Fang & Metal: A Science Fiction Vampire Detective Novel (Vampire Detective Midnight Book 4)

by JC Andrijeski

  Touching his headset, Horace mentally keyed in the security specialist’s headset ID.

  He heard it buzz.

  It kept buzzing.

  “He’s not answering,” he said, glancing at the Midnight as he leaned down to hit the key to the basement, where the vaults lived. “Should I leave a message?”

  She didn’t look particularly interested in his protocol dilemmas.

  “Connect me to the main security feed. Use the NYPD code I just sent.” Those crystal blue eyes sent another flickering look in his direction. “Did you do a full bandwidth search on this so-called ‘anomaly’?”

  “No heat signatures,” he said, figuring that’s what she meant.

  He sub-vocaled in the code she gave him.

  Immediately, the access band turned blue inside his virtual screen, indicating a shared connection. He glanced at her, watching those pale eyes turn inward as she watched the surveillance feeds. He watched her click through numerous light-spectrum bands. She did it rapidly, as precisely as a machine; so rapidly, he had no idea how she was able to see anything of significance in any of those different views.

  Visible, infrared, X-ray, gamma… nothing showed on any of them.

  Horace only knew that because he’d studied each one in detail upstairs.

  She switched over to pure motion capture.

  Immediately, the three-dimensional blueprint lit up.

  Horace sucked in a breath, staring at the difference in the signal since the last time he’d looked. Before, they’d only taken up a small corner of the vault.

  Things were moving all over the virtual screen now.

  He tried to count them with his eyes, couldn’t.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. “What are they?”

  There were too many… too many to count.

  That many signals couldn’t be right.

  “Didn’t you check this?” the Midnight said, puzzled.

  “Ming did,” he said. “The security guy. The other vamp. When he called up earlier, after he first got down to the vault, he couldn’t see anything. He got zero visuals in the places where the motion detectors had indicated anomalous movement. His portable motion sensor went quiet, too. It was like he showed up… and they just vanished off the grid.”

  “Did you see them upstairs?” she said, tilting her head to aim a frown at him. “Did they disappear for you, too?”

  “Yup,” he said, nodding. “Everything stopped.”

  “And he hasn’t called you since then? And now the whole room is covered with them?” Her frown deepened. “Doesn’t that concern you, Horace?”

  Horace swallowed, lost briefly in those perfect, blue eyes.

  Thinking about her question, he shook his head.

  “No,” he admitted. “I figured he was inside the vault, working. Sometimes you can’t call out of there easy, not with all the security measures on. When I checked last, the only signal for those things was inside.”

  “Inside the vault?” At Horace’s nod, she frowned. “And the motion detector is the only anomaly you’ve found?”

  Thinking, Horace shook his head.

  “No. Temperature. We had a cold spike. A big one. Inside the main vault. That’s why we assumed it was equipment failure. We thought the a/c must be acting up… pumping too much cold air into one part of the room. We thought maybe the temperature change was giving us the wonky motion detector readings. Interacting weirdly with the living wall.”

  “That’s what your security specialist said?”

  Horace shrugged. “It was a theory. I figured he was down there trying to fix it. See if that would clear up the problem. I figured he’d call, if anything went wrong.”

  The Midnight’s delicate frown returned.

  He wondered if she was frowning because she didn’t like the nature of the anomaly, or because she was worried about Ming.

  Or, more likely, because she thought him a fool for not checking in with Ming sooner.

  Maybe he was a fool.

  For the remainder of the ride down, the two of them watched the strange signals of the motion-capture feed. Horace was more convinced than ever, though.

  It had to be a malfunction.

  Nothing alive could make signals like that.

  He watched smoky, indistinct limbs and bodies move across the ceiling and floors. At times, their legs and joints seemed to bend backwards, like giant insects, or maybe like giant lizards, the kind of blue and green lizards that used to live in jungles before the war.

  Komodo Dragons. Monitor lizards.

  Chameleons. Iguanas.

  His mind recalled photos scanned from old nature books. He was too young to remember animals like that in real life, even in zoos, but as a kid, he endlessly imagined the world as it was before the wars, when it was still populated with things like lions, tigers, hippopotamuses, giraffes, elephants, bears, turtles, whales.

  He’d been reading for years about how they were trying to repopulate parts of Africa and South America inside wildlife domes. For regular people like him, it seemed like science fiction. Any animal bigger than a good-sized dog was as alien to his world as a creature from outer space.

  Or maybe, more accurately, a dinosaur.

  “What are they?” Horace said, watching her look at them.

  The Midnight didn’t answer.

  Thinking about his own question, Horace considered for the first time that the creatures behind those signals might actually be real.

  The blood drained from his face.

  “Hey,” he stammered. “If you think those things aren’t just a system glitch, we need backup, right? Don’t we need backup?” His throat fought through a swallow. He turned, looking at her. “Ming never answered. He could be hurt. Incapacitated, maybe. Right?”

  She frowned.

  Turning, she actually looked at him that time, her eyes clicking back to focus.

