TO BLACK WITH LOVE: Quentin Black Mystery #10

by Andrijeski, JC

  She didn’t pick up.

  I hit the contact for Dex next.

  He didn’t pick up, either.

  Adrenaline shot down my spine, making my muscles tense.

  That wasn’t just unusual. It was unheard of.

  Clenching my jaw, I hit the contact number for Javier.

  He picked up on the first ring.

  “Javier,” I said, before he could speak. “Get back here. Now. Something’s happening in the penthouse. We might have an intruder.” I paused a half-breath, biting the inside of my cheek. “Dex and Kiko aren’t picking up.”

  Javier didn’t need to hear any more.

  “On my way.” His voice turned military blunt. “Did Black go in?”

  “Yes. He’s in the penthouse now. He just went in. Alone. With a gun. I’m out in the hall.”

  “All right. We’re on our way. Stay put, Mrs. Black. I’ll go through the list and see if I can get you and Black support from someone closer.”

  I hung up the line, staring at the door.

  Black had left it open a crack. The music filled the hall, but even closing it that much muffled the sound significantly. I stared at the door handle for what must have been a good half-minute before my jaw hardened.

  Gripping it in one hand, I yanked the door the rest of the way open.

  I winced at the volume of the stereo once I stepped inside, but it didn’t slow me down. I made my way into the foyer in a half-crouch, keeping to the wall so I wouldn’t be immediately visible in the sunken living area.

  I didn’t see Black.

  I didn’t see or hear anything out of place––just that lilting Halloween song coupled with the view out the huge bay windows overlooking downtown and the Bay Bridge. Still keeping low and to the wall, I made my way in further.

  I wondered why Black hadn’t turned off the music.

  Whoever put it on, they’d set the song to repeat.

  The campy, Frankenstein-like voice rose and fell, tilting my mind like a carnival ride. The background chorus chanted in the background, so loud they sounded like screams. It made me feel disoriented, even slightly drunk, maybe because I usually only heard that song at Halloween parties in the first place, where everyone mostly got hammered by the end of the night, or maybe just because it had that kind of melody.

  Either way, it was like walking inside a mirrored funhouse––in the bad way.

  “Black!” I yelled out his name, blurting it on impulse.

  No one answered.

  Truthfully, I doubted he could hear me.

  He might not have heard me even if he was standing right next to me, although he would have felt me shouting through his light if he stood anywhere close by. Venturing in deeper, I stopped at the closet, dumping my purse on the table and easing out of the long coat I wore, which I let drop the floor.

  Once my arms were free, I eased open a drawer on the same table.

  Glancing inside, I didn’t see the gun Black usually kept in there. Frowning, I pushed through the contents of the drawer until I found a letter opener. I snatched it up, figuring it was better than nothing, even as I gritted my teeth.

  Gripping the silver opener at my side, I walked past the end of the hall.

  Once I had, I came to a dead stop.

  The walls on either side of the sunken living room had come into view. To my right, towards the kitchen, everything looked the same as I remembered.

  The view to my left is was what brought me to a halt.

  I stared up at the smashed, wall-mounted television screen, and the streaks of… fuck… I raised a hand to my mouth and nose, the same one that gripped the silver letter opener. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before.

  Blood. It smelled like blood.

  A lot of fucking blood.

  It filled my nose and mouth, a nauseating, cloying, coppery scent.

  My stomach lurched, hard enough that I had to fight not to throw up.

  Still struggling with my bile and gut, I walked in further, breathing harder now as I gripped the letter opener, still covering my nose and mouth with my other hand.

  I got past the hall leading into the back bedroom when I saw him.

  Black knelt by one of the couches in the sunken living room.

  I froze, staring down at him, and at what he hovered over.

  A body sprawled there.

  A body sprawled, naked, on Black’s white leather couch.

  It was a woman.

