Eleven
LOUVRE
WE PARKED THE rental car at a hotel a few blocks from the Louvre.
It seemed safer to go the rest of the way on foot.
Also, if it turned out we couldn’t do much tonight, at least we had our stuff someplace safe, where we could potentially get a room.
Nick, Angel and I geared up in the hotel’s underground parking garage after we’d paid the attendant and found a parking slot. After checking for surveillance cameras nearby, we’d opened our bags in the trunk and donned the longer black coats that I’d pulled from Black’s supply room in San Francisco.
All three of us had tasers, standard issue weapons and tranquilizer guns from the same storage area in Black’s offices. I’d checked all of the equipment out––technically, anyway––but I highly doubted most of this stuff was legal to bring into France without some kind of special permit. More pressingly, I knew it might not be enough, depending on what we found.
I had vests for each of us, too, and a few other things I’d managed to grab from Black’s stores. I hadn’t told Nick or Angel, but I even brought a small explosive device that I proceeded to stuff in one boot in the underground parking lot for the high-end hotel. I velcroed a knife in a concealed sheath around my other calf, hiding that inside my boot as well.
I’d been nervous none of this stuff would make it through customs, but that went off without a hitch too, surprisingly. Everything, including the tranquilizer guns and the pellet-like darts, had been locked inside several X-ray proof pouches in hidden compartments of Black’s travel bags.
Having him as a boss definitely had some advantages.
As I straightened from strapping the knife to my calf, I saw Angel watching me, her eyes holding a thin veil of incredulity.
“Black really has had an... influence... on you. Hasn’t he, doc?” she joked.
I heard the nerves underlying her joke.
“Getting kidnapped might have done that,” I muttered.
I didn’t wait for her reaction or even check if she heard me. Instead I started walking up the ramp towards the street above the parking area. Nick and Angel followed, buttoning up the long coats they wore to hide their weapons as they walked.
“How do you plan to get inside exactly, doc?” Nick murmured, walking to my left and scanning the empty streets with bloodshot eyes. “You know they have like a thousand regular security people, right? For the Louvre alone?”
“Only like eighty or ninety of those work at night,” I informed him. At his questioning look, I shrugged. “I looked it up in the Black Security files on the way here.”
“Only eighty or ninety.” Nick glanced past me to Angel, who walked on my other side. I saw him roll his eyes. “...Well, that’s totally different, then, boss.”
I didn’t bother to answer.
I knew he was right.
There was a really good chance we wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near the Louvre, at least tonight. But I felt compelled to try anyway.
I didn’t know where that pull came from. Truthfully, I didn’t care.
I was worried about Black.
If Ian had him, he could be dumping gasoline on his body right now. He could have Black’s arms wired up to some religious statue in the Louvre, getting read to light him on fire in some fucked up quasi-religious ritual.
That thought wasn’t exactly helping things, though.
Crossing the empty road in front of the darkened north wall of the museum, I noted on the GPS tracker that Black’s RFID chip glowed a bright blue dot in the southern section of the museum, called the Denon Wing––which happened to be the most popular wing of the museum since it was where the Mona Lisa lived.
In front of us, the road that led to the turnabout in front of the entrance to the Louvre, Place du Carrousel, was gated shut under the stonemason arches, looking oddly medieval. If the map was right, we should be able to walk around, taking Rue de Rivoli to Rue des Pyramides and walking in alongside the north wing of the extended building. Of course, we had to assume the whole area would be covered by CCTV cameras and whatever else.
Assuming it hadn’t been gated off entirely.
Given that a long park lived there and there were no roads accessible by anything but security vehicles, I had to hope there might be a way through on foot.
It seemed like we walked for a long time.
The occasional car passed us, but since we were wearing all black, I don’t think we stood out much. I kept my phone in my pocket to save the battery and to minimize calling attention to us, but streetlights dotted the road all the way down, so I knew we’d be visible to anyone watching from one of the windows. All those windows appeared to be dark, and it was eerily quiet, and cold––colder than San Francisco with wind that felt sharper against my face––but I knew there might be eyes on us.
Nick and Angel followed soundlessly, all of us keeping to the shadow of the north side of the wing that extended out past the edges of the Jardin des Tuileries.
