Black On Black (Quentin Black Mystery #3)

by JC Andrijeski

  Some feels like it’s solely about him.

  Both things hurt me.

  Miri... please. Please... don’t be angry with me...

  He’s asleep. It’s cold where he is, inside his dream. It’s cold, even though he’s sweating through the down comforter smothering his bed. It’s cold, and I hope to God I’m still seeing his future, and not his present.

  I know he’s alone.

  I know they are pulling him into more and more of their operation––more and more of their twisted rituals and the culture that surrounds their whole business... or cult... or whatever it is. I know some of that is to immerse him in it, not to indoctrinate him directly so much as to soak him inside the specific vibration. I don’t fully understand that part, but I know it has something to do with what he is, the way people like him absorb information.

  I also know he’s fighting them.

  I know it hurts him to fight.

  I no longer know what’s happening to him though, apart from the few things he tells me, and those get fewer every day. I lose track of what I’ve seen through him and what he’s actually admitted to me using words. I lose track but I fight to see him through the glimpses, to see the people on the other side, pulling his strings, screwing with him.

  I don’t see them raping him again. I don’t even ask him whether that really happened.

  Even so, a lot of what I see sickens me.

  I feel it sicken him, too.

  Some of it reminds him of a past he’d rather forget.

  In some ways, it’s worse to him, though. He thinks the seers here are insane, that there’s something wrong with them. He thinks Lucky poisoned their minds or maybe they’re just not doing well, cut off from so many of their own kind. He tells me it wasn’t like this in the other world. He tells me they weren’t all animals there, that some of them were good.

  He feels horrified by what he sees, disgusted by it.

  Miri, please... he sends. Please... I’m sorry...

  The pain worsens. Both kinds.

  Some of it feels old. Some of it feels new.

  I glimpse him young again, a small, gold-eyed child patterned in dust and blood and sweat, standing barefoot on the dirt, glaring up at guards, a smaller jaw clenched in defiance.

  A dirt floor. Barbed wire. Electrified fences. Bleached walls.

  I see him being hurt there too.

  It seems like wherever I look, I see people hurting him...

  It’s fucking unbearable.

  THINGS HAPPENED A lot faster after I talked to Nick and Angel.

  Fast enough that I didn’t have time to second-guess myself, at least not more than I had already. Once I’d roped my friends into what I was doing, the clock ticking overhead got a lot louder. I knew Nick heard it. Angel probably heard it, too.

  They understood the need to move fast. Nick understood it probably better than I did, although he didn’t bother to lecture me about consequences there, either.

  I could feel the confusion of Nick’s motives.

  I knew Nick had mixed feelings about helping Black.

  On the other hand, he picked up on a lot more than I’d told them in so many words, even just that first night. He definitely seemed to know there was a lot more there.

  He wasn’t wrong.

  I’d thought very carefully about how much to tell them, long before I invited Nick and Angel to that bar. The stuff about me was easy––that was my story to tell, and I’d been going back and forth on telling Nick and Angel about my own abilities ever since they arrested me the year before. They were my friends, after all. Some part of me even wondered if telling them the truth about me was long overdue.

  The rest I had to think through a lot more carefully.

  In the end, I didn’t tell them anything about alien races or dimensional portals.

  I did mention idealogical fanaticism was involved, stuff that included “master race” type rhetoric and mystical religions.

  Mostly though, I focused on how Lucky’s group had ex-Soviet affiliations.

  I knew that concept would be familiar to them––Nick especially.

  I even implied the psychic thing might have origins in experiments the Soviets had going during the Cold War. There’d long been talk the Kremlin funded some strange genetic and mind-control experiments in the period after World War II––including, conveniently enough, attempts to train a cadre of psychics to conduct surveillance on the United States.

  Rumors of that kind of thing abounded in Black Ops, even when I was there. They had their conspiracy theories, just like anywhere––maybe more than most.

  Some said the Russians had someone high up in their military who was obsessed with metaphysics. Some said they borrowed those ideas from Hitler even, who’d long been rumored to have occult leanings. I heard some crazy stories about the Nazis in Afghanistan, including that Hitler attempted to train an elite squad of “dream warriors” to go after world leaders in their sleep, mainly targeting Churchill and other enemies of Germany during the war.

  I didn’t specifically tell Nick that the group extorting Black had connections to any of those things.

  But I called them a “cult” and mentioned a lot of them were probably ex-KGB.

  I also said they were obsessed with people who had “unusual gifts.” I told them Black and I got on their radar mostly thanks to Ian, who was a member.

  Some of that was a pretty big bending of the truth.

  A few things––like the thing with Ian––verged on outright lies. I needed to give Nick enough information to know what we were dealing with though, without exposing Black as a separate species. Part of that was convincing him the psychic thing was real.

  There was another, more calculated reason too.

  By tying my “confession” to a long-disputed conspiracy theory, Nick would be a lot less tempted to talk to his military pals about it––at least until he had hard evidence. Nick knew how crazy this would sound to most of them. The KGB connection would make it sound more crazy, not less, at least without hard proof.

