“What now?” she said. “You’ve got that look on your face again, Nick. It’s disturbing.”
He scowled at her openly that time, shoving at her shoulder, only less playfully than she’d done to him.
“You are a brat,” he informed her.
Still scowling, he motioned towards the board on the sand at the end of their sun loungers.
“Go stand on that fucking thing,” he grumbled. “Show me your form. Pretend to be a surfer. Or at least pretend to pretend to be a surfer.”
She rolled her eyes.
“You’ve already showed me that basic, kiddie crap a few hundred thousand times,” she complained. “Let me out on the water, Nick––”
“Show me your damned form first.” He motioned again towards the blue-green board. “Now. Or I really will let you drown out there. That, or I’ll just watch you get smacked on the head with the board and laugh, and laugh… and laugh.”
“You vampires are all such walking stereotypes,” she said, rising to her feet with another annoyed sigh. “I mean the sadist thing is tired. Anyone ever tell you that?”
“No,” he retorted. “No one’s ever told me that. Want to know why?”
“Not really––” she muttered.
Ignoring her, he spoke over her words.
“––Most people, Katarina, have the proper respect for the undead. Most have, dare I say it, a sane amount of fear of the undead, and don’t ask them for surfing lessons or ridicule them when they comply. You’re the cocky human pup who enjoys smacking me around and mocking my vampire dignity every two seconds, all the while demanding favors from me––”
She snorted a laugh. “Vampire dignity?”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “Get on the damned board. Show me your half-assed surfing form… or I’ll make you practice in the kiddie pool.”
Letting out another half-laugh, she seemed to give in.
He watched her walk up to the board, then leap lightly on top of it. Positioning her feet, she bent her knees, balancing the way he’d shown her, resting her weight evenly across her feet and through the middle of her body.
Scrutinizing her form, he had to admit, she looked pretty good.
He rose to his feet, tossing the towel down on the lounger. Stretching his arms and back, he rolled his head and neck around in a circle before doing the same to his shoulders.
Walking up to her, he nudged her on the arm.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
A grin split her face, her eyes lighting up so genuinely, Nick couldn’t help smiling in return.
“All right,” he grumbled at her. “Don’t get too excited. And stay out of the way of the real surfers. I don’t want to get knifed out there by some gung-ho idiot.”
“You know you literally sound about a hundred years old, Daddy-O?” she said, laughing at him. “You need to update your slang, like… desperately, groovy cat.”
He grunted.
If only she knew how young “a hundred years old” really sounded to him.
Watching her pick up her board, carrying it under her arm as she jogged out happily towards the water, he shook his head. He watched as she kicked gleefully through the lapping shoreline waves, heading out deeper until she was wading strongly against the current, then jumping up on top of her board to paddle with her arms.
He noticed only then that she was wearing bright yellow shorts with a happy face on the butt and a lime-green bikini top, shaped mostly like a sports bra––or what they used to call a sports bra a few hundred years ago. Tattoos splashed color all over her pale skin, most of them anime characters, but also a dragon, a few large, lotus-like flowers and a tree that covered a section of her back.
Feeling how young she truly was, or maybe how old he was, some part of him sighed inside.
He knew she was in her twenties.
Technically, at least, she was an adult.
Hell, she was probably one of the top-level computer security experts in the country, given who she worked for, and how much responsibility her employer gave her. Still, whenever he was with her, he couldn’t help thinking of her as a kid.
Wynter was probably only about eight years older than her.
It was strange, but he never thought of his girlfriend that way, as impossibly young, or even as younger than him. He never viewed Wynter as if an age gap existed between them at all, even though there was an age gap, a big one, and she technically looked close to the same age as Kit.
He never saw Wynter as anything other than an adult.
Frowning at the thought, he glanced back towards the ocean when Kit started yelling at him from just past the first of several wave breaks, splashing to get his attention. Once she saw him looking her way, she yelled again, waving for him to come out and join her.
Exhaling in that human way, fighting to get Wynter out of his head, he began walking towards Kit, splashing his way through the thigh-high waves.
At least he could surf a few hours.
At least he had that.
Chapter 10
Another Favor
They were heading back to shore when he finally broached it with her.
The other thing.
The other reason he’d agreed to give her a lesson today.
More and more, he questioned whether he should go there at all. A big part of him just wanted to forget the Praetorian thing, and forget Morley.
That same part of him wanted to hop on a train to the Northern Protected Area, lie in wait at his girlfriend’s house for her to get off work. Or maybe call ahead, see if she could leave work early, or at least take a long lunch. He wanted to fuck her and bite her and fuck her again, maybe even pretend to be a normal couple for a few hours… at least until he had to take the train back to New York and sign in at the precinct or risk I.S.F. reporting him delinquent.
Just the thought made his chest hurt… and his cock.
Shoving all of that back, he looked at Kit.
She was practically glowing.
Her face was flushed, her hardware-enhanced eyes clear in the parts that actually looked human. Stretched out on her rented board next to him, she leaned back her head, her mouth tilted in a smile towards the fake sun.
He watched the muscles of her arms and shoulders tense and relax as she paddled in, her eyes still looking around hopefully for a final wave to catch on their way back.