When we reached the end, we took a left onto Rue des Pyramides.
The road dove into a tunnel below that section of park, but to our left, prior to the tunnel, a footpath hugged the south side of the same building we’d just walked beside along the main road. Minutes later we were retracing our steps along the inside wall, aiming our feet towards the roundabout and the main entrance of the Louvre.
I could see more lights up ahead of us already.
Even so, it remained unnervingly quiet. All I heard was the occasional crunch of a leaf or sand under one of our feet as we walked across the grass. We stayed in the park and away from the actual footpath to avoid being on the lit lane directly under the windows.
I didn’t see or hear anything.
No tell-tale buzz of a walkie-talkie. No murmured voices or security vehicle engines.
I used another of Black’s gadgets to look for security cameras––a second radio frequency tracker, but this one containing a broad spectrum signal detector and specifically designed for use in finding surveillance. It was about the size of a small phone––half the size of my real phone––and according to it, there was nothing active in our immediate vicinity.
Which meant, if they had surveillance cameras pointed at us out here, they either used some method to send data that the device couldn’t pick up, or they were all switched off.
That probably should have been a relief, but it wasn’t.
We walked the deserted stretch of park all the way to the cement roundabout at the front of the Louvre without hearing or seeing a single sign of life. We arrived at the roundabout itself only to find it completely devoid of vehicles of any kind.
My eyes went to the Richelieu building to the left of the glass pyramid.
Orangish-yellow accent lights lit up the front of the castle-like main structure, making it even more dramatic than it appeared in daytime photos. Streetlights dotted the massive courtyard stretched before us, with additional light coming from square housings embedded in the cement. The pyramid itself glowed a faint yellow, making it look both otherworldly yet also perfectly at home where it sat in the middle of the stone yard. Smaller pyramids on either side and closer to the U-shaped structure glowed with internal light as well.
Mirror pools surrounded the pyramid on three sides, but none of the fountains were on now, since it was the middle of the night.
Again, the silence felt strangely total.
We passed the edge of the park, the ornate stone archway to our right as we entered the road, walking in a diagonal line. I felt unnervingly visible once we’d walked directly into the light of the street lamps rimming the roundabout itself, but I didn’t slow my pace.
I also didn’t see anyone, not a single soul.
As we walked closer to the glass pyramid, the statue of a lone soldier riding a prancing horse stood directly in front of us, only visible as a dark form against the pyramid’s glass. I glanced back at the Richelieu as we entered the edge of the stone courtyard, marveling at the size of the old palace, the beauty of the balconies and pillars that hemmed us in on three sides.
I’d never been to Paris before––or France at all.
It only occurred to me now how strange it was that my first glimpse of the city’s most famous attraction would come like this.
“Where are the people?” Nick asked me, his voice soft.
I could tell he was avoiding sibilants, the “s” sounds that might carry further. I knew he was right to do it, even though the place felt entirely deserted.
I didn’t slow my pace to answer him.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“I don’t like it, doc.”
I nodded, glancing up at him. His eyes didn’t stop scanning the open area around us long enough to return my look.
I didn’t like it either, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it.
We approached the pyramid without saying anything else to one another. The one time I glanced at Angel, she had a hand inside her dark coat. I knew she probably held the handle of at least one of the guns she carried––the tranquilizer gun at least. I didn’t blame her, but I was glad she kept it out of sight in case someone happened to be watching from one of the dozens of windows or darkened doorways.
We’d all expected the pyramid’s entrance to be closed.
I didn’t really know how we would get inside, but I never in a million years thought it would be through the front door. When I aimed my feet towards that entrance, it was with the half-formed thought to simply check it out, to look for any signs of security or other people.
Or maybe it stemmed from some other instinct I was less conscious of.
Nick and Angel followed me without protest, walking past the row of chrome poles jutting out of the cement in a diagonal line, marking the direction of the human lines around the glass structure during the day.
When we reached the front, I came to an abrupt halt.
Revolving glass doors stood there, but nothing blocked them on either side. I saw no metal bars holding them shut, no gates down in front of the rectangular entrance past the museum’s curved entrance sign. I didn’t see anything that indicated those glass doors had been locked up at all. Pulling out the phone, I turned it on long enough to glance at the GPS.
