Black As Night (Quentin Black Mystery #2) (19 page)

Black! BLACK! HELP ME! HELP ME!

The response was immediate, nearly blowing out some part of my mind, making me cry out through the gag with the intensity. Black’s presence exploded over me, hot, filled with a panic that vibrated my skin, breaking me out in an instant sweat.

MIRI! WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE ARE YOU?

I was so relieved a pain rose in my chest, so sharp and raw I couldn’t breathe. Tears came to my eyes.
BLACK COME GET ME PLEASE. IT’S DARK. I DON’T KNOW WHERE I AM...

WHO HAS YOU?

I looked around, but I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything but my own breathing. I could hear something above me but it was faint. Traffic maybe? I strained to listen. Somewhere in another part of the building, I could feel people. Some of them felt like––

GODS, MIRI...ANSWER ME! WHO HAS YOU?

I DON’T KNOW...I’M TIED UP. IT’S DARK. I CAN’T SEE ANYTHI––

A wall fell down over my mind.

It happened so swiftly, so completely, I lost the breath in my lungs in shock. I couldn’t feel Black anymore. I couldn’t feel anything. It felt like being smothered, like some part of me got locked inside a thick, heavy shroud.

“No...” I screamed through the gag, in frustration more than anything. “No...”

I yelled for Black again with my mind, but that deadened space swallowed every sound, every attempt I made to reach him. I felt my mind smack up against those echo-less walls, as if my thoughts had been locked inside a dark box, too.

Whatever that shroud was, I wasn’t getting through.

I was still lying there, eyes closed, fighting to get past the block with every effort in my being, when a light was ignited not far from where I lay.

I let out a shocked gasp, opening my eyes then closing them against the brightness.

I said ignited, not turned on, because the light looked closer to a torch than a lamp. It sparked as it brightened, long and greenish-yellow, with a strange, liquid green flame that didn’t look quite like fire either. Still, it resembled a torch of some kind...like a green and yellow living light that coiled and sparked around a gunmetal black rod.

A man stood there, holding it.

I stared up at his perfectly angled face, questioning if it was real. His bone structure and unnaturally symmetrical features belonged to a sculpture, not a man. He looked like a young Adonis, lovingly rendered with exquisitely high cheekbones, a perfectly-formed jaw and a bow-shaped mouth below sharp violet eyes.

Those eyes couldn’t possibly real.

They made even Black’s gold irises look natural.

He really looked like a painting to me. Like something painted in oil, lit perfectly to replicate the inside of a dungeon behind him. He could be a vampire from an old story, some kind of immortal being chiseled out of rock.

Only his clothes didn’t fit.

He wore a dark red T-shirt stained with what might be oil, or might be something else. He wore scuffed combat boots, dark jeans, a gold chain around his neck. He dressed more European than American, but definitely not high-end. He looked like a soldier, like some of the mercs I met in Afghanistan from Eastern and Northern Europe.

The edges of what looked like a tattoo crawled up one side of his neck, red and dark blue in the odd lighting.

He watched me, perfectly still. Statue-still.

I wondered if he was real at all, when he suddenly walked closer, causing me to let out another startled cry, shoving myself backwards with my feet. I lay on a low cot, I could see now, or maybe a bed since the frame was a simple flat pallet, made of dark wood. My hands had been tied together and also to a ring above the head of the cot, so I couldn’t go very far. I tried to free my feet of the rope he’d used to tie my ankles together, but I could barely move those, too.

He stood over me, still holding the torch, but now that he stood close enough, I could see his chest heaving. His eyes were wide as he stared down at me. I was still watching his face, trying to make sense of the expression there, when he let out a hissing, purring kind of sound.

Something hit me then.

Sensation...heat...so intense it sucked in my breath.

It hit me harder than anything Black had ever thrown at me, more demanding than I could resist. Some part of the man in front of me––or I had to assume it came from him––crashed into me like a starving man trying to get through a door to get to food. Any attempts I made to block him, to get out of his way, just had him slamming into me harder.

I let out a low groan when he did it again.

He gasped when I did, forcing my eyes up.

I met his gaze. He was practically panting now, his lips parted, his eyes glazed. I saw his pupils dilate under the glow of the torch and suddenly wondered if that was all from the dark. I was still staring up at him, wincing as he continued to hit at me with some part of himself.

He was like Black. He had to be. But what did he want with me?

Even as I thought it, he let out a low sound, almost a pained one.

Before I could react, he moved fluidly yet purposefully to the side of the bed, leaning down to jam the black metal end of the torch into some kind of holder. Releasing it at once, he turned towards me, reaching for something behind his back that turned out to be a five-inch knife he must have been carrying in a sheath at his belt. I stared at it, then up at him. I tried to scream at him again through the gag, but he didn’t so much as flinch.

Resting a knee on the edge of the bed, he reached for me, still moving in that purposeful way. Grabbing hold of the rope tying my ankles together, he yanked my legs out straight and towards him, moving so swiftly I couldn’t do anything but comply. He was so strong it shocked me, but I didn’t feel anything brutal in the movement either.

Rather, it was efficient, matter of fact.

I felt something else there too. Restraint. Some kind of urgency flowed from his hands into my skin. The wall around him was even darker than the one around me though.

“Patience,” he murmured, that restraint trembling his voice. “Patience, sister...”

