Black To Dust: A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery (Quentin Black Mystery Book 7)

by JC Andrijeski

  Gods. He was beautiful.

  He was so fucking beautiful, even in the dark.

  That pain in my gut worsened, mixing with his when he reacted to my thoughts, to my pain, maybe to my fingers and hands on him, maybe to the fact that he was inside me. It hurt badly enough that I knew I was about to lose control, too. The thought terrified me.

  It also felt inevitable.

  It maybe even felt right.

  Closing my eyes, I swallowed.

  Then, meeting his gaze…

  I opened my light.

  15

  BARRIER STORM

  “I’M SENDING CHARLES and his people,” the deep male voice said over the phone. “They’re already on their way. We can’t make this a military exercise, Manny… for a lot of reasons. But the fact that it’s on reservation ground means it’s completely out of the question.”

  The Colonel’s voice turned grim.

  “The bigger issue is publicity. I think Lucky and his people are better equipped to deal with that than we are. They can also keep locals from the site, and in a more unobtrusive way. It’s not ideal, but if Black can’t handle this himself, it makes sense to do it this way.”

  “Lucky.” Manny grunted, shaking his head. “From ‘Nam. Who used to butcher people. Who worked for Spetsnaz, leaving corpses over half the Ho Chi Minh Trail.”

  “The very same,” the Colonel said, his deep voice holding a near annoyance. “Trust me, it’s weird for me, too, brother. But Black seems to have an uneasy alliance with him these days.”

  At Manny’s silence, Colonel Harrison Hamilton Holmes the Third exhaled, as if he shared at least some of the feelings currently going through Manny’s mind.

  “We can’t ignore this, Mañuel,” Holmes said next, his voice bordering on apologetic. “Not anymore. Charles seems to think that anomaly you encountered at Ship Rock is a real danger, and not only to him and Black and people like them. Not only because of Wolf, either. Charles claims there really might be some kind of ‘door’ there. Something that could be inviting even worse things into our world.”

  “Worse than what?” Manny said.

  “Worse than vampires.”

  “What’s worse than vampires?”

  The Colonel didn’t answer.

  Turning over his words, Manny frowned. Twitching a curtain aside, he glanced out the window to the black SUV with the tinted windows parked to the left of the house, next to the big piñon tree there. His beat up Indian motorcycle sat next to it, collecting dust, with his little Toyota truck parked on the other side of that. Beyond the row of vehicles, he saw his granddaughter filling the water trough with a hose.

  His three horses, Cookie, Samantha, and Dervish, looked on with interest.

  Shifting his gaze back inside the darker house, in the direction of the back area beyond the kitchen, Manny listened briefly.

  It had gone silent in there again.

  He hadn’t heard either of them get up to use the toilet recently, either.

  Maybe they’d fallen back asleep.

  Earlier that morning, before he’d realized he had a new guest, Manny heard a few things coming from that room he wished he hadn’t.

  For the last few hours though, it had been quiet as a tomb.

  He wondered if he should knock. It was getting on close to noon.

  Given everything going on, and now with Lucky Lucifer coming here to the rez in the next few hours, Manny wondered if he needed to force Black out of hibernation so they could talk about how they wanted to handle this, especially with Wolf still running free in those hills.

  Manny didn’t exactly want a war on the rez, whether it was with the Feds or with Lucky’s private security forces and professional vampire hunters.

  He’d need to give Red a head’s up too, so he and Elsie could sell this to B.I.A. and Navajo Nation police before they got on the horn with the F.B.I. in Santa Fe or Albuquerque.

  Even as he thought it, the Colonel’s voice rose in his ear.

  “Can I talk to Black?” the other man said. “Lucky’s people should be arriving relatively soon. They’re going to want an intelligence briefing, and I’d like to know what Black intends to tell them exactly.” Exhaling, he added, “Frankly, I’m beginning to wonder if Black should be there at all, given how he reacted to that thing at Ship Rock. Can he call in some of his people to oversee things? Maybe Kiko from San Francisco? Or Dex? Someone ex-military? I’d feel better if we put some distance between him and this thing.”

