Eyes of Ice

by J. C. Andrijeski

  Nick held her gaze.

  After a pause, he backed down.

  “You’re right,” he admitted. “I don’t know who you are. Not really. I definitely don’t know what you’re capable of… or what you know about any of this.”

  Still gauging her face, he picked up his coat, shouldering that on as well.

  “But now isn’t the time to test those limits, Wynter. If she doesn’t know about your… unusual abilities… that’s all the more reason we shouldn’t give her cause to ask that question. We shouldn’t be giving Malek more opportunities to check you out, either.”

  Pausing, he added,

  “I thought Malek knew about you. I don’t mean your blood… I mean what you can do. I thought Tai must know, too. I assumed they had to know. You seemed to know what they were, without me saying anything––”

  Wynter let out a low snort, folding her arms.

  Seeing the genuine anger on her face, he felt himself growing cautious again.

  “Wynter,” he said. “Don’t take it personally that I don’t want to put you in danger.”

  “But I’m supposed to just swallow it, when you do the same? You risk your life every chance you get, Nick––”

  “It’s my job,” he growled, a little harder. “I’m a vampire.”

  “So. What.”

  “So… I’m barely a legal fucking entity on my own,” he growled. “And I don’t need you. I can feed and read people on my own––”

  “Really? You’re going to go with that?” She lowered her voice back to that bare murmur. “What do you think my legal status would be, if anyone knew what the hell I was?”

  At Nick’s silence, her expression hardened more.

  “You need me, Nick. You can’t feed on St. Maarten. You can’t feed on any of her employees. You bring me there, they won’t think twice. They won’t look at me twice. They certainly won’t see me as a threat… or even as a person, really.”

  She added, her voice even more angry,

  “They’ll see me the way you do, Nick. As your girlfriend. As someone you’re protecting. Someone useless, who needs the big bad vampire to keep her safe. It’s the perfect cover.”

  He stared at her.

  He fought with her words, hearing the subtext there.

  There was a lot she wasn’t saying, but he could hear it all the same.

  “You’re mixed,” he said, low, staring at her. “You’re mixed. Right?”

  “I am. Technically.”

  “Technically? What the hell does that mean?”

  She shrugged, her eyes hard as glass.

  “You’d have to ask my father that, Nick.” Tilting her head back, she snapped her fingers, as if suddenly remembering something. Her mouth coiled in a mock frown. “Oh… wait. You can’t. You can’t ask him, Nick. He’s dead.”

  Nick’s eyes fought to see past the anger on her face.

  He could still feel her telling him something. Something she wasn’t saying.

  “Was he full?” he said finally.

  She hesitated, but only for a heartbeat. “Yes.”

  “You’re over a hundred years old?” he growled.

  He forgot to keep his voice down that time, too.

  Her jaw hardened as she glanced at the door.

  He followed her gaze to the door, then looked back at her.

  Refolding her arms, she simply stared back at him, her jaw hard.

  Looking her over, frowning back at her now, Nick felt his frustration worsening.

  “Fuck,” he said finally.

  She let out an annoyed laugh. “Yeah. Right?”

  Still thinking, he felt himself caving.

  Jesus. If she really was a seer… like much more of a seer, a real seer, than he’d let himself believe… then she wasn’t wrong.

  He could use her. He could really, really use her.

  Moreover, she was telling him more than that.

  She was telling him she was trained.

  As in, infiltrator-trained.

  Not all seers could exercise the kind of precision needed to erase a human mind, much less to do it in a way that another seer wouldn’t notice the gaps.

  He’d just gone from having a few hundred questions about his girlfriend to a few thousand questions about his girlfriend.

  But now wasn’t the time for that, either.

  “Fine,” he growled, motioning with his head towards the door. “Let’s go.”

  “Oh, gee… can I go with you, Nick?” she said, openly sarcastic. “Can I really? Really and for true? I wouldn’t want to get in the way or anything…”

  Growling at her, he smacked her ass. When she smacked him back, hitting him in the chest, he winced from the healing ribs there, then reached up to straighten his shirt collar under his coat as he began walking towards the door.

  She followed him, not saying a word, but he could practically feel the conflicted emotions on her: guilt for hitting him when he was injured, fury with him for not seeing her for what she was without her spelling it out, relief that he was letting her go with him, worry about him getting himself killed.

  As he picked up all of that, it occurred to him yet again.

  He shouldn’t feel so much on her.

  He really, really shouldn’t feel so much on her.

  Even if she was full-blooded seer, he shouldn’t feel so much.

  Clenching his jaw, he held the door for her, watching her walk through, watching her fume at him, still feeling every nuance of her fuming.

  He’d regret this.

  He fucking knew he’d regret it.

  But, like with most things Wynter, that door had already closed.

  Chapter 25

  Partners

  “Call her,” Nick said. “Put it on speaker. There’s a damned good chance she won’t even let us in the building. If she knows what Tai did, she might wonder if I remember it––”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  Nick heard the impatience in her voice, and glanced at her.

  “We might be too late,” Nick added. “To stop the kid.”

  Wynter gave him a harder look. “I know.”

  “You think we are. Too late?”

