Twelve
KNIFE TO A GUN FIGHT
I HIT THE deck instinctively, then grabbed one leg of Black’s chair, fighting to drag it across the floor, to get him out of the gun’s sightline. It was too heavy for me to move with him in it. I strained my muscles, but it wouldn’t budge.
Black started to get up, but I glared at him.
“No! Stay where you are, goddamn it!”
“Miri...”
“Help me!” I hissed at Nick.
Turning, I saw Nick gasping, holding his shoulder. He’d been hit.
Angel was returning fire with whoever it was. The sounds of a gunfire volley echoed through the stone chamber, disorienting me.
I stared between Nick and Black, trying to decide to do, when more gunshots came, that time from directly in front of where Black was tied to the chair.
Black once more started to get up, but I shoved him back down with one hand. I decided to try and tip the chair. On his back, at least the chair itself would provide cover until we could figure out what to do. Holding the base of Winged Victory, I planted my booted foot against the chair back, right by Black’s head. I kicked out at the heavy wood––hard, using all of my weight along with the additional the leverage from the statue. The chair barely budged.
Once I had the angle better, I kicked out again, using both feet that time.
The whole thing slid backwards a few centimeters. If that.
It was too damned heavy.
I was standing there, panting, realizing I was going to have to pull him off the glass wand, when Black let out a sudden, sharp, pained gasp.
I saw the glass wand disappearing backwards, out of his body.
I lunged for him even as he slumped forward, gasping. I felt relief on him, but also so much pain it briefly paralyzed me, blanking out my vision as I gripped his arms. Then I saw Nick. He collapsed on the marble floor behind the chair, the bloody glass gripped in his hand. He let it go while I watched, and the wand clattered to the floor with a sharp, pinging, glass-like sound.
It didn’t break.
While I focused on Nick’s pale face, Black slid forward, fighting to get off the chair. His legs didn’t hold, crumpling when he tried to stand. He landed hard, on his hands and knees. I heard him make a sound, somewhere between a groan and a grunt. I winced a second later when the echo of his pain slammed me a second time.
I felt his relief that time, too.
“Help me,” he gasped, holding up a hand. “Miri, it’s all right. Help me up.” When I pulled away from the base, crouching down to where he was, he was already trying to use the chair to get back up, his expression hard with physical pain.
“Black,” I said, alarmed. “Jesus, Black. I don’t know why Nick did that––”
He shook his head, gasping. “Don’t blame Nick. I asked him to do it. Help me up...”
I grabbed his hand when he held it out to me the second time.
Leaning all the way back and bracing my feet, I helped him up off the floor. By the time I got him up, both of us were gasping from the exertion. I was careful not to touch him anywhere near the hole in his side when I grabbed for him, gripping his good side when his legs once more half-crumpled under his weight.
He caught hold of the statue’s base in his hands once I brought him close enough.
Still leaning partway on me, he used the stone to work his way around behind it, until he was completely cut off from the shooter.
“Okay,” Black said, breathless. He pushed at my hands. “Let me go. I’m all right. Get him. Now. While your friend has Ian distracted.”
Realizing he meant Nick, I barely hesitated before I turned, staring at Nick on the floor.
Black was already taking off the outer shirt he wore, gasping in pain.
Pushing off the stone base of the statue, I crouched low, hurrying to Nick’s side with my head down. He was still mostly behind the chair, next to the bloody glass wand, so he had some cover at least. He looked dazed but he was conscious at least.
I peered past the chair once I was crouched behind it, trying to get a sense of where the shooter was firing from. Angel continued to exchange shots back and forth with whoever it was, and following her line of sight, I saw a flash when the next shots lit up the dark.
One o’clock. Level with the platform where we crouched, maybe slightly below. Whoever they were, they definitely weren’t firing a handgun.
Of course, like Black, I already assumed it was my ex-fiancé, Ian Stone.
