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

by JC Andrijeski

  Nick glanced at him.

  The kneeling tech was younger, maybe only in his early thirties. Over his white lab coat, he’d cut his hair in a dark green and black mohawk, decorated with a line of augmented-reality-enhanced skull piercings.

  “…Shutting it down now,” the same tech said. “Ten seconds.”

  Nick tensed.

  How the fuck did you turn off a living creature, even one artificially created?

  He looked at the wall, rather than the techs, watching with his vampire eyes as currents began running behind the wall’s “skin.”

  Ten seconds passed.

  Nick frowned, seeing no difference in the wall at first.

  Then, out of nowhere, a series of fire-like threads snaked through the silvery-green material, like tiny currents of electricity through dark water. The threads exploded in number, multiplying across the segments of wall that looked “alive” to Nick’s vampire eyes.

  They reached the human trapped inside the metal.

  Nick watched the current snake around his form, marking the outline of his body, igniting sparks around a human outline that grew sharply visible to him, even deep inside the wall.

  Definitely a male.

  Those sparks grew brighter. The face in the wall hardened, contorting in pain.

  It opened its mouth in a silent scream.

  The eyes opened so wide, rings of white grew around his brown irises.

  It might have been comical, if not for the agony reflected there. As it was, it was deeply disturbing to watch. Nick grimaced, staring at those eyes, seeing the mouth open wider––so wide, it looked like the act itself must have hurt, just from the position of his jaw and lips.

  Nick took an involuntary step forward.

  He wanted to stop that pain.

  Just looking at it made him feel sick.

  The currents and pulses grew brighter, visibly shocking the human inside the wall. Nick glanced at the human techs, wanting to yell at them, then stared back at those fire-like lights exploding and colliding with the human body inside the organic metal.

  “Stop it,” he said, gruff.

  Neither of the techs looked his way.

  “Hey!” he growled, louder. “Turn the fucking thing off! You’re hurting him!”

  Both humans turned that time, staring up at him.

  Nick glared at their blank faces, motioning with a hand towards the wall. “It’s hurting him. A lot. Can’t you see that? Turn it off––”

  “Calm down, sir,” the older tech said, his mouth firm as he held up a hand. “Just give it a minute. I recognize this process is disturbing, but––”

  “Disturbing?” Nick snapped. “I’m a vampire. I can see it, okay? Turn it off. Now––”

  “Tanaka, hey,” Jordan muttered, grabbing his arm. “Chill––”

  “A few more seconds,” the kneeling tech murmured.

  He was staring at the readings on his monitor, his eyes and voice distant, like he didn’t hear Nick at all.

  Frustrated, Nick stared back at the trapped human.

  The light inside the wall was brighter now.

  To Nick’s vampire eyes, it was nearly blinding.

  Seconds later, it was so bright, he had to look away.

  Nick switched to his headset view so he could continue to watch it, training the camera on the dying man’s face. The light was vibrating now, moving the metal; it rippled the surface of the green-black wall in a sickening wave.

  The wave knocked into the man inside the organic machine.

  A second wave followed the first.

  Each subsequent wave grew in violence, the ripples growing wider, steeper, as they headed for the body. The fire-like light grew hotter-looking, even through Nick’s headset cameras. Nick watched, feeling helpless as that heated wave reached the human, slamming into and coalescing around the body.

  The wall was trying to kill him.

  That, or maybe it was trying to burn him out of existence.

  It likely saw the man as some kind of contaminant.

  “HEY!” Nick shouted. He flashed a badge at the two techs. “Stop this! NOW. I’m ordering you to shut this down! I’m ordering you on behalf of the NYPD––”

  He stepped forward, and Jordan grabbed his arm, trying to pull him back––

  When another, even more violent wave rippled through the wall.

  It came towards the body in a wide ring, hitting it from all sides, like a giant contraction of a throat––a throat choking on a piece of meat.

