To Black With Love: A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery Romance (Quentin Black Mystery Book 10)
Author: Andrijeski, JC
Date: 2018-12-28
Publisher: White Sun Press

TO BLACK WITH LOVE

Quentin Black Mystery #10

JC Andrijeski

Copyright © 2018 by JC Andrijeski

Published by White Sun Press

Cover Art & Design by Damonza.com (2018)

Ebook Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit an official vendor for the work and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

Created with Vellum

To D.Z.

and all of the maybes,
would’ve-beens,
never-weres,
and might’ve beens
from all of those
alternate timelines

Contents

Synopsis

Prologue

1. You Can’t Go Home Again

2. Reunion

3. Everybody Wants To Rule The World

4. About Nick

5. A Favor

6. Trainee

7. A Different Approach

8. Family

9. What Do We Do Now?

10. Land’s End

11. The Soft Approach

12. Kicking Open The Door

13. Disappearing

14. Newborn

15. Bourbon And Biryani

16. Santa Cruz

17. Mirage

18. Message

19. Hospital

20. Warehouse

21. Family

22. Bad Memory

23. Riot

24. Race War

25. Fire Escape

26. Differences

27. Aftershocks

28. Conflicted

29. Protecting Miri

30. Negotiations

Epilogue

What to read next

Sample Pages

1 / Allie

2 / Mr. Monochrome

3 / Glow Eye

Also by JC Andrijeski

Series Summaries

About the Author

Synopsis

It was too late to save him.

It was too late for him to want to be saved.

Nice guy Nick, ex-cop, decorated vet…

was no more.

Nick Tanaka has been missing for months.

After that mess on the Thai island of Koh Mangaan, Miri and Black search for Nick all over Europe, following every lead, every rumor or trail they can run down.

Those footsteps are rapidly fading, though.

Miri has to face facts.

Nick is probably dead.

Whether the vampires killed him, or he died in that fire on Koh Mangaan, she might never know.

She and Black return to the United States, back to San Francisco, back to the reality of her Uncle Charles and the civil war he’s brought to American soil.

Charles wants nothing more than to wipe out the vampire race, and he’s willing to enslave or kill every human on the planet to do it.

As his newly-founded “Purity Movement” starts riots in several states, the unrest moves closer to Black and Miri, even as Charles continues to pressure them to join the war on his side.

The vampires are worried about Charles, too––so worried, their king contacts Black, wanting an alliance.

In return, he promises Black and Miri news on Nick.

He also promises an offer they can’t refuse.

Prologue

How You Like Me Now?

HE RAISED HIS head, gasping, bringing his body back to a vertical line in a single, fluid motion.

Even that simple act exhilarated him.

Contentment washed over him as he licked his lips, then wiped his mouth. Rivers of pain and pleasure ran through him as he did, shivering his skin, along with a jolt of energy so intense, he jumped a little on his heels, rotating his neck like he was in the boxing ring.

The contentment didn’t last.

It never lasted.

Within seconds, heat swam through his veins, bringing a stinging, charged discomfort to his skin, to the very liquid of his blood.

He fought with the heightened sensations, trying to manage them, to control his emotional reaction to the intensity––fighting that half-drunk, see-sawing aggression that went with it. He tried to find a way to stabilize inside it, but some part of him rebelled against that, too, finding it stupid, pointless even.

It really was like being drunk, or seasick maybe, but the clarity that came with it, filling his mind with alternate scenarios, thoughts, ideas for expressing that intensity made it more difficult to fight against, not easier. The ground beneath his feet never fully stabilized, but continued rising and falling on a series of steep hills.

His mind floated above that, trying to find ways to push that sensation in various ways, looking for ways to scratch that itch.

His skin heated more, the longer he stood there, fighting it.

That was in spite of his cooler blood, the relative silence of his physical body. That heat, that feeling of life and discomfort ratcheted up his restlessness more, increasing the desire to move, to continue moving, to continue acting, feeling, fucking, cutting a swath through time and space, cutting a swath through life and death.

Of course, some of that might have been the blood he just drank.

That wasn’t all of it, though.

He wasn’t done.

The woman with him, who still knelt over the second human they’d dragged into that dark, moldy alley behind the bar, laughed, looking up at him.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she chided, her eyes and cheeks flushed scarlet. “I can see those wheels turning. Practice calming down, my love. Practice self-control––”

“Fuck calming down.” He spoke without thought, like he did most things now. His eyes slid back to hers, as cold as his voice. “Fuck self control. I’m not done.”

“You are done,” she said. “No more kills tonight, my love. I already let you go over the number he gave you. You know he’ll know.” Her mouth quirked, exposing a shockingly white fang. “You also know he’ll punish me, not you.”

“If I’m already over the limit, what does it matter?” he said. “Punishment is punishment. It doesn’t fucking matter. Two or twenty, it makes no fucking––”

“Help me finish off this one,” she coaxed.

When he grimaced, shaking his head, not wanting to share a half-dead kill, the warning grew prominent in her voice.

“Waste not, want not, my love. You are not allowed to kill for sport.”

That rage and heat in him worsened.

He wanted to argue with her.

He wanted to point out that no one policed Dorian’s recreational activities. No one policed Nairobi’s, or Miguel’s, or Brick’s… or hers, for that matter.

Most of all, he wanted to shove her off that business suit-wearing asshole she was drinking from and snap his neck. He’d watched the bastard fuck her while she drank, moaning in French, completely oblivious to what was happening to him.

Guy was pathetic.

He disgusted him.

Even now, those blue eyes rolled towards him, staring up at him with a maddeningly stupid look on his face. He saw the pleading there, the request, animal-to-animal, for help, for mercy. He just wanted to kick the man’s pale, whining face in.

He didn’t want to think about what it was about that vulnerability that angered him so much. He didn’t want to think, period––not like that, not about navel-gazing bullshit that wouldn’t do anything but piss him off.

He wanted to snarl at her until she agreed to come with him.

That, or he just wanted to turn around, break into a full run while she was still finishing off the blue-eyed loser in the pinstriped suit.

She could catch him, though.

Any one of them could catch him. He’d learned that the hard way.

He still wasn’t as fast as the rest of them.

Just from her tone of voice, he knew she’d try to take him back after this, to that same, mind-fuckingly boring apartment with the twenty-foot ceilings on Rue de l’Universite with the view of the Eiffel Tower. Inside that apartment, he could hear every single goddamned sound from every single goddamned apartment above and below theirs in its entirety.

Inside that apartment, he could hear every sound from the street.

He could hear every word, every clink of glass and metal, every scrape of shoe, every exhaled breath, every rustle of clothes and hair. He could hear every muttered curse, every nervous sniff, every tap of toes or fingers. He could hear hinges creak and squeak, bells jangle, footsteps creak as someone entered one of the surrounding shops, townhouses or bars.

He heard the wind rustle the leaves of trees planted along the street.

He heard every plane, helicopter, bird and insect in the goddamned sky.

Every smell from within a roughly five-mile radius reached him through those fifteen-foot French windows.

He felt every drop of perspiration and rain bead down that glass.

Most days, being locked inside and bombarded by everything on the other side of that glass, plaster, wood and metal made him want to smash his way through the wall with nothing but his fists. More than once, he’d been tempted to crash through one of those windows, to run and run and keep running until that coiled spring inside him finally relaxed.

He knew the rules.

He’d been punished before.

He’d been punished many times––over and over again.

The memory of those punishments, of what they’d entailed, checked him even now, despite his words to the woman a few seconds before.

Brick had promised to punish her this time… and to make him watch.

The older vampire said he clearly didn’t care enough about his own skin, so Brick would try punishing her instead, see if that worked better.

Remembering that now, he felt his fangs extending.

He fought to control that surge of rage––to at least to keep it off his face.

He was still standing there, trying to decide which thing to do, whether risking punishment might be worth it anyway, whether he might have other options, when she was on her feet, beside him again.

Wiping her mouth, she looked up at him, that scarlet ink coloring her irises.

He could see so well in the dark, he forgot it was night half the time.

The sun was too bright; it hurt his eyes, blinded him.

It was like swimming through a goddamned forest fire––

But he didn’t like fire.

He didn’t even like thinking about fire, or trees, or trees on fire.

He focused back on her crystal-like eyes.

The crimson color there did something to him.

Unfortunately, that something didn’t relax him in any way.

Seeing the difference in his stare, she smiled, squeezing his arm.

“Want to go see a movie and fuck?” she said, glancing down the alley towards the road. “It’s early yet. Not even eleven o’clock. We don’t have to feed. There are other ways to entertain ourselves, little brother.”

When he looked down after following her gaze, she smiled wider, coiling her arm tighter around his, coiling her leg around his as she pressed her body up against him.

“You stayed,” she purred at him. “I thought you would run again, but Daddy was right. You’d rather be punished yourself than see me punished. What a good boy you are.”

He grunted, but felt himself hardening under her purr.

“Want to go to the park and fuck?” she offered, smiling wider, quirking an eyebrow at him mischievously before he could answer. “Or a church? Or we could find a nice sidewalk café? I’d like to reward you for being such a good boy. Your jealousy earlier, with that feed, already had me all hot and bothered, lover.”

He let out another half-amused grunt.

“And brought out your inner exhibitionist, clearly,” he said.

“Is that a smile?” She tugged on his arm. “And since when is my exhibitionist ‘inner’? Or yours? You’re the one who wanted to do it on the steps of the Notre Dame last night.”

He let himself be pulled, let her lead him down the alley, towards the relatively lit end, where streetlights colored the road ahead a goldish-orange.

The nuances of the colors distracted him briefly, as well as the floating particles of drizzling rain, confused by traffic headlights and wind, twirling in the circular beams of light above the road.

He heard a radio from a nearby window, a woman laughing, a television blaring… but his eyes never left the shifting colors from the rain, streetlights, cars, flickering neon signs and pedestrians walking across the rain-slicked pavement.

He watched the colors and shadows swirl on the road, like liquid light.

He tried to remember what month it was.

October? November?

“It’ll get easier,” she told him, softer, hugging his arm. “I promise, my love.”

His eyes moved off the colors and gradations of light.

He looked at her, staring into the gradations of scarlet in her irises.

“Maybe I don’t want it to,” he said.

She quirked that dark eyebrow above her wide, large eyes––eyes that would be doe-like if they were a different color.

“You don’t want it to get easier?” she said, her voice still coy.

He wasn’t in the mood for coy. He might be in the mood to fuck, but he wasn’t in the mood for coy, for flirting, for letting her distract him, or treat him like a child.

He was sick and tired of being fucking managed.

“When are we going?” he said. “When are we going back?”

He didn’t mean back to the apartment.

He didn’t mean the church.

He didn’t mean anywhere in Paris.

She seemed to know that, maybe just from how he asked it.

She didn’t answer at first.

Even so, he felt her sigh, through his and her skin.

When the sigh ended, her voice shifted from flirty to neutral.

“When you’re ready,” she said.

“I’m ready now.”

He didn’t realize how aggressively he’d spoken until she came to a stop, right before she glanced up at him, her chest rising and falling in another of those sighs. He knew it was theater to a degree. Vampires didn’t need to breathe. Still, most of them still mimicked a lot of human behaviors, either out of habit or camouflage or both.

“No,” she said simply. “You’re not.”

“Says Brick,” he growled.

“Says Brick,” she confirmed with a nod, frowning up at him. “Who is, I might remind you, in charge. Not only of you.”

She rolled her eyes at whatever expression came to his face.

“You can’t blame Brick for everything, you know,” she said, irritated. “He asked all of us. It’s not only him who believes you’re not yet ready. I believe it. Nairobi believes it. Dorian believes it. Miguel believes it––”

“Why?” he said. “Why am I not ready?”

She frowned, a faint crinkle appearing between her eyebrows.

“Why are you asking questions you know the answer to?” she said. “No amount of hunting satiates you. You’re barely able to control yourself when you feed. You can’t control your emotions at all. You’re impulsive, indifferent to exposure, unmeasured in your response to the majority of the stimuli you encounter. You’re angry. You attacked Dorian the other day and actually managed to hurt him…”

She grunted, smiling a bit, as if in spite of herself.

“…No mean feat, by the way. You’re still disobeying Brick almost daily. He hates punishing you, and you’ve forced him into it four times this week already––”

“All right,” he growled. “I get the point.”

“Why are you so anxious to go there?” she said.

Her voice sounded open that time, frank, without any of the guardedness it held before.

He heard the genuine curiosity behind her words.

“Why?” she repeated, when he didn’t answer. “Just tell me why, my love. Help me to understand. Perhaps I can help Brick to understand, if you explain it to me.”

He grunted, clenching his jaw. “Somehow I doubt Brick needs a primer as to my reasons.” Scowling at her, he added, “You just told me to stop asking questions I know the answer to. Why don’t you do the same?”

“Because I don’t know the answer to this question, my love––”

“Bullshit!” He turned on her, rage and heat once more filling his chest. “Why? Are you really asking me why? Are you fucking serious? Why the fuck do you think?”

Her expression didn’t move in the face of his anger.

When he finished speaking, she only shrugged.

“I really don’t know, though.” Her voice still sounded more frank than angry, and now openly puzzled. “I avoided my home, the place where I was from, for years after I re-birthed. I avoided it for decades. I had no desire to go there. I had no desire to see any of those places or people. He made me go back. He decided I needed it, so I went. But if he hadn’t ordered me there, if he hadn’t insisted on accompanying me, I may never have gone back.”

She meant Brick.

He knew she meant Brick.

“We’re different,” he said. “Clearly.”

Still looking up at him, she squeezed his arm, but continued frowning at him openly.

“But why?” she said gently. “You still haven’t answered me. Why do you want to go back there? It is painful to go back. For all of us. Nothing good can be found in looking back. Leave the past where it is… where it belongs.”

He didn’t answer her.

She shook his arm.

“Why, Naoko? What is there for you, in San Francisco?”

He flinched, just in hearing the name of his city of birth.

Hearing that bothered him far more than hearing his birth name, Naoko. He already felt the longer, Japanese version of his name suited him better than the shorter, Anglicized nickname his human friends had called him before.

His brethren seemed to agree.

None of them called him Nick.

No one had, not since the transition.

He still didn’t have a vampire name, though––not a real one. Brick told him he’d be given one when he “came of age,” whatever the hell that meant. Traditionally, the sire gave that name. Typically, it had some historical relevance to the community.

Brick told him he already had one picked out.

“You know what is there for me,” he said, answering her question belatedly. His eyes flickered down the alley. “And you know why I want to go there, Lucia.”

Without another word, he resumed walking towards the rain-slicked road.

Gripping his arm, she strolled with him, silent.

He felt her eyes on him, studying his face, his eyes, his body.

He didn’t return her stare.

Holding her arm in his, he watched the colors morph subtly over the road. He watched artificial light play over glass, plastic, metal, asphalt, wood––like they were all part of the same, complicated musical instrument playing color instead of sound. He shifted his eyes from object to light particle to object, tracking how differently it all looked to him still, how much he could see, how much he remained aware of in his periphery, despite his laser-like focus.

He knew, without looking at her, she didn’t like his answer.

She didn’t like it at all.

“What exactly do you plan to do?” she said finally.

When he didn’t answer right away, she prodded him, shaking his arm lightly with strong fingers.

“When you see her? What will you do, Naoko?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you want to see her anyway?”

He looked at her, his mouth and lips curving into a frown. “What the fuck is this?” he said. “Jealousy?”

She blinked, once.

Then shrugged.

“Maybe. Would it bother you, if it was?”

He let out a grunt, not bothering to hide his thoughts on that.

She squeezed his arm tighter, pulling herself closer to his body.

“Just tell me,” she coaxed. “What will you do? Kill her? Feed on her? Put her head through a window? Because you know Brick likely won’t approve any of that.”

“I’ll know when I see her.” He gazed down the last stretch of alley, his jaw clenching slowly as he thought. “I’ll know what I want to do then. For now, I just want her to see me.”

Thinking about that, he felt his fangs extend inside his mouth, sharp against his lips and tongue. Rather than calming him down, it brought that heat up all over again––the rage, the tension in his body and limbs, that intensity of energy.

If the female vampire noticed, she didn’t react.

She didn’t answer him at all at first.

He could practically feel her thinking, turning over his words.

Then, after he assumed she’d decided to drop it, when they were on the verge of reaching the mouth of the alley, she let out a half-amused grunt of her own.

“I see,” she said, her voice musing. She added in a dry voice, “How you like me now? Is that the idea?”

He turned, looking at her.

Seeing the glint in her crystal and scarlet eyes, the faint quirk in her lips, the arched eyebrow, he let out a short laugh, unable to help it.

“Something like that,” he said.

Looking at her, at her long, black, half-curled hair, her red lips, her crystal and scarlet eyes, her lusciously curvy body in the clingy, wine-colored dress with the low-cut neckline exposing her olive but deathly pale skin––he felt another body part of his start to stir.

“Let’s go to the church,” he said, squeezing her arm against his side. “I’ll pick where after that.”

Quirking an eyebrow, she shook her head in amusement. She gave him a knowing, half-bemused smile as they entered the main street.

“Aren’t you picking where now, my beautiful, handsome, sexy Naoko?”

“It was your suggestion first,” he reminded her. “I’m being accommodating.”

She laughed again, a real laugh that time.

Even so, she followed after him willingly enough.

By the time he got her inside her favorite church, it was dark enough that he dragged her past the pews after breaking the doors’ locks.

Ignoring the wooden benches altogether, along with the velvet ropes separating them from the altar, he brought her up the stairs until they stood directly under the famous painting of the gold Jesus on the domed ceiling over the altar.

Shoving her down on the white tablecloth of the altar, face first, he yanked up her dress, pleased when he saw she hadn’t bothered to wear undergarments, apart from the garter that held up her stockings. Without waiting, he angled his cock into her from behind right as he sank his teeth into her neck.

She moaned…

…and sensation washed over him.

The feeling was so intense, so incredibly intense and intimate and subtle and just so damned mindblowingly fucking good, it managed to distract him for real that time.

Even more than feeding, this calmed that raging heat in him.

It calmed him––at least in the moments it was happening.

Every part of him focused.

Every sense rang and vibrated with stimuli.

The blood, the feeling on his cock, the feelings on his mouth and throat and tongue, the aggression, the flood of memories, thoughts, and feelings as he drank from her, the intensely pleasurable sensations flooding every particle of his skin––

It was enough. It was finally fucking enough.

That hole inside him briefly filled.

Only one thing calmed it in him more.

The hunt created a peace in him unmatched by anything else he’d found. When he was hunting, his mind and heart went utterly still. The minutes and seconds, even hours where he stalked them, before they’d succumbed, before he’d taken that first, heart-stopping bite––that worked even better than sex.

When they stumbled out the doors of the Sacré-Coeur a little more than an hour later, their clothes looking significantly more rumpled, both of them with fully scarlet eyes, their extended fangs changing the shapes of their mouths, he dragged her down the hill with him by the hand.

The rain had finally stopped.

The cobblestone streets were slick, puddled here and there, but the air was drier, and the light changed because of it.

Lucia laughed when he leapt over puddles, balancing on a low wall before taking a longer leap down a stone staircase, then off a higher wall to the street below. She scolded him, telling him he was showing too much, that he had to moderate his movements in public, especially when there was no reason not to.

She mostly laughed, though.

She also followed him easily enough, at least until he stopped in front of a black-painted door a few dozen blocks from the church. Seeing the bouncer seated on the leather stool out front, his massive arms folded over a thick chest, she let out a humorless laugh.

“Dancing?” she said, her voice mocking. “Why don’t you call this what it is, Naoko?”

“Which is what?” he said, lifting an eyebrow innocently.

“Hunting,” she said promptly. “This is hunting, Naoko. And you bribed me with sex. You are a naughty, naughty boy.”

“I thought I was a good boy,” he said, that eyebrow still quirked.

“You are far more naughty than good, even on your best days,” she retorted, snorting. She tugged on his hand, her voice coaxing. “Come on, Naoko. Let’s go buy some wine before the shops close. Bring it back for Brick and the others. You know you shouldn’t be doing this. You know you shouldn’t––”

“Just for a few hours. I can’t go back there yet.” Yanking her closer, he nipped her neck with his fangs, feeling another stirring in his cock as he pressed into her. “We’ll find one we both want to fuck this time.”

Looking up at him with those giant eyes, she shook her head, her eyes turning serious as she leaned into him.

“We’ve been out too long already.” At his annoyed frown, she added, sharper, “You can’t be seen, Naoko. You can’t be. You know he’s in Europe, looking for you. I was there when Brick told you he and his people were in Paris not too long ago. If we happened to run into them, if they happened to see you––”

“They’re not looking for me like this.”

She let out a disbelieving laugh. “That’s the exact point, Naoko. Don’t you see? They cannot see you like this. Not until our king is ready for them.”

When he scowled, she added, sharper,

“Are you trying to run into him, Naoko? Black? Because of what you said before?”

“No.” His voice grew more subdued, but colder. “No. I can wait for him.”

Still gripping her against his side, he frowned.

“He probably wouldn’t even recognize me,” he said after a pause. “Anyway, I told you… I saw all the studies Charles did on our kind. I saw the government reports. They believe the venom only adheres to certain genetic types. A group of us had to be tested at Black’s company lab after they’d analyzed the findings of that lab. I tested negative. They don’t know about any other ways to make vampires. They won’t be looking for me like this. They’d look for me in graveyards first.”

Lucia stared at him. “If they saw proof with their own eyes––”

“I’m telling you, they’re not looking for me like this. They either think I’m kidnapped and being tortured somewhere… or they think I’m dead. Brick said as much last night, and he’s got people watching them still.”

Leaning closer, he nipped her throat, drawing a few drops of blood.

He licked them off his lips, groaning softly in her ear.

“What happened to me is a ghost story to them, Lucia my love,” he murmured, pressing his cock against her hip. “A human myth. Like garlic and silver bullets.”

“All of which being the exact things Brick would like to keep them from knowing, brother Naoko… for a long as possible. As long as necessary, anyway.” She frowned, pushing at his chest. “You know this isn’t only about you. There’s a lot at stake… for all of us. He needs you, Naoko. He needs your help with this.”

Naoko shook his head. “He doesn’t need me. He’s got her.”

Lucia frowned. “He can’t use her yet. You know that, too.”

He pulled on her hand, tugging on her to enter the club.

“They wouldn’t come here,” he said, coaxing.

“You don’t know that!”

“Yes, I do. Black would never look for me in a place like this.”

“He’s not looking for you,” Lucia said, exasperated. “You just said this yourself. He’s looking for Brick.”

“Brick would never come to a place like this, either.”

Staring at him, she burst out in an involuntary laugh.

“You are impossible!”

“Come on,” he coaxed. “Just another hour. Two at most. Maybe three.”

“Brick is going to cut off one of my fingers for this––”

“We’ll bring one back for Brick. One he’ll like. I’ll give him head while he drinks from it. He’ll calm down.”

Lucia threw back her head for real, belting out a full-throated laugh.

Still hanging from his arm, which he held tensed at his side, fingers clenched in a fist, she grinned up at him.

“Oh, my darling boy,” she said, relenting as she stroked his fingers. “You learn far, far too quickly. No wonder he’s so fond of you already…”

1

You Can’t Go Home Again

I REACHED FOR my bags when the trunk opened, only to be waved off by a man in uniform, a man beaming at me, who clearly recognized me, but one I hadn’t seen in so long, I could only blink back at him in confusion.

Miguel. His name was Miguel.

He was one of the security guys at Black’s main building.

He took the bag I’d grabbed out of the trunk right out of my hand, still smiling at me as he inserted himself between me and the rest of our luggage.

I wasn’t expected to carry my own luggage here.

I’d forgotten.

We were back in Black’s other world, the one that always somehow struck me as more surreal than the one filled with guns and military equipment, or even, increasingly, the one filled with psychics and vampires. In this version of Black’s life, we didn’t do things like carry luggage, or unpack, or do laundry, or even drive.

In this world, Black was a celebrity.

Even as I thought it, I grew aware of eyes on us.

Black’s arm coiled around my waist, pulling me gently to him, but most of my attention remained on the growing crowd between us and the glass doors of his building on California Street in downtown San Francisco.

Somehow they’d gotten wind of us being back in town.

I had no idea how. We’d taken Black’s private plane the whole way, and there’d been no media when we left Rome, none whatsoever.

Someone tipped them off, Black murmured in my mind, his arm wrapping further around me. Someone who was watching.

Charles. Charles was waiting for us.

He was probably the reason for these reporters.

Black squeezed me tighter into his side.

Possibly, he sent cryptically.

I knew of only one other possibility.

Before my mind could go there, Black blew warmth over me from his seer’s living light, wrapping more of himself around me, snuggling me against him.

Miri, don’t worry honey. My people got this. He kissed my temple. Let’s just inside. They’re waiting for us upstairs.

I nodded, but my eyes never left the crowd.

Reporters clustered on either side of two rows of Black Securities and Investigations security staff, who’d already carved a narrow corridor between the limousine doors and the glass doors of Black’s building. I watched muscular men and a handful of women use their bodies and hands expertly to push the two halves of crowd apart further, widening that passage.

I recognized a few of those on the security team, including at least two I knew to be seers. Both had to be wearing contact lenses, since I happened to know their real eye colors, which were neither the dull brown nor the muted hazel I saw on them now.

Every member of the team wore a black T-shirt and black pants, with Black’s company insignia on their backs in white lettering.

Shifting my eyes to the crowd itself, I scanned the reporters on both sides of that cleared aisle, noting the high-def video cameras, microphones, digital recorders, and smartphones they held up as they stared at me and Black.

Sprinkled in with the reporters were excited-looking faces that had to be some combination of tourists who happened to be in this part of downtown, business people who worked in the area, and a smattering of Black’s groupies and fans, which likely had overlap with the other two groups. At least some of them must have realized what the crowd of reporters meant once they put it together with the building address.

As usual, probably eighty percent of the groupies were young women.

Black’s building was relatively famous now, ever since he’d hit the celebrity circuit for real, which more or less started when we went to New York and he was on talk shows and magazine covers for over a year. Black being a fugitive from the law the year before, and chased by the Pentagon, only made him more notorious––and for a lot of women, more hot.

Black told me with a snort that the California Street building even showed up on some tour bus routes through San Francisco now.

In contrast to the groupie-types, female reporters stood to the front of the security lines with coiffed hair and wearing business suits, along with more makeup than most people wore on the street in San Francisco regardless of where they worked. Most of those same women carried microphones that looked overly large and weirdly dated.

Black was already steering me down the aisle bisecting the throng.

I couldn’t help watching the eyes following us, especially him.

People always stared at Black.

Women stared at him, but men did too.

It wasn’t only because he was disconcertingly handsome.

Black flat-out didn’t blend. Something about him just didn’t mesh with the regular crush of humanity.

By then I’d met too many seers to believe it was all about his race.

They didn’t fall silent as they watched him approach, but something about them seemed to grow more attentive, less distracted by the rest of the crowd. Black’s presence both drew them closer to us, and conversely nudged them to keep their distance.

As soon as we moved away from the car, however, the reporters at least, seemed to snap out of that more animal-like reaction to Black’s light. Once they did, they immediately pushed forward on the security guys, and started shouting questions at both of us. I stared around at them with a small frown, watching them jump, raise their hands, and lean around the muscular shoulders and arms of Black’s employees wherever they could.

“Where have you been, Quentin?” a man in a tan sport coat shouted.

“Miriam!” Another shouted at me. “Miriam! Are the rumors true? Are you Quentin’s wife? Are the two of you married? Tell us the truth, Dr. Fox!”

“Did you two just come back from your honeymoon?”

“Where have you been, Mr. Black?”

“What about your legal troubles, Mr. Black? Any comment on how the charges got dismissed? Was that due to your connections in the Pentagon?”

One voice rose above the others, tearing my eyes off the man in the yellow tie who’d asked me about being Black’s wife. My eyes shifted to the other side of the cleared aisle.

“Mr. Black!” A woman that time, one of the coiffed reporters carrying a big microphone. She leaned around the jostling reporters around her, forcing her body forward like a weapon. “Do you have a statement about the terrorist attacks? Or the response by the White House?”

I watched her push her way closer to the line.

“…Are you a supporter of the new policies?” she shouted, louder, as we kept walking. “Are you in favor of the New Purity movement, Mr. Black?”

I swallowed, taking in her words.

The New Purity Movement.

Even just the name made me feel a little sick.

“Mr. Black!” another reporter, male that time, shouted from the same side. “How did you get your name cleared? Are you aware some are calling for a new investigation into the murders in Virginia? How did you stop being their prime suspect?”

“Miriam!” a male voice shouted. “How do you feel about your companion being labeled a terrorist? Did you marry a murderer, Miriam?”

“Mr. Black!” another voice yelled. “How do you respond to the conspiracy theories around you and your organization? You know they’re calling you part of a shadow government? They say you’re the leader of a paid hit squad working for traitors within our military-industrial complex. How do you respond?”

I felt Black tense at that last, but he didn’t turn his head.

Gripping his hand where he had it wrapped around my waist, I pulsed light at him, trying to distract him from the crush of reporters still shouting at him.

I could tell it didn’t really work.

Everything felt different already.

I could feel it all around me, like we’d pierced the bubble somehow, just in entering the United States. I felt it even in the plane, when we entered U.S. air space. Now that we were back on the ground, and outside his car, it hit me like a physical force.

We were in my uncle’s world now.

I wasn’t even sure what that meant yet.

I could feel the difference though. I couldn’t even really comprehend this as my home. It didn’t feel like the San Francisco I remembered at all.

Did he really do this? I asked Black. How could he have changed it all so fast?

Constructs. Black’s mind came through hard, edged, reflecting the emotion he was keeping off his face with an effort. He’s changing the Barrier field over the entire goddamned continental United States. It’s affecting all of them, to greater and lesser degrees.

Glancing at me, he pursed his lips.

Once he’d studied my expression, he hugged me closer to his side.

Hey… it’s okay, doc. We knew this. And we’ll have some protection from the worst of it once we get inside. I’ve had the seers working on shields around this place and a number of other locations since they got back from Thailand.

I could only shake my head, still frowning in disbelief.

The construct wasn’t the only thing that worried me.

It was hard not to hear some of those reporters’ questions as a threat.

It was also hard not to hear that threat as coming straight from Uncle Charles.

Yeah, Black muttered in my mind. It’s a message, anyway.

How is it so much stronger here? I sent, still reacting to the feel of the crowd, the difference in the light all around me. It didn’t feel like this in Europe.

Black gave me a grim look. He’s starting here. It’ll spread.

I felt my jaw harden more.

I considered pressing him again, but only nodded.

We’d spent more than two months in Europe, looking for Brick and his vampire followers. Despite my obsessive news viewing and our near-constant contact with the team here in San Francisco, I still felt pretty out of touch with what was happening in the United States.

In Europe we had other things to focus on.

We spent weeks following ambiguous and contradictory intelligence reports and CCTV sightings of Brick and his vampire clan. Those reports had us zig-zagging all across Europe, with days and even weeks spent in Rome, Berlin, Budapest, Prague, Paris, London.

We followed aliases we believed Brick might be using through airports and train stations covering half of Eastern and Western Europe.

As far as I could tell, we never even got close.

We’d just start to case a city, sending out Black’s people to help us follow the various leads––then we’d get a report Brick had just been spotted in a different country or a different city, or we’d find out the original tip or intel was bad.

Most of the video footage we were able to access was blurry, or too far away for us to be able to do a positive ID. We looked primarily for Brick himself, but we also looked for other members of his “coven,” particularly Dorian, the most easily recognizable of his vampires and the one who never seemed to leave Brick’s side for long.

I examined bodies in morgues that definitely looked like vampire kills.

There’d been a spike in unsolved, random-seeming killings on the streets of several of the cities we visited, especially Budapest and Paris, but we never figured out if Brick and his people had anything to do with those, either.

Vampires in general were eerily good at avoiding CCTV cameras. Moreover, given that we had no idea how many vampires existed out in the world, there was no way to tie any of the kills or murder spikes specifically to Brick and his friends.

Of course, I couldn’t have given two fucks about Brick––not really.

I cared about the dead humans.

I cared that vampires killed them.

I wasn’t looking for the vampire king in particular, though, nor did I think he was likely any worse than most vampires when it came to leaving dead bodies lying around.

From what Black told me, Brick played on the cautious side when it came to actually murdering his feeding victims. Black seemed to think he kept them alive when he could, if only to severely reduce the likelihood of his being ID’d for what he was, or having any kind of run-in with human law enforcement.

While that was interesting information to have, and might actually be useful at some point, it didn’t really help me with what I wanted right now––nor did it help me much while we were in Europe. It just made the vampire king a hell of a lot harder to track.

For me, Brick was just a means to an end.

I hadn’t really been looking for Brick at all.

I was looking for Nick Tanaka, one of my oldest friends.

The fact that we hadn’t found any sign of him, any hint of whether he was even alive, much less whether Brick and his vampires had him, made me sick to my stomach every time I let myself think about it for more than a few seconds at a time.

I was so worried about him at this point, I could barely sleep.

While we were in Europe, Black would wake up in the middle of the night to find me pacing our hotel room, staring out dark windows––or, more often, he’d just wake up to a note and an empty bed. After about an hour of staring at the ceiling, I’d usually just give up and go out looking for Nick myself, walking the night streets with a gun concealed under my coat, my psychic sight straining in all directions.

My psychic sight was pretty useless, of course, in terms of finding Brick himself, since seers can’t feel vampires.

I had to hope I might feel Nick, though, if he were nearby.

As for Brick and his cronies, all I could do is look for blank spots in the psychic space that might indicate their presence, or look for signs of emotional distress in humans––anything that might indirectly signal a vampire could be hunting in the area.

If Black woke up before I got back, he chewed me out for not bringing me with him.

Each time, I promised him that next time, I would.

Yet, each next time, I couldn’t seem to make myself wake him up, just like I couldn’t stop myself from going out looking for Nick––at least on those nights I didn’t collapse unconscious from exhaustion.

What I didn’t want to think about, what Black wouldn’t say, at least not to me, was that there was a good chance Nick was dead.

Really, at this point, Nick being dead was the most likely scenario.

If Brick kidnapped Nick from the Thai island of Koh Mangaan, where we’d last seen either of them, the vampire king would have done it for a reason.

He would have done it wanting something.

Whatever that thing was, he would have asked for it by now.

Nick had been missing for almost three months.

Three goddamned months, and we didn’t have so much as a single lead.

Nick had to be dead.

I was fucking kidding myself, telling myself he might still be alive.

Black tightened his arm around me, crushing me into his side.

In front of us, another of Black’s security guards, this one from regular lobby security and wearing an expensive-looking suit, smiled at both of us. Bowing his head, he gripped the handle of the glass door to our right, swinging it open as we approached.

We walked inside, Black speeding his steps as he gave the security guy a nod. As soon as we were all the way through, I heard the snick of the door closing behind us, right as I stepped out onto the black and white granite tiles decorating the floor of the four-story lobby.

Instantly, the space altered around us.

I felt Black take a breath.

Something in his body, light and arm relaxed. I took a breath right after he did, then gradually aligned my breath and heart rate with his. The grief that had risen in me around Nick didn’t lessen. If anything, it grew worse, but it softened in me, somehow.

I also felt stranger about being back.

Black’s building lobby looked and felt exactly the same as I remembered it, making the contrast with the world outside even more stark.

That feeling of unreality worsened as we kept walking, crossing the stone floors and bypassing the main bank of elevators to reach his company’s private one.

I stared as we passed by the front of a copper sculpture waterfall fountain coming out of one wall, decorated with hanging crystals that shimmered with pale, colored lights. Just like I remembered, other real art decorated the rest of the lobby and hung on the walls, making the place look more like a museum than a regular business complex.

We hadn’t made it halfway across the granite tiles before we were approached by two more people on Black’s security team. I’d been looking down, reacquainting myself with the floor designed like an elaborate chess board as I aimed my feet for Black’s private elevator, when the guards stepped right in front of us, forcing us to halt.

I only half-listened as Black discussed a number of security measures with the two of them, including new pass keys for both of us, fingerprint scanners into his penthouse apartment, and a new key code Black and I could change once we got up there.

It was only after he’d been talking to them for a few minutes that I realized they were both seers. I didn’t recognize either of them; apparently Yarli had been busy recruiting from among the refugee population we’d inherited while we were gone.

“We’ve had a few break-in attempts recently,” one of them told Black, the taller, female one with the lighter-colored eyes.

It was difficult to tell what color either of their eyes were for real, since they both appeared to be wearing colored contact lenses.

“…I know Dex wants to talk to you about at least one of those, Mr. Black,” she added politely. “He also has some thoughts about security in general, including personal guards for yourself and your wife.”

She gave me a faintly nervous look, but smiled in a friendly way when I smiled at her.

“…He wanted me to pass that on, sir. He said to tell you that he and Cowboy can give you more details upstairs.”

“Are they still waiting for us in the suite?” Black said, his voice low, and gruff.

She nodded, once, a nod that felt more like a salute.

“They are, sir. And they know you’ve both arrived. But they also wished me to convey to you both that they’re more than happy to wait, if you and your wife would like to grab showers and change first. We can take you up in the elevator now.”

At Black’s raised eyebrow, she added, hastily,

“…Just until you get a chance to encode you and your wife’s retina imprints on there, sir. We can do that whenever you want today.”

Black grunted at that, nodding.

When the two of them turned, leading us the rest of the way to Black’s private elevator, he glanced down at me, quirking an eyebrow.

“They haven’t wasted any time, have they?” I murmured.

He grunted again, in amusement that time.

“They’d be in for an ass-kicking if they had,” he murmured back, kissing my cheek. “I’m the only one around here who gets paid to look pretty.”

When I choked on a half-laugh, earning a faintly puzzled look from the two seers, Black wrapped his arm around me even tighter, sending a jolt of heat through me that I felt down to my feet. It made me shiver, even as I pressed deeper into him. It also made me want to do more than just shower when we got up to the penthouse.

No complaints here, doc, Black murmured, his light coiling around me tighter.

I felt my light flare in reaction…

…which made me feel guilty as hell when I thought about Nick, and about Angel upstairs, waiting for me to reassure her that Nick was okay.

That had been happening a lot lately, too.

Me feeling guilty, that is.

Shoving both things out of my mind as best I could, I let my eyes fall out of focus, aiming them at the art hanging on the walls, at the waterfall sculpture, at the black and white granite tiles, at the backs of the two security guards walking in front of us. I could already feel that a lot more had changed than simply our pass cards and a few security measures in the lobby and elevators.

Now that we’d been inside for a few seconds, the whole building felt weirdly like it was on lockdown. It reminded me of entering embassies in foreign countries during wartime, or even some high-security prisons I’d visited as a forensic psychologist. It definitely felt more like either of those things than a business and residential complex on some of the most expensive real estate in the country.

I kept those thoughts to myself, though.

I even kept the bulk of my thoughts from Black, mostly because I could feel how worried he was about me.

We followed the seer guards into the private elevator that lived inside a small alcove to the left of the main elevator banks. I watched the female seer lean down, activating the retinal scanner once we were inside.

The elevator doors slowly began to close.

Once they had, it felt like we’d already left that other San Francisco behind.

2

Reunion

WE WALKED INTO Black’s largest frosted glass conference room over an hour later, a room I’d spent a fair bit of time in before all this, but barely recognized now, and not only because it was full of people.

I gazed around at all of the faces and backs of heads in a kind of wonder, noting the multiple screens up on the wall above the massive, industrial-style conference table, along with the number of unusual eye-colors and strangely alien faces I saw among the group.

Black and I had taken them up on their offer of a shower.

While we’d been in there, I’d fought not to make it more than that.

Black more or less offered it outright, but I managed to convince myself it wasn’t a good idea right then, that I needed to talk to Angel, and I needed an update from Black’s team, that I needed an update on Nick, more than I needed sex.

Now I wasn’t so sure I’d made the right choice.

I felt too far away from Black, light-wise and mind-wise, for what I suspected we’d be talking about in here.

Feeling a faint pulse from Black himself, I glanced over in time to see him quirk an eyebrow pointedly in my direction, in an expression that came about as close to “I told you so” as he generally got. Rolling my eyes at him a little, I bumped into him with my shoulder and he smiled, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.

I can get a lot closer to “I told you so” than that, doc, he murmured in my mind. I fully intend to demonstrate later tonight, by the way, since you seem to have forgotten.

Clicking at him mildly, I glanced to my left in time to see another seer enter the room, along with a human. Both were familiar faces––so familiar, I jumped a little, staring.

“Hey,” I said. My eyes fell to where they were holding hands. “That’s new.”

Manny burst out in a laugh, glancing at Yarli, whose hand he held. “Not all that new, Miriam. You’ve been out of the loop for a while.” His lip lifted in a sideways smile. “Oh, and… subtle, by the way. I see that big shrink brain of yours is way ahead of us lesser folks when it comes to your powers of observation. And interrogation.”

Black burst out in a laugh.

I felt my face flush hot. “Sorry. No one told me.”

Yarli clicked at both men in mock rebuke, releasing Manny’s hand. Walking directly up to me, the tall seer––who I’d always thought looked like some kind of runway supermodel––enveloped me in a warm hug, squeezing me tightly to her chest.

“We’re glad to see you too, Miri,” she said, smiling as she kissed me on the cheek. Releasing me, even as I felt a pulse of faint irritation on Black, she turned and enveloped Black in a second hug. “I am pleased to see you as well, brother. More than I can say.”

Black looked faintly taken aback.

He hugged the other seer in return, his expression going from a whisper of confusion to what might have been an almost touched look.

When Yarli released him, Black actually smiled at her.

It looked like a real smile.

“I hear I have a lot to thank you for in my absence, sister,” he murmured. “You and the rest of your team. I’m looking forward to hearing about all of it in detail.”

I glanced up at Black, my eyebrow quirked.

That was… beyond formal, for him.

I had to assume it was a seer thing, maybe just basic seer politeness, and maybe also related to her age in some way. Black had told me seers were kind of funny about age and respect for elders, and she was supposedly a few hundred years older than him… despite her looking like she was in her early thirties and him being her boss.

Looking away from Yarli, Black turned, giving Manny a stronger hug, clapping the Native American man roughly on the back. “You look old, Mañuelito,” he retorted with a mock frown, releasing him. “Are you trying to freak me out?”

“Yeah,” Manny grunted, glancing at Yarli. “Well, it’s pretty unlikely that state of affairs will improve, brother. I keep telling her that, but she doesn’t listen.”

Yarli poked him in the ribs, smiling.

There was so much softness in the smile, I couldn’t help smiling as well, looking at the two of them together.

They looked positively smitten, both of them.

I saw Manny give me a double-take then, studying me with faintly narrow eyes. He looked about to speak, then glanced at Black, who gave him a not-particularly-subtle warning look, along with a barely-perceptible shake of his head.

I didn’t ask.

I more or less knew, anyway.

I knew Black had been picking up on things in me for a while now, pretty much ever since we left for Europe. He wasn’t saying anything to me about those things outright, not yet, but I could feel them here and there through his light.

I knew he was worried about me.

I knew that, and felt mildly guilty about it… I just didn’t know what to say to him about it that would make anything better. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, not exactly. Truthfully, I doubted I knew much more than he did, given how closely he watched my light.

I felt sick all the time.

I felt sick, I wasn’t sleeping, I was having trouble concentrating.

The pain had been worse, and a lot of it didn’t feel like sex pain, or like it had anything to do with Black.

I knew it had something to do with Nick.

I didn’t know what, apart from worry about him and a heavier dread that some part of me already knew where the trail to him would eventually lead. I knew a big part of me wasn’t ready to look at that yet, much less accept it, and that Black knew those things on some level.

My inability to deal with any of this, or frankly, face reality, was probably why he hadn’t been pushing me to talk about it much.

I was terrified some part of me already knew Nick was dead.

I was terrified the seer part of me somehow knew that for certain, not just as a statistical probability.

I was terrified because some of those nights, staring up at the ceilings of strange hotel rooms, Nick being dead was the only thing that made sense to me.

It was the only thing that felt remotely true.

I knew Manny probably saw something in my face that mirrored what Black felt and saw in my light, or echoed it, anyway. The four of us were still standing there, Manny frowning faintly, as if he hadn’t yet made up his mind to drop it––when from my other side, arms enveloped me, crushing me in another tight hug.

I smelled perfume I recognized, even as I recognized the arms themselves, and before I knew consciously what I was doing, I’d turned around and wrapped my arms around Angel in return, hugging her so tightly I couldn’t breathe.

She’d wanted to come with us.

She’d wanted to come with us so badly.

It was the closest I’d seen to a real fight between her and Black since we left New York.

I think I was numb through most of their actual argument, which unfortunately occurred after it really sank in for me that Nick was gone, that Brick wasn’t going to just pop up and tell us he’d decided to take Nick with him to Phuket for some bizarre reason, and that he’d have him back to us, safe and sound, in under an hour.

That delusion was shattered by the time Angel got into it with Black about who should come with us to Europe.

At that point, I didn’t much care who went.

I just wanted to go.

Black had stronger opinions.

He had more specific ones, at least.

He thought a smaller group was better. He thought having fewer people Brick might recognize, or try to use against me and him was better. He figured if the vampires took Nick, it was for some kind of leverage or ransom. He didn’t want to give Brick any more opportunities for pressure points on either of us.

He also figured Brick, like us, would have people monitoring the airports.

He didn’t want to make it easy for Brick to track us.

For these reasons and probably others, he wanted no one else from our core group apart from the two of us. That included Angel, Cowboy, Dex, and Kiko. It also included Jem, Yarli, Holo, Jax, Mika, most of the Natives and Jori, one of the seers who originally worked for my uncle but since moved to our camp.

Brick knew all of them.

Dorian, his silent, sociopathic henchman, who alternately looked like a tech entrepreneur or a Scandinavian lord, knew all of them, too.

So Angel couldn’t go.

She yelled at Black, accused him of all kinds of semi-irrational things, but he wouldn’t budge. He told her to go back to San Francisco or she was fired––in which case, she could go back to San Francisco, since that’s where she’d lived before he hired her. Oh, and she would have to live at the building on California Street, he added, since there was no way in hell he was letting her live on her own, or anywhere really without full-blown security protection by seers and humans, meaning people who worked directly for him… and anyway, Cowboy would be living at California Street so she may as well live with him, whether Black fired her for being an irrational, insubordinate, pain in his ass or not.

I’m pretty surprised she didn’t hit him, truthfully.

Whatever she’d felt at the time, she didn’t feel angry now.

As she hugged me, all I felt on Angel was grief.

I also felt her need to be with someone who would truly comprehend that grief. I felt her wanting to get me alone, so we could talk about what to do. Of course, that brought up another whole host of things I hadn’t wanted to think about.

We needed to talk about Nick’s parents.

We needed to talk about what to tell them, along with the rest of Nick’s family. We needed to decide when to tell them, and how much, and when enough was enough and we had no choice but to tell them something. Angel and I were both close to Nick’s family. We spent Christmases with them. We spent Thanksgivings with them.

We spent birthdays and Fourths of July and Halloweens with them.

Angel grew up with Nick, more or less down the street from him, so her family was close to Nick’s family. Their mothers were friends.

I couldn’t think about any of this though, not now.

I needed to be alone with Angel to do that.

There needed to be a lot of alcohol before we could do that.

For now, I made myself let her go.

Gripping her arms, I pulled back from the hug, and looked her in the face, my jaw clenched hard enough to hurt.

“Tonight, okay?” I told her, my voice gruff. I shook her a little, sending her as much love and warmth as I could muster without losing my shit. “Tonight.”

Angel understood.

Tears shone in her eyes, but she wiped them while I watched, without trying to pull out of my grasp. Nodding, she sniffed, then nodded again.

While she did, I glanced over her shoulder at Cowboy. I found him watching the two of us, watching Angel especially, a worried look on his face.

I could tell from his expression the worry wasn’t new.

Moreover, it reminded me a little too much of the expression I’d seen on Black’s face a lot lately, pretty much whenever he thought I wasn’t watching him look.

Pushing that from my mind, I turned from Angel with an effort, and did my best to face the rest of the room.

A lot of eyes were watching us now, watching me in particular.

I felt Black watching me too, that now-familiar worry emanating off his very skin. Even as I thought it, I saw Cowboy and Black exchange looks, then look back at me and Angel.

I wondered if Angel and I would be the only ones drinking tonight.

Even as I thought it, I saw Kiko staring at me.

When she saw me notice, mid-stare, she swallowed, flushing, right before she looked away. I felt guilt on her, along with a plume of grief so intense it closed my eyes. I knew she and Nick had been close, although I wasn’t sure how close. I also knew Nick wanted more from her, meaning more than just friendship, and she’d turned him down.

She’d started sleeping with Jem instead.

Nick found out about the two of them when Kiko and the dark-haired, inhumanly beautiful seer started making out right in front of him.

I’d never even gotten a chance to talk to Nick about it.

I’d never gotten a chance to talk to Nick about any of that.

Angel was there when it happened. She told me Nick looked pretty gut-punched by the whole thing. She also told me she tried to get him to talk about it while they were out in the jungle with that rescue team, but he pulled a Nick and mostly blew her off.

Besides making it clear he didn’t want to talk about it, Nick told her he knew Kiko wasn’t into him that way, that it wasn’t a big deal. He muttered something about Kiko saying he “reminded her of her brother” a bunch of times, so he wasn’t exactly shocked when she turned him down.

Angel hadn’t been convinced.

I wasn’t convinced either, truthfully.

Knowing something and knowing it are two different things, and Angel knew Nick better than anyone. If she believed Nick hadn’t been anywhere near as “okay” with the whole thing as he pretended, I was inclined to agree.

Anyway, none of it mattered now.

That didn’t stop me from feeling an irrational wave of anger at Kiko, anyway.

Nick was one of the best people I knew.

He was also charming, handsome, athletic, and had more than his fair share of that “thing” that a lot of women liked, that made men attractive. As long as I’d known Nick, he’d had women approach him in bars, coffee shops, on the beach, sometimes on the street. He was one of the handful of men I’d known in my life who had total strangers trying to pick him up on a semi-regular basis. He might not have pulled off Black levels of attractive women offering him sex, but he did better than probably eighty or ninety percent of the men I knew.

He also had a knack for picking women who weren’t into him.

He also waited too long to approach women who might actually be into him, if he’d worked up the nerve to say something before they got involved with someone else.

And yeah, it was ironic, since women threw themselves at Nick all the time.

When he didn’t have any skin in the game, he could be charming as hell, funny, sweet. He could even be the alpha-sexy-mysterious guy on his motorcycle, or at the martial arts studio, or carrying around his surfboard. He was considerate, kind, a good listener. He was a decorated vet and a homicide detective. He also had more black belts than anyone I knew apart from Black and maybe Kiko, and he’d been winning surfing competitions since high school. He didn’t play mind games or lie about his intentions, and while I’d never slept with him, I got the impression from Angel’s stories that he didn’t get any complaints.

Nick never had a problem with women.

It was only when he got serious about someone that he seemed to fumble the ball every damned time. He just couldn’t get his act together when he really cared.

I couldn’t think about that either, though.

I knew it wasn’t really Kiko I was mad at.

“Hey, doc.” I turned my head, and found Black staring at me, his gold eyes soft. “You ready? We need to get started here.”

It was only then that I realized I’d just been standing there, staring off into space.

I felt my cheeks warm, not only for that, but because every seer in the room probably heard everything I’d been thinking just then, including Black.

Nodding, I walked over to the table, and pulled out a chair.

I felt almost robotic as I took my seat. I hadn’t even paid attention to where I sat, so I ended up on the opposite side of the table from just about every seer and human in the room I actually knew.

When I looked up, I found myself seated between A.J. and Luce, two of Black’s people who I only knew in passing. Although I’d talked to A.J. a few times before, I only knew Luce because she was so striking-looking, and because she’d been promoted within Black’s company when Alice died in Thailand.

Luce was short, maybe only 5’1” or even 5’, but she was one of the most muscular women I’d ever met in my life. Half-Filipino and half-some form of European or possibly Middle Eastern or South Asian, she had darkish skin, a broad face with light freckles and dark, almond-shaped eyes. She bleached her short hair platinum blond and her arms were covered in tattoos of flowers.

She was also a semi-professional boxer on the weekends, according to Angel.

I’d heard she did some cage fighting and ultimate fighting too.

So yeah, Luce was a badass.

She was also probably the friendliest, smiley-ist person on Black’s entire San Francisco team. Even now, when I glanced at her, I saw nothing but sympathy in her wide, dark eyes. I was still looking at her when she wrapped an arm around me, giving me a hard squeeze.

I found myself leaning my light into hers without making the conscious decision.

I’d just taken a deep breath, when Black spoke up from the head of the table.

“I know we have a full agenda,” he said. “I know a lot of you have questions about what we found and didn’t find in Europe. I know we need to debrief on both sides of the Nick Tanaka issue and discuss next steps. Before any of that though, I want to talk about Charles.”

When I glanced up, he was looking at me.

I could tell, just from a whisper I got off his light, that he wished I’d come over to sit by him. I could also feel he was grateful it was Luce I sat next to instead.

I could also feel his protective thing gearing into that darker, deeper part of his light, turning it into a desire to drag me back to our penthouse apartment to spend the rest of the day with me in there, fucking and comforting me, maybe at the same time, maybe in turn.

His gold eyes flickered away from mine.

I saw his face color slightly, but his expression never changed.

“…It’s pretty clear he’s not happy with our set up here,” Black said, his voice gruff. “It’s also pretty clear he’s feeding stories to the news about me, likely in the event he needs to take me out directly. He’ll likely try to discredit me first, go after my assets. But I don’t think we should discount more drastic measures he’d likely to take. I don’t think he’ll kill me, because of Miri. It’s more likely he’d have me thrown in jail… or maybe just have me deported.”

He gave me a grim look.

I saw a faint apology in his eyes.

Don’t be ridiculous, I chided him softly. You don’t need to apologize, Black. Trust me, I’d rather spend the day with you. If you think I’d prefer to be in here, talking about all of this shit, you’re crazy. I love my friends, but Christ. No. Just… no.

His expression lost some of its tautness.

I felt a flicker of regret on him, right before he glanced at Kiko, Dex, Yarli and Manny.

They’d more or less become his leadership team since Thailand.

Well, them and Dalejem.

“So?” he said, still gruff, but now with his light more entwined in mine. “We weren’t able to keep up on all of that in Europe, not in detail. Do you have an update on this Purity Movement crap? And what he’s rolling out policy-wise, now that the construct in the United States is more or less in place?”

There was a silence.

Then everyone seemed to look at Yarli.

They were still looking at her, when the door opened behind me and I turned along with everyone else.

Dalejem walked in, his face set in a determined-looking if distracted scowl, his light exuding an almost warlike quality. He looked like he was in the middle of something with potentially life or death consequences.

He saw me then and started, right before his eyes flickered to Black, sitting across the table. Jem still looked thin to me, after everything that happened in Thailand, and I noticed he still had a cut or something healing on his neck.

He looked a million times better than the last time I’d seen him though, so I couldn’t help exhaling in relief once I took in his overall appearance.

Seeing that relief in my face, or maybe feeling it off my light, he smiled, and it reached his eyes. Walking to me in two strides, he bent down and hugged me tightly where I sat, kissing me on the cheek. Before I could say a word to him, he spoke grimly in my mind.

Nothing? he sent, still holding me.

Meeting his gaze, I fought the pain that came to my chest.

In the end, I only shook my head.

Pain left Jem’s light, right before he leaned closer, kissing me again and squeezing me in a tighter hug before he let go. I felt grief on him, but also guilt, frustration, and an anger that didn’t feel like it had anything at all to do with me.

It had everything to do with Nick.

Watching Jem walk around the table to the nearest empty seat, it hit me that he was upset about Nick in his own right, not just in solidarity with me and Angel and the rest of us who’d known Nick well.

I couldn’t help wondering if that had anything to do with Kiko.

Glancing between him and Kiko at the thought, I noticed their light was pretty damned closed to one another. Even as I thought it, Kiko glanced in his direction, even as she appeared to be pretending not to. I saw the faintest scowl on her lips as she did.

Whatever had been going on between them, it felt like it was over.

It also felt like it hadn’t ended well.

I was still watching Jem, puzzled, when a flicker of reaction reached me from another part of the room. Since I’d felt absolutely nothing in Jem’s anything that came across as sexual, not even in a joking, flirty way, which was pretty ho-hum for seers, I found myself quirking an eyebrow pointedly in Black’s direction.

It’s not that, doc, Black sent, his thoughts a little annoyed. It didn’t feel like that annoyance was aimed at me. It’s nothing to do with you.

I pursed my lips, staring at him harder. Then what? I thought you said Jem was doing an unbelievable job here. You said him and Yarli were the most highly-competent seers you’d ever worked with, that you were damned lucky to have both of them––

We’ll talk later, okay?

I hesitated.

When he sent me a plume of heat, I frowned.

Later, doc. I promise. Now isn’t the time.

Feeling his concern that Jem would overhear us, even if we talked solely via our bond structure, coupled with the fact that he wasn’t ready to talk to Jem about whatever it was yet, I reluctantly backed down.

Okay, I sent. Soon, though.

Before he could answer, the door opened behind me a second time.

That time, Holo, Jax, Mika and two more people walked into the room, pulling my eyes off both Jem and Black.

Holo, Jax and Mika each started when they saw me, too. They also each gave me a hug while the two newcomers hung back. I glanced at those two long enough to determine they pretty much had to be seers, just from their height, their oddly near-Asian features and weird eye colors.

I smiled at both of them.

Following my eyes, Mika made introductions.

One, the female, had eyes that were nearly black, with a ring of white around the outer iris. Her long, dark blue hair contained streaks of black and gold. Mika introduced her as Kiessa, and I don’t think I’d ever even laid eyes on her before. Her name definitely wasn’t familiar. The other, a male, had one silver eye and one light blue eye, black hair, and looked Eurasian.

His name was Zairei, and I vaguely recognized him from the team of new infiltration recruits Black and Jem had been training on Koh Mangaan.

“All right?” Black said, his voice a low growl. “Can we start?”

He looked pointedly at his watch, then at Mika, lifting an eyebrow.

When no one moved, he added, “I’m glad to see everyone. I’m really impressed with everything I’ve heard and seen regarding what you’ve done while we were gone. But we’re under the gun here, in terms of time. Let’s get business done first.” Grunting, he added, “We’ll bring food in here and catch up after… if you’re not all fucking sick of me by then.”

Everyone fell silent, looking at him as if they weren’t sure if he was kidding.

When Black didn’t move, or change expression, they seemed to make up their minds. I watched the few people still standing move quickly, finding seats around the table.

Once everyone was settled and quiet, Black looked back at Yarli and Kiko.

“All right,” he said, giving Jem a brief, dark look. “Now tell me about these crackpot Purity assholes. Start from the beginning.”

So they did.

3

Everybody Wants To Rule The World

“HE’S DEFINITELY BACK in the country,” the seer said grimly. He swiveled his gaze, returning his boss’s stare. “We’re getting live footage now, if you want to see it.”

Charles barely hesitated, then nodded.

Loosening his tie from the meeting he’d just left with the National Security Council, where he still acted as “informal advisor” to the President, he clicked his fingers, motioning, seer-fashion, towards the largest monitor in the high-ceilinged room. It stood directly across from the dark blue leather couch he currently stood behind, and where he’d been leaning his hands when the seer asked the question.

While Charles waited for the seer to comply, his mind lingered on his last meeting.

It left him more annoyed than not.

That was a different set of problems though––problems that would be much easier to fix, presuming no one interfered. Problems considerably more straightforward than those relating to his niece and her maddeningly inflexible husband.

President Bradford Regent might not be the brightest bulb Charles had ever encountered, even compared to most humans, but he was relatively easy to manipulate. That was true even without having to rely solely on tricks of aleimi or Barrier constructs to nudge him towards the right decisions. Regent’s motivations were straightforward, as were his reasons for being mostly onboard with their plans.

Keeping him on message was the hard part.

That, and getting him to keep his mouth shut.

Already, he seemed to have convinced himself this whole thing had been his idea. He was beginning to actually believe the messaging Charles’ team had created about him, versus the reality of his role. Charles needed to remind the good President the true nature of that role.

He also needed to remind him just how easily he could be replaced.

Charles might further explain how potentially effective a political assassination would be, in terms of solidifying popular support among the people.

Clicking in dark humor at the thought, Charles unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt, taking another, more genuinely relaxed breath that time.

In the end, Regent was only a temporary tool.

Charles needed to remind himself of that fact, and not get worked up over the man’s antics, or his delusions of grandeur.

He was pulled from his thoughts when the live stream popped up on the monitor directly in front of him.

It appeared absent of sound at first.

Then the sound blared abruptly to life.

Calls and shouts of reporters filled the lounge area, along with traffic noise in the background, horns honking, pedestrians talking excitedly as they recognized Black’s face and build as he emerged from the limousine.

Charles watched Miri climb out of the limousine after him, looking overly thin and clearly elsewhere in her thoughts. She walked around to the back of the limousine, seemingly in rote, and proceeded to grab their bags. She’d only grabbed the first one, however, when one of Black’s employees waved her off, grabbing the bag’s handle more or less right out of her hand and smiling as he bent closer to her.

A second security agent behind him grabbed two more designer suitcases out of the trunk and placed them on the curb.

Miri watched them work, emptying out the rest of the trunk, a faint frown on her lips.

Then Black appeared by her side.

Charles hadn’t even begun reading the Barrier space yet, but he could practically see the protectiveness emanating off the tall seer’s light.

Frowning to himself, Charles watched his niece’s husband wrap a muscular arm around her, encasing his wife in his light, and more or less surrounding her with his body. Miriam was hardly a weak woman, but she fell into Black’s light and body with an ease that made Charles frown more.

Maybe to get his eyes off the two of them, he focused on the lines of security guards. Black’s logo was emblazoned on T-shirts that stretched across two rows of muscular backs. They held up their arms, holding off the crowd.

Most of those employees were human, but Charles saw at least four seers standing shoulder to shoulder with the worms. He knew Black had a lot more seers working for him now. It was bad enough that he’d gotten that Adhipan seer, Dalejem… he also had at least four other highly-ranked seers with combat experience under Syrimne d’Gaos himself.

Black had lieutenants of the Sword, for fuck’s sake.

The fact that a pup of his age had such seers answering to him would have been entirely ridiculous even if that young seer wasn’t Black himself––an immature, oversexed, ideologically inconsistent, irreligious mercenary who surrounded himself with worms.

That one seer, Yarli, was worth a king’s ransom all on her own.

Even without reaching out, Charles felt the construct Black’s seers had woven around Black’s building. He couldn’t help noting in some irritation that it was military-grade, and clearly contained Adhipan-like features, along with a number of features and connections he wasn’t familiar with at all.

Truly, he’d never seen a construct like it before.

He hadn’t even encountered one like it on Old Earth.

He had to assume that was the Bridge and Sword training, as well.

According to reports he’d gotten, which were nowhere near as detailed as Charles would have liked, that ex-Adhipan seer, Dalejem, was their primary construct architect, and therefore behind the unusual design. Charles’ infiltrators told him Dalejem was an unlikely recruitment opportunity, which irritated Charles even more, and not only because it meant he might have to eventually take him out.

Charles didn’t like killing his own kind.

He didn’t like killing his own kind even for a good reason.

He’d heard from his people that Dalejem, or “Jem,” managed to survive whatever happened to him in Thailand, despite how badly he’d been abused by those feral jungle humans. Damned stupid of Black, to risk his most highly-trained operative on two essentially worthless humans––human tourists, no less, who’d been stupid enough to get lost in the jungle, then captured by those deranged lunatics.

For Charles himself, it was a pity, really, that Dalejem survived.

It would have solved one of his problems, at least.

Although, if Charles were being fully honest with himself, he wouldn’t mind taking another crack at recruitment––regardless of his infiltrators’ assessments. If he could learn more about him, about his past, possibly even his religious beliefs, maybe he could find a way in.

Everyone had a weak point.

Everyone had something they wanted, something that motivated them.

For a lot of seers that was family.

At the thought, Charles’ gaze flickered to Black.

He watched the tall, dark-haired seer as he began steering Miri by the waist, still enveloping her visibly with his physicality and light as he walked her towards the glass doors of his flagship building on California Street.

His wife had been with him the whole time he’d been in Europe.

Of course she had been. Black would never go without her, regardless of the risk to her person. It wasn’t exactly the first time Black had put Charles’ niece in the direct line of fire of entire covens of vampires.

Scowling, Charles’ gaze flickered back to Miri.

He didn’t get too close, not with his aleimi at least. Miri, even more than Black, always seemed to know when he read her light.

He couldn’t help studying her intently with his eyes, however.

As he’d noted when she first stepped out of the limousine, she’d lost weight.

She’d lost too much weight.

Was that left over from the bonding? Or was there another reason?

The seer standing over the keyboard glanced back at him.

“I think that’s as good as I can get the image for now, sir,” he said apologetically. “They’re making it really hard to surveil the place… this camera was only able to be snuck in because the reporters were already there.”

“When did they arrive?” Charles said. “In the country, I mean. When did they land here?”

“They flew into SFO on one of his private planes just over an hour ago. Pretty much alone, from what we can tell, just him and his wife, plus a four-person crew. The team he had with him in Europe appears to have remained there; they’re continuing to work on the ground with law enforcement and local military branches in Germany and France.”

“Looking for Nick Tanaka?” Charles clarified.

The seer nodded, once. “From what we know, yes.”

“Any seers? In Europe?”

The East Indian infiltrator shook his head slowly, but not really in a no, frowning as he examined the data on his screen, a compilation of intelligence readouts from several different teams.

“We suspect they have at least two there,” he said after a pause. “But we haven’t been able to ID exactly who, so they might be newcomers, via the portals. Someone we never tagged and entered into the database when they came through.”

He glanced up at Charles.

“Just about everyone he had with him in Thailand, including his new seer military team, the refugees who defected to his side, and his human allies, all got back to San Francisco a few months ago. All but a few have been identified and accounted for by our infiltrators. All but a few appear to be living and working out of one of six main buildings, with the majority of the military and infiltration-trained personnel living at the two high-security buildings, highlighted on the map in blue. But we don’t have IDs on everyone yet. We especially don’t have IDs for anyone working outside the United States.”

A map appeared on one of the smaller monitors. The seer pointed at lit spots on a map of San Francisco, most of them blue and green.

“These are the structures where most of the seers appear to be housed,” he said, pointing out a number of the blue spots. “He has them broken out into various categories. The primary demarcations is the civilian/military split… meaning, the ordinary seers are generally housed together, and away from those with infiltration and/or military experience. He has some guards living with the civilians, presumably to keep them safe until they assimilate, and to make sure we aren’t actively infiltrating them. But most of the infiltrators are housed separately, under a different security designation.”

Charles gave the map a bare glance.

He would look at that in more detail later, when he didn’t have a live feed of his niece and her husband right in front of him.

He did look long enough to note the names and locations of the main buildings.

It looked like most of the core group lived at California Street.

That meant they now lived with Miri and Black.

Thinking about that, Charles tore his eyes off them a second time, scanning the list of security measures they’d already ID’d for the main building. He knew that list wouldn’t be exhaustive. Also, knowing his nephew-in-law, Black would add to that list now that he was back in town. The main security would come from the construct itself, of course.

That construct would be entirely useless against vampires, however.

Then again, Black seemed to think they were the enemy––not the bloodsucking monsters who’d tortured and abused him, stolen his people, abducted him, abducted his niece, betrayed him, lied to him again and again.

Charles’ leaf-green eyes focused back on the main monitor.

Leaning his hands on the back of the leather couch, he watched Black and his wife getting ready to enter the building, two of Black’s staff trailing behind them, both wearing concealed weapons, and pulling a trolley containing all of their luggage.

The limousine pulled away from the curb as Charles watched.

He frowned, his jaw clenching.

He found himself examining the other male’s living light, or aleimi, in more detail––Black’s in particular, although he’d already noted changes in Miriam’s light, as well.

Something was definitely different.

Some of that would have come from the bonding, which they’d clearly completed.

Charles fought to bite back his annoyance at that fact alone.

Delusional as it had been, he’d begun to hold out hope that bonding might never be completed, thanks to Black’s immaturity and his seemingly insatiable need to screw things up with his wife, right when they should have been consummating for real.

Charles had even begun to wonder if Black was sabotaging things between them intentionally, or if Miri was, or both of them together. Whatever the truth of it, he’d let himself believe Black might really fuck things up between them––as in, permanently fuck them up––before he managed to get Miri to fully agree to him.

It was a fool’s hope.

Charles had known it. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from entertaining it, though, however briefly.

Feeling his emotions roil around that end of things, he never lost his focus on the other male’s aleimic light.

The bonding being completed didn’t explain all of it.

It didn’t explain everything he was seeing.

Whatever was different in their light, in his light, Black’s specifically, couldn’t have occurred simply due to their being fully bonded to one another. Although, Charles supposed the bonding could have acted as a catalyst in some way, to other, more hidden changes. Perhaps Miri helped him grow beyond himself in this area, as well.

Charles slid into the Barrier, focusing his light more intently on Black’s.

Cautious, he moved closer to the other male, keeping his light totally still.

When he felt no reaction in the other to his presence, he moved closer.

Then closer.

Then closer still.

He slid carefully past the younger male’s shields, into the edges of the light that coiled around his body, and the aleimic structures that lived over Black’s head.

Charles didn’t know exactly how, or even precisely when, it changed.

He didn’t feel anything different, in terms of the quality of light. He felt no prior warning that he was about to get too close.

At some point he did get too close, though.

In retrospect, it was more like he’d stumbled over a tripwire in the jungle, like he or his people might have left for Black back in Vietnam or Guatemala. Only, instead of a click and an explosion, the difference crept up on him, coiling around him silently, seeping into his light.

The realization of it crept up just as gradually.

Until all at once––he knew.

He was no longer the hunter. He was the hunted.

The difference alarmed him so much, shocked him so much, he froze. He did so initially out of pure instinct. Looking back on it, however, it struck him that his heeding of that silent warning may have saved his life. He had no way of knowing how or why he believed that, either, but it felt true. Whatever that thing was… it could have killed him.

What happened after that defied logic––defied any experience he’d ever had with another seer inside the Barrier, in this world or the world he’d left behind.

A thick black wall of no-light rose up.

It slid up liquidly, towering high above him, a tidal wave of dark, dense presence.

Charles’ breath compressed in his chest.

He could only stare up at it, knowing nothing he did would allow him to move out of its way. That presence enveloped him before he could recover, before he could catalogue it in any way. Rather than the gradual, subtle tendrils he’d felt before, this thicker presence wrapped into him, invading him, slicing into him and pulling him apart like he was a frog pinned to a dissection board. It proceeded to systematically assess him, swimming into his light, filling every crevice and crack, leaving no part of him unexplored.

It examined his mind, the structure of his light, his thoughts.

It proceeded next to his matter, to his very atoms, the building blocks that made up his person.

It took him all in, inhaling him in a matter of seconds.

Charles stared into it, lost, bewildered––

Scared out of his goddamned fucking mind.

The presence was like a highly-intelligent machine. It felt like a machine mixed with some kind of feral animal, and possibly a mad scientist.

Whatever it was, he feared it might kill him just for irritating it.

He felt hints of Black in whatever it was, but a Black that had been turned inside out and remade with different materials, or perhaps bred with a whole new species. This version of Black felt like another being entirely, one nothing even remotely like the Black he’d known, especially back when he last had intimate access to his light––back when Black was even younger than he was now, and Charles first encountered him in the jungles of Vietnam.

Even so, it felt like him.

It fucking felt like him.

It contained flickers and flavors of that Black he’d known, despite its utterly alien and terrifying consciousness.

Whatever it was, whoever it was, fighting that thing was out of the question.

Resisting it in any way was out of the question.

Charles was powerless under it, and he knew it instantly, without having a single fact or conscious awareness to support that knowing. He knew it the instant that, that… thing that wasn’t really Black, yet somehow was Black… actually touched him.

He could only submit.

He could only hope he didn’t piss it off.

There was no time to even to call for help from his military infiltrators. There was barely time to realize what was happening to him. That abyss-like presence completed its assessment, contemplated what it found.

There was a moment of silence, a tilting jerk––

Then, whatever it was, it was through with Charles, too.

That teeming wall of black slammed into him.

It felt like a sledgehammer to his body and light.

Charles was forced out of the other seer’s light––out of the Barrier––before he realized what was coming, before he had any idea of what was about to hit him. He wasn’t pushed out so much as shoved, hard, by a hand made of cement and opaque shadow. It felt like being tossed casually off a cliff. He didn’t have time to brace himself, to even try to break his own fall.

In a split second, every hint of the other’s presence vanished.

Miri’s presence vanished, too.

Charles blinked, his eyes struggling to focus.

He found himself panting, sweating, fighting to breathe, his heart hammering in his chest as he gripped the back of the leather couch. He didn’t realize how far he’d been pulled out of his body by that thing until he found himself back inside it. He couldn’t breathe. He seemed to have forgotten how to breathe, to work his jaw, his hands, his body.

He hadn’t been knocked out of the Barrier so completely since he was an adolescent.

Maybe not since he was a child.

His mouth tasted coppery, like… blood.

He was tasting his own blood.

“Sir?” The lab tech stared at him, alarm in his silvery-gray eyes as he rose swiftly to his feet. “Sir! Gaos! What happened? Are you all right?”

The male seer was already moving towards him, but Charles turned away, straightening with an effort as he fought to catch his breath. He waved the other male off as he pulled a handkerchief out of the pocket of his suit jacket, unfolding it with a snap of his wrist.

Fighting embarrassment, anger, fear, a confused disbelief… he glanced at the mirror on the wall across from the main monitor.

His reflection looked like something from a horror film.

Blood ran freely from his nose and ears, staining the collar of the white shirt he wore.

He hadn’t imagined it.

He’d been tasting his own blood.

Wiping his nose and mouth with the handkerchief from his breast pocket, he turned to his ears next, staring at his reflection in the mirror as he cleaned himself up as best he could. He still found himself caught somewhere between competing reactions of disbelief, anger, shock.

“What happened?” the other seer asked again.

Charles’ jaw hardened. He finished wiping his left ear before he glanced at the tech.

“Never mind.”

He turned back towards the main monitor, still sniffling blood through his nose, still swallowing blood in the back of his throat.

The images of Miri and Black were gone.

His niece and her husband had vanished inside the mirrored windows of the luxury business and residential complex. The crowd of reporters and onlookers were already dispersing from the front of the building, most of them simply walking down the street, either to continue their days, or to return to their media outlet offices downtown.

Charles watched them go, his jaw hardening as he clutched the blood-soaked handkerchief in one hand, his knuckles white.

He needed to go talk to his infiltrators.

He needed to talk to his infiltrators right fucking now.

* * *

CHARLES SQUINTED, LEANING over the back of an office chair occupied by a female seer with dyed, wheat-blond hair done up in tight braids. Peering over her shoulder, he read the summary on her monitor of the first few jumps her team had completed.

Nothing. They hadn’t learned a damned thing.

Even Jalisa, the blond seer in front of him, his jump squadron lead who boasted one of the most impressive sight-ranks on his team, couldn’t see past that wall.

Like most of the female seers now working for him, Jalisa was new to this version of Earth. She’d arrived here when the portal doors opened, less than a year earlier.

Charles couldn’t help but be relieved the female problem had been solved for his people on New Earth, in addition to the low-numbers-in-general problem seers had suffered from since he’d arrived here. He knew every male seer from his original team was more than a little relieved, as well. All of them, pretty much without exception, had been indulging with their newly-arrived sisters as much as they possibly could.

Many hadn’t had sex with a female seer in decades.

For a few, it had been more than one hundred years.

There’d been a handful of fights, of course, along with a number of crushes and fixations. Some of that was still going on, with the most recent exploding in the infiltration barracks just that afternoon. There really was no shortage of females at this point, but the scarcity mentality was proving tough to shake, particularly in some of the younger males.

Since more female seers came through those doors than male, Charles hoped things would calm down relatively soon.

Part of the issue was that normal sex and breeding habits had been disrupted on this version of Earth since he’d arrived here. A fair-few male seers explicitly wanted not just sexual partners, but mates––and children.

Many felt they’d been cheated of such things for too long already.

Others felt it was their duty to propagate the race.

Still, the sudden influx of females was a damned distraction, truthfully. Charles hoped things would return to the usual levels of chaos and conflict that existed in seer sexual culture soon, hopefully within the next few months. In order for that to happen, the males would need to stop feeling like they needed to make up for lost time.

Charles suspected the psychology was more the issue than the sex itself.

Most of those males had resigned themselves to the likelihood they’d never have another female seer for a partner––or have biological children. While most had relationships with other male seers, in addition to female and male humans, Charles knew the inability to have children would have bothered a lot of them.

He’d had a hard enough time keeping them away from Miri.

Once they found out she was biologically compatible with full-blooded seer males, she became a lot more interesting to a lot of them.

Luckily, after Solonik––and particularly, after what Black did to Ian––most of the male seers seemed to get the message that attempting to poach Miriam from Black wouldn’t end well for them. Charles made it clear he wouldn’t support such a move, either. Although he was loathe to acknowledge Black and Miri’s bond, Charles promised his niece, his now-deceased brother, and himself that he wouldn’t get in the way of Miri and any partner she chose.

The promise to his brother, in particular, was one he couldn’t make himself break.

As long as she chose her partner freely, he was off-limits.

Charles had more than one occasion to regret that particular vow, but so far, he’d managed to keep it.

Until recently, he’d still worried someone might get past him and Black to get to Miri. After all, it happened once already, and although Solonik wasn’t exactly a normal seer, it wasn’t inconceivable it could happen again.

Now, his male seers had other distractions.

Of course, the seer females who came through those doors were useful for more than simply their hirik pouches and their ability to have seer babies. A hell of a lot of them had worked in the West, and many were highly-trained infiltrators.

Jalisa was now the highest ranked seer he had.

Well… the highest ranked one currently in his rotation.

Jalisa gave him a sideways look.

She must have heard that.

From her expression, she’d caught some of his thoughts, at least.

She looked away at once, but soon after, feeling his eyes on her profile and the back of her head, she glanced up a second time, her dark, blood-orange eyes meeting his. Her expression and her craned neck pulled at the Nazi scar on her face, the same diagonal scar he’d seen on the faces of a lot of seers from Old Earth.

Hers was thick enough to confuse the lines of otherwise striking features, making them all look just slightly askew, and out of alignment with one another, right at the point where the white line bisected her face. The scar appeared to slightly drag down the lines of her cheek and eye on that side as well, along with the tilt of her full lips.

“You’re thinking about bringing him back for this,” she observed. “Solonik.”

Charles frowned, glancing down at her.

She’d heard more than he realized.

She also knew a surprising amount about their operations here.

He honestly couldn’t decide if he was annoyed or impressed.

He might need to bring her further into the upper echelons of his leadership team, sooner rather than later. He’d planned to do so anyway, based on her working sight rank alone, but he might have to speed up the security checks his team had been surreptitiously conducting on her since she first appeared through those doors.

“I’m thinking we need every resource we have,” he said, studying those blood-orange eyes. Exhaling then, he muttered under his breath, “…Even the crazy, intractable, and utterly unpredictable ones.”

Jalisa nodded, her expression carefully neutral.

“What about the new seer?” she said, her voice neutral. “The female from Black’s camp? Raven? I hear her sight rank is also high.”

Charles frowned. After thinking for a few seconds, he shook his head.

“Not yet,” he said. “Solonik might be crazy, but he’s damned loyal. I haven’t finished vetting her yet. For all I know, Black sent her here.”

Jalisa nodded, her expression unmoving.

Charles knew her sight rank was high enough that he likely wouldn’t know her thoughts unless she wished it, not without the aid of the construct and probably a few of his higher-ranked infiltrators. That knowledge made the look on her face essentially meaningless, as was the silence he felt on her living light.

“What about your niece?” the female seer said, her voice as neutral as her face. “With Solonik, I mean.”

Charles scowled.

Rather than answer her question––either the one she spoke aloud, or the one implied under it––he nodded towards the team on jump seats in front of them.

“What are they doing?” he said. “They’re not on the Black thing too, are they?”

Twelve seers lay in rows on modified recliners, eyes closed, heads, chests and arms hooked up with electrodes. Those electrodes should be monitoring their vitals, and also connecting the individual team members to one another, as well as providing a partial feed into the rudimentary recording devices Charles’s team cobbled together from tech they were working on replicating from Old Earth.

Jalisa’s eyes flickered to the rows of infiltrators.

“No. They’re still with the Purists.” She looked up and back at him. “Do you want me to pull them off that? Get them to help out with the mapping of Black’s light?”

“No.” Charles shook his head, adamant. “No, we go forward with our plans. If I have to put a bullet in Black’s brain myself––or,” he muttered darkly. “More likely, a collar around his neck––I won’t let him interfere with the work we’re doing here.”

Jalisa hesitated. In the end, she only nodded.

“I have a connection to Kalri now,” she offered. “If you want to talk to him.”

Charles nodded towards the monitor.

“Please. Put it on the screen.”

She hit in a few keys, using the trackpad.

The face of an unusually European-looking seer appeared, wearing dark blue contact lenses. For a seer, his hair was cut short, more in the style of the humans around which he currently worked. He’d also dyed his hair blond, but not that unusual, near-silver shade of Jalisa’s braids; instead, his looked almost brown, and utterly nondescript.

The end result was shockingly close to the appearance of a Western human––a handsome, if completely unremarkable human male.

Granted, Charles could feel what he was. Any seer would feel it, providing they could see past his shields. Without looking from his light, however, Charles would have been fooled, even with the strange flatness of the seer’s artificially-colored eyes.

Of course, here, on this version of Earth, no one would know how unusual it was, to see a seer with such coloring and features. Humans here didn’t know about seers at all. Yet Kalri’s appearance still constituted a distinct advantage, especially in the southeastern United States and Texas, where he was currently posted.

“I can’t talk for long,” the blond seer said, grim-faced.

He looked over his shoulder, at the vast conference auditorium visible on Jalisa’s monitor. Glancing around for possible witnesses, he switched to Prexci, the seer tongue.

“…It’ll be starting again soon,” Kalri added, when he saw no one within earshot. “I’m the second speaker after the break.”

“How is it going?” Charles said. “Progress report.”

Kalri flinched. Until then, Charles hadn’t realized the visuals only went one way. Clearly, Kalri hadn’t known he was there.

The blond seer recovered quickly, nodding once, seer fashion.

It was a nod that verged on being a salute.

“Of course, sir,” he said politely, still speaking his native tongue. “We’re continuing to solidify and grow the group. The ideology’s still a little amorphous, but that’s mostly our fault, as we’re still on a bit of a learning curve here. We’re doing everything we can to nail it down, while still maintaining some flexibility.”

Glancing behind him, again looking for witnesses, he added,

“I’ve got most of our non-public-facing people working on construct maintenance and manipulation. That’s partly to accommodate the larger crowds, but also to ratchet up the tension, infusing more fear and violence, as well as more urgency and paranoia. I want to wean the team off pushing individual humans. Really, I’d like humans to take over recruitment of other humans. I’d prefer to relegate pushes to the leadership team only. I am therefore telling my team to adjust the construct and/or the rhetoric first… to fall back on pushes and overt light manipulation only if the other tactics aren’t working. I assumed you’d want the ability to manage most of these cells remotely, once we get them up and fully operational––”

“You would be correct in that,” Charles said.

Kalri gave another of those formal nods.

“Very good, sir. For the same reason, I have those of us who are public-facing focused on shaping the discourse and ideology as a whole, and creating an atmosphere that is more religious in nature and fervor. The hope is, more leaders will arise organically from the human ranks, once they are more fully radicalized within the ideology itself. If we keep their overall organization hierarchical in nature, the construct should adhere to that naturally.”

Charles nodded, lips pursed.

“A sound approach,” he said. “Have you begun introducing more information about vampires yet? What they are? How many there might be? Their agenda?”

Kalri nodded, again in the form of a near-salute.

“We have, sir,” he said. “We’ve floated a few test balloons during this conference alone. Conspiracy theories about ‘hybrid’ humans being built in government labs, mainly. We’ve got a few different versions, with one calling them a form of genetic ‘super-soldier’ being manipulated by outside governments. Another calls them the product of Satanic rituals being conducted by members of a global shadow government elite. We have a third set of stories that claims they’re aliens from outer space––”

Charles grunted, clicking under his breath.

“Which is sticking the best?” he said.

“Right now?” Kalri appeared to be thinking, or perhaps consulting data with his light. “Strangely, they seem to work best in concert. They tend to reinforce each other, sir,” he added after a pause. “The religious overtones work best for the original Purists, since that’s a large part of their rhetoric already… but it doesn’t explain the numbers as well as the other two. They tend to merge the three things into an ideology of its own, which works well for our purposes.”

The blond seer added,

“We figure as long as it channels their fears and aggression in the directions we want, let them come up with as much of the specific mythology as possible. It’s likely to stick better that way. Anyway, like I said, most of us down here are still learning about the human population on this version of Earth. We’d probably just screw it up if we got too rigid or controlling at this stage. We can nail it down later, once they’ve given it their own flavor.”

Charles nodded, thinking.

“Let me get back to you on that,” he said after a pause. “I’ll see if I can get some of our people up here working on narratives that could help. They know the humans in this world better. Maybe we can come up with some ‘evidence’ you could use, too… maybe get the President hinting about such things in his next major media appearance.”

“Thank you, sir,” Kalri said, exhaling in obvious relief. “That would be fantastic.”

The blond seer’s gratitude startled Charles somewhat.

The sincerity Charles heard there, the willingness to accept help without defensiveness, arrogance or resentment not only surprised him, it impressed him.

“And what about military recruitment?” Charles said. “Where are we with that?”

Kalri answered without hesitation.

“A lot of interest at the lower levels,” he said. “Military targeting has been a priority, sir. We’re currently looking at some bigger fish to bring over now.”

“They need to be willing to follow orders,” Charles warned. “At all levels.”

Kalri nodded intently. “Yes, sir.”

“…That means we absolutely need some hard-core believers at mid-ranks and above,” Charles added. “I’d like at least one general, preferably more, and preferably at least one who is high-profile, and respected enough that his people will follow him willingly. If the military doesn’t fall in line after the President declares himself a Purist, this will be all for nothing. The vampires will definitely counter-attack if they get wind of what we’re doing.”

Pausing, he added,

“We need them. Do you understand me, Kalri? I don’t want to make a move without the military in hand. We can’t rely on the President’s private security forces alone. C.I.A. and federal law enforcement won’t be enough, either. We absolutely need military support.”

“Understood, sir. Completely.”

Relaxing somewhat at the look in the other’s eyes, Charles nodded.

“Good,” he said. “Is there anything else you need from us?”

Kalri pursed his lips, thinking.

Watching him think, Charles relaxed still more.

He liked this seer.

Not only did he not resent an adjustment to his strategy, he didn’t blow off any offer of help. Moreover, he clearly grasped the larger strategy of what they were doing here.

Charles would be keeping the young infiltrator in mind for future postings.

“What about a meeting, sir?” Kalri said, breaking Charles out of his thoughts. “I know the President isn’t coming out publicly, not yet, but what if we arranged a meeting between him and a few generals? Maybe a few admirals, as well. We now have a list compiled of those who might be open to influence. The President is a war hero, sir. His word would go a long way with these people. He’s very popular in all of the branches.”

Charles frowned, turning this over.

“It’s a good idea,” he said. “But I don’t think a group meeting, given the likely press coverage and the questions it would raise––”

“Agreed,” Kalri said at once. “Private, one-on-one meetings would be preferable. And preferably outside D.C. Maybe he could come down here for a rally? Something that would provide a distraction, as well as an excuse for his being here? We can fly in those who are stationed in other areas.”

Charles found himself nodding slowly.

Again, he couldn’t help but be impressed by this young seer.

“I like it,” he said. “But not a rally. We need a bigger distraction than that. Arrange for a riot… a big one. We need to start scaling up the violence anyway. I want the rest of the country to start to worry about what’s happening down there. The precipitating event is up to you. As long as it’s something that will enflame more fear of outsiders and agitators. And, of course, vampires,” he added curtly.

Still thinking, he drummed his fingers on the back of Jalisa’s chair.