Crouching down beside Nick, I grabbed his good arm and tried to haul him up to a crouch. When he was moving too sluggishly to really comply, I didn’t wait but began to drag him behind the chair towards the statue’s large base, keeping my head low. Nick was heavy as hell, but at least the floor was smooth. Once I got him going it was easier. A few shots glanced off the tile but most of them still seemed to be aimed at Angel herself.
Even as I thought it, I heard a grunt and a cry from her, and looked over sharply.
By then, I had Nick mostly behind the statue’s base.
Angel had a hand clamped to her ear. It looked like she’d only been grazed, but a lot of blood flowed down her neck from where her hand held the injury.
“Angel!” I called out. “Get out of there! Fall back! With us!”
She glanced over. Seeing me there, she looked for Nick, then seemed to make up her mind. I knew she probably couldn’t see Nick, but she likely assumed that meant he was out of harm’s way.
I dragged Nick a few more feet around the base of the Winged Victory to get him well out of range of the gun, watching as Angel made a crouching run for the base on the other side, using the low wall as cover. I watched her make her way around towards Black. A few shots ricocheted off the low stone pillars of the wall as she ran, but she managed to keep low enough that she made a poor target.
The trajectory of the shots told me a bit more about where Ian had to be firing from.
I got Nick further around the statue’s base and leaned him up against the stone.
I looked up at Black. He’d tied the long shirt around his waist, covering both ends of the puncture wound. I watched him grimace as he tightened his belt over the shirt, hooking the silver tongue in the leather at the smallest notch he could reach.
“You need help?” I said.
He shook his head, glancing at me. “No. Angel’s all right, too. See to him. Make sure he wasn’t hit anywhere else.”
Biting back fear at how pale he was, I looked back at Nick.
Nick looked pale, too. Doing as Black said, I checked his shoulder. The bullet had passed clean through. I could tell it hurt him like hell, but the bleeding had already slowed. He didn’t appear to have any cut arteries or anything that would risk his life.
“Where is he?” Nick said, gasping a little. “Ian.”
“Level with us. Maybe a foot or two below.”
Nick nodded, grimacing in pain as he glanced over his shoulder.
He looked up at Black then, frowning.
“He’s going to be okay, Miri,” he said. “Whatever they hit... he’s upright. He’s not bleeding too much. It came out clean, whatever that fucking thing was. He’s going to be okay.”
I bit my lip, nodding.
Still kneeling next to where Nick leaned against the wide stone pedestal, I quickly searched him for more bullet wounds, worrying I’d missed something. If I had, I couldn’t find it. Shrugging off my coat, then pulling off the outer shirt I wore, I ripped a strip of the fabric off the bottom, then another.
I started tying them around the bullet wound in his shoulder.
“...One o’clock. From the statue, not us.” I spoke low now that the firing had stopped, more to distract both of us. “Some kind of sloped ramp on this floor. I don’t think he can get above us. He couldn’t get high enough for a clear shot at Angel, so we should be okay here for a few minutes at least... unless that door’s accessible.”
I nodded towards the fire escape door to my right.
Hesitating, I looked at his face. “You okay? Hit anywhere else?”
Nick shook his head, grimacing as I knotted the second cloth around his arm.
He motioned for me to help him up.
Black just stood there now, holding onto the stone base with both hands, gasping where he leaned against it. I could barely see for the pain coming off him, and it wasn’t even mine. Even so, he took the time to glare at Nick as I helped him to his feet. I felt the irrationality behind the anger there, and his confusion since Nick just helped him out.
I could also feel that a lot of Black’s hostility stemmed purely from the fact I was touching Nick, regardless of context. The fact that Black was the one to tell me to take care of Nick seemed to not fully register with the part of him that was angry.
Black’s stare was blatant enough that when Nick looked over, he stiffened.
“You want to aim that bullshit somewhere else, Black?” Nick said. “I just took a bullet for you, you piece of shit.”
Black’s jaw hardened. “It might not be the last one you take because of me, Tanaka.”
“Are you threatening me right now, you mutant fuckwad?”
“You’re lucky I didn’t tell her to leave you out there.”
“Am I?” Nick let out a disbelieving laugh. “Do tell, Black. Tell me how someone I’ve been in combat with, who I’ve known for decades and who spends holidays at my house every year would leave me to die at your say-so.”
