I leaned back in my seat, keeping my posture and facial expression calm.
“That is correct,” I said, holding his gaze. “We are willing, however, to claim responsibility for the maintenance of peaceful relations with the seer race as a whole. We are attempting to ‘police’ our own people, as it were… at least within our somewhat limited means.”
I was understating that.
By a fair amount, really.
Our means were pretty significant, even for a lot of mid-sized countries.
But I was there to downplay the scary factor with us, not give them more reasons to be paranoid. Black and I talked about how truthful I would be, and decided it would fall into the range of “mostly truthful”––meaning firmly in the “hoping to be allies” camp, while recognizing they had very different goals and concerns in some areas.
And also recognizing that yes… they were likely to be pretty twitchy when it came to us.
Right now, the older man sitting across from me, his previously black hair now mostly gone to gray, watched me warily, obviously suspecting me of withholding information.
Of course, we knew they weren’t telling us everything, either.
“Look.” I changed tacks slightly, leaning over the table, resting my arms on the polished wood. “I get that you have no reason to trust us right now. I really do. We’re more than willing to do our best to reassure you on that front… including entertaining any good-faith gestures you’d like to see from our camp. The truth is, our people are just as afraid of you as you are of them. We’d like to keep things calm… and non-reactionary… on both sides.”
I saw Garrity flinch perceptibly, as if my words surprised him.
He didn’t change expression apart from that.
I had to give him credit.
Guy was pretty danged cool, even for someone in his position.
I shuddered to think what President Regent would be doing, if he were here.
There was a reason the other human leaders chose Garrity to lead the initial discussions.
As I watched, he glanced at his colleagues on both sides of the table, most of whom represented countries in the E.U., along with the Indian Prime Minister, and the leader of Japan. From his unspoken question to them, I definitely got the sense he’d expected me to say something like this, that the human leaders discussed it.
Even as I thought it, Garrity looked back at me.
“But you’re reading our minds right now,” he said. “Aren’t you, Dr. Fox?”
Pausing meaningfully, he added in a harder voice.
“Not only that, you’ve told us that your kind can… what is the word you used? Push human minds to do your bidding? Manipulate our thoughts, our belief systems, our loyalties… our entire view of the world?”
He paused again.
I watched him gauge my eyes openly.
“How can we possibly trust you,” he said. “If what you say is true? Do you expect us to just take your word that you won’t enslave us, when clearly, that would be the easiest path forward for you and your kind?”
I held his gaze.
When he finished speaking, I held up my hands in a shrug, letting them fall back to the table.
“I’m sorry to say this to you, sir…” I kept my eyes on his, my voice firmly polite. “…but I’m not sure you have much choice.”
Pausing, I added,
“My people were enslaved in their previous world… by human beings. They won’t allow that again. They just won’t. The reality is, the seer race has learned a lot since that time. Moreover, their culture has evolved as a result of that experience. It’s a longer story, in terms of seer history, but suffice it to say, these seers are not the same as those who allowed that enslavement to happen. That means, in part, that they won’t do the things you would likely ask for, in order to feel totally ‘out of danger’ from any rogue seers who might abuse their powers…”
Seeing the alarm verging on anger in Garrity’s eyes, I held up a hand.
“Nor would you, if you were them,” I added, warning. “Both races have to compromise. It’s not fair in any way to put the entire burden of this on the seer race. You can’t expect them to willingly succumb to restraints on their powers, their freedom of movement, their free will… any more than you would agree to this for humans.”
Pausing to let my words sink in, I leaned back in my chair.
I dialed back some of the warning in my voice.
“That being said, most seers have absolutely no desire to impinge on the freedom or free will of human beings either, Prime Minister… in part for those same reasons. My people love freedom as much as yours do. Are there seers who lust for power over others? Yes. Of course. Just as there are humans who do the same.”
I let that sink in, too.
I added, “We’ve already told you about one of our kind with that kind of… instability. My uncle, Charles Vasiliev, was damaged from his time on that previous world. His fear of humans got the better of him, and he decided the best way to deal with it was to do to them what was done to him.”
My voice shifted back to a near warning.
“He won’t be the last to try this. But the truth is, that’s the very reason you need us. You need seers of integrity, and you need strong allies among my people. You need a functioning government of seers with which to negotiate, one that desires the same kind of world that you do… one you can build strong alliances, treaties, and peace agreements with. You need us to police those seers who are more dangerous… like my uncle.”
“And where is he now?”
My head turned.
I found myself looking at the man from Mi6, who was now staring me straight in the face. His voice was deep, and surprised me by sounding American.
“This uncle of yours,” he said, gesturing to the side, his eyes remaining coldly on mine. “No one seems to know where he is. No one seems to know where a good number of people are… including appointees to the United States’ presidential cabinet… and a number of high-ranking officials in other parts of your government…”
His eyes grew a few shades colder.
