Eyes of Ice

by J. C. Andrijeski

  Nick nodded, frowning behind the face mask.

  No teeth. Right.

  “He’ll go for your throat… or your solar plexus. He’s big on throat-punches. They’ve worked well for him as a distraction tool. Whatever you do, don’t let him knock you off balance, if he does manage to get you there. Last fighter he did that too, he popped out both of the vamp’s eyes and the fight was over.”

  Nick grimaced.

  Jesus.

  He wished the fucker hadn’t told him that.

  “––Just do your thing, man,” Tom said, patting him again. “Do your thing. You’re so fast, you should be able to get around most things he tries. They’re going to do anything they can to knock you out, fast, before your speed can be a real advantage. I’m sure they’ve studying that tape of yours obsessively, so their priority will be to slow you down. He’ll go for your legs. Knees. Any part of you he can get at to diminish the advantage––”

  Nick nodded to that, too.

  Made sense.

  He wasn’t used to fighting people who had tapes to study beforehand.

  Luckily, that last fight, with fingernail guy, had been short.

  They’d reached the top of the stairs.

  No-neck and the African-American bodyguard moved out of the way, receding back to positions by the gate, their broad backs forming a wall at the top of the stairs, keeping anyone from coming up to the walkway around the ring itself.

  Nick felt his muscles tense as Tom walked him up to the door into the cage.

  The human put his hand on a security panel by the door, something Nick missed last time, that must lock them inside the cage until the match was finished.

  It hit him again that Wynter would be watching this.

  God. He really should have asked her not to watch this.

  Of course, she probably would have just flipped him the bird.

  Forcing her out of his mind again, he fought to get his mind back on the job.

  The audience was sprinkled with cops tonight.

  Charlie. Jordan. Morley.

  Probably a few dozen more from vice and homicide.

  Archangel would be out there.

  Kit would be out there.

  Nick’s mind kept wanting to return to Wynter though.

  She’d be watching this.

  He could picture her now, curled up on her couch in the house where he’d basically lived for the past few weeks… on the couch where they’d had sex for the first time.

  He imagined her sitting there, maybe with a new order of Chinese take-out, watching the live stream of the fight, frowning at him long distance with those sculpted lips of hers. He imagined her staring with her blue-green eyes, riveted to the wide monitor hanging over the fireplace they’d lit one of those nights, even though it wasn’t really cold out.

  He was still lost there, thinking about that, when Tom grabbed his shoulder.

  The door was opening.

  He watched it, feeling his fangs extend behind the mask.

  Tom lowered his mouth to Nick’s ear, just like he had before his first fight.

  Just like that first fight, he spoke soft.

  Vampire-soft.

  No one would hear it, even if there were other vampires nearby.

  But Nick heard every word.

  “One more thing,” that voice whispered in his ear, still friendly, almost puppy-like. “Brick says hi…”

  Nick froze.

  He turned, staring at the human, but Tom went on without a pause.

  “…He says good luck on your fight tonight, brother, and that he’d very much like to speak to you, preferably sometime soon. He is most displeased with how the humans here have been treating you, brother… most displeased…”

  Nick opened his mouth, but Tom talked over him.

  “…He wants me to tell you to be careful. He says there are three of them. The creature took care of one, locking it in that freezer at the warehouse, but there are two more, and we haven’t managed to find them yet. The White Death is with you, beloved brother. We are with you. But until we can take care of this problem for you, be careful. Be very, very careful, dearest Naoko…”

  Nick continued to stare as the human trailed, ending his speech.

  He could see it now, in Tom’s face.

  The eyes were too bright… venom-bright.

  The human was compromised.

  He’d been bitten by a vampire.

  Tom was definitely under the thrall of vampire venom.

  Tom smiled at him, even as he thought it.

  He clearly had no idea what he’d just said, or what it meant.

  His eyes shone with that same, open friendliness, a distant blankness that made it clear some part of him was a few thousand miles away.

  Nick was about to speak, to try and reach him anyway, when the human prodded his shoulder with a thick hand, smiling encouragingly and motioning for Nick to go through the open door into the caged ring.

  Staring up at the human, then back at the door, Nick realized he had little choice.

  He walked through the door.

  He heard the door clang shut behind him.

  Then Nick was just standing there, stunned, trying to wrap his head around what just happened, what it meant. He was still standing there, fighting to get his equilibrium back, when the lock on the cage door engaged loudly, with another bell-like clang.

  Before he’d even turned around, he felt it.

  He felt his equilibrium shift.

  His vision tilted in front of him.

  That disorientation he’d felt in the crowd shifted into something else; it changed so fast, it was a few seconds before he could make the connection between that feeling and what it turned into. He hadn’t noticed it worsening in the seconds Tom had been talking to him, but it had, and now Nick knew, it wasn’t simply some form of stimulus overload, or a bad reaction to too many people in his physical space.

  Something was wrong.

  Something was really, really wrong.

  Fuck.

