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

by JC Andrijeski

  He might have felt sorry for her, under other circumstances.

  As it was, he couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief.

  East, the connection told him. East, then south.

  He could go south now, but that meant backtracking, and he had no intention of doing that, of crossing back through the section of pipe where he’d left all his tracking devices. He knew Kit was right; they would be sending drones into these tunnels already.

  So, east it was.

  He hung a right at the fork in the pipes.

  He felt Wynter start to panic.

  He could feel her wanting to talk to him, to argue with him, but she was worried if she used the blood connection to speak to him she would only strengthen it.

  Nick strongly suspected she was right.

  She tried other things to push him out, more complicated seer things, but the blood connection was stubbornly resistant to all of them.

  He began loping faster, moving in a controlled but maybe seventy-percent speed vampire run. Nick knew that, slowed down at least, it would have looked deceptively casual to human eyes, but it propelled him more than three times as fast as any human could have run, even record-breaking human runners.

  He knew Kit would have reported in to Archangel by now, telling St. Maarten what he’d done.

  He didn’t care.

  He didn’t have time to care.

  He focused on trying to see more through Wynter. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much more luck with that than she did with blocking him.

  He tried to see where she was, what she was looking at, but he couldn’t get anything close to that kind of detail. She might not be able to keep Nick from tracking her––from following his connection to her through the blood––but she could keep him out of her thoughts and out of her head, including blocking what she could see and hear.

  He couldn’t even tell if she was in the limousine still.

  He couldn’t see much of anything through Wynter’s eyes, so she obviously had gotten wise to how some elements of the blood connection worked.

  Frustrated, he sent to her without thought.

  Just show me where you are, he growled. Goddamn it, Wynter––

  No, she sent back angrily. Go the fuck HOME, Nick.

  He flinched.

  It didn’t take long for him to recover.

  I’m going to find you, either way––

  No, she cut in angrily. You won’t. And by the way, Nick… I could be showing you everything right now. Like I promised. If you’d kept your headset on your damned head and gone home like you said you would––

  Yeah, he growled. I’m sure you’d be showing me literally everything right now. Of course you would, honey. I’m just positive St. Maarten wouldn’t have any kind of problem with that. I’m positive she wouldn’t flip out at the very suggestion.

  Pausing, he added,

  I’m just as sure your buddy, Lara, wouldn’t do anything to prevent you from transmitting your location and audio-visuals to me. Like, say… unilaterally blocking any outgoing signals from your headset, maybe claiming she couldn’t risk it for security reasons. You know. In case her dickhead ex-husband had scanners all over the building… or whoever had the nanotech might be monitoring the network.

  Wynter didn’t answer.

  Something in her silence told Nick a few things.

  One, he’d more or less nailed it.

  Two, that conversation had already occurred between Wynter and St. Maarten.

  Three, and most obviously through the blood they shared, Wynter was still pissed off about whatever the outcome of that conversation had been.

  So show me now, he sent back, his thoughts subdued. Show me where you are, Wynter, and what you’re looking at. Like you promised.

  The silence deepened.

  He could feel her seething.

  She was seething at St. Maarten. Now she was seething at him, too.

  Through his mind’s eye, Nick could almost see her biting her bottom lip. He could feel her worrying about him. He could feel her fear for him. He could feel her wanting to yell at him, to throttle him, even.

  He could also feel her brief temptation to tell St. Maarten exactly where he was.

  Through Wynter, Nick could also feel that St. Maarten was irate, that she knew Nick had slipped Kit and her team and the drones, and likely already knew more or less where he was, and what he was doing.

  At Wynter’s continued silence, Nick’s frustration roared back.

  Damn it. What difference does it make? You know I’m coming. You know I’m coming after you, honey. You’re just making it harder––

  That’s the idea, she shot back.

  Wynter––

  What are you trying to do, Nick? she burst out. Do you want to get thrown in jail? Get put down like some kind of rabid dog? Are you missing your buddies in the White Death that much, that you’d risk being labeled a terrorist for this?

  That I’d risk it trying to keep you from getting killed? he snapped back. Yes.

  He felt her anger intensify.

  It intensified so much, it heated his chest.

  Inside that intensity of emotion, that nearly out-of-control surge of frustration and anxiety… her control slipped.

  Briefly, he saw the world through her eyes.

  Her surroundings flashed in the dark, merging with his physical vision.

  Sharply, the world she inhabited came into view.

  Nick saw trees. Her gaze followed a sidewalk decorated with lights as she glanced up, focusing briefly on a cascade of steps, gray stone, and old-looking. They led up to a strangely familiar-looking building, but familiar from so far back Nick struggled to identify it.

  Wynter didn’t look at the sign in front, but Nick frowned, trying to place where he’d seen those steps before, how he knew that exact configuration of stones and pillars.

  She was definitely outside the car.

  She was walking with the rest of them.

  Malek walked in front of her, and Nick saw the tall, lanky male seer stare back at her, his mismatched eyes holding a blank look as they took in Wynter’s face. He wore an old-fashioned looking suit, what might have been a tuxedo. The seer glanced down at whatever Wynter wore, his eyes taking in the length of her before flickering away.