I just lay there, panting, while he sawed through the ropes holding my ankles together with the knife. He did it relatively quickly, but it seemed to take forever––maybe because I spent the whole time looking around the cave-like room, looking for windows, doors, any way out. I felt air from somewhere overhead, but if a window stood there, it had been blacked out.

The one door I saw stood on the other side of the room.

The only other furniture the torch illuminated was a wooden table and two scuffed wooden chairs, a small antique table lamp that was currently unlit, a rug, what looked like a rifle case on the floor. I saw clothes poking out of the top of a duffle bag on a bench built into the wall not far from the table. I looked to the other side, and saw what might have been a shrine of some kind. Someone taped pictures to the white, water-warped wall over a low bench covered in candles, then placed a cushion in front. I didn’t recognize any of the images. No Buddha, no Hindu gods or anything I’d seen in Thailand.

He yanked off the last of the rope and I immediately tried to kick him.

That barely fazed him, either.
 

He caught hold of the foot I’d jerked free and yanked it out straight. Then, right after he released it, he slid swiftly up my body, holding me down with his weight and placing the blade of the long knife against my throat.

I went totally still.

He looked down at me. That heat radiated off him now.

His fingers were hot, gripping me tightly with his free hand.

“Black had a sister,” he murmured, tracing my throat lightly with the knife. “His very own sister.
Gaos di’lalente.
What a selfish prick. No wonder he kept you hidden.”

I shook my head, gasping against the touch of the cold blade.

“I’m not his sister,” I managed, my voice muffled through the gag.

He smiled, leaning most of his weight on me. The smile was knowing. I was still staring up at him, trying to make sense of it, when he shifted his weight, forcing my legs apart with his. He pressed his body against me then and I let out a startled gasp, feeling him hard against my inner thigh. He pressed against me again, flooding more of that heat into me and I groaned, I couldn’t help it. It felt like he’d reached inside me and––

“I haven’t seen a sister seer in...”

He paused, and another cloud of heat came off him. That one was so intense it blanked my mind, making my back arch. I fought to breathe, remembering the lobs of warmth Black threw at me on occasion. Those had been blown kisses compared to this. The man pinning me now watched my face as I reacted to him.

That amplification thing I’d felt with Black caused his eyes to close.

“...A really long time,” he finished in a low purr. He used the thumb he had wrapped around the knife’s hilt to stroke my throat. “A really, really long time...
gaos.”

He had a Russian accent.

“I’m going to fuck you until neither of us can walk,” he added softer.

I let out a cry, writhing under him, but he only shifted his weight, raising his upper body to grab hold of the front of the dress I still wore. I could only lie there, yanking on my bound wrists against where they were tied to that metal ring set in the wall. He cut the dress off me methodically, like he’d done everything else. Tears ran down my face, I felt like a trapped animal. They’d trained us for this. In the military, I mean. They’d taught us how to survive this, if we ever got caught by an enemy combatant––

“I am supposed to use you,” he said, his voice conversational as he opened the material of the dress. Pausing to look at me, he stroked the bare skin of my belly with his hand before he met my gaze, smiling. “I am supposed to use you to persuade Black. To get him to see reason...to stop his games with us. But now...now, I do not think so.”

He shook his head, clicking under his breath with his tongue.

“I thought you were just some human whore he’d fixated on,” he said. He gave a strange, one-handed shrug, something with echoes of gestures I’d seen Black use. “But I will not waste my beautiful sister for a purpose such as this.”

He met my gaze, his violet eyes catching the light of the sparking torch.

“Do not worry. I will have a little talk with your friend, Black,” he said, watching my face. “I still have the child...it can still go like we planned. Mr. Lucky does not need to know that I have you, as well. I am thinking he does not need to know that, that he lied to me, sister. You see, I offered to take you. I told him this would be faster...more efficient...but Mr. Lucky did not want me to take you. I am thinking I know why now, yes?”

Leaning down, he kissed my breast, using his tongue.

I let out a low cry of disgust when more of his presence flooded into me as he did it, but he barely seemed to notice.

“I find my brothers are much easier to persuade when it comes to their dicks,” he said, smiling. “Is that not true, my beautiful sister? What would your boyfriend do to get you back, do you think? Would he try to hunt me?”

Still smiling, he raised his head, massaging the same breast with his hand. Reaching up, he used the knife to cut more of the dress’s material off my shoulder. Once he’d finished, he tugged hard on the cloth to get it out from under me.

But my mind grasped onto the other thing he’d said.

“The child?” I managed. I fought to speak through the gag, but couldn’t really. “You’re the one who has Pete? Lawless’s grandson?”

If he understood me, he didn’t answer.

He continued to stroke my skin, his other hand holding the knife at the side of my body now, seemingly forgotten as he looked me over. He yanked the last of the material out from around me and tossed it to the floor. Since I couldn’t get my wrists free and his weight was crushing me now, there wasn’t a lot I could do. I struggled, but he barely shifted his seat.

Another of those shockingly heated plumes hit at me.

When I looked up, I could see him sweating in the flickering light of the green-yellow torch. His violet eyes looked glazed, but I still saw that restraint there too.

“I can’t wait very long, sister,” he said, his voice holding regret. “I can’t. The first few times...” He let out a heavier exhale, almost a gasp. “They will be quick, sister...I want to fuck you so badly I am sick with it. I want to beat Black to death with my bare hands. I hate him right now, sister. I hate him for finding you first...”