  Stepping closer, half in panic, I stumbled, then caught my balance, aiming my feet for the stairs to the lower level. Black didn’t look up from the woman on the couch as I descended down to where he was. He knelt there on the bloody carpet, his gun still in his hand, his face drawn and pale. He looked like he was in shock.

  I winced at the marks covering the parts of the woman’s body I could see. Bite marks, bruises and scratches marred seemingly every inch of her pale skin.

  I watched Black check her pulse, his fingers careful, tentative.

  By then, I’d stepped close enough to both of them to see her face.

  It was Kiko.

  Holy christ… it was Kiko.

  From the blood covering her neck and chest, it looked like her throat had been torn out.

  “Jesus fucking christ…” I breathed in a rush.

  I lowered the letter opener, then stood there, frozen in shock.

  Black couldn’t have heard me, but he must have felt me.

  He looked over at where I stood, meeting my gaze. I’d never seen that exact look on his face before. Helpless, panicked, grief-stricken shock stood there, making his skin paler than I’d ever seen it. I saw rage underlying the shock, even now––an out of control, violent, powerless-feeling rage––but I’d never seen him so completely lost before, or so afraid.

  Before I could fully take in that expression, or what it meant, his mental voice rose in my mind.

  That voice was disturbing, too. Stripped entirely of emotion, it didn’t reflect any part of what I saw in his eyes or light.

  It was so dead, so empty, it made my heart stop.

  I checked the rest of the apartment, he sent. I think they’re gone. But be fucking careful, Miri. He nodded towards a small Chinese-style table on the other side of the foyer. There’s a gun in there. Get it. Now.

  I nodded, jerking my chin up and down like a marionette.

  I walked-ran to the cabinet, pocketing the letter opener as I yanked open the drawer. In it, a Beretta APX 9mm sat there in a vinyl holster. I yanked it out, then turned back towards Black and walked in his direction, checking the chamber as I walked.

  Walking to the edge of where the blood started on the white carpet, I watched him brush the hair carefully away from Kiko’s face, nearly a caress. I felt the fury on him worsen, along with a grief that nearly buckled my knees.

  I was afraid to ask. I was afraid to ask him if––

  She’s not dead, he sent. Bastard raped her, pushed her to give him head, then drained her almost to death… but she’s not dead. Not yet.

  He looked up at me, his eyes now as empty as his voice.

  I read her. She’s unconscious, but I read her. That’s how I know. He erased or blurred her memory of who he was, but he let her remember the details of what he did to her.

  I nodded, fighting tears.

  I couldn’t quite comprehend Kiko herself, not yet.

  She didn’t even look like the woman I knew, not like she was now. I knew that wasn’t all of it, of course. Already, just from Black’s few words, it was hitting at memories of mine that I couldn’t handle, couldn’t face, especially not in relation to my friend.

  Unlike my own trauma crap, the grief and anger and helplessness coming off Black hit at me like a physical punch. It flooded into my light so intensely I could barely think, could barely comprehend anything else.

  Still holding the gun, I aimed it at the ceiling, the safety still on, as I reached where he was. I didn’t get too close. I could feel Black trying to decide i
f he should risk picking her up, to bring her closer to the paramedics, which he’d already called, using a landline I didn’t even know we had. Now that I was closer to both of them, I could see her chest moving up and down slowly, enough to know Black was right.

  She was alive.

  The music still blared through the penthouse apartment.

  I barely noticed it now.

  I found myself looking around at the hardwood floor, taking in the bloody footprints on the white rug. I frowned, staring around at all of it, the splatters on the couch, on the walls. It was too much blood. I glanced at more blood on the windows, pausing where someone had smashed a Thai mixed-media art piece.

  My eyes stopped again on an original painting Black bought me in New York.

  Someone had taken a knife to it, cutting the canvas to ribbons.

  My eyes scaled up, to the smashed television, the streaks of blood I’d first seen covering that part of the wall.

  That’s when I saw it.

  They hadn’t just painted our wall with random splashes of blood.

  There was writing there.

  Someone wrote a message in two-foot-high letters, in blood.

