Black of Hearts, page 34
part #12 of Quentin Black Mystery Series
“Naoko––” Brick began, his voice a low growl.
“Talk soon,” Nick said. “Thanks for the update.”
Without waiting, he hung up, clicking the red button on the satellite phone, and tossing the clunky thing down on the flat surface above the gearshift.
He didn’t really want to hear what his sire was about to say.
Anyway, he could guess.
24
Out Of Fucks
I STARED OUT the window, scowling.
I could feel eyes on me.
Really, I could feel eyes on me from every corner of the room, but one pair burned especially intensely.
It was starting to try my fucking patience.
Fingering the collar, wincing as I tugged on it in habit, pulling at the connectors that wrapped around the bones of my spine where it burrowed into my neck, I bit my tongue, fighting not to say what I really wanted to say.
I already knew it wouldn’t do any good.
Hell, the fucker seemed to view my fury as foreplay.
It reminded me a little too much of Solonik.
Thinking about Solonik now, I frowned, staring out the window at the night view of downtown, and the splash of lights over the Moscow River, dotted with boats that vibrated the reflections of the skyscrapers behind. My eyes were pulled to the left, to the bridge that crossed the river over into that crush of buildings on the other side.
Below the building where I was, darkness flowed down towards the river, a wash of trees and forest that took up probably a few acres.
I had no idea where Solonik was.
For all I knew, he was the real reason I was here.
Our people fought to find him after that first night of riots in San Francisco, when he’d been leading my uncle’s infiltrators in their hunt of vampires, but he never poked his head up again. He’d disappeared as completely as Nick himself had… and Dalejem.
Thinking about that, I frowned.
A throat cleared delicately behind me.
I didn’t turn.
My back molars ground together, though, hard enough I could hear it.
“Mrs. Black?” a thickly accented voice queried. “Will you not sit for a moment? Visit with me? I brought an evening snack for you, since I was told you were awake… and cakes.”
I continued to watch cars stream back and forth across the bridge, aiming for the irregular line of buildings, their different colored lights twinkling in reflections on the water.
“No, thank you,” I said after that pause.
“I insist.”
The voice took on a darker tone that time.
I recognized the tone. I knew what it meant.
I also knew the threat wasn’t idle, that the asshole wasn’t above using the manual settings on the collar to shock me into obeying him.
He’d done it before. He’d done it four times that week.
No. Five.
Five times where I just wasn’t in the mood for his bullshit.
Weighing that in my mind, weighing whether it was worth it to defy him, when he’d inevitably get his way in the end, I forced my eyes off the window with an effort, looking back over the expanse of pastel room they’d designated my “quarters.”
The room was cavernous, absurdly large, like a converted ballroom.
The size didn’t make it any less of a prison… nor did the rich food they plied me with, or the expensive dresses, robes, and shoes that filled the two enormous antique wardrobes, or the claw-footed tub in the marble bathroom, or the high ceilings with their gold accents, or the grand piano in the corner by the opposite window.
I felt like Rapunzel in her tower.
Only I didn’t have the pretty gold hair.
Then again, even if I had the hair, I had my doubts Black’d be climbing up it, assuming he planned on showing up here. More likely, he’d tell me to hide inside that thick, porcelain, antique bathtub with the clawed feet while he hit the building with a few dozen Javelin missiles, or possibly an equal number of Tomahawks, depending how he came in.
Then again, I thought, swallowing, he might not need that anymore.
I didn’t want to think about where he was now.
I didn’t want to think about who, or what, was hunting him.
I could barely stand to think about him at all right now, given how completely fucking helpless I felt.
Then there was the pain.
The pain seemed worse every single day.
Every night, I woke myself up, triggering the collar when my light inevitably darted out, frantically looking for my husband while I slept.
“Come here,” Alexei said.
His voice was coaxing that time, like I was a frightened dog.
They’d given me a dog.
Well, Alexei had given me a dog.
A coal-black Irish Wolfhound pup, Alexei dubbed him “Peter” and gave him to me in a box almost as tall as I was. He had the box, wrapped in gold metallic wrapping paper and done up with a purple and blue bow, wheeled in on a cart pulled by a small pony. Two men stood by the door, playing a trumpet, and the horse wore a harness covered in bells.
These assholes really thought they still lived in the time of the czars.
That being said, I took one look at the puppy, he took one look at me… and both of us decided he was mine. He slept with me every night. He wouldn’t go near anyone but me. I’d woken up to him licking the place where my collar met the back of my neck, digging into my skin.
He’d been whining, so he knew the score.
I renamed him Panther.
He was just a puppy, not much more than six weeks old when they first gave him to me, maybe eight or nine weeks old now, but I knew he’d be a monster when he grew up.
I had every intention of taking him with me, if I managed to get out of this fucking place alive. If I left, Panther was leaving too.
“Miriam?”
Alexei’s voice was soft. Dangerously soft.
I knew that tone of voice, too.
I turned, reluctant.
