Canada. Alaska. Europe.
Hell, we could be in China for all I knew.
I strained to hear speech, listening for accents, language.
I didn’t hear any voices at all, though, not before they bundled me into the back seat of a car. Brick sat next to me. The guy in the handcuffs with the sword tattoo sat on my other side, according to the sound of his chains clanking. I still hadn’t seen or smelled any other vampires, not apart from Brick himself and his vampire girlfriend.
I still tried to smell the air, to listen. I didn’t come up with much. That green smell and taste. A few birdsongs, but I don’t know birds well enough to identify them. I didn’t hear cows or other livestock. I also didn’t smell them.
We weren’t driving for very long, which again made me think it must have been a private airstrip, likely one used solely by a small group of people.
When I got out of the car that time, Brick held my arm.
I heard him speak to a few other people, telling them to bring the chained human.
Then, using a totally different voice, he spoke directly to Lila. His words came out so soft, so filled with reassurance and love, I flinched.
“Come with me, my darling. I brought this nice lady to speak with you...”
I fought to stifle a snort, but didn’t quite succeed. If Brick heard it, he didn’t react, nor did he take his attention off the vampire girl behind me.
“Come, darling... please. Take my hand. I know you like to look at the trees, but I’ve got a special place all ready for the two of you so you can talk. It’s much warmer and safer and no one will bother you. We can come outside and look at the trees later, my love.”
Again, his voice held so much tenderness it made me wince.
Clearly, he was one of those people who could compartmentalize their minds and emotions to a deeply scary degree.
That, or he simply didn’t see non-vampires as people.
I flinched when he gripped my arm tighter and began leading me firmly across the gravel driveway. I still couldn’t see anything at all through the black bag, but he calmly told me when to step, where to step, and how high.
Soon we were inside a building. My heels echoed loudly on what sounded like a stone floor under an awful lot of space. No carpet. Big entryway. The echo came from up high, however––so I guessed the entryway might be furnished. With the acoustics, it might even be a church.
Before I could discern much more about that space, he steered me left and then down a narrow corridor. The echo faded as soon as I felt carpet below my feet. We didn’t walk down that segment for long. Brick opened a heavy-sounding door, and then he was bringing me down a long flight of stairs. The stairs weren’t carpeted; they felt like stone or cement again.
Brick had to coax Lila to follow us.
“It’s all right, darling. No doctors... no doctors here, I promise... it’s safer down here. Promise...”
Safe, my ass, my mind muttered. Although maybe it is safe... for her.
Feeling my jaw harden, I didn’t voice the thought aloud.
We reached the bottom after what felt like an unusually large number of stairs, with no landings at all that I noticed, so no way to count floors. I heard the squeak of a door that sounded like metal, then I was brought inside a warmer room.
I heard a fire crackling.
Then the hood was ripped abruptly from my head.
I found myself staring around a room that was as comfortable as Brick had promised Lila, if somewhat overdone in gothic style. An art nouveau couch stood directly in front of me, with black-painted wood and forest green upholstery. It was framed on either side by matching chairs. All three faced a stone fireplace large enough to roast a pig in... or perhaps a human being.
Over the fireplace hung a long, beautifully-forged sword with a cross for a handle.
Flames crackled up from a blackened log. Dark rugs with Victorian floral patterns covered the stone floor, including near the hearth. The paintings on the walls were 19th Century, and mostly portraits. A few looked vaguely familiar.
There were no windows.
I turned back towards the door when two humans walked in. I guessed their race from their eyes, and wondered if they were the same two who’d dragged me off the plane. They half led, half carried the man with the dirty blond hair. Reaching the wall, they dumped him unceremoniously to the floor, where they promptly handcuffed his chains to a large iron ring set in the wall, like something from a medieval dungeon.
He had a bag over his head, too. They didn’t remove his.
I figured they must have drugged him, given how sluggishly he moved as they brought him in. Now that he slumped in the corner, he didn’t move at all.
I turned towards Brick, who made a hospitable wave towards the forest green couch and the two high-backed chairs.
“Will this do?” he said absently, his eyes flickering over the overall layout of the room. “It seemed suitably... Freudian.”
He checked his watch when I didn’t respond.
Lila was already wandering towards the couch, moving like a sleepwalking child. I watched her sit on it delicately, then bounce on it, like the springs and the fabrics fascinated her. She didn’t smile as she stroked the green velvet covering.
“Well?” Brick said, his voice openly impatient. “Perhaps I wasn’t clear on how little time we have, Miriam... or what will happen if your husband were to interrupt us before you had finished this task for me. I thought I was. Clear, that is. Repeatedly so.”
I glanced at those red eyes, the handsome face framed in that shoulder-length brown hair. For the first time, I noticed he looked young. Younger than Black even, closer to his late twenties than early thirties. Something in his energy, or maybe his facial expressions, made him appear much older, though.
Older than me. Older than Black. Even older than my Uncle Charles.
Forcing my mind back on the task at hand, I exhaled, combing my fingers through my long, straight black hair. “What is it you expect from me, Brick? You can’t possibly think I can cure her with a few psychic scans and a snap of my fingers?”
