Black of Hearts, page 40
part #12 of Quentin Black Mystery Series
Good. And when you pass my friends on the stairs, you aren’t going to see them. You won’t remember any of us. And this didn’t happen.
I understand, the human said, sounding relieved. I see nothing. Nothing strange. No strangers at all, comrade. I see nothing.
Good. Very good.
He released the human, stepping back.
Immediately, the human’s eyes went blank. Nick stepped around him cautiously, following the larger male as the human wandered down the hall, stretching, already seeming to have forgotten Nick as he made his way lazily toward the stairs.
Nick re-entered the dim lighting by the stairs, and saw Jem and Solonik watching the two of them, their eyes wide as the human walked straight towards them, staring more or less right at them without seeming to see either of them.
The human walked right past them.
He began making his way down the stairs.
Jem, still following the human with his eyes, spoke up in Nick’s headset.
“Do I want to know?” he said, a faint edge in his words.
Nick heard something else there.
He didn’t let himself react to it.
“Miri’s definitely in the room,” he said instead, using the sub-vocals and gesturing towards the nearest door. “I got that guy to tell me the basics. I know who has her… and who controls her collar. The guy I bit didn’t have a key to the door, unfortunately, and there’s a silent alarm on the fucking locks, so we’re no better off than we were, really.”
Jem frowned.
“Our options are pretty limited,” Nick admitted. “We could try hitting the security room, kill all those guys, hope we do it before they trigger the alarms… which is pretty unlikely. Or,” Nick said, giving a bare nod down the hall. “Just say fuck it, kick down the door, let them trigger the alarms and try to bar the doors to keep them all out. Or I could try the distraction thing, go into the room at that end…” He pointed to their right. “Kill a bunch of those guys, so when the alarm goes up, they come after me.”
“I am sorry,” Jem said, sounding irritated through the sub-vocals. “Are any of those actual plans, Nick? Or a dozen suicide attempts masquerading as plans?”
“What’s your big idea?” Nick said, hands on his hips.
Jem gave him an annoyed look, frowning.
Nick again got the impression it wasn’t all about his suggestions.
Jem was pissed about the human Nick bit.
Before Nick could decide how he felt about that, Jem spoke through the comm.
“I say we grab the guy you bit when he comes back. You can bite him again if you have to.” Jem gave him a dark look. “Assuming you can do that without getting… overexcited.”
Unable to miss the jab that time, Nick frowned, but Jem went on before he could speak.
“You can send him in to security, have him get the key for us. Tell him to think up some convincing reason why he needs it. Orders he got from higher ups, whatever.” Pausing, Jem added more icily, in his accented, seer’s voice,
“…That’s assuming you can do it without shoving your dick up against him, Nick. I wouldn’t want to spoil your fun, brother, but we are on kind of a tight schedule here.”
Nick fought a sudden, bizarre urge to laugh.
He didn’t know if it was Jem’s jealousy that brought on the nervous humor, or if it was something else, but he bit it back with an effort, nodding to Jem’s words while carefully keeping his expression blank.
“What about the alarm?” Nick said neutrally. “And the fact that the security guys, if they’re any good at all, will check with the higher-ups before handing over the key, much less turning off all the alarms––”
Solonik cut him off that time.
They both turned, staring, when his voice rose in the sub-vocals.
It was like watching a zombie come back from the dead.
“I can deal with them,” Solonik said, his voice calm, confident. “They won’t set off the alarm, not how I do it. I can deal with this. And with the comrades at the end of the hall.”
He motioned dismissively towards the right, where Nick smelled over twenty humans, and even more guns.
Nick blinked at Jem, then turned to look at Solonik.
He’d truthfully forgotten the other seer shared the same channel, the same kind of organic headset that he and Jem wore.
Hell, half the time, he forgot Solonik could talk.
“I can breach construct here,” the Russian seer said, his voice still strangely matter-of-fact, dismissive. “I know this one. I work in places like this. Many times, for Lucky. I can get into their minds.”
Nick blinked, then looked at Jem, who was also staring at Solonik.
Without asking, Nick knew what the seer was thinking.
He knew in part because it was exactly what he was thinking.
Could they really trust this crazy fuck?
In the end, Nick and Jem met eyes.
After reading the question in Nick’s, Jem shrugged.
“Your call,” he said simply.
Nick had a feeling he would say that.
Asshole.
Thinking, he gave a bare nod, looking at Solonik.
“Okay,” he said. “Tell us what you need from us.”
“Can you pick lock? For room?” Solonik said.
Nick nodded, copying the seer’s nod almost without knowing he was doing it.
“Yes,” he said.
“Then pick lock. The one there, out of the light.”
Solonik pointed at the door to their immediate left in the corridor.
“Start as soon as I go,” the Russian seer advised. “By the time you open it, I am inside security station. I stop alarm. You unlock door, go inside. Block door with something, if you can. If not, just get female. I will either stay out here, be lookout… or, if I crack whole construct, I go in other room, take care of other humans. If construct is same everywhere, I work through building. No problem. Easy.”