  Nick saw a flash of white shirt, a black bow tie as he turned.

  The male seer’s long hair had been combed out of its usual ponytail. It hung down his back in gentle curls, looking like it had been infused with a product that made it shine. That hair looked cleaner, blacker, and thicker than Nick had ever seen it.

  It occurred to him in the next second that Malek, even with his fucked-up eyes, was as shockingly good-looking as most seers. Somehow, with all of Malek’s weirdness, Nick had never really noticed before. The male prescient had those same stunning cheekbones, the same perfect mouth and angular features that seemed to be the birthright of most of his kind.

  Fuck you, Wynter muttered in his mind. Asshole.

  Nick’s frustration rose.

  Where are you, Wynter? he growled. Tell me where you are, damn it!

  He continued to look around even as he thought it at her.

  She was walking.

  They were definitely on foot.

  When Wynter flipped back her long hair, Nick glimpsed Central Park to his right.

  They were walking somewhere.

  Why the fuck would they be walking?

  Had the place been inaccessible, forcing the limousine to drop them off from a few blocks away? Had they done it for security reasons?

  And what the hell was Malek wearing? Why was he all dressed up like that?

  Even as he thought it, Nick saw Wynter’s gaze drift down.

  Pale blue fabric clung to her legs and waist, wrapping around her ribs and breasts, dividing to show a hell of a lot of cleavage. Nick felt his body react sharply, even as he felt a flush of nerves from Wynter as she glanced over her own appearance.

  Wynte
r seemed to feel him looking through her in any case.

  Her eyes didn’t linger.

  Nick got only the barest glimpse, but his vampire eyes picked up every detail, every shadow and highlight as he absorbed what he was seeing. The diamond-like shimmer of the cloth excited his predator instincts, even as he took in her high-heeled white shoes, accented with pale blue crystals in the straps and heels. A watery bracelet caught his eyes next; it coiled around one of her arms and the thumb of that same hand.

  Even her nails had been painted.

  He could feel her now, too.

  He felt the breeze on her legs, on the top of her breasts exposed by the dress, on her neck and throat, ruffling her long hair, which was also down, like Mal’s.

  Christ. No wonder Malek had been staring at her.

  When had they done all of that?

  Had he really been down in these pipes for that long?

  They must have gone somewhere to change after they left Phoenix Tower. They couldn’t have done all of that in the back of a damned limousine.

  The thought of his girlfriend, naked, squeezed up against Malek––also naked, and changing into that fancy retro suit––made Nick’s teeth grind all over again.

  Wynter seemed to feel at least some of his thoughts.

  He felt her anger at his jealousy.

  He felt her outrage at his hypocrisy.

  Mostly, though, he felt her trying to push him out, to get him out of her “light” and her head, to cut off his view.

  But now that Nick was in, he was harder to dislodge.

  She would dislodge him, though… eventually.

  She kept her eyes down as she walked, focusing on the sidewalk and on those high-heeled shoes, which Nick couldn’t help noting were sexy as hell. He felt her struggling, trying different ways to dislodge him as she blocked his view.

  Then, abruptly, she looked up, doing it in reflex, to gauge distances. It was another bare glance, but one that gave Nick exponentially more information.

  They were closer to that gray, stone building now.

  They weren’t heading there alone.

  Nick saw other women and men, a lot of them, ascending the stairs ahead of Malek and Wynter. A light must have changed, or a large party of guests just got dropped off. Whatever the difference, a crowd of people formed a slow-moving river, making their way up to the doors at the top of those gray stairs.

  Nick took them in, capturing even more information when Wynter glanced up a third time. There had to be over a hundred of them.

  Some were alone or in pairs, but most walked together in larger groups, all talking together, all allowing themselves to be guided by the proximity of other people. The women and men all wore formal attire from the Twentieth Century: retro dresses, capes, pant suits, hats, with some of them carrying canes and boxy purses.

  Most of the men Nick saw were in some combination of tuxedo, kilt, or expensive, designer-tailored suit. They wore sunglasses even though it was night-time, what were probably super expensive and high-powered headsets.

  They all looked filthy rich.

  More to the point, they all looked like they could be friends of the Governor.

  Nick watched them walk up the stone steps, and his vampire molars ground together in the back of his jaw.

  He knew where she was.

  She was at the damned Museum of Natural History.

  This was Gavin Kingsworth’s way of “dealing” with the problem.

  He’d moved it a few hundred yards to the other side of Central Park.

  “The Natural History Museum,” he said out loud, his words echoing in the stone tunnel. “They moved it to the Natural History Museum, and you’re there. Goddamn it, Wynter. You’re fucking there. Onsite. You’re going to the damned banquet––”

  Nick. You need to go home. Now.

  He let out a humorless laugh.

  Anger heated his chest, but he knew it was mostly worry.

  He didn’t think, but threw himself forward, putting more speed into his legs as he leapt over something dark and rotten-smelling, something wrapped in a ratty, moth-eaten blanket at the bottom of the sewage pipe. He couldn’t help wrinkling his nose as he did, refusing to inhale the scent there until he’d made another turn in the cement tunnel.

