Brick nodded slowly, acknowledging his words.
“I see,” he said. “As in, yes, based on what you are saying… I agree.” He looked up, frowning. “And yes, I strongly suspect it is more than Charles involved at that level. There is another thing.” He glanced around at all of us, then frowned at Black. “There is another player backing this move. Or, I should say, at least one. An outside player. Human.”
“Outside?” Black frowned. “As in––”
“As in organized crime. Or, more likely, a foreign government. Possibly both. There could even be multiple players… again, likely recruited by Charles.”
“Jesus,” Nick muttered.
I glanced at him.
Both him and Angel were completely focused on Black and the vampire now, listening with frowns on their faces. Nick’s brow furrowed as he thought over both Black and Brick’s words. Exchanging looks with him, and frowns with Cowboy and Angel, I found myself agreeing with the bulk of the emotions I could see running across their faces.
“Does Charles have control over them, too, do you think?” Black said. “This other player? Not just an alliance, but actual control?”
Brick looked at him.
After a pause, he nodded.
“I have no proof, of course,” he amended. “But I believe so, yes. Whatever this is, I believe Charles is the conductor. I believe he is driving the agenda… for the president, for the private interests involved, as well as for any other human governments or players.”
“That’s too many seers,” a voice blurted.
I turned, along with Brick and Black, staring at the seers in the back seat. Once I looked at their faces, I realized it was Yarli who had spoken. She swallowed, returning our stares, then shook her head, folding her thin arms.
“It is too many,” she said, her voice thickly accented. “From what Charles told us of his numbers. From what you have said about the same.” She nodded towards Black. “It is too many for him to have control over so much… over so many locations.”
Clenching her jaw, she made a graceful gesture with one hand, looking at Black.
“They would all have to be here. In America. In Washington D.C.”
Returning her gaze, Black nodded, frowning.
He didn’t answer her though, at least not aloud.
Brick studied the faces of the seers in the back seat, then returned his gaze to Black.
“Can your people locate him? Charles?” His voice grew serious. “We can provide additional shielding, if they need it. We have been shielding all of you since we left Lafitte… but we can’t track seers. We need a physical mechanism. Your people don’t.”
There was a silence while Black glanced over his shoulder, meeting Jem’s gaze, then Yarli’s. Both of them gave him grim looks in return, but didn’t speak.
Well, they didn’t speak aloud.
“They’ve got him already,” Black said, turning back to look at Brick. “He’s still in D.C. They’ve been monitoring his movements since we left Honduras.”
I turned, looking at him in surprise.
My eyes shifted to the back seat, where Jem and Yarli both exchanged looks with me.
Their expressions reflected back nothing.
Black continued, still looking primarily at Brick, although I felt at least some of his attention now on me. I felt a flicker of his worry too, mainly around how I’d react to him staking out Charles, much less what we might have to do when we reached D.C.
He needn’t have worried.
To say I wanted Charles stopped would have been an understatement, even before everything I’d just heard. Sitting there, listening to Brick and Black talk, I couldn’t help agreeing with everything both of them had said.
More than that, I found myself struggling with a sick sense of foreboding.
The feeling stole over me like a cloud, unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Whatever this was, it didn’t feel like a new plan.
This was Charles’ masterpiece.
This was the culmination of something he’d been working on for longer than I knew, or could even think about rationally.
The feelings that realization brought up in me were unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. It wasn’t just fear––it was an unmooring. It was like the certainty of everything I’d ever known before now was about to change. It was as if things I’d taken so entirely for granted I’d never even contemplated losing them were about to be erased.
I didn’t know how to sum that up by calling it “fear.”
Whatever the right word, it felt worse than anything I’d called fear in the past, even during wartime.
Worse, it felt like we were already too late.
Black squeezed my leg, wrapping his hand around mine as he pressed closer.
“He spent most of today at the White House,” he went on to Brick, giving me a bare glance. “He also attended private meetings with humans offsite, both in restaurants and at a number of hotels. He’s shielded, of course––psychically, I mean. So is everyone he’s meeting with. From what my team can determine, he’s got an infiltration unit on him pretty much 24/7, including while he sleeps. He’s also got seers disguising the identity and thoughts of the humans I’d guess are his primary partners in this.”
Gripping my thigh tighter, Black made another of those eloquent, shrug-like gestures with his other hand.
“Still,” he conceded, “My people say it’s nothing compared to the constraints they’re used to working under. They could crack those shields now, but I’ve ordered them not to.”
“Why?” Brick said, his gaze narrowing.
Black quirked an eyebrow. “Because the instant they do, Charles’ seers will ID us. At the very least, Charles will know we’ve tracked him to D.C. He’ll also know I’m behind it. Worse, he’ll know what my seers are capable of. More to the point, he might guess we’re working with you––especially if he redirects a significant number of his own seers to infiltrate us, and determines there are likely to be vampires nearby. If we’re still banking on maintaining any element of surprise, it’s better we don’t tip our hands. Not until it’s absolutely necessary.”
