Manny gave him a look, then shrugged. “If you don’t get too drunk, you’re welcome to give Red a call. I’m sure he’d appreciate the help.” Grinning at him slightly through the warped bottom of his glass, he took another drink, then added, “…Probably.”
Black grunted in return.
They’d spent the day in desert-pitted, four-wheel drive Jeeps owned by the local branch of the Navajo Nation police, attempting to track Wolf. They’d started from Manny’s house, tracing the wolf, human, horse and vampire tracks from the night before.
They’d been trying to determine where he might be holed up in the bluffs or the nearby rez territory. Using some of the local trackers, about half of whom already did contract work for the Navajo Nation police, they’d more or less narrowed it down to an area to the southwest of where they were now, maybe in the vicinity of Crystal but further west, where there was kind of no man’s land of forest and mountains that made up the Arizona and New Mexico border.
Red’s trackers speculated that Wolf might be based somewhere outside rez territory altogether––or maybe in Hopi territory, which was sandwiched in the middle of the Navajo reservation in Arizona.
To say the population was thin in most of the places they’d driven through that day was being generous in the extreme.
The area where they’d been looking wasn’t close to Ship Rock, though.
If Wolf was making regular pilgrimages up there, he couldn’t do it easily on horseback from where they’d tracked him today. He couldn’t even do it quickly via some kind of all-terrain vehicle, and Manny’s people seemed to think he’d been using horses to move around for the most part.
When factoring in the whole Ship Rock angle, assuming that wasn’t another wild goose chase, Black wondered if they’d been had. It was possible Wolf led them south as a means of throwing them off the trail.
Frowning as he thought about this, Black tapped the bottom of his rocks glass against the linoleum table.
“What’re you thinking about, brother?” Manny said.
Black glanced up.
Thinking about Manny’s question then, he shook his head.
“There’s something about this I don’t like,” Black admitted, frowning down at his glass. “I feel like I’m about to put my foot in a bear trap… or, more likely, walk into an ambush.” Giving Manny a harder look, he added, “I think we should send those kids to Santa Fe, let Miriam interview them there. I don’t want her coming here. Maybe it’s better if the kids are off-site for a while, too. Get them out of harm’s way. Out of Wolf’s reach.”
Manny frowned, his eyes growing a denser scrutiny.
“You’re that worried?” he said. “This have something to do with that vampire you told me about last night? Brick?”
Black shook his head, but not really in a no.
Thinking for a moment more, he took another sip of the whisky.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But no, I don’t think so. This feels different.”
“Different how?”
Black glanced over, noting the worried look on his friend’s face.
“I don’t know yet,” he admitted, exhaling. “It’s just a feeling for now. But whatever it is, I don’t want Miri any closer to it than she absolutely has to be. I’d rather if no one knew she was involved in this at all.”
“You want me to call her back?” Manny offered, frowning. “Tell her not to go to the F.B.I. offices tomorrow?”
Clicking under his breath, Black shook his head.
“No,” he said. Frowning, and fighting another sliver of pain, he rearranged his body on the hard chair, stretching out his long legs. “No, it’s too late for that. She probably wouldn’t listen to you anyway. Not now. She’d know it came from me.”
Exhaling again, and wincing that time when the pain worsened, arcing into his chest, he rubbed his sternum, glancing out the kitchen window into the darkness.
“No,” he repeated. “No, she’ll be okay up there.”
“What makes you think so?” Manny said, frowning.
Giving him a flat look, Black only shrugged.
Still looking at him, Manny exhaled, shaking his head. “Just how many people do you have following your wife around, Black?”
Black took another sip of whisky. “Enough.”
Hearing the silence this produced, he gave his friend a sharp look.
“They don’t tell me anything.” Clicking under his breath, he scowled. “They probably wouldn’t tell me anything even if I asked. They’re loyal to her. More so, since I was in that prison and she was running things for a while.”
He gave his friend a meaningful look.
“…but I don’t ask, Manny. Not anymore. They’re only there to make sure none of Brick’s people try to use her to get to me.”
“I see.” Manny was back to assessing him shrewdly. “Does she know? Your wife?”
Exhaling, Black gave him a flat look. “You talked to her. Does she come across as particularly stupid to you?”
Manny just looked at him a moment.
Then he sighed, too. “No.”
Black motioned gracefully and exaggeratedly with a hand, a seer gesture mixed with a human one, indicating well, there you go.
“She’s like you,” Manny said, out of nowhere. “Isn’t she?”
Black looked at him.
He considered not answering, then realized it didn’t matter. He didn’t mind Manny knowing. Out of all the people from Black’s past, Manny and their mutual friend Lawless worried him the least, and not only because both of them more or less lived off the grid.
“Yes,” he said, taking another sip of whiskey.
Still looking at him, Manny grunted. “You better start treating her like she’s like you, then,” he advised. “Or you’re going to lose her, Black.”
Black stiffened, his light flipping into aggression before anything approaching a coherent thought reached his mind. Despite the pain and heat coiling through his light, making it hard to think, he forced himself to remain silent as he turned over the other man’s words.