“We’ll send the President down to ‘calm things down,’” he said next. “We could use the distraction away from D.C. right now, anyway. We have a number of institutional and legislative changes we’d like to push through to lay the groundwork for stage two. That would be easier if eyes were focused elsewhere. If the incident got enough media coverage, we could likely speed things up significantly on that front…”

Still thinking, Charles added,

“Send out teams to capture a few more vampires––males, preferably, but either sex is fine, as long as they look like adults. I’d rather not use those we have in the labs up here. Get them front and center in media footage for the riot itself. Better yet, get them to kill a few reporters… or someone else relatively high-profile. Memories are short. The incident in Louisiana is almost six months old now. Let’s remind them what a vampire kill looks like. Try to do it in a way that won’t allow them to dismiss it as special effects or doctored footage. We’re not ready to have the President come out publicly against them either, but the more groundwork we lay, the easier it will be later.”

“Yes, sir.” A faint humor reached Kalri’s voice. “We can do that. Timeframe?”

“As soon as possible,” Charles said at once. “Just let us know when you’ve got everything set up, and we’ll take care of everything on this end.”

Behind the blond-haired seer, the doors opened at the top of the auditorium steps.

Humans began filing in, filling the auditorium with their murmurs as they flowed down the aisles. Within seconds, some began passing by where Kalri stood, close enough that he was glancing over his shoulder, distracted by their nearness.

“All right,” Charles said. “Clearly you must go.”

Kalri switched to English, his words colored with a distinctly Southern accent. “I’m afraid I must, sir. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.”

Charles nodded, once. “Very good work you are doing, brother. Love to you.”

The seer looked over, flushing in obvious pleasure.

“Thank you, sir––”

“Pull this off, and I’ll want you to join me here in Washington,” Charles added, his voice holding a denser pulse of light. “Excellent work. I mean it, brother. I am most impressed.”

The seer’s smile crept out wider. “Thank you, sir––”

Someone grabbed his shoulder, and the blond seer turned, looking into the face of a flushed, red-faced man wearing a brown suit and a cowboy hat. The auditorium was filling up fast, and growing noisy as people filed in, now crowding Kalri where he stood in the aisle towards the back.

Many of them were carrying signs, and wearing T-shirts with Purist slogans.

“Sorry, sir,” Kalri said. “I guess I’d better get back to it.”

Charles waved him off.

“Go. We’ll talk again soon.” He raised his voice when the seer got grabbed again by an enthusiastic supporter as they passed, hearing a cheer go up in the nearby crowd as more of those passing by recognized him. “Good luck today.”

The seer smiled, nodding. “Thank you––”

A whole group of young men shouted then, seeing Kalri standing there.

The screen went dark.

Charles straightened, still gripping the back of Jalisa’s swivel chair.

It struck Charles to check the seer’s online presence, now that he was considering him for a national role. He remembered now, hearing that Kalri and a few others had garnered quite a following on several social media platforms.

Kalri, in particular, was popular with young human males. It was partly how he’d been invited to this event. Unlike many of the others, he likely would have been invited even without seers manipulating things behind the scenes.

“He’s good,” Jalisa said, agreeing with his thoughts. “I think you’re right to bring him here. Maybe he could even run for office.”

Charles nodded, thinking about that, too.

It wasn’t a bad idea.

Maybe Kalri could even replace Regent.

Before any of that, however, Charles needed to deal with Black.

He needed to deal with Black so he didn’t fuck everything up once Charles started rolling things out for real.

4

About Nick

“ALL RIGHT.” BLACK glanced around the conference table, his expression hard. His voice was still lower than usual, a half-growl as he assessed the faces of his team. “Anything else I need to know about these fanatics? Who’s their leader? Is it this blond seer you were just telling me about? Kalri?”

Yarli glanced at Manny, who pursed his lips.

Sighing a bit, she returned her dark eyes to Black.

“He goes by Jack Ranger among the humans,” she said, clicking under her breath in irritation. “And yes, he’s a problem. He’s clearly one of their most popular media personalities. He incites a lot of violence and fear among the humans through his in-person speaking appearances, television and webcast interviews, and online articles. He’s got a kind of cult following at this point. He’s definitely brought more attention to the movement on the national stage. His main focus is still in the South, though.”

Shrugging gracefully with a hand, she glanced at me before adding,

“Even with all of that, I’m not sure you could call him their leader. The seers assigned to this Purist thing seem to be giving most of the actual leadership roles to humans. You could argue he’s becoming the face of the movement in many respects, though.”

Black grunted, glancing at me.

“That is the leader, Yarli,” he said, adjusting his back in the leather chair. “Regardless of who they name President of Purity on their masthead, the King of Cleanliness… whatever… if he’s the face of the movement, the one the masses flock to––that’s the leader.”

Yarli glanced at me, arching an eyebrow. I didn’t hear anything in my mind, but clearly, she wanted to know if I agreed with Black.

I nodded, once.

I did agree with him.

Exhaling, Yarli frowned, then returned her gaze to Black.

“If you are right,” she said. “Then he already has significant power. We had thought perhaps he would move out of the limelight once he had the humans better organized and more aligned in their ideology.”

Black clicked softly, shaking his head.

“Charles would never allow that. Not if this Kalri is as persuasive and charismatic as you say. That fucker passes. Hell, he looks more human than a lot of humans. Charles would never waste a resource like that. And Charles doesn’t trust humans. He would one hundred percent prefer having a seer in charge, if he thought he could do it without raising suspicion.”

Yarli pursed her lips, glancing at Jem and Manny, but I could see from her eyes that she was turning over Black’s words.

I could also see from Jem’s face that he agreed with Black.

Glancing at the blond seer’s image on the monitor over the table, Yarli scowled.

“That makes sense,” she admitted. “Truthfully, it took us a while to realize he was a seer. Charles’ people have his light heavily shielded, and he just looks so damned human, as you say. One of our refugees recognized him from Old Earth, though. She knew him from a prison camp there, and saw one of his speeches on a webcast. Luckily, she gave the intel to our team directly, and didn’t assume we already knew who and what he was.”

Black nodded, frowning.

I saw him glance at me, then back around at the rest of the group.

“He’ll move soon,” he said, blunt. “Charles.”

He gave me another fleeting glance, scowling.

“…He’s racing the clock now. He’ll want all of this in motion before the vampires can organize a real counter-offensive. Clearly, he intends to use these humans as shields. I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns this into a full-blown political party soon. He’ll likely want to have his people in power at all levels. This is one way to keep the humans in line. It’s also one that works well with constructs.”

Everyone around the table, especially the seers, exchanged hard looks.

“Yeah,” Jem said grimly, after a pause. “We’re somewhat familiar with the strategy. Those of us who fought under the Bridge are, at least.”

Black nodded.

“Should we send someone there?” Dalejem asked, glancing between me and Black. “We were waiting for the two of you to return to ask. It seems like we’re at a point now where we might want to risk it.”

Black exhaled. He gazed up at the main monitor, where some kind of talk or speech was going on at a huge auditorium somewhere in Texas.

After another beat, Black nodded slowly.

“Yes,” he said. “We need to send a team. We need more people in D.C., too.”

Frowning, he glanced around at faces, his voice lowering back to a growl.

“I want every candidate vetted through me,” he said. “They all need to know how dangerous this is. You need them to understand… there’s a good chance Charles is looking for me to seed people in his group, and he’ll have the advantage of the construct there. I think this is big enough that he’ll kill anyone he finds, anyone he thinks he can’t convert. At the very least, they could end up in a hole somewhere, and it might be a while before we can find them, or negotiate their release.”

Waiting a beat, he added,

“They need to be damned good at shielding, and they need to understand the risk they’re taking. And we should be looking at ways to tie them in to the construct here. Any thoughts on that from the senior infiltrators would be welcome.”

There was a silence after his words.

Yarli nodded then, “Understood, boss. I have some ideas. As for the candidates, I’ll pull a list together and bring it to you.”

“By tomorrow morning,” Black said, his voice warning.

Yarli nodded, giving him an odd hand-gesture that felt like another form of salute.

The silence deepened as we all looked back at the crowd in the monitor. With the sound turned down, all we saw were the faces of the crowd. I saw them waving hats and arms, red-faced, yelling at something the handsome blond man said at the podium.

A group stood around the rim of the auditorium, wearing black and red face masks. A number of them wore white triangles on their chests and arms.

We were all still staring at the screen when Jem spoke up, his voice a touch sharper.

“I think that’s all we need from you right now, lao ban, in relation to the Charles problem,” he said, drawing all of our eyes back to him. “Can we talk about the other thing now?”

Black turned, his gold eyes swiveling in the other male’s direction.

“What other thing?” he said.

I don’t know if Jem saw it, or heard it, but I picked up the flicker of warning in Black’s gaze. I also felt that warning in relation to me, although Black didn’t look at me.

Then again, he didn’t need to.

I knew why he was leery of talking about Nick while I was there.

If Jem heard or felt either thing, he ignored it.

“The Nick Tanaka thing,” Jem said, his mouth hard.

Black glanced at me, and I quirked an eyebrow back at him.

Well? I sent. Are we going to talk about it? I paused. Or were you planning on finding an excuse to order me out of the room first, so you could talk about it openly?

Looking at me, Black clicked under his breath.

I saw the defeat there, though.

“All right,” Black said, facing the room. “Let’s talk about it.”

He focused on Jem.

“Well?” he grunted. “You seem like you have something to say, brother Dalejem. Are you going to regale us with your theories? Thoughts? Next steps?”

Jem glanced at me, frowning faintly before he focused back on Black. Crossing his arms in front of his chest, he subdued his voice, but I still heard the edge there.

“What’s the working theory now?” he said. “For you, Black. Is he dead?”

There was a silence.

Jem glanced around the table.

He avoided my eyes, but I felt the flinch as his gaze passed my seat.

“Well?” he said. “I know none of us want to talk about it, but I think it’s time to discuss what’s most likely, given how little we’ve found. There are really only four options that are logical, given the vampire’s silence.” Again looking at me, he gestured vaguely with a hand, his other arm wrapped around his chest. “He’s kidnapped by them, and being held for reasons unknown. They lost him somehow… which strikes me as rather unlikely. He’s dead, or…” He glanced again at me. “Or he’s a vampire.”

The silence deepened.

I felt my jaw harden. I did my best to keep it off my face, but I doubt I fooled anyone.

I didn’t fool Black, nor likely Jem himself.

I felt Black’s eyes on me, but I didn’t look over.

He didn’t let it go, though.

Miri? he sent, soft. You don’t have to be here for this.

He paused, still watching my face. His thoughts grew blunt.

He’s right, though, he added. We’re at that point. We need to discuss this with the team. They need to know what the lab guys figured out. They need to know what we know, especially if we’re putting them out in the field.

I gave him a sideways glance.

Seeing his gold eyes watching mine, cautious, I sighed.

I’m not leaving, Black, I sent, shaking my head perceptibly. But I agree. I don’t think Jem is going to be content with half-assed answers anyway. The last thing we need is him going after the lab guys. They have a right to know––

“Well?” Jem said.

Black and I both turned, looking at him.

Jem frowned. “Is that possible?” he said. “Could they have turned him?”

He glanced between me and Black, frowning, like he knew we were talking but not what we’d actually said. Raising his voice slightly, he added,

“That’s the mythology, right? That they start as human? Didn’t you tell me, lao ban, that they wanted to turn Miri? That they threatened to turn Cowboy? Isn’t that part of what that mess in New York was about?”

The silence around the table grew deafening.

I saw Angel frowning now though, exchanging looks with Cowboy. I felt the pain in her heart as Jem’s words sank in, as she let herself turn the idea over in her mind.

“There is research, correct?” Jem went on, undaunted.

I saw his jaw harden as he glanced around at the others, only to focus most of his intensity back on Black.

Looking at the green-eyed seer’s handsome face, I realized he was barely containing his fury. It confused me, since that fury didn’t seem to be aimed at me or Black, or at anyone around the table really.

I wondered who he was angry at.

Was it Charles? The vampires? Nick himself?

“Didn’t you obtain at least some of the data files from those government labs?” Jem pressed. “I am told none of us have access to those files… none but Black himself.” Jem’s gaze flattened on Black. “Well, brother? Is this true? And if it is, are you going to tell us what’s in them? Or is there some reason this information isn’t to be shared with the rest of us?”

Black frowned at him faintly.

I could feel off his light that he had a better idea than I did why Jem was acting the way he was. I could even feel Black had specific thoughts about Jem’s reasons. Whatever those reasons were, they seemed to bring up a conflicted set of emotions in Black himself.

Annoyance, yes… but also a fainter thread of sympathy.

Understanding, at least.

Exhaling some of the annoyance part of that, Black leaned back in his chair.

“We know a little more than you’ve been told,” he conceded. Giving Jem a harder look, he added, “But not as much as you seem to be insinuating, brother.”

He glanced at me, then around at the rest of the room.

“We were able to access most of the files that survived the fires in Louisiana. It wasn’t easy,” he went on, letting out a low grunt. “A fair bit was destroyed, but from what the lab guys here tell me, the records are surprisingly complete in terms of their conclusions, despite the missing case studies and samples.”

He glanced at Jem, then went on in a matter-of-fact voice.

“So here’s what we know so far,” he said. “…In terms of vampire reproduction. Vampires can’t just turn any old human they want. They can only turn those who have a compatibility with their venom.”

He glanced at me, then back at Jem.

“At the lab, they found four distinct genetic types the vampires can turn. Vampires seem to know this instinctively… which humans they can turn, and which ones they can’t. I don’t know if they fucking smell it on people, if it’s pheromones or what, but they know. They knew with Cowboy. We tested him, using the samples we took when we hired him. He came up positive as a possible conversion opportunity for two out of the four genetic types of vampire.”

Silence fell on the group.

Letting that silence hang for a beat, Black looked at Angel.

“You’re susceptible too, Ang,” he said. “For one of the vampire genetic types, at least.” He looked at Manny next. “You’re in the clear, Mañuelito. None of the vampire types were compatible with your blood.”

His eyes shifted down another chair.

“You’re in the clear too, Easton. Frank’s not. He’s compatible with three types. Magic, unfortunately, is compatible with all four. So is Dog. Devin is in the clear. Ace, you’re in the clear, too. So is Kiko.”

He looked down another chair.

“Dex, you’re susceptible to two of the genetic strains. Javier is, too.”

Staring around the table, Black frowned, his voice blunt.

“We have profiles on all of you. I intended to share them with the group after we got back here, now that our genetics team is pretty confident of their findings. In the meantime, I’ve been assigning some of our ops according to what I know of your risk factor.”

He gave Angel a pointed look, his mouth twisting into a harder scowl.

“…That includes the recent trip Miri and I took to find Nick.”

Angel quirked an eyebrow at him, then turned, exchanging looks with Cowboy. Despite her faintly pursed lips, I could see a kind of lightbulb going off as she realized why Black was telling her, and why he’d been so adamant that she not accompany us to Europe.

After a beat, her frown deepened all over again, though.

“What about Nick?” she said. “You had a blood sample for him, too, didn’t you?”

Black barely gave her a glance.

His eyes returned to the rest of the group as he leaned back in his chair, hard enough to make it squeak, and folded his arms.

“When I was imprisoned in those labs, I had a vampire tell me there was another way of turning humans into vampires,” he said. “He didn’t tell me what it was. He just said the venom was ‘one way’ to create new vampires… the only way ‘the humans’ knew about.”

Black paused, then lifted one hand from where it was crossed over his chest, gesturing smoothly in a rippling motion.

“…The vampire who told me that was named Puzzle,” he said. “He was young, and acted like a child in many ways, so I have no idea if his account was reliable. Still, he knew about sight restraint collars, and how they operated. He knew they came from tech Charles gave them. He also knew a fair bit about what the human scientists in that lab were up to, since they considered him relatively harmless for a vampire and spoke in front of him more candidly than they did with the others––”

“What were his exact words?” Kiko planted her arms on the table, leaning over to look at Black. “This vampire. Puzzle. What did he say to you exactly, boss?”

Black gave one of those eloquent seer shrugs.

Still, he was seer, so he could parrot back the exchange with Puzzle word for word.

It was strange to hear him do it, since his whole voice changed when he switched to Puzzle’s response, growing higher, and more childlike.

“Puzzle said, Vampire venom, of course. The humans try to make vampires here, Quentin. The government has been trying for the last few years, ever since they figured out we exist. Of course, their failure rate is pretty abysmal. But they’ve never had one of you in here before, so I don’t think they know what you are. Then, a little later in the conversation, he said: My name’s Puzzle. They use me for venom. Me and about a dozen others. I asked, Venom? You make venom? That’s how you make vampires? Puzzle nodded, then said, Well, that’s one way. The only way they know about. They extract it. They try to make a kind of genetic virus cocktail out of it.”

Black clicked out of that headspace, glancing at Kiko.

Raising an eyebrow, he gave her another eloquent shrug.

“Those were his exact words. He definitely implied venom was only one way vampires reproduce, that any other ways that might exist were unknown to humans. I never got him to answer me on what those were. Presumably, Charles doesn’t know, either. He was very interested when I mentioned Puzzle’s words on the subject, the one time Charles and I spoke of it. Although it’s possible that was simply an act and Charles didn’t wish to share that information with me.”

There was another silence.

I glanced around the table, watching everyone think about Black’s words.

“And you’re sure about Miri?” Jem said, drawing eyes back to him. “I thought their venom killed seers. But you said Brick seemed certain he could turn her. Why is that?”

“Vampire venom does kill seers,” Black said, exhaling as he combed his fingers through his hair. “There’s pretty much a 100% kill ratio for seers who are given an undiluted dose the size needed to turn a comparably-sized human into a vampire. I’m damned lucky they didn’t kill me in those labs.”

Black’s voice and jaw hardened.

“…And no, I’m not at all sure about Miri. We don’t have a control group for Miri, so I have no idea why Brick seemed so sure he could change her. It’s possible he has some extrasensory means of determining that, like he does with humans… but I have my doubts. The impression I got from Charles was that vampires didn’t know they couldn’t change seers, not until they’d killed a bunch of them trying. Whatever extrasensory ‘thing’ they have to determine which humans can be turned and which can’t, it doesn’t seem to work on seers.”

Black looked at me.

Briefly, I saw a faint worry crease his brow.

I sent him a pulse of warmth and saw his face relax, but only a little.

“According to the labs,” he went on, his expression sliding back to that flat look as he turned his attention to the rest of the group. “Humans who don’t respond favorably to the venom sometimes didn’t die. A fair-few recovered, after getting really sick. A few of those ended up with some brain damage… but most of the brain damage problems they encountered was when they tried to turn the ones they made into vamps back into humans again.”

Exhaling, he made another vague but somehow expression gesture with his hand.

“The test group of non-compatible humans had something like a 60/40 chance of living, when injected with venom by the scientists conducting the studies. The studies indicate that this was primarily a lab phenomenon, however. Usually it wasn’t an issue ‘in the wild,’ as they put it, since vampires generally didn’t try to turn those humans. They already knew they were ineligible. It was only when they separated the venom from particular vampires and tried it out on human test subjects that this occurred.”

Angel’s voice rose a second time from the other side of the table.

That time, her tone was significantly harder.

“And Nick?” she said, terse. “Was he in the yes camp? Or the no camp?”

Black frowned.

He glanced at me, then looked directly at Angel.

I couldn’t help noticing Jem was watching Black minutely too, waiting for his answer.

“Nick was in the ‘no’ camp,” he said, blunt. “Nick couldn’t turn. He was incompatible with all four genetic strains identified by the labs.”

There was a spate of low murmuring around the long table.

Angel stared back at him, frowning. She didn’t speak.

Jem didn’t either, and after a few seconds, the murmurs died down, too.

“Nick knew he wasn’t compatible,” Black added, when no one else broke the silence. “He was the only civilian human privy to those discussions, who was aware of the different genetic types required for humans and vampires to be compatible. The Colonel opted to bring him in, partly because of his military background, and his level of security clearance, which he’d gotten renewed through me when he joined my company. Even within the military, however, only the Colonel and a few others knew about any of this.”

Black’s eyes returned to Angel, his voice grim.

“But Nick knew he wasn’t eligible to be made into a vampire. He knew about the different ‘types’ of humans. He would have known he wasn’t a candidate for being turned.”

Frowning at the silence his words produced, Black looked about to say more, when Jem spoke up from the other side of the room.

“And these other methods of reproduction?” he said. “How do we know Nick wasn’t eligible for one of those?”

Black turned, meeting Jem’s gaze.

Then, looking at me, he exhaled again, his words close to an apology.

“Look, I know it’s tempting to go there,” he said. “I get that. We know there’s some chance of turning vampires back into humans again, so believing that Nick could have been turned has the appeal of hope. But the fact is, we have months of research out of Charles’ camp and out of those labs in Louisiana. Our techs have yet to find a single case of a vampire existing who didn’t fit into those genetic paradigms… and they’ve taken samples from literally thousands of vampires at this point. Most of those were not created in the labs under that warehouse in Louisiana. Most were made in the wild.”

Pausing to let his words sink in, Black made another graceful gesture with his hand.

“Becoming a vampire likely wouldn’t have a happy ending for Nick anyway,” he added, that apologetic note still in his voice. “In case any of you didn’t hear that part, a good portion of those who were turned from vampires back into humans ended up vegetables. I thought at first that was because they mentally couldn’t cope with the transition, after being vampires for so long. That definitely seemed to be true of Brick’s wife, Lila.”

Black gave me another fleeting glance, then clenched his jaw, looking back at the rest of the group.

“But even those who were newly turned in those labs were as likely to become vegetables from the process as not. They had a name for them at the prison where they held me. Zombies. That’s what they called the prisoners who went to the labs and were sent back to the joint. Cowboy could tell you more about that than me, since he witnessed it firsthand. He said generally they were transported out of there again quick. The rest of the inmates assumed they were sent to some kind of psychiatric facility, since they acted like they’d been lobotomized in a lot of cases. Some were also violent.”

Clenching his jaw, Black looked directly at me.

“No one wants that for Nick,” he said, his voice gruff. “No one.”

Looking at him, I swallowed, nodding perceptibly.

Glancing at Angel, I could see Black’s words hitting at her, too.

I knew he was right.

I knew it, but it still hurt my heart, maybe even some part of my soul, to hear it out loud.

For Nick, there was unlikely to be any kind of happy ending.

The more time that passed with him missing, the less likely it was.

I could practically feel that window closing, even now, as we all sat around the table, absorbing Black’s words. Unless we got word of him alive somewhere soon, that likelihood of him surviving would only continue to diminish. The few remaining scenarios––that he was being held prisoner by vampires, held for ransom by Charles, that he might have some strange form of amnesia that left him wandering around Thailand or some part of Europe––each became less and less plausible the longer Nick was gone.

I knew it.

So did Black.

I still couldn’t make myself accept it, though.

5

A Favor

“I WOULD REQUEST a favor from you, my king.”

Pausing, the vampire cleared his throat.

“…I ask it humbly. But with some insistence.”

Brick glanced up, frowning faintly from where he’d been watching a live-stream on a tablet set up on an antique oak desk. The monitor currently played live news coverage of a massive human political rally in Houston, Texas.

Refocusing from the blond male giving a speech on the monitor to the blond male standing in front of him, he pursed his lips in faint surprise, giving him a once-over once he saw his serious expression.

When the other male didn’t react to his stare, or say anything more, Brick nodded, once.

“Speak it.”

The vampire walked deeper into the room, his perfect, king-like face unmoving as he reached where the firelight touched his cheeks, forehead and nose on one side. He stood over the desk where Brick worked. Something in the formality of the pose brought memories flickering into the back of Brick’s mind.

Dorian had been a lord in the human world, before he’d been turned.

It was a strange thought now, one Brick didn’t dwell on often.

Yet, the tall, fine-featured vampire still carried some hint of that essence.

He carried it even when he swung a steel-edged skateboard at the head of one of his victims, or when he dressed like a young punk, or a young tech worker, or a stockbroker, or an assassin, or when he made himself totally nondescript.

It was something lingering in his genetics, perhaps.

Or perhaps one simply never shed that initial image of oneself, even when switching species… even after over a hundred years had passed.

“What can I do for you, my brother?” Brick said, leaning back in his chair.

Surveying the other vampire’s face, he folded his hands over his solar plexus, letting the swivel chair squeak as he rocked backwards, balancing with one foot propped on his knee and propped lightly against the edge of the desk. He surveyed the seriousness in those blood-red eyes with some curiosity.

It wasn’t like Dorian to hesitate––on anything.

Really, anything that got Dorian to speak aloud, in a normal voice, was an event.

“Clearly it is something you want very much,” Brick observed. “Speak it, beloved friend. You know there is little I would refuse you.”

Dorian glanced up from the fire.

His glass-like eyes still reflected those flames, making the normal scarlet of his irises even more vibrant than usual. His long, perfect jaw tensed slightly, right before he looked back at his king, meeting his stare without blinking.

“I would like you to grant me permission,” he said. “To train him.”

Brick’s eyebrows rose.

For a few seconds, the only sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock that stood against the wall by the heavy curtains covering the balcony doorway behind his desk.

When Brick spoke, his voice bordered on a warning.

“Train… him?” His lips quirked in feigned puzzlement. “Who is ‘him,’ pray tell?”

Dorian didn’t bother to answer that.

He looked back at the fire, that faint hardness to his face growing more pronounced.

There was another silence.

Then Dorian spoke into it, still staring through the flames.

“You are too busy to do it,” he said, his voice unerringly polite. “You, begging my forgiveness… are too lax with him. You are too fond of him to do it properly.”

Dorian paused, perhaps waiting for a rebuke.

Hearing none, he looked back, staring at Brick’s face. The lordly vampire’s expression reverted to its usual pose, growing as flat as stone.

“Lucia is worse than useless with him,” he continued. “She doesn’t restrain him at all. She is allowing him to form bad habits. She encourages them, by finding them amusing.”

Dorian’s lip curled visibly.

“…She is a pup with another pup,” he added, his voice cold. “She is too weak for him. Too young. She will get him killed. Or simply make him uncontrollable. He needs to be brought to heel. It should happen now. Before San Francisco.”

Dorian fell silent.

He stood there, motionless, clearly waiting for a response to his words.

Brick was frowning, now more in puzzlement than annoyance. Leaning his arms on the chair’s armrests, he steepled his fingers, studying his friend’s face.

“This is important to you?” he said.

Dorian’s jaw firmed.

“Yes,” he said only.

“Why?” Brick said, curiosity reaching his voice.

Dorian didn’t answer that, either.

He only stood there, an ethereal, marble-like statue with blood-red eyes.

“Are you refusing my request?” Dorian said.

Brick blinked.

The question hadn’t been rude.

It hadn’t contained even a whiff of passive-aggression.

Stripped entirely of emotion, it had been carefully polite, without subtext, without any gradation of insubordination. Still, the other’s obvious interest in this, his decision to come forward to ask Brick directly, to make an issue of it, to term it as a favor––all of it made Brick more than a little intrigued.

Dorian clearly didn’t intend to share his motivations with him, however… at least not without less gentle prompting from Brick himself. It was Dorian’s right not to share his inner workings, of course, especially since he was making it clear he would honor Brick’s decision either way. Brick was not the kind of leader who required everything be known, certainly not when loyalty to him remained steadfast.

Still, his silence definitely sparked Brick’s curiosity.

Brick’s lack of knowing the precise nature of Dorian’s pull to this task didn’t influence his final decision, however.

“No,” he said, making that decision as he looked up at his second’s face. “No, Dorian. I am not refusing you.”

Pausing, he added,

“You may train him, beloved brother.” Seeing the faint relaxation of the tightness around the other vampire’s mouth, Brick made his voice warning.

“You will not break him, Dorian… not in any way. You are not to break his mind, his body, his spirit. You will not break anything about him. Not permanently.”

Grunting slightly at his own words, Brick waved a hand gently.

“Really, I’d rather if he weren’t too terribly broken even temporarily,” he added in a mutter. “I agree with you about the need for this to happen prior to San Francisco. Yet we cannot put that trip off for much longer, either. So you have one month, brother. Do you hear me, Dorian? One month. And he must be in near-pristine condition when we are ready to travel. No visible marks.”

Brick met those red eyes, frowning faintly.

“Are those conditions understood, brother?”

Dorian’s expression remained as still as stone.

“One month is sufficient,” he said only.

“No breaking.” Brick scowled, shaking a finger at him. “I mean it, brother. I don’t want him dented in that way. You can test his true stress points once he’s grown into being one of us, if you still so desire it. Not now. Not when he is so young. And I want regular updates. We will discuss this daily, my beloved friend.”

“Thank you, my king.” Dorian bent in half, lowering his upper body and arm in a formal bow. “I appreciate this favor very much. Because of it, I am indebted to you even more than I was already.”

Brick watched him complete the motion.

He followed the tall vampire’s fingers as they trailed neatly along the surface of the hardwood floor.

The puzzlement never quite left him, however, even after his second turned to leave, walking out the door without a backwards glance.

* * *

“LEAVE. NOW.”

Naoko stiffened.

His eyes darted back and up from where he’d been shouldering on a tailored coat in front of an antique wooden wardrobe. He stared at the tall, empty-faced vampire with the white-blond hair standing in the doorway of his room.

Nick took in his complete lack of facial expression before glancing at Lucia.

The female vampire had been dressing next to him. She’d just finished wrapping a gauzy black shawl around her shoulders and over a dark green dress when Dorian spoke.

It was clear to Naoko, without knowing precisely how he knew, that the command issued from Brick’s second-in-command was aimed at her, not at him.

As if seeing that knowledge in his face, Dorian aimed his next words at him.

“You won’t be going out tonight,” he said.

The silence deepened, growing into a near-living presence.

Then Naoko broke it, letting out a disbelieving snort.

“The hell I won’t.”

The other vampire didn’t flinch.

After a faint pause, he stepped further into the room, until he stood exactly in the floor’s center, and squarely in the center of the antique carpet that covered half of Naoko’s floor. Dorian moved like a shadow––so quietly, Naoko barely saw the shift.

An uninvited shadow, Naoko noted.

“Since when do you give me orders?” Naoko said coldly. “Get the fuck out of my room, you dead-eyed weirdo––”

The vampire cut him off.

“––Since now.”

The vampire’s words verged on indifferent, despite their blunt delivery. He barely gave Naoko a glance. Swiveling his head, he stared at Lucia with those deep scarlet eyes.

“Go. Now. You are not to have any contact with him. Not until I give you permission. That will not be for at least a month.”

Naoko’s eyes widened more. “What in the ever-living fuck––”

“Silence.” That time, the older vampire turned, facing him directly.

Staring into his face, Dorian showed the barest hint of his fangs.

Something in his eyes, in the scarlet seething in those flat, lifeless irises made the younger vampire pause.

Not for very long, though.

“Get the fuck out of my room! Now!” Naoko hissed, showing his own fangs. “I didn’t invite you, and I sure as hell don’t need a goddamned babysitter. Tell Brick––”

“Brick has already given me permission to train you, young brother. Every second, with every word that comes out of your mouth, you do nothing but reinforce the urgency of that need.” The taller vampire’s eyes flickered coldly to Lucia. “Get out. Now. I will not say it again.”

Lucia’s already chalk-white skin went a shade paler.

The blond vampire watched, his eyes as lifeless as a shark’s, as she jerked into motion, giving the tall male a wide berth, clutching the gauzy black shawl to her chest as she walked hastily for the door. Her high heels clicked on the hardwood floor once she left the rug, sounding like the claws of a small dog. She glanced over her shoulder at Naoko briefly, her clear, glasslike eyes holding a visible fear.

He honestly couldn’t tell if it was fear for herself, or fear for him.

He truly didn’t give a shit.

She hadn’t even yet reached the door when he moved.

Turning on his heel––he leapt.

He threw his whole weight forward, aiming his body at the nearest way out, crashing through the window of his four-story apartment.

His face and hands smashed through glass––then abruptly met the night air. He propelled his arms and legs harder, trying to get further from the building before he reached the ground.

His only chance was surprise.

Surprise, and a flat-out sprint to get out of the other vampire’s visual range. Unlike a human, he wouldn’t have a scent the vampire could easily track.

He feet hadn’t even kissed the pavement, when hands grasped his biceps roughly, like steel talons. They wound around the muscle so tightly, dug in so mercilessly, they held the flexed tendons in place, forcing Naoko to come down simultaneously with the heavier vampire.

Naoko’s brief elation twisted into fury.

Logic left his attempt to flee.

He twisted in midair, kicking out at the other vampire, using his weight to try and propel him around into a flip in midair.

He wanted to throw Dorian over his head.

He managed it halfway by the time they reached the cobblestones below––meaning, he didn’t fully flip him, but he shifted the taller vampire’s weight over his head, using the other’s greater weight against him. He managed to turn it into a tumble mid-air, fast enough and hard enough that he got Dorian to loosen his grasp on his arms before impact.

For the same reason, when they hit, Nick hit first.

Crashing into the uneven surface on his back fractions of a second before Dorian, Naoko launched himself upwards with the leverage the instant he felt those fingers loosen.

In the process, he managed to force the taller vampire into that flip, following it with a double-booted kick over his head, smack in the center of the vampire’s broad chest. Naoko felt more than saw the taller, heavier vampire sail over the road before plowing his face into the street.

Naoko didn’t wait.

Rippling his body in a swift leap up to land on both feet, he heard an audible gasp from a pedestrian who’d been approaching, likely assuming both of them badly hurt. Naoko shoved past the human, flinging him aside as though he were a paper target.

He broke into a run, darting down the dark street at a full sprint.

Again, he didn’t make it far.

A dense weight slammed into him from behind, so swiftly and unexpectedly, Naoko didn’t stumble––he plowed, head first, into the road. Pain exploded in his cheekbone and jaw, followed by a hard thunk to his forehead.

Rather than stunning him, it infuriated him.

He barely had time to recognize what happened to him––again, those steel-like hands gripped his biceps like a pair of vices, dragging him to his feet, then yanking him roughly back around to face the opposite direction.

Hissing, Naoko threw his head back in a head-butt, felt the solid impact as his skull hit the vampire’s jaw.

Unlike before, the fingers on his arms didn’t loosen.

The other vampire didn’t make so much as a sound.

It struck Naoko that the vampire hadn’t made a sound since he’d first crashed through that window. If he had, Naoko hadn’t heard it––not even with his vampire hearing.

There was a bare breath where the fingers of one hand released his arm.

Naoko swung the arm, the instant it was free––

––and right as a cold arm cinched his throat.

The arm yanked him back, forcing the length of Naoko’s body against a rock-hard form. Naoko hissed up at him, spat at him, tried to sink his teeth into the coat-covered arm trapping him to the vampire’s chest. Writhing in the other’s grasp, he didn’t stop fighting the whole way back down the street towards their apartment building.

The vampire dragged him, silent, impervious, forcing him forward, oblivious to his swinging fist, his booted kicks, his hissed threats. Naoko managed to land a good number of those kicks and hits, but he never felt the other’s hold on him waver.

Seeing the front door of their apartment building approaching, fury exploded in his chest. Letting out a half-scream of rage, he threw his whole weight backwards, jumping off the sidewalk with both feet and throwing himself into the other vampire with his whole body.

That time, he managed to catch him off-guard enough that Dorian’s hold on his other arm loosened. Naoko didn’t bother to try and hit him. He twisted instead, using the added leverage to try and free his head and neck.

He got halfway out of the hold––

Then those steel-like fingers clamped around his throat.

Before Naoko knew what happened, his back crashed into the brick wall making up the front of the building. He hit so hard that time, he felt the bricks in that wall crack and break behind his spine. He let out an involuntary whimper, hanging briefly limp from the other’s hand, his feet and legs dangling over the sidewalk.

When he looked down, Dorian was staring up at him, fangs fully exposed, his face covered in blood and twisted in a furious scowl. His blond hair was matted with blood. He was snarling, from deep in his chest, the sound vibrating up the back of his throat.

He held Naoko up off the street, his arm in a long, perfect, diagonal line.

“Move, and I will snap your neck,” he hissed.

Naoko blinked.

Then his rage rose.

It flooded his mind, his body, every part of his being in a hot, uncontrollable wave.

Without a single thought in his head, he punched the blond vampire in the face, twisting his waist, putting his whole weight behind it.

He felt his knuckles connect, felt a gleeful, cold feeling of vindication when the other’s fingers briefly loosened––

Then everything went dark.

6

Trainee

NAOKO OPENED HIS eyes.

He didn’t awaken gradually.

He came fully, completely, entirely awake.

Memory flooded his mind.

Images arose within that linear narrative––a long, tensed arm encased in a black coat, a snarling, bloody face, white-blond hair matted with blood, cold, chalk-white fingers gripping his throat like metal.

Adrenaline, or some vampire equivalent, flooded his blood, his very mind. Naoko’s palms found the hard surface where he lay, ready to shove himself up from where he lay on his chest and belly, to bring his body back vertical, back to a fighting, running, maneuvering pose.

He pressed down, throwing his weight up and back––

And let out an involuntary sound of shock.

Something pinned him to the hard floor.

Naoko stopped, briefly, staring around at the wooden planks.

He lifted his head as far as he could manage, then tried to crane it around, to look at his shoulders and back.

He glimpsed something vertical, something metal, that protruded higher than his own skin. He stared at it, then lowered his head back to stare around at the floor. He assessed his position, his body, the limits of movement.

His legs were free. His arms were free.

Whatever it was, it impaled him to the floor by his body alone. The whole thing was metal. Metal. Sharp. Maybe three inches wide, only a few millimeters thick.

Likely a sword.

Whatever it was, it went through his chest, piercing his breastplate, holding him to the floor.

He should be able to pull it out.

Why couldn’t he pull himself out of the floor?

He was stronger than the wood planks. He’d glimpsed the hilt of it, if it really was a sword. He could see and feel it, as well as the blade all the way through his body. The hilt should give him the leverage to pull it straight out.

“I bent it,” a voice said from above.

Naoko looked up, turning his head to stare at the opposite side of the room, his palms still pressed to the floor on either side of his chest.

He stared up at the vampire sitting there, folded into an antique couch.

The couch was Victorian in style, with an elaborate back made of cherry wood, all carved in roses and the faces of cherubs. The green upholstery of the couch contrasted with the vampire’s white-blond hair, and the dark blue pants and white dress shirt he wore.

Despite his modern clothes, Dorian looked perfectly suited to the couch.

He also appeared to know how to sit in it semi-comfortably, something Naoko had yet to figure out, even though the damned thing was in his room when he moved in here.

Naoko turned over the other vampire’s words.

“You bent it?” he said warily. “The sword?”

Dorian nodded.

Naoko couldn’t help noticing with some satisfaction that the other male’s face still held evidence of their fight. The bruises had mostly faded, but cuts were still closing on his cheek, at the bridge of his nose, on his chin, and near his hairline.

Naoko’s mind returned to the problem of the sword.

If the metal was bent where it pierced the wood, he should still be able to break out.

He would just wait until the vampire left.

“…I also encased it in cement,” Dorian added. “The other end of the blade. And most of the ceiling below you.”

Naoko looked up.

He found the vampire watching him.

That flat, empty look had returned to his dark-red eyes.

Dorian tilted his head as Naoko watched, as if studying an animal he’d put in a cage. His expression never moved.

“I would not suggest trying to tear yourself free of it,” the vampire added, his voice as flat as his face. “The thickest part of the blade is notching part of your heart, so it is unlikely you could move it sufficiently to free yourself… not without killing yourself.”

Naoko blinked, staring up at him, then turned his eyes and head to peer at the hilt sticking out of his back. He focused his attention on his heart, on the parts of his own chest where he felt the sword’s blade, verifying what the vampire just told him.

“It’s a Scottish claymore,” Dorian added. “Brick was none too pleased I destroyed it, as it was an original, but it was the only blade we had that was long enough… and strong enough. And since it belonged originally to a man I killed, I supposed I had the right.”

Dorian pursed his lips, inexplicably glancing up the wall and towards the ceiling.

“…luckily, unlike his predecessor, Brick does not generally grow very attached to ‘things,’” the vampire added, his scarlet eyes still trained up the walls. “Even so, I shall have to find and gift him something comparable, since he was fond of that sword––”

“What the fuck is this supposed to do?” Naoko spat. “Scare me?”

Dorian paused, looking down.

He surveyed Naoko’s face. His lip lifted in a faint smile.

The smile never reached those scarlet eyes.

“Humble you?” he suggested.

Seeing the scowl that twisted Naoko’s mouth at his words, the vampire grunted, his smile growing visibly.

“Perhaps not,” he said.

He rose gracefully to his feet.

Naoko watched him, still scowling, now hissing at him audibly, reaching for him with an outstretched arm as Dorian clearly made ready to leave.

The blond vampire strode casually past his prone form, past the burning fireplace to Naoko’s right, past Naoko’s arm and clasping hand, past the rug that had been rolled up and placed against the wall adjacent to the stone hearth, past the antique chairs that matched the Victorian couch.

Dorian didn’t give the vampire pinned to the floor by an authentic Scottish claymore, made sometime in the 1400s, so much as a glance.

“Perhaps I thought you needed time to think, friend,” he said.

Even in saying that, he didn’t look back.

Rage blinded the vampire on the floor.

“Fuck you, you albino piece of shit sociopath––”

Naoko’s words were deadened upon the firm closing of the door.

Realizing at once the vampire wasn’t coming back, at least not anytime soon, Naoko let out a furious howl, writhing against the hard edges of the blade locking him to the floor.

No one came to the door.

No one seemed to hear him at all.

* * *

DORIAN WENT FOR a leisurely hunt.

He took all night.

He called back to the apartment a few times, mostly to hear from the guard he’d posted at his new pupil’s door. Nairobi assured him that apart from angry hisses and growls, it had mostly been silent on the other side of that door.

The next day, Dorian didn’t go inside the room.

He passed by the outside a few times.

He remained in the house, and in the process relieved Nairobi of guard duty, but did not stand there, outside the door all day, as she had for him the night before. He worked with Brick instead, monitoring events in the United States, helping his king to organize the clans across Europe and South America, most of which were already in some state of preparation for war.

Moving on North America was inevitable now.

When Brick released him at nightfall, Dorian left the apartment building.

He hunted that night as well, just as he had the first.

He left Nairobi at the door again.

That time, each time he called in, she said the room was utterly silent.

She said it was so quiet, she grew concerned the newborn may have escaped. She climbed around to the outside window a few times, to make sure he was still inside.

He was there, she told him, impaled to the floor, just as Dorian left him.

Dorian thanked her for checking on him.

Even so, he checked through the window himself, breaking into his hunting routine to reassure himself that Naoko was, indeed, exactly where he’d left him. He checked the sword as well, both that night and several times throughout the next day, and the day previous.

It remained undisturbed where he’d driven it through the vampire’s chest and through the floor and ceiling below. The concrete he’d used to encase the bent blade was completely unbroken. No cracks showed on the gray-white surface. The apartment was intact, both from the outside and from the walls to either side. The building was old, but the crawlspaces were narrow.

Dorian knew this. He had checked.

There was nowhere for his charge to go.

There was certainly nowhere for him to go without detection.

Even so, checking all of these things reassured Dorian that he had missed nothing.

At the end of the second full day, he went on a shorter hunt.

By then, he was curious to see how his pupil fared.

He doubted Naoko would be sincerely repentant after only a few days.

He doubted he’d cowed him much at all.

Still, progress might be visible by now.

Perhaps Naoko’s predicament over the past few days had calmed him down enough that he might listen more rationally, with more of a respectful ear.

He would be hungry.

He would be weaker, and hungry, and likely more malleable as a result. Young vampires didn’t have the discipline or stamina to go without blood for long. Moreover, they couldn’t handle the mental stress.

They had no idea how long they could survive without blood.

To them, being hungry was as if literally watching themselves die.

Most thought they would die, if they went without for more than a few days, a mental state that made most beings more amenable to negotiation.

At the very least, Naoko would pretend to cooperate, if only until he got more blood. He would try to convince Dorian to let him hunt. He would likely promise to do whatever he asked, if only Dorian would let him hunt and feed.

Young vampires also felt the need to hunt at a keener level than older vampires.

Dorian didn’t intend to give him either of those things, though––not yet. He didn’t intend to give him anything without a few real concessions in return. He fully expected that to take a few more days, at least.

Those days didn’t need to be spent in isolation, however.

Dorian could begin to teach him, while those days passed.

Some of it might even start to sink in.

He relieved Nairobi at roughly two o’clock in the morning.

Motioning for her that he would take over for now, he stopped her only long enough to murmur in her ear that he’d left several gifts in her room for the favor.

He didn’t tell her what they were, but he knew they would please her.

She knew they would please her, too, and smiled up at him in gratitude, squeezing his arm with one pale hand.

Dorian didn’t squander when it came to presents.

He also took favors seriously, and repaid them in an appropriately serious manner.

Therefore, he left her two gifts, one for each full night and day she’d spent guarding his charge. One was a male human he’d gone to a fair bit of trouble to acquire.

She had a weakness for aristocrats, so he’d made the effort.

With the young Earl, who he’d considerately dressed for her in full uniform, tied and kneeling on her floor, a gag in his mouth, Dorian left her an emerald and diamond necklace that had belonged to the Earl’s now-late wife, displayed on the mantle over her fireplace.

Still smiling faintly as she imagined what Dorian might have brought her, Nairobi padded down the corridor towards her room.

Dorian watched her go.

Then he reached for the door handle to Naoko’s room.

Twisting it soundlessly, he opened it.

He’d ordered Nairobi not to enter the room for any reason.

He’s specifically told her to check on him by using the windows if she had any questions or concerns about his wellbeing, or whether he was still in the room. She could check on him in any manner and as many times as she saw fit, as long as Naoko never felt or heard her enter the room, as long as that door never opened.

The newborn was to feel himself totally alone in there.

The seclusion contained a message, as much as the sword.

Dorian knew Nairobi would follow his instructions to the letter.

He also knew she would have checked on Naoko through the windows more times than she’d specifically told him, out of fear of disappointing him, if nothing else, but mainly out of pride. She would never allow herself to lose a charge on a watch to which she’d been assigned. Never. Nairobi simply wasn’t wired that way.

For that reason, as well as his own precautions, Dorian knew Naoko would be inside the room, more or less exactly how he’d left him.

He’d known Naoko would be there.

He’d expected to see him lying there, shirtless, on his hardwood floor, a sword impaling him to the floor to the hilt. Even so, actually seeing him there, pale and vibrating with energy, his head half-raised in alertness as he heard Dorian walk in, gave him a soft thrill of pleasure. He allowed himself a small smile, crossing the threshold and closing the door behind him.

The young vampire looked positively magnificent, even now.

That smile was still on Dorian’s face as he took another step––

––and immediately knew something was wrong.

His stare darted sideways.

His vampire eyes took in the thin, metal pole as it bounced up in a whip-like arc, aiming for the top of the high ceiling. Dorian didn’t see the entire motion. A loop of wire cinched his ankle, yanking him up off his feet in a millisecond, pulling him sideways and up even as he twisted, midair, fighting to reach for his trapped foot.

He found himself swinging, midair, his ankle hanging from the wire.

Hissing, he struggled with the wire breaking the skin of his ankle, realizing only then that it had been sharpened on two sides, making it like a razor.

He stared up at the ceiling in disbelief, still swinging wildly back and forth, twisting from where he hung from the now straight pole.

Not once did he stop his attempts to free his foot.

Before he could finish digging his fingers under that razor-like wire, he felt the air move over his face and the bare skin of his arms, in a way different than that caused by the swinging wire. This motion felt directed, non-random.

It raised the hairs on his skin like an electric charge.

He turned, hissing, fangs extended, swinging in the air, his fingers still hooked on the wire around his ankle, bleeding down his leg as he tried to free himself.

The smiling face of Naoko appeared over him.

Blood covered his chest, his face, his arms.

Before Dorian could speak a single word, strong hands wrapped around his head…

And everything went dark.

7

A Different Approach

BRICK SURVEYED HIS second-in-command, his lips faintly pursed.

He wanted to be annoyed.

He felt strongly, on some level, he should be quite annoyed with him.

Moreover, he knew it would do absolutely no good for discipline if he gave in to his more instinctive reactions to the situation. It might also offend the other vampire, of course, but, under the circumstances, Brick was less concerned about that.

He should be angry.

Dorian had disappeared for days.

He’d allowed their youngest, a newborn, in fact, and a new newborn at that, to disappear for days. He’d allowed that same newborn to conduct a veritable rampage throughout the city of Paris, one noticeable enough to hit all of the major newspapers, and likely to attract the attention of Black’s seers still operating on this continent, if not Lucky Lucifer’s.

All of this occurred under Dorian’s watch.

All of this occurred after Dorian specifically assured Brick he would handle Naoko’s preliminary training personally, that he would do so because no one else could be trusted to do it as well or as thoroughly as Dorian could do it.

This complete and abysmal failure of Dorian in this task of training Brick’s new charge––nay, the newest addition to his family––should have angered him.

Instead, Brick’s primary reaction kept wanting to edge into humor.

In fact, he found it quite uncomfortable to sit there, forcing his face into a serious pose to keep his amusement from the other vampire’s awareness. It grew increasingly uncomfortable the longer he looked at the vampire sitting across from him on the leather settee.

Some of it might have been the complete and utter incongruity of who and what had failed, and the sheer, unassailable totality of that failure.

Dorian didn’t fail.

Dorian never failed.

Brick was relatively certain he’d never seen him look quite this, well… disheveled, either.

Dorian’s face remained its normal, immovable mask of neutrality. His irises remained the dark scarlet they always were, his blood and mind in that perpetual state of arousal he appeared to always maintain, if on an invisible, internal level.

His clothes were impeccable, as always.

His blond hair had been cut recently, short on the sides and back, longer on top.

But none of that erased the half-healed cuts littering his face and other visible areas of his skin. Brick witnessed cuts on Dorian’s forehead, by one eye, on his lips, across one cheek, on his neck, at the top of his chest.

Bruises also marred the usual flawlessness of Dorian’s appearance. Dark-blue marks faded on his throat. A larger one darkened one side of his long jaw. Brick also glimpsed a long tear up the inside of Dorian’s wrist and inner arm through his clothes, as well as a deeper, healing cut on the knuckles of his other hand.

He hadn’t missed the deep bite mark on Dorian’s upper shoulder, either.

Brick had seen Dorian fight multiple vampires at once.

He’d seen him take out seers, humans bearing assault rifles, highly-trained assassins, even vampires that fit several of those categories.

If he didn’t know the truth of it, he would have assumed Dorian had been jumped by at least four or five military-trained seer infiltrators. He likely would have assumed at least a few of those infiltrators came bearing those green-metal, otherworldly weapons Charles’ people had been laboring to design and produce for the past dozen or so years.

Dorian watched Brick appraise him.

If he noted Brick’s amusement at the state he was in, he did not react.

The blond vampire’s expression never changed.

“Dare I ask… status?” Brick said finally, keeping the amusement out of his voice with an effort. “I have to say, it’s been a few days since you’ve graced me with a report, brother Dorian.”

Dorian’s face did not move.

Lifting one foot off the floor, he crossed his ankle elegantly over one knee.

“Yes,” he said simply. “I apologize for that, my king.”

Brick nodded, his lips still pursed.

Again, as much as he wanted to be annoyed, he struggled with it.

“And?” Brick said. “Is our beloved Naoko back at home? Safe and sound?”

“He is safe. He is entirely unharmed.”

Brick’s eyebrows rose. “Really? Unharmed? Entirely unharmed, you say?”

“I had to break his neck,” Dorian explained calmly. “To bring him back. He is recovering, but otherwise unmarked. He will be fine by the end of today.”

“Ah. I see.”

Again, Brick paused.

Again, Dorian offered no additional information.

“And… dare I ask…?” Brick ventured delicately. “Where is he exactly?”

“In my room.”

“Ah.” Brick nodded, keeping his expression thoughtful.

When Dorian didn’t elaborate, Brick made his voice politely inquisitive.

“Secured, I hope? Despite his current condition?” At Dorian’s silence, Brick prodded him again, his voice still light. “You must understand my concern, beloved brother, given the events of the past few days. Is he truly secure this time? Or is he likely to have left the building before our conversation here is finished?”

“He is in a cage,” Dorian said.

“A… cage?”

“Yes.” Dorian adjusted his long body in the settee, but didn’t blink, or change expression. “It is iron. I had it built by a blacksmith. From Pierrefonds. It was delivered in my absence, and is now located in my room.” Pausing, he added, “It is sufficiently strong. With a lock he cannot pick. I possess the only key. He is also cuffed to it. With iron bonds.”

Suppressing a smile, Brick fought not to laugh aloud.

He coughed to cover it, then cleared his throat until his expression was back under his control. Looking up at his second, he furrowed his brow and nodded seriously, leaning back in the leather swivel chair that stood behind the massive, aged-oak desk. Balancing backwards on the same chair, he folded his hands across the front of his chest, narrowing his gaze at his second in command, his most favored and loyal lieutenant.

Dorian still had not changed expression.

“And?” Brick prompted, when Dorian did not go on. “How long do you propose to keep our naughty Naoko in this iron cage you had built for him?”

One side of Dorian’s lips quirked.

It was the first ripple Brick noted in the other’s placid veneer.

“That is why I am here,” Dorian said. He rested his pale hands on the settee, stroking the dark red fabric with his long, if currently cut and bruised fingers. “I would like to discuss alternate approaches to Naoko’s training.”

That time, Brick could not suppress his smile.

“You don’t say?” he queried innocently. “What… approaches… do you wish to try, my beloved friend?” Flashing his fangs briefly, he added, “My stipulation about not damaging him remains in place, Dorian. No torture. No chainsaws. No removing limbs, whether they grow back or not. No starvation, or mental manipulation––”

The other vampire calmly raised a hand.

“Nothing like that,” he said. “In fact, I now believe most typical forms of punishment will not be particularly effective with him.”

Brick’s eyebrows rose.

Leaning further back in his chair, he refolded his hands. “Really? And why is that?”

“He is too intelligent,” Dorian said simply.

At Brick’s silence, Dorian’s eyes flickered away.

Staring into the fireplace, he went on in the same, neutral voice.

“I now believe he significantly underplayed his intelligence as a human, as well as the extent of his skill sets. I do not know why, or for how long. I’ve recently done some research on his human records, however, including what I could uncover from the military, as well as his time on the police force, and working as a detective. Indications of a much higher than average intelligence reside in those records… as well as clear attempts by him to hide those conclusions.”

Dorian paused, then made a flourishing shrug with one hand.

“He is no longer doing that,” he said. “Not as a vampire.”

Brick’s eyebrows remained higher on his forehead than normal. “An example, brother? If you would?”

“Did Nairobi tell you how she found me?” Dorian said. “How he escaped?”

Brick frowned.

“She was not… specific,” he said carefully.

Dorian nodded, his preternaturally handsome face as still as marble.

“He laid a trap for me,” he said. “He cut himself free, maneuvering his body around the blade until he freed himself. Even after I told him that to do so would likely kill him.”

Dorian’s eyes met Brick’s, his scarlet irises brighter.

“He knew anatomy well enough to do it… to free himself of the notch I’d placed in his heart, and to maneuver the blade around the thickest bones, the ones the sword would not easily be able to saw through. It must have taken him some time, and some careful thought, but he freed himself, then set a trap for me, using materials from the room. A metal bar from the bed frame with enough flexibility to work as a pole in a snare… wire he pulled from the curtains and sharpened, presumably with more of the metal frame… a trigger he designed from a loose floorboard and carved with his teeth and a metal poker.”

Dorian’s jaw firmed.

“…He made sure none of it was easily discernible from the window, closing the drapes of the one window that would have given me or Nairobi a view of his snare from outside. He left the drapes of the other window open. Coincidentally, that view allowed anyone looking from outside to see him on the floor… but not the metal pole he’d rigged to trap me.”

Again, that slight tightening of Dorian’s jaw.

“Then our newborn maneuvered himself back onto the sword… again using the blade to cut through his own body, despite how painful that must have been. He followed the same track he’d followed to cut himself free. He covered the cut with his own blood so it wouldn’t be visible from the window. He then allowed his skin and flesh to heal back over the cut, so that he would appear to be exactly where I’d left him.”

Dorian shrugged, his scarlet eyes flattening on Brick’s.

“He waited there, on the floor, for me to come back. He didn’t jump out the window. He didn’t try to escape as he had the first time. He must have been hungry… especially after all of that blood loss. But he didn’t leave to feed, or to hunt. He waited.”

Dorian smiled faintly, quirking his eyebrow as he made another of those graceful flourishes with one hand.

“He learned, you see? He knew if he broke my neck, he’d have a real head start. He’d be able to get free of me for days, instead of hours… or possibly minutes, depending on whether I was inside the building or not, which he had no way of knowing without tipping one of us off that he was free of the sword.”

Gripping the cushion of the settee with his long, white fingers, Dorian gazed thoughtfully into the fire.

“I learned some things, in my recent study of his background… things I was lax not to discover before I attempted his training. Truthfully, I assumed I would have more time before I needed such in-depth information.”

He returned his gaze to Brick, his scarlet eyes flashing with reflected fire.

“As it happens, he is an expert in making and detecting traps of this kind. Explosives, too. I have made a much greater effort to study his profile once I discovered these things… so I now have a relatively thorough understanding of the full range of his skill sets from his time in the human military, and after.”

There was a silence after Dorian finished speaking.

Then Brick couldn’t help himself.

He chuckled.

“And?” he said, smiling as he rocked back on his leather chair. “How did you find him?”

Dorian’s eyebrow rose in a silent question.

“After he escaped,” Brick clarified. “How did you go about tracking our expert trap-layer and military operative, once he was loose on the streets of Paris?”

The elegant eyebrow dropped back to its normal position.

Dorian leaned deeper into his seat. His voice remained deadly serious.

“It wasn’t easy,” he said.

Brick burst out in a real laugh at that. “I’ll bet,” he grinned, still chuckling. “However did you manage it, my beloved friend?”

Dorian quirked one dark eyebrow, pulling at the cut under the same eye.

“He had gone some time without feeding by then… and without hunting.” Dorian focused back on the fire, his pale lips firming. “That should have made it easy to track him, but it did not. He was somehow able to control himself for the first few days.”

Glancing back at Brick, Dorian added,

“He used the sewers and catacombs to get around at night. He picked off a few utility workers, at least two homeless persons, and one priest that I eventually found. Clearly, it wasn’t enough to do much more than blunt the edges of his hunger. It wasn’t until the third day that he lost control entirely… when he got to that underground dance club. It was a lucky break for us. By then he was far from here, in the outskirts of the city.”

Brick’s amusement remained.

Even so, he scowled lightly at the other’s words.

“I’m not sure I would call that ‘lucky,’ brother Dorian. It hit the Parisian news, and was picked up by international papers––”

“I apologize for that,” Dorian intervened.

Again, he held up a hand, his expression back to inscrutable.

“Still,” he went on. “I would argue it is better that he lost control relatively early into his hunting spree. The damage could have been much worse, if he’d remained underground. Worse still, if he’d gotten out of the city entirely, which I suspect may have been his goal.”

Brick nodded, conceding the other’s words, if somewhat reluctantly.

“Even in the cage he has proven… difficult,” Dorian confessed.

Brick’s eyebrow rose again. “Oh?”

Dorian nodded, his expression flat.

“In what way, brother, pray tell?”

“I tried feeding off him,” Dorian explained. “I also tried having him feed off me, once he was sufficiently hungry. On both occasions, he spent the entire time reciting complex math equations and English sonnets to prevent me from pulling information from his mind. It is apparently a trick he learned from his interactions with seers––”

Brick burst out in another delighted laugh, unable to help himself.

Dorian only shrugged, continuing in the same voice.

“It is possibly a trick he learned from Black himself,” he admitted, his brow furrowing. “Unlike Black, however, Naoko is vampire now. He is less easy to pull into the thrall of venom. Less easy than a human… much less a seer.”

Still grinning, Brick chuckled. “Undoubtedly.”

There was another silence.

Then Brick leaned forward on his chair, placing his arms on the oak desk. He studied Dorian’s face more carefully that time, some of the humor leaving him for the first time.

“You are quite intrigued by this, aren’t you, brother?” Still studying Dorian’s face, Brick lifted one eyebrow. “I hear you forbade Lucia from going near him. Could that be angering him, too, my friend? That you deprived him of his playmate?”

Dorian’s lips tightened.

It was the first real show of annoyance on that porcelain, if marred face.

“He was bored of her already,” Dorian said. “It was clear to me, if not yet to him. She reminded him of someone… someone she is nothing at all like, apart from a few passing physical similarities. To say she is too weak for him would be an understatement. He would have toyed with her a while longer, then found a new plaything.”

Shaking his head in rebuke, Brick tut-tutted him mildly with his tongue.

“Now, now, brother… respect lives in this family,” he said softly. “Respect for all of our brothers and sisters. Regardless of their talents and capacities. I insist upon it.”

Dorian tilted his head in a bare shrug.

“I will apologize, if you wish,” he said, his voice holding a faint puzzlement. “But it is not disrespect that causes me to say it. It is fact. She is not a suitable match for him. He knows this, even if he had not faced it yet. You know it, too. Moreover, he has not so much as mentioned her name since I ordered her out of his room that first night.”

Brick nodded, again conceding the other’s words.

“Is he remembering yet?” he said next, his voice more subdued. “His memories. Have they started coming back to him?”

Dorian looked over, his expression thoughtful.

He clearly knew exactly what Brick meant.

“No.” Dorian pursed his lips, still thinking. “No. I do not think so. Not that I’ve observed. It is part of why it is still difficult to reach him, I think.”

Brick nodded to that, as well.

He had intuited the same.

Even so, that faint suspicion remained in his own mind.

“Have you had intercourse with him yet?” he said, blunt. “Naoko?”

The silence felt heavy that time.

“Dorian?”

“No.”

“No?” Brick gauged the other’s face. “And why is that?”

The other’s expression did not move.

Brick was not, however, willing to let a non-answer suffice, not in this instance.

“Tell me why,” he said, his voice harder. “I insist.”

When the silence stretched a few beats more, Dorian inclined his head politely, a near bow.

“I assumed I would need permission for such a thing, my king,” he said.

Brick felt that harder knot in his chest loosen slightly.

“You do,” he said, his voice a touch colder. “Require permission.”

Dorian merely sat there, his face and body unmoving.

One hand rested lightly on his knee, the other flat on the satin cushion of the settee. If Brick’s words impacted him, there was no way to see how.

“Is that what you are doing?” Brick said. “Asking permission? Is this the ‘alternate approach’ you have been leading up to with him?”

Dorian was now looking at him.

Nothing visible had changed in that face, in the blood-red eyes, in the full, perfectly-formed lips. Even so, Brick strongly got the sense he was being scrutinized by the other vampire, perhaps even assessed with caution.

“It crossed my mind that such an approach might be more fruitful,” Dorian said, his scarlet eyes still fixed on Brick’s face. “So I suppose my answer would be yes.”

His voice remained neutral, lacking in inflection.

Again, however, Brick sensed the caution there.

“…A more generous and affectionate approach in general, seemed like it might benefit him right now. We will not make him uncomfortable, or self-reflective, by declaring war on him. War is a state he knows, one in which he is wholly trained and comfortable.”

“And your goal is to make him… uncomfortable?” Brick frowned.

Again, that elegant shrug.

“It strikes me that Naoko has quite a bit of emotional conflict around his new status, as much as he seems to be channeling that into outward pursuits. I thought if perhaps I could slow things down with him somewhat, he might delve deeper into those emotions, which are clearly more difficult for him to face head-on. I thought if we could understand him better, we might convince him to attempt to understand us better––”

“I see.”

Brick did see. It made a certain kind of sense.

He, too, had sensed the volcano of anger living inside his newborn’s soul.

Being a newborn didn’t explain all of it. That kind of anger didn’t develop merely from the blood of the source. It would be fed by it, yes, perhaps made impossible to ignore by it, but it would not arise from nowhere.

It also made him dangerous.

It made him a danger to the rest of the family, quite possibly––but, much more likely, it made him a danger to himself.

Moreover, if Dorian was correct, Naoko had not even begun to experience the full range of vampire emotions. It was unlikely his memories had begun to come back to him yet, at least not in the full range of their emotions and understandings, as seen through the eyes of a vampire.

Humans felt things on such a superficial level, really.

“Has he slept with a male before?” Brick mused aloud. His eyes shifted back to Dorian, focusing on the other’s face. “That could complicate things. He is still new. Humans are different in such things.”

Dorian nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “That occurred to me, yes.”

Frowning faintly, a tiny and highly unusual crease appearing between his eyebrows, the blond vampire met Brick’s gaze.

“I can perhaps give him proxies to play with.”

“Human?” Brick prodded.

Still nodding, seemingly to himself, Dorian glanced at him again.

“Possibly. I do not think Lucia would be helpful at this stage.”

“That is not jealousy talking?” Brick said, his voice warning.

At the other’s flat look, Brick let out a snort.

“You are clearly taken with him… our Naoko.”

Again, Dorian did not speak, or change expression. He did nothing to try to refute Brick’s words, nor to acknowledge them.

“You want him,” Brick said, harder. “Tell me that much, brother. Let us not have this silence between us on this point.”

Dorian’s expression did not flicker.

“Yes,” he said simply.

Pausing another beat, he folded his arms over his broad chest.

“I find him… intriguing. But I promised you I would train him, my king. I made a vow to you. One I have so far failed you in. That goal takes precedence over all else.”

Studying Brick’s eyes, he inclined his head.

“To that end, I would use any tool at my disposal. Including Lucia. I have thought well upon possibly including Lucia in this, but she is a toy to him. He will hide in her blood, and in her body. He will tell her nothing he does not wish me to know. He will put her between us, and will tell me nothing, for he will not lose control because of her.”

Brick frowned, thinking about the other’s words.

Again, he could not fault the other’s logic––nor his observations.

Dorian had always displayed good instincts when it came to penetrating the psychology of his victims, whether human or vampire.

Or seer, for that matter.

Naoko did seem to see Lucia as a playmate.

He saw her as a sibling––a fellow “puppy,” as Dorian put it. Naoko had been using Lucia as a distraction, at least in part. If he could put her between himself and Dorian, he would do it. If he could lose himself in her blood, and avoid Dorian’s, he would do that, too.

If Dorian used humans, Naoko wouldn’t be able to get away with that.

The pull of human blood, of a human mind, would never be as strong.

Still frowning, Brick drummed his fingers on the top of the oak desk, looking into the fire. He calculated around various other scenarios that might work as well as the one he could hear Dorian proposing. He considered involving himself in this more directly. He considered where this might go, what Dorian would do, once he’d pulled Naoko into a more open and accommodating space, once he’d reached him––

But he already knew where it would go.

Dorian had more or less spelled that out.

He also knew Dorian awaited his decision.

Dorian would not act in any way upon the newborn unless Brick allowed it.

And yet… Brick hesitated.

Staring into the fire, he drummed his fingers, silent.

Equally silent, and now as still as stone, Dorian watched him, waiting.

8

Family

I SWALLOWED, MY hands going cold as I stood on the porch of a house more familiar to me than my own childhood home.

I just stood there.

I honestly had no idea how long I’d been standing there, but I knew it was too long.

I needed to press the door buzzer.

I needed to do it, but I just stood there, staring at the blue-painted door without really seeing it, staring at the gold-painted buzzer with the mother of pearl button without really seeing that, either. They’d painted the door since two Christmases ago, which was the last time I could remember being here. I was pretty sure the door used to be red.

That was the first time Black came over here for Christmas.

Both of us had come for the whole thing that year––Christmas Eve, and Christmas day, too. Black brought bourbon for Nick’s dad. He brought a beautiful, authentic Japanese tapestry from Kyoto for Nick’s mom. He brought all kinds of obnoxious presents for the nieces and nephews, including drones and robotic dogs and cats and karaoke machines.

Angel and a good chunk of her family joined us, along with Anthony, who’d been Angel’s boyfriend before she met Cowboy.

We all got drunk, played the yearly poker game, ate too much, played soccer and football in the narrow backyard. After the kids went to bed, the adults stayed up to watch movies late into the night while we took turns making drinks and putting out presents.

All of that felt like a million years ago now.

Black hung back, standing a few steps lower on the stoop, but I felt his light around mine, wrapped into and around me like a heated blanket. I couldn’t help but wonder how I’d be doing without it.

As it was, I felt like I might throw up.

Angel stood closer to me, on the other side of the stoop. She gripped my hand tightly in hers, maybe to support me, or maybe for herself. Whatever the truth of it, I could see from her face that she wasn’t doing much better than I was, being here.

In the end, it wasn’t me who reached for that doorbell, though.

It was her.

Giving me a borderline apologetic look, she leaned forward all at once, jabbing at the mother-of-pearl doorbell with her index finger. She laid into it for a good few seconds, making sure whoever was inside got a chance to hear it.

When she let up, she leaned back, releasing my hand.

She stared at the door like she thought a monster might walk through it, rather than an adult she’d known for most of her life. She folded her arms over the green leather jacket she wore, squinting and fidgeting uncomfortably, like she was back to being a kid, living down the street from Nick in their old, crappy neighborhood out on Hunter’s Point.

But Nick’s parents hadn’t lived in Hunter’s Point in decades.

Nick’s oldest sister, Numi, was top of her class in Harvard. She got there on a full scholarship, and landed a job at a major firm in San Francisco once she passed the bar. Not long after that, she moved her parents to this place on Potrero Hill.

Nick and his younger sister had still been in high school.

To avoid looking at the door, Angel glanced at Black, then up the street, then at the curb in front of the Tanaka’s door, staring at the car she’d driven us here in, her mint condition, midnight blue with white racing stripes, 1970 Plymouth Hemi Barracuda.

I hadn’t ridden in that car in what had to be two years, not since before Black and I left for Los Angeles.

I was still looking at her, glancing between her and her car, when the door opened behind both of us. Both of us tensed, then turned.

Yumi Tanaka, Nick’s mother, stood there.

Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw us.

Then she blinked, and her mouth twisted into a smile. Before I could speak a single word, she walked out onto the stoop, wrapping me in her arms.

“Miriam!” she cried out.

There was so much delight in her voice, I felt that sickness in my chest deepen into a full-blown panic attack.

“You should have called! I would have made dinner! I don’t even have cake right now…”

Releasing me, still before I’d managed to utter so much as a squeak, she turned to Angel, beaming even wider.

“Angel, dear. Come here! Give me a hug!”

Angel got the same warm squeeze I did.

She did a little better with smiling as she returned it, and speaking.

“Hey, Yumi,” she said, squeezing her harder than usual. “You look great.”

“Bah.” Nick’s mother waved off her words, beaming. “I look old.”

She did look good, though.

Mrs. Tanaka, which is how I still thought of her in my head, despite her insistence that I call her Yumi, had to be in her early seventies, but she looked a great deal younger. Her dark eyes were sharp, her black hair slicked back in a perfect bun. She wore a neat, powder-blue dress with a slim belt at her waist, like something you’d see on someone readying for a tea or Tupperware party in the sixties.

I watched as she released Angel and turned, aiming her dark eyes––eyes so much like Nick’s, my breath caught in my throat––down the porch steps at Black. She regarded him with a sharp stare. That stare was also disconcertingly like Nick’s.

Still surveying my husband with an open scrutiny, she smiled, as if in spite of herself.

“You still afraid of me, big man?” she scoffed.

Black didn’t hesitate.

“Yes,” he said. “Absolutely, Mrs. Tanaka.”

She laughed, shaking her head.

“So, no hug for me, then?” She scoffed at him again. “You know, if I wanted you dead, I would have poisoned you at the last Christmas party you let my Miriam attend,” she told him. “Sushi can be dangerous. Don’t you read?”

Black grunted a laugh, as if he couldn’t help himself, either.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “And sorry we missed last year’s.”

“Sure you are,” she grunted, slightly less amused. “I know it’s your fault.”

Turning, Angel quirked an eyebrow at Black, smiling faintly.

“Well, it wasn’t not his fault,” she murmured.

“See?” Mrs. Tanaka pointed at Angel triumphantly. “I knew it!”

“Not helping, Ange,” Black muttered, folding his arms inside the motorcycle jacket he wore as he shifted his feet. “It wasn’t exactly my fault, either, if you recall.”

Mrs. Tanaka laughed for real that time, waving at all three of us to follow her off the porch.

“Come on,” she said, motioning with a jerky wave. “Come in! Even you, big guy. I just made a pot of coffee, at least. Numi brought me another bag of the good stuff.”

Numi had changed jobs since that first high-powered one she got out of Harvard Law. I was pretty sure she worked for some giant tech firm now, but I couldn’t remember which one; she’d worked for a number of major companies in the Bay Area by then. From what Nick told me, her name was well known in the business scene. I’d even seen profiles of her in a number of business magazines and online sites.

Numi was a single mom now, with three kids.

She also lived down the street, so spent more time here than the rest of the Tanaka kids, all of whom had their own families now, apart from Nick.

The thought caught me off guard.

Then it hurt like hell.

A pain jabbed through my chest, like it was trying to crush itself from the outside in.

Nick used to joke he’d been cursed with three sisters, but the truth was, they were fiercely protective of him. He and his dad may have been outnumbered, but they were definitely not treated like second-class citizens. Angel claimed it was the real reason why Nick was still single. She joked he was too used to women fawning all over him.

He’d scoffed at that, of course.

I fought the memory out of my mind, even as I wiped my eyes, clearing my throat and blinking. Luckily, we were walking into the house, following Mrs. Tanaka towards the kitchen, so she wasn’t looking at me. Even so, I turned my face away from her back, hoping like hell she hadn’t noticed anything.

I had to keep it together here.

I fucking had to.

A warm hand wrapped around my shoulder, pulling me back against an even warmer chest, even as both of us were walking. I felt his light wind even deeper into mine, pulling me into his heat, into that solidity under his feet.

“No getting kissy-kissy in here,” Yumi Tanaka told him, wagging a finger at Black as we came to a stop at the doorway of her kitchen.

I found myself looking around the pristine, white-tile kitchen, focusing numbly on the stainless-steel pots and pans hanging from a rack attached to the ceiling, the perfect white cabinets with their sky-blue handles, the old-fashioned oven and gas burners.

“Just because my son isn’t here, that doesn’t mean you get to act like horny teenagers,” Mrs. Tanaka went on, still mock-scowling at me and Black. “I don’t need to see that. Saw enough of it when Nick was growing up.”

Black didn’t laugh that time.

Neither did I.

Black cleared his throat.

“We need to tell you something, Yumi,” he said. “Is Mitsuko here?”

Unlike me, Black had no trouble calling Nick’s parents by their first names.

She frowned faintly, glancing over her shoulder at him where she’d been placing coffee cups and saucers on a serving tray. Pulling the coffee pot off the burner of her stainless-steel coffee maker, she poured coffee into the four cups she’d arranged, then placed a small pitcher of milk and a bowl of sugar cubes next to it, along with four tiny spoons.

The coffee set was beautiful, and looked like real china.

Yumi Tanaka had those old-school manners I associated with my grandmother.

“He’s not here,” she said finally, after a long-feeling pause. “Mitsuko. He’s in Salinas for a few days. Visiting his brother. He just had surgery.”

Black and I exchanged looks.

“You don’t want to talk to me?” she retorted, hearing our silence. “Whatever it is, I can tell him.”

Black hesitated again.

So did I.

So did Angel.

But we had to tell her now.

We’d come over here. We couldn’t just leave.

She’d probably be angry we’d waited so long to talk to her as it was. If we told her even later than today, she’d be even more upset. She’d want to know why we didn’t tell her as soon as we reasonably knew. She’d probably want to know why we hadn’t called her the instant he’d gone missing, long before we’d spent weeks and months looking for him.

Black exhaled, giving me a look.

Fuck, he sent.

I couldn’t disagree with that.

“Okay,” he said aloud, frowning faintly as he looked back at Yumi Tanaka. “We were hoping to talk to both of you, but––”

“Both of us aren’t here,” she cut in, curt. “So you’re going to tell me, big man. Whatever this big news is. You’re going to come with me and sit, and you’re going to tell me.”

Picking up the tray she’d laid out, she started to leave the kitchen with it, heading for the sitting room, which stood on the other side of the kitchen’s right-hand entrance, just past the massive, freestanding wood cutting block. When we all didn’t move immediately to follow her, she paused by the door’s opening, now looking at all of us warily, as if she’d already picked up that this wasn’t news she was going to want to hear.

“…Come on, then,” she said, sharper. “Coffee’ll get cold.”

Black gave me a look when I glanced at him, frowning faintly.

We both exchanged looks with Angel too, who frowned as well.

We were all-in now, though.

* * *

BLACK AND I followed Mrs. Tanaka into the sitting room.

Angel, shoving her hands into the pockets of her black skinny jeans, followed.

All four of us entered the Tanakas’ blue and white sitting room, and found places to sit on the blue and white flowered living room set, hovering around a glass-covered table with a white-painted frame.

We all dutifully retrieved our coffees from the serving tray.

Black and I took the love seat across from the main couch where Yumi Tanaka sat. Angel sat in the one freestanding chair, which matched the sofa and loveseat.

We all held our coffee cups and saucers, but none of us took so much as a sip.

That time, Black didn’t break the silence.

I knew it was ridiculous to expect him to.

He’d already broached the topic with Mrs. Tanaka.

He’d paved the way for me and Angel, which is more than he had to do.

Even so, some part of me might have been hoping he’d do the heavy lifting for this part, too. When Angel looked at me, a pleading expression in her eyes, I could tell she’d been half-hoping the same. At the very least, she wanted me to do it.

In the end, I let out a resigned sigh.

Leaning forward on the loveseat, I set my coffee and saucer on the glass table, and met Nick’s mother’s gaze.

“We have bad news, Yumi,” I said, as gently as I could. “It’s about Nick.”

She paled. I felt it as much as I saw it.

On one level, she had to have known.

She probably suspected the instant Black said we had something to tell her.

Fear for Nick couldn’t be a new thing for her. Nick had been to war––hell, he’d done six tours. He’d been a cop after that. Then he’d been a homicide detective.

Yumi Tanaka had been fearing people showing up at her door to deliver bad news about Nick for most of his adult life. Nick told me she’d been visibly relieved when he informed her he’d decided to take a private security contract for a while, working for Black. She’d hated him being a cop almost as much as she’d hated him being in Afghanistan and Iraq.

She’d been thrilled he’d be working for Black, who she saw as some kind of celebrity, not really as a private detective, much less a private security contractor.

She thought Nick would be wearing fancy suits and attending galas in New York, not doing anything that could be really dangerous, much less life-threatening.

That was well before Nick told her the salary Black was offering him.

“What’s wrong with Nick?” she said, her voice sharp. Her dark eyes swiveled to Black. “He’s in Europe, right?”

I frowned, glancing at Black.

Black gave me a bare glance, then looked back at Yumi Tanaka. He lifted an eyebrow, his mouth pursed in puzzlement.

“Europe?” he said. “When did he tell you that?”

But I was already shaking my head.

“No.” I looked back at her. “No, he’s not in Europe. He was with us in Thailand, Mrs. Tanaka… Yumi. He died in a fire there, when––”

“What?” She let out a disbelieving laugh. “In Thailand? He didn’t die in Thailand. He told me all about Thailand. When did this happen?”

I felt my face warm.

This part was going to be harder to explain.

“Two months ago,” I said after a pause.

Seeing the disbelief growing even more prominent on her face, I exhaled.

“There was some question as to whether he survived,” I explained. “We’ve been looking for him ever since, Mrs. Tanaka. We thought maybe he got a ride out with another group.” My jaw tightened as I gave Black a brief, hard look. “…A private group we’d contracted with to help us while we were in Thailand. Some of their employees also disappeared. We tried to find them, and find Nick. But after all this time, the likelihood of him being alive is practically––”

She shocked me then.

She burst out in a laugh.

When I fell silent, staring at her, she shook her head, pursing her lips.

“I talked to Nick four days ago,” she said, her voice a low scoff.

I froze, staring at her face.

My hands were clasped together so tightly now, my fingers were numb.

“What bullshit game is this?” Yumi Tanaka asked, sounding angry now. She glared at Black openly, all playfulness in her expression gone. “Is this some kind of a joke? He told me he quit working for you. He said that you’re an asshole boss. That you put his life in danger. He said he has a better job now.”

Black’s jaw fell.

He stared at Yumi Tanaka like she’d just told him she was about to have his baby.

When I looked at Angel, the expression on her face wasn’t much different than Black’s.

I turned, staring at Mrs. Tanaka, feeling like the floor and the loveseat had just disappeared out from under me.

“Angel!” Nick’s mother turned on my best friend, her voice openly angry. “I could see if Miriam was pulled into this by her husband…” She practically spat the word, giving Black an angry glare. “…But what is your excuse? Are you fighting with Naoko now, too?”

Without waiting for Angel to recover, Yumi glared at me and Black.

“I thought you came here because you felt bad,” she said, her voice growing angrier as she spoke. “I thought you came to apologize, for putting my son in danger in that horrible bullshit Nick told me about in Thailand… leaving him in some dungeon, where he nearly died. Letting him nearly get killed in the jungle when they set the trees on fire. But you come here to scare the shit out of me? To make me think something bad happened to him?”

Her eyes swiveled back to Angel.

“I’ve known your mother longer than you’ve been alive, Angel Devereaux! I held you in my arms the day you were born. Why would you do this to me? Scare the hell out me like this? I’m an old lady… you think this is funny? Is this your idea of some kind of joke?”

Angel worked her jaw, looking between me and Black, maybe for help. Her eyes were so wide, she looked like she’d seen a ghost.

“N-N-No, Mrs. Tanaka,” she stammered. “No… of course not…”

Yumi Tanaka stared at me last.

The look in her eyes was pure fury, but more than that, betrayal.

She looked at me like I’d just stabbed her in the chest with a sword.

She looked at me like I really had killed Nick.

“He loves you,” she said, her voice cold. “He loves you, Miriam. He’s always loved you. Too much, maybe. He would never do this to you. He would never do this to your mother or father, if they were still alive. You are family to him.” She glared at Black again. “…More than family. Naoko should have been more to you, too. If you were smart, you would have married him long before you met this… this playboy.”

She looked back at me, her dark eyes still filled with fury, betrayal, but now also what might have been pity.

“I expected better from you, Miriam. I really did. But maybe you forgot what family is, after what happened to yours. Maybe it’s not even your fault, since so much happened when you were so young… those horrible murders of your parents and sister. Maybe you’re too broken now. You think love has to be difficult. You think it always has to be about pain.”

Again, she glared at Black, not even hiding her meaning.

All three of us just sat there, frozen, on the blue and white upholstered loveseat, and the blue and white upholstered chair.

All three of us stared at her, our mouths half-open, our throats paralyzed.

When Yumi Tanaka fell silent, for a long-feeling few seconds, all I heard was the ticking of a cuckoo clock that stood over the gas fireplace behind me.

I have no idea how long that silence actually lasted.

I have no idea how long I just sat there, my mind frozen like a block of ice.

9

What Do We Do Now?

ANGEL DROVE THE blue Barracuda down from Potrero Hill in silence.

None of us spoke at all those first few blocks.

We stared out the windows numbly as we headed back towards downtown.

At the Tanaka house, we’d broken the silence eventually.

We tried to find out exactly when Mrs. Tanaka last talked to Nick, what he’d said to her exactly, where he’d said he was, who he’d said he was with. We tried to find out anything she would tell us about this so-called new job of his, and his new employer. We tried to find out how many other times they’d spoken over the past two months, whether anyone else in the family had spoken to him, if Nick said anything about when he’d be back in San Francisco.

Black read her of course.

So did I.

Neither of us could really determine anything conclusive, though.

Human memories aren’t like seer memories. They lack the crystal clarity and precision of seer memories. They lack the attention to detail, much less the memory of every word spoken, and the exact tenor of the voice itself. Neither me nor Black could tell absolutely without a doubt whether the phone call had even taken place, much less if she’d actually spoken to Nick. We couldn’t definitely confirm most of the details she said came from the call itself.

Clearly, whoever Yumi Tanaka had spoken to, they were angry at me and Black.

They felt wronged by us, perhaps even betrayed.

Whatever they told Yumi, it definitely made her mad at me and Black, too.

My mind spun around all of it, unable to pull it apart, to make sense of it.

I couldn’t make up my mind whether I could feel even tentatively hopeful or happy about this, or remotely relieved. Mostly, I just felt paralyzed.

I wanted so badly to believe it was true, that Nick was alive, that he was working some high-paid job in Europe, that he was just angry at us for leaving him in that dungeon and then that tree on Koh Mangaan, not burned to death or killed by vampires.

I wanted to believe it, but none of it felt right.

Something was off about all of it.

All of us felt the wrongness of what she’d told us. I think Black felt it even more than me, but we didn’t talk about it for those first few blocks as we drove towards downtown.

Even if Nick was somehow alive, I couldn’t make sense of how I felt.

I couldn’t even decide if I should be angry that Nick hadn’t called me or Angel. Could he really have been so furious with us that he’d ask Brick to take him out of there? That he’d just fucking bail on us, letting us think he was dead?

Would he really let me and Angel think he was dead?

Would he do that to Angel?

Even if he was furious with me, which I could comprehend at least, how could he do that to Angel? Angel got stuck in that horrible place on Koh Mangaan with him. Wouldn’t he at least want to know that she and Cowboy were all right, along with Dex, Mika and Alice?

I tried desperately to hear Nick’s voice through Yumi Tanaka’s mind.

I tried to hear the Nick I knew in it, to feel him somehow through her, but what came through struck me as… strange.

It wasn’t not-Nick.

But it wasn’t really Nick, either.

“Vampires?”

I looked over at Angel, who’d finally broken the silence in the car.

She didn’t look away from the windshield as she pursed her mouth. We were heading down 7th Street towards Market by then, and her eyes flickered to the street light and pedestrians as we entered the more crowded intersection at Mission Boulevard.

Slowly, Black shook his head. “No.”

He gave me an apologetic look then glanced at Angel.

“I really don’t think so, Ange,” he said.

She pushed past his words, pretending that Black hadn’t understood what she’d been asking him.

“Could it have been other vampires?” she pressed, glancing in her review mirror at Black, who sat behind us. “Brick? One of his pals? Calling to convince us Nick’s still alive? Vampires can mimic human voices, right? Didn’t you tell me they can do that? That they can mimic a particular voice almost exactly?”

There was a silence.

Then Black shrugged, gripping my hand tighter where he held it. His arm reached between the seats to hold it tightly in my lap.

“Why, though?” Sitting up, he leaned through the gap between the seats. He leaned his shoulder on me, turning to look at Angel. “Why would they do that, Ange?”

Angel snorted.

No humor lived in her voice, or in the grim look she aimed at the road ahead.

“Gee, I don’t know, Quentin? Maybe to screw with you?” she said caustically. “Why else do they do anything? Doesn’t Brick live to fuck with your head?” Glancing sideways and catching my frown, she scowled back. “Oh, come on, doc. You know Brick’s got a thing for your husband. This is probably that psycho’s idea of flirting.”

I frowned, but couldn’t really argue.

Hell, she was probably right.

“I am right,” she said, almost like she’d heard me. “What the hell else could it be? Or do you really think Brick offered Nick some high-paid gig in Europe? And Nick is… what? Letting us think he’s dead? Calling his parents to troll us long-distance? Does any of that sound remotely like the Nick Tanaka you know?”

Frowning, I glanced at Black, who frowned back at me.

“Or do you think Brick still has him captive somewhere?” Angel said, scowling, her eyes showing she was still working through the possibilities herself. “Do you think he bit Nick and had him make the call? To get us off his back?”

The silence deepened.

Thinking about the possibilities inherent in that, I grimaced.

That time, I answered her, though.

“I didn’t before,” I admitted. “I never would have gone to the Tanakas if I didn’t believe he was likely to be dead. Now?”

I glanced at Black, then back at Angel, shaking my head.

Clicking softly under my breath, I swallowed.

“I honestly don’t know. What if he is alive? What if Nick’s leverage, like we originally thought?” Swallowing again, harder, I stared out the window. “Or what if Brick just likes him? What if Brick decided to keep Nick for himself?”

Angel looked at me.

I saw that warring conflict in her eyes.

I could tell she was just as afraid to hope as I was.

“Then he’d still be alive,” she said finally. “He wouldn’t be dead.”

Again, Black frowned.

I could tell something was bugging him about all of this, about all of the possibilities we were raising. He stroked my fingers and inner arm, still leaning against me on the seat, that frown still tightening his face and jaw.

On the other side of him, Angel frowned as well, obviously thinking still.