Black was to our right.
Definitely the south end of the museum, so Denon. He looked closer to the Sully wing side, meaning the east side of the museum, than where the Mona Lisa and a few other DaVinci masterpieces were stored.
Dimming the screen, I walked directly to the revolving doors without putting my phone away. Nick walked after me, speeding up a bit to reach my side. I felt a spark of panic off him even before he touched my arm, trying to slow me down.
“What are you doing?” he murmured.
I didn’t answer, just motioned for him to wait, for him and Angel to stay back, to not get too close. I knew he expected the alarms to explode around us the second I touched that door, but at this point, I had my doubts. It was too much of a coincidence, it being this quiet here tonight.
We were being invited in.
Nick ignored my warning, joining me right as I reached the glass doors.
“I think they’re open,” I murmured.
“I’m not worried about that, Miri.”
I looked up. I could meet his gaze since we stood by the pyramid’s front doors and yellow light shone through the glass all around us.
“We’re being led,” he said, softer still. “You’re being led, Miri.”
I nodded, looking back at the door. “I know.”
When I glanced up next, his jaw hardened, visible in the light coming off the pyramid.
“You’re going to let them? Lead you?”
I threw up my hand gripping the phone. “What can I do?” I said. Thinking then, I added, “You and Angel. You should go back. Wait for me at the hotel.”
“Not gonna happen.” Angel that time, standing next to Nick.
I frowned, trying to decide if I should push it. “Well?” I said, looking between them. “I’m going in. I really think you two should go back.”
I’d given up trying to speak without sibilants. After all, all three of us were silhouettes against a bright yellow background making up the main entrance to the most famous art museum in the world. They didn’t need to hear us––if anyone was watching, they could see us.
Angel shook her head. “Not without you,” she said.
I looked at her, then shook my head. “They won’t kill me.”
“You don’t know that, doc,” Nick said.
I glanced at him. “No, not for sure. But I really don’t think they will. Not while they can use me to control Black. Especially not after what I said to Black on the phone the other day.” I gave Angel a warning look. “I’m not at all sure about you two. They might kill you just to keep you quiet about all this. Or they might want to keep you to find out who your contacts are in the military or whatever else...”
I felt Nick’s dismissal of that.
He thought if Lucky wanted him and Angel dead, they’d be dead already.
I suspected he was right.
I also knew that, for Nick at least, this wasn’t about saving Black so much as saving his country and people from what he perceived as a potentially deadly threat in the form of Lucky and his trained “psychics.” That intelligence and military side of Nick frightened me too, if in a different way––but again, it wasn’t my priority right now.
I could feel that stubbornness emanating off both of them.
When neither said anything more for a few seconds, I shoved against the door.
It opened easily under my hand.
Taking a breath when I heard no alarms, I looked back at them.
“Well?” I said, looking between them. “You might think I’m crazy, but I honestly think I’ll be okay. I mean it. You guys did most of the set up. You gave me the leverage I needed... and you got me here in one piece. We’re never going to outgun them, so risking both of you for a few extra weapons makes no sense.” I swallowed, glancing at Nick. “I’m just here to get Black. That part’s my job. Not yours.”
But Nick was already shaking his head, glancing at Angel.
She shook her head, too.
“If they want us dead, they’ll just kill us at the hotel,” Nick said, turning back towards me. “We’re all-in at this point, Miri. We might as well help you get your psycho boyfriend back while we’re here...” He gave me a grim smile.
Looking between them, I couldn’t think of a good response, so I just nodded.
A sharper pain rose in my chest as his words sank in however.
I didn’t want to think about whether I’d gotten my friends killed already.
Shoving hard at the revolving door, I pushed my way inside the glass structure.
The door created wind on its tracks, the rubber seals squeaking, and the next thing I knew, I stood inside the structure, on a terrace illuminated by yellow track-lighting that ran along the base of the pyramid’s glass walls. There wasn’t a sound apart from the swish of the door and a faint hum of electricity from the lights themselves.
I walked to the edge of the balcony overlooking the main lobby. A staircase stood to my left, a darkened escalator to my right. Below the terrace, it was even darker, despite some ambient light reaching the floor under the glass where the balcony didn’t intervene. Not a single thing moved on either level, not that I could see.
