Black of Hearts, page 5
part #12 of Quentin Black Mystery Series
The seer bowed.
The bow was graceful, well-executed.
There was something intrinsically irritating about it.
Finn straightened. “I apologize, sir.”
Pausing, he added,
“…I primarily came to give you information on another, related matter.”
“Which is what?” Charles said.
“The team you asked to have assembled is ready, sir,” Finn said, unfazed by Charles’ hostile stare. “All preliminary work is complete. They wished me to tell you that all intelligence assessments give a high confidence for success. They await only your go order, sir. And a final location, of course.”
Charles continued to frown.
Turning his back on Finn, he aimed his eyes at the one-way window he’d been looking at before the seer interrupted him. His eyes flickered over the test subject in the lab partition below, noting now that the subject appeared to be seizing where he was locked to the organic chair. Foam ran out of one corner of his mouth, dripping down his bare chest and onto the pale green floor. Charles’ gaze flickered over the physiological stats listed, noting how they’d changed while he’d been speaking to brother Finn.
His mind returned to the timelines for the various experiments they had going on, the different areas in which he needed to see progress.
As it did, Charles’ anxiety returned.
All of this was taking too long.
He needed results, concrete results… now… on one of these fronts, at least.
He also needed more test subjects.
“All right,” he said, having already mentally dismissed the young seer. “Tell Fontaine I’ll be in contact within the hour––”
“Sir. Did you wish for me to convey your preference to the team? In terms of timeframe for the operation? Location?”
Charles tensed, then turned his head slowly.
“If I had wanted that,” he said. “I would have conveyed it, brother. Without being asked.”
The other’s expression didn’t move.
“Of course, sir,” he said.
“Of course?” Charles stared at him. “Get the fuck out of here. Now.”
The seer bowed. Without another word, he backed out of the room, head lowered as he made his way to the door.
Charles watched him go, half-incredulous.
Once the seer had fully disappeared, the door closing behind him, Charles touched his earpiece.
“Jali?” he said. “Do you have a moment for me, my lovely sister?”
He flipped on the visuals, and his second’s heart-shaped face swam into view, framed by dyed, wheat-blond hair, done up in tight braids. Jalisa’s eyes, a blood-orange in color, stood out sharply on a face that would have been unusually, even stunningly beautiful, if not for the Nazi scar that bisected her features.
That scar made the two sides of her face slightly askew, just enough out of alignment that it made her difficult to look at, at least until one got used to it.
Another remnant of Old Earth.
Another remnant of fucking humans, who seemed biologically incapable of feeling compassion, or any real empathy. Who thrived on animalistic cruelty.
Charles had watched these brutish, disgusting creatures… rapists, torturers, and enslavers to a one… treat his people like playthings for decades.
Looking at Jalisa’s still-beautiful face, the violence it remained a testament to, was a much-needed reminder of what they were doing here.
There could be no compromise.
There could be no naivete, not in this.
Charles would not repeat the mistakes of his elders on Old Earth. There would be no kneeling here. There would be no kneeling for his people ever again.
“…of course I have time for you, sir,” Jalisa was saying. “Always. As long as you need.”
“Did you send that new brother, Finn, down here? To the restricted science labs?”
There was a silence.
Unlike with Finn, Charles was happy to wait for Jalisa.
He could see his second consulting her light for any memory of a discussion around Finn, even as she also consulted the security logs.
“No,” she said after that pause. “No one in my unit. Perhaps Fontaine did? I don’t have access to his logs, but I could ask him.”
“Is brother Finn cleared to be down here at all?” Charles said. “Was he specifically cleared to see information this sensitive?”
Jalisa’s voice grew subdued, borderline apologetic.
“Sir, I honestly don’t know––”
“Find out, will you?” Charles said. “And if he has been cleared, Jalisa… check him again. Do it personally this time. And let me know the current protocols for clearing people for various areas of our facility. I want to know exactly how this is accomplished, and by whom.”
“Of course, sir. I’m heading down to counterintelligence now. Did you have a specific concern I should be aware of?”
Charles frowned, tapping the glass of the monitor as he stared at the man on the chair below. The test subject was turning bright red. From the swelling of his face and throat, he was going into anaphylactic shock.
Another one dead.
“No,” he said, frowning as he stared down at the lab. “Nothing specific. There’s something odd about him, though. And I confess… I don’t like him. I would like to know if that is simply a personality issue, or if my light is sensing something deeper there. Either way, do not use him to report to me again.”
“Of course, sir. I’ll have him taken off the roster at once.”
Pausing, still thinking, Charles added,
“Broadly, there is a concern, of course. We have to assume Black has someone in our camp. We should assume the same about the vampires, even with the venom tests Kalri’s team is using. I know those are far more accurate now, but we mustn’t underestimate the cleverness of these creatures. They have been extraordinarily creative in the past, in thwarting our methods.”