“We’re sure he’s not a vampire?” she said.

Black clicked under his breath, shaking his head. “It’s incredibly unlikely, Ange. I can think of a half-dozen possibilities that are a hundred times more likely.”

“Like what?” Angel said, pointed.

“Lucky,” Black said, blunt. “I could see Lucky having him. For all we know, Brick made some kind of deal with Charles. Nick could have been a part of that.” Exhaling, he combed his fingers through his hair, muttering, “Although truthfully, I don’t get why we wouldn’t have heard from him yet, either, if that’s the case. Unless he’s waiting for something. Maybe for us to make a move against him. Or he’s planning on making me another job offer.”

There was another silence.

That time, it was me who broke it.

“Well, we know it’s not what Mrs. Tanaka said.” My voice hardened. “Nick would never just take off, take some new, fancy job in Europe, and not even tell us he was alive.”

I looked at Angel, pressing my lips together.

“He wouldn’t do that to you, Ang,” I added. “Maybe to me and Black, but he’d never do it to you. If he’s mad at anyone, it’s the two of us. Which Mrs. Tanaka more or less said. She seemed surprised you were there with us at all.”

Pausing, I looked between the two of them.

My jaw tightened when I saw the sad, worried look on Black’s face.

I didn’t try to interpret what it meant.

Truthfully, I didn’t want to know.

“Nick’s not cruel like that,” I said, looking back at Angel. “Nick’s not that kind of person. Even if he was really pissed off at us… even if he was hurt, even if he felt betrayed, even if he’d had enough with the whole seer-vampire-whatever… he wouldn’t let us think he was dead. He wouldn’t do that. That’s not who he was.”

Realizing I’d just talked about him in the past tense, I winced.

The wince was painful, making it hard to breathe.

Wrapping my arms around my torso, I grimaced, feeling that pain in my chest sharpen back to a hot spike in my solar plexus.

“He wouldn’t,” I muttered, biting my lip. “He wouldn’t do that.” I looked at Angel. “Do you think he would do that to us? Really? Why would Nick do that to us? To you?”

Angel frowned.

Turning the wheel slowly as we passed through another intersection, she didn’t look over from where she stared out at the San Francisco streets.

After another beat, Black exhaled.

Lifting my hand to his lips, he kissed my palm, then leaned deeper into me, merging more of his light into mine. His light felt like a caress now, like it patiently smoothed some part of me, calming it down without words, without thought or reason.

“We all know Nick wouldn’t do that, doc,” he said, gruff. “He wouldn’t do it to you, any more than he would do it to Angel.” He paused, studying my eyes. “You heard Yumi. He loves you. You don’t do that to people you love.”

I sat there, staring out the window of the Barracuda.

I took a deep breath, trying to absorb his words, trying to make them feel real. I knew what he was saying.

I knew what Black was pointing out about me, too.

It was guilt.

Guilt was making me lose perspective on Nick, and on myself. My mind was going crazy with guilt, so I was imagining a Nick who saw me the same way I saw myself. I was imagining a Nick who blamed me like I blamed myself.

“Anyway,” Black went on, his voice even lower. “That’s not the real question, doc.”

When I looked over, he glanced at me, his face only a few inches from mine.

I returned his calm gaze, fighting to relax, to let that heated light of his do what it was trying to do and unclench the muscles in my body, most of which were tensed into hard knots. A part of me felt like I wanted to scream.

Another part of me wanted to burst into tears.

Forcing both reactions as far out of my light as I could, I refolded my arms even tighter, clenching my jaw.

“What’s the real question?” I said, gruff.

Clicking softly, Black looked out through the windshield, where it was just starting to rain. His gold eyes followed the light drops pattering the curved pane of glass, running in lines away from the wind.

“What do we do now?” he said simply.

Angel and I both frowned.

Glancing at one another, we frowned harder, but neither of us spoke.

Truthfully, I doubt either of us had a good answer.

10

Land’s End

“GET UP. NOW, Miri.”

I stirred, but not very much.

I didn’t wake up enough to think about it deeply, but I’m pretty sure I was hoping he didn’t really mean it. That, like the last few days before this one, he’d give up after a few tries and go away.

Black didn’t give up, though. He didn’t go away.

Not this time.

“Come on, honey.” His voice grew gentle, even as it pulled on me more insistently. “Get up. No more of this. It’s been long enough.”

I’d been sleeping in for days.

It felt like I’d been sleeping for days.

I’d definitely been sleeping too much.

I think I was in denial about why, about what was happening to me, but I couldn’t quite make myself think about that, either.

When I opened my eyes, it was dark outside.

“It’s night,” I informed Black, who stood by a glowing orange salt lamp, which only illuminated half of his body by the dresser. The salt lamp was mine, but he turned it on every night now, and every morning when we got up.

He said it was perfect illumination for fucking.

He didn’t look like he was getting ready to seduce me now, though.

He wore his running clothes. Black shorts, a fitted T-shirt that looked almost like what bike racers wore, an armband that tracked steps, heart-rate, and a bunch of other things I’d never bothered to ask him about. He’d gotten serious about training again recently.

He’d left me alone with it for the most part.

Well, up until now.

“Go without me,” I said, burrowing deeper under the covers. “I’ll never keep up with you anyway. I’ve got burrito body.”

He laughed.

I’d been eating burritos pretty much every night since we got back. I’d sometimes even sent one of Black’s people down to pick one up for me at my favorite taqueria in the Mission District, if I couldn’t get away from things happening at the business offices.

More often than not, I walked myself.

I’d been walking a lot the past week or so, too.

I walked for hours sometimes, often with no real destination in mind.

“Bullshit,” he said, still smiling, although that smile turned faintly predatory. “If anything you’re still too skinny. And you’re coming with me. So get your ass up. Or I’ll add a mile for every minute you lie there like a lazy slug.”

I let out another half-hearted groan.

I knew he was right about the skinny thing, but that didn’t mean I’d be able to keep up with him on one of his insane, fifteen-mile runs at breakneck speed.

“It won’t be fifteen miles,” he assured me.

I grunted, even as I conceded defeat, flipping back the covers. “Right. So it’ll be fourteen and a half miles.”

He laughed, clicking at me softly before he sat down on a bench near the dresser. I dragged myself up even as he was tying the shoelaces of his––probably eight hundred dollar––running shoes.

“It’s night out,” I grumbled, looking out the window at the skyline of downtown San Francisco. “It’s not even dawn. It’s actual night.”

“So?” he said. “I’d rather run now. It’s quiet.”

“And dark.”

“And quiet,” he repeated, his voice a touch warning. “Come on, doc. I’ve left you alone for days. You’re sleeping too much. You’re avoiding everything. You’re starting to avoid me. You need this. More than I do.”

Frowning, I didn’t answer.

I did want to argue with him.

I really did––badly enough that I bit my tongue, thinking about things I might say. But more than I wanted to argue with him, I didn’t want to hear him say anything more about me, or how much I’d been sleeping, or why, or what he thought about that, or what I hadn’t been talking about since we got back from visiting Yumi Tanaka.

To avoid all of that, I got up.

Standing by the mattress, I grimaced, stretching briefly and fighting to focus my eyes while my body screamed for me to go back to bed.

I made myself walk to the dresser instead, standing near him as he started tying the laces on his second shoe. I began rummaging through my sports clothes drawer, still blinking and fighting to focus my eyes as I stared down at my clothes.

Something like twenty minutes later, we were both walking through the front doors of the California Street building.

Black was wide-awake.

Black was… annoyingly awake.

Unlike his more high-tech running gear, I was wearing ripped sweat shorts, a hoodie over a threadbare T-shirt, and running shoes that were decent, but nothing like his. My eyes were still fighting for focus. Before we left the penthouse, I hadn’t done anything in the bathroom but pee, splash water on my face, brush my hair to put it up in a ponytail, and throw on some deodorant.

I normally ran with music, but I wasn’t in the mood for that, either. If I had to be honest, I didn’t want the emotionality that went with music, whether the good or the bad of it.

Black jerked his head northward, in the direction of the bay.

“Come on,” he said simply.

Resigned, I broke into a jog/run when he did.

Normally, I liked running.

It was my thinking time, my alone time… my quiet time, like he said.

I even liked running with Black.

His legs were longer, and he was damned fast, but I was decently fast too, just from having run for so many years. He generally didn’t pull punches when it came to telling the truth, so I believed him when he said I set a good pace for him, better than anyone else he’d run with regularly, including Cowboy and Dex.

Today, though, I highly doubted I would be able to keep up.

I hadn’t gone running since we’d been in Paris, and that had mostly been to burn off the same anxiety and grief I knew Black was trying to burn off in me now.

I knew Black, though.

He wasn’t going to let me off the hook for this, not this time.

Besides, he was right. This would be better for me than lying in bed until ten o’clock in the morning for the fourth day in a row. It would be better than me staring up at the ceiling of our bedroom, trying to think up ways to spend my day that would allow me to avoid Angel and Jem and anyone else who might want to talk about Nick, or even just remind me of him.

Black hung a left when we hit the Embarcadero, taking me with him towards Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf, then west, towards Fort Mason.

It was strange being in the heavily-touristed areas of the city at what must be three or four o’clock in the morning, when everything was closed.

By then, I was sweating pretty heavily, but I also felt better.

The first few miles up the Embarcadero, every muscle in my body was screaming, loudly enough that I found myself worried that I hadn’t even bothered to stretch, much less warm up, before we started this. By the time we hit Ghirardelli Square and then Fort Mason, I’d found my rhythm somehow, in the mess of my stiff arms and limbs, and the fog that had fallen over my brain since we’d given up on Nick and come back from Europe.

We didn’t give up on him, doc, a voice murmured.

Thinking about that, I shrugged, my mental voice blunt.

I did, I sent. I gave up on him, Black. I decided he was dead.

Black didn’t answer that, not at first.

Nudging me with his mind, he lengthened his strides, angling us to the right after we left Laguna and Beach Streets.

He sped up his pace, taking us down towards the Marina.

Do you still? he sent, once we had the San Francisco Bay on our right once more. Do you still think he’s dead, Miri?

I bit my lip.

Emotion tried to rise at the thought, a cacophony of reasons why Nick could and couldn’t be dead. I heard all of my inner voices competing for air time, for space, for my emotions, but I believed none of them. It was the quiet part of me, the part that sat somewhere in the middle of my chest, that I believed.

Yes, I sent, after a pause. Yes, I do. I think he’s dead.

Black didn’t answer.

We ran in silence for a few seconds more. Only the heart pounding steadily in my chest, and my heavy breaths echoed in my ears.

Some part of me wished I’d opted to bring my music after all. Even now, I knew I needed that silence more, though.

I know that doesn’t make sense, I added, when Black still didn’t speak. After what his mom said, I should be hopeful. I should be happier. We should be going back to Europe, looking for him. But I don’t think we’ll find him there, Black. I don’t know if someone killed him deliberately, or if my uncle or Brick killed him on accident. I don’t know if we’ll ever know what happened to him exactly, but I think our only chance of finding him is to find Brick. And Brick won’t come out of hiding until he’s damned good and ready.

Briefly, the grief in my chest and head twisted, turning into a cold, hard fury.

It coiled through me like metal snakes.

I want that son of a bitch, I sent. Just like you, after Louisiana. I want him, Black. Maybe even more than you did then.

I considered sending more, elaborating in some way.

I didn’t.

There was no need.

Black remembered New York. He remembered the nightmares after he got out of that prison, how obsessed he’d been with hunting down Brick. He remembered the months of careful planning he’d put us through, all of it designed to draw the vampire king out of hiding.

I knew Black understood.

I do, he sent, cautious. I do understand.

He paused.

Do you think Brick killed him, Miri?

I bit my lip again, oblivious to how much it hurt.

Thinking, I shook my head, even as we were reaching the edges of the Presidio, where Marina Boulevard veered left. We took Mason Street on Black’s urging, running alongside Chrissy Field and towards Fort Point.

It was still pitch black out.

It struck me that I never would have done this, even a few years ago. Running alone, in a city in the middle of the night, wasn’t something I’d ever been able to do as a woman, not even with a male partner. It wouldn’t have been safe.

With Black running next to me, and both of us monitoring the space around us with our living light, it never even occurred to me that we might be in danger.

It was a strange thought.

I don’t know, I sent, answering Black belatedly as we ran through the dark. I know Brick has something to do with Nick’s disappearance. I know it.

Biting my lip, I added,

I also don’t think Brick just “accidentally” left Nick in that tree, because he couldn’t carry him out sooner with the others or whatever. If Nick is dead, he didn’t die that way. Brick took him… somewhere. I don’t know if he took him so he could turn him into some kind of vampire puppet, like they did to Uncle Charles’ girlfriend, or if Brick meant to keep him for blackmail and killed him on accident. I don’t know if it was Nick who called Mrs. Tanaka, or if it was a vampire pretending to be Nick, or if Nick was hypnotized to tell her all of that stuff and they’ve got him chained to a floor somewhere…

I grimaced, fighting a surge of nausea that made it to my throat.

The only way out of that nausea was rage.

Luckily, I had that in spades right now.

…I just know Brick is behind this, I finished after a beat. I can feel it. Hell, I can smell it. Brick did this. Maybe he took Nick prisoner and Nick fought back too hard. Maybe Nick only feels dead to me because he’s drugged out on vampire venom, locked up somewhere with Brick and his vampire pals, wherever they’ve gone underground.

I grunted, that rage flaring hotter in my chest.

And that’s the best-case scenario, really. That Nick is alive somewhere, getting fed on and raped daily by a bunch of psychotic vampires.

Black didn’t answer.

I felt a flicker of pain on him, though.

He also didn’t disagree with me.

I don’t know why, I went on, maybe needing to talk about it now, or maybe needing to talk over what I’d just said. I don’t know why, or where he took him, or who has him now… but I fucking know Brick did this. He’s behind this, Black. He has Nick. Had him, anyway.

Without slowing my pace, I turned my head, glancing at Black through the dark.

And I know Angel’s right, I added. Somehow, this is about you. He did this because he wants something from you. He thought Nick would help him get it.

There was no accusation in my mind, or in the thoughts I aimed at him.

There was no accusation towards Black, anyway. Even so, my own thoughts enraged me, without me being fully able to articulate why.

That wasn’t entirely true either, though.

I knew why.

It wasn’t just Mrs. Tanaka who blamed me.

I blamed me, too.

Not Black––me.

On Koh Mangaan, I was the one who felt something had gone wrong with Nick. I was the one who kept getting misgivings, warning pings, warning sirens, bright red waving fucking flags over my head about Nick being in danger. I felt those warnings and misgivings off and on for days, hell for weeks for all I knew, given how out of it I was at the time. I felt them for a good chunk of the time Black and I were in that bungalow together, and I did nothing.

I didn’t do a damned thing.

I knew something was wrong.

I knew Nick was in danger, long before Yarli and Manny came looking for us, and we finally did something about it. I could feel it. I could feel it had something to do with Nick, even though I didn’t understand what I felt.

I mentioned it to Black here and there.

I asked him to send someone.

But mostly? Mostly, I fucked my husband’s brains out. Mostly, I went swimming between bouts of gorging myself on food from Black’s personal, Michelin star chef, and taking naked naps on the floor of an air-conditioned bungalow on the beach.

Black couldn’t feel what I felt.

Black wasn’t to blame for any of this. It was my fault.

I did this.

“No.” Black grabbed hold of my arm.

He came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road, and I did too, almost before I’d thought about it.

“No,” he growled, staring into my face.

It was dark out still, apart from sporadic street lights. I could see his face in the faint orange glow of the nearest one, especially his eyes, which reflected gold light back at me.

“No! Goddamn it. Miri…”

His voice rose in frustration, mixed with a kind of helplessness.

“Miri, we weren’t in any condition to help anyone right then. Not Nick. Not Angel. Not Cowboy. Not anyone.”

I frowned, feeling my jaw harden.

I shook my head, but he talked over me.

“We weren’t!” he snapped. “Miri… there’s a reason bonding seers are sequestered. It’s because they’re not fit to be around other people. It’s because they can’t be trusted to be rational. They can’t be trusted not do crazy, reckless, nonsensical things. They’re certainly not fit to lead anybody. We only would have gotten more people killed.”

He shook me lightly by the arm.

“You didn’t do this. You didn’t take Nick! You didn’t kidnap him… or give him to vampires. Hell, I called Brick! I brought Brick to that island! If you want to blame someone, blame me!”

“You asked me.” I stared up at him, biting my lip, even though it hurt like hell, even though I tasted blood. “You asked me if you could call Brick. I said yes.”

“We were trying to get help to him––”

“We snapped out of it just fine,” I said, my voice louder, harsher than his. “When Yarli and Manny came for us on that beach, we were fine, Black. It wasn’t easy, but we were perfectly able to lead the team out to––”

“We were finished with the fucking bonding by then!” he exploded, gripping my arm tighter. He lowered his voice, but it still came out in a near-growl. “We’d finished by then, Miri! We were still dopey and kind of nuts, but we were able to snap back as soon as we understood there was a need. You didn’t do anything wrong, doc! Don’t you understand? Yarli and the others wouldn’t have let us take off into the jungle in that state. They probably would have hit us both with tranq guns… and they would have been right to do it!”

Releasing my arm when I didn’t answer, he placed his hands on his hips.

Exhaling, he clicked under his breath, staring around at the dark field.

“Fuck, Miri… I doubt we even would have found them without Brick. It would have taken us weeks, given what Kiko told me. Brick and Dorian could smell them. They hunt humans as food. They can track them in the physical, in ways we can’t. They bypassed all of that crazy mountain interference and just followed their goddamned stomachs.”

Tears welled in my eyes.

They came out of nowhere, blinding me, even as my breath caught in my throat and chest, suffocating me. I stood there, gasping, hanging over my thighs, and Black walked closer, enveloping me in his arms.

“Gaos, doc… I’m sorry.” Pain rippled through his light, reaching his voice. “I’m so, so sorry.” He clutched me tighter against him, pulsing that furnace-like heat of his into my chest. “I’ll do anything you want, Miri. Anything. Do you want to go back to Europe?”

Clenching my jaw, I shook my head.

“We wouldn’t find him,” I said, after I forced myself to take a breath. “We wouldn’t find him, so it doesn’t matter. There would be no point.”

My voice came out deadened, but the words felt true. I knew that, I knew we wouldn’t find them, but I didn’t know how I knew.

“We won’t find Brick until Brick wants to be found,” I said. I knew I was repeating myself, but couldn’t seem to stop myself from doing that either. “We won’t find Nick until Brick allows it. Or until he tells us what he did with him.”

Black nodded.

I felt him agree with me.

I also felt that pain in his light worsen.

I could tell he believed the worst about Nick, just like I did.

He just didn’t want to say it.

Standing there, I let my light and body sink into his.

I fought to open to the pain, to at least open to Black himself.

I knew I was a million miles away from processing any of it, and not only because the last time I’d felt like this, it had been Nick who I first opened up to. Nick was the first person who really comforted me when my sister Zoe died. My sister Zoe––who’d also been killed by vampires. I wouldn’t have survived that without Nick.

Black’s arms crushed me tighter against him.

I felt love on him, anguish about Nick, grief about how helpless he felt to do anything about it, how helpless he felt to make me feel better in any way.

After another minute of that, he released me.

I watched him step back, wiping tears from his eyes. I still hadn’t managed to get much in the way of real tears out of myself. I’d cried once or twice in the shower when we’d been in Europe, but never for very long.

Never for long enough.

Clearing his throat, Black motioned his head back towards the road.

“Come on,” he said, gruff. “I want a good view when the sun comes up.”

We were on the west side of the city.

We wouldn’t see the sunrise from here, not well anyway.

But then, Black hadn’t actually said sunrise. He said a good view, so I supposed it didn’t really matter. There would be good views somewhere up ahead, even if we were on the wrong side of the city to see the actual sun rise up over the rim of the world.

Whatever Black meant or didn’t mean, I didn’t argue.

When he turned, and began to run, I just followed him.

* * *

WE WATCHED THE light rise from the edge of Land’s End, where a stone labyrinth lived just past the forested running track that wound around the edges of the Legion of Honor museum.

We stood on a sandy cliff overlooking the ocean, just before that ocean reached the mouth of the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. To my left, I could see more cliffs. I knew just beyond that lay the Sutro Baths, the Cliff House, and then Ocean Beach.

To my right, I saw more rocky shoreline, with the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, reflecting light from the early morning sun.

Standing on those cliffs, looking down at the crashing waves, we just stood there, not talking as the landscape grew visible around us.

I listened to the birds as they grew louder with the rising light, looked down to see seals all ready to start sunning themselves on the rocks. The white curls of foam rose and fell, crashing into the bottoms of the cliffs only to roll back and do it again.

We stood there for what must have been twenty minutes.

We stood there until we caught our breaths from the last few miles of up and down rises through the wooded areas of the coast, through the Presidio, along China Beach and then down the Coastal Trail. We stood there until I started to shiver a bit, as my sweaty clothes grew cold in the morning wind, sticking to my wet skin.

Black glanced over at me then, noting my arms wrapped around my torso.

“Come on,” he said, wrapping his hand briefly around the back of my neck and massaging the muscle there. “Breakfast is waiting.”

Without lingering to hear my reply, he turned on his heel, and began jogging up the path back towards the trees. After a bare breath, I followed him. Once we rejoined the main jogging trails above the cliffs, he aimed us right, in the direction of the Sutro Baths.

The muscles in my legs, which had been stiffening as we stood there, protested when I took the first few loping steps uphill after him.

They warmed up again slowly as I made my way with him down the hill, then past the Cliff House until we were above Ocean Beach.

Not long after that, he swung to our right again, and we were running on the beach itself, right at the edge of the lapping waves, where the sand was the firmest.

By then, I was genuinely tired.

Panting, I managed to increase my speed enough to pull up alongside Black, who still managed to look like he could go another fifteen or twenty miles.

“I’m about done,” I told him, between gasped breaths.

He glanced at me, smiling faintly.

“Almost there, doc.”

Before I could protest, he shifted directions, taking us back up the sand towards the road.

The softer and drier the sand got, the harder it was to run in, until I was panting, sweating, fighting my way up the slight rise of dune to get to the beach wall and off the sand altogether.

When I finally reached the road, I groaned a little when Black grinned at me, motioning with his head for me to follow him across the street.

By then, we’d already run past the west entrance to Golden Gate Park.

Hurling and forcing my body back into motion, I followed him.

He loped across the Great Highway, heading back east now, onto Noriega Street.

I’m not running all the way back to Market with you, I informed him in my mind. You go, if you’re intent on running a full marathon today. I’m taking a fucking cab. Probably macking on a burrito and chili fries the whole way.

He laughed. I heard him with my ears up ahead, and in my mind.

Not that far, doc, he sent, pluming heat into my chest. Almost there. I promise.

You’ve been saying that, I grumbled.

We ran another few blocks up Noriega, until I really thought I would drop dead from exhaustion. I was just about to call a halt for real, when I saw Black slowing his long steps, until he came to a loping stop in front of a glass shopfront.

I stopped when he did, even though I was a good twenty feet behind him.

I stood there on the sidewalk, gasping for breath, my hands on my thighs.

He watched me pant, his hands on his hips.

He didn’t speak until I’d more or less managed to control my breathing, even though I was still gasping like someone on their last tank of oxygen.

“Come on, lazybones,” he said, grinning. “I’m hungry.”

“You’re the devil,” I told him, only half-joking.

“Maybe,” he said, quirking an eyebrow at me. “But I know all the best places for blueberry waffles at eight in the morning.”

Still smiling, he grabbed hold of the door of the shopfront, jerking it open and disappearing inside.

Groaning faintly to myself, and still muttering at him in my mind, I jerked myself back into a stumbling walk-jog to follow him.

* * *

HE WASN’T WRONG about the waffles.

It’s probably the only reason he didn’t get a fork in the arm at some point during the meal, after I’d more or less recovered from Black’s idea of a “therapeutic morning run.”

I knew I’d be sore the next day.

And probably the day after that.

“Only if you don’t run again,” he observed, plunking another forkful of blueberry waffles in his mouth. …Which isn’t going to happen, sweetheart, he added in my mind as he chewed.

He almost got a fork in the arm for real that time.

As it was, I could only laugh.

He ate waffles the way Angel did. Covered in about a quarter inch of butter, then another half-inch of maple syrup. He was shameless in his decadence.

“Should I be ashamed?” he said, his words muffled through his chewing. “Get me another coffee, sexy lady wife, and I’ll buy you a burrito on the way home.”

I laughed again, smacking his arm, even as I waved down the server.

Even the coffee here was fantastic. We didn’t settle for the normal cups of brewed, but each got our own small pot of French press. I ordered him another pot as I dug my fork into the next layer of waffle on my plate.

Black did have good taste in restaurants.

“We need to visit Cal,” he said, swallowing and taking a sip of my coffee while he waited for his. “He’s been bugging me to come down to his restaurant for a meal… and to bring you. He thinks I’m avoiding him after last time.”

I snorted, rolling my eyes.

“Are you going to threaten to beat him up this time?” I said.

“I’ll try to restrain myself.” He grinned at me, leaning back in his booth seat and stretching. “He does have a crush on you, though. He couldn’t even hide it on the phone.”

I snorted again, not bothering to comment.

Black leaned over the table, resting his weight on his arms, studying my eyes.

“Feel better, doc?”

I met his gaze.

Instead of answering flippantly, I thought about his question.

After a pause, I nodded.

“Yes,” I said.

He held my gaze, the scrutiny sharpening in his gold, cat-like eyes.

“Do you know what you want to do now?” he said.

Taking another sip of coffee without lowering my gaze from his, I thought again, then nodded slowly.

“Yes.”

He waited, folding his hands in front of him on the table. He’d decimated his extra-large stack of waffles. The empty plate, still swimming in syrup, had been pushed to the side, along with the sides of sausage and bacon he’d also inhaled.

“And?” he said, when I didn’t speak. “Are you going to share, my love?”

“It’s not all strictly… ethical,” I said.

“I’m all ears.”

Exhaling, I found myself copying one of his sweeping gestures, leaning back in my own booth seat, my coffee cup in my other hand.

“Okay. Then I say we bug all of the Tanaka’s phones,” I said, taking another sip of coffee. I held his gaze, toying with my coffee cup on the Formica table after I set it down. “I say we get records of their previous calls, and find out where that one call Yumi told us about actually came from, and see if there’s any way to get ahold of Homeland Security or other records that might tell us something. And I say we send seers over to read the Tanakas. All of them. His sisters, too. And his father.”

Black blinked.

His facial expression didn’t change.

“Can you do that, honey?” I said innocently, raising my coffee mug and taking a sip as I batted my eyelashes at him. “Your pals at the Pentagon record all international calls, right? I know they don’t look at most of those records without cause, but they have them, right?”

Black’s eyes sparked with a faint humor.

“That would be correct, my beautiful wife.”

“So?” I said, shrugging, taking another sip of coffee. “We trace all contacts. We listen to the originals where we can. Then we send our people to go get Brick.”

“And then?”

I set down my mug. My voice remained calm, despite the tightening of my jaw.

“Then we drain him of blood,” I said. “And skin him, until he tells us exactly what he did with Nick.”

There was a silence.

A faint smirk formed at the edges of Black’s mouth.

Leaning back on his own seat, he threw his arm over the back of the booth, taking a long drink of coffee.

“I’ve definitely corrupted you,” he observed.

I shrugged. “It’s for a good cause.”

“My corrupting you?”

“Sure.”

He chuckled, shaking his head.

“Any objections?” My voice came out a touch harder. “I’m not going to get some moralizing lecture here, am I, Black? About how vampires are people too, and––”

“Want to go swimming?” he said, apropos of nothing.

When I stopped, staring at him, he smiled at me, sipping off his fresh coffee cup as he studied my face. When I didn’t speak, he shrugged.

“I have the car coming to get us,” he said. “But do you want to jump in the ocean first? I know it’ll be cold, especially after Thailand, but I don’t mind if you don’t.”

Looking at him, I snorted another laugh.

“Does that mean the moralizing is coming later?” I said.

He shook his head, setting down his coffee mug with a deliberateness.

“No moralizing, love. I told you… the call is yours. I’m 100% on board with however you want to handle this. All of my resources are at your disposal. That includes whatever contacts I have left inside the Pentagon, as well as––”

“But what do you think?” I cut in, pursing my lips.

There was a silence.

Black met my gaze, his lips quirked in a faint smirk.

“Well… you might have just given me a hard-on.” He gave me a predatory stare. “Is that relevant? Or too much information?”

I snorted a laugh.

“…And my offer to go swimming just now might have a slight ulterior motive,” he added, gripping my hand from across the table and tugging it closer to him. “I might be angling for a post-run ocean fuck, just to see what it’s like in the Pacific… at sub-zero temperatures… versus that no-wave bathtub in Thailand. We’ll have to look out for surfers, though. And sharks. You’re not on your period, are you?”

That time, I laughed for real.

Even I heard the relief that came with it.

Black was going to back me on this.

He was going to back me all the way.

Sooner or later, we’d find Brick.

We’d find him, and then I’d get the truth out of him about what he’d done to my oldest friend––even if I lost my fucking soul in the process.

11

The Soft Approach

NAOKO STARED OUT through the iron bars of the cage. He clutched them in his hands, his fingers twisting, white-knuckled, gripping so tightly they hurt.

He was growling in the back of his throat.

He couldn’t help himself.

At this point, he barely knew he did it.

Hunger twisted his insides, pulling at him, making him sick with longing. His cock was hard. Saliva filled his mouth. His fangs were extended painfully, making the longing worse, bad enough that some part of him wanted to sink those teeth into his own wrist.

He couldn’t take his eyes off the scene playing out in front of him.

He couldn’t close his ears to the sounds coming from it, the sickeningly sensual slurping and sucking sounds that seemed to fill the high-ceilinged room.

He felt dizzy with it. He felt drugged, lost in a level of desire he’d never experienced.

He wanted to scream at the other vampire.

No, he wanted to roar at him, to tear him limb from limb.

He wanted to throw himself against the bars of the cage until he bled.

He knew, though.

He knew if he said a word––if he raised his voice to the other male in any way, much less hurt himself, or threatened him, or swore at him––he would pay for it. He wouldn’t pay for it in pain, which he would have preferred. He would pay for it in hunger, in deprivation, in this fucking cage.

Frustration filled his mind, vibrating the very blood drying in his veins.

He’d been tortured before, as a human.

He’d been deprived of food, of water, of movement.

He’d been trained to deal with those things. He’d been captured twice while behind enemy lines, and he’d been forced to put that training into real-world practice. Even recently, he’d been caught on that island, and tortured in a sense, although that had been relatively mild in comparison, apart from the confinement, the darkness, the heat, the insects, the thirst.

Well, and having to watch Jem get beaten––

He cut the memory off without thought, but it came back within seconds. That time, it lingered strangely, confusing him.

His confusion worsened as the memory filled his mind, making him grimace.

Pain rippled his veins.

That pain wound through him mixed with crystal-clear images, a rising sick feeling in his gut. Within seconds, the images hurt to look at.

The emotions worsened.

He looked away from the feeding vampire for the first time, gasping as that pain filled his chest. He gripped the bars tighter, then opened one hand, clutching at his chest instead, fighting a sharp, knife-like reaction behind his ribs, a new pain, something he’d never felt before.

It felt like he was having a heart attack.

If he’d been human, he would have been sure he was having a heart attack.

In front of him, Dorian lifted his head.

Staring at Nick through the bars, he dropped the female human on whom he’d been feeding, letting her fall unceremoniously to the floor. She crumpled there, landing inelegantly in a sprawling kneel, whimpering in the back of her throat.

Dorian barely seemed to notice.

He stalked gracefully to the cage, then, in a single move, crouched in front of it.

“What?” He stroked Naoko’s fingers where his one hand still gripped the bars. “What is wrong, my friend? What is happening?”

“I don’t know,” Naoko managed. “Pain.”

He closed his eyes, shaking his head, fighting it.

“What is this pain you feel?” Dorian’s voice was soft, coaxing. “This is not from the blood, young brother. What is it?”

Naoko didn’t answer. He could only shake his head.

He didn’t know the answer to the vampire’s question, anyway.

He couldn’t comprehend any of it.

The pain worsened. He saw Jem behind his eyes. He saw the seer lying naked on black stone, being kicked, punched, thrown against the rock. Naoko winced with each hit, gasping, although he no longer needed air in his lungs.

“Make it stop,” he managed, his voice a half-groan. “Make it stop… please.”

Dorian’s voice held understanding.

“You are remembering.” He didn’t voice it as a question. His fingers turned softer, gentler. “It is a part of being so young, Naoko. All of your memories will come back. It is gradual, at first. You remember information, but the feelings come back slower.”

Naoko looked up at him.

He fought to hold the vampire’s scarlet gaze, still fighting for air he no longer needed, still gripping his chest, grimacing from the pain. He saw sympathy in those scarlet eyes, which confused him more, but drained away part of his rage. He even thought he saw the scarlet fade somewhat, turning them the closest to clear Naoko had ever seen them.

“It is because we feel things so much more,” Dorian said, still stroking his hand. His voice was a murmur, lower than a whisper. “We feel so much more, my beloved. We could not handle our vampire emotions if we remembered everything all at once. So we remember the information first… the feelings come later. They come slowly, so as not to overwhelm us. They come, and we grow used to living as we really are. We grow accustomed to managing the full, unfiltered range of our emotions.”

Dorian turned, glancing at the girl on the floor.

She was holding her neck now, whimpering, her eyes wide and confused.

“They really are the children,” he said softly. “Living half-lives. Feeling half-feelings. They have no idea what emotions truly are. They don’t know the power of them.”

He looked back at Naoko.

The sympathy in those dark red eyes had grown stronger.

“I will get you something to eat,” he said, his voice softer still. “You will eat, and we will talk. Is that all right with you, Naoko?”

The younger vampire half-lay in the bottom of his cage now.

He gripped his chest, fighting to think past the pain, fighting not to burst out in a cry or a sob. He couldn’t comprehend most of Dorian’s words. He couldn’t comprehend how anything as ephemeral as a feeling could do this to him.

He couldn’t comprehend a name for the feeling at all.

He only gripped the iron bar so that Dorian would keep touching him.

“Yes,” he managed.

Tears came to his eyes as he stared up at that beautiful face.

“Yes,” he said. “Please, brother. Please.”

He’d barely spoken the words when Dorian rose, regaining his feet.

Before Naoko could blink, the blond vampire had vanished.

The only way Naoko knew he had left was the sound of the closing door, and the absence of his stroking fingers.

He was left there, alone, in the cage, groaning with pain, panting without taking in or expelling air, staring up at the shadowy patterns the firelight made on the ceiling.

He couldn’t keep the room in his sights for long.

Images of that cave, of Jem, of blood and water and cut flesh filled his vision. He felt each blow, over and over, wincing with kicks, with groans from the prone seer, from blood running down his chin. Naoko lay there, paralyzed with horror, with fear for the seer’s life, fear for Angel’s life, who he loved like a sister.

He would die here.

He would fucking die in this cave.

The darkness, the rattling chains, the taste of blood, the bite of insects and rats…

He gasped, fighting to breathe. He couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t get any air.

He remembered dragons.

He remembered dreaming of dragons.

He half-lay there, feeling broken, gasping without air, paralyzed with the onslaught of emotion, with the onslaught of sensations so intense he couldn’t comprehend anything outside of them. He didn’t know how long he lay there, reliving every second of those memories in the cave, but without any of the cushion, any of the numbness, any of his previous defenses.

Somewhere in that endless-feeling stretch of time, he realized something else.

Dorian had taken the human woman with him.

Naoko really was alone.

* * *

HE HAD NO idea how long Dorian was gone.

The memory of the caves passed before Dorian returned.

The emotions softened, growing bearable.

Naoko remained slumped in the bottom of the cage, naked, fighting a restrained panic that the memory might come back, or a new one might hit him before Dorian returned.

He had a lot of memories.

He could list them off.

He could describe every memory like a multi-faceted diamond, living somewhere in the recesses of his mind, every detail intact. He remembered the facts of them in exquisite detail, but really only the bare-bones information of them, like Dorian said.

He knew the facts of his life.

He recounted those facts and timelines much more clearly now, in terms of the specific, concrete details of every second he’d lived up until now. Naoko remembered dates, names, faces, locations, specific things that occurred, actions he took, actions and events he witnessed, his own specific reactions and thoughts.

He could list off his own emotional reactions to those events in a way he couldn’t recall ever having done as a human––

But Dorian was right.

Naoko couldn’t yet feel them.

If Dorian was right about the rest of it, that would change soon.

The thought fucking terrified him.

Like Dorian said, humans walked through a perpetual fog. Their senses were dulled. Their vision was poor. Their hearing was even poorer, not to mention their sense of smell, and taste. They half-existed. Half-experienced.

Half-felt.

At the moment, Naoko envied them that.

He wanted that ability back.

He wanted his previous coping mechanisms back, too––but he could already feel them as unworkable here, in this body, in this way of experiencing the world. It was like trying to use a sponge to suck up all the water in the ocean.

So he could only lay there, his mind obsessively recounting the facts of his life, the pieces he could list out dispassionately, even now. He reviewed the list, looking at the bare bones of those experiences, and as he did, the implications of what Dorian said sank deeper and deeper into his understanding. His fear grew, the longer he thought about the older vampire’s words, extrapolating their meanings in relation to the life he’d led as a human.

The thought of remembering the emotions behind those memories, the visceral experience of those memories, terrified him.

He wondered if it could even kill him.

More likely, it would drive him mad.

He was still lying there when the door swung open, nearly soundless on its hinges.

Naoko heard the sound though.

He leapt lightly to his feet in a crouch, so he wouldn’t bang his head on the cage, which didn’t allow him to stand fully upright. He looked up through the bars, and found Dorian looking at him. The vampire smiled at him warmly as Naoko watched.

An instant later, Dorian turned away, sliding his long coat off his arms and back and hanging it up on the coatrack by the door.

Naoko was still studying the vampire’s face, trying to comprehend what lived behind the blankness of his expression, when the vampire turned back towards the door.

He pulled in a human.

Naoko had already known he had a human with him––he could smell it.

The smell was too strong to be a remnant on the other male’s clothes.

Anyway, Dorian promised. He promised he would feed him.

Dorian didn’t break his promises.

“Will she suffice?” the vampire said.

The older vampire drew the girl out of the shadow of the doorway, closing the panel behind both of them. Her large brown eyes stared down at Naoko, confused enough that she must already be in thrall to a degree, but not enough that she wasn’t still afraid.

Naoko got hard just looking at her.

She was beautiful.

Maybe in her early twenties, or even late teens. Liquid brown eyes, long black hair, high cheekbones, a voluptuous body. She wore skinny jeans, a band T-shirt with white writing scrawled over the front. On her feet were pink Converse sneakers.

She looked like Dorian had grabbed her out of punk club, or maybe off a skateboard as she rode down the street.

“Is she all right, Naoko?” the older vampire said. “Don’t answer too quickly.” His voice grew a touch warning. “Don’t be too eager, Naoko, however hungry you are. You may fuck this one if you wish, so make sure she is to your liking. As I have said, we kill for reasons. We choose those we take for reasons. We do not kill indiscriminately… like animals.”

Naoko’s tongue thickened in his mouth.

Despite his body’s reaction, the more analytical side of his mind didn’t miss other relevant implications in the vampire’s words.

Dorian was going to let him out of the cage.

That, or he was going to put the female in here with him.

Either way, the cage door would open.

“Naoko?”

After a bare pause, the younger vampire nodded.

“She’s perfect,” he said, meaning it. “Absolutely perfect.”

Dorian’s full lips lifted in the faintest of smiles.

Although the expression was barely visible, Naoko knew the other vampire well enough by now to know he’d pleased him greatly with his approval.

“Would you object to my joining you?” Dorian said, his voice polite.

Naoko looked at him.

He was so hungry, he couldn’t help but frown.

He didn’t want to share his kill.

Dorian’s gaze flickered over his face, even as he unhooked his belt, removing it from around his waist and coiling it, sticking it in a drawer. He kicked off his shoes next, still watching Naoko’s face, and placed them in the bottom of his wardrobe.

“Not in eating her,” Dorian clarified after another pause. “I have several others for that. I would not steal this meal from you, Naoko, after making you wait so long. You have behaved well this past week.”

Closing the wardrobe on his shoes, the vampire walked back towards him, folding himself into a heavily cushioned chair, one that faced the iron bars of the cage. A small, ornate table stood next to the chair. Pouring himself a glass of wine from the bottle that stood there, Dorian lifted an eyebrow in Naoko’s direction.

“Besides,” he added. “I’ve eaten twice tonight. The others I brought can all be yours, if you wish. Assuming you behave. I wasn’t sure how hungry you would be.”

Naoko frowned, puzzled.

If Dorian didn’t want to feed with him, what did he want?

The vampire mentioned the two of them talking earlier.

Naoko wasn’t averse to that, not anymore.

Despite the cage, despite all of the bullshit head games, despite the attempts to cultivate Stockholm Syndrome in him, the vampire was surprisingly easy to talk to. He also didn’t lie to him, from what Naoko could tell, or try to gaslight him, or bully him, or play any of the other psychological games he’d despised back when he was human.

Naoko had gotten to the point where he even looked forward to their talks, although he wasn’t blind to what was happening there, either.

He knew the vampire was handling him.

He knew the cage, the kindness, the controlled feeding, the attempts to foster dependence, to gain his trust, to educate him on vampire law, even vampire ethical stances––it was all part of the same head-fuck psychological leash.

They were trying to control him.

Brick probably wanted him controlled, especially after that scene in the night club outside the city center. He’d likely told Dorian to find some way to calm him down.

Naoko’s military mind could understand that.

That same part of his mind could even respect it.

Hell, he’d done the same thing during high-value interrogations. He’d been trained in this exact same bullshit, once upon a time. He knew how the game was played.

He knew they were trying to break him softly this time, instead of the hard way.

He knew that talking to him, establishing trust, was a foundational part of that.

He knew the affection, the presents, the gradual granting of freedoms, the heartfelt conversations, the teaching him about vampire biology, vampire culture, vampire history… all of it was part of that.

He also knew the soft approach was generally more effective.

But he didn’t get the sense talking was what the vampire meant, not this time.

This might still be soft approach, but it was something new.

Studying the vampire’s face, he finally just asked.

“If you don’t want to eat her, then… join me in what?”

The vampire held his gaze, taking a longer drink of the wine. He didn’t speak, but his eyes somehow grew more heated, more predatory.

Naoko felt it, without knowing precisely how he felt it.

He felt it well enough to understand, on a gut level at least.

His mind followed, wrapping around what the vampire was telling him. Or asking him. Or posing as a theoretical question, maybe.

The permissions part of all of it, Naoko still wasn’t overly clear on.

When the silence stretched, Naoko felt his chest clench in a different way. He stared at the vampire in near disbelief, watching the other study his reactions openly as his understanding sank in. Naoko looked at the female, then back at Dorian.

Was he talking about fucking her? Or fucking him?

Or fucking both of them?

He was pretty sure he knew the answer to that, too.

Again, however––he didn’t know precisely how he knew.

However he had discerned it, the information hit at him strangely, confusing him more than disgusting him, or even scaring him.

He knew vampires were basically bisexual.

All of them seemed to be, from what he’d observed… which wasn’t all that different from seers, as far as he knew, and from what Miri told him. She told him, more or less matter-of-factly, that Black had been with men. Apparently, Black had been with a lot of men, although most of that might have occurred back on Old Earth, and may or may not have been consensual.

The information surprised Naoko at the time.

It may have even shocked him, given how he perceived Black––and despite the fact that Naoko wasn’t particularly homophobic as a human. He’d had gay friends most of his life, growing up in San Francisco.

He’d had gay roommates, gay bosses, gay colleagues, gay school friends.

Black surprised him more because…

Well, because it was Black.

Now, Naoko’s reaction to Black’s bisexuality was a shrug.

As little as Naoko may have told himself those differences mattered to him as a human, they did seem to genuinely matter to him even less now.

Still, he knew nothing about it.

He also didn’t know what it meant for him.

Was he more bisexual now, simply from having transitioned? Would he grow to seek it out, to crave it, as he did with women? Or would it manifest more as indifference? Would he simply cease to care, either way, what sex his sexual partners were?

Would he start to notice males the way he now noticed females?

It was a strange thought.

Was the vampire even propositioning him?

Or just informing him of the new lay of the land?

As thrown as he was by the possibilities raised by Dorian’s silence, by the meaning Naoko read into that silence, and by what all of it might spell for him personally, he couldn’t help but think about it in terms of his captivity, as well.

Mainly, he wondered how he might use it to his advantage.

If Dorian was attracted to him, would that give him any leverage over the vampire?

Dorian laughed, startling him.

When Naoko looked up, he saw the vampire smiling at him knowingly. It was as if he saw the precise instant Naoko’s mind shifted from shock to strategic assessment.

“Do not kid yourself that you might take the opportunity to snap my neck again, Naoko.”

Naoko tensed, gripping the bars of the cage instinctively.

Dorian only smiled at him, shocking him with what looked like a real smile, despite the flash of fang. The vampire continued to look at him fondly, that same smile gradually reaching his eyes.

“…As taken as I may be in the moment, I would not try it if I were you,” he warned humorously. “You surprised me once. Do not expect that to happen again… at least not anytime soon. I know a bit more about you now.”

Naoko grunted at that.

He still found himself staring at the older vampire warily.

He couldn’t make up his mind if he was meant to be intimidated, intrigued, turned on, or simply thrown off balance.

Dorian seemed content to let him make up his own mind on that score.

“Are you ready to come out of the cage, Naoko?” Dorian said.

After barely a hesitation, Naoko nodded.

“I am,” he said.

12

Kicking Open The Door

NAOKO WAS HUNGRY.

More than hungry… he was ravenous.

He was fucking ravenous.

His mouth lowered to the exposed neck below him, but before he could so much as kiss it with the surface of his lips…

The vampire gripped his shoulder, holding him back.

The fingers of his other hand coiled into Naoko’s hair, pulling him back more, preventing him from taking another bite of the woman lying under him. Staring down at that throbbing, prominent vein, right at the thickest part, just above the teeth marks he’d left on her earlier, Naoko let out a low groan, a frustrated, half-pleading rumble in his chest.

Dorian was immovable.

“You can have more in a minute, Naoko. Calm down.”

Naoko let out another involuntary growl.

It wasn’t quite a full-fledged protest, but it bordered on one.

At the very least, it was a mildly-worded complaint.

Fighting his mind off blood, off the screaming need coming from his throat and fangs, he arched his cock and lower body at the woman instead. She gasped as he went roughly deeper, tilting her hips to meet his, clasping her arms around his waist. Her legs wound around him, coiling around his, then gripping him tighter when he slammed into her again.

She let out a low moan, urging him deeper inside her in French.

Her liquid eyes stared up at him, pleading with him.

The expression he saw there made that hunger in his chest and throat worse.

“She likes you, Naoko,” the vampire murmured, massaging his shoulder. “She likes you a lot, little brother.”

Naoko shivered when the vampire kissed his back and spine, using his tongue, nipping him with his teeth, even as Naoko continued to fuck the woman. The combination of sensations made his cock harder, his body buck more forcefully into her.

It also made the hunger worse.

He stared down at the fan of her black hair, those high cheekbones, full mouth. He could smell her blood all around him now, not just from the mark on her neck.

His fangs extended as he growled again, louder that time.

“Don’t come,” Dorian warned him.

Naoko let out another disbelieving growl of protest.

“I want you to wait for me,” Dorian said, gripping his hair, murmuring in his ear. “I’m going to fuck you now, Naoko. Unless you object?”

Naoko froze, mid-thrust.

He hung over the woman, listening to her breathe, listening to her heart pound in her chest and throat, her soft mewls of distress that he’d stopped what he was doing. She dug her fingernails into his back, pulling on him to keep going.

Her want distracted him briefly.

Not for very long, though.

The vampire’s hands remained on him, massaging the muscles of his back, massaging his shoulders, his arms. The long fingers paused to clench in his hair again, tilting back his head.

Naoko grew conscious of how he must look, from the vampire’s perspective.

He was covered in blood and some kind of oil.

He’d known, when the vampire poured the oil on him and the woman, what its purpose probably was. Confusion rose in him as it occurred to him that he’d known, and that he’d brushed it aside, maybe wanting to see what the vampire would actually do.

Thinking about it now, he bucked into the woman, involuntarily that time.

He’d continued to brush it aside as he started undressing her, then forgot it entirely for a while when Dorian first let him feed on her, once he’d gotten her clothes off. Naoko let it leave his mind again once he had his cock in her.

He told himself the vampire just wanted to watch.

He told himself the vampire was getting off watching him feed and fuck.

He’d known, somewhere in the back of his mind, that watching him do those two things wouldn’t be all the vampire wanted. He could feel how some part of him knew that the whole time, how he’d been playing up to it in a way. Not quite performing for the other male, but conscious of what it was doing to him. He’d found himself paying attention to which things Dorian seemed to like more or less in what he did.

He’d been testing him maybe, trying to determine what that initial proposition meant.

He might have even been toying with him, if in a cautious, toe-in-the-water kind of way.

It wasn’t just curiosity that caused him to pull on that string, to see what it might unravel. He’d been turned on by it. He’d been getting off on the knowledge the vampire was watching.

Not just watching––Dorian had more or less been directing things.

“Naoko?”

The vampire was massaging the base of his spine now, practically forcing Naoko to relax. In the process, he was also driving him deeper into the girl.

“Will it hurt?” he said, blurting it involuntarily.

Dorian smiled.

Naoko didn’t see it. He stared down at the woman, focusing unseeingly on her face. But he heard the smile. He practically felt it.

“Right now?” Dorian mused. “I very much doubt it.” Pausing deliberately, Dorian gently tugged Naoko’s hair, gripping it tighter in his hand. “I wasn’t going to ask, Naoko. Not unless you wanted it. But I’m pretty sure you want it. Am I wrong?”

Naoko stared down at the girl.

He swallowed.

Staring at those dark brown eyes, the utter lack of fear in them, her lack of understanding of any of this, he realized some part of him felt it wasn’t enough. Fucking humans wasn’t enough. He’d known that even while he went hunting with Lucia.

He also realized he’d been toying with a half-open door that had suddenly been kicked wide, wide open.

Now he wasn’t sure he wanted to walk through it.

“What about Lucia?” His voice came out gruff. “If you want me to fuck a vampire, at least with her––”

“Lucia bores you,” Dorian said simply.

Naoko frowned.

Turning over the vampire’s words, he shook his head, but not quite in a no––more in what he wanted to be a no. He felt the truth of the vampire’s words. Closing his eyes, he tried to deny that truth to himself, but only grimaced, feeling it more strongly as he remembered his last few nights out with the female vampire.

How had Dorian known that?

How could he possibly have known that?

Had he been following the two of them, even then?

Or was it just a product of his age, that he would know it before Naoko himself knew?

Apparently, Dorian didn’t find his protests very convincing, either.

He didn’t bother to answer them, in any case.

“Do I bore you, Naoko?”

Naoko fell silent. His chest was heaving, like it had from the memory of Jem in those caves. Again, he didn’t need to breathe, but his chest moved in his fear anyway, a muscle memory from before, or maybe just a psychological tic he hadn’t yet broken.

“No,” he said finally.

“Is that a yes? On the sex?” Dorian clarified.

Naoko frowned, staring down at the woman.

She was caressing his chest now, a faint pout on her full lips as she raked her nails lightly over his skin, tracing his ribs and muscles. His cock throbbed inside her, harder than he could remember it being. He knew that wasn’t all from the woman.

He knew it hadn’t been, not since they started this.

“Naoko? Is it a yes?”

“It’s not a no,” he said, his voice a growl.

Dorian chuckled.

Naoko heard the vampire shift behind him.

He felt it in the movement of the air.

He didn’t turn his head, but closed his eyes instead, listening to Dorian pull the shirt he wore over his head. He heard him unfasten his pants, saw him in his mind’s eye as he stood briefly, removing the rest of his clothes efficiently once he had the fasteners undone and could step out of them easily.

Naoko heard him toss his clothes onto the bed above where he and the woman lay.

Anxiety filled his chest as he felt the vampire approach.

That time, he couldn’t help himself––he turned his head.

When he glanced up at the vampire, Dorian smiled at him.

He didn’t slow his approach as he smiled, reaching him so swiftly and gracefully, Naoko felt his body go entirely still, like a trapped animal.

He barely had time to make a real decision.

The vampire’s head and mouth bent to his, and then they were kissing. Nick’s tongue and lips were nicked by fangs, caressed by a swiftly probing tongue, and he let out a heavier sound, without knowing he meant to do that, either.

He didn’t know how long that went on before he started to relax.

The vampire’s hands were on his back and spine again, which helped.

His cock hardened back to that painful throb as the vampire kneaded muscles and skin and bone. Naoko hung there, unmoving inside the woman’s cunt as Dorian kissed him, deepening the kiss, kissing him harder as Naoko felt more of himself slowly relax.

Another few minutes of that, of those painful, maddening, fucking unbelievable kisses, and he let out another involuntary sound, bucking into the woman under him, hard that time, his fingers tightening on her hip.

It wasn’t a surrender that time, it was closer to a demand.

“Yes,” he murmured, when the vampire drew back.

He felt his chest clench, his throat. He didn’t quite meet Dorian’s gaze, but his jaw firmed as he nodded again, his tongue thickening more.

“Yes,” he repeated.

Again, he heard Dorian’s smile.

The vampire was on top of him then, and on top of the girl.

Naoko didn’t know what to expect, how to brace himself, how to––

“Push back,” Dorian commanded him. “When you feel me, push back, like you’re trying to push it out. It’ll make it easier.”

Naoko fought not to tense, arousal and a faint panic warring in his chest. He didn’t try to answer the other vampire, not even to nod.

He asked himself what in the holy hell he was doing––

––when the vampire entered him.

Naoko’s whole body tensed. Then, within seconds, he thought he was going to black out.

The vampire was wrong. It did hurt.

What he didn’t expect was for that pain to feel so goddamned good.

His hands gripped the floor as he stared down in shock. He supported himself over the woman, his cock inside her, Dorian’s cock inside him, and he could only groan, half in disbelief, half because it felt so fucking good he really thought he might pass out. His chest was working again, breathing imaginary breaths. The woman let out a mewling cry when Dorian drove Naoko deeper inside her.

“Don’t come,” Dorian commanded.

Naoko let out a disbelieving noise, but made himself nod.

Then Dorian’s breath was by his ear.

“You like this. You’ve been wanting me to do this since I let you out of that cage.”

Naoko could only nod, his eyes closed.

He could feel the vampire staring at him, staring at his face. Then fingers wrapped into his hair, clenching painfully, holding him utterly still. Gripping his hair tightly in one fist, the vampire over him let out low growl.

Naoko heard the loss of control in that, and nearly came, in spite of what the vampire just said. He was still fighting to control himself, panting those phantom breaths, when the vampire bit him, sinking his fangs into the place where his shoulder met his neck. Naoko cried out, bucking back into him, then into the woman, and the vampire sucked harder, pulling blood out of him, making him light-headed.

For a long moment, Naoko couldn’t see anything in the room.

The woman disappeared, the rug they lay on, the frame of the bed, the wooden floor.

Dorian flooded his mind instead.

He saw flickering images from the vampire’s past, caught glimpses of him in different countries, different clothes. The wash of his presence overwhelmed him briefly, confusing him with the nuance he felt, the intensity of the emotions there, despite the vampire’s normally stoic, silent presence when viewed from outside.

Naoko fought to see more, to go deeper, and the images shifted, twisting forward, until he saw the older vampire after he’d first dragged Naoko back to his room, after he’d first broken his neck to stop him from feeding in that club. He saw Dorian watch him while he slept on the floor of the cage, before he’d regained consciousness. He felt the vampire battling between frustration, anger at him, a growing admiration… even amusement.

He also felt him wanting to tie him down and fuck him and bite him until Naoko would do what he fucking said.

He felt flickers of Dorian’s curiosity about him too.

He saw the vampire in the same room later that night, only at his desk, hunched over a computer, naked, reading files, looking at photos of him when he was human, when he was young. He felt the vampire getting more and more turned on, intrigued, curious––

Memories flashed through Naoko’s mind, intense enough that he groaned.

Dorian pulled on him, still drinking from him, swimming through his mind, and Naoko lay there, half-paralyzed as he saw his own human family.

It wasn’t there, then it was.

Nick was there.

He wasn’t just looking at it, he was there all over again.

His mom stood across the lawn, chatting in broken Japanese and English about something to do with the Christmas tree with his Uncle Tetsuo, complaining that the lights weren’t working right and he needed to fix it since Nick’s father was out getting more alcohol. He saw his two older sisters, Maya and Numi, sprawled out on lounge chairs in shorts and tank tops to soak up the cold, California December sun, wearing hats and sunglasses and drinking white wine as they watched their kids run over the grass, screaming in delight as they chased a soccer ball.

Then he saw her.

It shocked him.

Just the sheer physical reality of her shocked his heart.

Miri threw back her head, laughing at something his nephew, Jason, did, then kicking badly at a soccer ball in her high-heeled boots, a martini glass gripped in one hand as she threw her head back and laughed again.

He remembered that day.

He remembered every goddamned second of this.

She’d looked so unbelievably gorgeous that day.

Even as sad as she was, she looked so fucking gorgeous… he almost couldn’t stand it, even as a human. He’d felt like a voyeur, with how much he watched her that day.

Angel gave him shit about it.

His oldest friend nudged him, rolling her eyes at him, again and again, mouthing “stalker” at him, in between laughing at him and advising him to he needed to just cut the shit and talk to her––but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from staring at her instead.

He couldn’t seem to talk to her in a real way about it, either.

Well, not until it was too late.

That day, he’d still been kicking around what he could say. He’d been conscious of what happened to her recently in Thailand, how she’d been kidnapped by that crazy seer, raped. He’d known she was confused about her feelings about Black himself, as much as it pissed Nick off at the time. He’d known they were fighting, that Miri was mad at her new boss, and that it wasn’t all some employee-boss fight, or even a fight between friends.

He hadn’t wanted to lay anything heavy on her then, given all that, or make her feel pressured in any way.

He was trying to be a good friend.

At the same time, he’d stopped kidding himself he didn’t want something more with her. He’d been fantasizing about her, fantasizing about the night she jumped him at her apartment, at how close they’d come to having sex, at how fucking hot she’d been that night. He’d been fantasizing a hell of a lot, and jerking off, thinking about her.

That whole Christmas Eve day, he’d wanted to wrap her in his arms, take her up into his old room, the one he only lived in as a teenager, and then again briefly as an adult, when he first got back from Iraq, and fuck her until she forgot about Black, forgot about Thailand, forgot about everything bad that ever happened to her.

He had no idea then, it would be the last Christmas he would have with her before she married that son of a bitch.

He had no idea then, it was his last chance with her.

Dorian gasped, lifting his mouth from his neck.

He hissed softly, a hiss that turned into a harder growl.

Naoko felt jealousy spark through the vampire’s blood, heard the real animosity in the growl, right before the vampire bit into him again, harder that time.

Naoko could only lay there, his head pulled back, his body pinned by the larger vampire. It should have distressed him maybe, but truthfully, it brought a strange kind of relief.

It also nearly put him out of his head with want.

The memories only made it worse.

When he could make sense of anything again, he was fucking the woman under him, moving harder, faster, and Dorian matched him, aligning their movements to drive into her harder still, until she was crying out, clinging to Naoko even as he groaned from what Dorian was doing to his own body, not only with his cock but with his teeth.

He forgot himself entirely, then.

Lowering his mouth to her throat, he bit into her.

He sank his fangs without thought, feeling drugged as he sucked her hot blood into his mouth and throat, making his eyes roll back in his head––

Fingers tightened painfully in his hair.

They tore him off her.

Before Naoko knew what happened, his face was slammed, brutally, to the floor.

Dorian didn’t release him after he did it. He continued to grip Naoko’s head in his iron-like fingers, pressing Naoko’s cheek to the rug, trapping him for real.

Naoko groaned, licking the blood off his own lips, groaning as the vampire fucked him harder, dragging himself in and out of Naoko’s body with a sensuality that drove him out of his goddamned mind. He wanted to feed on her.

He wanted to feed on her while Dorian fucked him––

“Ask.” Dorian’s voice was coarse, a barely-controlled growl. “If you want something, ask, Naoko. If you want to feed, ask. If you want to come… ask.”

Naoko groaned. “Let me. Let me––”

“That’s not a question, Naoko.”

“Can I? Goddamn it, can I? Can I… please?”

“Which? Which thing do you want, Naoko?”

Naoko’s mind spun around both things, which he needed more.

The thought of doing one without the other, with choosing, broke him into a brief panic. Something about being forced to ask, to choose, made his cock throb even more painfully, made the hunger worse. He felt Dorian’s fingers gripping his hair, and his whole body softened. Before he could make himself verbalize any of it, Dorian drove into him again, harder––

Naoko came.

He groaned, unable to stop it.

Once it was happening, he lost himself in it entirely.

He let go, closing his eyes, feeling everything, fucking everything, in for those few seconds or minutes, however long it lasted. He was dimly aware of his body falling into that fugue state as well, bucking and thrusting into the woman as he groaned. Every nerve ending, every inch of his skin seemed to be touched, seemed to be somehow part of the sensation.

He felt the woman spasm around his cock as he came, and let out another choked, half-growling sound.

Dorian hung over him, Naoko’s hair fisted in his iron-like fingers.

Dorian watched him come, and Naoko felt that, too.

When he finished, he was only lying there, feeling the woman’s heart beat in her chest, feeling her chest rise and fall under his, lifting his body incrementally as she moaned.

He winced, then, feeling the vampire’s eyes on him.

He waited for the punishment he knew would be coming.

He waited to be thrown back in the iron cage, to be told he couldn’t eat for another stretch of however-many days, to be left alone.

Dorian’s grip eased on his hair.

He began massaging the back of Naoko’s neck.

For a long moment, he didn’t speak.

When he did, his voice was low, a bare murmur.

“We’ll have to work on that,” he said, soft. “Your control.”

Naoko looked up at him.

His head still lay pressed to the floor where the vampire had held him forcefully just a few seconds before, although he didn’t hold him there now.

He stared up at the male vampire, watching Dorian look at him.

Despite his soft words, he expected to see a rebuke there.

He expected to see disapproval… disappointment, at least.

He didn’t see any of that, though.

All he saw in the vampire’s eyes was heat. Dorian stared at him, meeting his gaze with those scarlet eyes, baring the slightest hint of his fangs.

It brought Naoko’s hunger back in a thick rush.

Dorian must have seen that, too.

A faint smile lifted those lips higher.

“You’d better eat, Naoko,” he said, his voice deadly serious. “I intend to feed off you… a lot. So you’d better eat this one. Once you do, I’ll bring in the next one. When you finish that one, I’ll bring in the next. If I have to, I’ll hunt more for us.”

Naoko’s cock got harder the longer the vampire spoke.

He didn’t wait, though.

He didn’t wait for the vampire to change his mind.

He didn’t wait for him to ask again.

Turning his head, he lifted it, looking down at the woman below him. Her eyes were glazed with sex. She smiled at him.

He smiled back at her.

Then he lowered his mouth, sinking his fangs into her neck.

He bit hard that time, and deep, sucking on her straight from the vein, groaning as he drank. He’d probably drunk more than half of her when Dorian started moving over him again. Naoko moved with him, eyes closed, feeling like he was in some kind of trance.

The nerve endings all over his skin flared back into life, turning into a kind of pleasure-attuned liquid heat, practically rippling under his skin.

It felt So. Fucking. Good.

So. Goddamned. Fucking. Good.

He couldn’t remember anything ever feeling that good.

He couldn’t have imagined anything feeling like this, in all of his years of fucking and fantasizing and wanting what he couldn’t have. He’d never tried heroin, but he might have thought heroin could be like this, if he’d had that kind of imagination as a human.

A part of him felt the danger in that.

That danger flickered at him from the dark spaces of his mind, enough to raise a dim pulse of fear, to jab at the more rational parts of himself, the more strategic parts.

Whatever lie he wanted to tell himself, though, Naoko knew.

The vampire didn’t just want sex.

Dorian intended to share memories with him, to drink from him until both of them knew one another in a way that perhaps Naoko had never known another person in his life, not even during wartime. Dorian wanted to feed off him, perhaps for them to feed off each other, until Naoko couldn’t possibly keep his mental or emotional distance.

He also knew something else.

He wouldn’t refuse him.

Even now, in that moment, knowing and realizing what he did, understanding the motives behind the vampire’s intentions, he would have done anything Dorian asked of him. He would have done anything Dorian wanted… anything, no matter what it was.

The realization terrified him.

It also brought up that wanting so intensely, he let out a heavy groan, still sucking on the neck of the woman as he felt the life start to leave her.

13

Disappearing

I SNAPPED AWAKE––covered in sweat, gasping.

Strong arms held me, winding around me, holding me tight to a muscular chest.

Both of us were naked, but for once it wasn’t him that was generating most of the heat.

I writhed in his hold at first, trying to get free out of instinct. Then, when he continued to blow his light over mine, calming me without words, holding me almost lightly now as he stroked my belly and hair, I sank into him instead, still fighting to breathe.

Tears ran down my cheeks.

I didn’t know what they were at first.

I had no idea what they meant.

“You were screaming,” he murmured in my ear. “You were screaming, Miri.” He kissed my face, pressing his cheek to mine. “Why were you screaming, honey?”

I lay there against him, still fighting to get air.

I put intention into every breath, into every inhale and exhale, fighting to think past the choking, tense feeling in my chest.

I tried to think, to remember, but my mind was completely blank.

“Bad dream?” he said.

“I don’t know.” I bit down on my tongue briefly, shaking my head. “I can’t see it. I can’t see anything, Black.”

I couldn’t.

When I closed my eyes, trying to remember, I saw nothing.

I saw only darkness there.

Normally seeing darkness behind my eyes didn’t bother me. I liked it.

Since I’d been a kid, images, feelings, meanings, presences, and voices from outside of me filled my mind. That dark, calm silence was a reprieve from all of that. It reminded me of meditation, of times I was able to quiet all the voices, both inside and out, to make them all, however briefly, go silent.

I spent years learning to meditate for that very reason.

Truthfully, for a lot of years, that was the only thing that kept me sane.

That wasn’t true now.

Now, instead of stillness, instead of calm, that darkness filled me with fear.

Black’s arms wrapped around me tighter.

Now that I wasn’t fighting him, he pulled me deeper against him, snuggling me up against the length of his body, pulling my hips and legs back to curl around his. Despite the heat coming off us both, I found every inch of his skin a relief. For the first time since I’d opened my eyes, I took a full breath, letting it fill my lungs completely before I let it out.

“You don’t remember?” he said, soft.

I shook my head, wiping my face with my fingers. “No. What was I screaming?”

“It was just a scream,” he said. “It was fucking loud, though. I’m surprised security hasn’t broken down the door… or at least checked in, to make sure we’re both okay.”

There was a silence.

In it, he massaged the front of my body, kissing my shoulder and neck. I felt worry on him. I felt his muscles tensing behind me, like some part of him was still on high alert.

I also felt thoughts on him––more thoughts than he’d shared with me.

“Where did you go?” he said. “Earlier, Miri.”

I frowned. “Go?”

“Did you go outside? I couldn’t find you.”

My frown deepened. I fought to think, to answer his question, staring out through the window at the lit skyline of the city.

Both Black and I liked leaving the drapes open at night.

I liked being able to see out at the world, especially now that I lived so high up. I liked being woken by the sun. I liked having my first view of the day be of the sky, of the clouds, of birds winging by, of the reflections of sun and sky on the tops of the city. I liked that glimpse of the rising sun being the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.

Up here, we really didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing in.

“What do you mean?” I said, after another beat.

I turned my head, shifting on the bed so I could see his face. I looked up and back at him in the dim light from the window.

“I didn’t go anywhere,” I told him.

His lips quirked in a faint smirk.

I didn’t feel even a whisper of humor on him, but he kept his voice carefully light.

“Either you wandered off for at least an hour tonight, or I’m losing my marbles,” he said. “That, or I had one hell of an elaborate dream.”

I turned over, so that I was facing him. I wrapped my arms and legs around him as I did, snuggling deeper into his chest and body. I felt like I couldn’t get close enough to him. Even with how much I was sweating, with how hot I was probably making him, I was frustrated that I couldn’t get closer to him.

“An hour?” I said. “I didn’t go anywhere for an hour, Quentin.”

He kissed my throat once I faced him, using light in his tongue and lips.

Pulling on me, he wrapped more of his light into mine, wrapping into me with those structures he had below his feet, pulling me further into him, enough that he must have felt my frustration with wanting to get closer to him. Coiling his arm around my waist, he gripped my ass in his hand, yanking me up against him, where I could feel he was already hard.

“I woke up,” he said, lifting his eyes back to mine. “You were gone. I went looking for you, Miri. You weren’t in the penthouse. I went to the offices, but they were dark… no one was there.” Pulling me tighter against him, he closed his eyes, a plume of pain leaving his light, right before he looked at me. “I even went down to the lobby. I asked the security guys if they’d seen you leave. They all looked at me like I was nuts.”

I stared at him, more awake now.

I was also confused, turned on… and bewildered.

“Seriously?” I said. “I don’t remember any of that, Black.”

“You didn’t answer when I tried to ping your light,” he said. “You didn’t have your phone with you. I tried calling it, and it rang in here.”

Shifting more to my side, I wriggled free of him enough to prop my head up on my palm propped up by my elbow, looking down at him as he shifted to his back. I just stared at him for a moment while his words sank in.

Somehow, the reality that he’d been worried enough to try and call me made the whole thing inescapably real.

“What?” I said. “You were really looking for me? For an hour?”

He smiled, nodding.

The smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Rather, I felt a whisper of the worry he was trying to hide from me. Now that I’d noticed it, now that I knew it was real, it was all I could feel.

“All I can think is, you must have gone to the roof,” he said. “I came back in here, ready to call my security guys and look for you for real… and there you were, curled up in bed, like nothing happened.”

He grunted, running his fingers through his hair.

“I almost woke you up,” he added, gruff. “I was sorely tempted to wake you up with a good, hard spanking for scaring the shit out of me.”

I let out a laugh, in spite of myself.

Even so, I found I couldn’t stop staring at him.

I couldn’t stop turning over his words.

“Maybe you were the one sleep-walking?” I suggested after another beat. “Maybe I was here the whole time, Black.”

He quirked a dark eyebrow at me, clicking softly.

“We could check the security tape,” he said.

Looking down at him, I realized he would have done that already.

“What did the tape show?”

“Nothing,” he said, his mouth a touch harder now. “I don’t have anything in here, but I have cameras in the hallway outside the offices. The cameras didn’t show you leaving the penthouse. You never entered the elevator. You were never on the staircase up to the roof. You were never in the lobby.”

“Maybe I was in one of the closets?” I suggested, quirking an eyebrow.

He gave me a faint smile.

I felt the edge behind it now, even though I also felt him trying his damnedest to acknowledge my humor, to let me reassure him. I could practically feel the skepticism on him, though. He didn’t think I’d been in a closet, which told me he’d searched the penthouse pretty thoroughly. He didn’t think I’d been on the roof, either.

He didn’t say anything though, so I didn’t know what he thought precisely.

I didn’t know why he’d mentioned the roof in particular, or why he found it at all likely I’d wander up there on my own, when security cameras would have definitely picked up images of me climbing the stairs.

He had a helipad up there.

“I’ll get the system checked tomorrow,” he said finally.

I nodded, still looking down at him, studying his light.

“Sorry?” I said, not sure what else to say. “I really don’t remember any of that.”

He looked over at me, his gold eyes reflecting in the street lights from below.

I felt the worry on him. I felt him working to let it go.

“Well,” he said after a pause, grunting as he wrapped his arms back around me, pulling me tight to his chest. “Apparently scaring the hell out of me once in one night wasn’t enough for you. You felt the need to do it to me again like two hours later… screaming your lungs out like someone was murdering you right next to me.”

Looking at him, I realized that despite his low, teasing tone, he wasn’t entirely kidding about the scream, either. It unnerved him. Ribbons of reaction still ran through his light, sparking visibly as he consciously seemed to be calming himself down. His aleimi felt almost like it was in military mode, like he was ready to hurt someone with his bare hands.

Sinking back into him, I lay on his chest and stomach, stroking his hair.

“Gaos, Black,” I murmured. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

He let out a half-laugh.

“Am I okay?”

“Well… yeah.” Sliding up his body, so I was astride his lap, I shrugged, still stroking his face and hair, now pulsing my light into his. “I’m fine. I don’t remember any of it.”

He let out a low laugh, like he couldn’t help himself.

I still felt that tension on him, though.

For a long moment, he didn’t say anything, but I felt his light in mine. I felt the probing there, even as he tried to decide if he should say more.

I was about to break the silence, to ask him, when he spoke.

“It’s about Nick,” he said. “This is about Nick, isn’t it?”

I tensed.

I didn’t feel caught. It was more that hearing Nick’s name right then managed to jar me, and to remind me. Immediately, that darkness wrapped itself back around my light.

For the first time, it really sank in that the darkness I’d been feeling had something to do with him, with Nick.

Some of it was grief.

I knew that wasn’t all of it, though.

“What can I do, Miri?” Black murmured, stroking my hair, cupping my face where I hung down over him. “Do you want to talk about it? About whoever or whatever you think called Nick’s mom? Do you want to go back to Europe?”

I frowned.

We’d had surveillance on Nick’s family for weeks now.

We’d tapped the line at his parents’ house, along with both of their mobile phones. We tapped his sister Numi’s phones, along with his sister Maya’s in Seattle, and his younger sister, Naomi’s in Los Angeles. We even tapped the lines of several of his uncles and aunts, mostly the ones who lived in the Bay Area, the ones Nick was particularly close to.

Black called contacts he still had in the Pentagon that first day we’d gone running and gotten waffles. In the end, he pulled everything he could get on Nick’s mother’s phone, and on Nick’s own phones, anything he could find with Nick or his family’s name attached.

That one phone call to Yumi Tanaka was the only one we found after Koh Mangaan.

I must have read that transcript about a hundred times by now.

I listened to the raw audio even more times than that.

I read and listened to every word, looking for Nick’s voice, quirks in Nick’s speech, looking for his humor, his light, his presence, even his anger. I looked for hints that he was who he said he was; I looked for hints that he wasn’t. I rewound particular parts of the conversation and listened to them over and over again. I looked for him there, anywhere I could find him.

I found shadows of him instead. I found that darkness.

I felt him, but I couldn’t make up my mind that it was him.

I couldn’t get past that feeling of grief, anger, guilt, and just wrongness.

Black’s contacts traced the call back to a payphone in Paris.

There was traffic in the background––cars, foot traffic, the sounds of an outdoor café nearby, the sounds of music from a club or storefront further away.

There was also laughter in the background, close enough that he’d likely been with other people. In the recording I listened to over and over, a woman’s laughter was audible specifically. I heard her speak to someone, maybe even to him.

I had the recording cleaned.

I listened to it again, trying to pick up what she said to him.

The only word I heard was his name.

Not Nick––she didn’t call him Nick.

She called him Naoko.

Naoko… I heard, amidst her laughter. Naoko… Naoko…

Black stroked my back, his fingers massaging my skin.

It snapped me back to the room, back to where I sat, naked, in his lap.

Coming back from wherever my mind had gone, I realized I’d never really answered his question. I supposed by then, I didn’t need to.

“You love him,” Black said, soft.

I flinched, looking down.

Frowning in puzzlement, I gripped his hair in my fingers, tugging on it lightly.

“Of course I love him,” I said, faintly chiding. “He’s my oldest friend, Black.”

He shook his head, lips taut. “That’s not what I meant, Miriam.”

I stared at him.

I blinked, then frowned, staring at him in the dim light.

“Black. What in the hell are you saying? After everything––”

“After everything,” he growled, his voice holding a faint warning. “I should know. I’ve known from the beginning how you felt about Nick, Miri.”

When I just sat there, staring at him in utter disbelief, he grunted.

“Why the hell do you think I was so threatened by him?” Turning his head, he looked out the window. His eyes narrowed at the lit structure of the Bay Bridge. “Miri, if I hadn’t shown up in your life, you probably would have ended up married to Nick.”

But that was too much.

I let out a disbelieving snort.

“If you hadn’t shown up in my life, I would have ended up dead,” I scoffed. “That, or married to Ian the serial killer.” I scowled. “Probably both. He probably would have married me then killed me. That, or I’d be one of my uncle’s lap dogs by now, after Ian spent however-long indoctrinating me in Charles’ crazy religious bullshit.”

Black shook his head slowly.

He didn’t want to fight with me, I could feel that, but I felt his disagreement all the same.

“You and Ian would’ve never lasted,” he said, matter-of-fact. “However that came out, you and he wouldn’t have stayed together. As your sight opened, you would have seen him for what he was.” He met my gaze, his gold eyes glowing. “You would have seen Nick, too, Miri. You would have seen him for who he was. Some part of you always knew. But I think you two would have found your way to one another eventually.”

I stared at him.

Now I was verging on angry.

“What the hell are you saying, Black?” I said. “That Nick’s mom was right? That I should have married Nick, instead of you?”

Grimacing, he shook his head. A plume of heat left his light, even as his arm circled my hips, yanking me closer to him.

“No,” he said, his voice harder, and thicker. “Fuck no, Miri. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying… you love him. More than you ever admitted to yourself. More than you ever admitted to each other. I’m trying my damnedest not to feel threatened by that, but it doesn’t change how I see it. I think him being gone is forcing you to face that. It’s why it’s hitting you so hard.”

“Or maybe it’s hitting me so hard because he’s my oldest friend, Black,” I said, my voice louder, caught somewhere between fury and disbelief. “Maybe it’s hitting me so hard because he was one of my best fucking friends, Black, someone I’ve been close to since my early twenties. Maybe it’s because he saved my fucking life more times than I can count. Or because he and Angel are the closest I had to a family after my sister died––”

“Hey.” He gripped me tighter, shaking me a little. Pulsing heat at me, he coiled his arm further around my waist and back, pulling me against him. “Hey… doc. This isn’t an accusation. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing at all. I’m trying to help. You’re still not facing it. I’m trying to help you see it.”

“See what?” I snapped. “That I was secretly in love with Nick?”

“Yes,” he said, exasperated. “That you had unresolved feelings. Both of you did.”

I shook my head, still fighting anger. “He was head over heels for Kiko. I was the furthest thing from his mind at Koh Mangaan. I had been for months.”

Black rolled his eyes.

I saw it even in the dark of the room.

“That thing with Kiko was bullshit, doc,” he said. “That was just him trying to deal with you and me. He was trying to move on. It was pure rebound. One hundred percent.”

I shook my head.

Before I could speak, Black went on, his voice dropping to a mutter.

“…Fucking Kiko’s been the rebound target lately.”

I stared at him. “Meaning what?”

Black glanced up, scowling.

“You asked me about Jem,” he said. “You asked me why I was so pissed off at him. Well, Kiko’s one of my oldest friends, doc… at least who’s still alive. Jem didn’t approach that thing with Kiko right. I’m beginning to think it wasn’t conscious on his part, so I’m not as angry as I was, but it’s still fucked up. I can’t help but be a little mad at him, especially given how he ended it.”

“Kiko?” I said, bewildered. “Jem? What does that have to do with––”

“Let’s just say you aren’t the only one who had unresolved feelings about Nick,” Black growled, glaring up at me.

I stared at him.

I honestly had no idea what he was talking about.

Walking back the last few things he’d said in my mind, I felt my frown deepen.

“Jem?” I said, confusion in my voice. “Jem and Nick?”

Black grunted. Propping his upper body up on one arm and hand, he continued to hold me tightly around the waist, keeping me flush against him.

“Yes, Jem.” Seeing the confusion on my face, he grunted again. “Jem had a thing for Nick. It wasn’t a small thing, either,” Black added, his voice gruff. “It was some kind of light thing, and Jem was trying to hide it from all of us… but especially from Nick. I can’t believe I missed it, truthfully, but it flew right past me. I take it you didn’t notice, either.”

He met my gaze, his jaw hard. Lifting his hand briefly off the mattress, he made the seer motion for crazy by one of his ears.

“He’s fucked in the head. Jem,” he added. “Something about Old Earth. Someone fucked him over, broke his heart… something.”

I nodded, frowning slowly.

I had known about that.

Jem told me about it.

Black scowled up at me. “Of course he did.”

Exhaling, I sat back on his thighs. “Black, he didn’t tell you because your cousin was involved. On Old Earth. He was in love with your cousin… and his wife. One after the other, or maybe both of them at the same time. Something. But your cousin was definitely involved. It was a big messy love triangle, from what he told me.”

Black’s eyebrows went up.

I felt a flicker of surprise off his light, then a more thoughtful whisper, one that held a lot more understanding.

Then he seemed to shrug it off.

“Well, whatever it was, it screwed him up. He started having feelings for Nick, and he ran like hell. I think it scared the shit out of him. He seduced Kiko instead… maybe partly out of jealousy, knowing Nick had a crush on her. Maybe it was completely subconscious, like I said. It might even have been a way of trying to get closer to Nick. He must have known Nick was straight. Whatever it was, it wasn’t cool to Kiko. It wasn’t cool to Nick either, of course… but it was seriously not cool to Kiko.”

Grunting, he adjusted his weight on his palm, his voice a low growl.

“I was kind of pissed at both of them, to be honest… Nick and Jem. But with Nick, I really think he meant to make something work with Kiko. It was Kiko who saw through it. She told me she knew Nick wasn’t really interested in her… not really. She didn’t come out and say why she thought that, but I knew what she meant, and I agreed with her. I was honestly relieved she intuited that, and didn’t go along with it.”

Scowling, he glanced up at me.

“Kiko wasn’t able to have that kind of clarity with Jem. For a lot of reasons. He’s a fucking seer, for one, and she’d never been with a seer before. Humans don’t exactly find our kind easy to read, and Jem’s ex-Adhipan for fuck’s sake… and probably well over three hundred years old. Kiko wouldn’t have been used to the light component of sex. Humans can get addicted to that, just like seers… he probably blew her doors off, sex-wise. She couldn’t see him clearly because of that, not to mention just being kind of overpowered by his light.”

Hearing the real anger in his voice somehow calmed my own.

I was still frowning, but I found myself thinking about his words.

Jem had a thing for Nick?

Weirdly, it almost made sense.

I hadn’t seen it at all at the time, of course.

I’d seen Dalejem look at Nick here and there, but a lot of seers did that, just stared at people, I mean, especially seers who’d recently come from Old Earth. It was one of the hardest habits to break them of, when it came to assimilation. Seers, in general, had a tendency to stare in ways that freaked a lot of humans out.

“Jem definitely wanted Nick,” Black grunted. “Believe me. I accidentally tapped into one of his fantasy sessions about it… it was explicit. Technicolor explicit. He might have even been borderline fixated on him, from what I saw. I’m actually surprised he didn’t act on it, whether Nick was straight or not. After I saw that, I was worried I was going to have a problem with him… as in, he might use his light to try and get Nick to sleep with him anyway.”

Wincing a little at the unwelcome images, I smacked Black’s chest.

“Okay,” I said, grimacing. “I get the point.”

He looked up at me, his brow furrowed.

“I don’t think you should have married Nick,” he growled, his anger rising. “Jesus Christ, Miri. Nothing like voicing my worst fucking fears aloud. I just think you feel what could have been there, and a part of you feels guilty about it. Not only for Nick, but because you know it would have worked, in a different world.”

Gripping me tighter, he yanked me up against him, pressing his erection against me.

“A world I’m not in, doc,” he said. “I’m in this one.”

I let out an involuntary laugh, curling my hands around his shoulders.

“I’m very aware of that,” I said.

“You’d better not forget it,” he growled. “You better not forget I would have fought him to the death for you, doc, if it came to that. I like Nick. More than liked him. I really cared about the son of a bitch by the end, but…”

Falling silent briefly, he clenched his jaw, looking out the window.

When I wrapped my arms tighter around his neck, he looked over at me.

“I’m sorry, doc,” he said, gruff. “I’m really sorry about Nick.”

Fighting a tightening in my throat, I nodded. “I know. I know you are.”

His arm squeezed me tighter against him.

He looked up almost apologetically. Pain wafted off him as he did, even as he pressed deeper against me.

“I really want to fuck,” he said. “I wanted to fuck when I came back in here and found you here. You scared the shit out of me.”

Coiling my arms and legs around him tighter, I leaned into his chest.

I’d definitely noticed our sex urges hadn’t lessened any, since we left Thailand.

Apparently that wasn’t part of the whole “completing the bond” thing.

Black grunted, clearly hearing me.

“Did you think it would be?” he said.

I shrugged. “I didn’t know. But yeah… if I had to guess, I thought it would have calmed us both down some on that front.”

“Nope,” he said.

He still sounded distracted, despite the pain I now felt twisting through both of our light. He was still looking out the window, frowning, when I nudged him.

“What?” I said. “You want to ask me something. What is it?”

He looked over, and I saw worry skate across his expression.

For the first time, I really noticed that I could see him better. The sky was lightening outside the window. When I glanced over, I saw pink and gold streaks brightening at the horizon just past the Bay Bridge.

“I know you and Nick… you had a connection,” he said, his voice hesitant.

Feeling me react, tensing in his arms, he shook me a little again, his voice lowering back to a growl.

“Fuck, Miri… I’m not saying anything about that. Not like you think. I’m just saying… the screaming. The disappearing in the middle of the night. That ‘darkness’ you’ve been feeling. Do you think you’re feeling him? Nick?”

I thought about his words.

My jaw hardened enough to hurt, but I tried to think, to give him a real answer. Turning, I gazed out over the pre-dawn sky of San Francisco. I tried to reconcile what I’d felt, the pit of dread in my gut when I woke up, the panic, the darkness. I tried to wrap my head around the screaming Black heard, what Black said about me disappearing in the middle of the night.

Still staring sightlessly at the brightening sky, I frowned.

“I fucking hope not,” I said finally, turning to look at him.

Still frowning as I studied his gold eyes, I felt that pain in my chest and gut worsen. “I really fucking hope none of what I’ve been feeling is Nick, Black. I hope he’s alive. More than anything, I hope he’s alive… but I don’t think that’s what I’ve been feeling.”

Black frowned back at me, his face tightening at my words.

He didn’t say anything.

He didn’t even nod.

He didn’t emit anything with his light, or change expression, but somehow, I felt him wince at what I’d said anyway. I could feel he had his own opinion around all of that, somewhere in the back of his mind. I even had a pretty good idea of what that opinion was by now, although I didn’t let myself think about it very deeply, or for very long.

Whatever it was, Black wasn’t ready to share it with me.

More likely, he knew I wasn’t ready to hear it.

I wanted to disagree with him.

I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that he could just tell me, whatever it was.

I wanted to tell him I could handle it.

The problem is, I was pretty sure he was right.

I was pretty sure, whatever it was, I couldn’t handle it.

Not yet. Maybe not ever.

14

Newborn

BRICK WALKED INTO the sleeping apartments, unannounced.

He didn’t knock.

He didn’t make a sound, but simply entered, swinging open the door and scanning the first room of the three-room suite, looking for movement. It was his right to walk into any room or apartment or dwelling here––any living space belonging to one of his own––but it was a right he seldom exercised, particularly with his higher-ranked lieutenants.

This time was different, though.

It had been over two weeks.

He’d indulged this silence for over two weeks.

Walking into the common area of the suite, he frowned faintly, knowing immediately that this particular room was empty. He glanced out the open drapes at the sunlight-kissed balcony and knew the room had likely been vacant at least since the night before.

Passing through the living area with its small kitchen, distressed leather sofa set, and the industrial-style desk with a brand-new laptop open on top, he glanced around the thick carpet, and the wooden floor beyond it.

No bodies.

That was something, at least.

Then again, Dorian had always been fastidious, particularly around the disposal of his kills. Even more than most vampires, Dorian hated the smell of dead things. He generally removed the remains within minutes of having killed them, particularly if he brought them back to wherever he regularly worked and slept.

Brick pushed open the bedroom door, which also made no sound.

He knew Dorian would have seen to that immediately upon moving into this space. Excess sound was another thing his friend couldn’t tolerate; he would have greased and aligned every hinge on every door in the room, as well as the shutters, windows, drawers. He would have done everything he could to make them silent––to human ears, at least––to make his presence here ghost-like.

