Fear exploded over me.
For a few seconds, I went totally still––like an animal stunned by a bright light. Like what I would have done in a hot zone during the war, knowing someone had eyes on me. All of my instincts flared into life as I froze. Even my mind went totally silent.
I felt surprise from him, as soon as I did.
Surprise, then...
Desire. A warm flush of desire, what bordered on love. Admiration.
Reverence.
He was impressed. I’d impressed him, by feeling him there.
No one ever felt him.
My beautiful saint... His mind murmured, barely audible, as he watched me. My beautiful, beautiful girl. God speaks to her. God loves her... as much as I do...
The voice held silence too. I felt that reverence intensify, not only for me. For the workings of the world, its order and beauty, his purpose and place. He knew how lucky he was, to know where he fit into the clockwork mécanique that made up the Light and Dark in the world, that gave it order and beauty and precision. His reverence for that perfect dance, for the presence he felt behind it––the One True God––that reverence formed the origin point from which his silence came. He had trained his mind. He trained it to move invisibly.
Out of love for the Light.
He believes us all to be connected.
Our thoughts. Everything that passes through us, tangible and not.
If one could only still their mind, they would disappear, become one with the background of the world. Become one with the others around them... with the buildings and sky and ground. One with the trees. The grass. One with the insects that crawled over the ground.
No one looks at a man who has nothing inside his mind. No one can see him, for without those thoughts, he becomes One with the creation. With the universe.
Indivisible.
He had no idea how right he was.
I fought to control my breathing, my heartbeat.
I had no means whatsoever to be as still and silent as this man, with his years and years of training in that silence. I still hadn’t turned around. I didn’t move my eyes, or my head. I knew he was looking at me. I also knew, if I turned in his direction, if I looked back at him, he would disappear.
He would really disappear.
I could almost feel him now.
He was visible––but only in the periphery.
And then he wasn’t visible there any more, either.
I found myself turning around in shock, looking for him only then.
Chinatown was full of people, as it always was. Tourists. People who lived and shopped there. San Franciscans going there for lunch, for their favorite dim sum place, to pick up Chinese herbs or to get acupuncture or simply to walk around and absorb a different flavor for a few hours. I heard people chattering in Mandarin from the storefronts as I scanned through faces, looking for any that might be connected to what I’d felt.
There was nothing.
He was gone.
He was gone, and he knew who I was. He’d followed me here.
At that, I felt that fear in my chest worsen.
I didn’t know what he wanted from me, but I was afraid. Truthfully, I was terrified. I’d been hunted before. I knew what being prey felt like.
BLACK! I screamed his name, unthinking. BLACK! COME HOME! I NEED YOU! I NEED YOU TO COME HOME NOW! PLEASE! PLEASE... COME HOME!
I stood there, listening, wincing slightly when I realize how loudly I’d done it.
I didn’t regret it though.
Honestly, more than anything I felt relieved. I was also listening.
I stood there for what must have been a few minutes, my heart pounded in my chest. I stood there, listening for Black.
But if he heard me, he didn’t answer.
My mind remained silent.
Even more silent than it was with the Templar inside it.
Ten
WATCHING
IT PAINED HIM. He had failed her that day. He had failed her so utterly.
He’d found her mere days ago, mere hours it seemed––and already he feared he would lose her. He feared he had already shown himself to be unworthy.
He could not stop thinking about it, turning it over in his mind, trying to make sense of it.
Trying to decide how he might fix things between them, before it was too late.
He knew now that she’d allowed him to find her.
He watched her, when she was with those she worked with, when she was alone, when she slept. He’d been watching her for as many days as he’d known her, noting the rhythms of her life, the people she trusted, the people who trusted her and lusted after her and followed her with their eyes. He learned her in any way he could, noting the way her life breathed, how it inhaled and exhaled. He went through news clippings, official records, anything he could obtain through his contacts in the world.
He felt so close to her in some of that.
Like they were one person almost.
Then today, out of nowhere, she let him see her.
She let him know that she knew him, too.
He had been watching her from an alley between two buildings on Grant Street. She’d just given a pretty, thirty-something blond woman a hug, walking with her to her parked car while they exchanged friendly words. The blond woman looked happy to be with her.
The guardian watched their lips move, reading only enough words to know they talked about nothing of importance. His love, his blessed saint––she wore a mask, too. He watched her don that mask with the blond woman, and something about needing that mask left her sad.
She felt alone.
She felt alone like the guardian felt, and she wore her masks with the patience with which he aspired to wear his. Compassion. Love for those from whom she must hide her true heart. She loved those she watched over, even as she shielded them from her true form. They could not comprehend that form, he knew. It would frighten them.
Just like the guardian’s true form frightened those not like him.
