“What about the seers?” Black said, his voice cold. “Where were they?”
“Training exercises,” I said at once. “At the building on Mission Boulevard. There wasn’t a single seer in the California building, so whoever did this, they likely had us under surveillance. Cowboy and Angel weren’t there, either… or Manny. All three of them had gone along with the seers to the Mission building.”
Black nodded, silent. His jaw grew harder still.
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds.
He also seemed to have forgotten the bag of food cooling on his lap.
When he finally spoke, his voice was lower.
“And the bite marks?” he said. “Any news on how many of them?”
I exhaled at that, clicking under my breath. Studying his profile, I fought with the pain that wanted to rise at the expression on his face.
“Just one, they think,” I said. “Manny said they had a few of the forensics guys in to measure the bite marks on all of the humans who got bit––”
“Yeah. I know.” Black turned, lifting an eyebrow at me briefly. “I gave that order. They came in here, too. I wanted them to look at Kiko. They took saliva swabs, measured and photographed all the bite marks and bruises. I told them to get access to the rape kit the hospital put together for Kiko, too. Do you know if they got that? I told them to bring Mika or Yarli… or one of the other seers. I figured if the hospital gave them a hard time––”
“It was fine, Black. They got everything you asked for.”
He took another sip of coffee, his gold eyes growing harder.
“I’m not going to ask if they went through everything then,” he said flatly. “I know they did. They would have stayed up all night doing it.” Pausing, he glanced at me, adding, “Did they get the results from all of their tests yet?”
I nodded, watching him cautiously. “The report I heard included all the data on Kiko, along with those vampire DNA tests, or whatever they call them, saliva and semen, and all the bite marks on the others. They think it’s all the same vampire.”
Black’s jaw clenched harder while I watched.
He looked at Kiko, watching her breathe through the oxygen tube on her face.
For another few seconds, neither of us spoke.
I found myself pulsing more light and warmth at Black, especially at his chest and heart. I felt him trying to relax into it, but I also felt him not having much success.
Watching Kiko breathe, I understood.
I understood better than I wanted to.
This was likely only the beginning for her. Some part of me hoped like hell she wouldn’t remember much of what happened, but I wondered if that would make things better for her or worse. Waking up in the middle of the night screaming without knowing why wasn’t exactly an ideal way to process trauma, either.
“They had to replace more than half of her blood,” Black said, still looking at his friend’s face. “If we’d found her even ten minutes later… if we’d gone to dinner at Cal’s without going upstairs… she would have died. We would have found her lying in a pool of her own blood on that fucking couch, and she would be dead. They told me it was damned lucky we found her when we did.”
Remembering why we hadn’t made it to Cal’s, remembering that figure I’d seen standing across the street from the California Street building, I didn’t speak.
Had that been Nick, warning me?
Some kind of premonition? A ghost?
I didn’t really believe in those kinds of things, as funny as that might sound, given all the seer stuff I’d experienced over the past few years, not to mention the existence of vampires. Black told me that true precogs, what his people called “prescients,” were extremely rare in the seer world. Back on Old Earth, they were treated like shamans or holy sages, since the gift was so unusual. It also made a lot of them batshit crazy, apparently.
Most seers got only occasional and extremely unreliable glimpses into the future, since the timelines changed so quickly.
When I asked Black why that was, he just shrugged, and said “free will.”
People had control over their own destinies, especially in the short term. Moreover, one person’s free will could have a pinball-like effect, interacting with the free will of countless others whose lives they touched.
It was only unusual seers who could see the timelines above that layer of free will.
Those seers, or prescients, saw the path of a “life-wave” as a whole, as Black termed it, meaning those currents or historical patterns related to an entire species. Those were the timelines that unfolded over not days, months, or years, but centuries.
Even millennia.
He told me he’d never once met an actual prescient, not on Old Earth, and not here.
Letting out a tired-sounding sigh, Black took his hand off my thigh long enough to open the bag in his lap a second time, and pull out the bagel sandwich I’d brought him. Pulling his out and setting it on his lap in the wrapper, he handed over mine, which was smaller and decidedly less packed with ingredients.
We sat there, eating, both of us watching Kiko breathe and sleep.
There was no sound apart from rustling paper, our chewing, and our swallowing.
Black hadn’t been lying about being hungry.
It struck me again that we never made it to dinner the night before.
Even so, and despite the fact that it was now a little before ten in the morning, I was in awe of how quickly he inhaled the food. It seemed like bare seconds before he crumpled up the wrapper and tossed it into the empty bag.
I’d only made it about a third of the way through the bagel and lox sandwich I’d gotten for myself by then.
Leaning back in the fabric chair, he stretched while I continued to eat, arching his back in a third attempt to get the kinks out of his spine and shoulders. He’d just grabbed his coffee off the table again, when his phone rang from inside his jacket.
I watched him pull it out, and just stare at the name that came up on the ID.
I leaned over, glancing at it.
It was a single word, a single name.
BRICK.
