“I trust Nick and Angel,” I’d returned coldly. “They won’t say anything. Not about any aspect of this... not to anyone. And I don’t intend to tell Mozar anything... or Jacquie... or anyone else in LAPD... and believe me, they’ve been asking. Mozar even put Black’s team under surveillance, so he knows they’re all down here.”
“He put them under surveillance?” Charles frowned. “What on earth for?”
“For my protection, he claims,” I said, biting my lip in annoyance. I shook my head, fighting back the surge of anger that rose in my own chest. “And yes, he’s completely full of shit. I read him, and he seems to believe Black being taken has something to do with his black ops days. He also thinks there’s something weird about Black... genetically, I mean.”
My uncle looked over sharply at that. “What?”
Shrugging with one hand, I let it fall to the couch’s arm.
“Not in any way that’s relevant... yet.” Again, I clenched my jaw. “Although yes, we’ll probably have to address that at some point.”
“Why not now?” Charles said, his voice as hard as mine.
I shook my head. “No. Not while he’s focused on Black. If he’s voiced those concerns to anyone else in the middle of an investigation centering on Black, then the gaps might be noticed. I strongly suggest we deal with it later. We can get any stragglers then, too.”
I watched my uncle look at me, a shrewder expression in his eyes.
Then he nodded, once. “I agree,” he said only.
Biting back another wave of pain, I closed my eyes. Feeling him notice what was going on with me yet again, I spoke before he could open his mouth.
“The main thing is keeping him away from me,” I said. “Mozar. He knows I’m running my own investigation via Black’s company, and he doesn’t trust me to fill him in. He also probably suspects us of planning offensives. According to Dex, Mozar’s got the F.B.I. watching us too, in addition to at least two of his people. My team’s handling it for now... but yes, at some point, I’ll probably need your help to get them to back off. Preferably after we get Black back alive.”
When another ribbon of pain went through me, I fell silent.
Seeing my uncle watching me, concern now prominent in his eyes, I gave him another annoyed stare.
“My point is, Mozar worries me a hell of a lot more than Angel or Nick. Honestly, it’s better that Nick and Angel know. Nick may not approve of my methods exactly, but he’ll run interference. He knows what’s at stake. He also has his own connections in LAPD... and the Pentagon.” Shrugging, I added, “Anyway, he relaxed a lot once he knew Colonel Holmes was involved. Nick’s a cop... but he’s also military. That means something to him.”
My uncle was shaking his head again, clicking in agitation.
“It’s done,” I said, sharper. “The decision’s been made. I don’t want anyone tampering with either of their minds without my express permission. It’s an absolute last resort, worst case scenario option only... and if you go against me on this, it will be the last time we ever work together, Uncle Charles.”
“Gaos, Miri. I trust you... I really do. And you have clearly thought through all of the decisions you’re making. But it may not be enough. You’ve never dealt with these creatures before. They are incredibly manipulative and clever. This whole thing could be a set-up. Just like how they grabbed Black in the first place.”
I gave him a level look, taking a sip of the peppermint tea I was holding. I told myself it helped with the pain, but truthfully, I had serious doubts it did anything.
“Do you have a specific suspicion?” I said, my voice level but still verging on cold. “Or are you talking more generally?”
“I don’t have a specific thing... but I can give you examples, Miri. You got all of the boat intel from the human police... who might have been influenced by vampires themselves down on that pier to even see that particular boat. They could have been bitten, given false memories. They might have taken Black out in a totally different way.”
I’d sighed, maybe in part because what he said made sense.
Moreover, some of this had already crossed my mind, and hadn’t really wanted to be reminded of that fact––especially since we were already in motion.
The biggest reason though, was that we had no other leads.
“Jacquie said the extraction team didn’t see them at the pier,” I said, my voice sharp. “They got the boat’s name via a rifle scope. As far as the intel back at the station... she lost her fiancé in that gun fight before they took Black. Do you really think she’d be passing us bullshit intel after that? Or do you think she’s actually a vampire?”
My uncle ignored my sarcasm.
Inclining his head, he answered me seriously instead. “I think she could have passed on bad intel without knowing it was bad, Miri. I think whoever gave her that intel might have tampered with it... or the person who gave it to them might have done so. Or she could have been persuaded to misremember the name of the boat. She would have no memory of any of that if it happened, Miriam. If it had been up to me, I would have checked all of them for bite marks the second they got back to the police station.”
Falling silent once more, as if thinking, he’d sighed again, looking back out the balcony windows. “But we must go in. I see that too, Miriam. I know you think I don’t, but I do.” He turned, meeting my gaze. “I am here for you. In any way you need me.”
I’d only nodded.
Truthfully, though, his words impacted me. They even provided some measure of comfort. At the time, I could clearly hear––and feel––that he meant them wholeheartedly.
Now, crouching down by that wrought-iron gate in a deafening-feeling silence, I found myself thinking about everything we’d said again. I found myself wondering if this really was a trap, if I’d get gunned down for no reason, and get Black’s team killed in the process. As much as he kept his distance from them personally, I knew they weren’t just employees to him. Black would never forgive me if he found out I’d been reckless with their lives.