He continued to watch her, wishing he could tell her in some way that he understood what it meant to be alone. He wished he could comfort her, wrap his arms around her. He wished more than anything to touch her, to reveal himself to her, to let her know it was safe.
He thought all these things––when suddenly, she froze.
He saw it on her. She went...
Inwards.
Like an inhaled breath, she stood, unmoving in the flowing foot-traffic around her. Like she had turned to stone. Like a deer who feels the lion in the tree above.
He knew, suddenly and without doubt, that she felt him.
In those bare few seconds, their hearts locked, beating in tandem. Her breath moved lightly in her chest, keeping pace with his. He felt her silence as she listened to him, as she knew him. He felt her there, breathing with him, and he was...
Aroused.
He was very very aroused. He was hard before he knew what it was he felt.
It scared him.
More so, when he realized she must have felt that arousal too.
He watched her listen to him, her head cocked, her hazel eyes slightly wider, her pupils dilated, her shallow breaths. She felt him there. He knew she felt him. He’d been a hunter his whole life. He knew when he’d been scented by his prey.
In human parlance––he knew when he’d been made.
Some part of him wanted to approach her then, to offer himself to her formally.
But it wasn’t time for that yet. He felt that strongly too.
Later, he second-guessed that as well, but at the time, the certainty was iron-clad. Later, he worried he’d simply feared rejection, especially when his reverence turned to something more carnal, more animal-like... less pure.
At the time, however, he forced himself to melt back, to disappear.
Now, hours later, sitting in the dark branches of a tree over a different wooden deck, he pondered their encounter, again and again, turning it over in
his mind, examining it from every angle. He burned with shame––a certainty of failure, and worse, a failure he couldn’t fully comprehend. He wondered if their meeting in Chinatown had been a test.
Perhaps he should have approached her. Perhaps he should have apologized to her, for letting himself be seen––for letting his animal nature get away from him.
Perhaps she was disappointed in him.
Hours had passed since then, hours where he did little but turn it over, trying to decide what it meant, what had happened. He still couldn’t be sure.
Even now, he wondered.
After he left her on the street in Chinatown, he made himself silent inside––more silent than he had perhaps ever been, even in jungles and deserts and mountains where he himself had been the hunted. He found food and water, then returned to where she slept, awaiting her judgment, determined to hold his post regardless––whatever she asked of him.
He would keep her safe.
The guardian kept watch over the windows into the apartment, and he watched over her in that silence as soon as she returned, determined he would not fail her again.
He would keep her safe. From whatever person or thing might harm her.
He watched the female police officer through the window. The woman was not a threat to his saint. She protected her too––watched over her, laughed with her. She was perhaps a guardian in some way, as well. He watched them sit together on the couch and talk, saw the soothing looks and gestures of the female cop, but he did not eavesdrop on what they said.
He knew now, he had no right. He had presumed far too much.
He suspected that was why she signaled him on the street. It was a warning.
She’d felt his desire. She’d felt him wanting her.
The thought made him ashamed. It also made him all the more determined not to fail her again. He would not leave his post, no matter how long he had to wait for her, no matter what he had to do to prove himself to her. He would not abandon her, or underestimate her again. The job was bigger than his failures, his shame... bigger than his ego.
God goes after our egos to make us sharper––to wake us up.
To wake us up...
But sleep is something this body badly needs. His training tells him that he’s left it too long. Like food and air and water, eventually he must rest the machine. Working all day while wearing a mask, then all night as the guardian, he could feel that it was time to shut off. It had been four days. Long enough to slow him down, to dull him, and he couldn’t afford either. He decided he would sleep a few hours.
He was close. He was close and she was safe.
It was a good time.
Using a canvas belt, he secured himself to the tree’s trunk, leaving the buckle in front so he could unclasp it quickly if needed. Adjusting the sword strapped to his back, he rested his chin on his chest, curling his arms around his own torso and wrapping the camouflage tarp around him more closely in the process. Once he had a comfortable position, one where he knew he would be able to doze, he watched her for a few seconds more.
He could see her face on the pillow she used on the fold-out bed.
Her eyes were closed. She was already there, in that other place.
He wondered if he would meet with her there, in their dreams.
He still thought about that as he dozed off in the tree where he perched.
WHEN HE AWOKE, the guardian’s mind was instantly alert.
He had set his mental clock to two hours. He knew even before checking his watch that exactly two hours had passed––he could feel it even apart from the fact that he knew how his body and mind functioned together for such things. He checked the watch anyway, since verification was something he also did out of rote.
Two hours. Exactly.
His eyes shifted back to the bay window across from where he had strapped himself to the heavy trunk of a Pacific Cyprus tree.
Once they had, he froze.
A man sat on the bed, still as a statue.
He was a large man. Muscular. The guardian could not see his face.
He held his breath, watching as the man stared down at his beloved saint as she slept. The guardian’s heart hammered painfully in his chest as the man reached down, carefully fingering the dark hair out of her face without waking her.
