More than that, I felt flickers of hurt in his light, that I’d never told him. Exhaling in frustration, I looked between him and Brick, realizing I had both of their undivided attention now.
Shrugging, I conceded with a nod.
“In abstract terms… yes. While he was with me in Hawaii, he’d talk about his thoughts on the balance of power globally, how he felt about it. We’d talk at length sometimes, usually at night, usually after we’d finished training, dinner, whatever else. It all seemed pretty academic to me at the time, truthfully.”
I glanced at Black, apologetically that time.
“…The more he drank, the more talkative he’d get.”
Feeling as much as seeing Black and Brick exchange looks, I shrugged.
“Maybe he thought I’d be more open to it, after what happened in New York.”
There was a silence.
In it, Black tightened his hold on my thigh.
“What did he say exactly, Miri?” he said finally.
I heard the caution in his voice.
Again, he needn’t have bothered. I wasn’t protecting Uncle Charles.
I couldn’t even think about Charles really, not without a deeper coil of anger and disgust twisting through my gut. Sadness lived there, too––memories of childhood––but I couldn’t go there, not now, not until we stopped him from whatever he was doing.
Anyway, I’d been thinking about the answer to Black’s question before he asked. Since all of this came up, I’d thought about it over and over.
For the same reason, I didn’t have to think long to answer.
“He didn’t tell me anything useful,” I admitted, sinking deeper into the van’s seat and sighing. “Nothing concrete… or particularly relevant to what you two are arguing about. Just that finding more seers had to be the priority. That had to come first, before anything else. He said if he had more seers, he could run the kinds of ops you’re talking about. He tried to make it sound all noble, of course. He talked about stopping wars, keeping peace among the humans, ushering in a new age of prosperity.”
I looked around at all of them.
“It always came back to needing more seers,” I added. “He was obsessed on that point. That was Charles’ number one priority.”
“A priority that is no longer realistic,” Jem muttered from behind me. “Or relevant.”
Turning in my seat, I met his gaze, frowning.
Remembering New Mexico, I realized he was right.
I looked back at Black.
“Maybe that’s the real reason this is happening now,” I said. “The doors are closed. Probably for good, given what happened to that other world.”
Brick frowned, looking between us.
“Other world?” he said. “What does that mean?”
I didn’t bother to answer him.
Even so, it hit me, maybe for the first time, how fast all of this was happening.
None of us had really absorbed any of what took place in New Mexico, or what it meant––for seers, for vampires, for humans. We hadn’t had time to absorb it.
Knowing Charles, that could be why he was doing this now. He was moving as many chess pieces around the board as he could while all of us were still off-balance. He was putting as much in motion as he could before we managed to recover.
I glanced at the back seat, at Jem, Yarli, Holo and Jax.
Then my eyes found Black.
“Maybe Charles figures he’s got nothing left to lose,” I said, watching Black’s gold eyes. “It’s not like he can wait for seers to simply breed their numbers higher, given how few of us there are, and how few females there are, especially. Maybe for Charles, it’s all or nothing now. Take out as many vampires as he can before seers are hunted into extinction. Hope he and his seers can hunker down and survive whatever happens on the other side.”
Brick frowned.
Leaning closer towards me over the back of the van’s seat, the vampire stared at me with those crystal eyes, his voice deadly serious.
“He believes that is the vampire goal?” he said. “Charles believes we intend to hunt all seers into extinction on this world?”
I stared back at him, my voice cold. “Don’t you?”
There was a silence.
Brick glanced at the two vampires sitting next to him, still frowning, then returned his gaze to me and Black.
From his expression, I got the impression my answer disquieted him.
“And if it’s not?” the vampire king said. “If that’s not our goal?”
Black clicked at him.
His voice grew openly annoyed.
“We aren’t getting into this now,” he growled. “We’re wasting time even discussing it. Much less voicing empty platitudes to one another about future benign intent. We all agree we must stop Charles, na? That should be enough right now, for both of our peoples. If you want to talk treaty after this is done… a realistic one… we’ll discuss it then.”
Black looked at me, mouth pursed, his hand tightening on my thigh.
“Apart from Miriam, he wants us all dead.” He looked back at Brick. “That’s enough of a mutual-fucking-motivation for a short-term alliance. Isn’t it?”
Realizing he wanted an answer from me, as much if not more than Brick, I thought about his words. Still thinking, I nodded slowly.
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”
Black’s fingers on me marginally relaxed their grip.
He focused on Brick.
“And you, vampire king? We don’t have to sign a mutual nonaggression pact for all time in the back of this goddamned van. We need to find Charles and stop him. I’m open to talking about the rest after… assuming there is an after, and assuming neither of us turn on the other and get a bunch of us needlessly killed.”
Silence fell after he spoke.
Brick nodded slowly, his eyes thoughtful. He focused first on me, then on Black.
“Yes,” he murmured. “I agree.”
