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

by JC Andrijeski

  Nick looked at her, frowning.

  She looked at him.

  Holding his gaze, she raised her voice, her tone back to the faintly-imperious-with-a-touch-of-ice he was used to.

  “In here, gentlemen.” Her voice rang through the expanse of her living room. “We’re in here. Your Detective Midnight is with me.”

  Again, that faint smile touched her narrow lips.

  “…And thank God for that,” she added, louder, quirking an eyebrow at him. “Thank God Detective Nick Midnight was here. For I most certainly owe him my life.”

  Chapter 15

  All Of It

  Nick frowned, seated now in the lower part of St. Maarten’s living room.

  He’d been watching uniforms walk back and forth for the past hour, along with Archangel security staff, forensics techs, a few stray I.S.F. agents. It couldn’t be more different from the murder scene of the night before.

  Even so, Nick got a similar, nagging feeling that the whole exercise was for show.

  There was an element of pageantry here, of going through the motions. He hadn’t sat in on the preliminary interviews of St. Maarten conducted by the officers on the scene, but he would be willing to bet she hadn’t told them jack shit.

  Nick frowned, watching squints work the room, picking up fibers and other detritus with small suction units, using specialized cameras to pick up any latent prints, including shoes, hands, fingers, even elbows and lips. He watched them scan and spray for organic leavings that might have enough DNA to run a match.

  The bustle was familiar, at least.

  Even so, yeah, that feeling of going through the motions nagged at him.

  As for Nick himself, he got the sense the NYPD wasn’t sure what to do with him. He was a witness, but not really. He’d come here as a cop running down a lead… but not really.

  They hadn’t released him, but so far, they hadn’t asked him much of anything, either.

  Nick wasn’t even sure who they’d assigned to the case.

  Even as he thought it, he heard a familiar voice in the entryway.

  “Where is he?” Morley said, his voice hard as metal. “Tanaka. Did you keep him here?”

  Nick heard the response as clearly as if he’d been standing right next to both of them.

  “He’s here. He didn’t even try to leave. He’s in there… by the window.”

  Nick listened to the detective’s shoes as Morley made his way across the tile entryway towards him, passing through the doorway and walking straight to where Nick kept the hyper-modern swivel chair aimed towards the panoramic view of the park.

  “Well?” a voice said from behind him. “You waiting for me to bring you a plate of goddamned hors d’oeuvres? Or are you going to pretend you didn’t hear me come in with your damned vampire super-ears?”

  Nick quirked an eyebrow, swiveling the chair around to face Morley.

  “This our case, sir?” he said, neutral. “I didn’t realize I was being held here for you. I figured they wanted me for questioning.”

  Morley frowned down at him, hands on his hips.

  Then he turned, glancing around the rest of the room. Making eye contact with the few remaining squints, he motioned them towards the foyer.

  “Can you give us the room?” he grunted.

  The squints exchanged brief looks, then straightened from the carpet, making their way back to the corridor without a word.

  After making sure they were alone, Morley looked back at Nick.

  “What are you doing here, Tanaka?”

  Nick smiled. He couldn’t help it. “Doing a favor for my boss.”

  Morley stared at him.

  Then he let out a grunt, as if he couldn’t help himself.

  “Were you now?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And how’d that work out for you?”

  “Not great,” Nick admitted. “Really badly, actually. Although I guess I got off easy, compared to what happened to Ms. Racine in there.”

  Morley’s frown returned, reaching his eyes.

  Walking around and past him, the senior detective sank into the chair on Nick’s other side, using his feet to swivel it around to face Nick.

  “You learn anything?” he said, his voice lower.

  Nick scowled, letting his own eyes scan the room for possible eavesdroppers. He knew not seeing anything was hardly a guarantee that nothing in here was listening to them, but at this point, he wasn’t sure they could avoid surveillance, no matter what they did.

  “It’s connected,” Nick said, leaning forward on the chair, bringing his mouth and ears closer to Morley. “What happened here. With the vault thing.”

  Morley’s jaw visibly hardened. “That so?”

  Nick nodded.

  Speaking low, he did his best to repeat everything St. Maarten told him before the police arrived. When he finished, Morley’s expression had gone through several different permutations of disbelief, anger and skepticism, settling more or less in the end in that harder mask Nick remembered from the night before.

  There was a silence after he stopped speaking.

  When Morley finally spoke, a faint frustration was audible in his voice.

  “And what does all that mean? Exactly?” he said, clenching his jaw. “There’s some kind of human-supremacy group stealing tech from a company as massive as Archangel? How in hell is that possible?”

  Nick returned his frown.

  “Honestly?” he said, shrugging. “If it’s true, the only thing that makes sense to me is that St. Maarten is right… someone in Archangel is one of them. Either they planted someone, or Yi recruited them. Probably a scientist. Probably someone working on the same project… or who had access to it. Definitely someone smart enough to be able to help them hijack the damned thing, and without getting caught…”

  Nick voice trailed. His focus shifted to the screen in his headset, distracted by a faint ping, then a pulsing light in the corner.

  Damn it. Wynter.

  He never did call her. He was supposed to call her last night.

