Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) (40 page)

“Tell me it’s not your fault.”

“It’s not my fault,” I said. “It’s not my fault, Michael...”

The man sat back somewhat on his heels, but didn’t take the gun out from under my jaw. His other hand still wrapped partway around my throat, and the combination made it hard to breathe, and to swallow. I didn’t dare move any other part of my body.

Turning his head, he glared up at the bed, where Black was.

“The serpent is clever, Miriam... it is very very clever...”

He looked down at me, his eyes holding pain now.

“You were good. It is why I came... to save you from this...”

I didn’t dare look up at the bed. Focusing on those blue eyes when they shifted back to mine, I shook my head, fighting to steady my voice.

“No. He’s not what you think. You’re wrong about him...” I began.

Those eyes flashed. “I’m not
wrong,
Miriam. I know you don’t want to believe this... but I am here to open your eyes. You’ve been deceived.”

I started to shake my head, to argue with him again, but his blue eyes flashed, altering into mirrored disks. They shone with a kind of crazed fury that forced me silent, even as the expression there grew inhumanly empty again.

I had no idea what he was seeing, looking at me.

I knew it wasn’t me.

“Miriam,” he said, his voice dangerously soft. “He has poisoned you. You’re sick right now. Do you understand? Are you
listening
to me carefully right now? He’s poisoned your mind. He has made you believe his lies...” His fingers tightened around my throat. Still pressing the gun up under my jawbone, he knocked my head against the floor, sharp, making me cry out. I could feel his mind again, pushing me for an answer, and I nodded, gasping.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m listening, Michael... I’m listening...”

“The serpent is
clever,
Miriam... it speaks lies. Lies that we
want
to believe. Lies mixed with truth. It comes at us through our weaknesses.”

He caressed my face, using the hand that didn’t hold the gun. I gripped his arm, but didn’t dare try to pull him off me, especially when he pressed the gun into me harder.

Nodding towards the bed, he spoke softer.

“I’m here to help you, Miriam. I’m here to help you be strong. I’m here to help you return to the Light. To be what you’re meant to be...”

“Okay.” I nodded again, still gripping his arm. “Okay. So we’ll leave here,” I said. “We’ll go together...”

“Not until I behead the snake.”

I felt my throat close down to a pinprick, pain exploding in my heart, even as I vehemently shook my head. “No... no. That’s not necessary. You don’t need to do that, Michael...”

“I do. It’s why I came here, Miriam. It’s why God sent me...” He looked down at me, his eyes filled with a harder resolution. “You must witness this, Miriam. It’s why I waited. I thought we would do this in the morgue... I thought I would make his heart stop, and you could see the ritual of his spiritual death. I thought that would be
easier
for you, Miriam... I saw how he played you, how he got you to reveal your true heart. But the serpent is strong, Miriam. I see that now. I must kill him... really kill him... and you must witness it.”

“NO!” I screamed the word, and he hit me again, with his fist that time, right in the face. I kept screaming, screaming my head off, trying to alert anyone who might be near enough to hear. “HE’S HERE! HELP ME! HELP ME! HERE’S HERE! TEMPLAR IS HERE!”

Clicking the safety back on the gun, he holstered it swiftly, catching hold of my throat. Both of his hands wrapped around me that time, squeezing until he’d forced me silent. I gasped in smaller and smaller breaths, wrapping my fingers around his, even as I struggled with the rest of my body, trying to buck him off. Fighting to tear back those fingers, one by one, I tried to give myself enough air so I could keep screaming.

I screamed in my mind instead.

UNCLE CHARLES HELP ME! GODS! PLEASE HELP ME PLEASE!

Everything was starting to gray, to go dim.

I fought that gray fog with every ounce of my being, remembering what I’d seen in his mind, what he intended to do to Black, when...

There was a thick, sickening wet sound.
 

It wasn’t loud, but something about the sound filled my ears, briefly silencing everything else.

The fingers around my throat abruptly loosened.

I heard gasping, choking sounds, liquid and wet.

Saw white hands clawing, scrabbling, animal-like in their frantic grasping.

Then the weight on my wrist and chest, what had been pressing down on my stomach and lower back––abruptly lifted.

I rolled to my side at once, choking and clutching at the floor. Looking back, I saw the Templar’s body lying there, still wearing the dark blue police uniform. He was clawing at his throat, eyes bulging, and my gaze darted down, seeing his gun still in his side holster, clipped to his belt. I lunged for it without thought, almost not caring if I got shot.

But he didn’t try to stop me.

Snatching it out of the holster while his fingers still wrapped around his own throat, I saw his eyes roll towards me, fear in them, asking me for help. His hands were covered with blood. That blood now poured out of a ragged hole in his neck.

Disengaging the safety on his gun, I stepped back, way back, putting at least three or four yards between me and the man on the floor. Gripping the gun in both hands, I pointed it shakily at his head. I knew it was over. Some part of me had to know that, but for a long time, I couldn’t take my eyes off his face.

