“Sure thing, Dr. Nguyen.”
A few seconds later, the doors closed, and the room suddenly got a lot quieter. Black could still feel at least one other person in the room besides Dr. Nguyen. He found himself breathing harder, fighting to remain silent. They still had the hood over his head.
Even as he thought it, Dr. Nguyen sighed, speaking to someone else.
“Okay, let’s have a look at him.”
Someone walked over to him, wearing rubber-soled shoes that squeaked, versus the high heels he’d heard on Dr. Nguyen. As soon as they reached his side, the hood was yanked off his head. The sudden brightness of the room made him wince and blink.
He heard twin gasps and found the faces of a woman and a man over him.
“What?” The woman attached to the voice he’d heard of Dr. Nguyen walked over to the other two, so then he had three faces over him.
Dr. Nguyen paused, staring down at his eyes.
She was prettier than he’d imagined her in his mind, a petite Vietnamese woman with long black hair, maybe in her mid-forties. The two others in the room included a slim man with thinning brown hair and hazel eyes behind designer-framed glasses who looked to be in his late thirties, and a blond woman with a pug nose who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.
“Is he one of them?” the man asked. He continued to stare at Black’s eyes, his own holding a kind of wonder. “I’ve never seen eyes like that before.”
Dr. Nguyen frowned down at Black too, but shook her head. “No. The eye pigmentation for those carrying the V-gene is always the same. They gave him blood tests at the prison. He’s definitely human.”
The blond woman giggled, staring down at him. “He’s really cute,” she said. “Did they say what he was in for?”
“Murder,” Dr. Nguyen said, her voice cold. “Multiple homicides, at least two of them with special circumstances. Like all of them, his crimes were bad enough that he’s not eligible for parole, Gina, so pull yourself together. I don’t care what he looks like, he’s a monster.”
Black was looking around the room, fighting to clear his eyes.
It was surprisingly bare, but definitely had the stamp of science and medicine. Glass walls enclosed the relatively small space on one side, and he could see people walking by in the corridor outside the room, a few looking through the thick glass at him curiously. An EKG machine and a ventilator stood near the wall, along with defibrillator and paddles. He saw a cloth-covered tray with various instruments lying on the counter attached to a wall-length storage cabinet. By the bed or table itself, he didn’t see anything apart from a stool, though.
That, and an I.V. stand.
He found himself watching warily as Dr. Nguyen began attaching a bag to that stand, checking the writing on the front before she attached the tubing.
“You’re going to start him already?”
“It’s better to give them the first dose while they’re still drugged from transport,” Dr. Nguyen answered coolly. “And I want to be here in case he flatlines.”
Black felt his stomach drop.
“What’s in it?” he said, his voice short. “What’s in the bag?”
Dr. Nguyen frowned down at him, then looked at the blond girl with that strangely pig-like nose. “Prep an additional 0.05 milligram dose of lorazepam, in case he goes into convulsions.” She glanced at him. “Check his vitals first. He could be an addict, with tolerance like that... assuming the Crenshaw people knew what they were doing in dosing him.” She leaned over him, checking his pupils with a small flashlight. After checking his pupils twice, she frowned again. “He shouldn’t even be conscious right now.”
She met his gaze, her mouth firm. “Are you a drug addict?”
He shook his head.
She continued to look at him, her mouth pursed, then glanced at the man with the designer glasses. “He’s probably lying. I’m going to go ahead and start the first dose.”
“What’s in it?” Black said again.
She gave him another hard look, but ignored the question.
When Black tensed his arm up as the blond held the needle over him, she frowned at him, wagging a finger like he was a dog.
“Now just relax here, okay? We’re not going to hurt you.”
“Bullshit,” Black snapped, glaring up at her. “You just said I might fucking die from this. Do you think I’m deaf?”
But Dr. Nguyen apparently had heard enough. She looked at glasses guy.
“Hit him with the lorazepam. Just have the paddles ready.”
Black struggled for real that time. Even remembering why he was there, what Brick wanted from him, what he’d threatened Miri with, threatened him with, it wasn’t enough for him to lie there and let them try to kill him. The three of them ended up holding him down while they slid the needle into the arm on the opposite side of the IV. He gasped when it went in, and within seconds it seemed, his mind tilted, nearly making him sick.
“Fuck,” he said, staring up at the ceiling. He blinked, fighting to focus his eyes.
“What’s with the collar?” the man said from over him. He fingered it, like it was an expensive piece of jewelry. “Did they tell you, Dr. Nguyen?”
Dr. Nguyen only shrugged. “They just said he’s dangerous. I guess they’ve used it to control him when he gets too violent.”
“Don’t they have solitary for that?” the man asked.
She gave him a level stare. “He was in solitary, Chris.”
The man nodded, pushing his glasses up his nose.
Black was having trouble focusing on them now though. He could only watch, his neck feeling like it was made of cement, as she inserted a second needle in his other arm, this one connected to the IV. He watched her tape it there, then check the tube up to the IV bag. Turning on the tap, she squeezed it between her hands to get it going.
