Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) (26 page)

I’d barely seen anyone from that older life, meaning pre-Black and pre-The Wedding Killer and pre-finding out I wasn’t fully human––not since all of that first went down. Ian told me he’d slept with most of my female friends while we’d been together, so that might have been part of it. He’d told me that while he had his hands around my throat in my apartment, trying to kill me, so the association there wasn’t a good one.

Truthfully, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel, seeing or talking to any of them after that, even though I knew Ian had been a seer and a psychopath and had more than likely used his psychic abilities to coerce them into sex in the first place.

I knew part of it was the long silence––and the inevitable questions and explanations. I didn’t really want to explain to any of them what happened between me and Ian, and the last time I’d talked to most of them, Ian and I were still engaged.

I bit the bullet with Lacey finally because she was one of my oldest friends.

Even so, I practically had to make myself do it. I could tell from the guilty flush of her cheeks when I told her that Ian and I “broke up” that she’d been one of the people Ian had talked into his bed. I wasn’t mad at her for it. Truthfully, I had to bite my lip to keep from telling her that it wasn’t her fault, that he’d essentially raped her.

I distracted both of us by telling her I was seeing someone else now.

I also told her a little bit about Black, although I hit up against the limits of what I could say about him, too, and surprisingly fast. I did tell her I worked for him as a case profiler, and that he owned a security firm downtown.

It was strange to be reminded of how different Black sounded on paper than how I experienced him in reality. Of course, that very fact made talking about him easier than I would have thought in some ways. It also made that whole conversation with Lacey a better distraction for both of us. I don’t think I could have handled a real conversation about Black at that point either, but I did admit to her that we appeared to be serious.

Lacey had been thrilled––probably because of the Ian thing, in part.

Of course, I neglected to tell her that Black had killed Ian with his own hands, and pretty much right in front of me––using a knife he’d gotten out of my boot while we were talking to terrorists inside the Louvre in the middle of the night.

It made me tired, really, when it hit me how much of my life I would never be able to share with people who had once been important to me.

Still, I was glad I bit the bullet finally and called her. She’d been so relieved to hear from me and so grateful I called, I ended up feeling like a real shit for waiting so long.

I was standing on the curb on Grant Street not far from Clay, when I felt it.

That presence whispered by me.

More of an absence than a presence. I felt it like a silence that passed through my skin, blanking my mind. It was so soft it’s amazing I felt it at all, but my reaction was immediate, and pure instinct in its intensity.

Fear exploded over me.

For a few seconds, I went totally still––like an animal stunned by a bright light. Like what I would have done in a hot zone during the war, knowing someone had eyes on me. All of my instincts flared into life as I froze. Even my mind went totally silent.

I felt surprise from him, as soon as I did.

Surprise, then...

Desire. A warm flush of desire, what bordered on love. Admiration.

Reverence.

He was impressed. I’d impressed him, by feeling him there.

No one ever felt him.

My beautiful saint...
His mind murmured, barely audible, as he watched me.
My beautiful, beautiful girl. God speaks to her. God loves her... as much as I do...

The voice held silence too. I felt that reverence intensify, not only for me. For the workings of the world, its order and beauty, his purpose and place. He knew how lucky he was, to know where he fit into the clockwork
mécanique
that made up the Light and Dark in the world, that gave it order and beauty and precision. His reverence for that perfect dance, for the presence he felt behind it––the One True God––that reverence formed the origin point from which his silence came. He had trained his mind. He trained it to move invisibly.
 

Out of love for the Light.

He believes us all to be connected.

Our thoughts. Everything that passes through us, tangible and not.

If one could only still their mind, they would disappear, become one with the background of the world. Become one with the others around them... with the buildings and sky and ground. One with the trees. The grass. One with the insects that crawled over the ground.

No one looks at a man who has nothing inside his mind. No one can see him, for without those thoughts, he becomes One with the creation. With the universe.

Indivisible.

He had no idea how right he was.

I fought to control my breathing, my heartbeat.

I had no means whatsoever to be as still and silent as this man, with his years and years of training in that silence. I still hadn’t turned around. I didn’t move my eyes, or my head. I knew he was looking at me. I also knew, if I turned in his direction, if I looked back at him, he would disappear.

He would really disappear.

I could almost feel him now.

He was visible––but only in the periphery.

And then he wasn’t visible there any more, either.

I found myself turning around in shock, looking for him only then.

