He let out a humorless laugh.
He couldn’t help it.
Her words also finally snapped him out of wherever his own mind had gone, out of that paralyzed, broken place, where Miri still maybe loved him, where he had a family and friends and it mattered what he did. He remembered Dorian’s words in his ears, his pale arms wrapped around him, and shivered.
He fought to get back that feeling, that…
Nothingness.
“Nick.” She shook her head, clearing her throat. “Nick, even Brick says you’ll change. You’ll feel differently than you do now. You’ll come back. More of you, at least.”
She stared at his eyes, and he couldn’t help but see the emotion there. He couldn’t help but see the fucking hope there.
He knew what she hoped for, though. He knew how completely fucking delusional it was. Moreover, he knew it probably wasn’t even about him.
“You don’t have to feel guilty, Miriam,” he told her.
He took a step towards her, and something about that gliding, forward momentum reminded him, clicking a different part of his mind in place. It put him back in mind of hunting. It took him out of the past, and back into the present, into the present of him. Sensation filled his mouth, ears, eyes. The sound of her blood throbbing inside him, following each expansion and contraction of her heart, each expansion and contraction of her lungs.
He grew aware of her nakedness.
Without making the decision consciously, he was staring at the rest of her, at her long, muscular legs, those fucking breasts, which he’d fantasized about more times than he could count back when he was human. With her tanned shoulders thrown back, as they were now, those breasts were displayed like she was a porn star centerfold in some eighties jerk-off magazine.
He stared at her feet, her calves, her muscular arms, her narrow waist.
He might not have it in him to kill her, not yet.
But he was definitely going to fuck her.
“Black’s going to have to learn how to share,” he said finally.
His voice came out thick, gruff… like an animal.
He no longer minded that, either. He didn’t mind anything, not anymore. His fangs were sharp against his lips. He felt the blood rising to his eyes, to his cock, to his tongue and mouth.
Within seconds, he didn’t care about much of anything.
When he looked up next, he saw Miriam’s eyes had widened. Those hazel eyes were surrounded by white, and he smiled before he knew he meant to. The hunter in him liked that look on her face. The hunter in him liked it a hell of a lot.
“Nick.” Her voice came out hard that time, warning. She held up a hand. “Nick, no. No, goddamn it. He’ll kill you. You know he will.”
“I know he’ll try,” Naoko murmured, his eyes back on her body.
He could see her breathing harder.
She was naked. She didn’t have a single weapon on her.
She didn’t even have a knife.
He heard her heart pounding in her chest.
“Nick.” She gasped, hyperventilating now, once more holding up her hand, shaking her head. “Nick… no. Don’t. Don’t, goddamn it. Don’t––”
But he could barely hear her now.
He was already moving.
* * *
HE DIDN’T HEAR them.
He didn’t hear them speak.
He didn’t hear the metal door to the downstairs open.
He didn’t hear their breaths. He didn’t hear their footsteps on the cement, or on the gravel when they walked past the edge of the white cement brick wall.
Despite his vampire hearing, his vampire sight, his ability to feel minute shifts in air and light, even when they happened outside his view––
He didn’t hear a goddamned thing.
Pleasure cascaded over him and through him as her fingers tightened on his arms. Her cunt spasmed around his cock as he fed on her, arching into her harder, feeling like he was wrapped in a hot, liquid blanket of sex, feeling her heart beat under his fingers, hearing her gasp in his ear as he angled into her again.
She liked his cock.
She liked his cock, his fingers, his mouth… the way he kissed.
He was lost there.
He was fucking lost.
The rest of the world had completely disappeared… gone away.
It wasn’t like any human he’d been inside, any vampire.
He’d never been so sated and drugged and turned on and frustrated and fucking hungry in his life. He’d never felt so much during sex. He’d never wanted to be so far inside another person, either their mind or body. He’d never been so far inside both things at the same time.
She belonged to him. She fucking belonged to him…
So no, he didn’t hear them.
He didn’t hear anything until the sound of a gunshot exploded, seemingly right in his ear, seemingly at the exact instant the bullet went through his upper chest.
They’d waited until Naoko raised himself up.
He’d waited, presumably so he wouldn’t hit Miri.
Naoko watched his own blood splatter over the front of Miri’s body, hitting her face, neck, breasts, belly. There was a silence where he heard her suck in a breath, where that was the only sound in the world as she released his arms, throwing up her forearms in an instinctive gesture of self-protection.
His body hummed with her blood.
His cock was so far in her he felt a split-second of reluctance, of regret, before his own survival instincts kicked in.
For that split-second, he contemplated taking her with him.
Even with the bullet twisting through him, slamming into bones and flesh, exiting out the front of him before mashing into a metal pancake on the cement wall, he still felt like he was on drugs, like everything about her drugged him.
He thought about her being his, really his.
He stared down at her, at her skin covered with his blood, and he thought about it even as the bullet exploded through his chest.
