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

by JC Andrijeski

  Wynter wrapped her arms around where he held her.

  The way she did it made Nick think that vibration scared her, too.

  As for the others in their small group, they fell totally silent.

  Despite being pressed awkwardly together, no one moved.

  Nick couldn’t be certain how long they all stood together like that. Time stretched, elongating as they stared at the baby seer, her face tinted blue by the security feeds. Nick’s eyes fixed on Tai’s face along with everyone else’s, despite the pull to look at the screens, to gauge the progress of the liquid metal coming towards them.

  Some part of him knew, logically, that they might all die in a few minutes.

  The feeling hit him emotionally that time, making him clutch Wynter tighter.

  It hit him, that feeling of getting her back, what Malek alluded to, when he said the two of them had been lucky, that they were lucky to have found one another again.

  He couldn’t remember Dalejem really, apart from a name, a whisper of a smile. The male seer was barely a memory at all. He was a dreamed face, a dreamed presence… but that feeling of familiarity, of loss, and maybe worse, of half-remembered happiness… it hit at his chest and heart, making it hard to think, to focus on where he was, what was about to happen.

  He couldn’t see anything past Tailaya’s small, delicate face, the concentration in those ice-blue eyes.

  He held Wynter to his chest, and some part of him, some more vulnerable, more human part, fought back a closing in his throat, a blurring of his vision.

  Gaos, was he crying?

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that, either.

  Wynter melted into him, hugging his arms.

  It’s okay, baby, she murmured softly in his mind. It’s okay.

  Nick couldn’t think well enough to answer her.

  Some part of him, irrationally, wanted to yell at her.

  He wanted to tell her she wasn’t the one who got left behind. She wasn’t the one who was left alive. She wasn’t the one who got left alone.

  He hadn’t left her.

  She left him.

  She gripped him tighter, squeezing his arm, wiping her eyes with her hand. He felt a flood of emotion from her, and wanted to close his eyes.

  He couldn’t even do that.

  He stared at the baby seer, instead.

  He was still staring at her, when a frown touched those bow-like, sculpted lips.

  He saw fear, briefly, in those ice-blue eyes.

  Nick’s body stiffened as he stared, understanding, reacting… but it was already too late.

  He wouldn’t reach her in time.

  He lunged forward anyway, releasing Wynter––

  ––right as Tai flew backwards, slamming into the organic metal wall.

  Nick ran for her.

  Right behind him, he felt Malek do the same.

  Purely due to what he was, Nick reached the young seer a few heartbeats before her brother. He was already kneeling down, his arm around her shoulders, his hand carefully supporting her neck, when Malek leapt over him to get to her other side.

  By the time Malek was lowering his weight, Nick was already pulling Tai up and away from the cement wall where she’d crumpled.

  He was worried about her skull.

  He was really worried about her skull, given how violently she’d been thrown back, how many feet she’d traveled through the air.

  Moving as gently and carefully as he could, Nick felt over the bone. He felt the bare beginnings of a lump, wetness that had to be blood, but nothing broken. Her skull seemed fully intact.

  That simple realization allowed the most irrationally terrified part of himself to relax, but he didn’t stop staring at her face.

  Her eyes were closed.

  Nick stared down at her, halfway in shock.

  “Tai!” he yelled. “TAI!”

  Malek knelt, settling the rest of his weight down on the concrete on the other side of her body. He reached for her, like Nick had done, but he didn’t try to take her from Nick. His hand and long fingers caressed her face, brushing the hair out of her eyes.

  Nick looked at him, and saw the seer’s pale face filled with terror, with more emotion than he’d ever seen––ever, at any point in the time Nick had known him.

  “Is she okay?” Nick demanded. “Is she okay, Malek?”

  He could hear her heart beat.

  He could hear her breathing.

  Hell, he could feel those things, where he held her.

  That wasn’t what he wanted to know.

  Neither her heart nor her breath moved or sounded like they did in an unconscious person, but they didn’t sound awake, either. Her eyes hadn’t opened. She wasn’t asleep and she wasn’t awake. Something, something besides the obvious, was wrong.

  She was too pale.

  She was way too fucking pale.

  “MAL!” Nick shouted his name.

  Malek flinched. He didn’t look up. He didn’t tear his eyes off Tai’s face.

  Nick leaned over her small body, getting nearer to the male prescient without releasing Tai from his lap. He moved right into the other seer’s space, but Malek still didn’t look up. He continued to stare down at his sister, his expression frozen.

  “MAL!” Nick growled. “MAL! Goddamn it… look at me!”

  The seer jumped, violently that time.

  The thrall behind Nick’s vampire voice made Malek jerk as if he’d been hit with an electric prod. His mismatched eyes flickered to Nick’s, and some of the color returned to his face, despite his fear now being focused on Nick.

  “Is she okay?” Nick snapped. “She’s breathing. I can hear her heart. Is she okay?”

  Malek swallowed, then nodded slowly.

  His mismatched eyes returned to his sister’s face.

  Once they had, Mal winced, as if in physical pain.

  “What happened to her?” Nick said. “What knocked her out?”