22
YOU’D BETTER BE RIGHT
WE ARRIVED IN D.C. around five o’clock in the afternoon.
I didn’t sleep much during the drive.
I’d be surprised if any of us did.
The seers tracked Charles through the night, updating us periodically on his comings and goings. From what they said, Lucky Lucifer didn’t appear to have slept much, either.
Apart from about two hours spent in a hotel room near the National Mall, where he might have caught some sleep and maybe a shower, he was at the White House until sometime around four in the morning.
Unfortunately, Jem wasn’t able to give us a lot of specifics, in terms of who Charles met with there, or what those meetings were about. At least a dozen seers guarded the psychic space around the Oval Office. That shield followed Charles to conference rooms in the West Wing, as well as to the White House residence where he met with the President alone for breakfast on the balcony the next morning.
Those same seers appeared to be guarding the key players in those discussions, as well, including in the aftermath of the meetings. The shield appeared thickest around the President himself, Charles of course, and a human who sat in on many of those meetings.
Black guessed that person to be Malcolm Silver, but he couldn’t tell for certain.
Jem asked Black a second time if he and his team should try to punch through any of those shields.
Black told them to hold off.
I knew he still held out some hope we might get into D.C. undetected.
Anyway, the news told us most of what we needed to know.
Television and online news played in the background pretty much non-stop throughout the drive––both on embedded video screens in the van’s ceiling, and via streaming watched and listened to by various members of our team, mostly on their phones.
I learned that vampires didn’t need to sleep at all.
Maybe for the same reason, they did a lot of the news monitoring, reporting highlights every so often to tho
se of the rest of us who were awake.
Black still featured heavily in a lot of those newscasts.
I saw my face on a few as well. One newscaster called me a “potential hostage.”
None of them called me his wife.
I saw Black’s friends and associates being taken away for questioning by Federal agents.
Some of those were difficult to watch. Lawrence “Larry” Farraday, one of Black’s lawyers was shown getting picked up at his penthouse in New York. I saw him talking to agents as they brought him to a waiting car in handcuffs, his toupee slightly askew over his trademark gray suit and sneakers.
I liked Larry. He was a friend.
I saw news interviews of people I’d met in New York, mostly business associates and friends of Black. Thankfully, the majority of his San Francisco employees were with us, but the few who’d opted to stay behind also got picked up, including Elspeth, Black’s longtime executive assistant.
That one probably bothered me the most.
I had to hope it was a scare tactic.
Black seemed to think it was, but we had no way of knowing if they would actually try to prosecute any of them. At the very least, they’d likely be held in custody and interrogated for hours, if not days.
I ended up halfway in Black’s lap for most of the drive, watching the largest of the three screens that lived in the van’s ceiling. For the first two or three hours of the drive, the bombing in Lafitte, along with the manhunt for Black, pretty much filled the newscasts, along with shorter excerpts on ongoing national and international stories.
Then the attack in New Orleans hit the news.
Images and commentary from the driveway of Brick’s house pretty much wiped out every other story on cable news, pulling award-winning newscasters out of bed, even though it had to be after two in the morning by then.
I’d been dozing off when it started.
My head rested against Black’s shoulder, his arm and hand wrapped around my back and massaging my thigh. His heat seeped through my skin, even as I found myself winding more of my light into his, pulling on him to open more, to let more of me in. I was still struggling with how much both of our lights were making demands on each other, how much we were fighting our way back into the other’s light, and how distant we still felt in some ways.
I was also struggling with feeling what had to be Brick on him still.
I was struggling with all of it, truthfully.
I also couldn’t afford to think about it then.
I was worried about Black. I was worried about me, about the two of us together. That didn’t even get into my fears around where we were going, our tenuous alliance with vampires, not to mention specific fears and distrust around Brick himself, worry about what Charles was up to, that sick feeling we were already too late, worry about Elspeth and Larry, worry about Nick and Angel, worry about the Native kids, worry about our new seer friends.
Black must have felt at least some of this.
I’d been trying to stop my brain for at least an hour when he started gently manipulating my light. Using heat and reassurance and softer waves and pulls, he tried to get me to relax.
At the same time, he started massaging my back with precise, light-filled fingers.
The longer he did it, the more I felt myself letting go of the parts of me that were obsessed with his light, with his mind, with the emotions I felt swimming through both.
I was also forced to realize that, as trivial as my mind told me it was right then, a decent chunk of my worry was about me and Black––what was going on with the two of us, how he felt, whether he distrusted me as much as it felt like he did.
He kissed my head, still stroking my face and hair.
No, Miri, he sent, soft. No. That’s not it.
Sighing, he went on when I didn’t answer.
Miri, I told you. I told you back in New Mexico. What you’re picking up on in me, it’s mostly an organic thing, because of the separation. It’s not conscious. I don’t even know I’m doing it until it gets so bad I lose control over it. We just need time… time where our lights can calm down. We aren’t getting much of that right now.
