Black And Blue (Quentin Black Mystery #5) (32 page)

He was still convinced Black didn’t know.

Well,
hadn’t
known anyway.

I bit my lip, fighting another wave of nausea as my mind wanted to return to that image of Black strapped to a table while animals fed on him.

I knew my uncle had been reading me when he spoke into that silence.

I also knew he was trying to distract me from where my mind wanted to go.

“I really wish you hadn’t involved the humans in this at all, Miriam,” he said, his voice holding a softer rebuke. “Really, why would you tell them these things? You know the vampires have at least one person among the human police. Even the humans know they have an intelligence leak. Why would you involve humans at all before that leak was identified?”

“I trust Nick and Angel,” I’d returned coldly. “They won’t say anything. Not about any aspect of this... not to anyone. And I don’t intend to tell Mozar anything... or Jacquie... or anyone else in LAPD... and believe me, they’ve been asking. Mozar even put Black’s team under surveillance, so he knows they’re all down here.”

“He put them under surveillance?” Charles frowned. “What on earth for?”

“For my protection, he claims,” I said, biting my lip in annoyance. I shook my head, fighting back the surge of anger that rose in my own chest. “And yes, he’s completely full of shit. I read him, and he seems to believe Black being taken has something to do with his black ops days. He also thinks there’s something weird about Black... genetically, I mean.”

My uncle looked over sharply at that. “What?”

Shrugging with one hand, I let it fall to the couch’s arm.

“Not in any way that’s relevant... yet.” Again, I clenched my jaw. “Although yes, we’ll probably have to address that at some point.”

“Why not now?” Charles said, his voice as hard as mine.

I shook my head. “No. Not while he’s focused on Black. If he’s voiced those concerns to anyone else in the middle of an investigation centering on Black, then the gaps might be noticed. I strongly suggest we deal with it later. We can get any stragglers then, too.”

I watched my uncle look at me, a shrewder expression in his eyes.

Then he nodded, once. “I agree,” he said only.

Biting back another wave of pain, I closed my eyes. Feeling him notice what was going on with me yet again, I spoke before he could open his mouth.

“The main thing is keeping him away from me,” I said. “Mozar. He knows I’m running my own investigation via Black’s company, and he doesn’t trust me to fill him in. He also probably suspects us of planning offensives. According to Dex, Mozar’s got the F.B.I. watching us too, in addition to at least two of his people. My team’s handling it for now... but yes, at some point, I’ll probably need your help to get them to back off. Preferably after we get Black back alive.”

When another ribbon of pain went through me, I fell silent.

Seeing my uncle watching me, concern now prominent in his eyes, I gave him another annoyed stare.

“My point is, Mozar worries me a hell of a lot more than Angel or Nick. Honestly, it’s better that Nick and Angel know. Nick may not approve of my methods exactly, but he’ll run interference. He knows what’s at stake. He also has his own connections in LAPD... and the Pentagon.” Shrugging, I added, “Anyway, he relaxed a lot once he knew Colonel Holmes was involved. Nick’s a cop... but he’s also military. That means something to him.”

My uncle was shaking his head again, clicking in agitation.

“It’s done,” I said, sharper. “The decision’s been made. I don’t want anyone tampering with either of their minds without my express permission. It’s an absolute last resort, worst case scenario option only... and if you go against me on this, it will be the last time we ever work together, Uncle Charles.”

“Gaos,
Miri. I trust you... I really do. And you have clearly thought through all of the decisions you’re making. But it may not be enough. You’ve never dealt with these creatures before. They are
incredibly
manipulative and clever. This whole thing could be a set-up. Just like how they grabbed Black in the first place.”

I gave him a level look, taking a sip of the peppermint tea I was holding. I told myself it helped with the pain, but truthfully, I had serious doubts it did anything.

“Do you have a specific suspicion?” I said, my voice level but still verging on cold. “Or are you talking more generally?”

“I don’t have a specific thing... but I can give you examples, Miri. You got all of the boat intel from the human police... who might have been influenced by vampires themselves down on that pier to even
see
that particular boat. They could have been bitten, given false memories. They might have taken Black out in a totally different way.”

I’d sighed, maybe in part because what he said made sense.

Moreover, some of this had already crossed my mind, and hadn’t really wanted to be reminded of that fact––especially since we were already in motion.

The biggest reason though, was that we had no other leads.

“Jacquie said the extraction team didn’t see them at the pier,” I said, my voice sharp. “They got the boat’s name via a rifle scope. As far as the intel back at the station... she lost her fiancé in that gun fight before they took Black. Do you really think she’d be passing us bullshit intel after that? Or do you think she’s actually a vampire?”

My uncle ignored my sarcasm.

Inclining his head, he answered me seriously instead. “I think she could have passed on bad intel without knowing it was bad, Miri. I think whoever gave her that intel might have tampered with it... or the person who gave it to them might have done so. Or she could have been persuaded to misremember the name of the boat. She would have no memory of any of that if it happened, Miriam. If it had been up to me, I would have checked all of them for bite marks the second they got back to the police station.”