I didn’t notice my uncle had fallen quiet in my mind until he broke that silence again.
You’re doing well, Miriam, he sent, soft. Very well... especially under the circumstances. He would be very proud of you.
I fought a tightness in my throat, and shook it off, biting my lip.
How close are you? I sent. I thought you would have the gate open by now.
Thirty seconds, he sent, his mental voice shifting back to businesslike. Relax, Miri. You can do this. And I’ll be right behind you, with a lot of highly-trained seers.
I nodded, and briefly, felt a surge of gratitude that he was there after all.
Before I could decide if I should tell him that...
The gates began to open.
MINUTES LATER, WE were running across the lawn, aiming for the driveway’s circular end, just outside the front doors to the main building. My nerves ratcheted up again, but still not for myself so much as for Black’s team.
My uncle and I had to talk weapons and tactics a lot, which was strange to do without Black’s team involved in the high-level decision-making. They’d taken my orders on that front well, but I could tell a few of them were baffled.
Basically, I had all of them armed with tranquilizer guns instead of regular rifles, with both the guns and the ammunition supplied by my uncle. After we’d talked it over for a few days, it made the most sense. I’d enter with the humans up front, and we’d knock out as many of them as we could with the tranq guns.
Of course, I had to get into the whole thing with my uncle about what was myth and what was fact, in terms of how one even killed a vampire... or incapacitated one, at least.
Turned out, quite a bit of the mythology was more or less true.
They could generally survive most wounds, and had regenerative powers that rendered seers’ ability to recover from near-fatal wounds a lot less impressive. A vampire’s ability to regenerate wasn’t instant, the wa
y I’d seen it depicted in movies and television shows and books. Still, according to my uncle, it was pretty tough to slow an aggressive vampire down using the usual means, even a fully automatic rifle.
He and his scientific-leaning seer staff had come up with a cocktail that could knock a full-grown vampire out in sufficient doses. According to my uncle, that same dose would kill most human beings, so he warned me to be extremely careful of friendly fire.
He said the only way to kill them was to decapitate them, or to cut their hearts totally out of their bodies. He said the “wooden stake” thing was a myth, but there really was something different about vampire physiology that meant they couldn’t regenerate if their hearts or brains were separated from the rest of their bodies... or, more likely, from one another.
So the humans would knock them out.
Of course, I knew my uncle wanting to lead the second team in behind us likely meant they’d be killing the downed vampires in our wake. Charles did tell me that the likelihood of keeping them unconscious for longer than twenty or so minutes was slim, so we might not have much choice in that, either.
I still hadn’t decided what I would tell Black’s team if they happened to notice my uncle’s people conducting that grisly work. Or how I could rationalize letting Lucky’s team cut the heads off people I’d convinced Dex and Kiko we were better off not killing.
Because that was the excuse I’d given for using the tranquilizer guns, of course.
All of that ran through my head again now as I ran across the close-cropped grass. I thought about the danger I’d put them all in by not telling them what they were up against...
Then my eyes tracked movement.
A shadowy form, moving with liquid speed down the front steps towards a massive stone fountain that stood in the middle of the circular drive. The infrared goggles picked the body up strangely. There was heat there, but not like a full-blown human kind of heat. If I had to guess it was half that, or less. The house stood dark behind him, so I might not have seen him at all if there wasn’t something so eerily preternatural about the way the thing moved. Before I could signal the others, Dex raised his rifle.
He let off a near-silent shot, hitting the thing with a dart in its white neck.
By then we were close enough that I heard it hiss.
It clutched its neck, which I could see well enough to note the blood trickling from the wound. I saw light-colored eyes focus on us, right before it hissed again, as if fighting whatever the drug was doing to its system. I was about to hit it again with another dart, when out of nowhere, the thing’s legs crumpled.
I glanced at Dex and then Kiko, wondering if either of them had heard the strange sounds the thing made, or noticed how oddly it moved... or how dimly it showed up on infrared. Both of them were back to scanning for movement across the front of the house, though, so I let it go and went back to doing the same.
Another of them came out the front doors, a female that time, and Kiko hit that one, this time in the chest. The dart tips were long and sharp, and she didn’t wear a coat, so she went down even faster than the first one had.
I couldn’t help noticing she had the same, strange, light-colored eyes that the first one had.
Otherwise, they looked nothing alike.
My uncle warned me that vampires shared few physiological traits apart from the odd color of their eyes, which were all more or less the same. They shared even fewer physiological similarities with one another than seers did with other seers.
They weren’t all particularly tall. They could be any age. They could also display the physiological traits of any ethnicity, and their proportions of each ethnicity seemed to more or less mirror the general population of humans.
The woman was small-boned, red-haired, only about five feet tall in height, and heavily freckled. The man had been tall, broad-shouldered, and looked closest to Middle Eastern to me. The only way I would have known they were the same was by the way they moved.
I knew it would get harder now, since others might have seen their companions fall.
When Dex looked at me, making the all-clear sign for the front of the building, I nodded, motioning for him to send his team inside.
