Black Of Wing: A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery Romance (Quentin Black Mystery Book 14)

by JC Andrijeski

  …and yeah, Dex.

  Dexter should have been at the top of that list.

  Yarli had the easiest group, in terms of breaking the news.

  The only one who really mattered was Holo.

  Holo––who’d fought in a war alongside Dalejem on that other version of Earth, and who, along with Jax, had known Dalejem longer than any of them, even Yarli––was definitely one person who would want to know that Jem was still alive.

  Holo hadn’t been able to leave San Francisco at all, since he still suffered from medical complications after the attack he barely survived by a cyborg in Oahu. The damned thing nearly killed him, and injured every major organ in his body.

  It was bad enough, Miri said he likely would have gotten a heart, liver, and kidney transplant if he’d been human.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t human… and there simply weren’t enough seers on the entire planet, even now, for them to have spare organs lying around for transplants.

  Holo had to tough out the healing process on his own.

  In any case, the whole team should know about Jem and Nick by now, and clearly they didn’t.

  Dex clearly hadn’t known.

  Black should have told him.

  After what Nick did to Kiko, Dex was going to lose his ever-loving mind when he found out Nick the vampire was still alive. Dex might actually have a stroke when he found out Nick was living at Angel’s place in San Francisco, feeding off Solonik when he got the munchies, going surfing in Santa Cruz every other night with his new boyfriend, Dalejem.

  Hell, Dex would freak out just about Solonik being alive.

  Solonik, who previously kidnapped and nearly killed Miri, and who’d been a damned dangerous seer in his own right, was currently chained up in Angel’s garage, sulking because Nick didn’t love him.

  Really, after all this, Dex might need medication.

  Therapy, anyway.

  Wincing as she turned all this over in her mind, Angel found herself thinking she didn’t blame Black for putting off “The Talk.”

  Then again, Miri had still gotten the hardest job.

  Miri had to be the one to tell Kiko.

  It was probably better that both of them waited until their respective teams were well outside of San Francisco, and in Kiko’s case, a few thousand miles away, on a whole other continent, before they dumped that news on them.

  Angel wondered if Dex was on the line even now, listening to this, wondering how the hell Dalejem was back, given how they’d all been so sure Nick murdered him. Dex was likely biting his tongue nearly in half with wanting to ask Jem if he’d “taken care of” that fucking vampire for the rest of them.

  Dex wasn’t stupid. He would put it together.

  It was just a matter of time.

  Again, Angel was damned glad she wasn’t tasked with telling him the truth.

  “What else?” Black growled. “Jem? Do you have anything I can actually use?”

  On the line, Dalejem hesitated.

  When that deep voice rose a third time, it remained melodious, calm––business-like verging on blunt.

  Even so, Angel heard the reluctance there.

  “He’s tied to you,” Jem said. “This new seer. He’s connected to you, specifically, brother.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Black stared at the naked, tattooed seer, his gold eyes hard as glass. “Explain, Jem. Now. What the hell does that mean?”

  “Exactly what I said,” Jem said, sighing. “He’s tied to you, brother. To your aleimi. I can see the cord… and it’s not insubstantial. It’s the kind of cord one would normally see with a family-member, or a military unit from the Pamir. There’s a multi-layered energetic cord between the two of you. I see it well within your own aleimic shield, connected to those dragon structures in your light. I also see it tied to another part of you.”

  Again, Jem hesitated, as if unsure he should elaborate.

  “Where?” Black said. “Where else is it tied to me?”

  Before Jem could answer, Holo cursed over the line.

  “Shit. He’s right, boss. I see it, too. I don’t know how I missed that––”

  “Because you’re not Jem,” Black growled. His voice hardened, focusing back on the older seer. “Where?” Black growled, louder. “Where else is it tied to me?”

  Dalejem sighed, clicking under his breath.

  “Your light bond,” he admitted. “It’s connected to the structure you share with your mate… with Miriam.”

  Angel, who’d been focused on Black’s face when Dalejem spoke, saw the seer flinch.

  To his credit, he didn’t change expression beyond that.

  His darker gold eyes remained warily on the face of the seer in front of him.

  “Is he connected to Miri, too?” Black asked.

  Another faint pause quieted the line.

  Angel heard Dalejem sigh, like he was getting ready to answer…

  …then there was a strange whoosh sound.

  Unlike the boom in the sky earlier, this noise, Angel almost recognized.

  It was the sound of all the air in a particular spot being abruptly shunted out of the way.

  It might not have been audible at all, but the gunfire at the outer gate had finally quieted, leaving a strange sort of silence over the studio’s backlot. The strange seer hadn’t spoken since Black’s last words. The two of them just stood there, staring at one another.

  Then there was that sound.

  The whoosh.

  A body-shaped hole punched into space and time, and––

  A new person stood there.

  Miri.

  Miri, stark-naked, panting, with a faint sheen of sweat.

  Something about seeing her there, looking so strangely small next to the two males, caused Angel’s heart to just… stop.

  Seemingly as one, both of the dragon seers turned to stare at her.

