In Black We Trust

by J. C. Andrijeski

  Then the clip rolled forward, and they both jumped, as if snapped out of a trance. Their eyes followed the clip just as mine did, showing two soldiers in full, nighttime combat gear approaching the vampire with weapons raised. The one closest to the vampire held what looked like a long cattle prod.

  I could hear the vampire snarling, even above the sound of the fire, and the sirens in the driveway.

  I saw the creature look around, as if trying to decide if it should bolt or attack.

  It struck me that this was being filmed live, likely by drone. Why the hell had the military allowed drones in there to make live recordings of the scene?

  But I knew the answer to that, too.

  Charles.

  Charles was reason this was being recorded, and why it was being broadcast live.

  He was outing the vampires, just like Brick said he would. He was exposing them to the human public, shining a light on their existence with a high-powered flashlight.

  He’d crossed that irreversible line––the line both races agreed for decades, perhaps even longer––they would never, ever cross.

  In addition to a whole range of repercussions I couldn’t even imagine yet, it meant vampires, maybe even especially Brick, would have every incentive to tell the human world about seers. Charles didn’t have enough seers to stop them, or to do damage control if knowledge about our race reached the general population.

  It was only a matter of time now.

  There was going to be a full-fledged race war.

  “Fuck,” Black muttered under his breath.

  On the television overhead, a second soldier stalked forward, a woman with long red hair back in a braided ponytail. Raising one black-clad arm, she shot taser probes at the vampire, hitting it right in the middle of the chest.

  Hissing in fury, the vampire yanked them out by the connecting wires, one-handed.

  Without a pause, it leapt on her, sinking its teeth into her throat.

  It ripped out her jugular a half-breath later.

  Like it had when I’d actually seen a vampire do that on the ground, in person, the whole thing happened so fast, I could only gasp, receding backwards into Black.

  He gripped me tighter, looking over at Brick.

  The vampire didn’t return his gaze.

  He was staring up at the screen, a cold, depthless fury in his eyes.

  “It’s not too late,” Black said to him, his voice warning. “Don’t freak out, Brick. We can still stop it from getting out of control. Call it a cult. Drug addicts. Even some kind of disease. It can still be buried. They don’t have jack shit on you yet. All we need is enough people in the government to go along with our story.”

  Brick turned slowly, staring at him.

  When I did, I couldn’t help but flinch.

  His irises were the same color as Dorian’s––a deep, blood-like scarlet that started in a ring around the pupils and plumed outward like a flower blooming inside a glass ball.

  “You’d better be right,” the vampire said.

  He glared coldly at me, then at Black.

  “For all our sakes, you’d better be right, Quentin Black.”

  23

  BAIT

  WE WERE APPROACHING the National Mall when Brick instructed his drivers to pull into an underground parking lot not far from Charles’ hotel.

  There, a number of us spent time disguising our appearance.

  For most of the vampires, contact lenses were enough.

  For all of us seers, the disguises were more complicated.

  Charles met all of the immigrant seers in New Mexico, so he knew what they looked like. Luckily, the immigrants themselves knew a lot about disguising their appearance, and the appearance of seers in general. Some of them, it turned out, were practically experts on that very topic. They were also really good with prosthetics.

  They had a fair bit to say about disguising walks, voices, accents, and mannerisms, as well––things I’d never really thought about before now, frankly.

  Remembering there was a good chance the seer race would be exposed to the public sometime in the next few days, I found myself thinking I’d probably need to become an expert in that particular skill set soon.

  Both the vampires and Black’s team were well-equipped with contact lenses, facial prosthetics, and makeup, which helped.

  Black was the hardest to disguise, and the one we most needed to disguise convincingly.

  In the end, Mika and Jax did most of it, covering Black’s most obvious tattoos with prosthetic skin coverings, changing the shape of his face and nose with the same, changing his eye color from gold to dark brown, changing his hair with a wig.

  When he still looked too much like himself in their view, they gave him sideburns and a goatee, making him look older and rougher, and changed his clothes from the dark colors he normally wore to a tan suit, a pale yellow shirt, and tan-colored Italian dress shoes.

  They gave me a wig with long, strawberry-blond waves, more facial prosthetics, and contacts that changed my eyes to a lighter brown than Black’s.

  I also wore about three-times the amount of makeup I usually wear.

  Like most of our group, I wore a suit––in my case, a charcoal gray designer jacket with a shin-length, form-fitting, black pencil skirt, a cream-colored blouse, and four inch heels. All of the clothes looked and felt expensive.

  The vampires provided most of those too, including two different suit options for Black, despite his height and upper body size.

  Once we had the clothes and our physical mannerisms down, we all armed up.

  It felt more than a little strange to be strapping guns to my person, side by side with a dozen vampires, Nick, Angel, and Cowboy in disguises, Black’s employees, and a bunch of seers I barely knew.

  It was made even stranger by watching a Black I barely recognized standing shoulder to shoulder with Brick in contact lenses and a short, blond wig, hunched over the same weapons’ table, both of them frowning as they discussed logistics in muttered voices.