Brick frowned, looking towards the back seat.
“Which is the lead?” he said, jerking his chin towards the immigrant seers. “Of your people. Who is the most highly skilled?”
I felt a whisper of annoyance off Black.
“Does it matter?” he said. “They’re all highly skilled. More so than the vast majority of the seers working under Charles, which is all that matters. Still, they acknowledge that Charles himself is highly trained. They even have some idea of where he got his training.”
Surprise turned my head a second time.
I looked at Jem first, then Yarli, but couldn’t get anything but a blank wall off either of them. When I glanced at Black, he tugged me closer with his hand, still gripping my thigh.
“We might need to pull him in public,” Black added. “He’ll have every reason to come at us with deadly force… but he’s likely to be more cautious in public. In private, he’ll have his seers with him. He won’t need to be cautious. Also, when he’s in public, his seers are far more likely to be working from a distance. That will give my seers an advantage.”
He shrugged.
“There’s also the matter of your team. If we grab him in public, our numbers work more to our advantage. Especially if my team blocks any attempts his seers make at controlling the nearby humans.”
Giving Brick a grim look, he added,
“I’d guess Charles has, at most, thirty, maybe thirty-five fully-trained infiltrators. That’s a lot, but it won’t overwhelm a physical proximity advantage. Not given the level of training some of my seers have.”
Brick’s mouth pursed.
I watched him frown as he looked out the window, watching Dorian pass cars on the freeway without seeming to see them.
I could almost feel him thinking over Black’s words.
He turned back a
moment later.
“It’s riskier in public,” he said finally. “We have greater numbers than you might realize. Others of my kind are meeting us in D.C. Moreover, they won’t feel us coming. We can perhaps corner him, using unconventional means of breaching wherever he is staying.”
Pausing, he added,
“We don’t know what he’s told the humans. Or their security teams… or how quickly they might mobilize, depending on what they believe is occurring. There are too many risk factors in public. Humans are too unpredictable.”
“My seers can control the humans,” Black said, frowning. “I know what he has at his disposal, in terms of seers who might be there with him physically, meaning in D.C. But even if we manage to crack their shields, my team won’t be able to control their minds––especially if they’re being supported by seers in Moscow. Moreover, we lose our advantage over the nearby humans if they have seers in physical proximity to those humans, as well.”
Black shook his head, clicking under his breath.
“No. If we grab Charles in public, we have a number of advantages. Even if you do a vampire-only attack, like you are suggesting––even if you manage to catch Charles off-guard––he could pull in hundreds of humans, possibly the entire human military, before you had any idea they were on their way. His seers could control the humans inside the hotel. They could overwhelm you with numbers… or simply trap you inside and drop bombs. It would be New Orleans and Lafitte all over again, only worse.”
He shook his head, scowling as he thought over his own words.
“No,” he said. “We need to control the psychic space. All of it. If we don’t cut Charles off from his contacts in the White House and the Pentagon, not to mention the bulk of his seers, we’re definitely in danger of getting picked up. Or shot. Or bombed. Or some combination of all three. This needs to be treated like a high-risk extraction. Knock him out, remove him. That means minimal noise in the psychic space. We’ll figure out how to deal with the rest of his team once we’ve got Charles in a fucking van, where he can’t do any more damage.”
The vampire frowned, his jaw hardening as he looked at Black.
Even before he spoke, I knew he didn’t agree.
“We have the numbers,” Brick said. “We can do it with vampires. Your seers can block off the psychic space from a distance––or from the hotel lobby, if that’s easier. We should spend the day collecting intelligence anyway. See if we can determine who he’s working with. If we don’t ID his human partners, we won’t necessarily be dealing with the problem––”
“The numbers advantage will work for us even more out in the open,” Black repeated, his voice a growl. “It doesn’t have to be inside the damned White House, Brick. It could be on the street. Outside a restaurant. In a park. That way, we’ll be able to scope out who he talks to. We can still collect intelligence… but we grab him when an opening presents itself.”
“Night time is better,” Brick repeated, his mouth a harder line.
“I don’t want to wait that long,” Black growled. “For all we know, the air strikes in Louisiana are just the beginning. They’re probably still tracking us. Trying, anyway.”
There was a silence where the two of them just stared one another down.
The rest of us looked between them, waiting.
I felt Black’s frustration, but more than that, a shrewder, harder part of his mind trying to figure out what Brick’s real issue was.
It was obvious the vampires were more comfortable working at night.
They also clearly didn’t like operating in public.
I wondered how much of it was that neither race fully understood the strengths or weaknesses of the other.
In the end, Black was the first to back down.
Retracting his light somewhat, he fought to calm it, to make an effort to be diplomatic. Frowning, he shrugged with one hand, seer fashion.
