She meant Brick.
He knew she meant Brick.
“We’re different,” he said. “Clearly.”
Still looking up at him, she squeezed his arm, but continued frowning at him openly.
“But why?” she said gently. “You still haven’t answered me. Why do you want to go back there? It is painful to go back. For all of us. Nothing good can be found in looking back. Leave the past where it is… where it belongs.”
He didn’t answer her.
She shook his arm.
“Why, Naoko? What is there for you, in San Francisco?”
He flinched, just in hearing the name of his city of birth.
Hearing that bothered him far more than hearing his birth name, Naoko. He already felt the longer, Japanese version of his name suited him better than the shorter, Anglicized nickname his human friends had called him before.
His brethren seemed to agree.
None of them called him Nick.
No one had, not since the transition.
He still didn’t have a vampire name, though––not a real one. Brick told him he’d be given one when he “came of age,” whatever the hell that meant. Traditionally, the sire gave that name. Typically, it had some historical relevance to the community.
Brick told him he already had one picked out.
“You know what is there for me,” he said, answering her question belatedly. His eyes flickered down the alley. “And you know why I want to go there, Lucia.”
Without another word, he resumed walking towards the rain-slicked road.
Gripping his arm, she strolled with him, silent.
He felt her eyes on him, studying his face, his eyes, his body.
He didn’t return her stare.
Holding her arm in his, he watched the colors morph subtly over the road. He watched artificial light play over glass, plastic, metal, asphalt, wood––like they were all part of the same, complicated musical instrument playing color instead of sound. He shifted his eyes from object to light particle to object, tracking how differently it all looked to him still, how much he could see, how much he remained aware of in his periphery, despite his laser-like focus.
He knew, without looking at her, she didn’t like his answer.
She didn’t like it at all.
“What exactly do you plan to do?” she said finally.
When he didn’t answer right away, she prodded him, shaking his arm lightly with strong fingers.
“When you see her? What will you do, Naoko?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you want to see her anyway?”
He looked at her, his mouth and lips curving into a frown. “What the fuck is this?” he said. “Jealousy?”
She blinked, once.
Then shrugged.
“Maybe. Would it bother you, if it was?”
He let out a grunt, not bothering to hide his thoughts on that.
She squeezed his arm tighter, pulling herself closer to his body.
“Just tell me,” she coaxed. “What will you do? Kill her? Feed on her? Put her head through a window? Because you know Brick likely won’t approve any of that.”
“I’ll know when I see her.” He gazed down the last stretch of alley, his jaw clenching slowly as he thought. “I’ll know what I want to do then. For now, I just want her to see me.”
Thinking about that, he felt his fangs extend inside his mouth, sharp against his lips and tongue. Rather than calming him down, it brought that heat up all over again––the rage, the tension in his body and limbs, that intensity of energy.
If the female vampire noticed, she didn’t react.
She didn’t answer him at all at first.
He could practically feel her thinking, turning over his words.
Then, after he assumed she’d decided to drop it, when they were on the verge of reaching the mouth of the alley, she let out a half-amused grunt of her own.
“I see,” she said, her voice musing. She added in a dry voice, “How you like me now? Is that the idea?”
He turned, looking at her.
Seeing the glint in her crystal and scarlet eyes, the faint quirk in her lips, the arched eyebrow, he let out a short laugh, unable to help it.
“Something like that,” he said.
Looking at her, at her long, black, half-curled hair, her red lips, her crystal and scarlet eyes, her lusciously curvy body in the clingy, wine-colored dress with the low-cut neckline exposing her olive but deathly pale skin––he felt another body part of his start to stir.
“Let’s go to the church,” he said, squeezing her arm against his side. “I’ll pick where after that.”
Quirking an eyebrow, she shook her head in amusement. She gave him a knowing, half-bemused smile as they entered the main street.
“Aren’t you picking where now, my beautiful, handsome, sexy Naoko?”
“It was your suggestion first,” he reminded her. “I’m being accommodating.”
She laughed again, a real laugh that time.
Even so, she followed after him willingly enough.
By the time he got her inside her favorite church, it was dark enough that he dragged her past the pews after breaking the doors’ locks.
Ignoring the wooden benches altogether, along with the velvet ropes separating them from the altar, he brought her up the stairs until they stood directly under the famous painting of the gold Jesus on the domed ceiling over the altar.
Shoving her down on the white tablecloth of the altar, face first, he yanked up her dress, pleased when he saw she hadn’t bothered to wear undergarments, apart from the garter that held up her stockings. Without waiting, he angled his cock into her from behind right as he sank his teeth into her neck.
She moaned…
…and sensation washed over him.
The feeling was so intense, so incredibly intense and intimate and subtle and just so damned mindblowingly fucking good, it managed to distract him for real that time.
Even more than feeding, this calmed that raging heat in him.
It calmed him––at least in the moments it was happening.
