The forty-sixth floor.
Naoko stared. That was one of the business suites.
Clearly, he wasn’t the only one who’d been studying the building’s blueprints.
Still holding the rifle in his hands, Naoko took it off the seer on the floor only long enough to smash out the camera in the upper corner of the car.
Seconds later, the elevator car was slowing.
Naoko waited for it to come to a full stop on forty-six, waited for the doors to open, then hit the “B2” button to take them down to the garage.
The metal doors closed on the darkened business suite.
Naoko glanced up at the numbers, making sure they were going down.
Then he looked back at the floor.
The seer was staring at him.
His violet eyes shimmered in the elevator car lights, brighter than they had before Naoko knocked him in the head with his own gun. The seer reached down, slowly, his fingers going for his ankle, but Naoko lifted the gun higher, a knowing smile curving his lips.
“Uh-uh. No. Stay still. Or I’ll just kill you.”
The seer’s mouth twisted in a rage-filled frown. “Like you won’t do that anyway.”
Still smiling, Naoko jerked his head sideways––a mannerism, it struck him suddenly, that he may have picked up from Black.
“I can think of a few other things to do with you first,” he said, smirking.
As he studied those flat, violet-tinted eyes however, Naoko found his humor fading.
Memories rose in his mind, unbidden.
He saw pictures there, things Miri shared with him through her blood, but also his own memories, things that came back to him from that earlier Christmas, from the months before and after. He remembered rope burns on her wrists, bruises she tried to hide, shifting her martial arts gee around her bare arms and neck to hide them from his view.
He remembered her crying.
He remembered going to her house, night after night.
She would drink with him, and at some point in the night, she would get drunk enough to cry. He’d never asked her, but he’d often wondered if she remembered crying with him, or if the alcohol was partly so she wouldn’t have to remember it.
If nothing else, the alcohol meant she wouldn’t have to explain it.
Staring down at the male seer, Naoko felt a surge of heat rise up through his chest, catching him off-guard, making it difficult to breathe. He remembered Miri when she got back from Thailand that first time with Black. He remembered how much he fucking hated Black for that, for what he saw in Miri’s eyes, for the changes he sensed there.
But it hadn’t been Black, not that time… not entirely.
Black hadn’t been the one who did that to her.
Black hadn’t been the one who left Miri broken and afraid.
This fucker did that.
This fucker did that to her.
Aiming the gun at the seer’s face, Naoko struggled with his heaving chest, staring into those violet eyes, fighting the hard, violent impulse to pull the trigger.
“Do it,” the seer jeered. “Do it. You fucking vampires… you think I care?”
Naoko’s jaw hardened to granite.
He didn’t pull the trigger though.
He lowered the gun instead.
“No,” he said coldly, staring down at the seer. “I have a better idea.”
He flipped the gun in his hands. Without giving the seer time to react, he smashed the butt of the rifle into the male’s temple, harder than he had the first time. He felt and heard the satisfying crunch of metal against bone, could almost see the hairline cracks form under the thin skin covering the male seer’s skull.
Then, as the heat in his chest and throat dimmed, he worried he’d done it too hard.
He worried he’d killed him.
When Naoko raised the gun from the blow, lifting its now-bloody stock, he paused, frowning as he stared down at the seer’s crumpled form.
After a few seconds, he felt himself relax.
The seer was breathing.
Naoko could hear it, even before he saw the male’s chest rise and fall.
Slinging the gun around his shoulders, he crouched down, lowering his mouth cautiously and sinking his fangs into the seer’s neck.
He spent a few floors injecting venom into the male’s bloodstream, pausing only to drink a few swallows of blood between injections. He didn’t take too much. He didn’t want to risk killing him from blood loss or putting him too deeply unconscious after hitting him so hard on the head. Over-feeding was a real risk, given that the fucker was seer and his blood tasted fucking amazing, no matter who he was.
He didn’t taste as good as Miri, though.
He didn’t taste anywhere near as good as Miri.
Just remembering that was enough to get him hard again. It was also enough to force him to consciously pull back from feeding on the male seer.
There was time enough for that later.
For now, he just wanted him compliant.
After giving him another good, solid dose of his venom, he made himself stop, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and rising to his feet.
The male seer didn’t move.
Even so, Naoko rode the elevator car down to the garage with the rifle in his hands, the bloody stock propped against his good side as he watched the seer’s face.
Miri warned him about this one.
She told him how clever it was.
She also told him it wasn’t like other seers.
Naoko had seen glimpses of her fear of him, even as recently as that night, while he fed on her. He’d felt it both times he fed on her, on the fire escape and on the roof.
Miri was still afraid of this seer.
Even now––after all this time––he made her afraid.
Staring down at that preternaturally handsome face, the closed eyes hiding their violet irises, Naoko decided she’d never be afraid of him again.
He would make Solonik into something Miri would never, ever have to fear.
