Blacker than Black (20 page)

Jhez is perched half on the edge of Garthelle’s desk, one leg folded underneath her. She looks up from rifling through a disarray of papers when I slide inside and shut the door behind me. For a few quiet moments, she just studies me. I can almost feel her weighing the bevy of questions in her mind, trying to choose the best one to ask.

“Where’s Garthelle?” Her voice is carefully neutral.

“He had some guests to see to or something.” I shrug and frown at the mess she’s made of the documentation. “The butler escorted me back here to get you. Car’s waiting to take us back to the flat.”

Her brows arch up. “Is it.” Her gaze flicks over me again. “Interviews done with, then, I take it?”

“For now. Garthelle isn’t pleased with the ‘lack of useful information’ to be had from his fellow
lyche
. The Durram brothers weren’t at all enlightening.” At least, not in the fashion Garthelle hoped.

Jhez starts collecting the papers into a semblance of order. “Works for me. There’s plenty here to go through.” She eyes me for a moment, and then lowers her voice. “And you and I have some things to discuss that are best not spoken in this hive of
lyche
.”

“You’ve got my cooperation on that count.” I’m rather curious to hear how her interview of Ferdinand went, and the rest of this . . . well, I just need some time and distance to process all of it. “Why doesn’t he have a troupe of
underlings
doing all this research for him? They’d be more inclined to understand it, for one.” I slump into Garthelle’s chair and turn to track Jhez as she hops off the desk to retrieve the large folio.

Together we gather the charts and lists and slide them into the case. Jhez shakes her head and twists her lips in thought. “I honestly don’t know. It has occurred to me, as one possibility, that he trusts no one else. Think about it. The vampires . . .”

“
Lyche
.” I glance up at her.

She grimaces. “Fine. The
lyche
have a society of relationships and connections that make a spiderweb look simple. He picked us up off the boulevard knowing we wouldn’t be frightened by close proximity. Knowing full well our years of experience give us greater insight than the average ’walker has.” Her hands fall still and she stares at me. “Perhaps he just needs someone he can trust.”

“Or maybe it’s his way of keeping us busy. So we don’t realize we’re actually hostages.” I don’t want to believe my own words, don’t want to consider the implications, and yet the possibility is there. If it’s not true, then he’s oblivious to the pair of aces up his sleeve and I just can’t see that at all. He might trust us, but I don’t trust him—not entirely. And if he does trust us, I have a niggling suspicion that it’s because he feels superior.

No, that’s unfair. Surely he has underlings who are weaker than him by a large margin. Jhez is right. I need another dose of the drugs Blue gave me. I can feel their effects starting to wear off, like a receding tide—slow but sure.

The wall is weakening. One strong push from Garthelle and it would give. I’m suddenly very glad we’re heading back to the flat and away from
Dragulhaven
. Problem is my resolve is slipping away just as steadily. My head feels clearer. Which is good, because it’s not a pleasant experience to think things and have them fall from your tongue without censor.

When the limousine comes to a stop in front of our apartment building, relief swells up in me. It’s odd that I’ve come to think of this as home so quickly.

Jhez and I step into and then out of the lift together. I shift the bulky folio in my grip and step off, but my stride falters as an odd aura brushes against me. Faint, tenuous, with the drugs still half-clogging my body. I try to ignore it; we aren’t the only individuals on this floor. We’ve yet to encounter any of our neighbors, but I’ve heard them in the halls a few times. They’re there.

“You feel that?” I whisper as we approach the door to the flat, ignoring the urge to swing around and study the corridor stretching out behind us. I will
not
be that paranoid.

“Yeah. I don’t like it.” There’s a quiver of something in her voice and her expression is familiar: the same look of concern she had when I went driving by in Garthelle’s vehicle.

She turns the key in the lock and opens the door.

