Still, it was clear from the footage that Nick’s hostage was a man… as in male… and taller than most human males. He also had broad shoulders and wore a Black Securities and Investigations uniform.
The weapon Nick used against the security team raised a few eyebrows among the seers. There was footage of Nick firing it––so they were able to ID the model, which was a Russian-made Kalashnikov AK-12.
A few people on Black’s team carried that gun, or a version of it, so that didn’t elicit more than a shrug. Rather, it was the sheer amount of organic material infused into the stock and working parts of the gun that had everyone perplexed. The rifle Nick had been firing had so much of the non-standard material it shimmered pale green under the garage lights, looking like some kind of alien artifact as it expelled bullets in rapid bursts.
Black pointed the different organic components out to me while we looked at the surveillance footage together, muttering about how all of that material was “high-grade organic” and therefore “fully alive,” versus being some kind of metal-hybrid. He said the organics my uncle was making were clearly evolving, and of a higher quality than we’d seen up until now.
He speculated that a gun like that might even be partly sentient.
Apparently, Uncle Charles had been upgrading.
Black speculated the ammunition might even have an organic component, just from the way it fired. He told me about “smart” bullets from his home world that could be programmed to find targets––and how the human militaries had to stop using them once they figured out seers could hack those bullets, sometimes mid-flight, turning them back around on their owners.
No one could explain how Nick got ahold of a gun like that.
Everyone agreed he hadn’t gotten it from Jem.
It was possible he’d gotten it off one of Charles’ people in the Mission, then hidden it in the building before he went up on the roof. Theoretically, Nick could have then retrieved the gun later, once he was on the run from Black’s security team and needed it to shoot his way out of the lower-level garage.
Whatever the truth of it, Nick got out clean.
He also apparently had Jem.
And Black’s second-favorite car.
Taking a sip of my mocha, I fought not to think about that, or about what Jem might be going through right now.
I was still staring off into space when Black broke out in a laugh in front of me.
That laugh held zero actual amusement.
It was pretty much pure rage.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said, his voice harsh. “Please tell me you’re joking. Because honestly, I’m not sure if the fact that you’re even saying this to me right now means you’re fucking insane, or you simply think I’m the stupidest goddamned person on the planet––”
The person on the other end cut him off.
After a few beats, Black clicked at them, loud.
When the person on the other end kept talking, he darted a furious look at me, more to share his anger and frustration with me than to aim any of it in my direction.
In the end, he cut him off.
“Brick,” he growled. “…and I do mean this from the bottom of my heart… go fuck yourself. Either you hand him over to me… now… or we kill whichever one of you we find first. You have to know I’m already hunting both of you.”
Clenching his jaw at something the other said, he snapped,
“I don’t give a fuck about that! I’m talking to you right now, Brick. Not Charles. You did this. You turned him into a goddamned animal! You realize it would have hurt her less at this point if you’d just killed him? Her oldest friend, and he nearly killed her…”
Trailing briefly as he listened, he burst out angrily a few seconds later.
“Bullshit!” he snapped.
He said it loud enough that time, I jumped, even as I’d been taking another sip of the mocha. I didn’t spill any of it, but I pulled it away from my mouth.
“…You have to know he’s my next call,” Black growled. “You have to know that. At this point, I need to decide what I’m willing to give up in order to secure the bastard’s help. Weirdly, I think dear old Uncle Charles is going to be really fucking generous about giving me a helping hand with this one, though. What do you think, Brick? You think you have problems with his seers and his fucking Red Masks now? Just wait until––”
The vampire on the other end cut him off.
There was a pause while Black listened, scowling into the phone.
“I don’t believe you,” Black growled.
Again, I felt Brick talking to him earnestly.
“I. DON’T. FUCKING. BELIEVE. YOU,” Black growled, stopping his pacing long enough to grip the balcony railing. “You have twelve hours. Twelve. Call me with a meeting place, if you’ve decided to cooperate. If you don’t have him with you… if you don’t have him ready for me to take custody… there’s nothing more for us to talk about.”
I took another sip of the mocha as I watched him hang up the phone.
Frowning faintly as I looked at him, I nudged him gently with my light.
“You know he won’t do that, Black,” I said, my voice low. “Not if he told the truth about Nick dying if he dies. He won’t trust anyone with Nick, if that’s the case.”
Black exhaled, gripping the balcony in both hands.
After a pause, he nodded, clenching his jaw.
I studied his profile as he gazed out over the city.
“So? What are we going to do?” My voice remained cautious. “You don’t really want to ally with Uncle Charles, do you?”
Clicking angrily under his breath, Black pushed off from the balcony railing, releasing it with his hands. Turning on me, he continued to frown, his eyes showing him to be thinking.
“No,” he said after a pause.
I felt something in my chest relax. “Okay,” I said. “Good. So… what?”