“Tell me what is wrong with her.” His accented voice grew openly angry. “I will do the rest. Give me a diagnosis... a real one... and I’ll leave you be.”
I frowned, looking at the girl on the couch, then sighed.
“Okay,” I said. “What was she like before?”
Brick rested his hands on his hips, flashing silver rings he wore on all but a few fingers.
“She was different,” he said after a pause. “She was...” He waved almost helplessly towards the woman in the indigo dress, then exhaled in a near-growl.
“Honestly? She was more like you, Dr. Fox.” He frowned, turning slightly to face me. “She was a fighter. Present. Passionate. Beautifully alive... ferocious when need be. She was my heart, Dr. Fox. And I do not say that lightly.”
His red eyes glared into mine, as if daring me to mock his words.
“Oh, and also?” he said, his voice colder. “She spoke.”
I nodded, turning my attention back to her.
“She hasn’t spoken at all?” I said. “Not once since you got her back?”
“Not while she’s been awake.”
I was tempted to make a crack about coffins, but didn’t.
“She talks in her sleep?” I clarified.
“She screams in her sleep,” he said, shifting his eyes towards me in another flatly level stare. “She has nightmares, Dr. Fox. Every night. Terror dreams, I suppose you could say. They are quite... disturbing.”
Remembering Black waking, sweating where he lay next to me, gripping hold of me at times hard enough to leave bruises, a wash of uncontrollable fury went through me.
That time, I gave the vampire a death stare right back.
“And?” I said coldly. “Maybe it’s karma, Brick. Did you ever think of that?”
His red eyes turned a darker, more blood-like red as he stared at me. “Tell me what is wrong
with her, and I’ll let you go, Miriam. Anything else you do here, including wasting time being offensive towards me, will not win either of us that which we most desire.”
I bit my lip, forcing myself to acknowledge his words.
Looking at Lila again, I assessed her child-like demeanor, thinking it over from the clinical side of my brain. Adults who fell back into the psychological affect of a child almost invariably did so as a result of severe trauma. She kicked her legs even as I thought it, looking up at me with those wide, glass-like, tinted red eyes, almost like a twelve-year-old.
It would have to be a severe trauma, if what Brick was saying were true.
Or brain damage, perhaps. Was that what Brick wanted to know? If it was psychological or physiological? Why not get her an MRI?
Then another thought: would an MRI work on a vampire?
“They were extracting venom from her fangs?” I said, clarifying what Black told me about the lab’s ghoulish experiments. “They were using her to try and make humans into vampires, correct?”
Brick gave me a harder stare. “That’s not all they did there, Dr. Fox.”
My eyebrows went up. That was news to me. “Oh? What else did they do?”
His voice grew colder. “They also attempted to turn vampires into humans.” He adjusted his shirt collar around his jacket, his jaw harder as he stared at Lila. “My darling Lilith had the very grave misfortune of being in the second group, doctor. They... changed her in some way. It’s why your kind can now read her, I imagine. For a seer to feel her mind at all, it must be... different somehow. Not the same as before.”
“Different how?” I said.
He gave me another of those death-like stares. “Different from a vampire.”
“How would you even find that out?” I said. “About seers, I mean.”
He frowned, exhaling, his red eyes flashing. “We have a few of your kind we employ in odd jobs from time to time.” Seeing my eyebrows shoot up, he held up his hand. “Also, I felt it in her. I felt a difference in her blood when I drank from her. I tasted that difference, so I know I did not imagine it.”
I stared at him again. “You drank from her? Another vampire?”
“To find out what had happened to her... yes. I did. Repeatedly, in fact.”
“And what did you find out?”
“I told you what I found out, Miriam,” he said, his New Orlean’s accent coming out harder, more angry. “They tried to make my darling girl human. They gave her drugs... some kind of genetic virus. They did blood transfusions and starved her. Then, when she was nothing more than bones, they committed horrible psychological tortures against her, meant to make her hate and fear her own nature. They nearly killed my beloved girl, all so they could try and strip her of her true life...!”
I flinched a little at the intensity of his tone, then bit the inside of my cheek. Keeping my reaction out of my voice, I said neutrally, “You said you employ seers?”
“It’s not important, Miriam.”
“It’s important to me––”
“––Then let me clarify,” he cut in. “I’m not going to discuss that matter with you, Miriam.” He gave me another of those hard stares. “Get to work, doctor. The clock, as they say, is ticking. For you far more than for me.”
His voice made it clear the conversation was over.
Even so, I struggled for a few seconds to remain silent.
Forcing my eyes off him, I looked at Lila instead. I believed him that he’d kill me if I didn’t do as he asked. Despite being a sadist, he seemed to really care about this other vampire. That part didn’t feel like posturing; it felt real.
Black told me to stay alive, to do whatever I had to do to stay alive.
He also told me to give Brick whatever he wanted.
So that’s exactly what I intended to do.
7
The Doctor Is In
THAT DAMPENING CLOUD lifted from my psychic sight the second I sat down on one of the green-upholstered chairs, facing Lila.