  “I agree,” she said. “When the doors open, I’ll exit out onto the lower levels. You won’t. You will go back up to the lobby, and keep the main security channel open, so I can communicate with you.”

  Pausing, she added,

  “I’ve already called for backup. When you get to the lobby, close down the elevator until that backup arrives. I can catch anyone on foot if they try to flee via the stairs.”

  Horace frowned.

  He opened his mouth to protest, but the Midnight cut him off.

  “I’ll be fine, Horace,” she assured him. “If I have to get out quickly, I’ll take the stairs. In the event that happens, I’ll have you lock down the lower levels totally… once I’m out the area of the shield doors.”

  Horace stared at her.

  Realizing he was staring, he closed his mouth with a snap.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea––”

  “Too late,” she said, giving him a wan smile.

  A low ping made Horace jump.

  The elevator doors began to open. She stepped out as soon as the opening was big enough, still training that wolf-like stare at him, those crystal eyes catching some fragment of light his human eyes couldn’t see, making them glow.

  She went totally still, like an animal scenting prey.

  The elevator doors began to close, but she inserted her arm in the opening, forcing the panels to reopen.

  “I smell blood,” she said. “Any reason besides a bad one, that it would smell like blood down here, Horace?”

  Horace flinched.

  Then he remembered.

  “Oh, yeah.” He exhaled. “Actually, there is a reason. We had an electrician who cut himself. Working on the organics. That was just yesterday. They cleaned it, but––”

  “Okay.” That heated, predatory look faded from her eyes. “Go back up.” She motioned with a finger. “I’ll be fine, Horace. Send my backup straight down here when they arrive.”

  As she said it, she was already unholstering her gun.

  He stared at her, still feeling like he should argue.

  Seei
ng her expression, he didn’t.

  He bent down instead, moving jerkily, and jabbed at the button that would bring him back to the lobby-level floor.

  The doors closed.

  He breathed a sigh of relief as the elevator car began to rise.

  Chapter 2

  Ana

  Humans, Ana Nuñez thought to herself.

  That human guard had been an odd one.

  She honestly couldn’t tell if he was afraid of her, or if he was some kind of fanger groupie who got star-struck around vampires.

  Of course, the two reactions weren’t mutually exclusive.

  At least he’d made an effort to be polite; a lot of full-blown racists couldn’t even manage that.

  She’d been tempted to tell him he needn’t have worried, whatever his specific hang-up was with her kind. She was in a relationship. She only did live feeds with him.

  The thought of telling him that hit at her dark-humor funny bone.

  Still, given how her one attempt at humor had gone down like a lead balloon, it was probably better she hadn’t told him that. If he really was paranoid about vampires, he might have complained, and then she’d have to explain the remark back at the precinct.

  Which would have been… embarrassing.

  Focusing down the dark hallway, she kept her gun pointed at eye-level, watching the screens in her headset as she gazed down her scopes.

  The movements she could see in her headset feeds were odd.

  She was tempted to call in again, let her new “boss” back at the 17th Precinct know where she was, see if maybe he could raise the vault’s security guy from his end. NYPD central had access to toys a lowly Midnight didn’t.

  Knowing Morley, he might want her to check in, regardless.

  She fought it back and forth in her head, knowing she was definitely overthinking it because of who Morley was, yet doing it anyway.

  She’d already called in to report the basics she’d learned from the security guard and ask for backup. She let the NYPD’s A.I. dispatcher, Gertrude, know that a private-sec guard was nonresponsive, that they were still getting multiple motion signals in the vault and no other readings.

  She debated on whether to call Morley himself, though.

  She didn’t want to bother him.

  She was conscious of how easy it would be to over-call him now that he was technically her boss. He was senior homicide detective at the 17th, and she was now one of his Midnights.

  It didn’t help that she was still a rookie with the Midnight thing.

  While she’d technically graduated from the training academy, she hadn’t even gotten her diploma yet. They’d postponed the official ceremony to do some big shindig with the mayor that week, something meant to promote race relations between the NYPD and vamps, in part by doubling their Midnight force.

  Ana knew it was all just a big PR stunt, likely only happening since it was an election year and vampire rights had been a “thing” lately.

  Even so, she had to play her part.

  Part of that was proving herself on the ground before she gave the humans at her new precinct a bunch of crap to gossip about. After she’d kicked ass on a few good-sized cases, they could gossip all they wanted… but she wanted them to know she was a damned good detective, first. She didn’t want anyone thinking she got the job for any reason other than that.

  She definitely didn’t want to come off as too needy with Morley himself, or as someone who overreacted to strange things she encountered in the field.

  Some of that was pride, of course.

  They already had another Midnight working out of the 17th Precinct, a celebrity Midnight who moonlighted as a vamp boxer, and racked up a pretty impressive win/loss count in the ring, in addition to his annoyingly impressive arrest record as a cop.

  Because of that asshole, she was even more anxious to prove herself.

  Ana had never been second-string anything… even before she got turned.

  She didn’t intend to start now.

