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

by JC Andrijeski

  When Jordan didn’t answer right away, Nick exhaled in frustration. Clicking over, he pulled up the image capture of the painting Malek had shown him, and sent an encrypted version to Jordan, using his headset.

  He waited for the human to look at it.

  During the pause, Nick found his own eyes drawn back to the damned thing.

  Malek had really outdone himself this time.

  The painting, which covered part of the stone wall in the old cemetery behind the bombed-out church in the Cauldron, showed the shadowed face of a tall form with glowing eyes. The being with the glowing eyes loomed over a cavernous, atrium-style room, filled with people who were screaming and running away. Down at the towering being’s feet, pale-green, metallic, strangely insect-like animals were ripping apart what had to be vampires.

  Well, mostly vampires.

  The painting had dead bodies strewn pretty much everywhere; some of them had to be human, presumably humans who got in the way. A hell of a lot of those bodies had pale, crystal-colored eyes, long fangs, nearly-white skin.

  They also wore police uniforms.

  On the wall of the building, someone had painted the symbol of Yi’s movement, a strange, astrological-looking symbol that resembled the one for Pluto. It looked like it had been painted in blood.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Jordan murmured over the line. “Has Morley seen this?”

  “I just saw it,” Nick said. “Literally… just now.”

  “Can I show it to him?”

  “Why the fuck do you think I’m calling?”

  “Okay, okay… relax, Midnight. I’m hearing you. Loud and clear.”

  “You’ll get it to Morley?”

  “Yes.” Jordan’s voice strengthened. “Yeah. I’ll go find him. Right now.” Jordan exhaled, right before his tone grew apologetic. “Look. I’m not supposed to tell you this, but he’s running down a lead with your old pals. The White Death.”

  Nick froze. “What?”

  “Yeah.” Jordan let out another sigh. “He thinks the vamps took part of the machine out of the vault last night. He thinks that’s what was in the body bag you saw… the one those medical techs took upstairs. He thinks the White Death got in there, even through all that Homeland Defense, I.S.F., and whoever else… and just stole that shit out from under their noses.”

  Nick stared. “Why does he think that?”

  Jordan shrugged. “He said something about one of the vamps wearing a White Death tattoo. He said he thought the guy might have actually been signaling you at first… that he was staring at you. Did you know him?”

  Nick felt his jaw harden.

  “No.”

  “Well. Morley went to check it out. I think he’s trying to find out what the White Death knows. He was pretty convinced St. Maarten didn’t tell him everything about that. He didn’t think she told you everything, either.”

  Nick’s frown hardened more. “Why the fuck wouldn’t he ask me?”

  “He didn’t want to ask you. St. Maarten apparently convinced him they might be putting your life in danger, involving you with White Death on this. She said they were pretty intense about this whole thing.”

  “So he’s going to talk to the White Death himself?” Nick growled. “Morley is? Alone? On what planet is that a ‘safer’ idea?”

  “He has a contact there,” Jordan said. “Don’t get twitchy, Midnight… it’s why he didn’t want me to tell you. But I figure it can’t do much harm telling you now, since I can see from your locator that you’re already up in the Northeastern Protected Area. I guess Morley has a friend who has access to the inner circle over there. Someone who’s infiltrating the White Death. Who knows them… even their leader.”

  Nick’s jaw fell more.

  Infiltrating the White Death? Infiltrating Brick?

  Were they suicidal?

  Was Morley suicidal?

  “Cop?” he asked Jordan.

  Jordon held up his hands. “I honestly don’t know. Morley didn’t seem to want to tell me much, either. He just said it’s someone he knows from way back. Someone he trusts. He figures White Death must have at least one person inside Yi’s camp. They knew enough to be at that vault. They got there before NYPD to grab that organic machine. Given all that, I suspect he’s right.”

  Grimly, Jordan added,

  “You’re sure about this painting? You really think Yi has a hybrid working for him?”

  Nick held up his hands. “As sure as I can be, under the circumstances.”