I pulled out the broad spectrum signal detector, checking that, too.
No cameras operating in here either.
I scanned the walls and corners and spotted a few cameras with my eyes, including one aimed right at where I stood. None had visible lights showing them to be switched on. A few appeared to be on swivels to pan around in an arc, but none of them moved.
Another swish of air and rubber seals made me turn back towards the door.
Nick entered. Angel walked through directly behind him. She had the tranquilizer gun out and in her hand now.
I watched them both look around, noting the same emptiness and silence that I had. Angel walked up to where I stood by the edge of the balcony. Nick remained somewhat behind her as he looked down the escalator then the spiral staircase on our other side. I watched him peer over the balcony wall too, frowning into that dimly-lit space, looking for movement.
“What are we doing, doc?” Angel murmured from next to me.
I gave her a grim smile.
“Walking into a trap?” I suggested.
She didn’t return my smile.
From the top of the spiral staircase, Nick gestured for both of us.
“This way,” he said, making a military hand-signal aiming down.
Angel glanced at me, giving me a slightly more prominent frown, but only nodded when she glanced at Nick. As we got closer to the top of the stairs, she motioned with the gun for me to walk ahead of her, putting me between her and Nick.
We descended to the main entrance of the museum.
Nick had his own tranquilizer gun out now as well, but I kept hold of the GPS, watching the blue dot shift orientation as we made our way silently to the lower floor. It got increasingly darker as we reached the bottom, then darker still as we walked away from the staircase and towards the south side of the lobby. When I glanced up, I could see the palace building through the glass pyramid, which now formed an enormous skylight over our heads.
I found myself wondering why since I’d met Black, I always seemed to be breaking into museums with glass pyramids in front of them.
I didn’t realize I was smiling until Nick gave me a puzzled look.
“Where to now, doc?” he said, once I’d wiped the smile away.
I showed him the GPS, motioning with my hand.
Nick nodded, and again led the way. We approached two darkened escalators with a staircase between them. Angel and I followed Nick up the staircase in the middle, making no noise apart from the occasional squeak of Angel’s rubber-soled boots. When we reached the top, I grabbed Nick’s arm, motioning for him and Angel to let me go ahead.
When Nick looked about to argue, I shook my head.
“I’m invited,” I said quietly.
I saw him thinking about my words, right before he seemed to concede my point.
I followed the GPS map under one of the smaller glass pyramids, which shone a smaller square of patterned yellow light on the floor. Just beyond that and a small souvenir stand stood the ticket collection gates.
We entered a narrow corridor––pitch black apart from a few lit exit signs.
I had my tranquilizer gun out now, too.
I held it down by my thigh, gripping my phone in my other hand with the GPS map illuminating my fingers.
We climbed a short flight of stairs, then a steeper spiral staircase, this one narrower than the one in the main lobby. The space opened up when I reached the top. I stood there, waiting for Nick and Angel to join me, the tranquilizer gun still gripped in my hand as I gazed down the length of a cavernous room.
It was filled with human-shaped statues, most at least eight or nine feet in height.
Ivory-colored pillars ran the length of the walls, each a few feet in diameter, and statues of women and men in classically Roman and Greek poses stood between those pillars and against the walls on either end and opposite the windows.
I looked down at the GPS as Nick reached my side, double-checking our direction since the staircase turned me around. Through the windows it looked like we were back at ground-level. According to the broad spectrum signal detector, the surveillance had been turned off in here, too. I couldn’t help being unnerved at just how empty it was.
It felt empty in here... like a tomb filled with nothing but echoes of whispers, the footsteps of ghosts. Black’s files on the Louvre said normally close to a hundred people worked here at night, depending on the time of year.
We were really damned close to that blue dot on the GPS tracker now.
Close enough that my heart started pounding in my chest.
Motioning for Nick and Angel to stay behind me again, I followed the GPS to the corridor on our left. I led them through an arched doorway and through a narrow room lined with more human statues, these ones mainly life-sized, versus the marble giants from the other room. Windows to our left filled the high-ceilinged corridor with orange light from the courtyard, turning the statues near the glass into real-looking human silhouettes.