Black’s gold eyes grew colder. “You think she wouldn’t tell me what you did?”
There was a silence. Then a harder anger came off Nick in a dense cloud. I couldn’t avoid that either, standing so close to him.
“What I did?” Nick glanced at me, his jaw clenching before he looked back at Black. “Maybe you need to talk to your girlfriend about who started that, Black. In fact, maybe you shouldn’t go on such long trips. Maybe things aren’t as secure at home as you seem to think––”
I didn’t see it coming, not until it already happened.
Black swung––hard––moving so fast I barely tracked it with my eyes.
He hit Nick in the face, not once but twice, a hook followed by a sharp cross.
They weren’t love taps, either. Black hit him hard enough to knock him down. I’m pretty sure he would have knocked him down if Nick hadn’t fallen into the stone pedestal and grabbed hold of it to keep himself upright. Given that Nick had spent over twenty years training in martial arts and spent a lot of time at the gym, it was no mean feat, even with him wounded.
I stepped between them without thought, holding up both of my hands to Black.
“Whoa! What the fuck?” I stared up at him, at a loss. “What are you doing?”
Black didn’t look at me. He glared past me at Nick, his gold eyes as cold as glass.
I followed his eyes. Nick touched his face and his temple, staring down at his fingers like he couldn’t believe what just happened. He wasn’t bleeding, but one or both of the hits obviously hurt him. I could see a bruise already rising on his cheek. I knew hitting him must have hurt Black too, given the twin holes in his side, but he didn’t seem to care.
His voice was an open threat.
“Touch her again, and I’ll fucking kill you.”
I jumped, looking up at him, alarmed.
Black’s gold eyes didn’t so much as flicker.
Nick let out a humorless laugh, looking at me. “Yeah. Really fucking healthy, Miri. He’s definitely a keeper...”
“Nick,” I said, giving him a warning look. “You were trying to provoke him.”
“It wasn’t exactly hard,” Nick retorted. “I barely breathed on him and he flipped out. What the hell is he going to do if you really do something he doesn’t like?”
Black took a step towards him and, feeling the wave of threat there, I immediately inserted myself between them, pushing on his chest. Black talked over my shoulder, glaring at Nick.
“Are you seriously accusing me of intending her harm?” he growled.
“I’m accusing you of being a narcissistic sociopath. Does that count?”
“At least I’m not trying to manipulate her into a goddamned relationship!”
Nick startled me when his voice came back as angry as Black’s. “The fuck you’re not! You’ve been screwing with her head from day one! With all of this psychic, mumbo-jumbo, ‘you’re just like me’ bullshit. All this crap about wanting her to work for you... about needing her ‘services’ as a profiler when you really just wanted her servicing you in bed...”
I winced, glaring at Nick, but he didn’t even glance at me.
“...You’ve been trying to mindfuck her since that first day in the interrogation room... and don’t think for a goddamned second I don’t know it. Hell, you were probably reading me in there, trying to figure out how to get into her goddamned pants...”
“And that just pisses you off, doesn’t it?” Black’s voice grew dangerously soft, soft enough to make me nervous. “Gods know you didn’t want me getting there if you hadn’t been there first.”
“You’re not good enough for her!” Nick snarled.
I flinched, staring at him in disbelief.
Black’s voice grew even colder. “And you’re the one to decide that, is that right... Nick? You’re the one who’s going to keep her safe? When it took you... what? A whole week after she’d been raped to try and fuck her?”
Nick paled, looking at me.
His expression twisted in fury as he stared up at Black.
“Not good enough by a hundred fucking miles.” Nick’s hands curled into fists. “Or did you think I wouldn’t look into what you’ve been doing over here for the past few months, Black? You sick, merc fuck. You think I don’t know you’ve been performing hits? Or what you did in Iraq a few years back? We could talk about Columbia, Black. Or how about Buenos Aires? I heard there are some juicy fucking tales of your exploits there...”