  “But how is that possible? I thought his movement wanted all the hybrids dead and gone. Why would one of them work for him?”

  Nick frowned, shaking his head.

  “I don’t know,” he said truthfully.

  Still thinking, he scowled, trying to sort through how the Morley thing fit in with everything else. He couldn’t get past the risk Morley was taking, or how easily the detective could end up dead.

  No one infiltrated the White Death for long.

  Nick had seen what happened to infiltrators, first hand, under Brick’s leadership.

  It wasn’t pretty.

  Gritting his teeth, Nick forced himself to shake it off.

  He focused back on Jordan with an effort. “When you talk to Morley, get him to call Lieutenant Achraya. We really need him to cancel that banquet. I’ll see what I can do from up here, too. Or I’ll come back down, if you think that makes more sense––”

  “Just stay where you are, Tanaka,” Jordan advised. “You can’t do any good down here, and you’ve got to be on Yi’s radar already. You’re a Midnight. You’re a celebrity. You already went after some of his boys. Killing you would be a huge coup for those nut-jobs… not to mention the publicity it would give them.”

  Nick frowned.

  He was about to protest, but Jordan seemed to sense it.

  “Stay where you are,” the other detective warned. “I mean it, Tanaka. Don’t play hero this time. Just stay there, with your girl. I’ll talk to Morley, but I strongly suspect he’ll want you to stay put, too. If Yi’s going after Midnights, you should lay low until we have a better idea where this machine is, and how they plan to deploy it.”

  “Christ,” Nick muttered. “You sound like him. The Artist.”

  “Well… maybe listen to the crazy fuck. Maybe he’s right.”

  The silence on the line grew deeper.

  “St. Maarten,” Nick said then, frowning as he thought. “She had some insane idea about using the banquet tonight as some kind of trap… some way to flush out Yi’s people, and get her machine back. You might need to talk to her. Convince her to back down––”

  “Let me deal with all that, Midnight,” Jordan waved him off through the virtual. “Just stay the fuck up there, okay? I’ll call you when I hear from Morley.”

  Nick clenched his jaw, wanting to argue more, to convey the urgency again, to remind Jordan how little time they had.

  For a few seconds, he just stood there, gazing out over the manicured lawns of the school. He heard a bell go off in some other part of the building; it echoed loudly through the stone columns. They were still in the covered walkway, after Nick brought their little threesome to a halt. Tai and Mal were looking at him, watching him talk to Jordan, probably talking to one another in seer.

  None of that was able to distract him really.

  He had a bad feeling in his gut.

  About all of this.

  He was trying to think how to explain that to Jordan––

  When the doors slammed open beside him, and he jumped, glancing over his shoulder as two kids exited out the school, making their way towards the tree-dotted lawn.

  “Well,” Jordan said into the silence. “I better go.”

  Nick hesitated. After a beat, he just nodded.

  “Call me when you hear back,” he said, gruff. “I mean it, Damon.”

  Jordan rolled his eyes. “Just stay where you are. Hear me? Don’t get weird, Tanaka. And say hi to Wynter for me.”

&
nbsp; Before Nick could answer, the human clicked off.

  Chapter 19

  Seers And Their Gifts

  Nick followed Malek into the main school building, with Tai skipping after them, grinning at Nick when he cuffed her lightly in the arm as she passed.

  His mind was still turning over the whole mess in his head.

  Everyone and their damned brother was withholding information from him right now. At least some of that information was going to get a bunch of people killed, if Morley, Jordan, and the rest of them couldn’t figure out some way to stop it.

  “How sure is it?” Nick said, speaking to Malek’s back. He didn’t wait for the seer to turn. “What you saw? The painting? How sure?”

  Malek turned slowly, studying Nick’s face cautiously.

  After a beat, the prescient seemed to relax.

  His sculpted, seer lips tightened as his eyes focused inward. The stranger, lighter-colored one––the blue-white iris that looked like moonstone when it hit the sun––appeared to go more internal than the dark one.