Walking into the room that felt larger, the one to the left of the main door into the wider building, Brick scarcely paused as he entered the overly warm space. He did not stop until he stood on a thick, plush rug that stood between the fireplace and the four-poster bed.

An iron cage stood on that floor, just as Dorian told him it would.

Nothing lived inside it now.

The door hung slightly open, and it was empty.

Dorian could smell blood, but nothing marked the off-white rug where he stood, or the hardwood floors. The fire had burned down to embers, but the room was sweltering, almost uncomfortably warm, even for him, and vampires generally ran cold.

No bodies on the floor in here, either.

Brick’s gaze shifted to the bed.

He’d known that’s where his search would end.

He’d suspected as much before he arrived, but he actually knew the instant he walked into the three-room apartment, and sensed both of them in the largest room apart from the common area. He could find any of his children, if only he looked for them.

The near-silence that greeted him told him most of the rest.

Even so, he’d taken the time to survey the rest of the vampire’s living quarters anyway, maybe in part to brace himself for what his eyes would find when he finally laid eyes on his two missing vampires.

He still grimaced faintly when his stare found them.

Dorian lay there, naked and sprawled, eyes closed, one arm and one leg wrapped possessively around their newborn.

As for Naoko himself, he hardly looked averse to the contact. Rather, he leaned into the taller male, his hand wrapped around Dorian’s pale arm where he was held.

Naoko’s face winced visibly while Brick watched, his eyes rolling under his lids, his chest moving in phantom pants. He grimaced, tensing, his expression changing in a complicated and articulate series of facial tics and twitches, like an animal hunting or fighting in its sleep.

When Naoko growled, low in his throat, the vampire lying behind him wrapped his arms around him tighter, crushing him to his chest. He wrapped his leg more tightly around him, too, sinking his fangs into his shoulder, which he’d already marked extensively, along with the newborn’s arms, neck, back, ass, side, his one visible leg.

The bite wasn’t aggressive.

That time, at least.

The sinking fangs stilled Naoko instead, reminding him.

It reminded him to obey.

It reminded him who was in control.

More than any of that, it reminded him he was safe.

A stronger vampire was there. Nothing would happen to him, not on that vampire’s watch. Not without that vampire’s say.

They weren’t asleep.

Vampires didn’t sleep.

Brick frowned, looking between the two of them, trying to decide if he should snap them out of this now, or if he should call in some of the others to help him do it. He knew the state they were in. He recognized it, as well as the dangers that accompanied it, if he tried to break them apart in the wrong way, or if he did so without first making them coherent enough to see him clearly.

They were gorged on one another’s blood.

Or, much more likely, Brick thought with a grimace, Dorian had gorged himself on Naoko’s blood, feeding the newborn throughout the night on humans to keep him from getting too weak. If that was the case––and Brick knew with almost no doubt that it was––Dorian was now completely immersed in the mind and the memories of the newborn, exploring every detail of the life he could coax Naoko to recall.

Whatever the precise truth of it, they were both clearly drunk on the connection.

If they’d been going at this all night––or for several nights, if not several weeks, which Brick deemed far more likely based on the silence he’d observed from Dorian since at least the middle of the month––they were probably far gone enough by now that Brick could have set off a firearm in the room without disturbing them.

Well, perhaps not.

With any vampire but Dorian, that likely would have been the case; with Dorian, a different outcome was more likely.

With Dorian, he’d probably end up having to fight the other vampire off as the blood-drunk male protected his newborn fuck-toy from what he perceived as a dangerous intruder.

Brick’s annoyance ratcheted up a few notches.

He watched the two of them a few moments longer, noting the unmistakable expression of contentment on his friend’s face.

Brick had known Dorian was infatuated with the newborn.

He’d known it might even have been Dorian’s real reason for asking to train Naoko, whatever Dorian told himself about why he’d made the offer. If the infatuation hadn’t started before then, it definitely started after, when Naoko not only attacked him ferociously and tried to bolt, but eventually outsmarted him.

Brick had given his approval anyway.

He’d done it more out of logic and expediency than out of deference to his own feelings, which had been decidedly more mixed on the subject. In fact, he’d specifically ignored his personal feelings in this, much as it pained him to do so. He’d tried to do what was best for Naoko, and well as what was best for his people as a whole.

He found himself almost regretting that now.

He would have preferred to have been Naoko’s first.

He more or less told Dorian that, even as he gave him permission to do what he did.

Again, he could rationalize that decision now.

He’d known Dorian was right. Dorian really was the best choice for this.

Lucia was out of the question. Nairobi would have been too rough with him. Naoko simply hadn’t been afraid enough of Brick himself.

The implications of that last irritated Brick, too.

Subconsciously or not, Naoko saw Dorian as an alpha in their little pack, even more than he saw his rightful king that way––whatever lip service he might pay to Brick’s role and title. The fact that Brick had power over Dorian himself likely mattered little in that assessment, since it was wholly subconscious anyway.

Of course, Brick knew it wasn’t that simple.

Dorian seemed to think Naoko saw him, meaning Brick himself, as a kind of benign father-figure, not unlike how he saw his human father. Naoko had apparently been quite close to and fond of his human father, both as a child and an adult.

Whatever the precise case, Dorian clearly was the better choice for breaking in Naoko while he still needed a firm hand. Brick saw that, even before Dorian outlined his reasons in painstaking and maddeningly logical detail.

Still, Dorian didn’t have to so enjoy his self-appointed assignment quite so much. He’d obviously enjoyed it––and continued to enjoy it––with enough enthusiasm that Brick felt an overwhelming urge to break his friend’s neck where he lay.

Still, Naoko’s obvious compliance with Dorian’s sexual demands told Brick nothing concrete about whether Dorian’s attempt to train the youngster had been successful––meaning if he’d actually managed to bring Naoko somewhat to heel.

Looking at the two of them, Brick found himself thinking Dorian would probably say that he had, at least in the ways that mattered.

Brick wasn’t even sure he would disagree with him.

Naoko would have developed more of an understanding of the vampire mind from so many days spent sharing an elder’s blood.

That understanding alone would make him more compliant.

Dorian’s mind was logical. Through his blood, Naoko would have gained a firm and thorough grasp as to why their laws and rules were necessary, and why those laws would help to keep them all alive, especially now.

Moreover, Brick could see the submission on him, even from where he stood.

Dorian clearly had him trained to respond to his teeth and touch, at least to a degree. Of course, whether that would translate into Naoko being receptive to their words might be another matter entirely, especially once the novelty of getting properly fucked by a vampire who knew what he was doing wore off.

Still, Brick had to grudgingly give his friend credit.

Dorian had apparently done what he said he would.

Moreover, he’d managed it within the one month deadline Brick gave him.

At the thought, and the memory of what brought him here, Brick frowned again.

He also made a decision.

“Get up,” he snapped. “Now!”

He banged his Anubis-headed cane on the hardwood floor.

Naoko frowned, receding deeper into Dorian’s arms.

Dorian coiled those arms around him tighter, a bare flash of fang visible as his expression tightened, shifting to a near threat. His eyes still closed, he snarled softly, deep in his throat. He gripped Naoko even more tightly as Brick watched, his body coiling around the newborn’s with an overt protectiveness, mixed with a possessiveness Brick could not fail to notice.

As Brick suspected, Dorian would likely try to kill anyone who got too close to either of them right then––even Brick himself––unless Brick managed to snap him out of his drunken state prior to approaching. If Dorian remained too far inside Naoko’s blood, the older vampire would likely attack anyone who even might be a threat, especially to the newborn in his arms.

Brick didn’t intend to get that close.

Leaning down, he plucked a throw pillow off the floor instead, and threw it at the two of them, hitting Dorian in the head.

“GET UP!” He raised his voice, putting an element of thrall into it, trembling it with his own blood. He banged the cane on the floor. “DORIAN! THIS IS YOUR FUCKING KING. I REQUIRE YOUR PRESENCE. AND YOUR FULL ATTENTION. NOW.”

That time, Brick saw recognition flicker across his friend’s face.

After what felt like a long silence, one eye opened on that pale face.

When it did, Brick could only stare.

If he’d been human, he might have gasped.

The iris that met his was clear, the color of cracked crystal.

Brick’s jaw loosened as he continued to stare, doubting his own eyes. He continued to stare even as Dorian’s iris filled slowly with scarlet, reverting to the shade he knew.

Even so, that bare glimpse of crystal in Dorian’s eyes genuinely threw him.

“Did you need me, my king?” his second-in-command said, his voice as toneless and unreadable as always. “I apologize I have not checked in of late.”

Brick smirked at that, in spite of himself.

Even so, that pretense of nonchalance gave him pause.

It might have made him laugh under different circumstances, and with a different fuck-toy in Dorian’s bed. As it was, the utter flatness of that gaze, the indifference in his expression and that deep voice, came close to annoying him. More than any of that, it made him wary, if only for the utter transparency of the lie.

“Are you going to attack me, brother?” he said, quirking his eyebrow as Dorian slowly raised his head. “Am I safe to approach this little sex nest you’ve built here for our newborn? Or am I liable to get a limb torn off my body for my trouble? One that will no doubt be excruciatingly painful to grow back?”

Dorian glanced down at Naoko, who still hadn’t opened his eyes.

The black-haired newborn remained ensconced in Dorian’s arms and body, his fingers gripping the older vampire’s forearm, his teeth exposed in whatever dream where he remained. Dorian made no move to release him, but instead drew him tighter against him, as if to encase him more deeply in that protective bubble.

“Are you able to speak to me?” Brick said, his voice a touch sharper.

“Of course, my king.”

“You will do it here, I take it?” Brick said. “Naked? With my own blood shamelessly in your arms?”

Dorian tensed.

That time, Brick saw it.

“Careful, Dorian,” he breathed, softer.

His second immediately relaxed, his expression and muscles changing in swift increments as Brick watched. Brick felt his own fangs retract somewhat at the apology he saw rising in the other’s eyes.

“I know you are smitten, my love,” Brick said, his voice warmer that time, and significantly more sympathetic. “Looking at the two of you, I am quite jealous… so I do understand your feelings. But do not forget your place.”

“Never, my king.”

He said it so vehemently, with such force behind his words, Brick relaxed for real.

Even so, he found himself assessing the other vampire critically.

“Will he be in shape to travel?” he said. “Or do you need more time with him?”

Dorian’s mouth pursed, but that time in thought. He glanced down at Naoko, studying his face, then up at Brick.

“When were you thinking of taking this trip, my king?”

“In three days. Less, if he can manage it.” Frowning as he thought about what he’d just watched on the news, he gazed unseeingly at the wall above the bed. “I’m afraid we’re out of time, Dorian. Charles is clearly moving. Half of the Southern United States now burns with fires from his human mobs. They are closing off the borders. It is time to approach the seers in San Francisco. It is time to bring our proposal to Quentin, before it is too late.”

Dorian nodded to his words.

Still, as he looked down at Naoko, Brick saw conflict there, doubt.

More than that, he saw what might have been actual worry.

Brick watched him, frowning.

“What?” he said finally. “What is the matter? Is he ready? Or not?”

Dorian looked down at Naoko, at his closed eyes, then up at Brick.

“He is ready,” he said, sounding sure of his words. “Ready enough for what you need, I believe. But I confess,” the vampire added after a pause, his voice apologetic. “After witnessing his mind, I fear we may have miscalculated.”

Brick frowned, staring at him.

“What do you mean?” he said. “Miscalculated? In what way?”

Dorian continued to look at Naoko, watching the handsome face twitch and tighten, his own long jaw and mouth unmoving.

“With Naoko?” Brick pressed. “Or with Quentin Black?”

Dorian looked up.

His scarlet irises shone faintly.

“No,” he said. “Well… perhaps. Perhaps with Naoko himself. He understands more now, but we will need to keep an eye on him while we are there. He has more feelings towards Black than I had previously realized. He may have trouble controlling them once we are there. Once he is around seers in general.”

Brick frowned.

This was not news, not to him.

“I assumed,” he said. “He is still a newborn.”

He stared at his friend, puzzled when the other didn’t go on.

“Is that who you meant we miscalculated with?” Brick pressed, when Dorian still didn’t speak. “Are your misgivings around Naoko himself, my brother?”

Slowly, Dorian shook his head.

Looking up from newborn’s face, as if pulling himself out of whatever he felt there, Dorian frowned, his features uncharacteristically expressive.

“No,” he said grimly. “Not him either.”

He looked up, meeting Brick’s gaze.

“No,” he said seriously. “I meant Miri. I am worried we may have miscalculated in relation to Quentin Black’s wife… Miriam Fox.”

15

Bourbon And Biryani

“HEY… MIRI. CAN I borrow you a minute?”

I turned, looking towards the conference room door.

I stood around a flat-screen television in the main conference room of Black’s offices, surrounded by about fifteen of the young natives from New Mexico.

In just the last few minutes, a few seers and a number of Black’s ex-military types had joined us as well––most of them carrying bags of food, since it was around noon. Now Kiko leaned on the edge of the table next to me, not far from Mika, Jem, Jax, Yarli, Manny, Easton, and Frank, who’d all pulled chairs over from around the high-tech conference table.

The younger natives, including Magic and a number of her friends, Dog and Devin among them, sat on the floor. I was the only one who stood entirely, maybe because I kept telling myself I would leave soon, that I would stop watching the news.

Somehow, I never did stop watching, though.

On the monitor, twenty-four-hour cable news reported on the riots in Texas.

Copycat riots had started in Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Virginia, Chicago, and Philadelphia now, too.

Tearing my eyes off the image of two vampires tearing out the throats of soldiers firing assault rifles, wearing full riot gear, I looked towards the familiar voice.

Black stood in the door of the conference room.

He wore his usual work uniform of black pants, a black T-shirt and boots, and his military watch. I couldn’t help noticing he was wearing his wedding ring too, the one from the set he’d commissioned from that artist in New York.

If he’d seen me glance at his ring finger, his face didn’t show it. His expression was grim, and he looked distracted. Taking in what little I could feel off his light, I looked from him back to the monitor, grimacing at the video now playing in the inset behind the reporter.

It showed a tall, red-haired male vampire with its fangs sunk into the throat of a woman who looked maybe twenty years old––so probably from one of the colleges. According to the news reports, several universities in the South, notably in Texas and Louisiana, had been targeted by groups of vampires. There’d been a lot of murmured conversations in our group about what was really going on. So far, I agreed the most with Kiko and Yarli’s assessment, that Charles had his people staging these riots for his own reasons.

Yarli figured Charles might have even targeted the universities specifically. According to her, he’d want control over the institutions of higher learning, perhaps as an excuse to put them directly under the umbrella of the federal government, and thus his own people.

Charles also clearly wanted more control over the borders.

Yarli explained to us how they’d had racial checkpoints at all borders on Old Earth, even between some states in her version of the U.S.A.

She suspected Charles was aiming to create something like that here too, only for vampires, not for seers. He’d want the universities, she explained, so he could start funneling resources into research and tech he needed to control the vampire population––and likely the human population as well.

The longer she talked, the more I found myself seeing the outlines of the world my uncle was designing, and the more I realized we wouldn’t be able to stand on the sidelines for much longer. It also made me wonder what the hell the vampires would do once Charles started making his power grabs for real.

There was no doubt the riots were also meant to scare the hell out of the humans in regard to vampires, as well.

I stared at the college student’s face as the red-haired vampire consumed her, and it hit me that her parents could be watching this. Eyes glazed, head thrown back, the young woman looked on the verge of death. The vampire’s face was calm. A look of utter contentment lived in his expression as he drained her, one hand wrapped around the front of her body, squeezing her breast through the sweatshirt she wore.

She wasn’t a woman, whatever her age.

She was a girl.

Watching the life drain out of her, I couldn’t help but think of Zoe, my sister. She was about the same age when a vampire killed her.

My eyes returned to Black, that grimace still twisting my expression.

“Sure,” I said. “No problem.”

Realizing how long I’d been standing in there, watching the news with the young Natives, all of whom had a lot better excuse for being in there than I did, I felt a flicker of guilt. I wondered if I was growing addicted to watching the horror show my uncle was unfolding on the world stage, starting with my own country.

More to the point, I was neglecting my work.

Black asked me to start going through the files on the seer refugees days ago, a job I’d been putting off since we got back from Europe, mostly because I still spent most of my time combing news and police reports, looking for signs of Nick.

Kiko gave me a smile and a quirked eyebrow as I walked around her and her Tupperware container of wakame, rice and grilled salmon, which she was mostly eating with her fingers, probably so she didn’t have to bother dragging a chair around from another part of the table.

Kiko rarely just sat and chilled, though.

She always seemed to be on the move, or soon to be on the move, whenever I saw her.

Black motioned for me with his head when I glanced at him again, and I sped my steps, walking through the door in front of him when he held it open.

He brought me back to his office.

Once again, he held the door for me to walk in front of him, nudging me with his light towards the conference table at one end of the long room. I glanced around at the smoky, etched-glass front wall, and realized I didn’t come in here all that much.

“You eaten yet?” he said, as he closed the door.

I looked at him, blinked.

Then I thought about his question.

“I had a yogurt?” I said, doubtful.

“At six in the morning,” he grunted. “So that would be a no.” He motioned me a second time towards the chairs around the conference table at the corner of his office. “Sit. I’m ordering us food. I need to talk to you.”

Faintly wary now, I followed the motion of his hand, taking a seat in the corner out of habit, where the window switched from smoky to clear to provide a view out over the city. I just sat there, looking out, listening with only part of my mind as he spoke on the phone with one of his people about bringing us food.

I didn’t really pay attention to what he ordered; I was too busy looking at the skyline, then at his face, and his hand with the wedding ring.

I hadn’t looked at either of our rings since I threw mine at him in New York.

I’d asked him for mine back.

I wondered now why he hadn’t given it to me.

Both rings of the rings he’d had made were gorgeous.

I found myself a little blown away by how beautiful his looked now. I could see the curved, organic pattern of the etched orca in the black gold even from where I sat, along with the three stars, which he’d told me were colored green and gold diamonds, meant to approximate the hazel of my eyes.

The design was similar to the Native American pendant I wore around my neck, but more fluid somehow, more evocative of Art Nouveau. My grandfather made the pendant I wore, and it symbolized human and seer––my parents’ marriage, but also me and my sister, Zoe.

The ring version evoked the original, while still having a style of its own.

I wanted mine back.

Chuckling, Black hung up the phone, glancing at me.

“You do, do you?” he said, smiling.

“Yes,” I said, folding my arms. “Are you holding onto it for any particular reason?”

“Why would I be doing that?” he said innocently.

“Ransom?” I said. “To screw with me? Maybe you need the extra cash for another helicopter? Or a new motorcycle?”

He smiled, clicking at me softly, even as he pretended to be thinking about my words.

“Well, it’s a good question, really,” he said, leaning back on his desk.

I frowned. “What’s a good question?”

“What’s in it for me?” He quirked his eyebrow as he folded his arms, adjusting his butt against the edge of his desk. “After all, you gave it back to me once. Threw it at me, really. I figure I should get something out of the deal, if I’m going to return it.”

“How about sex… with me ever again?”

He grunted. “You’d last a week. Less, probably.”

I frowned.

He wasn’t really wrong.

Was he serious? Did he actually want something for the ring?

“What did you have in mind with your dastardly wedding ring blackmail scheme?” I said. “An endless supply of back rubs? More three a.m. marathons to get waffles?” I snorted at the smile growing on his face. “Or are you just hoping to get me to finally finish those psych evals and skill assessments on the new seers?”

“No,” he said, clicking. He spread his legs, still leaning on the desk. “I plan to get all of those things regardless.”

I snorted a real laugh that time. “Do you?”

He smiled, not answering.

Damn that smile.

“What do you want?” I said, faintly wary now.

Still smiling, he took his weight off the desk. He was already walking to the door when someone knocked. I followed him with my eyes. I hadn’t even felt the person on the other side of the glass, but then, Black had that kind of gravity with me a lot of the time.

I had a tendency to miss things when I focused on him.

Now I knew it was one of the security guys from downstairs.

He didn’t come in.

Rather, Black took two bags from him without leaving the doorway, then the guy who brought them shut the door and Black brought the bags over to the small conference table.

“How did you possibly get food that quickly?” I said.

“There’s a whole bunch downstairs,” Black said. “I had them pull us together some takeaway from the buffet on the third floor. We’re feeding a veritable village, remember? Most of those seers aren’t making any money yet.”

Quirking an eyebrow at me meaningfully, he added,

“I can’t employ them myself yet. I don’t know what salary to pay them, doc, or where to put them, when I have absolutely no idea of what they can do––”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, exhaling. “Skill assessments. Got it. Message received.”

I flushed a little, though.

He was right.

I hadn’t considered the fact that I was costing him money.

“I’ll start right after this,” I told him. “Promise. Cross my heart.”

He chuckled, bending over one of the bags and unfurling the top. As soon as he opened it, a rush of warm garlic and spices filled his office. He started pulling out clear containers with lids, covering the surface of the table between me and him.

They were all different colors, but all of them looked vaguely soupy.

“Indian,” he said. “I hope that’s okay. I thought it would be easier to share.”

My creased brow smoothed. “That’s perfect.”

He pulled out a basket covered in a cloth towel, placing it in the center of all the colorful containers. It turned out to be full of buttered naan. Another basket had garlic naan, which might have been what I smelled when he first opened the bag. Out of the second bag his security guy had handed him, Black retrieved two water bottles, two beers, and some lemon ginger tea.

He cracked open one of the beers, and plopped down on the seat across from me.

“So?” I said, opening the first container, a dark orange one that happened to be nearest to me. “Are you going to tell me what you want for the ring? Or not?”

“How about a wedding ceremony, doc?” he said mildly.

I froze, glancing up from where I’d been prying the lid off another container, one filled with what looked and smelled like some kind of vegetable korma.

“A… wedding ceremony?” I blinked at him, bewildered. “Why?”

His eyes stayed on mine. I watched him shrug carefully, tilting his jaw back to take a long pull off the beer he’d opened.

“PR,” he said, after he lowered the bottle. Seeing the blank look in my eyes, he clarified, “Public relations. I want it public. Our marriage. And it wouldn’t hurt, in terms of smoothing over some of the stuff that happened when the Colonel died.”

I let out a half-incredulous laugh.

“You want to get married as a PR stunt?” I said. “As a way to rehabilitate your image after the murder of one of your oldest friends?”

His jaw hardened faintly, but he only shrugged.

“When you say it like that––”

“I make you sound like a sociopath?” I said, quirking an eyebrow at him.

Remembering then, who’d initially believed Black was a sociopath, if not an out-and-out psychopath, I swallowed, losing some of my humor.

Black seemed to feel my change in mood. Leaning over the table, he watched my eyes, the beer still clutched in one hand.

“I want to do it, Miri.” His voice lowered. “Maybe the PR shit is an excuse. Maybe I want to do it, and I’m looking for reasons it’s a good idea, instead of just a way to piss all over you in a fit of public, highly decadent, hyper-possessive control-freakish abuse of my wealth and ability to garner media attention.”

I smiled at that, in spite of myself, clicking at him softly.

“Don’t click like that,” he murmured. “It’s making me want to fuck.”

I glanced around his office, giving him an innocent look. “Isn’t that why you brought me in here? To get me stuffed on Indian food, blackmail me into marriage, then have garlic breath sex on your desk afterwards?”

That time, he grunted a laugh.

Leaning back, he took a few swallows of beer.

As he sat there, though, the humor leeched out of his eyes.

His expression flattened, then turned into that grim, far-seeing stare I’d seen on his face in the doorway of the industrial conference room.

“No,” he said. “I wish that was it. I wish that’s all we needed to talk about… but no.”

It was my turn to frown. “Then what?”

Looking up, he hesitated, a near nervousness in his eyes as he looked at me. I saw his eyes flicker over me, over my limbs, almost like he was afraid of me.

“Black,” I said, impatient. “For crying out loud, just tell me what––”

“Brick called.”

My whole body stiffened.

I didn’t speak. I sat there, still as a stone, a piece of naan gripped in my fingers, half-poised over the tub of vegetable korma. I didn’t move, I just waited for him to go on.

“He wants to meet,” Black said. “He’s coming here. To San Francisco.”

Heat built in my chest.

It happened so swiftly and intensely, it made me light-headed.

“Nick?” My voice came out guttural. It sounded harsh, cold. “Did you ask him about Nick, Black?”

“Of course I fucking asked him about Nick,” Black said, his voice faintly exasperated, but holding that worry, too. “Christ, Miri. It was the first thing out of my mouth––”

“And what did he say?”

Black’s jaw hardened.

He avoided my gaze briefly, then took a breath, meeting my eyes.

“He said Nick’s dead.”

Pain hit me. It hit so intensely, I couldn’t even grasp what it was until it already stole my breath. It hit before my mind caught up with his words, before I could process any of it in any logical or conscious way.

I don’t think I moved.

When my eyes refocused across the table, Black was watching me, worry in his eyes. He gripped my hand from across the table, the same hand holding the piece of naan.

“Hey,” he said, soft. “Hey… honey.”

I extricated my hand carefully from his fingers.

“Just tell me.” I cleared my throat, wiping my eyes, which I hadn’t realized were silently leaking tears. My voice sounded deadened. “Just fucking tell me the rest of it, Black.”

He continued to watch me, his gold eyes worried.

Exhaling when I didn’t return his gaze, he leaned back slightly, taking another long drink of beer. He watched me when I reached across the table, grabbing the second beer he’d had brought up, twisting off the lid, even though I knew he’d ordered it for himself.

“Here.”

He took the beer out of my fingers before I could bring it to my lips.

Setting it back on the table, he rose to his feet.

Walking over and behind the desk, he opened a cabinet below my visual range, part of the built-in wall unit that covered most of the space behind his desk. Rising gracefully to his feet an instant later, he was holding two rocks glasses and a bottle of bourbon.

He brought all three over to the table and plunked the glasses down.

Unscrewing the top of the bourbon, he poured me a few fingers-full first, sliding the glass over to my side of the table. He poured himself some while I fingered the glass.

“Just tell me, Black,” I said.

He finished pouring, then set down the bottle, not bothering to replace the cap.

Sinking back to his leather chair, he took a few swallows of the bourbon. I watched as he leaned back in his chair, pouring himself more from the bottle as he went on in a voice that was flatter, closer to a military report.

“Brick claims Nick died on the way from Thailand to Europe. On the plane.” Black took another drink, holding the bourbon briefly in his mouth before swallowing it that time. “He wasn’t specific as to how. He didn’t answer me when I asked him why they’d been taking him to Europe in the first place. He said he’d explain all of that when he saw us.”

“And when the fuck will that be?”

“Saturday,” Black said at once. “In three days.”

I felt my jaw harden more.

Staring down at the glass with the amber fluid, I picked it up, almost without thinking about it, and drained it.

Gasping a little, I set down the glass, then motioned to Black to refill it.

He didn’t hesitate.

Tilting the bottle back over my glass, he filled it fuller that time.

“What else?” I said. “Why is he coming out of hiding now?”

Black set down the bottle, shrugging faintly. Folding his arms, he leaned back in his leather chair, frowning. “Why else?” he said. “Charles. He’s worried about what Charles is doing. He wants to discuss some kind of alliance.”

For a moment, I only stared at him.

Then, unable to help myself, I let out a disbelieving laugh, gripping the new glass of bourbon in my hand. It was hard not to crack the glass into pieces between my fingers. I looked at Black directly that time, my voice cold.

“He kills my best friend, doesn’t tell us for months… and now he wants to talk about a goddamned alliance? What exactly does he think he has to bargain with at this point? And what makes him think we wouldn’t hunt down his fucking murdering tribe right alongside Charles?” Grunting, I took a sip of the bourbon. “Hell. I might get my own flamethrower.”

Black studied my face, his own inscrutable.

“He thinks these riots are the prelude to a military coup,” he said.

I blinked.

Black’s words didn’t dispel any of my anger, but they diverted it somewhat, forcing me to think about Brick differently, as well as his possible motives.

It also forced me to think about Charles, about what Black and I both knew was happening at the southern border.

“If he wanted an alliance with us, he shouldn’t have killed one of my best fucking friends,” I snapped. “Did you tell him that?”

“I told him unless he had a damned convincing story about what happened to Nick… one that absolved him and his kind of blame, a story we believed… he wouldn’t leave this building alive,” Black said mildly. He met my gaze, his gold eyes like sunlit glass. “He said he’s coming anyway.”

I frowned.

When the silence stretched, I downed the rest of the second glass of bourbon. The liquid burned a trail from my mouth down my throat, all the way down my chest and into my belly. It didn’t help, though.

I honestly couldn’t tell if the alcohol was even affecting me really.

Setting down the empty glass, I fought to think. The longer I turned over Black’s words, fighting to understand them in relation to Brick, and what he might be up to now, the harder I clenched my jaw.

“What do you think?” I said. “Why would he risk coming here, given that?”

Black’s sculpted lips pressed together, tilting in a subtle, complicated expression that came closest to a frown.

That time, I didn’t ask him for a refill of the bourbon. I reached over the table, grabbing the bottle by the neck myself. I poured another few fingers of the bourbon into the bottom of my glass, then held the bottle over his, offering him more.

He waved me off, reaching for his beer.

He watched me down my third double-shot, his brows creased faintly with worry.

His voice was flat, however, pure business, when he answered my question.

“I suspect Brick is coming here because he thinks, whatever he has to say, or whatever he has to offer… it will convince us to cooperate with what he wants,” he said. “I suspect Brick waited to tell us about Nick because he didn’t have any leverage before. Now he thinks he has something to offer us. Something he believes we’ll have a hard time refusing.”

Still frowning faintly, he stared at the frosted glass walls without seeing them.

Pursing his lips, he made a vague gesture with one hand.

“He thinks, whatever it is, it will be enough. Not just to keep me from killing him. Enough to force us to cooperate with him.”

“Force us?” I set down my empty glass with a grimace. “That’s pretty fucking cocky, wouldn’t you say? Or does he really have no idea how many seers we have here now? Is he planning on bringing a fucking army here to meet with us?”

Black’s lips lifted in a wry smile.

I saw no humor in it.

“Persuasion isn’t really Brick’s strong suit,” he said. “Not in something like this. So yes, whatever he’s bringing with him, he thinks it will compel us to cooperate with him. He wouldn’t risk persuasion, or my good will… or even my practicality. Not for this.”

Frowning, Black took a drink of the beer, his lips pursed in thought as he leaned back in the office chair, making it emit a faint squeak.

“I truly think Brick believes his race’s entire future is at stake, Miriam,” he added seriously. “Brick sees Charles as a species-level threat. He thinks Charles is a genocidal maniac.”

“Is he wrong?” I grunted.

Black turned, giving me a flat look.

“No,” he said. “He’s not wrong. Charles will exterminate every last one of them, given half a chance. I didn’t realize how much of that mentality I witnessed in Paris while I was there, but I recognize it now, when I look back at those memories. Charles has been actively indoctrinating his core followers on this seer superiority shit for decades. He’s got the numbers now. And he’s weaponizing the humans.”

Pausing, he added, blunt,

“I agree with Brick. Charles is getting ready to make a real move. He won’t wait. He can’t wait. He needs his new government in place so he can start culling vampires for real before Brick and his people mount a defense.”

Taking another sip of beer, he added,

“Charles’ window is short, but his timing is good. The vampire clans have been a disorganized mess since Konstantin died. Brick being held in custody by the Feds, so shortly after he ascended to power, didn’t help. I’m relatively certain Brick was still in the process of consolidating power when that happened. It’s actually a testimony to the bastard’s craftiness that he’s managed to hold onto the throne at all, given that.”

“And Dorian,” I reminded him coldly. “It’s a testimony to Dorian, as well.”

Black nodded, acknowledging my words with a flicker of his fingers.

“Definitely,” he said.

Taking another drink of beer, he leaned back to set the empty bottle in the trash. Returning to the table, he paused to rip a piece of naan in half, then used it to scoop up a generous portion of what looked like dal makhani. I watched him take a big bite and chew vigorously. He scooped up more of the dal even as he swallowed.

Chewing that second mouthful, he shrugged.

“Charles knows Brick will be in process of pulling his people together,” he added.

He slid the container of biryani closer to him, eyeing the aloo gobi before he dug into the biryani instead.

“Now that Brick’s out of that prison, I’d imagine that’s what he’s spending the vast majority of his time doing,” Black added. “…meeting with clan heads, organizing them into military units, strategizing around how to keep Charles from taking over the United States for real. It makes sense he’d be coming back here now, and that he’d want to talk to us. There’s already talk of closing the borders… and racial checkpoints. If Brick is going to make a move here, he’ll need to do it soon.”

Giving me a grim look, Black added,

“So will we, doc. Brick knows that, too.”

Taking a bite of the biryani, he scooped up some of the aloo gobi as he chewed it.

I felt his mind and light, warm in mine as he nudged me to eat.

“Please, honey,” he murmured, watching my face.

Swallowing, I felt my jaw harden.

I made myself nod, though.

He was right. Being drunk on an empty stomach at noon wasn’t exactly a promising way to start the rest of my day. The least I could do is eat.

Picking up the piece of naan I’d let go at some point, leaving it on my napkin by my hand, I dug it into the nearest container, not paying much attention to what it was.

It turned out to be palak paneer.

I chewed without tasting it, still watching Black.

He relaxed slightly when he saw me eating.

Pausing to pull two bowls and spoons out of the second paper bag, he filled one with jasmine rice and ladled butter chicken on top of it, handing it over to me without a word. I took it, setting it down in front of me, and watched him make a second bowl for himself. Picking up a fork, I started to pull apart the chicken in my bowl and felt him relax even more, propping his elbows on the table as he chewed more of the naan and biryani.

I still felt him watching me though, that worry furrowing his brow.

“Charles will want to move before Brick can finish pulling the clans together,” he said after another pause. “He’ll want them as off-balance and disorganized as possible. So when it happens, it’ll happen fast. I suspect these riots are Charles laying the groundwork for whatever story he intends to feed the human media. He’ll want the human population scared enough to go along with whatever crazy shit he has coming next.”

“Like what?” I said, swallowing some of the chicken and rice. “What do you think he has coming next?”

Black met my gaze. “I suspect he’ll declare war on vampires officially pretty soon. Possibly couched in this whole ‘purity’ doctrine he’s been pushing at the riots. I would expect him to start suspending civil rights, and likely, closing the borders to deal with the infestation. He’s already floating language to that effect.”

Swallowing some of the butter chicken and rice, I nodded.

“What about us?” I said. “Do we want to be here when that happens? Inside the United States, I mean?”

Black hesitated. I saw him watching me eat. He seemed to be monitoring everything about me, including my hands, fingers and facial expressions, with his gold eyes.

“I think we should stay,” he said finally. “What do you think, doc?”

Reaching across the table, I grabbed the bottle of bourbon again, pouring myself another few fingers, but less than I had the last time.

Again, I silently offered to refill Black’s glass.

He waved me off, picking up the beer by his elbow and leaning back in his chair. He watched me down my fourth glass of the amber liquid as he took a few more swallows of beer.

He didn’t prod me again, but I felt him waiting for my answer to his question.

“I think we should stay, too,” I said, lowering my empty rocks glass back to the table. “I don’t think we should just hand the country over to Charles. He won’t stop here. We need to find a way to at least slow down what he’s doing. Without both of us ending up in a military prison… and all of the refugee seers and your human employees ending up in some kind of ‘reeducation’ camp.”

Black grunted, nodding in agreement.

His brow remained furrowed, but I could feel his relief that I agreed with him. Even so, he didn’t comment at first, not out loud.

For a few minutes, both of us just ate.

Black’s light was coiling into mine, especially those lower, denser structures. It felt almost like he was pulling me deeper into the earth, along with pulling me deeper into that part of him. When I closed my eyes, my world tilted. I knew some of that was the bourbon. Some of it was Black, and that dense heat that lived under his feet.

Like in Thailand, I still saw it as lava and stars.

I saw it as dark ocean, pulling on me, lulling me back and forth.

“You are so beautiful.”

I looked up, startled when it hit me that I’d heard the words aloud.

I stared at Black’s face, saw his gold eyes watching mine, softer than maybe I’d ever seen them. Blinking, I realized I’d closed my eyes while I let myself fall into his light. I realized in the same moment that tears were running down my cheeks.

I wiped them brusquely with the back of my hand, caught somewhere between anger at myself and embarrassment.

I’d known Nick was dead. I’d known.

I couldn’t possibly have been in this much denial.

“I’d like you there, with me,” Black said, soft, reaching for my hand. “For the meeting with Brick.” He hesitated. “But I’d prefer it if you didn’t kill him, doc. At least not until we hear what he has to say. I suspect we might still need him.”

My jaw hardened.

I didn’t answer at first, not even with a nod.

“Can you do that?” he said, equally soft. “Can you be in a room with him, doc? Believe me, I would completely understand if you can’t be. If you don’t want to be there, I’ll handle it without you… or maybe we can do something remote, with you in my ear, on the other side of one-way glass. You don’t have to sit across a table with the son of a bitch. None of us would expect that of you, Miri. None of us. Certainly not me.”

That time, I nodded.

I felt a harder knot in my chest loosen somewhat, but the pain in my gut and throat only seemed to be getting worse.

I knew no amount of bourbon would smooth that away.

Anyway, I had to stop drinking.

I’d told Black I would do some actual work that afternoon.

I wondered if I’d already drank too much to be able to keep that promise.

Somewhere in the spaces where I’d been thinking the bourbon wasn’t affecting me and the two or six shots I’d done since that time, I’d tipped past cold sober and buzzed and now skirted the edges of full-blown drunk.

I was pretty sure the food wasn’t doing much to sober me up, not yet anyway. Maybe after a nap and some coffee, I could pull it together. I didn’t need to work during office hours. I could work into the evening.

I could get up early the next morning.

“You’re not working today,” Black said, his voice grim. “You’re not working tomorrow either, doc. I’m giving the assessments to Yarli for now.”

Frowning, I started to shake my head.

Black held up a hand.

“What would you do, doc?” he said. “If you had nothing else to do today. What would you do? Where would you go?”

Still frowning, I tried to think about his question.

My mind went to the ocean, to surfing with Nick.

That sickness in my chest worsened.

I thought about the last time we’d been out there, when I managed to brain myself with a rented surfboard, and Nick laughed so hard he choked.

My stomach turned so fast, I didn’t have any warning at all.

Luckily, Black must have seen it on my face.

“Whoa, whoa… doc…”

He had the garbage can in front of me even as my stomach heaved violently. He was on my side of the table before I’d even wrapped my head around what happened.

Then I was hanging off the table with one arm, Black holding back my hair as I threw up in the garbage can below my chair.

It felt like that went on forever.

I threw up all the butter chicken and rice. I threw up my few mouthfuls of naan and palak paneer, and vegetable korma. I threw up every drop of bourbon my body hadn’t yet absorbed into my bloodstream. I probably even threw up some of the yogurt I’d eaten that morning, and the coffee I drank after that.

Eventually, there was nothing left in me to throw up.

I heaved for a while longer anyway, until my eyes were watering, my throat and stomach burning from the painful, strangely-violent spasms.

Black knelt there with me, despite how bad it must have smelled.

He rubbed the small of my back, his light wrapped in mine as he murmured in my ear, kissing my neck and face when I paused between spasms.

At the end of it, he handed me a bottle of water. I chugged down half of it without taking a breath. I felt Black watching me worriedly as I did, probably afraid I’d throw that up, too.

I didn’t though.

On the negative side, I was also cold sober.

I also felt like I’d been hit by a truck.

“Yeah, no more drinking for you today, doc,” Black muttered.

He took the empty water bottle away from me once I’d finished it off, setting it on the table near the Indian food, which was difficult for me to even look at––much less smell––after what my stomach had just done to me. I looked at it anyway for some reason, staring across the spread of dishes, grimacing.

I was still doing that when Black caught hold of both of my hands.

He pulled me gently to my feet.

“Come on, doc,” he murmured, wrapping an arm around my waist. He began leading me towards the door. “We’re getting you out of here.”

I didn’t ask him what he meant.

I didn’t ask him where he was taking me.

I just followed the gentle tugs of his hands and arm.

Truthfully, I didn’t much care where we went. I just wanted to get the fuck out of there. I wanted to run, and run, and never stop running until that feeling somehow left me.

16

Santa Cruz

“WE NEED TO tell Angel.”

I blurted it, staring sightlessly at the horizon as I bobbed gently up and down, my feet dangling in the cold, salty water. Despite the intensity behind my words, the ripple of waves rolled silently under me, soothing, systematically wearing away my resistance to their pull.

Black looked over. He wiped salt water off his face with a bare hand, shaking his wet hair from where he bobbed gently on a longboard next to me, wearing a black wetsuit with sky blue lines down his arms and legs.

He gripped the board briefly, adjusting his position on it.

“We will,” he said. “We can call her tonight, if you want.”

I frowned.

So we weren’t going home.

I’d figured that, but he hadn’t said it until now.

“I got us something down here,” he explained, maybe feeling my thoughts. “I thought a night away from all of that would be good.” He added, “We can drive back, if you’re rather.”

My lips pursed.

I didn’t tell him I wanted to go home, though.

The thought of going back there brought up a sharp, throat-clutching wave of sickness, what bordered on depression. The thought of staying down here depressed me too, but less somehow. As usual lately, Black seemed to have a better idea of what I needed, even if it wasn’t what I thought I wanted.

I don’t know how he got me to come down here with him, truthfully.

I don’t know how he got me out on the water.

I don’t know how he coaxed me into a wetsuit of my own, after throwing a small bag in the trunk of the MacLaren with clothes for both of us and driving us down the coast to Santa Cruz, where Nick first tried to teach me how to surf. I didn’t know how he’d known exactly which surfing area to take me.

I tried to remember if it came up during our bonding in Thailand…

But that made me feel sick too.

Not the bonding.

More the memory of what had been happening to Nick while we were bonding.

I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing here.

I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing out on this water, at one of Nick’s favorite surfing spots.

“You’re paying homage,” Black said. “Both of us are.”

When I didn’t answer, he caught hold of my arm, tugging me and the surfboard I sat on closer to him. Once I was close enough, he kissed my mouth, wrapping his arm around me and hugging me to his chest.

His tongue was hot, salty; it flooded me with his light.

Pain hit at my chest.

I wanted him, but I could only feel like shit about that right then, too.

“I love you,” he said, gruff, raising his head. “Let me help you, doc. Just let me help you with this. Even if it doesn’t make sense to you right now.”

I nodded, fighting the closing of my throat.

That pain was starting up again in the middle of my chest, the longer he held me, the longer he immersed me in that heat and density.

I knew he was right. Being down here was better.

It hit me again that he’d already called ahead to get us a room, probably in some fancy bed and breakfast on Highway 1, probably some place that would be beautiful and quiet. For some reason, as that realization sank in, I found myself fighting tears. I knew he was right, but it wasn’t only that. I’d never had anyone take care of me like this, not since I’d been a kid. The closest was when I got back from Bangkok, when Nick––

I cut off the thought.

Shaking my head to shove the vision away, I clenched my jaw.

Black was right.

Getting away for a few days was the right thing, especially with Brick coming here, especially with Brick about to take up space in my city, in my head, probably with that walking corpse Dorian at his side.

I knew Black was right.

But nothing felt right, not now.

Also, Black hadn’t exactly chosen neutral ground.

Thinking about the last time I’d been out here, I let out a low gasp, feeling that pain abruptly worsen in my chest. I gripped the front of my wetsuit, and the flood of Black’s light intensified, pulling me deeper into him.

I saw wings. Those wings wrapped around me, bright green and violet and blue behind my closed eyes, and my heart hitched sideways in my chest.

We’d never talked about what happened in those caves, either.

We’d never had time to talk about any of it. I remembered all of that light, inside that grim dragon temple on Koh Mangaan. I remembered those wings that came out of Black, how his voice sounded––how his voice felt in my light.

“None of that matters now, doc,” he said, soft, wrapping me in that hot, dense light, wrapping me in those wings. “It’s your light now too. Rest on it. Rest on me.”

I fought to make sense of his words.

I fought to comprehend what he was telling me.

I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around anything though. Not the fact that Nick was dead. Not the fact that I’d never see him again, that I probably wouldn’t even see a body. Not what I’d seen my husband do in Thailand. Not what I’d felt off him when we were bonding on that beach. Not the fact that Coreq, the strange voice I heard inside my husband’s light, who claimed to be a part of both of us now, had gone silent ever since we’d left that island.

I couldn’t believe Nick was really gone.

I kept expecting to see him out here.

I looked for him in the face of every surfer with roughly the same build, with dark hair, with broad shoulders, with anything that reminded me of Nick, even just a gesture or mannerism. I kept expecting him to call, to see his annoyed, semi-grumbling text messages on my phone. I’d caught myself thinking I needed to tell him we’d come down here, that we’d gone to his favorite stretch of surf near the lighthouse.

I hadn’t lived without Nick in over ten years.

He was like my conscience. Maybe my guardian angel.

I spoke before I knew I meant to.

“He was there for me,” I said, staring out over the waves. “After Thailand. After you left. He was there for me, Black.”

There was a silence.

I felt my words sink in.

Then I felt a hard stab of pain cut into Black, enough to close his eyes.

I flinched, feeling it through him.

I hadn’t said it to hurt him. I didn’t mean to hurt him… I didn’t want to hurt him. After I’d said it, though, after I turned over my words, I realized how cruel they were. I hadn’t meant to be cruel, but I had been.

“I’m sorry,” I said, still gripping the front of my wetsuit. Reaching out, I gripped him too, catching hold of his arm, still not looking at him.

“Don’t be sorry, doc.” He sounded sad. I heard real grief in his voice, and that pain in my chest worsened. “Don’t apologize for that. It’s true.”

I nodded, even as tears ran down my face.

I stared down at my legs, still gripping Black with one hand, and the front of my wetsuit with the other. I watched the seawater lap against my thigh.

“He made me see someone,” I said after a pause. “He didn’t know about seers yet. But he noticed… things. He got me to talk to him, to admit what happened. Then he made me see someone. That psychologist I went to for a while.”

“I remember, doc.”

Biting my lip, hard enough for it to hurt, I added,

“He showed up at my door. Every goddamned night.” I let out a choked, bitter laugh. “Even after I yelled at him. Even after I told him to stop coming over, to leave me alone, he came over anyway. After that thing happened with me and him, he brought Angel… but he never stopped coming. He never left me alone.”

Black stroked my hair, not speaking.

I knew he understood that, too.

He knew what I meant, including the parts I’d left out, that I hadn’t said aloud.

That thing that happened was the night I kissed Nick.

It was the night I basically jumped Nick, mostly to get back at Black for leaving.

I’d been drunk. We’d both been drunk enough that we’d nearly slept together.

Somehow, even as drunk as I was, I realized what I was doing halfway through. I had enough of a flash of sanity and clarity to stop things before we went all the way.

By then, we’d both been half-naked. I’d been in Nick’s lap, my hand on his cock, my other hand in his shirt. Both of us had been breathing hard. Both of us had been turned on, flushed, confused. Nick had been hard. He’d been in the process of undressing me for real when I called a halt to things.

I’d felt enough off his mind and light to know he had pretty mixed feelings about me stopping things, given where we were, where it was going. Even so, he practically ran out of there not long after, making some excuse about work the next morning.

I’d felt like shit about that.

Not so much because of Black––not then, anyway.

I felt bad for doing that to Nick.

I felt like I’d used him.

Fuck, I had used him.

It also confused me, and confused Nick, who seemed to struggle with his feelings about me for at least a few months after that. According to Black, he’d been confused about me for longer than just those few months.

But I couldn’t think about that, either.

Black nuzzled my face, kissing my neck, then my cheek.

I love you, doc. I love you so much. Pain left his light in a cloud, even as he gripped my hair in one hand. He loved you, too… and you loved him. Don’t punish yourself. Don’t beat yourself up for every single thing you did wrong with him. We all make mistakes. We make the worst fucking mistakes with the people we love.

I let out a choked sound, one that hurt my chest.

It wasn’t a laugh, not even a humorless one.

I don’t know what the hell it was.

Forgive yourself, doc, Black sent, soft, stroking my wet hair. Forgive yourself. You know he would have forgiven you. He loved you, doc… he loved you…

I tried to feel it. I tried to believe it.

I couldn’t, though.

I just fucking couldn’t.

* * *

BLACK DROVE US to the actual town of Santa Cruz for dinner.

We parked near the boardwalk, and walked down to the pier, holding hands as we walked to the end of it, where a number of seafood restaurants lived.

I must have eaten.

I did eat. I remember eating.

I remember Black ordering for me after I spent probably ten minutes staring at the menu without seeing or comprehending anything written on it. I remember him urging me to eat bread, and then urging me to eat the grilled salmon and pumpkin mash he ordered for me.

I remember asking him about Charles, about the riots.

He was reluctant to discuss it at first.

I knew he would have stayed in touch with everyone in San Francisco, though. He was at least checking in periodically with Kiko. He had to be, and I didn’t blame him. He couldn’t afford not to, not with Brick coming in three days.

“Don’t worry about any of that, doc,” he said, kissing my fingers.

I shook my head though, staring past him at the night sky over the lapping ocean.

“I can’t just think about nothing, Black,” I said. “The silence is fucking deafening right now. It’s making me want to crawl out of my skin.”

He gripped my fingers tighter.

I felt conflict on him, as he felt my light.

I knew he was being careful with me. I could almost feel that brain of his calculating the best ways to help me. How hard to push. When to push. Where to push. When to distract me. When to let me sit in it, even when I was clearly miserable.

Some part of me appreciated it.

Mostly, I felt like some kind of science experiment.

In the end, he talked to me a little.

He said the riots were spreading, mostly to large urban centers in the East so far. Vampire sightings and attacks had grown more frequent. He said Kiko and Dex were both pretty sure those attacks were also more legitimate now. Kiko said their agents, those who were following the violence on the ground, suspected Charles had his people deliberately attacking known vampire enclaves, forcing them to defend themselves when they were flushed out.

I listened to him describe the reactions on the news.

I listened to him repeat back what talking heads were saying.

I listened to him tell me what government officials were saying.

He ate a pasta seafood dish with white sauce and drank wine, describing the discussions occurring on the major media outlets by political pundits and eye witnesses and victims, by scientists and political experts and lawyers, the arguments back and forth about whether the creatures were real or some kind of hoax, or even a psychological and military attack by a foreign entity.

Black expected Charles to continue to escalate things.

I knew he was right.

I wondered when Charles would be sending someone to visit us, too.

“Yeah,” Black said, hearing me. Resting his hands on one another, he gauged my face in the candlelight. “I’m wondering that, too.”

Before we could talk about that in particular, four college-aged looking kids walked up to our table, asking Black for his autograph.

He accommodated them, tossing a few jokes and smiles back and forth with them, but I could feel him pushing at them with his light to get them to leave, so they didn’t linger long.

After that, we walked on the beach, and on the boardwalk.

He took me to the downtown mall of Santa Cruz next, then to a coffee shop I’d last gone to with Nick. It had been one of Nick’s favorite hangouts here, mostly for their coffee when he came in the morning after surfing around dawn, but I’d been here with him at night a few times, too, after early evening sessions on the water.

We didn’t usually get coffee at night, but they served craft beer, and made a lemon tart Nick had a weakness for, and really amazing hot chocolate.

Black told me to grab a seat outside, and went in to order without me.

Without thinking about it much, I ended up sitting in more or less the same place I sat whenever I’d come here with Nick, on the lower deck right by the corner, where you had the best view of the shop itself, as well as the two streets of the corner it sat on. It was an old, giant, Victorian house that someone converted into the sprawling coffee shop, and it was really pretty when it was all lit up at night.

Black came out a few minutes later.

He carried a tray with two hot chocolates and two slices of lemon tart. He walked right up to the table I’d found and plunked the tray down on the salt-warped wood.

“How the fuck did you know?” I said, staring down at the tray.

Black shrugged.

I couldn’t decide if I was glad he’d done it, or if I wanted to hit him.

“You can hit me later, doc,” Black said, taking a seat across from me with a faint smirk. “We’ll have privacy tonight. You can hit me as much as you want once we get there.”

Picking up a fork, he dug into the nearest of the two lemon tarts.

Taking a bite, he smirked, raising an eyebrow at me across the table.

“Nick had good taste,” he grunted. “I should have brought him to Cal’s.”

I stared at him, caught between frustration and a tightening in my chest.

In the end, I just grabbed my hot chocolate, and took a sip.

It was as good as I’d remembered it being.

I also ate every bite of that damned lemon tart.

We walked up and down the mall a little longer after that, but I was exhausted by then. Eventually, Black took us back to the MacLaren, and drove me further down the coast a few more miles on Highway 1.

I’d been wrong, though.

He didn’t get us a room in a fancy bed and breakfast.

He rented us a beach house.

He hadn’t been kidding about the privacy.

The house sat on the edge of a sandy bluff overlooking the ocean, with a small stretch of near-private beach below. The driveway was long, and there were no neighbors; it sat on a rock outcropping with water and more cliff on either side.

Parking the MacLaren in the driveway, he found the keys to the front door in a fake rock by a palm tree, where apparently someone left them for us.

Inside, the living room and balcony looked like a movie set.

Sleek, modern furniture sat in a sunken living room by a free-standing fireplace that bisected the room. A long window made up the ocean-facing side of the house, peaking in a faint V-shape out towards the ocean, with an enormous deck on the other side of sliding glass doors. Thee deck wrapped around that whole side of the house. I saw deck furniture out there, along with another fire pit, a lap pool, and a jacuzzi.

Someone had lit the indoor fireplace for us already.

Outside, the lights were on in the jacuzzi, and I saw bubbles, showing it was already on, which likely meant someone had heated it up for us, too.

“Yeah,” Black said, shouldering off his leather jacket and tossing it on the couch. He flashed me a quick grin. “We’re definitely going in there, doc.”

We’d showered at the public showers on the beach, then threw on street clothes for dinner and for walking around downtown Santa Cruz.

I was still faintly itchy from all the salt and sand, though. Some of that might have been from the restaurant on the pier and our walk on the boardwalk after, but I knew some was probably from surfing too. I was also cold, since Santa Cruz in December was even colder than San Francisco in December. I wouldn’t be able to sleep yet, not with how wound up I felt.

Staring at the jacuzzi, I couldn’t think of a single reason not to go in there.

I could feel Black pulling on me to relax, to trust him, to stop fighting everything, to stop looking for reasons to fight everything.

I wanted to trust him. I wanted to relax.

I wasn’t sure I was ready to relax, though.

I was afraid of what might happen if I relaxed.

He didn’t wait for me to wrap my head around it.

Grabbing my hand, he pulled me towards him, then helped me off with the jacket I wore, tossing it next to his on the couch. He led me to the sliding glass doors, walking me through the opening once he’d unlocked the latch and slid it open.

He undressed me by the jacuzzi, then nudged me to get in.

I didn’t argue with him any more than I had when he put me in the car in San Francisco, or dressed me in the wetsuit and handed me a surfboard at Nick’s favorite surfing spot, or took me to dinner, or to Nick’s favorite coffee shop and handed me Nick’s favorite post-surfing evening snack.

I sank into the hot, bubbling water, and lowered my body to the jacuzzi’s bench. Tilting my head back on the wooden deck, I stared up at the stars, which were visible in crazy numbers, reminding me of Thailand, even though the constellations were different.

Steam rose up around me and I closed my eyes, trying to breathe, to relax.

I didn’t notice Black hadn’t joined me until he did.

He climbed into the hot tub next to me and I opened my eyes. When I did, I saw that he’d lit candles all around the opposite rim of the jacuzzi. He’d lit white candles on the deck table, and on the benches around us, too.

He handed me a drink when I blinked at him, looking around at what he’d done. Then I glanced down at what he’d handed me. Like before, it wasn’t alcoholic, but a blended matcha tea drink, like he knew I liked.

I sipped at it, watching him look at me.

He held a beer, but he only took a sip while I watched, never taking his eyes off me.

Pain reached me, not only from the look in his eyes, but just everything… everything he’d done that day. Everything he’d done in Europe, and since we’d been back in San Francisco. Everything he’d done since we’d found out Nick was missing.

And what had I done? Unconsciously or not, I’d been taking the Nick thing out on Black for weeks, pretty much since I’d realized he was missing.

I blamed the bonding on some level.

I blamed me and Black for what happened to Nick.

I know doc, he murmured in my mind. It’s okay.

I shook my head. It’s not okay. I know you’re right. I know what you said about us not being capable of going after Nick on our own is right.

His mouth hardened, just before he combed a hand through his black hair.

Clicking under his breath, he took a longer drink of the beer.

Setting it on the deck above my head, he continued to frown.

“I blame me, too,” he said, speaking aloud. “But maybe not for the same reasons you do, doc. I let myself forget what Brick was. I let myself forget what he was capable of. I invited him there. I fucking invited him there. I trusted that sociopathic bastard with our friends.”

Black’s gold eyes darkened as he thought about his own words.

I felt a flaring of that black, fathomless light from the structures below him. I felt the ripple of power that went through me as that part of him flexed––intensely enough that my breath briefly stopped. I remembered his voice echoing through that cave, right before he snuffed out the mountain’s heart.

I’d almost forgotten.

I’d almost forgotten the power there.

If Black noticed what he’d done, he didn’t visibly react.

“Brick exploited a weakness,” he said, his voice still hard over the sound of the jacuzzi’s jets, and now holding a denser, more light-filled power. “When I called him in that state, I gave him an opening.”

“So you think he did it,” I said. “You think he definitely killed Nick.”

My mind had clicked back on, maybe from that rush of Black’s power and light through my aleimi, maybe from his actual words. Whatever the exact cause, I was totally focused on Black now, studying his gold eyes. I felt myself coming out of that crushing grief, well enough to really think, maybe for the first time since we’d left Thailand.

Something about Black’s anger, the sheer rage and power behind it, snapped me out.

“You think Brick deliberately killed Nick,” I said.

“I sure as fuck don’t think it was an accident,” Black growled, that anger bursting out of him in a rush. “I have no fucking idea what story he’s going to feed us on Saturday, doc. No clue. But every single instinct in me tells me this thing was planned… that Brick targeted Nick. The damnedest thing is, I saw it. I saw that he was overly interested in Nick, even in Louisiana. I caught the fucker staring at him. A lot.”

I felt my jaw harden.

I hadn’t seen that.

I’d been too wrapped up in my own shit to notice any of that.

Black gave me a hard look. “You have less reason to be wary of Brick, doc. I have no fucking excuse. I knew what he was. I fucking knew, not just in theory, but firsthand. What he did to me in that prison… what he was willing to do to you in New York. I knew, and I let myself get distracted by Charles, by wanting to complete the bond with you, by those seers coming through the portal… by everything but what I should have been paying attention to. I should have let Charles kill him and Dorian in D.C. I let them go. I fucking let them go.”

Staring past me in the direction of the ocean, he threw his arms behind him, leaning on the edge of the deck.

I watched as he shook his head, clicking angrily before he added,

“Honestly? At the time, I just thought Brick wanted to fuck him. Nick. I figured he was attracted to him, that he wanted to bite him and fuck him. It was that kind of look.”

“So you think that’s what happened?” Still watching Black’s face minutely, I felt my jaw harden along with his. “You think Brick wanted Nick, so he kidnapped him, and then things went too far? He lost control or something?”

Black gave me a hard look. “I think it’s really fucking possible.”

“You think Brick would risk an alliance with you over that? To get laid?”

Black’s mouth twisted into one of his delicate frowns.

His gaze turned inward as he shook his head slowly.

“That’s the part I can’t figure,” he admitted, still frowning. “It could have been an opportunistic thing that went wrong… but honestly, it still doesn’t make sense to me, even on that level. Brick may act crazy at times, but he’s not. He’s practical to the bone. He wouldn’t risk his people over his dick. I don’t care how big of a crush he had. He just wouldn’t.”

He met my gaze, his gold eyes glimmering with anger.

I sensed a wariness there too, a near caution.

Whatever was behind that caution, he didn’t voice it aloud. I practically felt him holding it back, although I couldn’t get a sense of what it was he was thinking, or what he was worried about saying out loud.

Whatever it was, he didn’t want to tell me, specifically, at least not yet.

“You think there’s more to it,” I said. “You think he wanted Nick for something more than sex.” I frowned, thinking about that, too. “Do you think Nick died, rather than give it to him? Do you think he refused them, whatever it was?”

Black’s frown deepened.

“Is he a vampire now?” I said, my voice hard. “Did Brick turn him?”

“We already know that’s not possible, Miri.”

“But we don’t ‘know’ that. You said they had other ways. Ways besides the venom––”

“I told you,” Black said, his voice harder. “We haven’t found a single case, in any of the files, of a human being turned into a vampire who didn’t match the genetic profile. That’s thousands of cases, Miri. Almost tens of thousands at this point––”

“But it’s not all of them,” I said. “It’s not all cases, Black. There still might be––”

“He’s bringing the body, Miri.”

I stopped, staring at him.

“He’s bringing Nick with him when he comes.” Black exhaled, exuding a pulse of anger so intense, I might have flinched if I was capable of it right then. “Honestly, I wasn’t going to tell you. I know how unrealistic that is. To try and smuggle him into a room where our people could do any kind of real autopsy… but I was worried, Miri.”

He met my gaze, his eyes apologetic.

His light and expression held so much grief I swallowed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to hurt you any more than I had to. I didn’t know what you’d do.” His jaw hardened. “But I want the fucking truth. I want to know exactly what happened to him. So I told Brick to bring it, and to keep it on ice so we could do a real autopsy. I told him not to mention Nick’s body to you if he saw you.”

Feeling my heart stop in my chest, I could only stare at him at first, watching Black look at me. His eyes were glowing faintly, and I felt grief on him, along with his anger at Brick, his guilt, his helplessness that he even had to tell me this.

The next time he spoke, he lowered his voice.

“I told him we’d need proof,” Black said, gruff. “I told him we needed some way to verify whatever bullshit story he planned on telling us. He assured me he would ‘expect no less,’ from either of us, particularly from you. He said he knew you’d need proof, with you being a ‘scientist.’”

Black’s voice turned bitter.

“That’s when he told me he had it. Nick’s body. He said he would bring it to us ‘intact,’ so we could ‘mourn him properly.’”

Black met my gaze, his jaw hard.

“Fucker kept it. He’s had Nick with him this whole time.”

I stared at him, feeling that dull pain grow into a fresh wound in my chest.

I don’t think I’d ever felt so much hatred in my entire life.

I thought I’d hated Brick before, but I hadn’t, not really.

I did now.

If Black felt the change in me, he didn’t react.

Picking up his beer, he tilted back his head, taking another long drink before he looked up at the stars, his long jaw hard as he exhaled steam up into space.

* * *

THAT NIGHT, IT was me who woke Black up.

After we got out of the hot tub, we both showered.

We even made out a little afterwards.

I started it, pulling him to the bed when he was naked and still wet after the shower, until both of us were lying on the huge white comforter in the master bedroom, our light wrapped into one another’s. I pulled on him even then, tugging and coaxing and opening my light, until that heat and density below Black’s feet coiled up into me and around me, like a dense, protective cloud, physical enough to constrict my breathing.

Even so, Black remained cautious with me. When I slid down his body to give him head, he offered me a back rub instead.

He was really damned good at back rubs.

He joked it was because he was raised in Thailand.

Whatever the reason, I had trouble refusing him when he offered one.

I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of the one he gave me that night. I suspect it was all of that time out on the water, not to mention getting sick in his office in San Francisco, and just the emotional exhaustion of the day and night in general.

I only slept for a few hours, though.

When I woke up, he was lying next to me on his back, naked.

He was dreaming.

As per our usual custom, he’d opened the drapes to the room. For the same reason, I could see him almost as if it were daylight. The planes and lines of his body appeared blue and black, bathed in the light from the nearly full moon shining on the other side of the glass, but I could see every line, every tendon, every muscle.

He’d gained some of the weight back we’d both lost in Thailand.

Of course, being Black, most of what he’d gained back was muscle. His chest looked significantly bigger than the last time I remembered looking in the bungalow, although he still wasn’t quite as big as I remembered from when I first met him.

The last few years had been hard on him.

I knew that more or less started when he met me.

He was breathing slow, heavy, a taut look on his face. He made a soft sound as I watched, his brow furrowing as his living light coiled around him and around me, flaring up abruptly in colored sparks, nearly physical as I used my eyes and light to look at him. I could see darker, more fire-like colors twisting through those structures below his feet.

I could feel his light wanting to connect more with mine.

His fingers grasped at nothing while I watched, his arms sprawled out at his sides, and something about his expression brought up a rush of pain, worse than I’d let myself feel in weeks. After looking at him for a few minutes, that pain grew so intense, I was gritting my teeth. Sliding under the comforter he’d wrapped around me, I moved closer to him, wrapping the white fluffy blanket tighter around me as I sat next to him, looking down.

He still had the ability to catch my breath.

He was so fucking beautiful.

I could honestly say I’d never seen such a beautiful man in my life before I met him.

He almost didn’t look real to me, even now, especially when he was asleep like this, or whenever I couldn’t see him through his eyes, or hear him in his voice.

Not that he was better-looking absence of his own presence––the contrary was true, for me, anyway. It was more that his presence somehow eclipsed his own physicality, making his looks less relevant somehow.

They became a bonus instead of something intrinsic to who he was.

I started stroking his skin, lightly at first.

I traced muscles, caressing the lines of him, exploring his sides, his ribs, his arms, his thighs, his calves. I watched his light and skin react to my fingers, getting turned on when I saw it sliding into his dream, both calming him and making his muscles tense under my hands. I watched him swallow, his face taut. I’d barely started when he was shifting under my hands, jerking faintly, rising up to meet my fingers.

When I didn’t stop, his skin grew hot.

It got hotter the longer I touched him, until I was sweating lightly, just from being so near him. Pain came off him in a cloud, making me clutch at him briefly, nearly making me light-headed. I opened my light more, and he let out a low groan.

He still didn’t open his eyes.

I didn’t feel him wake, but after that, it was like a furnace ignited under his skin.

When I slid closer, a few minutes later, letting the comforter fall, and threw a leg over his waist, sitting astride him, he jerked violently.

He half sat up, his hands grasping reflexively at my hips.

He opened his eyes, breathing harder, and saw me sitting there, naked, the white comforter having fallen down to my hips and part of my back. For a few seconds he only stared at me in the moonlight, his chest moving in slow pants.

Then he let out a low groan.

He yanked me higher up his legs, so I was more or less sitting on his cock, which was hard enough that I gasped a little, pressing down against him.

Then I was looking at his face, gripping his hair in one hand.

“I know,” I said, whispering it. “I’m molesting you in your sleep again. Not cool.”

His fingers tightened abruptly on my hips.

He closed his eyes, longer than a blink. I saw his jaw harden, even as the muscles in his arms tensed, outlining every tendon in a detail that made me stare.

“Fuck me,” he said.

His voice was lower than mine, deep in that way that still drove me crazy, even after all of our time together in Thailand. If anything, it hit at me even more intensely now, pulling on that part of me that was connected to him.

He’d said the wanting part wouldn’t lessen any, with us together like this.

I could feel how true that was.

Somehow, it didn’t reassure me. If anything, it made me feel…

Well, not quite nervous. Nervous wasn’t the word.

It almost scared me. I could feel him like a second heartbeat, a second pair of lungs, a second pair of skin. I could feel that darkness under his feet, I could see those same stars––and he was right. It felt like me now.

Or not me––but mine.

It felt like mine now.

I probably would have noticed sooner, but I’d been avoiding feeling much of anything since he first told me about Nick. I hadn’t realized how much I’d closed, not just to him but to everyone. I’d closed to Angel too, and she probably needed me. She wouldn’t ask, not when I was so obviously struggling, but she needed me to go through this with her.

She didn’t even get to look for Nick in Europe, like I did. She didn’t get to tell herself she’d done everything she could to find him.

Ever since I’d heard about Nick, I’d closed off part of my light.

Now that it was open, I felt almost like I had in Thailand.

I felt that part of me drift back into the vast spaces of Black’s light, tilting out of control. I felt how it changed something in my light, sparking structures over my head that still felt so foreign to me, so new, I could barely acknowledge them as mine. I saw space there too, but it was the silent space, the stillness of a held breath.

“Miri… I feel it. I feel it, too…”

When I closed my eyes, not moving for a moment, his voice grew gruffer.

“Miri. Gaos. Do you want me? Right now, I mean. Tell me before I do something I regret…”

Opening my eyes, I looked down at him.

His irises were glowing faintly, a pale, tiger-like gold. His fingers dug into my hips, yanking me down on him harder, and his light flooded into mine, making me gasp.

“How do they do that,” I said, my voice still a half-breath. “How do your eyes do that. How do they glow like that…?”

His fingers wrapped into my hair.

He pulled me down to him roughly, kissing my mouth, hard. His light flooded into me as he opened himself more, and I let out a sound against his mouth, opening my light in response. His pain flared, right before his light grew hotter, more intense, wrapping into mine like a physical force.

It felt like he was fucking me with it… like he was already fucking me.

“Gaos, Miri.”

He pressed his forehead into mine, coiling more of his light into me, making me gasp. When he pulled on me to open more, flooding me with even more of his light, I let out a low sound, unable to help that either.

He kissed my mouth, still speaking to me in that soft voice.

“Gaos… your eyes are glowing, too. It drives me fucking crazy. They were doing that most of the time we were together on Koh Mangaan. They started right before I tied you up that first time. Remember? When we came up with those crazy safe words… when I lost my shit, and put that collar on you.”

I raised my head, looking down at him in bewilderment.

I remembered the safe words.

I remembered the collar, and him losing control.

I also remembered him using a belt on me with a precision that nearly brought me to an orgasm all on its own. It had been unbelievable.

I’d done some of that kind of thing before, especially with a boyfriend I’d had not long after I got out of the military, who’d been into bondage games… but nothing I did with Jack had been anything like what Black did to me. Black knew how to use pain with an exactness that drove me out of my mind. He got me right to the edge, then would leave me there, then roll me right back up to it, and leave me there again.

By the time he actually fucked me, I’m pretty sure I blacked out.

When I frowned, staring at him, he caught hold of my wrist.

“Here,” he said, soft, kissing my palm. “Look, Miri. Look.”

He held my palm up to my face, right up to my eyes.

A faint light illuminated the lines in my hand, green and gold. I stared at it. I blinked, then stared at it again, moving my hand closer and further from that faint light. I blinked one eye, and saw the light extinguish briefly on that half of my hand.

Black burst out in a laugh, watching me.

When he spoke, his voice was deep, gruffer than before.

“Gods. You’re driving me fucking crazy right now. Are you going to fuck me or not? Because I’m not sure how much longer I can wait.” Pain rippled through his light. “I kind of want to hit you with a belt now, too, after what you were just thinking.”

Pain coiled through me, making my eyes close.

“Was it really that good?” he murmured, combing his fingers through my hair where it hung down on him. “Maybe I need to practice my technique. Read some books. I admit, until we did that, I hadn’t played in that particular sandbox in a while.”

Jealousy rippled through me, just like it had on Koh Mangaan.

Every now and then, reminders of who he’d been, things he’d done before he met me, still hit at my light and heart in ways that felt almost animalistic.

He felt that, too.

His pain worsened exponentially, enough that I let out a low gasp.

I stared down at him, half tempted to smack him.

“You get off on my paranoia?” I snorted. “Gee. Thanks, Quentin.”

He quirked an eyebrow at me, a faint smile touching his sculpted lips. “Do I get off on my wife having violently possessive thoughts about me? Hmmm. Let me think…”

When I smacked his chest, he chuckled, still stroking his fingers through my long hair.

He leaned up, kissing my mouth, pulling on me sensually with his light.

“…Definitely, doc,” he murmured. “Definitely get turned on by that. Hitting me isn’t really going to help with that, I’m afraid…”

I let out a low gasp when he pressed his cock up against me, moving in a sensual ripple that made my pain instantly worse. Still gripping my hair in one hand, he reached down to position himself under me, watching my eyes. When I tilted my hips to follow what he was doing, his eyes closed, right before he broke out in a sweat.

I slid down on him with a deliberate slowness, watching his face tighten. Balancing my weight and feet on his thighs, I held him there when he tried to angle up deeper into me, making his light flare in frustration.

When we fell into a slow, heavy rhythm, a few minutes later, I felt his pain worsen. I opened my light more, and he let out a groan, digging his fingers into my hips.

I have to admit, it felt so damned good, being lost in his light.

I let everything else go.

I pushed out every other image that wanted to rise: Nick, my Uncle Charles, Brick, Nick’s body, Brick coming to San Francisco, the riots spreading over the country, vampires killing college students, everything that happened in that cave in Koh Mangaan…

I felt Black losing control.

I felt him fight back aggression, a desire to take control of what we were doing, to flip me over to my back. I opened my light more, fighting to match what I felt coming off his. I enveloped more of him, feeling those structures in my light, the ones high up above my head, wrapping into his, controlling and containing them somehow…

Until they weren’t.

I felt his control leave him abruptly, so quickly I couldn’t react until he writhed under me, grasping me in his arms. He held me firmly against him, slamming up into me, his hands gripping my thighs, forcing me deeper. When I let him, opening my light even more, his light flared out, a shocking, nearly blinding flash of light.

Like in that cave, I honestly couldn’t tell if that light was physical or not.

Then I saw them.

I actually saw them with my eyes.

Wings unfolded from around him, wrapping tightly around me.

I let out a shocked, turned-on gasp when they clasped around my back. He wrapped them tighter around me, pain spiraling off him in a dense cloud right before… something… something my mind made into a tail… penetrated me from behind.

I let out another shocked cry, writhing over him.

His eyes were closed now, his jaw taut. I felt his pain worsen, even as some part of him watched me, measuring my reaction, his light opening more. I watched his face as it softened, feeling that dark, strange light of his seem to swallow me. I looked into that abyss, and every part of me let go, surrendering to what I felt there.

I think I might have said his name, but I honestly don’t know.

I do know that, somewhere in that, I lost my hold over his legs and light. I found myself sitting on him, my legs flush with his hips, when the hard part of his cock extended.

His arms clasped around my waist, holding me down as he did.

I went away for a while after that.

I’m pretty sure Black did, too.

17

Mirage

THINGS FELT DIFFERENT with us again.

We didn’t talk about the wings, about the glowing eyes, about what he’d done to me with his light. We didn’t talk much at all that night.

The next morning, I felt almost shy with him.

We went surfing again, that time under the cliffs of the beach house he’d rented.

I was puzzled at first, when Black woke me up. It’s not like we could fit surf gear in the MacLaren. I wondered if the house came equipped with boards and wetsuits we could use, or if Black planned on going out there naked and just body-surfing in the freezing cold waves of the winter Pacific.

The day before, a guy had been waiting for us in a parking lot by the lighthouse cliffs, having been sent there ahead by Black’s people with a small truck filled with wetsuits and surfboards. When we got out of the water, we’d returned everything to him, since none of it except maybe the wetsuits would fit easily in the MacLaren, especially with the top down.

When I gave Black a bewildered look the next morning, he explained that he’d had the same guy clean up and drop everything off at the beach house while we were at dinner. He’d also been the one to pick up and hide the keys for us to use.

Black, as usual, had a way of taking care of things before I’d thought to ask the question.

That time, we went out early, before sunrise.

Only a few other surfers shared that part of the ocean with us. They gave us space, but all seemed friendly enough, despite the reputation of territorial Santa Cruz surfers.

Going out on the ocean that early was eerie.

Then, when the sun came up behind the cliffs, it was gorgeous, the water sparkling with pink and gold sunlight as we bobbed on the rolling waves. For the first time, I saw the bluff and the beach house in daylight, and I was a little blown away at how perfect it all was, with the big bay windows over those massive rock walls, the scoop of a small beach, smooth with golden sand and decently sized even during high tide.

Seals swam over to look at us in curiosity. Pelicans and seagulls winged overhead as sand pipers scuttled up and down the shore.

Apart from the sound of the surf and the gulls, it was strangely quiet.

Maybe it was the quietness, or the night before, or just exhaustion from being wrung out the previous twenty-four hours, but I felt myself relaxing into the ocean and Black for real. For the first time since Thailand, I felt almost at peace.

That morning, the waves were better than they had been the day before.

We stayed out there for hours, catching wave after wave, racing each other into shore, laughing when one of us wiped out––usually me.

It was nearly noon before Black asked if I wanted to go back in.

Climbing up the stone stairs to the house, we left our suits and boards in the garage, rinsed off in the outdoor shower, and walked around to the deck. There, someone had already left us brunch: Eggs Benedict with salmon, bowls of blueberries and strawberries, French-press coffee, sourdough toast, buckwheat pancakes with butter and real maple syrup––the latter probably being brought especially for Black, since he dug into those first.

I never even saw him make the call.

Knowing him, he’d arranged it all the night before, or maybe at four o’clock in the morning, before he woke me up to surf with him.

Either way, we ate leisurely on the balcony overlooking the water… then spent another hour or so on an even more leisurely fuck in the jacuzzi… and then another one in the giant shower of the master bedroom before we finally put on real-person clothes.

By the time we were getting ready to leave, around five o’clock that afternoon, I was genuinely sorry to go.

I asked Black if we could rent the house again, maybe the following weekend even, if only to detox from having to deal with Brick and his henchmen for three days.

He laughed, then handed me a key. He informed me he’d already bought it, that we could come down here whenever the hell we wanted––that I could come down here whenever the hell I wanted, too, with or without him.

We talked a lot more on the drive back up the coast on Highway 1 than we had on the way down.

I barely remembered the drive down now. It was like I was underwater for all of it, maybe even in shock… like real shock, like some part of me just checked out.

But the whole drive back, we talked.

We didn’t talk about Nick, though, or Charles, or riots.

We didn’t talk about fucking vampires.

I curled up against Black in the convertible MacLaren, and we talked about possible venues for the wedding… and food… and how big and crazy we wanted to make it… and whether we’d invite a few members of the press or just let them show up… and how many of his friends we’d invite… and whether we’d incorporate any seer traditions.

Black entertained me, telling me about a few of those traditions, including one that would essentially require our entire wedding party to drop acid.

The only time Charles or Nick came up was when I mused aloud about whether or not I should invite Nick’s family… and when Black asked me how likely I thought Uncle Charles would be to crash the wedding and/or reception.

The sun set to our left as we wound up the coast.

When we finally got back to the building on California Street, it was dark.

I climbed out of the MacLaren and wrapped my arms around my torso, shivering. Black noticed and went into the trunk, pulling out my coat. He held it up so I could slide my arms one by one into the sleeves. He was still talking, telling me little things about changes he’d made to our security detail and the organization of the team.

I was listening, noting with some relief that there were no people and no press waiting for us this time, as we exited the car.

We were about to walk into the building, when Black nudged me.

“Hey, what about North Beach tonight? For dinner.” He nudged me again playfully, coiling his light into mine, pulling on me. “We could take Cal up on his offer for a kick-ass meal. Eat until we feel sick, get some wildly decadent plate of Italian desserts and eat all of it, then come back home and fuck like rabbits to burn it off.”

When I rolled my eyes at him, laughing, he nudged me again, coiling an arm around my waist and hugging me close to him.

“Don’t worry.” He smirked. “I’ll wake you up nice and early so we can go running tomorrow morning, too.”

Snorting humorously, I turned towards him with a narrow smile.

“Over my dead body.”

“No Cal’s, then?” He exuded disappointment. “What about the wharf? I don’t feel like eating here tonight. And I’m starving.”

“I’ll go to Cal’s,” I said, my voice humorous, if faintly warning. “But only if you promise not to threaten his life this time. Or act like a lunatic if I give him a hug. Or start ranting about how we’re married if I’m in any way polite to him…”

Black chucked, even as my voice trailed.

I didn’t hear what he said in response.

I didn’t hear anything for a few seconds.

I stared at a figure standing on the sidewalk across the street.

Whoever he was, he was maybe thirty yards from where we stood. It was far enough from the car that I don’t know why I noticed him at all. He stood under a broken streetlight, in front of a storefront that was already dark for the night.

He was watching us.

I stared back at him.

As I did, I felt my breath hitch in my chest. Not a single conscious thought rose in my mind, not a single linear understanding. Instead, my reaction was animal, visceral. A pain rose in the center of my solar plexus as I froze, taking in the shape of him, trying to make out his face in the darkness where he stood.

My night vision was different now. It was closer to Black’s. It was close enough to Black’s that I could make out the man’s face, even in the dark.

It was Nick.

It was fucking Nick.

Nick stood there, his face and outline in shadow.

I stared at him, my breath stopping in my chest, my head swimming.

Even so, I never stopped taking him in, trying to confirm or refute what I knew. My eyes scanned over every inch of him, going over every detail of his appearance.

His hair was longer than I remembered. It hung in an expensive shag cut that fell down one side of his forehead, making his face look narrower, his cheekbones higher.

Even in the dark, he somehow looked… younger.

Instead of the early-forties Nick I remembered, he looked like he was in his late twenties. Early thirties at most.

Even apart from the age difference, he looked… different.

He’d always been a good-looking man, and not only because he kept himself in peak physical condition the entire time I’d known him. He’d always had women after him, too, and not all of that was about him being such a nice guy. I’d personally witnessed women approach him just for sex, without knowing him at all.

More than just good-looking, he’d always been attractive, I guess.

Like Black, he just gave off a vibe a lot of women liked.

But not like this.

He looked ethereal now, like he was too beautiful to be quite real.

He looked like something out of an artistic rendering, or a movie poster.

He didn’t smile.

He stared at me, his body and face utterly still, his mouth and eyes unmoving. He wore an expensive leather jacket, black pants, dress shoes. He dressed almost like Black, I realized as I stared at him. He dressed like he had money.

I’d never seen Nick in clothes like that before. I’d never seen him in clothes that expensive, or that fit him so well, like they’d been made for him.

I don’t know how long I stood there, staring at him.

I don’t know how long I went without breathing.

Eventually, I heard my heart and blood throbbing behind my eyes, turning my vision dark red. The rational part of my mind informed me there was a good chance I might pass out.

Then strong hands gripped me, yanking back my mind.

Panic flickered around me in darting pulses, swimming through my light, pulling me inexorably back to my body. I took a breath, a choked gasp, and my vision flooded back, even as I fell into and against a larger, harder body than mine.

Black wrapped his arms around me, hugging me tightly to his chest.

When I could hear past the loud ringing in my ears, he sounded panicked, borderline scared.

“Miri! MIRI! Answer me, goddamn it! What is it? What’s wrong?”

I blinked, fighting to see.

I leaned deeper into Black, gripping his arms in my hands, holding onto him for balance, maybe just to be there at all, to be fully inside my own body.

My eyes looked for the figure that had been standing across the street.

He was gone.

I scanned up and down the sidewalk frantically, trying to see where he went, looking for his face in the other people I saw walking there, looking for the clothes I remembered, the black hair, those high cheekbones, the muscular build.

I looked for him in every face that crossed my vision. I looked with my eyes, and I looked with my living light, desperate to glimpse him in the streetlights that ran up and down the street so I could dismiss what my mind had told me.

I was too late.

Whoever he was, whatever he was, he was gone.

18

Message

I SOMEHOW FOUND myself surrounded by security, being hustled into the lobby of the California Street building.

They seemed to come out of nowhere.

I was standing there, breathing, being half-crushed in the arms of Black, when they surrounded us, bringing us back with them across the stretch of sidewalk to the glass doors. I watched one of them take the keys to the MacLaren from Black, right before they jogged around to the driver’s side and climbed in to start the engine.

The white and black car was pulling away from the curb before we were halfway to the doors leading into the California Street building.

They stayed with us until we entered the elevator.

Then one of them, Javier, I realized when I focused on his face, quirked an eyebrow at Black in a silent question.

“We’re good,” Black said, his voice a growl. “You’ve got the description?”

Javier nodded. “Got it, boss. Don’t worry. They’re already out there.”

“Find whoever the fuck that was. I want you to call me the second you’ve got an ID. Take their picture first and send it to my phone, so Miri can take a look at it… then bring them in. Try to do it legally, if you can, but if you can’t, bring them in anyway. I don’t care if you have to knock the fucker out to do it. If he exists, I want him inside this building within the hour.”

Javier gave him a short salute. “Understood.”

Black nodded, once, his jaw hard.

Leaning down, he crushed me against his side as he jabbed at the “PH” button for the penthouse floor.

I blinked.

Before I’d finished the blink, the elevator doors were closing.

I realized only then that Black hadn’t released me the whole time we were standing there. His arm remained wrapped tightly around me, holding me flush to his chest and side. He was breathing harder than usual, and I could feel adrenaline shooting through his veins, speeding up his heart, tensing his muscles.

For the first handful of floors, we didn’t speak.

“What the hell was that, doc?” he said.

I bit my tongue, hard enough that I winced.

“It wasn’t Nick, Miri,” he growled, his voice hard. “Could it have been someone dressed up to look like him?”

Thinking about that, I shook my head slowly, but not really in a no.

“It wasn’t the clothes,” I said after another beat. I frowned, my voice sounding strangely distant. “No. The clothes were all wrong––”

“I saw,” Black growled. “I went into your head and looked, Miri.”

Maybe feeling something off me––confusion, a flicker of surprise, even tension––Black looked down at my face, scowling. He continued to look at me as his arm tightened around me even more, his light wrapping deeper into mine.

“You weren’t fucking answering me, doc,” he said, gruff. “I’m sorry I went into you like that, but I panicked. I looked at what you thought you saw, got all the details, then fed them to the security detail. I looked for him, too. I looked exactly where I’d seen you staring, but there was nothing there. I don’t know if whoever it was ran off when I grabbed you, or when the security team showed up… or before that. You were starting to pass out by then. Of course, is someone implanted the image, all of that is moot––”

“Implanted the image?” Turning, I stared up at him, bewildered. “What does that mean?”

“A seer,” he growled. “Highly trained infiltrators can do that kind of thing, doc. They can make you see things that aren’t there.” Exhaling, still breathing too hard, he added, “Normally, I would say no one could penetrate your shield––or mine––not without me feeling it. But we were outside, and your uncle has a whole new team of infiltrators working for him now. Not to mention other advantages.”

At my blank stare, Black’s voice lowered to a deeper, gruffer growl.

“The construct, doc. Remember? Your uncle has that construct over most of the country. There’s a good chance he has people on us all the time now.”

Still frowning, he stared at the elevator doors without seeing them.

“Due to the construct alone, he now has a fair bit of control over the Barrier space all over the country. He also has probably a hundred seers, if not three times that, maintaining the fucking thing. He could conceivably force an image into your mind, make you believe you were really seeing it. Hell, given how many seers walked through those inter-dimensional doors, he’s likely got some real talent on that front now. Someone who specializes in those kinds of Barrier headfucks. He’s also got Raven. Jem says she can do that kind of thing.”

I stared at him, still frowning.

I fought to think about his words.

My brow furrowed as I did.

“Why would Charles show me Nick?” I said.

“I have no idea,” Black growled. “To turn us against the vampires? To try and recruit us to his fucked-up cause? To make us paranoid? I can think of a number of reasons. Why the fuck did someone call Yumi Tanaka? Because someone is screwing with you, doc. Or screwing with me… or with both of us.”

Squeezing me tighter against him, he looked down.

“If there was an actual person standing there, doc, we’re going to find them… and my people are going to bring him back here, and we’re going to have a little chat with him.”

His voice lowered, shifting into a furious mutter,

“If this person really exists, I’m especially going to have a chat with him. I’m going to have a nice, long, leisurely, threat-laden conversation with this piece of shit, whoever he is… and find out exactly what the hell is going on, and who hired him.”

Black’s words trailed as the elevator slowed, reaching the top of the building.

Still holding me around the waist, he steered me out of the elevator car in front of him when the doors opened with a melodic ping.

I found myself glancing around the glass-enclosed lobby of the penthouse floor, weirdly unnerved by the silence.

Everything looked exactly the same as it always did, though.

The tall windows on either side of the elevator’s foyer, and the high ceiling made of glass, showed nothing but cloud-filled night sky. Straight in front of me stood the brushed copper door of the main offices of Black Securities and Investigations. That door, with its long, vertical cylinder for a handle, like a thick copper pipe, was closed. As it had since I’d first seen it, the effect of all that glass with the wedge-like shape made me think of the prow of a ship.

Now, however, the glass walls were dim to each side.

The offices looked closed.

