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

by JC Andrijeski

  Jax’s eyes and voice remained serious.

  “Who was it?” he said. “If not us––”

  “I hired Archangel,” Black cut in.

  There was a silence.

  “It was the doc’s idea,” Black added, kissing her face.

  Miri shook her head, her voice rough as she looked up at the others.

  “No. It wasn’t my idea to hire that crazy cult of rogue assassins,” she corrected. “I just said, hey, maybe we should find someone. Someone outside of our circle. Someone we’d never worked with before. Someone Charles wouldn’t be watching…”

  Black smiled at her, feeling tears coming to his eyes as he kissed her face.

  “That didn’t leave me a lot of options, love,” he reminded her.

  She grunted, but he could feel her mind clearing, the more he flooded his light into her.

  He could feel some part of her drinking him in, leaning on him.

  Then she met his gaze, her hazel eyes bright, even in the relative darkness.

  Somewhere in all of that, the sun had gone down for real.

  Firelight reflected in her eyes, most of it from the tiki torches surrounding the pool, but also from the several fire pits scattered around the pool deck.

  Most of the “non-family” guests were being escorted out.

  Black could feel it, with Frank Blackfoot and Devin coordinating a lot of it, aided by Yarli and Dalejem from the Barrier.

  “Where is he?” she said. “Did they find him? The other dragon?”

  At that, Black could only frown.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  Just then, from directly overhead…

  …there was an ear-shattering roar.

  29

  Black Of Wing

  BLACK, NO… where are you going?

  I have to.

  He sounded distracted in the space, only halfway with me.

  I could see him running, aiming his steps for the desert on the other side of the resort wall. I watched in my mind as he vaulted over the adobe barrier, climbing up it nimbly and throwing himself over the other side.

  Black, you absolutely DON’T have to do this. We can find another way––

  Too late for that. And yes. I do have to, wife. I have to draw him away from the resort, if nothing else… and away from Santa Fe. No one else can do that. We don’t even know if we can communicate with him like this.

  Pausing, still running, he added, Maybe I can find a way to reach him. He seemed mostly reasonable when he wasn’t in blackout mode…

  NO! she snapped. Black, he’ll probably kill you before you say so much as “hi”…

  Oh, come on, wife. He’s not THAT much bigger than me.

  He’s TELEKINETIC, for crying out loud!

  I felt Black shrug, even running.

  I almost saw it in my mind.

  Don’t get paranoid now, wife, he sent. We only saw the one thing. We have no idea if he can do that in dragon form… or if that was him at all.

  For a second, I couldn’t even answer that.

  What? I sent. Black, do you have any idea how insane that sounds?

  I have SOME idea, he admitted.

  He was barely listening to me, though.

  I could feel Coreq there now, already sharing some part of his mind.

  I could feel them both mutually decide when they felt they were far enough away from people, from the resort––

  BLACK NO! I shouted at him.

  But I could feel him changing, even as I threw it at him.

  I could feel it… and knew it was already too late.

  An earth-trembling screech exploded in the night sky above where they stood.

  Nick looked up first, ducking in reflex even as he gaped up at the enormous shadow that blotted out the stars. Claws, scales, and leathery wings all caught glints of light as they passed over the firelight around the swimming pool.

  Nick’s vampire eyes easily picked all of that out of the dark, even the gold eye of the black-scaled creature as it streaked through the air.

  An answering scream rent the sky, seconds later, and he ducked again.

  They were already moving away.

  Black was doing what he said he’d do––drawing the other dragon away from the resort.

  The sheer insanity of that, of two dragons dueling in the night skies of New Mexico, made Nick think, yet again, they had to be in some kind of twilight zone, end of times place, or possibly that he’d already died, and this was his messed-up afterlife.

  “Are you seeing this?” a voice asked over his headset.

  Brick spoke almost pleasantly, but Nick heard the edge there.

  “I see it,” Nick acknowledged. “Do you have people out in the desert? People who can see what’s happening for real?”

  Instead of answering him, Brick opening a virtual screen, sharing it on Nick’s side of the communication. In it, an enormous, bone-white dragon slammed into a smaller black one, throwing it into a red-rock bluff that overlooked part of the city.

  Nick winced, hoping there weren’t any houses up there.

  The black dragon screamed inside the video, and Nick heard it in stereo.

  He looked up at the sound, realizing the dragons’ screams were still audible where he stood by the swimming pool.

  “Fuck,” he muttered.

  “Indeed,” Brick remarked.

  “Any sign of that big white one using the telekinesis on the Black one?”

  “Not as of yet,” Brick said.

  The vampire king paused, then added,

  “He did not hurt our dear Miriam, did he?”

  Nick frowned, then shook his head. “He didn’t not hurt her. But from what I can tell, it was nothing serious. Black was pretty freaked. I think he thought that other dragon wouldn’t hurt her at all, since he supposedly came here looking for her.”

  Nick felt his sire think about this.

  Before Brick could say any more, Nick broke into his thoughts.

  “What about Archangel? Are they still here?”

