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

by JC Andrijeski

  “Fuck you, Nick.”

  There was so much anger in her words, so much seething rage, Nick grimaced, flinching for real. Then, remembering who was in the room with them, he glanced at Tai.

  The kid looked openly shocked.

  “She’s really mad at you,” the young seer said, her voice reflecting that shock. “Really, really mad at you, Nick––”

  Nick raised a hand to cut her off. “No shit. Tell me something I don’t know, kid.”

  Before Tai could say anything else, he turned to Malek.

  “Why?” he growled. “Why does she want you to come back? Why not me?”

  “I don’t know,” the seer said. “She did not say.”

  “The banquet is canceled though,” Nick said. “Right? The banquet isn’t happening. Kingsworth took care of that. Didn’t he?”

  Malek blinked at him. His eyes swiveled to Wynter.

  “Malek?” Nick growled.

  The seer jerked his eyes back to Nick’s. “I do not know,” he said. “She did not say that, either.”

  “And you didn’t ask?”

  “I did not.”

  “So you have absolutely no fucking idea why Lara wants you, Wynter and Tai to go back to the city? Without me?”

  “No.”

  Nick scowled, glancing at Tai.

  The kid had closed her mouth, but continued to look between him and Wynter, her ice-blue eyes holding that bewildered shock.

  Malek looked between Nick and Wynter, too, but his expression was different. Nick saw puzzlement in the male seer’s eyes, but he also saw something else––a denser understanding there, coupled with a near-urgency as he looked between them.

  He wanted to tell them something.

  He really wanted to tell them something about their fight.

  The seer opened his mouth, and Nick raised his hand higher, barking at the prescient seer before he could utter so much as a syllable.

  “Shut the fuck up, Mal,” he growled. “Now. Don’t say a goddamned word.”

  The seer slowly closed his mouth.

  He looked between the two of them again, and Nick could practically see the frustration seething off him, the wanting to speak.

  “Not. One. Word,” Nick growled. “I mean it. Whatever it is… it can wait. Now is not the time. I know you mean well. Just… don’t.”

  The seer’s eyes flickered.

  He nodded, but Nick could both feel and see he wasn’t happy.

  More than that, he didn’t agree.

  He thought Nick was wrong. He thought whatever he had to say would fix things… make them better, at least. Nick didn’t let himself think too hard about why Malek was so sure of any of that, or where those perceptions came from.

  “We need to go,” the male seer said next, exhaling with an obvious effort, dropping whatever was bugging him with an even more obvious effort. “We need to go back to the city.”

  “Wynter isn’t going anywhere,” Nick said.

  Even as it left his mouth, he realized it was probably a mistake.

  Still, he didn’t realize the depth of that mistake until it was already out of his mouth.

  When he glanced at her, she gave him a single, lingering stare. He saw enough in that look, felt enough through their shared blood, that he knew immediately that he’d made a really big, really bad mistake.

  Wynter was going to New York.

  She was going to New York if she had to climb over Nick’s bleeding corpse to do it.

  Him telling her she couldn’t go––now, after he’d more or less dismissed her words on that topic earlier––and, more to the point, after what he’d done to her in the time since––pretty much sealed the deal. Now Wynter would go to New York with or without Malek and Tai.

  She would definitely go with or without Nick.

  Hell, Wynter would go to New York now if it meant shooting all three of them.

  She would go to New York if it meant hijacking the train.

  Tai glanced at Nick, her eyes even wider.

  She nodded subtly, just enough that Nick knew the kid agreed.

  He scowled at her, then back at Wynter.

  “Honey––” he began, his voice subdued.

  She let out a furious laugh. “Really?”

  Nick shut his mouth. Folding his arms, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Then, standing there, looking out over the faces of all three of them, he realized there was only one option left.

  “Fine,” he growled. “We all go.”

  Without waiting, he walked up to the desk, snatching his jacket off where it barely hung off the end, and shoved an arm into a sleeve. Shouldering the thing the rest of the way on, he gave Wynter a hard look, then glanced at Malek, half-daring him to argue.

  Neither of them did.

  Wynter glared at him coldly.

  Malek looked borderline wary, but he didn’t say anything, either.

  Grabbing his boots and socks off the floor by Wynter’s desk, and then his belt, Nick fixed the collar of his coat with his free hand as he made his way to the door, flipping open the lock and jerking the handle inward to reveal the darker corridor beyond.

  The sun had gone down.

  Nick should have felt that, but with everything else going on, somehow he hadn’t.

  Standing in the doorway, he turned to give Malek and Tai one last glare, not daring to aim his look at Wynter.

  “Well?” he said. “We doing this? Or not?”

  Glancing at one another, the two seers raised their eyebrows. Then, as if by silent agreement, they turned towards Nick and crossed the distance to him and the door.

  After a bare pause, Wynter followed.

  Chapter 23

  Found Again

  They should arrive in the city in just over an hour.

  That would be an hour before the doors to the Met were supposed to open.

  All of that was according to Nick’s timepiece, the train’s scheduled, nonstop express route and timetable, and what he’d been told by the Lieutenant about the banquet when Acharya cornered him on it, making sure he was coming.

