Taking them down helped, though.
It helped a fuck of a lot.
It would have helped a lot more if he hadn’t managed to completely alienate his wife in the process.
Even with everything that happened in order to get him out of that prison, he hadn’t forgotten his friends left on the inside. After that whole nightmare went down with the vampires, both in the prison and in that lab, and after Black finally got his freedom again, he pulled some strings and got his friends out of that shit-hole, too.
He hadn’t heard from them since, but he hadn’t expected to.
They were free.
Also, he didn’t exactly broadcast that he was the reason for their newfound freedom, so they likely didn’t know.
Black was fine with that. They didn’t owe him a damned thing.
He’d pretty much had his hands full in the time since, anyway.
Still scanning the horizon on four sides, he stopped around the ten o’clock position from the Jeep’s windshield. He did a double-take when he realized someone was finally visible on the horizon, heading in his direction.
Not in a car, though. They weren’t on foot, either.
They were riding a fucking horse.
“Fantastic,” he muttered.
He considered pulling out his rifle with the big scope, just to freak the guy out.
Of course, if the B.I.A. detective sent one of Black’s so-called friends instead of coming himself, that might be Easton out there, on that fucking horse––or Frank. Knowing the two of them, either or both might be packing heat. If they saw the glint of a rifle scope, joking or not, they might shoot back at him, just to be on the safe side.
Prison had a tendency to make people jumpy.
Wiping his forehead, he muttered to himself as he walked back to the Jeep.
He leaned through the open window to the front seat, which was already coated in a fine layer of red dust, just like his hair, his clothes, and everything else out here. Rummaging around in the canvas military bag he’d left between two bucket seats, he grabbed his binoculars and straightened up out of the window, grabbing a sun-heated bottle of water on his way up.
Leaning his back against the car door, in part to disguise the glint of glass by confusing it with the car windows, he looked out over the desert again, using the high-powered binoculars between swallows of too-warm water.
Yep. A horse. He hadn’t imagined it.
Worse, the guy was leading a second horse, a taller, gray and white appaloosa mare with a dark gray mane and tail. Since the second horse was already wearing a saddle, along with a bridle and two saddle bags, it was pretty clear it wasn’t just there to be a pack animal.
Black swung the glasses back to the smaller bay with the white blaze on its face. He adjusted the binocs more specifically on its rider.
It didn’t look like Easton.
Or Frank. Or Dog.
After a few more seconds of squinting, he decided he definitely didn’t know the guy, not from that Louisiana prison or anywhere else.
He must be Nick’s friend, the cop.
He looked roughly the right age, early to mid-forties, so a few years older than Nick. He had that sun-baked look, like he spent a lot of time outside, but he was more tan than burnt, even if it was a reddish tan.
Good-looking guy. He fit as a local tribal, from his clothes and the shoulder-length black hair he wore in a half-ponytail. Athletic build, but in that wiry, practical way, not the city, gym-rat version Black generally saw on the coasts.
He wore a long-sleeved button-down shirt and blue jeans, along with cowboy boots.
Cursing a little under his breath as he lowered the binoculars, Black could only stand there and wait, taking more swallows of tepid water as he did.
It took a long-feeling stretch of time for that distance to close.
The guy rode right up to him without speaking, or even raising a hand in greeting. The only sound came from horse hooves hitting the packed, red dirt.
The rider brought the horses close enough that all three of them, the two horses and the rider, blocked the sun. The fact that they could block the sun only served to remind Black that it was already getting late in the day.
That punishing desert heat would evaporate soon, leaving the land cold once the sun passed the edge of the horizon.
That was another difference between here and Thailand.
It generally didn’t get cold at night in Thailand.
It also meant this little camping trip would likely happen in pitch darkness.
“I’m not riding a fucking horse,” Black said, before the guy in the dark blue jeans could speak.
The man only stared at him, expressionless, pulling a hat off his saddlebag, a wide-brimmed black cowboy hat that was dusty too, but had an elaborate silver and turquoise band under the peak. Black watched him pull the ponytail casually out of his shoulder-length hair, putting the black cowboy hat on over it.
His long-sleeved button-down flannel shirt made Black hot just by looking at it.
He scowled at the man’s silence, the deliberateness of his movements.
“No horses,” he repeated. “…Forget it, Tonto. This thing can handle your scrub brush and sand just fine.”
He motioned vaguely behind him at the Jeep.
If the man was offended by Black’s words, no indication showed on his face.
In fact, if Black wasn’t losing his marbles out here, the guy was actually smiling.
Normally, Black liked a guy who could give as good as he got, but something about this man’s smile rubbed Black the wrong way.
He knew he was being a dick.
Some of it might have been irritation with the conversation he’d gotten into with Angel, but most of it was probably because he’d been thinking about his wife. In general, he had a tendency to jab at people he knew he might be working with, in part just to see how they reacted.
With humans, ethnic and “race” crap was a cheap shot, but it was easy.