  “I don’t know,” the seer said, exhaling and clicking his tongue lightly under his breath. “As sure as any of my paintings feel, I suppose?” Malek held up his long-fingered hands, his voice holding a touch of frustration, despite that overlying calm. “How sure have the other paintings I’ve shown you been, Nick?”

  Nick frowned.

  He frowned harder as he thought about the answer to the seer’s question.

  The reality was, every painting Malek had shown Nick had come true.

  They hadn’t always come true exactly the way Nick thought at the time, but they’d all come true, without exception.

  Nick scowled, aiming his glare at Malek.

  He knew it wasn’t rational, but there it was.

  Malek must have felt something, because he glanced over his shoulder again.

  “You are correct,” the seer commented, meeting Nick’s gaze. “Being angry at me, purely due to the accuracy of my prescient vision, doesn’t seem all that rational.”

  Nick scowled harder, holding up a hand to signal to the seer to be quiet. He glanced meaningfully around the corridor, trying to remind Malek that he shouldn’t be speaking aloud about his psychic gifts, especially not indoors.

  Malek barely seemed to notice.

  He went on in the same offended-sounding voice.

  “…I suppose I could make an effort to make some paintings I don’t feel to be true,” the seer grumbled. “But I’m unclear how helpful that would be, Nick. It certainly wouldn’t assist you in your job as a Midnight. Even if we did it purely as a cathartic exercise, I’m unclear how it would be a productive use of either of our time…”

  Tai laughed, glancing over her shoulder at Nick.

  She looked up fondly at her brother, then laughed again.

  Nick rolled his eyes in their general direction, but fought a smile in spite of himself. Damn that kid. He shouldn’t be finding humor in much of anything right now, but she always seemed to have that effect on him.

  They reached the end of the corridor, and Nick stepped onto the pile rug that covered most of the stone tile in the building’s front lobby. At the end of that stretch of carpet, a wood and marble staircase led to the higher floors.

  Nick glanced up at the chandelier in the high-ceilinged entryway.

  He followed Malek and Tai soundlessly up those stairs after Tai nudged him with an arm. He tried to smile, mostly so he wouldn’t worry the kid, even as it occurred to him that she was probably still reading his mind.

  He was still turning over ways to stop the Midnight ceremony that night.

  It was already after two o’clock.

  How the hell was he going to stop something that was probably being set up at that very moment? Something they’d likely been planning for months? The guest list was supposedly a who’s-who of New York Protectorate society, with hundreds of big donors, actors, sports stars, and others from the “important” class in attendance.

  It wasn’t even just the banquet itself; they would be broadcasting the whole event live. That meant time slotted on the major newsfeeds, not to mention advertising.

  The more he thought about it, the more unlikely any kind of “cancellation” or “postponement” sounded to him.

  Which likely meant Malek really did bring him up here to keep him alive; which meant, Lara St. Maarten likely wanted him out of harm’s way, as well.

  Scowling at the thought, and the realization he’d been shuttled up here with barely a protest, Nick wondered if he should just turn around, head back to New York now.

  But he couldn’t just leave.

  Not without talking to Wynter, at least.

  The thought brought a sharp pain to his chest, pulling him out of his thoughts of the banquet, of Archangel, of the vault and the living machine. Trying to distract himself, he checked his queue for messages, tempted to ping Kit again, or maybe St. Maarten, as they ascended the stairs to the top floor.

  The distraction didn’t work, though.

  The top floor was where the Kellerman Principal’s office lived, the office of one Ms. Wynter James, who, as far as Nick knew, still had no idea they were here, unless Mal or Tai had told her by now, using their psychic, mind-to-mind stuff.

  He wasn’t sure why he was so nervous to see her.

  An image flashed in his mind, briefly eclipsing the virtual screens from his headset: pale green eyes, him lying on his couch, losing track of time, losing track of who he was now, of when and where he was––

  Or maybe you do know why, his mind muttered. Maybe you know exactly why you’re nervous to see her.