Feeling his eyes on me from one end of the antique French sofa, the intent behind his stare, the hardness I could see under those flat eyes, I fought a disgusted look off my face.
Like the day I’d met him, his dark hair was slicked back.
He’d encased his muscular, boxer’s build in acid-washed jeans and a silk shirt with Escher-like silver and black patterns across the front. He wore expensive leather shoes, probably Italian, several gold chains around his neck, a diamond pinky ring in a gold setting, and a diamond earring in his ear, also set in gold.
He looked like what he was––a Eurotrash pimp.
The sofa where he sprawled was equally ridiculous.
It looked like a reproduction of a 18th or 19th Century French Rococo style wedding couch, but it might have been an original, for all I knew.
The frame was gold, probably real gold, knowing these clowns, the upholstery black with dark purple and lighter mauve round pillows and throws. It was probably twelve feet long, and that was just the part where one could sit. The ornate gold legs jutted out a few feet further on either side, the elaborate carvings rising up to a high, cushioned back, also decorated with a few inches of gold flourishes in the design of leaves and flowers.
It was so large, I would have thought it a sectional, if not for those curved, ornately carved legs and feet, and the low way it sat, like it was a crouched animal, waiting for the right moment to attack me.
Alexei patted the black upholstery next to where he sat.
I ignored that.
Instead I whistled for Panther.
The Irish wolfhound pup scrabbled up from his bed, bounding over to me on his gangly legs. I continued to walk as he approached, walking all the way around the couch and choosing one of the matching chairs that sat across the low table where the servants had the tea set and sandwiches laid out.
I folded myself into the chair, crossing my legs deliberately in the silk dress I wore. Panther reached me right as I situated myself. He vaulted up easily and surprisingly gracefully for a dog his age, joining me on the chair and sprawling his length across my lap.
Looking up at me, he gave me a doggy grin, thumping his feathery tail.
I smiled back at him, scratching his ears.
I felt Alexei’s eyes on me the whole time.
I felt him staring particularly hard at my legs under the short, incongruously summery dress, then pause to linger on my bare feet. I hated wearing such light clothes, especially around this gross fuck, but they hadn’t supplied me with much else in either of the two stuffed wardrobes.
They cranked the heat up so damned high in here, I probably would have been even more uncomfortable in jeans or a cardigan, anyway. The fireplaces roaring in every room of the house, including this one, didn’t help.
As it was, I was sweating lightly even in the silk wrap dress.
I knew the dog in my lap wouldn’t help, but I didn’t order him to the floor.
I considered again, if it might be worth kicking Alexei in the throat.
I envisioned the whole thing.
Casually putting Panther back onto the floor…
While Alexei watched me pat the dog, I’d push off the chair, shifting my weight sideways, darting out with a sidekick before he could react, hitting him square in the trachea with my bare heel.
The satisfying crunch.
Watching him gasp, paralyzed against the back of that ridiculous couch, bug-eyed, knowing he was dying but unable to do a damned thing. Me going back to the chair, whistling for Panther to come back to my lap.
Me sipping tea, waiting for him to finish dying.
Me, petting the dog, waiting for the security team to show up.
Me, waiting for them to hit the remote controls to drop me with the collar.
Would it be worth it?
Some part of me really really thought it would be worth it.
At the same time, I couldn’t help musing about how differently I might have answered that question, even a few years ago.
It hadn’t escaped my notice how much more violent my thoughts had been of late. I wondered if that was circumstantial, some flavor of what I was feeling off Black, what I could feel Black wanting of me, the pull I felt from Black as he fought to find me. He wanted me out of here. He wanted me to do whatever I had to do to get the fuck out of here, to find him.
I wanted that, too, but I wasn’t willing to get myself killed for it.
Some part of me was waiting, but I wasn’t exactly sure for what.
An opening, I guess.
Maybe I was just waiting for Black himself.
Because Black was looking for me.
That much, I knew.
Just like how I looked for him, every time my guard fell enough that I forgot about the collar, he was also looking for me. My light screamed for his, even past the collar. Some part of me could feel his light screaming for me, even when I couldn’t hear him.
My light needed his so badly I couldn’t think clearly at all.
His light needed mine.
I knew both things, without questioning how I knew them.
Maybe that crept up on me, too.
Maybe something between us had changed again, while we were in that other dimension, where Black and I played around with training, with learning the new structures in our light.
I thought about all of that now, in a kind of incredulity.
We’d viewed it all as a lark. We’d screwed around, learning new skills, showing each other things, but we never took it all that seriously. On the contrary, we told ourselves it was no big deal, that it was all essentially harmless.
But clearly it was a big deal.
Clearly, it wasn’t entirely harmless.
Given the form my husband likely inhabited, even now… and what he might be doing with that form… it was anything but harmless.
“Are you not going to ask?” Alexei queried.
I glanced over.
Alexei was pouring black tea into two china cups on saucers.
