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

by JC Andrijeski

  I saw a few of Joseph’s people do the same, covering our six from the other side as the rest of them followed after Black and me.

  If Black noticed, he didn’t bother to look back, not even when gunshots sounded behind us, and I heard more hissing screams. I turned with Manny, worried about the kids, and about Joseph’s people more generally, but they seemed to know how to handle themselves.

  Then I saw Cowboy back there, and heard the ringing of more swords.

  The Navajo man with the machetes appeared to be working beside him.

  I also saw one of the younger native girls down a vampire with a single arrow through the heart, using what looked like a handmade bow.

  Meanwhile, leading us down that leftward bend in the tunnel, Black wound us closer to that throbbing bright light in the rock, which I could feel more strongly every second.

  I could feel also myself getting more and more light-headed, the further we walked.

  It struck me suddenly that a lot of that light-headedness wasn’t coming from me.

  Turning back towards the lefthand side of the corridor, I aimed my gun past Black, looking for any sign of more vampires.

  You okay? I asked Black, realizing how bright that light was getting. Can you ground through me? I’ll try to tie my light more strongly to Joseph, Manny and the rest of them.

  I felt a ripple of relief run through Black’s light.

  That’s a good idea, doc. Thanks.

  I was already doing it, even as he answered.

  I started with Manny, since I still walked closest to him. I could feel his connection to the land here, like a dark red thread that ran through him in a straight line, from above his head down below his feet and deep, deep into the volcanic rock.

  Once I had my energy, or “living light” or “aleimi,” as the seers called it, wound more into Manny’s, I threw myself out further, winding my light into Joseph next, then the teenaged girl wearing the scarf, then the girl with the bow and arrow, then Joseph’s wife, then Frank and Easton, and another native woman I didn’t know, and Dog… and on down the line.

  I tried to be thorough with each connection, but within seconds, I felt like my legs, arms, chest and abdomen were made out of the volcanic rock.

  Better? I asked Black.

  His thoughts came through differently that time.

  They felt solid, as dense as rock.

  One hundred percent better. One thousand percent, he sent. A plume of his heat reached me, strong enough that I felt it in my knees. Gaos, doc. I love you.

  Then be fucking careful with that door, I warned, feeling a flare of alarm run through me as I assessed the density of the light storm over our heads. Something is happening there. You must feel that. I don’t know if Wolf is throwing seers through the door, but it definitely feels like he’s killed some of them––

  I know. I know, doc. Don’t worry.

  Black grew briefly silent.

  Then I felt him make up his mind.

  He’s waiting for us, he sent. Wolf. It’s why he hasn’t killed Charles yet.

  I frowned, feeling what Black felt through his light.

  Why? I sent. Why would he care about us in particular?

  Black sighed, clicking under his breath.

  I have no idea. But whatever it is, I doubt it’s good.

  Thinking about his words, feeling what he felt, I couldn’t help but agree with him.

  Black killed two more vampires that came at us from that side. More gunshots went off behind us, followed by arrows flying and machetes ringing as Cowboy and Joseph’s people took out a few more. I felt Angel with them, too, holding a rifle she used to bullseye them in the head and chest before Cowboy stepped forward to decapitate them.

  It crossed my mind that we were being driven in this direction. They were sending way more vampires to come at us from behind than they were to attack Black.

  They really were waiting for us.

  Black was still making his way forward down the corridor when a figure appeared at the end of the rock tunnel, holding his hands up in the air in the universal gesture of surrender.

  I stared at him, raising my gun to aim at his chest.

  Even so, I didn’t fire. I couldn’t help but hesitate when I saw who it was.

  It was Manny’s son-in-law, Red.

  BEFORE BLACK COULD speak, before any of us could, Red raised his voice, his hands still in the air. He didn’t address us.

  He spoke to the group of natives with us, speaking Navajo.

  I missed the first handful of words.