  Angel’s heart jerked back into motion, now beating too fast, and seemingly all over her body. That heart beat throbbed in her hands and fingers. It beat at her ribs.

  It stuck painfully in her throat, rendering her silent.

  It must have similarly affected Cowboy, although he didn’t lose his voice.

  Not only that, but he understood Miri’s appearance here, next to Black and that seer, in a different light than Angel.

  Well, he understood it faster, anyway.

  He let out a low whistle, and she looked at him.

  “Well, damn,” he muttered.

  Cowboy’s hands rested on his lean hips. His gray eyes never left the three seers standing in the studio street, but he spoke to Angel alone.

  “…I hope these studio folks have good insurance.”

  It took a handful of seconds for Cowboy’s meaning to penetrate.

  Then Angel looked back at Miri.

  The doc just stood there, panting, seemingly trying to regain her equilibrium. She held out her arms on ether side, as if afraid she might lose her balance and fall… or maybe like she thought she might have to run out of there as fast as her legs would carry her.

  She stared up at the strange male seer, an odd look on her high-cheekboned face. Her delicate jaw jutted slightly upward as she stared up to meet his light-gold eyes.

  She looked at him almost like she knew him.

  She looked at him almost like she recognized him.

  Something about that struck Angel as ominous as hell.

  “Shit,” she muttered.

  That was before she saw Black’s face.

  Black looked between Miri and the new dragon like he was trying to decide which of them he wanted to murder first.

  Then, and only then, did Angel understand what Cowboy had meant.

  If Miri didn’t have a way to stop it, this was going to be a damned bloodbath.

  10

  Too Many Ours

  I wasn’t there.

  Then I was.

  I’d gotten a lot better at the interdimensional jumps.

  I st
ill got out of breath.

  It still felt like I’d gotten a good, solid, hard punch to the solar plexus, maybe a half-second before I landed. I generally had to fight my body’s rhythms back to normal after I got to the new place, more or less for the same reason.

  I also showed up covered in a thin sheen of sweat.

  Before I left, I talked to Jax, Mika, Kiko, Larisse, and then to Yarli and Dalejem.

  Jem was at the Raptor’s Nest with Yarli and the other seers.

  Yarli finally cracked that nut, and ‘fessed up to the seers and humans we’d left behind to hold down the fort in San Francisco. Unlike me––or Black, who I was ninety-nine percent positive hadn’t yet said a word to Dex––Yarli actually did the thing we’d all agreed to do and talked to her portion of the team about Nick and Dalejem.

  After I’d spoken to everyone in London about my plan, and gave them Black’s instructions, I didn’t stick around when they started arguing with me about how Black might be right about me going to the Raptor’s Nest instead of Los Angeles.

  I knew where I needed to be.

  To me, it wasn’t even a question.

  I climbed into a closet at the building in Kensington…

  …and poof, I was gone.

  It took me less than five seconds to gear into the right structures, and resonate with Black.

  Then, out of nowhere, I stood in the middle of a fake city street, surrounded by fake buildings on both sides, only about half of them containing anything approximating an interior.

  Sucking in breaths to ground myself, I looked to my right, and saw Black.

  I looked to my left, and saw…

  Someone else.

  I didn’t know him, but something about the stare he leveled on my face ran a shiver up my spine that made me wrap my arms around my chest.

  I remembered I was naked.

  Usually I didn’t care about that these days, but right then, I fervently wished I wasn’t.

  I never took my eyes off his face.

  His skin shone with a strange, near-gold sheen. It let off faint breaths of what looked like steam, barely perceptible, but enough to make his outline oddly blurry.

  I knew how crazy and impossible this was, and how crazy it would sound if I spoke it out loud… but I knew him.

  Somehow, I knew him.

  The thought made my jaw clench, even as I continued to study those pale, gold-white eyes.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  My voice came out sharp, uncompromising.

  The strange male didn’t blink.

  He looked me over.

  As he did, a tension I’d seen in his eyes when I first looked up at him slowly began to ease. It was almost like seeing me there, in the flesh, relieved him of some intense, possibly even semi-conscious fear he’d held in his light.

  The longer he looked at me, the longer his light skirted around mine, the more I saw his expression lose its hardness.

  “Who are you?” I repeated. “Answer me.”

  He adjusted his feet, never taking his eyes off me.

  The sheer relief in his expression as he looked me over unnerved me more than any amount of hostility he might have aimed in my direction.

  “Who are––” I began angrily.

  “You know who I am.”

  He cut me off without stopping his appraisal of my naked body.

  He spoke calmly, almost dismissively.

  For the first time, I looked at Black.

  I barely glanced at him, though.

  I was afraid to look at him for long. I was afraid to turn my back on the other seer, to take my eyes off him for even a second.

  I saw Black’s gold eyes, staring at me.

  I felt his blinding fury that I was there, that I’d come here, after he specifically told me not to.

  Even knowing how intensely Black felt, I couldn’t look away from that other seer. Fear coursed through me; I felt unnerved by how badly I didn’t want to turn my back on him, or on the stare of those pale, blank eyes.

