Page 17

16

THE KID

“ F ucker should be prosecuted,” Nick muttered darkly. “Goddamned disgusting, perverted, garbage, piece of shit, child-molesting sadist…”

Prosecuted? Black suppressed a cynical snort.

Ever the gaos- damned cop.

It would have been funny, maybe, under different circumstances.

“The fucker is dead,” Black reminded him, his voice equally low. “He’s been prosecuted by someone already.”

“Not for this,” Nick shot back. “Not for what he did.” He glared at Black. He lowered his voice to aim his words only at him. “Shooting was too good for that fuck. I would have ripped his arms out of their sockets and beat him to death with them. I hope those mad scientists at Prometharis resurrect him just so I can kill him again. Maybe I’ll even turn him into a vampire so I could kill him a few more times, or at least keep him alive longer so I can hack him to pieces while he slowly rots…”

Black could hardly disagree with the sentiment.

Still, the visuals made him grimace.

“Jesus, Nick––”

“I meant it,” Nick snapped. “What I told that kid? I wasn’t joking. If someone hadn’t already taken him out, I’d keep that fucker alive for weeks. He’d be begging me for death by the end of the first day… then he’d get to watch as I dismantled him piece by piece… I’d feed his entrails to him… then his own fucking cock…”

Black grimaced again.

“I never thought you were joking.” He gave Nick a dark look. “And if he was still alive, I would have helped you, brother.”

Nick looked slightly placated by that.

Only slightly.

The two of them had just followed Miriam and the girl seer out the front door of the house. Black kept the staff away with his mind, while Nick used his disturbingly sensitive vampire ears, eyes, and sense of smell to make sure Black hadn’t missed anyone.

The girl gripped Miri’s hand and arm tightly in both of her small hands.

While Black and Nick worked on cutting the bars out of the floor, Nick had explained to the girl that they were all friends, that they would be taking her out of here forever, that she could trust Black and trust Miriam, who were his very close friends. Nick told the girl that Miriam was like a sister to him, that she could trust Miriam with her life.

Black was honestly a little uneasy at just how intensely the girl absorbed everything Nick said. She hadn’t even nodded, just stared up at him with slightly wide eyes, listening with every part of her body. She watched and listened to Nick like he was giving her detailed orders on how to storm the Pentagon to steal military secrets.

Black guessed Nick could have told her he was a resurrected god, that she had to go on a murder spree to provide him with blood sacrifices or he’d bring earthquakes and make the skies rain blood, and the kid would have believed every word.

She believed every word he said about Miriam, that much was clear.

“What’s your name?” Miri asked her gently now.

Black found himself straining a bit, wanting to hear the answer.

He felt Nick’s attention on the two of them, too.

“Aura,” the girl whispered. “Aura…” She stared at the trees outside the front door of the Pacific Heights mansion. “…Woods.”

“Aura Woods?” Miriam asked carefully.

The girl nodded.

She seemed to curve most of her waif-like body towards Miri’s as they spoke.

Black got the impression, from her body language and her light, that she would have preferred to meld into Miri’s side altogether. The fucking kid needed a mother. She seemed to see Miri and project that need immediately onto her, as soon as Nick told her it was safe.

The way those large eyes looked up at the doc, wistful and shy and filled with longing, felt like a punch to the gut.

Poor kid. Gaos.

Black definitely understood why Nick wanted to take apart the garbage human who’d done this to her. He couldn’t help but be touched that the girl gravitated so easily to his own mate. Miriam, because of course she did, enveloped the cub entirely in her light. She wrapped her aleimi around the underfed form and smothered her with warmth and safety and affection. She cocooned the kid in gold and violet and blue and green clouds.

Gods, he loved that damned woman.

He’d been struggling like fuck lately to talk to her, to not have bizarre emotional reactions around her, to not unintentionally be a prick to her, but nothing at all in his feelings towards her had changed. If anything, they felt stronger lately. Unfortunately, they often felt stronger than he could entirely control.