  I didn’t know if it was Kiko’s blood.

  It still seemed like too much blood to me, like there had to be other bodies, more than hers. Even as that thought nagged at the back of my head, making my breath come faster, I stared at the words, reading them over and over, unable to comprehend them.

  The letters spelled out a brief, simple message:

  To Black With Love.

  19

  Hospital

  HE WAS ASLEEP when I walked into Kiko’s hospital room.

  Slumped on a chair he’d dragged over next to her bed, he shifted while I watched, his head leaned sideways on the chair’s back. I watched him fight to settle into the worn cushion, his profile in sharp relief against the orange fabric.

  He was about a foot too tall for the chair.

  He’d also pulled it close enough to the bed that his knees banged into the metal edges of it. His five o’clock shadow was growing into the beginnings of a full-fledged beard, and he wore the same clothes he’d put on before we left Santa Cruz.

  I watched him sleep, keeping my light still.

  Glancing down at the breakfast I held in both hands, the food I’d brought him from the bagel shop down in the lobby, and the coffee I’d gotten him at the gourmet coffee shop next door to the bagel place, I frowned. After a bare pause, I set the white paper bags with the bagel sandwiches on the table near the door, and across the room from where he sat.

  I set the cardboard tray holding our coffees next to it.

  I didn’t want to wake him. He looked exhausted.

  At the same time, I wondered how sore his neck would be if I let him sleep like that for long. He needed a damned bed. I knew how unlikely it was he’d go find one, though––even if I did wake him up.

  Sighing, I decided to leave him be.

  Grabbing the bags with the bagels and the tray with the two coffees, I backed slowly out of the room. I reached behind me, groping for the door, and heard him stir, shifting his long body on the fabric chair. When he didn’t open his eyes, I turned around, catching hold of the metal, L-shaped handle.

  I’d just yanked down on it, opening the door, when his voice rose, sounding groggy.

  “Hey,” he said. “You stealing my breakfast, doc?”

  I turned, feeling a flush of guilt, but not about his breakfast.

  I watched him stretch, his body obviously stiff from having dozed off in the fabric chair. Watching me look at him, he gave me a half-smile, nearly a smirk.

  “I see what you’re up to,” he said. “Pretend to get me food, just so you can run off and eat it yourself.”

  “You should sleep.” My voice remained low like his, nearly a whisper, but it carried a lot more genuine scolding, versus his joking version. “You should go home and sleep, Black. Let one of us stand vigil for a while. The doctors say she’s recovering well, now that her blood pressure is stabilized. She’ll be okay if you just crash for a few hours.”

  Black’s sculpted lips hardened into a faint frown.

  “The others are here, too,” I added, before he could argue. “Most of them are down the hall, camped out in the waiting room. Dex, Jem, Yarli, Mika, Manny. Kiko wouldn’t be alone, Black. Not even for a minute. And we have a guard on the door.”

  Black shrugged. He didn’t really answer me, though.

  He also didn’t get up from the chair.

  “You going to give me that coffee you brought, doc?” he said instead, quirking an eyebrow as he stretched up his arms a second time, wincing at their stiffness. “And stop looking at me like that,” he added. “You have no reason to feel guilty. You didn’t wake me up. The smell of that damned bagel with egg and bacon did.”

  “What’s the difference?” I said, exasperated.

  “The difference is, my stomach is smarter than I am. I need food more than I need sleep right now.”

  Staring at him, I frowned.

  I considered arguing the point about his stomach being particularly “smart” when it came to his body’s need for sleep. I also considered pressing the point about him needing a real bed, wondering if he’d use a hotel room bed if I got him a suite in the four-star place next to the hospital.

  Seeing the immovable look on his face, I exhaled in defeat.

  Even so, I clicked at him as I brought over the two bags of food, along with the two cups of coffee I had in a cardboard tray, balanced on my arm. Once I got close enough to him, he leaned up for a kiss.