Both of them were so drunk on his venom he could feel her presence, even now. Not quite thoughts, not quite words, not anymore, but he felt her awareness of him, of him inside her.
He felt how good it felt for her.
He had her pinned to the gravel, his fingers fisted in her hair.
His instincts kicked in before she’d even finished that inhaled breath.
Then he rolled.
He was out of her and on his feet, running. His body and mind adjusted in milliseconds, clicking back into the mode of a hunter, his senses kicking back on even as he held up his pants, darting towards the outer wall, weaving and zig-zagging his way to the helicopter to put it between himself and Black’s gun.
The gun went off again.
Then again.
Then again.
It felt like slow motion now, although he knew Black––he knew the seer was firing without pause, without hesitation, emptying his magazine at his fleeing back in the dark without so much as a hair’s breadth pause between each squeeze of the trigger.
Naoko had zero doubt Black was firing that gun as fast as the model allowed him to fire it.
He’d just passed the helicopter when a bullet caught him in the side, jerking his body sideways, forcing him to twist in the air to keep his forward momentum. By then, he’d reached the edge of the wall. He didn’t hesitate but leapt without slowing, wind-milling his legs to go over the edge and drop out of the seer’s sight as fast as he possibly could.
He knew exactly where to jump.
He knew exactly what he was aiming for.
He knew exactly where the smooth glass top of the building changed, becoming the steel, jutting ridges of the lower part of the building’s architecture. Those ridges started at the fiftieth floor, expanding out the base of the building a good twenty feet in diameter wider than the tallest part of the building’s spire, which was made all of glass.
Falling seemed to take forever, too.
As he
fell, a sharp, fire-like pain jabbed at his neck.
Nick slapped it with his hand in midair, but whatever it was, it wasn’t fatal, or even some kind of tranquilizer, like he’d feared. He wondered if he’d hit into one of Black’s insect-sized drones… but the pain was already starting to fade.
Moreover, it was nothing compared to the pain from the gunshot wounds in his chest and lower abdomen.
He didn’t have long to think to think about his injuries in any case.
He slammed into the top part of the wider rim of the building, hitting into the steel ridges like falling on the spikes of a metal fence. Exhaling air from lungs he didn’t need, he grasped at the slick surfaces with fingers slippery from his own blood, managing to slow himself down enough to wedge himself between two of the building’s ridges.
Within seconds, he was jammed between two parallel pieces of jutting metal, his back to one side, his feet to the other, like a rock-climber stuck in a narrow gully.
He gave himself one second, just hanging there.
Maybe two.
He didn’t need to breathe, but it felt like catching his breath.
It felt like he hung there, for just one breath.
Perhaps it was more like acknowledging he was alive, along with comprehending his new circumstances, and the state of his body, which hurt like fucking hell now that he was twisted into the narrow space between the two ridges. In that same bare instant, he fastened his pants, yanking them up and hooking the belt. He ignored his shirt, letting it hang open around his bare chest. He’d already chucked the jacket while he was with Miri.
That jacket, a gift from Dorian, was up there somewhere, on the gravel of the roof.
Then… the breath was over.
More gunshots went off from overhead.
Without looking up, Naoko dropped, releasing his hands and feet enough to slide between the two ridged metal walls. He fell as swiftly as he could while maintaining full control of the fall, adjusting his body as he went until he found the optimal angle to propel himself downward the fastest without letting himself just slam into the cement sidewalk.
He already knew there would be seers and humans waiting for him at the bottom of the building. No matter how fast he fell, Black would already have them down there, waiting for him, probably directly below where he was now.
He’d either have to attack them before they could take him out, or find a way back into the building before he reached the ground floor.
Even as he thought it, more gunshots went off from overhead.
They pinged against the ridged metal, one of them missing his head by inches, despite how fast he fell.
Black must have infrared.
He’d also clearly switched from a handgun to a rifle.
Naoko couldn’t know for sure if they could still see him. He doubted they could, at least right then, but he strongly suspected that wouldn’t matter to Black. He’d just aim down the ridge where Naoko disappeared, and fire until he ran out of bullets.
Moreover, Black would send drones soon, if he hadn’t already.
Black would send everything he had at him now.
At the thought, it crossed Naoko’s mind that hitting the pavement like this, with two gunshot wounds, no weapons, and no other vampires, wasn’t a good idea.
He needed to find a way back inside.
Releasing the ridged steel beams briefly at the thought, he let himself fall faster, going into a near-freefall for at least fifteen stories, mostly in an attempt to put more distance between himself and Black.
He knew where he was going now, though.
Something in the knowing calmed him, even as sirens once more exploded out of the sound system in the building behind him. He heard them wind up even louder overhead, echoing down to the street, reverberating between the tall skyscrapers.
He wondered how many people down there thought a big wave might be coming.
He never stopped counting stories as he fell.
Seconds later, he began slowing his fall.
Within a few seconds more, he brought himself to a full stop. Unlike before, he didn’t wait to gather his bearings. The windows behind him were all dark, which was a bonus, but he knew he didn’t have much time.
