Nick frowned, unable to quite think through the look in the other’s eyes.
“We consult her about every job,” Malek added, clasping his hands between his knees. “We talk through the moral and ethical considerations with her… each and every time, Nick. It helps her if she thinks she’s only doing this to bad people, to people who would harm others… maybe even a lot of others. It helps her if she frames this as stopping the truly dangerous of this world… killers who would harm the weak and defenseless, those who need someone like Tai to protect them.”
He hesitated, still studying Nick’s eyes, clearly looking for understanding.
For empathy, maybe.
“It helps her,” Malek said. “I know it seems wrong to you, but it really helps her, Nick. All of this, everything we’ve tried to do with her over these past few years, it’s allowed her to…”
Again, he struggled for words.
“…accept who she is. It’s why she’s so hurt you don’t approve, Nick. She really wants you to approve of her. She wants you to accept her, too.”
Nick frowned, staring back at the seer.
He understood what Malek was telling him.
Truthfully, he had absolutely no idea what to say.
Chapter 30
Coward
He stood with her in the lobby of Phoenix Tower.
He paced, fighting not to look at her, not to think about what had just happened upstairs.
Fighting not to think about the blood that still patterned his shirt.
He watched her, anyway.
He watched her follow him with her eyes, her stunning, blue-green eyes following him as he paced the gilded lobby of St. Maarten’s modern-day palace with its high, church-like ceilings and its phoenix-designed tile embedded with semi-precious stones.
“Nick,” Wynter said finally.
When he gave her a bare glance, she walked up to him, catching him by the arms.
“Nick.” Her voice grew soft. “Calm down.”
He shook his head, not quite pulling free of her, but tensing, avoiding her eyes. He stared down at the tile in the lobby, at the jade, topaz, sapphire, and opal stones that made up the phoenix’s feathers, the bright red eyes of the birds that coiled like dragons in each individual tile.
He could feel Wynter staring at his face.
He could practically feel her reading his face, his body, maybe even his fucked up vampire “light,” if what Malek had said was true. He was trying to figure out what to say to her, how to say it, when she spoke before he could.
“You’re not coming back with me, are you?” she said.
At that, he looked up.
He met her gaze, and saw the understanding in her eyes.
“No,” he said, exhaling in a human-like sigh. “No. I’m not.”
“Because of what happened?” Her sharp jaw jutted when she clenched it, but still managed to look almost inhumanly delicate to him. “Because that vampire bit me?” Her voice grew colder. “Or because of what I saw? Because I saw you feed on that other man?”
Nick felt his own jaw tighten.
Still studying her face, he answered her, his voice blunt.
“Both,” he said. “Either, Wynter. Pick one.”
“You think I didn’t know you get turned on when you feed?” She gripped his arms tighter, staring at him. Her eyes were too bright, and Nick looked away, unable to hold her gaze. “You think I didn’t know that, Nick? Why the hell do you think I wanted you to bite me?”
Nick shook his head, backing away from her, but she only reinforced her grip on him, forcing him to stop, or else wrench away from her––which he didn’t do.
“I don’t mind that I got bit,” she said, her voice low, thicker now. “I mind that it wasn’t you, Nick.” Swallowing, she added, half-choking on the words, “I don’t mind that you bit that man… I mind that it wasn’t me.”
He felt her frustration, her anger, but most of all, her grief.
He felt her disappointment in him.
“…Do you really not get that, Nick?” she said. “Really?”
He made himself turn.
He made himself look her in the face.
“They know about you now,” he said. “I did that, Wynter. I did that… and then I almost got you killed. Tai was wrong. It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I wanted you there. For my own selfish, fucked up reasons. And now St. Maarten knows about you. Archangel knows about you. If I’d never gone near you, if I’d left after the Kellerman thing, never called you––”
“It’s too late for any of that!” she snapped. “You want to blame yourself? Fine. Blame yourself. Blame us. But what difference does any of it make now, Nick? Even if you stopped seeing me today, that wouldn’t reverse any of it––”
“No,” he growled, staring at her. “No more, Wynter. No more saying the damage is done. The damage hasn’t even fucking begun… you know it’s true. Or you would know, if you were being the slightest bit honest with me or yourself.”
Forcing his expression still, he stared right at her, his eyes and voice flat.
“I will destroy you, Wynter,” he said, his voice cold. “I will fucking destroy you, if you let me… and you keep asking me to try.”
She stared at him.
Her shocking, blue-green eyes flickered between his, too bright, but holding a glimmer of anger now, too. She looked at him for what felt like a full minute.
Then she released his arms. She released his jacket, stepping back.