I followed behind him and Kiko, conscious again that Efraim and Ravi shadowed my every move. I could feel their light extended around me as well, like a protective bubble.
More than that, I felt my uncle’s people following behind us now.
Barking dogs heading around the building caused me to motion to Kiko to speed things up on getting the rest of her team inside the house.
Javier and Alice went in first, with Kiko and Dex covering them. Walter and Ace went in next, then me, Efraim and Ravi, followed by Kiko and Dex.
Entering that cavernous hallway, I couldn’t help looking up, even with the infrared goggles, taking in the scope of the room. A very old-looking chandelier filled the space directly above me, hanging in the area between the staircase and the giant oak doors. I glanced around as Javier and Alice gave the all-clear sign for the foyer, noting human-sized sculptures made of marble and paintings and tapestries that looked like they belonged in a museum. The largest of the latter had the image of a white unicorn in the center, surrounded by adoring humans.
A yelp came from my right.
I jerked my head around, and saw Alice gripped in the hands of a heavy-set, athletic looking man who had his jaws attached to her neck.
Feeling my blood run cold, I raised my rifle, shooting the thing in the shoulder. For a long-feeling second, it didn’t raise its head. Then, slowly, groggily, it did. Blood gleamed from its fangs in the moonlight coming through the stained glass window above the door. Alice was panting, gripping his arms where he held her, but not actively fighting him.
When he went down behind her, she landed heavily on top of him, on her back.
Her rifle separated from her shoulder when she fell, clattering on the marble tile, and immediately, Javier stepped on it to deaden the sound.
Alice scrambled away from the unconscious vampire as soon as his hands loosened and he went still. I watched her, fighting the adrenaline running through my blood, as she snatched her rifle off the floor as soon as Javier moved his foot.
For a moment we all just watched her as she stood there, panting, pressing a hand to her neck. I watched as she flipped her goggles up, craning her head and neck to try and look at the wound his teeth had left on her skin.
“Did he fucking bite me?” she whispered, staring at Javier.
Javier nodded slowly, frowning. He glanced at me, lifting an eyebrow, but didn’t speak.
“Jesus fucking christ,” she said, her voice still sounding shocked.
“Quiet!” Dex’s voice was low, but unforgiving.
They all fell silent. Once he had their attention again, Dex motioned that we were going upstairs. I watched Alice nod, her expression growing determined once more. She flipped her goggles back down in the same few seconds, her mouth firming as she adjusted her rifle on her shoulder and fell in step behind Ace.
And yeah, I felt guilty as hell. But I was glad she was all right.
I’d asked my uncle if vampires could really turn humans into more vampires, and he’d never really given me a definitive answer, which told me they probably could.
When I asked Colonel Holmes the same question, he’d been almost as cagey as my uncle. He did tell me that it wasn’t as simple as the myths portrayed, likening it to some kind of genetic illness that could be passed under certain conditions. But he definitely alluded that turning a human into a vampire was possible.
They both said it took a hell of a lot more than being bit by one, though.
Even so, I found myself following after Alice, watching her back worriedly as we ascended the stone stairs.
Using the sub-vocals headset, I made sure it was turned to the channel where both Charles and the Colonel’s people would hear us, along with my own team.
“Red-1 here,” someone on the Colonel�
�s end said.
Whoever he was, he sounded young.
“We’re inside,” I murmured. “Three of theirs unconscious. One person on our team injured, but she seems to be okay.”
“Understood,” the guy on the Colonel’s end said.
“Any more signatures inside?” I said, still quiet. “Can you see them in here?” I didn’t know how to ask him if vampires showed up on the infrared with my whole team listening. Red-1 seemed to get the gist of my question.
“Infrared picks up significantly more hostiles outside the building,” the voice said, confirming my unasked question. “But we’ve also counted approximately seventeen upstairs. More are coming from the smaller buildings behind the main one. Oh, and they’ve let loose the dogs...” he added.
I nodded, gritting my teeth. “Copy that.”
“Request private channel,” Red-1 said then.
I switched over at once. “What is it?”
“Colonel Holmes wishes me to inform you that we’ve got an estimated head count of thirty-six humans and twenty-four non-humans total at this time, ma’am. Standard arms, from what we can tell. At least twelve of the non-humans are upstairs.”
So they could tell them apart from their satellite scans, too. Good to know.
“Copy that,” I said. “Tell the Colonel thanks.”
“Roger. Will do.”
I opened the private channel between me and Charles. “Did you get that?” I murmured through the sub-vocals.
“Received,” my uncle said. “We’ll take care of the downstairs problem... can you handle the upper floors until we arrive?”
“I got an additional headcount,” I said, mouthing the words into the sub-vocals. “Thirty-six and twenty-four. Warm bloods on the high end. Twelve cold ones upstairs.”
I felt a plume of irritation off my uncle. “And you’re sure you’re okay to go forward alone?”
“I’m not alone,” I said. Feeling him about to argue, I cut him off. “Take care of the downstairs problem for us. Then come up when you can. If we get cut off on both sides, we really will be in trouble.”
My uncle’s voice came out grudging. “Understood.”
Black And Blue (Quentin Black Mystery #5) Page 21