I watched as Porvin opened the car door, his hands still carefully visible apart from when he snapped the latch. I continued to watch him as he stood up, then closed the door behind him. He moved into view of the windshield and watched me, his eyes still wide.
Looking back at my uncle, I saw him sliding closer to me on the seat and shook my head. “Back up. Now. Put your back to the door.” When he did as I asked, I motioned at the door. “Lock it.”
He did that, too. Then he took off the dark sunglasses, revealing his shocking green eyes and clicking at me in irritation.
“Miriam. You are making a mistake.”
“Who has him, Charles? Tell me, and I’ll let you go.”
“Miriam, you need to come with me, not let me go. It’s for your protection.”
“Ten seconds,” I said, aiming the gun at his shoulder. “Don’t think for a goddamned second I won’t shoot you, uncle, because believe me... I will.”
He stared at me, looking between my eyes as if gauging the emotion there.
“Eight seconds,” I told him.
He frowned, but I saw the decision in his eyes even as he held out his hands, not quite in a surrender position but clearly leaving them visible.
“It’s complicated, Miriam.”
“Six seconds,” I told him.
“I intend to tell you everything,” he snapped. “Why the hell do you think I came out here myself? But it’s not safe here! I need to get you somewhere I can protect you!”
“Two seconds,” I said, aiming the gun at his thigh now.
“It’s another race, okay, Miri?” he snapped, glaring at me. “We have an enemy here... a genetic one. Not human... something else. Something native to this world... like we were native to the other version of Earth.”
I stared at him, feeling my mouth harden even as I kept the gun aimed at his leg. “What the fuck are you talking about?” When he didn’t answer immediately, I sharpened my voice, motioning with the gun. “Explain! Now!”
Uncle Charles exhaled in some anger, still holding up his hands.
“I was going to explain everything, all right? It’s why I came. But I’m worried you might be next. You need to put the gun down, Miriam, and let me take you out of here.”
“Next for what?” I barely heard the rest of what he’d said. My heart slammed in my chest. I was terrified he was going to tell me they’d already killed Black. “Who are they, Charles? What do they want with Black?”
He shook his head, clicking again, but not really in a no.
“I suspect they want something from me, to be honest, not your husband. But they aren’t answering my calls, so I don’t know for certain...”
“You know how to contact them?” Disbelief sharpened my voice.
He nodded, still watching the gun warily. “In a manner of speaking. The Konstantin Group is one of their fronts.”
“The Konstantin Group is behind this?”
“It’s not that simple, Miriam,” he said, his voice sharper. “Did you hear what I said? They’re not seer, Miri. They’re also not human. They can’t be reasoned with in the ordinary ways. It’s not a corporation you’re dealing with... it’s a whole other culture. An entirely alien civilization and set of rules. We’ve had a truce for years. After...”
Gritting his teeth, he stared at me with those leaf green eyes.
Then he took a breath.
“...After your parents, Miri. They’re the same beings who killed my brother and his wife. And possibly your sister, Zoe. There was a lot of bloodshed when we first came into contact with them. We made a truce after that... as much of one as I could get out of them, anyway, after we spent a few years hunting one another down like animals...”
I stared at him, fighting to take in everything he’s said. “They killed my parents?”
“Yes. That much I know for sure.” Exhaling, he leaned back against the door. “I’m less sure about your sister, truthfully.”
“That’s why you left?” I said. “To go after them?”
“Yes,” he said coldly. “I did what I could to protect you and your sister, first. I removed any record of either of you being connected to your parents after you went into foster care, and then I hunted them. So you see why I couldn’t contact you all of those years, Miriam? You see why I had to have someone protecting you who couldn’t be traced directly to me?”
I shook my head, fighting to process everything he’d said. “Why now?” I said. “Why would they go after Black now, if you had that truce? And why him?”
Charles clicked his tongue. “I don’t know why... or why him... but it’s possible they targeted him because he married you.” He met my gaze, his voice apologetic. “I’ve tried to keep them away from you, Miri. For years I’ve tried... since you were a child. I did it partly because you’re my niece and I thought they might try to use you to get to me... but also because I didn’t want them to have definitive proof that seers could mate with humans. It’s possible they figured out who you are. I strongly suspect they know you are my niece, at least.”
Pausing on that for a moment, he made a graceful wave with one hand.
“Why do you think I kept every member of your family away from you and your sister after Darius and Janie were murdered? I even got your mother’s family to keep their distance... especially those I feared suspected something about your father. Or about myself, for that matter. Or you and Zoe.”
I stared at him, feeling a hard lump form in my throat in spite of myself. “You kept them away? You did that?”
“I had to, Miriam! Don’t you see that?”
“So you’re the reason no one would take us in? That Zoe and I ended up in foster care?”
“Miriam!” He said my name harshly that time, as a command, even though I still had the gun on him. “This isn’t the time to talk about this! We have to deal with your husband right now... with getting him back. And with keeping you safe and out of their hands. Everything else can be discussed later. Do you understand?”