I didn’t sense any movement back there, either.

As we walked past, I glanced at the company’s eagle logo etched into the translucent, plate glass walls that angled back on either side of the door. The glass formed a near pyramid shape with the copper door at one end and diagonal hallways on either side.

Everything looked the same.

Nothing looked different.

Even so, the hairs on my arms were standing up as I stood there, head-cocked, listening.

I realized Black was doing the same next to me.

“You feel something, doc?” he muttered.

After a too-long pause, I shook my head, slow.

“No,” I said, frowning. “I don’t feel anything.” I hesitated. “But I feel like I should feel something. I feel like something should be off.”

Black didn’t bother to interrogate what I meant by that.

Instead he stood there, head cocked, listening.

After another long pause, he nudged me gently with his light.

“Come on,” he said, gruff. “Everyone’s probably in one of the conference rooms.”

I nodded, but still found myself listening to the silence. I had no idea what I was listening for. I didn’t know if it was fear I was feeling exactly, or more some lingering tilt in my light from what I’d seen under that burnt-out streetlight.

It didn’t really feel concrete enough to be fear.

Rather, I felt a kind of underlying hum, like there was a strain of music I couldn’t quite pick out, that was just out of my reach.

“I feel it too, doc,” Black murmured.

When I glanced at him, he only frowned.

Tightening his arm where it had loosened around my waist, he led me past the glass walls of Black Securities and Investigations and towards his penthouse apartment, which lived at the end of the left-hand corridor and took up more than half of the floor.

Unlike the first time I’d ventured up here, I now knew Black’s company offices took up much more than simply part of this floor, even though reception lived on this level.

The bulk of his offices encompassed the entirety of the three floors below this one.

The only thing on this floor really was reception, most of the IT department, and Black’s own office, along with a large conference room and an equipment room directly below the stairs up to the helipad on the roof. My office now lived on this floor as well. Also, part of the IT department had been moved to the floor below.

I’d heard Black muttering recently about expanding it down two more floors, now that we were absorbing the influx of new seers. He’d asked my thoughts on creating what amounted to an “infiltration department” for the company to take up one of those floors, although it obviously wouldn’t be called that.

He’d considered asking Yarli and/or Jem to run it, possibly both of them together.

Unlike most of the other departments, which reported either to Dex or Kiko, the infiltration department would report directly to Black.

I wondered if Black already had some of those same seers coordinating with Javier and his team as they looked for whoever I’d seen down there on the street––assuming I’d seen anyone at all. I still couldn’t really wrap my mind around the possibility that I might not have seen anyone, even now.

At the same time, it struck me as less and less likely that I’d actually seen Nick.

The image felt burned into my brain, though.

I wondered if it really could be a hallucination. If so, I knew my mind wouldn’t view it any differently than if it were real. If Black was right, and Charles was behind this, I would have no idea my mind was being tampered with at all.

I wondered if we were still going to Cal’s restaurant.

“No.” Black glanced at me, muttering, “No North Beach tonight, doc. Sorry. We’ll go tomorrow, okay?”

I bit my lip, but didn’t answer.

Brick would be here tomorrow.

It certainly didn’t take long for our post-Santa Cruz glow to wear off.

We were approaching our front door now, and I could hear something. I could really hear something, unlike that phantom melody that nagged at me before.

Black stiffened as we got closer, clearly hearing it too.

“Did you leave anything on, doc?” he said. “Television? The sound system?”

I frowned, thinking, then shook my head. “No.”

“You’re sure?” Releasing me, he motioned me to the side of the corridor, the opposite side from where the door opened. He reached behind him and under the jacket he wore. “Go through your memories, doc. Be sure.”

I did, and shook my head slowly.

“I’m sure. It wasn’t me.”

Watching him pull a gun out of his jacket, from a holster that must sit at the base of his back, I felt my adrenaline spike, and not only because I hadn’t known he was carrying. I watched as he checked the chamber, then the clip, unmoving.

I wondered if he’d been carrying the whole time we were in Santa Cruz.

He grunted, glancing at me. “Of course I was fucking carrying, doc. I had a crew watching us while we surfed at the lighthouse, too… and security watching the house all night and the next day until we left, including when we were fucking in that hot tub. Given everything going on right now, I’ll be carrying in the shower pretty soon.”

I only nodded.

There wasn’t a whole lot I could say to that.

We’d reached the penthouse door though, and now I could hear the music even through the thick, metal-plated panel. Whoever left it on, they’d cranked the volume up high. If this was a normal apartment, the sound would have filled the hallway.

“What about Lizbeth?” I said, as we approached the door. “Or the cleaning crew?”

“It would be a first,” Black said, his mouth firming as he gave me a look. “A first in over ten years, doc.”

I didn’t answer.

We were close enough now I recognized the song.

It almost sounded like…

“Monster Mash,” Black muttered.

I frowned. He was right.

It was that Halloween song.

His gold eyes darted to mine.

His expression grew so hard, it almost didn’t look like him.

“Stay here, Miriam.” He motioned for me to stay behind the door. “Don’t come in. Not until I tell you it’s okay. I fucking mean it.”

I frowned at him, shaking my head. “Call someone, Black. Right now.”

His hand was already on the door handle. He paused long enough to reach into his jacket, pulling out and handing me his phone.

“You call,” he said. “Call Kiko. Tell her to send a team.”

I took the phone, wanting to argue with him, but he jerked open the door before I could speak. Sound erupted into the hallway, so loud it was nearly deafening. I’d never heard Black’s speakers that loud before, not even the one time we had a small get-together there and someone, probably Nick or Angel, got drunk enough to crank up the music for dancing.

I watched Black disappear through the opening, his gun up.

Feeling a ripple of pain and fear flood my light, ratcheting up my heartrate as I watched Black disappear from my view, I considered following him, then decided to call his team in first. Swiping the front of his phone, I entered his password, then immediately went into his phone app and hit the number for Kiko.

She didn’t pick up.

I hit the contact for Dex next.

He didn’t pick up, either.

Adrenaline shot down my spine, making my muscles tense.

That wasn’t just unusual. It was unheard of.

Clenching my jaw, I hit the contact number for Javier.

He picked up on the first ring.

“Javier,” I said, before he could speak. “Get back here. Now. Something’s happening in the penthouse. We might have an intruder.” I paused a half-breath, biting the inside of my cheek. “Dex and Kiko aren’t picking up.”

Javier didn’t need to hear any more.

“On my way.” His voice turned military blunt. “Did Black go in?”

“Yes. He’s in the penthouse now. He just went in. Alone. With a gun. I’m out in the hall.”

“All right. We’re on our way. Stay put, Mrs. Black. I’ll go through the list and see if I can get you and Black support from someone closer.”

I hung up the line, staring at the door.

Black had left it open a crack. The music filled the hall, but even closing it that much muffled the sound significantly. I stared at the door handle for what must have been a good half-minute before my jaw hardened.

Gripping it in one hand, I yanked the door the rest of the way open.

I winced at the volume of the stereo once I stepped inside, but it didn’t slow me down. I made my way into the foyer in a half-crouch, keeping to the wall so I wouldn’t be immediately visible in the sunken living area.

I didn’t see Black.

I didn’t see or hear anything out of place––just that lilting Halloween song coupled with the view out the huge bay windows overlooking downtown and the Bay Bridge. Still keeping low and to the wall, I made my way in further.

I wondered why Black hadn’t turned off the music.

Whoever put it on, they’d set the song to repeat.

The campy, Frankenstein-like voice rose and fell, tilting my mind like a carnival ride. The background chorus chanted in the background, so loud they sounded like screams. It made me feel disoriented, even slightly drunk, maybe because I usually only heard that song at Halloween parties in the first place, where everyone mostly got hammered by the end of the night, or maybe just because it had that kind of melody.

Either way, it was like walking inside a mirrored funhouse––in the bad way.

“Black!” I yelled out his name, blurting it on impulse.

No one answered.

Truthfully, I doubted he could hear me.

He might not have heard me even if he was standing right next to me, although he would have felt me shouting through his light if he stood anywhere close by. Venturing in deeper, I stopped at the closet, dumping my purse on the table and easing out of the long coat I wore, which I let drop the floor.

Once my arms were free, I eased open a drawer on the same table.

Glancing inside, I didn’t see the gun Black usually kept in there. Frowning, I pushed through the contents of the drawer until I found a letter opener. I snatched it up, figuring it was better than nothing, even as I gritted my teeth.

Gripping the silver opener at my side, I walked past the end of the hall.

Once I had, I came to a dead stop.

The walls on either side of the sunken living room had come into view. To my right, towards the kitchen, everything looked the same as I remembered.

The view to my left is was what brought me to a halt.

I stared up at the smashed, wall-mounted television screen, and the streaks of… fuck… I raised a hand to my mouth and nose, the same one that gripped the silver letter opener. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before.

Blood. It smelled like blood.

A lot of fucking blood.

It filled my nose and mouth, a nauseating, cloying, coppery scent.

My stomach lurched, hard enough that I had to fight not to throw up.

Still struggling with my bile and gut, I walked in further, breathing harder now as I gripped the letter opener, still covering my nose and mouth with my other hand.

I got past the hall leading into the back bedroom when I saw him.

Black knelt by one of the couches in the sunken living room.

I froze, staring down at him, and at what he hovered over.

A body sprawled there.

A body sprawled, naked, on Black’s white leather couch.

It was a woman.

Stepping closer, half in panic, I stumbled, then caught my balance, aiming my feet for the stairs to the lower level. Black didn’t look up from the woman on the couch as I descended down to where he was. He knelt there on the bloody carpet, his gun still in his hand, his face drawn and pale. He looked like he was in shock.

I winced at the marks covering the parts of the woman’s body I could see. Bite marks, bruises and scratches marred seemingly every inch of her pale skin.

I watched Black check her pulse, his fingers careful, tentative.

By then, I’d stepped close enough to both of them to see her face.

It was Kiko.

Holy christ… it was Kiko.

From the blood covering her neck and chest, it looked like her throat had been torn out.

“Jesus fucking christ…” I breathed in a rush.

I lowered the letter opener, then stood there, frozen in shock.

Black couldn’t have heard me, but he must have felt me.

He looked over at where I stood, meeting my gaze. I’d never seen that exact look on his face before. Helpless, panicked, grief-stricken shock stood there, making his skin paler than I’d ever seen it. I saw rage underlying the shock, even now––an out of control, violent, powerless-feeling rage––but I’d never seen him so completely lost before, or so afraid.

Before I could fully take in that expression, or what it meant, his mental voice rose in my mind.

That voice was disturbing, too. Stripped entirely of emotion, it didn’t reflect any part of what I saw in his eyes or light.

It was so dead, so empty, it made my heart stop.

I checked the rest of the apartment, he sent. I think they’re gone. But be fucking careful, Miri. He nodded towards a small Chinese-style table on the other side of the foyer. There’s a gun in there. Get it. Now.

I nodded, jerking my chin up and down like a marionette.

I walked-ran to the cabinet, pocketing the letter opener as I yanked open the drawer. In it, a Beretta APX 9mm sat there in a vinyl holster. I yanked it out, then turned back towards Black and walked in his direction, checking the chamber as I walked.

Walking to the edge of where the blood started on the white carpet, I watched him brush the hair carefully away from Kiko’s face, nearly a caress. I felt the fury on him worsen, along with a grief that nearly buckled my knees.

I was afraid to ask. I was afraid to ask him if––

She’s not dead, he sent. Bastard raped her, pushed her to give him head, then drained her almost to death… but she’s not dead. Not yet.

He looked up at me, his eyes now as empty as his voice.

I read her. She’s unconscious, but I read her. That’s how I know. He erased or blurred her memory of who he was, but he let her remember the details of what he did to her.

I nodded, fighting tears.

I couldn’t quite comprehend Kiko herself, not yet.

She didn’t even look like the woman I knew, not like she was now. I knew that wasn’t all of it, of course. Already, just from Black’s few words, it was hitting at memories of mine that I couldn’t handle, couldn’t face, especially not in relation to my friend.

Unlike my own trauma crap, the grief and anger and helplessness coming off Black hit at me like a physical punch. It flooded into my light so intensely I could barely think, could barely comprehend anything else.

Still holding the gun, I aimed it at the ceiling, the safety still on, as I reached where he was. I didn’t get too close. I could feel Black trying to decide if he should risk picking her up, to bring her closer to the paramedics, which he’d already called, using a landline I didn’t even know we had. Now that I was closer to both of them, I could see her chest moving up and down slowly, enough to know Black was right.

She was alive.

The music still blared through the penthouse apartment.

I barely noticed it now.

I found myself looking around at the hardwood floor, taking in the bloody footprints on the white rug. I frowned, staring around at all of it, the splatters on the couch, on the walls. It was too much blood. I glanced at more blood on the windows, pausing where someone had smashed a Thai mixed-media art piece.

My eyes stopped again on an original painting Black bought me in New York.

Someone had taken a knife to it, cutting the canvas to ribbons.

My eyes scaled up, to the smashed television, the streaks of blood I’d first seen covering that part of the wall.

That’s when I saw it.

They hadn’t just painted our wall with random splashes of blood.

There was writing there.

Someone wrote a message in two-foot-high letters, in blood.

I didn’t know if it was Kiko’s blood.

It still seemed like too much blood to me, like there had to be other bodies, more than hers. Even as that thought nagged at the back of my head, making my breath come faster, I stared at the words, reading them over and over, unable to comprehend them.

The letters spelled out a brief, simple message:

To Black With Love.

19

Hospital

HE WAS ASLEEP when I walked into Kiko’s hospital room.

Slumped on a chair he’d dragged over next to her bed, he shifted while I watched, his head leaned sideways on the chair’s back. I watched him fight to settle into the worn cushion, his profile in sharp relief against the orange fabric.

He was about a foot too tall for the chair.

He’d also pulled it close enough to the bed that his knees banged into the metal edges of it. His five o’clock shadow was growing into the beginnings of a full-fledged beard, and he wore the same clothes he’d put on before we left Santa Cruz.

I watched him sleep, keeping my light still.

Glancing down at the breakfast I held in both hands, the food I’d brought him from the bagel shop down in the lobby, and the coffee I’d gotten him at the gourmet coffee shop next door to the bagel place, I frowned. After a bare pause, I set the white paper bags with the bagel sandwiches on the table near the door, and across the room from where he sat.

I set the cardboard tray holding our coffees next to it.

I didn’t want to wake him. He looked exhausted.

At the same time, I wondered how sore his neck would be if I let him sleep like that for long. He needed a damned bed. I knew how unlikely it was he’d go find one, though––even if I did wake him up.

Sighing, I decided to leave him be.

Grabbing the bags with the bagels and the tray with the two coffees, I backed slowly out of the room. I reached behind me, groping for the door, and heard him stir, shifting his long body on the fabric chair. When he didn’t open his eyes, I turned around, catching hold of the metal, L-shaped handle.

I’d just yanked down on it, opening the door, when his voice rose, sounding groggy.

“Hey,” he said. “You stealing my breakfast, doc?”

I turned, feeling a flush of guilt, but not about his breakfast.

I watched him stretch, his body obviously stiff from having dozed off in the fabric chair. Watching me look at him, he gave me a half-smile, nearly a smirk.

“I see what you’re up to,” he said. “Pretend to get me food, just so you can run off and eat it yourself.”

“You should sleep.” My voice remained low like his, nearly a whisper, but it carried a lot more genuine scolding, versus his joking version. “You should go home and sleep, Black. Let one of us stand vigil for a while. The doctors say she’s recovering well, now that her blood pressure is stabilized. She’ll be okay if you just crash for a few hours.”

Black’s sculpted lips hardened into a faint frown.

“The others are here, too,” I added, before he could argue. “Most of them are down the hall, camped out in the waiting room. Dex, Jem, Yarli, Mika, Manny. Kiko wouldn’t be alone, Black. Not even for a minute. And we have a guard on the door.”

Black shrugged. He didn’t really answer me, though.

He also didn’t get up from the chair.

“You going to give me that coffee you brought, doc?” he said instead, quirking an eyebrow as he stretched up his arms a second time, wincing at their stiffness. “And stop looking at me like that,” he added. “You have no reason to feel guilty. You didn’t wake me up. The smell of that damned bagel with egg and bacon did.”

“What’s the difference?” I said, exasperated.

“The difference is, my stomach is smarter than I am. I need food more than I need sleep right now.”

Staring at him, I frowned.

I considered arguing the point about his stomach being particularly “smart” when it came to his body’s need for sleep. I also considered pressing the point about him needing a real bed, wondering if he’d use a hotel room bed if I got him a suite in the four-star place next to the hospital.

Seeing the immovable look on his face, I exhaled in defeat.

Even so, I clicked at him as I brought over the two bags of food, along with the two cups of coffee I had in a cardboard tray, balanced on my arm. Once I got close enough to him, he leaned up for a kiss.

He pulled on me with his light as he kissed me, and I found myself giving in for real, feeling the worry and exhaustion on him, but also his relief that I was there. I was still looking down at him when he took all of the food I’d been carrying away from me and put it on the table closer to Kiko’s bed.

Once both of our hands were free, he pulled me briefly into his lap, and kissed me for real. I found myself caressing his face and neck and shoulders as he did, putting light into him as much as touching him, doing it instinctively as I felt his light merge into mine. He felt borderline affection-starved as I leaned into his chest, but after a few minutes, he let me go, nudging me with his mind to stay, to sit with him for a bit while he ate.

I slid out of his lap as he leaned towards the table to grab the food.

Glancing around, I pulled over a second chair from by the window while he took the coffees out of the cardboard coffee tray, setting them on the table, then opened the bigger of the two white paper bags in his lap.

“Gaos,” he murmured, peering into the white paper bag. “You even got me the right cheese. I could marry you all over again, doc.”

I grunted, plopping down next to him.

I took the coffee with my name on it from his fingers when he handed it over.

“I thought you were doing that already,” I observed, quirking an eyebrow at him.

He gave me a faint smile, then leaned over for another kiss, pausing to clutch my hair in his hand as he used his tongue. I got lost in his light a second time, breathing him in when I felt him merge into me, and only coming up for air when he did.

He pressed his forehead to mine briefly, kissing my cheek.

Despite his attempts at levity, I could feel the exhaustion on him, as soon as he opened his light at all, along with another hot plume of that gratitude that I was there.

When he let me go, releasing my hair, I felt the reluctance on him, too.

“How is everyone else?” he said, gruff, taking a sip of his coffee.

He kept a heavy hand on my thigh, and I found myself giving him more of my light, bleeding it subtly into his fingers and up into his arm, hoping it might help him with the tiredness. I hadn’t meant for him to notice, but I felt him notice anyway.

He sent me another pulse of gratitude, leaning over and kissing me again, that time on the side of the neck, using his tongue.

When he straightened, adjusting the bag of food on his lap, I watched his eyes return to where Kiko lay on the hospital bed, her eyes closed.

Exhaling, I tried to answer his question.

“They’re fine,” I said, taking a sip of my own coffee.

I paused long enough to briefly savor my drink. The coffee shop in the lobby was surprisingly decent. I’d gotten a mocha, figuring the extra dose of sugar and caffeine couldn’t hurt. Tasting the chocolate on my tongue now, I found myself really glad I had.

“Most of them only got bit once,” I went on after a pause. “They were groggy when Javier found them in the conference room, but no one was seriously hurt. He said it scared the shit out of him, seeing them all lying on the floor and on couches like that. He said they really looked dead. But he realized they were asleep––not dead––as soon as he got close enough to see them breathing.”

Giving Black a grim look, I added, “Javier says whoever it was, he bit Dex first, and got him to order the others into the conference room. He then bit each of them as they arrived, more to subdue them than to drink.”

Grimacing overtly, I added, “The one exception was Dex… who you knew about. And Kiko, of course. Dex was missing enough blood that he needed to be taken here in an ambulance, but he’s fine now. He was the one who called Kiko and told her to go up to your apartment. He can’t remember exactly what he told her, but Jem read him, and he says Dex told her you and I had gotten back early from Santa Cruz, and that you wanted to talk to her about something to do with the meeting with Brick. Kiko, that is.”

Black’s face changed while I watched, turning hard as stone.

He never took his eyes off Kiko.

“Dex got a transfusion, too,” I added. “He was down a few pints at least, but it looks like the vampire only drained him for extra blood to paint the walls. The forensics guys say the writing in the living room, along with the stuff on the paintings, and those handprints on our wall in the bedroom was mostly Dex’s blood.” Glancing at Kiko, I grimaced. “Whoever it was, they apparently drank Kiko. The others were mostly there as props. And to get them out of the way, of course, and make sure no one could raise the alarm.”

“What about the seers?” Black said, his voice cold. “Where were they?”

“Training exercises,” I said at once. “At the building on Mission Boulevard. There wasn’t a single seer in the California building, so whoever did this, they likely had us under surveillance. Cowboy and Angel weren’t there, either… or Manny. All three of them had gone along with the seers to the Mission building.”

Black nodded, silent. His jaw grew harder still.

He didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

He also seemed to have forgotten the bag of food cooling on his lap.

When he finally spoke, his voice was lower.

“And the bite marks?” he said. “Any news on how many of them?”

I exhaled at that, clicking under my breath. Studying his profile, I fought with the pain that wanted to rise at the expression on his face.

“Just one, they think,” I said. “Manny said they had a few of the forensics guys in to measure the bite marks on all of the humans who got bit––”

“Yeah. I know.” Black turned, lifting an eyebrow at me briefly. “I gave that order. They came in here, too. I wanted them to look at Kiko. They took saliva swabs, measured and photographed all the bite marks and bruises. I told them to get access to the rape kit the hospital put together for Kiko, too. Do you know if they got that? I told them to bring Mika or Yarli… or one of the other seers. I figured if the hospital gave them a hard time––”

“It was fine, Black. They got everything you asked for.”

He took another sip of coffee, his gold eyes growing harder.

“I’m not going to ask if they went through everything then,” he said flatly. “I know they did. They would have stayed up all night doing it.” Pausing, he glanced at me, adding, “Did they get the results from all of their tests yet?”

I nodded, watching him cautiously. “The report I heard included all the data on Kiko, along with those vampire DNA tests, or whatever they call them, saliva and semen, and all the bite marks on the others. They think it’s all the same vampire.”

Black’s jaw clenched harder while I watched.

He looked at Kiko, watching her breathe through the oxygen tube on her face.

For another few seconds, neither of us spoke.

I found myself pulsing more light and warmth at Black, especially at his chest and heart. I felt him trying to relax into it, but I also felt him not having much success.

Watching Kiko breathe, I understood.

I understood better than I wanted to.

This was likely only the beginning for her. Some part of me hoped like hell she wouldn’t remember much of what happened, but I wondered if that would make things better for her or worse. Waking up in the middle of the night screaming without knowing why wasn’t exactly an ideal way to process trauma, either.

“They had to replace more than half of her blood,” Black said, still looking at his friend’s face. “If we’d found her even ten minutes later… if we’d gone to dinner at Cal’s without going upstairs… she would have died. We would have found her lying in a pool of her own blood on that fucking couch, and she would be dead. They told me it was damned lucky we found her when we did.”

Remembering why we hadn’t made it to Cal’s, remembering that figure I’d seen standing across the street from the California Street building, I didn’t speak.

Had that been Nick, warning me?

Some kind of premonition? A ghost?

I didn’t really believe in those kinds of things, as funny as that might sound, given all the seer stuff I’d experienced over the past few years, not to mention the existence of vampires. Black told me that true precogs, what his people called “prescients,” were extremely rare in the seer world. Back on Old Earth, they were treated like shamans or holy sages, since the gift was so unusual. It also made a lot of them batshit crazy, apparently.

Most seers got only occasional and extremely unreliable glimpses into the future, since the timelines changed so quickly.

When I asked Black why that was, he just shrugged, and said “free will.”

People had control over their own destinies, especially in the short term. Moreover, one person’s free will could have a pinball-like effect, interacting with the free will of countless others whose lives they touched.

It was only unusual seers who could see the timelines above that layer of free will.

Those seers, or prescients, saw the path of a “life-wave” as a whole, as Black termed it, meaning those currents or historical patterns related to an entire species. Those were the timelines that unfolded over not days, months, or years, but centuries.

Even millennia.

He told me he’d never once met an actual prescient, not on Old Earth, and not here.

Letting out a tired-sounding sigh, Black took his hand off my thigh long enough to open the bag in his lap a second time, and pull out the bagel sandwich I’d brought him. Pulling his out and setting it on his lap in the wrapper, he handed over mine, which was smaller and decidedly less packed with ingredients.

We sat there, eating, both of us watching Kiko breathe and sleep.

There was no sound apart from rustling paper, our chewing, and our swallowing.

Black hadn’t been lying about being hungry.

It struck me again that we never made it to dinner the night before.

Even so, and despite the fact that it was now a little before ten in the morning, I was in awe of how quickly he inhaled the food. It seemed like bare seconds before he crumpled up the wrapper and tossed it into the empty bag.

I’d only made it about a third of the way through the bagel and lox sandwich I’d gotten for myself by then.

Leaning back in the fabric chair, he stretched while I continued to eat, arching his back in a third attempt to get the kinks out of his spine and shoulders. He’d just grabbed his coffee off the table again, when his phone rang from inside his jacket.

I watched him pull it out, and just stare at the name that came up on the ID.

I leaned over, glancing at it.

It was a single word, a single name.

BRICK.

Giving me a cold, death-like stare that made my chest tighten, Black rose smoothly to his feet, hitting the button to answer the phone.

He didn’t wait for whoever was on the other end to speak.

“You’re fucking dead,” he said.

He spoke lower than a whisper, his voice cold, furious.

“Do you hear me, motherfucker? You’re fucking dead. You and those bloodsucking, sociopathic fucks you call your people. I fully intend to spend the rest of my day finding out from Charles exactly how I can help hunt down every last one of you miserable, soulless pieces of shit. I want to personally light the match after he’s dumped gasoline on all of your––”

Whoever it was must have cut him off.

Black’s voice abruptly rose.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what the fuck happened!” he snarled, seemingly forgetting about staying quiet for Kiko’s sake. “You’re lucky I haven’t shown up at your door with a trowel made of razor blades and a goddamned flamethrower! These are your people, Brick! You’re responsible for this!”

Listening to something the other said, he shook his head.

Still listening, Black clicked at him sharply, letting out a coarse laugh.

There wasn’t an ounce of humor in it.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. You’ve got the fucking gall to ask me that, after what I came home to last night…” Pausing to listen, briefer that time, he snarled, “I don’t give a fuck, Brick. You hand that vampire to me, or there is no conversation. The only meeting we have starts with me ripping that motherfucker’s heart out of his chest––”

Again he stopped, his teeth gritted.

“Don’t even go there,” he growled. “Don’t even fucking go there. You want to talk about the Pentagon, Brick? About what I did to you? Let’s talk about that prison first, shall we? Let’s start there, if we’re going to play that fucking game…”

Again he fell silent, listening.

Sandwich forgotten, I stared at him, watching him pace by the foot of Kiko’s bed.

I watched emotions ripple through his light like electric currents.

The pure intensity behind those twisting, fire-like plumes alarmed me.

Below him, dark shapes writhed in the structures of his light, turning the room darker, as if a cloud had passed over the sun. Black’s hand curled into a fist while I watched, as he listened to the other speak.

“Fine,” he said after another pause.

His voice remained cold, death-like.

“Fine,” he said again. “We’ll be there. And I don’t want to hear shit about numbers or security. If he’s not there, don’t expect the meeting to end well. For you or anyone else. And if this is a goddamned attempt to trap me, trick me, or harm a single hair on any of my people’s heads, you might want to rethink that right now… old friend.”

I watched him click the hang-up button and shove the phone back in his jacket pocket.

By then his words had penetrated enough that I stared at him in shock.

“You’re still going to meet with him?” I said in disbelief.

Turning, Black scowled, meeting my gaze.

That death look was still in his eyes.

“Yes,” he said, gruff. He glanced at his watch. “I need to go make arrangements. Can you make sure someone’s with her? At all times? It doesn’t have to be you.”

Watching his face, I nodded slowly.

“Of course.”

His expression softened, but not very much. “Thanks.” The instant he looked away from me, his face grew taut all over again.

Feeling the pulses coming off his light, I found I understood.

This wasn’t about making a deal with Brick anymore.

This was about killing the vampire who’d done this to his friend. It was about killing Brick if something similar had happened to Nick Tanaka.

I wondered if Brick knew that, even after what Black said to him.

Since he’d clearly agreed to bring the vampire who’d done this to Kiko to the meeting with him, he probably did.

All of which made me wonder why Brick would agree to meet with us at all.

“Did he say who did it?” I said, when the silence stretched.

Black gave me a furious, incredulous look.

None of that anger or incredulity felt aimed at me.

“No,” he growled. “He didn’t. He didn’t explain shit. He said one of his new recruits got away from him, that he’s being ‘disciplined’ now, apparently by Dorian.”

Black gestured vaguely, his jaw hard, like he was too angry to speak.

When he finally did, his voice rose sharply.

“His excuse was that the vampire’s ‘young.’ Like… what the fuck does that mean? Young? Young how exactly? Like a teenager? A kid? Why the fuck would Brick bring a goddamned kid with him to something like this?”

Shaking his head, he clicked angrily, louder than I’d ever heard him make the sound.

“That doesn’t mesh with the bite marks I saw, the rape, the images I got off Kiko, any of it. It doesn’t make any fucking sense at all.”

Trailing, he glanced at Kiko on the hospital bed.

He winced, right before he lowered his voice.

“Brick claims he wouldn’t have brought him, had he known he’d do something like that. He said this vampire has ‘issues’ he wasn’t aware of.”

I stared at him.

That time, my face twisted in disbelief.

“What does that mean?” I said. “Issues? What the fuck kind of issues?”

Black grunted, his expression unmoving.

“I don’t much care at this point, doc,” he said, his voice as cold and fathomless as his eyes. “As far as I’m concerned, it means this vampire’s going to have a very short fucking life. It means Brick is a lot less likely to leave this city alive, too.”

Looking at him, I didn’t answer.

I couldn’t help being worried, though.

I also couldn’t help thinking it wouldn’t be that easy.

20

Warehouse

BLACK DIDN’T WANT me to go.

I understood why. I especially understood why after the Kiko thing. I understood after Nick, after all of it.

I also knew some of Black’s worry had to do with Brick’s threat towards me in New York, when the vampire king had been determined to turn me into a vampire. Black and I hadn’t talked about that, not specifically, but I could feel it was still on his mind.

Everything had changed now, though.

There was no way in hell I wasn’t going to be there.

There was no way in hell I wasn’t going to hear Brick’s explanation of what happened to Nick with my own ears. It was never going to be enough to hear or see it through someone else’s mind and light, even Black’s. I’d never trust that I wasn’t being influenced by another person’s take on it. Even if I did believe I was getting the exact account, word for word, impression for impression, thought for thought… it would never be enough.

Even seeing Nick’s body wouldn’t be enough.

I needed to hear and see all of it for myself.

I needed to hear every fucking word that came out of Brick’s mouth.

Angel felt the same way.

So did Cowboy––and Dex.

While I suspected Cowboy’s issues were more about Angel than Nick per se, and Dex’s issues were likely more about Kiko, both men were pretty tight with Nick by the end, too. Even so, Kiko changed everything all over again, and not just for Black and Dex. That grew increasingly obvious when Black started assembling the team and handing out assignments for the meeting with the vampires that night.

Black invited just about every seer we had with any infiltration experience. He also made the duty completely voluntary.

Despite that fact, not a single one of them turned him down.

From the looks on some of their faces when they stood with us in the lobby of the California building, waiting for transport to come and pick us all up and take us to the meeting location, they would have come even if Black hadn’t asked.

Jem, in particular, looked positively fucking dangerous.

I’d never seen him in his full-blown military persona before. The difference wasn’t solely due to the all-black combat gear he wore, or even the M-4 he had strapped around his chest and back––I’d seen him geared up for ops before, both in Thailand and in D.C.

It was something else, something different in his actual light.

Even so, I’m not sure I’d ever seen him carry quite so many weapons on his person.

As I looked him over, I realized he wore two handguns at his thighs, gunfighter-style, two more at his ribs in shoulder-holsters, another at his ankle, and one in a holster at the small of his back. I also counted six throwing knives in each of the sleeves he wore on his forearms, in addition to the two katana-style swords that crossed his back, similar to the swords and scabbards Black and Cowboy wore.

Jem’s long hair was pulled out of his face, both in the back and the top of his head in two separate ponytails, making him look more Eurasian than I’d ever seen him, and a little bit like a preternaturally handsome Genghis Khan.

I saw a number of the human women in Black’s crew staring at him, almost like they couldn’t help themselves.

If Jem noticed, I didn’t see it on his face, or feel it in his light.

He stood right next to me. I couldn’t help but feel the protectiveness he threw over and around me, strangling my light. Between him and Black, I felt like I was encased in four feet of light on all sides, including below my feet.

“Hey,” I told him, nudging him. “Relax. I don’t need a bodyguard.”

Jem gave me a flat look, unsmiling.

“Tough shit,” he said, blunt. “You have one. If you have an issue with it, talk to your husband.”

I looked at Black.

He felt my stare, but barely bothered to shrug.

“You heard him,” Black said, his gold eyes flashing briefly. “Tough shit.”

He glanced at Cowboy and Angel, then back at me.

“Anyone Brick’s targeted in the past… or who Brick might target due to their relationship with me… or to you… has coverage, doc. You can’t possibly think that wouldn’t include you, given you’re the fucking poster child for both categories, Miri.”

“Does it include you?” I retorted.

“Yes,” Yarli said, stepping out from the other side of Black.

She gripped a M-4 in both hands, one that looked even more modified than the one Jem carried. Next to her stood Holo, wearing a similarly modified HK433. I’d never seen either of the two seers with such warlike expressions on their faces.

On Holo’s other side, Jax looked the same, and equally pissed off.

Looking at the three of them, it suddenly became much more real to me that they’d fought in a long-running war on their home world.

Realizing at least two of them were directly covering Black, if not all three, I nodded, backing down with my light.

“Fair enough,” I muttered.

Black quirked an eyebrow at me, but didn’t smile.

All of the seers and humans who’d geared up for this stood around Black in a rough circle now. They all looked to him expectantly, expressions grim, but the seers stood so inhumanly still, with such expressionless faces, I found myself scanning over them, noting how tightly they were shielded.

So these are infiltrators, I found myself thinking.

“Military-trained infiltrators,” Jem said from next to me. “And please shield your light, sister. I’ve been told these vampires have coerced seers to work for them before. We can’t assume they won’t have any with them now.”

I glanced over at him, frowning as it hit me how right he was.

They could easily have another Efraim by now. With so many new seers on this version of Earth, they could have found a lone seer before that seer even knew vampires existed in this world, before they had any idea of the risks.

Hearing me through his light, Jem checked his gun, his face twisted in a scowl.

“We can’t afford to have a single one of these fuckers knowing even one more thing about us,” he muttered. “They know way too fucking much already.”

I nodded, agreeing with him.

I focused my light. Concentrating on the structures I used to shield, I began closing my aleimi down systematically, hiding it from view, checking for gaps at each stage of the process to make sure I wasn’t missing any part of my mind or light.

Within seconds, the world felt further away.

It also felt strangely clearer, as did my mind.

Keep a line open to me, doc, Black murmured in my mind. At all times.

I sent him a pulse of acknowledgment, feeling the structure he highlighted over each of our heads, the one that connected the two of us.

Once I’d double and triple-checked to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, I glanced at Jem.

“Better?” I said.

The older seer frowned, looking at me. I saw his light green irises shift faintly out of focus, his gaze narrowing as he methodically scanned my light. I didn’t feel a damned thing, but from what I knew of Jem, I could count on him being thorough.

His eyes slid back into focus a few seconds later.

Surprise flickered subtly across his expression.

“Yes,” he said, giving me one of those delicate seer frowns. “A lot better than I would have expected, sister, if I am to be honest. And not only because you were raised on a planet with almost no other seers.” He frowned in Black’s direction. “Did he teach you that?”

“No,” Black said, glancing over his shoulder at Jem. “I didn’t.”

I gave Black a semi-humorous look, but he’d already gone back to where he was speaking in a low voice to Yarli and Dex, seemingly without missing a beat.

Jem grunted at his back, glancing at me.

“Is that true?” he said.

I shrugged. “Half true, so no… not really. He definitely taught me to do it more consciously. And how to be more systematic about it. And how to check to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. But I suppose he’s at least partly right.”

Glancing at Black’s back, I looked back at Jem, lowering my voice. “My father taught me. He started when I was a kid.”

Jem’s eyebrows rose at that.

He didn’t comment on it, though.

Hearing the light squeal of breaks from the street outside the building, I looked out the one-way glass walls. A row of armored SUVs was pulling up to the curb, all of them with blacked-out windows.

I didn’t have to see the gunmetal gray eagle insignia on the doors to know they were there for us.

Watching each of them come to a stop, engines running, I gave Jem a grim look.

“Here we go,” I said.

* * *

BRICK AGREED TO meet us not at the California Street building, as he’d originally proposed, but at one of Black’s other properties instead, which Black more or less demanded.

Black didn’t want him anywhere near our headquarters, or our home.

I could hardly blame him.

At the same time, I’m not sure why Brick agreed to Black’s demands.

I don’t know why the vampire would agree to meet at one of Black’s properties at all, much less let Black pick the place. It’s not like Black made much of an effort to hide his state of mind over the phone.

The whole thing struck me as an enormous risk for Brick, no matter what leverage he believed he had. I could only think Brick must’ve been so damned determined to convince us he was operating in good faith, he was willing to risk Black setting up an ambush and just massacring his people wholesale.

That, or he planned to do the same to us.

Whatever his reasons, Brick agreed to meet us at one of Black’s storage facilities inside the city, an older one located in the Mission District.

Black bought it back in the 1980s, when the Mission had been run down, the area was more or less ignored by developers, and the properties went for ridiculously cheap, particularly by current-day standards in San Francisco. What now had to be an eight-figure property may have cost Black as little as five-figures back in those years.

The neighborhood had since been gentrified.

That was putting it mildly.

Now the large, brick, heritage building that took up a full block of real estate, with its blacked-out and barred windows and thick steel doors, stood on a series of city blocks dotted with high-end bars and restaurants, not to mention nightclubs, art galleries, expensive and trendy loft apartments, boutique hotels, specialty and designer shops for wine, as well as imported food, local clothing and jewelry designers, cigars and antiques.

For the same reason, it was strange to watch the row of armored SUVs pull up to the massive, sliding metal door smack in the middle of the busiest part of Valencia Street. It was even stranger to watch those SUVs empty out, dumping what looked like a small army out onto the sidewalk across from a row of trendy restaurants and bars.

We got a lot of stares initially, but within seconds, most of those eyes had turned away. Glancing around at the armed seers now surrounding me and Black, I realized the infiltrators were already engaging in crowd control.

I knew that for certain when I glimpsed the faces of nearby humans as they slid from surprised to utterly blank in a matter of seconds. Those who clearly recognized Black blanked out even faster, their expressions turning as empty as manikins before they came to a dead stop, going motionless and unblinking on the sidewalk.

All of those who’d been approaching our position either quickly walked through if they were already close to the steel doors, or they stopped before they got within twenty yards of the warehouse opening. Many of those latter just stood there, like the ones who’d noticed Black, as if waiting for a light to change. Others turned around entirely and began wandering aimlessly in the opposite direction.

I felt whispers of fear on most of them.

Black told me once that humans on this version of Earth knew on some level, when they were being pushed. He said it made them subconsciously fear him––it made them fear any seer who tampered with their minds.

Even without that, even without the fear I picked up from the crowd that stood out of our way, the power behind the group of infiltrators unnerved me.

Shaking off my misgivings, I glanced towards Black’s warehouse.

The path between the SUVs and the steel doors was entirely clear now.

The brick and iron building was taller than I remembered, at least ten stories, and more forbidding-looking. I remembered Black telling me it used to be an armory for the United States military, which is part of how he got it for so cheap.

Overall, it struck me as oddly appropriate for the meeting we were about to have.

It was the kind of place I could picture vampires living in already.

I knew one reason Black picked it was that a heavy, military-grade construct, as Jem put it, already protected the structure. I suspected that had more to do with Charles than Brick, however, since constructs were pretty useless against vampires.

Black definitely wouldn’t want Charles to think he and Brick were negotiating.

At the very least, he wouldn’t want Charles listening in on what was said.

I suspected there were other reasons, as well––reasons having to do with the functionality of the construct for the seers operating in it, and advantages that might give us, even over vampires, who were relatively immune to most seer abilities––but I could only really guess at those, since the whole infiltrator thing was still pretty new to me.

Black nudged me with his light.

“We need to get off the street,” he said, gruff.

I nodded, glancing his way. “I’m ready.”

“Stay near me, doc. At all times.” He gave me a grim look. “We have drones over us, and inside the building, but unless I order Javier to blow the whole damned structure, they’re liable to be too slow. That leaves those of us with swords on the front lines. Mostly seers.”

I nodded a second time, showing I understood.

Holding my gaze another beat, Black motioned for Javier and Dex to open the sliding doors into the warehouse.

Once they did, Black and I made our way to the gaping opening.

Seers and humans jogged around us, keeping us more or less surrounded the instant we left the shelter of the SUVs.

I think we were only on the street for a few seconds total, but I felt Black’s light gearing up and charging in that unnerving way I remembered from Koh Mangaan. I wondered if the other seers around us noticed, or if those structures on Black were still relatively invisible to them.

Black seemed to think they were––invisible, that is.

He claimed it was one advantage of having a lot of advanced structures below his feet, rather than above his head, which is where most seers were trained to look for them. Apparently, you needed some awareness and training in your own lower structures to see subterranean structures on other seers.

Or something like that.

Truthfully, I needed a lot more training in whatever the hell Black was talking about, too.

The bottom line was, according to Black, most seers didn’t have the ability to even see what he had in his light, nor the training on how to look for it.

Glancing at Jem as we entered the warehouse, I wondered if that was true of all seers.

Pushing all of that from my mind, I focused back on why we were here. Even with those stray thoughts, I could feel the part of me that was laser-focused.

Once this meeting became real, once it sank in that I’d be in the same room as Brick and his vampire henchmen, that I’d be in the same room as the vampire who attacked Kiko, that Brick would have Nick’s body with him, all of my more volatile emotions faded back.

I fell into a state I recognized, but one I hadn’t lived in for a long time.

It didn’t really hit me until we were inside the warehouse, walking down a black-painted passageway to the high-ceilinged room where the actual meeting would take place, that it was a mental state I’d cultivated in a war zone.

The last time I remembered feeling like this was Afghanistan.

It was a mental state Nick helped me learn, both through his advice, when I was green and he was a lot less so, and just from watching him operate.

Hyper-practical, completely focused on the job, Sargent Nick Tanaka maintained a peripheral awareness without letting anything pull his attention from the task at hand. I learned that from him, consciously emulated that in him. Something told me, even when I first met him, that adopting Nick’s approach to the front lines might be the only thing to keep me alive.

That state of mind had changed in me somewhat from those years, now that I understood my living light. I knew how to shield myself differently, as well as how to focus my mind, to gear into the more aggressive parts of my seer abilities, to aim that power outward––but the fundamental mental state still came from Nick.

Thinking about Nick now wasn’t going to help me, though.

I followed Black and Yarli down a second narrow corridor between another set of black-painted walls.

Behind me, I felt Jem pacing us, even though I still couldn’t hear him.

I’d foregone the assault rifle most of the seers and humans around me carried.

Instead, my hands rested on the grips of two SVI Tiki’s I wore at my hips.

Black handed those specific guns to me personally, and told me to wear them as my primary guns, since he’d noted during training exercises I was the most accurate with those. He also muttered about needing to buy me some “real guns,” presumably meaning some that belonged to me personally, versus those coming out of his general armory.

Two more guns rested in shoulder holsters inside my coat.

Those I’d already been carrying when Black handed me the Tiki’s with holsters. Both were Desert Eagles, and matched the Baby Eagle I wore at my ankle.

I didn’t carry swords like Black or Jem, although I had a long knife in a scabbard on the small of my back under the coat. I figured in this, I should play to my strengths. I’d logged a lot more time at the target range with handguns than I had with either of the other two weapons in the last six or so months.

If nothing else, I could cover the others, slowing down attacking vampires long enough for the seers and humans with swords to take them out.

It was a secondary job that had worked well within our team in the past.

In the same half-muttered conversation about the guns, however, Black informed me he would be starting me back up on sword-fighting lessons “right away,” so maybe this would be the last time I wasn’t carrying the double-scabbard worn by a lot of his senior team.

Angel wore the twin swords now.

So did Yarli, and Mika.

Normally Kiko would be here, wearing hers, too.

Normally she would be the one standing beside Black, acting as his bodyguard.

We entered the two-story warehouse room right as I shoved the thought from my mind. Whoever came here ahead of us already had it set up with a long, wooden table, surrounded by worn leather chairs.

Black clicked his fingers to Dex, conveying in a series of hand-gestures where he wanted everyone. Clearly, Black didn’t trust that vampires wouldn’t already have the warehouse under surveillance. He also likely didn’t trust that Brick didn’t already have someone inside our group, which is probably why he waited until now to deploy the teams to their final positions.

Knowing Brick, he would have sent at least a few vampires ahead, if only to look for signs of an ambush. One or more had likely been inside this building.

“They’re here,” Mika said, touching her earpiece and looking at Black. “Javier says they just pulled up in front of the building. The drones have their numbers at approximately sixteen. All of them appear to be vampires.”

Black nodded, once.

He looked at me.

Without hearing a word from him, or even a pull at my light, I walked over to where he stood at the head of the table. He sat down, and I took the seat to his right. Manny sat on his other side. Angel, Cowboy, Luce, and Easton sat down the table from me. Ace, Frank and two more humans from Black’s San Francisco team sat on the other side of Manny.

Behind us stood a row of seers, all of them carrying assault rifles and most of them wearing swords.

None of them sat down.

Jem stood behind me, next to Yarli, Holo, Jax and Mika.

Kiessa, the new seer with those eerie black and white eyes, stood on the other side of Mika, her dark face set in an unreadable mask. I counted eight more infiltrators with assault rifles I didn’t yet know, standing on Kiessa’s other side.

Dex stood with the seers.

So did Nadia, and a number of other humans high up in Black’s organizational structure. Black wouldn’t let Magic or any of the younger Natives come. I was there when a few of them threw a fit about that, but I was fully on Black’s side in that particular argument.

This was no place for teenagers, no matter how good they were with weapons.

I knew I was a hypocrite to say that, given how young I was when I first went to war, but I didn’t really give a damn.

I may have lied about my age to get into the military the first time, but I didn’t have to fight vampires in Afghanistan.

Javier was holding down the California Street building and monitoring the drone feeds. He was also keeping an eye on the refugees, the Native kids, and building security, not to mention making sure Kiko had both companionship and security guards posted outside her hospital room at all times.

I realized some part of me was still looking for Kiko… and for Nick.

Frowning, I finished my scan of the catwalks above us and the group standing behind us, and returned my gaze to the empty side of the table, and the black-painted corridor beyond.

None of us spoke.

After a few minutes, I heard sounds in the corridor.

Not quite footsteps.

Not even really the rustle of clothes.

It was more like the whispering echoes of movement, like ghosts shifting air down the narrow passageway between the high walls. The displacement of air was so soft, so subtle, I questioned my own ears, as well as my light, which seemed to pick up on the faint ripple as the vampires moved towards us through the building’s construct.

I doubt I would have heard or felt anything at all under normal conditions.

But these weren’t normal conditions.

Not only was every part of me on high alert, straining for their approach, those of us around the table, both seer and human, sat unnaturally still. The humans’ lights were as deathly still as mine and Black’s, probably aided in part by the construct and the row of infiltrators standing behind our chairs.

Here. Black reached into his pocket, and handed me something. Looking down at my hand, I realized was an earpiece. Wear this, doc. It’s already set to the right frequency.

I took it from him without question, fitting the small piece of green metal in my ear.

As I did, I glanced at Black’s ear and saw that he already wore one.

The instant I had the earpiece in place, a voice rose in my ear.

I realized it was that seer who reminded me of an anime character, Zairei.

“They should be reaching you now, lao ban,” he said.

I turned back towards the corridor and flinched, barely, when the first vampire face appeared. The pale, angular face turned both ways as his eyes darted around, taking in the space like a reptile––or maybe a predatory bird.

Like seers, vampires were beautiful.

Also like seers, some were more beautiful than others, but all of them ranked unnervingly high on the physical beauty scale.

My mind and light tracked that beauty differently with vampires than it did with seers, however. Vampire beauty struck me overtly as camouflage, barely masking the death they signaled to a more primal, flight-or-fight part of my brain. Looking into the eyes of a vampire was like staring into the eyes of a shark.

Seers may have reminded me of animals at times, even predatory ones, but vampires looked alien in a way that sent fear and adrenaline darting down my spine.

They felt like natural enemies, I guess.

Whereas seers… well, they felt more like me.

That first male vampire to enter moved soundlessly, shifting out of the opening in the wall in a fluid, dancing step. I blinked and had to turn my head to follow him.

Then the second face appeared.

I watched as the female vampire split off from the male, moving to the other side of the high-ceilinged space. Both of them looked wary, despite the flatness of their expressions. Unlike the combat gear we wore, they wore expensive civilian-wear, like they’d just come from a bar or dance club on Valencia Street, and wandered mistakenly into the building.

The male wore a modern-cut black suit with a white shirt and tie. The woman wore a long green dress, slit up to the tops of her thighs on both sides.

While the contrast confused me briefly, it made sense.

They didn’t need weapons.

They were the weapons.

I watched more of them file in, just like the first few had.

Brick entered somewhere in that flow of silent, swift-moving bodies and limbs.

Once my eyes zeroed in on his face, and the silent, stone-faced Dorian who walked behind him, I found I couldn’t look away from either of them.

Brick, alone among all of them, smiled.

His black hair was longer than I remembered.

It hung past his shoulders, but he’d tied it up in a half-ponytail to keep it out of his eyes, almost how Jem wore his hair. On Brick, the hairstyle managed to look more elvish than Asian, or perhaps in some gray area of elf-pirate. His dark hair and pale skin made his crystal-like eyes stand out even more above darker lips, a full mouth, and a strong jaw.

He was handsome too, I remembered––a fact I always managed to forget until he stood right in front of me, likely because it was probably the least relevant thing about him.

Behind him, Dorian stood like the ghost of a fairytale king.

He wore a faint beard, like I remembered, his white-blond hair cut short on the sides and back, left longer in front. He still presented a confusing, conflicted appearance to me. Dorian’s features evoked a kind of old-world nobility, like he really did belong in some kind of horror-fairytale, even as his clothes blended seamlessly with San Francisco chic.

In the same way my mind made him a fairytale king, I also noted he could have been a young tech mogul with his perfectly cut blue pants with the metallic glint, coupled with a black thigh-length jacket, a dark red shirt, and expensive shoes.

All of his clothes looked expensive, really.

He could have just stepped off a runway in New York or Milan.

I watched him shadow Brick, who wore clothes that evoked more of the San Francisco goth vibe than the tech one. The vampire king dressed more to stereotype, with his Anubis-head cane, a black velvet jacket coupled with a dark green shirt, dark red pants, and, again, expensive-looking black leather boots.

I watched Brick make his way casually to the chair at the opposite end of the table from Black, that smile still ghosting his lips.

He sat with a grace more alien and reptilian than mammal-like, resting one of his arms and hands on the unfinished wood surface. He met Black’s gaze, quirking one dark eyebrow. I watched as his gaze left Black’s face long enough to take in mine, then the row of seers standing behind us.

His eyebrow quirked higher.

“You’re displeased with me, Quentin.”

I stared at him, then at Black.

If Brick looked like a reptile, Black looked more like a great cat.

Cold-blooded predation met warm-blooded rage, and I practically felt Brick reacting to the heat coming off the male seer sitting next to me.

Black’s stare did look animal, in a way that made my fists clench.

He stared at Brick like a lion assessing a threat that had invaded its territory. Black’s eyes never left Brick’s face, although I could feel from his light an awareness of the placement of every vampire in the room. Like the seers, they didn’t venture past the halfway point in the table, but fanned out behind Brick in a protective arc.

Only two vampires sat beside him.

One was Dorian.

The other was a female I didn’t recognize, but who looked at me like she knew me, and like she knew Black.

I wondered if she’d also been in New York.

Assessing her briefly to memorize her face, I returned my gaze to Brick, mirroring Black’s stare.

When Brick didn’t say anything more, Black lifted his hands from the table in a brief but evocative gesture, flipping over one hand to show his palm.

“Well?” he said. “You know my conditions for this meeting. I was crystal fucking clear.”

Brick frowned faintly, glancing at Dorian.

“Yes,” he said, returning his glass-like eyes to Black’s. For the first time, the humor faded entirely from his expression. “I remember. I only caution patience, friend. A bit of self-control. That we might talk through this thing like civilized beings––”

“Where is Nick’s body?” Black cut in, cold. “My people tell me it hasn’t yet been delivered to my lab. So, you’ve already broken our agreement in terms of timing. Which means you have about two minutes to fulfill the second condition of this meeting, or the negotiation portion of the evening is officially over––”

“I beg of you, my friend!” Brick raised his voice, simultaneously raising a pale hand. “Please, Quentin. Calm yourself. I have not yet delivered either condition as agreed because I wished to assess your mental state first, with my own two eyes. I would prefer this meeting to occur peacefully. As a promise and precursor to alliance, not a messy start to a tragically impractical and mutually self-destructive war between the two of us––”

Behind me, Dex let out a disbelieving and openly angry grunt.

I didn’t turn to look, but I felt a ripple of similar sentiment go through the seers standing with him across the back of the room.

In the background, I heard the murmur of voices on my earpiece rise.

My mind couldn’t quite focus on them, though, not with Black and Brick still arguing.

“Quentin,” Brick said, his voice warning as he continued to hold up his hand. “I caution you to not react rashly to this young vampire when he appears. I caution you to await our explanations first, before something even more tragic occurs, and you lose someone you care about for real––”

“Where the fuck is he, Brick?” Black growled. “Which one of these pieces of shit did it? And why? Why Kiko, for fuck’s sake? What is wrong with you, bringing someone with goddamned mental health problems to a meeting like this?”

Again, the voices in the background rose.

I couldn’t make sense of most of what they were saying; they were speaking Prexci, the seer language, not English. I’d been taking lessons to try and learn it since Koh Mangaan, but I was nowhere near understanding them when they spoke this fast.

As a result, I only made out a few words.

“Stand down!” I heard. “Don’t fire!”

More words ran over those, words I didn’t understand.

Next to me, I felt Black stiffen.

I turned, about to ask him through our bond what was going on outside, but I felt a blank wall fall around Black’s light, even as he gave me a taut glance.

The vampire king’s words rose in the silence while I stared at my husband.

“––He is coming in now,” Brick was saying. “He is unarmed. He has been chastised already for his misdeeds. Repeatedly. Moreover,” Brick added, in a slightly louder warning. “If you attempt to take his transactions out on myself, the outcome will be tragic for all of you. I mean that sincerely, friend. Without any guile whatsoever.”

I turned, staring at Brick.

Truthfully, I couldn’t comprehend a damned thing he’d just said.

The vampire’s voice grew deathly serious, more stripped of humor than perhaps I’d ever heard it.

“Please,” he said. “I beg of you, friend. Have patience until we are able to converse about this like adults. Wait for the explanation before you go off half-cocked.”

I frowned, still trying to make sense of his words. Before I could, however, and before I could speak, movement pulled my eyes back to the black-painted corridor.

A form appeared there, materializing out of the dark.

It moved so silently and gracefully, I could only blink, staring at it as it mirrored the movements of the other vampires, its cut-crystal eyes darting around to take in the rest of the room.

Then, somewhere in that, in the midst of my staring, I sucked in a gasp.

I didn’t exhale the breath.

I just stared at the creature as it assessed the room, my heart pounding as the black-haired vampire walked around to the other side of Dorian, gliding like a snake, moving in such a measured, predatory way, I could only watch him, unblinking, my jaw loose.

It couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be real.

This couldn’t possibly be fucking real.

Next to me, I heard a strangled sound come out of Angel’s throat.

I didn’t look over at her, but the vampire tensed and turned, staring at her.

He saw me then, and froze.

Those clear, crystal eyes met mine.

It was the one part of his face that was completely and irrevocably different from how he had been before, but even in those cracked glass irises, I somehow saw my friend. I watched the scarlet bloom around the black pupil as he stared at me.

I saw his full lips twist in a faint smile, and felt like I might throw up.

Then another voice rose behind me, so angry and loud in that silence, I jumped.

It was Jem. He didn’t speak to any of the vampires.

He spoke to Black.

“You said it wasn’t fucking possible!” he snarled, his voice loud enough to make me flinch. “You said they couldn’t fucking transmit it to him… that he wasn’t fucking compatible with their DNA. You said it wasn’t fucking possible. You fucking told us that!”

Black didn’t look back at Jem.

I hadn’t noticed until then, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off Nick. I didn’t turn to look at Black, even now, but I felt him staring at Nick just like I was, just like Angel was, and probably every seer and human on this side of the room.

I also felt Black’s awareness of me, of what I might do.

For a long moment, none of us spoke.

Nick continued to stare at me.

His eyes had flickered briefly to Jem when he shouted, then returned to Black, then to me. I watched him examine my face, studying every detail of my expression.

Now, as I stared back at him, I didn’t see anything in his eyes or on his features I recognized.

He looked so different. He looked so goddamned different.

I couldn’t really get over at first, just how different he looked.

I couldn’t get over how much he looked the same.

It was like a strange kind of uncanny valley, where he looked both too much and not enough like my friend, a man I’d known and loved for over a decade.

Like the shadow I’d seen across the street the night before, he looked about twenty years younger than the Nick I’d last seen on Koh Mangaan. That apparent age difference was much more pronounced now that I could see him clearly. Everything about his body and features appeared subtly altered, or strangely exaggerated. His cheekbones looked higher, his eyes larger, his mouth fuller, his hair blacker, his shoulders and chest more muscular and broad, his hands and fingers and legs longer.

A scar I remembered on his neck from shrapnel was gone.

The visible parts of his bare skin, including his face, were so pale and unblemished, they looked like they’d been made out of porcelain. He looked like the creation of some artist who only roughly based his likeness on a photo of the real Nick.

The spell didn’t break until Dorian reached up, catching hold of Nick’s wrist.

Looking up at Nick’s face, the vampire with the white-blond hair pulled on him gently but insistently. When the Nick-vampire glanced down, taking those crystal eyes off me, Dorian gave him an openly warning look.

It was only then that I realized they’d left a seat open.

Whatever Nick saw in Dorian’s face, he found it persuasive.

Without a word, the breathtakingly beautiful, Japanese-looking vampire with almost the face of my best friend sank into that open seat.

Once he had, for the first time since Nick entered the room, Black looked at the vampire king. For a long moment, he only stared at him, his face unmoving.

Then, out of the silence, he spoke.

His voice was so cold, so filled with fury, I turned, staring at him.

“In what fucking universe do you think you will leave this warehouse alive?” Black said.

In the silence after he spoke, Black stared across the table, his face as hard as glass. Even with the fury that stood there, the full-blown hatred I felt in his light, genuine puzzlement lived there too, in his voice as much as his light.

“I really don’t understand,” Black said after that pause. “How could you not realize we’ll kill every last one of you for this? Do you wish Charles to annihilate you so badly that you’d force me to help him destroy you? Or are you mentally damaged in some way?”

Once again, Brick held up a hand.

That time, he raised his voice for real.

He also changed it in some way.

His words reverberated through the high-ceilinged space, forcing me to look at him, forcing me to focus on his face, to hear him past the words themselves.

If he’d been a seer, I would have said he’d infused his voice with light.

As it was, I had to assume it was some kind of vampire, voice-punch equivalent.

“If you kill me, Naoko dies,” Brick said, that strange vocal quality echoing up to the catwalks. “He is mine now. He is literally tied directly to me––to my blood. He belongs to me as no human child belongs to their father. It is how he was made, so this quality of his, it is irreversible. It cannot be undone.”

Brick’s crystal eyes took in all of the seer and human faces around the room, stopping the longest on Jem, Angel, and finally on me and Black.

“You cannot kill me without also killing him,” he repeated, that power still infusing his voice. That same power made his words melodic, made the sounds shiver my light, even as my hands clenched on the table. “Do you hear me, friends? If any of you kill me, you will end Naoko Tanaka. I can explain all of this, and will do so, willingly. I can tell you how it works, and why I made this drastic decision, but that requires you to hear me out…”

He added extra punch to his words, pausing before adding,

“…before you allow your emotions to overtake you. Before you do something exceedingly rash, something we will all regret, you must listen.”

There was a silence after he said it.

In it, I could only stare at Nick.

I watched him study me from across the room, his crystal eyes appraising me openly, that hint of scarlet in them expanding silently. It occurred to me, somewhere in the midst of that, that I still hadn’t heard him speak a single word.

A helpless kind of rage came over me as the silence stretched.

Brick knew us better than I’d thought.

Whatever Nick was now, I couldn’t let Black kill him.

I couldn’t let any of them kill him, not when I still saw so much of Nick in his face and eyes. I couldn’t let them kill him before I understood what the fuck he even was.

I just couldn’t.

I looked at Black, right as he looked at me.

Meeting my gaze, he frowned.

I could feel him picking up off my light what I’d already realized about myself, what Brick had clearly understood about me better I had. Perhaps Brick understood it about all humans and seers––including Black, Angel, Dex and Cowboy, and the rest of us who cared about Nick. I felt Black’s rage rise as he looked at me, his helplessness, but I knew neither thing was aimed at me.

I also felt his understanding.

I felt him thinking about if it had been Kiko who sat next to Dorian, or Dex… or me.

More than any of the rest, I felt him imagining it was me.

Pain rippled his light at the thought, even as he turned to aim a hate-filled stare at Brick.

For another long-feeling set of minutes, no one spoke.

I now felt every eye and light on our side of the table focused on Black, on what he would do. I studied his face along with the rest of them, feeling my muscles tense as I realized I might actually have to fight some of them to keep Nick alive.

Before I could go any further with that train of thought, Black reached for me. He took my hand where it rested on the table, squeezing it roughly in his.

Giving me a heavy look, he shook his head, once.

No, Miri. No.

I met his gaze, and he shook his head a second time.

Never, doc.

He faced Brick.

“Talk,” he said. His voice came out stripped, cold as ice. “Tell us everything we need to know about this newborn of yours. And do it carefully, Brick,” Black added, his voice even colder. “Do it very, very fucking carefully right now, or I can’t promise I’ll be able to control them. Any of them. Including my wife.”

He paused, unblinking, then added,

“…Especially my wife.”

Glancing over his shoulder, he aimed a meaningful look at the row of armed seers, as well as Dex and the others in his human team.

Then, still squeezing my hand, he looked at me.

I looked only at Brick.

The vampire king had followed Black’s stare to my face, to my eyes.

I watched him assess me warily, studying something he saw on me before he glanced at Dorian, who answered his frown with an even more delicate frown of his own. I sensed them communicating in some way, but I didn’t hear or see any change in either of them.

Then Brick returned his gaze to Black.

Unlike the smirk I normally saw on the vampire king’s face, particularly when he addressed my husband, Brick’s expression grew even more serious, and utterly still.

It remained that way as he began to talk.

21

Family

“NAOKO INFORMS ME you are aware of the standard means by which vampires are made,” Brick began, his voice infused now with more of his Louisiana drawl.

“…He tells me that you determined the patterns there, the biological linkages between humans and ourselves. While he also told me that information used to be restricted within your leadership, given the outburst of your friend there…”

Brick motioned a lazy hand towards Jem.

“…I’m going to go forward assuming that has changed in the time since Naoko was a part of that team.”

The vampire glanced around the table, measuring us.

His eyes remained utterly still as he went on in a voice that still held a hint of that presence-infused melody.

“Naoko tells me your scientists know of our blood types, and how they interact with the DNA of specific humans. He tells us you know how those linkages determine which humans we are easily able to turn into vampires and which we are not.”

Without waiting for an answer, he looked at me.

“It is true. All of it. That is normally the only way we propagate our species.”

He glanced at Nick, giving him an openly affectionate look that made my teeth grind.

Before I could look away from either of them, Brick’s crystal eyes returned to Black.

“The reason for that is simple. We value our own lives.” The vampire’s eyes remained serious, borderline grim as he surveyed our side of the table. “Newborns are unstable. They are volatile. Many of them die. Many of them commit suicide. Many of them simply cannot control themselves and must be put down for the safety of our community as a whole. They often have little respect for, or understanding of, the need for anonymity of our race. Some of them turn on their sires, or on vampire-kind as a whole.”

Pausing, Brick gestured towards Nick for emphasis.

“They do rash things,” he added, his fangs showing briefly as he looked at Nick’s face. A kind of frustrated fondness rose there, like a parent being forced to apologize for a vandalizing child. “Like lying to and manipulating their masters to get free of their supervision for several hours. Like deliberately going against orders and attacking the dear friends of those with whom their masters would like to forge an alliance…”

Letting his words trail briefly, Brick shook his head.

His crystal eyes returned to Black’s.

“I am sorry for that, Quentin… truly,” he said heavily. “As I told you on the phone, Naoko is still working through some issues associated with his new condition. Dorian is doing his best to instruct him, and to calm him. Naoko is quite stubborn, however. He is also quite clever, and often finds ways to evade us that are most unexpected.”

Seeing the fond look he aimed at Nick, I felt my teeth clench harder.

They continued to grind together the longer he spoke.

“…In any case,” Brick added, giving me a faint glance. “My point is, vampires do not often tie their own lifespans to such unstable creatures willingly. Because vampires must be of a certain age before their venom matures enough that they can sire little vampires, those who could sire a new vampire have generally been around long enough to be quite comfortable and happy with what they are.”

For the first time, Brick allowed himself a faint smile.

“…For the same reason, most vampires of that age are not willing to risk their own lives to create a newborn who could quite possibly get them killed in a matter of months, if not days, or even hours. Therefore, unless there is very good reason to do so, my kind generally only create new vampires through the genetic compatibility of our venom. That way, if the newborn does something colossally stupid…”

Holding up his hands in a kind of helpless gesture, he looked at me.

“…the vampire sire does not die as a result of that stupidity. The young vampire merely extinguishes his or her own new existence… and the wheel of time grinds on.”

Brick glanced around at all of our faces, either to gauge our understanding, or our reactions to his words, or both.

“What I did in creating Naoko is exceedingly rare,” Brick added. “Exceedingly rare. Truly, it is almost never done, particularly in these modern times, where there are so many ways one might unwittingly kill oneself. Particularly now that seers roam among us.”

He paused on Jem’s face, then looked at Black.

“Therefore, I am not remotely surprised that no one in either your Pentagon science labs…” Again, that flash of fang. “…nor in your own, personal medical teams, Quentin, ever came across even a single case of it.”

Brick leaned back in his chair.

“Naoko is unique,” he said simply. “Truly, I would not be at all surprised if he is one of only a small handful of vampires alive created in such a way. Normally it only occurred back in our early years, and then generally for one of two reasons. Love…”

He glanced at me, his dark eyebrow quirked.

“…or for purposes of ending or taking over a particular human bloodline. That generally happened with human royalty, or some other clan of political or cultural significance. It was also generally done as part of a broader racial strategy.”

Glancing around at our faces, Brick went on in that serious voice of his, his expression wiped of any trace of humor.

“When we are first born,” he said, glancing at Nick with a faint frown. “We are a bit sociopathic, I’m afraid. That would be the modern term, I believe. Sociopathic. Psychopathic. Imbued with a lack of conscience and deeply anti-social tendencies towards those apart from ourselves. We behave as what has come to be known colloquially as ‘serial killers.’”

Turning, he gave me a grim stare.

“This is a stage within our development. Personally, I believe is evolutionarily determined to a degree, in that it gets us over any initial squeamishness about our new state of being… our new dietary requirements, in particular. We are given a period of time… weeks sometimes, usually months, sometimes years… where none of the emotional impact of our change disrupts our physical adjustments to our new biological categorization.”

Lingering briefly on the words in his Louisiana drawl, Brick quirked an eyebrow at me.

A smile never touched his lips.

“It is quite distressing, of course, for those who knew the newborn as human,” he conceded. “The newborn truly does seem to be a different person entirely… devoid of the empathy, emotional connection, understanding, and, well, humanity, that their loved ones were accustomed to experiencing in them from before. It is quite normal to think that every hint of who they once were, every trace of their previous personality, has been erased as a function of the transformation. For many, it seems easier to view that person as dead.”

Brick’s eyes again fell on me.

After a pause, he infused his voice with that compelling melody, gently hammering each word.

“This. Phase. Passes,” he said, holding my gaze. “It is a mere blip in the life of a fully transformed vampire. One that keeps them alive, and feeding, and away from sharp objects they might be tempted to use on themselves, were they feeling particularly maudlin some night over their change in life circumstances and diet.”

Brick swiveled his gaze from me to Black.

“You, Quentin, changed my mind about seers,” he said simply. “I know you think I am toying with you, calling you friend, establishing short-term alliances with you only to betray your trust… but there is some seriousness to my teasing with you. I do wish us to be friends. Moreover, my mental change on this topic has only manifested over time, which partly accounts for my vacillations in mood when it came to possible alliance with you in the long term.”

Frowning, he leaned back in his chair, measuring Black with his eyes.

“Prior to meeting you and your lovely wife, I confess, my goals in addressing your kind’s presence on my world were straightforward. Truly, there was only one goal. There was only one strategy. I intended to wipe you and all of your offspring out. Utterly, and completely.”

He made a vaguely apologetic gesture with one hand.

“You see, I truly saw it as my Earth, Quentin. I saw your kind as aliens and interlopers. Moreover, from what I’d been told, you’d somehow managed to mangle your own world and so wanted to steal a not-insignificant portion of mine. As such, since you were not natives here, you had no intrinsic rights to live or exist here. If you posed a threat, which you clearly did in my view, you lost those rights altogether. Like with any invasive, dangerous species, I saw myself as fully within my rights to defend myself. Moreover, I thought the means of defending myself and my people was simple. Extermination.”

His lip curled in a delicate frown, flashing a bit of white fang.

“Charles is not a good ambassador for your kind, Quentin,” he added, his voice a touch colder. “I can see now, how my opinions about your race were built largely on prejudices stemming from assumptions I’d made about your race’s character… most of which, it gradually became apparent, I gleaned from observing Charles.”

Brick’s crystal eyes flickered up from where he’d frowned down at the table.

“I now believe I was wrong in many of those assumptions,” he said, unfolding his fingers in a quick display of his palms before weaving them back together. “I believe our species can share this world peaceably, Quentin. But in order for that to happen, you need to understand us, just as I feel I am gradually coming to understand you.”

From next to me, I felt a plume of fury leave Black’s light.

I didn’t look over at him, but felt my light wind and coil more deeply into his.

I honestly don’t know if I did that to calm him down, or more because I resonated with what I felt there, in his light.

Like Black, I was following the trail the vampire king was leading us all down.

I was already understanding why he’d decided to do this to my friend, and the sheer, inhuman calculation of it was enough to make me want to rip his heart out where he sat.

I didn’t move though, or speak, and after a pause, Brick went on.

“Do you know that some of my people believe we are relatives, in a sense… seers and vampires? That we are biological permutations of the same cosmic impulse? There are some in my kind who believe that impulse was merely twisted slightly from one dimension to the next, made to manifest in a slightly permuted form between our worlds.”

Brick paused, glancing at me, then at Black.

His crystal eyes remained serious as he added,

“I am seeing more of those similarities of late. I confess, now that I am looking for them, rather than for reasons to hate across our racial lines, I see these similarities all the time. From speaking with Naoko, I know he sees them, too. I now truly believe we share far more in common with one another than either of our species has acknowledged. I believe we share more in common with one another than we do with humans… as much as it might pain you to hear it, Mr. and Mrs. Black.”

His mouth turned grim as he glanced at me.

“I know you believe my people to be without feelings… but I assure you, the exact opposite is true. Like your people, vampires feel in a way that is far deeper than humans, more intense than humans. For the same reason, our emotions require more maturity and self-control than humans to manage… particularly given our need to keep our true natures hidden. Like your people, our long-term, monogamous couplings are also relatively rare, but are deeply emotional and volatile compared to those of humans.”

Pausing, he made a conciliatory gesture with one hand.

“I appreciate that these observations might not be particularly welcome to hear from me at this juncture… especially after yesterday, Quentin. But it is true. The newborn phase is an anomaly, as I said. Once Naoko grows into himself, he will be more like you than he was before, in ways that you will only be able to discover for yourself if you give him that chance.”

The vampire scanned all of our faces, his expression wary.

In the end, he returned his stare to Black’s face, his glass-like eyes deadly serious.

“We would do well to get to know the true nature of one another,” he cautioned. “We might yet be able to share this planet peacefully… and learn to live compassionately towards the humans with whom we share this world.”

The silence on our end of the table grew thick.

Truthfully, I would have been surprised if any of us knew how to even respond to that.

All that came to my mind was curse words.

That, and an overwhelming desire to see the vampire’s neck once more impaled on the end of Black’s sword.

I don’t know if Brick saw that on our faces or not.

When none of us answered him, he went on speaking in that same, careful voice, his words deliberately calm, deliberately measured.

“Naoko has not yet truly begun to shift into the next phase of his transformation,” he said, glancing at Nick. “This is in part because he is fighting that shift… which again is perfectly normal, and understandable, and nothing to be distressed about. If he is like the vast majority of young vampires, he is likely afraid. The feelings coming up for him are intense… far more intense than anything he’s ever experienced prior to now.”

Glancing again at Nick, the vampire king made a delicate frown.

“As a result, it is only natural that those feelings are frightening,” he continued. “Naoko, moreover, is very clever, as I said, which means some allowances for his psychology must be made. It is often the most intelligent of our kind who struggle the most with this at first. Which again, is only natural, I suppose. The most intelligent often struggle in the human world too, from what I have observed… I imagine the same is true for seers. Because Naoko comprehends the depth of the emotions he will face, he has the intelligence to block those emotions in various ways, using complex mental strategies. It might be several more months before he fully enters the stage of emotional remembering.”

The barest smile touched the vampire’s lips.

My hatred intensified when I realized that smile was pride.

“Naoko here is unique in quite a few ways, I am discovering,” the vampire added, that proud smile teasing his lips. “To call him ‘clever’ is a disservice, really. I am realizing now he is quite the genius in the rough.”

Brick aimed that fiercely proud smile at Nick.

“He has proved quite challenging for us to control for that reason,” the vampire king added. “Truthfully, the extent of his intelligence and resourcefulness shocked all of us a bit. While I knew he was no fool as a human, I had no idea just how intelligent he was, not until I made him into a vampire. I feel quite lucky to have him with us, to be honest.”

That pride reached Brick’s voice when he added with a less-subtle smile,

“Do you know that he very nearly killed Dorian during his first week of training? Do you have any idea how utterly extraordinary that is?”

Brick let out a low chuckle, glancing at Dorian, who returned his look with a faintly quirked eyebrow and a smile of his own.

Nick never took his eyes off our end of the table.

Unlike the other two, a smile never touched his lips.

“Luckily,” Brick continued in that Louisiana drawl. “Dorian here is a bit of a masochist. He also doesn’t easily intimidate. He persevered in his attempts to educate Naoko, and began to have some success with him once he realized the extent of his intelligence and approached him more as an equal. Even so… it is truly amazing how close he came to escaping us, even with my entire family actively watching over him.”

Shaking his head bemusedly, Brick glanced at Nick, then back at us.

“He laid traps for us. Physical traps, that actually worked. One had Dorian hanging from the ceiling of our private apartments in Paris.”

Brick chuckled, as if unable to help himself.

“…Later,” he added. “After we thought we’d more or less brought him to heel, he turned to more subtle strategies to control us. Once, he even managed to turn a somewhat coercive training exercise around on Dorian, manipulating him via a psychological gambit to get away from us yet again. He is quite psychologically perceptive… and highly adaptive, in addition to his strategic and spatial gifts.”

Smiling at Nick with an open affection, Brick added,

“…He’s also got Dorian and myself quite wrapped around his finger, I’m afraid.”

Brick unclasped his hands, holding up his palms in an exasperated, semi-helpless gesture, as if to say, What are you going to do?

His amusement evaporated as he faced Black.

“I know that is no excuse, Quentin.”

The vampire’s voice changed, reverting to that presence-infused tone, even as it deepened, growing the most serious I had heard it.

“I am not excusing what happened yesterday in any way,” Brick continued. “I both deeply apologize and accept full responsibility for what happened to your friend. I was mortified when I learned of it… positively mortified. I confess, I was also relieved that he had not killed anyone, at least. You have no idea how unusual that is, for a vampire of his age. While that is small comfort, I know, it was a relief for all of us nonetheless.”

Another silence fell over the group.

In it, Brick surveyed all of us, including the row of seers standing behind me.

I found myself staring at Nick, unable to look away from him.

When no one else spoke, I did––before I knew I intended to.

“He did that to Kiko,” I said.

I felt every eye in the room swivel to me.

I looked only at Nick.

“…He raped Kiko,” I said. “He wrote that message on the wall to Black. In Dex’s blood. After nearly killing Kiko. Nick did that.”

I waited a beat, for Nick to look over at me.

After a deliberate-feeling pause, he did. His expression exuded indifference, his crystal eyes flat as they gauged mine.

“Why?” I said, speaking to him that time. “Why would you do that, Nick? Explain to me how you could have even one ounce of the Nick I knew still inside you, and you could rape someone you considered a friend? Explain how you could nearly kill her, then leave that fucking message on the wall for me and Black to find?”

The silence deepened.

Nick didn’t look away from me. He didn’t even blink.

In the same set of seconds, I realized I couldn’t see him breathing.

I was about to speak again, when Jem’s voice rose from behind me.

“You are saying he will change?” the seer said.

His accent came out stronger than I’d ever heard it.

I turned my head, looking over my shoulder at him.

Jem didn’t look at me, but I saw his jaw harden as he stared at Brick, his green and violet eyes reflecting light from the industrial-style overhead lamps.

“Nick,” Jem clarified, when the vampire tilted his gaze up, focusing from me to Jem. “Naoko, as you call him. That is what this long-winded lecture is about, na? That he will become more like himself again, once he regains his ‘emotional memories,’ or whatever it is you’re calling them? That once that happens, we’ll have the basis for a real alliance?”

Brick looked at him.

From the faint frown on his lips, he clearly heard the emotion in the seer’s voice. He stared at him shrewdly, right before his glass-like eyes swiveled to Nick.

“This one is fond of you, Naoko,” he observed, frowning slightly. “You neglected to mention him.”

“Because I didn’t think he even knew who the fuck I was,” Nick said.

Nick’s voice made me physically jump.

Then it made my heart pound wildly.

It sounded so much like him, a pain stabbed into my chest. Still, I heard a hint of that more melodic quality in his words, too.

He sounded utterly bored as he went on.

“…Other than him fucking the human I wanted to fuck, and drawing the eye of every female in our camp, I knew nothing about him. He’s one of those who walked through the door in New Mexico. He’s their leader… was, until he joined Black.”

“Well, he knows you,” Brick said, still studying Jem’s face. He seemed nonplussed by the observation, even as he aimed his next words at Jem. “Are we going to have a problem, friend? Or can you control yourself until we finish here?”

Frowning, I looked at Jem a second time.

That time, I saw what Brick saw.

Jem was breathing harder, a dense, cold fury emanating from his light. He didn’t just look warlike that time; he looked murderous.

Black clearly felt it, too.

Glancing at Jem, he motioned towards him with a few flicks of his fingers. I felt him send something with his light, too.

Whatever that second thing was, he didn’t accompany it with words.

Jem looked at him.

His green eyes blazed with heat, but he really looked at Black, and as he did, he seemed to see something there, some affinity or understanding.

Whatever it was, it caused him to back down.

Temporarily, at least.

Brick continued to measure Jem warily, even as he directed his words back at Nick. “You are certainly much more popular here than you led us to believe, beloved one.”

Nick didn’t answer. He didn’t even change expression.

The impression I got off him was a mental shrug.

Brick looked at me, then at Black, his expression cautious. “I apologize for the emotional trauma this is no doubt causing you and your people… particularly your wife,” the vampire said, his voice cautious. “But I needed to marry our camps, so to speak. This struck me as the most efficient way to do it… if not exactly the safest way for myself.”

I glanced at Black.

He was staring only at Brick now.

His expression held nothing. I could feel him through the bond structure we shared, but not a single piece of him showed in his face or his eyes.

“You knew I wished this,” Brick added, looking between me and Black. “I intended it for your wife originally, as you know. I truly thought it would be the best of both worlds, for both of us. I know how fond you are of having your blood drawn by one of our kind, Quentin. I truly hoped and believed your wife having this ability… this additional means of pleasuring you… might be something that would add to your marriage. To your sex life, at least. In addition, how could you better understand our kind than through being married to one of us?”

Black’s face didn’t move.

Even so, I felt a curl of heat below my feet that was difficult to keep off my face. It reminded me so much of Koh Mangaan, I couldn’t stop myself from glancing at him.

“…It was drawn to my attention, however,” Brick continued carefully, now watching me as much as Black. “That turning Miriam posed unforeseen risks. Not so much due to her mixed blood. I was already relatively certain her blood was compatible with becoming one of us. No, the problem was her marriage to you, Quentin.”

Adjusting his body minutely in his chair, he assessed our faces, then went on in that careful voice.

“Due to the nature of how your people bond, I could not predict how Miriam… or you yourself, Quentin… would react to such a radical change in one of your physiological natures. I was told the bond makes you both quite volatile to any changes in the other already, and that to enter further instability into that mix could have deadly consequences. Not simply for Miriam, but for you, Quentin. And for me, since I would be changing her the way I changed Naoko, which would make at least Miri’s and my own life dependent upon one another. Possibly, it would make all three of our lives mutually dependent.”

Frowning faintly, he added,

“I was warned about this primarily by members of your own kind. Efraim, in particular, was quite insistent that for Miriam to become one of us, it had to happen prior to the completion of the bond between the two of you. He seemed to think I was playing with gasoline and matches to experiment with such a thing even then, Quentin… but he said to try this with a fully completed bond was tantamount to suicide.”

Inclining his head, Brick glanced at me, then at Black.

“To be honest, Efraim hated the idea, regardless of when it occurred. Now that I understand your species better, I am sympathetic to this view. The bond is sacred with your people. I respect that sentiment. Truly. I would not have even entertained such an idea, were I not so desperate to link our peoples before Charles had time to indoctrinate you fully to his racist obsessions.”

Pausing deliberately, Brick added,

“After New York, and after Dorian got me out of that hellhole in Virginia, I assumed it was too late for our peoples to ally with one another, Quentin. I assumed you had been fully brainwashed into Uncle Charles’ army by that point.”

A smile tugged at Brick’s lips.

It wasn’t a sarcastic smile, but one that struck me as genuinely pleased.

“Imagine my surprise when you appeared in that swamp in Louisiana, Quentin, looking for me. I was quite flummoxed on how to react at first. I also couldn’t quite bring myself to hope what this change of mind of yours might mean. Then, when you let Dorian and myself leave that ambush in D.C. unharmed, and even requested our help on that island with those human lunatics, I knew the gods of the underworlds had to be sending me a sign.”

I felt the heat coil up hotter out of Black.

I also felt his crushing guilt as he comprehended Brick’s words.

Still, his expression didn’t move.

“I never forgot Efraim’s warning, however,” Brick said, his voice thoughtful. He tapped the top of the table lightly with his fingers. “I remembered what he said about the two of you. I remembered him telling me that using one half of a mated pair to create a blood-link between our peoples could fail spectacularly… not to mention constitute a tragedy the likes of which I might never forgive myself. So I looked for another way.”

Glancing around at the faces on our side of the table, he shrugged eloquently.

“I decided it would be better if I avoided anyone who was compatible with my vampire blood, although I do have the ability to create any of my children via the blood-link, if I so chose. More importantly than any of that, however, I wanted someone who would be an asset… both to my people and to yours.”

Pausing, he made another of those apologetic gestures.

“In the end, the choice was clear. For me, at least.”

Brick’s eyes swung to Nick, his voice thoughtful.

“I admit, I was partial to Naoko as soon as I noticed him. Once I saw how fond your wife was of him… and you, yourself, Quentin, despite your obvious jealousy of his relationship to Miriam… I knew it had to be him. The more I observed him, and noted his personality traits, his skill sets, his intelligence, the more convinced I was that he would make an excellent addition to my family. Truthfully, I was quite pleased.”

Glancing cautiously at me, then at Black, he added,

“I am still quite pleased. I consider it an extraordinary honor to have Naoko in my blood. Whatever you might think of us, we wish him no harm whatsoever. Quite the contrary. We all love him dearly. All of us do. Irrespective of the blood-link I share with him, we would protect him with our very lives. Without hesitation.”

Brick’s voice grew harder.

“It is important to me that you understand this, Quentin. Naoko is family now… for both of us. Trust me when I tell you, for vampires, that is no less a thing than it is for seers. He is a part of me now, and always will be. I hope that is something all of you will grow to understand. At the very least, I hope you will grow to respect the power this has over me.”

The silence grew dense.

When none of us broke it, Brick went on in a somewhat lighter voice.

“And yes,” he said, directing his clear, cracked-crystal eyes up at Jem. “To answer your question, friend, he will regain more and more of himself as time goes on. His emotions are already returning in small snippets of memory, here and there. He can avoid and repress them for now, but that won’t be possible for very much longer. Once that happens, you might truly be surprised at how much of your Nick Tanaka remains… even inside a vampire’s body.”

Again, he paused, listening to our silence.

That time, however, he didn’t seem in a hurry to break it.

Unfortunately, none of us seemed to know how to break it, either.

22

Bad Memory

WHAT DO YOU want me to do?

Black turned, looking at me, his sculpted mouth tilted in a frown. I felt his distress as he studied my eyes, and realized he genuinely didn’t know how to react to this, or how to move forward after everything Brick had said.

He didn’t know what to do.

Miri. He reached under the table, grasping and massaging my thigh. Miri… what do you want me to do? I’ll do anything you want. Anything you think is right.

Feeling my heart pound in my chest, I bit my lip.

Before I knew I intended to, I looked back across the table.

Without my willing it, my eyes found Nick.

He was watching me, too.

For a long moment, I could only look at him.

Then Nick spoke, his words coming out amidst a deep curl of involuntary-sounding laughter.

“Jesus fucking christ,” he said, staring around at all of us. “I should have died years ago. Look at all of you.”

His crystal-like eyes met mine.

I watched the humor evaporate from their clear depths, even as a plume of scarlet grew visible around the black pupil.

“All of these sad faces,” he said, still staring at me. “All of this pretend grief. Funny. You seemed okay with me dying when you left me in that fucking cave on that island, Miri. And when you sent vampires to ‘help’ us into that tree.”

Making air quotes with a hard smile on his face, he glanced past me.

I followed his stare, and realized he was looking at Jem.

The dark-haired seer stepped forward. Without taking his eyes off Nick, he approached the table, until he stood directly behind me.

I felt his hand rest lightly on the back of my chair.

I felt the protectiveness his light exuded.

“You’re awfully forgiving, Jem,” Nick said, his voice faintly mocking. “But I guess you’re seer, too… maybe it makes sense to you that Black’s non-stop fuckathon with the doc here would take precedence over saving our asses.”

“You remember the cave?” Jem said.

Nick grunted. “Of course.”

“Good. Then you remember you tried to help me in there? Even after what I did to you, you tried to help me. You even offered yourself up to be beaten in my place. Do you remember? You were angry at me, but you could not help yourself from trying to help me.”

I stared up at Jem, blinking.

He hadn’t told us any of this.

“You were the only one who did that,” Jem added, his voice harder. “No one else tried to help me. Only you. You think I didn’t know, that I was too drugged… not conscious enough to know what you did. But I did know. I heard everything you said in there. I felt your pain.”

Nick stared at him.

For a brief instant, I saw doubt color those glass-like eyes, touching the edges of his full mouth.

Then Nick frowned, forcing his eyes off the tall seer.

He stared down at the table, shaking his dark head.

“I remember you got the crap kicked out of you,” he said, lifting his eyes to Jem’s. “Maybe I was just more squeamish than the others––”

“Bullshit,” Jem growled.