  Before Nick could open his mouth, that contraction jerked…

  …and the wall ejected the human body out onto the matte-black floor.

  Jordan let out a shocked, high-pitched cry.

  More like a shriek, really.

  Stepping back, still gripping Nick’s arm, he practically dragged Nick away from where the body lay on the floor, completely naked.

  His flesh looked burned. Steam rose from skin that shone a violent, dark red.

  Nick couldn’t tear his eyes off the thing.

  It gasped like a beached fish, eyes wide, mouth open.

  Human.

  It barely looked human, but the smell was overpowering now.

  The man’s entire body contorted and clenched with each labored breath. Nick couldn’t stop staring at the bright-red skin and flesh, even as he heard the techs shouting from by the wall.

  “Get emergency medical down here! Now!” the older one yelled into a console on the wall. “He’s alive, but critical…”

  Nick let Jordan yank him backwards by the arm, his eyes still on the steaming human.

  Those brown eyes stared back at him, and Nick realized for the first time that the man was completely bald, and not just on his head. All of his hair was gone, on every part of his body. It looked like the wall had been slowly digesting him.

  Thinking about that, Nick had to fight a wave of nausea.

  He was still staring down at that face, the white skin of his features a sharp contrast with the raw red of the rest of the body, when a flurry of movement behind him indicated the emergency crew had reached them.

  They must have been in the lobby.

  Nick watched them, barely able to make sense of their faces, much less the equipment they carried, as they pushed past him and Jordan, filling up the space between them and the wall, where the two technicians crouched.

  The emergency medical techs knelt around the body, working together to turn it carefully onto its back.

  The body continued to gasp those labored breaths, staring up at the ceiling.

  “That guy’s going to be fuuuucked up,” Jordan murmured from next to Nick. “If he manages to survive this. If he makes it. That’s, like… therapy for life, man.”

  Nick nodded, still unable to tear his eyes off that face.

  He moved closer to the storage structures as more medical techs came through.

  The second group carried a stretcher.

  They set the stretcher down on the floor next to the raw-red body, and Nick watched as all six of them carefully picked up the male human and deposited him on the stretcher’s dark green material. That material must have been some kind of organic too, as it wrapped around the man’s arms and wrists, legs and ankles, seemingly on its own.

  The man looked down, even as two of the techs were trying to fit an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose.

  Seeing the dark green material wrapped around his limbs, holding him down to the stretcher…

  He began to scream.

  Chapter 8

  Is It Murder, Though?

  “That was some of the most seriously disturbing shit I’ve ever seen,” Jordan said.

  He shook his head, staring out the window of the diner at a small park-like area on the walking street.

  “…I mean, that was some seriously disturbing shit,” he said, glancing at Nick. “Like, I’m never going to forget that. I might have to ask about those prescription memory loss drugs if we get dropped from the case. I
f we don’t need to know this shit for work, I see no good in remembering any of that––”

  “You’re not taking memory loss drugs,” Morley said, cold.

  Jordan gave him an annoyed look, but didn’t bother to argue.

  Grimacing, he slumped deeper into the red vinyl diner seat next to Nick, forcing him to move over more.

  The adjustment pushed Nick into the center seat of the booth, giving him an unobstructed view of the robot server behind the fake fifties counter with its approximation of antique soda fountains.

  “…I mean what the fuck?” Jordan gave Nick a disbelieving look, shaking his head for emphasis. “Like, what the fuck was that?”

  His voice still sounded shaky.

  Morley gave him a hard look, glancing around at the other patrons of the diner.

  “Volume, Damon,” he said, warning.

  Jordan clearly heard him, but apart from the younger man’s quick look around at the same diner patrons Morley just observed, nothing in the younger detective’s expression changed. He looked about to speak again, but Nick spoke up before he could.

  “A fucking nightmare,” Nick agreed with his friend, making his voice deliberately quieter. “First time in a long time I’m glad I don’t sleep,” he added, quieter still. “Even without sleep, I’ll be seeing that screaming face for months, every time I close my damned eyes.”