  He should have called before he left the indoor resort with Kit.

  He sent a quick text back, using his mind.

  “Work stuff is a mess today,” he sent. “I’m still working. With Morley now. I’ll call you when I get done.”

  There was a pause.

  Then pale blue script appeared in the same small screen.

  “I thought you had the night off?”

  “I did… got called in. It’s a big mess, honey. I’ll call as soon as I can. Promise.”

  The pulsing light blinked a few times more.

  In those faint, rhythmic glows, Nick could almost feel her thinking.

  Then the light shut off.

  Nick refocused on Morley, to find the old man staring at him.

  “Who was that?” Morley said.

  “Girlfriend,” Nick said promptly. “I haven’t been home yet.”

  Morley’s lips turned in a delicate frown, but he nodded. From his expression, he seemed to go somewhere else; his eyes focused inward briefly as he stared at the floor.

  Nick was startled at how much emotion he saw there.

  He wanted to ask.

  He couldn’t quite make himself do it, though. He and Morley didn’t really have that kind of relationship. On a pure gut level, Nick suspected anything he asked or said wouldn’t be welcome, not if he crossed that line.

  “Well?” Nick said after another beat. “What do you want me to do, boss? You want me to keep running this down?” He added, “If St. Maarten’s right, that graduation thing tonight could be a target. It might even be the reason for the timing of this… if they’re looking to pull off a big event. Yi’s kind of a media hound, isn’t he?”

  Morley nodded, jaw hard.

  “He is,” he said.

  “St. Maarten didn’t want to cancel it,” Nick said, cautious. “I got the sense she might want to lay a trap. Get the machine back before Yi’s people can activa
te it again.”

  Morley nodded. “I’ll talk to the Lieutenant,” he said only.

  Nick hesitated, not sure if he should bring Kit into this.

  He decided against it, at least in terms of specifics.

  “I might be able to convince St. Maarten to let me talk to her tech team,” he said, his voice still cautious. “The hacker brigade… or maybe just Archangel’s security geek squad. I could try and get a look at their personnel files… maybe even the confidential ones, related to access and security clearance. We could at least narrow down who’d be capable of pulling something like this off. It’s got to be a pretty short list. Even for a company like Archangel.”

  Nick met the human detective’s gaze, seeing him listening intently now, watching Nick with a harder scrutiny.

  “What makes you think she’d do that for you?” Morley said. “Give you access to confidential employment files? Give you access to research scientists with top secret clearances? Or her tech-punk squad, who probably have security clearances higher than most of her folks in R&D?”

  Pausing, he glared at Nick.

  “What the fuck do you have on this lady, anyway?” he said. “Who is she to you?”

  Nick blinked. “What do I have on her?”

  Thinking about that, Nick grunted.

  “I think she thinks I’m her employee. That’s not exactly a compliment. But I may as well use it, if it’s going to gain us access to––”

  “Bullshit,” Morley cut in, colder. “She told you she trusted you. Just you. More than her own people. More than I.S.F. Or Homeland Defense. Or the goddamned NYPD.”

  Pausing, Morley added more caustically,

  “You fucking her, Midnight? Is that it? This St. Maarten woman your piece on the side? You got her hooked on your venom?”

  Nick felt his goodwill abruptly fade.

  He felt the part of him that had really wanted to help Morley out with this fade, too.

  He stared at the human, feeling his jaw harden the longer the other’s words sank in, the longer their meaning washed over his person.

  He’d never been angry at Morley before.

  Not really angry.

  Staring into his face, Morley seemed to see something there, in Nick’s. Whatever it was, it hit him hard enough that regret flashed across those dark eyes. The human’s lips curled into a harder frown, right before Morley looked away, clasping his hands between his knees.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Tanaka… I didn’t mean that.”

  “I’m trying to fucking help you,” Nick growled. “I didn’t want to be here today. I don’t want any part of this mess. I came here for you. I was trying to help you––”

  “I know.”

  “Do you? Because if I got here even a few minutes earlier, there’s a good chance I’d be dead. Like Racine. Like Nuñez. Like St. Maarten likely would have been… if she didn’t have the survival instincts of a damned snake.”

  “I get that.” Morley’s voice grew openly apologetic. He looked up, holding Nick’s gaze. “I get it. I didn’t mean it. Really.”

  Nick kept his jaw clenched, not trusting himself to respond.

  A part of him wasn’t done.

  A part of him was actually offended.

  Another part of him wanted to tell Morley to fuck off for insinuating he’d cheat on his girlfriend. Then again, maybe that last thing, after all those damned waking dreams he’d been having lately, hit a little too close to home.

  Exhaling, still not looking at him, Morley added, his voice lower,

  “I was.”

  Nick stared at him.

  It took a few seconds for the other’s words to penetrate his mind past his anger, past his memory of those goddamned dreams, past his ghosts, past all those people who’d died so long ago, they shouldn’t matter to him at all anymore.

  Once he’d waded through all of that, he found he still didn’t understand what Morley said.

  “You were what?” Nick said. “What do you mean, ‘you were’?”

  “The other Midnight,” Morley said.

  At Nick’s silence, the human turned to face him, a look in his eyes that seemed to dare Nick to say something.