Slowly, he nodded.
“Agreed.”
Manny leaned back in his chair, watching Black stare out the dark window.
“Does Holmes know?” Manny said. “The Colonel? Does he know what she is?”
There was a silence. Then Black shrugged with one hand.
“For now,” he said.
“For now?”
Again, Black gave him a flat look.
Manny’s taut expression relaxed slightly as he took in Black’s stare, right before he stretched out his legs, folding his arm back across his chest. Swirling the whiskey at the bottom of his glass, he nodded slowly, but with unmistakable approval.
“Good,” he said.
9
SEPARATION PAIN
“IT’S REALLY BEAUTIFUL out here,” I admitted, leaning against the dark blue tile of the hot tub. I gazed up at the swath of stars that filled the dark bowl of sky. “I’d forgotten how beautiful the desert can be.”
“Ayuh,” Cowboy agreed, from where he leaned his head against the edge of the hot tub across from me. He lifted a bottle of Mexican beer to his lips, taking a long drink, then holding it over the bubbling water. His eyes focused overhead. “It’s somethin’ all right.”
Angel, who leaned her head against the blue tile rim right right next to me, just sighed in contentment, lowering her mouth just enough to take a sip of her salt-rimmed margarita. Setting the rocks glass carefully on the tile not far from her head, she sighed again, exhaling steam into the night sky and gazing up at the view of the Milky Way.
“We were going to walk around downtown,” she reminded me, still watching the stars. “Look at the lights on all the adobe buildings.”
“Tomorrow night,” I promised, exhaling steam and watching it dissipate in the night air. “I don’t think I would have made it tonight. Even if we hadn’t eaten late.”
I closed my eyes, and got an image of a red
rock formation jutting out of the earth in the middle of a plain. The sky was red too. The clouds sped up like a time-lapse film as I watched, swirling in a vortex over the rock formation like a dust-filled hurricane. The sky darkened rapidly as I watched the movie run faster behind my eyes.
I saw a Native American man standing there, surrounded by wolves––
I jerked open my eyes, focusing with an effort on the stars.
“We could watch a movie in the suite’s common room,” Angel offered, glancing over without raising her head. “I saw a couple of new ones on the pay-per-veiw.”
I nodded, smiling faintly. “If you don’t mind me falling asleep on the couch in there, sounds perfect. Oh, and I want ice cream… and maybe flan.”
“No chocolate?” Cowboy grunted. He patted his belly underwater. “What about pie? I could really do with some pie about now.”
I grunted a laugh, closing my eyes again.
That time, the face of Birdy Phillips swam up in the red clouded darkness.
My eyes jerked back open, my heart beating harder in my chest. Remembering the way she’d looked at me in that empty common room, I shivered, sitting up.
Angel glanced over, clearly seeing something on my face, or maybe just noticing the way I moved after I’d been so relaxed before.
“What is it, doc?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head, frowning. “That little girl.”
“Birdy?” Cowboy said, lowering his beer bottle and frowning. “What about her?”
Still sitting up on the tile bench inside the hot tub, I sighed, smoothing wet hair out of my face and hooking it behind my ears.
“That was just one spooky kid,” I admitted, pressing my lips together. “There was something about her. I still can’t quite put my finger on it.”
Angel glanced around, making sure none of the other guests were in earshot.
Seeing no one, she looked back at me.
“You read her though, right?” she said.
I nodded, still pursing my lips. “Yes.”
“Well?”
Frowning, I looked out over the lit surface of the main pool. After what was probably a too-long pause, I glanced back at the two of them.
“I don’t know,” I said, still frowning. “I definitely felt she believed what she said. She absolutely bought into Wolf’s whole cosmology. She believes the gods are real, that he’s some kind of prophet, sent to do their work. She believes the vampires were sent by the gods, too.”
“But you knew that already, right?” Cowboy said.
I nodded, still frowning.
“Yes,” I said. “None of that surprised me. She more or less told me all that. It was more the feeling I got off her. She was so… happy. She wasn’t scared. She wasn’t worried about being locked up. She wasn’t worried I was talking to her about Wolf. She wasn’t worried I knew about vampires. She seemed to think I couldn’t touch her… that none of us could stop any of it. My being there almost seemed like a good omen to her, a sign something big was about to happen. Something related to them getting the native lands back.”
I aimed my frown at Angel, then at Cowboy.
“She was so sure of it,” I said. “So utterly sure.”
“But she’s deluded, right?” Cowboy said.
Still thinking, I nodded slowly. Gazing back out over the pool, I watched the steam rise from the blue-tinted water lit by underwater bulbs.
“Right,” I said.
There was a silence. I could feel both of them looking at me.
After going back and forth in my head, I said the other thing.
“Something’s bugging Black,” I said. “About all of this.”
In my periphery, I saw Angel and Cowboy exchange glances. I also felt a whisper of a smile on Angel’s light, right before she cleared her throat.
“Something’s bugging Black,” she said neutrally.
I glanced over, frowning, but not really at her.
