St. Maarten was looking between the two of them, frowning.
She’d regained her composure, but Nick could see the frustration on her still.
He distinctly got the impression her word “behave” more or less summed up how she saw this situation. Clearly, she wanted Nick as a pet, and wished she could find some way to train him better so he would just, well… behave.
The silence stretched a few seconds more.
Then St. Maarten exhaled again, folding her hands in her lap.
She was still wearing the forest-green dress, Nick noted.
“How was the fundraiser?” he said, his voice mockingly polite. “Did all the other rich people give generously to the poor orphans of… wherever?”
Lara St. Maarten gave him a hard look.
Then she aimed that look at Wynter.
“You’re psychic,” she said, her voice as cold as her eyes. “You chose not to share that with me.”
Nick’s fingers tightened on Wynter’s, almost unconsciously.
“No,” he growled.
His fangs extended along with his tightening fingers.
Staring at St. Maarten, he shook his head, all of the sarcasm, humor and compromise stripped from his voice.
“No,” he repeated.
St. Maarten looked at him, exasperated.
“Calm down, Detective,” she said. “I have no intention of kidnapping your hybrid girlfriend and shuttling her off to some black site so I can torture her into joining my secret squad of ‘master assassins,’…” She made air quotes, her voice openly angry, and sarcastic. “…or whatever it is you are telling yourself I do here.”
“You’re using a kid… a kid… as an assassin,” Nick growled. “I’d say all bets are off on what I think you might be capable of, lady. Not to mention what sick shit I think you’d be willing to rationalize.”
Before he could go on, Malek spoke up.
“My sister was killing people on accident before Lara offered her help,” the seer growled. “Until Lara helped us to examine her gift… to understand it… Tai was suicidal. She was afraid to go outside… to talk to anyone. She tried to run away from me more than once. I had to find her each time, to convince her to come home with me…”
Nick looked at him, eyes flat.
He couldn’t help but notice the bruise that was already darkening on the seer’s jaw, or the swelling left by Nick’s fist.
He still couldn’t bring himself to regret it.
“You really want to sell me on the idea that turning her into an assassin was the only way to handle that?” Nick said, his voice cold. “You couldn’t have taught her to control it, and, say, not kill people with it?”
“It doesn’t work like that, Detective,” St. Maarten said.
Nick looked back at her. He renewed his grip on Wynter’s hand, still feeling too much of Laura St. Maarten’s attention on his girlfriend.
“Enlighten me,” Nick said. “…Please.”
Lara St. Maarten let out another annoyed exhale, but she had regained her composure almost in full by then, so her expression showed little. Fingering one of the artistically-placed curls on her forehead, she exhaled again, throwing back her head.
“This is a longer conversation, detective,” she said, glancing at Malek with pursed lips. “But I suppose we owe you the bare minimum… since Tai more or less employed herself against those she felt to be threatening your life.”
Hearing the not-so-subtle implication in her words, Nick felt his jaw harden.
Even though Wynter squeezed his hand, warning him, Nick spoke anyway.
“A guilt trip about my own life isn’t going to fix this,” he growled. “I never asked you to ‘deploy’ your little telekinetic murderer on my behalf––”
“She’s not telekinetic.”
Nick turned, staring at who’d spoken.
It was Malek again.
The tall, specter-like seer was looking at Nick with one of those penetrating seer stares, lips pursed, a faintly puzzled look lingering in the back of his mismatched eyes.
“She’s not telekinetic, Detective,” Malek repeated.
“Bullshit,” Nick said, grunting a humorless laugh. “Then what the fuck is she, if not telekinetic? Are you going to tell me she didn’t kill that newborn? Or the people who held me in that warehouse? She practically liquified them…”
“She killed them,” Malek affirmed, matter of fact. “She isn’t telekinetic.” He glanced at Lara St. Maarten, then back at Nick. “…Not in the strictest sense.”
That time, Wynter spoke up, inserting herself before Nick could.
“Then what is she?” she said. “If not telekinetic, then how did she do that?”
St. Maarten looked at Wynter.
Something in her face gave Nick the distinct impression she was relieved to talk to anyone about this who wasn’t Nick.
“There isn’t really a name for what she is––” she began, her voice curt.
“It’s like what the detective said. She liquifies people,” Malek said, blunt.
Nick saw St. Maarten flinch, right before she glanced at him. “Jack––” she began, warning.
But the seer looked only at Nick.
“She can’t throw people into walls. She can’t move objects really, not in the strictest sense. She’s not telekinetic––”
“She’s moving something in them,” Nick growled.
“Not exactly,” Malek said. “It’s more like she changes their vibration. All seers with the sight-ability can do that to a human’s or a seer’s aleimi, or living light. She can do it to their light in such a way that the vibration change in their light translates to their physical bodies.”
There was a silence after he spoke.
