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

by JC Andrijeski

  Seeing the look on her face, he swallowed, still tasting the seer’s blood on his tongue. He couldn’t apologize, though, not and mean it. Not when he knew the guy would have killed her next, or Mal, or both of them… after he’d finished off Tai.

  All of that went through Nick’s mind in a heartbeat.

  He couldn’t apologize, not and mean it.

  He didn’t apologize.

  “Is he out?” he said instead, nodding down at the seer he still gripped by the shoulders, kneeling on his chest. “Did I venom him enough? I don’t have any more, but maybe we need to crack him a few times on the head with something hard. Can you read him, and tell me?”

  Wynter’s frown deepened.

  Her eyes shifted from Nick to the seer he had pinned to the cement.

  She looked him over, her eyes flickering to where Nick held him by the shoulders, pausing where Nick kneeled on the male’s chest.

  Then, her irises slid abruptly out of focus.

  After a few minutes where she scanned him, slowly, she shook her head.

  “Don’t hit him,” she said. “You’d probably kill him, Nick, and anyway, he’s out. You knocked him out completely. He’s not just high on your venom, he’s completely unconscious. He feels like he’s overdosed or something, like you pushed him completely out of his body.”

  Nick nodded, feeling his arms and fingers relax.

  He looked back at her face.

  “Who is he?” he said. “Do you know him Wynter?”

  “He’s a seer––” she began, frowning.

  “I know he’s a fucking seer. But who the hell is he?”

  Her mouth hardened, even as her eyes rose back to meet his.

  The familiarity Nick felt when he saw her expression made his chest clench in pain. The pain was sharp enough, he grimaced, falling silent without lowering his gaze.

  “So much for not drinking off anyone else, I guess?” she said drily.

  Nick scowled, glaring right back at her.

  “I’m not going to fight with you about saving your life,” he snapped. “And if you think I’m going to promise not to do it again… after everything that just happened… you’re completely fucking insane, Wynter.”

  When she opened her mouth, glaring back at him angrily, he cut her off.

  “––Can you stop it?” he said. “The machine? Can you do it now?”

  Her jewel-like eyes flickered, as if she’d forgotten.

  Then she looked at Malek.

  Malek looked at her.

  Nick felt something pass between them, then Wynter nodded, looking back at Nick. He wasn’t sure what to make of the nod, not precisely. It definitely didn’t feel like a total assurance that yes, she could stop the machine, but it felt like something.

  Like maybe she was pretty sure she could stop it, but not positive.

  Or maybe the nod was just to tell him she’d try.

  “Be careful,” he growled. He glared at the male seer. “Shield her. This fucker might not be the only one.”

  Malek nodded, but from his expression, Nick honestly couldn’t tell if he was even listening really. Since Malek looked to be focused on Wynter, however, Nick kept his mouth shut, watching the two of them, even as he renewed his grip on the seer he had pinned.

  He was still watching Wynter when Morley and Jordan walked up to him, along with Lara St. Maarten.

  St. Maarten spoke first.

  “He is seer? You are sure?”

  “Yes,” Nick growled, glaring up at her.

  “And you are sure he’s unconscious?” St. Maarten’s lips pursed in a narrow line as she studied the face of the seer on the floor, her eyes flickering over his body inside the security guard uniform. “You realize he’s likely a telekinetic? Given what he did to Tailaya?”

  “The thought crossed my mind,” Nick muttered, giving her an even harder look.

  If his angry looks registered with her, no reaction showed on her face.

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” she informed him.

  “I get that,” he growled. “Who the fuck is he? Do you know him?”

  St. Maarten tilted her head.

  Her eyes hadn’t left the security guard’s features. Like Nick, she seemed to notice something strange about them after a few seconds, and her mouth pursed.

  “He’s wearing prosthetics,” she said. “Can you remove them?”

  Nick frowned up at her.

  “I might be able to identify him,” she clarified, her voice holding the barest pretense of patience. “But not if you don’t remove whatever’s distorting his features––”

  There was a bang on the outside door.