Maybe he’d gotten out of practice at getting under people’s skin, living in a human city on the West Coast of the United States, where everyone got offended by fucking everything. Those few months in New York clearly weren’t enough to bring his sharper edges back, since he already felt guilty for lobbing racial bullshit at this poor bastard he didn’t even know, just to get a rise out of him.
Then again, maybe that was Miri’s influence, too.
If she was here, she’d already be scowling at him, and not because she was of native blood. More because she’d know he was full of shit.
And yeah, because he was being a dick.
“Sorry,” he said, when the other didn’t speak. “It’s hotter than the Sahara out here. And horses freak me out. I almost got killed by one, and––”
“I know what you are.”
Black frowned, staring up at him. “Excuse me?”
The man smiled wider, looking him over with dark brown eyes.
Those eyes had a hint of sharpness to them, but again, there was something else there, something Black didn’t like.
“It’s good,” the man pronounced, giving a single nod. “We need one like you. You need a ghost to fight a dead man.”
Black stared up at him, suddenly feeling a lot less friendly.
Of course, there was no possible way this guy knew what he was.
The chiefs in that Louisiana prison sure as fuck didn’t know what he was.
They didn’t even know he was “psychic,” as most humans insisted on calling it, including his wife. Joseph, their de facto leader, might have picked up there was something weird about Black, but he sure as hell didn’t have a clue what he was.
Remembering Joseph, Black frowned.
Was Joseph the “old friend” Nick mentioned, who called Black out here?
Maybe he should have had Dex and Kiko run the info on this gig after all, at least enough to find out who these jokers were. Looking at this tough-looking guy on his horse with his bi
g cowboy hat, it struck Black that he’d made a lot of assumptions.
At the time, coming out here seemed like the answer to his insane restlessness with Miri gone, but maybe he should have bugged Nick for more information.
At the very least, he should have made sure no one out here wanted him dead.
Glancing up and down the horizon, he focused back on the stranger in the black cowboy hat with a frown. No way this guy knew what he was, but maybe it was time to figure out who’d called him out here, and why.
When Black reached out with his mind and living light, however, trying to read the man on the black horse, he got… nothing.
A blank wall.
Well, not a wall exactly––a wall implied resistance, and this was the opposite of that. It was more like he fell through the man’s mind, meeting nothing whatsoever to latch on to, nothing that his mind or light could interpret, or even see.
Black’s frown deepened.
It crossed his mind that the guy might be a vampire.
He had serious doubts about that as a real possibility, though. Vampire minds didn’t feel like what he’d just felt. Moreover, this guy had been riding, hatless, in some of the most punishing sun Black had ever encountered. Sunlight might not kill vampires, like the old myths dictated, but in Black’s experience, they tended to avoid it.
He tried to read the guy again, going deeper with his light.
That time, he got a feeling of presence, a flavor of the man and even of his horse. He got a few impressions really, but they were fleeting and more in the realm of feelings. He still didn’t hear or feel anything resembling concrete thoughts.
He definitely didn’t hit up against anything resembling a shield, nor did the man in the black cowboy hat do anything to push Black out of his mind. There was no sense of misdirection, or even awareness of what Black had done, or tried to do.
The joker simply kept his mind completely and utterly blank when he wasn’t using it.
The only human Black had met who could do that so well was Cowboy.
“Who are you?” Black said. “Do I know you?”
The man smiled, his dark eyes far-seeing, unmoved by Black’s harder stare, or by the faint flavor of paranoia in his question.
“You’re asking that now? Why not get on the horse first?”
Black scowled. “I’m not getting on the fucking horse. And I’d rather know who you are now. Before I follow you to God knows where.”
The man’s smile grew even more cryptic. “I’m Nick’s friend.”
“I gathered that much––”
“I think it’s best if your own friend, back at the rez, tells you the rest. Then it’s coming from a source you have more reason to trust. You might hear it easier.”
Black’s scowl hardened.
He tried to read the guy again and again got nothing. How did this guy know to keep his mind blank around him? Did Nick tell him something? That struck Black as exceedingly unlikely, no matter how much Nick trusted this joker.
Could the guy see him, maybe?
That struck Black as unlikely, too.
Sure, Black ran into humans who could see a bit from time to time. Usually they were old-school religious types, mostly from Asia, South America, or Africa. It wasn’t totally implausible that this tribe might have one or two who had a bit of the real deal, human-style psychic vision, especially if some of the old ways persisted out here. Black had already noticed humans were more psychic in this version of Earth than the one where he’d been born.
Of course, most were utterly oblivious to that fact.
More to the point, not a single one of them had enough juice to ID Black for what he was. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of them never knew he could see at all, much less that he could run circles around them in that area. They couldn’t touch his shields, or see past his decidedly non-New Age persona, or his unwillingness to go there with any of them.
Even if they could see some hint of his seer’s sight, they’d never know what he was. How would they? Humans had no context, no myths about someone like him.
But yeah, it was possible this guy had something.
“Are you at least going to tell me where I’m going?” he said to cowboy hat, still frowning. “And why I can’t just drive there? Like a normal fucking person?”