I stared between the two of them, caught between disbelief and a growing alarm.
Nick had been looking into Black’s sealed military records? And what the fuck was going on with Black himself right now? Did he really just threaten Nick’s life because I drunk-kissed him one night? I thought we’d gotten past all that.
When the silence stretched, I moved again, trying to insert myself further between them. To get one of them to look at me, at least.
When neither of them spoke, I faced Black.
“Seriously?” I kept my voice soft, but I know he heard the lower thread of concern. “You’re doing this now, Black? With Ian out there?”
He finally looked at me.
A cloud of pain came off him once he met my gaze, forcing me to suck in a breath. When my vision cleared, he’d already looked away. Even in that brief contact, I could feel his anger at Nick was real––real enough that it vibrated off him in an erratic-feeling pulse. Real enough that his hands were clenched at his sides, his jaw hard.
Real enough that I knew his threat just now hadn’t been wholly idle.
“Black,” I said, softer. I laid my hands on his chest. “Calm down. You need to calm down... all right? It’s okay.”
That time, his whole face tightened. He closed his eyes, shielding those gold irises longer than a blink. When he opened them, he still wouldn’t meet my gaze, but I could feel my words had reached him. Moreover, he was wholly focused on me now, not Nick.
Then Nick spoke up from behind me. I turned my head at once, scowling at him for calling attention to himself again, only to find him glaring right back at me.
“Let me call Jean,” he said. “He can have the Gendarmerie here in minutes. I told him we might need them, so he’s on call with––”
“No,” Black cut in. “Absolutely not.”
Nick glared at him. “Excuse me, I wasn’t aware you were in charge. You got a problem with all cops, Black? And here I thought it was just me.”
“Apparently you dislike your friends significantly more than I do.” Black took a breath, leaning some of his weight back on the stone base of the statue, his expression hard. Even so, I felt him leaning on me more now, and not only physically. I also felt him acutely conscious of my hand rubbing his chest.
“...You call them here and they’ll be cut down like animals,” he said, his voice subdued, but also holding a thread of pain. “You’d be signing their death warrants, Tanaka, so I wouldn’t advise it.”
Nick looked at me, then back at Black. His voice turned incredulous.
“Ian’s one guy, Black. You can’t seriously think––”
“He’s ‘one guy’ who can control human thoughts.” Pausing a beat to let that sink in, Black faced him, his eyes hard. “The only reason he hasn’t taken ahold of your puny human mind and turned you into his personal dancing monkey already, Tanaka, is that I’m currently shielding you and Angel to keep that from that happening...” Black’s stare grew colder still. “Otherwise you likely would have shot Miriam by now... and me... and probably eaten a bullet yourself once you’d finished.” He jerked his chin towards Angel.
“...Well. After you killed her.”
Nick followed Black’s jerked chin to Angel, his expression stunned. I saw the wheels turning in his mind as he looked up at Black.
Then he turned that stare on me.
“Human, Miri?” His voice held something between disbelief and triumph. He turned on Black again. “Did you just say human, you psychopathic douchebag?”
Black glanced at me. “I thought you told him?”
I gritted my teeth. “I told him we were psychic.”
Black frowned back. “Well, how in the gods am I supposed to know that?”
More shots went off overhead, that time from a different angle.
Black, Nick and I all ducked. Angel, who still sat at the base of the statue to our right, was already out of range. She motioned for us to join her.
We slid around the base of the statue, getting on the other side of her while Angel herself continued to sit there, panting, a hand clamped over her ear and part of her neck. Once I was close enough, I got her to move her fingers long enough for me to look at the wound. I grimaced when I saw the bullet had taken a chunk of her ear. When she put her hand back over the severed part to try and staunch the bleeding, she gave me a weak smile.
“I’m still pretty though, right, doc?” she said.
Shrugging, I gave her a faint smile. “Well, since you’re not carrying an armful of alcohol right now, I honestly can’t tell,” I said, my voice deadpan.
She laughed, then grimaced when the movement caused her pain.