  I wanted to trust that Nick wouldn’t do that anyway––at least not without talking to me––but I couldn’t risk it. Not given his feelings about Black.

  Truthfully, on some level it was a relief that my friends finally knew.

  I could tell they hadn’t adjusted to the information yet. Neither of them seem to know what to do with that information precisely, at least not in regards to me.

  But they hadn’t run away screaming, either. That counted for something. Both of them, Nick included, also offered to help. Truthfully, they’d offered to help before I’d even asked.

  Given those two things, I had some hope I’d still have my friends on the other side of this thing.

  I was sitting in Black’s office, reading off his computer screen, when Nick called the burner phone I’d picked up the day before. None of us, including me, had any illusions that my phone wasn’t already tapped. I knew there was some chance Black’s office might be bugged too, even though his people swept for that kind of thing.

  Nick didn’t bother with a greeting.

  After he’d been talking for a few minutes straight, barely taking a breath, I cut him off.

  “––So you’re absolutely sure they’re on board?” I said, wary. “They’re not just trying to gain free intelligence on Lucky’s group?”

  Nick grunted. “Sure they are. But does that matter, Miri? This is strictly a back-pocket plan for now, right? We’re only going to use it for leverage, right? Or if we can’t pick him up?”

  I nodded, rubbing my eyes with two fingers. “Right,” I said. “But we’re opening a door here, Nick. I just want to make sure we can kick it shut later.”

  He exhaled. I could almost see him standing outside the police station on Fillmore, probably in the gravel parking lot where he and Angel left their motorcycles for the day, a hand on his hip as he watched people walk by on the sidewalk.

  “That ship might have sailed, Mir
i,” he said. “You’ve put yourself on the radar by contacting them at all. Right now, they’re mostly intrigued, I think. You’re not a direct threat to them, and they’ve got a lot of self-interest involved of course. Oh, and FYI,” he added drily. “Speaking of being on their radar, that one fucker, Alexei, must have looked you up, because he wants to meet you. I had to make a few cracks about how I wasn’t a dating service, that this was a business proposal. But having the leader of that faction wanting to ‘date’ you isn’t exactly something that reassures me either, Miri...”

  I sighed, rolling my eyes to the ceiling, but only nodded.

  Contacting the rival black market groups operating out of Asia and Russia hadn’t been one of my more genius ideas, but I wanted the leverage in case we failed to get Black back the more straightforward way. Nodding again, I glanced at the open screen on Black’s monitor.

  “Understood,” I said.

  “...At base they’re business people,” Nick added. “Uri and Alexei both made it clear they’d love to see those fuckers taken down a peg or two for personal reasons, but the self-interest is what makes me think you can trust them in the basics.” He paused, his voice growing more cautious. “...Another thing, Miri. I could tell he already had some idea of the... you know. The ‘special skills’ thing. Alexei seemed surprised I knew. He also seemed to be very interested in obtaining some of those resources himself...”

  I frowned, but I couldn’t say that really surprised me, either.

  Nick hesitated, his voice turning more grudging.

  “...It’ll make Black a fuck of a lot more visible. They already had him down as a possible new recruit by Lucky’s group, even before I confirmed it. He asked me outright if Black was one of Lucky’s ‘special assets.’ I told him no, but I could tell he didn’t believe me.”

  I shook my head, but not dismissively.

  Maybe I just couldn’t think about that now.

  “It’s too late,” I said. “We have to get him out of there. Anyway, Nick... since we’re not exactly big players in this field ourselves, we need the backup. And hopefully, we won’t need it. Hopefully we can get him out without just the threat of it. But I needed enough to make the threat credible...” I swallowed, shaking my head. “Trust me on this. They’re not going to let him go willingly. I know you don’t care about him, per se, but he’s too dangerous to leave in their hands. You should care about that...”

  “I’m not completely heartless, Miri,” Nick said, his voice short. “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone... even Black. Not if it’s as bad as you say.”

  I nodded, but didn’t really answer him.

  “How are you doing with your end?” he said. “Getting any better?”

  I rolled my eyes, letting out a humorless snort. “Define ‘better.’”

  “Well, you pushed that one woman, right?” he said. “To get into the storage area?”

  I let out a short laugh.

  “Kind of half-push, half reading the security codes off her... but yeah, it worked.”

  “Well, there you go,” he said, his voice encouraging.

  I laughed again, I couldn’t help it.

  Nick taking an interest in my feeble attempts to up my game in Black’s “special skill sets” struck me as funny, even beyond the fact that we were talking about it at all. I’d told him and Angel that I found a number of training manual-type documents that Black had been writing before he left, probably to use for teaching me. It explained a number of skill sets seers could learn to use. After I described to him and Angel a few of the most basic, Level 1-type skills, meaning the very first ones that Black had intended to teach me, we decided that given the short window, I should pick the one that seemed to all of us to be the most useful.

  Then I would try to learn it.

  After a lengthy discussion over wine and dinner at a hotel in the Mission, where we talked scenarios that might come up over the next few weeks, we unanimously decided the skill Black called a “push” would likely be the most useful.

