Black On Black (Quentin Black Mystery #3) (23 page)

Hell, I’d known in Bangkok they were using me against him. That envelope filled with stalker-like photos and information about me only confirmed it.

But I would be damned if I let them keep doing it.

I wasn’t about to become some naked lapdog for a psychopath like Grigiore either, just so they could get Black to dance when they said dance.

“They’ll never let you go,” I told him, my voice colder. “This is all bullshit, Black. Ian is probably working for them. They’re probably using him, right now, to recruit you––”

“Miri.” Black’s voice grew openly warning. “Let me handle this.”

“You’re not handling it, Black.” My voice remained harsh. “You’re not handling it. They’re handling you.”

“Miriam––”

“I’m going to tell them,” I said, not speaking to him that time, but to whoever was listening on the other end. “I’ve already made arrangements. I’m going to tell the whole fucking world what you are...
 
give them a real threat to worry about. Maybe then they’ll be a little too
busy
to waste time screwing with you and me.”

I felt my words hit Black like a punch.

His voice grew into a whisper.

“Miriam,” he said. “Miriam, honey. Don’t even fucking joke about that...
 
please.”

I felt the begging there, the pulling.

It was terror. What I’d said terrified him.

It was hard to feel that, I admit.

I shoved his reactions aside with an effort.

“I’m not joking, Black,” I said. “Why the hell wouldn’t I warn
my race
about an alien species with dangerous abilities? An alien species that’s already living among us? Manipulating our minds? Running crime families and psychotic churches filled with anti-human master race fanatics? Plotting to take over
our
world?” I paused, letting my words sink in. “You’ve documented how humans used to control your kind, in that other dimension. I can pass that information along too. It’ll give
my people
a fighting chance at least...”

His mind rose in mine...
 
suffocating, like a wall of cloying, cloud-like darkness, blanking out the room.

What the fuck are you doing?
he hissed through that dark.
Miriam, what the fuck are you doing right now? Do you have any idea who you’re messing with?

His fear completely blanked out my vision.

I’ve been telling them for fucking weeks that you were harmless! I’ve been telling them over and over you aren’t a threat to them! That you’d be loyal to me...
 
that I could trust you...
 
that I could fucking
control
you. Please gods shut your fucking mouth Miriam...
 
please...

“Well, I am a fucking threat,” I said aloud. My voice sounded hard, like it came from some deeper part of my body. I almost didn’t recognize it. “Tell them, I want my goddamned boyfriend back. Tell them to find someone else’s head to fuck with. Or I’m going to burn them and their whole goddamned ‘pure race’ bullshit to the fucking ground...”

Biting my tongue so hard I tasted blood, I found I was shaking, my voice nearly vibrating, but it wasn’t from fear.

“Tell them that, Black. Tell them they’ve fucked with the wrong ‘hybrid.’ If they don’t let you go...
 
today...
 
I’ll make damned sure they regret it.”

Without waiting that time, I slammed down the receiver.

Then I just sat there, in his darkened office, breathing hard.

My hands still shook, but I realized fury coursed through me, not fear.

I was almost panting, my head and blood pounding, my heart expanding and contracting like a living animal in my chest.

I felt Black still. His terror vibrated my skin.

I didn’t regret saying it though.

Maybe I’m a fucking idiot.

But I didn’t regret saying it at all.

Ten

AIRPORT

WE GOT ON the plane at two in the morning that night.

I argued with Nick...
 
with both of them really, but mostly with Nick. I didn’t want them to come with me. I told them I should go alone, that they should stay away from this in terms of being on the ground.

Nick wouldn’t even discuss it.

And truthfully, he was right. He was the one with the connections in Paris. He was the one who had people waiting for us over there.

He also pulled some strings and got fake passports for all three of us, using one of his old Special Ops pals who now worked in the State Department.

I knew the IDs probably wouldn’t help us hide from Lucky’s people, of course.

Not only did Lucky’s people know what I looked like, they’d probably be able to track me via Black, much less the RFID chip in my arm.
 

When it came to this seer thing, there was no way to be safe.

We also couldn’t trust anyone, including Nick’s pal at the State Department.

Even someone who might honestly be trying to help us could be read or manipulated by a trained seer. Black said that seer skills were significantly diminished in this dimension compared to where he grew up, but he also seemed to think Lucky found some way around that, at least in part––maybe by collecting all the known seers and pooling their abilities in some way.

Either way, it was unnerving in the extreme, not having any idea who we could trust.

Nick argued he’d already involved himself too much to not be at risk.

Angel didn’t even bother to argue. She just showed up at my apartment in the Richmond in a cab and knocked on my door around eleven-thirty that night. We picked up Nick about twenty minutes later, since he lived south of the city and closer to the airport.