Seeming to feel Nick and Jem staring at him, likely similar-looking frowns touching their lips as they turned over his disturbingly casual words around killing roughly forty or fifty people, Solonik frowned back at them, looking between them as if puzzled.
“I can do this,” he assured them, focusing on Nick. “This part is done for you, brother. Get inside room. Get female. Solonik will do the rest.”
Nick glanced at Jem, who now looked like he wanted to laugh.
That time, it was Jem who shrugged, right before he looked back at Solonik.
“Okay,” he said.
29
Into The Lurch
JEM HAD LOCK-PICKING tools out of his bag before Nick could fully make up his mind how stupid or crazy this plan was, or what they were going to do if Solonik didn’t manage to shut off the alarm, like he said he would.
Pushing the details from his mind, in annoyance that time, he watched Jem as he knelt down in front of the door Solonik indicated. Jem moved silently as he pulled out two narrow, flat, metal tools. He inserted one silently in the top of the lock and fitted the second one below it.
Just then, Nick heard a commotion at the end of the hall, the same side the human told him housed the security team and the surveillance feed.
It was faint, behind closed doors, but his vampire ears had no trouble picking it up.
“Hurry up, brother,” Nick urged in the sub-vocals.
“I hear it,” Jem muttered back.
A gunshot went off at the end of the hall.
Nick flinched, his whole body going tense.
It was the same side where the security room lived.
“Fuck,” he said, speaking out loud before he could stop himself, if only in a mutter. “Hurry, brother. Hurry––”
“Shut up, brother,” Jem returned without stopping what he was doing.
Nick walked away from him, if only to distract himself. He paced back and forth, gun out, then bent his knees, sinking to a silent crouch at the top of the stairwell, his eyes fixed narrowly down the hall. He kept the gun out, covering Jem’s position.
Another gunshot made him jump, flinching hard.
Then there was a series of them, all in a row, from more than one weapon.
That time, it was heard by more than just him and Jem.
With his vampire ears, Nick heard people talking in the room at the other end of the hall, where the first guy emerged from, where they were playing poker and chess and drinking. He could hear them asking one another about the sounds. Their voices held wariness, surprise, the bare edges of alarm. They couldn’t hear well enough to know for sure it was gunfire, but they’d be coming out damned soon to investigate.
Nick was staring in that direction when the door to the security room slammed open, jerking his eyes back to his left. A male human in a dark blue uniform ran out into the hall, gripping a gun in one hand.
A shot downed him in a matter of seconds.
That one was loud, being outside the security room’s thick walls.
From the other end of the hall, shouts rang out.
They were definitely coming now.
“Jem!” Nick said, ignoring the earpiece altogether that time.
“I’ve almost got it––”
“Move your ass, Jem!” Nick said. “We’re about to have company––”
The door slammed open to his right, even as he spoke.
Voices erupted in the hallway, even as the gunfire died down in the security room. Solonik must have finally managed to kill all the security guards.
Stupid fuck. So much for using the construct to control the humans.
Nick had his gun aimed down the right side of the corridor now. He could hear their footsteps now. He heard them picking up rifles, could see them in the dark, coordinating with one another as their eyes adjusted to the dimmer corridor.
“Hurry––” Nick growled.
“Got it,” Jem said, hissing a little through the earpiece.
Nick turned, jumping, and saw the seer pushing the door inward. He felt his body tense more.
“You go,” he said then. “I’ll back up Solonik––”
“The fuck you will,” Jem snapped through the comm. “There are too many of them. Solonik’s in the construct now. He’s halfway through the security measures… they just fought back before he could get all the way in. If he manages to hack it, which it looks like he will, he’ll take care of them. There’s not a damned thing you can do out here but get yourself shot––”
“I can’t go in there,” Nick snapped. “We agreed––”
“Plans change,” Jem growled, turning to glare at him. “I’m not going in without you, so get your ass over here. Just stay behind me, so she sees me first––”
“No.” Nick felt his heart leap to his throat.
Not nerves but terror ran through him, intense enough that he felt like his throat was collapsing on him, even as his chest constricted to the point of sharp pains arching his back.
“No. I can’t––”
“Now, goddamn it. You’re about to get us both shot––”
Even as he spoke the last, gunfire erupted from the end of the hall.
That time, it was definitely aimed in their direction. Probably not at him physically, since they hadn’t rounded the bend in the corridor yet, but in the direction of his voice. They’d heard him shout, so they were shooting down the corridor, trying to provide themselves cover, and also likely to see if he’d shoot back.
Nick ducked in instinct, even as a bullet blew a chunk of wood off the bannister above his head. Another pinged off the marble, making him duck again. A third hit the wall near Jem, right before another embedded itself in a wooden cabinet.
“Nick!” Jem snapped in his headset. “Get the fuck over here, goddamn it. Now! They’ll see you! They’ll see us go inside! Do you want to get Miri killed, too?”
Nick’s jaw clenched, hurting his face.
He stared down the corridor, in the direction of the gunfire.