“…notably, quite a number of people who used to work in your Pentagon. And in the C.I.A. Not to mention the F.B.I.”
I held his gaze, feeling his attempt to intimidate me.
Truthfully, humans couldn’t really get away with that, not when it came to seers.
They just didn’t have the mental oomph to push us around.
Which, of course, tended to really piss them off, if they were used to being able to do this with other humans.
I didn’t shove that aggression back at him, I only nodded, my voice calm.
“Yes,” I said. “Quite a few people were removed. Charles’ people. We were transparent about this.”
I felt humans stiffen around me, and I folded my arms, staring around at them pointedly.
“What race do you suppose they were?” I said then, gesturing expansively. “Why do you suppose we felt the need to remove them, when… like you said… if they were human, we could have merely taken over them minds? Pushed them to do our bidding?”
The silence after that felt more weighted.
I saw them exchanging looks.
I knew I was taking a risk, saying such a thing.
There was a lot we couldn’t tell them, at least not yet.
Black and I both agreed we’d need to ease people into certain facts, as we began to educate them more about seers… while still telling them the important things they needed to know.
One of the big things we needed them to understand… hopefully without scaring the bejesus out of them… was the severity of the dangers and security risks posed by Charles’ seers, and how they needed us to lead the teams addressing that.
“So this… ‘policing’ of your people you mentioned,” Garrity said, exchanging looks with the President of France, and the representative from Germany. “That would include these so-called ‘disappearances’? Is that what you are telling us?
”
He glanced sideways, that time looking at the man I’d pegged as Mi6.
I now questioned whether he was C.I.A., thinking maybe the other leaders allowed the United States into the meeting, after all, if indirectly.
Bingo, doc, Mika murmured grimly in my mind. Which explains where he got the sight-blocking tech. We’re working on getting more out of him now––
I absorbed her words, still focused on Garrity in front of me.
“…all of those government appointees and career officials, not to mention military leaders, scientists, members of the Defense Department and the military contractors. You want us to believe that all of those individuals within your own country…”
The Prime Minister paused, as if second-guessing that, given what I’d just said about Black running a quasi-sovereign, independent naton-state of seers.
“…err, I mean the United States government… they were, literally dozens of them, extra-judicially removed by your people as part of this ‘self-policing’ of seers?”
When I glanced across the table, I saw the C.I.A. agent glaring at me.
I saw him about to open his mouth.
I turned to Garrity before he could.
“Yes,” I said, blunt. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
3
Diversion
“You pulled me out of a meeting for this?” I stared at him through the monitor of my laptop. “A meeting with heads of state. Representing a good chunk of the civilized world? Really?”
Not waiting for his answer, I exhaled in exasperation.
“I thought you were going to wait on this,” I said. “I thought you were waiting until I got back… that you’d told Steele no. As in absolutely no. As in not until we could do the interview together, Black.”
He clicked at me, smiling one of those killer smiles of his.
“I’m running cover for you, baby,” he informed me, without an ounce of shame in his voice. “You’re creating too much of a hullabaloo, with your whole fancy-schmancy end of things. I need to draw eyes a bit, at least until you’ve done some of the heavy lifting. Get down and dirty with the unruly masses…”
He folded his muscular arms, his flecked gold eyes catching sunlight as he leaned back in what looked like a director’s cloth and wooden chair.
“This way,” he added expansively, adjusting his weight in the chair. “I pull some of those eyeballs off you, sweetheart. I get the press to focus on me instead, and my ‘buffoonish antics’ as you so flatteringly call them.”
He winked at me, flashing another of those smiles.
“Trust me… people would much rather watch me act like an ass than watch a bunch of boring meetings about anything of real consequence––”
“This doesn’t help me,” I cut in, blunt. “This doesn’t help anything, Black.”
My mouth turned down in a frown.
Hearing him click at me reproachfully, I gave him a bewildered look.
“Why would you think this would help me, Black? The interview is pre-taped, right? It won’t even show until tonight. You’re not pulling any headlines from me, doing this now. You could have waited for me to come back, and then the two of us…”
I trailed, watching him grin at me from the other side of the video screen.
Glimpsing the narrow dressing area where he sat, thinking about his words, I tried to read between the lines to what he wasn’t actually telling me.
“You’re not doing it live?” I said, blunt. “Is this interview live?”
The killer grin widened, right before he winked.
“No.” I shook my head, adamant. “Absolutely not, Black. No. Does Yarli know where you are? There’s no possible way she and Manny approved this… much less Dex!”
Thinking about my own words, I looked around the narrow space where his chair appeared to be located. A mirror took up most of the background. Since it was a mirror, I could see a lot more of the area around his dressing table than I would be able to normally, especially the area on the other side of the laptop he was using to speak to me.
Where was Cowboy? Where was his security detail?
Where was Dex?
I had a handful of the seers with me, but he should have Luce, Kiessa, Holo, Larisse, not to mention whoever they’d moved into security from the team of seers they’d been training at the Raptor’s Nest over the past few months.