  Manny grunted, walking away from the window and back to the middle of his living room. Glancing ruefully at the back corridor, where the house’s small bedrooms lived, he shrugged.

  “Black’s… err, not here right now. I’m going to have to have him call you back.”

  “When will he be back? Can I call him where he is?”

  Still staring down the corridor towards his daughter’s old bedroom, Manny pursed his lips, shaking his head.

  “Doubtful,” he said. “But you’re welcome to try. I don’t know when he’ll be available exactly, but I’ll be sure and tell him to call you when I see him next.”

  “Thanks, Mañuel. I’ll check in if I get a more specific ETA from Charles’ people.”

  Manny grunted. “That would be most appreciated. I admit, I’m a little bewildered how to handle him showing up on my doorstep.”

  The Colonel chuckled. “Take care, old friend. And tell Black to call me.”

  “Will do.”

  Manny hung up the phone, still staring down that darkened corridor to the bedrooms.

  HE WOKE ME up, more than once.

  To be fair, I woke him up at least once, too.

  Maybe twice.

  I might have woken him twice.

  There was at least one time where I’m not sure which of us was awake first, and which of us pushed the other into full consciousness.

  Honestly, it might have been both of us, taking turns.

  He woke me again, more from the pain that spiraled off my light, which made me wonder if that pain woke him. His mouth was on me then, where I lay face down on the bed, his light pulling at me, his hands massaging my lower back as he tilted up my hips. He let out a low groan when my light opened.

  It had gotten effortless again. It was easy, opening to him.

  It scared me how easy it was now.

  He slid up and over me, wrapping an arm around my waist as he pinned me under him.

  His light pulled harder, asking me, and I turned my head, looking up at him. He let out a low groan once he saw my eyes on him, massaging the back of my neck with his free hand, his cock pressed against me from behind.

  “Tell me I can,” he said, his voice heavy, gruff, like it had been all night. My eyes closed when I recognized the tone there, the pain that hit at my lower belly. “I know you’re sore. I’m sore, too, but I don’t give a fuck. Tell me, Miri. Tell me I can.”

  He pulled his arm out from under me, wrapping his hand around my hip. He’d been grabbing me there a lot all night. He gripped my waist, my ass, my hip, holding me against him with a possessiveness that caught my breath in my chest, making it hard to think.

  “I know you’re sore.” He let out a half-groan. “I can feel you’re sore… tell me you want to anyway. Tell me I can. Fucking tell me, Miri.”

  It was a Black question, which never really sounded like a question at all.

  I could see him now.

  I guess that’s how I knew it was morning, that the night had ended for real. Even with the heavy curtains hanging over the windows, enough sun leaked through holes and threads, splashing the wall below the windows, that I could see his whole body.

  I could see his face, his high cheekbones, his five o’clock shadow, his mouth, his gold-flecked irises. Those almond eyes shone at me, those cat-like eyes that never looked quite human to me. His black hair hung half over one eyebrow, his expression hard. My eyes ran down his chest, down that unreal symmetry of his, the muscles in his arms, in his abdomen.
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  “I want to,” I managed, my heart already thudding in my chest. “I want you to,” I amended, increasingly lost in his light as I fought for words. “Do it, Black… please.”

  Gripping my neck harder, he slid into me from behind.

  I groaned.

  Looking back at his silence, I saw his jaw hard, his expression harder still.

  Renewing his hold on me, he slammed into me, a violence coiling through his light that made me open to him more. When I let out another involuntary sound, he lowered his weight over me, shifting sideways to kiss my mouth once he was close enough. I felt him telling me we had to be quiet, that we couldn’t make too much noise, that he’d heard Manny get up, that we had to be quiet.

  I felt his words anger me, then embarrass me.

  I felt the irrationality behind that.