She’d caught a few good ones already.
She was definitely getting the hang of this whole surfing thing.
It was only her third lesson, and he was already thinking she wouldn’t need him to come out here with her for much longer.
He’d even taken her to the intermediate section of “ocean” today. Not for the whole lesson, but for over an hour, he let her try to catch some decently-sized curls, ones more comparable to the kind he’d learned on at Ocean Beach, in San Francisco.
Now that she’d gotten the basics, he figured she needed the challenge.
Maybe next time, he’d try her out on the advanced area.
She’d definitely spill out there, but that would teach her, too.
“Well?” he said, as she slid off the board, starting to slog through the waves as the clear water grew shallow. “You sick of this yet?”
She snorted, scoffing at him as she glanced over her shoulder.
“Fat chance, big guy.” Snorting again, she added, “But nice try.”
Looking at him as he drew even with her, gripping his own board under his arm, she smirked.
“I guess I don’t have to ask if you’re getting sick of it? Of teaching me, I mean?”
He rolled his eyes. “Well, the company sucks. But otherwise, it’s okay.”
She kicked water at him, laughing.
He smiled back, in spite of himself.
She really did love this. It was nice to make someone happy, even just for a few hours. Thinking about that, thinking about Wynter, he frowned.
He needed to talk to her.
She knew somethi
ng was up with him. She knew something was wrong.
Moreover, she knew he was halfway avoiding her because of it.
Because he was doing that. He was avoiding her.
Admitting that much made the pain in his chest worse.
He glanced up at the virtual clock, which hovered and rotated three-dimensionally over the tiki bar in the middle of the sandy beach. That “beach” formed a giant circle that made up the center of the artificial outdoors area––a circle surrounded by water and waves, cut up into different sections for different uses and customers. Foot bridges formed dividers between the sections, in addition to providing a means of accessing other parts of the rec center.
Most of the sun loungers were being used now.
They all either had towels on them, or clothes, or virtual reservation markers… or actual people, most of the last wearing bikinis or surfer shorts, eyes closed or behind sunglasses.
He watched a couple on adjacent loungers touching fingers, talking quietly and laughing together, and that pain in his chest worsened.
Still, Morley’s face nagged at the back of his mind.
Morley wasn’t going to let this thing go. For some reason, maybe he even couldn’t let it go. And Nick couldn’t make himself let the old man do it alone.
Shoving Wynter out of his head, for what felt like the hundredth time that day, he looked at Kit.
“I need to talk to you about something,” he said, as they left the water, reaching the line of dry white sand. “Work-related.”
She looked over, her eyes sharpening all at once.
“Here?” she said.
“I could take you to lunch,” he offered. “Or we could do it here.” Glancing around, squinting up at the fake sun, the fake blue sky, and high, fluffy, white cumulous clouds, he exhaled one of his human-like sighs.
“Here’s nicer,” he admitted. “But we can go wherever, Kit. Do you want to go to that pancake place you like?”
“Naw.” Throwing herself down on the lounger she’d reserved next to his, she exhaled, shifting and grunting and turning herself over so she lay on her back, her ghostly pale belly with its numerous piercings facing up towards the sun.
“Here is good,” she said, closing her eyes. “They’ve got food here, right?”
“They do,” Nick acknowledged.
Setting his board down on the sand, he arranged himself on the sun lounger next to hers, moving more carefully, more conscious of the density of his vampire weight.
He had a tendency to break human furniture if he wasn’t careful.
Picking his headset up from where he’d left it on his towel, he fit it into his ear, and conjured up the indoor-resort’s menu. Once he got it, he sent a copy to Kit’s headset, then started scrolling through the offerings, wondering if they sold blood.
He’d been really fucking hungry lately.
He had a feeling that had to do with Wynter, too.
Grimacing, he found the section for vampires and hit through an order for overpriced “fresh” blood that he doubted was all that fresh. This wasn’t a vampire-owned place, and “fresh” to humans usually meant flash-frozen while it was still warm from the vein, then thawed.
Still, fuck it.
This wasn’t for him. It was for the kid.
“Damn,” she mused, plopping a pair of sunglasses over her eyes. “They have pancakes. Blueberry pancakes. And Cuban sandwiches.”
Nick grimaced. “That’s… a combination. I hope you brought breath mints.”
She laughed. “I didn’t say I’d have them together. But how am I supposed to choose?”
“Flip a coin?” he suggested.
She peered at him over her sunglasses, eyes puzzled, scrunching her lips.
“A virtual coin,” he clarified.
“Admit it,” she said, grinning at him. “You forgot you weren’t back in the Stone Ages. When people actually used coins.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Whatever, kid. Order what you want. It’s on me.” He added, “Order both. You can always take it home. If you don’t finish.”
She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Dang. You must really need my help. Normally you’re a cheap bastard.”
Nick shook his head, refocusing on the vampire side of the menu.
“I’m not that cheap,” he muttered.
She only laughed again.
A second later, she pulled her sunglasses up to the top of her head, raising a hand to shield her enhanced eyes against the fake sun. “Okay. I ordered. So what’s this about? This ‘work’ thing you need my help with?”
