“It broke through the metal,” he muttered.
“No.”
Kit that time, drawing his eyes to where she stood, wearing some kind of elaborate headset, something likely equipped with full virtual reality. Still wearing the headset, she turned, staring at him through the opaque goggles.
“No, it didn’t bust through,” she explained. “Not really. It kind of melted through the door. From what I can see, it changed the atomic composition of the matter of the door, merging into it completely. Then it reconfigured into its previous form, once it passed through to the other side. It only looks like a hole.”
Nick stared at her, then back at the monitor.
Again, he fought with whether to speak, glancing at the three seers, staring longest at Wynter, then returning his gaze to Kit.
“Can it do that down here?” he said, low. “With this door?”
Kit frowned.
A few seconds later, she shook her head, but not exactly in a no.
“I’m not sure. Maybe,” she admitted. “It’s definitely a more powerful A.I. than what lives in the door and walls down here. There’s a good chance it could overpower it. Maybe even hack it, get it to work for it, instead of us. They’re kind of like animals, and respond to us like an owner or master. If it changed masters––”
“Yeah, I get it,” Nick said.
“Silence,” St. Maarten cut in, glaring murderously at Nick.
Nick closed his mouth. He knew the Archangel CEO wouldn’t balk at drugging him, if he really pissed her off.
His eyes returned to the row of monitors.
One of the screens up above the panel was made up of colored pixels, formed into the vague shape of a human, likely a male from the shape. Nick was staring at that screen, again fighting not to ask what the hell it depicted, when Wynter spoke.
“Can you see him any better?” she said, sounding frustrated.
Tai, from next to her, nodded, her bow-like lips tilted in a frown.
“I’m almost there,” Tai said, her voice disconcertingly businesslike given how young she was, how small she was. “Can you pull him out a little more? His light, I mean. I think I could target him, if I had a few more markers to work from.”
Wynter was already nodding.
Like Tai’s pale, ice-like eyes, Wynter’s eyes focused on the screen with the odd, pixelated and shadowy outline of a man.
Nick looked back at the screen showing the liquid metal coming through the upstairs door. A lot more of it had come through now.
It created a mirrored pool on the cement floor of the landing.
That pool grew as Nick watched, rippling with life as more of the substance ran down the inside of the metal door.
They were running out of time.
“Okay,” Tai said, her voice that eerie calm. “One more marker should do it. As much detail in the resonance as you can get.”
Wynter frowned, not speaking.
Malek looked between the two of them, his bi-colored eyes showing him to be far away, despite how sharp they looked, maybe sharper than Nick had ever seen them.
“Keep protecting her,” Tai said, glancing at her brother. “He definitely knows he’s being tracked. I felt it just now. He’s pissed. He’s also trying to figure out who she is––”
“Just focus on him,” Malek said, his voice as calm as hers. “I’ll keep Ms. James safe.”
“Has he seen you?” St. Maarten said, now sounding alarmed as she stared at Tai. “Does he know there are more than one of you?”
There was a silence.
Then Tai shook her head slowly.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Nick heard the doubt in her words.
He was absolutely certain Lara St. Maarten heard it, too.
Nick scowled, glancing at Wynter, his jaw clenching as his fangs began to extend. He didn’t know what the fuck was going on, which was maddening, but he got the basic gist. His girlfriend was in danger. Whatever the fuck they were doing right now, it was putting a goddamned target on Wynter’s back.
He was about to open his mouth, to risk speaking again, when he saw Wynter jerk back, her head rolling hard on her neck.
If he hadn’t been standing right there, if he hadn’t seen that absolutely nothing and no one stood in front of her, he would have thought she’d just been punched in the face. As it was, he was reasonably sure she had been punched, only by some kind of invisible hand.
“What the fuck?” he growled, unable to stay silent.
Wynter glanced back at him, and now the back of her hand and wrist had gone to her nose. Nick stared at the blood there, feeling his worry bloom into rage. He opened his mouth to speak again, but Wynter shook her head at him, her eyes overtly warning.
