He held her down until she cursed at him, gripping his wrists in her fingers, sinking her nails into his skin.
He had no idea how long he did that.
He felt more than one orgasm.
He didn’t stop, didn’t even try to pay attention to that. He tried to dull the edge of the other thing instead, that maddening, pulling, demanding thing in both of them. When he couldn’t do it with his tongue and fingers, he tried again with his cock, turning her over that time and fucking her from behind until she was begging him to bite her again.
He didn’t.
God, he wanted to.
He wanted to so badly. He even stopped a few times; he had to stop, and one of those times, he even had to leave the room.
But he didn’t.
He didn’t bite her.
They were on the floor.
He couldn’t remember whose idea that was.
He didn’t care… nor did he mind.
He lay on his stomach, sated enough that he was thinking about the thermos of blood on the table over him, wondering if it was still warm.
He had no concept of how long they’d been doing that.
He wondered if she still wanted to watch a movie.
He wondered if she’d watch porn with him while he fucked her again.
She was half-curled around him from behind, tracing his back with her fingers, her leg resting on the small of his back and his ass. The sensation of her fingers was maddening, lulling, both relaxing him and making him hard. The feelings and sensations and pulls warred there, balanced but not, teetering towards one impulse then the other.
“What is this?” she said, soft.
She kissed his back, tracing it with her tongue.
“What is it?” she said again, softer. “What does it mean? The wings?”
He turned, looking up at her.
She met his gaze, holding it as he resettled his face on his arm so he could continue to look at her without craning his neck.
“You don’t know?” he said, soft.
He heard a faint growl in his voice.
She heard it too.
He saw her shiver, right before her fingers tightened on him, clenching briefly in his hair.
His eyes closed, then opened, only to find her looking at him, her eyes brighter.
She smiled, then shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I know it was different. When you fought, it was different… it wasn’t the same design.”
“They changed it,” he said. “In virtual. Disguised it with Farlucci’s club design.” Hesitating, he watched her eyes carefully when he added, “It’s White Death. It’s their mark.”
He watched her take that in.
If he’d been human, he might have held his breath.
As it was, he watched her minutely, studying every nuance of her expression as she turned over what he’d said, what it meant.
“How long ago?” she said, at the end of that silence.
“Over twenty years,” he told her, just as he’d told Farlucci.
She nodded, her eyes still on his.
She hesitated, her eyes full, her mouth pursed, then went back to stroking the tattoo with her fingers. Despite it being an implant, he felt every brush of her fingers, every shift in temperature and pressure.
“You must have been high up,” she ventured, cautious. “When you were with them. They can’t all have these. They can’t all have tattoos like this.”
He opened his eyes, realizing only then that he’d closed them.
Watching her as closely as she watched him, he nodded. “Yes.”
“But you left.”
“Yes.”
“But you were free with them,” she said, a frown pinching the space between her eyebrows. “With them, you didn’t have to be with I.S.F. Or NYPD. You were free. Right?”
He smiled wryly, but not at her.
He shook his head, his voice growing lower, softer.
“No one is free with them,” he said.
“But you weren’t owned. Technically, I mean.”
“I was more owned by them than I ever will be by the I.S.F… or any human government.”
He watched her think about that.
“Is that where you learned to fight like that?” she said. “What I saw you do in the ring. Is that who taught you? The White Death?”
Nick hesitated.
Then he shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Seers taught me that.” He saw her eyes flinch. “Well,” he amended. “I learned a lot from vampires too, including in the White Death, but most of it I learned before I ran with them. In the war.”
He saw her think about that, too.
He looked for fear, for shock… for disgust.
He didn’t see it.
He saw surprise. He saw her thinking about everything he’d said. He saw her absorbing each word, turning each one over carefully and coming to conclusions about each piece he fed her before she pressed further.
“You loved a seer,” she said.
His mouth tensed.
He saw her notice.
He nodded, reluctantly that time. “Yes.”
“What was she like?”
She asked that too fast.
She asked it way too fast. Nick heard the emotion there. He heard it, heard her heart beating faster, felt a flush of heat as her skin reacted to her fear.
He shook his head.
“No,” he said, soft.
Leaning up, he kissed her, pressing his face against her, nuzzling her skin.
“No,” he murmured, withdrawing enough that he could look at her. “Not tonight, Wynter. No. Or I’ll start asking questions again, too. I’ll want to know about your husband. I’ll want to know too much about your husband. Then we’ll get into it about you and your past. Then you’ll have to deal with crazy, jealous, possessive, commitment-phobic, shithead vampire.”
Instead of laughing, as he half-hoped, she nodded, eyes serious.
Taking a breath, she nodded again, but he saw dissatisfaction in her eyes.
“No, Wynter,” he repeated, caressing her face. “No. I’m serious. You don’t want to go there with me. Not tonight. Let me… mellow out about this first.”
“What was her name?” she said. “Can you tell me that much?”
“No,” he said. “And it wasn’t a her.”
She blinked, staring at him.
He felt her surprise.