“I hope this one survives,” Gina breathed, watching his face as his eyes struggled to stay open. She smiled at him shyly. “He’s way too pretty to die.”
Dr. Nguyen didn’t answer. She only stared down at him with that faint frown on her lips, and checked her watch.
It was the last thing Black remembered.
HE WOKE UP screaming.
Pain ripped him out of unconsciousness, but the pain alone couldn’t force his eyes to work, or his mind to function, much less to move in straight lines. He couldn’t control his thoughts. He couldn’t control his body, or the sounds he made. Sounds echoed around him, distorted as if coming from under water, but he couldn’t make sense of any of it.
People were there, but he didn’t want them.
He screamed for her...
He screamed... his whole mind reaching for her, his light...
He barely felt it when the collar ignited.
That pain that ripped through him––the other pain, that liquid heat setting his blood on fire, trying to eat its way through his skin and bones and flesh, a pain even the drugs couldn’t force him to sleep through––wiped out every other sensation. It felt like dissolving in a vat of acid. It felt like watching himself burn alive. Like being hacked to bits with a dull machete.
Eventually, however, the collar did what the drugs could not.
Black’s mind cut out... and he slumped back to the bed.
I JERKED AWAKE, panting, drenched in sweat. Sitting up so fast I got a head rush, I knocked the lamp off the night table in my panic to find my phone.
Once I had it in my hand, though, I only could sit there, gripping it to my chest in one hand, gasping out words I didn’t track. The fingers of my other hand fisted in the T-shirt I wore, one of Black’s which I’d pulled out of his suitcase earlier that night. I couldn’t remember what color it was, but it was soaked through with sweat now and looked black.
I didn’t move for a long moment.
I sat there, panting in the dark, whimpering like a hurt animal.
I didn’t know where I was for those first few minutes. Even after I knew, the information was meaningless
... worthless. I was alone. I was alone, and I still didn’t know where he was, but for a bare instant I’d felt him there. I’d felt him inside of me.
I’d felt him, and someone was fucking killing him.
My hand shook as I hit one of the speed dial digits on my phone.
I didn’t bother with a greeting when he picked up, although I could tell I’d woken him.
“Miri? Miri, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Call them,” I said. “You need to call them. Now.”
“What happened?” Charles cleared his throat. I could feel him waking up, even as his light snaked around me, trying to understand what had happened, if I was in danger. For once, I barely noticed. “Miriam. What is wrong? What happened?”
“It’s Black...” I started to go on, then couldn’t, choking on the words. “We can’t wait any longer,” I said finally. “We can’t, Uncle Charles. They’re killing him.”
“Gaos. Miriam. My love... I’m so very very sorry.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear that, not now.
“Call them. Right now.” I closed my eyes, gritting my teeth as my mind fought to circle this, to make sense of it. “Tell Brick I want to talk to him. Only him.”
“But why, Miri?” My uncle’s voice grew wary, even through his sympathy. “He killed his own kind in this, Miriam... he’s the worst kind of snake, even for one of them. You can’t trust him. You can’t trust anything he says. No matter what he says.”
“I don’t have to trust him.” I gritted my teeth, fighting the pain in my chest, fighting to think past it. I shook my head, at no one. “No promises. Not this time. We’re going to start taking down their holdings,” I said, my voice cold. “All of them. Starting with the building at the Port. They want a fucking war, they’re going to get one.”
I felt alarm snake through my uncle’s light.
I didn’t wait for him to catch up.
“They’re killing him, Uncle Charles. I know you don’t give a damn about him, but hear me on this. If they kill him, I will do whatever it takes to burn every fucking one of them to the ground. Whatever it takes, Uncle Charles. Both races be damned... exposure be damned. I will do whatever I have to do. Do you understand?”
There was a silence on the other end.
Then I felt a pulse of anger on my uncle, too.
“All right, Miri,” he said, his voice grim. “I’ll call them.” His voice grew harder still. “If you can’t negotiate a return of Black, alive and unharmed, then I’ll do whatever you want. I am with you, Miriam. Do you understand? I am with you on this. All the way. You don’t have to worry about me, as well... you are my blood, and I am with you.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
So I just hung up the phone.
I sat there on the bed once I had, staring into the dark. I stared in the direction of the ocean through the gauzy drapes on either side of the open windows, but I couldn’t see it.
It took me another few moments to realize the reason I couldn’t breathe was that I was crying. The tears locked in my chest, coming out in thick heaves that felt like they would rip me open with each breath.
I wanted to smash something.
I wanted to kill someone in a way I never had in my life.
Brick. Konstantin. My uncle. Mozar.
More than anything, I wanted to wipe away the memory of what I’d felt on Black in those seconds after I’d woken up. The terror in his light. Him begging me to save him. The pain he was in, which was more than any torture I could imagine, even from the war.
I think I would have done anything to smash that memory out of my mind... to erase it, make it disappear... to make it different in some way.
At the same time, if I could have changed places with him––right now––if I could have put myself where he was and put him in this bed, I would have done it in a heartbeat.