  She didn’t answer him, not directly.

  Instead she frowned, switching off the virtual display she’d just ignited on her headset before turning to him. “You should call,” she said. “Put it on speaker. I can try to read her while you talk to her. All I need is a voice––a direct line. She doesn’t even need to know I’m here.”

  Nick turned, staring at her.

  They were free to talk now, at least.

  He was driving his car, which he and Wynter had gotten out of the garage of his apartment building in Washington Heights.

  It was dark out, but he found he was still adjusting to the brightness of the holographic and other lights shining through his tinted windows. Those holographs ran liquid, colored patterns down the hood and windows of his dark green, 1970 Mercury Cougar Eliminator 428 Super Cobra Jet with the white racing stripes, confusing his sensitive eyes after so much time spent unconscious.

  “That hospital,” he said. “Who put me there?”

  Wynter glanced at him, disbelieving. “You’re only thinking to ask that now, Naoko?”

  “Just tell me, Wynter.”

  “St. Maarten,” she said, grunting and folding her arms. “Farlucci’s people were going to send you to an I.S.F. facility. She convinced him to let her handle it, that she could do better for you. Once he realized who she was, he let her.”

  “The facility where I was. Who runs it?”

  She gave him another flat look. “Who do you think, Nick? It’s one of their research hospitals. Archangel.”

  Nick nodded, but his jaw hardened. He stepped on the gas, pulling off the line of a red light as they descended from the northern part of the city towards midtown.

  “Call her,” Wynter said, nudging him. “We may not need to go there at all, if I can get a location from her, or one of
the people in the room with her.”

  It was his turn to give her a disbelieving look. “You can do that?”

  “With a real-time audio-visual representation?” She snorted. “Yes, Nick. Easily. If she doesn’t use a scrambler for her vocals, it’ll be even easier.”

  “And the other people in the room––?”

  “I can jump from her to them. Again, assuming no one is shielding her, and she’s not doing anything to actively modify or scramble her thoughts or living light.”

  Nick stared at her. “Who the fuck are you?”

  Wynter snorted again, rolling her eyes.

  Still, something in her face altered at last. That harder anger he’d seen in her expression since their conversation in the recovery room finally perceptibly softened. She blew a few strands of color-streaked black hair out of her face, giving him a faint smile.

  “Just put her on the line, Nick. We can talk about the rest later, okay?”

  Still looking at her with more than a little incredulity, he nodded.

  Glancing out his window at the relatively light traffic on Columbus Avenue, he used a mental impulse to open a line on his headset. He used the same function to put the transmission on speaker, and to mute the background of the line on his end so that the person who picked up would only get his voice, not all the ambient noise in the car.

  Then he requested Lara St. Maarten’s private line.

  He didn’t expect her to be the one to pick up.

  He’d expected Veronica Racine, her assistant, or one of her other people.

  Therefore, he jumped a little when the image of Lara St. Maarten came up on the holographic projection.

  She spoke at once, her voice sharp, borderline impatient.

  “Yes, Detective Tanaka?” she said. “What can I do for you? I assumed you needed nothing more from me at this time, since you checked yourself out of the medical facilities a full day early.” She paused, then her voice rose a few degrees sharper. “…and why aren’t you at home right now? Relaxing? Recovering from nearly getting yourself killed for the second time in recent memory?”

  She paused meaningfully.

  “…Or better yet, why aren’t you on a train with Ms. James? Heading north for another week of well-deserved R&R?”

  Nick could practically hear Wynter’s mental editorializing on that last comment, but he didn’t look over, knowing St. Maarten might have the visuals on for her side, since he hadn’t explicitly blocked them, not of his face.

  He frowned instead at the woman on the line. As per usual, she looked perfectly coiffed, if strangely out of time. Her dark hair framed her face in a dated but flattering style, her razor-thin lips painted dark red below her green eyes.

  He decided not to beat around the bush.

  “Where’s Tai, Lara?” he said. “I need to talk to her. Now.”

  Those green eyes blinked.

  She stared at him, and from the look on her face, he found himself thinking he’d genuinely thrown her, at least a little. He wondered if some of it was him calling her Lara, which he’d never done before.

  “Where is she?” Nick growled. “I know you know. Just tell me where she is.”

  “Did you try to reach her via her headset?”

  “I did,” Nick said. “But I doubt you let her keep it on, Lara, while she’s doing a job for you. Especially the kind of job I suspect you and brother Mal have her on at the moment.”

  Nick glanced up in time to see a red light in the intersection ahead, and slammed on the brakes. He got the answer to his question about whether she had the visuals on for her half of the conversation when she pursed her lips.

  “You are driving right now?” she said, her voice a touch harder. “Where are you going, Naoko? I hope you aren’t coming here,” she added sourly. “I’m afraid I don’t have time to entertain tonight. I’ve got a fundraiser to attend, not to mention––”

  Nick cut her off.

  “Naw,” he said, drawling the word. “I was in the mood to share some blood with old friends, Lara. I thought I’d head to Queens. Visit a boxing buddy of mine. A vampire… a new vampire, I suspect. You might know him? His name’s Raphael Molony.”