  Malek continued to stare at Tai.

  “What the fuck happened?” Nick shouted. “MALEK! We don’t have much time. You need to talk to me. Now. Or we’re all dead.”

  That seemed to bring Malek back to the room, at least in part.

  “Not knocked out.” He shook his head, speaking Prexci, the seer language. His eyes rose to Nick’s. “She’s not knocked out. Not like you mean, brother. He broke her. He broke her light. Her structure. He just… broke it. Her mind…”

  The seer trailed, back to staring at his baby sister.

  Nick felt his chest clench. “Who? Who did that? The machine?”

  “No,” Malek said. “No. The other seer.”

  Nick bit his tongue. He fought with whether to ask, then shoved it aside.

  “Will she die?” he said. “Did he kill her?”

  “No.” Malek’s face and jaw firmed. He looked up, and that time, heat lived in his mismatched irises. “No. She won’t die. Not from that. She’ll heal. It won’t be permanent. Her light will regenerate, given time. But until then––”

  “How much time?” Nick cut in. “How long will it take her to… regenerate? Those things are coming, Mal. Will she snap back in time to help us?”

  Malek’s eyes rose from where he’d gone back to staring at Tai’s face.

  He stared at Nick in open bewilderment.

  Then, seeming to understand the look on Nick’s face, Mal shook his head, his narrow mouth firming, his mismatched eyes growing puzzled.

  “No,” he said, his voice reflecting that puzzlement. “No, Nick. It will take months for Tai’s light to repair. She won’t be able to do much of anything until then. She probably won’t be able to feed herself. She certainly won’t be able to use any of her seer abilities.”

  Still staring at Nick, Mal made his voice slower, as if explaining something to a very young child.

  “He broke it, Nick. He broke all of it… everything she was using. Everything he could see, most likely.”

  Nick frowned. “How the
fuck is that possible?”

  Malek stared at him like he didn’t understand the question.

  Nick watched the seer’s eyes return to his sister. He watched Malek’s eyes brighten, right before the seer reached out again, caressing her small face.

  Nick felt his chest clench, watching the prescient look at her.

  The emotion he could see… hell the emotion he could feel.

  It was too much.

  It was more than he could handle right then.

  He turned, looking for Wynter, who he felt moving closer.

  She was only a half-dozen feet away, standing in front of Morley, Jordan, Kit, and Lara St. Maarten. All four of them, along with the security guard who’d led them down here, looked down at Tai’s small body, her pale face, her closed eyes.

  Nick’s eyes met Wynter’s alone.

  Can you stop the machine? he asked.

  He already knew the answer, even before she gave it.

  She hesitated, a bare pause, then shook her head.

  No.

  You’re sure?

  She winced, but nodded again.

  I’m sure, Nick. I wish I could, but I can’t. Not with that seer guarding it.

  She looked past him at Tai.

  Wynter’s face and thoughts grew pained, guilty.

  I can’t get past him, she said after a beat. Malek can’t, either. Whoever this other seer is, he went through both of us like we weren’t even there. I can’t figure out how he did it, or how he tracked us so easily. Tai and Mal may have been on his radar, just from working for Archangel in the past… but I shouldn’t have been. He shouldn’t have been able to see or feel me, not on his own. Not with Mal shielding me.

  Looking at Nick, she swallowed. That’s why they used me for the trace. I was supposed to be safe. An X-factor.

  Her eyes returned to Tai, her face pinched.

  That’s why St. Maarten was so insistent I join them for this. Yi’s people were supposed to know nothing about me. I was supposed to be invisible.

  Nick nodded, feeling a pit forming darkly in his stomach.

  He was about to answer, or maybe just ask her what they should do next…

  …when his vampire eyes caught a flicker of movement.

  It was a small movement.

  It was so small, if he wasn’t a vampire, he wouldn’t have seen it at all.

  He was a vampire, though.

  He saw that bare twitch, a faint smile. It was there and gone, scarcely enough for a micro-expression… but Nick saw it, even out of the corner of his eye.

  His eyes swiveled to the security guard.

  He looked at the man, stared him full in the face.

  It was the first time he’d really done so, in the whole time since the guard first waved him towards an open door. Nick looked at him only long enough at the time to note he didn’t know him. He looked at him long enough to see Jordan and Morley standing with him.

  But Nick looked at him now.

  He stared at that face, at the high cheekbones in an unusually handsome face, on a body that was muscular and lean and strangely familiar… familiar in ways Nick couldn’t really wrap his mind around, or maybe he just didn’t want to.

  The twitch he’d seen, what caused Nick to look in the first place, was gone.

  The guard stared at Nick blankly, his expression loose, like he was scared out of his wits. His frozen features didn’t move at all as Nick studied them with his vampire eyes, swiftly, at four times the rate a human could do it.

  Still, the mask was impressive.

  If Nick’s instincts hadn’t screamed otherwise like a four-alarm fire, he likely would have thought the human was lost in some state of advanced shock.

  Even now, Nick’s mind questioned that.