  Standing there, fighting to focus his eyes, he realized something else.

  Charlie had been wrong. Morley had been wrong, too… and Lara St. Maarten.

  They weren’t going to kill him after the fight.

  They were going to kill him in the ring.

  Chapter 20

  Powerless

  “What’s he doing?” Kit said, frowning down at the small form of Nick in the ring.

  Her eyes shifted from the smaller version that was the real Nick down in the enclosed ring, back up to the much larger hologram of Nick––which appeared at least ten times the size of his real body from where she sat with Lara St. Maarten and that tall guy with the weird eyes that were two different colors.

  She’d noticed that same guy, who St. Maarten called “Jack,” never really talked to anyone but St. Maarten herself.

  Well, and––weirdly––to Nick.

  Nick called him something else, though.

  Not Jack.

  He called him Mal-something. Or maybe just Mal.

  Forcing her mind off the strange guy sitting to her left, between her and St. Maarten, she focused back on Nick.

  She stared at the pearl-white tattooed wings on his back, the bare skin that was somehow only a little darker than those organic implants. The implants themselves were strangely visible, in spite of that; they glimmered with faint augmentation that made the tattoo glow and ripple, almost like the fur of an animal… or the skin of a reptile.

  Much more brightly, the black mask he wore lit up his face and the back of his head, its aquamarine augmented reality designs flickering with life, complete with blue-green fangs and lightning bolts that rippled around his jaw, and all she could think was––

  Why the hell isn’t he moving?

  Why hadn’t he moved once, even a little bit, since he walked through that door?

  Had he been this still at the beginning of the last fight?

  She fought to remember, but
this time, her anxiety at the raised stakes made it hard to remember clearly, or to trust her memory, even when she tried.

  It looked like that blond guy––the beefed up human who walked up there with him––said something to Nick before he walked through the door. Had he said something that Nick was reacting to? Was the blond guy involved in some way?

  She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. Coaches always said a few words to fighters before they entered the ring––even vampires. Kit assumed it was just that, at least until she saw the look on Nick’s face. Briefly, it showed up in the hologram over the ring. Nick had stared at the blond human, a disbelieving, almost paralyzed look on his face.

  And now he was just standing there.

  She looked over at his opponent.

  The vamp was huge.

  It had long, scarlet hair that was done in a kind of twisting, knotted braid down his back. His mask matched his hair, and he was even whiter than Nick, with muscles that bulged so large, he didn’t seem to have a neck at all. He looked like a weightlifter, or someone who’d taken a hell of a lot of steroids––but he was a vampire, so Kit knew that wouldn’t slow him down much.

  The vamp seemed confused by Nick’s stillness too.

  He paced back and forth at first, hissing, clearly trying to get a reaction from him.

  When Nick didn’t react, didn’t look over, the vamp growled louder.

  Nick still didn’t move.

  Kit practically saw the no-necked vampire thinking, trying to decide if it was some kind of trick, if Nick was playing him, or trying to draw him near.

  The more Kit watched Nick, though, the more she was afraid he wasn’t playing him.

  The more she watched Nick, the more afraid she got, even before she had words to put to what frightened her.

  Then, seemingly apropos of nothing, the scarlet-haired vampire began running towards Nick. He moved fast, but deceptively casually, loping more like a wolf than any kind of reptile, despite the animals meant to depict the two of them over the cage.

  Nick didn’t look over.

  Nick didn’t seem to change position at all.

  When the scarlet-haired vampire was halfway across the ring, Kit found herself on her feet. Next to her, others stood too. Some of them screamed, but a lot of them just stared, watching the big vampire with no neck dart across the space towards Nick.

  The tall, quiet guy with the different colored eyes stood, too.

  He glided gracefully to his feet, staring down at the same scene as Kit.

  It didn’t occur to her until then just how quiet they’d been––how quiet the whole stadium had been––waiting for something, anything, to happen.

  Waiting for Nick to move, to do something.

  Waiting for him to do what he’d done in the last fight.

  Waiting for him to wow him.

  Before she’d fully straightened, she was already screaming.

  “NICK!”

  She cupped her hands around her mouth, screaming his name.

  It was all she managed to get out.

  That was it, just that one word.

  Then the other vampire was upon him.

  Brick.

  Jesus.

  Brick was the last thing Nick should be thinking about.

  Brick was the only thing he could think about, after what Tom said.

  Brick. How the hell had Brick––

  But Nick knew the answer to that.

  He knew exactly how the vampire had found him.

  Farlucci.

  Farlucci had gone to the White Death. Farlucci and his people told someone in the White Death that Nick was going to be fighting for them, and that information got back to Brick. Brick, of course, being Brick, couldn’t pass up an opportunity to use that. He couldn’t pass up an opportunity to fuck with Nick’s head, to insert his way somehow back into Nick’s life, even knowing he wasn’t wanted.

  Maybe especially knowing he wasn’t wanted.

  That was assuming Farlucci wasn’t working for White Death directly.