That’s why I didn’t notice the light coming from ahead of us at first.
About a third of the way through the corridor, I came to a stop.
Steep stone stairs rose up at the end of our walk, two flights of them. The light that spilled down them wasn’t from outside. It shone a paler white-yellow, and had a harder tint.
Holding up a hand for Nick and Angel to wait, I took a few more cautious steps forward. Now that I looked for it, I could see the craggy stone base of a statue at the top of that second set of stairs. It looked like a wide jumble of rocks, with a sharp chunk jutting forward like the prow of a ship. As I moved closer, the body of the statue was slowly revealed.
A headless woman, with outstretched wings.
I recognized it immediately.
A 2nd Century B.C. marble sculpture, it depicted the Greek goddess Nike. It also happened to be a piece of art I would have traveled to Paris and the Louvre just to see. I knew it primarily as the Winged Victory of Samothrace, but it was also called Nike of Samothrace.
Most people just called it Winged Victory.
I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I let it out. By then, I felt nearly light-headed. I began to walk, now in a low crouch to look up at the statue, conscious of the tranquilizer gun I gripped in one hand. Because of the steep stairs, I couldn’t see most of the base of the statue, but I knew from the blue dot that we had to go up there.
I walked up the stairs cautiously, in awe of the lit statue even as my heart slammed loudly against my ribs. I still didn’t hear anything. I couldn’t see anything either.
I was terrified I was going to find Black’s dead body at the top of those stairs.
I remembered Ian’s fetish about winged creatures, both in San Francisco and Bangkok.
By the time I reached the first landing, I fought to control my breathing.
Shoving the phone into my back pocket, I gripped the tranquilizer gun in both hands, sparing a brief glance back at Nick and Angel before I began climbing the next flight of stairs.
I was sweating, even though it was cold as a tomb in here.
As I got high enough that my eyes rose above the highest step at the top, my heart started hammering for a different reason. Relief flooded through me, even as I found I couldn’t breathe for those few seconds.
I also lost the last bit of caution I’d had about making noise.
“Black,” I managed. My voice held an open relief.
His eyes jerked towards mine. They widened, then filled with that same relief.
“Miriam... di’lanlente d’ gaos. I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”
I didn’t stop to think about his words at first.
I was too busy closing the distance between us. That, and looking him over.
He’d been tied to a heavy chair. The chair looked like a piece of artwork itself, maybe from one of the historical recreation rooms. Truthfully, it looked like a throne, although maybe one from a lesser reception hall, not a formal receiving room.
Whatever it was, Black didn’t look much like royalty sitting in it. His hairline was bleeding and a fresh-looking bruise darkened one side of his face.
As I got closer to him, still gripping the gun in my hands, I saw that wasn’t the worst of his injuries. Someone had stuck something in his side. In addition to the bindings holding his wrists and ankles, that thing seemed to be impaling him to the chair. The upholstery under where he sat was already soaked with his blood, which explained why he looked so pale.
I kept the gun in my hands, but pointed down as I ran up the last few stairs to reach the landing platform. Apart from the chair where Black sat, which obviously didn’t belong there, Winged Victory was the only piece of art there.
Now that I stood directly below it, it was enormous.
“Fuck... cut me loose,” he said, jerking my eyes back to him. “Miri, we need to get out of here. Now.”
I lowered the gun still more.
After a bare moment of indecision, I holstered it, then walked directly to him.
Once I got close enough, I saw that the thing that they’d stuck through his side was some kind of scepter made of glass. It was maybe only a centimeter and a half thick at the widest part I could see, but it had to be hurting him like hell. I couldn’t tell for sure where it would have gone through him, in terms of organs.
I was afraid if I took it out of him, it might kill him from blood-loss, though.
Since it was glass, I wondered if we could break it off.
“Miriam,” he said. Again, that gratitude came through his words, along with a darker urgency. “Come on, honey... help me out of this.”
Heat bloomed on my cheeks at his words, but I didn’t look at his face. I walked closer, then knelt down at the base of the chair, looking at his ankles.
Whoever left him here had tied him with rope.
“They left me here,” Black said. “They left me and then they freed Ian...”
I froze, looking up from where I knelt by his feet. “Ian?”