“I figure he’s got, at most, about ten seers in D.C. with him,” he said. “He’s still running a full-blown organization in Russia. Most of his people will be there. He wouldn’t risk them all coming over here to get slaughtered, not even for this. Anyway, there’s no need. Unlike vampires, he can use most of his people long-distance. It’s an advantage he will definitely exploit, particularly if he feels cornered. If we come at him at night, where he doesn’t have to fear witnesses, he would call on all of his seers in Moscow. They would activate links to humans all over D.C., and likely send every armed human in the vicinity to come after us and kill us. If we’re in an enclosed area, we’ll just make it easy for him.”
Brick continued to frown, his crystal-colored eyes showing him to be thinking.
Waiting a beat, Black added,
“He’ll overreact. He’s just given every vampire in the United States a reason to want him dead. He knows that. Moreover, he thinks the survival of his race is at stake. Trust me, he won’t hold anything back. Our best bet is to come after him in public, when and where he won’t be expecting it. Once he’s out of the picture, we can take a more proactive approach with the humans in the White House. Rooting out his accomplices will be easy with Charles out of the picture. No matter what he’s told them.”
Black’s voice dropped to a growl.
“…But I’m not letting you slaughter seers wholesale either, Brick. I’m not letting you kill infiltrators, even if they’ve been brainwashed by Charles. Once Charles isn’t around to screw with their heads, there’s a good chance we can reason with them. Get them to back down.”
I heard the subtext of that, too.
Black didn’t want to kill any seers, not if he could help it.
Not now. Not after New Mexico.
Not when he had no idea if the six seers from Ship Rock were the last of their kind in existence, apart from what already lived on this version of Earth.
When Brick shook his head, frowning, Black sharpened his voice.
“It’s non-negotiable, Brick,” he said. “If you want my help, we do it this way, or not at all. If Charles gets wind we’re in D.C., he’ll disappear. Go underground. If that happens, we’re fucked. He’ll hole up somewhere we can’t get to him and manipulate all this shit from a distance. We won’t even know who’s involved for sure––not until it’s too late. The only other lead we have apart from Charles is that Congressman’s kid you interacted with. For all we know, Charles erased him already.”
I frowned, looking between them.
Black must mean Logan Silver––Malcolm Silver’s son.
That must have been the huge blond man I’d seen in Black’s mind during the blood exchange, the one who looked like a psychopath.
Brick gave Black a humorless smile.
“It is interesting to me that you haven’t yet mentioned the real weapon he has against us, Quentin,” the vampire said, that Louisiana lilt back in his voice. “He can out us. Vampires. Publicly. He may be planning to do that already. It could be that was the true purpose of those attacks today, both in Lafitte and New Orleans.”
Black frowned, then conceded his point with a wave.
“He hasn’t done it yet. Not in the way you mean. All the more reason for us to move fast. Neutralize Charles before he can do any more damage.”
Brick continued to hold his gaze.
Slowly, he nodded.
“All right,” he conceded. “I see the logic of your position. But if we neutralize him, as you say, he may have contingencies in place with his people already, yes? We won’t know what those contingencies are until we know who he’s working with. Which is why we should wait. Spend some time gathering intelligence.”
“Really?” Black growled. “Because to me, that sounds like yet another argument as to why we shouldn’t wait. We need to pick him up as soon as fucking possible, Brick. Before he can fully implement this shit-show, whatever it is––”
I couldn’t stay silent any longer.
“Why?” I said, frustration audible in my voice. “Why any of it, I mean? What possible mo
tive could he have? Why would he do something this monumentally stupid?”
Black looked at me.
A ripple of surprise left his light, right before a frown touched his sculpted lips.
Seeing the puzzlement in his eyes, I scowled.
“Look, I’m not defending Uncle Charles. Believe me, I’m not. I’m saying it doesn’t make sense. If nothing else, Charles is ridiculously practical. Why would he do this?”
Black glanced at Brick, then back at me, frowning.
“Miri,” he said. “You know why. After New Mexico––”
I was already shaking my head.
“No,” I said. “He told me, multiple times, something like this would never work. New Mexico might have freaked him out. It wouldn’t make him stupid overnight. Or suicidal. It wouldn’t have made him forget basic facts about our situation here. Like the fact that vampires could wipe seers out entirely, if push really came to shove.”
Black winced, and I frowned.
Glancing at Angel, then at Nick, I explained,
“There aren’t enough seers to keep control of the human governments this way. Charles knows this. In fact, he was the one who told me that… emphatically. He was constantly going on and on about the numbers disparity between seers and vampires. He didn’t believe he could do anything in this world until he found some way to bring those population counts closer to some kind of parity––or really, to make seers the majority race, after humans.”
Glancing at Black, I added,
“He told me, flat out, the way things are now, moving against the vampire race would be suicide for seers. Even if seers had some early wins, they’d be annihilated once the vampires rallied and fought back. He knew this. He said it over and over again. It was like an damned obsession with him.”
Black’s frown deepened the longer I talked.
“He spoke to you about this?” he said.
I heard the disbelief in his voice.
In Black We Trust Page 30