  Of course, Nick told himself, those doors wouldn’t open.

  They wouldn’t open because there was no fucking banquet happening now.

  The banquet had been cancelled.

  It was cancelled because Governor Gavin Kingsworth assured Wynter he would deal with it, that he’d postpone it, or move it, or just shut that shit down.

  Of course, Nick had no confirmation any of that occurred.

  He also had serious doubts.

  He told himself it wasn’t his problem before. Now that St. Maarten seemed to want his girlfriend for something, Nick was kicking himself that he hadn’t insisted on talking to Gavin-fucking-Kingsworth personally. At the time, he’d been a little too distracted by Wynter herself, by the fact that she seemed inordinately fixated on him, on the two of them being physical, on all the things Nick himself had been struggling to think past.

  Before they got on the train, he tried to get Malek to contact St. Maarten. He tried getting Malek to call her and find out exactly what the fuck was going on, why she called them all back to New York, why she’d deliberately excluded Nick.

  Malek claimed he couldn’t get through to her.

  Nick considered calling Jordan, even Kit, but wasn’t sure if he could hold it together well enough to talk to either of them.

  He was tempted to ask Wynter to call Gavin a second time, but couldn’t make himself do that, either. He had a strong suspicion Wynter would make him pay for that request, repeatedly, and not only by doing exactly as Nick asked.

  He would lose his shit if she started flirting with that fucker now, right in front of him. He would definitely lose his shit… and, worse, Wynter knew that. Kingsworth would make it easy, since from their earlier conversation that day, he clearly still wanted her. Nick remembered Wynter saying before that it wasn’t personal, that it was just part of Gavin Kingsworth’s twisted female-hybrid fetish, but
it felt pretty damned personal to Nick.

  Moreover, the guy was the damned Governor.

  In the end, Nick decided he could wait until they got to New York.

  There was nothing he could do about the banquet, anyway.

  He occupied himself making a rough attempt to figure out the math of their arrival time. He’d been with Wynter almost three hours, by his calculation. Given the faster non-stop train they took back, and the fact that they managed to walk on it within minutes of arriving at the Northeastern Protected Area terminal, they should get back by six-thirty.

  So they’d be back with roughly an hour to spare.

  Nick would have an hour before the banquet was scheduled to open its doors.

  That meant two hours before it got fully underway, likely three before everyone left the bar long enough to sit down and eat overpriced artificial chicken or fish while they listened to a bunch of government and defense contract assholes get up and make self-indulgent, boring, and likely cluelessly racist speeches about vampires.

  The rookie Midnights would be stuck sitting there in full uniform for the duration, politely foregoing the government-supplied blood bags while they tried not to let their eyes glaze over, or worse, stare too hard at any one human’s neck.

  Shoving the image out of his mind, Nick fought to think about what he could do now, while he was on the train.

  So far, he was coming up blank.

  The train ride was awkward.

  The first half-hour mostly involved Tai and Malek staring out the windows while Nick and Wynter looked at each other.

  It didn’t help that Nick and Wynter were still connected via the blood.

  Nick was shit at blocking her in the first place, something that had gotten worse, not better with time. As a result, pretty much every thought going through his mind reached her, in one form or another.

  Most of those thoughts weren’t helping.

  They weren’t helping at all.

  Part of it was the sheer irrationality of where his mind stubbornly focused.

  Part of it was that he had no answers for her––at least, nothing she wanted to hear.

  The combination more or less guaranteed a continuation of the same argument they’d been having before Tai and Malek showed up at Wynter’s office––if you could call it an argument really, given Nick wasn’t exactly disagreeing with her.

  Wynter glared at him from the opposite bench in the cabin the four of them shared, arms folded over her chest.

  From the look on her face, and the things that reached Nick via the blood, he suspected she was doing a better job of shielding him from her thoughts than he was with her.

  It didn’t help that a lot of his thoughts involved wanting to fuck her again.

  He couldn’t keep that want out, even when they were arguing about the rest of it. He knew she felt it. He knew she felt that wanting in him.

  He also knew it was infuriating her.

  She wanted answers, and he had nothing.

  Honestly, Nick wasn’t sure what was causing his sex drive to go through the roof, but he couldn’t seem to do anything about it. All he knew was, somehow, all of this made him want her more, not less. The more Wynter felt that on him, the more pissed off she got.

  She also had her own theory as to what caused it.

  It’s him you want, she snapped at him through the blood. You want him. Why won’t you just fucking admit it, Nick? You’re turned on because of him––

  No, he thought at her, watching her in spite of himself, staring at her in spite of himself, wanting her in spite of himself, even as she glared at him. Wynter, I swear to God… I don’t know what’s going on with me right now, why he’s coming up in my thoughts, but it’s not making me want him. It’s making me want you––

  “That doesn’t even make any sense,” she snapped, speaking aloud.

  When the two seers jumped, Wynter glanced at Malek, then at Tai, before switching back to speaking to him through the blood.

  Nick, you must know how fucking ridiculous that sounds. You were fantasizing about another seer while you were with me. You were fantasizing about an ex-lover sucking you off, when my mouth was on you. Apparently, you were fantasizing about him vividly enough, you forgot who you were actually with––

  I didn’t forget, he insisted.