I grunted.
I couldn’t exactly disagree with that.
Exhaling, he added in more of a mental growl,
It would be easing a lot faster if both our lives hadn’t been in nonstop fucking danger for the past forty-eight hours. And if we’d gotten more than a few minutes of stolen alone-time. Or even close to enough sleep.
I grunted a second time, nodding where I leaned against his chest.
I was definitely in agreement with that, too.
And if I didn’t have to deal with you being around so many other people, Black added sourly. And vampires… and other seers you think are hot.
Wrapping my arm around his waist, I squeezed him, hard.
You’re ridiculous, I murmured in his mind.
Am I? Are you sure?
I nodded. I’m sure. Burrowing deeper into his chest, I added, And I saw you check out Yarli, so don’t pretend you’ve gone blind all the sudden, either.
He stiffened.
I didn’t look up, but I could practically feel him frown.
Yarli? he sent. No, I didn’t.
Liar.
His light grew genuinely offended. I’m not a fucking liar, Miriam.
When I showed him an image of her bending down, pulling bags out the back of the raft we took from the ship to Lafitte, and his eyes sliding over her near-perfect rear end, his mental frown turned into a scowl.
Are you fucking serious? he sent. I looked at her because her ass was in my face. It was pure fucking reflex. It also left my mind less than a second later.
I exhaled. I know, dumb-dumb. What do you think I’m trying to tell you?
His mind grew silent.
As he felt me continue to open my light, as he turned over my words, I felt his light soften reluctantly, enough that I relaxed more. Another, deeper exhale left me when he started massaging the back of my neck, using his fingers to loosen the muscles in my shoulder.
It’s not the same, he muttered, quieter.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
I’d only closed my eyes for a few seconds when Brick cursed from the seat in front of us, causing me to open them. He spoke in Creole French, a cold fury in his voice.
I followed his gaze to the images on the large screen.
At first it was hard to make much out.
I could tell I was still looking at footage of his house in New Orleans, despite the fact that the screen was mostly dark. The fire burned hotly in the background, more brightly than it had when we’d been there. It had eaten through most of the two-story building by then, and continued to burn so hot, I doubted any firefighters would be able to get near it.
I was still staring up, wondering what Brick was reacting to, when the sharp scream of jet engines vibrated the speakers in the walls of the van. Smaller missiles than what they’d used on us screeched and whistled down, impacting the side of Brick’s house, throwing up a wash of white light.
Briefly, the grounds and gardens were illuminated.
Bodies lay in different parts of the lawn, most of them wearing the black combat clothes of the Marines.
Most of them weren’t moving.
Raising my head from Black’s shoulder, I stared up at the screen.
It hit me again––shock, almost to the point of mental paralysis.
Before the last forty-eight hours, I never in a million years thought they’d drop anything remotely approaching military-grade ordnance in the middle of an American city. A SWAT team, sure. Even a small military unit wouldn’t have surprised me… but actual bombs, actual guidance system missiles, I wouldn’t have believed.
Before the last forty-eight hours, I would’ve doubted they’d even use drones so far inside the city limits––due to the optics, if nothing else.
They had, though.
Someone inside the Unit
ed States government ordered a military attack in an affluent neighborhood in a major city in the United States.
Moreover, they’d put it on television.
“Turn up the volume,” one of the seers in the back said, Holo, I think.
The female vampire next to Nick used a small, white remote to turn up the sound.
The commentators’ voices immediately filled the back of the van.
“Oh my God!” The woman reporter yelled, making me jump. I stared up at the beautiful Asian woman with the young, round face, watching her point at the screen behind her. “There! Did you see it? Brian, look!”
“Where?” The other reporter, a handsome white man with dark brown hair followed her pointing finger. He sounded as off-key and panicked as her. “Where, Wendy?”
He touched his headset, then seemed to make an effort to calm his voice.
“We’re getting conflicting reports,” he said, wild-eyed as he stared up at the monitor. “Authorities are saying now that the same beings were spotted in Lafitte, then tracked to this Garden District mansion in downtown New Orleans. The Garden District is one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in––”
“There!” Wendy the reporter called out, looking towards the cameras. “There! Freeze it! In the right-hand corner of the screen!”
The image behind them froze.
Without prompting from either of the reporters, the camera operator zoomed in on one part of the screen.
I stared up at the unmistakeable image of a vampire’s face.
Fangs extended, its glass-like eyes nearly full crimson, it was pale as chalk, its long black hair framing its face as it snarled, staring directly into the camera. In the still image, the fire froze in the background, as did the outlines of more vampires running across the lawn, most of them wearing dark clothes.
Some of those vampires were on fire.
But it was the image of the vampire in the foreground that drew my eyes––and the eyes of probably every person watching this broadcast, including everyone in that newsroom.
It didn’t look human.
It didn’t look remotely human.
Both reporters stared up at the image on their monitor, silent.
They remained that way for a few seconds too long.
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