Black On Black (Quentin Black Mystery #3) (16 page)

He knew he was being watched. There had to be at least three hundred people inside the underground church, all of them chanting the same words.

He felt eyes on him though.

Something was wrong.

Iltere ak selen’te dur Hulen-ta...

Isre arendelir d’goro anse vik-renme

Isre l’ange si nedri az’lenm

Isre ti’a ali di’ sule-tuum...

The light of the ritual made him sick. It made his stomach hurt.

He could feel the silver lines criss-crossing over the church.

Hard light. Metal light.

He remembered that from the Old World, too.

He’d been drowning in that silver crap since he got here. It reminded him of working for the rebels in his home world, as a kid. They’d been the good guys, the bad guys––all of that had been so mixed up in those years, and not only because he was too young to really understand the difference.

But he wasn’t a kid anymore.

Someone gave him a new life when he came here. A life he didn’t want to waste––definitely not by recreating a past that was fucked up the first time around.

Here, he’d managed to avoid all of that ideological and religious bullshit from back home. He could just live in this world––invisible. Free. He didn’t have to be something or someone different than who he was.

He had to hide things about himself, sure. He had to hide his race. But he’d found having a shit-ton of money made it really easy for people to forget things about him that might not add up. If you had enough money, no one in the human world gave a shit what you did. No one argued with you––no matter how fucking strange they thought you acted.

That darker, nauseous feeling worsened.

It was never enough.

There were always people who had to have more.

It hadn’t been enough for human in the Old World. It wasn’t going to be enough for Lucky and his Mythers here, either. They couldn’t just leave him alone, let him live in peace––let him have a different kind of life than what he’d been forced into when he was born. He couldn’t even lip-service the whole thing. That wasn’t enough for them either.

No, they had to own his fucking light
totally.

These New World seers, they finally found the enemy, only the enemy was them. They’d let themselves be made over into that image, somewhere along the way, and now they were just replicating all the same b.s. they hated back home.

Whatever their problem was, he wished they’d leave him out of it.

Then again, maybe that was his fault too, getting involved. Even before Miri, before Ian and Solonik, he never really left them alone either. He never stopped hunting his own kind. He’d stayed away from those directly claimed by Lucky, but he never gave up on finding more like him, ones who didn’t want to join––ones who didn’t want to chant in underground churches and talk about racial purity and death and “the problem with humans.”

Unlike them, he had zero nostalgia for the past.

He couldn’t really be the only one, could he?

Black scanned that sea of faces, muttering the same words along with the others to avoid attracting attention.

Something was wrong, though. Too many people were aware of him. He could feel their lights on his, touching him, following every movement of his eyes. Knowing he only mouthed the words. Knowing he wasn’t really one of them.

Or maybe he’d just gotten so little sleep he was getting paranoid.

He turned his head subtly to scan the crowds standing around the congregation in the center, most of them clustered at the ends of each wooden pew. He’d made it about a third of the way up one side when pale white eyes shone back at him.

Black froze, watching the seer standing there.

He saw him speak the words said by the others, could almost feel the reverence in every syllable, even from all the way across the room. The seer stood in the shadows of a stone pillar beneath an iron sconce and a blazing torch. He held a small symbol in his hand, made of some black stone that glinted in the firelight.

Ian.

Ian was here.

Black moved without thought, sliding his way between bodies in the row of humans and seers where he stood. He moved fast, half climbing over a pew to get closer to the form in the shadows where he kept his eyes fixed. He got confused looks, disapproving looks, a few smacks in his light from fellow seers for disrupting their holy space.

The space of wire and metal.

Black ignored all of it, his mind focused solely on the tall seer with the bone-white irises who stared adoringly up at the depiction of the One God over the altar. The dragon-like form writhed in similar-looking black stone, wings outstretched.

That was a Myther thing too, that obsession with the One God.

Black’s mother had derisively called it “idolatry” when he was a child.

The image scared Black when he’d first seen it as a boy.

By then he no longer lived in his mother’s home. A four-foot version made up the centerpiece of the altar in Johan’s bedroom. Part-human, part-serpent...
 
part-angel, perhaps...
 
Johan called it
Dragon
and told Black it was always made of stone. Like the one on the wall of this underground church, Johan’s God always seemed be depicted with hate-filled eyes, blood on his lips, outstretched claws. In the one book Johan read to him however, Dragon was known by its voice––a voice that could stop a man’s heart, reduce cities to rubble.

Black continued to shove his way through the crowd, moving fast, as silently as he could.