He nodded. His expression relaxed, as if he was relieved he finally had my attention. I felt puzzlement on him as he continued to watch me, along with a mixture of other feelings that felt a lot more muted––things he might even be suppressing. It hit me that I’d felt that suppression on him before, only a lot fainter than I could feel it now.
I was so physically close to him now, I could feel everything.
He’d been shielding from me. A lot more than I’d realized.
“I had to,” Black said, hearing me. “I have to shield now, too. It’s all I had for defense in here... the size of this place and shielding my light. I had to hope he didn’t start looking for me here first, that the shield would buy me some time.”
“Do they know I’m here?” I pulled the knife out of my boot, starting to saw at the rope holding his nearest ankle to the base of the chair.
“I don’t know.” I felt him watching me work. “They must know though, Miri.”
I felt a flush of pain on him. I felt him looking at me still.
“Thank you for coming,” he added after a pause. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t. I admit, I was worried he was right... that you’d leave me here. They’ve been fucking with my head so much, I didn’t know what to think...”
I paused on that, then decided it could wait until I got him free.
I fought not to think about Black himself, focusing instead on the logistics of how they had him tied to the chair. I needed to get the rope off first, so we could deal with the problem of the glass rod.
I’d gotten his first foot free and was sawing through the second rope when I heard a noise behind me and turned. Glancing over my shoulder, I let out an exhale when Angel’s head appeared over the edge of the platform.
Nick’s dark head followed closely behind hers.
A wave of hostility hit me from Black, seemingly seconds after I could see Nick.
I glanced up at him, and saw him staring in the direction of the staircase, a colder anger in his eyes and face. I smacked his leg lightly from where I knelt.
“Hey,” I said softly. “Cut it out. They’re helping me.”
“Probably so that fucker can be sure I don’t leave here alive,” Black muttered.
When I glanced up that time, he was still staring at Nick.
“Black,” I warned. “That wasn’t Nick’s fault. It was mine.”
“Bullshit,” Black growled, his stare unmoving. “He fucking wants you, Miriam. If you think he’s dong this for any other reason, you’re kidding yourself.”
Following his gaze over my shoulder, I saw Nick and Angel reach the top of the platform, both holding tranquilizer guns.
After a few rapid hand-gestures between them, Angel crouched at the base of one of the pillars on the opposite side of the staircase, to the left of Winged Victory, and looking out so she covered the two main corridors. I saw her holster the tranquilizer gun from a crouch, pulling the other gun out of her jacket.
I knew a regular gun would be useless if we had to fight seers. A seer could simply use pushes to make it impossible for Angel to aim––or worse, tell her to shoot herself.
Even so, I remained silent.
The tranquilizer gun was strictly a short-range weapon. If she could get the jump on whoever might come for us, a regular gun was still probably her best bet.
I looked back at Black and caught him staring at Nick again.
I sighed. “Quentin. You need to chill. I mean it.”
Pain coiled off him, right before his eyes met mine.
I’d said his first name on purpose, in part to get him to look at me, to get his hostility aimed away from Nick, but even so, when I met his gaze directly it sent a jolt through me. For a few seconds, I couldn’t speak, or look away from his face.
Eventually, I saw him swallow, right before he broke eye contact. More pain came off him right before he nudged me with his knee, shifting the direction of his gold eyes down to where his wrists were tied.
“You got that ankle?” he said gently.
Swallowing, I looked down, then finished sawing the knife through the last few millimeters of rope. When I finished and he’d moved his foot away from the base of the chair, I started working on the rope at his wrists.
Nick walked up to us as I was finishing up the first one. I felt Black tense all around me, even as that aggression and hostility on him flared.
“What the fuck is this?” Nick muttered, lowering his gun as he looked over Black. I saw him wince visibly when he caught sight of the glass shard sticking out of Black’s side. “Christ. What the fuck is that?”
“Some kind of scepter, I think,” I told him, without looking up from where I sawed at the rope. “Walk around the back... see if there’s any way to push it out of the chair,” I added. “I’m afraid if we take it out altogether it might kill him.”
