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

by JC Andrijeski

  Black shrugged again, his eyes and voice flat.

  “Until we know who’s sending the damned things, there’s no way to know for sure what they’re trying to do.”

  I nodded, turning to stare out the window again.

  Again, he paused.

  Again, he seemed to be waiting for me to speak.

  When I didn’t, he cleared his throat.

  “Either way, the good news is, the shield seems to be holding,” he said. “Yarli, Mika, Jem, and Jax all agree nothing’s getting through… and they’ve tested it from various places, including from the air. They said we shouldn’t even need to stay in the construct all the time. Yarli’s getting better with the mobile constructs, and says if we don’t wander too far, or for too long, we should be okay. She’s currently got a field around you, me, Angel, Cowboy, Dex, Kiko. Pretty much everyone who was on our two teams in London and Los Angeles.”

  Pausing, he added,

  “She’d let all of that shit go dormant after Charles’ people were neutralized… mostly to give us all privacy, since the construct means all the seers are more or less connected. Which means our minds are connected, too.”

  He added, his voice darker,

  “…Needless to say, she’s fixed that problem. So you might want to keep that in mind when you’re chewing me out for being a bastard. We’re likely to be overheard. Including when we’re not arguing. Including just when we’re just thinking impure thoughts…”

  I nodded, but only half-heard him.

  I heard the faint innuendo there too, but didn’t react.

  We still had over a week before the wedding, so part of that was me not wanting to go there, even as a joke. I was in enough separation pain as it was.

  I was still thinking about Kiko.

  I was still kicking myself for not talking to Kiko.

  Exhaling, I looked up at him.

  “Should we ask Jax to do it, really?” When Black frowned, I clarified. “Kiko. Should we ask Jax to talk to Kiko. At least he’s there. He’ll be gentle with her.”

  Black grunted.

  He probably grunted at me saying Jax would be gentle with Kiko. It was one of the team’s biggest non-secrets that Jax was in love with Black’s second.

  “Or we could all do it,” I said, still thinking out loud. “We could ask him to sit in on the conversation, so she’d have someone there… with her, I mean.”

  That time, Black was the one who fell silent.

  I watched him stare out the same window I had.

  Pain flickered across his expression, right before he raised a hand, rubbing his face and jaw.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Neither of us know,” I pointed out. “No one knows. But what do you think we should do, Black? You know her better than anyone. What will be the least horrible for her?”

  “Me killing him. Me giving her Nick’s head… gift wrapped.”

  My jaw tightened. “Besides that.”

  “Me giving her his head not gift-wrapped.”

  “Black. Can we be serious for one second––”

  He turned, his voice a denser growl. “What makes you think I’m not being fucking serious right now, Miriam?”

  I stared at him.

  Then I frowned.

  That time, the silence between us felt hostile.

  “So that’s it?” I said. “We’re back to this?”

  The silence between us deepened more.

  Then Black leaned back, exhaling in frustration.

  Throwing an arm over the back of the couch, he stared out the window at the San Francisco Bay, and the Bay Bridge in the distance. I watched as different emotions skated over the surface of his eyes, there and gone too quickly for me to pin most of it down.

  After what must have been a few minutes of that, he exhaled again.

  Reaching up, he rubbed his face, using the hand not thrown over the back of the couch. I felt a sharper, harder ripple of frustration and grief go through his light.

  “Gaos. I hate this.” Still with his face covered with his hand, he asked, “Can’t I just kill him? It would be so much easier.”

  I might have frowned, but for the first time, I could tell he didn’t mean it.

  Maybe for the same reason, I smiled.

  “No,” I said, shoving at his arm. “Would you really do that to my dog? You’d traumatize Panther for life. He thinks Nick is his mommy.”

  “What if he’s eaten your dog by now?” Black muttered. “Can I kill him then?”

  I leaned my head on the back cushion of his couch.

  After a beat of staring up at his ceiling, I closed my eyes. I adjusted my back.

  When he nudged me with a hand, I exhaled again.

  “Sure, Black,” I said, my eyes still closed. “If Nick eats my dog, you can kill him.”

  “Is he really the same?”

  I opened my eyes.

  Warily, I raised my head, and met his gaze.

  His gold irises studied mine.

  “As before,” he prodded. “Is Nick really the same as he was before he got turned?”

  “You mean besides the weird eyes? And the blood drinking?”

  “Besides those things.”

  I heard a faint warning in his voice.

  Reaching out, I caught hold of his arm.

  I tugged on it, but more as a means of bringing myself closer to him, not the reverse. Pulling myself across the leather couch, using his arm as a rope, I ended up curled up against him. I leaned my head on his chest, and sighed, my hand on his thigh.

  “He’s the same,” I told him, listening to his heart through the thin shirt he wore. “It was the weirdest thing, Black. I walked up to him and hugged him in Russia… after everything. After all that he did to me, to Kiko. He looked positively terrified of me. He looked at me like he fully expected me to kill him, and he’d come to peace with it.”

  Thinking about that, remembering my shock when I realized it was Nick, I grunted.

  “I was so happy he was alive. It was like he’d risen from the dead.”