She wiped the blood off her face, tilting back her head to deal with the nosebleed and grabbing a towel off the console.
She held it up to her nose as she looked sourly at St. Maarten.
“He definitely saw me,” she admitted. “I don’t know if he saw much in terms of specifics, but I may not be able to get that close to him again, not right now. I’ll likely have to modify my approach next time, too––”
“Next time?” Nick growled, unable to stay silent.
St. Maarten glared at him, her eyes cold.
Before either of them could speak, Tai did.
“It’s okay,” she said, sounding young once more, and openly relieved. “It’s okay. I’m sorry he hit you, Ms. James,” she said, her voice shifting to apologetic. “…But honestly, it helped. He had to emerge from his shield to come after you, and I got a good look at his light. I can definitely resonate with it now.”
Nick glanced at what had been the shadowy, pixelated outline of a male body on the screen and saw it had filled out a lot more.
Nick could see some of the man’s features now.
They were still only half-there, but he saw a square jaw, a high-cheekboned face, a narrow mouth. Pale, nearly white eyes glowed from the shadowy features.
Details of the light surrounding his physical form began to emerge. His ghostly aura exploded into strange structures and shapes, made up of precise lines that were further made up of tiny particles. Each of those particles seemed to be a different, shockingly-bright color. The details were so granular, so fine, Nick wondered if the humans could pick them out at all.
It was like someone had taken a few million colored light markers and filled in details of his organs and veins, all of it made of light and only roughly corresponding to the physical. Nick saw them more as meridians and light-channels running up and down the male’s legs, up and down his arms, around his chest and throat, radiating off his heart in complex geometrical shapes, radiating off and above his head.
It reminded Nick of drawings he’d seen in a friend’s acupuncture office, what felt like a million years ago. That, too, had been back in San Francisco, when his cop pal, Rick, quit the force to go back to school, eventually returning to open a clinic in the Richmond.
The strangest and most detailed structures lived above the male’s head.
Nick stared at where they rotated and reconfigured above a shadowy skull, and again felt vaguely uneasy at his own familiarity with this.
It definitely wasn’t because of Rick––not solely, anyway.
“All right,” Tai said, her voice back to that eerie calm. “I’ve got a lock on him. You and Mal need to back off. Like… completely. You need to disconnect. And everyone in here needs to give me as much space as you possibly can.”
She glanced at Kit, then at Morley and Jordan, and finally at Nick.
“I mean it,” she said, her voice darker. “Don’t worry about me. Just get as far back as you can. I’m not used to doing this around so many people.”
Nick frowned, glancing at Morley and Jordan, both of whom looked openly confused now, and out-and-out wary. Christ. If he was confused, what must they be feeling? As far as Nick knew, they had no idea seers still existed on this planet.
> Why were Tai, Mal, and Wynter doing this right in front of them?
Wynter let out a disbelieving grunt, turning to stare at him.
“We hardly had a choice, Nick,” she said, annoyed.
Nick frowned, but didn’t argue.
Raising a hand, he motioned to Jordan and Morley instead.
“You two better come over here.” Nick pointed at the concrete corner, behind where he stood. “Come on. Move it. Get behind me.”
The two cops glanced at one another, quirking eyebrows.
Then, as if by mutual agreement, they walked up to Nick and past him, giving Tai a wide berth.
Nick led them deeper into the bunker, where the shadows covered ancient-looking equipment that definitely pre-dated the organic upgrade. Wynter moved closer to them too, and Mal, and Kit, and Ms. St. Maarten herself, along with the three techs who’d been sitting in front of the monitors. The museum security guard joined them last.
When Wynter was close enough, Nick caught hold of her arm, tugging her further back into the shadows with him, until she was directly in front of him.
He half-expected her to yell at him, but after an exasperated glance over her shoulder, she moved at the prompting of his hand without a word.