“We have an elder. He asked for you. I’m taking you to him.” The man’s lips tilted in a faint smile. “And it’s better if we don’t advertise you being out here. It’s a small community. They can be touchy about strangers. Your friend asked if you could ride out instead, at least until you make a decision about the job.”
“An elder?” Black grunted.
Joseph. Maybe Easton and Dog put him up to it.
“Elder, huh?” he repeated. “Asked for me? What’s his name?”
“Come with me,” the man responded, his voice reasonable. “Maybe you’ll know yourself, when you see him.”
Feeling his unfriendliness deepen, Black folded his arms, flexing them a bit as he straightened to his full height, taking his weight off the car door.
“Look. I drove all the way out here, and you’re late. If you’re going to jerk me around, I’ll just as happily drive back to Santa Fe. Spend the night getting a hot rock massage, drinking tequila, and eating green chili steak.”
The man with the black cowboy hat chuckled.
Clucking his tongue at the bay, he began to turn the animal around.
“Come with me, ghost,” he said. “The horse I brought is gentle. Your friend told me you don’t like them.”
“My ‘friend’ told you, huh?” Black grunted. “What a pal.”
Even so, he wondered which “friend” the guy meant that time.
Probably Nick. He’d told that asshole he didn’t like horses. Was this Nick’s idea of a joke? If so, Black was definitely going to have to return the favor… in spades.
Homicide Detective Nick Tanaka had opened a giant can of whup-ass if he thought he could start a game like that with him and not get hit back.
To the man on the horse, he only shook his head.
“I told you, I’m not getting on anything that’s alive. I’ll follow you in the Jeep. Or hell, tell me where we’re going and you can meet me there. Maybe I can park in a barn or something. Come in after dark, so no one sees me.” He glanced at the cooler in the back seat of his car. “I’ll even save you a beer, if you’re not a total dick.”
“No.”
Black looked up, scowling. “Are you deaf?”
“Are you?” the man countered, leaning over the pommel of his saddle. “This is Navajo land, friend, and this part of it is sacred. You can’t drive on it… Tonto. You might be a ghost, but your skin is white, so I wouldn’t suggest going alone in a rented rich man’s car, not unless you want to get shot. You can’t even walk in these parts, not without me or another tribal authority with you.”
Leaning back in his seat, he clucked at his horse, wheeling it the rest of the way around.
“…So get on the fucking horse and stop being such a baby,” he added.
Black scowled, staring at the dark gray appaloosa, watching it swish its tail.
Oh, he was so going to make Tanaka pay for this.
2
BACK IN THE SADDLE
THEY RODE FOR over an hour.
Black still hadn’t gotten much out of the guy.
He hadn’t gotten any more off his new, horse-riding friend than he’d gotten from Nick, who genuinely hadn’t seemed to know much about the reason for this little visit.
He kept trying though––maybe because he was a masochist.
“So this medicine-shaman-old man guy,” Black pressed, shifting his butt in the hard leather saddle as he adjusted the rifle strap around his shoulder. “You said his name’s definitely not Joseph. And he told you to call Nick to get to me? Am I getting that right?”
When the man didn’t say anything, didn’t look over, Black frowned.
“You’re a cop though, right?�
� he pressed. “What kind of weird-ass procedure is this for a cop? Why didn’t we meet at the station?”
When the guy didn’t look back that time either, Black grunted, annoyed.
“Do you always give private contractors who come out to help with murder investigations the cryptic native mystic treatment?” he said. “Or should I assume I’m special? Do I somehow look particularly gullible to this b.s.?”
The man in the black cowboy hat with the turquoise and silver headband turned slightly in his saddle, giving Black a wan smile.
“You got a problem with cops? Nick said you were a little weird. Lucky he warned me you were kind of an asshole, too.”
Black grunted, but didn’t bother to argue the point.
He’d been trying to be a little nicer about not reading total strangers, at least not invasively, mostly because he knew Miri didn’t really approve of it.
In this case, after they’d been riding a little longer, he decided fuck it.
The guy wasn’t talking to him. Reading his surface thoughts hadn’t done jack-all.
He might as well go for it, since they were both out here.
By the time he finished doing a real scan of the guy’s mind, meaning into his memories and the deeper areas of his conscious and subconscious, he couldn’t decide if he was more annoyed, incredulous or wary. Clicking out once he’d hit upon all the most immediate, relevant details, he jumped a bit in the hard leather saddle, gripping the pommel.
He must have reacted a little too obviously in his facial expression, because when his eyes cleared, the man was staring at him again. Seeing the questioning look on the guy’s face, Black snorted, and decided, to hell with it.
“You hunt… supernatural beings?” Black shook his head, ignoring the guy’s deepening frown. “That’s your big ‘special unit’ secret? That you’re some kind of glorified ghost hunter? How the hell have they not kicked you off the force?”
Frowning at his own question, he felt his humor evaporate.
Jesus fucking christ.
This better not be about vampires.
If they called him out here because of vampires, he was going to kill Nick Tanaka. At the very least, he was going to give the guy an earful to end all earfuls.
Black To Dust_A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery Page 2