  Still thinking, I added,

  “I could feel it. He’s a vampire, so I couldn’t read it off him or anything, but I could still feel he was Nick again… somehow. I think he might have passed out if he’d been human, when I walked up and hugged him like that. He wouldn’t even meet my eyes at first. Dalejem told me he was suicidal, that he probably still needed vampire therapy or whatever. I know it’s a cliché, Black, but he hates himself. He really hates himself for what he did. I think if Dalejem hadn’t been there, watching him like a hawk, he definitely would have killed himself.”

  My mouth firmed as I added,

  “I know you’re probably not ready. I know Dex and Kiko definitely aren’t ready. But he’s really gone, Black. That other… Nick… Brick’s ‘Naoko’… the vampire who did those things to me and Kiko… that thing he’d been. It’s gone. It’s just not there anymore.”

  There was a silence.

  Black raised his hand to my hair, and began stroking through it, combing the long, damp strands with his fingers.

  I could feel him thinking.

  Even so, he shielded the actual contents of his thoughts from me.

  “You know while you were in the shower, that fucker had the audacity to invite us to dinner?”

  I raised my head, staring at him.

  Then I realized what he meant.

  “Dalejem?” I said, incredulous.

  Black just held my gaze, but I could see the answer all over him.

  Even so, some part of me just couldn’t believe it.

  “Dalejem invited us to dinner?” I asked again. “With him and Nick?”

  “And Cowboy and Angel.” Black held my gaze, voice flat. “And Nick’s parents. At the house on Potrero Hill.”

  I blinked.

  Then I stared at him again, still sure he must be joking.

  As I held his gaze, I realized he wasn’t.

  We decided to talk to Kiko and Dex
right after the dinner.

  Yes, as crazy as it was, we’d decided to accept Jem’s invitation.

  Black wanted to see Nick for himself.

  He claimed he’d have a better idea what to say to Kiko and Dex if he’d witnessed Nick firsthand, and could see for himself what I’d described.

  Black argued, significantly more sourly, that he could hardly be convincing, in regards to describing Nick’s “miraculous transformation” (his air quotes, not mine) if he didn’t really believe it himself.

  Luckily, we had a slight breather with Dex.

  Dex had been the bigger worry initially, since Los Angeles was only an hour away by plane. But Dex wasn’t coming straight to San Francisco; he’d decided to go to New Mexico, instead. Frank Blackfoot called from the White Eagle Resort, asking for back-up to deal with security arrangements, and Dex volunteered.

  We knew it was at least partly because he was pissed off at all of us.

  Even so, it was a relief, honestly.

  It definitely didn’t get us off the hook, but it bought us some time.

  As for the dinner, Black wasn’t exactly inspiring confidence that everything would go smoothly. He already seemed to be gearing up for a fight. For starters, he openly accused Nick of choosing the time and place for calculated, manipulative reasons.

  And sure, he likely wasn’t entirely wrong, although I suspected Dalejem had more to do with those calculations than Nick himself did.

  The dinner was obviously meant to be neutral ground.

  According to Black, that was the exact and only reason we got the invite.

  Nick knew damned well Black wouldn’t kill him in front of Yumi and Hiroto Tanaka.

  Black wouldn’t threaten him, either, or beat the shit out of him, not in front of two people who’d been so kind to both of us, and who’d more or less acted as my adopted parents after my own parents and sister died.

  Which meant Black would be more likely to hear whatever it was Nick had to say, whether it was “a shitload of excuses and bullshit” (again, his words, not mine), or some kind of half-assed apology (also his words).

  Despite his editorializing, and his assumptions about Nick’s motives, which I wasn’t altogether convinced of myself, I believed Black that he intended to accept the temporary truce, and view the dinner as a peace offering.

  Black, to me at least, seemed willing to accept the neutral ground, if only as an opportunity to observe Nick for himself.

  Of course, he told me bluntly that if he got any hint Nick wasn’t who I thought he was, that he posed any kind of danger to me at all, or to Kiko, or to anyone else he loved, Black would kill him without a second’s thought.

  I knew he meant it.

  Black one hundred percent believed he was telling me the unvarnished truth.

  I honestly had my doubts he could do it as easily as he said, however, even now.

  Still, it was like the fourth time he’d threatened it.

  The repeated threats made me nervous.

  Some part of me wanted to call ahead, warn Nick to be especially careful not to do or say anything––even as a joke––that might make Black want to murder him.

  I figured that wouldn’t exactly help things stay friendly, though.

  Instead, I climbed out of Black’s car.

  I walked up to the gate leading into the Tanakas’ garden, and the path that went up to the front door. As I did, I found myself thinking about Nick’s parents. I wondered how they’d taken it, when Nick told them what he was now.

  I wondered how they’d taken it, even just seeing Nick.

  In a more gossipy, me, Nick, and Angel from the old days way, I also wondered how they’d taken it when he told them about Dalejem.

  Thinking about all that, about how much it all was, I realized I shouldn’t assume Nick had told them about Jem. Given the other revelations he’d been forced to lay on them, it struck me as likely Nick would have skipped the Jem thing… for now, at least.

  Of all the things that could wait, the Jem thing struck me as the most obvious.

