Black The Sun, page 22
part #9 of Quentin Black Mystery Series
Manny frowned, trying to make sense of that.
Truthfully, he really couldn’t, not even in the abstract.
It was still hard for him to remember Miriam’s father was Lucky’s biological brother. He had no concept of what her father must have been like, apart from his reference point of Lucky himself, and Miriam, of course, but to a lesser degree.
Shaking it off, he tried again. “You’re saying no one was different on your version of Earth? Different in the way you think Miri might be?”
Frowning, clearly thinking about his words, Yarli snorted a little, clicking under her breath. Still smiling, she dusted off the last of her beer, setting the green bottle down on the wooden picnic bench and looking at him.
“Oh, there were some different ones, for sure. Your boss’s cousin was pretty different. So was his wife.” Still thinking, she shook her head. “It’s complicated, Mañuel,” she said, her voice apologetic once more. “I don’t mean to be cryptic. I really don’t. And I’m not being condescending. It’s just really hard to explain.”
“Can you try?” he said, studying her face. “You did well with the construct thing. Can you try with this, too?”
Clicking a little under her breath, she thought for a minute, then exhaled in a sigh.
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “I think the simplest way to explain is to tell you it was believed that three races existed on Old Earth… not just humans and seers. There was a third race, too.”
Pausing to look at him over the pink sunglasses, she waited for his nod, then went on.
“We seers called the third race Elaerian,” she explained. “But they had other names, too. Intermediaries. Glow-eyes. Manipulators. Some even equated them with what humans call angels, or angelic beings.”
Manny’s eyebrows rose a second time, but he didn’t interrupt.
“That race broke the rules, genetically-speaking,” Yarli added. “Their biology was strange. Mutable in ways that are difficult to explain. They could take on traits of both races… and not always in the same combination. They could even switch from one race to the other.”
She peered at him over the pink rims of her sunglasses.
“…Biologically, I mean. Their actual organs would move. I know of one case where a seer’s whole aging process changed, even began to reverse itself. He changed physically in other ways, too. Of course, his light was where the truly dramatic changes happened.”
Pausing, she gauged his eyes before adding,
“They had traits that no other seer had, Mañuel. Even super abilities of various kinds. They could do things other seers just can’t do.”
Manny’s brow furrowed as he thought about this.
“These were real? These Elaerian?” He smiled at her, but his mouth remained tense. “I hope you don’t mind my saying, but they sound made up.”
Yarli nodded, her mouth firming.
“I get that,” she said grimly. “But they were real. I worked for two of them.”
At his surprised look, she smiled.
“Honestly, until I saw it with my own eyes, I thought they were mostly mythological too. Really, I thought they were all extinct. Like real history, but transformed into a kind of mythology over time, you know? But I witnessed some of these things with my own eyes. The two Elaerian I worked for were telekinetic. One was Black’s cousin, who was scary telekinetic. He could do things with his light…”
Clicking under her breath, she shook her head, her eyes far-seeing.
“…I’ve never seen anything like it. None of us had. He was infamous on that world. Humans were terrified of him.”
She looked at Manny and sighed, folding her hands on the table.
“Supposedly his wife had even more power than he did. They kept her pretty much under lock and key, so I got that mostly second-hand… although I do know she and her husband are the only reason any of us got off that world alive. She was more or less treated as a quasi-deity by some of the more religious among our people.”
Turning this over, Manny nodded, frowning.
“So you think Miri could be one of those?” he said. “An Elarry-whatever?”
Yarli let out a short laugh. Still looking at him, she shrugged broadly with a brown hand, an exaggerated gesture.
“I have absolutely no idea,” she said. “But her parentage is significant. Not just for her, but for both of our races. If humans really are different here… and your boss seems to think they are… then we’ll have a third race of hybrids here in no time at all if our two species truly can interbreed. Especially given the recent influx of seers on this world.”
Exhaling a sigh, she made another of those exaggerated shrugs.
“If Miri herself is different, well, that might explain her uncle’s obsession with her. He is a racial purist, is he not? That has puzzled me from the beginning with all this. Why is he so adamant on having his niece, who’s not even full-blooded seer, as his right-hand lieutenant?”
Manny frowned.
The thought had never occurred to him.
Now he wondered why it hadn’t. It certainly must have occurred to Black.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“Indeed,” Yarli said. “There is a reason. There must be. One reason might be if Charles believes Miriam is of this third race. If he believes she was conceived of a human and a seer because Elaerian can do that sort of thing… or are said to be able to do such a thing in the myths, which Charles believes… he would definitely want her by his side. He would likely see her being here as some kind of sign. Maybe even a divine mandate.”
She gave Manny a grim look, rolling the empty beer bottle between her hands.
“On Old Earth, members of the third race were seen as highly-evolved,” she explained. “Sort of like super-seers, as I said. Racial supremacists like Lucky were obsessed with them. They saw them as the purist of the pure, when it came to seer lineage. Like a master race.”
Manny nodded, frowning.
The idea made him feel a little sick. It wasn’t exactly a new one, though. Apparently seers were just as prone to stupidity of this kind as humans were.
Yarli grunted in agreement, rolling her eyes. “You have no idea.”
