Eyes of Ice

by J. C. Andrijeski

  It more or less told him what he already knew.

  He was going to die in here.

  He was going to fucking die.

  Chapter 21

  White Wolf

  “What happened?” The vampire’s voice rose to a keening, hissing snarl, an open threat. “What the fuck happened to him? You had one… fucking… job. You were supposed to protect him. Does he seem ‘protected’ to you? Particularly safe? Particularly snug and well-cared for?”

  The vampire paused ominously.

  “Well? Does he?”

  “No, sir.”

  Thomas could hear the disapproval in his master’s voice.

  More than that, he could feel it.

  He felt it in his mind, a sharp, tapping kind of pressure, a pulling, stretching, anxiety-inducing pain that made him frantic, desperate to make things right.

  He wanted to please him.

  He wanted his master to be happy with him.

  But his master wasn’t happy. His master was angry. He’d put his master’s brother in danger. He’s done something bad, and now he couldn’t make it right. Thanks to him, his master’s good, dear friend, his family, his blood… was in danger.

  He would likely die.

  Worse, more devastating still, he’d caused this. Tom.

  This was his fault.

  “Stop the fight,” the vampire demanded. “You will stop it. Now.”

  “I can’t!” Tom burst out, his anxiety worsening. “I can’t! The doors are locked! They cannot be opened! I can’t open them!”

  The large man standing next to Tom looked over, his full lips pulling in a frown. He looked Tom over in an overt puzzlement that bordered on suspicion.

  His master noticed.

  He must have seen it through Tom’s eyes, through Tom’s blood.

  “Be quiet,” the vampire hissed through his headset. “Calm yourself!”

  Thomas did as he was told.

  He forced his face utterly blank. He forced his mind blank, his body still, his demeanor nondescript. He stood there, practically vibrating with anxiety, but he kept his expression utterly calm, completely uninterested… and uninteresting. He forced himself to behave, to not give his master more reasons to be angry with him.

  “Good.” The voice in Tom’s ear grew excruciatingly calm, despite the edge in the vampire’s voice. “Good. Now walk me through this, friend. How could this have happened? Who did this?”

  “I don’t know––”

  “Don’t fucking talk,” the vampire cut in, cold. “Did I tell you to talk? I did not. I want you to think. Right now, you will think, friend. Do not speak to speak to me until you have something useful and illuminating to say. Do not tell me what you do not know. Speak only when you have something to tell me that will be useful. Directly. Useful. To the problem at hand. Do you understand?”

  Tom nodded, not wanting to speak.

  The master felt his nod.

  “Good. Now. Who had access to him? Who else could have drugged him?”

  Tom fought not to say he didn’t know.

  He really wanted his master to hear that he didn’t know, that he had nothing to do with this, that no one he knew had anything to do with this.

  He fought to remain silent.

  As he did, he fought to think.

  He did not know, though.

  He was with the Midnight, his master’s friend, all night. No one else was with him.

  It was too late now.

  “Who could have touched him?” the vampire said.

  Tom frowned. He thought about that.

  “There were many,” he said, relieved he knew the answer to this. “Many who touched him, master.”

  “I want a list of names,” the vampire said. “Right now.”

  “Me. Farlucci. Alex. Rain. Gabriel. Fisk.” Tom frowned. “There were others. Guests. Friends of guests. In the pit. I don’t know their names––”

  “I want all of their names,” the vampire warned. “You will find them out. I want the name of every single human and vampire in that pit. You will get that for me now. I don’t care how many you have to hurt or kill to get it. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Will you do this for me, friend?”

  “Of course, master. Of course––”

  “This will be your first priority. You will do this now. I will find another way to stop the fight, since you are clearly too stupid to take care of that for me.”

  Tom nodded, feeling a strange sort of relief, a longing in his chest.

  He had been giving a task. He’d been given a way to make up for his failure.

  He could do this. He could do it this for his master.

  The vampire would forgive him, if he did this.

  He would love him again.

  “Yes, master,” he said, speaking soft, lower than a whisper. “I will do anything you need from me. I will do anything you want.”

  “Good. Go now. Take care of this for me, friend. I will reward you, if you do… if only by not snapping your spine over my knee when I next see you––”

  Tom nodded, glancing back towards the caged ring as the scarlet-haired vampire stomped down on the chest of the cop. The vampire crowed triumphantly as a bone broke audibly under his bare heel, making the audience groan, even as some cackled with nervous laughter.

  He was putting on a show now.

  Tom knew this. He was in the business.

  The vampire with the blood-red hair had already realized this wasn’t a fight.

  It was a massacre.

  It was a bloodbath.

  It was ritual sacrifice.

  The crowd, like all crowds, easily turned on the loser.

  Thomas had seen it before. He’d seen it in other fights.

  Therefore, when the first man in the crowd near the stage stood up, face flushed red with excitement and aggression, Thomas wasn’t surprised. He recognized the look there. He knew what it meant. His mentor in the fights, a vampire with the unlikely name of Happy, explained it to him once.

  According to Happy, the races really weren’t as different as they pretended.