  I felt an irrational certainty he might attack me––or maybe just grab me, open a portal and drop both of us through to some other world.

  That had to be how I knew him.

  I didn’t know his face.

  I didn’t know his body, or that strange tattoo on his arm.

  It had to be his light.

  I’d felt his light before––somewhere.

  The only explanation that struck me as remotely possible had to do with the unintentional jumps I’d made when my powers to portal-jump first began to manifest. In those early weeks, I got whisked to numerous worlds, worlds I still scarcely remembered because of the state I’d been in at the time.

  All I’d managed to figure out in the time since, was that they were all worlds where the Dragon manifested.

  I’d felt some aspect of Dragon on every one of those versions of Earth I’d been drawn to.

  I must have felt this one too, on one of the many places housing some form of the Dragon God… the same Dragon God that lived inside my husband.

  “How did you get here?” My voice came out harsher each time. “Where did you come from? What are you doing here? Why would you come to this world?”

  The questions fired out of me.

  Hostile, tinged with aggression.

  I pointed away from us, back towards the studio gate, but I didn’t mean the gesture to indicate anywhere on this world.

  “You need to go,” I told him. “Now. You can’t be here.”

  The tall man with the broad chest and muscular arms met my gaze, a smile toying at the edges of his lips. I felt that Dragon-light all over him. It made my skin vibrate, like it did when that light grew prominent in Black.

  It felt different on this being, though.

  It felt like insanity on him.

  It felt like the vibration keened off in strange, chaotic directions.

  “Miri.” Black’s voice was soft, dangerous, deeper than hell. “Miri. I need you to go. Now.”

  I didn’t look at him.

  My eyes remained on the male seer who stared at me.

  He stared at me like I belonged to him.

  “Goddamn it, Miri––”

  “No,” I cut in. “You need to come with me, Black. Now.”

  I didn’t dare take my eyes off the other dragon.

  “…I’m not leaving without you,” I added. “So bare your fucking arm. Grab my hand. Whatever. We both go… or neither of us do.”

  I needed contact with his skin to take him with me.

  Just holding his hand made me nervous, although I suppose I could have managed it fine.

  I preferred to be able to touch a lot more of his skin.

  “We can’t just leave him here,” Black growled. “He could kill half of Los Angeles. Just fucking leave, Miriam. Let me handle this.”

  I shook my head, frowning up at that oddly familiar face.

  My eyes took in the brown hair streaked with silvery-white, the high cheekbones, the tawny skin. He was still smiling at me, seemingly oblivious to everything I’d said, and everything Black had said.

  He didn’t seem to care about Black at all.

  He ignored him entirely, looking at me with a pleased smile toying at his lips.

  “I came for you,” the male said. “Are you happy? I am so happy.”

  “No,” I snapped. “I’m not fucking happy! I want you to go.”

  “I came for you,” he repeated. “I cannot wait much longer to claim you. My body and light have ached for you. For so long––”

  Another voice cut him off.

  “Back away from her. Now. Or I will kill you.”

  It wasn’t Black.

  It used Black’s voice, Black’s body, Black’s vocal chords to speak, but the instant I heard it, I knew it wasn’t Black. I heard his deep voice. I felt that distinct vibration in the center of my chest. I could almost see the being through that voice, as his words hung in the air.

  That, finally, got
me to turn.

  I stared at Black’s face, but he was no longer inside it.

  I was looking at Coreq.

  Coreq––who somehow embodied the dragon part of Black.

  I still didn’t know how any of that worked.

  Black didn’t know, either.

  Regardless of the cause, or even the when of it––if it was something Black had been born with, or something he picked up at some point in his life––Black was, in a sense, two people.

  He was the Quentin Black I knew.

  He was also Coreq, who I knew and understood a lot less.

  I couldn’t say I didn’t know Coreq at all, though.

  The truth was, Coreq felt even more eerily familiar to me than the naked seer currently standing to my left.

  “If you don’t back away from her, I’m going to have to kill you,” Coreq repeated, eerily calm. “My mate already told you. You are not welcome here.”

  His light churned through the sunlight, blurring Black’s outline when I glanced his way.

  “This isn’t acceptable,” Coreq added. “You are bothering my mate. If you attempt to make some kind of claim, or even just disrespect mine––”

  “She is our mate,” the naked one said. “I will claim her. My body and light desire it.”

  I felt the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck go up.

  At the same time, I felt some part of me getting angry.

  We didn’t need this shit right now.

  We were already on the cusp of a damned race war.

  We still had to find whoever the hell was building those robots and creepy cybernetic animal-machines. The human race was totally freaked out and probably trying to figure out ways to either nuke us or enslave us or boot us all out into space… if not some combination of those things.

  Worse, I could feel Black/Coreq gearing up behind me.

  His light had already started to spark hotter, crackling the air around me, creating a resonance in the male seer who stood in front of me.

  I remembered what I’d done with Uncle Charles.

  I didn’t think.

  I sure as hell didn’t tell Black what I intended to do… or Coreq… assuming I could make meaningful contact with either of them.

  I leapt forward, and grabbed hold of the naked seer in both of my hands.