Manny gave her a sideways smile. “Good to know. That you’re not all perfect, anyway.” Frowning a bit at her returning smile, he added, “Although I’m not sure it’s all that comforting. One stupid race per planet should be enough.”
Again she snorted a humorless laugh, shaking her head.
For a moment, they both stared at the ocean, listening to and watching the rolling motion of the waves, watching birds dart back and forth among the palm trees, and skim the surface of the water. The sun looked a little lower in the sky, but it was still hotter than hell out. Hot enough that Manny was having trouble thinking clearly about all of this.
Even so, he got the gist of what Yarli was telling him.
Dusting off the last of his own beer, he nodded again.
“Okay,” he said. “So clearly, we need to know more about what Lucky thinks of Miriam. We need to know why he thinks he needs her in this new world order of his––”
“––and whether it’s actually Miri herself he wants,” Yarli added. “Or if she’s just been a way to get to Black.”
Manny turned sharply at that, frowning for real.
“That’s a possibility? Why?”
Yarli made another of those exaggerated shrugs, puffing out her cheeks.
“Cousin, I honestly, truly have no idea. That’s the problem. My mind sees a lot of possible scenarios in this.”
Pausing, she gave Manny a serious look over the pink sunglasses.
“There’s something different about your boss, too,” she added, her voice as serious as her eyes. “I’m not the only one who’s noticed. Jem’s brought it up a number of times… and his sight rank is high. He is also Adhipan trained, so he knows what he’s talking about. Moreover, if we have noticed, there is zero doubt Charles has noticed, too.”
Manny frowned.
He was about to say something else, when a voice rose from directly behind them, making Manny jump about a foot.
“This is all so very, very interesting,” the voice said in a thick New Orleans drawl. “By far the most interesting conversation I’ve overheard in weeks and weeks… which is quite something, given the conversations I generally overhear.”
Manny jerked his head and eyes around, staring over his shoulder in disbelief.
The man standing there smiled.
“Do you mind terribly if we join you?” that New Orleans lilt asked politely. “I would so very much like to be a part of this fascinating conversation myself. I have so many, many questions, my darlings.”
Shifting around entirely on the bench, so that he faced the newcomers more or less directly, Manny only stared for a few seconds, his mind still stuck on disbelief.
The vampire, Brick stood there.
Next to him stood the tall, eerily pretty male vampire with the white-blond hair and the small goatee, whose name Manny remembered as Dorian. Manny remembered that one in part because Miri cautioned him strongly to stay the hell away from it.
Looking up at the creature’s dark red eyes, he found himself thinking Miriam’s warning was warranted.
He almost didn’t want to know what precise knowledge it was based on.
Both vampires held expensive-looking umbrellas in their hands, with thick black coverings, presumably to protect them from the sun.
Neither sweated however, Manny noticed.
“Well?” Brick said, twirling his umbrella as he cocked his head.
With a lazy gesture of one hand, he motioned towards the tray gripped in the blond vampire’s ghost-white hands, which Manny noticed only now was covered in drinks and snacks, including what might have been chicken wings.
“We come bearing gifts,” the vampire said, smirking.
Manny looked at Yarli.
The seer returned his stare over the rim of the pink sunglasses, her mouth pursed in a hard frown of her own.
15
WHO THE HELL LET YOU IN?
KIKO LOWERED HER weight to the bench beside Manny.
Once situated, she glanced up at the palm trees, then at the cloth shade that had been erected a few minutes earlier by two of the island’s staff to protect part of the benches and table from the rays of the setting sun.
She looked out over at the ocean and the lowering sun before her eyes shifted back to the vampires sitting across from her.
She stared at Brick the longest, not hiding her scowl.
From her expression, Manny figured she probably had snipers up in a hide, guns aimed at each of the vampire’s heads.
Yarli snorted a laugh, covering it with a hand before she glanced at him.
From her eyes, which he could finally see in their entirety, since she’d removed the dark pink sunglasses and stuck them in the neck of her shirt, she had a little bit of a buzz going. Not that surprising really, given they’d each drank a full glass poured from the pitcher of margaritas the vampires brought for them. Also, neither of them had eaten anything off the several plates of finger foods that still sat on the table between them.
He nudged Yarli at the thought, thinking loudly at her.
You should eat. I will if you will.
She glanced at him in surprise, her dark eyes widening.
It occurred to him that it might be because he’d thought his words at her, instead of speaking them out loud.
Was that rude, seer-wise?
He hadn’t done it to be rude.
Truthfully, he couldn’t see how it would be rude, since he couldn’t read anything in her, but he didn’t know jack-all about seer etiquette. He supposed he needed to make an effort to learn at least the basics before he started experimenting.
He’d only done it because he didn’t see much point in these vampires knowing any vulnerabilities in them, especially when it came to the only seer who sat out here. Black told him vampires viewed seers as some kind of delicacy. He didn’t want either of these bloodsuckers getting any ideas about Yarli.
Yarli reached out with her hand under the picnic table, clasping his thigh.
Manny jumped about a foot.
Everyone turned, looking at him, and he fought to normalize the expression on his face, rearranging his weight on the bench.