He used an antique tea set that looked to be French, like the sofa and chairs, and roughly from the same period. The teapot and matching cups, saucers, sugar bowl, and cream pitcher, were all just as absurdly ornate as the sofa, covered in mauve and purple flowers, hand-painted on the white china. The bone color and strangely violent patterns on the large, pitcher-like pot both clashed with and matched the couch’s throw pillows and black velvet cushions.
Glancing around the rest of the cavernous room, most of which was wallpapered in the same mauve, purple and black, contrasting the bright gold and marble tiles of the floor, and the bear and tiger rugs, I felt faintly nauseated.
I knew it wasn’t all the room.
The pain was back.
It seemed to be worse every time I let myself notice it.
“…About your husband?” Alexei continued, when I didn’t rise to his bait. “Aren’t you going to ask about him? Where he is now?”
I bit my lip.
Alexei liked his little games.
One of those was to withhold information from me about Black, to dole it out as it pleased him, usually after making me ask.
Sometimes, he made me ask over and over, only to give me a vague, nothing report, one that didn’t help fill in any of the blanks from what I could feel through the edges of my light.
Again, I contemplated kicking in his trachea.
I added a step that time, though.
After that first, darting kick, I’d pick up that ornate tea pot and smash it into his face, hard enough that it broke into a few hundred pieces. Hopefully, a few knife-like shards of that expensive, gaudy china would get stuck in at least one of his eyes.
Maybe a few more would get stuck in his cheeks, and his mouth.
The image was gruesome.
It made me smile.
“You find this funny?” Alexei frowned, leaning forward with one of the tea cups and saucers, offering it to me. “I would have thought you would be concerned for him. Whatever he is now, he still bleeds, does he not? Whether he breathes fire or not, he is not immune to bullets, is he? Or missiles… or torpedoes?”
A faint smirk touched those full lips.
“I imagine he is not immune to nuclear warheads either, Mrs. Black… Miriam. My beautiful bird, Miriam. He is like a bird now, too, yes? But I imagine he would have to fly very fast to evade one of those weapons, no matter how big he is now. Faster, given how big he is. Bigger body, bigger target, da?”
I stared at him.
When I didn’t take the teacup and saucer he offered, he eventually gave up with a sigh. He set it down carefully on the low table, as close to me as he could without risking it tipping onto the fluffy white rug under the table’s four clawed legs.
“I wish something from you on this night,” Alexei said.
I tensed, but didn’t let anything reach my face.
I’d known this was coming, too.
Somehow, I’d even known it was coming tonight.
“A gesture of good will,” the Russian said, motioning towards my lap with his chin. “I have given you that fucking dog…” He gestured over the low table. “I bring you tea. Cakes. I bring you many things.”
His voice grew harder.
“But what I bring, I can take away,” he said.
He stared at the dog in my lap, watching me stroke the silky fur.
“I can strangle that dog,” he said, his voice flat, indifferent. “I can break its fucking neck, right in front of you. If I feel you are not showing the proper gratitude for all I do for you, Miriam, I can take away my nice gifts.”
Silence fell.
That silence was different from any that had fallen between us before.
I sat utterly still, my hand stopping its slow stroking of the dog’s fur. My eyes fixed on Alexei like they might fix on a poisonous snake I knew would strike.
I understood, though.
I understood just fine.
“What do you want?” I said. “What is it exactly, cousin, that you feel would show you the proper…” My lips curved in a hard smile. “…Gratitude?”
He smiled.
I watched that lazy smile as it grew on his face, as he leaned over so that he was close to the gold table. He clasped his hands between his knees, watching me shrewdly, obviously pleased that he finally had my full attention.
“I wish a show of goodwill, my little bird,” he said.
“What kind of show?”
I knew what he meant. I fully intended to make him say it.
He held out his hands. “I’m sure you can think of something.”
“I’m pretty sure I can’t,” I said, my voice colder.
“Come now. You are the intelligent one, yes? The creative one? I’m sure you can come up with something that will soothe the raging beast inside me. Something that will make me feel quite magnanimous, and not at all resentful for all the fine presents I bring.”
I stared at him, unblinking.
Then I shrugged, seer-fashion, one-handed.
“I’m afraid I can’t think of anything at all,” I said mildly.
Leaning forward, I picked up the cup of tea and saucer he’d left on the table in front of me. Leaning back in the chair, I took a sip, my expression flat.
“Nothing that wouldn’t get you killed by my husband. Or by me.” I leaned forward, placing my tea cup and saucer back on the table. “But then, if you kill my dog, or even so much as scare him… I definitely will kill you. I will get creative about that.”
The silence returned.
Again, it was different from the silences that came before.
That time, Alexei’s smile turned harder.
So did his eyes.
I distinctly got the impression he hadn’t liked what I said.
Moreover, I’d spoiled his fun. I’d taken the joy out of him trying to blackmail me into performing sexual acts, and ruined the high he was getting from having power over me. I hadn’t reacted the way he wanted. Worse, I hadn’t reacted the way he expected, the way he’d grown accustomed to people reacting in these situations, particularly women.