  At the next fork in the pipes, he didn’t hesitate but hung a right, knowing somehow he was already under the park.

  Now he was actively looking for a way back aboveground.

  He would travel a hell of a lot faster up above.

  The park was perfect for that.

  Also, he needed to do something about his clothes.

  Even as he thought it, he ran down another fork, gliding up the side of the wall to get around more refuse in the bottom of the pipe. He smelled more dead things, but the worst of it was the gray water in the sewage itself, which seemed to fill his mouth and throat and lungs. The occasional squish under his feet also bothered him, but only because his mind insisted on pairing it with the smell.

  He knew his squeamishness would have amused Wynter.

  There was something about him being a vampire that amused her when he had human reactions to things like rotting flesh, open wounds, or shit and piss for that matter. She seemed to think his very vampire-ness should render him immune to that kind of thing.

  Pushing her out of his mind, knowing it might get them arguing again, he ran down another full length of pipe at top speed, then hung a right, more on instinct than because it was the exact direction where he could feel his girlfriend.

  Mate, his mind murmured sharply.

  Nick ignored that.

  Even so, he winced a little, his lip curling in mid-run as he remembered everything he’d said to her that afternoon. Not just the Jem thing.

  He’d told her he loved her.

  He’d never said that to her before.

  He didn’t exactly regret saying it. It might have been premature, but he didn’t regret it, even in terms of that. He didn’t regret it at all, really––but he couldn’t help wondering how she’d reacted, apart from his supremely bad timing in saying it then.

  Shoving that from his mind, he pushed himself faster, sprinting down yet another pitch-black tunnel, that one smaller and more claustrophobic than the last. It seemed to be sloping downwards, which worried him, especially combined with the water being deeper down here. In the end, he ran along the curved part of the wall, which was faster than slogging through the choked water… and significantly less gross.

  Even so, he didn’t really breathe a sigh of relief until the tunnel curved left and he found a bigger opening branching off the right.

  Then he saw it.

  Really, before he saw it, he smelled it.

  Fresh air.

  Here, the tunnel sloped up. The water grew thinner, less rank, more shallow.

  He still kept to the pipe walls, but found himself speeding up, sprinting up the slope and towards those wisps of fresh air.

  He found the ladder in seconds, along with a bare finger of light coming through the narrow slats of the grating above.

  He skidded to a stop, cursing when it splashed water up his leg. It didn’t smell as bad up here, but it smelled bad enough.

  His hand grasped a round metal bar in front of him.

  He could smell wet earth overhead. Fresh cut grass. Wood.

  His face and eyes tilted up.

  The bands of illumination were so faint, it seemed his eyes could pick out each individual particle of light. Those particles fell on the black metal ladder like an ethereal, barely discernible powder. It was too faint, really. The night must have gone overcast.

  Turning that over in his mind, Nick frowned.

  He hoped that didn’t mean the grating was blocked.

  Still frowning, he began to climb, slowly at first, then more vampire-speed. He reached the top and pressed his ear to the metal slats.

  He heard a breeze. He heard leaves rustling, what might have been insects, above-ground insects. Som
ething bigger breathed nearby, too. A squirrel? Nick guessed it was something that size, maybe a big rat. He heard footsteps, too.

  His vampire hearing told him the footsteps were far away.

  Thirty, maybe forty yards.

  He waited until it sounded closer to sixty.

  Then, reaching up, he pushed on the metal grate.

  It gave easily––so easily, his foot and arm slipped on the ladder where he’d braced himself to use his weight and strength to force it up. Nick fought to pull his balance back into alignment, bringing his feet swiftly up a few more rungs of the ladder.

  Once he was stable, he poked out his head.

  It was dark.

  He was in a dense thicket of trees.

  He blinked up at the narrow, dark trunks clustered around the grate, the oddly-shaped, dark canopy. They surrounded the opening in the ground almost like they were guarding it.

  Nick blinked again.

  He also took his first big inhale of the scents around him in the dark.

  They weren’t trees.

  They were umbrellas.

  He wasn’t in the park, not exactly. From the blood-red umbrellas and the wrought-iron tables and chairs he saw around him, he was in the patio of a restaurant.

  So why did he smell trees everywhere?

  Why did he still swear he heard squirrels?

  He pulled himself cautiously out of the hole.

  Still moving soundlessly, he lowered the grate carefully down to the cement lid, and straightened. Only when he had both feet planted firmly on the ground, out of that shit-smelling pipe, did he finally take in his surroundings in detail. He frowned around at the sprawling tables, which had been arranged in an artful pattern over the cobblestones.

  Trees hung over the patio. Big trees, not the usual city trees.

  So he wasn’t losing his fucking mind.

  He was inside the park. The restaurant was in the park.

  He could hear squirrels again, and the fluttering wings of birds. He knew the Protected Area had begun restocking animals in the last twenty or so years, at least where they could. The fine for killing any one of the protected species was probably more than Nick made in a year. That included squirrels, raccoons, most breeds of snakes, foxes, possums.

  They were cherished here, though––you’d have to be one hell of a sadist, even for a vampire, to even want to kill an animal now.