Yarli hid her smile behind a cough that time.
She also didn’t let go of his leg.
Manny fought to ignore its warm presence there even as Brick poured from the pitcher of margaritas he’d brought, filling their two glasses, as well as a third one he placed in front of Kiko. As he poured, he glanced around at each of them with a subtle smile.
“Ya’ll are so jumpy,” he observed.
His crystal-like eyes paused on Manny as he finished, then drifted down, focusing on where Yarli’s hand rested, almost like he could see through the wood of the table.
Manny felt his face warm, in spite of himself.
Christ. He was seventy-two years old. Why was he acting like a teenager?
“Relax, dear friends.” Brick smiled, leaning back and setting down the pitcher before folding his arms loosely over his chest. He picked up his own glass, which appeared to contain a mint julep, at least from the vegetation Brick glimpsed through the glass.
“…We come in peace,” he added with a smirk.
“Just how did you come to be here?” Manny said, trying to ignore Yarli’s fingers massaging his thigh. “How in the hell did you get on this island? Or do I even want to know?”
Brick’s crystal-like eyes shifted to his.
He glanced at Kiko next, quirking an eyebrow.
“You mean you don’t know?” His smile and eyes glimmered with a flicker of surprise, along with a more prominent amusement. “Why my dear Mañuel, we were invited. Didn’t he tell you? Really? How extraordinary.”
“Invited?” Kiko stiffened, her voice even more hostile than Manny’s. “What’s that supposed to mean? Invited by who?”
Those light, glass-like eyes shifted to her.
“By your boss. Quentin Rayne Black. Obviously.”
Kiko frowned, exchanging glances with Yarli, then with Manny.
“That’s not possible,” she said flatly.
Brick leaned over the table, resting his weight on his forearms. When she continued to stare at him with cold eyes, he let out a low chuckle, shaking his head.
“I assure you, Kiko darling, it’s very possible. Do you really think I would have made it out here, on a Black Securities and Investigations helicopter, no less, if it wasn’t?”
Pausing on her harder, more meaningful stare, along with her now-quirked dark eyebrow, the vampire chuckled. Leaning back in his chair, he shook a finger at her––as if she were a naughty child throwing a temper tantrum, rather than the current leader of their group.
“Now, now. Don’t get all imaginative on me, Kiko dear. We left no bodies littering the shores of the tropical mainland, I assure you. We were asked to come. Moreover, Black clearly told someone on shore, even if he forgot to tell you… since the pilots not only let us on, they were courteous enough to bump us to the front of the rather impressive line. They also made it quite clear they were expecting us.”
At Yarli’s grunt, Brick glanced at her, his smile widening.
“I must say, it is heartening to see all of these sweet, wide-eyed seers flocking to our dear Quentin for help. Most interesting to talk to them. All of those we met on the trip out here thought we were seers, as well. They shared their stories with us quite willingly, telling us how they positively feared for their lives. How the bad man Charles was trying to bring them all into his dark, evil fold, thus endangering their immortal lights and souls. That their only hope was the savior of all their kind, a man who remains pure at heart and stalwart in the good… one Quentin Rayne Black, esquire.”
Chuckling, maybe more to himself than with any of them, Brick leaned back on the bench, picking up his drink on the way and taking a long sip. His eyes flickered from Kiko to Yarli, that smile still playing at his lips.
“It was all so very touching,” he added, lifting his glass to Yarli. “I may have shed a tear. Truly. Indeed, whatever would your race do, if not for your white knight, Quentin Black?”
The vampire chuckled as if the idea thoroughly amused him.
Manny glanced at Kiko.
He barely heard the vampire’s baiting, drawled words. His mind kept going back to the first thing Brick said, when they asked him how he got out here.
Would Black really have invited this bloodsucker here?
If so, why?
Granted, Black was off his rocker right now.
Still, inviting bloodsuckers to come stay with them, when Black himself was out of commission, and both he and Miri were more than a little vulnerable, given their current state of mind––and given the number of civilian seers and humans wandering around, most of whom hadn’t yet been integrated into their little community here much at all…
Well, it was a bit extreme is all, even for Black.
Even for batshit crazy Black, it was extreme.
Could Black and Miri really have lost their collective marbles to the extent that bringing Brick here might have seemed like a good idea to them?
Before Manny could decide whether he should voice the question aloud, to Brick or anyone else, Kiko turned, gazing at him with dark eyes as hard as volcanic stone. From the thirty-something woman’s expression, she was wishing strongly that she’d thought to post a warning to the pilots about not giving rides to fucking vampires––at least not without checking in with her first––and definitely not out to the island.
On Manny’s other side, Yarli let out a faint snort.
Kiko looked at her, but the seer only waved her off, shaking her head.
Manny couldn’t help but find the seer adorable right then, but truthfully, he was worried. Black and Miri were still sex-drunk and apparently needed their phones confiscated, and possibly a full-time babysitter, given this new development.
Most of Black’s ex-special forces types were traipsing over another part of the island, looking for Nick, Angel, Dex, Cowboy, Jem, Somchai, Mika, and Alice. Most of the Natives were with them, since they were their best trackers.