Giving me a cold, death-like stare that made my chest tighten, Black rose smoothly to his feet, hitting the button to answer the phone.
He didn’t wait for whoever was on the other end to speak.
“You’re fucking dead,” he said.
He spoke lower than a whisper, his voice cold, furious.
“Do you hear me, motherfucker? You’re fucking dead. You and those bloodsucking, sociopathic fucks you call your people. I fully intend to spend the rest of my day finding out from Charles exactly how I can help hunt down every last one of you miserable, soulless pieces of shit. I want to personally light the match after he’s dumped gasoline on all of your––”
Whoever it was must have cut him off.
Black’s voice abruptly rose.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what the fuck happened!” he snarled, seemingly forgetting about staying quiet for Kiko’s sake. “You’re lucky I haven’t shown up at your door with a trowel made of razor blades and a goddamned flamethrower! These are your people, Brick! You’re responsible for this!”
Listening to something the other said, he shook his head.
Still listening, Black clicked at him sharply, letting out a coarse laugh.
There wasn’t an ounce of humor in it.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. You’ve got the fucking gall to ask me that, after what I came home to last night…” Pausing to listen, briefer that time, he snarled, “I don’t give a fuck, Brick. You hand that vampire to me, or there is no conversation. The only meeting we have starts with me ripping that motherfucker’s heart out of his chest––”
Again he stopped, his teeth gritted.
“Don’t even go there,” he growled. “Don’t even fucking go there. You want to talk about the Pentagon, Brick? About what I did to you? Let’s talk about that prison first,
shall we? Let’s start there, if we’re going to play that fucking game…”
Again he fell silent, listening.
Sandwich forgotten, I stared at him, watching him pace by the foot of Kiko’s bed.
I watched emotions ripple through his light like electric currents.
The pure intensity behind those twisting, fire-like plumes alarmed me.
Below him, dark shapes writhed in the structures of his light, turning the room darker, as if a cloud had passed over the sun. Black’s hand curled into a fist while I watched, as he listened to the other speak.
“Fine,” he said after another pause.
His voice remained cold, death-like.
“Fine,” he said again. “We’ll be there. And I don’t want to hear shit about numbers or security. If he’s not there, don’t expect the meeting to end well. For you or anyone else. And if this is a goddamned attempt to trap me, trick me, or harm a single hair on any of my people’s heads, you might want to rethink that right now… old friend.”
I watched him click the hang-up button and shove the phone back in his jacket pocket.
By then his words had penetrated enough that I stared at him in shock.
“You’re still going to meet with him?” I said in disbelief.
Turning, Black scowled, meeting my gaze.
That death look was still in his eyes.
“Yes,” he said, gruff. He glanced at his watch. “I need to go make arrangements. Can you make sure someone’s with her? At all times? It doesn’t have to be you.”
Watching his face, I nodded slowly.
“Of course.”
His expression softened, but not very much. “Thanks.” The instant he looked away from me, his face grew taut all over again.
Feeling the pulses coming off his light, I found I understood.
This wasn’t about making a deal with Brick anymore.
This was about killing the vampire who’d done this to his friend. It was about killing Brick if something similar had happened to Nick Tanaka.
I wondered if Brick knew that, even after what Black said to him.
Since he’d clearly agreed to bring the vampire who’d done this to Kiko to the meeting with him, he probably did.
All of which made me wonder why Brick would agree to meet with us at all.
“Did he say who did it?” I said, when the silence stretched.
Black gave me a furious, incredulous look.
None of that anger or incredulity felt aimed at me.
“No,” he growled. “He didn’t. He didn’t explain shit. He said one of his new recruits got away from him, that he’s being ‘disciplined’ now, apparently by Dorian.”
Black gestured vaguely, his jaw hard, like he was too angry to speak.
When he finally did, his voice rose sharply.
“His excuse was that the vampire’s ‘young.’ Like… what the fuck does that mean? Young? Young how exactly? Like a teenager? A kid? Why the fuck would Brick bring a goddamned kid with him to something like this?”
Shaking his head, he clicked angrily, louder than I’d ever heard him make the sound.
“That doesn’t mesh with the bite marks I saw, the rape, the images I got off Kiko, any of it. It doesn’t make any fucking sense at all.”
Trailing, he glanced at Kiko on the hospital bed.
He winced, right before he lowered his voice.
“Brick claims he wouldn’t have brought him, had he known he’d do something like that. He said this vampire has ‘issues’ he wasn’t aware of.”
I stared at him.
That time, my face twisted in disbelief.
“What does that mean?” I said. “Issues? What the fuck kind of issues?”
Black grunted, his expression unmoving.
“I don’t much care at this point, doc,” he said, his voice as cold and fathomless as his eyes. “As far as I’m concerned, it means this vampire’s going to have a very short fucking life. It means Brick is a lot less likely to leave this city alive, too.”
Looking at him, I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t help being worried, though.
I also couldn’t help thinking it wouldn’t be that easy.
