Black On Black (Quentin Black Mystery #3) (12 page)

Before I could take a breath, Black surrounded me like a dense cloud. He blocked me off from everything, pressed so far into and against me it stopped my heart. Realizing he was shielding me, that he was shielding both of us, I held my breath.

You and I are bonding,
he murmured in my mind, so soft I barely heard it.
He doesn’t like it. That’s why I’m here, doc. He doesn’t like it at all...

The shield around me abruptly vanished.

I realized only then that some part of his mind had continued talking while we were in that other place.

... the contract’s more than half over. Just wait it out, okay? I’m doing this for Lucky, then I’m out. Just be patient, doc, please. They’re not going to want you here because of the testing thing. And some of the religious stuff is private...

He hesitated, and I felt a flicker of his nerves.

... You’re okay, right? After everything in Bangkok?

I knew he asked in part to cover up any lingering emotional tension. It scared me sometimes, how calculating he could be.

To be perfectly honest, it kind of turned me on too.

I kept those thoughts carefully shielded in the back of my mind.

As good as can be expected,
I sent back drily.

I made my forward thoughts defeatist, and a little depressed. Like he’d convinced me not to go where he was and I felt let down and a little annoyed with him. Letting that flavor color my light, I sent more of that separation pain towards him too.

Feeling him react sharply, his own pain spiking violently, I realized my mistake and immediately dialed it back.

When that desire on him worsened, I covered it up with a sigh, like I hadn’t noticed.

Black, are you ever going to tell me anything?
About the seer thing? About what I am? Half of what I am, anyway?
I paused, waiting. When he didn’t answer, I sighed again.
You promised you would. Months ago. Getting information out of you is like getting blood out of a stone. All I really know is that you can read minds, like me. Can’t you tell me anything?

The silence deepened.

I knew he heard my real question in that.

I also knew I’d genuinely hurt him, sending him that pain.

He fought to control his reactions even now, restraining some part of himself that still coiled and seethed in the distance. For the first time, it hit me how much he’d been downplaying that pain between us. He’d joked about sex, but he’d been casual about it, too. There were nights where we spent a fair bit of time messing around in this space, but those had grown less frequent lately as well. I’d thought maybe he was trying to keep things lighter between us while he was gone, since they’d felt a lot less light while he was here.

Thinking back on what he’d pulled me into that shield to tell me, I wondered just how constructed that casualness had been.

I started thinking maybe he was hurting as much as I was.

He let out a soft sound in the space, right before he pulled on me again.

I miss you,
he sent softly.
Gaos, doc...

I nodded, feeling the message there, too.

I needed more though. Especially if I was going to get him out of there.

Is there anything you can tell me?
I sent.
Anything at all? Anything apart from, “you’re changing?” And “stay away from me?” And “you’re psychic”?

I deliberately used the word psychic. Black told me once that seers didn’t use that word. They had other, much more nuanced words. Hundreds of them, from what he’d said.

I felt him thinking. I had no idea if that was a front too.

You’re going to have to wait until I get back,
he sent finally.
Honestly, there isn’t much to say. I’m affecting you a little...
 
you know that already. And Solonik changed things with the sex. But you’re going to be fine. I promise you. It’s nothing to worry about...

As he spoke, I got the barest glimpse of an image.

It was there and then gone, like a few frames spliced into a longer film.

In that millisecond, I saw a jumping orca and three stars.

Can you wait?
he said, softer.
Can you wait until I get back, honey?

I nodded.

I can wait,
I told him.

I felt his relief.
Good. Thank you.

But I wasn’t going to wait.

I was pretty sure Black knew that.

I was also pretty sure he didn’t know the extent of it, however.

Six

CONFESSIONS

THE PAIN IN his light worsened, before he even saw her.

He knew that had to be coming from the construct here too.

I didn’t fully understand what he meant by “construct,” but I could tell it had something to do with the building where he stood, the overall flavor of what lived inside it.

I don’t think you’ve yet have the pleasure of our pet...
 
have you, Mr. Black?

The man sitting at the head of the table looked like a vampire to me. Like a villain from some kind of fairy tale. It wasn’t Lucky, though.

I knew that from Black, too.

Black was wary of this male, however. Very wary.

The vampire-looking male worked for Lucky. His exact place inside this revolving palace of bullshit was unclear, but Black knew he had to be relatively high up. Middle management, at the very least. Black suspected higher.

When the man motioned him deeper into the room, Black glanced around, feigning nonchalance.