“You’re a coward,” she said. Her voice was colder than his, despite the tears in her eyes. “You’re a coward, Nick––”
“I’m a vampire, Wynter,” he growled. Taking a step towards her, he let a denser, more animal-like snarl reach his voice. “When are you going to get that through your fucking head? When are you going to stop idealizing this… or pretending there can be anything but a terrible fucking ending for any of it?”
Her eyes flinched.
She stepped back briefly, but not far.
Once she’d recovered, that frown returned to her full lips.
“Coward,” she said. “Fucking coward, Nick.”
Without another word, she turned on her heel.
He watched her walk for the doors of the Phoenix Tower lobby, heading for the street. She walked fast, head high, but there was a vulnerability there too, one that gutted him once he let himself see it. Passing under the cathedral-like ceilings, she wrapped her arms around herself as if for warmth, and it seemed to take forever for her to reach those glass doors.
He realized only then that the driverless, robo-taxi he’d called to bring her to the train station had pulled up to the curb outside.
He watched her reach the end of that cavernous lobby.
He watched her exit the tall, gilded doors out to the street.
He watched her walk out into the sun.
He watched her, and felt something in his chest try to crush itself.
He felt it try, and wished desperately that this time, this time above all others…
…it would finally succeed.
What to read next
WANT TO READ MORE?
Check out the next book in the series:
THE PRESCIENT
(Vampire Detective Midnight #3)
Description coming soon!
VAMPIRE DETECTIVE MIDNIGHT is a new romantic, science fiction and fantasy series set in a futuristic, dystopian New York populated by vampires, humans and psychics trying to rebuild their world after a devastating race war nearly obliterates the previous one.
A spinoff of the Quentin Black Mystery series, it features vampire with a past and homicide detective, Naoko “Nick” Tanaka, who gets transferred to the NYPD after a bad incident in Los Angeles forces him to start a new life. Nick works as a “Midnight,” or vampire in the employ of the human police department, but when he arrives in New York, he really just wants to be left alone to work, surf, and deal with his immortality in peace.
Life, and the residen
ts of New York, clearly have other ideas.
See below for sample pages!
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Sample Pages
THE PRESCIENT (Vampire Detective Midnight #3)
Prologue / The Box
“GOT IT!” HE GRINNED, YANKING down on the old-fashioned, L-shaped handle after his hand-held lit up, confirming the meaning of the loud click he’d heard when the electronic combination clicked into place.
Yanking open the safe’s thick door, he glanced back at the woman who knelt on the floor next to a man in a hyper-modern virtually-enhanced suit. Despite the man’s dead-eyed stare up at the ceiling, his suit flickered with distracting and disjointed lights, flickering in the dim space of the corner office on the eighty-eighth floor.
“You got it?” he asked her, looking back towards the contents of the safe.
“Working on it,” she muttered, without looking up from where the machine she held hovered over the face of the man on the floor.
Her metallic silver braids were pulled out of her face in a long ponytail, making her face look more severe than usual. He couldn’t help smiling at the intensity in her dark brown eyes as she stared down at the body below her.
He watched her run the scanner over his face, then the length of his torso.
“Don’t forget the blood sample. Or the fingerprints,” he reminded her.
She gave him a flat look, one that was openly annoyed.
“Really, husband?” she said.
When he grinned at her, she jerked her chin towards the safe.
“Look for the damned thing, will you?” she said. “We need to get the hell out of here.”
“We’re good, baby… we’re good,” he assured her, checking his timepiece. “Four and a half minutes ahead of schedule.”
“We’re not past the anti-terrorism measures on the ground floor,” she reminded him. “Those damned things will be switched on by now––”
“Don’t worry, baby. Don’t worry,” he assured her.
He’d turned back to the safe, and began pulling out the contents.
The sheer variety was something.
Paper documents from before the war. He whistled a little under his breath when he saw the names on some of the original stocks and deeds represented by some of those papers. He even saw a small stack of Archangel stock, which was probably worth more than this whole damned building, all on its own.
“Did you find it?” she said, still focused down on the man’s body.
“The jackpot, honey––”
“But did you find it?” she said, emphasizing the last word. “They won’t pay us the rest, if we don’t get what we came for. I’m doing my half of it. We need yours to get the full payout. Their contact made it pretty clear that was the part they cared about.”
“Don’t worry, baby,” he said, pulling out a black box that sat in the back of the safe cavity, under all the papers. “It’s here. It has to be.”
He brought the locked box over to the modern, semi-organic desk.
Like the man’s suit, it flickered with internal life, sparking up and down its legs and the enormous, flat, living monitor that made up its flat table surface. The whole thing was pale green, almost like it was part plant, or maybe just survived off photosynthesis like a tree.
