Eyes of Ice

by J. C. Andrijeski

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re not at home.”

  Nick fought a wave of frustration.

  She had that effect on him.

  She had that effect on him a lot.

  “I’m not at home.”

  “What are you ‘in’? Who did you think I was?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Wynter––”

  “Are you back on the job?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Technically… no. I’m not.” He hesitated, scanning faces in the crowd around him. “It’s complicated. Can I explain later?”

  “You’re in danger.” She didn’t voice it like a question. “Whatever you’re doing right now, it’s dangerous.”

  Nick fought not to react to that, too.

  She might not be able to read him directly, since he was a vampire, but she was still psychic, despite her half-human blood. She picked up on things. More and more, he noticed she tended to pick up on things with him, despite the fact that he’d only seen her twice in the flesh, and they’d never so much as kissed.

  To say Wynter James confused him would be putting it mildly.

  She also distracted the hell out of him, even on a good day, which wasn’t something he could really cope with right then, given where he was.

  To say he didn’t understand their relationship was also more than a small understatement.

  “Wynter.”

  His voice softened, seemingly on its own. At the same time, his emotions rose, those damned, volatile vampire emotions that clashed and echoed strangely with hers.

  “Wynter. Can I talk to you later? I need to concentrate right now. I need to be clear. You make things… not clear. I promise I’ll explain everything later––”

  “Just tell me where you are. Nick, please. Tell me where you are.”

  Her voice had gone from sharp to worried.

  It softened alongside his, which somehow made it all worse––the distraction, the confusion, the odd compulsion to tell her the truth about fucking everything, even when he knew he probably shouldn’t.

  Even in thinking that, he found himself blurting out more or less everything he could think of, in terms of where he was right then.

  “I’m at the fights,” he said. “In Queens. The vamp fights. Undercover. I’m doing another cop a favor. I’m not supposed to be out of my apartment, Wynter, so you can’t tell anyone––”

  “I’m not going to tell anyone,” she said.

  Her voice had gone up about ten notches in worry.

  “You’re fighting?” she said next. “You’re going to fight, aren’t you? That’s the ‘favor’ you’re doing for this cop?”

  Nick’s eyes closed, briefly, then opened.

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  “Is the cop blackmailing you? He? She?”

  “She. Her name’s Charlie… and no, she’s not blackmailing me.” He could practically feel Wynter’s reaction through the faint vibrations of his headset. “Wynter,” he said. “Hey. Calm down. She’s not an ex-girlfriend. She’s not a current girlfriend, either. It’s not that kind of thing. She’s just someone I know from work, okay? I ran into her here. On duty.”

  He expected her to get defensive about him implying she was jealous.

  She didn’t.

  Like with most things, she was utterly matter-of-fact about it.

  “And you don’t have anything with her?” Wynter said. “You’ve never fed off her? Before, I mean. You never had a blood-fling with her, or––”

  “No. No… Christ. Nothing like that. She knows about you. I told her. Tonight.”

  “Because she was hitting on you? Is that why you told her?”

  Nick felt himself getting turned on.

  He didn’t really want to think about why.

  He also knew the timing was fucking abysmal for that right then.

  “No,” he said. “Well… yes. Kind of. I honestly don’t know how serious she was about it. She got flirty, then she got a little handsy, so I told her about you.” He paused, trying to gauge her reaction, but the line was silent. “She took it well,” he added. “Like I said, I don’t know how serious she was about it. I think she’s just vampire-curious.”

  He felt her relax marginally.

  She was satisfied with his answer.

  “And she’s not blackmailing you?” she said, her voice more subdued.

  “No.” He shook his head. “No. She’s not. It’s for a case. When the fight promoter asked me if I’d fill an empty slot for him, she just asked me to say yes––”

  “So, you’re going in there to get the shit beaten out of you?” she cut in, her voice angrier. “For some bullshit case that’s not even yours? As a favor to a cop with a vampire fetish?”

  “Wynter.” His voice softened more. “Hey. You know what I am. You know what I do for a living. You knew I’d have to do dangerous things every now and then. It comes with the job. And I’m not human. I’m not even seer. I’ll be okay.”

  He practically felt her trying to calm herself down.

  He heard her take a breath.

  He heard her exhale it out.

  He heard her do it again.

  “I’ll call you,” he offered. “When I’m done.”

  “If you’re conscious,” she muttered.

  He smiled, shaking his head.

  “I’m honestly not sure if I should be flattered you care enough to try to talk me out of this,” he said. “Or insulted you’re so sure I’m going to get my ass handed to me in there, without ever having seen me fight––”

  “I’m not stupid, Nick,” she cut in, her voice a touch harder. “It’s late. That means the big fights… the entertainment fights. The big ticket fights. That means you’ll be fighting one of their headliners. If that promoter pulled you out of the crowd, that means you’re the blood show for the evening. They pulled you out as an amateur, thinking you’d make an entertaining piñata for one of their best fighters to beat the living shit out of…”

  Nick thought about that.

  As he turned over her words, he scowled.

  “Seriously. Do you think I’m dumb?” she said.