Falling silent once more, as if thinking, he’d sighed again, looking back out the balcony windows. “But we must go in. I see that too, Miriam. I know you think I don’t, but I do.” He turned, meeting my gaze. “I am here for you. In any way you need me.”

I’d only nodded.

Truthfully, though, his words impacted me. They even provided some measure of comfort. At the time, I could clearly hear––and feel––that he meant them wholeheartedly.

Now, crouching down by that wrought-iron gate in a deafening-feeling silence, I found myself thinking about everything we’d said again. I found myself wondering if this really was a trap, if I’d get gunned down for no reason, and get Black’s team killed in the process. As much as he kept his distance from them personally, I knew they weren’t just employees to him. Black would never forgive me if he found out I’d been reckless with their lives.

I didn’t notice my uncle had fallen quiet in my mind until he broke that silence again.

You’re doing well, Miriam,
he sent, soft.
Very well... especially under the circumstances. He would be very proud of you.

I fought a tightness in my throat, and shook it off, biting my lip.

How close are you?
I sent.
I thought you would have the gate open by now.

Thirty seconds,
he sent, his mental voice shifting back to businesslike.
Relax, Miri. You can do this. And I’ll be right behind you, with a lot of highly-trained seers.

I nodded, and briefly, felt a surge of gratitude that he was there after all.

Before I could decide if I should tell him that...

The gates began to open.

MINUTES LATER, WE were running across the lawn, aiming for the driveway’s circular end, just outside the front doors to the main building. My nerves ratcheted up again, but still not for myself so much as for Black’s team.

My uncle and I had to talk weapons and tactics a lot, which was strange to do without Black’s team involved in the high-level decision-making. They’d taken my orders on that front well, but I could tell a few of them were baffled.

Basically, I had all of them armed with tranquilizer guns instead of regular rifles, with both the guns and the ammunition supplied by my uncle. After we’d talked it over for a few days, it made the most sense. I’d enter with the humans up front, and we’d knock out as many of them as we could with the tranq guns.
 

Of course, I had to get into the whole thing with my uncle about what was myth and what was fact, in terms of how one even
killed
a vampire... or incapacitated one, at least.

Turned out, quite a bit of the mythology was more or less true.

They could generally survive most wounds, and had regenerative powers that rendered seers’ ability to recover from near-fatal wounds a lot less impressive. A vampire’s ability to regenerate wasn’t instant, the way I’d seen it depicted in movies and television shows and books. Still, according to my uncle, it was pretty tough to slow an aggressive vampire down using the usual means, even a fully automatic rifle.

He and his scientific-leaning seer staff had come up with a cocktail that could knock a full-grown vampire out in sufficient doses. According to my uncle, that same dose would kill most human beings, so he warned me to be extremely careful of friendly fire.

He said the only way to kill them was to decapitate them, or to cut their hearts totally out of their bodies. He said the “wooden stake” thing was a myth, but there really was something different about vampire physiology that meant they couldn’t regenerate if their hearts or brains were separated from the rest of their bodies... or, more likely, from one another.

So the humans would knock them out.

Of course, I knew my uncle wanting to lead the second team in behind us likely meant they’d be killing the downed vampires in our wake. Charles did tell me that the likelihood of keeping them unconscious for longer than twenty or so minutes was slim, so we might not have much choice in that, either.

I still hadn’t decided what I would tell Black’s team if they happened to notice my uncle’s people conducting that grisly work. Or how I could rationalize letting Lucky’s team cut the heads off people I’d convinced Dex and Kiko we were better off not killing.

Because that was the excuse I’d given for using the tranquilizer guns, of course.

All of that ran through my head again now as I ran across the close-cropped grass. I thought about the danger I’d put them all in by not telling them what they were up against...

Then my eyes tracked movement.

A shadowy form, moving with liquid speed down the front steps towards a massive stone fountain that stood in the middle of the circular drive. The infrared goggles picked the body up strangely. There was heat there, but not like a full-blown human kind of heat. If I had to guess it was half that, or less. The house stood dark behind him, so I might not have seen him at all if there wasn’t something so eerily preternatural about the way the thing moved. Before I could signal the others, Dex raised his rifle.

He let off a near-silent shot, hitting the thing with a dart in its white neck.

By then we were close enough that I heard it hiss.

It clutched its neck, which I could see well enough to note the blood trickling from the wound. I saw light-colored eyes focus on us, right before it hissed again, as if fighting whatever the drug was doing to its system. I was about to hit it again with another dart, when out of nowhere, the thing’s legs crumpled.

I glanced at Dex and then Kiko, wondering if either of them had heard the strange sounds the thing made, or noticed how oddly it moved... or how dimly it showed up on infrared. Both of them were back to scanning for movement across the front of the house, though, so I let it go and went back to doing the same.