I fought back and forth with my emotions, which already resembled jagged lines jerking up and down behind my eyes with Black being taken. I knew my uncle was right. After a long-feeling pause, I nodded, my jaw hardening so much it hurt my face.
“All right. Keep talking. You think they took Black because of me?”
He shook his head, his expression pained. “I’m not saying that, Miri. And I don’t know what I think yet... I don’t have enough information. But the coincidence of the Konstantin Group being involved is too much for me to believe they’re not behind this. And the fact that they took him at all makes me think they must know who you are. That, or they think your husband works for me. Either way, if they did this... and I strongly suspect they did... that truce is obviously breaking down.”
“Do I need to know what that truce entailed?”
He shook his head. “The details are unimportant. Suffice it to say, we both had agreed-upon safeguards in place. We didn’t impinge on one another’s territory... or kill members of the opposite tribe. We also vowed to do everything we could to minimize one another’s exposure threat to the humans... even if it meant sacrificing lives.”
“Why would they risk that?” I said. “If you were at war with them before, why would they risk the truce now?”
He shrugged with the same hand. “Like I said Miri... this is not a development I anticipated, certainly not this soon. I know their leadership isn’t happy with the number of seers here now... it’s possibly to do with that. Or perhaps something else occurred to change their minds. They might be under new leadership, or perhaps dissension has broken out internally about how best to deal with ‘the seer threat.’ Something might have happened to threaten their exposure to the humans. They fear that as much as we do... albeit for somewhat different reasons.”
Again, he looked at me. “Or perhaps it is the mixed breeding thing, Miriam. They would definitely see that as a threat. Even their moderates would.”
Slowly, I lo
wered the gun.
“Where is he?” I said. “Where would they have taken Black?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have any way to find out?”
“I’m working on that, Miri. I promise you I am.”
“Do you have a list of sites they operate out of?”
He shook his head. “No. Well... we do have a list, but it’s so long as to be almost completely meaningless, I’m afraid.”
“Did Black know about this? This other race? Your truce?”
Frowning, Lucky shook his head more slowly, his mouth pursed in thought.
“I honestly don’t think so, Miriam. I certainly never told him, and he never once mentioned it to me. Part of the truce was not to share this information with anyone within our own ranks who didn’t already know. If he never spoke with you about this topic, I would assume he didn’t know.”
I frowned. Clearly I was a lot less optimistic about Black’s transparency with me on the subject than my uncle was. But I didn’t voice that aloud.
“What are they likely to do with him?” I said.
He shook his head, clicking in frustration. “I honestly don’t know. Some of their people want to wipe seers out totally, Miri, but they obviously went to a good deal of trouble to get him alive, so I find it highly unlikely they would have killed him, even following an interrogation. The way they took him tells me they intend to hold him for some reason. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have bothered covering their tracks so well.”
Watching my face cautiously, maybe from something he saw in my expression, he went on more carefully.
“Whatever they want, it can’t be good for us, Miri... or for him. Most of them see us as animals. Or at the very least, as alien invaders, a threat to their very existence. Some see us as a natural, biological enemy that should be destroyed. Still others of their kind view us more like...” He frowned, his expression conveying a disgust deep enough that I couldn’t help seeing it as real. He exhaled more of that disgust. “...Food.”
“Food?” I stared at him.
“A delicacy, in fact.”
I felt my jaw harden all over again. “What the fuck are you saying? They eat seers?”
“They’ve been known to, yes.” My uncle held my gaze, his eyes coldly angry, although his voice still wore that revulsion. Studying my eyes, he waved off what must have been a disbelieving look from me. “Thankfully, most of their leadership, at least those with whom I designed the truce, view our being here in more sophisticated terms. Even the most rational among them see us as an added exposure threat, however, and don’t wholly trust us to hold up our end of the bargain we struck.”
Still studying my face, he went on, his voice grim.
“Like us, they fear exposure to the human race above all else. For centuries... if not millennia... they have taken great pains to avoid being identified for what they are. They see this as the primary threat to their civilization and continued existence.”
“And just what the fuck are they, Uncle Charles?” I said. “Are you going to tell me? Or are you going to keep dancing around it. Are they psychic, like us?”
“No.” He shook his head, his mouth pursed as he seemed to think about his own words. “Well... not exactly.”
“Not ‘exactly’? What does that mean?” I said.
Some part of me still couldn’t wrap my head around any of what he was saying.
Another race? Something that evolved alongside human beings? What the hell did that even mean? Did they look like us? And if they weren’t psychic, did they have other supernatural powers? Black said on that other version of Earth there’d been a handful of documented telekinetics, although apparently they were so rare they bordered on a myth.
Whatever these things were, how was it that human beings wouldn’t have discovered them by now, no matter how carefully they hid? Even on Black’s home world, seers got outed at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. How could a whole species have hidden itself in the middle of human society in this day and age?
When he didn’t answer me right away, I aimed the gun back at his face.
“What are they?” I growled, my jaw hard. “Tell me. Now.”
