Page 175 of Hunters and Prey

“Don’t talk to me about Nick,” Black growled.

His voice sounded distracted that time, but I could tell he meant it.

He wanted to talk about Zoe, not Nick.

Even so, my mind could see the connections there.

Thinking about that, I fell silent, clenching my jaw.

Weirdly though, I felt better, just from having told him. Somehow, just forcing myself to say it out loud made it easier to wrap my head around it, around what I’d seen the night before. It made it feel real, maybe for the first time.

It also made it easier to think about the whole thing strategically.

Exhaling a breath I hadn’t known I’d held, I felt myself coming back even more. I felt more of myself landing back in my body.

I felt Black react to that too, with a tangible relief.

“You were in shock,” he said, understanding reaching his voice. “You probably still are. It’s been too much, Miri. Nick being turned. Nick attacking you as a vampire. Now Zoe.” He grunted, gripping me tighter in his arms, his warmth flooding into my chest. “Not to mention your uncle and what he’s been doing for the past few months.”

Still thinking, he grunted again.

“…And yet it’s me who’s wary about working with vampires,” he muttered.

I snorted a little at that.

“That’s how you got to the roof that night?” he said. “With Nick?”

I nodded, again reluctantly. “I think so. Yes.”

“The earthquake.” Black said, looking at me. “There was an earthquake that night. You disappeared right after the earthquake. After everything that happened, with Nick and the riots––then the earthquake. It must have overloaded you again––”

“Yes,” I said, exhaling. “Being overwhelmed by emotional stimulus definitely appears to be a trigger. That makes sense.”

He grunted again. “It does? That you stress teleport? That ‘makes sense’ to you, Miriam? Maybe you need to explain it to me. Because I’ve never once heard of a seer that can do that. Not even one of the intermediaries.”

I didn’t have an answer for him. Not on that.

“I don’t know if it’s ‘stress’ exactly,” I said. Exhaling, I admitted, “I suspect it’s more like a PTSD-type reaction. Self-diagnosis isn’t exactly recommended in my field, but I think some of this is happening outside the normal parameters of what we think of as ‘stress.’”

Black frowned. He didn’t say anything to my words, but I felt him scanning my light, even as that harder worry on his light deepened.

Sighing, I wrapped my arms around him under the leather jacket he wore, gripping the back of his belt.

Black sighed, too.

“Christ,” he said, after another beat. “You really want me to work with those fuckers. Brick. The rest of those bloodsucking psychopaths.”

He didn’t say it like a question.

Still, I answered it like one. Sort of.

“I don’t think we have any choice, Black,” I said.

I felt hints of that anger coiling around his light again, but he only nodded.

“I went to Brick solely to talk options,” I said, gripping him tighter. “I didn’t intend to promise him anything. I didn’t intend to offer him anything, Black… on your behalf or even on my own. I just wanted to know if there was anything we could salvage there. I wanted to know if there was any way we could still form some kind of temporary alliance. Preferably before my uncle starts a full-blown civil war.”

Grunting, I pressed my lips together.

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