Jalisa nodded.
“Understood, sir. I’ll run the full range of tests. Black’s people are harder to spot, of course, but they all slip up eventually. As long as their sight rank isn’t much higher than mine or anyone else’s on the senior team, we’ll find them.”
Charles smiled, in spite of himself.
“Little danger of that,” he murmured.
His mind still on infiltration, he frowned.
“What about the other one? The female from Black’s camp?” He recalled her name from his light. “Raven. Elan Raven. Have you finished evaluating her?”
Jalisa nodded, her expression and voice growing more confident.
“She was cleared last week. I oversaw the process myself. Fontaine spent a good deal of time with her, too, as you know. He conducted the preliminary assessment. I did the secondary, and we were in full agreement as to our final appraisals… at least in any area of importance.”
Charles grunted, mostly at the polite way Jalisa couched her and Fontaine’s few areas of “disagreement.”
“Yes. I heard about this,” he murmured, letting her hear the humor in his voice. “I appreciate you doing the secondaries on that, sister. I suspect Fontaine wasn’t thinking with the right part of his body, when it came to that particular sister.”
Jalisa smiled.
Charles heard it through the line, even as it softened and warmed her scarred face.
“You may be right about that, sir.” Her words still contained a thread of caution, but they shifted lighter. “He was reprimanded for his, well… impatience.”
“But she looked good to you? This Raven? Apart from her other, more animal charms?” He smiled, but his voice remained curious. “Do you think she is worth putting to work in our infiltration units, Jalisa?”
The female seer’s voice again grew confident.
“Definitely, sir. She’s significantly higher than average in sight rank, and extremely well-trained. She’s also got a number of unusual skill-sets I suspect you will find very interesting, sir. In particular, she’s specialized in a form of mental manipulation that is––”
“That’s not what I meant.” Charles gave her a faint warning look through the virtual line. “What is her ideological slant? Can we trust her, sister Jali?”
Jalisa gave another short nod.
“I believe so, sir. Within limits, of course, but yes. I would say, ideologically-speaking, she is very much in alignment. She clashed with Black’s team pretty significantly over that same issue… although I am of the impression she kept her views mostly to herself there.”
Shaking her head to get a stray braid out of her face, Jalisa added,
“I think the issue was more with those who knew her from Old Earth.”
When Charles’ eyebrows went up, Jalisa gave him a sideways smile.
“Her history is… well, colorful, sir. Well worth looking into, if you don’t mind my saying. When you have a few minutes.”
Charles grunted. “I hear she knew the Sword? Syrimne d’ Gaos? Is that true?”
“She had a child with him.”
His jaw dropped, in spite of himself.
“You are certain?” he said, closing it with a snap.
“Yes. Her story was verified through a number of sources. There are those among our team who knew her back on Old Earth. Even more of ours knew of her. She had a reputation there. On both sides of the ideological divide.”
Seeing Charles’ frown, she added,
“That was all after you left Old Earth, sir. But I assure you, the camps she worked for were our ideological brothers and sisters. They followed the old myths. They advocated for any means necessary to halt the human carnage. They split with the Seers’ Council in the wake of the failure of appeasement––”
Charles raised his hand.
“It is fascinating, Jalisa,” he said. “But I do not have time for a history lesson now.”
Still thinking, he pursed his lips.
“I would like to see files on her, however,” he added.
It occurred to him that he hadn’t thought to study the happenings in that world prior to its destruction. He hadn’t even asked, other than to determine the basics of the final events that led to the end.
He wondered now if that was a mistake.
Although that world was gone, none of those details would be irrelevant to the seers who had come from it.
The more he could bridge ideologies, the better.
“Actually, I would like to see all of the files, Jalisa,” he said, still thinking. “Everything detailing the different factions fighting up to the end. I would like analyses of their specific philosophies, and how those groups compare to the religious understanding my people have here. If there are no files, I would like you and Golgi to arrange for a series of interviews for me.”
Still thinking, he added,
“I would also like to know how many people in our camp adhere to the beliefs this Raven holds, and how they view us, in light of those past loyalties.”
“I would say most of them, sir,” Jalisa offered. “Including me. I think any who don’t would have mostly defected to Black’s camp by now––”
“Ah. Well, good. Very good.” Charles nodded, waving for her to stop. “As to Raven specifically. You could reach her? Sister-to-sister?”
Jalisa gave an even more decisive nod.
“I would say so, sir, yes. Everything I saw in her strongly suggests a consistent belief system through the years, one very much like my own. She is highly ambitious… so I wouldn’t necessarily trust her on a personal level, but ideologically, she is very close to myself and others like me from Old Earth. I think as long as she is given appropriate responsibilities… and, pardon me for saying it, appropriate rewards… she will prove a highly valuable and loyal resource. And like I said, her skill set is most impressive, sir. Our team has her pegged at roughly a Rank 10. That’s a working rank, sir.”