Charles only sighed, wiping his face with a white handkerchief he pulled out of his suit pocket before lowering both of his hands to the leather seat.
“My darling, darling girl,” he said, his voice weary. “I’m afraid you wouldn’t believe me, even if I told you.”
13
THERE’S ALWAYS A REASON
“RISE AND SHINE, asshole.” The unfamiliar voice held a curl of derision even as blinding light erupted over the bed. “You got a visitor. A non-negotiable one.”
Black barely had his eyes open when rough hands yanked him off the bunk, two sets of them.
He wasn’t in the cell he’d woken up in the other day. This one was stripped bare, with only one thick door at the other end. The door had no windows, only a “bean slot”––meaning the slot in the door where guards handed through food and where prisoners handed through their wrists to be handcuffed and un-handcuffed by those same guards.
They hadn’t done that with him, though.
They’d come in after him.
Black was in De-Seg, solitary confinement.
He had no memory of how he got there.
They’d barely dragged him to his feet when they forced him back to his knees on the cold floor. His mind fought back to straight lines as they forced his hands over his head while they patted him down, then behind his back, handcuffing his wrists while he panted, fighting to remain silent from the pain.
Physical pain ripped through his body the second he was awake enough to feel it.
Every time they moved him, or jerked at his body, it only got worse.
“Fuck,” he groaned, unable to help it when they wrenched his arms to lift him.
The guard on his right smiled as he yanked him back to his feet. “Looks like the boys worked you over pretty good, fish.” Black stumbled, nearly falling into him, but the guard on the other side gripped his other arm, steadying him. “Guess we all have to learn sometime. You really pissed in the wrong fucker’s corn flakes... didn’t you?”
Black fought to clear his vision, to remember. His right eye remained dark and blurry no matter how often he blinked it, and he realized after a few seconds it was swollen most of the way shut. He didn’t remember anything that happened in the yard after the collar turned into a live wire around his neck.
The fire alarm. The chiefs running towards him, only to be stopped by guards with riot shields. Roscoe... that other guy, the skinhead with the eagle tattoo. Inmates running towards the prison complex, trying to see which part of it burned.
Black knew he got a few of them down. Then the collar ignited...
Then nothing. His memories just stopped.
Of course, he could deduce a few things.
The state of his body told him more than he really wanted to know.
They shoved him towards the cell door and he groaned again, unable to stop himself when they forced him up against it. He was barefoot, wearing nothing but boxers and a tank top. The guards didn’t seem to care. They frisked him again once he was pressed up against the door, and Black groaned a few times at their rough hands on him.
“Yeah, those boys got you good,” the first guard said, that faint glee still audible in his voice. “I’m guessing you won’t walk right for a week, what you say, Sonny?”
“Least a week,” the other guard affirmed.
“But maybe he’s okay with that... what do you think?”
“There are those who like it,” Sonny allowed. “Don’t understand it myself.”
“Yeah,” the first guard said, grinning as he turned Black around, so that his cuffed wrists knocked into the door, making him wince again at a shoulder that felt dislocated now. “A few of them swear this here fish liked it. That he was begging for more at the end. They only stopped ‘cause they got tired, I guess.”
<
br /> The one called Sonny chuckled, shaking his head on a thick neck.
They pulled Black off the wall and for the first time he looked down. The shirt he wore was splattered with blood. He didn’t let his eyes roam down much further than that. Grimacing, he looked away. “Can I put on some fucking pants at least?” he growled.
“Oh, now he wants pants,” the first guard said.
Sonny shook his head, chuckling again.
They helped him put on the baggy prison pants though, which was its own kind of torture. They got them on him and hitched them up, and Black just stood there while they tied them in front, clenching his jaw against the pain.
“Come on now,” Sonny said, yanking open the door. “I think you’re as pretty as you’re going to get.”
Black didn’t speak, he just followed them out into the hall.
The other prisoners in solitary catcalled him as he passed the cells.
Roscoe was in one of those, sharing it with the guy with the eagle tattoo on his neck. Both of them made kissing faces at him as he passed, laughing when Black looked away. He didn’t see any of the chiefs in there, but he saw a few others he recognized from the yard, not all of them Aryan Brotherhood types. All of them grinned at him as he passed, and a few others blew him kisses, too.
Black fought with the rage that started to build in his chest.
A harder, more animal feeling rose inside that rage.
Memories he hadn’t let near his mind in longer than he cared to think about. Not just memories––ways of thinking, ways of strategizing about his own survival. It crossed his mind to ponder the strangeness of how memory could work... how blurry some things could be one day, only to come rushing back, crystal fucking clear and three-dimensional.
Then something a lot more immediate struck him.
A visitor.
These assholes just said he had a visitor.
Hope bloomed in his chest at the thought. He knew it was irrational. He knew the likelihood that it was Miri was next to none, given what they’d said to him in his cell. He knew they likely wouldn’t let him have real visitors at all, given how he’d gotten here, since clearly no one was supposed to know where he was.
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