  He pulled on me with his light as he kissed me, and I found myself giving in for real, feeling the worry and exhaustion on him, but also his relief that I was there. I was still looking down at him when he took all of the food I’d been carrying away from me and put it on the table closer to Kiko’s bed.

  Once both of our hands were free, he pulled me briefly into his lap, and kissed me for real. I found myself caressing his face and neck and shoulders as he did, putting light into him as much as touching him, doing it instinctively as I felt his light merge into mine. He felt borderline affection-starved as I leaned into his chest, but after a few minutes, he let me go, nudging me with his mind to stay, to sit with him for a bit while he ate.

  I slid out of his lap as he leaned towards the table to grab the food.

  Glancing around, I pulled over a second chair from by the window while he took the coffees out of the cardboard coffee tray, setting them on the table, then opened the bigger of the two white paper bags in his lap.

  “Gaos,” he murmured, peering into the white paper bag. “You even got me the right cheese. I could marry you all over again, doc.”

  I grunted, plopping down next to him.

  I took the coffee with my name on it from his fingers when he handed it over.

  “I thought you were doing that already,” I observed, quirking an eyebrow at him.

  He gave me a faint smile, then leaned over for another kiss, pausing to clutch my hair in his hand as he used his tongue. I got lost in his light a second time, breathing him in when I felt him merge into me, and only coming up for air when he did.

  He pressed his forehead to mine briefly, kissing my cheek.

  Despite his attempts at levity, I could feel the exhaustion on him, as soon as he opened his light at all, along with another hot plume of that gratitude that I was there.

  When he let me go, releasing my hair, I felt the reluctance on him, too.

  “How is everyone else?” he said, gruff, taking a sip of his coffee.

  He kept a heavy hand on my thigh, and I found myself giving him more of my light, bleeding it subtly into his fingers and up into his arm, hoping it might help him with the tiredness. I hadn’t meant for him to notice, but I felt him notice anyway.

  He sent me another pulse of gratitude, leaning over and kissing me again, that time on the side of the neck, using his tongue.

  Whe
n he straightened, adjusting the bag of food on his lap, I watched his eyes return to where Kiko lay on the hospital bed, her eyes closed.

  Exhaling, I tried to answer his question.

  “They’re fine,” I said, taking a sip of my own coffee.

  I paused long enough to briefly savor my drink. The coffee shop in the lobby was surprisingly decent. I’d gotten a mocha, figuring the extra dose of sugar and caffeine couldn’t hurt. Tasting the chocolate on my tongue now, I found myself really glad I had.

  “Most of them only got bit once,” I went on after a pause. “They were groggy when Javier found them in the conference room, but no one was seriously hurt. He said it scared the shit out of him, seeing them all lying on the floor and on couches like that. He said they really looked dead. But he realized they were asleep––not dead––as soon as he got close enough to see them breathing.”

  Giving Black a grim look, I added, “Javier says whoever it was, he bit Dex first, and got him to order the others into the conference room. He then bit each of them as they arrived, more to subdue them than to drink.”

  Grimacing overtly, I added, “The one exception was Dex… who you knew about. And Kiko, of course. Dex was missing enough blood that he needed to be taken here in an ambulance, but he’s fine now. He was the one who called Kiko and told her to go up to your apartment. He can’t remember exactly what he told her, but Jem read him, and he says Dex told her you and I had gotten back early from Santa Cruz, and that you wanted to talk to her about something to do with the meeting with Brick. Kiko, that is.”

  Black’s face changed while I watched, turning hard as stone.

  He never took his eyes off Kiko.

  “Dex got a transfusion, too,” I added. “He was down a few pints at least, but it looks like the vampire only drained him for extra blood to paint the walls. The forensics guys say the writing in the living room, along with the stuff on the paintings, and those handprints on our wall in the bedroom was mostly Dex’s blood.” Glancing at Kiko, I grimaced. “Whoever it was, they apparently drank Kiko. The others were mostly there as props. And to get them out of the way, of course, and make sure no one could raise the alarm.”