  I knew the gist of the plan.

  They were going to grab Charles on his way back to his hotel.

  The seers were still clocking Charles’ every move, and now reporting those movements to Black and Brick what seemed like roughly every thirty seconds.

  We’d continued talking over options on how to extract Charles for most of the drive from Louisiana.

  Brick and Dorian still wanted to wait for him at the hotel.

  The tall, female vampire seated next to Nick thought if we weren’t going to grab him at the hotel, we should do a real-life version of how they portrayed abductions in movies––meaning, trap his car with four of the vans and yank him out, shooting any human security team members the seers couldn’t control.

  Then, presumably, they’d put a cloth sack over Charles’ head, shoot him up with a syringe, and shove him in the back of one of the vans.

  Dex and some of the humans thought we should just grab him in the hotel lobby or, better yet, on the curb outside his hotel.

  A few others thought we should follow his vehicle in the van and use the seers to get the human driver to pull over. There was some talk about trying to hit him with a tranquilizer dart the instant he showed his face outside the White House grounds, or use the seers to get his driver to bring him to a parking structure or other secure location, preferably one with no cameras.

  In the end, Black vetoed all of these options.

  He thought we should get Charles to come to us.

  He wanted to contact Charles via the Barrier and ask for a meet, use the outing of the vampires as an excuse. In Black’s view, if Charles thought he was in control of the situation, it would cause him to lower his guard––and Charles knowing Black likely had Miriam would force him to be cautious.

  More to the point, Black could pick the capture zone.

  It would allow us to control the space, versus following Charles around, trying to guess his next move, or risking our seers bein
g spotted in the Barrier if they got too close.

  Black could save our seers for when we really needed them––during the extraction itself, when he needed Charles cut off from the Barrier totally.

  That way, the attempt wouldn’t be thwarted by Charles doing something unexpected, either, like his driver stopping for gas, or taking him to dinner with a Senator or some other high-ranking witness we couldn’t afford to kidnap or kill.

  It was also an approach more likely to pique Charles’ curiosity.

  Once they had him out in the open, they could cut off his Barrier access, using the seers, and use the overwhelming number of vampires to get Charles to stand down long enough to tranquilize him and get him out of there. Black thought the use of vampires would throw Charles off completely. Charles would maybe expect a trick or an ambush, but he would expect Black to come at him using humans and the immigrant seers.

  He would also assume he could overpower both easily.

  I just hoped Charles wasn’t right about that.

  Still, Black’s plan sounded the least crazy to me, out of all the other options.

  There was only one part I strongly disagreed with.

  “It should be me,” I said, interrupting yet another heated argument between Black and Brick. “I should do it.”

  Black turned, staring at me.

  Brick turned too, but I barely gave him a glance.

  My eyes remained on Black.

  With his eyes that dark brown color, and the odd sideburns, thicker jaw, scars on his face, plus the scruffy goatee, I blinked, again thrown by how different he looked. He still felt like Black, so I understood the meaning of the stare, but he didn’t look like him at all.

  “I should go,” I repeated. “It should be me.”

  I clenched my jaw briefly at his silence, holding his gaze.

  “He won’t hurt me, Black. We have no idea what he might do to you. It makes sense for me to be the one to contact him. It makes sense for me to be the one to talk to him. I should go. And you know it.”

  The silence deepened.

  In it, Black and Brick exchanged looks.

  After a pause, Brick shrugged. “She’s not wrong.”

  Black’s frown turned into a scowl.

  Looking back at me, I could almost see his mind working, trying to come up with reasons why I was wrong, why it shouldn’t––or couldn’t––be me. In the end, he seemed to give up looking for something rational, and simply shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll do it, Miri.”

  “No,” I said, sharper. “You won’t.”

  Brick chuckled, looking between us.

  “Children.” He gave us a tsk tsk in mock warning.

  I ignored the vampire that time, too.

  “Black, we’re not discussing this.” I frowned, studying his face. “Even apart from the other reasons, you’re the best sniper we have in the group.”

  Black glanced at Jem, frowning. “That may not be true now.”

  “You said we needed them to handle the shielding,” I said, exasperated. “You and Javier can take point on the tranquilizer guns. You can cover me the whole time.”

  Black stared at me.

  From his expression, and what I felt on his light, he still didn’t want to discuss this rationally. He was probably trying to figure out how he could force me to do it the way he wanted without the rest of his team jumping down his throat.

  He must have heard me.

  Grunting, he looked away. Folding his arms, he clicked under his breath in annoyance, which didn’t exactly convince me I’d been wrong.

  “Fine.” He turned to Javier and Dex, then scowled at Kiko and Nick. “But I want a real fucking gun. Kiko and Javier can take the tranquilizer rifles. Cowboy and I will cover them on each side… with rifles with actual fucking bullets in them.”

  It was my turn to frown. “Are you sure that’s such a good idea? You’re not exactly… calm. Right now, I mean. We need Charles alive, don’t we?”

  Cowboy chuckled, taking a long-range rifle with a scope from Kiko when she handed it to him out of the back of one of the vans.