They all stared at Tai.
Nick stared over Wynter’s shoulder where she stood almost flush against him.
Then he was smelling her and he found himself staring at her face and neck and her body in that damned dress. He wanted to growl at her, even though it was definitely not the time. She wasn’t even looking at him; she was looking at Tai along with the rest of them.
He wanted to talk to her.
He badly wanted to talk to her.
“Well, maybe you should stop drinking from other people,” she murmured, so quietly the humans around her couldn’t hear it. “If you’re so hell-bent on talking to me, Nick, maybe stop fucking biting other people.”
The anger in her voice was unmistakable.
Nick’s jaw hardened.
Without letting himself second-guess it, he wrapped an arm around her from behind, cross-wise, pulling her fully flush with him. Her skin warmed in surprise, her heart rate rose, thudding where he could distinctly hear each beat…
…and he lowered his head, sinking his fangs into her neck.
He half-expected her to curse him out for that, too.
Instead, she pressed into him, her breath catching.
He was hard in less than a second, gripping her tighter, having to remind himself they were surrounded by people… making himself care at least enough to keep from grabbing her somewhere inappropriate. As it was, he heard the cleared throats, the uncomfortable shuffling of feet, like he was forcing them all to watch the two of them fuck.
He wanted to tell them to piss off.
He wanted to, but he knew they were right.
They were right and he was wrong.
But apart from having an audience, apart from the flash of annoyance and wishing they were anywhere but here… Nick mostly felt relief.
He couldn’t really suppress the intensity of that relief as he injected her blood with venom, as he felt the blood connection reignite between them. He felt her relief too, mixed with a confused, anger-colored swirl of more complex emotions that hit him in waves.
The strongest of those emotions lived somewhere between lust and wanting to hit him.
He made himself stop.
He made himself stop relatively quickly, within what couldn’t have been more than a minute or two of drinking.
When he finished, he was almost surprised to realize they were all just waiting there still.
He raised his head cautiously, licking his fangs, and felt Wynter’s mind slide easily into his. It was like floating down a silent stream, separate from the water, but immersed in it, too. That, even more than the blood itself, forced him to suppress a relieved groan.
It was like hearing the mirror of his own heartbeat.
Well… if he still had one of those.
Bending down, he kissed her neck, licking over the cuts he’d made, covering his toothmarks with venom.
He felt her shiver.
Happy? her mind muttered at him as her eyes returned to Tai. Are your control-freak impulses finally satisfied, Nick?
Maybe, his mind growled back. At bare minimum.
Pausing, he gripped her tighter.
That being said, he added, gruff. If you think that “satisfied” me in any way, you’re in for a rude fucking awakening when we get home.
Thinking about that, he grunted.
Assuming either of us live to make it home. He kissed her neck again, still fighting to keep from putting his hands in inappropriate places. Assuming I can wait that long, even if we do make it out of this, he added, softer.
She turned her head, looking up at his face and giving him a semi-incredulous look. Even in that, he could feel her relief, strongly enough that he tightened his arm around her. He made it more of a hug than a grope, but still felt Wynter react, right before she softened into his chest. He squeezed her more tightly, exhaling without breath and pressing his face into hers.
He felt her soften even more.
You are completely impossible, she murmured in his mind.
He didn’t answer.
He wanted to yell at her for leaving him.
He wanted to yell at her for taking off with St. Maarten and Archangel and leaving him on the fucking street, but he couldn’t muster up the indignation to do it.
Not now, anyway.
Later, then? she murmured, a humorous lilt in her thoughts.
Heat flooded through him, intensely enough that he couldn’t answer her, not even with his thoughts. He just squeezed her against him, biting his tongue to keep from biting a different part of her, maybe a part that wasn’t already bared by her dress.
She snorted, clicking at him softly.
Once more, he felt human eyes on both of them.