“Yeah,” I said. Still thinking, I leaned my head on the dark blue tile, fighting to push my awareness of his mind out of my light. “Maybe I’m too close to him… physically, I mean. Maybe it’s because I talked to Manny earlier tonight and he was there. Either way, I can’t get it out of my head.”
Pausing at their silence, I added,
“Whatever it is, it’s really bothering him.”
Raising my head, I looked at Angel. “He doesn’t want me anywhere near Ship Rock. I can feel that, too.”
Angel’s smile faded, right before she exchanged puzzled looks with Cowboy, that time doing it right in front of me.
“Why not, doc?” Cowboy said after they had. “What’s at Ship Rock?”
Looking at him, then back at Angel, I could only shake my head.
“I have no idea,” I said.
“But Black does?” Cowboy clarified, watching me keenly with those light gray eyes of his. “Black knows what’s there?”
I frowned harder, staring unseeingly at the water. I fought to think logically about this, to view his question objectively, but I didn’t have facts. All I had was the feeling.
After a longish pause, I sighed, reluctant.
“I’m beginning to think Black might,” I admitted.
I SLEPT REASONABLY well that night.
Of course, I was grading on a curve.
Really though, I probably slept better than I had in at least a week––once I finally fell asleep. Despite what I’d told Angel and Cowboy in the hot tub, I didn’t fall asleep on the couch after we’d gorged ourselves on room service flan and ice cream and apple pie and cocoa.
In fact, I didn’t fall asleep at all until well after they’d disappeared into their room to call it a night.
I hadn’t been sleeping well for a while now.
Apparently I’d been doing a better job of hiding that fact than Black, but it seemed to be something we had in common, regardless.
In Hawaii, that meant a number of late night swims in an attempt to tire myself out, to distract myself, sometimes just to clear my head.
Here, I didn’t really have that option.
The resort pool closed at eleven, as did the gym, and I wasn’t sure wandering around downtown Santa Fe––or out in the desert––in the middle of the night was the best idea, even knowing Black likely had people on me to make sure I was safe.
Instead, I found myself reading up on Navajo myths on my tablet in my private bedroom in the shared suite. I kept the local news running at a low volume in the background.
I looked up at that news only once, raising the volume to listen to an unusual story from a town not far from the edges of the Navajo reservation.
Someone had broken into one of those giant, chain, home improvement stores, stealing tens of thousands of dollars worth of tools and equipment. A lot of it had been digging equipment apparently, which struck the newscasters as odd, but the robbery itself was serious.
One guard had been killed and another injured, but the thieves got away clean.
Frowning as I watched and listened to the Latina newscaster report from the giant parking lot of the store, I turned off the television a few minutes later when they moved to a story about a new, controversial housing development along the bosque near the center of town.
Even after I turned out the light, I ended up staring at the ceiling.
I was in pain––that maddening, physiological counterpart to being a seer, and another of those little “gifts” Black had given me since he’d walked into my life. I’d experienced it a few times pre-Black, of course. When my ex-boyfriend, Ian, was out of town for too long, or when I was younger and didn’t date for most of college.
Black had never fully explained to me what it was, or what caused it, but I’d been observing it on my own long enough to know a few things.
One, it generally happened when I was lonely. For the same reason, it was really bad when my parents died, and even worse when my sister disappeared.
Two, it generally happened
when I wasn’t getting enough affection.
Three, it got a lot worse when I wanted sex.
It was no picnic when I went through puberty, presumably for the same reason, and because my hormones were out of control, just like they were for every other teenager.
Four, it had gotten exponentially, incalculably, excruciatingly worse since Black and I got sexually involved. Really, it got worse even before we’d had intercourse for the first time. At some point after we’d gone to Thailand together, I’d felt the sensation bloom into something different than it ever had been, at any time in my life pre-Black.
Really, though, something in that sensation changed for me somewhere around the first time we kissed.
It was bad enough now, it kept me up at night.
It woke me early in the morning.
It killed my appetite at times, since a kind of strange nausea often accompanied the pain and pulling that roiled my chest and gut.
Black told me once that seers had different names for this, back where he was from: separation pain, bond pain, sex pain, seer pain, even “hunger.”
He also warned me it would affect the people around me, including humans.
He said they wouldn’t know why they were reacting to me the way they were, but they wouldn’t be able to ignore it entirely, either, especially anyone who was attracted to me for other reasons. He described what he called “pulls” coming off my light when I was in this state. He said some part of me would pull on the light of humans, especially their sex centers.
The thought wasn’t exactly non-paranoia inducing.
As a result of what he’d told me, which felt true at the time, I’d taken to hiding from other people when it got really bad. Luckily, it usually got the worst at night and early in the morning, so I would generally ride out the peak times before I ventured out in public.
I did the same that morning––I tried, anyway.
In the end, I had to get up before I managed to get it under control.
I got out of bed first, hoping the shower would get rid of the worst of it. When that didn’t work, I hoped maybe breakfast would help. I tried not to do the mental calculation on how much sleep I’d actually gotten in the end, but the more analytical part of my mind couldn’t help doing it anyway.
Black To Dust: A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery (Quentin Black Mystery Book 7) Page 13