Now, he only wanted to be alone with her.

Gaos, he really wanted them to get past this weirdness since they’d been “normal” seers again. He wanted to go to the beach, go hiking and look at waterfalls, or hell, dust off his yacht and tool around the Mediterranean. Hell, maybe they could even bring it back across the Atlantic and park it in Mexico, use it to go to Costa Rica and Hawaii.

“Fucker got off too easy,” Nick muttered.

“There’s nothing we can do about it now,” Miriam broke in, a touch sharply.

She clenched her jaw as she glanced over her shoulder at both of them. From her expression, she was impatient with their argument, and possibly with both of them, and wanted them focused on the girl, not on getting vengeance on a man who was already dead.

She wasn’t wrong.

Then again, she was rarely wrong.

“And we can’t report this, Nick,” Miri added, turning her gorgeous eyes on her ex-cop friend. “We’re not reporting this to anyone. Agreed?”

It struck him that the cub’s eyes were a different combination of the same colors that made up Miriam’s. Maybe that was part of the reason he wanted to break things with his bare hands every time he looked at the girl’s drawn face. Maybe he wasn’t reacting to this as differently to Nick as he was pretending.

Maybe he and Nick were exactly on the same page.

“…You know we can’t,” Miriam was saying now. She darted a warning look at Black. “Not given what she is. The last thing she needs is to be processed through the system, anyway. Even apart from her race, it’s definitely not the best thing for her. Child Protective Services doesn’t have the resources to help someone like her, and it would be an absolute nightmare after this kind of trauma. Would you really want to see her thrown into foster care, Nick? A halfway house for trafficked youth? You saw the track marks on her arms… what if they decide she’s an addict and throw her in a state-controlled rehab? Are you going to explain to them how seers react differently to narcotics than humans do?”

She shook her head, her eyes fierce.

“No,” she said, adamant. “We should look into experts from that world, but I’m not leaving her anywhere she might be subject to more abuse.”

Nick gave Miriam a faintly startled look.

The ex-homicide detective obviously agreed with all of her points, but Black also found himself thinking it had never once occurred to Nick that they would institutionalize the girl. Nick assumed all along Aura would be coming with them.

All three of them had assumed that, without ever voicing it aloud.

Nick wanting Rucker to burn in hell for what he’d done was a totally separate issue in the vampire’s mind. He never would have put Aura through a trial, or protective services, or any part of the system set up to absorb unwanted and abused kids.

Nick wanted justice.

Black wanted justice.

Miri wanted justice, too.

But Rucker managed to slither his way out of the bulk of that––ironically, by being murdered. If Nick was going to get pissed off at someone, he should help the cops find Rucker’s killer. Then Nick could buy him as many drinks as he wanted, or yell at the piece of shit for letting Lucian, “Call me Luc,” Rucker off the hook for being an absolute fucking monster.

In the meantime, maybe they could figure out where Rucker found the girl.

Aura Woods.

It wasn’t a seer name. Her seer parents had likely given it to her in the hopes she might blend in. Maybe she’d even been born here, on this Earth.

The way she clung to Miri now, just because Nick told her she could, suggested to Black that she’d had loving parents before all this. Black could feel how Miriam made it easier on the girl, just by being who she was, the warmth of her light, the fact that she was a seer, but Black could feel the familiarity in the girl, too.

Black himself, for example, likely wouldn’t have reacted that way to an older female seer when he was her age. He hadn’t had a particularly loving home, nor a particularly affectionate mother, at least not with him, so he wouldn’t have known enough to miss it.

This girl, Aura Woods, clearly did.

Trauma did funny things to a person, though.

Black still had no idea why the girl felt so safe and trusting of Nick. Had she been raised around vampires? She must know what he was. How else would she have known about Nick’s real eyes? Why else would she have called them “pretty”?

