but he could already feel them as unworkable here, in this body, in this way of experiencing the world. It was like trying to use a sponge to suck up all the water in the ocean.
So he could only lay there, his mind obsessively recounting the facts of his life, the pieces he could list out dispassionately, even now. He reviewed the list, looking at the bare bones of those experiences, and as he did, the implications of what Dorian said sank deeper and deeper into his understanding. His fear grew, the longer he thought about the older vampire’s words, extrapolating their meanings in relation to the life he’d led as a human.
The thought of remembering the emotions behind those memories, the visceral experience of those memories, terrified him.
He wondered if it could even kill him.
More likely, it would drive him mad.
He was still lying there when the door swung open, nearly soundless on its hinges.
TO BLACK WITH LOVE: Quentin Black Mystery #10 Page 15