  Nick paused, his jaw harder.

  “…Personally, I had to look that up. But if you follow the matches, he had a pretty gruesomely spectacular win, a few weeks back. The same night I fought my first match, as a matter of fact. He ripped the jaw off a vampire with green hair––”

  “I know who Raphael Molony is, Mr. Tanaka,” Lara said, her voice openly annoyed. “I strongly suggest you not go there right now.”

  “You had her hack me,” Nick growled. “You had her go into my mind and find that fucker, so you could send her after him. A little kid––”

  “Tailaya is hardly an ordinary child, Nick,” the woman said coolly. “As you very well know––”

  “So… what? You and her brother decided that makes it okay to recruit her into your little family of mercenaries? Turn her into some kind of operative? She’s not even a damned teenager yet––”

  “She wanted to help.” St. Maartan’s voice grew colder. “She asked if I would help her take care of this, Nick.”

  “So the fuck what?” he burst out angrily. “Who’s the adult here? The kid asks to go after murderers, and you just hand her a bullet-proof vest? Her own damned brother gives the okay for this? What is the matter with you people? Did you both attend the same school for sociopaths?”

  Lara St. Maarten sniffed, tilting her chin up and folding her arms. Nick glanced at the image of her in the virtual depiction, scowling as he drove.

  He hadn’t bothered to look at anything but her face before, but now, he could see that she hadn’t been lying about one thing.

  She did look like she was getting ready to go to a party.

  She wore a forest-green, low-cut dress that matched her eyes, dark green and brown eyeshadow that matched the dress, and that retro hairstyle of hers looked immaculate, with each curl delicately and precisely framing her angular face.

  She looked even more like some kind of old-school movie queen from hundreds of years before the Displacement.

  “She was worried about you, Naoko.” Lara St. Maarten exhaled, fingering one of those curls at her forehead. “She wanted to keep you safe. Why not let her do that? Why not simply step aside for this one, and let us handle this for you?”

  “Not gonna happen,” Nick growled.

  A frown came to that red-lipsticked mouth, right before her green eyes darted to her left, as if looking at someone who stood there. Nick saw the look in her eyes change, right before they shifted back to focus directly on Nick.

  “You’re not alone,” she said, her voice cold. “Who is there with you, Naoko?”

  Nick didn’t think.

  He terminated the communication.

  Frowning, he glanced at Wynter, and she glanced at him.

  “Malek?” he said after a pause.

  She hesitated, then nodded, once.

  Nick scowled.

  “He didn’t get a lock on me,” she said.

  “He didn’t need to,” Nick growled, glaring at her. “Who the fuck else would it be? With me? In my fucking car?” His scowl hardened. “They know you’re a hybrid, Wynter. They’ll have exactly one guess who was in my car with me, trying to read her––”

  “There’s no possible way he got enough off me for it to matter,” she broke in, raising a hand in reassurance. “Trust me. I felt him. I felt exactly what he was thinking. I’m good at playing helpless kitten in the space. I was scanning on multiple levels, and he only tagged me on the low-level one… the one he was supposed to hit. I deliberately make that one clumsy, and easy to spot. I knew there was some chance he was there.”

  Nick stared at her, again not able to hide his incredulity.

  Blowing at stray bangs, Wynter shrugged, squeezing her chest with her arms.

  “They’ll think I’ve got some low-grade psychic ability,” she said. “So
what? A lot of hybrids do. They’ll think I’m an idiot for trying it with someone like St. Maarten. Especially since I’m already like ninety-percent sure that Malek knows I know what he is.”

  Nick clenched his jaw hard enough for his teeth to hurt.

  He was about to snap at her again, to remind her that this was exactly why he didn’t want her involved in his job or his cases with him, when he realized he hadn’t even asked her the most important thing.

  “Did you get it?” he said. “The location?”

  He glanced at her as he asked it, and her eyes met his.

  After a bare pause, her lips curved up in a sideways smile.

  Seeing the look there, he grunted, rolling his eyes in spite of himself.

  “Well, I hope it was worth it,” he grumbled. “Because if you think St. Maarten isn’t going to do everything in her power to figure out exactly how good you are with ‘the psychic shit,’ then you don’t know her at all.” He glared at her, gripping the antique steering wheel of his car with both hands. “…and I do mean, at all,” he added, sharper. “You know that asshole’s probably trying to track you this very second.”

  “Let him,” she said serenely, folding her arms and settling back in her seat.

  Nick turned, frowning at her. “Meaning what?”

  She gave Nick an impatient look that only made him want to yell at her more.

  “Leave the psychic stuff to me, okay?” she said, frowning back at him. “I know it goes against every single thing in your nature, Nick… but you’re just going to have to trust me. You’re going to have to take a deep breath, and accept that you can’t control any aspect of this. And you’re going to have to trust me to handle it.”

  He glared at her, his jaw still clenched.

  Turning back to stare out the windshield of the Cougar, he turned over her words.

  In the end, he had to admit defeat.

  “Where are we going?” he grumbled.

  She looked at him, frustration, bemusement and what might have been the slightest hint of hurt still visible in her eyes.