He examined the box, on the top of that desk, and frowned.
After a few seconds, he picked it up, bringing it over to his partner, and the body she crouched beside.
“I think I need his fingerprints to open this thing,” he explained when she looked up. “See if any of them work on the pad.”
Glancing up at him, she frowned faintly, then nodded, stopping her scanning long enough to take the box from him.
Going back and forth on which hand to use, she glanced up at him.
He knew her well enough to know what she was asking him.
“Is this one right-handed?” he said.
“Left,” she said, prompt. “He said left for this one, right?”
“I think so.”
Getting up from the carpet, she walked around to the other side of the body and knelt by the left hand. He followed her, crouching down beside her.
Looking at the organic indentation on the front of the box, he could see her trying to decide which finger. He understood her caution, and appreciated it.
Some of these lock-boxes had defense mechanisms. Get the wrong finger, and they shut down altogether. Then you needed specialized equipment to get them open––equipment he and his lady hadn’t brought with them for this job. They hadn’t forgotten. They discussed it, then decided they didn’t want the extra weight in case they had to leave down the outside of the building to avoid the worst of the counter-measures.
That equipment was too expensive to buy for just one job, anyway.
It was definitely too expensive to leave behind.
For the same reasons, they didn’t have it back at the garage, either.
They’d have to hope the client had it.
They’d have to hope he wouldn’t be a dick about it, if he didn’t.
“What if we try the thumb?” she suggested. “The pad looks too big to be for one of his other fingers.”
He nodded, agreeing with her.
He slid closer, so he could maneuver the hand while she held the box.
Picking up the human’s dead fingers, he positioned the thumb over the indentation on the organic-metal box she held in both hands. Double-checking that he had it lined up right, he hesitated, glancing at his partner, who was watching everything he was doing minutely.
“Look right to you?” he said.
She nodded. “It looks good.”
“Well,” he said, exhaling. “Here goes nothing.”
He pressed the thumb onto the pad.
Veins in the box lit up, green and blue at first, as they scanned the dead man’s thumb.
The thief grinned, glancing at the woman holding the box.
“It’s working!” he said gleefully. “They don’t do shit when you have the wrong finger––”
Even as he said it, the lights on the box changed.
The colors shifted.
They went from blue and green to yellow… then to orange.
Then to red.
“What the fuck?” he said, frowning down at it. “Could it know he’s dead?”
He glanced at the woman’s dark brown eyes, those beautiful brown eyes he could get lost in, even in the middle of a job…
But she never got a chance to answer.
THE COP LEFT THE LIGHTS ON top of his black and white flashing as he got out of the car.
He saw the revolving glass door at the front of the office building in front of him spin open, ejecting a security guard out the front of the building. An older latino man, the guard huffed a little as he made his way quickly across the decorative garden leading into the office park and towards the three main buildings making up the complex.
“Hey!” the cop called out. “You get a breach alarm?”
“That was us,” the guard confirmed, still a little out of breath. “The eighty-eighth floor. The executive suites––”
“Okay, we’ve got backup coming,” the cop said, sending a signal through his headset. “Is anyone up there? Anyone working this late?”
/> The guard nodded. “Mr. Silverton is here. He’s up in his office––”
“Silverton?” The cop’s eyebrows went up. “Abe Silverton?”
The guard nodded. “He always works late nights before a big product launch.”
The cop nodded, but transmitted the information through his headset even as he spoke to the other man.
“You tried to reach him up there?” the cop said. “To get him out?”
The guard nodded, his expression impatient now.
“Of course. I called him first. He didn’t pick up. That’s when I hit the alarm, and notified building security of the breach.” His voice grew a touch sharper. “That was fifteen minutes ago.”
Hearing the reproach there, the cop chose to ignore it.
“All right,” he said. “Show me the surveillance you’ve got on––”
Before he could finish, an explosion shook the ground under his feet.
He and the security guard dropped.
The way the other man moved, the cop couldn’t help thinking he’d probably seen some combat at one point too, despite the weight he’d gained in the time since, and how bad his breathing sounded.
Both of them moved fast, in pure reflex, their knees bending as they covered their heads, the cop gripping his uniform hat as he looked up, staring in the direction of the sound.
The security guard stared up with him.
An expanding mushroom cloud of fire lit up the night sky.
The cop watched it blow out the side of the building, almost like the whole thing unfolded in slow motion. Glass blew out with it, debris, raining down the side of the building, coming seemingly from the very top floor of the ninety-odd story building.
“MOVE!” the cop shouted, waving a hand towards the building as he shouted over the deafening sound. “GET OUT OF THE WAY!”
Eyes of Ice Page 35