20
Warehouse
BLACK DIDN’T WANT me to go.
I understood why. I especially understood why after the Kiko thing. I understood after Nick, after all of it.
I also knew some of Black’s worry had to do with Brick’s threat towards me in New York, when the vampire king had been determined to turn me into a vampire. Black and I hadn’t talked about that, not specifically, but I could feel it was still on his mind.
Everything had changed now, though.
There was no way in hell I wasn’t going to be there.
There was no way in hell I wasn’t going to hear Brick’s explanation of what happened to Nick with my own ears. It was never going to be enough to hear or see it through someone else’s mind and light, even Black’s. I’d never trust that I wasn’t being influenced by another person’s take on it. Even if I did believe I was getting the exact account, word for word, impression for impression, thought for thought… it would never be enough.
Even seeing Nick’s body wouldn’t be enough.
I needed to hear and see all of it for myself.
I needed to hear every fucking word that came out of Brick’s mouth.
Angel felt the same way.
So did Cowboy––and Dex.
While I suspected Cowboy’s issues were more about Angel than Nick per se, and Dex’s issues were likely more about Kiko, both men were pretty tight with Nick by the end, too. Even so, Kiko changed everything all over again, and not just for Black and Dex. That grew increasingly obvious when Black started assembling the team and handing out assignments for the meeting with the vampires that night.
Black invited just about every seer we had with any infiltration experience. He also made the duty completely voluntary.
Despite that fact, not a single one of them turned him down.
From the looks on some of their faces when they stood with us in the lobby of the California building, waiting for transport to come and pick us all up and take us to the meeting location, they would have come even if Black hadn’t asked.
Jem, in particular, looked positively fucking dangerous.
I’d never seen him in his full-blown military persona before. The difference wasn’t solely due to the all-black combat gear he wore, or even the M-4 he had strapped around his chest and back––I’d seen him geared up for ops before, both in Thailand and in D.C.
It was something else, something different in his actual light.
Even so, I’m not sure I’d ever seen him carry quite so many weapons on his person.
As I looked him over, I realized he wore two handguns at his thighs, gunfighter-style, two more at his ribs in shoulder-holsters, another at his ankle, and one in a holster at the small of his back. I also counted six throwing knives in each of the sleeves he wore on his forearms, in addition to the two katana-style swords that crossed his back, similar to the swords and scabbards Black and Cowboy wore.
Jem’s long hair was pulled out of his face, both in the back and the top of his head in two separate ponytails, making him look more Eurasian than I’d ever seen him, and a little bit like a preternaturally handsome Genghis Khan.
I saw a number of the human women in Black’s crew staring at him, almost like they couldn’t help themselves.
If Jem noticed, I didn’t see it on his face, or feel it in his light.
He stood right next to me. I couldn’t help but feel the protectiveness he threw over and around me, strangling my light. Between him and Black, I felt like I was encased in four feet of light on all sides, including below my feet.
“Hey,” I told him, nudging him. “Relax. I don’t need a bodyguard.”
Jem gave me a flat look, unsmiling.
“Tough shit,” he said, blunt. “You have one. If you have an issue
with it, talk to your husband.”
I looked at Black.
He felt my stare, but barely bothered to shrug.
“You heard him,” Black said, his gold eyes flashing briefly. “Tough shit.”
He glanced at Cowboy and Angel, then back at me.
“Anyone Brick’s targeted in the past… or who Brick might target due to their relationship with me… or to you… has coverage, doc. You can’t possibly think that wouldn’t include you, given you’re the fucking poster child for both categories, Miri.”
“Does it include you?” I retorted.
“Yes,” Yarli said, stepping out from the other side of Black.
She gripped a M-4 in both hands, one that looked even more modified than the one Jem carried. Next to her stood Holo, wearing a similarly modified HK433. I’d never seen either of the two seers with such warlike expressions on their faces.
On Holo’s other side, Jax looked the same, and equally pissed off.
Looking at the three of them, it suddenly became much more real to me that they’d fought in a long-running war on their home world.
Realizing at least two of them were directly covering Black, if not all three, I nodded, backing down with my light.
“Fair enough,” I muttered.
Black quirked an eyebrow at me, but didn’t smile.
All of the seers and humans who’d geared up for this stood around Black in a rough circle now. They all looked to him expectantly, expressions grim, but the seers stood so inhumanly still, with such expressionless faces, I found myself scanning over them, noting how tightly they were shielded.
So these are infiltrators, I found myself thinking.
“Military-trained infiltrators,” Jem said from next to me. “And please shield your light, sister. I’ve been told these vampires have coerced seers to work for them before. We can’t assume they won’t have any with them now.”
I glanced over at him, frowning as it hit me how right he was.
They could easily have another Efraim by now. With so many new seers on this version of Earth, they could have found a lone seer before that seer even knew vampires existed in this world, before they had any idea of the risks.
TO BLACK WITH LOVE: Quentin Black Mystery #10 Page 27