Blood pooled around him silently, inexorably.

Even when it slowed, I didn’t lower the gun.

Eventually I turned my head though, looking at who’d hit him.

Black swayed there, a metal stand still gripped in one hand. It was the same metal stand that held his IV bag the last I’d looked, although that bag now lay on the floor next to a dripping tube he must have ripped out of his arm. The chrome stand had blood all over the end, where a sharp-looking, hook-shaped prong stuck out on one side.

Flesh hung on the end of that prong now.

I had a sudden mental flash of Black swinging the metal pole like a baseball bat, impaling the other man’s neck on the end of it.

Looking down at the floor, at the sprawled body of the blond officer who’d called himself Michael Lawson, I realized that, however he’d done it, Black jammed that metal hook into the back of the guy’s neck. He’d done it hard enough to punch that same hook all the way through to the front of Michael Lawson’s throat. Gauging from the size of the hole there, he’d also likely twisted before he yanked that hook back out.

I also realized I was pointing a gun at a corpse.

Black had nearly decapitated him.

With an IV stand.

I still hadn’t lowered the gun. I couldn’t make my brain function well enough to put all of those things together, at least not quickly. Still gripping the gun in both hands, my hands shaking, I stood there a few seconds longer in shock, paralyzed.

I looked at Black again when as he opened his hand, releasing his fingers around the metal IV stand. It hit the floor with a dull thunk, right before he crumpled to the floor after it, his knees buckling under him.

That time, my paralysis broke.

I ran to him.

“Black!” I skidded over the floor to reach him.

Kneeling next to him, I re-engaged the safety on the gun I held and set it carefully on the floor. Gripping his arms in a panic, I raised my voice, fighting to make it work after having my throat half-crushed by Lawson’s hands.

“HELP US!” I yelled. My voice came out craggy, weak. It sounded only a little stronger when I tried again. “HELP! HELP US!”

Standing abruptly when I realized no one would hear me, I fumbled around on top of the bed for the cord with the bed controls. I pressed the nurse call button probably close to a dozen times before I knelt back on the floor beside Black.

“HELP!” I yelled again, half choking on the words as I caught hold of his arms. “WE NEED HELP! WE NEED A DOCTOR! PLEASE!”

I heard the squeak of shoes right outside the door and looked up as those shoes skidded to a stop. The door slammed open, and someone switched on the overhead lights, blinding both of us. I blinked against the onslaught, raising a hand, feeling Black wince, too.

“Gaos!”
The voice seemed to explode over me.
“Gaos d’jurekil’a!
What the fuck has happened here? Sister! Are you all right?”

I looked up to see the two seers I remembered from earlier, the ones my uncle sent to watch over me. The slightly shorter of the two, the one with the red sun tattoo on his neck, was staring down at the corpse of Michael Lawson, disbelief in his eyes. I noticed only then that he held a gun in his hand. So did the taller seer who’d burst into the room behind him.

For a few seconds they just stood there, wide-eyed, looking from me and Black to the corpse and back again.

“Don’t just stand there, damn it!” I snapped. “Get help! He needs help!”

The two seers looked at one another.

Then the one with the sun tattoo nodded, holstering his gun. The taller seer disappeared like a shadow through the open hospital door. Before I fully realized he’d left, I could hear him running as he went to find someone to help us.

“I am so very very sorry, sister,” the one with the sun tattoo said, shaking his head and clicking softly. His hand still rested on the butt of his gun as he walked towards me and Black. “We were outside, watching the building. We did not feel this one when he came in...”

I shook my head, not caring about that right now.

“Just get him help. I don’t want to move him without a doctor or a nurse.” I craned my neck, looking up at the seer with the sun tattoo. “Call your seer tech guys. Tell them to get their asses down here, now. They said they’d leave their phones nearby... get them here.”

The seer’s expression snapped back, turning abruptly businesslike.

He nodded, once, seer fashion, even as he pulled out his phone.

I watched until he’d retreated to the corridor, looking away only after I heard him talking on the line to whoever picked up on the other end.

My eyes returned to Black. He was caressing my fingers where I touched his face. I fought not to react to that as I looked at him, trying to assess how he was. Leaning against the side of his hospital bed, he propped his weight up with one hand, panting, his gold eyes half-lidded where he’d slumped. I could feel that he was in pain.

Probably a lot of pain.

I didn’t really want to think about what he’d done to himself, in getting Lawson off me.

I couldn’t––not yet.

He was looking at me though, and I realized he must have torn the oxygen tubes off his face at some point in all of that, too. A dark stain was spreading slowly on his chest as I watched, shining in the florescent overheads. Staring at him for that fraction of a second, looking at the darkening patch on the pale blue hospital gown, I had the overwhelming urge to yell at him.

He must have seen some hint of that in my face.

When he met my gaze, still breathing hard, gripping the side of the bed and watching me with those cat-like eyes...

He chuckled.

Sixteen

MRS. BLACK