  BULLSHIT, NICK, she sent, slamming her thoughts into him. BULLSHIT. YOU SAID HIS DAMNED NAME WHEN YOU WERE ABOUT TO COME––

  Wynter, God… I don’t know why I did that, but it’s not as simple as you think. I wasn’t thinking about him. I swear to God, I wasn’t thinking about him. I have no idea why I keep seeing his damned face. I have no idea why I said his name like that. But I know it’s you I want. I know it. I know it with everything in me. You’re all I think about––

  Liar, she cut in. FUCKING LIAR.

  He tried to control his thoughts again when he saw her eyes brighten.

  Truthfully, he just wanted to go to her.

  He wanted to wrap his arms around her.

  He wanted to bite her, and fuck her.

  Hell, he wanted to reassure her in any way he could. He wanted to convince her that everything she was thinking was wrong, even if he couldn’t explain why it was wrong, not in a way that made sense to either of them.

  That’s more or less what kept happening in her office, before Tai and Mal showed up. They would fight, she would scream at him… then at some point they’d be fucking again, until either she stopped it and hit him, or one or both of them came… and then she hit him.

  Then she cried.

  He offered to leave. He apologized. He told her she was wrong.

  Nothing he said helped.

  Most of what he said made it worse.

  The fucking didn’t help.

  None of it, not a single part of it, felt any more rational now.

  “I’m sorry,” he said aloud.

  He glanced at Tai and Malek, then shut his mouth.

  Wynter, I want to understand this. I do. I really am trying to be honest with you about all of it. I told you about the dreams, but I don’t actually understand them. All I can tell you is, you’re wrong about me not wanting you. You’re dead wrong.

  Great. She wiped her eyes, glaring at him with a clenched jaw. Great. So you want to fuck me while you fantasize about the person you really love. No wonder you won’t tell me anything about him. Even now, you haven’t told me shit… do you realize that? I don’t even know how long the two of you were together. You made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal, that you were only together a few months––

  I never said that, Nick sent.

  You never said shit, she snapped back. Even now, you’re not actually telling me anything, Nick. You’re just talking in fucking circles. As usual.

  There was a silence where Nick turned that over.

  That pain in his chest worsened, making it hard to think.

  Then again, all of this was hard to think about.

  He couldn’t think about Jem, not really.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he let himself think about Jem, really think about him. Now that he was trying, it just felt like a black hole. He felt grief there, a kind of lost emptiness, but entirely devoid of specifics. It felt like that part of Nick was just––gone. Like whatever had been there, it simply ate itself away, until no part of it was left, just that lingering grief and feeling of despair.

  It wasn’t as simple as not being able to remember.

  He could actually feel the absence there, like a phantom limb.

  It was almost like––

  “It was erased,” said a male voice.

  Nick turned, staring at the prescient seer.

  Malek met his gaze. He glanced at Tai, then back at Nick.

  “You cannot remember your mate. The male. The one from before, na?” Malek looked between Nick and Wynter, his mouth pursed. “You are wondering why you don’t remember. I can feel it through your mate right now.”

  He loo
ked between them again, but neither Nick nor Wynter spoke.

  “The reason is simple,” Malek said. “The memories were erased. Gone, as you surmised. But they did not simply fade away, as a function of time. They did not vanish of their own accord. They were removed.”

  Nick stared at him.

  So did Wynter.

  Taking a breath, Malek went on in the same voice.

  “You no longer have access to that information. I cannot tell you what those memories were, as they are truly gone. Not all of them, perhaps, but enough that––”

  “What?” Nick stared at him, his voice hard. “What?”

  Wynter continued to stare at Malek in disbelief, too.

  Nick glanced at her, feeling her reaction to the seer’s words, to one word in particular.

  Mate.

  Malek had called Jem his mate.

  Jesus fucking Christ, leave it to the damned prescient to find a way to make this whole thing exponentially worse.

  Even so, Nick found he couldn’t let it go.

  He couldn’t just ignore what Malek had just said.

  He fought back and forth on whether and how to ask. He knew it wouldn’t help things with Wynter to ask it now, in front of her. In fact, without having any idea of what Malek might say, he had little doubt it would likely make things worse. But he couldn’t make himself let it go. He couldn’t even make himself wait to ask later, when Wynter wasn’t here.

  In the end, his jaw hardened, right before he spoke.

  “What the hell do you mean, it was erased?” Nick said. “Who erased it? Who the fuck would have done that?”

  Malek turned back from where he’d been staring out the dark window.

  He met Nick’s gaze, glancing at Wynter before looking back at him.

  “You did,” the seer said.

  Nick stared at him. “Bullshit.”

  “It is not. It is a fact.”

  Nick’s frown hardened. “I couldn’t have erased it. I couldn’t have erased my own fucking mind. That’s not even possible.”

  “Well… not you, yourself,” Malek corrected.

  His voice had gone back to that oddly calm, weirdly Zen tone of his, the one that bordered on indifferent. Just hearing it made Nick’s teeth clench.