  Nick’s mind spun around what Brick wanted, every word Tom said.

  His mind spun around it, even knowing he shouldn’t be thinking about this now.

  He tried to pull himself out, to force his mind back to the present, if only by repeating: he shouldn’t be thinking about this right now.

  It didn’t really help.

  His mind found a new track to obsess on in that, but not in a way that was particularly useful.

  His mind spun around when they’d dosed him… how they’d dosed him.

  Because they’d definitely dosed him with something.

  Nick was definitely on some kind of drug.

  They’d dosed him…

  His mind blanked briefly.

  How? How had they dosed him?

  Tom had been handsy with him all night.

  A lot of hands had been on Nick that night, though. Hands groping him as he came out of the pit. Hands touching his arms, shoulders, cock, back, ass… hands touching him all over. The guards touching him. No-neck, the big African-American, that guy Gabriel. Farlucci touching him when Tom brought Nick in to see the promoter before the fight.

  No one touched him as much as Tom, though.

  Had Tom done it?

  Tom had been thralled by Brick, and Brick’s warning hadn’t sounded like a threat. It sounded like… well… a friendly warning. It was Brick being charming, Brick trying to lull Nick back into his bullshit, not freak him out or scare him. It had sounded like Brick was warning him, thinking he was in danger.

  As much of a headcase as Brick was, would he really try to kill him?

  If so, why?

  Why now?

  Brick couldn’t possibly have anything to do with these vampire murders, could he?

  No. If Brick wanted him dead, he’d be dead. Hell, he could have had Tom do it. At the very least, he would have gloated. He would have used Tom to gloat about it, just so he could watch Nick’s reaction to his impending death and know Nick knew who’d killed him. Brick didn’t do anonymous… not for murder.

  He wanted his name all over that shit.

  He was enough of a narcissist to feel a compelling need to have his victims know it was him. He’d want to be the last thing in Nick’s mind as he died.

  Which, Nick supposed, he would be anyway.

  But no, Nick didn’t believe it was Brick who was murdering him.

  Brick couldn’t stand to not get credit for anything he’d done, especially if it involved getting one over on someone, surprising them, or tricking them. Especially if he thought whatever he’d done was particularly clever.

  Brick definitely would have gloated.

  He would have wanted Nick to know it was him.

  He would have…

  Right?

  Nick’s mind grappled with that, with Tom’s words, with being drugged.

  He shouldn’t be thinking about this now.

  He should be focusing on the cage. He should be focusing on what was about to happen inside the cage. His mind kept repeating Tom’s words anyway, turning them over and fighting to make sense of them, even as that throbbing, dull fog wrapped around different parts of him, making him feel like he had a heavy blanket entangling his limbs.

  It hit him, how dense that fog was.

  It was affecting his body already.

  It had been affecting his body.

  Weirdly, his mind still felt painfully, distractingly sharp.

  Well… active, anyway.

  It felt really, really active.

  His vampire eyesight, too, was precise to the point of being distracting.

  It was the rest of his body that swam through gelatin, moving like a slow-motion animal, strangely fascinating to him, given his slowed-down thoughts. Even as his mind fought to click through options, how to compensate, how much time he had before he got his eyes gauged out, or his throat ripped out of his neck by the other vamp’s bare fingers––he assessed how strangely ea
ch part of his body appeared to be moving.

  Wait. Was he moving?

  Was he moving at all?

  Or was he just standing there?

  His mind flickered around, looking for something to hold onto. He remembered the tapes he’d seen, the scarlet-haired vampire’s fights.

  Throats ripped out… eyeballs gauged… smashing another vampire’s skull until he broke a piece of it off…

  He’s seen that too, in the replay tapes.

  His mind remembered every movement, every incremental detail.

  Even as he thought it, he turned, realizing he’d been gone in those other spaces for far, far too long. He’d been standing there far, far too long.

  He had a disturbingly accurate view of the vampire above him.

  It was so clear.

  So real-looking.

  He watched it move through space as it leapt at him, most of its face obscured behind a blood-red mask that matched long, scarlet hair that was knotted and braided down his back, but remained spiked in front, like some kind of futuristic, punk-rock, vampire mullet.

  The male vampire hissed, the sound distorted in slow motion through the mask. His fingers extended. They moved slowly, incrementally, his irises blood-red as gravity brought him back down towards Earth, and, more to the point, towards Nick.

  Nick watched him approach, seeing every inch the other vamp moved through space and time. He could see every millimeter of it, but he could do nothing to get out of the way.

  The body slammed into his.

  Briefly, time sped up, back to normal speed.

  Sound returned.

  The weight of the vampire slammed into Nick’s chest and shoulders, throwing him into the cage wall, letting off a deafening, clanging sound that reverberated through his skull. He imagined pieces of it breaking off, but he could barely think well enough to even picture it.

  The vibration sent a shock of tremor up his back and through his bones, stunning him even as it clicked his mind painfully back on.

  Unfortunately, his mind working didn’t help him much.