Nick’s frown hardened. He looked about to go on, to speak again, when Dorian reached over, laying a hand on his arm.

When Nick opened his mouth anyway, the blond vampire spoke.

“No,” he said simply.

Nick turned, glaring at him.

Even so, after a bare pause, he closed his mouth.

Turning, Nick frowned around at all of us on the other side of the table. He bit his lip, glancing at Dorian, then muttered words anyway, as if unable to silence himself entirely.

“The hypocrisy is just fucking unbelievable,” he growled. “All of these ridiculous crocodile tears. A bunch of maudlin whining. As if any one of them gave a shit, back when––”

Dorian gripped his arm tighter.

Nick turned, glaring at him a second time.

“Fuck off,” he growled. “I’ve sat here and let you parade me as your new toy for the last fucking hour. I’ve let you do it, because I understand the need for it. But do not mistake that for ownership. I’m not your goddamned pet––”

Dorian reached up, gripping Nick’s hair in one hand.

Moving deftly, too quickly for my eyes to follow, he tugged Nick’s head sideways, and nipped the side of his neck with his fangs, just above where it met Nick’s pale shoulder. Instantly, the expression on Nick’s face changed, growing less hard. He gripped the forearm of the taller vampire, right before he turned towards him, kissing him on the mouth.

I watched them kiss for what felt like an endless stretch of time.

It hurt some part of me, watching it.

I felt it affect me on some level, too.

I didn’t examine either thing, not while the kiss went on. I don’t think my brain emitted anything other than static for those few minutes.

When Dorian finally pulled away, both vampires’ eyes looked glazed.

Then Black’s voice rose.

It came out loud, infused with light, angry enough to make me jump.

“We need to talk about this,” Black said.

I turned, looking at him. I felt him breathing harder, that dark light coiling and sparking under his feet, under mine, his skin heating as he stared at the vampires seated across from him. He stared at Nick and Dorian, then focused all of his light and mind on Brick.

Just seeing the look on his face, feeling his light, made me breathe harder, too.

“We need time to discuss it,” Black said, his voice holding even more of that added punch. “Without any of you sitting in front of us. Without any of you ‘explaining’ anything. Without any of you anywhere near us. You need to go, Brick. You need to get the fuck out of here, and bring your new vampire with you and all of your goddamned minions. You need to disappear until I tell you I can talk to you again.”

I tore my eyes off Black, looking to the vampire king.

I saw that caution once more in the vampire’s eyes, along with an understanding that grew as he looked around at the faces lining our end of the room.

In a bare blink, he made up his mind.

“Of course,” he said, rising at once.

He looked at Dorian and Nick, and the two of them rose after him.

I watched Brick arrange his suit jacket, buttoning the bottom button as he picked up the Anubis-head cane and glanced around at the other vampires standing in a half-circle around their leader. I didn’t see or hear him speak, or make any kind of gesture, but they all seemed to understand what he intended at the exact same instant.

I watched them begin to file out of the room, more or less the same way they entered it.

That time, however, Nick walked between Dorian and Brick, with two other vampires in front of him and behind him.

I could not help but feel the overt protectiveness there.

All of us just remained where we were, standing and sitting, as the vampires disappeared through the dark opening that led to the steel doors, and back out onto the busy Mission District street. I don’t think any of us moved other than to breathe, and to follow the liquid movements of the vampires with our eyes.

Within seconds, they’d vanished entirely.

It seemed to take another few seconds after that before the rest of us stopped staring at that dark opening, or the other side of the table where they’d sat.

It took even longer for one of us to break that silence.

“Goddamn,” Cowboy muttered then, leaning back in his chair.

I looked at him, then at Angel, who I realized only now was crying, wiping her eyes with her fingers as she sniffled, fighting to pull her facial expression under control. Cowboy held her other hand in his lap, squeezing her fingers and palm in his.

I glanced at Jem next, who still looked furious, so filled with rage he didn’t trust himself to speak, or to move from where he still gripped the back of my chair.

Finally, I looked at Black.

He looked as sucker-punched as Angel, and almost as angry as Jem.

I watched him wipe his eyes with the side of his hand, still gripping my thigh with his fingers, his mouth curled in an angry, grief-filled frown.

I wondered why I wasn’t crying.

I wondered how Angel and Black could cry and I couldn’t.

I was still looking at Black, gripping his hand where he held my thigh, when voices erupted in my earpiece.

Before I could make out the exact words, or even determine who was speaking, I heard something else. The sound echoed through the piece of green metal in my ear, so familiar I was already reaching for my sidearm before a conscious thought had reached my mind.

Gunshots.

* * *

I ROSE TO my feet as Black did.

All of us were heading for the black-painted corridor even as Black touched his earpiece, speaking loudly as we half-jogged towards the building’s entrance.

“Javier. Talk to me.”

I touched my own ear, straining to make sense of what I could hear on the other end of the line. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t at the California Street building.

I could hear traffic, the sounds of civilians shouting, screams.

It was outside this building, on Valencia Street.

Javier’s voice rose.

“Someone’s opened fire… at least thirty separate guns ID’d, and that’s just now.”

“Shooting at you?” Black said.

We were most of the way to the front of the warehouse building.

Javier cut out briefly, then his voice rose, louder.

“No. The vampires. Repeat… vampires are the targets, not our people.”

Immediately, my mind went to Nick.

I glanced at Jem, who walked beside me. He frowned as he met my gaze.

You’re not going out there, he growled in my mind. Forget it.

Black gave him a hard, visibly annoyed look. Taking my hand, he pulled me closer, and I walked faster to keep up with his longer strides. Pushing aside what Jem had said, I focused back on the humans on the other end of his earpiece when Black spoke.

“Return fire,” he growled. “Protect Nick, if you can.” His voice lowered, turning gruff. “You’re sure they aren’t ours? Someone who heard what was going on in here? Most of you got the live audio feed of the meeting, right?”

“We did,” Javier confirmed. “But that’s a negative on our people. All of ours are accounted for.”

“You’re sure?”

“That’s affirmative, sir. Yes.” There was a short pause. “It’s Lucky’s people. We just got visual confirmation on two of them. They’ve been positively ID’d by facial-rec.” Javier’s voice turned grim. “I recognize them too, boss.”

“Send it to me. Now.”

Black pulled his phone out of his jacket without letting go of my hand, making the next turn in the corridor. The steel door stood just ahead of us now. Two of the seers from the new infiltration team stood on either side of it, their oddly-colored eyes shining in the wall lights as they turned to watch us approach.

“Are they still shooting right outside?” Black said.

“No, sir,” the first seer said at once, bowing in a seer way.

“They’ve got them on the run now, sir,” the second added, gripping the bar-like handle of the door. “The vampires, I mean… they’re all running, sir. Most of the shooters are traveling on the roofs. The gunfire has moved a few blocks over.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Black said to them in a growl. “Open it.”

He swiped the front of his phone as he said it, without slowing his pace towards the door. I saw him go into the encrypted text function for the company, where two photographs were already waiting for him. He clicked the first one to bring the image up.

Then he came to a dead stop.

I stopped with him in bewilderment, jerked forward and back by how fast he halted his forward motion. I looked over, puzzled, as he stared down at the first image Javier had sent to his phone. He didn’t so much as glance up as the steel door opened with a screech in front of us, letting in an orange wash of streetlights, and the sound of receding gunfire.

Seeing him pale, I squeezed his hand.

What? I gripped him tighter. Who is it?

Black turned, staring at me, as if he wasn’t sure how––or whether––to answer me. Then his jaw hardened, right before he seemed to make up his mind.

Without a word, he handed me his phone. Taking it from him, still watching his face warily, I swiped the glass front with a finger to bring the image up.

When I did, I couldn’t help it, I sucked in a breath.

Black’s light coiled into mine, so densely and hotly, I fought to feel myself apart from him, to think past the heat and intensity of his presence.

Despite that, I didn’t look up from his phone.

I didn’t look away from the image of the man depicted there.

I gazed at the familiar face numbly, staring at a pair of eyes I thought I’d never see again, that I’d nearly convinced myself no longer existed in the same world as me. A light up on the roof where he crouched illuminated every inch of his face, leaving almost no shadow, despite it being night outside those doors. In the still image the drone captured, his head was turned towards the camera, not quite looking at it directly, but turned towards it enough that there could be no question as to who he was.

It was him. It couldn’t be anyone but him.

His hair was shorter than I remembered.

Someone shaved it down to less than an inch all over his head.

He wore a black tank-top despite it being December, two rifles strapped around his back and chest. His left bicep displayed a highly-detailed sword and sun tattoo I remembered. More tattoos covered the visible parts of his back through the gaps left by the tank top, crawling up his neck. I knew they covered most of his back, from his neck down to his thighs.

On his other arm, which flexed where that hand gripped his second rifle, a dragon coiled around his bicep.

I kept returning to those violet eyes.

They looked exactly the way I remembered.

I remembered how shocked I’d been when I’d first seen them, and him, in that dingy basement apartment in Bangkok. I remembered thinking he didn’t look real, that he looked more like a pale statue than a living person. I remembered thinking he looked like some kind of mythological creature, that he was too beautiful to be real.

I remembered thinking he looked like a vampire.

“Solonik,” I breathed.

My breath hitched in my chest.

It put me back there, not just in that Bangkok basement where he’d tied me up and raped me for days, where he’d called me his girlfriend and ripped apart my light so I couldn’t keep him out––but back into that earlier version of me, back to the Miriam I was before any of this happened. That Miriam was a forensic psychologist.

She barely knew Black, had no real family apart from Nick, always felt like she was on her own, despite how much she loved her friends.

But was that even true by then?

I remembered screaming for Black in the dark, even then.

I remember him being the family I ran to, at the worst moment of my life.

That was when everything changed with me and Black.

Now I wondered if that had partly been Solonik’s doing, too.

After what Solonik did, I couldn’t keep Black out, either. For all I knew, Black and I initially bonded because, for the first time since I’d met him, I wasn’t able to keep him at arm’s length. I wasn’t able to shut him out, using the shielding tricks my dad taught me. I wasn’t able to force him behind those walls I’d used to keep everyone at a distance since my sister died, even Nick and Angel… even Ian, despite our being engaged.

Once my walls came down, Black got into my light, just like Solonik did.

The difference was, my light wanted Black there.

I remembered Solonik ripping open those shields, doing it with a casual, businesslike efficiency that somehow made the violation worse. I remembered him covering me in his light once he’d ripped me open, building structures in me so he could track me and read me, claiming me in a way I hadn’t known was possible––

Miri. Miri… honey. Hey.

I looked up.

Black stood there, gripping my arm.

I met his worried, gold-flecked eyes, even as he reached up with his other hand, stroking my cheek with the backs of his fingers, caressing my hair out of my face. His light coiled so tightly around mine, I could barely distinguish it from my own.

Reaching carefully for my other hand, he plucked the phone gently from my fingers.

Miri, honey. His light and mind soothed mine, pulling and stroking my aleimi gently, drawing it deeper into his. Miri, I want you to stay here. Please. Just wait here, okay, honey? I’m going to leave you with Jem.

Biting my lip, I shook my head, my jaw clenching so hard it hurt.

“No,” I said.

My voice came out in a growl.

Black tugged me closer.

“Miri, please,” he murmured. “Please. Listen to me on this. I need you to stay inside.”

“NO!” My hands clenched into fists. “You’re not fucking leaving me, Black. You’re not leaving me! Not with him here! No fucking way!”

Black blinked, staring down at me.

Then, some part of him seemed to go back there too, to those early days in Thailand. I saw him understand. More than understand. Heat rose to his eyes, even as he reached for me, pulling me closer.

He nodded slowly as he did, his expression clearing.

“Okay.” He gripped my hand tighter. “Okay, Miri.”

I felt something in my chest relax.

Then another voice rose from right next to me.

“Not okay,” Jem growled.

His angry voice made me jump, then made both me and Black turn. We stared at him, and I felt a kind of wall of solidarity go up between us and him.

Jem glared only at me.

“Not okay, Miriam! Not okay with Nick out there… not when he’s in some kind of new-vampire homicidal state and obviously still has issues with you… and your husband… and sex. Not with some fixated seer stalking you who’s already fucking raped you, if I’m reading the two of you correctly.” He paused to glare at Black before adding, “A fixated seer who feels like a goddamned rank eleven in actual… if not higher.”

“Rank 11?” Jax muttered from my other side, reinforcing his grip on his rifle, glancing at Kiessa, who stood next to him. “Gaos d’ jurekil’a… are you sure, brother?”

“At least that, brother,” Jem said, giving the younger seer a hard look. “He may not be a Balidor, but he’s another fucking Ditrini all over again.”

“Gaos,” Holo muttered from his other side, giving me and Black a nervous look. “And he’s interested in the doc? Her specifically?”

Jem glared at Black, who I felt reacting to the green-eyed seer’s words as well.

Black didn’t react precisely the way Jax and Holo had, presumably because they knew who “Balidor” and “Ditrini” were, whereas Black had no clue. Still, I could feel the “rank 11” designation hit him hard enough that he hesitated, thinking about Jem’s words. I also felt Black piecing it together with things that happened in Bangkok, things that bewildered him at the time.

He’d definitely wondered how Solonik had done some of the things he’d done.

He’d even wondered if Solonik had help.

Jem’s pale green eyes were focused on me now.

“No fucking way, Miriam,” he growled.

At my frown, he seemed to see something in my face. Whatever he saw, it made him hesitate, just before his voice lowered, growing more serious.

“Look,” he said. “I am sorry for reading you just now, sister. I am. I didn’t intend to invade your privacy like that, but you are telegraphing trauma on this. It is too loud for me to ignore… and your husband isn’t okay with this thing, either. It is obvious to me your light is still scarred by what this Solonik did to you, and that it is affecting both of you. Him being here, leading the team hunting Nick… it cannot be a coincidence.”

He clicked loudly, obviously displeased by the combination of factors.

“Please, Miri,” he said. “Black will listen to you. Tell him to stand down. I cannot in good conscience allow you… much less both of you… to put yourselves at risk by going out there right now. Let us take you back to California Street. The rest of us can handle what is going on down here.”

I just stared at him, less intimidated than blank.

I seriously had no idea how he felt like he had a vote.

I also had no idea why he was trying to use me to manage Black.

Before I could speak, Black inserted himself neatly between me and Jem, straightening to his full height. Looking between the two of them, I couldn’t help but see two wolves posturing, the gold eyes meeting the green, both of them exuding a harder light.

I also couldn’t help noticing that Black actually looked taller now than he had when I’d first met him.

He really looked taller. He looked like he might be a few full inches taller.

He was nearly Jem’s height now.

“Don’t fucking go through my wife,” Black said, his gold eyes hard. “Do you hear me? Don’t go through my fucking wife. Stay out of my wife’s fucking mind. Out of her light. I don’t give a fuck what she’s telegraphing, brother.”

“Something is coming, Black,” Jem growled. He took a half-step forward, staring down at him. “Don’t pretend you can’t feel it! I don’t know what’s behind it, or who, if it’s vampires or those goddamned Mythers, but you and Miri are right at the fucking center of it!”

“And we’re not the only ones dealing with trauma!” Black growled, stepping closer to meet Jem’s aggressive stance. “I’m not my goddamned cousin. And Miri’s not my cousin’s wife. You need to back the fuck off… now. Or I’m going to be a hell of a lot less polite in asking.”

Jem blinked at him, his eyes visibly startled.

He looked from Black to me, then scowled, staring at Black.

“Believe me,” he muttered angrily. “I know you’re not him.”

“Bullshit!” Black growled. “Moreover, you’re jealous of Miri. And we both know why. You need to back off, now. I’m your boss, goddamn it. Accept that, or get the fuck out.”

Jem’s face hardened.

He looked about to speak, but before he could, heat flashed from somewhere below Black’s feet. I felt the wave of black fire rise up through his aleimi like liquid smoke. It reached his hands, his heart, his throat… then his eyes, briefly igniting that paler gold in his flecked, cat-like irises.

Jem flinched back violently.

I watched the taller seer blanch, staring at Black’s eyes like he’d seen a ghost.

Taking a step back, he continued to stare at him, at his eyes, breathing harder. He looked at me, his green and violet eyes wide with shock, then returned his stare to Black.

“Gaos di’lalente… what in the hell are you?”

I found myself stepping closer to Black.

After a bare breath, I inserted myself between them, much as Black had done with Jem and me. As I did, I coiled my arm around Black’s waist, doing it more in instinct than thought, pressing myself against him. I felt those structures below Black’s feet wind into me the instant I did, pulling me deeper into that star-filled, churning space. I felt Black’s relief, but also a surge of possessiveness and protectiveness that caught my breath.

I kept my eyes on Jem.

“Jem,” I told the older seer, my voice stern. “Black’s right. Okay? He’s right. You’re upset about the Nick thing. We all are. It’s also triggering things in you. So is this Solonik thing. But we need you to focus on being here. On right now. Not on whatever happened in that other world. Can you do that?”

I waited a beat, watching his face.

When he remained silent, I went on in the same voice.

“It’s okay if you can’t,” I said. “It really is. Black and I will both understand. But we need you to be honest about it, so Black can decide where to put you right now.”

Jem’s jaw hardened.

I felt my words reach him, but he was still stuck on Black’s eyes, still staring at his irises like he expected them to burst into flames. When he didn’t look over, didn’t directly acknowledge my words, I reached for his arm. I touched it lightly with my fingers.

I did it more to get the other seer to look at me, but the ex-Adhipan infiltrator jumped violently. Breathing harder, he looked down at me.

“Jem?” I said. “Are you going to be okay? Right now, I mean.”

Jem stared at me blankly, like he couldn’t comprehend what I’d said.

Then he glanced around at where the three of us stood.

For the first time, I realized it wasn’t only Jem staring at us. Every seer and human who’d accompanied us into that warehouse now stood in the building’s foyer, watching me and Black. I also saw more than just Jem staring at Black’s eyes. Holo, Jax, Mika and Yarli stared the hardest, but all of the seers in the foyer stared at Black like they’d seen a ghost.

None of the others looked quite as pale and disturbed as Jem did, though.

Frowning, I glanced up at Black.

He shrugged, rolling his eyes a little.

Whatever their problem was, he obviously thought they were overreacting.

I was about to ask him what we should do now, whether we should send Jem back to the California Street building with a handful of the others, whether we should send a team after Nick or Solonik or go after them ourselves––

When screams erupted from outside.

They rippled my light.

The emotions hit at me along with the sounds, even standing inside Black’s building with its separate military construct––even being wrapped so deeply in Black’s light. I felt the panic and fear spreading down the street like a liquid wave, hitting one human after the other, like some kind of light tsunami filling the corridors between buildings.

I almost wondered if it was an impulse sent through the construct itself.

“Yes,” Black said.

I glanced at him, and saw him and Jem staring through the open steel door.

I watched through their lights and the reflections in their eyes as people ran down the street, screaming. I heard the sound of breaking glass and the whump of fire igniting, and I saw fires reflected in both of their eyes.

Turning towards he door, I focused outside right as a group of people wearing red masks were hurling Molotov cocktails through the open door of a bar across the street. I saw another of the flaming bottles smash into the window of a boutique deli next door.

Interspersed with the screams, I now heard shouts, commands…

I also heard chants.

The chants grew louder as I listened, like a rhythmic drum beat.

I’d heard those chants before, if only on the television.

“Evil within! Evil without!

“We bring the Light when we cast the Dark out!

“Evil within! Evil without!

“We bring the Light when we cast the Dark out!”

Those were Purity Movement chants.

I stared out through the open door in disbelief as cars and buildings outside burned. The flames reached higher as more lit bottles crashed into windshields and through storefront windows, igniting clothes and display racks inside.

Before I could turn to Black, before I could speak, the night sky was punctured by a series of concussive blasts.

Those were strong enough to tremble the ground under my feet. I grabbed at Black, even as his fingers tightened on me.

That hadn’t been from guns. Not even multiple shotgun blasts, fired at a relatively near distance, could have made the ground shake like that.

Those were bombs.

My uncle’s riots had come to San Francisco.

23

Riot

“NOW WHAT?” I half-shouted.

I pointed at the row of SUVs in front of us, half of which were now on fire.

The cars were armored, but I watched the crowd surge around them, rocking them with their hands and chanting. A man wearing a red bandanna and lower face mask approached the lead car with a long crowbar and began bashing in the hood with violent swings.

I felt a ripple of irritation off Black, even as the driver forced her way out of the front seat, pushing the car door through the surging crowd to aim a gun at the man wielding the crowbar.

“Stop!” she commanded. “Right now.”

Turning, the guy grinned at her through the face mask. I heard her shout something else at him, but her words were drowned out by the crowd that time.

Then the guy hurled the crowbar at her.

I saw the driver curse, ducking.

I realized it was Michelle when I heard her voice. I’d barely recognized her with her hair pulled back in a severe bun, wearing the full combat armor versus the expensive pantsuits I normally saw her in.

The crowbar slammed into the driver’s side window, and a series of lines and cracks exploded over the shatterproof glass.

The road was wall to wall people now.

The guy with the crowbar melted back into that crowd.

I’d just waded out into that same crowd with Black, Jem, Mika, Cowboy, Angel, Easton and Frank. Holo and Jax followed, still in a flanking position around Black himself, with Manny and Yarli following close behind. Black and I were both surrounded by infiltrators carrying assault rifles, but I still felt exposed out here.

Jem never left my side.

He seemed totally focused again, back in military mode.

I could hear voices shouting back and forth in my earpiece, most of them still tracking the vampires. Looking ahead, I saw another group of rioters with red and black face masks beating at our cars further down the row of SUVs, most of them using baseball bats and metal poles.

I looked at Black, frowning.

He returned my frown, then touched his earpiece.

“Get the fuck out of there,” I heard him say to his drivers. “We can’t get through that way. There are too many people on the goddamned street… and the seers can’t do much in this construct. Pull out everything you need and join us here. We’ll walk out together.”

His voice dropped to a growl. “…Feel free to bash a few of those fuckers in the face on your way out, through.”

“You want us to leave the cars?” I heard Rueben say on the comm.

“Leave the fucking cars,” Black growled. “That’s what insurance is for.”

“Got it, boss,” I heard Michelle say.

I knew Black was right. Other than opening fire on the crowd, our options were pretty limited without access to seer pushes to get the humans to back off. The construct over us had now clamped down over this whole part of the city.

I could feel it pushing on me, even under Black’s shield.

I felt it looking for a way into my light, into my mind. I felt it trying to draw me deeper into the chaos around us, tugging on threads in my memories, in my heart, trying to get me to panic, to lash out. The subtlety of it was unnerving. I felt frequencies of light trying to resonate with experiences I’d had in wartime, times I’d felt trapped or afraid or enraged.

I felt it nudging me to join in with the rioters, to give myself over to the violence, the chaos, to join in with the chanting, the destruction.

We just had to get the hell out of here.

Hopefully the guns we carried would convince most people to give us enough space to walk out.

It’s affecting you more right now, doc, Black murmured in my mind, holding up the rifle he carried and giving me a grim look. Don’t let it get to you. You’re fine.

I nodded, swallowing.

I knew what he meant.

Still, being reminded of Solonik right then didn’t exactly calm me down.

Being reminded of Nick right then wasn’t super helpful either.

Do you still have eyes on him? I sent, looking up. Solonik? He’s leading the team going after Nick, right?

Black gave me a hard look, glancing at Jem before he shook his head.

No, he sent. I have the drones out looking for them, but they knocked two of them down. Apparently your uncle’s construct is calibrated to look for them.

Feeling something off me, probably the sick feeling that rose in my gut and chest, making me light-headed, Black gripped my arm in his free hand.

Miri. This isn’t Bangkok. He leaned closer, kissing my cheek, nuzzling my face. We have other seers with us now. We’re not alone. We’re okay. All right? I’m not letting Solonik get anywhere fucking near you.

I nodded, conscious of other lights listening to this, conscious of Jem, Jax, Mika and Holo especially, since they squeezed up against us in the tight space.

I couldn’t really make myself care about how I appeared to them, though. It didn’t even cross my mind to feel embarrassed. Their worry and concern smothered me, surrounding my body and light with electric pulses and shocks of their light, but I couldn’t really decide how I felt about that, either.

I’ll tell you the second anything changes, okay? Black sent. The very fucking instant I know anything, you’ll know it too, doc. Right now, we should assume he’s still moving away. He’s leading the team tracking Brick, and the last we saw, they were ten blocks away from us right now, doc… heading towards SOMA.

Thinking about Solonik tracking Nick made my heart beat harder all over again.

Have they taken out any of the vampires? I sent.

Not that we know of. Glancing at me, feeling the charge in my light, he added, The last we got visuals on any of them, Nick was fine, Miri. So was Brick… and Dorian.

I nodded, but couldn’t really make myself relax.

Gripping the gun I’d unholstered, although I still aimed it at the ground, I watched the drivers of the nine SUVs shove their way through the crowd to reach us. All of them wore backpacks, and I realized it was because they’d pulled all of the extra weapons and clips out of the cars, and now wore them on their backs.

“Where to now, boss?” Luce said, half-shouting over the sound of the crowd as she pushed her way through bodies to reach us.

Michelle came up behind her, shouldering her rifle and a backpack of her own. Right as they reached us, a shout went up from the other side of the SUVs, along with scattered gunshots. All of us ducked reflexively, even as Black scowled, scanning the crowds around us as he raised his own weapon. I saw his eyes dart back towards the warehouse, could almost feel him trying to decide if we should hole up in there until the worst of this had died down or moved on.

Looking over my shoulder, I followed his stare towards the building we’d just left.

Dex, Miguel and a few others in Black’s crew already had it locked up and bolted across the front with a flat metal bar. I was still staring in that direction when another group of red and black-masked Purity agitators ran by.

One of them threw a Molotov cocktail against the steel door as they passed, hooting loudly.

The glass shattered, the lit fluid spraying over the metal in a spiderweb pattern, and Black gave me an annoyed look, right before he turned his frown back around at his employees. Again, I could almost feel him thinking.

By then, I was thinking too, though.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he growled. “Jem, I want you to cover Miri, and––”

I was already shaking my head.

“No!” I caught hold of Black’s arm, meeting his gaze when he looked down. “No, Black. We can’t leave Nick to Solonik. We can’t.”

Black’s jaw hardened, even as I heard Jem click in frustration next to me.

My eyes never left Black’s.

Frowning, Black leaned down, putting his lips to my ear.

“Miri, Jem’s right. I can’t let you get anywhere near Solonik. Not if he’s ranked as highly as Jem says. Not when we don’t know if he’s still fixated on you… or if he could still connect to your light from the trauma and the previous connection he had, or some structure I missed that he left in your light. We can’t risk him doing something batshit crazy… to either one of us.”

“Not to mention that he might be here to extract one or both of you,” Jem said, giving me a harder look as he spoke above the crowd. “Or that this riot might simply be cover for his team to do just that.”

Frowning at Jem, then ignoring him, I focused solely on my husband.

“He’ll kill him, Black,” I said. “He’ll kill Nick.”

Black frowned.

I went on before he could speak.

“––You know he will. There’s no way in hell Charles will let Brick have that kind of leverage over us. There’s just no way. You know I’m right.”

For a long moment, Black only looked at me.

His gold eyes reflected the flames from the Molotov cocktail burning itself out on the steel door, but I saw him there, saw the conflict worsen as he turned over my words.

Then he exhaled in frustration.

“Goddamn it,” he said, that frustration reaching his voice. “All right. Let’s go.”

* * *

“CAN YOU REACH him on the number I gave you?” Black said, speaking louder as another wave of screams rose in a nearby alley. “Try the office one, too. The one he gave Lizbeth.”

I knew who “him” was.

He was trying to get through to Brick.

I knew if he managed to get him on the phone, he’d try to pull Brick and the rest of his leadership team in with us.

Where we’d put them after that wasn’t something I was ready to think about yet. The idea of housing twenty or so vampires at the California Street building––after what just happened to Kiko––was more than my mind could really process right then.

Telling Kiko I’d talked Black into doing it to protect the exact same vampire who raped and nearly killed her probably wasn’t going to go over well, either.

Just don’t expect me to be the one to explain it to her, doc, Black muttered at me. This was your idea. I’m not taking the bullet for this… figuratively or literally.

I didn’t have a good response for that, either.

Probably because I knew he was right.

Black led us in a broken V-formation, taking us on a fast military jog down the middle of Valencia, all of us weaving between clusters of people.

Most of the crowd still on this section of street seemed to either be running away from the sirens we could hear up ahead, or milling and wandering in groups.

I don’t know why so many remained on the street.

We’d given up on telling them to go home. Most of them ignored us anyway.

I don’t know if they were hypnotized by the construct, in shock, trying to collect themselves, or just trying to comprehend what the hell was going on. I saw a lot of civilians just sitting on the sidewalk, some of them with bloody faces, bodies, and heads. We jogged past a woman in a short white dress who was crying, surrounded by friends, most of whom just stood there, talking and drinking from flasks.

Blood covered the front of her sequined outfit and ran down her arms and legs.

I winced as we passed, watching her sob. I was glad she had friends around her, comforting her, their arms around her where she sat on the curb, but I wondered why the hell they didn’t take her home––or better yet, to a hospital.

I didn’t read her to find out the specifics of what happened to her. I might not have been able to read her anyway, given the construct, but I didn’t even try.

We’d already seen some of that on the way here.

I’d watched Black personally drag two men wearing black and red masks off a girl wearing a clubby outfit in front of one of the Valencia dance clubs.

Cowboy and Angel broke up another cluster who were dragging two girls into an alley off the main road. I saw Dex, Luce, Jax and Holo break up a group of Purists who were kicking the crap out of a group of homeless men who’d been sitting on the curb outside a taqueria.

They didn’t only target young women and homeless people.

I also saw a number of well-dressed men who’d obviously been hit with bottles or rocks, likely wielded by the “Purity soldiers,” as I’d heard them called on the news.

“They sure like to beat up on women,” Cowboy muttered, almost like he’d been hearing my thoughts.

I gave him a grim look, but he wasn’t looking at me.

He was staring at two more young women with bloody heads and bruised faces as we passed another group of twenty-somethings in club wear. Like many others we’d seen, they were all huddled together. They were moving though, slowly making their way out of the area.

“Women in short dresses especially,” Angel muttered from next to me.

“What do these Purity fuckers even want?” Dex said, looking over at us from where he jogged on the other side of Black. “Other than to beat up on people they don’t like?”

Angel snorted, glancing at him.

“Isn’t that enough?” she said. “Isn’t that what all fanatics want? For everyone to burn in hell who isn’t exactly like them?”

“Yeah, but why other humans?” Jax said. “I thought it was a whole anti-vampire thing. Isn’t that why Charles is pushing this Purity thing? To get humans to kill vampires?”

“Ayuh. That’s part of it.” Cowboy nodded towards Black. “From what your lao ban’s been saying, it’s more about control, though.” He pointed towards the sky, motioning vaguely without slowing his military-style jog. “Black says these construct-thingys work better if there’s a unifying ideology. Keeps everyone in line. The more rigid the ideology, the better.”

Cowboy glanced at me.

“That’s right, ain’t it, doc?”

I shrugged, glancing at Jax, then back at Cowboy.

“I probably know as much as any of you,” I admitted, hitching the rifle I now wore higher on my shoulder as I jogged alongside the rest of them. “And probably a lot less than Jax when it comes to constructs. From what I’ve read about the Purists, though, they’re an apocalyptic group. They think the world will burn if it’s not ‘purified.’”

“Sounds like those dugra-te di aros Mythers,” Jax muttered.

“Purified, how?” Luce said, jogging closer to us to listen.

“The usual way,” Angel said, rolling her eyes. “No drugs. No drinking. All single mothers are supposed to be rounded up and ‘found husbands.’” She snorted louder. “Men are supposed to work at ‘virtuous employment’ and raise children who are ‘pure.’ Women who break the laws can be sold into slavery, apparently––”

“Slavery?” Luce stared at her. “What the fuck? Is this some Bible thing?”

I shook my head. “Not exactly. It’s pieced together from a number of religions, from what Black told me. He thinks Charles kept the religious aspects purposefully vague, so they’d be applicable to a number of different belief systems.”

I exchanged grimaces with Angel.

“…Convenient for Charles,” I added sourly. “It means he can adopt it to any culture on the planet, without fundamentally changing the construct. Every religion can claim the doctrine as their own. So here in the United States, sure, a lot of people think it’s based in the Bible. But Black told me Charles is already experimenting with a version in the Middle East that locals believe came directly from the Koran.”

Shrugging, I added,

“Black thinks those distinctions will gradually be erased, assuming Charles is successful. Everyone will follow the same core beliefs, and it won’t matter what they believed before. As it is, a lot of atheists follow the Purists, too. Now, I mean.”

“Athiests?” Luce frowned. “But why?”

“You mean apart from getting to rape and/or buy any woman they decide is ‘acting impurely’?” Angel said, grunting in anger. “And beating up on homeless people? And being rewarded for acting like a thug? I can’t imagine the appeal.”

Grimacing, I glanced at Luce, watching the younger woman pale at Angel’s words.

“Angel’s not wrong,” I said, watching Luce look at me. “It’ll attract those types at first. But from what I can tell, the Purity ideology is mainly fear-based. It promises to fix all the things that scare people.”

Exhaling, I added,

“So it promises the end of the world, but it says we can all be saved if they purify the world of various ‘corruptions’ now. Most people won’t do that themselves, of course. Even with the construct, I don’t think most would have the stomach for that. But they might let the government and these Purity soldiers do it for them. If Charles can use the construct to convince people it’s necessary to do these things, that it will save them, they’ll go along with it. They won’t fight back. That’s what Charles is banking on, I suspect.”

Angel glanced at me, then added to Luce,

“The doc’s right,” she said. “These foot soldier assholes are just the first wave. Everyone else will just bury their heads in the sand and look the other way. Or yell at the government to end the riots, no matter what the cost.”

Luce shook her head, frowning at both of us.

“There’s no possible way people will go along with this,” she said. “Slavery? Killing anyone who doesn’t follow their fucked up rules? No way. It’s not happening, not in this day and age. This isn’t the middle ages.”

Angel only shrugged, not answering.

I felt her cynicism though, and couldn’t help but agree.

From what Black had told me, Charles was already working to clamp down the internet. I didn’t want to get into all of that with Luce, though.

Not right now. Now definitely wasn’t the time.

Jax didn’t say anything, but I could feel this resonating with him on some level, too.

I could also feel whatever that resonance was, it wasn’t a good one.

“Look,” I said, cutting off where I could feel everyone’s light going. “One problem at a time. Charles hasn’t taken over yet. He might have a lot of seers on his side, and he might be making big moves, but he doesn’t have everyone under his control yet. He won’t get everyone either. My uncle has always underestimated humans. He’s always believed them to be easier to dominate than they are.”

I gritted my teeth, then said it anyway.

“…And it’s too early to count the vampires out,” I added. “There are a lot more of them than many of you probably realize. They haven’t even begun to fight Charles yet. We haven’t, either.”

Glancing over at a band of red and black-wearing Purists running down the other side of Valencia, I scowled.

“Although I’m not going to lie,” I muttered. “This shit is disturbing.”

“And where do vampires fit into all of this?” Dex said, frowning at me and Angel. “In terms of the Purists, I mean. What do they believe they are? Because I’ve seen a lot of conflicting reports on that, too, doc. Do they just see them as super-impure? As demons? Corrupting influences? Some kind of deep state conspiracy? What?”

“Some combination, I suspect,” I said, exhaling steam as I jogged alongside Black.

Glancing up at him, I could tell from his eyes he was talking to someone, maybe in the Barrier. In any case, he wasn’t listening to us.

Sighing again, I looked back at Dex.

“From what I’ve read, some Purists believe humans actually turn into vampires if they allow themselves to become corrupted enough. They seem to believe that’s the fate of all of us, if we don’t ‘purify’ ourselves.”

Angel snorted. “And yeah, Dexter, some also think some shadow movement of dark occultists created them inside the government.” She rolled her eyes. “I was reading all of these Purist conspiracy theories the other day. Some of them are really out there.”

“I’ve read that some Purist believe vampires are actual demons, too,” Luce said, from Jax’s other side. “As in, culled-from-the-netherworld, honest-to-God demons. As in, someone did a bunch of dark rituals and conjured them out of hell. From the article I read, that wing of the movement believes the ‘corrupt’ among us worship vampires, and let them drink our blood. Essentially, they blame corrupt humans for the vampires being here at all.”

“That would include us, right?” Dex said, raising an eyebrow.

“Right now,” Angel snorted. “That includes pretty much anyone not in their cult.”

Sirens blared from closer, maybe only a few streets over, jerking my attention up ahead. Only two blocks past our current position, I saw cops in riot gear backing onto Valencia. Two of them were holding M-32 40 mm launchers, and I watched one aim up at the crowd, shooting what looked like a tear gas canister at a crush of people throwing rocks and bottles.

The crowd throwing weapons all wore red and black masks.

I could hear chanting mixed in with screams as the first canister hit the pavement, expelling a cloud of dark red gas.

Realizing Black was still in the Barrier, I nudged him with my light, flashing an image at him of the rioters moving out into the street and urging him to hang a right at the next corner. We had to hope Mission and Van Ness were still open.

The last anyone had seen, both Brick’s group and Solonik had been traveling north.

Until we got new intel, we had little choice but to do the same.

Black, Jem, and I all tried to use the Barrier at various times to determine which streets had the most Purist soldiers, which streets the cops had cordoned off, which streets had vampire sightings, but it was pretty much impossible with the interference from the construct.

For now, we were flying blind.

Black gave me a bare glance, pinging an acknowledgment, right before he shifted direction, aiming us where I’d nudged him in a diagonal line, using hand motions down the line so everyone behind us would see the change.

I glanced at Angel, who jogged next to me, a grim look on her face, and Cowboy, who loped along on her other side, a rifle and two swords bouncing lightly against his back. I couldn’t help thinking it was a good thing there was a chill in the air that night.

We were all pretty loaded down.

We probably should have sent more of our equipment back with the group that returned to the California Street building.

Manny was in charge of that bunch. He’d taken Frank, Easton and Lex with him, along with Yarli and Mika, in part to reinforce Javier back at the headquarters building, since we’d brought most of the infiltrator seers with us.

I knew Black wanted extra protection on his headquarters building anyway.

The last thing we needed was Solonik or the vampires flanking us, and/or trying to get into that building ahead of us.

“Try the other one,” Black growled, once more speaking to whoever was on the other end of his earpiece, likely Javier or Yarli.

He’d picked up the pace, enough that I found myself straining a little to keep up with his longer legs.

“…And get more drones over there. See if you can get a visual,” he added. “But don’t get too close. Charles definitely has some ability to feel electronics in the air through the construct. That, or he’s pulling some satellite bullshit that’s tagging our drones through GPS. Either way, I don’t intend to lose every damned military drone we have tonight. Until you figure out how he’s doing it, keep your distance.”

In a different headset channel, I listened to seers coordinating under Jem and Yarli.

It was harder to follow their terminology, but I got the gist.

They were trying to hack the construct to find Solonik’s team.

Assuming they were still alive, Brick and his vampires likely wouldn’t be far off from wherever Solonik’s seers were hunting.

“Fine,” Black growled. “Patch him through.”

There was a pause, then Black glanced at me, a frown curling his lips.

“Fine,” he said. “Then patch him through to her. Fucker has to know I’ll be listening in, though. You can tell him that, if you want.”

I gave Black a puzzled look, but he only pinged the new frequency at me with his light.

I touched my own earpiece, voicing the channel change and hoping it would switch over. I still hadn’t used the green-metal seer machines much; I didn’t really have the knack of how they worked.

Black’s mind nudged me again, so I spoke to the machine a second time.

“Pick up,” I said. I waited until I heard the channel open. “Yes?” I said. “Who is this?”

“Miriam.” The voice on the other end sounded immediately relieved. “Miri. You need to tell Black to stand down. Let us handle this.”

I scowled, giving Black a dirty look.

He shrugged. What did you want me to do? Hang up on him?

“A head’s up would have been nice,” I muttered under my breath.

See if you can find out where Solonik is, Black sent, undaunted. Not like he’s liable to tell you shit. But get whatever you can. You’re the only one of us he might talk to.

I scowled at him a second time.

“Miri?” Charles said. “Are you still there? Miriam?”

“I’m here, Uncle Charles,” I growled.

We were jogging down 20th by then. I heard sirens in the distance again, and not only in the block of streets we’d just left behind. Closer by and ahead of us, I heard our seers whistling to one another, using hand signals different than the ones Black’s human team normally used.

Focusing back on the open phone line in my ear, I scowled again.

“What do you want, Uncle Charles?”

“I told you what I want. Do not enter this fray, Miriam. Not only is it dangerous, you’re interfering in things you don’t understand––”

“No.” Gritting my teeth, I shook my head, my voice cold. “No, Uncle Charles. You need to call Solonik off. In fact, you need to get him the fuck out of my city. Now. And you can take your damned Purity assholes with him.”

From my other side, Jem grunted.

Ignoring him, along with the other ears and lights I felt focused on me now, I aimed my anger at my father’s brother instead.

“What the hell are you even doing here?” I said. “I know I shouldn’t be surprised by anything you do at this point, but this is a lot to swallow, even from you––”

“You knew this would come to your doorstep, Miriam,” Charles broke in, his voice sharper, and openly frustrated. “There is no possible way you could have not known this. This unrest is spreading all over the country now. Vampires are being driven from the shadows. You knew the humans would not react well to finding out an alien, parasitic race has been feeding on them since the dawn of their history––”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I snapped. “As if you aren’t creating ninety-nine percent of these ‘popular uprisings’ yourself. How stupid do you think I am?”

“It started that way, yes,” he said, wholly unapologetic. “I’m not hiding anything, Miriam. I told you I would do this. I told you the vampires would be exposed, and driven from their blood-soaked nests. I told you I would direct that exposure in the beginning, if only to keep our own people from dying. Don’t pretend to be surprised that––”

“I’m not surprised by any of that––”

“Then GO HOME, Miriam,” Charles snapped. “I gave you and your husband every opportunity to be a part of this. You refused. You cannot have it both ways––”

“Newsflash, Lucky… we don’t work for you. You don’t get to decide how and when we involve ourselves in this. That’s one of the little perks of telling you to go fuck yourself with your so-called ‘job offers’––”

I felt Jax and Kiessa cheering me on, laughing.

My voice only hardened.

“––And threatening me isn’t exactly going to make me want to work for you, strangely enough. Nor is it exactly going to sway Black––”

“Threatening you? When have I ever threatened you, Miriam?”

“Solonik?” I snapped, still jogging between Black and Angel, catching a furious look from Angel when she glanced my way. “What the fuck kind of message is that, sending my rapist here, to my city? Explain to me how I’m supposed to take that as anything other than a threat?”

Feeling Charles flinch, along with several of the people and seers jogging alongside me, I bit my lip.

“––What the hell are you playing at, sending that psychopath here? Wasn’t my being kidnapped and raped by him the first time enough for you? You needed to send him after me a second time? Or are you hoping he’ll kill me this time––”

“Miriam. Darling, listen––”

“No. You listen,” I snapped. “Get that fucker out of my city. Now! I’m not going to ask you again, Uncle Charles. The fact that you would let that animal anywhere near me after what he did tells me everything I need to know about your ‘plans’ here.”

My voice dropped to an angry mutter.

“…I honestly can’t believe you’d let him out of his cage at all. Especially now, when there are a few thousand more female seers here for him to kidnap and rape.”

There was a tauter-feeling silence.

When my uncle spoke into it, his voice was significantly colder.

“Sometimes you need an animal to hunt an animal, Miriam,” he said. “You, of all people, should understand that.”

“Should I?” I shot back. “And who’s the animal in this scenario, Uncle Charles? Brick? Nick? Me? Or are you referring to my husband?”

Another plume of fury left my uncle’s light.

“You must admit my options are limited, Miriam. You have refused to join me. Your husband has not only refused to help me, he is actively working against me. As a result, I now have to plan to fight not only Brick and the rest of his animals… now I have to worry about you and what your damned husband might do, as well. I have to worry about the seers he has recruited to his team. That limits my options rather considerably, niece.”

Pausing a beat, he added,

“If I had your husband working with me, rather than against me, then that seer shielding you right now… Dalejem, is it? …would be aiding me, too. I wouldn’t need to resort to using a blunt instrument like Solonik––”

I let out a humorless laugh. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me––”

“––As it is,” Charles said, raising his voice. “You and your husband insist on obstructing me at every turn, making deals with vampires, preventing me from protecting you from Brick’s twisted attempts to gain leverage over you. You leave me little choice, niece. I must match firepower with firepower, if only to protect my mission––”

I snorted.

“Your fucking mission.” Contempt reached my voice. “You expect sympathy from me for that? For your attempt to enslave every human and seer on the planet?”

“If you gave a damn about your race, yes,” Charles snapped. “Gaos, Miriam. You really don’t get it, do you? Neither does your husband, seemingly… even though he has experienced far worse at the hands of these creatures than you have. They can destroy us, Miriam. The vampire race can destroy our race… they will destroy us, if we do not annihilate them first. It is inevitable. It is only a matter of time.”

“Bullshit––” I began angrily.

My uncle talked right over me.

“––I am not only talking about our bodies. I am not only talking about their willingness to take our blood. I’m not even talking solely about their efficiency at killing other beings. I am talking about their venom, Miriam.”

Clicking under his breath, he lowered his voice, even as it grew harsher.

“You really don’t seem to understand what that venom means. You really don’t seem to understand the danger it poses to our kind. With their venom, they have the potential to enslave our entire species. How does a woman as intelligent as you not see this? We cannot fight their venom, Miri. We are more vulnerable to it than even humans are. I know of not a single seer who is stronger than the effects of their venom… including your husband.”

His voice turned into a harsh growl.

“Our only choice is to kill them. Do you not see that? If we do not, it is only a matter of time before they make us all their slaves. That includes you, Miriam. That includes Black… and Dalejem… and every seer standing with you this night. I will not allow my entire species to be made into slaves again Miri… only this time, of their minds as well as their bodies. I WILL NOT ALLOW IT. Do you hear me, niece?”

I frowned, staring at where a group of red-masked Purists were using tire irons on the front door of a European-style deli. One of them threw a bottle at a passing woman, hitting her in the head and making her stumble, then fall to one knee.

All of them burst out in laughter, sounding like hyenas.

My uncle’s voice grew louder.

“You can’t have it both ways, Miriam. Either join the fight or get the hell out of my way. If you don’t want Solonik in your city, stop making it necessary for me to send him there. Stop aiming your seers and your husband at me, and Solonik will no longer be necessary! Join the fight that actually matters to our people, or go the fuck home!”

I gritted my teeth.

For a long moment, I couldn’t even find words.

Like with Brick in the meeting earlier, it felt like my uncle and I were speaking completely different languages.

I understood what he was saying about the venom.

I understood why it frightened him so much.

I remembered Efraim. I remembered how Black got, when he got bit.

I could see the danger there, the endgame scenario my uncle was outlining.

But enslaving the entire human race just to wipe out a species that frightened you was so far off the map of an acceptable, proportionate response, I didn’t know how to even bridge that gap. Not without being insulting, or banging my head against a wall.

At my silence, Charles sighed, clicking, even as Black nudged me with his light, pulling my attention to another group of people hurtling down the street towards us. They ran in near formation, like a quasi-military unit, wearing black and red masks.

Rather than Molotov cocktails and tire irons, this group carried automatic rifles.

They gave us a wide berth, but we all stared at them and they stared at us as they passed. I still wasn’t able to read them much through the construct, but they were running towards the rioters we’d just left behind, the ones facing off with the cops on Valencia and 18th.

My uncle spoke, jerking my mind back to him.

“Miriam,” he said, his voice subdued. “You and your husband cannot simply ‘opt-out’ of the world we are building. You cannot simply avoid the vast majority of your people, or your heritage, no matter how far or fast you run.”

I grunted in annoyance.

“Maybe you haven’t been paying attention, Uncle Charles. Black and I have plenty of opportunities to rub elbows with our ‘heritage’ these days––”

From next to me, Jem grunted a laugh.

I glanced at him, and he smiled, nudging me with his elbow.

Grinning back, I jabbed my own elbow back at him, even as I spoke to my uncle through the earpiece.

“––They also remember our so-called heritage a little differently than you do, Uncle Charles. They remember seers like you from Old Earth, and want nothing to do with you and your weird religious bullshit, or your dreams of some bloody Armageddon. From what they told us, your kind are the reason the last world ended in the first place.”

Before he could argue, I sharpened my voice.

“––Call off Solonik,” I said. “Let me and Black deal with Brick. If you really want us to trust you, then stay out of this.”

My uncle clicked at me sharply.

I could almost see him shaking his head.

“You know I can’t do that, Miriam.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“I mean I can’t,” Charles said, sharper. “I cannot allow those creatures to have that kind of power over you. You and your husband are too important. As young and as maddeningly naive as you both are, you simply matter too much… and not only to me. I cannot allow you to make foolish decisions that affect the rest of us, purely based on sentiment over a human who you cannot accept is already dead, Miriam.”

That time, his words hit me like a punch to the chest.

Nick. He was talking about Nick.

My uncle went on, his voice colder.

“Do you have any idea how many people your ‘friend’ Nick Tanaka killed while he and his vampire family were in Europe? Do you have any idea how many he killed in Paris alone? He and that vampire henchman of Brick’s, Dorian, averaged around six a night for nearly a month. You say you care about humans? They killed children, Miriam. They killed whole families––”

Gunshots erupted behind us.

Everyone in our group flinched, including me.

We turned, looking for the source of the shots without stopping our fast jog down the street in the opposite direction.

“Miri!” Charles said, his voice harder. “Are you hearing me?”

“How many have you killed in the past few months, Uncle Charles?” I snapped back. “How many are you killing in my city right now?”

“It’s not the same! You know it’s not the same. My goal is peace, Miriam. Peace and safety for the humans and seers of this world. I am trying to keep vampires from destroying both of our races. If you can’t see the difference between what I’m doing and the indiscriminate murder committed by sociopathic serial killers, I’m not sure I can help you, niece…”

When I shook my head, fighting to push him out of my head, Charles’ voice grew louder, a near-shout I couldn’t help but hear over the gunshots in the background.

“You know damned well your place is here, with me! So is your husband’s, as much as he seems determined to play this game of adolescent rebellion with you. Do not think I will allow either of you to jeopardize our only hope of survival in this world. All for some base sentimentality about a human you gave to vampires to protect. You have no one to blame but yourself for this, Miriam! This is your fault! Nick Tanaka is on you––”

The connection broke.

It happened so quickly, I blinked.

Then I tapped my earpiece, wondering if I’d done it myself.

I glanced at Black, who shrugged, his expression unapologetic.

Did you just hang up on him? I sent.

He was irritating the crap out of me, Black sent.

I couldn’t help it––I laughed.

“He’s not going to help us,” Black said, speaking aloud that time, over the sound of gunshots, which seemed to be getting louder again. “I’m starting to worry Solonik is here for more than Nick, though.”

Jem glanced over from where he jogged beside me.

When I met the older seer’s gaze, he nodded, his mouth as grim as Black’s.

“I agree,” he said. “Charles is inordinately focused on Black, in particular. Some of that is seeing him as a threat… likely for the reasons he stated, because your husband is drawing seers to him who defect from Charles’ camp.

“…That’s not all of it, though,” Jem finished in a mutter.

“Meaning what?” I said, frowning.

Jem’s brow furrowed.

He looked past me to Black, staring at his eyes.

“I have a few theories,” he exhaled under his breath.

I followed his stare to Black, but Black only scowled.

Melodramatic b.s., he muttered in my mind.

Jem’s mental voice rose next to his.

Melodramatic? Really? That’s the position you’re taking?

When Black only rolled his eyes, Jem’s mental voice got louder.

Have you told her? Does your wife have any idea what you even are, brother? Or should I say ‘cousin’? he retorted.

When Black only clicked at him, Jem clicked back at him, louder.

I didn’t hallucinate that earlier, did I? Your eyes glow. Or were you going to pretend that didn’t happen? Glaring at Black, he snapped, She has no idea what that means, does she?

When I gave Black a puzzled look, he glared at Jem, his eyes openly warning.

Jem only scowled.

Does she have any idea how Charles would react, if he saw what I saw tonight? Much less his more fanatical religious followers? You about gave Jax a heart attack. You need to tell your own team something, at least––

“No. I don’t.” Black growled the words aloud that time, giving Jem an openly threatening look. “I don’t need to tell them shit––‘cousin.’ Neither do you. You’d be wrong, anyway.”

I frowned, looking between them.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Black sent me a hard pulse of light, his eyes warning in a different way that time. I felt what he meant, but it didn’t exactly clear up my confusion. When I frowned harder, not hiding my puzzlement, he gave me a barely perceptible shake of his head.

We’ll talk about it later.

I got the message. Both of his messages.

I shut my mouth.

Without thinking about why, I also blanked my mind.

I had no idea what was going on between the two of them, or what Jem was talking about in terms of Charles, or Black’s glowing irises, but clearly Black didn’t want Jem knowing my eyes glowed, too. I felt the protectiveness behind that, and not only in relation to Jem, so it didn’t bother me really, but I fully intended to take him up on that explanation once we were alone.

Exhaling his annoyance, Black focused back on the rest of the group.

He increased the pace of his military jog, scowling around at all of us.

“Someone get eyes on those goddamned vampires for me,” he snapped. “Now. Or I’m going to try bleeding a few of you, see if we can coax them out that way––”

“Sir!”

Black turned his head.

So did the rest of our group. For the first time it struck me that Jem wasn’t the only one who’d been staring at me and Black during that exchange.

It was Kiessa who’d spoken. She met Black’s gaze, her black and white-ringed eyes flashing, her expression grim but satisfied.

“We have them,” she said.

24

Race War

I SHOULD HAVE known Brick wouldn’t come to San Francisco with only those fourteen or so vampires he’d brought to the armory.

I should have realized that.

It was obvious, now that I thought about it for even a second.

Even so, my jaw dropped when we burst out onto 16th Street, following Dex, Keissa and A.J., who’d taken point once we heard more gunshots and screams up ahead.

It seemed like half the people on the street were vampires.

I stared in shock as two of them jumped at a cluster of humans wearing black and red masks. Gripping handguns, the humans fired wildly, missing both of them.

I watched, frozen, as a red-haired female sank her fangs into the throat of the man in front. He let out a scream, like an animal caught in a snare, even as the second vampire, a male with long, gold hair, bit the wrist just below the gun the second man carried, causing that man to scream even louder as he threw himself backwards, trying to shake him off.

I watched the humans around them scatter backwards, too shocked to even fire their guns.

Within seconds, both vampires had bitten three more humans.

I turned, gripping my rifle as I stared up and down the street.

We’d gotten there via the infiltration team, which finally managed to hack enough of my uncle’s construct that they were able to tap into Barrier communications between the seers in Solonik’s team.

They’d been a lot closer than we’d expected.

We caught up with them roughly at 16th and Mission.

A full-scale riot was already in progress.

We burst out on 16th as more screams erupted.

We were immediately surrounded, forced into a funnel of people fighting to get out of the main intersection. Gunshots erupted on either side, loud even over the panicked shouts and breaking glass I heard from the buildings closest to us. Automatic weapons fire erupted next, followed by louder screams.

Forced to slow our pace, our group came to a near-stop as we stared down at the sheer chaos on the block ahead.

Men in black riot gear fired tear gas canisters and live rounds of ammunition at the crowd as I watched, driving back a group of screaming people stuck in the middle of Mission Street. Only about a third of them wore the black and red masks of the Purists.

That meant the cops were firing on unarmed civilians.

I watched some of those civilians fall to the pavement, screaming, clutching gunshot wounds on legs and torsos.

Bottles were flung back at the cops, some of them on fire.

Here, Miri… put this on.

I tore my eyes off the crowd, looking at Black, who stood next to me. He handed me a face mask, yanking a second one out of the backpack he carried.

Frowning, I pushed my rifle out of the way to give my arms and hands the space to quickly pull it on. It took me a few minutes to adjust the thing as I brought the filter down over my mouth and nose, adjusting the goggles over my eyes. It made it harder to see, even with the infrared in the goggles, but as I watched the approaching gas clouds, I checked the edges of the mask, making sure they were sealed.

I’d been gassed before; it wasn’t exactly fun.

I glanced around and saw Cowboy, Angel, Dex and others pulling on face masks too.

I ducked as more rocks and bricks got thrown in our direction. Some of the nearer ones seemed to be aimed at us, probably because we were dressed more or less like cops or military, especially with the face masks.

Still, we didn’t carry riot shields or grenade launchers, or wear the insignia of the SFPD, so most in the crowd ignored us.

What now? I asked Black.

He gave me a grim look. You know why we’re here, doc. Look for vampires we know. His mental voice lowered to a growl. Preferably vampires who won’t fucking eat us before we can get a message to Brick––

Gunfire erupted to our left, cutting him off, and I ducked, turning.

Cops were aiming automatic weapons into the broken windows of a storefront. I couldn’t see what they were shooting at, but I saw more shadowy forms disappear into the nearby alley.

One darted out as I watched.

Before I could blink, he dragged one of the riot police into the alley with him.

To our left and in front of us, a thicker line of riot police continued marching forward with batons and Plexiglas shields, heading north up Mission. They formed a circle now, protecting their line of uniforms from the front and behind.

More bottles and rocks hit into their shields as I watched.

Some of those bottles were on fire.

A few of those exploded when they hit the Plexiglas, spreading liquid flame across curved shields, setting fire to the arms of the officers holding them.

I winced, ducking when a chunk of brick narrowly missed my head. I’d barely recovered when a larger explosion went off half a block up the street, lifting a cop car off the pavement.

“Goddamn it,” Black muttered from next to me. “This is a fucking mess.” He touched his earpiece. “They’re firing live rounds on civilians down here,” he growled to whoever answered. “We’ll try to get close enough to diffuse it, but we need air cover. Check the tops of buildings around Mission and 16th. So far, I’ve counted at least two teams in sniper hides… I can’t get a read on them, but it’s got to be Solonik’s people.”

His voice lowered, turning gruff.

“See if you can get someone on the horn from the local military too, before this becomes a fucking bloodbath. If it stays like this, we don’t have enough people to diffuse this on our own, not with the construct in play…”

As he spoke, he motioned for Dex and Kiessa to go ahead.

He nudged me to follow as he pushed forward after Kiessa.

Gripping my rifle tighter, I stepped into the path his body made through the crowd, sandwiched between him and Jem, Angel and Cowboy. I felt Black’s light wrap deeper into mine as we moved further into the melee, grounding me in a way that made everything around me seem to slow down, turning my vision hyper-clear.

Shadowy forms continued to pull down bodies as I watched, grabbing them out of the crowd like wolves picking gazelles out of a herd. Darting through the dark lines rimming the spaces of light, they stayed outside the glow of streetlights and fires, working the sides of the streets and staying out of range of the snipers on the buildings above.

A lot of them seemed to be working in pairs.

I saw two more grab and pull down uniformed soldiers on the edges of the riot police scrum, dragging them out of the light. Seconds later, three more grabbed humans wearing the red and black masks of Purity soldiers.

I didn’t recognize any of them.

None of the vampires I’d seen so far had been at the meeting with Brick.

More gunshots echoed between the buildings, forcing my eyes up.

I heard hisses then and turned, right as two of those bullets found targets.

A black-haired vampire growled, releasing the Purity soldier he’d been biting and limping back to the dark. The female vampire with him snarled from a bullet wound to the shoulder. Rather than releasing her prey, she dragged it backwards, holding the heavyset man in the red and black mask up as a shield as she disappeared into a broken storefront.

Black nudged my mind towards another skirmish, further down the street.

I saw a cluster of vampires in street clothes fighting about fifteen Purity soldiers, all of whom were firing hand guns into alleys and darkened store fronts.

I didn’t recognize any of them, either.

It might be enough if they recognize one of us, Black sent.

Frowning, I nodded.

Watching two more vampires dart out to grab cops wearing riot gear, I looked to the other side of the street when I heard more shots ring out, that time coming from higher up.

Black was right. Solonik had at least two groups of snipers up there.

They were clearly targeting vampires.

The crush of humans around us screamed when more shots rang out, pulling us first to the right, away from the direction of the gunfire, then back to the left when more vampires appeared out of the dark parts of the streets on that side, grabbing humans who got too close.

Frustrated by all of the chaos around me, and the poor visibility, I reached out with my light, trying to hook into our infiltrator’s construct.

No, Black sent sharply. He looked back at me, even as Jem gripped my arm, sending me a warning pulse. Stay out of the Barrier, doc. We kept you out of that for a reason.

But why? I sent, frustrated. Don’t you need as many eyes on this as we’ve got?

There’s a good chance Solonik knows we’re here, Black sent, giving me a grim look. We don’t want him knowing you’re with us. Not if we can help it.

He lowered his mental voice.

You used to be connected to him, doc. If that fucker hacks your mind, we have a whole new set of problems.

Black glanced at Jem, adding,

If he’s got a sight ranking as high as Jem says, we have to assume the son of a bitch can hack us. I know you don’t fully get sight rankings yet, doc, but trust me, if he is what Jem says he is, it’s a whole different ballgame.

I frowned, remembering what my uncle said about Jem making someone like Solonik “necessary.” Still pushing past bodies, I only nodded to Black’s words.

Got it, I sent.

I could see a little more now.

The icy December wind was blowing most of the tear gas away from us, up Mission Street towards Highway 101 and South Market. A lot of the Purity Movement soldiers had broken rank and seemed to be moving east, towards Van Ness, probably to get away from vampires as much as the gas.

A lot of the Purity soldiers I saw wore gas masks now, along with their red and black uniforms.

I also saw a lot with streaming, bloodshot eyes and bloody necks stumbling down the street, supported by their Purist friends.

The black-clad cops were mostly aiming their weapons at the shadowed side of the streets now, presumably at vampires.

Solonik probably had something to do with that, too.

Now I could see the BART station entrance on fire. A half-dozen parked cars were on fire too, dotting the street heading north.

Closer to us, a San Francisco MUNI bus also burned, its insides already gutted by fire, the seats burning through the row of smoke-blackened windows. Someone had shot out more than half the streetlights, but the fires gave us a lot of visibility, even with the smoke.

Gunshots erupted from behind the bus as we approached, right before a snarl rose out of the dark. Before I could blink, a liquid, shadowy form leapt onto another form wearing black Kevlar.

Gunshots went off in a string from the man’s rifle, but the gun swung wide as the vampire tore out his throat in a single, disconcertingly agile move.

I stared as the vampire rode the limp form down to the pavement.

The sheer grace of the move paralyzed me.

I focused on the high-cheekboned face, the scarlet eyes that had replaced the dark, almond-shaped eyes I’d previously known. His face was contorted into an animalistic snarl, his fangs extended as he spat out something he’d ripped out of the man’s neck.

Even so, I would have known that face anywhere.

“NICK!” I screamed.

He looked up, his whole body going still.

He stared at me, a held breath, and I saw the violence in that look.

Then shots rang out from above, aiming at him.

He vanished, melting back into the dark before I could wrap my mind around what I’d just seen. I had no idea if he’d just killed a human or a seer.

Without thought, I ran after him, shoving my way through the crowd.

“Miri, no! No, goddamn it!”

Black cursed in Prexci, even as I felt him leap after me.

“NICK! WAIT!” I screamed, ignoring him, ignoring the alarm I felt off the seers around me. I felt Jem and Jax bolt after Black to follow me. “NICK! WAIT! COME BACK!”

I shoved my way through a group of men who were staring down at the cop with his throat torn out, then ran for the bus. I yanked my gun out of a side holster, holding it up, but I didn’t slow down, or stop when I met the line of shadow.

“Hey, lady…” one of the guys yelled out when I rounded the edge of the bus. “You don’t want to go back there! There’s things back there!”

I ignored him, too.

Venturing deeper into the dark, I took a breath. My eyes fought to adjust to the line of black outside the glow reflecting on the brick walls from the burning MUNI bus.

I knew I only had a few seconds before Black and the rest of them caught up to me.

“Nick!” I yelled. I squinted through the smoke and dark, scanning for movement. “Nick! I need to talk to you! You don’t know who these seers are! Tell Brick––”

Hands grasped my upper arms.

Before I could take a breath, my stomach abruptly dropped.

It felt like falling off the edge of a cliff, only I was going up, not down.

The closest I could come mentally was a roller coaster. It felt like I’d just been lurched upwards to follow the massive loop of a giant roller coaster.

My feet left the ground.

I’d barely forced out a gasp when my feet landed back on Earth, my boots sliding and stumbling on a metal mesh platform, bile lurching to my throat.

“Jesus fucking christ…” I breathed out in a rush.

The hands released my arms.

I gripped the banister of a rickety fire escape, where I realized I now stood. Looking down, I absorbed that I was somehow at least three stories up. My mind couldn’t comprehend how I’d gotten there.

I wasn’t alone.

I looked up and around, and met red-tinted eyes that reflected firelight.

Nick smiled at me, fangs visible between his lips.

“Heya, doc,” he said.

25

Fire Escape

MIRI! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU? Black’s mind exploded in mine, even as I heard him and the others through the earpiece I wore.

“Get a drone over here! NOW!” Through my earpiece, I heard him instruct Zairei. “Seers only! And be fucking careful! My wife is back there! Don’t shoot to kill, for fuck’s sake! And tell them I’m here, that I sent you…”

MIRI! GODDAMN IT… ANSWER ME!

Swallowing, I stared at Nick, watching him look me over in the dark.

I’m okay, Black. Nick’s got me. I’m on the fire escape.

I felt a plume of terror leave Black’s light.

It’s okay, Black––

The FUCK it is! he exploded at me. How is that in any way okay?

Which building? Jem sent. Which building, Miri?

I can see the school bus burning at the end of the alley––

“Well?” Nick said, smiling at me. “You called me, Miri. Did you want to talk, or…?” He held up his hand in a silent question. “Was all that screaming my name just a bit of melodrama?”

“Nick.” I gripped the banister. Staring at him, the reality of him hit me in a way it hadn’t. “Nick, what are you doing? Why am I up here?”

His smile widened. “Why are you up here? Didn’t you call for me, Miriam? Didn’t you say you needed to talk to me?”

Biting my lip, trying to control the pounding of my heart in my chest, I stared at him, trying to see my friend in his eyes. I could barely see his face in all that dark, apart from glints from his crystal-like eyes in the firelight.

I wondered if I should risk jumping over the banister.

GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE, MIRI. SHOOT HIM AND RUN!

I can’t shoot him, Black––

The FUCK you can’t! He’ll be fine, Miriam! Shoot him! Shoot him right now, and run! We’re coming down the alley now!

“He’s telling you to shoot me, isn’t he?” Nick’s smile returned, his fangs flashing in the dark. “Your husband.”

He shrugged, those crystal eyes meeting mine.

“He’s not wrong, Miriam.”

“Nick.” I forced out a breath, staring at him, still gripping the gun in one of my hands, even as I used both to hold the rickety metal banister. “Nick… we came to warn you.”

“Warn me?” Nick smiled, gliding silently closer to me. I watched his pale fingers reach out, gripping the banister a few feet from where I held it. “That’s so sweet, Miri. What is it you wanted to warn me about?”

Swallowing, biting my lip at what I heard in his voice, I shook my head.

“It’s Charles’ people out there. They’re here for you, Nick.” Forcing a breath, I turned my head, meeting his gaze. “Solonik is leading them. I know that won’t mean anything to you, but he’s not like regular seers. He’s stronger… stronger than most of the seers you’ve come across. Stronger than any of the seers we have here, maybe even Jem.”

Nick let out a laugh.

“You really came here to warn me? Really, Miri?”

“Nick––”

“And here I was thinking you were offering to give me my first real taste of seer.” Watching me stare at him, Nick smiled. “Trust me, I’m not about to turn down such a generous offer. I hear drinking one of you is like goddamned liquid sex.” His eyes flickered over me, his lips lifting in a faint smirk. “Is that true, Miriam? I admit, I’m fucking dying to try it.”

“Nick, you need to listen to me. Solonik––”

“I suppose your husband’s really the one I should ask.” Nick’s voice grew more melodious, still Nick’s but so different I stared at him. “Since I’ve been blood-sharing, I’ve seen him… your husband, I mean, enjoying himself with some of my brothers and sisters. The memories are vivid, doc. Really fucking vivid. Fucking being the operative term.”

Nick’s eyes studied mine through the dark.

“I get it now, doc. I get why you wanted him. I hope you don’t mind my saying, I got pretty turned on, watching that.”

Feeling a different kind of sickness rise to my gut, I shook my head.

“Nick, you need to listen to me. You’re not safe. None of you are safe here. You need to tell Brick to pull your people out––”

“I appreciate your concern. I really do.” Nick gripped the metal banister, that smile still teasing his lips. “And of course I’ll be happy to pass on any message you’d like… to brother Brick or whoever else. I’m still going to take you coming to me as an invitation though, doc.”

He glided a bare inch closer.

“…I hope your husband doesn’t mind. I’d be happy to do a threesome, but somehow I doubt he’d be into it.”

He started to move towards me again and I raised the gun.

I did it without thought, aiming it at his chest.

Gripping the handle, I didn’t think about the next thing I did, either.

I squeezed the trigger.

Before I could complete the motion, though, Nick moved––so fast my eyes didn’t track the motion at all. The gun just left my numb fingers. I felt it go, realized Nick had knocked it out of my hand as easily as a human swats a fly.

I heard the gun hit and clatter to the pavement below.

“Miri!” Black shouted up. “Is that you?”

I reached down for the gun on my other hip. Before I’d gotten a grip, Nick grabbed me around the arms and back, pinning my arms to my sides, pinning my chest to his. He trapped the rifle strapped around my back, pinning my arms, my hands.

“BLACK!” I gasped. “BLACK! I’M UP HERE!”

Nick chuckled, his arms like steel bands. “Yeah. Call him up here. Maybe I’ll get that threesome I was asking for, after all––”

“Nick, goddamn it,” I snapped. “I’m trying to fucking help you!”

“A little late for that, doc.”

For the first time, real anger touched his voice.

Somehow, that anger sounded more like the Nick I knew than anything else I’d heard from him. It silenced me briefly, causing me to stare up at him.

His expression didn’t move.

When the smile returned lazily to his lips, my own anger rose in a hot flush.

“Goddamn it! You need to fucking listen to me, Nick!” I snapped. “Solonik is the seer from Bangkok. He’s the one who took me. Remember? He nearly killed me there. He nearly killed both of us, and he’s here for you now. Are you hearing me at all?”

If Nick reacted to my words, I didn’t see it.

His features were close to me now, so close my heart hammered in my chest as I looked up at him, staring at the faint reflections of light in those crystal eyes. I saw him looking at my mouth, his face only an inch or two from mine.

I was about to try speaking to him again when he lowered his head. Before I could make a sound, before I could comprehend what he was doing, he pressed the length of his body into mine and sank his fangs into my throat.

I screamed.

* * *

MY SCREAM DIED before I’d finished taking my first breath.

I felt the venom hit my blood, and my mind lost cohesion, breaking apart like a pebble tossed on the surface of a still lake.

Nick’s arms cinched around me tighter, and I felt a rush of pleasure off him that made me gasp, even as he injected more venom into my blood.

I heard him drinking then, heard him let out a low growl, sucking in a breath without letting go of where he held me. His lips and tongue caressed my skin as he let out a softer sound, right before he wrapped his arm around me tighter, pressing his cock between my legs. Leaning me up against the window by the fire escape, he sank his fangs deeper…

My head rolled back.

I let out a gasp, my knees seeming to lose their ability to keep me upright.

His fingers clenched in my hair.

I felt Nick’s mind swim into mine, not like a seer’s, not even like how I remembered it happening with the vampires at Ship Rock. Instead, this evoked how I’d seen Nick move––a dark, liquid presence that surrounded me silently, before I even knew what was happening. I struggled against his arms when I felt him moving deeper into my mind, but I felt like a rabbit kicking in a wire snare.

Nick paused long enough to raise his head.

He kissed my mouth before my mind registered the change, then he was sucking on my tongue, nipping it with his fangs as he deepened the kiss, leaning his weight on me against the window sill. It shocked me. Not just that he kissed me, but the kiss itself. It shocked me like our first kiss shocked me, the one in my old apartment in the Richmond.

That night in my apartment, nothing went like I expected.

Nick hadn’t kissed how I’d expected.

He’d kissed so much better than I’d expected.

Nick let out a low growl, pressing me deeper into the window, kissing me again.

Images flickered through his mind––of that night, of nights after that, of him remembering that kiss, of him remembering my hands on him and wanting to fuck, of him jerking off and wanting to fuck me, wanting to show up at my door.

All of it hit at me in a guilty rush, even as pain slammed into my gut.

He watched me remember, remembering with me. I felt it turning him on, even as he gripped my hair, kissing me again. I let out an involuntary sound and he gripped me tighter, raising his head to stare down at my face.

Studying my eyes briefly, he smiled.

His fingers brushed the hair out of my eyes, right before he lowered his mouth back to my throat. I practically heard his fangs extending––

When a voice exploded out of the dark behind us.

“Let go of her,” it growled. “Now.”

Nick froze, his arms still wrapped around my back.

Without releasing me, he turned his head, and I followed his eyes back over his shoulder.

Black stood there.

His appearance shocked me, and not only because I hadn’t felt him at all. His gold eyes shone brighter than usual, not quite glowing but right at the edge. He was breathing hard, his face holding so much fury it looked like a mask.

That’s when I saw the sword notched up against Nick’s throat.

“Let go of her.” Black’s voice dropped to a thicker growl, a menacing, animal-like snarl from deep in his chest. “I’ll fucking kill you Nick. Don’t think I won’t.”

Nick released me slowly, smiling over his shoulder at Black.

“No need to be greedy, Quentin,” he said. “I just wanted a taste.”

“Back away from her. Right now.”

Nick eased around slowly, turning so that the sword followed his throat. Then he was facing Black, stepping closer to him, away from me.

“This must be a relief for you, Black,” Nick said. “Me being dead and all.”

Unlike me, Black was unmoved by Nick’s words.

“Sell that shit somewhere else, Naoko,” Black growled. “Seems to me you’re enjoying your new circumstances quite a bit––”

“Lemonade out of lemons, as it were,” Nick smiled.

I was coming back now, even though I could feel the venom rippling through my veins. My palm went to my neck and shoulder and I winced, closing my eyes against the shock of pain when I felt the open wound there.

“Black,” I said, my voice breathless. “Be careful. Be really fucking careful.”

“Back up, Miri,” Black said, his eyes never leaving Nick. “Towards Jem. Towards the ladder.”

I looked to my right, and saw Jem standing there, in a combat crouch. His eyes never left Nick and Black, but he held out a hand to me, motioning for me to come closer.

“Do as he says, Miri.”

I edged sideways, still fighting to catch my breath, still fighting the venom vibrating my lungs, my skin, my muscles. It made my limbs shake, like a double dose of adrenaline mixed with some kind of tranquilizer.

Something about the effects made it difficult to stay in my body. I felt like I was floating, like some part of me was more in the Barrier than down here, on Earth. I tried to ground myself, to pull myself back down, but I couldn’t quite do it. I struggled to even walk in a straight line.

It felt less like being drunk and more like being really sick with a fever.

I gripped the rifle still slung around my back, holding the window for balance as I edged closer to Jem.

I’d nearly reached him when another voice rose in my mind.

Ilya… is that you?

I stopped, gripping the brick wall.

Another presence swam over me like a bad dream, closing my eyes. It left me there, panting, my blood jerking erratically in my veins.

Darling girl… my chocolate…

I choked. My heart leapt sideways in my chest, stopping my breath.

Can it really be you? My beautiful Miriam, after all this time?

Next to me, Jem grabbed my arm, hard.

Some part of me reached for Black, but he felt far away, out of my reach.

My light reached for his––

Di'lanlente o' kitre-so’h. A hot cloud of pain plumed off Solonik’s light, hitting at me and making me jerk back. Your light has changed so much. So very, very much, ilya. Gaos…

I felt my light try to fight his off, to withdrew from him in any way it could. I couldn’t get away from him, though. It was Bangkok all over again, with him invading my light and me helpless to keep him out. This time it was the vampire venom, the construct, not my broken light, but the effects were the same.

I couldn’t keep him out.

I grew more and more desperate, but it was like fighting smoke.

I tried again to reach for Black, to find him, but I couldn’t do that either.

I was trapped there, in that amorphous, smoke-like space––between Solonik, Nick’s venom, Nick himself, Uncle Charles’ construct, probably stress, missing blood, being separated from Black. Whatever the exact cocktail affecting my mind and light, I was lost there, unable to drag myself back to my body.

Solonik kept talking to me.

My little ilya has grown up. His desire hit out at me like a physical force, cloying. Your uncle tells me things, beautiful sister. He tells me he started your training. He tells me you are clever, you are quick to learn, that your light belongs to an old soul…

His pain worsened as he felt over my light, trying to reacquaint himself with it, to feel whatever my uncle told him.

I would so very much like to talk to you, ilya, now that you are truly my sister. I have so much I would like to teach you. Things your pup husband and these traitor seers cannot teach you. Things your uncle cannot teach you––

I felt fury rise in Black’s light.

Solonik’s voice grew colder, more deadly.

I am told you took that child as your mate, ilya. I confess, I was very not happy to hear about this. I was very not happy he was allowed to tie you to him, despite him being so young. I had many angry words for your uncle about this, ilya––

I felt Jem fighting to push him out of my light.

Black’s light coiled around mine, only to be forced out again.

I felt Black’s attention split between Nick and Solonik, even as Nick turned, staring at me with those crimson eyes, his mouth curled in a frown. For the first time it hit me that my mind was still tied to his through the venom.

Nick heard Solonik too, as clearly as Jem and Black.

Maybe even more clearly.

I fought to push Solonik out, but it still felt like shoving at smoke.

Behind my eyes, I saw all of them.

Nick’s crimson-colored eyes, staring at me across the fire escape.

I saw him as I’d last seen him before, on Koh Mangaan, laughing at something Angel said as the three of us body surfed on the main beach below the swimming pools. I saw Nick floating on his back, sighing contentedly as he gazed up at the blue sky, talking about tacos and margaritas for dinner up at Black’s island restaurant.

I saw Angel’s face when we got back from Europe, then later that same night, her eyes full of tears as we sat in her and Cowboy’s apartment at California Street, drinking tequila in honor of Nick and trying to convince each other there was still some chance he was alive.

Gold irises replaced Angel’s light brown ones.

Moonlight splashed across a lean, muscular chest, Black’s eyes glowing as he lay under me in Santa Cruz, his guileless laugh as he showed me my own glowing irises, bringing my palm up to my face.

I saw Jem then, staring at Black, his handsome features blank with fear.

I felt him knowing something I didn’t, knowing what those glowing eyes really meant.

Pain rippled through me, pain I didn’t understand.

Ilya… are you still there, ilya?

I saw Solonik, his violet eyes over me.

I felt his hot skin as he sweated on me in that dank, underground room in Bangkok, a room that smelled of him and me and pad thai and stale beer. I remembered him telling me he’d take me to Russia with him, that I’d never see Black again––

Ilya. His voice softened, pulling on me. Ilya, it’s time to come home. Your family misses you, ilya. Do not let that pup tell you who you are. Do not let him confuse you––

Tears came to my eyes.

Sudden, violent, they ran down my cheeks, accompanied by a pain in my chest that was blinding. I could feel them pulling on me––Charles, Solonik, faces of seers I didn’t know, who I’d never seen before.

My father.

That pain grew debilitating.

I felt all the years I’d been alone. All the time I’d spent alone, waiting for someone to come back for me, to give a shit. All of those years after Zoe died, I waited there, patiently, thinking one day my family would come back, that my father’s brothers would come back, that my mom’s sisters and brothers and cousins would come back.

But they didn’t come back.

They left me alone, and after the war, I made a new family.

Nick and Angel were that family.

Then Black came, and he was that family too.

The pain in my chest got so bad I couldn’t breathe.

I remembered my father in that pain. I felt Black in it. I felt Black, Angel… Nick… my mother… Zoe. I felt my sister Zoe so strongly it felt like she was standing right in front of me. I felt my grandparents, my cousins, Uncle Charles, my mother’s aunts. I saw all of their faces around me, and the pain in my chest nearly made me pass out. It was like the human side of me grappled with the seer side, fighting for control.

I was neither thing. I was both.

I was something else.

I was the orca, leaping from the water under three shining stars.

There was a hard flash of light.

Then, for a long-feeling span of time…

There was nothing at all.

* * *

I OPENED MY eyes.

Faces hung over me.

They were so close, I flinched back, hitting my head into something hard and wincing in pain. For a long-feeling few seconds, I could only squint up at them, blinking through that pain, trying to make sense of the features that took shape in the shadows.

I saw them arguing before I could hear them.

I saw faces contort as their mouths moved, as brows furrowed, as they frowned and glared at one another. Their fear hit at my light––fear, anger, worry. They argued back and forth, trying to deal with their emotions.

My light recognized them before my mind fully caught up.

I felt lights all around me I knew, and somehow that calmed me.

Somehow, it allowed me to take my first real breath.

Once I did, the sound came back on.

“Doc! Hey, look! Black! Her eyes! Her eyes are open!” A female voice, so familiar. “Black, shut up and look! She’s awake!”

Angel.

Angel was here.

She gripped my arm through the dark shirt I wore, exuding her own particular frequency of light. She smiled down at me, worry and relief shining in her light brown eyes.

“Miri, hey. You okay?”

I blinked, once. I blinked again.

When I opened my eyes next, Black was there. His light wrapped into mine––or maybe I just grew aware of it again. Either way, it enveloped me like a physical force, pulling me into him with an insistence that caught in my throat, making my chest hurt. Despite the charge I felt behind it, I relaxed into that pull, feeling a relief beyond words.

Worry plumed off him as he stared down at me.

His fingers touched my cheek and forehead, stroking the hair out of my eyes, stroking the side of my face, stroking my jaw.

Miri, he ventured softly. Miriam, honey… ilya. Are you okay?

I nodded, opening my eyes as I looked up at him.

It was strange how that one word could sound so different coming from him.

More relief washed over me as I studied his gold irises.

I love you, I told him. I reached up, caressing his jaw, then his neck, my fingers soft, almost tentative. I watched his eyes react, stroking his throat. I love you, Quentin. Only you. I want to stay with you. Promise me.

Black went totally still, looking down at me.

Then, slowly, his eyes filled with tears, shocking me with their brightness, even as I felt a plume of near-aggression leave his light, mixed with a heat that closed my eyes. When I opened them again, he nodded, leaning down to kiss my face, then my mouth.

You’re not going anywhere, ilya, he sent, gruff. You run off into a nest of goddamned vampires like that again, and you’re getting a public spanking, though.

I nodded, again feeling that rush of relief.

Somehow, just hearing him say I didn’t have to go to Charles, I felt calmer.

I looked around at the rest of the faces then, and saw them watching us, even as they gave me and Black space, their eyes and light cautious as they looked between us.

My eyes returned to him, meeting his gold eyes.

What happened, Quentin? Did you do something with your light?

I felt him react to me using his first name a second time, even as his light seemed to envelop me more. Moving closer to me in a crouch, he wiped his face with one hand, his gold eyes never leaving mine. His fingers continued caressing my jaw and neck as he looked down at me. A surge of possessiveness left his light, mixed with a wave of affection that bordered on aggression, like being squeezed in a bear hug.

Then I saw those eyes flicker towards Jem, who I realized was one of the other faces hanging over me.

It occurred to me only then that other seers probably heard what I’d said to Black.

Black turned, staring down at me.

“Fuck them,” he said, gruff. “Fuck everyone, Miri. And no, ilya. I didn’t do anything with my light.”

Rubbing my shoulder and neck with his fingers, he glanced at Jem a second time.

“I wanted to,” he said, a faint scowl on his lips. “The others thought it was a bad idea. They told me not to do it, not with Solonik watching.”

I felt worry leave his light, even as his eyes glanced up, looking at something overhead. I realized he was looking at the buildings, scanning the rooftops with his eyes and light.

We need to get out of here, ilya, he sent, his thoughts a mutter. We need to get off the street. Can you get up? Or do you want me to carry you?

What about Nick? I sent, remembering. Where’s Nick? Did Solonik––

Black shook his head.

Nick’s fine, doc. Brick and Dorian showed up, not long after you collapsed. They took Nick with them. They said they’d leave the area, and I’m pretty sure they meant it. Brick did, anyway. Scowling, Black stroked my hair, tugging me closer with his light. Brick apologized for not finding us sooner… and for Nick biting you. Like that fucking matters.

He studied my face, his eyes apologetic, worried.

Brick said he has a lot of his people here, Miri, Black added. He said to thank you for trying to warn them, but that he has more than enough with him to hold his own against Solonik and whoever else. More than I’d calculated, frankly, or I never would have agreed to come down here in the first place.

Pausing at my frown, he added,

Yarli’s working with Javier’s drone pilots to try and track Solonik.

Frowning at that, I fought to get up.

Angel and Black immediately bent towards me, catching ahold of my arms on either side as I struggled to my elbows. They helped me the rest of the way up to a seated position when I gripped each of their forearms.

Once I’d regained some semblance of verticality, it hit me that I was on the sidewalk.

I glanced around at where we were, and saw a little boutique shop I recognized, one I’d been inside a few times. They sold secondhand clothes and jewelry on consignment, mostly antiques. I couldn’t remember what exact street it was on, but I knew it was one of the little side streets off 16th. It definitely wasn’t in the same alley with the fire escape.

My head throbbed. My elbows and back hurt, but mostly my head.

It felt quiet around us.

Well… not quiet exactly.

Now that I was listening, I heard shouts and screams in the distance, and sirens, but all of it felt a lot further away. From what I could see and feel, we were at least five or six blocks from any of the riots or protesters, much less any of the police.

“What the hell happened?” I started to climb to my feet, and Angel and Black each grabbed one of my arms and my waist, helping me up. Once I’d made it back to my feet, I stood between them, fighting to get my equilibrium back.

My legs and knees were still trembling.

Wincing at the pain in my head, I looked up at Black, gripping his arm for balance.

“Did something knock me out?” I said.

Black didn’t answer.

I saw Angel’s lips curl in a frown, right before she exchanged looks with Cowboy and Dex, who stood on her other side. I glanced around and saw Kiessa and A.J. standing there, along with Zairei, the seer who looked like an anime character, and Jax, who looked paler than usual, gripping his rifle in front of him in both hands.

All of them were watching me now, a mixture of worry and relief in their eyes.

Confused by what I saw and felt there, I focused back on Angel. Most of what I felt on her was puzzlement though, like she didn’t know what happened, either.

Jem glared at Black.

When Black wouldn’t return his gaze, or answer me, Jem focused his stare on me.

“The construct attacked you, Miri,” he said. “You were weak from vampire venom and being bit, and your uncle’s infiltrators saw the opening and went after you… with Solonik in the lead. We were slow to react.”

Scowling at Black a second time he added,

“Truthfully, after your conversation with your uncle, I was expecting the attack to come at your husband… not at you. Now I think he was trying to actually pull you, while your husband was occupied with Nick. In any case, they were clearly trying to take control of your light. They mostly succeeded, too,” he growled. “They locked you down damned fast… so fast, I have to assume they had the lines to you built already, likely via your uncle and Solonik himself.”

I gave Jem a flat look.

“He was connected to you before,” Jem said, unflinching. “Solonik.”

“That’s one way of wording it,” I muttered.

Jem’s jaw tightened, but his tone didn’t change.

“Your uncle tried to extract you, Miri,” he said. “Are you hearing me on that? Do you understand what that means?”

“I get the gist,” I said, wincing as I cautiously tested my legs. Angel and Black moved with me, letting me get my balance again. “So?” I glanced over at Luce and Dex, who looked worried, too. “Are we ordering a bunch of Ubers? Or what?”

Cowboy burst out in a laugh.

When I glanced at him, he quirked an eyebrow, smiling.

“We’ve got cars coming, Mrs. Black,” he said, giving me a symbolic tip of the hat. The grin on his face widened. “You scared the shit out of us, by the way. Twice. Running after those bloodsuckers like a damned crazy person. Then going down like a fucking stone.”

I frowned, studying his face.

“I passed out,” I said.

Of course I passed out. I knew that. What I didn’t know was what happened before that. Still looking at Cowboy, I frowned.