  He told me to talk to him in my mind instead.

  He pulling on my light, asking me to talk to him in my mind, begging me to.

  His light flared the instant I started.

  I yelled at him. I told him to stop holding back, to stop pretending he gave a damn about what Manny thought. I told him to fuck me, or I’d make him stop. I told him to fuck me, or I’d leave. None of it made sense. I pulled on him as I said almost all of it, using my light to pull him into me, to try and make him do what I wanted.

  It hurt like hell. Everything hurt like hell.

  “Gaos…” He clenched his jaw, then gasped, gripping my neck, reaching up to grip my hair, losing control over his light. “Gaos… Miri.”

  Opening his own light more, he slammed into me again, then forced himself to slow, putting intention into each stroke. The sheer deliberateness of it, the slowness of it, the amount of light he flooded into mine as he fucked me into the mattress, put me into a kind of mind-fog.

  It also infuriated me more.

  He was deliberately not doing what I asked. He was deliberately screwing with my light, with my body, trying to get me to lose control.

  I fought to stay quiet as he continued. He was listening to me now, though, answering the urgings of my light by going harder, then faster and harder, then harder and deeper.

  I felt him wanting to talk to me.

  I felt his frustration, that confusion of emotions that hadn’t really dissipated, not for either of us. I felt his anger, too. That came out more and more as he relaxed with me, as he let his light open, as his real feelings came out. I knew a lot of that anger was fear. I felt the fear woven into and around his frustration even now, but he still didn’t seem to know how to express it.

  Truthfully, it was almost a relief to feel it.

  Maybe it was a relief because it felt more honest.

  In the beginning, he did talk to me.

  He talked to me after the first time we had sex. He told me he was angry, he said he was angry at me for leaving without talking to him, without even trying to work things out. He said I’d hurt him, that I’d screwed with his head, that we would need to fuck for a few days straight, at least… maybe weeks… maybe months… for him to feel remotely safe with me again, to get over those seven or eight weeks apart.

  I could feel that on him still.

  I could feel the wariness there, that unwillingness to say the wrong thing, to drive me away. I could feel the anger behind that, the fear behind that anger.

  He’d talked to me after the first time, too.

  Not so much during the first or second times we had sex, but after.

  He talked during the times after that, and after those times, and during the next times. After he confessed he was angry, that he was confused, that he didn’t trust me, a lot of what he said was jumbled––not quite nonsensical, but not exactly clear or linear, either.

  A lot of his words felt compulsive.

  A lot felt like confessions, or maybe just attempts to share with me, to connect, to bridge the time since I’d last seen him. I felt the loss of control in that, the pulls in his aleimi and mine, the obsessive want to bring me back into his light.

  He clenched his hand in my hair, and I felt another surge of that confused emotion.

  Fear, anger at me.

  I realized a lot of what I felt was anger at himself.

  I also felt possessiveness, a surge of jealousy I hadn’t felt the night before.

  His mind had gone places, just from the small amount of sex we’d had.

  I felt him wanting to ask me what I’d been doing over those eight weeks, if I’d tried to take revenge on him for what he’d done with those goddamned vampires. I felt him wanting to ask me not to do that to him again, not to leave him like that again.

  I felt him want to wrap himself around me, to handcuff me to the bed, to make me promise him I’d never fucking do that again, not now that he’d made promises to me.

  He really wanted to ask me what I’d been doing all that time, who I’d been with. He wanted to know whether I would come back to San Francisco with him, whether I would live with him again, whether he could finally fucking tell people I was his wife.

  He wanted to ask me to trust him again.

  I felt his distrust of me––for leaving, for refusing to talk to him.

  I felt him thinking about his past, about that other world.

  I felt him thinking about Coreq.

  I felt him thinking about his family.

  I felt him thinking about what all of that turned him into. I felt him wondering if he was capable of being with anyone at all, if his head was too fucked up from surviving, from having that impulse ground into him until it was all he was.