  Pushes were essentially a way to lean on someone’s mind to get them to do something. At the higher levels, a push could implant actual thoughts, but at the lower, it should at least influence a person’s decision-making process.

  Since then, Angel had picked up the annoying habit of quoting science fiction movies at me and laughing hysterically.

  “I’ll be ready,” I said. “Ready enough, anyway. That’s all that matters.”

  “We could still involve the government,” Nick began. “Directly, I mean.”

  But we’d had this argument before. Too many times, really.

  I shook my head.

  “No,” I said. “Nick... I told you. Black is connected there already. He claims there are people on the inside who already know what he is. People he trusts. If he could have gone to them for help, he would have already.” I paused, thinking aloud. “He didn’t say it in so many words, but I suspect Lucky’s group has their own government ties. Meaning ties to our government, not just Russia’s, or even China’s. Going to your Pentagon buddies would probably just alert them to what we’re doing. Lucky’s people might not hesitate if it came to killing you. They don’t have any reason to keep you and Angel alive...”

  “Miri...” Nick began, sighing.

  I cut him off, my voice warning.

  “They’re religious fanatics, Nick. You can’t reason with them. This isn’t a group you can quid pro quo with a business deal, like you can with Uri and Alexei. I don’t think we have much that they want.” Feeling his continued disagreement, I reminded him, “Ian worked for the government, Nick. His security clearance was pretty impressive, if you recall.”

  That time, I felt my words penetrate.

  I felt as much as heard Nick’s sigh.

  “Okay,” he said. “We do it your way for now. This just makes me nervous, doc. These people, your new ‘allies,’ or whatever... they might not be much better than the ones putting the lean on Black.”

  “They’re better,” I said grimly. “They have to be better, Nick.”

  Even so, I heard the thread of doubt in my voice.

  I hoped like hell that I was right.

  Then again, I hoped like hell we would never need their help at all.

  I SHOULD HAVE known they’d call him. Dex at least. Kiko.

  Still, for people who claimed they had no easy way to contact Black when he’d gone dark on a job, they didn’t waste much time.

  I was sitting in front of the computer in his office when his desk phone rang. He had an actual land-line in here. Knowing him, it was in case of earthquakes or some other disaster. He’d be the type to want that, for a lot of reasons, I suspected.

  I didn’t answer it, of course. Not at first.

  It was his phone. His office.

  I just kept reading the file I had open on his computer.

  Then a voice rose in my mind, hard as metal.

  Pick up the goddamned phone, Miriam...

  I paused on the keyboard. Feeling him waiting, feeling the emotion coiling and sparking around him, I felt my jaw harden. Snatching up the dark-green, old-fashioned receiver from the rotary phone on his desk, I put it to my ear.

  “Black Securities and Investigations,” I said, my voice cheerful. “Commander In Chief Black’s office. I’m sorry he’s not available at the moment... perhaps I can leave a message? Or perhaps you’d like to just send your specific blackmail conditions via email so that there’s no delay?”

  Silence greeted me.

  I could feel him fighting to control himself on the other end of the line, but somehow, it only made me angrier.

  “Sir?” I said politely. “Would you like to leave a message? He’s currently being blackmailed by someone else right now... but I’m sure he’ll make your specific extortion or threat a number one priority as soon as he gets back. Well... if he gets back. There’s always that.”

  “Miri,” he said. “What are you doing?”

  “Answering your phone.
Didn’t you want me to answer your phone, Quentin?”

  Pain snaked out at me, catching me off-guard, closing my eyes. Anger wound into that pain, even as I felt a harder pulse slam into me despite the distance between us.

  I felt fear there too. What might even have been panic.

  “Did you call Uri? Alexei?”

  I fell silent that time, caught off guard. Then, realizing that didn’t matter either, not now, I shrugged. “I’m sorry, sir? I don’t know who you are––”

  “Did you make a deal with those fuckers, Miriam? Did you tell them about me?”

  I fell silent. On the other end, Black lowered his voice, as if trying to control himself.

  “Dex said you informed them you’re leaving.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “That information is classified.”

  “He said you’re fucking leaving, Miri... that you threatened them with legal action for false imprisonment if they tried to make you stay...”

  “Can I route your call to voicemail, sir?” I said politely. “I would be happy to take down your name and number, and any specific conditions––”

  “Goddamn it, Miri!” he snarled.

  I fell silent.

  For a moment, he didn’t say any more than that either.

  Then he exhaled slowly, as if controlling his own heart beat. I could hear the drugs on his voice, could almost see him where he sat on the edge of a window sill, looking down over a street dusted lightly with snow. He was on the tail end of his time without sleeping again. He had to be on day four, at least... maybe even day five by now, since he’d been doing his damnedest to extend that period, using drugs and whatever else.

  They’d been going after him more and more while he slept.

  But I knew he’d lie to me about that, too.

  “Miri.” I saw him rub his forehead with his fingers, his eyes closed. “Miri. What are you doing? What are you doing, baby?”

  I felt my jaw harden. “You don’t get to ask me that, Black.”

  “Where are you fucking going?” he growled. “Are you coming here?” He hesitated, his voice holding more fear. “Or are you going there? Are you going to see them?”