Every part of him focused.
Every sense rang and vibrated with stimuli.
The blood, the feeling on his cock, the feelings on his mouth and throat and tongue, the aggression, the flood of memories, thoughts, and feelings as he drank from her, the intensely pleasurable sensations flooding every particle of his skin––
It was enough. It was finally fucking enough.
That hole inside him briefly filled.
Only one thing calmed it in him more.
The hunt created a peace in him unmatched by anything else he’d found. When he was hunting, his mind and heart went utterly still. The minutes and seconds, even hours where he stalked them, before they’d succumbed, before he’d taken that first, heart-stopping bite––that worked even better than sex.
When they stumbled out the doors of the Sacré-Coeur a little more than an hour later, their clothes looking significantly more rumpled, both of them with fully scarlet eyes, their extended fangs changing the shapes of their mouths, he dragged her down the hill with him by the hand.
The rain had finally stopped.
The cobblestone streets were slick, puddled here and there, but the air was drier, and the light changed because of it.
Lucia laughed when he leapt over puddles, balancing on a low wall before taking a longer leap down a stone staircase, then off a higher wall to the street below. She scolded him, telling him he was showing too much, that he had to moderate his movements in public, especially when there was no reason not to.
She mostly laughed, though.
She also followed him easily enough, at least until he stopped in front of a black-painted door a few dozen blocks from the church. Seeing the bouncer seated on the leather stool out front, his massive arms folded over a thick chest, she let out a humorless laugh.
“Dancing?” she said, her voice mocking.
“Why don’t you call this what it is, Naoko?”
“Which is what?” he said, lifting an eyebrow innocently.
“Hunting,” she said promptly. “This is hunting, Naoko. And you bribed me with sex. You are a naughty, naughty boy.”
“I thought I was a good boy,” he said, that eyebrow still quirked.
“You are far more naughty than good, even on your best days,” she retorted, snorting. She tugged on his hand, her voice coaxing. “Come on, Naoko. Let’s go buy some wine before the shops close. Bring it back for Brick and the others. You know you shouldn’t be doing this. You know you shouldn’t––”
“Just for a few hours. I can’t go back there yet.” Yanking her closer, he nipped her neck with his fangs, feeling another stirring in his cock as he pressed into her. “We’ll find one we both want to fuck this time.”
Looking up at him with those giant eyes, she shook her head, her eyes turning serious as she leaned into him.
“We’ve been out too long already.” At his annoyed frown, she added, sharper, “You can’t be seen, Naoko. You can’t be. You know he’s in Europe, looking for you. I was there when Brick told you he and his people were in Paris not too long ago. If we happened to run into them, if they happened to see you––”
“They’re not looking for me like this.”
She let out a disbelieving laugh. “That’s the exact point, Naoko. Don’t you see? They cannot see you like this. Not until our king is ready for them.”
When he scowled, she added, sharper,
“Are you trying to run into him, Naoko? Black? Because of what you said before?”
“No.” His voice grew more subdued, but colder. “No. I can wait for him.”
Still gripping her against his side, he frowned.
“He probably wouldn’t even recognize me,” he said after a pause. “Anyway, I told you… I saw all the studies Charles did on our kind. I saw the government reports. They believe the venom only adheres to certain genetic types. A group of us had to be tested at Black’s company lab after they’d analyzed the findings of that lab. I tested negative. They don’t know about any other ways to make vampires. They won’t be looking for me like this. They’d look for me in graveyards first.”
Lucia stared at him. “If they saw proof with their own eyes––”
“I’m telling you, they’re not looking for me like this. They either think I’m kidnapped and being tortured somewhere… or they think I’m dead. Brick said as much last night, and he’s got people watching them still.”
Leaning closer, he nipped her throat, drawing a few drops of blood.
He licked them off his lips, groaning softly in her ear.
“What happened to me is a ghost story to them, Lucia my love,” he murmured, pressing his cock against her hip. “A human myth. Like garlic and silver bullets.”
“All of which being the exact things Brick would like to keep them from knowing, brother Naoko… for a long as possible. As long as necessary, anyway.” She frowned, pushing at his chest. “You know this isn’t only about you. There’s a lot at stake… for all of us. He needs you, Naoko. He needs your help with this.”
Naoko shook his head. “He doesn’t need me. He’s got her.”
Lucia frowned. “He can’t use her yet. You know that, too.”
He pulled on her hand, tugging on her to enter the club.
“They wouldn’t come here,” he said, coaxing.
“You don’t know that!”
“Yes, I do. Black would never look for me in a place like this.”
“He’s not looking for you,” Lucia said, exasperated. “You just said this yourself. He’s looking for Brick.”
“Brick would never come to a place like this, either.”
Staring at him, she burst out in an involuntary laugh.
“You are impossible!”
“Come on,” he coaxed. “Just another hour. Two at most. Maybe three.”