  Happy said humans just weren’t as able to act on their instincts.

  They had inferior tools to hunt and rip and fight.

  Their inadequacies left most of them on the sidelines of life’s hunt, living their vicious natures vicariously through other, more advanced beings.

  Vampires. Seers.

  Other humans––humans who had the will and ability to overcome their shortcomings, at least to the extent they were physically able.

  “KILL HIM!” the human with the black and blue mohawk screamed, his face contorted as he gained his feet. “KILL THE MOTHERFUCKER! KILL HIM!”

  Others took up the call.

  “MURDER HIM! RIP OUT HIS HEART!”

  The white wolf over the arena began to whimper, skulking around the livestream vid of the two fighters inside the caged ring. The red and black serpent chased the wolf, blood on its fangs. Below the holograms, the calls of the audience turned into chants, even as the music changed, altering to follow the crowd.

  It shifted from a strident, fighting beat that sounded like something hard hitting something hard, like stone slamming stone, metal slamming metal… to a faster-throbbing profusion of chaotic noise, crashing and exploding ominously overhead.

  Like automatons, the audience rose to their feet.

  Just as the music followed them… they followed the music.

  The music carried them along, merging them into one. The music lifted them up, aligning them with one another… then twisted the impulse, making it dark.

  They screamed and shouted, and that darkness infused their voices, their hearts.

  Their cheering turned to screams of laughter when the cop slammed into the wall again. The music rose even louder and the audience chanted with it, stomping down on the sensors on the floor. They laughed, clapping, yelling out calls of blood, and something about all of
it felt like a ritual older than the fight, older than the city, older than time itself.

  The drums sounded like the soundtrack to some dark occult dance.

  “KILL HIM! KILL HIM!”

  “RIP HIM APART! MURDER HIM!”

  “BREAK HIM IN TWO!”

  “CRUSH HIM! CRUSH HIM, MAN!”

  Tom didn’t linger with the audience for long, though.

  He looked around, trying to figure out how to get downstairs.

  Two of the other guards, Alex and Rain, blocked the entrance.

  He wondered how he could convince them to let him by.

  It was against protocol for him to go downstairs while the fight was still on. He never did it. He’d need a reason.

  He was still trying to make up his mind when he glanced down the stairs and saw a human shoving his way through the crowd in the pit. That human got through the crowd in a nearly straight line, making surprisingly good time through the crush of bodies. He began vaulting up the stairs from below, an expensive headset wrapped around the back of his head, his signature arrow-shaped beard newly-dyed a dark green and rippling with AR product.

  He glared up at Tom before he’d even reached him.

  Once he was close enough, Farlucci grabbed his arm, his voice a furious hiss.

  “What the fuck is going on?” he snarled.

  Tom struggled to deal with the anger of yet another being directed at him.

  Briefly, he was confused as to what the other man even meant. His mind didn’t track it back to the vampire, to what his master wanted of him.

  “What do you mean?” he said slowly.

  “What do I mean? What the fuck happened to him?”

  Tom grimaced. Looking ruefully towards the caged ring, he shrugged, gesturing vaguely with a hand, fighting to remember his other job here, the one he did for Farlucci.

  For once, the two things intersected.

  Merged.

  More or less.

  Tom felt the vampire in his blood pushing him to use this.

  Use it. Use him to get me what I need.

  “No idea, boss,” Tom said, shouting the words over the crowd. “I was just going to come down and get you. I’m thinking maybe someone dosed him with something. He was acting a little weird when I led him up to the gate, but I thought he was just nervous––”

  “Bullshit!” Farlucci snarled. “How fucking stupid do you think I am?”

  Tom blinked, back to being confused.

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  Farlucci scowled, aiming his arm and hand towards the cage, even as the organic metal clanged as the vampire cop’s back slammed into the cage wall.

  “Someone ‘might’ have dosed him?” Farlucci snapped. “––Are you seriously going to pretend you didn’t notice anything, bringing him up here? Even a human wouldn’t do this badly in there! How could you not fucking notice that? He was barely on his feet, even before that Viper started using him as a piñata––”

  “Can we stop it?” Tom said hopefully. “Can we stop the fight?”

  Farlucci looked at him like he was brain damaged.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you? What do you think I’ve been trying to do for the last five minutes? I’ve got the fight commissioner on the other line…” He pointed to his headset. “You think I have the goddamned codes to end it on my own?”

  Tom nodded.

  Of course. Of course Farlucci would be trying to end it.

  “Who did it?” Farlucci snapped, glaring up at him. “Who was it?”

  Tom’s voice grew overtly apologetic.

  “I’m sorry, boss. I really am… but I don’t know who did it. A lot of people touched him on the way up here. I was going to go down to the pit, see if I could––”

  “The hell you are! You’re not going anywhere near that pit!”

  “Boss. Look. I’m sorry. But I need to go down there. I need to find out––”

  But the other man was no longer listening.

  “You’re ‘sorry’?” Leaning closer, Farlucci got in his face, his eyes cold as river stones, leached of emotion. They stared into Tom’s, almost like vampire eyes. “I know it was you. Okay? I fucking know it was you.”