  “They are,” Brick confirmed. “They are standing by. They will not leave without Black’s explicit say-so. He is the paying client. I am merely an intermediary.”

  Nick wanted to roll his eyes, but he only nodded.

  He remembered dealing with these fucks before, back when he’d been human.

  They really were like some kind of cult, or secret society.

  Damned effective, though.

  They were even more effective after Black gave them tech that hid their Barrier light from seers. Nick strongly got the impression that’s how Archangel had been paid, in organic tech. Even Nick couldn’t help thinking Black was really opening a can of worms with that one.

  In the end, their method of bringing down Charles had been simple, yet effective.

  They’d hit Charles in the neck with a damned blow dart.

  That was some next level weird ninja shit.

  “Did they find any more of Charles’ people on the ground?” Nick asked next.

  “We have ten in custody,” Brick affirmed. “Zoe also located three long-haul trucks parked at a truck stop down the road. All three were filled with those cybernetic creatures that attacked Quentin on the beaches of Hawaii. These look like more advanced models, though.”

  Pausing, Brick added dryly,

  “Charles came with a lot of firepower. Clearly, he didn’t intend to take any chances this time around. We’re actually damned ‘lucky’ ourselves that we were able to shut down those cyborg creatures before they could be activated… but Zoe located the truck before Charles made his appearance at the resort. Apparently, he intended to use them after he’d brought down Miriam and Quentin. Quite probably to destroy any chance of a viable treaty between humans and seers… or humans and vampires, for that matter.”

  Nick grimaced, but Brick’s words felt true.

  Charles intended to put a stop to any illusions about building a multi-species world, at least one living in
any kind of peace… or even semi-hostile mutual tolerance.

  “He probably could have done that with the telekinetic dragon,” Nick muttered. “But Charles seems to believe in overkill these days, so that doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Indeed,” Brick agreed. “But Charles has always believed in overkill, darling boy… and in making unnecessarily bloody statements to hammer home his points. You didn’t know him before he decided to play ‘Magnanimous Uncle Charlie’ with the seer world. He was a monster, my child. An absolute and utter monster.”

  Nick grimaced, remembering “Lucky” from his military days.

  He could have corrected Brick on his supposition that Nick hadn’t been aware of him back then, but he didn’t bother.

  “Have they got any more of his cultists outside the gates?” Nick asked instead.

  “There are some, yes,” Brick said. “We have most of them rounded up now. Frank Blackfoot and his people have involved the local authorities on that end of things. It is likely they will be taken off to the human jail, most of them. A number were found carrying illegal weapons, as well as gear likely intended for use against Black’s wedding guests. Plastic handcuffs, tasers, extendable batons, handguns, even smoke bombs and grenades…”

  Nick grimaced again, but only nodded.

  He liked the idea of involving the human authorities, though.

  The more of this they could do aboveboard, at least as far as the human authorities and media were concerned, the better. The more they could frame Charles’ radicals, not to mention Charles himself, as a threat to all of the species, the better.

  It might not solve the PR issues, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.

  Especially right now.

  Dragon screams filled the sky once more, mostly coming from the VR screen in his headset. Nick could no longer hear them outside the virtual feed, even with his vampire hearing.

  That could only be a good thing, though.

  It meant Black managed to draw the other dragon further out into the desert.

  Focusing on the images in his headset, Nick watched the dragons claw at one another from the air, then slam into one another in the space.

  The white one grabbed the black one’s neck in thick jaws, flying it into yet another cliffside, sending boulders tumbling down to the desert floor.

  The black one screamed in fury, beating at the other dragon with its wings.

  Its claws ripped into the other one’s chest, and the white dragon released it, beating its own wings, creating a cloud of red dust as it rose higher in the air, screaming again.

  Fire erupted from the black one’s jaws, lighting up the desert sky, lighting up the rock formations that broke the flatness of the desert floor.

  Nick watched it, his shoulders tensing.

  He wondered how long it would take for videos of this insanity to make it to social media.

  The white dragon didn’t shoot fire back at the black one, but the fire didn’t seem to faze it, either. It dove at Black even as Black roared a continuous stream of flames; the white one’s lower claws and legs extended, its talons turning red and white in the fire.

  Seemingly impervious to the fire engulfing its lower body… it slammed into the black one’s belly and side. Nick winced as the white one tore chunks of flesh and scales out of the smaller dragon, causing it to scream in agony, twisting in the air.

  That time, it couldn’t get away.

  The white one slammed the black one into the desert floor.

  That time, Nick heard the impact, deep down in the earth, almost like a bomb going off, or a seismic event of some kind.

  He heard it even without the virtual feed.

  The black one let loose with another stream of liquid fire.

  He aimed it at the white one’s chest and head, writhing to get free.

  Nick watched one of the white dragon’s huge white claws… claws wielding four-foot talons… close around Black’s dragon neck. The white dragon dug those razor sharp talons in, squeezing, and Black screamed, sending up another stream of blue-green fire.

  Nick felt sick.

  Even he could see where this was going.

  The goddamned thing was going to kill him.

  The white dragon was going to kill Black.