“Well,” she said to me, glancing up at Black and Nick. “We can’t just sit here and let the menfolk bicker. If your boyfriend’s right, we need a plan B.”
That pretty much answered my question about whether or not Angel heard Black’s remark about him and Ian not being human.
More to the point, I knew she was right.
I found myself thinking about the grenade I had in my boot. I didn’t want to waste it though, and I honestly wasn’t sure it would be enough to get us out of there, not with us pinned against the statue and at least one of us seriously wounded. Black wouldn’t be able to move very fast, no matter what we did. Moreover, the whole idea of setting off a grenade in the middle of the Louvre made me pause, I admit. It just felt like some kind of sacrilege.
I looked up at Black, found his gold eyes on me already.
“Is there no way you could protect anyone else coming in here?” I said. “I’m not sure all of us can move fast enough to get out.” I jerked my chin towards the emergency exit. “That’s in his line of fire now. He’d cut us down if we tried to get to it.”
Black frowned in thought.
Watching him, internally I sighed in relief. I was relieved to see him thinking again––about something other than Nick––no matter what he said next.
“I’d lose my hold on these two,” he said.
“For how long?”
“However long I was shielding the other person.” His eyes returned to mine. “There are two factors. Angel and Nick are physically close. Even just having Angel here, next to us, makes it easier for me to hold both of them. It was harder when she was at the wall, shooting.”
I nodded. “What’s the other thing?”
“I know them.” At Nick’s grunt, Black gave him a brief glare before looking back at me. “I know them through you, Miriam. I’m familiar with their light. I won’t know whoever Nick wants to bring into this. I’d probably be able to track them through Nick, but being a secondary connection, it won’t be as strong. Not strong enough to shield them. Not here.”
I bit my lip, nodding as I thought.
I knew by “here” he meant this version of Earth, so presumably he could have done it in his home dimension. I still didn’t know what he meant by light exactly, or the whole logistics behind tracking, but it was language I was familiar enough with by now that I sort of got the idea. Light seemed to be similar to a person’s flavor, like their specific psychic “frequency.” I knew there was a lot more to it than that, but it was enough for me to work with for the moment.
“I think we’re going to need it, Miri,” Black said.
When I glanced up, he motioned towards my boot. “On the door. It should be enough cover to get us through.”
I glanced up at the Winged Victory statue and cringed at the thought of some random piece of shrapnel damaging any part of it, even the base.
When I looked at Black, he rolled his eyes at me, but smiled a little, too.
He crooked a finger, beckoning me closer.
Rising to my feet, I stepped up next to him, bringing my face nearer to his. I knew it was unlikely Ian would overhear us in here, but his caution made sense.
“Get over it, doc,” he murmured once I was close enough. He sent me a heated pulse. “It’s cute as fuck, but I’m not letting you risk your life... or mine... just to avoid nicking a piece of stone, no matter how pretty.” He glanced up at Winged Victory herself without moving his face from mine. “...Anyway, every single piece in this museum has seen at least one war. This one’s seen a few I suspect, so give the old girl some credit...”
He was right. I knew he was right. Even so, I clenched my jaw as I glanced at the emergency exit door.
“Will it definitely give us an exit?” I said.
“Did you get it out of my stores?” Black said, his eyes flickering back to my mouth.
“Yes.”
He inclined his head. “Then yes... providing we don’t do anything stupid like throw it so it bounces back at us... it will definitely get us through.”
Nodding, I returned his gaze. It was difficult, being so close to him. I found myself acutely aware of him again, in more ways than one. I also realized I’d been avoiding that very thing pretty much since I’d seen him tied to that chair.
Swallowing when I felt him following the direction of my eyes over his face, I nodded again, looking away.
“Okay. We’ll need to get everyone to the opposite side of the pedestal long enough to have some protection from the blast.” I paused, glancing in the direction of the last shots fired. “Can we do that? Without getting shot?”
“I can distract him. I just need a few minutes.”
Wary, I met his gaze. “How?”
Black smiled. “A little faith, doc.”
I considered arguing the point, then decided against it.