  I opened more, instinctively that time, and he broke out in a sweat.

  After we’d been fucking a while longer, he groaned aloud, losing control. He was louder than I’d been, and I felt his awareness of that, even as he let it go. I felt him decide it didn’t matter. He let out another, heavier sound when I arched up against him, then he gripped my waist, tight enough to hurt, shifting angles so he could go deeper again.

  For a long moment, the two of us just hung there, lost in the motion, lost in each other’s light. I felt him losing it. I felt it sliding away from him again.

  I felt him let it go. I felt him decide to let it go.

  He let himself start to go there––

  A sharp knock came at the door.

  He let out a pained sound.

  He didn’t stop.

  At that point, I’m not sure he could have stopped.

  “Fuck off,” he said. His voice was deep, gruff, loud enough that I jumped. “Unless the house is on fire… fuck off. We’ll be out there soon.”

  There was a silence.

  Then I heard whoever it was retreat, their steps quiet on the carpet.

  I had to fight not to laugh, but Black renewed his grip on my hair, holding my shoulder down with his other hand. When I groaned, opening my light even more, he let out a heavy cry, fucking me harder. For a long-feeling moment, I got lost again, lost in our lights, lost in whatever the hell was going on with the two of us.

  I felt him lose control for real as he swam deeper into my light.

  Seconds later, he came.

  He used his light and cock to bring me to an orgasm even as he was still coming, and I cried out for real that time.

  I didn’t think about Manny again until I was already coming down.

  I was lost there, in that fugue state, lost in the gold and white light of the Barrier storm. I was lost in Black, in so much of Black and his presence, that pulling, compulsive need in him, the way my light reacted to that need, my own emotional reactions––I couldn’t think at all for those minutes it took me to come down.

  Then he was lying beside me, his arms wrapped around me from behind, gripping me tightly, holding me against his chest and abdomen, still breathing hard.

  “I want to fuck again,” he murmured, gripping me harder.

  Pain slid through him, and through me at his words.

  The pain hit at my chest, sharp, pulling on my light, slanting out my
vision. He pressed his body against mine, cutting my breath when he tightened his arms more.

  “We have to go out there, though,” he said, gruff. “Something’s going on.”

  Using his light and sight mixed with mine, I felt what he felt.

  Feeling my chest clench in what it took me a few seconds to identify as disappointment, I nodded, leaning my head back against him.

  I exhaled in a sigh, fighting to clear my mind.

  I didn’t fully realize I’d closed my eyes until he spoke again, and I opened them.

  “Do you want to take a shower?” he murmured.

  I looked up and back, to find him staring down at me, studying my face.

  “You didn’t sleep much,” he said. “I’m assuming you drove all night.” His lips curled in a near-scowl. “…Despite knowing there’s a fucking vampire coven hunting in this town.”

  Turning around in his arms, I caressed his jaw with my fingers, pressing into him.

  His eyes closed, but I couldn’t tell if it wound him up more or less from the way his light sparked around me at my touch.

  “I was careful,” I assured him. “I was really careful.”

  He grunted a little.

  Pain slid off his light when I pressed against him again.

  “We have to get up,” I reminded him. “You want to take a shower first? That way you can find me a towel. And let Manny know we’ll be up soon.”

  “I thought we could shower together,” he said.

  Looking up, I met his gaze. That harder pull was still coming from his light.

  Still looking at him, I broke out in a smile, unable to help myself.

  “You think that’s a good idea?” I said. “How sturdy is Manny’s shower?” Thinking about my own words, I grunted. “And how thin are the walls?”

  “I’ll be good.”

  I snorted openly at that, but he wrapped his arms around me.

  “I’ll be good,” he insisted. “So will you.”

  “Fat chance, Quentin,” I said, still amused for some reason.

  Another surge of pain left his light. Realizing what he was reacting to that time, I tried to remember if I’d used his first name the night before. I decided I hadn’t. He wrapped his arms around me, yanking me closer again, this time with me facing him.