“How did I get out of that? If Black didn’t do it––”

“You did something,” Angel blurted, drawing my eyes to her. “That’s what it looked like.” She glanced at Cowboy. “I mean, we’re not seers, but that’s how it looked to us.”

“Ayuh,” Cowboy agreed. “It did.”

“What did it look like?” I said.

Cowboy and Angel exchanged another look, then Cowboy sighed, resting his hands lightly on his waist.

“You went down, sister, like I said.” He made a diving motion with his hand, smacking it into his palm. “Like a rock. We all panicked, and grabbed you. Jem here…” He motioned at the green-eyed seer. “…was yelling about how they’d hacked your mind, that we had to be careful or you might attack us––”

“Then your eyes opened,” Dex said, joining in from Black’s other side. “Miri, your eyes were like flashlights. They glowed this pale gold and green color––”

“––and there was this kind of low-level boom––” Luce added.

“––or more like a feeling than a sound,” Cowboy amended. “Like the pavement got hit with some kind of sonic charge. Like a sound too low for human ears.”

“––then everything just felt different, Miri,” Angel said, frowning.

She glanced at Black, but he only motioned for her to go on, his face unmoving.

Angel looked back at me.

“They said you crashed the construct, Miri. Like you just broke it somehow. Maybe not the whole thing, but the part Solonik and your uncle were using to mess with you. It even affected the people on the street. A lot of them ran away after that… the Purity rioters, too. Black, Jem, Dex and me just grabbed you then, and carried you out of there. Brick and his people had left by then, and our team couldn’t track Solonik with the construct down––”

“Not without using you,” Black grunted, contributing to the narrative for the first time. “And there’s no way in fucking hell I was letting them do that.”

Silence fell after he spoke.

In it, I could only look around at all of them, frowning.

Finally, I turned to Black, looking between him and Jem.

“So what did I do, exactly?” I said.

Both of them frowned, almost in unison.

In different circumstances, it might have been funny.

“Do you really not know?” I said. “Or do you just not want to tell me?”

“We don’t know,” Jem said, blunt.

“Then how could you possibly know it was me who did it?” I said, puzzled.

“It was you,” Jem said.

I looked at him, frowning.

Jem glanced at Black, giving him a death look, his handsome features hardening before he returned my gaze. “…As for exactly what you did, I’d have to know more before I could speculate, Miri.”

“Know more?” I followed Jem’s eyes to Black, giving him a questioning look. “What does that mean? Know more about what, precisely?”

“About whatever the hell you and your husband actually are,” Jem growled, aiming another glare at Black.

I blinked. “What we are?”

“Yes,” Jem growled.

Looking from Black to me, he motioned towards my face, his accent growing stronger as he stared at my eyes.

“…I haven’t got a fucking clue what you are, Miriam. Either of you. And your goddamned husband isn’t talking.”

I watched Black scowl at him, resting his hands on the guns he wore on his hips, a pose that made him look strangely like a gunslinger. He’d let go of my arm, but I could feel him hovering over my light, that worry and protectiveness creating a wall around both of us.

I hadn’t even noticed the wall until that precise moment, but now I could feel it as a near-physical entity, cutting me off from the minds and lights of those around me, everyone apart from Black himself. It struck me that Black was using those lower structures in his light to separate the two of us from the wider Barrier.

Now that I’d really noticed it, I could feel Jem and the other seers trying to see us past that wall––me, in particular––and not having much luck.

I wondered if that was the real reason Jem was pissed.

If so, Black didn’t seem to give much of a shit.

Looking from my husband’s immovable face back to Jem’s angry glare, in the end, I only exhaled.

“Tacos?” I ventured, glancing around as blank eyes met my face. “There’s a really good taqueria only about a block from here. They have kick-ass chile verde.”

Silence.

Those blank faces just stared at me.

Angel stared at me along with everyone else.

Then, when I was about to ask her and Cowboy how long before our ride got there, she threw back her head, bursting out in a laugh.

26

Differences

YOU WERE KISSING him.

Black nudged me where I stood next to him on the elevator, his light still coiled into mine, pain whispering through the veins in his aleimi.

You were kissing him, doc, he sent, prodding me again. I saw you… kissing him.

I exhaled, half in humor, half in annoyance.

Leaning against the back wall of the elevator, I gripped a taco in my hand. It was my third taco. I was pretty sure I’d want a fourth, but for now my focus was on eating this one without getting it all over the elevator floor.

Fuck the elevator, he growled lightly in my mind, nudging me again with his elbow and light. That’s what servants are for. I want to talk about this kissing thing.

“Servants?” I looked up at him, snorting.

“Employees. Whatever.”

Luce glanced over her shoulder at us. Exchanging looks with me, she smiled, shaking her head. I grinned back at her, then took another bite of my taco.

You were kissing him, Black sent, nudging me again. Full tongue action. You were basically making out with him when I got up to that fire escape, doc.

I rolled my eyes. Do you really expect me to dignify that with an answer? I grunted. He didn’t kill me. I figure I’m alive… you’re alive… neither of us got taken by Solonik or dropped off a tall building. I call that a win.

You’re not even going to pretend you feel bad about that? About me having to see you with Nick? Shoving your tongue down his throat?

Still chewing my mouthful of chile verde taco, I gave him an incredulous look. Is that what your hyper-possessive weirdness is about right now? You’re really threatened by my being bitten and kissed by a damned vampire?

Not “vampire,” he sent, his mind pointed. Nick. And I seem to remember you having an issue with me putting any of my body parts near vampires, Miri.

I gave him a hard look. Don’t go there, Black.

Why the fuck not? He grunted, anger coiling off his light as he adjusted his weight against the wall, holding the brass bar in his hands. What’s the difference? Apart from me being venomed into doing it with people I hated? While you did it with Nick. Nick––a guy you made out with willingly back when he was human.

I exhaled in frustration. You and I weren’t together then, Black.

Bullshit. We were together then. And you just made out with him again. The same guy. Nick. Only I had to see it in person this time.

He’s not the same guy, I sent, exasperated. Nick is currently a vampire, Black. In case you didn’t notice.

It’s still Nick, he repeated stubbornly.

Shaking my head, and struggling to keep the braised pork and sauce in the taco wrapper, I rolled my eyes, exhaling in frustration as I took another bite of taco.

He probably only did it to get to you, anyway, I grumbled after a pause. Given what he wrote on our wall, I don’t think I’m the one Nick’s obsessing on right now, Black.

Bullshit. He couldn’t take his fucking eyes off you during that meeting.

But my mind had returned to the day before, to what we’d found when we walked into that penthouse. Remembering Kiko, remembering what Nick had written in blood on the wall of the apartment I shared with my husband, a place where Nick had come to watch movies, to eat dinner, to hang out and talk, my humor faded, along with my smile.

We’re not going back there, are we? I sent, looking up at him. Tonight.

Black’s smile had faded too.

“No,” he said aloud.

He motioned with his fingers towards the elevator controls, and I followed the gesture with my eyes. More than just the penthouse button was lit.

“Sixtieth floor,” he added. “We’re taking a different apartment until the police are done with that one. We’ll move back in once they get it cleaned up. I want to change some things. Besides the obvious––meaning new carpet, new television, new couch. I have contractors coming in tomorrow. If you don’t mind, I might redo that whole room, so maybe we could look at a few ideas tomorrow.”

I nodded.

“We’ll redo it,” I said, my voice firm. “Absolutely.”

Black nodded, but I could tell from his eyes he only half-heard me.

His mind was back there now, too.

I felt a pulse of anger leave him, mixed with disgust as he remembered what we’d seen when we entered that apartment, as it really sank in for him who’d done that to Kiko. I felt him relate that back to what he’d just been hassling me about, trying to reconcile the two things. I felt him trying to wrap his head around the idea of Nick doing that to Kiko.

Watching his face, I nudged him with my arm, sending him a pulse of warmth.

Hey.

He looked down at me, frowning.

Seeing my expression, he wrapped his arm around me, pulling me closer.

“They should have moved most of our stuff down to the apartment on 60th already,” he said, gruff. “I’ll work on beefing up security measures tomorrow. For tonight, we’ll have live guards. A lot of fucking guards.”

Exhaling, I only shook my head, not bothering to argue.

I knew it wouldn’t do any good.

Anyway, I wasn’t sure he was being all that paranoid, not anymore.

“Paranoid,” he muttered, giving me a dark look. “Gaos, Miriam. We need to come up with a counterpunch. As in now. If we can’t come to an agreement with Brick, I think we need to hit out at your uncle in the next few weeks. Before he comes at us for real. At this rate, that’s going to look a lot like starting a war. Which means I’ll need to call in a lot of favors, and not only from people here in the U.S.”

Glancing at Luce and Dex standing in front of us, knowing they’d heard Black’s words, I felt my jaw harden.

I couldn’t really argue with that either, though.

The doors pinged then, opening up on the sixtieth floor.

Dex and Luce moved out of the way, making space for us to pass. I crumpled up the wrapper from my taco as I walked out of the elevator car, knowing the two of them were heading up to the penthouse floor, and to the Black Securities offices. Dex would probably be working for at least a few more hours.

Black would probably join him, after he saw me back to our new room.

Between my pounding head, the leftover effects of the venom, and whatever the hell happened out on that street, I honestly wasn’t sure if I should join them or not.

More than anything, I wanted to go visit Kiko.

“Tomorrow, doc,” Black murmured. “And you’re not working tonight, ilya. You’re sleeping. I won’t be up there for long, either.”

Gripping my shoulder, the side that hadn’t been bitten by Nick earlier that night, he massaged the muscle there gently, steering me down the carpeted corridor to the right of the elevator doors. The actual bite had already been bandaged by Holo in the limousine on the way back. Black hassled me to go to the infirmary, too, but I’d more or less blown him off.

“Like that’s anything new,” he muttered, squeezing my shoulder in his hand.

I glanced behind us, watching the elevator door finish closing on Dex and Luce, right before the lit numbers began to rise, taking them up the last few floors.

I knew most in our team who’d gone to the Mission were in their rooms by now, including Angel and Cowboy. Some had already left for other buildings in different parts of the city. I couldn’t help feeling like none of them were safe, no matter where they were bunking for the night. My uncle had broken through the protective bubble around us, shattering my last illusions that we could protect ourselves from any of them.

I guess he was right. I really was naive.

I really didn’t think he’d come after us so hard, or so soon.

“He can’t have us allying with vampires, doc,” Black said, his voice low. “From his perspective, we provoked this, by agreeing to meet with Brick.”

“So he does have someone here,” I said, looking up at him. “With us. It’s the only way he could have gotten Solonik here so fast.”

Black shrugged, his gold eyes meeting mine.

“Was that ever in doubt, doc?”

I frowned, but didn’t answer.

I watched Black fumble in the pocket of his leather jacket, pulling out a steel-gray key card. He’d already dumped most of his weapons with Dex and Javier downstairs, but he still wore two guns in shoulder holsters, along with the two at his hips, not to mention the two swords that hung in crossed scabbards across his back and chest.

Remembering him digging that blade into Nick’s throat, I swallowed.

He hadn’t killed Nick.

He could have, but he didn’t.

I knew he’d probably done that for me.

I also knew it might be the last free pass Nick got, and not only from Black.

“Don’t think about that now, doc,” Black said, his voice a low rumble in his throat.

Giving me a bare glance and a frown, he swung the door inwards, motioning for me to walk in ahead of him. I walked across a pale green carpet, entering a long, rectangular apartment with rust-colored leather couches and chairs, and a white marble kitchen. The wooden cabinets were the same rust color as the living room set.

The view was of the opposite side of the building as Black’s penthouse.

I could see the Transamerica building through these windows, and the Gold Gate Bridge, but far in the distance, barely visible where it was lit up at the edge of the skyline. The windows weren’t as tall or as long as those in Black’s penthouse, but the suite was still impressively large, with a full living room, a kitchen, dining room with an eight-person table and a corridor that led to my right, probably to the master bedroom.

It wasn’t a full reversal of Black’s place; the layout was genuinely different, without the sunken living room, and with much lower ceilings, but with the kitchen in roughly the same place, even if it was half the size of our kitchen. The dining room and living room set were laid out completely differently, and none of Black’s art or his volcanic counters were in here, but it was familiar enough that I exhaled, feeling something in my chest relax.

More than anything, I wanted a shower.

Hearing me, Black wrapped his arm around my waist, tugging me with him towards the corridor that lay on my right.

I glanced back as he writhed out of his two swords and scabbards, then his jacket as he walked, without ever fully letting go of me. He dumped the swords with a clatter, then the motorcycle jacket in the hall without slowing.

Glancing back when I heard each thing drop, I laughed.

“Don’t do that with the guns,” I scolded.

“I won’t.”

“Shoes,” I said. “What about your shoes?”

“Boots, doc,” he said, kissing the side of my face. “I’ll take them off in the bathroom.”

I nodded, letting him tug at my jacket. He wrestled it off my arms, pulling it off my shoulders as he continued to steer me forward. Removing it from my wrists and hands, he dumped the armored coat on the carpet in the corridor. I heard the clatter of 9 mm magazines that were still in my pockets as it fell.

Wrapping an arm around my front, he tugged me to the right when we reached the end of the hall, into a sage green bathroom with a white tile floor and more of those white marble countertops.

He released me as he brought me through the door, then began undressing himself for real. Ripping open the velcro fasteners on his upper holsters first, he shouldered off the guns, checking them briefly before setting guns and holsters both on the marble counter.

He reached for his belt next, his eyes on mine.

“Stop watching me and take off your fucking clothes, doc,” he said, gruff.

He unhooked his belt, staring as I tugged off my boots, dumping them one by one on the thick, sage-green rug, then pulling straps to get off my own upper holsters. Black was taking off his hip holsters by the time I got mine off, them removing his own boots, tossing them down next to mine.

By then, his pain had me feeling light-headed again, almost dizzy.

Mixed with his pain was a possessiveness I couldn’t fail to notice, that somehow hit me harder than the pain. It wasn’t just possessiveness; I felt a desire to connect in that. That pull to drag me into his light was so intense, it felt almost organic.

I was unbuckling my belt, my shirt open on my shoulders over my bra, when he caught hold of my face in his hands, pulling me to him for a kiss.

He kissed me hard, using his tongue, and I gasped a little against his mouth, feeling his reactions to my light, to faint impressions of Nick, to the cuts on my lips and tongue.

He paused the kiss long enough to let out his own gasp, then he groaned, yanking me closer to him, pressing his body against mine. I felt relief there, but also fear, a kind of dawning awareness of all the things that could have gone wrong that night.

Feeling it go through his mind, I found myself turning over the same thoughts. I thought about the guns, the vampires ripping out throats, the bombs.

We all could have died.

Nick could have killed me.

He could have killed me easily.

Why hadn’t he killed me?

“Stop thinking about Nick,” Black growled, pulling away from the kiss long enough to finish unfastening the front of his pants. His jaw hardened as he watched my face, yanking down on his pants to pull them down over his hips and legs.

I rolled my eyes at him a little, but his light was hitting at me hard enough, I felt my skin flushing, and knew my attempts to blow off his reactions were paper-thin, at best. My eyes remained on his face as I wriggled out of my own pants, stepping on the bottoms and lifting my knees to tug them off. I watched him look at me as I pulled the black shirt I wore off my shoulders. I watched his arms and chest as he tugged his own shirt over his head.

I was reaching for the fastener on my bra when Black grabbed me around the waist, yanking me towards him.

His light swam into mine, and I let out a heavier gasp, gripping his arms.

Pain rippled through me, closing my eyes, tilting my balance.

“Do I kiss as good as him, doc?” he said, gruff. “Nick?”

I saw wings when I closed my eyes.

They wrapped around me, surrounding me with heat, with light, with Black’s presence. I could barely breathe they grew so tight, even as I relaxed into them.

When I opened my eyes next, his gold eyes were glowing.

I stared into them, lost there.

On either side of us, I could almost see the wings, even with my eyes open.

My pain worsened, so badly it felt like some part of me was ripping apart. Gasping, I looked down, fighting to breathe, to catch my breath, and realized he had me up on the marble counter, his hand wrapped around my ass, his cock positioned between my legs.

“Are you going to fucking answer me?” he said, gruff. “Or do I not want to know?”

Remembering how not-well teasing had gone over in this regard in the past, I looked up, meeting his gaze seriously.

“I love the way you kiss, Black. I absolutely love it.”

“That’s not what I fucking asked.”

“It’s different,” I said, refusing to lie to him. “It’s different, okay? It’s better with you because your light makes everything better… because we’re connected and I can barely stay in my body when we kiss. Nick kisses different. I can’t compare the sheer physicality of that part, because it’s different. Kissing is better with you. Period––”

“So I need to work on my fucking kissing then,” he growled. “Got it.”

Frowning, I shook my head. “That’s not what I said.”

“If you think hearing, ‘you both kiss equally well, just differently’ from my wife is going to cut it for me, doc, you don’t know me at all.” His jaw hardened as he looked down at me. “I appreciate you being honest, though.”

His eyes closed as he entered me, angling up and into me.

He’d already extended before I could catch my breath, before I could remotely control my light.

Relief expanded over me, even as he wrapped his arms (wings?) around me, pulling his whole body closer, pulling himself around me, pulling me around him.

I opened my light, and he let out a heavy gasp, nearly a groan.

I don’t remember either of us speaking.

I don’t remember anything once that light grew brighter.

Some part of me opened below my feet, and I felt our lights wind into one another down there, so tightly it almost hurt, even as a part of me fought to do it harder, tighter. I focused there, focused on him, even as those wings wrapped around my back down to my legs, and I felt the tail again, like I had in Santa Cruz.

I cried out when that was inside me, too.

It hit me, in some dim corner of my mind, that we still hadn’t talked about this.

We hadn’t talked about any of this––how strange things had gotten between the two of us, how weird our sex was getting, the wings, the tail, how much my light was changing, how much different it felt, even now.

“I see vortexes,” Black gasped, murmuring in my ear. “With you, Miri… I see tunnels of light. I see…”

He gasped as that pain in him worsened, causing us to wrap around and into one another tighter. His eyes closed and I felt him searching for words, for some way to show me.

“I see other worlds,” he said, his fingers tightening in my hair. “I see other worlds, Miri… tunnels of light…”

He was holding my face and hair in his hands.

It wouldn’t have been strange.

It wouldn’t have been strange at all––

––but other parts of him gripped my ass and back.

Other parts of him wound around my legs and arms, yanking me up against him, pulling him deeper into me. I felt him fucking me in my ass and cunt, those other parts of him yanking my legs wider apart so he could go deeper, gripping my hips and the backs of my knees to hold himself further inside me. I groaned against his neck, going weak in his arms when he crushed me against him, and some part of me pulled on him for more, demanded more.

I murmured against his mouth when he kissed me, even as I felt teeth sink into my neck, on the opposite side from where Nick bit me earlier.

I opened more when my pain worsened and he leaned his weight, slamming me up against the mirror near the sink. I heard the glass crack as he fucked me harder, until we were half-lying on the counter and he was groaning, those multi-colored wings wrapping around me tighter, until they were all I could see.

The pain got so bad, I couldn’t make a sound.

I couldn’t even tell if it was my pain or his. I was lost in him somehow, just––lost. Worse than that maybe, I didn’t care.

I didn’t fucking care at all.

I just wanted him to do whatever he was doing harder, to obliterate both of us with it if he could.

At some point, we had to talk about this.

At some point, we had to stop pretending it wasn’t happening.

For now, I could feel neither of us wanting to have that conversation. I felt our reluctance to do anything that might force us to look at it, much less stop doing it.

I knew it had something to do with whatever bothered Jem about Black’s eyes.

I knew it had something to do with what none of the seers on our team wanted Charles to know about Black, what Black didn’t want anyone apart from him to know about me.

Even now, Jem was probably trying to limit the number of seers on our team with that information. I’d heard him and Black arguing in the Barrier about that very thing while we rode back to California Street in the limousine.

Mostly Jem did the arguing, while Black sidestepped him or just told him no.

Jem wanted to erase Cowboy and Angel.

He wanted to erase every human on our team who might have seen Black’s eyes glow, or my eyes glow, or who might suspect Black was something other than a regular seer. He also wanted to erase the seers they didn’t know well enough to trust yet.

Black said no.

When Jem pushed, Black said no again, and told Jem to leave the minds of “his” goddamned humans alone… and the minds of his seers, for that matter.

When Jem tried to get him to talk about his glowing irises, Black said no again, and told him to mind his own fucking business.

I knew Black was dead serious in his threats, particularly when it came to messing with the minds of any of his human employees.

I loved him for that.

I also loved that it was a conversation we’d never had to have.

For all of Black’s apparent callousness and quirks, for all of his hyper-pragmatism that Nick and others used to speculate verged on sociopathy, Black’s ethical and moral lines in the sand were a lot firmer than those I’d observed on the majority of seers.

As much as I’d seen Black screw with the minds of humans outside his inner circle, I’d never seen him use his light to so much as calm someone down who worked directly for him. He was way more heavy-handed with other seers, including me.

In stark contrast, I couldn’t help but notice how the seers from Old Earth talked about, thought about, and treated humans, as compared to seers. The difference was subtle most of the time, but it got a lot less subtle when security, military, and intelligence issues were at stake.

Black made it crystal clear that the rules were different in his world, at least for the humans he knew personally. I’d heard him tell seers that if they wanted to screw with human minds, they could damned well go work for Charles. He’d more or less threatened all of them in different ways that if he caught them using their light against any human in his employ, they were out––and out for good.

As far as I knew, none of them had broken that rule, even though they’d argued with him over the necessity of breaking it.

I knew Jem was only a fraction of our current problem, though.

I’d seen the looks on all of their faces when Black’s irises glowed.

I knew we should be taking more precautions to keep Charles from finding out about Black being different, and to find out what Charles already knew about both of us. I knew it was reckless to just blow it off, especially if those differences would be as big of a deal to Charles as Jem seemed to think.

The problem was––a bigger, far-less-logical part of me just didn’t care.

That part of me just wanted everyone to leave me and Black alone.

More and more, when Black and I were together, I didn’t much care about anything apart from the two of us. Even knowing how dangerous that was, I couldn’t seem to make myself want to think about it, or try to push Black to talk to me about what it all meant.

I could feel Black’s reluctance, too.

I could feel that part of both of us that was afraid to even ask the question.

27

Aftershocks

“IS HE COMING up here?” Jem growled. “Or should we just go ahead without him?”

Angel frowned, exchanging looks with Cowboy before glancing at the green-eyed seer. She noted the scowl on his face as he stared down at the flat-screen monitor embedded in the metal table top, and found herself thinking he wasn’t really angry.

He was worried.

More than that, it struck her that he was sad, maybe even grieving.

Remembering how he’d lashed out in that meeting with Brick, she frowned, wondering exactly what was going on with him.

She was still staring at his face when Jem turned, giving her a hard look.

“Do you mind, cousin?” he said, his voice cold.

“Do I mind what?” she said, nonplussed.

“Thinking quieter,” Jem growled. “Or maybe just fucking the hell off?”

“Hey.” Cowboy looked up, sharp. His normally good-humored face hardened, losing every speck of friendliness, and reminding Angel he’d been in a federal penitentiary when Black found him, and not for shoplifting. “Watch your fucking mouth… cousin. You talk to her like that again, and you and me are gonna have a goddamned problem.”

Jem’s long jaw clenched.

Then, looking between Cowboy and Angel, he nodded, once.

“I apologize,” he said, his voice subdued.

After another bare pause, he gave Angel a direct look.

“You’re right,” he said, blunt. “I’m sad. I’m angry. I’m worried. I’m grieving. I’m a lot of fucking things right now. I know you don’t mean anything by it, but having you stand right there and think all of them back at me isn’t helping.”

That time, Angel felt her own face warm.

“Sorry,” she said.

He shook his head, again once, in that seer-like way.

“Not your fault,” he said.

Pointing at a door in the wall of the conference room, not the glass one back to the bullpen full of cubicles but a metal one that led to storage, he lowered his voice.

“You know if they’ve got weapons in there? Other equipment?”

Cowboy followed his pointing finger, then frowned.

“What’re you looking for?”

“A GPS tracker,” Jem said at once. “Preferably a tagger.” He held out his hands until they were about a yard apart, which only made Angel frown since she didn’t quite understand the gesture. “A rifle, if there is one. Hell, I’ll take a bow and arrow. Any kind of propulsion system would be preferable. If not, something I can inject, but that’s a last resort.”

Cowboy frowned, glancing at Angel.

She folded her arms, quirking an eyebrow back at him.

Cowboy wasn’t the type to ask questions though, not without good reason.

“He’s got an RFID chipper in there,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand. He made a gun out of his forefinger and thumb. “More like a nail gun though, not exactly a rifle. I don’t know about any propulsion system for that kind of thing, but knowing Black, he might have something like that back there, too. If he doesn’t, you might be able to rig something up, or ask the lab folks to do it, depending on how soon you need it.”

“Just show me what you have,” Jem said.

Angel and Cowboy just looked at him.

Jem seemed to feel their stares.

Glancing at Angel, then back to Cowboy, he frowned, then took a deep breath, seemingly with an effort.

“…If you don’t mind,” he added, his voice subdued.

Cowboy shook his head, but didn’t hide the puzzled frown that came to his lips.

“It’s no trouble, brother,” he said. “Come with me.”

They were just starting to walk towards the metal door, when the glass door, the one leading to the bullpens at Angel’s left, opened instead.

Black strode through the opening with wet, freshly-showered hair, a black T-shirt, black dress pants, and black leather shoes. She smelled him before he even got halfway to where he stood, and nearly smiled at the scent of shampoo and soap that filled the room. He wasn’t quite scowling, but he looked preoccupied.

“All right,” he said. “I’m here.”

“Time for a parade,” Angel murmured.

Black quirked an eyebrow at her, but smiled, as if in spite of himself.

He looked at Jem and Cowboy then, who’d been part of the way to the metal door. Apparently deciding to not ask whatever that was about, Black clicked under his breath, then looked back at Angel, his strangely perfect lips flattening into a determined look.

“Get Dex in here, would you? And whoever else from the main team who’s still up here. We should talk. Then I want everyone who’s not specifically on-shift to go to bed.” His lips curled in the faintest of scowls. “I have a feeling we’re going to need the sleep.”

“What’s the topic?” Jem said, walking back to Angel’s side of the table and focusing his pale green eyes on Black. “Or are we allowed to know that?”

Black aimed his gold eyes at the older seer.

“You’re going to stow that shit now, brother,” Black growled. “I don’t know what the fuck kind of command structure you’re used to, but I get tired of being second-guessed, fast.” Pausing at Jem’s silence, he added, “I want to talk about the vampires. And about Nick. There’s not much we can do to influence Charles, not directly anyway, but we need to talk about whether it still makes sense to go for an alliance… and what kinds of terms we should ask for.”

Jem’s eyes grew puzzled.

He glanced at Angel, then at Cowboy, then back at Black.

“For example?” he said.

Angel couldn’t help noticing Jem’s voice was considerably more deferential that time.

Black exhaled, clearly noticing it, too. Combing his fingers through his damp hair, he exhaled again, making a vague, graceful gesture with one hand.

“Like, should we stipulate Nick can’t be anywhere near this,” Black grunted. “Do we try to find ways to make it safe for our people to be around them… and where do we draw the fucking line, before they can cross it.”

Scowling a little, Black leaned his palms on the table.

His gaze turned inward as he shook his head.

“I don’t want to ally with the fuckers at all,” he growled. “I know Miri isn’t crazy about the idea, either. But truthfully, we don’t have a lot of choice.”

Glancing at Angel, he gave her a once-over before scowling harder.

Angel studied his face, folding her arms.

“Are you thinking about killing Nick?” she said, pointed. “Taking away their leverage?”

Black exhaled in open exasperation that time.

“Of course I’m thinking about killing Nick,” he growled. “For a lot of fucking reasons. And not only because him continuing to be alive, and a vampire, poses a serious fucking danger to me and my wife.” Straightening up from the table, he met Angel’s scowl defiantly, his gold eyes unflinching as they met hers. “Jesus, Angel. Do you really want to see Nick live like this? Even apart from what he did to Kiko… and what he tried to do to Miri… do you think the old Nick would have wanted this?”

“We don’t know what he’ll even be yet,” Jem said, his voice warning. “Unless you think they’re lying, the vampires said he’ll change. They said he’ll become different once his emotions come back.”

Black gave him an openly skeptical look. “Because all the other vampires we’ve encountered are such sweet, fluffy bunnies?”

Jem’s expression hardened. “Are you being serious right now? You’re seriously thinking about killing him? Behind your wife’s back?”

“Not behind her back,” Black growled. “Jesus fucking christ… I want to discuss it. I want to bring whatever we discuss to her, assuming the rest of us can come to some kind of agreement. I’d rather give her a purely logic-based argument to assess, since she can’t be expected to look at this objectively.”

“And you can?” Angel muttered, biting her lip.

Without looking away from Jem, Black jerked his head in Angel’s direction. “Do you really think, if I was trying to pull something behind my wife’s back, I’d do it with her goddamned best friend in the room?”

“Her best friend who is human,” Jem said coldly, folding his arms.

Black grunted humorlessly, shaking his head.

He didn’t bother to answer the other’s implied accusation.

He only looked at Angel. “You open to talking about this at least, Ange?”

“Talking about it?” Angel grunted, folding her arms. “Sure. I’ll talk about whatever you want, Black. I should tell you though, I’m with Jem on this. I don’t think we should do anything with Nick until we have some idea of what he’ll be like when he gets through this ‘newborn’ thing or whatever.”

Black’s frown deepened, but he only nodded.

“Why wouldn’t you want to wait for that?” Cowboy said, when Black didn’t speak. “He could be an ally for us, not only Brick. Isn’t it worth putting any action against him on hold, until we find that out?”

“For how long?” Black gave him a hard look. “Months? Years? We may not have that long, brother.”

“There’s the Brick issue, too,” Angel reminded him. “Who takes Brick’s place if he dies? And what makes you think that vampire would work with you in the first place, versus trying to exterminate every seer he encounters?” She paused, then made her voice pointed. “What if it’s Dorian, Black? Dorian… after you killed his vampire king and bff?”

Black shook his head, once. “Any plan that takes out Brick would have to take out Dorian, too.”

When they all just stood there, staring at him, Black’s frown returned.

“Well?” he grunted. “Are we having this conversation now? The four of us? Just so we can have it again with everyone else? Or do you want to call the people I fucking asked you to call so we can hash it out for real?”

Angel rolled her eyes, but yanked her phone out of her back pocket, where she’d shoved it. Cowboy waved her off, pointing to where he already had his phone against his ear.

“Dex is rounding people up now,” he told her, his voice quiet.

Angel nodded, then glanced at Black. “Pissy, pissy,” she muttered under her breath. “I thought getting laid would calm you down.”

Black glared at her for real. “Not when there are at least two people currently hunting my wife. Both of them fucking psychopaths… with supernatural powers. One of whom she’s still got a damned soft spot for and won’t shoot.”

“Where is she?” Jem said. “Your wife?”

Black’s eyes jerked to him.

“Your wife,” Jem repeated, once Black was looking at him. “Miriam. Where is she right now? Why isn’t she part of this?”

“She’s fucking asleep,” Black growled. “I hope she is, anyway––”

“Alone?”

Black gave him an even harder look.

After a pause, he clicked at the green-eyed seer, but answered in a flat voice.

“I’ve got Wendall, Cross and Avers on the door,” he said. “They’ve got swords, tranq guns loaded with those anti-vamp drugs, and assault rifles. The suite’s got motion detectors on the windows, the balcony and the front door. I’ve got that whole floor restricted, and security is covering the elevators downstairs.”

Folding his arms, he added,

“I also asked Yarli to put at least four seers on her, and on her guard detail. There are cameras in every room but the bathroom and the bedroom, and I’ll probably install them in both places tomorrow.” His voice dropped to a growl as he glared at Jem. “You and the rest of the depraved assholes on my security detail will just have to deal with watching me fuck my wife.”

Jem nodded.

Angel saw the seer’s expression visibly relax.

Cowboy set down his phone. “Dex is on his way. He’s bringing Luce, A.J., Javier, Kiessa, Zairei, Yarli, Manny, Frank, Easton, Lawless, Lex, Michelle. A few others, too.”

“Hasn’t anyone gone to fucking bed yet?” Black grumbled.

“You want him to thin the list?” Cowboy offered. “I could call him back.”

“No.” Black shook his head, exhaling. “If they’re here, they might as well get their say. If I’m going to get a bunch of damned people yelling at me and telling me I’m a monster, I’d rather get it over with all at once––”

“You really want to kill Nick?” Angel blurted.

The reality of his words was sinking in now, even as she stared at his handsome face.

When he didn’t look over, or answer, she felt her throat tighten.

“You know Miri will never forgive you, if you do that,” she said. “Ganging up on her with a bunch of her friends isn’t really going to help with that.”

Black grunted, but she saw a flicker of pain cross his expression.

It was there and then gone.

He still didn’t look at her.

“But you will?” he said, gruff. “Forgive me?”

“I didn’t say that,” Angel said, sharper. “But I’m not married to you. I didn’t figure my opinion would hold as much sway.”

Black didn’t answer, but again she saw that tightness pass over his features.

After a longer pause, he only shrugged.

“Come up with a better idea,” he said, motioning gracefully as he stared sightlessly at the frosted glass. “Give me some realistic options, Ange. First one I hear that doesn’t sound like wishful thinking bullshit, and Nick comes off the table.”

He turned his head, giving her a hard look.

“But telling me you ‘don’t think’ Nick will kill my wife if we let him roam free––given what he did to Kiko, and likely would have done to Miri if we hadn’t gotten there when we did––probably isn’t going to be enough to sway me, Ange.”

Frowning, Angel exchanged looks with Cowboy.

Cowboy folded his arms, frowning back.

Then he turned, his gray eyes holding a harder scrutiny as he studied Black’s face.

Before Angel could think of anything more to say, the glass door at the end of the room opened, and Dex walked in, trailed by all of the people Cowboy listed earlier, along with at least five more from Black’s human team, and at least three additional seers from Yarli’s infiltration group. Angel watched them file into the room, noting that most watched Black’s face even as they looked for a chair around the brushed steel table.

It hit her again that they were really doing this.

They were really having a meeting about whether to kill Nick Tanaka.

And Miri wasn’t even here to be a part of it.

She was about to open her mouth, to try one more time to reach Black before he opened the floor, to maybe convince him to wait for Miri to have this conversation––

When the floor under her feet trembled.

She reached out, grabbing hold of Cowboy, letting out a gasp when it stopped, when everyone in the room fell silent, looking around at the frosted glass walls. The monitor embedded in the table top continued to play, showing police in riot gear getting pummeled by flaming bottles somewhere off Van Ness in the Mission District.

Angel opened her mouth––

When the floor under her feet jerked again, harder that time.

It threw her into Cowboy, who caught her around the waist, tugging her to him and bringing her low, down by the table.

Black fell to a crouch next to them, along with Jem, whose knees bent a split second after Black’s. Others in their group stood still and dropped, most of them clutching and huddling around the sides of the table as they looked up at the swaying light fixtures.

No one spoke as the earth continued to shake.

* * *

THE BED UNDER me rumbled.

I felt it shake, a vibration so fast and hard, it seemed to go through my bones, like it was trying to detach them from my flesh.

My heart started pounding harder, faster.

I couldn’t open my eyes, though.

My mind fought with what was happening, trying to categorize it in some way.

Earthquake. Night terrors. Sleep paralysis. Bad dream. Earthquake.

Earthquake.

I fought to open my eyes.

Light filled the spaces behind my lids, so much light I got confused, until I thought I’d actually opened them. A sick, nauseating lurch closed my throat and chest as I tried to move, to sit up, to throw my legs over the side of the bed––

Everything went dark.

* * *

THE SHAKING GREW so violent, Angel cried out, gripping Cowboy’s arm in her fingers. He held her around the back and shoulders, and they knelt there, half under the table, sandwiched between Black and Jem on one side, Manny and Yarli on the other.

When the floor didn’t stop rippling under her knees, she started to wonder if they should leave, try to get out of the building.

But they always said not to do that. The earthquake advisories said not to leave, no matter what kind of dwelling you were in––definitely not a steel and glass monstrosity like Black’s building, which stood in the middle of the financial district of downtown San Francisco.

This thing had to be up to code.

Even so, she gasped a little, hearing things fall in the other room, hearing glass break, hearing people yell out to one another on the other side of the frosted glass walls.

She watched the walls themselves, knowing she should turn her face away when she saw the surfaces ripple under the movement of the earth.

Then… slowly…

The shaking began to subside.

Angel knelt there, panting, as the rumbling grew further away.

The building continued to sway gently around her, maybe because of casters under the earth, like they put some of these bigger buildings on, maybe from aftershock or her own mind playing tricks on her.

The ground felt mostly solid again, though.

Black was the first to climb back to his feet.

Using the steel table to pull himself up, he walked around Jem, bending over the table and tracing a code out of light on the touch-screen built into the steel surface.

Angel didn’t realize what he was doing until he spoke.

“Avers?” Black didn’t wait for a response. “Is she all right?”

“Cross is inside now, sir,” a female voice answered. “Wendell’s out here with me. We didn’t hear anything from her room, and the keycard wasn’t working when the worst of the shaking was happening…”

Angel saw Black’s jaw clench.

No doubt he was filing away the access card thing for another day.

“I’ll stay on the line until he comes back,” Black said. “Unless you can patch me through to him right now––”

A male voice rose, unintelligible as it shouted something on the other end.

Then the female voice returned to the line.

“Sir?” Her voice lost its professional veneer, sounding panicked. “Sir, you’d better get down here. Right now. She’s gone, sir. Your wife. She’s just… gone.”

Fear trembled her voice.

“I can’t explain it, sir. We were here the whole time––”

But Black wasn’t listening to her anymore.

He wasn’t even by the monitor, but was already heading for the door.

His face had hardened into a mask.

Angel jerked to her feet to follow him, when he stopped abruptly, his hand on the door’s handle. He turned to face all of them.

“One of you have a gun for me? I left mine in the room.”

Cowboy stepped forward, along with Dex. Angel heard the scrape of leather and vinyl as at least six more guns were unholstered, as seers and humans stepped towards him, offering him their weapons without a word. Glancing over all of them with a single flicker of his gold eyes, he took a Glock from Dex, meeting his gaze.

“Run a sweep. Send as many teams as you need. The whole goddamned building.”

Dex was already nodding. “On it, boss. Just go down there. We’ve got this.”

Black looked at Cowboy, then at Angel.

“You two with me,” he said.

He didn’t wait for them to respond.

He didn’t even wait for them to nod.

He was already out the door, heading for the elevators.

Angel glanced at Cowboy, even as her boyfriend broke into a loping jog to follow him.

28

Conflicted

NAOKO FELT THE building start to shake.

At first, he thought it was some kind of defense system––some insanely expensive, likely experimental, possibly illegal, high-tech anti-breach protocol Black had installed in his building after he’d returned from Koh Mangaan.

Naoko froze when it started, melting into the shadow by the parked helicopter. Under his fingers, a black eagle was etched on the door of the gunmetal gray body.

He stood on the helipad, surfing the rippling tarmac, looking around in a wary, bemused kind of wonder. Even after he determined that it must be a natural phenomenon, that he was experiencing yet another of San Francisco’s famous earthquakes, he half-expected the metal door to the concrete stairs into the building to slam open.

He waited for it.

He waited for Dex and a half-dozen more of Black’s people to appear, bearing tranq guns and tasers, wearing black armor and infrared goggles.

Naoko waited, fangs extended, blood pumping erratically through his veins, as the earth shook beneath his legs, chest, feet, and arms like an angry Hawaiian god.

He stared at the only door into the main building, and waited.

No one came.

When the shaking worsened, his knees bent, bringing him closer to the ground. He balanced himself lightly, crouching on the tarmac. His fingers touched the underside of the helicopter’s fuselage, but otherwise, he didn’t move.

His eyes never left that metal door.

Eventually, the shaking slowed.

Then, even more gradually…

It stopped.

For a few seconds, Naoko remained where he was, crouched at the underside of the helicopter’s fuselage. He glanced up at the sky, noting a thin sliver of moon, half-covered by silver and black clouds. Far in the distance, he could hear voices with his vampire hearing. He heard car alarms going off, activated by the shaking deep inside the earth.

The voices he heard were excited.

Fear still lived there, but already, Naoko could hear the attempts to normalize what had just occurred.

What do you think? 6.0? That felt like a big one to me…

At least 5.8. I think higher though, depending on where the epicenter is…

Damn, the glass table broke…

Did you see the street? There’s a ton of damage down there…

Even further away, Naoko heard sharper, more violent sounds of unrest. He heard chanting, screams, threats, breaking glass, the whomp of ignited gasoline and grain alcohol.

He could feel how the earthquake quieted that unrest for those few minutes.

The Earth didn’t care about political disagreements. It rebelled against the animals living on top of it, pulling them off one another and their petty disagreements––forcing them to face their mortality, their lack of power, their lack of control.

Now, in the aftermath, that unrest would be worse.

In the end, humans weren’t so different from any other animal. They howled, baying at the moon. They snarled when uncertain or afraid.

They panicked when the ground turned liquid under their feet.

Now, they would reassert control.

Charles would nudge that along, of course. His pet dogs on the ground would act as his eyes and ears, the mind and light of the humans they controlled.

Naoko frowned, rising silently back to his feet.

He glanced around, looking for damage from the quake. The military helicopter he’d been hiding behind looked unscathed, its propellers still vibrating slightly in the aftermath of the shaking ground. The building itself looked unchanged.

Apart from a single, snaking crack along the white-painted square on the cement helipad, Naoko saw no real differences at all. The crack formed a jagged pattern through the black eagle painted on the larger white square. The symbol formed a near circle with its curved wings, marking a target for the helicopter to land.

Naoko pulled away from the silent, black and silver bird.

He began making his way to the metal door.

The earthquake could only help him now.

No matter what they were doing downstairs, an earthquake that size would prove a distraction. Also, if Naoko set off any security measures now, they might think they got triggered by the quake. If nothing else, the quake would make them slower to react.

He was halfway to the door when the building’s alarms went off.

The loud, wailing sound made him briefly freeze.

It sounded like an air raid siren.

That, or possibly the tsunami warning they tested several times a week in the Sunset and Richmond Districts, where he and Miri used to live.

He listened to the escalating, keening sound, not wincing––such things didn’t hurt him any longer; his vampire senses scaled up and down naturally, adjusting to changing volumes of light and sound without his needing to consciously will it––but he was made curious as to the cause. He wondered again if the metal door would be flung open before he could enter the building, if he should expect Black’s humans and seers to pour out, weapons raised.

No one came.

Naoko stalked forward cautiously, ready to run.

Worst case scenario, he would fling himself off the side of the building and scale back down the hard way. Hopefully not while dodging bullets, or getting hit by a tranquilizer dart and crashing to the pavement below.

He was nearly within touching distance of the door, when––

The siren cut out.

It happened so suddenly, Naoko again froze.

He stood there, listening to the silence.

When that silence persisted, he took the last step to reach the handle of the door. He’d just touched his fingers to the brushed metal surface, when––

Someone gasped.

The sound came from less than a dozen yards away.

Female.

No one had been out here before. No one shared the roof with him.

He was sure of it.

No one who breathed was out here at least––no one who would have gasped like that. No one with a heartbeat. He could hear that heartbeat even now, thudding behind the curved bones of her chest, forcing blood through her veins in violent, throbbing pulses, running it just below the skin. Hunger rose in him like a pain, making him hard even as his fangs extended enough that he felt them, razor sharp, lightly touching his lips and tongue.

Naoko didn’t think.

Well, he didn’t think beyond that, beyond what his body wanted.

He hadn’t fed enough tonight.

Given what he’d been doing all night, he hadn’t fed nearly enough.

Dropping to a combat crouch, he disappeared into the shadow by the wall, then immediately began following the cement-bricked surface towards the sounds of that heart and those breaths. He made it around the first corner and stepped off the tarmac.

His shoes landed on a light crunch of gravel.

He came to a complete stop once again.

He could see her now.

She lay on the ground near the wall, sprawled on her back, her skin pale and oh, so much of it. Her dark hair framed her face, fanning around her shoulders and head.

She was completely naked.

He blinked.

Staring at her, he doubted his eyes.

Then, in the pause before he stared at her face a second time, at those high cheekbones, full lips, those long dark eyelashes, that nearly-black hair… that pain and hunger in him keened violently higher… so high, it made him light-headed. In fractions of a second, it was louder in his mind than the air raid siren that cut out a few seconds before.

It was Miriam.

He had no idea how or why it was her.

It didn’t matter.

It was her.

He took another step towards her.

Like earlier that night, when she screamed his name, when she ran at him in the dark, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he had to restrain himself from draining her right there, the very fact of her in front of him briefly paralyzed him.

Memory once more tried to swim forward, confusing him.

With that memory came pain––a different pain than the hunger.

He stared at her, and found he was panting without air, fighting with that pain in his chest, like he had with Dorian inside that cage… like he had with Dorian so many times since then. He heard her laughing in his mind, saw her head thrown back, her eyes open, reflecting sunlight. He saw her sitting across from him at their favorite sushi restaurant in Japantown, where they went for more lunches together than he could count.

They’d gone to lunch together nearly every day for years, sometimes with Angel, sometimes not, pretty much the whole time he worked at the Northern Precinct and she had her offices across the street.

Tears came, shocking him, then confusing him.

He stared down at her, that pain crippling his chest.

When he could see again, her eyes were open.

Those giant, hazel eyes stared at him, holding more green and gold than he remembered.

Black had changed even her eyes somehow.

“Nick.” Her voice was low, frightened, almost husky.

She cleared her throat, looking around at where she lay. She had her upper body propped up on her hands now, and sat there, staring around at the gravel-covered section of roof. He saw her eyes focus past him, at the helicopter.

He saw it click where she was––where they were. He saw her look back at him, assessing his face in a single flicker of her gaze. He saw the intelligence there sharpen, that damned intelligence of hers, which always turned him on, even when it intimidated him.

“Nick, how did you get me up here?”

He only stood there, staring at her.

He saw her studying his face. He saw her seem to see something in his eyes. Before he could make sense of what it was, her own eyes filled with tears.

“Nick.” Her voice was low that time, broken. “Nick…”

He watched her fight for more words, for something to say to him.

But there was nothing to say.

She’d left him there. She and Black and the rest of them gave him to Brick.

He belonged to Brick now.

She seemed to see some of that in his face too.

“Nick, come home,” she said, soft. She wiped her face, without taking her eyes off his. “Nick come home. Stay with us. Don’t do this with Brick. Don’t go through all of this with Brick… with fucking Dorian. Do it with us. Let us help you.”

He let out a humorless laugh.

He couldn’t help it.

Her words also finally snapped him out of wherever his own mind had gone, out of that paralyzed, broken place, where Miri still maybe loved him, where he had a family and friends and it mattered what he did. He remembered Dorian’s words in his ears, his pale arms wrapped around him, and shivered.

He fought to get back that feeling, that…

Nothingness.

“Nick.” She shook her head, clearing her throat. “Nick, even Brick says you’ll change. You’ll feel differently than you do now. You’ll come back. More of you, at least.”

She stared at his eyes, and he couldn’t help but see the emotion there. He couldn’t help but see the fucking hope there.

He knew what she hoped for, though. He knew how completely fucking delusional it was. Moreover, he knew it probably wasn’t even about him.

“You don’t have to feel guilty, Miriam,” he told her.

He took a step towards her, and something about that gliding, forward momentum reminded him, clicking a different part of his mind in place. It put him back in mind of hunting. It took him out of the past, and back into the present, into the present of him. Sensation filled his mouth, ears, eyes. The sound of her blood throbbing inside him, following each expansion and contraction of her heart, each expansion and contraction of her lungs.

He grew aware of her nakedness.

Without making the decision consciously, he was staring at the rest of her, at her long, muscular legs, those fucking breasts, which he’d fantasized about more times than he could count back when he was human. With her tanned shoulders thrown back, as they were now, those breasts were displayed like she was a porn star centerfold in some eighties jerk-off magazine.

He stared at her feet, her calves, her muscular arms, her narrow waist.

He might not have it in him to kill her, not yet.

But he was definitely going to fuck her.

“Black’s going to have to learn how to share,” he said finally.

His voice came out thick, gruff… like an animal.

He no longer minded that, either. He didn’t mind anything, not anymore. His fangs were sharp against his lips. He felt the blood rising to his eyes, to his cock, to his tongue and mouth.

Within seconds, he didn’t care about much of anything.

When he looked up next, he saw Miriam’s eyes had widened. Those hazel eyes were surrounded by white, and he smiled before he knew he meant to. The hunter in him liked that look on her face. The hunter in him liked it a hell of a lot.

“Nick.” Her voice came out hard that time, warning. She held up a hand. “Nick, no. No, goddamn it. He’ll kill you. You know he will.”

“I know he’ll try,” Naoko murmured, his eyes back on her body.

He could see her breathing harder.

She was naked. She didn’t have a single weapon on her.

She didn’t even have a knife.

He heard her heart pounding in her chest.

“Nick.” She gasped, hyperventilating now, once more holding up her hand, shaking her head. “Nick… no. Don’t. Don’t, goddamn it. Don’t––”

But he could barely hear her now.

He was already moving.

* * *

HE DIDN’T HEAR them.

He didn’t hear them speak.

He didn’t hear the metal door to the downstairs open.

He didn’t hear their breaths. He didn’t hear their footsteps on the cement, or on the gravel when they walked past the edge of the white cement brick wall.

Despite his vampire hearing, his vampire sight, his ability to feel minute shifts in air and light, even when they happened outside his view––

He didn’t hear a goddamned thing.

Pleasure cascaded over him and through him as her fingers tightened on his arms. Her cunt spasmed around his cock as he fed on her, arching into her harder, feeling like he was wrapped in a hot, liquid blanket of sex, feeling her heart beat under his fingers, hearing her gasp in his ear as he angled into her again.

She liked his cock.

She liked his cock, his fingers, his mouth… the way he kissed.

He was lost there.

He was fucking lost.

The rest of the world had completely disappeared… gone away.

It wasn’t like any human he’d been inside, any vampire.

He’d never been so sated and drugged and turned on and frustrated and fucking hungry in his life. He’d never felt so much during sex. He’d never wanted to be so far inside another person, either their mind or body. He’d never been so far inside both things at the same time.

She belonged to him. She fucking belonged to him…

So no, he didn’t hear them.

He didn’t hear anything until the sound of a gunshot exploded, seemingly right in his ear, seemingly at the exact instant the bullet went through his upper chest.

They’d waited until Naoko raised himself up.

He’d waited, presumably so he wouldn’t hit Miri.

Naoko watched his own blood splatter over the front of Miri’s body, hitting her face, neck, breasts, belly. There was a silence where he heard her suck in a breath, where that was the only sound in the world as she released his arms, throwing up her forearms in an instinctive gesture of self-protection.

His body hummed with her blood.

His cock was so far in her he felt a split-second of reluctance, of regret, before his own survival instincts kicked in.

For that split-second, he contemplated taking her with him.

Even with the bullet twisting through him, slamming into bones and flesh, exiting out the front of him before mashing into a metal pancake on the cement wall, he still felt like he was on drugs, like everything about her drugged him.

He thought about her being his, really his.

He stared down at her, at her skin covered with his blood, and he thought about it even as the bullet exploded through his chest.

Both of them were so drunk on his venom he could feel her presence, even now. Not quite thoughts, not quite words, not anymore, but he felt her awareness of him, of him inside her.

He felt how good it felt for her.

He had her pinned to the gravel, his fingers fisted in her hair.

His instincts kicked in before she’d even finished that inhaled breath.

Then he rolled.

He was out of her and on his feet, running. His body and mind adjusted in milliseconds, clicking back into the mode of a hunter, his senses kicking back on even as he held up his pants, darting towards the outer wall, weaving and zig-zagging his way to the helicopter to put it between himself and Black’s gun.

The gun went off again.

Then again.

Then again.

It felt like slow motion now, although he knew Black––he knew the seer was firing without pause, without hesitation, emptying his magazine at his fleeing back in the dark without so much as a hair’s breadth pause between each squeeze of the trigger.

Naoko had zero doubt Black was firing that gun as fast as the model allowed him to fire it.

He’d just passed the helicopter when a bullet caught him in the side, jerking his body sideways, forcing him to twist in the air to keep his forward momentum. By then, he’d reached the edge of the wall. He didn’t hesitate but leapt without slowing, wind-milling his legs to go over the edge and drop out of the seer’s sight as fast as he possibly could.

He knew exactly where to jump.

He knew exactly what he was aiming for.

He knew exactly where the smooth glass top of the building changed, becoming the steel, jutting ridges of the lower part of the building’s architecture. Those ridges started at the fiftieth floor, expanding out the base of the building a good twenty feet in diameter wider than the tallest part of the building’s spire, which was made all of glass.

Falling seemed to take forever, too.

As he fell, a sharp, fire-like pain jabbed at his neck.

Nick slapped it with his hand in midair, but whatever it was, it wasn’t fatal, or even some kind of tranquilizer, like he’d feared. He wondered if he’d hit into one of Black’s insect-sized drones… but the pain was already starting to fade.

Moreover, it was nothing compared to the pain from the gunshot wounds in his chest and lower abdomen.

He didn’t have long to think to think about his injuries in any case.

He slammed into the top part of the wider rim of the building, hitting into the steel ridges like falling on the spikes of a metal fence. Exhaling air from lungs he didn’t need, he grasped at the slick surfaces with fingers slippery from his own blood, managing to slow himself down enough to wedge himself between two of the building’s ridges.

Within seconds, he was jammed between two parallel pieces of jutting metal, his back to one side, his feet to the other, like a rock-climber stuck in a narrow gully.

He gave himself one second, just hanging there.

Maybe two.

He didn’t need to breathe, but it felt like catching his breath.

It felt like he hung there, for just one breath.

Perhaps it was more like acknowledging he was alive, along with comprehending his new circumstances, and the state of his body, which hurt like fucking hell now that he was twisted into the narrow space between the two ridges. In that same bare instant, he fastened his pants, yanking them up and hooking the belt. He ignored his shirt, letting it hang open around his bare chest. He’d already chucked the jacket while he was with Miri.

That jacket, a gift from Dorian, was up there somewhere, on the gravel of the roof.

Then… the breath was over.

More gunshots went off from overhead.

Without looking up, Naoko dropped, releasing his hands and feet enough to slide between the two ridged metal walls. He fell as swiftly as he could while maintaining full control of the fall, adjusting his body as he went until he found the optimal angle to propel himself downward the fastest without letting himself just slam into the cement sidewalk.

He already knew there would be seers and humans waiting for him at the bottom of the building. No matter how fast he fell, Black would already have them down there, waiting for him, probably directly below where he was now.

He’d either have to attack them before they could take him out, or find a way back into the building before he reached the ground floor.

Even as he thought it, more gunshots went off from overhead.

They pinged against the ridged metal, one of them missing his head by inches, despite how fast he fell.

Black must have infrared.

He’d also clearly switched from a handgun to a rifle.

Naoko couldn’t know for sure if they could still see him. He doubted they could, at least right then, but he strongly suspected that wouldn’t matter to Black. He’d just aim down the ridge where Naoko disappeared, and fire until he ran out of bullets.

Moreover, Black would send drones soon, if he hadn’t already.

Black would send everything he had at him now.

At the thought, it crossed Naoko’s mind that hitting the pavement like this, with two gunshot wounds, no weapons, and no other vampires, wasn’t a good idea.

He needed to find a way back inside.

Releasing the ridged steel beams briefly at the thought, he let himself fall faster, going into a near-freefall for at least fifteen stories, mostly in an attempt to put more distance between himself and Black.

He knew where he was going now, though.

Something in the knowing calmed him, even as sirens once more exploded out of the sound system in the building behind him. He heard them wind up even louder overhead, echoing down to the street, reverberating between the tall skyscrapers.

He wondered how many people down there thought a big wave might be coming.

He never stopped counting stories as he fell.

Seconds later, he began slowing his fall.

Within a few seconds more, he brought himself to a full stop. Unlike before, he didn’t wait to gather his bearings. The windows behind him were all dark, which was a bonus, but he knew he didn’t have much time.

If he didn’t hit the ground soon, they’d start looking for him on the higher floors.

Knowing Black, he’d have spotlights cover every inch of the outer building.

Grabbing the steel ridge in front of him with both hands, he grunted, maybe more out ofs habit than necessity, pulling himself over and around the foot-thick piece of jutting metal, using only the strength of his upper body and arms. Balancing with his feet and legs once he got around the first ridge, he wedged himself between the next set of steel beams, then crawled around the next one, moving in a roughly northwestern direction around the building.

He pulled himself around to the next set of beams.

Then the next.

Then the next.

He made his way around maybe an eighth of the building that way, moving as quickly as he could, without pausing to rest, or to assess precisely where he was.

He would see it when he was close.

He traversed across six more beams the same way…

Then he did see it.

A terrace appeared four stories below him, a paler color than the surrounding black steel. Landscaped trees rippled softly in the night breeze, rimming the glass balcony and clustered in geometric patterns across the terrace itself, their small leaves making liquid patterns in the dark. Jutting out from the building, the cement landing was covered in glass-topped tables with dark red and blue umbrellas, closed now for the night, and surrounded by outdoor chairs. Potted plants rimmed the edge, below the trees, and a koi pond ran through the middle of the cement deck, decorated with a curved arch of a wooden footbridge.

Naoko didn’t wait.

Looking down, he gauged the exact distances of everything that was below him.

Then, once he had the whole layout memorized.

He dropped.

29

Protecting Miri

“OKAY,” COWBOY SAID, nodding emphatically. “I get that, brother. Loud and clear. But someone’s got to talk to him. We got a whole heap of people on the ground, and drones covering the whole outside of the building, and we still got nothing––”

“No sightings at all?” Luce muttered, her voice unnerved.

Cowboy gave her a flat stare. “Nothing. I mean nothing.”

Exhaling, he placed his hands on his hips. He glanced around them at the rooftop, looking away from where Angel was walking towards them from the metal door.

She heard him mutter, “I still can’t figure how he got Miri up here in the first place. Past all them guards. Past Black’s surveillance. It jus’ don’ add up.”

“The windows?” Luce offered. “The balcony?”

Cowboy’s frown deepened as he glanced at her. “Meybe.”

Angel found herself thinking the Louisianan didn’t buy that, though.

Cowboy aimed his stare back at the male seer with the streaked black and brown hair. “We can’t just leave ‘em up here, Jem. We need to separate them. We need someone to look at her, for fuck’s sake. She probably needs blood––”

Jem was already shaking his head.

“––someone seer,” Cowboy added pointedly. “I didn’t mean a hospital.”

Angel continued her cautious approach.

Reaching the small group, she looked from her boyfriend’s face to the green-eyed seer standing directly across from him, and who Cowboy seemed to be primarily talking to.

Dexter hovered over and behind the other three, a frown punctuating his broad face where he stood on a raised step by the cement wall. Dex unholstered his sidearm while Angel watched, checking the chamber of his gun even as he glanced over his own shoulder at someone on the ground behind them.

“I just don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jem muttered, following Dex’s gaze before he returned his stare to Cowboy. “Not right now. It’s better if we leave them alone. We can handle this.”

“Handle what?” Angel said, speaking in more of her normal tone.

Cowboy and Jem looked at her.

Cowboy looked relieved, whereas Jem frowned, as if the last thing he wanted was yet another opinion.

“Tell ‘em, darling,” Cowboy said, motioning a thumb at Jem. “Tell ‘em we can’t jus’ leave the two of them up here. It’s December for fuck’s sake.”

Jem was frowning now, though, looking Angel over with a sharper scrutiny. After a pause, he glanced at Cowboy, then back at her.

“You could talk to him,” he said, blunt, meaning Angel. “He listens to you.”

Angel blinked.

It hit her then, what they were talking about.

Once it had, she paled, stepping between the four of them, holding up a hand to part the group so she could walk past and beyond them.

She’d just assumed they were downstairs.

She’d assumed someone would have taken them out of there by now.

She assumed paramedics would have come, that the usual things would have happened in a case like this. It didn’t fully hit her until after she thought it that there was no “usual” in a case like this. Even so, she was shocked at hell at what she saw by the cement wall, about twenty yards from where her boyfriend and the others stood, talking in low voices.

Black sat on the gravel.

He was shirtless, sitting directly on the ground, his clothes in a heap around his thighs and legs. Angel blinked again, and realized it wasn’t a pile clothes in his lap. Long strands of dark hair fell down his chest, which looked pale against the backdrop of a night sky. His skin and eyes shone faintly in the lights from the helipad.

Angel could only just make out Miri’s profile in those same lights.

Her eyes were closed.

“Jesus,” she breathed.

She glared at Cowboy, then at Jem.

“You just fucking left them there?” she said.

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Cowboy said, sounding vindicated.

Angel barely heard him.

She couldn’t remember when she’d been so angry. She was actually shaking. Adrenaline ran through her limbs, making them shake, making her hands shake, her jaw clench. It wasn’t only anger, but anger came up the strongest. That, or maybe anger was just the easiest emotion to deal with, out of all of those wanting to rise.

“You fucking left them there?” she said again.

Jem frowned, about to speak, but Cowboy gave him a warning look.

“In our defense, he’s hard to approach right now,” Cowboy said, his voice subdued.

She turned, staring at him. “Yeah. So just leave them up here… to catch pneumonia in the middle of the fucking winter. In San Francisco. When both of them are probably in shock. That’s fucking genius.”

Without waiting for an answer, she began walking towards them, her boots crunching in the light coating of gravel.

She crossed the distance in what felt like seconds. She didn’t pause, didn’t wait for Black to look up, for either of them to acknowledge her presence.

She walked right up to them, her knees bending once she stood directly over them.

She looked at Black’s face, then down at Miri.

Her eyes were still closed. Her cheek lay against Black’s chest. She wore his T-shirt. His leather jacket wrapped around her body and part of her legs, which she’d drawn up to her chest where she sat in his lap. His fingers were wrapped in her hair, and he clutched her against him, a strange combination of strength and gentleness, like he was simultaneously afraid he might break her and afraid someone might try and drag her out of his arms.

“Black.”

Angel spoke soft, her voice a murmur.

“Black… hey.”

He stared towards the metal door.

She glanced down at his other hand, the one that wasn’t holding Miri against his chest. She saw it on the gravel, gripping a gun so tightly his knuckles were white. He was staring at the metal door, the one that led back down into Black Securities and Investigations.

Angel reached up cautiously.

She touched his face, trying to get him to look at her. Her fingers caressed his cheek, and drew back, realizing it was wet.

“Hey.”

She sidled closer, until she was right up against both of them. Her hands went to Miri’s back, and she rubbed her friend gently, to add her warmth to both of theirs. Black flinched when Angel first touched her, but he didn’t try to stop her, and he didn’t look over.

“Black.” Angel stroked his hair back from his face, trying to warm him too, trying to bring him back. “Black, come on. Quentin, honey. We need to get Miri off the roof. We need to get her inside. Where it’s warm.” She forced herself to smile. “You can bring the gun. We’ve got lots more guns in there. Bigger ones, too.”

Black flinched when she laid a hand on his shoulder, turning his face away.

He didn’t avoid her fingers though, and after waiting a pause, she massaged the muscle of his shoulder, her jaw hardening at how cold his skin was in the night air. It was probably thirty degrees up here. Fifteen, with wind chill.

Luckily, Miri felt warmer.

Curled up in Black’s lap, wearing most of his clothes, she might have been asleep.

Black shook his head. “She’s not asleep.”

For the first time, he looked at Angel, meeting her gaze.

Her chest clenched at the grief in his eyes.

“She’s not asleep. She’s drunk on venom.” Black’s jaw hardened so much it looked like it hurt. “Fucker pumped her so full of venom, he could have killed her with that alone.”

Angel swallowed, nodding.

Swallowing again as his gold irises grew unnaturally bright, she looked down at Miri.

“You need to bring her inside, Black,” she said, soft. “We need to get some of the medical guys to look at her. Okay?”

“He bit her all over.” Black’s voice came out low, hoarse.

Angel wondered if he was even fully aware she was there.

“…You should see her goddamned breasts.” Black gripped her tighter against him, tears running down his face. “Gaos. Angel. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to fucking kill him for this.” Black’s jaw hardened back into that painful-looking clench. “He doesn’t get to fucking live after this. I don’t care who he is.”

Biting her lip, Angel only nodded.

“I understand,” she murmured, stroking his hair out of his face.

His eyes closed.

She saw pain reach his features, just before he shook his head.

She was still watching him when tears filled his eyes a second time. He started crying for real, and she slid closer to him, wrapping her arms around him. Since Miri was still in his lap, she ended up hugging both of them, holding them to her chest. Black leaned his face against her shoulder. He let go of the gun long enough to wrap his other arm around her without letting Miriam go.

For a long-feeling moment, Angel just crouched there, her arms around both of them.

Black’s muscular arm held her tightly, his forehead pressed against her shoulder. Pain seemed to seep off his very skin. Pain, grief, a broken feeling that was somehow worse than both, that felt like Black blaming himself for all of it.

Eventually, he began pulling that part of himself back.

He took a breath, and seemed to pull his whole being back.

He pulled it back to her, to the roof, maybe even to his own body. She felt a kind of armor fall over him as it happened, along with a heat that shocked her. That heat felt nearly physical, like a furnace ignited under her feet.

Miri stirred in his arms, as if she felt it, too.

Black released Angel an instant later, wiping his face with the heel of his hand.

His jaw was hard again, but it looked different now. His features changed as Angel watched. Instead of that pain, or that broken feeling she’d struggled to breathe through, she felt rage on him now. Rage, and a harder cunning, like his mind had clicked into a different mode of operating entirely, turning him from a grieving husband into…

Well, something else.

He stared off the edge of the roof, his gold eyes like those of a predatory cat. His eyes always looked like a tiger’s eyes to her, or maybe a lion’s, but there was something different in them this time, something a lot less soft.

“I hit him,” he said, his voice reflecting that edge. “Twice.”

Angel leaned back, resting on her heels. She rested her arms on her knees, glancing down at Miri before looking back at his face.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s what Cowboy said. Jem, too.”

“I didn’t have my fucking swords. Or he’d be dead.”

Angel only nodded. There wasn’t much to say to that.

“Do they have him in custody?” Black said.

Angel shook her head. “No. He disappeared.”

Black turned, staring at her. “What?”

Angel hesitated, then glanced at Jem and Cowboy.

Both of them looked away the second she glanced their way, like they’d been staring at the three of them, and tried to hide that fact the instant they got caught.

“Yeah,” Angel said, exhaling before she looked back at Black. “Bring Miri inside, Quentin. They need your help. Nick’s gone. He might even be in the building. They have people watching on every part of the street. They’ve tapped all the CCTV cameras down there, too. There’s been no sign of him.”

Black’s expression turned to stone.

He looked down at Miri, stroking her hair absently with his hand.

His other hand found the gun on the gravel, gripping it in his fingers.

“Will you stay with her?” He looked up from Miri’s face, searching Angel’s gaze. “Please,” he said. “Will you stay with her? I could use you down there, too, but––”

Angel was already shaking her head.

“I’ll stay with her,” she said. “Of course I’ll stay with her, Black. You should go. I’ll get one of the others to help me bring her down.”

“Who?” Black said, frowning.

“I’ll call Yarli. Get her to send someone. Or have her come herself.”

After a bare pause, Black nodded. She felt his reluctance, but he was already thinking, his mind turning over what she’d said about Nick, about him disappearing.

It hit her again––this was Nick.

Nick had done this to Miri.

Nick had done this.

Thinking, she pressed her lips together, just before she wiped her own eyes.

“And anyway, you’re wrong,” she said, her voice coming out husky. She wiped her eyes again. “I wouldn’t be any good to you down there, Black. Not for this.”

Black didn’t answer.

Then again, there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could have said.

* * *

NAOKO SLID DOWN the walls, making his way through the corridor of an office suite for what looked like some kind of tech company.

He was pretty sure they didn’t have surveillance cameras in here, not unless something had changed since he’d worked for Black as a human.

Even so, he kept to the shadows anyway.

He couldn’t help being conscious of the smears of blood he left on the walls, or those that dripped off his shoes onto the light-colored carpet.

He fought back and forth between trying the stairwell again, or going for broke and using the elevators. Enough of Black’s people were going up and down via the public elevator cars now, he could probably commandeer one without anyone noticing, as long as he was fast.

He’d already switched floors since he entered the building.

He’d done it the first time to avoid a scouting team Black must have sent to check the terrace. He descended four floors via the staircase before the sounds of another team rose up the metal and cement tunnel. He ducked back inside at the next floor he found that housed a private suite of office buildings, one unlikely to be on Black’s security grid.

So far, he’d stayed away from the elevators.

Now he ran over different possibilities on how he might use them.

He didn’t like the idea of being trapped in a car, wounded, with no weapons apart from his teeth. He mulled the idea of using the shafts but not the elevator itself. He might be able to simply disable one, descend using the cables and the shaft while the car hung there, inert.

Frowning, he dismissed the idea seconds later.

They would notice a disabled elevator car a lot faster than they would notice him riding in a functioning service car, surveillance or no.

Moreover, if they managed to get the car working again before he found a way out, it could potentially be a lot more dangerous.

It made more sense to open up the doors and drop down on one of the cars being used by Black’s team.

He might even be able to disable surveillance from up there.

Making up his mind, he shifted directions on the carpeted hall, sticking to the walls as he made his way to the main bank of elevators. He knew there was a smaller cluster on the other side of the building but he decided to go for the public-facing ones, figuring again, he’d be less conspicuous in an area where multiple cars were in use.

He wanted to ride it down to the garage.

Hopefully by the time they realized he wasn’t one of theirs, he’d be able to hijack a vehicle and get the fuck out of there.

That, or he might be able to gain access to the sewers.

Pushing through the glass doors in reception that led into the office suite, he entered the public bank of elevators, strolling down the Indian-patterned carpet runner that ran in front of the row of doors.

His eyes scanned the lit numbers over each door.

After a moment’s thought, he decided he wanted one that was on its way up, heading for one of the higher floors. Preferably one that was at least twenty floors below him.

Riding one down made more sense in some ways, of course, but it also struck him as riskier in his wounded state. Bigger teams would be traveling down from Black Securities headquarters than they likely would coming up from the street.

Also, it would be a hell of a lot harder to time his jump right to hit an elevator car on its way down. Naoko’s reflexes still felt slow, his timing off. He didn’t want to take unnecessary risks. One heading up would be relatively easier.

Not for a human, but for him it would.

Then again, trying either thing for a human would be suicide.

Naoko just had to be sure to get inside the car before he reached any of the staging floors. The last thing he needed was to have the doors open on twenty of Black’s seers, all of them pissed off and armed to the teeth, getting ready to ride the elevators down to the ground floor to hunt him.

He stopped in front of one set of doors, staring up at the lit “G” that shone in the dark.

When it began to ascend, he didn’t hesitate, but leapt for the doors.

Jamming his fingers into the crack between the two panels, he began forcing them apart, wincing and writhing against the pain in his chest and side as he felt the effort ripping open the wounds all over again.

He’d left too much blood all over the carpet in here already.

If they stopped on this floor, they’d know he’d been here.

He was glad he’d taken the time to study the blueprints of the building, and that he’d remembered much of the layout from back when he worked for Black. He knew which office suites were leased by private companies unaffiliated with Black’s holdings. He knew which had surveillance systems Black’s people could tap into easily and which didn’t.

He knew all of that would likely change after this.

It would change as soon as Black realized how Naoko used those blind spots to sidestep his people. Legal or not, Black would likely fit the whole damned building with surveillance after this, including every angle on the terrace Naoko used to re-enter the building.

He got the doors open about a foot and a half and stepped back to stare up at the lit numbers.

It was already up to the tenth floor.

Naoko was on twenty-eight now.

He started to shove himself sideways through the opening between the doors, and grunted in pain, pausing long enough to touch the wound on his side, mostly to see how much it was bleeding. He hadn’t really given his vampire healing abilities the opportunity to kick in long enough to fully close either wound.

Pulling his hand away, he frowned, rubbing it on his pants when it came away covered in blood. He needed to feed.

He needed to feed damned soon.

The high from Miri’s blood had pretty much faded.

Truthfully, it mostly died when Black made sure most of that blood ended up on his wife’s naked body and all over his upscale office building.

Thinking about Miri briefly, Naoko shivered.

It hadn’t been long enough. It hadn’t been anywhere near long enough.

The doors of the elevator started to vibrate.

Naoko felt it, subtly at first, like a tremor passing over his skin. It made the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rise, even as he leaned over to stare down the shaft, feeling the air rushing towards him as the elevator rose.

Wedging his body further between the two panels, he used his feet, along with his less smashed up shoulder to shove them further apart. He could hear the car for real now.

It was close, maybe ten floors below him.

So far, it hadn’t made a single stop since leaving the ground floor.

He stared down, and saw the cables moving in the dark, the glint of metal as the car slid smoothly towards him. He waited until the moving air ruffled his shirt, his hair, blinding him briefly with the rush of air.

Then he leapt––

––and landed as lightly as he could on the top of the elevator car.

It wasn’t as light as he would have liked.

The car rose to meet him, so quickly it felt like if he’d waited a half-second longer, the elevator would have thrown him into the wall.

Naoko’s knees bent, catching some of the fall, but his chest slammed into the cable on the top of the elevator car, forcing him to grab hold of it and the top of the car to keep from falling. For a split second, he knelt there, his good shoulder leaned against the cable, fighting past the pain of the gunshot wound in his chest, which he’d just smacked into the cable on his way down.

Then he felt over the top of the elevator car.

Finding the emergency hatch, he ripped it open, one-handed.

He didn’t have much time.

In this, speed was everything.

Anyway, whoever was inside might have already heard him.

Sliding his body around the cable even as he jerked open the square panel, he threw his legs through and dropped his whole body inside, landing on the bottom and shaking the elevator car a second time before he’d even looked at the occupant.

He did know it was only one.

He also knew it was seer, from the smell alone.

With Miri’s blood still covering his clothes, filling his nose, pumping through his veins, he suspected he’d never not know that smell again.

Straightening to his full height, he met the gaze of a seer with black hair and high cheekbones. Naoko found himself staring in shock when he made sense of the features, instantly recognizing the face that came into focus in front of him.

It wasn’t a face he’d expected to see.

The seer stared back at him, equally stunned to find him in the elevator car with him.

Then, putting the pieces together, staring at Naoko’s vampire eyes, the male seer raised the modified rifle he held in both arms.

Luckily, Naoko had already seen him start to swing the barrel around.

Hissing, he leapt, snatching the rifle out of the seer’s hand, managing to rip it free of his long fingers as much from the element of surprise as anything. Flipping the gun in his hands, he slammed it into the seer’s face, feeling a faint ripple of satisfaction go through him when he heard the crunch of the other male’s nose.

Without waiting, he turned to the elevator’s panel as the seer dropped to his knees. He scanned through the numbers, trying to discern where the seer had been going.

The forty-sixth floor.

Naoko stared. That was one of the business suites.

Clearly, he wasn’t the only one who’d been studying the building’s blueprints.

Still holding the rifle in his hands, Naoko took it off the seer on the floor only long enough to smash out the camera in the upper corner of the car.

Seconds later, the elevator car was slowing.

Naoko waited for it to come to a full stop on forty-six, waited for the doors to open, then hit the “B2” button to take them down to the garage.

The metal doors closed on the darkened business suite.

Naoko glanced up at the numbers, making sure they were going down.

Then he looked back at the floor.

The seer was staring at him.

His violet eyes shimmered in the elevator car lights, brighter than they had before Naoko knocked him in the head with his own gun. The seer reached down, slowly, his fingers going for his ankle, but Naoko lifted the gun higher, a knowing smile curving his lips.

“Uh-uh. No. Stay still. Or I’ll just kill you.”

The seer’s mouth twisted in a rage-filled frown. “Like you won’t do that anyway.”

Still smiling, Naoko jerked his head sideways––a mannerism, it struck him suddenly, that he may have picked up from Black.

“I can think of a few other things to do with you first,” he said, smirking.

As he studied those flat, violet-tinted eyes however, Naoko found his humor fading.

Memories rose in his mind, unbidden.

He saw pictures there, things Miri shared with him through her blood, but also his own memories, things that came back to him from that earlier Christmas, from the months before and after. He remembered rope burns on her wrists, bruises she tried to hide, shifting her martial arts gee around her bare arms and neck to hide them from his view.

He remembered her crying.

He remembered going to her house, night after night.

She would drink with him, and at some point in the night, she would get drunk enough to cry. He’d never asked her, but he’d often wondered if she remembered crying with him, or if the alcohol was partly so she wouldn’t have to remember it.

If nothing else, the alcohol meant she wouldn’t have to explain it.

Staring down at the male seer, Naoko felt a surge of heat rise up through his chest, catching him off-guard, making it difficult to breathe. He remembered Miri when she got back from Thailand that first time with Black. He remembered how much he fucking hated Black for that, for what he saw in Miri’s eyes, for the changes he sensed there.

But it hadn’t been Black, not that time… not entirely.

Black hadn’t been the one who did that to her.

Black hadn’t been the one who left Miri broken and afraid.

This fucker did that.

This fucker did that to her.

Aiming the gun at the seer’s face, Naoko struggled with his heaving chest, staring into those violet eyes, fighting the hard, violent impulse to pull the trigger.

“Do it,” the seer jeered. “Do it. You fucking vampires… you think I care?”

Naoko’s jaw hardened to granite.

He didn’t pull the trigger though.

He lowered the gun instead.

“No,” he said coldly, staring down at the seer. “I have a better idea.”

He flipped the gun in his hands. Without giving the seer time to react, he smashed the butt of the rifle into the male’s temple, harder than he had the first time. He felt and heard the satisfying crunch of metal against bone, could almost see the hairline cracks form under the thin skin covering the male seer’s skull.

Then, as the heat in his chest and throat dimmed, he worried he’d done it too hard.

He worried he’d killed him.

When Naoko raised the gun from the blow, lifting its now-bloody stock, he paused, frowning as he stared down at the seer’s crumpled form.

After a few seconds, he felt himself relax.

The seer was breathing.

Naoko could hear it, even before he saw the male’s chest rise and fall.

Slinging the gun around his shoulders, he crouched down, lowering his mouth cautiously and sinking his fangs into the seer’s neck.

He spent a few floors injecting venom into the male’s bloodstream, pausing only to drink a few swallows of blood between injections. He didn’t take too much. He didn’t want to risk killing him from blood loss or putting him too deeply unconscious after hitting him so hard on the head. Over-feeding was a real risk, given that the fucker was seer and his blood tasted fucking amazing, no matter who he was.

He didn’t taste as good as Miri, though.

He didn’t taste anywhere near as good as Miri.

Just remembering that was enough to get him hard again. It was also enough to force him to consciously pull back from feeding on the male seer.

There was time enough for that later.

For now, he just wanted him compliant.

After giving him another good, solid dose of his venom, he made himself stop, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and rising to his feet.

The male seer didn’t move.

Even so, Naoko rode the elevator car down to the garage with the rifle in his hands, the bloody stock propped against his good side as he watched the seer’s face.

Miri warned him about this one.

She told him how clever it was.

She also told him it wasn’t like other seers.

Naoko had seen glimpses of her fear of him, even as recently as that night, while he fed on her. He’d felt it both times he fed on her, on the fire escape and on the roof.

Miri was still afraid of this seer.

Even now––after all this time––he made her afraid.

Staring down at that preternaturally handsome face, the closed eyes hiding their violet irises, Naoko decided she’d never be afraid of him again.

He would make Solonik into something Miri would never, ever have to fear.

30

Negotiations

I WATCHED BLACK pace, his gold eyes murderous as he tracked back and forth across the terrace, making a dark line against the blue morning sky past the glass balcony wall.

I sat in one of the wicker chairs, on a dark blue cushion, a hot mocha coffee drink on the glass table in front of me.

It would have been a pleasant place to sit, under other circumstances.

As it was, I found myself watching Black warily, wondering if I needed to try and do something to calm him down.

I knew this was his way of working through everything that happened over the past twenty-four hours. I also knew my focusing on him was an avoidance tactic for myself, at least in part. As much as I hated seeing him like this, it was easier to try and think about how to help him than to think about anything I remembered from the night before.

Black told me he’d taken this suite––hell, this whole floor––back from the company he’d leased it to. He’d torn up the contract essentially, as soon as he’d found out Nick used this terrace to get back into his building.

He had his lawyers on it, but he didn’t seem to think it would be an issue, given how he’d written up the contracts. His lawyers were good; they were better than good, in the way most rich people’s lawyers were. They’d already advised him they would be arguing that the leasing company’s security protocols––or lack thereof––put them in breach, by jeopardizing Black’s holdings and the integrity of his building.

I knew it was essentially b.s.

Black wanted the suite back.

Therefore, the company currently leasing it was out.

If that meant Black using lawyers, or seers, to push them the fuck out, they’d be out by the end of the week––if not the end of the day.

Although he hadn’t come out and said it, I strongly suspected Black wanted the whole building back under his control. For the same reason, I expected there would be a bunch of these so-called “security breach” lawsuits starting up in the next few days.

Black had already muttered about turning this whole floor into a restaurant and recreation area for everyone working and living in the building.

When we walked through that morning, he pointed out the café and kitchens, saying how they could expand that, add another kitchen there, pull down that wall, maybe even add a row of saunas and an indoor lap pool.

He’d pointed out a set of suites in the back, saying that whole area could be made into a gym, pointing out another section that could be made into a boxing ring or simply a floor mat area with heavy bags for hand-to-hand training. He talked about getting a few massage therapists to come in for half the week, if not full time.

I knew he was distracting me, as much as himself.

The real issue was security.

He’d have cameras, motion detectors, probably automated drones connected to this part of the building before the sun went down that day.

He was already talking about building a new headquarters building, too––and threw around a few possible locations in the Bay Area or possibly in New Mexico or Vancouver. He wanted something he could build from the ground up, likely as a full-blown military fortress, if I was reading his light accurately, which I suspected I was.

I hadn’t left his side since we got up that morning.

He got me out of bed to take a shower with him, waited for me to get dressed, asked me what I wanted for breakfast, told me his rough itinerary for the day.

He never asked, but then he didn’t really have to.

I didn’t want to be apart from him, either.

If he hadn’t made it clear he wanted me with him every second of that day, I probably would have followed him around anyway, and just tried to bring my work with me.

He didn’t want me working though, at least not on anything separate from what he was doing. He wanted me to help him change whatever was wrong with fucking everything in our world that allowed what happened the night before to happen.

A nagging voice in the back of my mind told me I shouldn’t be encouraging this, probably not in either of us. I knew if I wasn’t careful, I’d be lucky if he let me walk outside the building alone… at least for the next few months.

For now, however, I wasn’t up to fighting that impulse in either of us.

Already, we had press trying to get into the building.

They’d been shouting questions and requests for interviews at our security people in the lobby and outside the building since dawn, asking about the alarms that went off the night before, asking about unauthorized drones and reports of gunfire, wanting to interview Black about rumors of a possible kidnapping and security breach.

They wanted to talk to him about whether and how he was involved in the riots in the Mission, with the groups fighting against the Purists and the federal government. Apparently, now they were saying the so-called “police” shooting at protesters in the Mission hadn’t really been police at all. Reporters on major networks were now saying the anti-riot cops had actually been part of private militia groups, and only masquerading as cops.

Watching the news that morning, I heard all kinds of insane conspiracy theories, even on the major cable networks. Talking heads postulated Black and others might form the military arm of a “shadow state” trying to take down President Regent’s administration. They mentioned other paramilitary groups being involved too, in addition to Black’s company, although I recognized the name of only one of them.

They mentioned Archangel.

Archangel, which, as far as I knew, actually was hooked into some kind of shadowy global network as their military arm.

How any of that connected to my uncle, I could only speculate.

I honestly would have thought my uncle would want Archangel on his side.

Black told me Archangel employed and trained the most ruthless, well-organized, disciplined and smartest mercenaries he’d ever encountered. He said they were some of the most highly-trained killers on the planet… if not the most highly trained killers on the planet.

Uncle Charles more or less admitted to me he’d worked with Archangel in the past, mostly via his contacts with Russian organized crime.

Maybe they’d had a falling out around the “enslaving all humans” issue.

Either way, news commentators were now talking about Black Industries and Archangel in the same breath. Two different program segments I watched on my phone while Black was talking to his tech team interviewed experts who speculated that Black’s company and Archangel had something to do with the riots in the Mission.

I’d seen blurry smart phone footage of all of us down there, too.

CCTV cameras caught us running down Valencia, carrying assault rifles and swords, dressed all in black kevlar. I saw images of us at Mission and 16th, as well, but there we’d been wearing gas masks, so you couldn’t really make out our faces.

Black’s phones had been ringing off the hook all morning, pretty much since that footage hit the networks.

He’d been hit with requests for interviews from about a dozen news networks and talk show hosts. Lawrence “Larry” Farraday, Black’s criminal lawyer and advisor, had also been calling all morning. I’d overheard Black talking to him a few times, as well, mostly arguing with him about the kind of damage control he should be doing with the public, and whether he should take any of those interview requests, and if so, which ones.

Apparently, Farraday was getting requests for interviews as well.

A few networks even called trying to negotiate interviews with me.

Charles tried calling that morning, too.

I didn’t think Black had talked to him yet, and I sure as hell hadn’t. I wasn’t ready to deal with Charles, although I knew I could only put that off for so long.

In any case, Black definitely wasn’t talking to Charles now.

He also wasn’t talking to Farraday––or any of the news networks.

His gold eyes flashed in the morning sun as he listened, jaw hard, and it struck me again how early it was still, despite how much ground Black had already covered. It couldn’t be much past nine a.m., even though we’d been up for hours.

I watched his angular face, and fought a shiver of separation pain, in spite of myself.

I knew it didn’t make a ton of sense that I’d be lusting after my husband, especially given the night before, but somehow, all of that only made it worse. I knew Black was fighting his own conflicting impulses there, so I didn’t push it, but my separation pain seemed to be getting worse, not better, the longer I was awake.

I knew some of that might be a safety issue, too, and a more organic impulse to draw closer to him when I felt like both of us were still actively in danger. Black told me seers did that––that when our lives are in danger, our instinct was to share light with partners and friends, people we trusted. Husbands and wives pretty much topped that list.

I also knew sex right then wouldn’t exactly be uncomplicated.

Just having Black see me naked, given the state of my body, wasn’t going to be easy for either of us. That didn’t even get into the other complications of my memories and light from the night before, and the things Black would probably feel on me.

I wasn’t ready to deal with that yet, regardless of what my light wanted.

Instead, we drew together in every other sense of the word.

I don’t think Black moved more than three yards away from me that whole morning. Even now, he paced in front of me, not leaving my immediate orbit. When Kiessa and Zairei, the two seers helping Black with the security assessment of this floor, brought me around the corners of the terrace, Black followed on his phone, moving around me in a rough perimeter that both comforted me and slightly embarrassed me when I felt the two seers notice.

They acted like it was perfectly normal though, essentially ignoring Black’s hovering while they showed me the bloody hand and footprints Nick left behind as he made his way inside the building. They told me their thoughts on how to make the terrace secure, presumably so I could share those thoughts with Black once he was off the phone.

Black’s team, seer and human, had more or less mapped out Nick’s entire course through the building before he broke into one of the elevators, jumping on top of it and riding it down to the basement to steal one of Black’s cars.

He stole the GTO, which pissed Black off too.

It was one of his favorites.

From camera footage in the garage, Nick had also taken someone with him.

While we couldn’t see the hostage’s face in any of the camera angles, or even much of his body, we were only missing one person when the sun rose on the building.

Dalejem.

Nick had taken Jem with him when he left.

None of us could believe it when we heard.

In the end, though, it was the only thing that made sense. The timelines were consistent between Nick’s route through the building and when anyone had last seen Jem. More to the point, the ex-Adhipan seer was the only one of our people missing.

Process of elimination told us it had to be Jem.

Still, Black wasn’t the only one who’d been baffled when he heard who it was.

The why part of it didn’t surprise any of us. That Nick felt he might need a hostage made sense, given what he’d done. We more couldn’t figure out how Nick managed to get the jump on the older seer in the first place, given who and what he was.

Still, anyone could be surprised at the wrong moment.