  “You?” he muttered. “No. You’re definitely not the dumb one.”

  There was another silence.

  Then she took another breath.

  “Nick. Don’t do it. Whatever this cop wants you to do, there’s got to be another way. Just turn around. Walk out of there.”

  She paused.

  He could almost see her biting her lip.

  “Come visit me,” she said, quieter.

  He heard her swallow.

  “Get on the train, Nick. Come up here. I don’t have to work tomorrow. I’ll beat you up, if you’re that bored. Or we could find other, less pointless things to do.”

  Nick felt his jaw harden.

  Shoving the images out of his mind that wanted to rise, he fought to focus on where he was. He’d continued following the red-haired human, “Gabriel,” without paying much attention to where he was going.

  Now, as he looked around, he realized he was in an underground space, under the ring. He had a vague memory of taking the stairs down here, pushing through crowds of humans and vampires, but he knew he needed to be paying more attention to where he was, even though his headset should be recording all of it, even with him talking to Wynter.

  Still using his mind to work the vocals, not his actual voice, he muttered,

  “It’s too late now, babe. I’m committed. But don’t worry. We vampires heal fast.”

  “Nick––”

  “I have to go, Wynter. I’m sorry. I really have to go.”

  “Nick. I know what I said, but call me after. Call me, okay?”

  “Promise,” he said.

  Before she could answer, he clicked off.

  He hung up on her.

  He knew that might bother her, but it felt like a form of self-defense.

  It seemed to happen every time they spoke.

&nbs
p; It seemed to be getting worse, each time they spoke, even though he hadn’t seen her in person since everything went down at the prep school where she worked, where the two of them had met, and where the two of them had almost been killed. Even just via headsets and monitors, he seemed to get more and more lost in her, every time they spoke.

  It got worse the longer they talked.

  It got worse when they talked more frequently, and they’d been doing that, too.

  It wasn’t just the distraction thing.

  He’d get more and more lost in her actual way of thinking and being, in her way of seeing the world… even though all of their conversations lately happened only in virtual, and often he couldn’t even see her face.

  Maybe because he was more in Wynter’s head now, he found himself seeing this fight, and his “favor” to Charlie, the same way Wynter was seeing it.

  Fuck.

  Maybe she was right.

  Maybe he should just bail.

  Walk out of here, leave the stadium.

  Walk up the tunnel, get on the train back to Manhattan. He could switch trains at Grand Central, buy a ticket for the next scheduled run up to the Northeastern Protected Area. Call her, or, better yet, look up her address on the way and surprise her.

  Get in a driverless taxi, take it to her front door.

  He could almost feel her willing him to do that very thing.

  She told him she lived in a house right near the campus of Kellerman Preparatory, which was located in the mountains of what used to be Vermont… or maybe Maine. It would be pretty up there, even at night. She said she had wild birds, that there were a lot of trees.

  It took around two hours to get there by train.

  He’d be there before dawn if he left now.

  The idea of lying down next to her, wrapping his arms around her, feeling her breathe against him, feeling her heart beat, the warmth of her skin and breath, her eyelids fluttering against his skin… every imagining related to that single fantasy, a fantasy he’d been harboring since the first time he saw her… distracted him all over again.

  It continued to wash out most of the rest of his thoughts as he made his way down a narrow passageway, still weaving around humans and the occasional vampire wearing a muzzle, some of them dressed in quasi-costumes or robes.

  Nick barely looked at them.

  He walked through the crowded space in rote, lost in a fantasy of seeing his––well, whatever Wynter was to him––in person, of actually being able to touch her.

  Fuck, she’d been asking it of him for weeks now.

  She’d asked if she could come to him, to his apartment in Washington Heights.

  He told her no.

  He repeated that no, every time she asked.

  He didn’t want her on record as visiting him, given all the surveillance around his place, and the fact that the building was I.S.F.-owned and managed. After everything that happened, it would look bad for her, bad for her job, bad for both of them––not to mention the fact that it put her even more on the radar of the I.S.F.

  Given that she was a half-seer hybrid living illegally under a human alias, that would be a terrible idea––for both of them––for multiple reasons.

  It was illegal for him to feed on her.

  While it was technically not-illegal for them to be friends, or to hang out––or even to date, or fuck, as long as he didn’t bite her––literally no one would believe he wasn’t feeding on her, given what she was and what he was.

  No one.

  For all those reasons, and a few dozen more, Nick asked her to wait, to let him come to her. She relented after their fourth or fifth argument about it, but she asked him to come as soon as the NYPD gave him permission to leave his apartment.

  He’d told her he would come.

  He might have even promised it, in one of his less-guarded moments, especially since more and more of their talks lately felt like phone sex versus ordinary conversations, even between two people who liked one another.

  No wonder she was pissed.

  He could be hanging out with his girlfriend right now.

  Yeah, he’d said it. Thought it, at least.

  Girlfriend.

  He could be with her, not here, about to get beat up for no reason. But he’d felt like he owed it to Kit to come see her fight, especially after she’d been the one to make it so he could leave his apartment in the first place.