  Then Black was in my mind, translating those words for me with his light.

  ––not your friend! Red called out in Navajo. He is not your brother. I do not know why you are here, following this one, but you are not like him. You are of the people. You are one with us. This one is a devil… a demon from another world.

  Red pointed at Black.

  His wife can’t help herself, Red added, aiming a contemptuous look and a chin-jerk at me. We won’t harm her, but she won’t turn back on her own, so we’ll stop her in our own way. We will return her to her people after. But all of you… you need to turn around and go back. You need to go home. We have no quarrel with you. You are our kin.

  Manny frowned. He continued staring at his son-in-law.

  He took a step towards Red without lowering his gaze. Then he took another.

  Feeling the movement, I glanced back briefly, without taking my gun off Red.

  Joseph stood just behind me now too, gripping a rifle in one hand. He pointed the gun at the volcanic rock floor, but I saw his finger resting on the barrel right by the trigger.

  Why would we do that? Joseph asked, speaking the same language as Red. You have loosed this plague on our lands. You have killed our people. The man who leads you has stolen our children, told them lies, turned them dark in their hearts. I think you are confused about who is the ghost and who has demons inside them, brother.

  Red smiled.

  His smile reminded me of Jason’s smile, and Birdy’s smile before him.

  “You are the one who is confused,” Red said, switching to English. “It’s not your fault, brother, but you will learn the truth about your ‘friend’ here.” He jerked his chin towards Black. “He is not what you think. He’s not from this world at all. He’s not even human.”

  Joseph looked at Black, frowning.

  After a long pause where he seemed to assess Black’s face, maybe something beyond his face, beyond his physicality altogether, the old man shrugged.

  “His heart is okay,” Joseph said. “That matters more.”

  Red gave him an angry look, aiming a look of pure hatred at Black.

  “He is a thief. His kind do not belong here. We have had our lands stolen before. You would let ones like this walk through the worlds and take more from us?”

  Manny stepped to Black’s other side.

  I saw him frowning now, still staring at Red, the gun gripped in his hand. He didn’t quite aim it at the floor, but he didn’t aim it directly at his son-in-law, either.

  “What are you doing here, Red?” Manny said. “Did you bring my grandchildren down here? To watch you and my daughter be murderers?” Anger touched his voice, but also grief. The combination roughened his words. “How did you get my daughter involved in this? Why would you do this? Bring hate into my home? Into my family?”

  Red looked at him, his expression hard.

  “You brought these ghosts here, Mañuel. You brought the white man’s guns, his military, his death. You’ve been brainwashed by the white man ever since you went to fight his wars for him… killing people in other lands who never hurt you. You made yourself the conqueror. You made yourself the thief. You helped the white man murder. You traveled across the world, leaving your family to help the white man steal other men’s land.”

  Manny glanced at Black, who returned his look.

  After a pause, Black shrugged.

  “He’s not wrong,” he
said.

  Manny chuckled, almost like he couldn’t help himself.

  “You really are an asshole, Black,” he said. “You know that?”

  In my periphery, I saw Red move, his hand sliding to the back of his belt.

  I saw his dark eyes fixed on Black, hatred shining from their depths, as I raised my gun. I saw Black’s eyes narrow as he realized the same thing I did. He tensed, reaching for his own gun––but Manny was faster than either of us.

  His big Colt echoed down the stone corridor.

  He hit Red right in the forehead, just above his eyebrows.

  The big Colt threw his son-in-law backwards, so that his back connected with the wall not long after part of the back of his skull did. Red hovered there briefly, a blank look in his eyes, his back against the wall.

  Then his knees crumpled.

  Staring, and now breathing hard, I lowered my gun, shocked in spite of myself.

  Turning to look at Manny, I fought with what to say.

  As if seeing my thoughts on my face, Manny frowned.

  Looking away from me, he popped open the cylinder on the Colt, feeding a few bullets in to replace those he’d fired and snapping the carriage back into place.

