“I’ll get you inside,” he said to Brick. “Give you everything I found. Then I’m done.”
Brick looked at him, his lips pursing in a frown, perhaps because Black didn’t acknowledge his lament on the fate of his people. In the end he only nodded though.
“That is the deal we made, Mr. Black.”
The corridor ended on another metal door, one that opened out into the same parking lot he’d just been brought out of by the last set of delivery guys. A military grade truck stood there now, parked right up against the metal door, its open end under the shade of the roof.
Black followed them through those open doors, sitting on a bench when the two guards guided him there between them. He found himself stiffening when Brick motioned the guard to his right to move away. He stiffened more when Brick sat down right next to him.
The engine started in the truck, right as Brick turned to the guard next to him, clicking his fingers and motioning towards his belt.
The guard handed over a handcuff key, one of the long ones, like the prison guards used. Leaning over Black’s wrists, Brick used the key to unlock his handcuffs quickly and efficiently. He dropped them to the floor as soon as he had Black free of them.
Black rubbed his wrists as Brick tossed the handcuff key back at the guard, who caught it one-handed. Black tensed in the silence that followed, staring around warily at the red-tinted eyes watching him. Then he looked back at Brick.
“I should be sitting up front,” he said, blunt. “I have to feed you the directions piece by piece. I’ve got the map, but it’s times and directional changes... they had me hooded the whole way, and there were no windows.”
Brick studied his face for a moment, then nodded.
With that marionette-like grace he had, he smoothly regained his feet, crouching as he walked up to the front end of the truck bed, meaning the part nearest to the drivers. He pounded on the panel there, and after a short pause, the person on the other side opened it.
Brick turned, looking back at Black. He frowned when he realized Black hadn’t followed him, and motioned sharply for him to join him near the front.
More guards moved out of the way of the two of them. They rearranged seats around the back of the truck, making room for Black and Brick to sit right behind the driver and the vampire sitting shotgun. Black counted twenty of the vampire soldiers now.
“So sun doesn’t bother you?” Black said, turning towards Brick.
Brick stared at him. “What makes you say that?”
Black motioned towards the two drivers. “Them.”
Brick shook his head. “They are human, Mr. Black.”
Black frowned, looking at the drivers. He hadn’t noticed, but Brick was right. Either that, or they were the only two in that whole truck who bothered to wear contact lenses. At the thought, he glanced back at the sea of red eyes.
“So sun kills you, then?” he said.
Brick frowned at him for real that time. He seemed about to answer for a brief moment, then changed his mind, turning back towards the driver.
“Do whatever he says,” he said, waving a hand towards Black. “He’s going to tell you when to turn. When to stop. When to take a piss, possibly. Do everything he says. Understood?”
The driver nodded, giving Black a bare glance.
Black couldn’t help noting that Brick stayed out of the sun as he spoke to the two humans, remaining behind the metal plating separating the driver’s cab with the cargo area. So vampires really didn’t like the sun. Good to know.
Brick gave him another appraising look, then motioned towards his arm. His voice grew borderline apologetic.
“I have to check. You must understand this.”
Black stared back at him. “Check what?”
“I have to know if you’re telling the truth. About where you’re taking us. And I need to verify everything you experienced while inside that facility... and share it with my team so we can discuss an approach. It will be much better if I can see the layout for myself.”
Black looked at him. Then he looked back at the rest of the vampires in the truck. From the expressions on their faces, they’d just learned they were about to watch a porno.
“No,” Black growled, looking back at Brick.
“I have to,” Brick said, his voice sharper. “Don’t make this unpleasant, Mr. Black. Remember, your wife is waiting.”
Clenching his jaw, Black fought with what he would have liked to say to the vampire. After another pause where he realized he had no choice, that as a seer he would check intel from a hostile source, too... he held out his arm. It still had bite marks on it from Puzzle. It occurred to Black in the same set of seconds that he hadn’t eaten since then, not apart from the glass of orange juice the guard at the lab gave him to drink.
“Don’t take too much,” Black growled. “I mean it. I’m no fucking good to you if I pass out... and I’m already low.”
Brick smiled. As he did, his fangs were already growing longer, making Black grimace.
“One of mine got greedy, is that it?”
“You could say that––” Black broke off with a gasp when the vampire bit him without warning. He found himself leaning against the metal divider then gasping again as the vampire continued to draw from him. He felt the other’s desire turn sexual and stared down, fighting the urge to punch the vampire in the face as he sucked on his arm.
After a few minutes more, he started feeling sick.
Then he started feeling woozy.
“Stop,” he managed. “I mean it... fucking stop.”
Brick pulled back slowly, pulling his teeth out of him carefully so as not to tear the flesh. Sighing, he raised his head, wiping his mouth with a black handkerchief from his breast pocket and giving Black a small smile.
“God. No wonder your little friend got greedy. That is... really good. Better than good. Better than fucking, my friend, if you want the truth...”
“You must not be fucking right,” Black said, grimacing as he pulled down the prison shirt sleeve. At Brick’s laugh, Black put his hand over the bite mark, wincing at the pain.