  Without fully admitting it to himself, he’d already planned to go see Wynter tomorrow.

  Maybe even tonight, after Kit’s fight.

  What the fuck was he doing?

  How had he let Charlie talk him into doing this, instead?

  A lot of dead vampires, Nick’s mind muttered. That’s how. They found a lot of dead vampires, and you want to know why.

  His jaw hardened at the thought––

  ––when the broad-backed human in front of him came to a dead stop.

  Chapter 6

  Grant

  Nick came to an abrupt stop behind the human, saved more by his vampire reflexes than anything else.

  Blinking, he stared around the round room in which he found himself, his mind clicking back with a clarity that had his muscles tense.

  He faced a row of humans.

  They weren’t all facing him.

  They all wore identical clothes––black, form-fitting outfits that reminded him of combat gear, but looked deceptively simple.

  Uniforms, he quickly realized.

  The insignia he’d seen on Farlucci’s business card and on the mohawked vampire fighter’s back shone from the black cloth via organic-electronic patches. Nick noted the symbol in three places he could see: on the front of the zip-up shirts over the heart, in a significantly larger design on the back, and a third, more-subtle version in black on the thighs of the pants.

  A blond, handsome male walked up to him and Gabriel.

  “Who’s this?” the blond said, jerking his chin at Nick. “This the new guy?”

  “New guy,” Gabriel confirmed. “The boss wants him for the open slot.”

  The blond guy looked Nick over, then grunted.

  “The boss gets what the boss wants,” he said, giving Nick a half-smile. He held out a hand. “You know anything?” he said. “Anything at all?”

  Nick shook his head. “No.”

  “David tell you anything about colors?”

  Nick’s frown deepened. “No.”

  The blond looked at Gabriel. They laughed.

  “Not much of a talker, are you?” the blond one said. “All right, tough guy. Come with me. We’ll get you set up.”

  He walked over to the wall on the left.

  For the first time, Nick noticed that the entire circular room was filled with inventory. Clothes on the left, moving into face masks, more elaborate headgear… then weapons. Nick’s eyes flickered around the room, taking in the range of each category.

  When he looked back at the blond, he saw the man watching him.

  Nick noted that the man’s hazel eyes were intelligent, appraising.

  He was clearly assessing Nick, too, sizing him up almost openly.

  “You can fight?” he said, his voice casual.

  Nick returned his narrow stare.

  The blond smiled, holding up his hands. “I’m just saying. You need me to go over anything for you? Rules?”

  “Yes,” Nick said. “What are they? The rules.”

  Still gauging Nick’s face, if more surreptitiously now, the male human sighed.

  “There aren’t a lot,” he admitted. “These fights can get brutal. The masks are mandatory for that reason.” His eyes flickered over Nick, as if looking for a reaction.

  Nick just stood there, staring back at him.

  The human’s voice turned businesslike.

  “No removing hearts,” he said. “No decapitations. No removing the headgear––yours or theirs. No breaking necks to end the fight. An accidental spine injury is one thing… although they’l
l review it, if it looks like that was your primary goal with the move. If you kill the other vamp, intentionally or not, you’re out. Disqualified. That means you automatically forfeit the match. You’re also banned from the ring. Permanently.”

  Nick nodded. “Weapons?”

  The man gave him a faint smirk. “You want weapons?”

  “No,” Nick said, blunt. “I’d prefer none. Do I get a choice on that?”

  The blond male folded his thick arms, giving Nick a harder stare.

  “No,” he said. “Weapons aren’t dependent on the fighter… they’re dependent on the fight. If the match is too close, weapons get added in. Judges’ discretion. You get no say. No choice.” He paused, gauging Nick’s face. “You okay with that?”

  Nick frowned. “Does it matter?”

  The blond laughed at that, a real laugh, and clapped Nick on the shoulder.

  “I like you, vampire. What’s your name?”

  Nick spoke without thinking.

  “Grant.”

  “Grant. I’m Tom.” The blond turned, nodding towards the wall. “You have a preference? On colors? Your opponent’s wearing black, so it can’t be that. Anything else is fine, but the judges get pissed if the colors are too close.”

  Nick looked over the wall.

  Seeing a blue-green color, close to the color of Wynter’s eyes, he nodded.

  “There. That.”

  The male human nodded. “Good. The judges’ll like that.”

  Nick didn’t much care what the judges liked, but he didn’t voice that, either.

  The human motioned for Nick to follow him along the curved wall.

  They stopped in front of over a dozen rows of box-shaped cubby-holes built into the wall.

  Each one held a face mask.

  Nick looked over the different masks, noting that some were of harder, almost metal-looking material, while others were softer, and looked more like that old material, Kevlar, they used to use to make bulletproof vests and other clothes.

  “Those are off-limits,” Tom said, aiming his fingers up at three rows of masks that had hard spikes, what looked like razor blades and knives affixed to them. “They’re classified as weapons. The soft ones are more comfortable, I’m told. They’re also lighter, so easier to adjust to. But the hard ones provide more protection. Including against head injuries.”