The man comes out of nowhere. He shoulders into us from behind with brute force and pushes us into the flat. My back slams into the door, which hurriedly swings out of my path. I fall to the floor inside, hard, grabbing Jhez against me. Her impacting weight knocks the wind out of me but she’s on her feet in a flashing blur of movement. Stance wide, arms extended from her body, she faces the two men who stroll casually into the flat. The second shuts the door and turns to us with a grin splitting his face.

It’s the first man, though, that Jhez backs slowly away from.

Arm extended fully at shoulder height, hand cocked sideways, he brandishes an old but very effective projectile pistol at her chest.

“Not the welcome you were expecting, I take it?” He chortles, strange gray gaze darting between us.

I don’t move. Not even to prop myself up on my elbows. I just lay there on the floor, thankful for the energy booster Blue shot me up with as I draw my heavy aura into my chi, focus turned inward.

I don’t recognize either of them. They’re too rough around the edges for the Monsieur of York, the air about them completely different from the one I named Muscle. It’s easy to theorize one of Garthelle’s adversaries sent them. Gray complexions, hair the color of smog, sallow expressions, an impression of gray auras, and that stringy, sinewy musculature that defies expectations of weakness. Like a pair of street thugs strung out on crack, they’d punch a fist through a window and not flinch. The two could be clones of one another. Even the accent is flat and indistinguishable, the sound of their voices resonating as though through a dense fog.

In the
lyches’
world, they’re the perfect muscle, I guess. Untraceable. The blindness of my own aural sense is frustrating; I’m sure if the dampener weren’t still in force, I would be able to get a better read on them. A trace of something, anything. Without that sixth sense with which to measure them, every physical aspect of the pair seems clouded and obscured, the same way a mask would hide their face. Only, they haven’t bothered with anything as simple as a mask.

The one who closed the door walks over and clamps a heavily booted foot down on the center of my chest. “This one’s gotta be Black from the look. Puny thing.”

The one wielding the gleaming steel handgun glances back over his shoulder and studies me. “Aye, that he is.”

Jhez moves into action, recognizing the moment of relaxation as opportunity. Her foot flies through the air to knock the man’s weapon from his grip. With a rolling twist, she brings her other foot up to slam into the side of the man’s head.

I clench the drawn energy inside me and grab the booted ankle on my chest. Wrenching violently with every ounce of strength, I pour my essence into the action. The surge of power scourges the remaining block out of existence, but it also elicits a wonderfully pleasant crack from the man’s leg as he loses his balance and collapses.

Scrambling backward away from him, I clamber to my feet and snatch the folio and handgun from the floor.

“I would advise you to tell your boss to try harder next time,” I pant, relaxing the death-grip of control on my energy, “but something tells me you won’t be given the opportunity to deliver that sort of message.” Absurd, sending only a pair. If that was all it took to overpower us, we wouldn’t have survived on the boulevard half as long as we have.

The man writhes on the floor and holds his thigh in a white-knuckled grip while glaring at me. The contrasting whimper of pain escaping his lips sounds rather pathetic. He glances at his partner but the man is slumped on the floor in a heap, unconscious.

Jhez has the phone in her hand. “I called down to the security desk. They’re sending someone up.” Her voice is rough and flutters a little with the adrenaline still rushing through her veins. “You good?”

“I’m fine.”

She gives a curt nod and steps closer, easing the gun from my hand. Carefully standing out of the conscious man’s reach, Jhez brandishes it at his forehead. “Who sent you?”

The man grimaces in pain but remains silent. Her gaze drifts down his leg. With a subtle shift of weight, Jhez plants a foot on the side of his calf just below his knee. As she leans into it, a howl of anguish rips from the man. She leans a little harder to make the sound ratchet up in pitch and decibels, before easing off.

“How about now?”

“Okay! Fine! Shit!” The man pants and his face flushes a putrid combination of sickly, pale green and red. “Just don’t do that again.” Blood blooms from somewhere under his hands to stain the dark blue of his pant leg. The stain expands swiftly. “Fuck,” he mutters under his breath, head falling back against the floor with a thump.

“Answer the question,” I advise him. “Or your compound fracture will get a great deal uglier. Really fast.”

