Page 209 of Hunters and Prey

I felt him, even though my vision hadn’t yet cleared, even as I tried to focus on my body, to bring myself back into the room. I stopped trying to make sense of where I was, how I’d gotten there, where I’d been before I opened my eyes.

Then Black was with me, his hands on me, as if reassuring himself I was real.

Opening my eyes, I looked up at him.

As I did, I realized how exhausted he looked.

The passage of time reached me, as I looked at him, as I saw the five o’clock shadow on his face.

It had been almost two weeks since I’d gone to meet Brick.

Two weeks of this, with me leaving and coming back almost every night.

Black had surveillance in every room of the apartment now.

He never left me alone. He had his whole infiltration team working on the problem of me, the problem of Miriam, his wife––all but a few who continued to look for Dalejem, our missing seer, and Nick, Brick’s missing newborn vampire and my ex-best friend.

Black assigned every single one of his highly-ranked seers––even some of the more monk-like, non-infiltrator types, who lived among the civilian population––to find some way to keep me here. Or, better yet, to teach me, or even Black himself, some way to control what was happening to me.

So far, all of them had come up dry.

Black himself barely slept.

I’d heard him arguing with the other seers.

I’d heard him yelling at them, threatening them, demanding solutions, asking for ideas on how they might begin to train me, ordering them to map the relevant structures of my light so we could begin to isolate them as a team, and try to infuse more of my waking consciousness into those parts of my aleimi.

I’d heard him on the phone, yelling at Brick.

I heard him snap at the vampire king over the line.

“No, she can’t talk to her fucking sister. Miri’s not well. The last thing she needs right now is any more goddamned vampires in her face. I don’t care if they were the Dalai Lama before they were turned…”

Black had been walking towards the door, listening to something the vampire said in response, before his voice came out in a harder growl.

“Well, that’s just too fucking bad,” he cut in, interrupting whatever the vampire told him. “That bitch waited ten years to show her face and give my wife a gaos d’ jurekil’a heart attack. As far as I’m concerned, she can wait the rest of her bloodsucking life for my wife to be damned good and ready to come to her. If you think I’m pushing that on her, now, after you turned her best friend into a vampire and he nearly killed her, you’re insane…”

His voice sharpened.

“…moreinsane. Than usual, that is. You’re out of your di'lanlente a' guete mind, Brick, which believe me… doesn’t surprise me at this point. Anyway, she hasn’t even asked me about her fucking sister. What makes you think she wants to talk to her at all?”

He walked out of the room entirely before I heard any more.

As he did, I wondered if he even realized he’d been swearing at the vampire in Prexci, the seer tongue.

Given how little sleep he’d gotten over the past week, I doubted it.

Either way, he’d closed the door behind him, and closed off his light, so I had no idea what he said to Brick beyond that, or if he’d explained my disappearance that night at the Conservatory of Flowers.

I had to assume he hadn’t told the vampire much, or that he told him as little as he thought he could get away with, without piquing the vampire’s interest more, or worse, causing him to go looking for answers in Charles.

Now Black studied my eyes, his expression hard, his face looking thinner than it should. He felt over my arms, touching my face with a lightness that made me want to cling to him, if only to reassure me that his hands couldn’t hurt me, that I was fine.

Then I heard him suck in a breath, and I followed his eyes, looking down to my leg.

There was some kind of burn on it.

I also realized I smelled, like I’d fallen into a sewer.

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