  Nick was so busy staring at the images in his headset, he didn’t see or feel the human approach. He didn’t even hear him through the black dragon’s agonized screams.

  “I knew you were here,” a voice said then.

  Cold, filled with hate.

  Almost completely unrecognizable.

  But Nick did recognize it.

  It was the voice of a man he’d once considered one of his closest friends.

  When Nick dropped the virtual screen, focusing on where he was in real life, he found himself face to face with Dex.

  He found himself facing the gun Dex held in his hand.

  “Rot in hell,” Dex told him.

  Nick raised a hand in instinct, but he was already too late.

  The gun went off.

  Everything went dark.

  “Jesus H… are you seeing this?”

  Luke glanced over from where he’d been breaking down his rifle, his jaw hardening as he checked out the view on his lieutenant’s tablet.

  He watched as the significantly larger, white and gray monster clenched its talon around the neck of the black one.

  The one on top, which had the black one pinned, reminded Luke of a corpse, and not only for the gray and white color of most of its body. Veins of red darkened the areas around the mouth and nose, evoking dried blood on a dead body. A pale blue ridge ran along its back and tail that somehow evoked broken veins as well. The thing was grotesque, bulging, its teeth yellow and thick, its eyes set too far outside its head.

  It looked like a zombie dinosaur.

  The black one thrashed under it, screaming fire into the night––red, orange, pale blue and green––but it was obviously weakening.

  “That one on the bottom is Black, isn’t it?” Davis, his lieutenant, muttered. “Does this mean we’re not getting paid?”

  Luke grunted.

  Gotta trust an Archangel to have that bleak sense of humor.

  “We got paid, Digger,” he assured the other man.

  He nodded towards the screen.

  “Where are his people now?”

  Davis lowered the screen.

  He exhaled, then his voice turned to the cadence of a formal report.

  “They’ve got Vasiliev in custody. Four psychics guarding him, cuffed at the wrists, ankles, neck, biceps… they still seem shit-scared of that asshole. They’ve also got one of those psychic-blocking collars on him, one of the new ones.”

  Luke nodded, thinking.

  “What about those Purity jokers?” he said. “They still there?”

  Davis shook his head.

  “Santa Fe P.D.’s got them mostly rounded up. At least forty-five taken into custody so far. We’re hearing mostly weapons charges, but also some trespassing, assault against police, destruction of property, and at least a handful of possible terrorism and conspiracy to commit terrorism charges, when all’s said and done.”

  Luke turned that over, too.

  “Do his people still want us here?” he said finally. “Black’s?”

  Digger made a face. “I talked to their contact person. The bloodsucker. He seemed to think we could go whenever we wanted. They really only needed us for Charles.”

  Grunting, looking over the dark valley, where the screams of the two dragons had grown louder once more, Davis added sourly,

  “That bloodsucker didn’t think we’d be much good against those things.”

  “Why not?” Luke said wryly. “We’ve got most of the nukes those assholes in Kiev and Moscow were hoarding… Uri and Alexei. Believe me, Black knows that.”

  Davis grunted in that dark humor, shaking his head.

  “I don’t think Black is in charge anymore,” he said dryly.

  He poin
ted across the valley, in the direction of the screams.

  Luke nodded grimly.

  Both of them looked back down at the tablet’s screen, where the live drone feed continued to play. They watched the dragons rip and beat wings, and bite, and claw at one another apart in silence for a few seconds more.

  Without looking up, Davis shrugged.

  “Your call, boss,” he said to Luke. “Do we see this out to the end?”

  Luke frowned.

  He watched the white dragon as it sank its razor-sharp teeth into the side of the dragon lying on its back. The black one bellowed, thrashing its body sideways in violent arcs, hitting at the other one with its powerful tail, trying to knock it off. The black one was getting weaker, though. It still fought hard, trying to roll out from under the white one, to break free of the other’s weight, but its thrashing and clawing gradually slowed.

  It blew out more fire, screaming into the night.

  “Pack it up,” Luke said, deciding as he said it. “Looks like Black’s no longer a variable. We’ll regroup and gather intel, bring our findings back to the Base.” He gave Davis another look. “Tonight was paid work. We did our job. We go.”

  Looking back out over the valley, he added grimly,

  “Tomorrow, we’re no longer on the client clock. Tomorrow we’re on Archangel time. I’ll get us an audience with The Priests. We’ll bring everything we’ve got to them. Let them decide. There’s still the factor of the woman.”

  Davis nodded, snapping the tablet shut.

  “Sounds right, boss,” he said approvingly.

  He rose to his feet, hiking his rifle strap back up on his shoulder.

  The two of them stood there for a few seconds longer, listening to the screams of the giant animals as they echoed across the desert valley.

  30

  Under The Light Of The Moon

  Black’s in trouble.

  I felt it so clearly, so intensely clearly, I sat bolt upright.

  They’d put me in the resort’s small clinic on the first floor.

  They’d given me a shot, something to help me relax while they examined me.

  When I sat up like that, instantly, like four pairs of hands tried to hold me down.