He gave me a direct look, his sculpted lips hard.
“I have a few thoughts,” he said. “You might not like all of those either, Miri.”
“I know you want to kill Nick,” I said.
Black’s jaw hardened.
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” I pressed. “I get it. I really do. But what happens to the vampires if another of their leaders dies? Brick is hardly a saint, but he’s not Dorian. He’s not even Konstantin. We have no idea who else is waiting in the wings.”
Black nodded to that, too, but I could see from his eyes that his mind was somewhere else. I knew I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. The truth was, we had no good options. We didn’t even really have a model for what kind of world we were fighting to create at this point––especially given all the players involved, not to mention the dangers of exposing seers to the human population.
Humans hadn’t even fully accepted the existence of vampires.
At this point, they were still debating what they were, if it was some kind of a hoax or a genetic experiment gone wrong, or foreigners trying to manipulate the American public.
I knew Charles would be hitting that harder soon.
I knew it was only a matter of time before he presented the world with some kind of incontrovertible “proof” that vampires existed. He was likely only waiting until he had more control over public and private institutions, especially the media, so the vampires couldn’t just turn around and expose seers to the humans somewhere else.
I didn’t have much faith my uncle would be able to prevent that from happening eventually, however, no matter what he did. History had a way of uncovering the truth, given enough time. Sooner or later, seers would be exposed.
When that happened, what kind of world would it be?
Would my uncle be able to control how that world developed? If not, would this Earth end up like one Black grew up in? Would it end up something worse? Rather than seers, would humans be the slaves in this world, like my uncle seemed to want? Or would he only manage
to convince the human race just how dangerous seers really were?
After all, humans still outnumbered seers by what had to be thousands to one.
Black grunted and I looked up, meeting his gold irises.
“All good questions, doc,” he said.
Walking towards me, he dropped his weight into the chair next to me, leaning his arms on his thighs. Without thinking, I set down my coffee cup and leaned towards him, curling my fingers into his hair and kissing his face. Once I was that far into his light, I found it difficult to stop, and pressed my cheek against his, caressing his face with mine until he let out a low rumbling sound, what might have been a purr on a different kind of animal.
His arm curled around me when I didn’t draw back, still more cautious and gentle than normal, but strong enough to take my breath when he tightened it around me. A bare hint of asking permission stayed in his light as he tugged me closer to him.
“What do you want me to do, ilya?” he murmured, resting his forehead on my shoulder.
I stroked his hair, thinking about his question as he merged his light into mine.
After a few seconds of doing that, I found myself frowning.
My gaze slid out of focus as I stared out over the balcony, thinking about how few options we really had.
The truth was, we needed Brick.
We needed him almost as badly as I couldn’t yet bring myself to contemplate killing Nick. Even after the night before, even after what he’d done, Brick’s and Jem’s words kept echoing in my mind, leaving me some bare sliver of hope.
He would change. He would go back to being more like himself.
Of course, if that was true, I had no idea how he’d feel about what he’d done to me on the roof the night before, or even on that fire escape. I had no idea how well Nick would manage to forgive himself, or if he would find some other way to cope with it psychologically.
I had no idea how I would cope with it, either.
In a strange way, I was almost glad Jem was the one Nick took with him.
Well… providing Nick didn’t kill him.
Jem might be the only one left who still had enough empathy for Nick that he might actually be able to reach him. I couldn’t see myself being that person. I couldn’t see Angel being that person, either, not until some time had passed.
When I’d seen her that morning, she looked wrecked.
Cowboy didn’t look much better, or Dex.
Of course, right now, none of that really mattered.
Black would never be able to forgive Nick.
That mattered a lot more.
Given that Black more or less still dictated the direction of our entire operation, that mattered a fuck of a lot more. There was no way Black would be able to let go of what Nick had done. I had my doubts he’d be able to let go of it even if Nick did go back to being more or less himself. At the very least, it would take time, probably a lot of time.
Time in which Nick the vampire would have to be acting more or less like a regular human being… and I had no idea how realistic that was.
Right now, I didn’t see Nick surviving long enough for us to conduct that particular experiment. I didn’t see him surviving much more than a few days, given what I felt on Black’s light, and the likelihood that Black would eventually approach my uncle for help.
I didn’t blame Black for that.
It wasn’t his fault.
It was what it was.
Which meant I had to find some other way to reach him.
* * *
I DON’T THINK I’d ever felt as bad––for anything I’d done––as I did for what I did that night.
I knew it was wrong.
I knew a million different ways in which it was wrong.
I just couldn’t think of any way around it.
I had no allies on Black’s team… not for this.
I knew they’d all think I was out of my damned mind for even considering what I was about to do. Worse, they’d think––with more than a small amount of justification––that I was in shock, that I couldn’t possibly be thinking clearly, given what happened to me.