At the same time, he felt her absorbing his words again, slowing down. Her fear didn’t dissipate, but she was with him again. She’d heard what he said about them driving one another crazy. She was trying to understand, not looking for things to intensify her fear, to give it dimension. She frowned, staring down at his back, her eyes unfocused.
Then those stunning, blue-green irises flickered back up to his.
“Vampires are like seers, then?” she said.
He knew what she meant.
Thinking about that, he nodded, slowly.
“More or less,” he said. “Preferences don’t mean much, in terms of certain connections.” He continued to study her face cautiously, trying to gauge her reaction. Seeing her jealousy worsening again at his words, he offered, “I prefer females.”
He watched her think about that, too.
He saw a faint relief touch her eyes.
“Good,” she muttered.
She said it soft, more an exhaled breath than a word.
He was a vampire, though.
He heard it as clearly as if she’d spoken it right into his ear.
He laughed.
Chapter 17
The Blackest Night
He picked up at the ping in his headset, doing it without thought.
He’d expected it to be Jordan… or Kit.
He’d been awake at Wynter’s for a week. Therefore, it had been a week since he’d seen either Jordan or Kit in the flesh, but he’d been in contact with them both off and on throughout that time.
Jordan called him every day.
Kit called most days.
Jordan called ostensibly to update him on unfolding events with the case. He kept Nick abreast of the contracting issues with Farlucci and the I.S.F. He told Nick what Charlie had been up to. He told him anything new Charlie found on Farlucci or the other victims. He told Nick about other suspects they were looking at inside the fight circuit.
He even occasionally sent Nick files, or told him about new bodies they’d found.
Without fail, Jordan also spent at least half of their conversations telling Nick––again––that he was being a naïve idiot. He warned Nick he was letting himself be made into a mark by the NYPD, and by Charlie, specifically.
He said Nick shouldn’t open the door to letting them use him for shit like this.
He said if Nick did it once, they’d ask again. And again.
He said they’d get Nick killed in the end.
In principle, Nick didn’t disagree.
Funnily enough, Kit was even more strident than Jordan, if generally more cryptic in her wording. Kit also spent a chunk of their calls trying to get information off Nick.
She didn’t like how St. Maarten found him.
More to the point, she didn’t understand how St. Maarten found him.
Kit explained to Nick, more than once, that the people who’d taken him had known all about I.S.F. ident-tats for vamps. They’d apparently done something to neutralize the GPS Nick wore, so I.S.F. and his assigned employers––in Nick’s case, the NYPD––couldn’t track him. Kit said it worked like a virus, that she had to fix the damned thing manually after they found him, while he was still unconscious in St. Maarten’s penthouse in Phoenix Tower.
She mentioned it to him again.
And again.
She explained it slowly a few times, like maybe she figured Nick couldn’t possibly be as calm as he was about the whole thing if he really understood what she was saying.
Nick couldn’t tell her about Malek.
He couldn’t tell her Malek was a full-blooded seer.
He couldn’t tell her St. Maarten knew where he was because she had a pet prescient seer who could track Nick down using his psychic visions.
He couldn’t tell Kit any of that––for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being, knowing any of that would put Kit herself in a lot of danger, and not only because she worked for the I.S.F. and was legally bound to report a full-blooded seer to her superiors.
Nick couldn’t tell Jordan about Malek either.
He also couldn’t tell Jordan or Kit about Tai.
Luckily, Jordan didn’t ask how St. Maarten found him. Jordan didn’t ask about Nick’s I.S.F. race-cat tattoo, either. From what Nick could tell, Damon chalked all that up to Archangel voodoo, meaning St. Maarten used her wealth, military connections, and vast company resources to track Nick down at that warehouse in Queens.
Jordan was more hung up on Farlucci.
He was more hung up on Nick going undercover as a vamp fighter.
For the same reason, whenever Jordan called to update him on the case, Jordan also updated him on the likelihood Nick would see the ring that weekend. From what Nick could tell, it was a fifty-fifty chance, even as late as Friday night.
So when his headset pinged, he assumed it would be Kit or Damon again.
He expected it to be Damon, telling him the final verdict on the Saturday fights.
Or Kit, telling him not to do it.
Or Damon calling to tell him the verdict and then telling him not to do it.
But it wasn’t either of them.
“Hey.” Her voice was cautious, borderline nervous. “You okay?”
Nick glanced over at the other side of the bed.
Wynter sprawled there, her face smoothed in sleep.
Looking at her, he felt his throat and chest tighten, a kind of sympathetic pain that brought up flickers of memory from earlier that night. It hadn’t gotten any easier, or any mellower, since the day he’d woken up here.
Wynter hadn’t gotten any mellower.
Nick definitely hadn’t gotten any mellower.
He kept trying to convince both Wynter and himself that he would.
Get mellower, that is.
Eventually.
Forcing his mind off that, and back on the person on the line, he slid cautiously off the edge of the mattress, moving it as little as possible so he wouldn’t wake his hybrid girlfriend.
He switched to sub-vocals as he moved, continuing to walk, vampire-quiet, for the door to the bedroom, aiming his feet for the stairs.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m good, Charlie. Any word on this weekend?”