30
Negotiations
I WATCHED BLACK pace, his gold eyes murderous as he tracked back and forth across the terrace, making a dark line against the blue morning sky past the glass balcony wall.
I sat in one of the wicker chairs, on a dark blue cushion, a hot mocha coffee drink on the glass table in front of me.
It would have been a pleasant place to sit, under other circumstances.
As it was, I found myself watching Black warily, wondering if I needed to try and do something to calm him down.
I knew this was his way of working through everything that happened over the past twenty-four hours. I also knew my focusing on him was an avoidance tactic for myself, at least in part. As much as I hated seeing him like this, it was easier to try and think about how to help him than to think about anything I remembered from the night before.
Black told me he’d taken this suite––hell, this whole floor––back from the company he’d leased it to. He’d torn up the contract essentially, as soon as he’d found out Nick used this terrace to get back into his building.
He had his lawyers on it, but he didn’t seem to think it would be an issue, given how he’d written up the contracts. His lawyers were good; they were better than good, in the way most rich people’s lawyers were. They’d already advised him they would be arguing that the leasing company’s security protocols––or lack thereof––put them in breach, by jeopardizing Black’s holdings and the integrity of his building.
I knew it was essentially b.s.
Black wanted the suite back.
Therefore, the company currently leasing it was out.
If that meant Black using lawyers, or seers, to push them the fuck out, they’d be out by the end of the week––if not the end of the day.
Although he hadn’t come out and said it, I strongly suspected Black wanted the whole building back under his control. For the same reason, I expected there would be a
bunch of these so-called “security breach” lawsuits starting up in the next few days.
Black had already muttered about turning this whole floor into a restaurant and recreation area for everyone working and living in the building.
When we walked through that morning, he pointed out the café and kitchens, saying how they could expand that, add another kitchen there, pull down that wall, maybe even add a row of saunas and an indoor lap pool.
He’d pointed out a set of suites in the back, saying that whole area could be made into a gym, pointing out another section that could be made into a boxing ring or simply a floor mat area with heavy bags for hand-to-hand training. He talked about getting a few massage therapists to come in for half the week, if not full time.
I knew he was distracting me, as much as himself.
The real issue was security.
He’d have cameras, motion detectors, probably automated drones connected to this part of the building before the sun went down that day.
He was already talking about building a new headquarters building, too––and threw around a few possible locations in the Bay Area or possibly in New Mexico or Vancouver. He wanted something he could build from the ground up, likely as a full-blown military fortress, if I was reading his light accurately, which I suspected I was.
I hadn’t left his side since we got up that morning.
He got me out of bed to take a shower with him, waited for me to get dressed, asked me what I wanted for breakfast, told me his rough itinerary for the day.
He never asked, but then he didn’t really have to.
I didn’t want to be apart from him, either.
If he hadn’t made it clear he wanted me with him every second of that day, I probably would have followed him around anyway, and just tried to bring my work with me.
He didn’t want me working though, at least not on anything separate from what he was doing. He wanted me to help him change whatever was wrong with fucking everything in our world that allowed what happened the night before to happen.
A nagging voice in the back of my mind told me I shouldn’t be encouraging this, probably not in either of us. I knew if I wasn’t careful, I’d be lucky if he let me walk outside the building alone… at least for the next few months.
For now, however, I wasn’t up to fighting that impulse in either of us.
Already, we had press trying to get into the building.
They’d been shouting questions and requests for interviews at our security people in the lobby and outside the building since dawn, asking about the alarms that went off the night before, asking about unauthorized drones and reports of gunfire, wanting to interview Black about rumors of a possible kidnapping and security breach.
They wanted to talk to him about whether and how he was involved in the riots in the Mission, with the groups fighting against the Purists and the federal government. Apparently, now they were saying the so-called “police” shooting at protesters in the Mission hadn’t really been police at all. Reporters on major networks were now saying the anti-riot cops had actually been part of private militia groups, and only masquerading as cops.
Watching the news that morning, I heard all kinds of insane conspiracy theories, even on the major cable networks. Talking heads postulated Black and others might form the military arm of a “shadow state” trying to take down President Regent’s administration. They mentioned other paramilitary groups being involved too, in addition to Black’s company, although I recognized the name of only one of them.
They mentioned Archangel.
Archangel, which, as far as I knew, actually was hooked into some kind of shadowy global network as their military arm.
How any of that connected to my uncle, I could only speculate.
I honestly would have thought my uncle would want Archangel on his side.
Black told me Archangel employed and trained the most ruthless, well-organized, disciplined and smartest mercenaries he’d ever encountered. He said they were some of the most highly-trained killers on the planet… if not the most highly trained killers on the planet.
Uncle Charles more or less admitted to me he’d worked with Archangel in the past, mostly via his contacts with Russian organized crime.
Maybe they’d had a falling out around the “enslaving all humans” issue.