We didn’t talk much during the flight itself.

I sat between Nick and Angel and tried my damnedest to sleep, knowing we wouldn’t have any time to waste once we landed. I couldn’t sleep, though. I ended up sitting there with my eyes closed, looking for Black in that dream-like space.

I never found him. He’d gone quiet not long after our fight on the phone, and I had no idea what the silence meant.

As the flight progressed, I got hit by images––really, more like paranoid movie-reels––that wanted to play incessantly in my head. I tried to tell myself they weren’t real, that they were just my mind working overtime, but some part of me doubted that. In those flashes, shadowy forms broke down Black’s door, dragging him out of the room with the high ceilings and the fireplace. I saw Black bundled into the back of a van, Black cuffed and shoved into that creepy renaissance dining room with Grigiore and a long table filled with more people like him––people with strange-colored irises and oddly perfect faces.

I saw Ian. Not with them, but somewhere else, watching maybe, like I was.

A Thai mask hung on the wall behind him, and he sat smiling, perched in a high-backed chair on one end of an empty, warehouse-like room.

In the dining room where Black sat chained, humans served them food. I glimpsed naked women––not just the seer I’d seen before, different women that time, most of them with normal-looking eyes. I saw naked men too, but I winced away from most of that, not wanting to know what they were doing, or if it had anything to do with Black.

I tried to get the voice I’d heard before to come back, to tell me what was going on...
 
but my unnamed source remained silent.

Later, as our plane was on final approach to Charles de Gaulle Airport, I got more flashes, glimpses of arguments, of someone standing over Black, the room darker, more empty, seemingly lit with something other than electric light. The main person talking to Black that time looked older, well into middle age.

He had eerie, dark red irises.

He didn’t wear a robe covered in elaborate symbols that time, but I recognized him.

I knew I’d risked Black’s life, saying those things to him on the phone. It had been a gamble that they wouldn’t kill him, that they wanted him badly enough that they wouldn’t hurt him too badly either––at least no more than they were already.

I had to hope I had enough safeguards set up to reason with them.

I knew it was a gamble...
 
a potentially big one. On the other hand, I also knew any or all of those things could have happened regardless.

We were standing in line for customs when I saw the first one.

As I focused on the odd-colored eyes staring at me, another one joined him.

I gave Nick a bare glance. “Eleven o’clock. Trench coat. And his friend.”

Nick turned, the tiredness wiped from his expression. Before I could aim my eyes back in that direction, he was already speaking into his sleeve. He’d donned the earpiece and microphone while we were waiting to disembark from the plane.

I cautioned, “They need to knock them out before they’re seen. They can’t leave them conscious, Nick...
 
or it’s all over.”

Before I could finish speaking, the first one went down. The tall male with him turned sharply, looking behind him, then slapped a hand to his neck.

Then his legs crumpled, too.

I glanced at Nick, who gave me a grim smile, right before he spoke into his sleeve a second time. I heard him say, “Nice shootin’, Tex.”

I smiled wanly, in spite of myself.

Even so, my nerves were jacked up enough that I couldn’t stop scanning faces in the cavernous room. I didn’t see any more of them. I kept looking, unable to slow the adrenaline pumping through my veins.

We got an escort to the short line for customs, not long after.

After the three of us went through an abbreviated passport check, Angel and a uniformed French officer left to talk to the head of airport security.

Nick and I followed three different men and a woman, all of them wearing suits. They met us on the other side of customs. So did Nick’s two friends, who wore militarized police uniforms and body armor. After giving Angel the okay to go, the six of them led us to a small interrogation room just on the other side of the long line of customs booths. Inside that windowless room, both of the men I’d seen wearing trench coats had already been laid out on collapsible cots, like what EMTs used for ambulatory transport.

“Can you ID either of these guys?” Nick muttered as we stood over the unconscious forms. “They’ll want to know how you recognized them.”

I looked down at the bodies. I didn’t know either of them, not even via Black. Glancing up at the three men and one woman in suits who stood next to Nick’s friends, speaking in low voices, I shook my head, glancing at Nick.

“So how do we answer that?” Nick murmured.

“You’ll think of something,” I said, equally quiet.

He let out a grunt, but didn’t answer.

I focused on the two bodies laid out on gurneys. Looking over their faces, I made sure to memorize their features so I would recognize them later.

I knew Nick would think of something in terms of how we’d ID’d them, despite his annoyance. Glancing around, it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea what organization any of the people in the room represented, not even Nick’s friends. I’d assumed at first they were members of France’s
Gendarmerie
, the investigative branch of the national police force, but now, scanning clothes and faces, I wasn’t so sure.