Even Jem.

As the morning wore on and no one could get in touch with him via his headset or his mobile phone, that possibility turned into a full-blown probability. Black now had most of his infiltration team under Yarli working on tracking him.

However Nick managed to get his hands on the Adhipan seer, he hadn’t used Jem to get out of the building. The handful of humans and seers Black had posted in the garage were taken out either by vampire venom or automatic rifle fire.

The only camera angle we had on the two of them together was after Nick had already taken out the security team. Nick had returned to the area of the elevators at that point, and carried his hostage to the GTO. The angle wasn’t great, being mostly from overhead, and Nick had his hostage in a fireman’s carry, so his face wasn’t visible. Nick also had something wrapped around the seer’s head, likely to keep us from identifying him easily.

Still, it was clear from the footage that Nick’s hostage was a man… as in male… and taller than most human males. He also had broad shoulders and wore a Black Securities and Investigations uniform.

The weapon Nick used against the security team raised a few eyebrows among the seers. There was footage of Nick firing it––so they were able to ID the model, which was a Russian-made Kalashnikov AK-12.

A few people on Black’s team carried that gun, or a version of it, so that didn’t elicit more than a shrug. Rather, it was the sheer amount of organic material infused into the stock and working parts of the gun that had everyone perplexed. The rifle Nick had been firing had so much of the non-standard material it shimmered pale green under the garage lights, looking like some kind of alien artifact as it expelled bullets in rapid bursts.

Black pointed the different organic components out to me while we looked at the surveillance footage together, muttering about how all of that material was “high-grade organic” and therefore “fully alive,” versus being some kind of metal-hybrid. He said the organics my uncle was making were clearly evolving, and of a higher quality than we’d seen up until now.

He speculated that a gun like that might even be partly sentient.

Apparently, Uncle Charles had been upgrading.

Black speculated the ammunition might even have an organic component, just from the way it fired. He told me about “smart” bullets from his home world that could be programmed to find targets––and how the human militaries had to stop using them once they figured out seers could hack those bullets, sometimes mid-flight, turning them back around on their owners.

No one could explain how Nick got ahold of a gun like that.

Everyone agreed he hadn’t gotten it from Jem.

It was possible he’d gotten it off one of Charles’ people in the Mission, then hidden it in the building before he went up on the roof. Theoretically, Nick could have then retrieved the gun later, once he was on the run from Black’s security team and needed it to shoot his way out of the lower-level garage.

Whatever the truth of it, Nick got out clean.

He also apparently had Jem.

And Black’s second-favorite car.

Taking a sip of my mocha, I fought not to think about that, or about what Jem might be going through right now.

I was still staring off into space when Black broke out in a laugh in front of me.

That laugh held zero actual amusement.

It was pretty much pure rage.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said, his voice harsh. “Please tell me you’re joking. Because honestly, I’m not sure if the fact that you’re even saying this to me right now means you’re fucking insane, or you simply think I’m the stupidest goddamned person on the planet––”

The person on the other end cut him off.

After a few beats, Black clicked at them, loud.

When the person on the other end kept talking, he darted a furious look at me, more to share his anger and frustration with me than to aim any of it in my direction.

In the end, he cut him off.

“Brick,” he growled. “…and I do mean this from the bottom of my heart… go fuck yourself. Either you hand him over to me… now… or we kill whichever one of you we find first. You have to know I’m already hunting both of you.”

Clenching his jaw at something the other said, he snapped,

“I don’t give a fuck about that! I’m talking to you right now, Brick. Not Charles. You did this. You turned him into a goddamned animal! You realize it would have hurt her less at this point if you’d just killed him? Her oldest friend, and he nearly killed her…”

Trailing briefly as he listened, he burst out angrily a few seconds later.

“Bullshit!” he snapped.

He said it loud enough that time, I jumped, even as I’d been taking another sip of the mocha. I didn’t spill any of it, but I pulled it away from my mouth.

“…You have to know he’s my next call,” Black growled. “You have to know that. At this point, I need to decide what I’m willing to give up in order to secure the bastard’s help. Weirdly, I think dear old Uncle Charles is going to be really fucking generous about giving me a helping hand with this one, though. What do you think, Brick? You think you have problems with his seers and his fucking Red Masks now? Just wait until––”

The vampire on the other end cut him off.

There was a pause while Black listened, scowling into the phone.

“I don’t believe you,” Black growled.

Again, I felt Brick talking to him earnestly.

“I. DON’T. FUCKING. BELIEVE. YOU,” Black growled, stopping his pacing long enough to grip the balcony railing. “You have twelve hours. Twelve. Call me with a meeting place, if you’ve decided to cooperate. If you don’t have him with you… if you don’t have him ready for me to take custody… there’s nothing more for us to talk about.”

I took another sip of the mocha as I watched him hang up the phone.

Frowning faintly as I looked at him, I nudged him gently with my light.

“You know he won’t do that, Black,” I said, my voice low. “Not if he told the truth about Nick dying if he dies. He won’t trust anyone with Nick, if that’s the case.”

Black exhaled, gripping the balcony in both hands.

After a pause, he nodded, clenching his jaw.

I studied his profile as he gazed out over the city.

“So? What are we going to do?” My voice remained cautious. “You don’t really want to ally with Uncle Charles, do you?”

Clicking angrily under his breath, Black pushed off from the balcony railing, releasing it with his hands. Turning on me, he continued to frown, his eyes showing him to be thinking.

“No,” he said after a pause.

I felt something in my chest relax. “Okay,” I said. “Good. So… what?”

He gave me a direct look, his sculpted lips hard.

“I have a few thoughts,” he said. “You might not like all of those either, Miri.”

“I know you want to kill Nick,” I said.

Black’s jaw hardened.

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” I pressed. “I get it. I really do. But what happens to the vampires if another of their leaders dies? Brick is hardly a saint, but he’s not Dorian. He’s not even Konstantin. We have no idea who else is waiting in the wings.”

Black nodded to that, too, but I could see from his eyes that his mind was somewhere else. I knew I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. The truth was, we had no good options. We didn’t even really have a model for what kind of world we were fighting to create at this point––especially given all the players involved, not to mention the dangers of exposing seers to the human population.

Humans hadn’t even fully accepted the existence of vampires.

At this point, they were still debating what they were, if it was some kind of a hoax or a genetic experiment gone wrong, or foreigners trying to manipulate the American public.

I knew Charles would be hitting that harder soon.

I knew it was only a matter of time before he presented the world with some kind of incontrovertible “proof” that vampires existed. He was likely only waiting until he had more control over public and private institutions, especially the media, so the vampires couldn’t just turn around and expose seers to the humans somewhere else.

I didn’t have much faith my uncle would be able to prevent that from happening eventually, however, no matter what he did. History had a way of uncovering the truth, given enough time. Sooner or later, seers would be exposed.

When that happened, what kind of world would it be?

Would my uncle be able to control how that world developed? If not, would this Earth end up like one Black grew up in? Would it end up something worse? Rather than seers, would humans be the slaves in this world, like my uncle seemed to want? Or would he only manage to convince the human race just how dangerous seers really were?

After all, humans still outnumbered seers by what had to be thousands to one.

Black grunted and I looked up, meeting his gold irises.

“All good questions, doc,” he said.

Walking towards me, he dropped his weight into the chair next to me, leaning his arms on his thighs. Without thinking, I set down my coffee cup and leaned towards him, curling my fingers into his hair and kissing his face. Once I was that far into his light, I found it difficult to stop, and pressed my cheek against his, caressing his face with mine until he let out a low rumbling sound, what might have been a purr on a different kind of animal.

His arm curled around me when I didn’t draw back, still more cautious and gentle than normal, but strong enough to take my breath when he tightened it around me. A bare hint of asking permission stayed in his light as he tugged me closer to him.

“What do you want me to do, ilya?” he murmured, resting his forehead on my shoulder.

I stroked his hair, thinking about his question as he merged his light into mine.

After a few seconds of doing that, I found myself frowning.

My gaze slid out of focus as I stared out over the balcony, thinking about how few options we really had.

The truth was, we needed Brick.

We needed him almost as badly as I couldn’t yet bring myself to contemplate killing Nick. Even after the night before, even after what he’d done, Brick’s and Jem’s words kept echoing in my mind, leaving me some bare sliver of hope.

He would change. He would go back to being more like himself.

Of course, if that was true, I had no idea how he’d feel about what he’d done to me on the roof the night before, or even on that fire escape. I had no idea how well Nick would manage to forgive himself, or if he would find some other way to cope with it psychologically.

I had no idea how I would cope with it, either.

In a strange way, I was almost glad Jem was the one Nick took with him.

Well… providing Nick didn’t kill him.

Jem might be the only one left who still had enough empathy for Nick that he might actually be able to reach him. I couldn’t see myself being that person. I couldn’t see Angel being that person, either, not until some time had passed.

When I’d seen her that morning, she looked wrecked.

Cowboy didn’t look much better, or Dex.

Of course, right now, none of that really mattered.

Black would never be able to forgive Nick.

That mattered a lot more.

Given that Black more or less still dictated the direction of our entire operation, that mattered a fuck of a lot more. There was no way Black would be able to let go of what Nick had done. I had my doubts he’d be able to let go of it even if Nick did go back to being more or less himself. At the very least, it would take time, probably a lot of time.

Time in which Nick the vampire would have to be acting more or less like a regular human being… and I had no idea how realistic that was.

Right now, I didn’t see Nick surviving long enough for us to conduct that particular experiment. I didn’t see him surviving much more than a few days, given what I felt on Black’s light, and the likelihood that Black would eventually approach my uncle for help.

I didn’t blame Black for that.

It wasn’t his fault.

It was what it was.

Which meant I had to find some other way to reach him.

* * *

I DON’T THINK I’d ever felt as bad––for anything I’d done––as I did for what I did that night.

I knew it was wrong.

I knew a million different ways in which it was wrong.

I just couldn’t think of any way around it.

I had no allies on Black’s team… not for this.

I knew they’d all think I was out of my damned mind for even considering what I was about to do. Worse, they’d think––with more than a small amount of justification––that I was in shock, that I couldn’t possibly be thinking clearly, given what happened to me.

But I couldn’t let Black give himself to my uncle.

I couldn’t do it, not without finding out for myself if there was another possibility.

Right now, the only other possibility I saw was one.

There was only one truly motivated buyer in the alliance-with-us department, even if Black managed to somehow work out agreements with Archangel, rival factions in the Russian mafia, white hats still clinging to the halls of American government, or whoever else.

Anyway, the last thing we needed was another enemy.

So I did what I did.

I don’t know if it made me feel better or worse that it went off without a hitch.

I knew that was a combination of luck and timing––that it would never happen like that again, and probably wouldn’t have happened that easily even before Black put the whole building on lockdown. As it was, no one on our team in a million years would have expected me to do it, given what happened the night before.

For the same reasons, I knew this was likely the only chance I would have, at least if I wanted to try something like this without my husband knowing about it.

By the time I got to the end of the wooden wharf adjacent to Pier 39, it was so quiet I began to wonder what in the hell I thought I was doing.

I wasn’t unarmed.

Far from it.

I wore seven guns––two at my ribs, two at my hips, one at the small of my back, two in holsters on each of my ankles. I also carried four knives, including a long Bowie knife strapped to my right thigh, and an even longer one that nestled in the groove of my spine.

I knew there was a good chance none of it would do me any good.

Even so, as I stood there in the dark, my back to the moon-splashed ocean, my hands resting on one gun and the hilt of the Bowie knife, I was glad I’d brought the weapons anyway.

It hadn’t been easy to get enough time alone to even set this up.

I’d been forced to push a number of Black’s employees to help me.

A.J. and Javier switched out the security tapes, in case Black might see them.

Michelle brought me the weapons, including the two long knives in vinyl scabbards, one of which I was pretty sure belonged to Cowboy.

Dex––and I felt really, really badly about this, for multiple reasons––brought me the syringes filled with enough liquid tranquilizer to down a good-sized seer or human.

I knew Dex might not forgive me for that, if he ever found out what I’d done.

For that particular task, my options were limited, though. Only a handful of Black’s inner circle had access to the full weapons’ cache, much less the labs where they stored things that weren’t in standard rotation. It was pretty much down to Dex or Cowboy… or Angel… and I’d been warned against trying to push Cowboy, since there was something different about the way his mind worked.

There was no way in hell I could do that to Angel.

Anyway, as bad as I felt about using Dex, it was nowhere near as bad as I felt later that night, when I stuck my own husband in the neck with one of those needles, pressing down on the syringe’s plunger after he’d dozed off next to me.

I used one more on Zairei, who stood guard with Luce outside our suite’s door.

Well, more specifically, I pushed Luce to use it on him.

I wasn’t proud of any of it.

Thinking about that now, shivering in the cold breeze coming over from the bay, I hoped like hell I wouldn’t just end up with my throat torn out for my trouble.

I didn’t see them approach.

I certainly didn’t feel them.

I had to assume he’d brought more of his people with him. He would have been foolish not to, despite what he’d said on the phone when I’d managed to get away long enough to call him. Whoever Brick had watching his back, however, they were invisible.

His was the only dark form that crossed the salt and water-warped wooden planks out to where I stood, waiting for him.

He glanced around when he was only about five yards away.

I saw a puzzled frown touch his well-formed mouth, right before he tilted his head, assessing me directly.

“You are here alone.” His voice did not hide his wonder. “You really are alone.”

Exhaling the breath I hadn’t known I held, I pushed my weight off the wooden railing, nodding. My hands still rested on the gun and the knife as I walked towards him, closing the last of the gap between us.

“I really am,” I said, my voice holding a similar dim surprise.

I couldn’t tell if that surprise was humor, honestly, or if it really had finally sunk in for me how incredibly stupid it was, for me to come out here alone.

“Your husband knows where you are?” the vampire said, wary.

I exhaled a humorless laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”

The vampire king’s frown grew more pronounced, even as he took another step towards me, meeting me roughly in the middle of that last gap he’d placed between us.

His crystal eyes caught the orange streetlight at the end of the pier, and I saw him study my face, his expression almost guileless.

“You are a brave woman, Mrs. Black,” he said finally.

Exhaling, I clicked under my breath, but didn’t bother to answer.

“Do you want to talk here?” I said. “Out in the open?”

Brick looked around, then out over the water. After a brief pause, he shook his head, shoving his hands into the pockets of his long, black coat.

“I had another thought, actually,” he said. His voice turned overtly polite. “Would you mind accompanying me for a short drive, Mrs. Black?”

I tensed. I couldn’t help it.

Every warning I’d ever heard since I was a kid about climbing into cars with serial killers flooded back into my awareness. An image flashed in my mind of the night before, of Nick darting at me, those first few seconds when his fangs sank into my neck––

I didn’t notice when my hand left the hilt of the Bowie knife, touching the bandage at my throat. It was an unconscious move, but one Brick followed with his eyes.

He stepped forward before I could move away, touching my arm lightly with his fingers.

“I am so sorry, Mrs. Black… truly.”

Stepping back, I shook my head. “That’s not going to help anything, Brick.”

Watching my face a beat longer, he nodded.

“I understand. The sentiment is sincere, however. It is unconscionable that we allowed him to get away from us twice. That chaos in the Mission…”

At my look, he let his words trail, shaking his head again.

“I am very, very sorry, Miriam. More sorry than I can adequately convey.”

I felt my jaw harden. Before I could decide how and whether I should answer him, a sound pulled my eyes over his shoulder, to the street in front of the wharf.

Behind him, a car pulled up to the curb.

It was a limousine. Black. With tinted windows.

He turned, following my eyes.

Those eyes returned to mine a beat later.

“It is a short trip, Mrs. Black,” he assured me.

“But why is it necessary?” I said.

Clenching my jaw briefly, I looked around at the empty pier. I could feel people walking on the street a few blocks away, and more sitting on the grass, but I’d pushed any homeless and others I’d felt heading this way to give this particular segment of pier a wide berth.

Most of the humans I felt were asleep in the nearby houses and flats.

“We won’t be bothered here,” I told him, returning my eyes to his.

He nodded, his expression unmoving.

“I understand your reluctance. But I am not toying with you, or trying to abduct you, Miriam. You must realize you are my only hope in this. I have no delusions that taking you would do anything but make your mate even more murderous.”

He paused, shoving his hands deeper into his coat pockets. “There is someone I would like you to meet. It might help you to understand a few things.”

I tensed. Keeping my expression still with an effort, I bit my lip.

“I thought we were going to talk about Nick,” I said.

“We can do that too, of course.”

“Did you lie to Black? Do you know where he is?”

Brick shook his head, his expression holding regret.

“No. I’m afraid I was telling your husband the truth about that.” Frowning delicately, he met my gaze, his expression disarmingly sincere. “We have been unable to find Naoko, Miriam. I have people out looking for him, of course, even now. Dorian is leading that operation, as the need to find him is quite desperate for us… particularly for me, as you might imagine. I know your husband will kill him the first chance he gets.”

Brick studied my eyes, frowning faintly.

“You may not believe me, Miriam, but I am concerned for him, too. My concern goes far beyond any worry I may have for my own wellbeing. As I told your husband, Naoko is family to me. I am quite ashamed of him right now, of what he did to you… but I love him. I would protect him with my life. I would protect him regardless of what he did, or whatever mistakes he made. He is still a child, from my perspective. Children often do stupid and cruel things.”

I didn’t bother to answer that.

I didn’t even try and decipher which parts of it might be true.

“Shall we?” he said, inclining his head towards the curb.

I didn’t answer that, either. When he turned and began walking towards the limousine, however, I followed him silently.

I’d come this far.

If they wanted me dead, I was already dead.

* * *

HE TOOK ME to Golden Gate Park.

I don’t know where or what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

We sat in the back of the limousine, just the two of us, despite my fears.

He didn’t try to talk to me while we drove. I saw a figure in the front of the car, driving the limousine, but it wasn’t who I expected. Rather than the tall blond vampire I normally associated with Brick, this one had auburn hair, tied back in a messy ponytail. He wore a dark suit, and a number of silver rings. He never once looked back at us as he drove, so I only saw his face and eyes in glimpses in the rearview mirror.

I remembered that Brick said Dorian was out looking for Nick.

I wouldn’t see him at all tonight.

When the driver turned us onto John F. Kennedy Drive, entering the park, and then off onto a smaller, winding drive, I frowned, looking through the tinted windows at the silent lawns and flower gardens surrounded by shadowed trees.

I could see lights in the distance now.

It wasn’t until the limousine drew closer to those lights, winding around another wide curve, that I realized what I was looking at.

The Conservatory of Flowers was lit up from within.

The tall, white, Victorian glass structure glowed like a beacon in the otherwise pitch-black park, its tall glass walls shining with white light. The limousine made its way around behind it in the dark, following the curve of road around it until it was on our other side, the opposite side from where I sat, and perched on a slight hill.

I bent down, looking at it through the window on Brick’s side of the car.

“What are we doing here, Brick?” I said, staring at those lit glass walls.

“It seemed a neutral place.”

I turned, frowning at him.

It might be “neutral” from the perspective of the seer and vampire conflicts, but it hardly lacked for drama. Moreover, it had emotional connections for me, personally, although there was no way the vampire could know that.

It had been my sister Zoe’s favorite place in the park, maybe in the whole city.

She would drag me here on the weekends sometimes.

I had shoeboxes full of photos of Zoe in various costumes taken inside the different rooms and segments of the Victorian-style greenhouse, and on the steps leading up to it, and in the glass vestibule that formed its entrance.

Since she was six years old, she’d said she would be married here.

Even after I was in junior high and high school, we would ride our bikes out here when the weather was good, and eat sandwiches on the lawn. The conservatory perched on one of the only hills in this part of the park, overlooked a sloping view of JFK Road and a section of the nearby gardens, so it was perfect for people watching.

We would sit here and talk about psychic stuff.

We weren’t really allowed to talk about that openly at home, so we’d do it in the park, or at Ocean Beach, where we thought we wouldn’t be overheard.

Gazing up the glowing glass walls of the antique building, I fought to push the memories of Zoe out of my mind. I hadn’t been here in years. I hadn’t avoided it consciously, but looking up at the domed roof and the two, L-shaped wings coming off the central structure, I found myself understanding why I hadn’t been back.

There was no possible way I could come here without remembering my sister.

My jaw hardened at the thought, my anger aimed at myself that time.

I also found myself wondering if Black would want to get married here.

Maybe that was something I could do for Zoe. At least one of the Fox girls could still get married here, even if it wasn’t the right one.

I shoved that out of my mind too.

It was probably better if I waited to see how this meeting went––and whether Black found out it took place––before I started planning weddings here.

Someone opened the limousine door, right next to where I sat.

It wasn’t the driver.

Looking up, I met the crystal eyes of another vampire I didn’t recognize, this one female. She had black and red dyed hair, her lipstick matching the red streaks in her long, half-curled hair. She smiled at me, and the smile almost looked real, disconcerting only because it was paired with those clear, soulless-looking eyes.

I took her offered hand without thought, and let her help me out of the back of the car.

Walking past her, I waited a few steps from the open door, watching Brick help himself out, then pause to lean to the female’s ear, murmuring something to her, too low for me to hear. Brick tugged the dark coat around him then, giving me a faint smile as he walked up to join me at the base of the Conservatory steps.

Without a word, we climbed the steps together, aiming our feet to the lit vestibule that led into the exotic plants greenhouse.

We were approaching the doors, when I found my steps slowing.

I stopped, looking at him.

He made it a few more steps before he stopped as well, looking back at me.

I could see his face clearly now, under the glow of the lights inside the Conservatory.

“What is this, Brick?” I said.

At his quirked eyebrow, I bit the inside of my cheek.

“Aren’t we going to talk about Nick?” I said. “About how to fix things between our two camps? Assuming they can be fixed?”

Brick looked at me for a minute, his smile fading.

As I watched, that smile transformed into a thoughtful, more conflicted frown.

Then, moving slowly, deceptively slow, almost in a glide, he approached where I stood. Before I’d decided how to react, he took my arm gently in his, looping his hand and forearm through my elbow without pulling my fingers off the hilt of the gun I wore.

It struck me in the same few fractions of a second that he hadn’t attempted to disarm me.

He hadn’t even had one of his people frisk me.

“Come inside, Miri,” he said, his voice gentle. “All of this will make more sense once you do.”

Watching his face, not hiding my skepticism, I stepped forward when he did.

That misgiving remained in my chest, pulling at my light, tightening in my throat. It wasn’t about Brick, per se. For some reason, I didn’t think he brought me here to hurt me. Whatever he wanted from me in bringing me here, it wasn’t that.

He was still holding my arm as he led me through the glass doors. Two of his people held open those doors, smiling at me as I walked past. Another female vampire and a male, both of them with black hair. The male looked Middle Eastern and wore a short, trimmed beard. The female had dark skin with tightly-cropped, black curly hair. She watched me with crystal eyes, and I saw an open curiosity there, almost like she knew me.

Maybe she just knew who I was.

Still, something about the familiarity in her eyes brought back that shiver of misgiving.

“I know you have your doubts about what your friend Nick will become,” Brick said. “I know it isn’t only your husband who is skeptical about this, Miriam.”

His voice was low, almost paternal in that soothing, melodic tone.

When I glanced over at him, he smiled, studying my face with slightly sharper eyes than his facial expression would suggest.

“…I know you have no way to judge that, by looking at me,” he continued, still watching my face. “I know you have no way to judge that by looking at or speaking with any of my people. Like human beings, vampires vary in temperament, in violence, in compassion, in wisdom, in foolishness, in experience, in character.”

He led me into the octagonal pavilion and my eyes scaled up, taking in the arched roof, as well as the glass clerestory and dome. Around us, tropical plants surrounding the central segment of the conservatory, with passageways going to the left and the right.

Brick steered me towards the right.

We entered an exhibit I remembered vaguely, and he took me to the right again, so that we followed a path along the south wall, towards the eastern arm of the building.

Tropical plants surrounded and loomed over us, giving the feel of a jungle.

I found myself looking at the colorful flowers and dark palm leaves as Brick continued to talk, guiding me gently deeper into the conservatory.

“…To truly understand the differences and similarities, you would need to interact with a vampire you knew before their transformation,” Brick continued, glancing at me. “With things as they are now between your husband and myself, I worry now that Naoko may not live long enough for you to see that transformation through him…”

Feeling me wince, he glanced at me, squeezing my arm briefly in his.

“That is not an outcome I relish either, Miriam,” he said, his voice lower. “Even if I somehow managed to survive it. And while I have misgivings about what I am about to show you, I feel it is the only way to prevent that from occurring. I hesitated to go this route with you previously for a number of reasons… not the least of which being I frankly had no idea how you might react.”

Pausing, he glanced at me again, leading me through the glass and plant-lined corridor.

I saw vampires here and there as we passed, all of them staring at me.

I saw that familiarity in some of their faces, too.

Brick continued speaking to me in that low, melodious voice.

“…But now I have no choice,” he said, his words firm. “I can only hope you forgive me for not telling you sooner. Be aware that wasn’t my decision, either, dear heart… trust me when I say, it was no small feat to convince the affected parties to agree to this meeting tonight.”

I bit my lip, trying to make sense of his vague words, even as I followed his graceful steps. Distracted by two more vampires standing on either side of the next glass doorway, I focused on the pond covered with flat, round water lilies just beyond that opening.

He’d taken me to the aquatic plants section.

I’d spent way too much time in here as a kid.

Maybe that was confusing me, too.

“What are you telling me?” I said. “I’m confused.”

Something in my mind clicked then, and I turned, giving him a harder glare.

My jaw tightened as I continued to turn over everything he’d said.

“Are you going to try and turn me into a vampire, Brick?” I said, blunt. “Because you have no idea how fast Black would kill you if that happened.”

Pausing, I added,

“If you somehow tied your life to mine, the way you did with Nick, he’d kill every single vampire around you… and probably throw you in a cage in his basement and experiment on you when he was bored.”

I stared at him, knowing every word I’d just said was true.

Even so, fear shot adrenaline through my blood and light, making it hard to breathe, hard to think clearly, despite my own words.

“Trust me, Brick,” I said, my voice harder. “You don’t want to do that.”

Brick raised his fingers, waving off my concern with a patient, dismissive gesture.

“Do not concern yourself, Miriam. I was in no way leading up to anything like that. I have absolutely no intention of turning you into a vampire.”

It took a second for my mind and body to react to his words.

Then I exhaled silently, feeling a relief that was nearly physical.

“However,” Brick said, raising his hand a second time. He motioned gracefully, indicating across the pond to the other side of the aquatic plants exhibit. “…I can perhaps clear up one mystery for you tonight. In relation to what you just said.”

He turned, meeting my frown with a smile.

“You and your husband have asked me, on more than one occasion, why I was so sure I would be able to turn you, if I so chose.” Noting my puzzlement, he smiled a touch wider, flashing a starker white of fang. “Perhaps I can offer the answer to that question finally.”

Frowning, I just stared at him.

When he nodded across the pond, however, still indicating for me to look towards the other side of the L-shaped glass room, I turned my head.

For a few seconds, I didn’t see anything.

The water was utterly still, a mirrored surface covered in dark green lilies, surrounded by ferns and dark vines, making it look like something from a prehistoric pond. I stared across the dense green undergrowth, remembering being in here as a kid––

When a form appeared on the other side of the pond.

It glided silently, softly, moving like liquid, appearing from behind a giant fern.

My eyes took in the body in a confused glance, logging details without comprehension. Long, lean, muscular legs encased in black leather. Tall red boots, also leather. A form-fitting white lace top over a generous chest, accented with a pale green teardrop stone hanging on a silver necklace. Red leather belt. Lean, muscular arms. Long-fingered hands covered in silver rings, resting on curvy hips below a narrow waist.

My eyes rose to her face.

I froze.

For a long-feeling few seconds, I thought my memories had superimposed over the scene in front of me.

I was dreaming… hallucinating, anyway.

I had to be.

Then she smiled.

“Hey,” she said, raising a hand.

It was the same, goofy, half-assed wave she would have given me when she was seventeen.

I stared.

I couldn’t blink.

I couldn’t look away.

I couldn’t fully see her, either.

“Miri.” Her voice rose, growing a touch sharper. “Hey… big sis. Take a breath. Breathe, okay? You’re not seeing things. It’s me.”

She turned, her eyes shifting to the space next to me.

Some part of my mind knew she was looking at Brick, but I didn’t look away from her to follow her gaze, to confirm what I knew.

I also didn’t breathe.

I couldn’t breathe.

“Miri.” Her eyes shifted back to mine. Her lower lip jutted in a worried pout. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do it like this. I told them we shouldn’t do it like this.”

Again, her eyes flickered sideways, then back to me.

“Don’t blame Brick. It’s not his fault.” She frowned at the other vampire. “Although I told him you’d probably have a damned coronary… and then you’d probably beat him to death with your bare hands.”

Glancing again at Brick, she smiled.

Her smile faded when she returned her stare to me.

Her brow furrowed in worry.

“Hey! Miri… I mean it. Breathe!”

I didn’t breathe, though.

I didn’t move.

My eyes found hers, somewhere in that wash of familiarity and memory and all of the million and one things that told me none of this was real, that it couldn’t be real, that I was hallucinating, or drugged, or losing my mind.

My eyes found hers and somehow fixed there.

I stared at those clear, cracked-crystal irises.

I watched her look at me.

I saw the caution there, the nervousness, the excitement to see me.

I saw everything that was right there… everything I remembered.

I saw everything that was wrong.

Something in my chest just gave out.

Then everything went dark.

Epilogue

Cargo Ship

PAIN RIPPLED THROUGH him, forcing him to avert his eyes.

Clenching his jaw, Dalejem looked away from the opening into the shipping crate, forcing his eyes up to the high ceiling of the cargo hull instead, focusing with an effort on the metal catwalks above where he crouched. Taking a breath to clear his head, he turned his gaze back a few beats later, staring down through the narrow opening between the oval, hatch-like door and the crate’s metal side.

He held his breath, watching the two males fuck.

It wasn’t easy, even now.

The more muscular one, the male on top, closed his eyes, letting out a low growl as he held down the other, a male seer with a taller but narrower frame. The seer on the bottom groaned as Dalejem watched, gripping the male on top with white-knuckled hands, making a lower, more pained sound as the other arched into him.

Again, Dalejem closed his eyes, clenching his jaw.

Gaos. What the fuck was he doing?

What did he think he was doing here?

He knew what he’d told himself.

Now, for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine how he’d been so arrogant as to believe his own bullshit. Now that he was out here, he wondered if he’d just end up getting himself killed, along with everyone else on this ship.

He’d told himself he was giving Nick a chance.

He’d told himself he was trying to save the vampire’s life––long enough to determine if there was anything there worth saving.

If Brick and the other vampires were telling the truth, Nick was going to come down off this. He was going to come down off this no-consequences, zero-empathy, repression-free high, and he was going to be left with the emotional after-effects of what he’d done.

Like Dalejem intuited back when Nick was human, Naoko Tanaka had been sitting on a virtual powder keg of repressed emotions, resentments, angers, unresolved feelings.

Those included but weren’t limited to: anger, bitterness, self-hate, sexual repression, jealousy, rage. He’d buried all of it under an affable personality, under nice guy syndrome, under duty and patriotism, family obligations, only son obligations, friend obligations, social obligations… and whatever the hell else humans tortured themselves with.

His new vampire nature both exploded and gave free-reign to all of it––once Nick was finally able to wholly and completely not give a fuck.

As a result, all of that repressed crap came up.

His anger at Black for marrying Miri, his anger at Miri for not wanting him, his anger at both of them for leaving him in that cave on Koh Mangaan, then leaving him at the mercy of vampires in their so-called “escape” and nearly getting him killed in that tree. His anger at the fucking world for never getting what he wanted, for disappointing his parents, for vampires and seers taking over his world, for being the “nice guy” and never being rewarded for it, for being the one who always had to take the higher fucking road.

His vampire nature didn’t care about any of that.

His vampire nature did not give a fuck.

But sooner or later, Nick was going to come down.

Nick was going to come down, and he was going to come down hard, and Jem didn’t intend for the ones to catch him to be more goddamned vampires.

He sure as hell didn’t intend for Brick and/or Dorian to be the ones to help Nick through that transition, or to impart their so-called “vampire wisdom” on Nick when he was vulnerable to believing anything that might help him hate himself less.

So Jem decided it wouldn’t be Brick and Dorian who Nick saw when he came down.

It would be him––Dalejem.

He knew, even at the time, it was a foolish conceit.

He knew it was dangerous, stupid… probably selfish and immature.

He also knew, if he didn’t do it, no one would.

Nick would die at the hands of Black, most likely––or he’d be pulled into the vampire family and end up like the rest of them. He’d find some way to rationalize and repress in vampire form, and they’d lose Nick Tanaka forever.

Now, watching Nick with Solonik, seeing what he’d already done to the high-ranked infiltrator through his venom, Dalejem was back to thinking he, Dalejem, was an idiot.

He wondered just how stupid and arrogant he’d have to be, to think he could do this. Even if he managed to keep Nick from Black, there was a damned good chance he could end up like Solonik himself in a few weeks.

He’d end up like Miri on that roof, or Black in that government lab.

He’d end up like all seers under the thrall of vampire venom, only forever.

Vampire food, a sex slave––a mental cripple.

He’d kept his distance so far, mostly to keep from tipping off Black as to where he was, and therefore, tipping Black off to where Nick was. He knew Black wouldn’t be rational about this. Black probably couldn’t be rational about this.

Jem understood that. He really did.

He also knew Black might kill him for this, if he found out Jem stood between him and Nick Tanaka.

For the same reason, he knew if he didn’t find some way to hide Nick from Black, this whole thing would be over, the instant Black caught up with them.

Therefore, Jem waited three days to approach.

Three days of no sleep, of hiding out in the cargo hold of the ship, which smelled of oil and feces, sweat, metal and brine, depending on which part of the hold he hid himself. Jem hid himself in the smelliest parts of these, to try and disguise and overpower his own scent, so the vampire wouldn’t find him.

He dared not sleep.

He knew if he slept, if he entered the Barrier for any amount of time at all, for any reason––which would happen if he let himself fall unconscious––Black’s team of infiltrators would find him in minutes, if not seconds.

Seers couldn’t hide while they slept.

Well, they couldn’t hide from other seers.

Specifically, they couldn’t hide from other military-trained infiltrators who were actively looking for them, as Black’s team most certainly was by now.

Like humans, when seers slept, their aleimi, or light-body, left their physical body. The instant that happened, Dalejem’s light would pop back up on the grid for any tracking seer who knew his specific frequency.

Black had at least four seers who could give him exact markers for Jem’s light. Back on Old Earth they had to memorize everyone’s light signatures on their team, in the event anyone got lost, kidnapped, or found themselves in trouble in the Barrier.

For the same reason, Yarli, Mika, Holo and Jax knew his light.

More seers on Black’s infiltration team probably had his light signature by now, too.

Dalejem could keep them out while he was awake. He was Adhipan-trained, and his shielding skills had been above average even for their elite team.

If he let himself doze off, he was toast.

Well, more specifically, the vampire below him, currently getting his rocks off inside his seer lover-slash-prisoner, was toast.

Dalejem couldn’t let that happen, not until he either had some other means of shielding his light, like, say, a construct––or, his mind muttered, quieter, like a vampire––or else he was far enough away that he could explain to Black what he was doing and how much time he needed before the seer came after him with a fleet of drones and a squadron of pissed off infiltrators screaming for blood.

Until then, he had to stay awake.

No amount of training could compensate for basic seer biology. The only way to stay invisible right now was to stay out of the Barrier altogether.

That meant no sleep.

Of course, he couldn’t go without sleep forever.

Already, his reflexes were suffering… both by slowing, and by turning glitchy. Already, he startled too easily, jumping at shadows, hallucinating threats.

He also caught himself spacing out when he shouldn’t.

Like he’d just been doing, watching Nick fuck that sociopathic seer, Solonik.

Grimacing, he shoved the images out of his mind, forcing himself to think in straight lines.

He couldn’t push things much further.

He needed to do this now.

When the sun came up that morning, slanting through the view ports near the dirty laundry crate where he’d been holing up for the night, he decided he wouldn’t make it another night, not without putting his life in danger for real.

He used the GPS tracker to confirm the seer and vampire were still where Dalejem initially found them; that Nick hadn’t moved his captive to some other part of the ship. Dalejem knew Nick had to be feeding the seer somehow, and obtaining him water. Presumably he’d been moving around under cover of night to raid the ship’s larder and its water cache, leaving the seer behind in the nest he’d built inside the crate.

That same morning, Dalejem also used the GPS tracker to determine where they were––meaning all of them, meaning the location of the cargo ship itself. He’d intended to leave at least a full day’s gap between himself and Black before he made a move.

From what he could tell, he had almost that.

The ship hadn’t followed the coast when it left California, but headed straight out into the Pacific from the shipyards in Oakland. From the line across the map on his hand-held, or “smart phone,” as they called them here, the ship and all of them on it appeared to be heading for Asia, likely either China or Russia, if they continued along their current trajectory.

From the Cyrillic letters painted in black on the dark blue hull, Dalejem guessed the ship was owned and operated by a Russian shipping conglomerate. The smatterings of Russian, Polish and Ukrainian he’d overheard from the crew supported that theory.

Dalejem had no idea why Nick chose this ship.

He supposed it didn’t really matter.

It’s possible his choice was just as random as it appeared; which had a kind of logic to it, as well. It was difficult to follow someone when even they didn’t know where they were going, much less why.

Assuming his Russian was still passably decent, and the written version here was close enough to the Russian on his version of Earth, the name of the ship was the Monchegorsk.

Rubbing his face with a hand and blinking to try and clear his head, he looked back through the opening in the crate’s hatch. Staring through the narrow slat, he fought the pain that wanted to rise in his light.

He had to be careful.

He couldn’t risk the seer feeling him, either.

Solonik would undoubtedly tell Nick if he did feel him. From the way Solonik was looking at Nick right then, he’d do pretty much anything he could to protect the vampire, including kill for him, if he thought Nick needed someone killed.

Both the seer and the vampire still appeared to be pretty damned distracted at the moment, however.

Dalejem watched, wincing again as his light reacted to the look on the violet-eyed seer’s face. He watched Solonik tilt back his head, exposing his already heavily-marked throat to the vampire. Despite how pale the seer was, it looked a lot more like a request than even an offer.

The dark-haired vampire gripped the seer’s hair in his fist.

Dipping his mouth and face, he sank his fangs slowly, sensually into Solonik’s neck. Just as slowly, just as luxuriously, he began to drink.

A few seconds later, the vampire let out another low growl.

Dalejem watched Nick’s face, watched the vampire drink with such obvious pleasure and abandon, he couldn’t help but react to that, too. He couldn’t feel the vampire, not like he could the light of the seer, but the look of complete and utter contentment on him, the slackening of his facial expression in undisguised desire, worked on him in its own way.

Somehow, not being able to feel Nick affected him more.

Maybe because he very, very badly wanted to feel him right then.

The male seer gasped when the vampire lifted his mouth, stopping his feeding with obvious reluctance.

For a moment Nick just hung there, looking down at the male seer’s face.

Then he let out a low, rumble of a sound, almost a purr. Stroking the seer’s hair out of his face, the vampire adjusted his body over his, leaning his weight.

When he spoke, Dalejem jumped in spite of himself.

The vampire’s voice held a pulling, melodious want coupled with an overt affection.

The combination brought Dalejem’s pain back all over again.

“Don’t tempt me, cousin,” the vampire murmured. “Don’t let me kill you on accident.”

The seer reached up, caressing the vampire’s face. He continued to stroke Nick’s skin, caressing his muscular chest and arms, tracing lines and muscles in his throat and face.

Both of them were completely naked.

Both of them were hard again, too, despite having recently finished, and even though that hadn’t been their first time fucking in the last few hours.

Clearly, vampires were closer to seers than they were to humans, at least when it came to their sex drives. Dalejem had been told the blood connected them, too. He couldn’t help but wonder if that connection was similar to the light connections shared by seers, or if it was something different entirely.

Biting his lip when he realized how much he was letting his mind wander, not to mention how distracted he’d let himself get by the sex, by Nick’s naked and erect cock, by a whisper of annoyed jealousy he was struggling to admit to himself, and the fact that all of that was being made worse by his lack of sleep, he withdrew from the opening yet again.

For a few seconds he only crouched there, fighting the images of the vampire and seer together out of his head.

He knew it wasn’t exactly helping him do what he’d come here to do––as in the reason he’d made this crazy trip in the first place. All it did was make him second-guess his motives all over again, and wonder what in the hell he thought he was really accomplishing, assuming he did manage to save Nick’s life.

Pulling carefully out of the opening, he leaned even more carefully on the metal bulkhead to the left of the hatch, doing everything in his power to not make a sound.

Black warned him vampires had better hearing than seers.

They had faster reflexes, better hearing, better physical sight.

They also had extra senses, from what Dalejem had been told by Black’s tech team.

Physical senses––not like the quasi-physical ones of seers.

Dalejem didn’t have a full education on vampire versus seer anatomy, at least not yet, but he’d read in the tech reports about how vampires could feel air displacements, in addition to having all of the physical senses shared by seers and humans. From what Black’s lab rats could determine, it wasn’t simply an extension of those other senses, although that might play a part. They seemed able to sense the level and movement of air pressure itself, even feeling displacements at a significant distance from their skin.

The report Dalejem read postulated this as occurring through some other mechanism entirely, something that had no parallel in seers or humans.

Right now, all that meant was Dalejem had to be really damned careful.

The GPS tag he’d managed to shoot into Nick’s neck after he jumped off the California Street building got him this far.

It led him to the docks in Oakland.

It led him to this crate.

Jem spent a few hours that morning checking out Nick’s crate from all angles, until he found this hatch. It gave him a good thirty feet between where the vampire lay with his seer lover and where Dalejem crouched with a tranquilizer rifle.

Raising that same rifle slowly, Dalejem checked the chamber, even though he’d already done it three times before.

Taking a final breath, he turned then, facing the opening.

He was a good shot.

He’d been a good shot since he was a young seer in Asia, back when the only person around to teach him was his father. He might not have been the natural killing machine Dehgoies was, back on Old Earth, but he was close.

Now that he looked through the scope of the rifle, he realized how close to the vampire he really was.

There was no way he could miss.

In those last few seconds before he pulled the trigger, he found himself throwing up a prayer to the gods anyway.

From what he knew of vampires so far… and Nick… and Black…

He was definitely going to need it.

What to read next

WANT TO READ A NOVEL SET IN BLACK’S HOME WORLD?

Try the BRIDGE & SWORD WORLD, starting with:

ROOK (Bridge & Sword Series #1)

Yanked out of her life by the mysterious Revik, Allie discovers that her blood may not be as “human” as she always thought. When Revik tells her she’s the Bridge, a mystical being meant to usher in the evolution of humanity––or possibly its extinction––Allie must choose between the race that raised her and the one where she might truly belong. A psychic, science fiction romance set in a modern, gritty version of Earth.

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Sample Pages

ROOK (A Bridge & Sword Novel)

1 / Allie

I KNOW WHO I am.

Somehow, deep down inside, I’ve always known.

I don’t know how to explain that statement precisely. It’s not in the “I am Alyson May Taylor” sense of knowing myself. It’s more like this presence I carry within me, this solid sense of “me-ness” that feels untouchable in some way. It shocked me as a kid, when I realized a lot of people didn’t have that.

For a lot of people, that rock-solid, “here I am” thing was more elusive. A lot of them spent their whole lives searching for it.

Funnily enough, with me, it turned out who I was didn’t end up being all that important.

What I was mattered a whole lot more.

On that front, I knew a lot less than I thought I did. I might have had that essence thing down, but I was missing a hell of a lot of pretty significant details.

* * *

“HE’S BAAAACK.” MY best friend, Cass, grinned at me from where she leaned over the fifties-style lunch counter, her butt aimed at the dining area of the diner where we both worked. Given that our uniforms consisted of short black skirts and form-fitting, low-cut white blouses, she was giving at least a few of our customers an eye-full.

Seemingly oblivious to that fact, and to the men sitting at the counter to her left and my right, pretending not to stare at her ass as she stuck it in the air, she grinned at me, her full lips looking even more dramatic than usual with their blood-red lipstick.

“Did you see, Allie?”

I pursed my lips, rolling my eyes.

“What’s the pool up to now?” she said. “Seventy bucks? Eighty?”

“Eighty-five.” I used the metal stopper to compress finely-ground espresso beans into the metal filter I held in my other hand, managing to spill a small pile of grounds on the linoleum counter in the process. “Sasquatch threw in twenty yesterday.” Remembering, I let out a snort-laugh. “He walked right up to the guy’s table. Asked him his name, point-blank.”

Cass’s black-eyeliner decorated eyes widened. “What happened?”

I smiled, shaking my head without looking up. “Same thing that always happens.”

Cass laughed, kicking up her high heels, which were red-vinyl platforms, more seventies than fifties, not like it mattered. Again, I saw the men nearby sipping their coffees while they surreptitiously stared at her legs.

Cass had been on a red kick lately. Her long, straight, raven-black, Asian hair had dark red flames coming up from the tips, the color matching her lipstick, eyeshadow, fingernail polish, and the five inch heels.

Two months ago, everything had been teal.

She could get away with just about any style she wanted, though. Her ethnicity, an odd mish-mash of Thai sprinkled with European and Ethiopian, somehow mixed inside her to make her one of the most physically beautiful women I’d ever seen.

I hated her a little for it, sometimes.

Other times, I pitied her for it. Truthfully, I hadn’t seen that it had done her a lot of favors over her life, and Cass and I had known each other since we were kids.

Looking up from where I was doing battle with the diner’s antiquated espresso maker, a machine I was convinced had it in for me, personally, I blew my much less dramatic dark brown bangs out of my face, glancing at the man in the corner booth in spite of myself.

I’d seen him walk in.

Truthfully, I’d felt him walk in.

It was unnerving as hell, the effect he had on me, simply from entering a building I happened to occupy.

This was in spite of him never saying a damned thing to me, apart from whatever single-item purchase he made off the diner’s crappy menu. He paid in cash. He never came in with anyone else. He flat-out ignored any attempts at small talk, even polite questions. He rarely made eye-contact, although I always felt his eyes on me. When I looked over, however, he was usually staring out the window, or down at his own hands on the table.

Mr. Monochrome wasn’t a talker.

He wasn’t a people person in any sense of the word. He took ignoring other sentient beings to the level of an art form. The extremes he went to in avoiding conversation didn’t just verge on rude; they were rude. Mr. Monochrome didn’t care.

Mr. Monochrome wasn’t interested in our opinions of him.

Mr. Monochrome wouldn’t even tell us his name.

That last part was the pool Cass referred to.

Given that most people paid bills with their headsets these days, the fact that he paid in cash made him frustratingly impervious to our curiosity about him. He was a blank canvas. My mind superimposed that canvas with various stories, of course, as did my co-workers––undercover cop, international fugitive from justice, spy, private detective, writer doing research, terrorist for the seer underground. Serial killer.

I knew the reality was likely a lot less interesting.

Jon, my brother, referred to him as my “current stalker,” but Jon was paranoid about that kind of thing, given the number of problems I’d had in that area back when I was a kid. Apart from the fact that Mr. Monochrome insisted on sitting in my section every day––even when we moved around which tables were mine––he didn’t seem all that interested in me, either.

He certainly hadn’t made any overtures in my direction, not even oblique ones.

He was probably just a guy who lived somewhere on the autism spectrum, and I’d fallen into his daily routine.

At most, he might be cultivating a deep-seated paranoia around being tracked by the government, one that made him reluctant to use his headset. If he did have some kind of socially-dysfunctional crush on me, he didn’t seem the type to do much about it. He likely worked at one of the tech companies nearby and came to the Lucky Cat because we still accepted cash; more and more places in San Francisco didn’t.

So yeah, a tinfoil hat weirdo, maybe… but a harmless one.

At the thought, I glanced up at the monitor on the wall.

Cass or one of the other waitstaff had turned the volume down, but the news feeds were still playing up there, showing the reaction to the latest terrorist attack in Europe. I watched the President of the United States as he gave a speech from behind a podium, his mouth moving silently. Blooming trees waved gently in a breeze behind him, framing the view of a sprawling lawn and flower gardens. His blond wife stood beside him, hands clasped, a small smile etched on her face, her expression rapt, if bland.

I knew she didn’t really look like that, of course.

Neither did he.

According to Human Protection Act rules, both were required to wear avatars to avoid being targeted by seers owned by enemy governments. Even the landscape around them was digitally altered, to prevent seers from tracking them or reading their minds.

Still, his avatar suited the speeches he gave.

Hers suited him, somehow, as well––meaning, she looked like the kind of person that the man giving those speeches would marry.

Of course, his actual voice was altered digitally, too.

I’d listened to dozens of his speeches over the past however-many years, like everyone else. Daniel Caine was the most popular president we’d ever had, at least as long as I’d been alive. There was already talk of adjusting the presidential term limits again, so he might be allowed to run for a fourth term.

Opposite Caine’s wife stood his Vice President, Ethan Wellington. His avatar showed him to be a handsome black man in his late forties, roughly the same age as Caine. I remembered reading somewhere that they’d even gone to school together.

Both were young, energetic, articulate.

Both of them bothered me.

I honestly couldn’t explain to myself why.

I certainly didn’t try to explain it to anyone else.

To be clear, I didn’t think they were evil or anything, or even that they were hiding some sinister secret; I just didn’t fall all over myself with love for them, the way most people did. Maybe it was just a random distrust of any image that had so few apparent cracks. I knew most people would think I was crazy for thinking that, even Cass. Hell, even Jon liked President Caine, and he hated most politicians, no matter what side of the spectrum they fell on.

Objectively, I got it.

Caine ended years of stalemates and infighting in congress. He’d been the one to move the country as a whole back to a more moderate middle, socially and politically. He’d brought stability, boosted the economy, created jobs, improved our image overseas. He’d even fixed healthcare, and all without raising taxes too much.

If there were conspiracy theories about Caine, they usually involved him being too perfect. Like somehow that must be a trap, which I guess is how my mind worked, too.

Still, in almost ten years of running the country, he’d managed to avoid pissing off any of the major political factions, including the military and the corporate elite.

He was pretty universally liked.

Frowning slightly, I glanced at Mr. Monochrome again, wiping the counter off with a wet rag where I’d spilled the espresso bean grounds.

If I was right in my tinfoil hat theory, Mr. Monochrome likely believed a lot of the same conspiracy theories my brother, Jon, did. Jon had a whole paranoia thing about seers, in particular, and how our own government was likely using them against us, via our headsets and whatever else. To be fair to my brother––and possibly Mr. Monochrome––I had noticed a lot more seers in San Francisco lately.

Most didn’t seem all that involved in government espionage rackets though. From what I could tell, most worked in sex fetish clubs, or for corporations downtown.

Of course, rich people had been importing and maintaining privately-owned seers in San Francisco for years. They’d kept their “purchases” behind closed doors for the most part until about the 1990s, however, in part because of the strict Seer Containment Codes in California, and partly because they likely didn’t want people to know they had a psychic living in their house. After two world wars prominently featuring seers––primarily as villains, or the tools of villains––most people were pretty paranoid about them still.

I knew from listening to anti-seer talk feeds that a lot of people wanted them all deported from the United States entirely. Some people wanted them exterminated––as a species, I mean. The real nutjobs even wanted to kill the more docile variety of seers living in the monkish enclave of Seertown, a quasi-mythical town somewhere in Asia, supposedly filled with chanting robed seers and their human followers.

Since the feeds weren’t allowed to go there, I had no idea what Seertown looked like, but like many people, I was curious.

According to the political feeds, and what I’d learned in history classes back in high school and college, the World Court had an agreement with the seer government that seers who lived there couldn’t be owned, just so long as they never left.

Plenty of religious types still believed seers to be children of the Nephilim, though––if not outright spawns of the Great Horned One, Satan himself. Even moderates viewed seers’ increasing integration into human society as dangerous.

On a more practical level, most people simply didn’t want someone’s pet seer reading their minds and sharing their most private secrets with their human owners.

Apparently, a lot of rich people weren’t all that cool to their friends.

Despite all this, seer numbers in San Francisco were definitely increasing.

More and more, I saw seers out on the street, especially in the business district. From stories I’d watched on the feeds, most of the new arrivals were owned by corporations, not individuals, but I knew that didn’t reassure people all that much. It didn’t help that seers weren’t always easy to spot; they blended in more or less seamlessly with the humans they accompanied, wearing business suits and sporting expensive haircuts and shoes. A lot of times, given how valuable they were, and the investment they represented to their owners, they had their own bodyguards.

I’d read in the feeds somewhere that a highly-trained seer could go for more than the cost of an entire apartment building in San Francisco.

So yeah, being a peon myself, usually I couldn’t get very close.

A few times, I got within a dozen yards or so, though.

Only once did a seer seem to notice me. A female I’d seen out in front of a sex club caught me looking at her, and stared back.

It was difficult to pin down exactly, what was so different about her, as compared to a regular person, but some of it had to do with the way she moved. The differences there evoked an animal in my mind, even though she looked more or less like a human being. Wearing nothing but a white mesh bodysuit, she stalked around the buffed, black bouncer who stood beside her, her long, dark hair hanging down her back in thick braids. The bouncer held her leash––literally, in her case––but she didn’t appear to be trying to get away. Her careful steps, graceful and precise, reminded me of a cat’s, or maybe an insect’s.

She was beautiful and wild, and yes, a bit terrifying.

From what I’d seen on the feeds, most seers tended to have beautiful features, though. A few of the corporate-owned seer pop bands had cult-like followings in part because the male and female leads were so stunningly beautiful.

If I were being honest though, I mainly spotted seers by their collars.

By law, all seers wore them.

Most of those collars were silver with a greenish tint, a kind of brushed metal that glowed faintly, even in direct sunlight. I’d seen a few seer collars decorated more like jewelry or S&M bondage wear, but it was difficult to disguise them entirely. They all sat in identical places at the base of a seer’s neck, likely because of how they attached to the spine.

It was really, really illegal to have an un-collared seer out on the street.

That wasn’t just United States law––that was World Court law.

If you broke that particular rule and someone caught you, you’d have the international branch of Seer Containment, or SCARB, breathing down your neck. You’d not only get any future license to own or operate seers permanently yanked, you’d also do jail time, most likely, and pay a fine that would leave your grandkids in debt, and maybe their kids, too.

Of course, in reality, I knew this wasn’t a problem I’d ever have.

Like most people, the closest I’d ever get to a real-live seer was a glimpse on the street. All of my knowledge of the seer race would come via online feeds, movies, gossip and stories from my friends. The seer sex-fetish bars that offered services of various kinds throughout the city were way out of my price range, too, even if I was into that kind of thing. No amount of tattoos, digital renderings, or coffee-shop gallery paintings would ever buy me access to that world.

So yeah, unless I had a rich relative somewhere I didn’t know about, waiting to donate a few million my way after they died, I would have to appreciate the beauty of seers from afar.

I was curious, though.

Most people were curious, I suppose.

Cass poked my arm, pulling me out of my reverie. When I looked up, she raised her eyebrows a few times at me suggestively.

“What’ll you give me if I go over there right now?” she grinned. “…and offer to blow him if he’ll give up his name?”

The man at the counter next to her coughed, spitting out some of his coffee.

Glancing at him, I grunted an involuntary half-laugh at Cass.

Realizing I’d forgotten the cappuccino I’d been making, I turned my back on her briefly, hooking the metal filter into the corresponding threads on the machine. After a bit of a struggle, I got it locked in place and stuck a wide-mouthed coffee cup under it, hitting the red button to turn it on. I waited for the tell-tale hiss, then turned towards her once more, quirking an eyebrow.

“What’ll I give you to blow my stalker? Hmmm.” I pretended to think. “How about a grilled cheese sandwich?” I said. “You like those, right?”

She exhaled in mock drama. “Cheapskate.”

“What were you hoping for?” I snorted. “I’m a starving artist, remember? I’m basically offering you my dinner.”

“Right.” She gave me a mock-serious look. “I guess I’d better let you blow him instead. If you do a good enough job, maybe he’ll give you a tip.” When I let out an outraged sound, smacking her arm with the counter rag, she laughed, tugging on my wrist. “Hey, starving artist. We’re going out tonight, right? You’re still in your ‘I’m getting even with my lousy, cheating, fuckwad, loser ex-boyfriend Jaden by going out to clubs, getting rip-roaring drunk, and picking up cute strangers with my best pal Cass’ phase, right?”

I snorted. “I think that phase has run its course.”

“Aww.” She pouted. “No. One more night. It’s Saturday.”

Again, I could only shake my head. “I’m supposed to work at Spider’s new tattoo shop tomorrow. He and Angie wanted to see a few more designs… so that’s what I’ll be doing tonight. I can’t draw drunk, so partying’s out, sorry.”

She frowned. “Boring. At least call that Nick guy, the bartender. Get him to come over and screw your brains out when he gets off work.”

I grimaced, shaking my head. “Ugh. No. I had to end that.”

“What?” Her mouth puckered disapprovingly. “Why? He was cute!”

“He started getting weird.”

She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Define ‘weird,’ Allie.”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Just weird. Clingy, I guess.”

Staring at me in disbelief, Cass snorted. “Jesus. The magic pussy strikes again.” Pouting her lips, she added, “You have to tell me how you do it, Al. I think I have the opposite… the anti-magic, dick-repellent pussy. They all want to bang me, then… poof! They’re gone. You get marriage proposals, I get vomit-stained notes on my bed stand.”

I let out an involuntary laugh. “You have bad taste in guys, Cassandra. That’s not the same thing as being dick-repellent or whatever. If I slept with those guys, they’d leave me crappy notes, too.”

“Sure, they would.”

“They would,” I insisted. “And you know it.”

Sighing, she propped her jaw on her hand, looking down the bar. “Maybe. I do manage to find the major bag of dicks in every crowd, don’t I?” she said, glum. Perking up slightly, she glanced at me. “Hey, is Jon coming in today? After his morning kung fu class?”

I nodded. “Far as I know.” Glancing up at the cat clock with the eyes that flicked back and forth for each second, its tail twitching in time, I sighed. “He should be here any minute, actually.”

“Now, he’s someone I’d blow for free,” she said wistfully.

I grimaced for real that time. “Seriously? Can you just… not? Talk about him like that, I mean? He’s my brother.”

“Your brother is seriously fine. And he’s an adoptive brother, right? So no reason to get all skeeved over hearing me lust over your non-blood relative.”

I winced, shaking my head as I hung the rag on the counter behind the bar. “You know he’s gay, right? I mean, it’s not like we haven’t known that since, what, kindergarten?”

She sighed wistfully. “A girl can dream.”

Internally, I sighed. Not only was Jon probably the person I was closest to in the entire world, but my mental image of him was still closer to how he’d looked when he was fifteen than it was to how he looked now.

Of course, objectively, I knew he barely resembled that person anymore.

Back then, everyone called him “Bug” and he got stuffed into garbage cans and gym lockers on a semi-regular basis. Predictably, he got picked on mainly for being a “little faggot,” since kids were oddly perceptive about that kind of thing. Sometimes, though, they went after him for being a bookworm, being a know-it-all, being skinny, or for wearing corrective glasses so thick they distorted the size of his eyes––thus earning him his nickname––or just because he wouldn’t back down or cower like they felt he should.

Eventually, though, as people do, Jon got older.

He picked up martial arts at the end of high school, not long before Dad died. He also switched from glasses to contact lenses, filled out, and started getting tattoos.

Now Jon had like five black belts, part ownership of a software company, and taught Choy Li Fut, a type of kung fu, as his day job.

No one had stuffed Jon into a gym locker in a very long time.

“You’re sure he’s not bi?” Cass said. “Not even a little? Like a secret bi?”

I let out an involuntary laugh. “You’re welcome to ask him.”

Her lips pursed. “Maybe I’ll just show up at his place in a trench coat and a teddy one of these days. See how he responds to actual real-girl stimulus.”

The men sitting there all looked away as her eyes turned in their direction, trying to hide the fact that they were staring at her.

“Yeah,” I grunted. “Good luck with that.” Walking the cappuccino over to the guy at the counter who’d ordered it, I walked back to her, shrugging. “Personally, though, if you’re going to start going after guys who aren’t card-carrying members of the bag-of-dicks crowd, I’d suggest trying with males of the species who actually like sleeping with, you know, women.”

She grinned, shrugging eloquently. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Thinking, I added, “Speaking of dating non-jerks, Jon has good taste in guys usually.” I quirked my mouth in a half-smile. “Instead of playing ‘scare the hot gay guy,’ maybe just ask him for tips on how to pick up, you know, men. With an emphasis on guys who aren’t anything like your father or your bag-of-dicks brothers.”

She laughed, but I saw my words reach her, even as she shook her head ruefully.

“Yeah,” she conceded, dumping part of a salt-shaker on a napkin and spreading the granules around with her index finger.

We’d been friends since we were kids, like I said. There were advantages to that.

“How’s your mom doing?” she said, even as I thought it.

I shrugged. “She’s okay.”

“Really?”

I looked up from where I’d been rearranging the stack of paper napkins behind the counter. Seeing the probing look in her eyes, I inclined my head. “More or less. Her last bender was two weeks ago, so she’s probably due for another one pretty soon. Last time I went over there, she was watching old tapes of us when me and Jon were kids.” I grimaced, remembering. “She yelled at me when I tried to turn it off, then started crying.”

“Jesus,” Cass said, wincing.

“Yeah,” I said flatly. “It was awesome.” Frowning, I shrugged. “Jon tried to talk her into going to rehab again… or at least some kind of grief therapy, but no go. She still won’t even talk about Dad. She watches those videos of him with us, you know, before he got sick… I swear she wants to pretend it never happened. Like he’s on a business trip or something.”

Cass frowned, watching my eyes. “I really like your mom.”

I nodded, my throat tightening. “Me, too.”

I didn’t add that I missed her, but I thought it. In a lot of ways, it felt like my mom died when my dad did.

Shoving the thought aside, I bit the inside of my cheek, annoyed with myself for even going there.

I was still lost in my own head when a throat cleared not far from where we were talking.

I turned, a little startled that it came from so close. I usually had better peripheral radar than that, but this guy walked right up on us like a ninja.

When I glanced up, I felt my jaw loosen.

Light, strangely glass-like eyes met mine. A narrow mouth pursed under absurdly high cheekbones and a narrow, angular face. His almond-shaped eyes hinted at what might have been Eurasian ancestry, but his ethnicity was impossible to pin down, and could have been anything from Native American to Mongolian. Whatever it was, it had to be mixed with Scandinavian or German or something, given how tall he was. His coal black hair was straight but curled just the smallest bit where hung down by his ears.

It was Mr. Monochrome.

2 / Mr. Monochrome

HE CLEARED HIS throat again. I heard impatience that time. Annoyance.

“May I speak with you?” he said. “It’s important.”

I blinked.

Nope. He was still there.

He was also definitely talking to me.

I glanced at Cass, who was staring up at him, too, her red-lipsticked mouth ajar where she still leaned over the lunch counter, her short-skirted butt in the air. When I glanced back at Mr. Monochrome, though, he hadn’t followed the direction of my gaze.

Those clear eyes remained locked on me.

His narrow lips curled in a frown. The impression of impatience strengthened.

“Now, Alyson,” he said. “It can’t wait.”

He spoke like someone used to having his words obeyed.

I wasn’t really someone used to having to listen to people who spoke to me like that, though, maybe because I’d never had jobs high-paying enough that I had to care. Even our boss at the diner, Tom, didn’t go there with me.

With this guy, I hesitated.

Maybe part of it was the sheer fact of his physical presence.

I’d never stood this close to him before, not while he was standing, too, so I’d never really realized how tall he was, or how broad-shouldered. I definitely hadn’t realized that my head only came up to about the middle of his chest. He had one of those frames that made him look more lean than big, more of a runner type than a weight lifter, but now that he stood directly in front of me, I realized that impression might be deceptive, too.

Up close, he looked more like one of Jon’s martial arts buddies, or even Jon himself. The muscles this guy wore definitely looked functional, not purely decorative.

Until now, he’d never looked me in the face before, either.

When he ordered from me, he never looked up from the table, or away from the window. He didn’t so much as glance in my direction when he walked into the diner, or when he left.

He was looking at me now, though.

His light-colored eyes stunned me in some way I couldn’t quite articulate to myself, maybe in part because they weren’t what I expected. I’d known his eyes were on the light side, but I hadn’t realized how light. Looking at them now, they appeared to have almost no color at all, apart from a vague tint. I supposed technically they must be blue or gray, but they reminded me more of crystals I’d seen in New Age rock shops. Their lightness was made stranger by his eyes’ almond slant and the pitch black hair, but I didn’t see how they could be contact lenses.

Maybe he’d gotten some kind of cosmetic surgery?

Either way, it wasn’t my finest moment, me gaping up at him like a drunk teenager.

Mr. Monochrome stared back at me, exuding impatience.

Then, without warning, he moved.

Before I could jerk back, or get out a single word, he caught hold of my upper arm. His fingers felt like flesh-wrapped steel, not bone; they closed around my bicep like a vice. He gripped me tightly enough that I let out a surprised sound, but I didn’t fight him.

I was still staring at his face, when something slammed into my chest, a flood of warmth.

I didn’t see anything, but it felt nearly physical in intensity. It confused me, calmed me, wiped out my ability to think. It was thorough, too, whatever it was. I relaxed totally under his fingers. It didn’t even cross my mind to fight the sensation.

When my vision cleared, he was watching me, his eyes sharp, filled with scrutiny, as if he was trying to read something in the details of my face.

“All right?” he said.

Thinking about his question, I nodded.

“Okay.” I nodded a second time. The motion felt odd, almost mechanical. “Yes.”

I saw his shoulders relax, but something about the way he moved, even the nod he gave me in return, struck me as strange. Not in an alarming way; rather, it fascinated me. He moved oddly. It reminded me of something, that small gesture, those little adjustments of his body and face. The way he stood there. His angular face.

I tried to remember what it reminded me of.

He didn’t wait for me to finish that line of thought.

“Come on,” he said, gruff.

Before I’d made sense of the words, he’d already dragged me through the opening in the linoleum-topped lunch counter.

I followed him, without a care in my mind.

* * *

CASS FOLLOWED BEHIND us. I was aware of her, despite that calm over my mind.

Her voice confused me as it grew increasingly frantic.

“Wait!” She reached for me, catching hold of my arm when we’d crossed half the space between the diner counter and the front door. The man holding me didn’t pause his steps. Scarcely glancing back at her, he pulled me easily out of her grasp. “Hey! Wait! Where are you going with her? STOP! STOP!”

I heard the fear in her voice.

Somehow, it didn’t alarm me, though.

Rather, it made me concerned.

Cass was my friend. Why was she upset? What was upsetting her? I half-turned back, about to ask her, when a voice overshadowed the thought.

It’s all right, Allie. You’re fine. Cass is fine. She just doesn’t understand.

I nodded to myself, acknowledging the words. Then my brow scrunched.

“Understand what?” I said aloud. “What doesn’t she understand?”

He didn’t answer me.

Despite his silence, my mind still felt calm. I mused over my own calmness, the fact that I was totally unfazed by this strange man leaving my place of employment with me. I didn’t try to fight him at all, which somehow didn’t strike me as strange, either. I followed him obediently towards the restaurant’s lobby, even as my mind turned over what was happening in the distance, watching me and the man with the black hair and Cass as if hovering over the three of us.

Then a different voice brought my focus back down.

It was sharp, loud, and it came from right in front of us.

It was also extremely familiar.

“What do you think you’re doing, man?”

My mind wavered…

Then it clicked back, sharpening to a denser focus.

My brother, Jon, stood in front of us, his long, dirty-blond hair up in a half-ponytail, probably because he’d just walked here from where he worked at a nearby martial arts studio. He stared from my face to the man standing slightly in front of me. His hazel eyes focused on the hand that gripped my bicep, right before they slid upwards, measuring the man whose hand it was. He looked at me, as if gauging my expression.

Then his focus zeroed in on the man holding me.

“Let go of her,” Jon said. “Now. Or I’m calling the cops.”

There was zero bluster in Jon’s voice, no hint of empty threat. He spoke without emotion, his voice an unequivocal command. It was his martial arts voice, the one he used with his students. I knew that voice––I’d seen it in action when I’d gone to watch his fights and other events––but I’d never seen it used like this.

Something about it brought my mind back, marginally, at least.

I tugged on my arm in the tall man’s grip, trying to retrieve it from his fingers.

The man glanced at me, his grip tightening.

Calm down, I heard distinctly in my mind. Now, Alyson.

That time, it didn’t calm me though. Not as much, at least.

Even so, I couldn’t quite force myself to speak. I frowned at him instead, gritting my teeth as I fought to clear my mind, to understand what was happening, what I was doing.

The man in front of me faced Jon. “I won’t hurt her.”

Jon frowned. He looked at me. “Are you all right, Al?”

I frowned, looking up at the man holding my arm. For the first time, it genuinely crossed my mind to wonder what was wrong with me, why I’d been so willing to go with him.

“I’m fine,” I said, my voice doubtful.

Jon’s eyes never left my face when he spoke to Cass. “What’s going on here, Cassandra?”

“I don’t know!” she said, that worry sharpening her voice.. “He just grabbed her and started walking for the door. They didn’t even talk. She was just… going with him. Like he’d drugged her or something. She didn’t argue with him or anything!”

Jon’s mouth hardened. He glared at the man holding me, then held out his hand. “Come here, Al.” Jon motioned towards me, a brief flick of his fingers. “Right now. Get behind me.”

I started to move forward, but the man holding me tightened his grip.

“No,” he said. He looked at Jon, then at Cass. “I need to talk to her. There isn’t time for this.”

His voice was deep enough to shock me. For the first time, I noticed his English carried an accent, maybe one he’d been hiding before, or adjusting in some way, at least. That accent sounded German to me. It definitely came from somewhere in Europe.

Jon stared up at him. “Excuse me? You don’t get to drag women out of public spaces because you decide you want to talk to them, bro. You need to let go of her. Now.”

“Don’t make me force the issue, Jon.” He glanced at Cass, who now stood to his right, and was edging between Jon and the black-haired man. “Cass.”

Jon’s light eyes widened perceptibly. Then they narrowed, turning openly aggressive for the first time. “Do we know you, man? How do you know our names?”

There was a silence.

Then Mr. Monochrome turned his head, fixing that cold gaze on me.

“Tell them you’re coming with me willingly,” he growled. “Tell them we’re just going outside to talk. Tell them it’s all right… that they can watch us from inside.”

“What?” I stared up at him, bewildered. “That’s my brother.”

“I know who it is,” the man growled back. “Either you deal with this, or I will.”

Just then, something made him start. He tensed abruptly, turning his head back towards Jon. I felt every muscle in the long body clench next to me, his arms, chest and shoulders suddenly taut as a drawn bowstring. His grip on my arm loosened, then tightened again.

Fluid as liquid, he moved, sliding his free hand into the jacket he wore.

When he withdrew that hand, he held a gun.

Before I could take a breath, much less scream, he aimed the barrel of that gun to my head. I let out a gasp when he wrenched me closer to him, flicking a metal bar on the end of the gun, presumably to unlock the safety, or to cock it. Either way, the gesture was smooth, practiced, and definitely clear in terms of intent.

My heart… stopped.

When it resumed, it jackhammered in my chest, adrenaline flooding my limbs.

Cass screamed.

I heard other people, diners probably, reacting, too.

Still, I couldn’t seem to make my mind work well enough to speak.

I heard Jon yell at Cass to get back, to get away from the gun, to go back behind the counter. I felt more emotions crash into me, people panicking, talking excitedly, chairs screeching as they moved back, as they got out of the way. I could barely process any of that, though.

I looked only at Mr. Monochrome, and the gun he held to my head.

Mr. Monochrome continued to stare at Jon.

Looking up at him though, I realized it wasn’t Jon he was looking at, at all.

He was staring at the man who’d walked into the diner behind him.

3 / Glow Eye

I FOUND MYSELF staring at that man, too. He moved like some kind of predatory animal, stalking in through the glass doors and winding around Jon like he was little more than a pebble in the stream, a minor hindrance to reaching his destination.

The new man was handsome, startlingly so.

Auburn hair fell on either side of perfect bone structure, large eyes of pale amber, dark brows, a well-formed jaw, and full, beautifully-shaped lips quirked in a faint smirk. His eyes never left the man holding the gun to my head.

The smirk definitely seemed aimed at him.

“Now, now, Revi’,” the auburn-haired man said. “Let’s not get overexcited.”

Mr. Monochrome jammed the gun tighter to my head. “You can’t possibly think I won’t do it.” The German-accented voice was cold as ice. “Turn around. Leave. Now, Terry. Or this ends here.”

My jaw loosened. I looked at Jon, who was staring between the man holding a gun to my head and the one he’d called “Terry.”

I began to feel like I’d walked into the middle of a movie set. Jon and I felt almost superfluous to whatever was unfolding. I could tell Jon was struggling to make sense of that same thing, of how he’d been shunted aside even as things escalated. Even so, Jon recovered faster than I did. After a bare breath, held up a hand to Mr. Monochrome.

“Put the gun down, man,” he said, his voice shaken. “Please. Don’t hurt her.”

Mr. Monochrome’s eyes never left the auburn-haired man.

“Leave, Terry,” he growled. “Right now. My orders are clear. I will kill her.”

“No, you won’t.”

The man holding me gripped me tighter, his hand on my shoulder now, his fingers digging into muscle, practically holding me by my collar bone.

“The fuck I won’t. Walk out of here. Now.”

Jon turned, staring at the auburn-haired man without lowering the hand he held up towards Mr. Monochrome. “Are you a cop?” he snapped. “What are you doing, man? Leave! Don’t you see he means it?”

The auburn-haired man didn’t glance at Jon, either.

“This is so childish, Revi’,” he said, clicking his tongue in an oddly expressive way as he shook his head. “We both know you will not kill her.”

“Terry––”

“The police are already on their way, my friend.” The auburn-haired man smiled. He shook his head, that smile still playing around his full lips. “So is SCARB. Are you really so willing to wear a collar again? Do you miss Asia so much, you’d be happy to return there to live on a work camp?” Clicking his tongue again, he sighed, holding out his hand. “Give me the gun, Revi’. Give it to me, and release her. I will let you leave before they get here.”

When he took a step towards us, Mr. Monochrome stepped back.

Gripping me tighter, Mr. Monochrome angled himself behind me, still holding the gun to my temple. He began moving us in a circle, taking a sideways step in the direction of the door, as if he meant to angle us around Jon and the auburn-haired man. Jon turned with us, his hand still up. He was pale now, and I saw his eyes dart towards the door, then back to the gun still pressed hard to my temple. He glanced at the auburn-haired man, without taking his eyes off the gun for more than a millisecond.

“You a cop?” Jon said again.

The auburn-haired man smiled, his eyes still following the man who held me. “In a manner of speaking. Yes.”

“He’s not a fucking cop,” the man holding me said. His voice was hard as metal, still tinged with that German accent. “Jon, you don’t want her to go with him. Trust me.”

Jon gave him a hard look, then looked back at the auburn-haired man.

For some reason, I found myself thinking that Jon actually believed him.

I believed him, too.

It was entirely irrational, but I would rather leave there with Mr. Monochrome than with the handsome man who said he was a cop.

Mr. Monochrome continued to maneuver us towards the door.

The auburn-haired man took a step towards us. Then another. He walked cautiously, his eyes on the man holding me, as if he was approaching a tiger.

“Revi’,” he said. “Be reasonable.”

Like Jon, he held up a hand, as if to calm a wild animal–-one that was cornered, snarling at him. His voice turned soothing, matter-of-fact. “You’ve lost this round, old friend. You waited too long. Let her go. If your people want to negotiate getting her back––”

The man holding me let out a humorless laugh.

“Go fuck yourself, Terry,” he growled.

The man with the auburn hair smiled faintly, then shifted his gaze until he was looking solely at me. His eyes and expression grew solemn as he studied my face.

I found I couldn’t look away from those amber, light-filled irises. They seemed to glow with their own internal light as he watched me seriously.

“Has he told you, little sister?” he said. “Has he told you who you are?”

When I just stared at him blankly, the man broke out in a disarming smile.

“Of course he didn’t,” he mused. “Classic Dehgoies. Why would he tell you anything when it’s easier to simply club you over the head and drag you with him by force?” Clucking his tongue lightly in amusement, the man shook his head, still focusing on me. “We have been looking for you longer than you’ve been alive, Alyson dear––”

“Shut up,” the man holding me growled. “Quit with the head-games, Terry.”

The man ignored him, looking only at me. “Do you have any idea how important you are, Alyson?” he said gently. “How the elders managed to hide you here, after all this time, allowing you to play human… well. Let’s just say, it’s upped my respect for their abilities a fair bit. I would never have guessed they’d be capable of such a thing.”

“Terry––”

The auburn-haired man held up a hand. “You are the Bridge, Alyson May Taylor. Do you know what that means?” His smile turned faintly predatory, conspiratorial. “Do you?”

I didn’t answer, swallowing as I glanced sideways at the man holding the gun to my head. It occurred to me again that somehow I was less afraid of him than I was of the man with the auburn hair. The thought made no sense. It was borderline nuts, like the fastest form of Stockholm Syndrome imaginable, but somehow the feeling persisted.

The auburn-haired man seemed to take my silence as an answer.

“The Bridge is sent here to save us, Alyson,” he said, his voice lulling, seductive. “You’re going to save us all. You’re going to return your people to their rightful place––burning the human world, and all of its cruel, empty, child-like bullshit to the ground. You’re going to set us free. You’re going to force them to evolve, Bridge Alyson.”

I stared at him, unable to respond.

Somehow, I could feel he meant what he said.

I saw it in him, like one can see the fervor of a religious fanatic. It reminded me of that sheen in the eyes of people who’d knocked on my front door, there to sell me on their God, prophets and churches. He believed his words. He pinned hope on that belief. Some part of him maybe even lived for it, in a sense.

He truly believed he’d been waiting for me.

I found myself concentrating on him harder.

Silver lights flickered at me, out of time, out of joint. Above him, I glimpsed a pyramid made of light, rotating in the darkness over his head. Something about that vision brought a spike of pain to my temples. It was white-hot, blinding.

I gasped, leaning against the man holding me.

He clutched me tighter. Concern bled through his fingers, a near longing. For the barest instant, I really felt him behind me, like a beating heart. The feeling was familiar––so familiar it brought a rush of something akin to relief. He breathed with me, holding the gun to my head, but we felt almost like a single being, a single heart and set of lungs. Pain twisted through me at the thought, but not like the pain that struck my temples.

Truthfully, it wasn’t like any pain I’d ever felt before. Longing wound into that pain, too, along with another rush of that familiarity.

The man holding me turned his head, looking at me.

I felt that pain on him, too. I felt it intensify––

––when the man with the auburn hair lunged at us both. He leapt towards me, moving without a sound, the instant the man holding me turned his head.

He moved fast––so fast I barely saw the shift.

I saw his attack unfold in the abstract, a blurred motion of aggression and animal-like violence. It was coming straight at me, so fast my heart leapt to my throat. It was too fast for thought, too fast for my mind to make sense of the exact threat.

I just knew I was under attack.

It terrified me more than the threat of the gun. More than the man holding me.

This man coming at me was danger. That’s all my mind fully understood.

DANGER. DANGER.

Maybe that’s why it happened.

Time slowed to a standstill. I felt every inch of expanding heat as adrenaline shot through my veins, every millimeter of those iron-like fingers gripping my shoulder, my heart hammering, the man holding me breathing hard enough I could feel each breath as it vibrated my body. I saw my brother’s face as he watched, terrified, from a few feet away, his hand still up as he stared at me, his expression full of fear.

I don’t really know how to explain what happened after that.

Something in me just… let go.

That’s how it felt.

It was as if a fist I’d held clenched, somewhere in the middle of my chest, suddenly loosened. Whatever it was, I’d held it for so long, I hadn’t known I held it at all. It was just how it was, to be clenched in that part of me.

When I let go of that tightness I’d carried since birth, it started a chain reaction in some distant part of me. A folding sensation, like a telescope being collapsed in segments, only lightning fast, a ticking film in the background of my mind with an oddly mechanical, almost beautiful precision.

A rush of power hit me somewhere in the middle of the chest.

That time, it didn’t come from outside of me.

I breathed it out, and it was as natural as… well, breathing.

That force slammed out of me like a hard exhale, like if I held it in, even a second longer, it might burn me apart from the inside.

Then it was gone.

It left me. I watched it go, fascinated, in that space of no-time. A slow-motion millisecond unfolded with the same precision as that part of my mind that had collapsed, folding within itself just a fraction of that same second before.

It hit the man who’d lunged for me first.

Jon was blown back after him, around the same time the first man’s feet left the ground, as he’d begun to fly backwards through the air, reaching the place where Jon was.

Then Jon’s feet left the ground, too.

I watched in that moment of timeless silence, seeing their bodies fly through the air, going in the opposite direction from where I stood. I saw that same force that came from my chest, only now it looked like a pale green light in the darkened spaces behind my eyes.

My own eyes were light––only light.

Somehow, I saw through that light anyway, for those few seconds at least.

Even though the force hit Jon second, he slammed into something first.

I watched him fly partway over a tabletop where two college-aged kids were eating pie and drinking coffee. They’d been watching the exchange between the four of us, I realized––everyone in the diner had been staring, riveted, the instant Jon showed up at the door, demanding Mr. Monochrome let me go.

Now I saw the two college kids’ faces alter in slow-motion, eyes widening as they saw my brother heading straight for them and their table.

His back slid over their pie and coffee, only an inch or two above the surface. His legs and tennis shoes hit the edge of the chrome tabletop, knocking their plates and glasses sideways and back, causing the girl sitting there to throw up her arms, also in slow-motion. Jon kept going, not stopping until he landed on a second table behind them, which had a tray covered in dirty soda glasses and coffee cups that the other waiter, Corey, must have left there when he went on his smoke break.

Those glasses and coffee cups flew towards the floor even as Jon’s tennis shoes scraped over the edge of the first tabletop, then he was heading for the floor.

The auburn-haired man flew further, since no table stood directly behind him from the direction of that onslaught of pale green light.

My attention shifted to him somewhere in that fraction of a second.

I watched him fly through the air, his amber eyes wide, the handsome face contorted in disbelief even as his arms pinwheeled, his hands and fingers actively looking for purchase. One of his hands was looking for something else, too. It dug into his jacket, reaching for the gun there, fighting to get it free of the holster he wore under the suit. I watched him struggle with it as he flew all the way to the wall.

Then, both struggles abruptly ended. He crashed into a row of glass shelves covered in fifties knick-knacks––an old radio, metal lunch boxes, Elvis Presley records, a letterman’s jacket.

It wasn’t until he hit into all of that, smashing the shelves with his shoulders, head and arms, that the sound seemed to come back in the diner.

Screams were the first thing that penetrated my awareness.

Then gunshots.

I flinched, violently, sure I was dead.

Something whizzed by me. I felt it pass, but didn’t move.

Then the man holding me grunted, half of his body jerking back, to both of our right.

More gunshots broke the quiet. That time, it was the man holding me who was firing. For the first time, it hit me that he was left-handed.

He wasn’t firing at me.

Instead, when I looked up in shock, I saw the end of his gun smoking. He’d aimed it past me, over my shoulder, at the man with the auburn hair.

I gaped from the gun back to the wall.

The man there held a gun as well. He’d somehow managed to unholster it while he’d been flying through the air. He’d been the one shooting at us, at least until the man holding me ended him. He’d shot the auburn-haired man right in the middle of the forehead. The shot was so precise it shocked me.

My vision slanted out.

Light took its place. That light blocked my view of the surrounding room.

Gasping in panic at my sudden blindness, I found myself acutely aware of everything else happening around us.

I heard people scrambling to their feet, knocking over chairs, moving tables. Screams followed. I felt fear––of the guns, yes, but not only the guns. Some of that fear felt aimed at me. Loud speech and frightened gasps confused me. I felt their panic like a physical force. It made me wince, then grimace from the pain of it––but I couldn’t see them, or anything else.

My eyes wouldn’t work. Everything was light––just light.

Green light, like what my mind conjured around that force in my chest, just before Jon and that other man flew across the room. I blinked, panicking at my seeming blindness.

I blinked, over and over, but the light wouldn’t dim.

Then the fingers holding me tightened so much I let out a gasp.

“Jurekil’a u’hatre davos!” The man was breathing hard, almost as hard as the people panicking around us. He gasped, speaking right near my ear. I couldn’t see him through the light, but his own panic slammed into me, making me nauseous. Was he afraid of me? “Gaos… di’lanlente a’guete… you’re a fucking manipulator! Gaos! Gaos!”

I couldn’t make sense of anything he said.

All I knew was, he sounded afraid. Shocked to the point of paralysis.

I kept blinking, fighting to see.

I felt dizzy, light-headed. Truthfully, I felt like I might be sick.

I leaned against the man where he held me against him, not thinking about the gun anymore, only wanting to see, to know what happened, where I was, why everyone was screaming. Did I really see this man shoot another man in the head?

Then, another thought brought panic back to my throat.

Had I hurt Jon? What happened to Jon?

Terror hit me, along with a surge of dread that nearly overwhelmed me.

“Where’s Jon?” I managed, my words blurred, groggy. “Where is he? Is he all right?

Something in my words seemed to snap the man holding me out of his stupor.

The fingers released me, but for barely a second.

An arm wrapped roughly around my waist, wrenching me against a hard, muscular body. I gripped that arm in my hands, still fighting to see, to think, to move my mind beyond that nausea and dread. I couldn’t budge the arm off me.

Truthfully, I could barely make myself try.

I couldn’t remember ever being so drained, scared or exhausted.

Before I could wrap my head around what he was doing, the feelings coming off him, he was carrying me. Half-carrying me, at least, dragging me with him.

I couldn’t see, but I knew we were heading towards the door.

That’s when I first heard the sirens.

(END SAMPLE)

WANT TO READ MORE?

Check out the rest of the Bridge & Sword Series:

ROOK (Bridge & Sword Series #1)

Also by JC Andrijeski

Also by JC Andrijeski

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NEW YORK (A Bridge & Sword Prequel)

BRIDGE & SWORD COLLECTION (Books 1-3 Plus Bonus Prequel NEW YORK)

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KIREV’S DOOR (Quentin Black #0.5)

BLACK CHRISTMAS (Quentin Black #2.5)

BLACK SUMMER (Quentin Black #3.5)

BLACK BLOOD (Quentin Black #5.5)

Series Summaries:

QUENTIN BLACK MYSTERY SERIES is a dark, gritty paranormal mystery romance with science fiction elements, starring brilliant and mysterious Quentin Black and forensic psychologist Miriam Fox. The series spans continents and dimensions as Black solves crimes, takes on other races and tries to keep his and Miri’s true identities secret to keep them both alive.

BRIDGE & SWORD SERIES is a dark, unique and gritty apocalyptic world and alternate history of Earth. It features a young woman grappling with her role in bringing about the end of one world and the start of a new one. Follow Allie Taylor and her antihero partner, Dehgoies Revik, as they fight terrifying enemies and one another in a passionate story spanning centuries, and filled with unpredictable twists, turns and betrayals.

THE MORPH SERIES is a science fiction mystery romance centering on shifters from another world, called morph. Earth humans remained blissfully ignorant of the existence of alternate dimensions until Nihkil Jamri tries to save private detective, Dakota Reyes, while he is surveying Earth.

ALIEN APOCALYPSE is a post-apocalyptic dystopian romance series about a tough girl named Jet Tetsuo who grew up on Earth following an alien invasion. Forced into living among her conquerors, she learns to navigate a dangerous world of sexy aliens, enemies who pose as friends, treacherous humans, traitors and unlikely allies, even as she becomes their most famous fighter in the Rings, their alien version of the coliseum.

About the Author

JC Andrijeski is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author who writes paranormal mysteries, urban fantasy, and apocalyptic and cyberpunk-y science fiction, often with a metaphysical bent.

JC has a background in journalism, history and politics, and currently traipses around the globe, eats odd foods, and reads whatever she can get her hands on. She grew up in the Bay Area of California, but has lived abroad in Europe, Australia and Asia, and from coast to coast in the continental United States.

She currently lives and writes full time in Bangkok, Thailand.

To learn more about JC, please visit https://jcandrijeski.com

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“Seeking Truth in Made-Up Worlds”

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