TO BLACK WITH LOVE: Quentin Black Mystery #10

by Andrijeski, JC

  “You know Miri will never forgive you, if you do that,” she said. “Ganging up on her with a bunch of her friends isn’t really going to help with that.”

  Black grunted, but she saw a flicker of pain cross his expression.

  It was there and then gone.

  He still didn’t look at her.

  “But you will?” he said, gruff. “Forgive me?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Angel said, sharper. “But I’m not married to you. I didn’t figure my opinion would hold as much sway.”

  Black didn’t answer, but again she saw that tightness pass over his features.

  After a longer pause, he only shrugged.

  “Come up with a better idea,” he said, motioning gracefully as he stared sightlessly at the frosted glass. “Give me some realistic options, Ange. First one I hear that doesn’t sound like wishful thinking bullshit, and Nick comes off the table.”

  He turned his head, giving her a hard look.

  “But telling me you ‘don’t think’ Nick will kill my wife if we let him roam free––given what he did to Kiko, and likely would have done to Miri if we hadn’t gotten there when we did––probably isn’t going to be enough to sway me, Ange.”

  Frowning, Angel exchanged looks with Cowboy.

  Cowboy folded his arms, frowning back.

  Then he turned, his gray eyes holding a harder scrutiny as he studied Black’s face.

  Before Angel could think of anything more to say, the glass door at the end of the room opened, and Dex walked in, trailed by all of the people Cowboy listed earlier, along with at least five more from Black’s human team, and at least three additional seers from Yarli’s infiltration group. Angel watched them file into the room, noting that most watched Black’s face even as they looked for a chair around the brushed steel table.

  It hit her again that they were really doing this.

  They were really having a meeting about whether to kill Nick Tanaka.

  And Miri wasn’t even here to be a part of it.

  She was about to open her mouth, to try one more time to reach Black before he opened the floor, to maybe convince him to wait for Miri to have this conversation––

  When the floor under her feet trembled.

  She reached out, grabbing hold of Cowboy, letting out a gasp when it stopped, when everyone in the room fell silent, looking around at the frosted glass walls. The monitor embedded in the table top continued to play, showing police in riot gear getting pummeled by flaming bottles somewhere off Van Ness in the Mission District.

  Angel opened her mouth––

  When the floor under her feet jerked again, harder that time.

  It threw her into Cowboy, who caught her around the waist, tugging her to him and bringing her low, down by the table.

  Black fell to a crouch next to them, along with Jem, whose knees bent a split second after Black’s. Others in their group stood still and dropped, most of them clutching and huddling around the sides of the table as they looked up at the swaying light fixtures.

  No one spoke as the earth continued to shake.

  * * *

  THE BED UNDER me rumbled.

  I felt it shake, a vibration so fast and hard, it seemed to go through my bones, like it was trying to detach them from my flesh.

  My heart started pounding harder, faster.

  I couldn’t open my eyes, though.

  My mind fought with what was happening, trying to categorize it in some way.

  Earthquake. Night terrors. Sleep paralysis. Bad dream. Earthquake.

  Earthquake.

  I fought to open my eyes.

  Light filled the spaces behind my lids, so much light I got confused, until I thought I’d actually opened them. A sick, nauseating lurch closed my throat and chest as I tried to move, to sit up, to throw my legs over the side of the bed––

  Everything went dark.

  * * *

  THE SHAKING GREW so violent, Angel cried out, gripping Cowboy’s arm in her fingers. He held her around the back and shoulders, and they knelt there, half under the table, sandwiched between Black and Jem on one side, Manny and Yarli on the other.

  When the floor didn’t stop rippling under her knees, she started to wonder if they should leave, try to get out of the building.

  But they always said not to do that. The earthquake advisories said not to leave, no matter what kind of dwelling you were in––definitely not a steel and glass monstrosity like Black’s building, which stood in the middle of the financial district of downtown San Francisco.

  This thing had to be up to code.

  Even so, she gasped a little, hearing things fall in the other room, hearing glass break, hearing people yell out to one another on the other side of the frosted glass walls.

  She watched the walls themselves, knowing she should turn her face away when she saw the surfaces ripple under the movement of the earth.

  Then… slowly…

  The shaking began to subside.

  Angel knelt there, panting, as the rumbling grew further away.

  The building continued to sway gently around her, maybe because of casters under the earth, like they put some of these bigger buildings on, maybe from aftershock or her own mind playing tricks on her.

  The ground felt mostly solid again, though.

  Black was the first to climb back to his feet.

  Using the steel table to pull himself up, he walked around Jem, bending over the table and tracing a code out of light on the touch-screen built into the steel surface.

  Angel didn’t realize what he was doing until he spoke.

  “Avers?” Black didn’t wait for a response. “Is she all right?”

  “Cross is inside now, sir,” a female voice answered. “Wendell’s out here with me. We didn’t hear anything from her room, and the keycard wasn’t working when the worst of the shaking was happening…”

  Angel saw Black’s jaw clench.

  No doubt he was filing away the access card thing for another day.