“It’s something about her own aleimi, of course,” he explained, still speaking in that patient, slow voice. “I don’t know how it works. Maybe it’s the same reason she can read you… vampires, I mean. She is highly attuned to even the most subtle frequencies of light. She is also, as a part of this, capable of vibrating at frequencies that cause other living lights to vibrate at that frequency with her. It doesn’t harm her, but it more or less…”
He glanced at St. Maarten, a faint frown on his lips before he looked back at Nick.
“…Liquifies them. If it goes on too long.”
Wynter and Nick exchanged looks.
Nick felt a little sick, in spite of himself.
“It’s not only their brains,” Nick said, looking back at Malek. “I saw the coroner report on those two humans in the warehouse––”
Malek was already nodding.
“It starts with the brain,” he explained. “It starts there, because humans, like seers, have the most aleimic, or living light, around that brain. It moves to the other organs after that if she doesn’t stop… usually the heart next, then the intestines and stomach. It generally follows where the individual themselves has the most living light––”
“How the hell does it kill vampires, then?” Nick said, frowning. “I thought we didn’t have aleimic light?”
Malek aimed his stare back at him.
After a pause, a faint smile lifted his narrow lips.
“If you didn’t have living light, cousin,” he said, the barest tinge of humor in his words. “You wouldn’t be moving around. You wouldn’t be able to think––”
“But I was told––”
“Seers may have believed something like this at one point,” Malek cut in, his voice more warning. “But believe me… you have aleimic light. You would not exist if you did not. You might need to replenish the more dimensional aspects of that light… supplementing it in some way via the blood of other living beings, which is also a carrier of aleimic light. You may also vibrate at a frequency invisible to most seers. But you most certainly have it.”
He paused, looking between Wynter and Nick.
“Your aleimic light is quite entwined with your partner’s,” he added, focusing a beat longer on Wyn
ter. “…It binds the two of you. Just as it would with two seers. Or a human and a seer. Or two humans, for that matter. She is quite unusual, really, in how compatible her light seems to be with yours. I have never seen that with a vampire and one of my kind before, truthfully… it is quite fascinating.”
Nick frowned. He glanced up at Wynter, who quirked an eyebrow at him.
Something in that look made him frown.
Or maybe he was just remembering what she’d seen him do out on that street. Or the fact that he’d put her life in danger, in more than one way, by dragging her into his world, and into the awareness of people like Lara St. Maarten.
Feeling his throat close briefly, he focused back on Malek with an effort.
“So she… Tai… vibrates…” Nick began, still frowning. “But you can see it. You can see vampiric ‘light’ or whatever.”
Malek didn’t remotely try to deny that, either.
“Yes,” he said simply
“And the kid’s not telekinetic. Just some kind of living, sonic weapon?”
Malek nodded. “I have never seen any record documenting what Tailaya can do.” He paused, his voice growing more meaningful. “I have looked. Believe me. I think it is perhaps like her ability to read vampire minds… some kind of evolutionary adaptation. Unfortunately, this means that the few seer texts and training materials left behind when the seers left this dimension are more or less useless to me, in terms of trying to help her.”
He looked at St. Maarten, then back at Nick.
“Without Lara’s help, Tai would likely be dead.”
Nick scowled, looking between them.
When neither of them said more, his voice lowered to another growl.
“I still don’t get how turning her into an assassin was your only option––”
That time, St. Maarten spoke up.
“She goes into this… frequency… of her own accord,” she said.
Her voice remained a touch cold. Unlike Malek, who seemed more or less open to telling them everything now that they knew the basics about Tai, St. Maarten was clearly reluctant to be discussing this with them.
“…She can’t help it, Detective,” the woman added. “If Tailaya goes too long without vibrating at that frequency, she begins to lose control over when and how she does it. Training her to use it at regular intervals… for purposes she believes are just, and useful to a greater cause––”
Nick snorted openly at that, but St. Maarten only spoke louder.
“––It has given her a sense of purpose, Detective. It has allowed her to control it, within reasonable parameters. Moreover, she has not had a single ‘accident’ in all the time since we have begun employing her for regular assignments. Her emotional anxiety has significantly lessened. She is able to do more…”
St. Maarten glanced at Malek, then back at Nick.
“…Kid-like things,” she continued icily. “Like attend school.”
When Nick said nothing, she added,
“You must realize… such a thing would have been impossible for her, even just a year ago. Even allowing her to leave the Cauldron was completely impossible until recently. She wouldn’t have permitted it, regardless of what we wanted for her. She would have been terrified she might hurt someone.”
Her nose wrinkled in a kind of reluctant distaste.
“Her newfound confidence to leave the Cauldron on her own is how she met you, Detective. Her isolation for so many years is why she’s grown so attached to you so quickly, we believe. She views you as part of her family now… nearly in a parental capacity. As such, she absolutely sees it as her responsibility to protect you. To keep you safe.”
She said those last words with obvious distaste, too.
Nick scowled faintly.