“No,” Black said, shaking his head. “It’s a urele. They pushed it in from behind.” Seeing a blank look on my face, he explained, “...Seer training tool. There’s a bulb on the other end. That bulb’s got to be sticking out of back side of the chair. We’ll have to find some way to break it... or pull me off it... or pull it out of me from behind. You can’t get it through the chair.”
I shook my head, “Black, no.”
“I’ll be okay. They didn’t hit anything important. They weren’t trying to kill me. I think it was more to see if I’d yank myself off of it, or––”
“––Even if you’re right,” I said, my voice warning. “You could still bleed to death, Black.”
I cut him off partly because I could feel he’d been about to say something about seer organ placement. As it was, I hoped Nick missed the seer reference Black tossed out there already.
“And we can’t break it either,” I muttered, looking back down at the knife. “Jesus... not while it’s inside you. It’s glass. The whole thing could shatter...”
I got through the last of that rope and slid over on my knees to work on the next one.
Black used his free hand to start stroking my hair, which was distracting as hell.
After a few seconds of him doing that, I slid further to the left on my knees, repositioning my body and the knife so I was on the other side of the chair’s arm. In the process I moved myself out of reach of Black’s fingers, at least without him twisting his waist and hurting himself. I felt his presence all around me now, so dense I could barely think through it.
The total lack of clarity around that scared the shit out of me.
I’d barely been around him for more than a handful of minutes and I already felt drugged. I’d been feeling like this on and off since Bangkok, but it was so much worse now I honestly wasn’t sure how I was going to keep my head clear enough to get us out of there.
I went back to sawing at the rope, even as Black pooled more of that presence at me. Finally I raised my eyes back to his, glaring at him with a clenched jaw.
“Cut it out. I mean it, Black.”
“I’m so glad to see you, Miri...” he said, his voice thick.
Hearing the emotion there, I softened, even as I resisted that pull.
“Not now, okay?” My voice lowered, growing softer too. “I need you to focus, all right? I know you’re wounded and I missed you, too... but you need to focus right now, Black. Tell us who took you. Was it Lucky?”
He nodded. I saw him swallow, even as he winced from something Nick was doing to the chair behind him. I felt another pulse of anger off Black that Nick was even there and the irrationality behind it made me want to smack him again, harder that time.
“Cut it out,” I warned. “I mean it, Black.”
Nick frowned as he raised his head from behind the chair. “What the fuck is he doing?”
“None of your goddamned business.” Black’s voice was cold as ice as he looked up and back, grimacing in pain from twisting his body. “We’re having a private fucking conversation, do you mind?”
Nick met his gaze from where he stood over him.
“I do when she sounds like a crazy homeless person,” he said. “Maybe you two need to be a little fucking subtle about the psychic crap, is all I’m saying.”
I looked up at Nick, frowning as I shook my head perceptibly.
When I returned my eyes to Black, he was staring at me. “You told him?” He glanced at Angel. “Both of them?”
I sighed, smoothing my hair to get it out of my eyes from where it had fallen out of my ponytail. I focused back on the rope around his wrist. “I had no choice.” I glanced up at him again before I resumed sawing. “Now answer the question I asked. You said Lucky brought you here. I’m assuming you don’t mean Lucky himself. Do you mean your handler, Fontaine? Grigiore? That red-eyed seer? Who?”
Pain ribboned off Black again, and I realized it was because I’d seen so much through him. I felt him realize I’d seen him with Grigiore and those other seers and the emotions there strengthened, laced with more fear as his thoughts continued to churn.
Mainly that longing pulled on me though, mixed with a desire so intense that I closed my eyes longer than a blink, stopping what I’d been doing.
You need to control that... I sent to him. Please, Black... please...
More pain plumed off him. His voice came out hard though, a sharper warning.
“Don’t speak to me in your mind right now, Miri.”
When I glanced up, he shook his head, once.
“It’s much more likely to be overheard than anything we say aloud. If Ian is here, and if he was listening from that space, you just told him where we are.”
I swallowed, nodding, even as my jaw hardened at his words.
“Okay.” Nodding again, I shoved it aside. It was too late now. “All right... so talk, Black. Anything you can tell us. Anything that might help with whatever we’re dealing with here.”