  “With Ana. I was with Ana. We were a thing. A serious thing. For a while.”

  Nick felt his jaw loosen.

  Whatever he’d expected Morley to say, it wasn’t that.

  “How long?” he said, unthinking.

  “A while. A few years now. A lot of years.”

  Nick’s jaw loosened for real.

  Years? He was with Nuñez for years? And just what was a “lot” of years to Morley? Three? Five? Twenty? What in the ever-living––

  “I thought you should know,” Morley said, cutting into Nick’s thoughts. The human’s eyes trained stubbornly down at his clasped hands. “Why I won’t just let this go. Why I can’t just let it go. I don’t expect you to help me. I really don’t. But I appreciate it. I appreciate it a lot.”

  Nick swallowed, still in shock, and not hiding it well.

  “I’m sorry––” he began.

  Morley was already waving him off, likely because of whatever look was plastered across Nick’s face.

  “Forget it,” Morley said, that harder look returning. “I just thought you should know. I figured I owed you that. I owe her that. We kept it quiet. That was my doing. For the job… for credibility, maybe. Because I couldn’t marry her.”

  There was another silence, then Morley shrugged.

  “Maybe that was the wrong thing,” he said. “Maybe that was me, being a damned fool. I know she thought I was embarrassed. She thought I was ashamed of her. But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t close to being it.”

  Morley’s jaw hardened.

  “Truth? I couldn’t bear the thought of living without her. I was afraid someone’d ask me to, if it came out. I was afraid they’d find some way to pull us apart. Legal or otherwise. I couldn’t risk it. She said she understood. But I’m not sure she ever did.”

  Nick had no fucking idea what to say to that.

  The sixty-something human aimed his gaze out the window, his large, muscular if bony hands clenching harder between his knees.

  Nick just watched him.

  The longer he sat there, the less he knew what to say, or do.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, subdued. “I’m really sorry, James.”

  Like with St. Maarten earlier, it seemed to be the only thing to say.

  Instead of shushing him, Morley glanced over sideways, most of his body still facing Central Park. After a beat of studying Nick’s face, he nodded, some of the heat leeching out of his dark eyes.

  “I am, too,” he said. “Really damned sorry. About a lot of things.”

  Nick swallowed, although he didn’t need to.

  He watched Morley as the old man’s eyes returned to the park. They seemed to focus past the park itself, aiming primarily at the tall, strangely thin buildings that made up the River of Gold on both sides of the green.

  Nick thought their conversation was over.

  Then Morley exhaled.

  “Do it,” he said, his voice decisive. “Do what you said.”

  Nick frowned. “Which part?” he said. “The techs, or––”

  “All of it,” Morley said. “Whatever St. Maarten will agree to.”

  He turned, frowning at Nick, a harder, more determined look staring out of those eyes. For the first time, Nick flashed to an image of Morley as a much younger man, back when his chest and shoulders were likely broader, back when they likely matched the size of those muscular but lean hands. Nick saw him clearly for those few seconds––Morley twenty years younger than he was now, thirty years younger, even forty.

  Nick had never really seen that side of the human before, but he found himself reappraising him for the few seconds he did.

  Morley definitely hadn’t always been the Zen detective.

  It made Nick wonder what he’d done during the war.

  It also ma
de him wonder which version of Morley was the one Ana Nuñez first met.

  “Do all of it, Tanaka,” Morley repeated, the look in his eyes still that younger man’s look. “Whatever you can get that woman to agree to. Tell her we can offer her access to any aspect of our investigation she wants. We can include her every step of the way, since it’s off the books. Assuming she even wants that, or cares, given the resources at her damned fingertips.”

  Nick grunted.

  Morley wasn’t wrong.

  “Offer it anyway,” Morley said, sharper. “Offer her whatever the hell you have to, Midnight. Tell her we’ll be damned accommodating, at least where we can be. You can direct her to talk to me, if she wants. Just find out if she’s right. Find out if Archangel’s been infiltrated by these Yi fanatics. Find out who it was.”

  Nick nodded.

  “Sure thing, boss,” he murmured.

  Morley was already rising to his feet.

  Nick followed him up, intending to go look for St. Maarten––

  When his headset pulsed again.

  He answered at once, not bothering to check the origination point.

  “Wynter,” he said, still staring after Morley. “Hey. I still can’t talk. I’m reasonably sure I’m close to being done here, but I have one more thing––”

  “I am not your mate.”

  A very different, very male voice spoke.

  Startled, Nick blinked.

  Then, recognizing that voice, he scowled.

  Chapter 16

  A Missing Piece

  “What, Malek?” Nick growled, refocusing on his headset. “If I don’t have time for Wynter, I sure as hell don’t have time for you––”

  “I need to talk to you,” the prescient said, speaking as if he hadn’t heard a word Nick said. “Really, I need to see you. It cannot wait. It really cannot wait. You were in much more danger today and last night than you realize. You are still in danger now.”

  There was a silence.

  Then Nick let out a humorless laugh.

  It was closer to a bark.

  Two uniforms who’d been descending into the living room looked over sharply, staring at him from near the room’s entrance, frowns on their faces.