The high-ceilinged room recalled its older roots in more ways than one.

Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, dotted with real candles dripping white wax. Food covered the long wooden table in front of him, even though most of the chairs remained empty. Black knew he’d been called up early, prior to the end of the religious revival, or whatever the fuck was going on downstairs.

Apparently they pulled him out so he and the vampire could have this little face-to-face.

Black was just as happy to skip the fanatical crap, but being up here alone with this sociopath didn’t exactly reassure him.

He sat when the older seer motioned for him to sit.

He felt naked without his gun, which they’d confiscated at the door. Even apart from the physical insecurity of being in here alone, he could feel them fucking with his light already.

They were constantly fucking with his light.

I felt him thinking about me.

He pushed me out of his mind too though, even as that pain worsened, growing briefly bad enough that he clenched his jaw. He knew they were doing that too, at least in part. He knew it even before he saw where the vampire motioned with one pale hand.

Go on,
the man with pale yellow eyes urged, smiling.
Offer yourself to her. She feels empty without a cock in her, brother...

The seer was handsome, if in a goth-y, devoid of color kind of way.

He looked almost albino with his porcelain skin, those eerie yellow eyes and his long, white hair, perfectly framing high cheekbones and a flawless face with full, red lips.

He really did look like a vampire.

Black heard somewhere that this sick fuck got off on cultivating that image deliberately. Probably to scare humans. Either way, apparently he got a kick out of adhering to as much of the mythology as he could. Only going out at night. Drinking blood. Avoiding the sun.

He was a fucking psycho of the highest order, in other words.

He called himself “Grigoire.”

Black doubted that was his real name.

Go ahead,
the male seer urged, motioning towards the naked female on the floor.
She’s dying to get her mouth on you, brother...
 
and she’s been trained very well. You won’t regret it, I promise you. And she doesn’t eat until she swallows...
 
He stroked the female’s hair, like she was a dog.
Isn’t that right, my darling... ?
he cooed at her.
You’re hungry, aren’t you, sister?

Black fought back a grimace. He barely gave the female a glance.

It wasn’t the first time they’d offered him sex, of course.

He’d even heard the story with this particular seer. According to some of the “faithful” downstairs, chanting like zombies in the underground church of crazytown, she’d crossed Lucky’s people, trying to free their other captive females.

She was a seer herself of course, one of only a handful in this world, and they’d basically broken her mind for her “insubordination.”

From what Black could tell, they’d tagged a number of females here as a kind of resource for Lucky’s crew. The excuse he’d been given was for the continuation of the race, but he knew that’s all it was. An excuse. The idea that they’d basically enslaved their own infuriated him, but he’d learned to keep his mouth shut about a lot of things since he’d gotten here.

Black didn’t want to think about what he’d been told had been done to this female seer in particular, for the crime of trying to get her sisters free. His handler, a decent-enough seeming male seer by the name of Fontaine, advised him to stay out of any business between the higher-ups. Apparently this female also tried to kill Lucky in his sleep after they’d been lovers for a number of months, so some of it was personal. She’d stabbed him in the heart with a shard of glass, nearly killing him before Lucky gifted her to this sick fuck.

I’m sorry, but my body is not my own...
 
Black said, as politely as he could.
I’m under agreement, brother. Exclusive agreement.

That’s non-negotiable?
Grigoire queried innocently.

A faint smile toyed at his lips as he glanced down Black’s body.

Entirely non-negotiable,
Black said, his voice a touch harder.

They were speaking a different language.

Not French. Definitely not English.

It had to be that seer language I’d heard Black speak before. I could understand both of them, in spite of that, presumably because I was seeing and hearing this through Black. I couldn’t help noticing how much more formal the language sounded.

How much older, somehow.

She is quite possessive then, your half-breed?
Grigoire said.
How...
 
unusual.

Not really.
Black kept his affect flat as he shrugged.
Human females get pissed off when their boyfriends and husbands get sexually serviced by random strangers, too. Seers don’t hold any kind of exclusive right to jealousy. Or expectations of fidelity.

But how would she even know, your half-breed?
Grigiore asked the question in that same innocent voice, watching Black’s eyes.
One advantage of having a worm for a bedmate is that you have some discretion in terms of what they know. Is that not so, brother?

Black shook his head, clicking softly. He looked away, staring at the long, velvet drapes hanging over the ceiling-to-floor windows. Fighting his expression still, he answered in a lower voice.

Some of us take our agreements seriously, brother. No matter who we make them with. And not only when we think we might be caught.