“Satisfied?” he growled.
“Not even a little,” Brick said, giving him a teasing smile. “But I am content that you are of the proper frame of mind for this little endeavor... if that’s what you mean.”
Black ignored his suggestive tone and scowled.
“Do you have anything I can eat?”
Brick’s lips pursed. He glanced at the back of the van, as if thinking. Then he looked towards the humans in the front seats. “Do either of you fine gentleman have some food you could spare? Our guest here is quite in need of some sustenance.”
They looked at one another. Then the man in the shotgun seat frowned. He leaned forward, rummaging through a backpack on the floor by his feet. Seconds later, he handed Black a chocolate bar. After more rummaging, he handed him a protein bar, too.
Black realized only then that the truck was idling, right by the prison gates, waiting for him.
“Go left,” he said, ripping open the top of the chocolate bar with his teeth. “Go about forty-five miles per hour. In fourteen minutes and twelve seconds, you’re going to go right, but not a sharp right. Then, four minutes after that, you’re going to go right again, up a ramp.”
The driver listened, then nodded.
“Sound familiar?” Brick said.
“I know what he’s talking about,” the driver confirmed. “Heading out now.”
Black looked at the guy sitting in the shotgun seat.
“Do you have a digital watch, something with a second hand? Maybe on your phone?” As he said it, he rubbed his own wrist reflexively, conscious of his own watch being missing. “...You might need to time parts of this, once you get on unfamiliar ground. Other parts, I’ll probably need to guide you step by step, since they sped up and slowed down a lot more in areas where they got more traffic.”
When the guy sitting shotgun nodded, using the buttons on h
is phone to find the stopwatch app, Black took a bite out of the chocolate bar he’d been given. He was so hard up for food, his body seemed to absorb it through his tongue. Feeling the jolt of sugar hit his bloodstream, he sighed. When he glanced up, however, he tensed.
Brick and the other vampires were watching him.
The look on some of their faces wasn’t difficult to read.
“Get fucked.” Black’s voice came out harsh, more of a snarl. “Anyone tries to bite me, and I’ll lose my fucking memory real fast...”
Brick chuckled, patting him reassuringly on the knee. When Black glared back at him, Brick’s smile was amused, but his eyes watched him shrewdly, a faint curiosity shining from their depths. Black saw the alienness there. He saw Brick viewing him the same.
When pity rose to the vampire’s eyes it only infuriated him more.
He wished he knew what the fuck the vampire was thinking.
“Did you really put an explosive in this fucking thing?” he said, swallowing the bite of chocolate and thumbing the collar. “If I cut it, or tampered with it... would it have killed me? Blown my fucking head off?”
“Yes,” Brick said. Leaning back on the bench, he raised an eyebrow, smiling faintly. “Oh, my. Did I neglect to warn you about that, Mr. Black? If so, I’m terribly sorry. That really was quite thoughtless of me. How unfortunate things might have turned out if your mechanic friend had managed to cut through the collar after all.”
Black didn’t answer. He took another bite of the chocolate, making himself chew it before he swallowed. He couldn’t help feeling the vampire’s eyes on him still, or the eyes of the rest of them watching as he ate. He hated the feeling he got from Brick most of all... like the vampire already knew more about him than he should.
Black couldn’t help tracing that feeling back to Miriam, as well.
Shoving her from his mind when a sliver of pain tried to rise, he focused on the road, on what he was doing here, where they were going. He doled out each leg of the trip, piece by piece, doing his best to validate those memories where he could, using ambient sounds he heard, smells, even the bumps on the two-lane road. Having traveled the distance twice now, he felt pretty confident he could get them there.
He had no intention of leading them astray. He wanted out of here.
Even if they didn’t let him go willingly, he knew his chances were better with every mile he got away from that fucking prison.
BLACK HAD KNOWN, objectively, that it took hours for him to get to that lab the first time, and hours to get back. But it was different when he was counting down those minutes with a clear head, with the promise of freedom on the other side.
It seemed to take excruciatingly long this time.
He was hungry as fuck, too. He inhaled the protein bar after he’d eaten the chocolate, but the combination only seemed to wake his body up to how completely fucking starving he was.
Brick fed off him a few more times, to verify their route and answer specific questions he had about the labs. He also grilled him on everything he remembered about the inside of the building and their security systems and personnel. After the vampires had discussed a few different options for approach, Brick had Black give them a full walk-through while he fed on him again, to confirm all the security checkpoints.
By the end, Black felt woozy again, and angry, and hungry enough to want to fight all of them. He just sat there, listening, as Brick spoke to the others.
Still, despite how shitty he felt, he didn’t miss a word.
Brick’s plan was aggressive... reckless even. But it wasn’t stupid.
Truthfully, it wasn’t far off from what he might have chosen to do himself, if he’d suddenly been forced to plan an op days or even weeks ahead of schedule.
When the van finally pulled up to a fenced-in warehouse at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, the sun was already starting to go down. Black had never seen the building from the outside, but everything else tracked with what he remembered. From the outside, the place looked like a rusted ruin. It also looked abandoned, apart from the security guards standing by the heavy metal sliding door and the CCTV cameras mounted on poles above the lot.