  He gave me a sideways look, frowning.

  “He was gone,” he told me flatly, his dark eyes warning. “He had murder in his heart. I could see it on his face. He was going to kill Black. And I can’t have that.” He glanced at Black, his mouth a hard line. “And I don’t want to hear a damned word about it, you bastard. You saved my life at least four times over there. More, probably.”

  Grunting, Manny added,

  “Laura never liked the son of a bitch anyway.”

  I knew Laura must have been Manny’s wife.

  Black didn’t say anything. I saw a flicker of pain touch his eyes as he looked at his friend––a friend who’d just killed the father of his grandchildren to save Black’s life.

  He only looked at him, though.

  Cowboy stepped closer to me then, holding his gun on the corridor.

  I hadn’t even seen him walk through the others to reach us.

  “I think we’re clean back there now, boss,” he said, giving Black a nod. “The vamps more or less vanished once we got this far.”

  Black hesitated, then looked away from Manny.

  Meeting Cowboy’s gaze, he nodded in acknowledgment of his words, glancing over the rest of us for the first time since Red appeared. After a pause, he waved Cowboy forward, motioning with hand-signals that he wanted him to cover him.

  “Ma’am,” Cowboy said, nodding. “You mind if I go in front?”

  Glancing at the twin swords he wore strapped to his back in the customized scabbard, I nodded briefly, pursing my lips.

  “I’m going to have to get me a set of those,” I muttered.

  Cowboy chuckled, but didn’t lower the Python he carried, or take his eyes off the corridor as he walked forward, until he was side by side with Black.

  I saw them look at one another.

  Then Cowboy walked ahead of Black, stalking silently down the corridor.

  Walking around the decapitated head of the last vampire Black had killed, Cowboy approached the opening in the wall Red had appeared out of, his gun still up, but one-handed now as he reached back, gripping the handle of one of his swords with his other hand.

  Reinforcing his grip on the sword, he slid forward just enough to peer around the corner.

  After a pause where he moved his head further into the doorway, he looked around the space on the other side.

  Then he looked back at Black, frowning.

  “You’d better come over here, boss,” he said.

  Giving me a glance and a frown, Black stepped forward, following Cowboy’s path and moving as silently as the other man had done.

  Reaching the rock wall near the opening, he let Cowboy step out of the way. Then, moving as cautiously as Cowboy had done, he peered around and through the same opening in the wall, scanning the space behind it with his eyes, and likely also his light.

  Then he glanced back at me.

  I barely had time to make sense of his expression before he disappeared through that opening.

  Manny and I exchanged looks. Then both of us stepped forward at the same time, half-jogging towards the door in the rock wall.

  22

  WOLF AND DRAGON

  I WALKED THROUGH the opening in the rock, heart pounding in my chest.

  Once I’d walked all the way into the next cave, I came to a dead stop.

  Light filled the room beyond that opening.

  I hadn’t realized before, with all our flashlights aimed down the corridor, first looking for vampires and then looking at Red, that the adjoining cave had its own illumination. Now that I was past the curve in the rock near the opening, I was greeted by a ring of torches stuck in metal brackets hammered into the rock walls.

  The flames flickered in a light breeze from what was probably another of those hand-hold ladders carved into the rock.

  The wall directly in front of us was covered in a mosaic made of colored stones.

  That mosaic appeared to be the reason for the torches.

  It wasn’t like a cave painting, or any of the stick figure-type drawings I’d seen at Bandelier National Monument or Mesa Verde, or any of the other ancient drawings I’d visited in caves, whether in North America or in Europe or the Middle East.

  The mosaic instead was hyper-realistic, even more realistic and detailed than stone images I’d seen fitted into the walls of ruins in Ancient Egypt and Herculaneum, and it filled nearly the entire wall.

  The firelight seemed to have been strategically placed to best highlight the image there.