Without taking his eyes off the window, he unclasped the buckle that had held his chest to the trunk of the tree.
His mind went utterly still.
Even so, some part of him calculated. Far away. Out of reach of that stillness.
He could slide down the trunk of the tree. Two minutes. Two and a half to do it silently. Three people inside that apartment. Two in a car on the street. Four to get inside––five if he had to kill the men in the car. The big man could easily kill her before he got inside.
The guardian held his breath, stilling his mind further, trying to decide. He didn’t want to act until he had all the information, but he knew if he waited, it might be too late.
But it was too late now.
If this man meant her harm, he would kill her before the guardian got anywhere near to a door or window. Once he acknowledged that truth, the guardian’s choice was clear. He would wait. He would see what the man did, what his intentions were.
He watched, transfixed.
He’d barely taken a handful of breaths since he’d first opened his eyes, but his whole body had gone taut, utterly still––ready to move in a flash once he decided his best course of action. His mind clicked through scenarios, possibilities, risks––risks to her, which brought his heart up into his throat even as it turned his mind to glass––all in that locked box he maintained behind the quieter wall of his mind.
He couldn’t rush. He had to remain sharp. Sharp as razor wire.
If this man hurt his beloved, he would remove every piece of skin from his flesh.
He had nearly decided to descend the trunk of the tree and move closer when his beautiful saint opened her eyes. The guardian saw them clearly, reflecting light from the streetlamp, the same one that threw the guardian’s tree into the deepest of black shadows. He’d scoped the upstairs flat from all angles over the course of the past week, so knew exactly what could and could not be seen and from what angles.
He could see her clearly now.
She flinched when she saw the man sitting there.
The guardian held his breath.
Fear exploded over him, real fear––and the understanding that he’d failed again, that he was too far away, too late.
Then her expression changed again.
Anger hardened her perfect mouth, her flecked, cat-like eyes.
Then she moved––so quickly the guardian flinched. She began hitting the big man who sat there, hitting him in the chest, in the face, in the shoulders. The man threw up his hands, but didn’t move off the bed. If he spoke to her, it was too quiet for the guardian to hear. The big man just sat there and took it. He protected his head from some of those hits, which had training behind them, muscle, intent. She closed her fist in some of them.
The man sitting there protected his head, protected his face, but he didn’t hit her back.
The guardian felt the worst of his fear dissipate.
This man wouldn’t hurt her.
Everything in his posture denoted submission.
The guardian watched her instead, fascinated by the fury of his beautiful saint.
He could see her lips move, could see her saying things to him, but again it must have been soft since it didn’t carry through the glass windows. He didn’t try to read her lips, didn’t catch any of the specifics of what she said to the other man, but the sheer ferocity of her expression, the near grace behind her attack, made his heart swell in a heat that caught him off guard.
Then the thick, muscular arms wrapped around her and she burst into tears.
They were kissing then, her and the muscular man.
Seconds later, they were kissing harder.
T
he guardian felt his face heat, his heart thud in his chest––for a different reason that time.
Shock exploded through him. Disbelief.
That disbelief worsened as he watched her climb into the black-haired man’s lap, her long hair hanging down past her shoulders as she slid over him.
She was still the aggressor, even now. The muscular man with the black hair had to weigh three of her, at least, but he let her push him back, let her shove away his hands when they tried to touch her. She shoved at his chest until he leaned his broad back against the wall, and then she began to undress him.
The guardian couldn’t see her face at all now, only his.
The guardian recognized him now.
Even as he took in that face, the high cheekbones and long jaw, the man closed his eyes––strangely light, animal-like eyes––leaving them closed longer than a blink. The hard face softened in obvious desire as she continued to unfasten his shirt, then the guardian could see him talking to her too, his lips moving in a low murmur as she worked over him, exposing a muscular chest and nearly hairless body.
The black-haired man tried to undress her as well, but she shoved his hands off her again, even more violently than before.
The guardian felt his throat close when she unhooked his belt, then his pants. She was astride him then, her lean waist and back flashing pale as she tugged her shirt over her head. The guardian saw the man’s face tighten as he gripped her waist––then she was naked and astride him and the black-haired man was looking up at her, his pale eyes narrowed to slits.
The guardian watched her as she positioned herself over him, then slammed down on him almost violently.
From the look on the man’s face, the guardian knew he was inside her.
The black-haired man’s jaw hardened as he the guardian watched, but he didn’t take those animal-like eyes off her face. She bucked into him harder, her hands now wrapped around his shoulders. She used him as leverage as she threw her weight against him a third time. When she did it again, the man’s angular face softened, even as he looked like he was panting, fighting for control. Something changed then––that control slid away.
Both of them stopped, gasping visibly when it happened.
Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) Page 17