If he didn’t hit the ground soon, they’d start looking for him on the higher floors.
Knowing Black, he’d have spotlights cover every inch of the outer building.
Grabbing the steel ridge in front of him with both hands, he grunted, maybe more out ofs habit than necessity, pulling himself over and around the foot-thick piece of jutting metal, using only the strength of his upper body and arms. Balancing with his feet and legs once he got around the first ridge, he wedged himself between the next set of steel beams, then crawled around the next one, moving in a roughly northwestern direction around the building.
He pulled himself around to the next set of beams.
Then the next.
Then the next.
He made his way around maybe an eighth of the building that way, moving as quickly as he could, without pausing to rest, or to assess precisely where he was.
He would see it when he was close.
He traversed across six more beams the same way…
Then he did see it.
A terrace appeared four stories below him, a paler color than the surrounding black steel. Landscaped trees rippled softly in the night breeze, rimming the glass balcony and clustered in geometric patterns across the terrace itself, their small leaves making liquid patterns in the dark. Jutting out from the building, the cement landing was covered in glass-topped tables with dark red and blue umbrellas, closed now for the night, and surrounded by outdoor chairs. Potted plants rimmed the edge, below the trees, and a koi pond ran through the middle of the cement deck, decorated with a curved arch of a wooden footbridge.
Naoko didn’t wait.
Looking down, he gauged the exact distances of everything that was below him.
Then, once he had the whole layout memorized.
He dropped.
29
Protecting Miri
“OKAY,” COWBOY SAID, nodding emphatically. “I get that, brother. Loud and clear. But someone’s got to talk to him. We got a whole heap of people on the ground, and drones covering the whole outside of the building, and we still got nothing––”
“No sightings at all?” Luce muttered, her voice unnerved.
Cowboy gave her a flat stare. “Nothing. I mean nothing.”
Exhaling, he placed his hands on his hips. He glanced around them at the rooftop, looking away from where Angel was walking towards them from the metal door.
She heard him mutter, “I still can’t figure how he got Miri up here in the first place. Past all them guards. Past Black’s surveillance. It jus’ don’ add up.”
“The windows?” Luce offered. “The balcony?”
Cowboy’s frown deepened as he glanced at her. “Meybe.”
Angel found herself thinking the Louisianan didn’t buy that, though.
Cowboy aimed his stare back at the male seer with the streaked black and brown hair. “We can’t just leave ‘em up here, Jem. We need to separate them. We need someone to look at her, for fuck’s sake. She probably needs blood––”
Jem was already shaking his head.
“––someone seer,” Cowboy added pointedly. “I didn’t mean a hospital.”
Angel continued her cautious approach.
Reaching the small group, she looked from her boyfriend’s face to the green-eyed seer standing directly across from him, and who Cowboy seemed to be primarily talking to.
Dexter hovered over and behind the other three, a frown punctuating his broad face where he stood on a raised step by the cement wall. Dex unholstered his sidearm while Angel watched, checking the chamber of his gun even as he glanced over his own shoulder at someone on the ground behind them.
“I just don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jem muttered, following Dex’s gaze before he returned
his stare to Cowboy. “Not right now. It’s better if we leave them alone. We can handle this.”
“Handle what?” Angel said, speaking in more of her normal tone.
Cowboy and Jem looked at her.
Cowboy looked relieved, whereas Jem frowned, as if the last thing he wanted was yet another opinion.
“Tell ‘em, darling,” Cowboy said, motioning a thumb at Jem. “Tell ‘em we can’t jus’ leave the two of them up here. It’s December for fuck’s sake.”
Jem was frowning now, though, looking Angel over with a sharper scrutiny. After a pause, he glanced at Cowboy, then back at her.
“You could talk to him,” he said, blunt, meaning Angel. “He listens to you.”
Angel blinked.
It hit her then, what they were talking about.
Once it had, she paled, stepping between the four of them, holding up a hand to part the group so she could walk past and beyond them.
She’d just assumed they were downstairs.
She’d assumed someone would have taken them out of there by now.
She assumed paramedics would have come, that the usual things would have happened in a case like this. It didn’t fully hit her until after she thought it that there was no “usual” in a case like this. Even so, she was shocked at hell at what she saw by the cement wall, about twenty yards from where her boyfriend and the others stood, talking in low voices.
Black sat on the gravel.
He was shirtless, sitting directly on the ground, his clothes in a heap around his thighs and legs. Angel blinked again, and realized it wasn’t a pile clothes in his lap. Long strands of dark hair fell down his chest, which looked pale against the backdrop of a night sky. His skin and eyes shone faintly in the lights from the helipad.
Angel could only just make out Miri’s profile in those same lights.
Her eyes were closed.
“Jesus,” she breathed.
She glared at Cowboy, then at Jem.
“You just fucking left them there?” she said.
TO BLACK WITH LOVE: Quentin Black Mystery #10 Page 41