The fact that I couldn’t, that I couldn’t do anything for him, brought up so much rage in me I could only sit there, choking out those heat-filled tears.
I don’t know how much time passed in that lost place.
All I know is, I was still sitting there when my phone began to ring, vibrating and buzzing where I still held it against my chest.
20
PUZZLE
WHEN BLACK OPENED his eyes next, he still felt drugged.
He lay there, staring up at a different ceiling, in a dimmer, warmer-feeling room. His mind spun in slow circles, making it hard to focus his eyes, to think. The pain was less, though. It was a lot less. He felt weak. He felt like he floated, like his mind hovered up above his body somehow, attached by the slimmest of strings.
He wondered for a few moments if he was dead.
He didn’t think he was dead.
He heard a strange noise.
Not the monitor beeping nearby. Not the hum of the air conditioning, or the slow tick of what was probably the battery-powered white and black clock that hung above the door.
No, this noise was closer. More intimate, somehow.
More... liquid.
He turned his head, surprised only after he’d done so that he could. When he did, his vision tilted again... then righted all at once. As soon as it had, he blinked, unable to really flinch in surprise, but feeling surprised nonetheless.
He blinked again, unsure if he was seeing clearly.
But the person he’d seen was still there.
Black watched him raise his head, licking a shiny, dark red fluid off his lips. Scarlet-tinted eyes narrowed at him, like a cat’s smile of pleasure. Then, when he saw Black looking at him, his lips tilted in an off-kilter grin.
“Hey,” he said softly, his voice a soothing purr. “You’re awake. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t wake...” His soft smile slid wider. “It’s good you did. I might have forgotten myself, and drank too much.”
Black blinked at him, fighting to think, to make sense of this.
The man looked back at him, his expression indulgent almost, patient, as if he was waiting for Black to understand him. He was young. His shirtless upper body was hairless and thin, and long hair hung down around his face in artful strands. He looked like a heroin-chic rock star, or maybe a kid who turned tricks on the streets of New York. Black had seen the type before. He knew there were those who would have paid a lot for this one.
He smiled at Black again, his eyes still friendly.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” he said. “They have a few here, and I’ve drunk too much to be sleepy. I’d rather if you stayed up with me, kept me company. I have so many things I want to ask you... especially about Miriam.”
“Miriam...?” Black felt his mind slant out, then right itself. Pain slid through him, badly enough that he writhed on the table. His arms were still handcuffed though, as was his chest, even though they’d left his neck free. “Miriam?” he repeated. “Where is she?”
The boy blinked at him in surprise.
As Black looked at him, he wondered if the kid was on drugs, or maybe touched in the head somehow. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen, maybe a really young-looking twenty, but he looked closer to sixteen or seventeen.
“Miriam,” Black repeated. He cleared his throat, still fighting to clear his head. “You just said my wife’s name. Why?”
“Why?” The kid looked at him, his lips puckered in a faint confusion.
Then, as if shaking it off, he unfurled himself from the chair where he’d been sitting beside Black’s bed. He walked over to a television mounted on the wall, and touched a button on the side of what Black realized was a DVD player.
“Are you okay with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?” he said, glancing back at Black with that off-kilter smile. “I’ve seen it a million times, but it really is my favorite. I know all the songs. The best is the one where they go in the Chocolate Room... the one that Willy Wonka sings about ‘imagination.’ Do you like that song?”
Black stared up at him.
He had no idea how
to respond to that.
“How do you know my wife?” he growled.
The other’s mouth opened in a dull surprise. Then he smiled.
“From you, of course.” He shook his head, still smiling, as if Black had said something funny. “I feel everything about you when I drink from you. And God, you miss her so much. I wanted to fuck you really badly when I felt that. I didn’t want to do it while you were asleep though...” He frowned then, as if just putting together things Black had said. “She’s really your wife?” He sounded disappointed that time.
Black stared at him. “Yes. I thought you knew about her.”
“I saw how pretty she was,” he said, smiling again, but more shyly that time. “I felt how much you missed her... that part, wow. I’ve never felt anything like that before. I had to jerk off a few times... it was making me absolutely crazy. I didn’t know she was your wife, though.” He sighed, that disappointment again prominent in his voice. “Oh, well. I guess it’s good I didn’t do anything to you. I don’t want to mess with a married guy.”
Black stared at him again.
His mind was starting to move again, slowly, but he still felt out of it, and so exhausted he was having trouble stringing more than one thought together at a time. He just lay there, silent, while the young man opened the carriage inside the DVD player and popped a disk inside. He hit the button to close it again and grabbed the remote off a round table as he passed.
He came back to the chair and sat, smiling at Black.
For the first time, something clicked in Black’s mind.
The boy’s eyes were those same, strangely transparent, red-tinted eyes he remembered on Brick and on the “doctors” in the prison infirmary. The same ones he remembered from the hit team at the Port of Los Angeles.
This kid was one of them. Whatever they were.
Then he remembered the rest of what the kid had said.
He looked down at his arm, and saw a crescent-shaped mark there. A bite mark.
Black And Blue (Quentin Black Mystery #5) Page 25