I started to move my face away from his altogether, but he caught hold of my arm. I didn’t have time to even tense when he bent down, kissing me on the mouth, pressing my back up against the base of the statue. The kiss started off warm, soft... sensual enough to catch me off guard even as a pulse of his heat sank slowly into my chest. The kiss gradually grew hotter as he deepened it, using his tongue. He kissed me for a long-feeling few seconds, holding my body away from his, probably because of the gaping hole in his side. In spite of that fact... in spite of everything, I lost myself there, briefly at least.
He didn’t. I felt his caution, even when I lost mine––intensely enough that it frustrated me. Whatever that caution was, it wasn’t about him being wounded.
Maybe caution wasn’t really the right word.
Restraint. Restraint was a lot closer, which is maybe why I struggled to understand.
I wondered about it more loudly and he exuded amusement, raising his head. Kissing my neck, he murmured in my ear. “You’re fucking kidding me right now, aren’t you, doc?”
He lightly bit the skin of my neck, hitting me with a more intense wash of heat, making me light-headed. When I looked up, his pupils had dilated, turning his irises nearly all-black. I understood the rest of what he was saying, too––I wasn’t the only one who got a little off-balance when we were together.
“Off-balance?” He grunted. “I suppose that’s one way to put it.”
He kissed me again while I thought about that, and I lost myself again.
I had to fight not to cling to him when he pulled away the second time. I met his gaze and his gold eyes were slightly out of focus. He seemed to be breathing harder, too.
“You know how to set the delay?” he said, soft.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“You’re okay with the throwing part?” His eyes flickered to my mouth. “Be gentle, doc.”
I nodded, then glanced back at the other two.
Nick was scowling openly at Black. Angel only smiled from where she sat on the floor, holding her hand against the side of her head where the bleeding seemed to have finally stopped. She rolled her eyes at me, or maybe at both of us.
Ignoring Nick’s continued glare, I looked back at Black. “Okay. Tell them what’s up... and when you need us to move. I’ll get closer to the door. Do you want to give me a signal or something?”
“You’ll know when I start the distraction. But give me a few minutes. Let me ping you for the throw itself, okay?”
I hesitated, about to ask.
Then I let it go and just nodded.
I didn’t want him playing distraction truthfully, especially wounded. But I also knew he’d be more likely to pull it off with a fellow seer than either of my friends. It should also put him furthest away from the grenade blast, so there was that.
Anyway, I didn’t have any better ideas.
I was about to walk away, when he caught my arm again. “Can I see it, doc? I want to make sure what kind it is. They had new ones coming in when I left.”
Realizing he meant the explosive, I barely hesitated before I bent down, pulling my pant leg up over the top of my boot. Easing the grenade out of the pouch strapped around my calf, I straightened and handed it to Black.
I glanced at Angel and Nick while Black looked it over.
They both looked wiped out. Despite his anger, Nick also looked overly pale.
I reminded myself that in addition to the bullet holes, they were also both jet-lagged. We needed to get out of here. None of us could hold up for much longer, and Black could actually die depending on what that glass rod punctured while it was inside him.
Thinking about that, I realized Ian hadn’t fired at us in awhile.
I wondered if he was changing vantage points on us again.
I looked down in surprise as Black bent his knees in front of me. Gasping lightly, he shoved the grenade back into the pouch in my boot and pulled my pant leg back over it. He straightened seconds later with the help of the stone base, pressing his other hand to his side.
He leaned back against the pedestal, breathing hard, grimacing in pain.
“Why the hell didn’t you let me do that?” I said, staring at him.
He just winked at me, smiling. I could tell he was full of it, just from how pale he’d gotten in those few seconds, but he spoke before I could lecture him again.
“Don’t pull it out until you need it, doc,” he said.
He began to move away then paused, bending down to kiss me on the mouth again. Like before, he started out soft at first––then let the kiss linger, kissing me harder, until he’d pressed my back into the stone base all over again.
He let out a low sound just before he pulled away.
I felt a lot behind that kiss. Enough that I probably should have been worried.
Apparently that’s a lesson I just can’t seem to learn, though.