“Grigoire’s people brought me here,” Black said, gasping a little when Nick did something from behind him, probably either yanking on or shoving at the glass wand to try and get it out of the chair. “...They told me they were holding Ian. Somewhere else. They roughed me up a little, asked me who you would have told about them... then they stuck that thing in me and said they were going to give me two hours to get out of it, then let Ian loose...”
“Jesus,” I heard Nick mutter.
I felt my skin grow cold, remembering what I saw, remembering Ian in that warehouse, how he’d been watching, smiling because he knew he’d have his chance at Black.
“I was hoping like hell you understood me, Miri... that you were coming here. I honestly think I would have died tonight if you hadn’t. But then... maybe they only staged this because they knew you were on your way. In fact, that’s likely, really.”
I stopped as his words penetrated, even though I was almost through the last of the rope.
Staring up at him, I closed my mouth with a snap, only realizing then that it had been hanging open.
“You wanted me to come?” I said.
“Of course.” He looked at me in genuine surprise. “You got into those files, right?”
Still fighting shock as I turned his words over in my head, I let out a humorless laugh. Looking away from his face, I cut through the last of the rope and yanked it off his wrist. I winced at the bruise and the cuts I saw there.
“I thought you wanted me to stay away,” I said, shaking my head. “I believed you that you were trying to save my life.”
“Miri.” Black’s voice remained openly startled. “They aren’t going to hurt you. Lucky’s people, at least, wouldn’t dare touch you. You found those files, right?” At my silence, his voice sharpened. “I needed your help. I knew they’d never let me go if you didn’t intervene directly. Don’t you understand? The whole thing was a test. Not just to determine how you felt about me, but to make sure I was good enough for you...”
I stared up at him again. “Good enough for me? I thought I was the dirt-blood half breed who deserved to die?”
He glanced around us, seemingly not hearing me, or noticing the fact that I continued to stare at him in disbelief.
“...I don’t know why they would have done it like this, if they really did involve Ian. Seems like a big risk.” Muttering, he seemed to be speaking almost to himself. “...Another test? But for who I wonder? Me? Or you? Or maybe he really is pissed about you and me and is hoping Ian will kill me before you can get me out of here. Maybe he cut a deal with him to let him have me if you walked out of here alive?”
“Who?” I said, not hiding my confusion.
He looked at me. “Lucky, of course.”
My frown deepened. “Black. Why wouldn’t they want me dead? Especially more than you?”
Again, he stared at me like he couldn’t believe what I was saying. “Did you read those files at all, Miriam? I all but told you how to get in. I told you where to find the information to push Lizbeth, if necessary. You used her to break into my safe, right?”
I continued to stare at him. “You sounded genuinely angry about that...”
He gave me a bewildered look. “Of course I sounded angry. They’d tapped my fucking phone, Miri. They had me in their damned construct for months so probably read half the thoughts in my head. I had to go through periodic scans just to prove I wasn’t feeding you information. I couldn’t be half-assed at all about projecting thoughts at you... much less about policing what I said when you and I actually spoke. They made it crystal clear they didn’t want me telling you anything about their true motives, as in their mind it would ‘bias’ the test. I think initially they didn’t want you coming to get me until they’d had time to look me over. But they also wanted a true gauge of what you’d do if you thought I was in danger.”
He clicked under his breath, shaking his head.
“...Anyway, once I knew why they really wanted me, I had to spend most of my mental energy to shield them from seeing we were bonding...”
The look he gave me that time was almost nervous.
“I had no idea how he might react to that news, honestly,” he admitted. “Given how hostile he was to you and me already, I wasn’t feeling optimistic. And I really didn’t want to chance him finding that out while he had me in custody without you being here. I thought he might kill me on the spot...”
When I continued to stare at him, he frowned.
“You really didn’t read them?” he said, his voice bewildered. “Those files? Then why the fuck are you here, Miri?”
I closed my mouth with a snap.
“Of course I read them!” I burst out. “What the hell do you think I’ve been doing for the last four months, Black! I’ve done everything I could to try and learn about that damned religion, to try and push people and figure out––”
“Not those files,” he said, impatient. “The ones about you.”
Again, I could only stare at him.
I opened my mouth, about to answer, when a gun went off, echoing through the stone walls.
That time, it definitely wasn’t a tranquilizer gun.