He felt her hesitate.
He practically felt her wanting to apologize.
He felt her wanting to apologize, and not knowing how.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, brusque. “It was mine.”
She exhaled, as if she’d been holding a lot more than just air in her chest.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault, Nick. It was absolutely mine. We were there to find out information. You were the only one who was actually trying to do that––”
“Charlie, let it go. Tell me about this weekend.”
She hesitated a third time.
Then she seemed to give up, exhaling sharply.
“You’re in.”
Nick felt a tension in his chest relax. He nodded, even as his muscles tensed.
“All right. Does he know where I am now? Farlucci?”
“Nick… I don’t even know where you are right now. Jordan wouldn’t tell me. Morley isn’t saying shit, either. They just said you were laying low for a while.” Pausing again, she added in a mutter, “Jordan’s pissed as hell at me about all this.”
“Yeah.” Nick made an exhaling sound of his own. “About that. Thanks for covering for me. For taking the fall for me being out of the apartment.”
He hesitated.
He wanted to ask about the GPS, about whether I.S.F. was asking questions about that. Realizing that was probably more of a Kit and/or St. Maarten question, he decided it was better not to go there with Charlie, not without her broaching the subject with him.
Knowing St. Maarten, she’d worked that whole angle through I.S.F. already.
He couldn’t help wondering what Morley thought, though––and what story the NYPD was fed about why Nick’s GPS wasn’t accessible to them any longer.
Shoving all that aside, he walked into Wynter’s kitchen, turning off the sub-vocals as he did. Now that he wasn’t in danger of waking Wynter, it was more comfortable to talk that way, and took less of his concentration.
He strolled around the center island and its stone countertop, not really thinking about the fact that he was naked as he opened the cooler and took out a few blood bags. Ripping the tab off the top of the first one, he squeezed it into the heat-mug, emptying out every drop before he grabbed the second one, ripping off the tab and filling up the second half of the mug.
Tossing the empty bags into the trash, he stuck the mug into the heater and hit the auto-temp switch to warm it up.
“What time’s my first fight?” Nick said. “Is it tonight? Or––”
“Tonight? It’s still night, Nick.”
“You know what I mean. Tomorrow to you. Tonight by the clock.”
She exhaled, as if realizing how wound up she was.
“Yes. They want you at the stadium in Queens at four o’clock. Farlucci was pretty pissed it took so long to put things through. He wanted to talk to you, but Morley was adamant that there be no contact until the deal was hammered out and signed.”
“Morley’s still on board with this?” Nick said. “With the op? Using me?”
“He is,” Charlie acknowledged. “I think he’s a little angry at all the interference from I.S.F. and that St. Maarten chick from Archangel––”
Nick nodded, remembering hearing Morley’s voice when he came by that morning, how he’d talked to St. M
aarten and Kit.
“Yeah, I figured.”
Pausing, Nick realized he had a lot of questions.
He hesitated, then said,
“So? Any new developments from that night in Queens? Did you get any names of the people who took me? I know they have bosses, that they were just hired hands, but were you able to find or charge any of them––”
“Find any of them?” Charlie’s voice was blank. “Charge them?”
The human’s voice lost the guilt edge he’d heard in it since the beginning of their conversation.
“Nick, didn’t anyone tell you?” she said. “They’re all dead.”
Nick frowned. “I know the two in the warehouse were dead, but more than those two took me, right? All I saw was some skinny junkie and another guy of average build… both of them full human. No way it was only those two who brought me down… or who dragged all those vampires in there to drain. From the photos Damon showed me, the two of them wouldn’t even have been able to lift me up on the table without help.
He could already hear Charlie shaking her head.
“No, Nick. That’s why Morley’s so pissed. Archangel had their private security forces go in there to get you… and to do clean-up afterwards. Zero head’s up to us, while they hunted down your captors. Zero official authorization. They didn’t even notify us while it was happening, much less beforehand… although, apparently, they have enough pull that no one in I.S.F. charged them for operating illegally, or even seemed to care when we complained.”
Before Nick could speak, she added,
“Archangel performed a military-style extraction to get you out of there––like a hit, Nick. The cameras were all shut off. No witnesses. No bodycams. Then they went after the humans who took you out of that club… tracing them in some way they wouldn’t even share with us… and killed them, too. Presumably so no one could identify you.”
Her voice grew increasingly annoyed, the longer she spoke.
“…We went down to that warehouse the next day, after they told us what they’d done. There are tons of homeless down there, including a handful of C.I.s. No one would admit to having seen a vehicle, or anyone carrying weapons. We found two dead human bodies Archangel left for us in the walk-in cooler. We found extraction equipment for venom and blood in the makeshift ‘lab’ the vampire harvesters were using in the warehouse. And we found a deeply gross pile of dead vampires who’d had their blood, venom and hearts extracted. Our people found the blood vats in nearby vans, ready for transport, at the other end of pumps that transferred the blood through the damned walls. They’d clearly used the site before––”
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