Glancing at the setting sun, Black frowned.
Did the lab even get deliveries this time of day?
Of course, given the vampires’ sun issues, maybe waiting until dark made sense.
Brick was already putting the cuffs back on Black’s wrists as the military van slowed. Since Black now knew their plan, he wasn’t surprised. He was still checking out the warehouse itself when the metal slot between the front and back sections of the car slid shut.
“Get us inside, and you can go,” Brick told him quietly, snapping on the second cuff. “You don’t need to stay for the fight itself.” He met Black’s gaze. “My people are motivated. And we’ll have reinforcements once we get below. We don’t need you once we’re inside.”
“So what happens to me?”
“We’ll have the humans bring you to your wife.”
Black nodded, clenching his jaw. He knew the vampire wouldn’t risk setting him loose around their own kind. He still had his doubts they’d let him go at all.
In fact, the more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Why would they let him go? Why not put a bullet in his head when this was done? Brick talked as if they were doing this for Miriam, but why would they? Had she threatened them with exposure? Something worse? Maybe Charles was the one they really feared.
They put the hood over his head as he was thinking this. Another of the guards snapped cuffs back on his ankles.
Why had Brick known anything about Miri? He’d said she was beautiful... more beautiful than photos. He must have seen her, but where? Had Miri been meeting with this piece of shit, trying to get him back? Who the fuck let her do that? Charles?
Pain ripped through him as the thought turned into spinning knives in his head. He couldn’t stop trying to wrap his head around it. Could this all be bullshit? Had Brick killed her? Had Brick killed his wife? Fed on her? Raped her, like Puzzle had him? The possibilities paralyzed his mind, wiping out everything else. Why would Brick have seen her face to face? Why would he agree to meet with her, unless he’d gone to hurt her?
His heart hammered in his chest, his breath coming out in heavier pants.
In the background, he heard the guard talking to the driver.
He’d told them what to say to them, too.
“Subject 3297T2 being returned from Crenshaw,” the driver said, bored-sounding.
Black heard a pause while the guard confirmed it over a walkie talkie. Then his voice rose, sharper than the driver’s. “Already? They said he just fucking left this morning.”
The driver sighed. “Don’t ask me, bro. I just do what they tell me. They said it was an administrative thing. Either way, he’s here. Do you want him or not?”
Again, the guard spoke over the walkie, more or less repeating what the driver said. After another pause, he turned back to the driver.
“Okay. All right. They say yeah, bring him in.”
Black heard the metal sliding door in front of the parking lot begin to open.
His stomach dropped, even as a harder wave of aggression rose in his light. The vampires to either side held his arms, but he felt his muscles clenching under their gloved hands. He knew he was low on blood, exhausted, hungry, but he didn’t fucking care. He didn’t care if he got out of here in a body bag––he wasn’t going back to that goddamned prison, or being handcuffed to any more padded tables.
When the back doors opened, he could no longer see because of the hood. He heard the guard there though, heard him whistling when he saw the number of soldiers in the back of the truck.
“Jesus. Overkill much?” the guy said. “This guy Charles Manson, or what?”
The vampire holding Black’s left arm grunted as he led Black out of the van. “You don’t know much about this one, do you?” he said only.
“I know he’s cuffed. He’
s also walking like he’s doped to the gills.”
“Trust me, you want the overkill.”
The guard grunted. “Whatever, man. My tax dollars at work, I guess.”
The vampire’s voice grew less amused. “Are you taking us in? Or are you going to stand out here, holding your dick and talking crap?”
The man sighed. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”
Black’s legs moved as they began leading him away from the truck. Again, the glass doors swished open in front of him, letting out a cloud of air-conditioned air. The swirl of activity was less than he remembered as they entered the upper floor of the building, but that might have more to do with the time of day. He still felt people walking around them, probably due to the armed guards. Only the two vampires brought him in; the rest stayed in the loading bay inside the warehouse.
Black knew that was temporary though.
They stopped about halfway through the lobby, just like before.
“Wait here,” the guy from the loading area said.
Black heard him walk away, going back the direction they’d come.
He knew they’d be bringing up the security team and/or one of the doctors who had badges and clearance to be in the lab downstairs.
It seemed like they were only standing there a few seconds when a familiar voice rose. It was the same guard Black remembered from earlier that day, the one who’d yelled at Dr. Nguyen for letting the vampires feed on Black. The one who gave him a clean shirt, and orange juice to drink, and actually treated him like a person.
“So they brought the poor bastard back, huh?” His voice sounded angry, like it had earlier that day. “I guess some guys just can’t catch a break.” Exhaling, he addressed the vampires directly, his voice turning businesslike. “You got the paperwork?”
“No,” the vampire to Black’s right said.
“No?” There was a silence. “What the fuck do you mean, no? I can’t bring him downstairs without––”
But the vampire must have unholstered his gun.
The shot echoed through the lobby. Black heard it even after the heavy sound of a body hit the tiled floor in front of him.
Black And Blue (Quentin Black Mystery #5) Page 29