But I couldn’t let Black give himself to my uncle.
I couldn’t do it, not without finding out for myself if there was another possibility.
Right now, the only other possibility I saw was one.
There was only one truly motivated buyer in the alliance-with-us department, even if Black managed to somehow work out agreements with Archangel, rival factions in the Russian mafia, white hats still clinging to the halls of American government, or whoever else.
Anyway, the last thing we needed was another enemy.
So I did what I did.
I don’t know if it made me feel better or worse that it went off without a hitch.
I knew that was a combination of luck and timing––that it would never happen like that again, and probably wouldn’t have happened that easily even before Black put the whole building on lockdown. As it was, no one on our team in a million years would have expected me to do it, given what happened the night before.
For the same reasons, I knew this was likely the only chance I would have, at least if I wanted to try something like this without my husband knowing about it.
By the time I got to the end of the wooden wharf adjacent to Pier 39, it was so quiet I began to wonder what in the hell I thought I was doing.
I wasn’t unarmed.
Far from it.
I wore seven guns––two at my ribs, two at my hips, one at the small of my back, two in holsters on each of my ankles. I also carried four knives, including a long Bowie knife strapped to my right thigh, and an even longer one that nestled in the groove of my spine.
I knew there was a good chance none of it would do me any good.
Even so, as I stood there in the dark, my back to the moon-splashed ocean, my hands resting on one gun and the hilt of the Bowie knife, I was glad I’d brought the weapons anyway.
It hadn’t been easy to get enough time alone to even set this up.
I’d been forced to push a number of Black’s employees to help me.
A.J. and Javier switched out the security tapes, in case Black might see them.
Michelle brought me the weapons, including the two long knives in vinyl scabbards, one of which I was pretty sure belonged to Cowboy.
Dex––and I felt really, really badly about this, for multiple reasons––brought me the syringes filled with enough liquid tranquilizer to down a good-sized seer or human.
I knew Dex might not forgive me for that, if he ever found out what I’d done.
For that particular task, my options were limited, though. Only a handful of Black’s inner circle had access to the full weapons’ cache, much less the labs where they stored things that weren’t in standard rotation. It was pretty much down to Dex or Cowboy… or Angel… and I’d been warned against trying to push Cowboy, since there was something different about the way his mind worked.
There was no way in hell I could do that to Angel.
Anyway, as bad as I felt about using Dex, it was nowhere near as bad as I felt later that night, when I stuck my own husband in the neck with one of those needles, pressing down on the syringe’s plunger after he’d dozed off next to me.
I used one more on Zairei, who stood guard with Luce outside our suite’s door.
Well, more specifically, I pushed Luce to use it on him.
I wasn’t proud of any of it.
Thinking about that now, shivering in the cold breeze coming over from the bay, I hoped like hell I wouldn’t just end up with my throat torn out for my trouble.
I didn’t see them approach.
I certainly didn’t feel them.
I had to assume he’d brought more of his people with him. He would have been foolish not to, despite what he’d said on the phone when I’d managed to get away long enough to call him. Whoever Brick had watching his back, however, they were invisible.
His was the
only dark form that crossed the salt and water-warped wooden planks out to where I stood, waiting for him.
He glanced around when he was only about five yards away.
I saw a puzzled frown touch his well-formed mouth, right before he tilted his head, assessing me directly.
“You are here alone.” His voice did not hide his wonder. “You really are alone.”
Exhaling the breath I hadn’t known I held, I pushed my weight off the wooden railing, nodding. My hands still rested on the gun and the knife as I walked towards him, closing the last of the gap between us.
“I really am,” I said, my voice holding a similar dim surprise.
I couldn’t tell if that surprise was humor, honestly, or if it really had finally sunk in for me how incredibly stupid it was, for me to come out here alone.
“Your husband knows where you are?” the vampire said, wary.
I exhaled a humorless laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”
The vampire king’s frown grew more pronounced, even as he took another step towards me, meeting me roughly in the middle of that last gap he’d placed between us.
His crystal eyes caught the orange streetlight at the end of the pier, and I saw him study my face, his expression almost guileless.
“You are a brave woman, Mrs. Black,” he said finally.
Exhaling, I clicked under my breath, but didn’t bother to answer.
“Do you want to talk here?” I said. “Out in the open?”
Brick looked around, then out over the water. After a brief pause, he shook his head, shoving his hands into the pockets of his long, black coat.
“I had another thought, actually,” he said. His voice turned overtly polite. “Would you mind accompanying me for a short drive, Mrs. Black?”
I tensed. I couldn’t help it.
Every warning I’d ever heard since I was a kid about climbing into cars with serial killers flooded back into my awareness. An image flashed in my mind of the night before, of Nick darting at me, those first few seconds when his fangs sank into my neck––
TO BLACK WITH LOVE: Quentin Black Mystery #10 Page 44