  Doubt rippled through him for a split-second, just long enough to make him question the certainty now living in a deeper, quieter part of his awareness. He could see past that expression now. Still, it scared him, just how convincing that expression was––

  He jerked his eyes off the security guard’s face.

  He looked at Malek.

  He focused on the prescient, and hoped his expression remained as blank as the guard’s.

  If Malek noticed anything, it didn’t show.

  Tears ran down his angular face as he gazed down at his sister, blurring his mismatched eyes. Nick noted that well enough to feel a stab of near-physical pain.

  Without saying a word to the male prescient, he handed Tai over to him, carefully positioning her tiny head and shoulders in her brother’s lap. Malek didn’t look up as Nick did it. He barely seemed to remember Nick was there at all, but continued to stare down at Tai’s face, his expression lost in shock, pain, maybe something akin to terror.

  Unlike the security guard, Nick believed what he saw in Malek’s face.

  He didn’t like the expression he saw there. He didn’t like it at all.

  Still, he had to admit it was damned convenient right now.

  Malek’s genuine shock and grief were perfect cover for what Nick was about to do.

  Nick rose easily to his feet.

  He felt Wynter’s eyes on him, but didn’t trust himself to look at her, either.

  Once he had his weight back solidly on the cement floor, he didn’t think.

  He just leapt.

  Chapter 34

  A Foolish Thing To Do

  He managed to surprise the guy.

  Turns out, that was lucky as hell.

  It was luckier than Nick fully realized at the time.

  He didn’t give himself time––in the fractions of a second it took for him to make up his mind and act––to contemplate whether or not what he was doing was completely suicidal.

  Really, he should have died.

  Maybe the guy was too cocky. Maybe that helped Nick, too.

  But really, he was just damned lucky.

  Nick landed on the guard’s chest with his full vampire weight, his vampire eyes catching every increment of the change as the male guard’s eyes widened in shock, as the security guard realized too late what was about to happen.

  Blue eyes.

  Pale blue, with the faintest ring of black.

  They were beautiful.

  Now that Nick saw them up close, they were beautiful.

  They were also alien, even with the contacts he could see, now that he was so close to the male’s face.

  Nick barely clocked any of that, other than to see it as he impacted the other’s chest and abdomen with a hard thud. The force of his leap knocked the other male into the cement wall even as Nick’s fangs sank into the bare neck.

  Nick injected venom like his life fucking depended on it.

  He didn’t drink.

  He didn’t stop injecting long enough to taste a single drop.

  He didn’t stop trying to venom the guy even after he had no more venom left. He drank then, trying to muster more, and when he took the first solid swallow of the other male’s blood, he knew without a doubt that he’d been right.

  Seer blood.

  Fuck, even for seer blood… that asshole’s blood was something.

  Nick’s eyes rolled back in his head, in spite of what he’d done, in spite of why he’d done it, in spite of what he knew. He had to make himself stop after a few swallows, then found himself looking over his shoulder, seeking out Wynter guiltily once he had.

  She was frowning at him.

  From the way she stood––the way all of them stood there––he’d startled more than just the guy he’d knocked into a cement wall.

  At the thought, Nick turned, staring into the guard’s face.

  Looking at it now, up close, under the greenish-blue tint off the monitors and the living sections of wall, Nick wondered how he hadn’t seen it.

  How could he have not seen the seer-ness there?

  For one thing, the guy was too perfect-looking.

  Humans could be equally good-looking, of course, and equally attractive, but not often like t
his. This guy was beautiful. He was model-beautiful, like someone who did beauty for a living. Someone like that was unlikely to be a security guard, even at a rich-person museum in the River of Gold.

  Even in this day and age, that kind of beauty was too valuable.

  Moreover, the male’s face and body were beautiful in that way normally reserved for the not-fully-human, whether hybrid, vampire, or seer.

  Not only were his features and bodily proportions nearly perfect, there was something strange about that perfection, something overly symmetrical and overly refined, as though he’d come out of a pre-fabricated mold that hadn’t allowed for quite enough human variation.

  The longer Nick stared down at him, the more he saw it, the more obvious it was to his vampire eyes, and how familiar it was.

  At the same time, he noted how that symmetry was something the male seer had clearly tried to hide, at least downplay in various ways––not only with the contact lenses but with a light beard, a dirt-smudged face, and something slightly off in the jaw and cheekbones.

  After staring at him a second longer, Nick wondered if the fucker was wearing implants.

  If so, it was likely something temporary, some kind of prosthetic.

  Still, there was something vaguely familiar about him.

  Touching the male’s face with one hand, Nick frowned, turning his jaw back and forth to look at him. Even more sure about the prosthetics once he had, he began brushing his fingertips lightly along the long jaw, feeling over his skin for the edges of the disguise.

  For some reason, it felt really important to look at the guy’s real face.

  He’d forgotten he had an audience.

  He’d forgotten one person in that audience in particular, and how she’d likely react to him touching this guy so much.

  “Nick!” Wynter growled. “Stop it!”

  He raised his head, turning in reflex, as though she had a string tied to his head.

  His eyes met hers, and immediately, he felt himself react.