  Tom blanched. “No. Boss, no––”

  “Who was it, then? Who the fuck paid you off? Whoever it was, neither of you have any idea who you are screwing with right now––”

  “Boss, hey.” Tom frowned, holding up his hands. “I had nothing to do with this––

  “Bullshit! Get the hell out of here! You’re fucking fired! Now! I want you gone! You’d better go fast. Before I change my mind and have you shot in the alley outside––”

  Just then, an inhuman scream rose.

  An animal scream.

  A scream of death.

  It pierced through the space between Tom and Farlucci, pulling both of their eyes.

  That scream rose above the chanting and laughter and shouts of the crowd, sliding up and through all of it, even the music. It briefly shattered the foot-stomping drums, the screams for blood, the half-crazed yells and catcalls.

  It briefly broke through all of it. It slid through the ambient noise like butter, somehow silencing everything in its path.

  Inexplicably, before anyone knew what had happened…

  The entire arena fell silent.

  Tom fell silent with the rest of them, staring at the scene inside the walled cage.

  Everything fucking hurt.

  Everything.

  He couldn’t rely on his body now. All he had was his mind.

  Nick knew who he was.

  Barely.

  Barely, he remembered who he was, how he got here.

  He had some awareness of his body, as an intellectual exercise.

  He felt his body moving, felt sensations of distance, motion, of pressure––

  Then the pain would rise.

  The pain would keen up and up, blotting everything else out.

  He’d lose his mind for a while.

  He’d lose himself.

  Then it would come back. It would come back, and he could study what was happening again. He could assess it, as if he were outside of himself altogether.

  In that same way, he had a memory of flying through the air.

  He watched it happen, the slow-moving strangeness of flying through space, of seeing dust motes coil and swirl past him as he displaced air, seeing drops of his own blood catching the stage lights in the ring, moving through the air in hyper-attenuated detail, leaving him like rats leaving a sinking ship.

  Then, briefly, everything would speed up.

  Nick’s back slammed into the cage wall.

  His body vibrated, sparking and bouncing against the organic panels.

  His mind left him…

  …but he clawed it back, fighting to think, to hold on to himself, even as he struggled to move, to catch himself with limbs that still wouldn’t work.

  He heard another something––probably another rib, although he hoped it wasn’t his collarbone––snap.

  Before he could fall back to the floor of the ring, the vampire with the blood-colored hair gripped Nick in his hands, lifting him up off the ground.

  The other vampire was having fun now.

  This was no longer hunter and prey.

  It was a cat playing with his food.

  Nick’s mind grew strangely clear.

  He got those clear moments, here and there.

  They made the pain worse, the awareness of his coming death worse… the memory of who and what he was letting down… but he clung to them mindlessly. He clung to those last vestiges of himself, of his mind, that survival instinct irrationally stubborn, unwilling to let him sink through into that other place.

  Nick knew how irrational that was.

  But he couldn’t control that any more than he could control what was happening to him. His body was starting to hurt more––enough that he suspected the drug was starting to wear off. That damned vampire cons
titution burned through most drugs whether he wanted it to or not. It made it hard to get drunk, almost impossible to knock a vampire out for more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch.

  It made it hard to give a vampire painkillers effectively, at least without feeding them to him or her like candy.

  Maybe for the same reason, his mind remained distractingly, oddly, unnervingly clear. Maybe they even timed it that way on purpose––so he’d be there for the end.

  Brick would want his mind clear.

  That’s something Brick would do.

  He would want him to remember every instant of this.

  He’d want him aware of who was doing it to him––who was really doing it to him. Knowing Brick, he would see it as just punishment for Nick hurting his feelings, leaving the White Death the way he had.

  Anyway, Brick was never the type to glory in the quiet knowledge of his own accomplishments.

  He liked accolades, parades, fireworks… a formation of jets flashing overhead.

  Nick tried to comprehend his own body.

  He knew already that he moved too slow for most maneuvers. His limbs wouldn’t work right. He wasn’t fast to fight a human pro-fighter right now, much less a vampire.

  The drug wouldn’t wear off fast enough for anything his mind contemplated.

  He was pretty sure his wrist was broken.

  A lot of his ribs had snapped.

  He’d heard something in his left leg, and definitely at least a few bones in the same foot.

  Wynter was going to kill him.

  If he got out of this alive, Wynter was definitely going to kill him.

  Nick watched the red eyes of the vampire as it laughed up at him through the virtually-enhanced mask, which simulated snake’s fangs. He hissed in Nick’s face, and a virtual tongue flicked out at him, seeming to graze Nick’s lips.

  Serpent and wolf. That was a myth from somewhere, wasn’t it?

  Or maybe it was the alligator and the rabbit…

  The scarlet-haired vampire slammed him up against the wall again, cackling through the mask, hamming for the crowd. Nick glanced down, looking at himself where he hung from the chalk-white hands, noticing the other male wore nail polish that matched his mask and hair.

  That’s when Nick saw his wrist.