He knew Jem was right.
If he didn’t move, they’d see him in seconds.
Even as he thought it, he could hear the Russian guards making their way forward down the corridor, approaching the curve that would give them an unobstructed view of the stairwell, and Nick’s position. He was out of time. He had seconds.
He had less than seconds to decide.
His hands curled into fists, his chest throbbing in pain.
Looking between the left end of the hall, where Solonik had gone, the right end of the hall where the Russian ex-military thugs were creeping towards them, and the closed door where Jem stood, he moved in the same breath, more or less shutting off his mind.
Not a single thought ran through his head as he darted across the hall.
Jem opened the door while he crossed the space…
…and Nick was inside the room, and Jem was shutting the door behind them, letting it click softly before he locked it from the inside.
Nick’s eyes darted around the cavernous room.
His chest heaved. He looked around the space like he expected an attack to come at them from all sides. He felt like an attack was coming.
Truthfully, he wanted to jump out one of the windows.
The space was huge.
Everything about it, from the shockingly high ceiling to the piano in the corner, made him think of a ballroom in a Sixteenth Century castle.
Instead of a series of smaller apartments, they’d left most of the space open.
It wasn’t cold, though, or drafty. If anything, between what had to be a central heating system cranked to at least seventy degrees, and the fires burning in two grates, it was overly warm. The windows were all closed, with thick bars blocking them.
Nick’s eyes scaled up the walls to the ornate ceiling with its gold-leaf details, then down to the larger of the two fireplaces, the one roaring on the far side of the room. He saw a long, black-velvet couch in front of that fireplace with matching chairs, a low table, also gold, possibly even painted with real gold, sitting atop a pure white rug that might have been sheepskin.
Everything about the room, the gold details, the mauve and purple and green wallpaper and throw pillows, the marble floor––it looked like a person with no taste’s idea of how rich people lived.
Nick wondered if the toilets were made of gold, too.
Realizing he was distracting himself, he receded into the darkest pocket of shadow he could find by the door, putting the largest of the two wardrobes between him and the orange glow from the fireplace on the other side of the room.
He glanced at Jem.
The seer was looking around the room as well, his pale green eyes soaking in the furniture, the main fireplace… then stopping on a large bed that Nick had missed entirely, that stood all the way across the room from the large fireplace, and closer to the second, smaller fireplace. The fire in that grate had burned down to red and white embers.
Jem glanced at Nick, then motioned with his head towards the bed.
Nick shook his head, feeling his throat close.
He spoke in the sub-vocals.
“You go,” he urged. “I’ll stay here.”
Jem nodded, but Nick could feel the seer’s impatience with him.
Truthfully, he didn’t get it.
Wasn’t Jem the one who’d been talking about Nick scaring Miri? Why would he want Nick to walk up on her now, like this? Why the fuck would he urge Nick to just wander up to her bed in the middle of the night? What kind of genius idea was that? For Nick to just be there, standing over her? For his face to be the first thing she saw when they woke her up?
How the fuck would that not scare the living shit out of her?
How would that not scare the shit out of anybody?
Even if he hadn’t done what he did, that would scare any normal, sane person… to see a goddamned vampire lurking over their fucking bed.
That was nightmare material.
Nick slid deeper into shadow at the thought, grimacing.
He made himself as small and invisible as he could as he watched Jem cross the room. Standing there, he marveled at how quiet it was in the massive room. They must have something coating the doors, and probably the walls, given how old the building was. Some of Charles’ organic metal-machine-whatever material, most likely.
Whatever the cause, Nick could no longer hear the gunshots.
He listened as he thought it, and decided a few seconds later that the gunshots must have stopped. He could hear footsteps out there, and voices.
They were still surprisingly quiet, but he could definitely hear them.
That meant Miri must have heard the gunshots in here.
Why hadn’t it woken her up?
Were these assholes keeping her drugged?
He was still watching Jem, his back to the wall, his side to the wardrobe, when a commotion broke out on that part of the room.
Nick jumped about a foot.
Then, seeing Jem on the floor, someone on top of him, even as a dog’s agitated barking exploded around them… Nick moved.
He darted across the room, moving so quickly, he didn’t think about what he was doing until he had ahold of the person on top of Jem. Her legs were scissored around Jem’s neck as the black ball of angry dog fur darted around the three of them, barking and growling and jumping, clearly wanting in on the fray.
She was throttling him, choking him unconscious with her thighs.
Jem’s eyes were fluttering, his face turning purple.
She was going to kill him.
She was going to kill Jem, right in front of his eyes.
30
It’s You
“JESUS!” NICK BURST OUT. “Get off him!”
She froze.
She went totally still where Nick gripped her arms in his hands, turning her head slowly to look up at him. Nick realized he was looking into Miri’s face, her wide hazel eyes staring up at him in utter shock, her mouth falling open as her eyes widened in fear.
He stared at the fear there, the utter terror, and pain stabbed so hard at his chest he released her, stumbling backwards.
Tripping over his own feet, he ended up sprawled on the floor.