Chinatown was full of people, as it always was. Tourists. People who lived and shopped there. San Franciscans going there for lunch, for their favorite dim sum place, to pick up Chinese herbs or to get acupuncture or simply to walk around and absorb a different flavor for a few hours. I heard people chattering in Mandarin from the storefronts as I scanned through faces, looking for any that might be connected to what I’d felt.

There was nothing.

He was gone.

He was gone, and he knew who I was. He’d followed me here.

At that, I felt that fear in my chest worsen.

I didn’t know what he wanted from me, but I was afraid. Truthfully, I was terrified. I’d been hunted before. I knew what being prey felt like.

BLACK!
I screamed his name, unthinking.
BLACK! COME HOME! I NEED YOU! I NEED YOU TO COME HOME NOW! PLEASE! PLEASE... COME HOME!

I stood there, listening, wincing slightly when I realize how loudly I’d done it.

I didn’t regret it though.

Honestly, more than anything I felt relieved. I was also listening.

I stood there for what must have been a few minutes, my heart pounded in my chest. I stood there, listening for Black.

But if he heard me, he didn’t answer.
 

My mind remained silent.

Even more silent than it was with the Templar inside it.

Ten

WATCHING

IT PAINED HIM. He had failed her that day. He had failed her so utterly.

He’d found her mere days ago, mere hours it seemed––and already he feared he would lose her. He feared he had already shown himself to be unworthy.

He could not stop thinking about it, turning it over in his mind, trying to make sense of it.

Trying to decide how he might fix things between them, before it was too late.

He knew now that she’d allowed him to find her.

He watched her, when she was with those she worked with, when she was alone, when she slept. He’d been watching her for as many days as he’d known her, noting the rhythms of her life, the people she trusted, the people who trusted her and lusted after her and followed her with their eyes. He learned her in any way he could, noting the way her life breathed, how it inhaled and exhaled. He went through news clippings, official records, anything he could obtain through his contacts in the world.
 

He felt so close to her in some of that.

Like they were one person almost.

Then today, out of nowhere, she let him see her.

She let him know that she knew him, too.

He had been watching her from an alley between two buildings on Grant Street. She’d just given a pretty, thirty-something blond woman a hug, walking with her to her parked car while they exchanged friendly words. The blond woman looked happy to be with her.
 

The guardian watched their lips move, reading only enough words to know they talked about nothing of importance. His love, his blessed saint––she wore a mask, too. He watched her don that mask with the blond woman, and something about needing that mask left her sad.

She felt alone.

She felt alone like the guardian felt, and she wore her masks with the patience with which he aspired to wear his. Compassion. Love for those from whom she must hide her true heart. She loved those she watched over, even as she shielded them from her true form. They could not comprehend that form, he knew. It would frighten them.

Just like the guardian’s true form frightened those not like him.

He continued to watch her, wishing he could tell her in some way that he understood what it meant to be alone. He wished he could comfort her, wrap his arms around her. He wished more than anything to touch her, to reveal himself to her, to let her know it was safe.

He thought all these things––when suddenly, she froze.

He saw it on her. She went...

Inwards.

Like an inhaled breath, she stood, unmoving in the flowing foot-traffic around her. Like she had turned to stone. Like a deer who feels the lion in the tree above.

He knew, suddenly and without doubt, that she felt him.

In those bare few seconds, their hearts locked, beating in tandem. Her breath moved lightly in her chest, keeping pace with his. He felt her silence as she listened to him, as she knew him. He felt her there, breathing with him, and he was...

Aroused.

He was very very aroused. He was hard before he knew what it was he felt.

It scared him.
 

More so, when he realized she must have felt that arousal too.

He watched her listen to him, her head cocked, her hazel eyes slightly wider, her pupils dilated, her shallow breaths. She felt him there. He
knew
she felt him. He’d been a hunter his whole life. He knew when he’d been scented by his prey.

In human parlance––he knew when he’d been made.

Some part of him wanted to approach her then, to offer himself to her formally.

But it wasn’t time for that yet. He felt that strongly too.

Later, he second-guessed that as well, but at the time, the certainty was iron-clad. Later, he worried he’d simply feared rejection, especially when his reverence turned to something more carnal, more animal-like... less pure.

At the time, however, he forced himself to melt back, to disappear.

Now, hours later, sitting in the dark branches of a tree over a different wooden deck, he pondered their encounter, again and again, turning it over in his mind, examining it from every angle. He burned with shame––a certainty of failure, and worse, a failure he couldn’t fully comprehend. He wondered if their meeting in Chinatown had been a test.