He forced himself to loosen his grip on her, forced his eyes to return to the monitors, and to Tai, who now looked impossibly small where she stood in front of the security console. He realized again that the seer child was alone, that there was nothing any of them could do to help her. On the contrary, their lives were pretty much in her hands.
“All right,” Tai said, right as Nick’s eyes returned to her delicate-featured face. “I’m going to start now, okay?”
Her voice remained calm, disturbingly calm.
“Everybody better hold on to something,” she added, looking over to lock eyes directly with Nick. “I don’t know how this one’s going to go.”
Chapter 33
The Other Seer
Nick held on to Wynter.
He gripped her tightly, his fingers wrapped around her shoulder. He watched Tai nervously, his jaw aching from clenching it. He knew vaguely what she was about to do. He’d seen her do it before, if never in quite this “formal” of a setting.
He found himself glancing nervously at Morley and Jordan, again wondering what they were thinking about all this.
He found Morley staring at him and Wynter, though.
The old man’s dark eyes focused on the fang marks on Wynter’s neck.
Nick wondered at first if he’d disturbed the old man, disgusted him maybe… then remembered he’d been living with a vampire of his own for years.
The look on the detective’s face wasn’t disgust.
It was grief.
Nick winced at the realization, glancing at Jordan.
The younger detective was staring at Tai, a frown creasing the skin around his eyes and mouth, his machine-enhanced eyes focused on the small seer’s face.
From the look on his face, the detective had figured out Tai might be more than a hybrid. Nick wondered if Jordan had guessed the truth about all three seers by now, given what he’d just seen. It was possible Jordan thought they were just particularly talented hybrids, or hybrids Archangel had genetically enhanced in some way, but Nick had hi
s doubts that either story would hold together for long.
Nick glanced back at Tai, then past her, at the monitors.
His eyes found the screen with the live feed on the upstairs door.
The pool of metal had grown at least three times in size.
It might have been bigger, but it was already disappearing, making its way down the cement stairs. It emptied out of the upper landing like liquid mercury, only a lot faster, not bothering to give itself a shape as it flowed down the steep angles of the stairs.
It was disturbing, how fast it moved.
They were fucked.
Not yet, Wynter murmured in his mind. Give her a minute, Nick. I can probably get the A.I. to see reason if she can get that damned seer out of the way.
Who is he? Nick murmured back.
Wynter shrugged, gripping the arm he’d wrapped around her chest.
I don’t know. He works for Yi, that much was clear.
A seer? A full-blooded seer… and he works for Dimitry Yi? Nick blinked, thrown by that, maybe more than he should have been. Why, for fuck’s sake?
Wynter shrugged, her eyes still on Tai.
If I get a chance, I’ll ask him, she sent dryly.
Nick followed her gaze to Tai.
The young seer already looked different.
Nick couldn’t have put that difference into words, not easily, but he felt it, animal-to-animal. The sheer power he felt building around her made it impossible to look away.
The last time he’d witnessed Tai using this particular skill, she’d aimed it unintentionally at him, mostly due to emotions that slid out of her control. She’d been yelling at him, her light vibrating out of her like a physical force. The longer she yelled, the more he heard a high, piercing tone, the more his head felt like it was about to rip apart.
He could feel that intensity of vibration again.
This time, thankfully, it felt further away.
It was more like watching an explosion from a distance––versus the first time, when he’d been in the middle of it, losing his ability to react, to think, to even hear.
He felt too close, even now.
That vibration coming off her was still close enough to raise the hairs on the backs of his arms and neck. A fight reaction ignited somewhere in the more animal, fight-or-flight parts of his brain, but not so intensely he couldn’t control it. He knew the reaction was irrational––whatever she was doing, it wasn’t hurting him, or making his skull feel like it would break apart into little pieces like before––but he couldn’t repress it completely.
Fang & Metal: A Science Fiction Vampire Detective Novel (Vampire Detective Midnight Book 4) Page 31