  “She’s not wrong, boss,” he said, winking at me. “If it’s Miri out there, maybe you should hand the gun-work off to someone else.”

  Black scowled at him, then at me, then back at him.

  “No,” he said, cold.

  Cowboy chuckled again, but didn’t argue, handing a second rifle over to him, a CheyTac Intervention .408 that looked customized, and not only in the scope.

  Black pulled back the bolt, still giving me hard looks as he checked over the gun, pulling out the magazine and checking that before pulling apart half the rifle in the back of the van, cleaning pieces of it and putting it back together again before he loaded the chamber with the bolt. He did it all so quickly and precisely I could only watch him, fascinated.

  When he’d finished and slung the rifle strap around his shoulder, he walked straight up to me and took my upper arm, leading me away from the rest of the group.

  He didn’t take me far. He walked me maybe a dozen paces, just far enough to be out of direct earshot of the rest of the group.

  Once he had me where he wanted me, he scowled.

  “I don’t want you to do it,” he said.

  “I know.” I gripped his arm in return. “Black, I know. But it makes sense, and you know it. Charles won’t hurt me. I don’t trust him not to hurt you.”

  Black’s frown hardened.

  He didn’t speak for a few seconds, but I could tell my rationality was frustrating the hell out of him.

  He wanted me to respond to his irrationality with irrationality of my own, not feed him yet more rationality. That, or he wanted a better, even more rational excuse to contradict what I’d just said. Unable to really get movement on either thing, he scowled down at me instead, bleeding frustration at me through his fingers.

  “I don’t want you to do it,” he said. “I’m in charge here. For want of another leader, I’m in charge. You have to trust me.”

  “I know you’re in charge,” I said. “And I do trust you. But this is your plan, and it’s my job to give you advice that will best help your plan to succeed.”

  “Miri––”

  “Charles may not come to you, Black. He will definitely come to me. He may hurt you. He definitely won’t hurt me. Therefore, it has to be me. No one else on your team can claim the same two things… not even you. No one else on your team would disagree with anything I just said. You are the leader. We do trust you. Which is why I can’t let you do this.”

  His fingers on my arms grew tighter.

  Even so, I felt his rationality reasserting itself, maybe in part because I continued to open my light the longer I talked.

  By the end, I could feel that affecting him more than my actual words.

  “I don’t like it,” he repeated. “I don’t want you out there, Miri. Not when I have no idea what he might have with him.”

  Gritting his teeth, he confessed in a lower voice.

  “I don’t like any of this, doc. I’m not used to going into a potentially lethal situation this blind. I’m not used to having to make plans on the fucking fly like this.”

  “I know.” I touched his face, taking my hand away when it met prosthetic. “I know you don’t like this. But it’s a good plan, given what we know. I just have to be the one to do it.”

  I watched him frown, feeling his uncertainty.

  “He’ll come to me, Black,” I repeated, softer. “You know he will.”

  Clenching his jaw harder, he nodded.

  Even so, I felt another plume of emotion leave his light.

  Gripping his hand in mine, I added,

  “I want my ring back, Black.”

  He flinched, staring at me.

  Then his expression softened, growing so open I squeezed his hand harder.

  Leaning down, he kissed me on the mouth.

  I felt his consciousness of the others with us, even as h
e did it. I also felt him decide to cut it short, before one or both of us might have turned it into a real kiss, even as another plume of frustration left his light. There was so much restraint behind all of it, I ended up gripping his hand tighter, watching his face in something close to worry.

  “I’ll be all right, Black,” I told him. “Try to calm down, okay?”

  Looking down at me, he frowned.

  “I’ll kill him before I let him take you, Miri,” he said, blunt. “I know he’s your uncle, but I won’t let him take you. I won’t.”

  Studying those alien, dark brown eyes, seeing a glimmer of the gold even past the contact lenses, I only nodded.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I was good with that, too.

  I DIDN’T TRY to reach Charles until all of our people were already in place.

  Black picked the location, with some input from Brick and the other seers.

  In the end, it really couldn’t have been more of a public place.

  I felt Black’s continued uneasiness with my role in all this, the whole time they mapped out the final plans. I wasn’t sure how much the others picked up on it, but for me, it was pretty much impossible to ignore, every time I got anywhere near his light.

  It got worse whenever he stood near me for more than a few seconds.

  For part of their planning session, I walked off with Manny, Lawless, Dog and a few others, mostly so I wouldn’t hear the exact details of their locations during the meet itself. Black thought it would be better if I didn’t know where all of them were––physically, that is––since I’d be standing so close to Charles.

  Black also didn’t want me knowing how many vampires would be there.

  In the end, they decided I shouldn’t know where any of them were, not precisely, not even Black himself.

  I knew they were right.

  Even with me shielded, we had to assume Charles would be able to read a fair bit off my light once we stood close to one another. Jem and the other immigrant seers could cut me off from Charles’ light totally––so could Black, from what he said––but again, not without tipping our hand. Black wanted to hold off on doing that until we had a better idea of what Charles wanted, and what he had protecting him.