  “I’ll stay on the line until he comes back,” Black said. “Unless you can patch me through to him right now––”

  A male voice rose, unintelligible as it shouted something on the other end.

  Then the female voice returned to the line.

  “Sir?” Her voice lost its professional veneer, sounding panicked. “Sir, you’d better get down here. Right now. She’s gone, sir. Your wife. She’s just… gone.”

  Fear trembled her voice.

  “I can’t explain it, sir. We were here the whole time––”

  But Black wasn’t listening to her anymore.

  He wasn’t even by the monitor, but was already heading for the door.

  His face had hardened into a mask.

  Angel jerked to her feet to follow him, when he stopped abruptly, his hand on the door’s handle. He turned to face all of them.

  “One of you have a gun for me? I left mine in the room.”

  Cowboy stepped forward, along with Dex. Angel heard the scrape of leather and vinyl as at least six more guns were unholstered, as seers and humans stepped towards him, offering him their weapons without a word. Glancing over all of them with a single flicker of his gold eyes, he took a Glock from Dex, meeting his gaze.

  “Run a sweep. Send as many teams as you need. The whole goddamned building.”

  Dex was already nodding. “On it, boss. Just go down there. We’ve got this.”

  Black looked at Cowboy, then at Angel.

  “You two with me,” he said.

  He didn’t wait for them to respond.

  He didn’t even wait for them to nod.

  He was already out the door, heading for the elevators.

  Angel glanced at Cowboy, even as her boyfriend broke into a loping jog to follow him.

  28

  Conflicted

  NAOKO FELT THE building start to shake.

  At first, he thought it was some kind of defense system––some insanely expensive, likely
experimental, possibly illegal, high-tech anti-breach protocol Black had installed in his building after he’d returned from Koh Mangaan.

  Naoko froze when it started, melting into the shadow by the parked helicopter. Under his fingers, a black eagle was etched on the door of the gunmetal gray body.

  He stood on the helipad, surfing the rippling tarmac, looking around in a wary, bemused kind of wonder. Even after he determined that it must be a natural phenomenon, that he was experiencing yet another of San Francisco’s famous earthquakes, he half-expected the metal door to the concrete stairs into the building to slam open.

  He waited for it.

  He waited for Dex and a half-dozen more of Black’s people to appear, bearing tranq guns and tasers, wearing black armor and infrared goggles.

  Naoko waited, fangs extended, blood pumping erratically through his veins, as the earth shook beneath his legs, chest, feet, and arms like an angry Hawaiian god.

  He stared at the only door into the main building, and waited.

  No one came.

  When the shaking worsened, his knees bent, bringing him closer to the ground. He balanced himself lightly, crouching on the tarmac. His fingers touched the underside of the helicopter’s fuselage, but otherwise, he didn’t move.

  His eyes never left that metal door.

  Eventually, the shaking slowed.

  Then, even more gradually…

  It stopped.

  For a few seconds, Naoko remained where he was, crouched at the underside of the helicopter’s fuselage. He glanced up at the sky, noting a thin sliver of moon, half-covered by silver and black clouds. Far in the distance, he could hear voices with his vampire hearing. He heard car alarms going off, activated by the shaking deep inside the earth.

  The voices he heard were excited.

  Fear still lived there, but already, Naoko could hear the attempts to normalize what had just occurred.

  What do you think? 6.0? That felt like a big one to me…

  At least 5.8. I think higher though, depending on where the epicenter is…

  Damn, the glass table broke…

  Did you see the street? There’s a ton of damage down there…

  Even further away, Naoko heard sharper, more violent sounds of unrest. He heard chanting, screams, threats, breaking glass, the whomp of ignited gasoline and grain alcohol.

  He could feel how the earthquake quieted that unrest for those few minutes.

  The Earth didn’t care about political disagreements. It rebelled against the animals living on top of it, pulling them off one another and their petty disagreements––forcing them to face their mortality, their lack of power, their lack of control.

  Now, in the aftermath, that unrest would be worse.

  In the end, humans weren’t so different from any other animal. They howled, baying at the moon. They snarled when uncertain or afraid.

  They panicked when the ground turned liquid under their feet.

  Now, they would reassert control.

  Charles would nudge that along, of course. His pet dogs on the ground would act as his eyes and ears, the mind and light of the humans they controlled.

  Naoko frowned, rising silently back to his feet.

  He glanced around, looking for damage from the quake. The military helicopter he’d been hiding behind looked unscathed, its propellers still vibrating slightly in the aftermath of the shaking ground. The building itself looked unchanged.

  Apart from a single, snaking crack along the white-painted square on the cement helipad, Naoko saw no real differences at all. The crack formed a jagged pattern through the black eagle painted on the larger white square. The symbol formed a near circle with its curved wings, marking a target for the helicopter to land.

  Naoko pulled away from the silent, black and silver bird.

  He began making his way to the metal door.

  The earthquake could only help him now.

  No matter what they were doing downstairs, an earthquake that size would prove a distraction. Also, if Naoko set off any security measures now, they might think they got triggered by the quake. If nothing else, the quake would make them slower to react.