But he disrupted too much. His light clanged off-key with the rest.

Those bone-white irises turned, finding Black’s face.

Black saw him stare right at him. He saw a faint smile on his lips––

Then someone grabbed him from behind.

More than one. Several someones.

Black called out sharply in the space, feeling them willing him to be silent, to not speak a word as they caught hold of his arms and torso.

No! I’m tracking someone!
He flashed an image of Ian’s face. Those white eyes. The human-like features and mouth.
I’m working for Lucky...
 
don’t let him leave! He’s an exposure threat...
 
I’m working for Lucky, goddamn it!

No one answered him.

He turned, trying to fight the hands on him, but before he could make sense of the individual faces––

Something hit him on the head. Hard.

It dropped him before he knew what happened.

He was on his knees on the stone when they hit him again. Harder.

That time, he went down for real.

WHEN HE OPENED his eyes, he was naked.

He was also wet.

The second part was explained by a metal bucket that clattered to the floor in front of him, clearly the reason he was also now awake.

He watched, dazed, only half-conscious as a seer wearing a dark blue robe covered in elaborate gold thread released the bucket’s handle and it fell with an echoing thunk.

Kneeling on hard stone, Black blinked to clear his vision.

He looked around the dark, cave-like space, but didn’t recognize it. Below the church maybe? In the catacombs? Pain throbbed his head, making him groggy, even as nausea coiled in his gut, likely from the head injury as well. His tongue was thick in his mouth. Someone had chained him to the stone wall, using those old, Tower of London type chains, his arms spread out, like he was some kind of Christ-figure.

He stared at the torches in iron brackets on the wall inside the room, focusing briefly on the dark corridor beyond. He tried to calculate how long it felt like he’d been out. And what was with all the fucking torches?

“You don’t like fire, brother?”

The blue-robed seer stood directly in front of him now.

In assessing the bare bones of his situation, Black had nearly forgotten him.

He squinted up at him now, trying to make out his features, to determine if he knew him. As he did, the skin of his own face moved strangely, crinkling and pulling uncomfortably. Something had dried all over his face, sticking on his skin.

It didn’t take a major deductive leap to assume it was his own blood.

“Fire’s okay,” Black said, answering the question belatedly. “But what’s with all the medieval bullshit... ? You trying to scare me?”

His voice slurred, again probably from the blow to his head.

He struggled briefly to test the chains, still fighting to pull his mind and light back together when his gaze shifted up, focusing on the face of the red-eyed seer standing there. He didn’t know him. He was dressed like one of the fanatics though.

Glancing to either side at his own outstretched arms, which were also wet and had a few new scratches and bruises visible around the tattoos, Black noted where the chains fastened to the stone wall, then looked back up at the seer standing over him.

“Someone have a sword and magic role-play fantasy they want to share... ?” he said, winking at the male with the narrow face. “...Or did you just forget to pay your electric bill?”

The seer clicked at him, then smiled faintly, as if in spite of himself.

“You are...
 
an interesting specimen, brother,” he said.

“Am I?” Black glanced at his chained wrists again, yanking on them to test them a second time, but they barely moved. He glanced down at his naked body. Moving his legs, he found his ankles also chained to the stone. “You know, friend, if this is foreplay, we should talk. There are easier ways––”

“You disrupt a religious ritual in a way that could get you
killed,”
the red-eyed seer cut in, his voice openly warning. “You are forcibly subdued and probably concussed. And yet the first thing out of your mouth is more disrespectful jokes. More garbage...”

The seer paused, folding his hands as he looked down at him.

“A wiser seer...
 
or an older one, perhaps...
 
might cultivate a little
humility
at a moment like this.”

Black looked up, his mind suddenly clearer.

Death threats had a tendency to do that for him.

He studied the face of the seer standing there, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t see the point. Not until they told him what they wanted.

He didn’t really think they’d kill him. Well, he hoped not.

The seer exhaled at his silence, clicking softly.

“You must know that what you did upstairs constitutes a severe blasphemy, brother. As I just said, it is punishable by death, according to the old books. You rightly surmise we don’t intend to give you the maximum sentence, but you must also realize some punishment is surely warranted...”

He paused, frowning delicately at Black’s face.

“Can you explain this disrespect, brother? Or are you too immature to do more than quip humorous remarks at me and toss insults in the space about our beliefs... ?”

Black glanced towards the darkness of the stone hallway, wondering if they intended to bring someone out to whip him after this little pep-talk. Grimacing at the thought, he returned his gaze to the red-eyed seer, making his voice more serious.