Even apart from all that, why on earth else would a female seer child trust a male vampire? It was beyond strange, for a lot of reasons. Why would most vampires give her any reason to trust them?

Considering the history between the two races, Black had a lot of questions.

He only stood there, silent, as Miriam climbed into the driver’s seat of the SUV with the cub curled up in the back by one of the doors. Black got briefly into the back seat with the girl, only long enough to cuff the cub’s wrist to the door, with a quiet word to her about how it was only for her safety, and only until they got her somewhere.

Even Nick didn’t argue with that, and the girl herself was eerily cooperative, holding up her arm like it was the most normal thing in the world––like being chained to car doors was an everyday occurrence for her.

Black did do it for Aura’s safety, but he also did it for Miri’s.

He couldn’t have the cub jumping out of the car halfway down the block, or attacking Miri while she drove. He walked up to the driver’s side door once he’d finished, activated the child locks to make sure the doors couldn’t be opened by anyone but the driver, and handed Miri the key to the handcuffs.

He kissed her cheek, then told her to take the car to the parking lot below the California Street building, right up to the elevator doors.

People would be waiting for them there.

Black no longer had a seer physician on his team, as Luric disappeared with the rest of those seers loyal to Charles, but he had a human he’d recently hired as their new company physician. She would have to do, at least for now.

Holo would also be there to help; lately he’d been studying seer anatomy and medical texts to replace Luric. With Yarli’s and Jem’s help, he’d gotten shockingly well-versed on seer medicine already, and he’d done it surprisingly fast. He’d been poring over every text Luric left behind, memorizing diagnoses and treatments for seer-specific health risks, diseases, drug reactions, challenges relating to different stages of seer lives, immune systems, regeneration, reproduction, sexual disorders.

He now spent most of his time reading and conducting virtual surgeries, to practice.

Black watched the SUV pull around the wide driveway and head back for the road outside the iron gates. He’d made sure Miri was wearing her headset, and that it was switched on. She’d be able to contact him instantly if anything went wrong, even if she couldn’t use her sight. Miri assured them both she was fine taking the kid back on her own. It wasn’t far; maybe a fifteen-minute drive, assuming they didn’t hit an unusual amount of traffic.

Nick also watched them leave, but from under the shadowed overhang that protected the front door from the sun.

They’d opted to stay at the house to finish their search.

By then, Black and Nick figured out how to access and disable the security system at Rucker’s house, including the cameras aimed all over Rucker’s bedroom, all around the foyer, and over the front and back of the property.

Black also called Kiko, and not only to make sure there were medics and other seers available to help Miri with the cub. He told Kiko to grab, at minimum, Jax, Mika, Cowboy, and the best tech nerd they still had available with Jem gone, which probably meant Alisha.

He wanted them to join him and Nick at the house.

He tried calling Jem, too, but the fucker didn’t pick up.

Black hadn’t wanted to admit it to Nick, but he’d been surprised when Nick made it clear Jem hadn’t told him he was going to New York. Black thought he was generally the fuck-up when it came to being a secretive, uncommunicative fuck with his bonded mate. Now he wondered if Jem might be a contender for that spot.

It was fucking weird he’d fly all the way across the country and not tell Nick.

That was weird, right?

He’d wanted to talk to Miri about it, but there hadn’t been a good time.

Were the two of them fighting? Was this a fuck you to Nick? Black glanced sideways at vampire, knowing he’d never ask, but damned tempted to ask anyway.

Truly, though, it was none of his business.

Like most seers, Black believed mate bonds were sacred. Most seers would only involve themselves in the affairs of a bonded pair if they believed some form of abuse might be taking place. Black certainly didn’t have any reason to think that was an issue.

He walked back to the front door, jerked his jaw for Nick to follow, and re-entered Lucian Rucker’s San Francisco home.

Nick glared at him a little as he passed, like he might have been thinking his own thoughts about Black’s silence, but he didn’t say a word as he turned to follow.