  Jordan grunted, but Nick saw a wince in the other male’s eyes.

  It was enough to make him regret saying what he’d said.

  After all, Jordan was human. He did sleep.

  “They’re saying he was a cop,” Jordan said, frowning sightlessly at the menu on the table. “They think he went down there right after Praetorian opened up the vault. I heard one of the tech guys say he must not have gone through the security protocols. You know… like we did. He didn’t do the hand on the wall shit.”

  Jordan glanced up, holding up his palm in an imitation of them pressing it against the sentient wall.

  Nick felt another wave of nausea. “Seriously?”

  Jordan nodded. “That’s what they said. Guy was NYPD. A uniform. The did a DNA scan to verify his ident after they brought him up to the medevac. Damn thing ate his barcode right off his arm.”

  Nick frowned. When he glanced at Morley, the older detective was watching both of them warily, his darker eyes holding an overt scrutiny.

  “All right,” Morley said, that piercing look still aimed at Nick. “I need both of you to act like grown-ups now. No more whining about how gross it was… or how weird it was… or making drama where serious things are occurring.”

  Morley paused.

  His eyes shifted to Jordan, then back to Nick.

  “…It was gross,” he said, blunt. “It was weird. There was some shady shit happening at that vault, and with Home-Def, and H.R.A., and I.S.F., and Praetorian, and whoever else. Get over it. Because I’m risking my ass talking to either of you about this at all… so if you can’t take this shit seriously and keep your mouths shut, go home. Get some rest. I’ll call you for the next fucked up thing that comes our way.”

  Nick frowned.

  He and Jordan exchanged looks.

  Then they both looked back at Morley.

  “Are we off this?” Nick said, blunt. His eyes flickered over Morley’s face, noting how pale the senior detective looked. “Technically, I mean. Did they already give you the ‘thanks for playing, now go home’ speech?”

  A grim smile touched Morley’s lips.

  “Not in so many words. That said, I think we can assume our role here will be… circumscribed, shall we say. Officially, that is.”

  “Officially?” Jordan muttered, glancing around them, then back at Morley. “No offense, boss, but what the fuck does that mean?”

  Morley gave him a stare. “You need me to get a dictionary for you, Damon? Am I using too big of words?”

  Nick frowned. He was still watching the older detective warily, trying to understand what he saw in Morley’s face. Somehow, he got the feeling Morley’s words were aimed more at him than Jordan, that his boss was feeling him out, more than he was feeling out Jordan.

  Nick wondered why.

  When Morley didn’t go on, Nick prodded that instinct.

  “Do you know how, sir?” he said carefully. “How will our role be circumscribed? Are we able to look into Nuñez? That other guy, the private-sec vamp, Ming?”

  Grimacing delicately, he added,

  “…The guy in the wall? We’ve got two NYPD people dead, after all.”

  Thinking about that, Nick felt his jaw harden.

  Technically, the guy in the wall wasn’t dead yet. Even so, it was hard to imagine that raw mass of meat and bone and burned skin surviving, much less becoming fully human again.

  Pushing the image of that open, screaming mouth, and terror-filled eyes out of his head, he refocused on Morley.

  “Is this still a murder investigation?” he said. “For any of them?”

  Morley met his gaze.

  “No,” he said.

  There was another silence.

  That time, Jordan broke it.

  “Are we sure that’s a bad thing?” he said, lowering his voice when Morley gave him a look. “I mean… shit. I’d rather not have my mind wiped, personally. It’s pretty clear this is some serious, top-secret, defense tech shit we’re talking about. With a screwup this big, they’ll do just about anything to keep it from hitting the media channels. Not to mention, it might cause a big stir in the vamp community, including the White Death. Or am I the only one who noticed that thing killed two vampires without blinking, and only seemed confused when it came to what to do with the human?”