Either way, news commentators were now talking about Black Industries and Archangel in the same breath. Two different program segments I watched on my phone while Black was talking to his tech team interviewed experts who speculated that Black’s company and Archangel had something to do with the riots in the Mission.
I’d seen blurry smart phone footage of all of us down there, too.
CCTV cameras caught us running down Valencia, carrying assault rifles and swords, dressed all in black kevlar. I saw images of us at Mission and 16th, as well, but there we’d been wearing gas masks, so you couldn’t really make out our faces.
Black’s phones had been ringing off the hook all morning, pretty much since that footage hit the networks.
He’d been hit with requests for interviews from about a dozen news networks and talk show hosts. Lawrence “Larry” Farraday, Black’s criminal lawyer and advisor, had also been calling all morning. I’d overheard Black talking to him a few times, as well, mostly arguing with him about the kind of damage control he should be doing with the public, and whether he should take any of those interview requests, and if so, which ones.
Apparently, Farraday was getting requests for interviews as well.
A few networks even called trying to negotiate interviews with me.
Charles tried calling that morning, too.
I didn’t think Black had talked to him yet, and I sure as hell hadn’t. I wasn’t ready to deal with Charles, although I knew I could only put that off for so long.
In any case, Black definitely wasn’t talking to Charles now.
He also wasn’t talking to Farraday––or any of the news networks.
His gold eyes flashed in the morning sun as he listened, jaw hard, and it struck me again how early it was still, despite how much ground Black had already covered. It couldn’t be much past nine a.m., even though we’d been up for hours.
I watched his angular face, and fought a shiver of separation pain, in spite of myself.
I knew it didn’t make a ton of sense that I’d be lusting after my husband, especially given the night before, but somehow, all of that only made it worse. I knew Black was fighting his own conflicting impulses there, so I didn’t push it, but my separation pain seemed to be getting worse, not better, the longer I was awake.
I knew some of that might be a safety issue, too, and a more organic impulse to draw closer to him when I felt like both of us were still actively in danger. Black told me seers did that––that when our lives are in danger, our instinct was to share light with partners and friends, people we trusted. Husbands and wives pretty much topped that list.
I also knew sex right then wouldn’t exactly be uncomplicated.
Just having Black see me naked, given the state of my body, wasn’t going to be easy for either of us. That didn’t even get into the other complications of my memories and light from the night before, and the things Black would probably feel on me.
I wasn’t ready to deal with that yet, regardless of what my light wanted.
Instead, we drew together in every other sense of the word.
I don’t think Black moved more than three yards away from me that whole morning. Even now, he paced in front of me, not leaving my immediate orbit. When Kiessa and Zairei, the two seers helping Black with the security assessment of this floor, brought me around the corners of the terrace, Black followed on his phone, moving around me in a rough perimeter that both comforted me and slightly embarrassed me when I felt the two seers notice.
They acted like it was perfectly normal though, essentially ignoring Black’s hovering while they showed me the bloody hand and footprints Nick left behind as
he made his way inside the building. They told me their thoughts on how to make the terrace secure, presumably so I could share those thoughts with Black once he was off the phone.
Black’s team, seer and human, had more or less mapped out Nick’s entire course through the building before he broke into one of the elevators, jumping on top of it and riding it down to the basement to steal one of Black’s cars.
He stole the GTO, which pissed Black off too.
It was one of his favorites.
From camera footage in the garage, Nick had also taken someone with him.
While we couldn’t see the hostage’s face in any of the camera angles, or even much of his body, we were only missing one person when the sun rose on the building.
Dalejem.
Nick had taken Jem with him when he left.
None of us could believe it when we heard.
In the end, though, it was the only thing that made sense. The timelines were consistent between Nick’s route through the building and when anyone had last seen Jem. More to the point, the ex-Adhipan seer was the only one of our people missing.
Process of elimination told us it had to be Jem.
Still, Black wasn’t the only one who’d been baffled when he heard who it was.
The why part of it didn’t surprise any of us. That Nick felt he might need a hostage made sense, given what he’d done. We more couldn’t figure out how Nick managed to get the jump on the older seer in the first place, given who and what he was.
Still, anyone could be surprised at the wrong moment.
Even Jem.
As the morning wore on and no one could get in touch with him via his headset or his mobile phone, that possibility turned into a full-blown probability. Black now had most of his infiltration team under Yarli working on tracking him.
However Nick managed to get his hands on the Adhipan seer, he hadn’t used Jem to get out of the building. The handful of humans and seers Black had posted in the garage were taken out either by vampire venom or automatic rifle fire.
The only camera angle we had on the two of them together was after Nick had already taken out the security team. Nick had returned to the area of the elevators at that point, and carried his hostage to the GTO. The angle wasn’t great, being mostly from overhead, and Nick had his hostage in a fireman’s carry, so his face wasn’t visible. Nick also had something wrapped around the seer’s head, likely to keep us from identifying him easily.
TO BLACK WITH LOVE: Quentin Black Mystery #10 Page 43