He definitely got the impression St. Maarten had tried to get Tai to view her in that capacity and had failed. She must really be pissed Tai decided to project that need for an adult in her life onto a vampire who wasn’t good at taking orders.
His mind kept turning over her actual words, though.
They’d been keeping Tai in the Cauldron to keep her out of society. They’d been keeping her there on Tai’s insistence, to keep her away from anyone she might hurt, at least on accident, at least outside of self-defense.
He’d nearly hit Malek for that, too, once upon a time.
He’d definitely wanted to hit him, for raising that kid in the Cauldron––a little girl left alone far too often around a lot of desperate, hungry, criminal people. A little seer girl, who could have been abducted, raped or abused by anyone.
Now he found himself thinking… grudgingly… that maybe he’d misjudged the male seer. At least in part.
At least the fucker hadn’t left her.
He’d stuck by his baby sister, even though she might easily have killed him on accident one day too, assuming Malek and St. Maarten were telling the truth.
He was still fighting to think through this when Wynter spoke up, gripping his hand tighter in both of hers.
“Isn’t there some other…” Wynter began, hesitant. “You know… less murder-y way for Tai to express that part of herself? To flex that… vibration? Or whatever it is?”
Malek turned, aiming his eyes at her seriously.
“We don’t know,” he said frankly.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs and looking between them, his voice matter-of-fact.
“We’ve been trying other things,” he admitted. “Animals work… but they need to be of sufficient size, and as you know, living animals are quite rare these days. Killing them also upsets Tai quite a bit. She more or less refused to do it after the last one.”
Glancing at Wynter, he added seriously,
“…The problem is, Tai’s light seems to require interaction with another’s aleimic light to fully express. We’ve tried infusing inanimate objects with living light, in the hopes the destructive aspects of this vibration could be channeled in harmless ways. We’ve tried this with increasingly advanced organic machines. So far, this approach has not worked. We are not able to maintain a field of enough aleimic light… real, living light… for her to attain the same high levels of vibration and connection.”
The seer hesitated, glancing between them, maybe trying to gauge their reactions.
He added, “There’s an organic need component to this, much like any other biological drive. Being young, she cannot control this element to her condition. At the high point of her raising the vibration of her aleimic target… or subject, or partner, I guess you could say… she has a kind of…”
He gave Nick an apologetic look.
“…a release, I guess you could say. Her light goes into an abnormally high level of vibration, and that’s generally when she kills her subjects. This high level of vibration tends to liquify the organs of her hosts. She seems to need that release periodically. If she goes too long without this, it builds up, and she loses control over it.”
Nick’s frown deepened.
He exchanged looks with Wynter.
Taking in the disturbed expression on her face, he gripped her hands tighter in the one of his she held between them.
He looked at Malek then, and St. Maarten.
Truthfully, he wasn’t sure what to say to that.
“Did she really kill your parents?” he said finally.
Malek winced.
St. Maarten frowned, looking at Nick with borderline anger.
Before she could saying anything though, Malek did.
“She told you that?”
Nick returned his eyes to the seer. “Yes,” he said.
Malek exhaled, combing his fingers through his hair.
He met Nick’s gaze.
“It is strange she would tell you that, but yes, it’s the truth. She did kill them.” He glanced at Wynter, then back at Nick. “She was very young, Detective. She was a toddler, essentially. It wasn’t her fault––”
“I get that,” Nick cut in. “I do.�
�� He frowned, looking at St. Maarten, then back at Malek. “If you’ll pardon my saying it, she’s got to be fucked up from that, though. As in, seriously traumatized. There’s no possible way that wouldn’t cause her severe psychological problems. It might even be making it harder for her to control this thing she does––”
“She loves you, Detective,” Malek broke in.
Nick tensed, staring at him.
He closed his mouth, before he’d even thought about why.
“She never would have told that to you, if she didn’t,” Malek added. “She has… bonded to you in some way. Just as your mate has.” Sighing, he glanced at St. Maarten, then back at Nick. “I know I have fought this. I have fought it with both of you. But I no longer believe this is the best thing… for either of you. Especially not for her.”
Nick stared at him.
He let out a humorless laugh, unable to help himself.
“What?” he said.
“I’m asking you to be…” He hesitated, looking between Nick and Wynter. “…Kind to her, Detective. Both of you. I’m asking you to not push her out of your life.”
His black and pale blue eyes focused on Nick.
“…Especially you, Nick.”
Nick blinked.
The male seer had never called him that before. He’d never used his name. He’d rarely called him anything other than “Detective,” or “vampire.”
“I know what she is,” Malek said, still studying his eyes. “But you’re right about her, too. She’s also just a girl. She’s a little girl who happens to have a terrible and powerful gift. For the first time since our parents died, she’s finally learning to have an almost…”
He struggled with words.
“…normal life. It might not be normal by most standards, but it’s better for her. It may not seem like it to you now, but it’s so, so much better for her now, Nick. And you are a part of that, whether you realize it or not.”
Eyes of Ice Page 34