“Brick is going to cut off one of my fingers for this––”
“We’ll bring one back for Brick. One he’ll like. I’ll give him head while he drinks from it. He’ll calm down.”
Lucia threw back her head for real, belting out a full-throated laugh.
Still hanging from his arm, which he held tensed at his side, fingers clenched in a fist, she grinned up at him.
“Oh, my darling boy,” she said, relenting as she stroked his fingers. “You learn far, far too quickly. No wonder he’s so fond of you already…”
1
You Can’t Go Home Again
I REACHED FOR my bags when the trunk opened, only to be waved off by a man in uniform, a man beaming at me, who clearly recognized me, but one I hadn’t seen in so long, I could only blink back at him in confusion.
Miguel. His name was Miguel.
He was one of the security guys at Black’s main building.
He took the bag I’d grabbed out of the trunk right out of my hand, still smiling at me as he inserted himself between me and the rest of our luggage.
I wasn’t expected to carry my own luggage here.
I’d forgotten.
We were back in Black’s other world, the one that always somehow struck me as more surreal than the one filled with guns and military equipment, or even, increasingly, the one filled with psychics and vampires. In this version of Black’s life, we didn’t do things like carry luggage, or unpack, or do laundry, or even drive.
In this world, Black was a celebrity.
Even as I thought it, I grew aware of eyes on us.
Black’s arm coiled around my waist, pulling me gently to him, but most of my attention remained on the growing crowd between us and the glass doors of his building on California Street in downtown San Francisco.
Somehow they’d gotten wind of us being back in town.
I had no idea how. We’d taken Black’s private plane the whole way, and there’d been no media when we left Rome, none whatsoever.
Someone tipped them off, Black murmured in my mind, his arm wrapping further around me. Someone who was watching.
Charles. Charles was waiting for us.
He was probably the reason for these reporters.
Black squeezed me tighter into his side.
Possibly, he sent cryptically.
I knew of only one other possibility.
Before my mind could go there, Black blew warmth over me from his seer’s living light, wrapping more of himself around me, snuggling me against him.
Miri, don’t worry honey. My people got this. He kissed my temple. Let’s just inside. They’re waiting for us upstairs.
I nodded, but my eyes never left the crowd.
Reporters clustered on either side of two rows of Black Securities and Investigations security staff, who’d already carved a narrow corridor between the limousine doors and the glass doors of Black’s building. I watched muscular men and a handful of women use their bodies and hands expertly to push the two halves of crowd apart further, widening that passage.
I recognized a few of those on the security team, including at least two I knew to be seers. Both had to be wearing contact lenses, since I happened to know their real eye colors, which were neither the dull brown nor the muted hazel I saw on them now.
Every member of the team wore a black T-shirt and black pants, with Black’s company insignia on their backs in white lettering.
Shifting my eyes to the crowd itself, I scanned the reporters on both sides of that cleared aisle, noting the high-def video cameras, microphones, digital recorders, and smartphones they held up as they stared at me and Black.
Sprinkled in with the reporters were excited-looking faces that had to be some combination of tourists who happened to be in this part of downtown, business people who worked in the area, and a smattering of Black’s groupies and fans, which likely had overlap with the other two groups. At least some of them must have realized what the crowd of reporters meant once they put it together with the building address.
&nbs
p; As usual, probably eighty percent of the groupies were young women.
Black’s building was relatively famous now, ever since he’d hit the celebrity circuit for real, which more or less started when we went to New York and he was on talk shows and magazine covers for over a year. Black being a fugitive from the law the year before, and chased by the Pentagon, only made him more notorious––and for a lot of women, more hot.
Black told me with a snort that the California Street building even showed up on some tour bus routes through San Francisco now.
In contrast to the groupie-types, female reporters stood to the front of the security lines with coiffed hair and wearing business suits, along with more makeup than most people wore on the street in San Francisco regardless of where they worked. Most of those same women carried microphones that looked overly large and weirdly dated.
Black was already steering me down the aisle bisecting the throng.
I couldn’t help watching the eyes following us, especially him.
People always stared at Black.
Women stared at him, but men did too.
It wasn’t only because he was disconcertingly handsome.
Black flat-out didn’t blend. Something about him just didn’t mesh with the regular crush of humanity.
By then I’d met too many seers to believe it was all about his race.
They didn’t fall silent as they watched him approach, but something about them seemed to grow more attentive, less distracted by the rest of the crowd. Black’s presence both drew them closer to us, and conversely nudged them to keep their distance.
As soon as we moved away from the car, however, the reporters at least, seemed to snap out of that more animal-like reaction to Black’s light. Once they did, they immediately pushed forward on the security guys, and started shouting questions at both of us. I stared around at them with a small frown, watching them jump, raise their hands, and lean around the muscular shoulders and arms of Black’s employees wherever they could.
TO BLACK WITH LOVE: Quentin Black Mystery #10 Page 2