“Alpha circle,” he slurs. The pain is threatening his grip on consciousness.

“A name, damn it!” my sister barks. Silence. Jhez nudges his arm roughly with the toe of her red leather boot.

“Noire. Noire sent us,” the man responds faintly. His hands go lax against his leg as his head lolls to the side.

Fucking hell, I knew it.
In unison, we turn to stare at each other. After a heartbeat of silence, the corner of her eye twitches. She coils as though to pounce again, to force more information from the man.

“He’s out, Jhez. You won’t get anything more.”

She nudges him roughly a few more times just to be certain.

The tattoo of hurried footsteps reverberates from the corridor outside and I sidle past the unconscious man to open the door. Two security officers rush into the flat, their expressions grim. I recognize one of them from the desk in the lobby.

“How did they get past you?” Jhez asks as one begins leveraging an unconscious and injured man onto his stomach to apply handcuff restraints. His comrade grabs a transmitter at his shoulder and calls for backup before assisting.

“That’s what I’m curious to know.” Leonard’s voice is droll and carries a faint twitch of accent. Not nearly enough for me to pinpoint its origin. He stands outside the still-open door of the flat, hands casually tucked into his pockets, a restrained expression of fury twisting his face.

I jerk away from the door. The
lyche’s
gaze drifts over me, intense and piercing. How did he get here so fast?

“I have my ways,” he whispers as he slips by me into the flat. I just grimace and squeeze my eyes shut. No. I didn’t ask the question aloud without realizing it. It’s simple enough to gauge what the knee-jerk question to his presence here would be.

Garthelle pushes at their heads with his foot, studying their features. His calm intensity is disturbing. He looks up, glancing between me and Jhez. “You took them out?”

She nods and shrugs before holding the gun out to him. His brows arch as he takes it.

“The one with the broken leg said Alpha circle sent them. Noire, to be precise.” What are the odds of it
not
having to do with our aunt? Or our sire? Nil, I’m thinking. “Any guess as to who sent them for us?”

The
lyche
grimaces. “There’s more than one Noire in Alpha circle.”

“Not us, Black.” Jhez is quiet, but she gets Garthelle’s attention. “You. They came for you.”

The trace of emotion drains from Leonard’s face as he turns toward me. “Is that so.”

Jhez heads for the kitchen, probably to grab a shot of something stiffer than her coffee. “It’s what it sounded like to me,” she calls over her shoulder. “I was just . . . in the way.”

The clunk of glass, a slosh of liquid. Leonard holds my gaze, still, unwavering. And reaches out to encircle me in a tendril of his aura, wrist-thick and glowing heavily with a swirling, indistinguishable amalgam of emotions.

Pretty sure this isn’t good. I can feel him. The tension didn’t register when the last of the block crumbled because of the distractions; the sensation immediately began lessening thanks to Garthelle’s perverse need to come rushing to see what the problem was.

Infuriating
lyche
. I want to run straight to my bedroom and shoot up with two of everything Blue left me. But I don’t.

Garthelle retracts his aura and settles onto our couch with a casual air. I can sense a certain measure of waning concern—and burgeoning relief—emanating from him. This is interesting. And it makes me wonder what else I missed while the drugs blocked him from my awareness.

I don’t quite understand why he’s making himself comfortable instead of leaving. Surely his guests haven’t all left yet. Surely there’s
something
that requires his attention. Elsewhere.

My emotions are pulling me two different directions. I’m grateful, relieved, that he’s here. His presence is comforting. At the same time, it annoys me. I don’t want to like him. Sure as Gaia lives and breathes and bleeds, I damn well don’t want to start getting attached or feeling anything deeper than that. But it’s happening. Much as it annoys me to admit it, the vamp—
lyche—
is an honorable, ethical sort. From what I’ve seen. Despite the random instances that give off the momentary stench of lies, that squeak like wooden floorboards. They’re starting to accumulate, and I don’t like it in the least.