Charles nodded.
As he thought over her words, his shoulders relaxed.
“Good,” he said. “Send her up here. I would like to speak with her.”
Jalisa smiled.
“Of course, sir. Right away.”
Without waiting, Charles clicked off.
Still thinking, he pulled up a live feed of the wall breach that started a little more than fourteen hours earlier. Taking in the rows of blackened holes in the border barrier, he frowned, watching explosions and flares light up the night sky.
He’d sent every drone he had down there. Via the human president, he’d sent troops too, trying to stop the flood of vampires coming in.
Unfortunately, the vamps had come prepared for both things.
Most of the flares Charles saw now were from drones being detonated.
The larger ones came from suicide bombers who ran into the lines of American troops, most of them venomed humans sent over to protect the vampires as they crossed.
The bloodsucking cowards were hiding behind human shields.
That was after they’d used human suicide runners to clear mines on both sides of the wall, and set humans upon the wall itself, their entire bodies strapped with explosives.
They’d already taken out the wall over nearly a mile of terrain.
Now vampires were flooding in, hiding behind yet more humans.
So far at least, Charles had been unable to stop them.
Tanks and fighter jets should be there in less than an hour, but it had been surprisingly complex to deploy troops quickly. He wondered if that had something to do with Black as well, and his bottomless spiderweb of connections within Congress and the Pentagon.
The thought made his teeth grind.
It also hammered home the necessity of ending this unholy alliance of Black and these fucking vampires before it could begin.
He needed to separate them, and fast.
Turning Detective Tanaka into a vampire should have opened Miri and Black’s eyes to the reality of what they were dealing with. It should have accelerated the inevitable split between their two camps.
So far, it hadn’t.
It hadn’t done it nearly enough, at least.
Charles could not for the life of him fathom why that was… especially given what Tanaka had done after being turned. Whatever the reason, Black’s team appeared to be once more moving cautiously towards alliance with the bloodsuckers.
Charles’ jaw clenched harder at the thought, hard enough to hurt.
Miri had done that.
Goddamned Miri, his niece… little Miri.
It had been her who reengaged with the vampires, not Black.
But then, he’d let that situation go on for far too long, too.
4
No Choice
BLACK EXHALED, GLARING around the rectangular conference room.
We were in the one with the metal, industrial table.
Most of his team had already been assembled and were seated around it. They sat there, looking pale, strung out, with dark circles under their eyes. Most held mugs of coffee, and their clothes looked rumpled, along with their hair, as they’d obviously been dragged out of bed.
A few were bracing themselves, watching Black warily as he gazed around at the rest of us. It was clear from Black’s face that he was about to launch into some kind of tear. He already looked like he was looking for someone to blame for what he was about to say.
He ended up aiming that glare at me.
Maybe it was for lack of other options.
No, he growled in my mind. I do blame you.
Me? I blinked, staring at him. You blame me for what, exactly?
I blame you for bringing us back here, his mind growled. My light already feels like total shit, and we’re still inside our own goddamned construct. I can’t wait for the shit-shower I’m in for once we leave this building and get back into Charles’ construct.
I bit my lip.
I knew he wasn’t being totally serious.
I also knew he wasn’t totally not-serious.
“Fine,” he growled out loud, glaring at me, then around at the rest of the occupants of the conference room. “…Fuck. I guess we have to. I guess we have to do it.”
Given our brief mind-to-mind conversation, I was confused at first what he meant.
“Brick,” he clarified, glowering at me. “We have to go down there. Help them out. We have to help get his people past Charles. Don’t we?”
There was a silence.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be the one to answer that question.
Cowboy, Angel, Manny, and Yarli exchanged looks.
Clearly, none of them wanted to answer that question, either.
Black had called Kiko.
It was pretty much the first thing he did when we got to his offices.
According to Kiko, Brick called in all of his “tribes,” or whatever they were for vampires. Using his authority as King, he’d more or less ordered them to the United States to help with the “Charles problem.”
They’d done it, too.
But now those vampire tribes had run into some difficulty at the border.
Most technically made it over, using a number of horrific tactics, incidentally, and killing a hell of a lot of innocent humans in the process… but now they were more or less trapped there. It was getting close to sunrise now, so the vamps were being driven underground, stuck in an underground complex of caves just north of the border.
Initially they’d meant to leave the border area entirely.
They hadn’t timed it right, however.
Their ground transport got taken out by the U.S. military.
Kiko confirmed all of this was true.
Thanks to my uncle employing missiles, fighters, and even tanks to the area, and locking down the air and land-space, a large number of vamps were trapped there. The United States military threatened to shoot down and/or take into federal custody anyone who passed into their perimeter without authorization.
According to a message Brick left with Manny and Yarli, as of an hour ago, Brick lost his ability to communicate with his people on the ground.