I sent a quick word to Black as soon as I could feel my psychic abilities working again.
Black? Are you there?
Miri? he sent back at once. What’s happening?
I’m here, I murmured with my mind. Underground. Stone building in the countryside. Big... high ceilings, maybe even a church...
I went on as fast as I could, relaying every detail of what I’d seen and heard without taking my eyes off Lila. I told him everything I could think of from the trip here and the building itself. I described the room and the stairs and Lila and the two humans.
I didn’t describe the guy with the sword tattoo. I didn’t want Brick having any more emotional leverage over Black than he had already.
But I couldn’t stay with him long.
Okay, I sent hurriedly. I have to go. I really have to go. I need to do this thing for him. He’s going to notice if I don’t come up with something here soon...
I understand. He sent me another flood of warmth. Behind that, I sensed more, a lot more than he let me feel. I love you, Miriam.
Fighting back my emotional reaction to that, I let his presence fade.
I focused my mind on Lila’s.
Going into her mind was like entering a mouse’s maze, only one filled with flickering strobe lights and mirrors and transparent walls. That strange mantra in the foreground of her thoughts remained, but I almost couldn’t hear it in everything else that swam forward to meet me.
The emotions coming off her were the hardest.
The sheer depth of feeling there, the flickers of love, hate, grief, fury, terror, loneliness... it all collided and jerked my own feelings to and fro, my own fears for Black, anger at Brick, that feeling of powerlessness. The intensity of how she felt was overwhelming. It also surprised me. I never would have thought a vampire would feel so much.
With her, it was like a drug, pulling me deeper into her mind.
I fought that pull.
I fought to stay objective, to keep my own mind and emotions separate. I knew I couldn’t afford to get lost in her, to lose myself, or forget what I was doing here. That was true of any client, but here it was doubly true. Here, in this space, I almost became her in order to see inside her mind. There was no way to avoid that.
Still, I read my human clients too; the process wasn’t totally alien to me.
Once I’d more or less regained control, pulling out of her somewhat in the process, I could hear her words again, louder that time.
...never do it again... never do it... never never never do it again... never...
Lila? I spoke in her mind gently. Lila, can you hear me?
Never again, she promised, maybe to herself, maybe to me, maybe to the world. Never again. Never ever ever again... I won’t do it again... I won’t... I won’t...
But she would do it again.
She believed she would, anyway.
She believed it with every beat of her heart.
She hoped if she said it often enough, she might somehow change the future, maybe change her past, too. She was trying to rewire her brain, change something inside of herself through sheer force of will. I’d come across such thought patterns before, of course.
They were really more of a prayer than a promise.
What is it you’ll never do? I sent. What is it you don’t like, Lila?
...never never never do it again, never again. I’ll never do it again. I mean it this time... I really really really mean it... I mean it I mean it I mean it I mean it I mean it. I’ll never do it again... never...
Like before, on the plane, she looked at me in that space.
Inside her own mind, her eyes weren’t red. They were a deep, warm brown, like polished wood. Her face was fuller, more pink. Her body looked younger somehow, less hard.
Those eyes pleaded with me.
Kill me, she sent, just like she had before.
The words carried a desperation that hit at my heart.
I knew what she
was. I knew, but I couldn’t help feeling for her.
Kill me... please. You seem like a good person. You seem good... not like me. Not like him. Just do it... end this, please. Don’t tell him you’re going to do it. He’ll never allow it. You need to do it... kill me... please...
That desperation tensed my throat.
Maybe for that reason, or maybe for another, I found myself telling her the truth.
I can’t kill you, Lila, I told her. Brick would kill my husband if I did that. And me. And probably other people I care about. I’m sorry, but I don’t know you. I won’t risk the people I love because you want to die. You’ll have to find some other way.
He’ll never let me go.
That grief in her swelled, flooding over me in a thick cloud.
He’ll never let me go... she sent, softer. I heard love in her words that time. Never. He’d never leave me alone if I even whispered it. You don’t know what he’s like. He’d see it as... betrayal. Like he’d betrayed me, if he let it happen.
I bit my lip.
It went against every rule of my profession to encourage a client in their suicidal fantasies.
Then again, Lila wasn’t a client. Should I really be advising a vampire not to kill herself, given that her kind was a threat to me and every other person on the planet? How much worse would Brick be, if he got his girlfriend back?
Then another thought struck me. How much worse would he be if he lost her?
I changed the subject.
What did they do to you there, Lila? I sent. In the lab. What happened to you that changed you so much? I need to know.
There was a silence after I asked the question.
I saw her body once more in my mind’s eye, sitting on that couch, rocking herself gently. She stared at the floor with those deep brown eyes.
For a long-feeling few seconds, that’s all I saw.
Then other things flashed at me.
I saw what Black had described to me... an underground lab. It was cold, like a maze of glass cages and metal doors, filled with stainless steel and white tile and beeping machines. Filled with people in white coats with empty faces.
Black Blood: A Quentin Black Mystery Story: Quentin Black Mystery #5.5 Page 5