  There was a silence.

  In it, Nick frowned down at the table.

  He hadn’t actually noticed that.

  That the machine may have been targeting vampires specifically hadn’t even occurred to him, not until Jordan said it.

  Now that Jordan had said it, though, it felt true.

  “Whatever, man.” Jordan threw up his hands when neither of them answered. “I’m just saying, this has got black-ops military shit written all over it. That means big bucks. It means national security. But, again… does it mean murder?”

  Still thinking, still frowning, Jordan added,

  “I mean, is it our kind of murder?” Plucking the menu up from the old-fashioned Formica table, he hunched his shoulders to read it. “If it’s some kind of intelligent machine malfunction, it’s probably more like wrongful death, am I right?”

  He glanced at Morley over the top of his menu.

  “…That means the company’s probably liable. It might mean lawsuits, or, more likely, some kind of settlement. The fact it’s all hush-hush, top secret shit complicates things, sure, and they probably broke all kinds of safety rules. But is it murder?”

  There was another silence.

  In it, Morley and Nick looked at Jordan.

  Nick frowned, turning over Jordan’s words.

  Damon wasn’t wrong.

  On the other hand, his words didn’t feel one hundred percent right, either.

  Nick’s gaze shifted to Morley.

  Studying those dark brown eyes, he found himself thinking he didn’t know what Morley was thinking exactly, but he could guess what the old man wasn’t thinking. Morley wasn’t thinking this was just some tech fuck-up––a “wrongful death,” as Jordan put it––where some experimental, semi-sentient, and probably illegal machinery accidentally killed some people.

  Nick also knew what he was thinking… meaning Nick, himself.

  Morley was definitely more right than Jordan about this.

  Jordan seemed to sense their doubt.

  Looking between the two of them, he frowned.

  “Nothing was stolen. Right?” he said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong… everything that happened is fucking horrible. What happened to Nuñez, and Ming, and that uniform… it was horrible. But it’s not murder. Right?”

  Ag
ain, Nick didn’t answer.

  He glanced at Morley.

  The old man was stirring his coffee with a spoon, staring down at the pale brown liquid like he could no longer hear either of them.

  “Morley?” Jordan pressed, clearly wanting at least one of them to agree with him. “You got any reason to think it’s something other than what I said?”

  Morley glanced up.

  His eyes refocused on Jordan, a slight frown pinching his lips.

  Once again, Nick found himself watching the detective’s face.

  What the hell was going on with the old man?

  When Morley still didn’t speak, Nick found himself being the one to break the silence.

  “What about Nuñez?” he said. “We can’t even look into the thing with her? She was homicide. One of ours. Any news on whether our techs will even get access to her body?”

  Morley’s eyes swiveled from Jordan’s to Nick’s.

  Nick felt a flicker of reaction go through his gut at the harder, verging-on-angry look that rose to the senior detective’s expression.

  “No,” James Morley said, after another too-long pause. “We won’t be getting access to that, Midnight. We won’t be getting access to shit.”

  There was a silence.

  That one felt a lot heavier.

  It also baffled Nick a lot more.

  He still couldn’t tear his eyes off Morley’s face. He didn’t like what he saw there. He didn’t like it at all. Truthfully, it made him damned uncomfortable, borderline worried, but it also bewildered him.

  “Hey,” he said, when the silence continued to stretch.

  He laid a hand on Morley’s arm where it rested on the Formica-topped table. He did it without thinking, but as soon as he’d done it, he wondered if he should have.

  He didn’t normally touch humans, not unless they touched him first.

  A lot of the time, he didn’t even do it then.

  He touched Jordan, but only sometimes, and maybe a tenth of the times Jordan touched him. Charlie, another of their workmates, touched him a fair bit, but Nick didn’t touch her at all, and not only because of his girlfriend.

  A lot of humans didn’t like being touched by vampires.

  It freaked them out.

  Nick understood why. He respected it.