  Telling his mind to shut up, he aimed his gaze out the window as they passed, trying to focus on the lush fields behind the school. His eyes slid past those fields, past an orchard and a denser wooded area, to land on snow-covered peaks in the distance, seemingly at the end of the world. He still wasn’t sure if those mountains were real, or if they were part of the virtual program of the dome. He should ask Wynter, but somehow, he never had.

  They reached the top floor too quickly.

  The corridors seemed unusually quiet.

  “We don’t have school this afternoon,” Tai informed him, glancing over her shoulder. “Some teacher thing… we got out at noon. Most of the kids are back at the dorms. Or they’ve gone to the New York Protected Area for the weekend.”

  Nick frowned a little at her mind-reading, but only nodded.

  That explained how quiet it was. It also hit him that Tai’s little speech was the first time anyone in their threesome had spoken as they ascended the stairs.

  Tai glanced back at him again.

  “Don’t worry,” she told him cheerfully, surprising him by taking his hand, and even more by not letting it go. “I didn’t tell her you were here. She’s going to be really happy to see you.”

  Nick grunted.

  He hoped that was true.

  He found himself looking down at Tai though, thinking about her.

  Not so long ago, he’d been nervous to see her, too.

  Thinking about that, he pinged her with his headset, speaking to her through the link instead of out loud.

  “You’ve forgiven me, then?” he asked the young seer, using sub-vocals. “For not coming up here? For avoiding Ms. James? You know I wasn’t avoiding you, right? All those weeks? We just had… grownup stuff. To work out, I mean.”

  She laughed, looking up at him.

  Instead of answering via the headset, she spoke directly into his mind, making him jump.

  You can just think at me, you know, she told him. You shield your thoughts naturally. It’s how I knew you’d probably spent time with seers before. Before the war or whatever. If you just drop that shield and think, you don’t have to use the headset.

  She tapped her temple, as if in illustration.

  That way, no one can listen in, she added. Thinking, she glanced at her brother. Well, maybe Mal will. Or Ms. James. But no one dangerous.
r />   Nick frowned, thinking about that.

  He knew she was right, about the seer thing, that is.

  Even so, the fuzziness of some of his thinking around those years was starting to annoy him. It annoyed him a lot more now that he was having all of these bizarre “dreams” that seemed to trace directly back to that time.

  At the same time, he wondered if that was a scab he should be picking at.

  It was probably, definitely one he shouldn’t be trying to tear off.

  And you were avoiding me, Tai went on, her thoughts more reproachful. Not just Ms. James… me, too. At least a little. I talked to Ms. James about it. She said you were struggling with how to help me. She said what I can do scares you.

  Nick frowned.

  It does scare me, he admitted, thinking at her clearly. It scares the shit out of me sometimes, what you can do. YOU don’t scare me though, kid. I hope you understand the difference.

  She looked up at him.

  I do. I think I do. Scowling a little, she added, I wish you’d stop blaming my brother, though. It’s not his fault.

  Thinking about their last conversation about that, Nick frowned.

  I’m not mad at your brother anymore, he thought at her. Hesitating, he added, I’m not sure how much you should trust Lara St. Maarten, though. I’m still not crazy about her “solution” to your problem. I don’t think you’re bad for doing it… I think it’s wrong of them to ask you to do it. You’re still just a kid, Tailaya.

  Tai nodded, clearly unbothered by this.

  I know, she sent. Ms. James told me that, too. She and I have talked about maybe finding other ways to deal with it. Still holding Nick’s hand, she flashed those ice-blue eyes up at him, her face calm. You know. With my problem.

  Nick nodded cautiously to that.

  Still, he couldn’t help frowning a little, too.

  Wynter was working with Tai on that? Since when?

  He wasn’t sure he was crazy about that idea. What if the kid accidentally killed his girlfriend in the midst of their “experimentation”? After all, Tai, cute as she was, didn’t have the most stable of gifts. Tai might have gotten better at controlling it, but that didn’t take away from the reality of what she was capable of.