Nick frowned.
He’d been thinking, while they’d been out on the waves, how he would broach this with her. He still wasn’t sure how much to tell her.
“This is unofficial,” he said after a pause, still frowning. “No one’s asked me to look into this––”
“Well, duh. I figured––”
But he talked over her.
“––We had a weird call last night. Technically, the whole thing’s been yanked from the NYPD, and homicide, so it’s not even our case. Even though there were deaths.”
Kit’s eyes opened.
Turning her head, she stared up at him.
Then, frowning, she sat up, grabbing a light pink shirt out of her bag by the lounger. Shoving her arm into one of the short sleeves, she pulled it around her damp back. Her eyes never left Nick’s face, and from her expression, he one hundred percent had her attention now.
“Wait,” she said. “People were murdered… and the NYPD isn’t investigating?”
She didn’t say it loud.
Even so, Nick held up a hand, wincing.
He glanced around them, realizing he hadn’t done his usual scan for possible eavesdroppers, or eavesdropping devices. No one was looking at them. Most of the loungers around them were empty, and the few that weren’t were too far away for them to be overheard, at least at the volume they were currently speaking.
Nick was nervous anyway.
Maybe he should have taken her back to his apartment.
At least there, Kit controlled the I.S.F. surveillance herself.
“Don’t worry, big guy,” she said, dismissive, shoving the purple sunglasses back over her eyes, their shade exactly matching the purple tips in her hair. “I’ve got a surveillance spotter program running on my headset,” she said, tapping her ear. “No one can hear us. It’ll pick up any signal in a hundred-yard radius, and there’s nothing out there. Not yet, anyway.”
Settling back on the lounger, leaving the front of her shirt open in the artificial sun, she exhaled in a sigh, turning her head towards him.
“Shoot,” she prompted with a wave of her hand. “Tell me.”
Nick’s shoulders relaxed.
Keeping his voice down, but still loud enough for her human ears, he told her pretty much everything that happened the night before. He told her about the vault, the sentient wall, the bodies in the ceiling, the extra body bag they couldn’t account for, all the cops and Homeland Defense, H.S.A., I.S.F. and other, unidentified law enforcement crawling all over the scene, Morley’s weird behavior, their talk at the diner afterwards.
He even told her about the strange vampire and the Khanjar swords tattoo.
He’d more or less finished when three waiters approached them, one carrying a folding table and a semi-organic mug with a cover, the others carrying covered plates of food.
Apparently, Kit took his advice.
She got the pancakes and the Cuban sandwich.
Nick grunted in wry amusement as the waiters set up the table, then set down the two trays in front of her, placing Nick’s mug of blood carefully on the side closest to him. Just as carefully, they set down what looked and smelled like a peach lemonade with ice on Kit’s side, near to the stack of blueberry pancakes and a small pitcher of artificial syrup.
After they laid out napkins and utensils on Kit’s side, the waiters left.
It only occurred to Nick later that they hadn’t s
aid a word.
Nick watched Kit smear artificial butter all over the blueberry pancakes, pouring syrup on top of that. She emptied out the whole pitcher, dipping it up and down in a few jerking pumps to make sure she got out every drop.
He watched, fascinated, as she dug into the stack with a fork, stuffing the first bite into her mouth from three stacked pancakes, topped by that thick layer of butter and syrup. Sighing in obvious ecstasy at the taste, she chewed vigorously.
Her eyes were serious through the sunglasses when she met his gaze.
A few chews later, she swallowed.
“You sure you want to look into this, Nicky-baby?” she said, her voice matching her eyes. “Sounds sketchy as fuck. Like sketchy that could get you killed, Naoko. That tech sounds like it breaks the post-war treaty. Everything you told me screams government. Black ops. Cover up. Some tech project that’s probably illegal and definitely off the books. I’d rather not help you commit suicide… even if you are a crotchety old man.”
Nick nodded.
Weirdly, he felt his shoulders relax at her words.
He’d more or less thought the same. So had Morley, and Jordan.
Still, it was somehow comforting to hear her say it out loud.
“I honestly don’t want to look into this,” he admitted. “Not especially. But Morley’s made it pretty clear he’s going to investigate, with or without my help.”
“And Morley’s interest in this is…?”
“I don’t know, precisely.” Frustrated, Nick pursed his lips. “I’ve never seen him like that, though. When they booted us off the case, he was… upset. Really fucking upset.”
Kit snorted. “You think he’s going to get himself killed?”
“I think he’s not thinking clearly right now,” Nick admitted, glancing up. “Whatever this is to him, it’s personal. He didn’t say it was personal, but he didn’t have to. The way he was acting, no way this was just some jurisdictional thing that rubbed him the wrong way.”
Shrugging, Nick added,
“Morley’s no idiot. He knows governments cut corners and experiment in areas that aren’t strictly legal. He definitely knew this was something like that. He didn’t care. He wanted to look into it anyway.”
Fang & Metal: A Science Fiction Vampire Detective Novel (Vampire Detective Midnight Book 4) Page 9