  He was halfway to the door when the building’s alarms went off.

  The loud, wailing sound made him briefly freeze.

  It sounded like an air raid siren.

  That, or possibly the tsunami warning they tested several times a week in the Sunset and Richmond Districts, where he and Miri used to live.

  He listened to the escalating, keening sound, not wincing––such things didn’t hurt him any longer; his vampire senses scaled up and down naturally, adjusting to changing volumes of light and sound without his needing to consciously will it––but he was made curious as to the cause. He wondered again if the metal door would be flung open before he could enter the building, if he should expect Black’s humans and seers to pour out, weapons raised.

  No one came.

  Naoko stalked forward cautiously, ready to run.

  Worst case scenario, he would fling himself off the side of the building and scale back down the hard way. Hopefully not while dodging bullets, or getting hit by a tranquilizer dart and crashing to the pavement below.

  He was nearly within touching distance of the door, when––

  The siren cut out.

  It happened so suddenly, Naoko again froze.

  He stood there, listening to the silence.

  When that silence persisted, he took the last step to reach the handle of the door. He’d just touched his fingers to the brushed metal surface, when––

  Someone gasped.

  The sound came from less than a dozen yards away.

  Female.

  No one had been out here before. No one shared the roof with him.

  He was sure of it.

  No one who breathed was out here at least––no one who would have gasped like that. No one with a heartbeat. He could hear that heartbeat even now, thudding behind the curved bones of her chest, forcing blood through her veins in violent, throbbing pulses, running it just below the skin. Hunger rose in him like a pain, making him hard even as his fangs extended enough that he felt them, razor sharp, lightly touching his lips and tongue.

  Naoko didn’t think.

  Well, he didn’t think beyond that, beyond what his body wanted.

  He hadn’t fed enough tonight.

  Given what he’d been doing all night, he hadn’t fed nearly enough.

  Dropping to a combat crouch, he disappeared into the shadow by the wall, then immediately began following the cement-bricked surface towards the sounds of that heart and those breaths. He made it around the first corner and stepped off the tarmac.

  His shoes landed on a light crunch of gravel.

  He came to a complete stop once again.

  He could see her now.

  She lay on the ground near the wall, sprawled on her back, her skin pale and oh, so much of it. Her dark hair framed her face, fanning around her shoulders and head.

  She was completely naked.

  He blinked.

  Staring at her, he doubted his eyes.

  Then, in the pause before he stared at her face a second time, at those high cheekbones, full lips, those long dark eyelashes, that nearly-black hair… that pain and hunger in him keened violently higher… so high, it made him light-headed. In fractions of a second, it was louder in his mind than the air raid siren that cut out a few seconds before.

  It was Miriam.

  He had no idea how or why it was her.

  It didn’t matter.

  It was her.

  He took another step towards her.

  Like earlier that night, when she screamed his name, when she ran at him in the dark, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he had to restrain himself from draining her right there, the very fact of her in front of him briefly paralyzed him.

  Memory once more tried to swim forward, confusing him.

  With that memory came pain––a different
pain than the hunger.

  He stared at her, and found he was panting without air, fighting with that pain in his chest, like he had with Dorian inside that cage… like he had with Dorian so many times since then. He heard her laughing in his mind, saw her head thrown back, her eyes open, reflecting sunlight. He saw her sitting across from him at their favorite sushi restaurant in Japantown, where they went for more lunches together than he could count.

  They’d gone to lunch together nearly every day for years, sometimes with Angel, sometimes not, pretty much the whole time he worked at the Northern Precinct and she had her offices across the street.

  Tears came, shocking him, then confusing him.

  He stared down at her, that pain crippling his chest.

  When he could see again, her eyes were open.

  Those giant, hazel eyes stared at him, holding more green and gold than he remembered.

  Black had changed even her eyes somehow.

  “Nick.” Her voice was low, frightened, almost husky.

  She cleared her throat, looking around at where she lay. She had her upper body propped up on her hands now, and sat there, staring around at the gravel-covered section of roof. He saw her eyes focus past him, at the helicopter.

  He saw it click where she was––where they were. He saw her look back at him, assessing his face in a single flicker of her gaze. He saw the intelligence there sharpen, that damned intelligence of hers, which always turned him on, even when it intimidated him.

  “Nick, how did you get me up here?”

  He only stood there, staring at her.

  He saw her studying his face. He saw her seem to see something in his eyes. Before he could make sense of what it was, her own eyes filled with tears.

  “Nick.” Her voice was low that time, broken. “Nick…”

  He watched her fight for more words, for something to say to him.

  But there was nothing to say.

  She’d left him there. She and Black and the rest of them gave him to Brick.

  He belonged to Brick now.

  She seemed to see some of that in his face too.

  “Nick, come home,” she said, soft. She wiped her face, without taking her eyes off his. “Nick come home. Stay with us. Don’t do this with Brick. Don’t go through all of this with Brick… with fucking Dorian. Do it with us. Let us help you.”