I had no idea who he’d brought from San Francisco to Los Angeles with him, but it would at least have included a few seers.
Black’s make-up table definitely appeared to be outside, sandwiched between two cast trailers, instead of inside the studio where they normally got their guests ready for an interview of this kind. I didn’t see any of the studio staff around him, or even regular studio security, which made me wonder what the hell was going on.
If it was a live show, where was everyone?
“Why are you outside?” I asked him, frowning. “Can anyone else see you out there?”
He rolled his eyes, grinning wider.
“You worried about me, doc?” Refolding his arms, he leered at me openly. “Come on. Don’t tempt me. You know our little agreement isn’t just about actual, in-person fucking, right? No phone sex. No oral. No nothing until after the wedding. That was the deal. You agreed to it, doc. I want us to go full animal crazy on one another during the honeymoon…”
I ignored that.
Knowing it was one hundred percent distraction, I didn’t bother to roll my eyes.
Then he rearranged his arms, so that his left forearm faced his laptop’s webcam.
Seeing the new tattoo he’d gotten there, I scowled a little, mostly because some part of me was tempted to soften. When we’d gotten back from Hawaii, he’d asked Jax for new ink. That’s when I found out that Jax apparently studied under one of the best seer tattoo artists on Old Earth, and specialized in elaborate, detailed designs.
Black gave Jax a drawing for this one… a drawing he’d apparently done himself… and requested seer ink. I had no idea what seer ink was made of, but Black and Holo joked it lasted a lot longer than “that weak-ass shit” humans used on their skin. Holo also informed me it was “made of acid and stuff,” which didn’t really elucidate much.
The more relevant information I got from both of them was that seer ink designs remained for decades, even centuries, in nearly pristine condition, contained sharper, more vibrant colors, and hurt like hell to get applied.
Seeing the tattoo now, brightly colored and twisting around his forearm and up to his bicep before it disappeared under his shirt sleeve, I fought not to react.
It really was beautiful.
I’m pretty sure it was the most beautiful tattoo I’d ever seen.
I was strongly considering getting one like it on my back, but I hadn’t told Black that yet, and I hadn’t talked to Jax about it yet, either.
Black’s new tattoo was of a dragon coiled around a blackfish, what most Americans called an orca, or a killer whale.
It more or less combined the two designs of our wedding rings.
Black had drawn the designs for those, too.
Knowing Black might have even shown me the tattoo to distract me, or to at least nudge me into being a little less mad at him, I bit my lip, frowning.
Unfortunately, Black wasn’t above those kinds of psychological maneuvers.
He was damned good at them, truthfully.
“Black,” I began, exhaling. “Can we just talk about this? Without all of the mental and verbal musical chairs? What are you up to right now? And are you really safe there?”
My husband had been stalked pretty much twenty-four-seven by reporters and camera people for the past four months, ever since he single-handedly caused the entire human civilization on Earth to lose its collective mind.
“No one can see me here, doc,” he said, his voice more serious. “No one even knows I’m here. We had a small crowd at the gate…”
Seeing my expression, even as
I opened my mouth, he held up a hand.
“…it was a small crowd, doc. Less than a sixty people. Our people handled it.”
I snorted at his definition of “small,” but otherwise blew past it, folding my arms.
“Seers?” I clarified. “Seers handled it?”
“Of course.”
I considered asking him who he’d brought with him, then brushed that aside.
Instead I asked, “Have you had any problems inside? Since you got there?”
There was a silence.
A beat too late, he shrugged, his gold eyes shifting into that difficult-to-read mask of his, making it clear he didn’t want to get into details, not with me, at least not right then.
Of course, that only struck me as an oblique way for him to answer the question in the affirmative.
“No,” he said, a touch sharper. “It’s not that, doc. The truth is, I don’t know for sure. But if there’s been anything in here, it wasn’t big enough for Cowboy or Dex to bother me with it.”
Pausing, and now studying my face more cautiously, he added,
“Really, doc… everything’s fine. Just finish your gig there and come the fuck home. I mean it. I know what I’m doing. Get your ass back here. Then neither of us has to worry.”
I exhaled at that, not answering.
A big part of me agreed with him.
Neither of us would sleep easy this far away from one another, not for long.
Especially not now, with everything going on.
Even apart from the impending wedding… and the lack of sex we’d both agreed to until after the ceremony.
Separations just sucked for us, period.
That was the way of seer bonds.
I knew it would be worse for Black than for me right now, given what he was dealing with, in terms of the dragon thing. He’d told me more than once before I left that he needed to hear from me every day while I was gone… at least once every day… since he still wasn’t entirely confident in terms of controlling his living light.
Remembering that now made my teeth grind.
Given all that, given everything, what the hell business did he have going to Los Angeles for a major interview without me?
Black Of Wing: A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery Romance (Quentin Black Mystery Book 14) Page 3