  Nick could only disguise his appearance so much.

  He could only disguise his race so much.

  It wasn’t even just that he’d reverse-aged by at least twenty years.

  Or that his eyes were a different color.

  Or that he was deathly pale, and more beautiful than he’d ever been as a human man.

  Nick moved differently now.

  He interacted with his body, with his environment, in entirely different ways.

  On the plus side, his bum knee no longer bothered him.

  Neither did the shoulder he’d screwed up from a surfing accident in his twenties.

  I glanced at Black, who must have given himself an extra few seconds in the car.

  I watched him climb out of the black and white McLaren now, straightening to his full height after pushing the button to lower the gull-style door back to the car’s frame.

  I wondered why he’d brought this particular car, then dismissed that, too.

  I was stalling.

  Both of us were stalling.

  Standing by the gate leading up to the Tanaka residence, holding a bakery-bought pie in one hand––rhubarb, Nick’s mother’s favorite––with an expensive bottle of red wine under my arm, I felt totally bizarre suddenly.

  Were we really going to do this?

  Were we really going to play normal with Nick the Vampire and his four-hundred-year-old seer boyfriend in front of Yumi and Hiroto Tanaka?

  “Yes,” Black murmured, reaching my side. “We are.”

  Leaning down, he kissed my temple as he lightly touched my back. His eyes never left the Tanakas’ front door, and suddenly, it struck me as too quiet. Not just here, outside their house, but the whole neighborhood.

  Black was opening the gate then, the hinges squeaking in the early evening air.

  I followed him without a word.

  My heart hammered in my chest, loud enough, I realized Nick would probably hear it once we got inside.

  I was terrified.

  I didn’t even know why exactly, but I was terrified to see Yumi Tanaka open that door.

  15

  Another World

  “Miriam!”

  I nearly had forgotten how angry Yumi Tanaka had been with me, the last time I’d seen her. It hadn’t even crossed my mind until I found myself face to face with her, the two of us less than a yard apart, and I felt a faint flicker of guilt off her light.

  She tried to keep it off her face, beaming at me as soon as she opened the door.

  Before I could make sense of either thing, she was already leaving the doorway, meeting us halfway between the door and the porch steps. She moved before I could wrap my mind around anything I could see in her smiling face, or the brightness of her eyes… and then her arms were around me as she enveloped me in a smothering, mom-like hug.

  I couldn’t help it.

  I started crying.

  Then, still gripping the wine bottle under one arm, balancing the pie box on my palm in the same hand, I hugged her back as strongly as I could with my free arm.

  When we both let go, she laughed, and hugged me again.

  A rush of love rose in me, overwhelming me briefly.

  They’d been my second family.

  Not just Nick, but the whole Tanaka family had taken me in after I left the military, becoming the only family I knew after my sister died.

  They insisted I come to every holiday, every big family dinner, every silly birthday and anniversary party, every unveiling of a new family pet. I’d missed them too much to even let myself think about missing them, but now it all came rushing back, making it impossible for me to keep up my act of polite distance in coming here.

  By the time I’d gotten past that first, overwhelming wave of emotion, Yumi was still hugging me around the shoulders, and already scolding Black.

  “You make her carry everything? You are a worthless husband, just like I thought.”
>
  “Why would you even bother to sound surprised, Mrs. Tanaka?” Black retorted, rescuing the bottle of wine from under my arm, even as he muttered his answer. “If I wasn’t useless, you’d only be disappointed anyway…”

  “Yumi,” she snapped. “Yumi, Yumi, Yumi. How many times do I have to tell you my name? Do you have Alzheimer’s? Are you a drug addict, that you can’t remember a simple thing like an old lady’s name?”

  Black burst out in a surprised laugh, like he couldn’t help himself.

  I saw Yumi give him a wry smile, and again, I felt a whisper of guilt on her.

  I found myself wondering about that guilt.

  I also wondered at how relieved she seemed to see not only me, but Black, too, who she’d always seemed to like in spite of herself, and despite her best efforts to dislike him as much as possible… probably out of some sense of loyalty to her son.

  Not that Nick hated Black, per se––they’d been real friends over the past few years before he got turned into a vampire––but there’d been a time when the two of them disliked each other intensely, and Yumi probably got an earful about Black during that period.

  Nick and his mother had always been close.

  Knowing Nick, he told her a lot.

  Maybe Yumi hadn’t been able to forget all of those things, even after Nick grudgingly grew used to having Black in his life… and even grew to like him.

  Then there was me.

  For quite a few years, there was a not-subtle hope in Yumi Tanaka that I might become a member of the family on a more permanent, legal basis, and… probably more to the point… that I might give her little versions of her son as grandchildren.

  Pushing all of that out of my mind, even as I fielded a harder look from Black, I followed Yumi into their house, glancing around for who else was there as we entered the foyer, then the living room.

  It was an odd scene, to say the least.

  Nick’s father sat in his usual recliner, but the chair wasn’t reclined.

  He sat bolt upright, holding a whisky in one hand.

  Cowboy and Angel sat on the long couch across from him, with a lot of space on one side, likely making room for me and Black.