  And no way would she let herself be labeled as “that other Midnight” or “the female Midnight” while they fawned over a swollen-headed media hound who thought he walked on water just because he happened to be decent at pummeling people.

  Good in the ring and good in real life were two totally different things.

  Ana happened to know that for a fact.

  Raising the gun higher as she approached the thick metal security door separating the main vault area from the rest of the floor, she paused, listening.

  She could have sworn she heard something.

  Whatever it was, it came from the other side of that door.

  Which was impossible, of course.

  Those walls were probably five feet thick, made of steel, concrete, reinforced with organic and semi-organic tech, sound deadeners, surveillance interference.

  Even her vampire hearing couldn’t penetrate that.

  Anyway, there was far too much movement being tracked on the other side of that door for her to risk opening it.

  Hesitating another beat, she called in, in spite of herself.

  The human detective picked up after just two tones.

  “Hey,” she said, before he could speak. “It’s Nuñez. Did they ping you about where I am? I was closest to the Price building, so I took the call.”

  “The Price Building?” The detective paused. “That thing down in the vault?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ana could almost hear him frown.

  Realizing he wasn’t thrilled she’d taken the call, rather than letting a uniform get it, she cursed herself silently, wishing she’d waited on calling him.

  She should have at least waited until she had something.

  “You down there now?” he said, after that longer pause. “In the vault? Alone? Or is this damned machine lying to me?”

  “I’m not inside the vault,” she clarified. “I’m on the same floor. The security door is still sealed. They’ve had no openings in the past twelve hours.”

  “But the motion sensors––”

  “––Are all over the map. I know. But everything being picked up is on the other side of that door. I thought I should check out the rest of the floor. I figured it couldn’t hurt to keep an eye on things until my backup arrives.”

  “That’s a long way of saying you’re down there,” Morley grunted. “Alone.”

  “I’m not going in,” she repeated. “I’m waiting for backup, and looking for their missing security guard. It’s pretty unlikely whoever breached the vault would come out this way, given that the seal hasn’t been broken. However they got in, it wasn’t through the vault door––”

  “Go upstairs, detective,” Morley said, his voice hard. “If it wasn’t clear, this is my disapproving voice. You shouldn’t be down there alone.”

  Nuñez clenched her jaw.

  A part of her wanted to ask if he’d be saying that if it was the other Midnight down here, the media-hound boxer, instead of her.

  Or hell, if he’d be saying it to any of his other detectives, human or vamp––or getting pissed at them for taking the call because they were closest.

  “I don’t see any sign of a forced breach through the walls,” she said, hearing the stubborn note in her own voice. “If there is someone inside, they must have found some other way in. Electrical access, maybe… but that still doesn’t explain the sensors. If it was an inside job, how did they miss motion capture? And how are there so damned many signals in there, even after the alarm got flagged? Are they locked inside?”

  She waited through a beat of his silence.

  “According to the schematics, there’s no other way in or out,” she admitted. “Even the air vents don’t go through there. They have a plasma system for air and cooling. They wanted the system contained, so it only services the vault––”

  “Detective––”

  “There’s a hell of a lot of movement inside, sir,” she added. “It looks like someone let loose a he
rd of wild animals on the other side of that door. That’s got to be from the same glitch blocking the other scans, right? Some tech being deployed to scramble the signal?”

  “Did you hear me, Nuñez?” Morley said, his voice openly annoyed. “I don’t give a damn how indestructible you think you are. Those motion sensors might be malfunctioning… might. The tech hypothesis is a good one, but it’s only a theory. I’ll feed it to the team here, but you’re to follow protocol. That means assuming the sensors are working––”

  “How far out is my backup?” she said.

  She knew she was pressing her luck.

  She hated being coddled, though.

  Humans could be funny about that, about how she looked.

  Even humans as smart as Morley had a tendency to forget, especially the males, that despite her looking like a five-foot-two female human, with delicate bones and a voluptuous figure––she wasn’t one.

  She definitely wasn’t as fragile as she looked to human eyes.

  That fact worked to her advantage at times.

  It was also a semi-frequent source of annoyance.

  “Sorry, sir,” she said at his silence. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful. Would it be all right if I went to wait by the elevators? I could have the security guard turn them back on… and even wait inside the car. That way, I would still hear if someone opened the vault door.”

  There was a silence.

  Then the senior detective let out an annoyed exhale.

  “I’m not crazy about it,” he said. “But I’ll approve it. I expect you to get the hell out of there, the instant you hear something. And I mean anything.”

  She felt her shoulders relax.

  “Understood, sir––”

  “––and I’m not coddling you,” he added, sounding even more irritated. “Good Midnights are hard to find. I’d rather not lose you before I’ve determined if you’re any good or not.”

  She bit her lip.

  She wanted to laugh. Maybe he’d even meant for her to laugh.

  She didn’t, though.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, deadpan. “Returning to the elevators now.”

  She began backing up, retreating the way she’d come in. Her eyes, nose, and gun remained aimed at the security hatch leading into the main vault.