  Staring at it, I found myself understanding suddenly.

  I found myself understanding why Wolf had been waiting for Black.

  Taking a step forward, I bit my lip, fighting a reaction in my chest as I stared at the person depicted on the volcanic rock wall. Some part of me tried to reconcile that image with the apparent age of the mosaic itself.

  I tried to convince myself it was fake––that Wolf’s people placed it here as some kind of prank, a way to screw with our heads.

  I knew that wasn’t true, though.

  I could feel how old the image was. My light could feel its age, almost like a weight.

  Moreover, I could feel meaning there, contained within those detailed lines, the perfect shapes and painstakingly cut rock. I might not be able to understand the meaning, but I could feel it living in those stones.

  Wolf’s people hadn’t done this.

  Of course, I couldn’t be certain the image in that mosaic was of Black himself.

  It looked like him, though.

  Truthfully, it looked a hell of a lot like him.

  Wearing a long, heavy coat, more like what I’d seen the vampires wear than anything Black himself wore, the man faced the inside of the cave, his back to an enormous sun that took up most of the wall. I stared at the man’s face, at the stare he aimed at us, that seemed to look right through me. The faint glow in his eyes, the hard lines of his face, his stance––all of it made him look fierce, like some kind of devil.

  Or a god, perhaps.

  The longer I looked, the more I doubted it was actually an image of Black, however.

  It did look like him––sort of––but too many of the details were off.

  It was like a harder, leaner, less handsome version of Black.

  Instead of Black’s sculpted lips, this man’s lips were narrow. They were still well-shaped, a seer’s lips, but they weren’t Black’s. His face was more angular, less harmonious than Black’s. His eyes were the wrong color––a nearly clear, glass-like color with a faint tinge of green light in their center. He had long, shaggy, black hair, longer than I’d ever seen on Black himself.

  The detail was breathtaking.

  Whoever the man was, he looked positively deadly.

  He also looked, unmistakably, like
a seer.

  Light came from his fingertips where he held out his arms, the same green light that emanated from those crystal-colored eyes.

  I wondered if he could be a vampire with those eyes––but that didn’t seem right, either.

  He really did look like Black.

  He looked like Black––but not.

  Behind me, I heard a low whistle.

  I turned, realizing only then that I stood with my gun up, half-crouched in the center of the cave, almost like I expected the mural to attack me.

  Joseph, Easton, Frank and Dog were all gaping at the mosaic, their eyes wide. Then, as if their heads were tied to the same set of puppet strings, they turned, staring at Black.

  “Is that you?” Dog said. “Holy shit, man. That’s you.”

  I shook my head, frowning as I lowered my gun. “That’s not him.”

  “It looks a hell of a lot like him,” Joseph observed from just behind me.

  I scowled at him faintly. When I looked at Manny, then at Angel and Cowboy, I saw them all give me faintly apologetic looks, even as they shrugged.

  “It does,” I admitted, with a frustrated sigh. “But it’s not him, okay?” I gestured at the mosaic, angry for some reason I couldn’t articulate. “The eyes are wrong. The mouth is wrong. The face isn’t quite right––”

  “Could it be a relative?” Angel said, frowning up at the mural. “Like an ancestor or something? Because that’s spooky as fuck, doc.”

  Glancing at her, I continued to scowl.

  I didn’t really have a good answer, though.

  For the first time, I looked at Black.

  He was frowning up at the mural, too.

  Feeling my eyes on him, he turned, quirking an eyebrow.

  “I’m better-looking than him,” he said, giving me a half-smile.

  I snorted a laugh, in spite of myself.

  Only then did I lower my gun all the way to my side. I hadn’t realized I was still half-aiming it forward, if towards the ground, both of my hands wrapped around it and my fingers resting just above the trigger.

  I turned my head then, scanning the rest of the cave.

  “Where are we?” I said, fighting to push the mural out of my head. “Is this a dead end?”