  All of them jumped.

  Nick forgot St. Maarten, gripping the seer’s arms. Digging his fingers into the cloth uniform to hold him down more tightly, he threw more of his weight on his chest as he looked over his shoulder at Wynter.

  Whatever Wynter said, if this fucker so much as coughed, Nick was going to brain him.

  He’d use his own skull if he had to.

  Hell, he’d rip out the fucker’s throat.

  Another bang slammed into the door.

  Nick tensed more, crouching over the unconscious seer. Again, he looked at Wynter, fighting an impulse to grab her, to pull her back.

  Wynter didn’t return his look.

  She was staring at the door.

  “Wynter?” Nick said. “Honey?”

  She didn’t turn her head.

  All of them were staring at her now, including Kit, who had joined Morley and Jordan, and now stood a few feet away from Nick and the seer. St. Maarten alone continued to stare down at the seer on the floor, her mouth tilted in a frown as she studied his face.

  “Wynter?” Nick added a faint growl. “Wynter, answer me, goddamn it. Are you okay?”

  “Shut up, Detective Tanaka,” St. Maarten said.

  Nick glared up at her, but the Archangel CEO barely spared him a glance. She held up a hand towards him as though he were a disobedient dog, without taking her eyes off the seer lying unconscious on the floor.

  “Take off the prosthetics,” she said, giving Nick another bare glance when he continued to glare at her. “You might as well. You can’t help your girlfriend right now… all you can do is get us killed by distracting her from what she needs to do.”

  Nick frowned, glancing at Wynter.

  She didn’t acknowledge him at all.

  Realizing St. Maarten was probably right, that he should probably let her distract him with this fucker on the floor, Nick growled a little in the back of his throat, but released the seer’s shoulders so he could feel over his face.

  He found the edges of the first prosthetic within a few seconds.

  Picking at the edge with a fingernail, he got it up enough to grip it, and tug on it. He got it up a bit more, and gripped it tighter… then peeled the whole piece off one of the seer’s cheeks. It came off as a contoured piece of flesh-colored topography, one that covered one side of his face from his lips all the way up to his temple.

  Nick immediately felt for the piece on the other side.

  He found that one faster, and peeled it off the opposite cheek.

  Staring down at the significantly thinner, significantly more symmetrical and angular face, he frowned.

  The guy definitely looked familiar now, but maybe not for the same reasons.

  Feeling over his chin, he found another prosthetic and pulled that one off the length of his jaw on both sides. He found another that changed the angle of his forehead… then yet another one that grew obvious with the jaw one gone, one that thickened the top part of his neck, presumably to make it match with the size of the prosthetic-fattened face.

  Nick leaned back on his heels then, staring down at him.

  He definitely looked familiar now.

  Nick stared at that striking, angular face for a few beats too long anyway, sure his eyes must be playing tricks on him. He fought to separate how he’d perceived this face before tonight,
at least the few times he’d bothered to watch one of his thousands, maybe tens of thousands of propaganda videos. Truthfully, Nick had always assumed he used an avatar in those videos. He’d never dreamed it was his real face.

  “Fuck a duck,” a voice said from above Nick.

  It was Jordan.

  Nick glanced up, that frown still stuck on his face.

  “Is that––?” Jordan said, pointing down at the seer Nick still knelt on.

  On Jordan’s other side, Morley stared down as well, his expression, especially his dark eyes, reflecting even more incredulity.

  Nick looked between the two of them, then nodded curtly.

  “Yes,” he said. “It is.”

  Dimitry Yi.

  Not one of his henchmen––it was actually him.

  “I always thought it was an avatar,” Jordan muttered.

  Nick looked up, frowning at his friend echoing his own musing.

  His eyes returned to the seer’s face.

  Weirdly, he looked both more and less seer now.

  More, because of that odd symmetry, the strange perfection of his features, the long jaw and high cheekbones. Less, because Nick recognized him, and had totally different associations with that face, which made him appear almost human to him again.

  Still, Nick wondered that the guy had the balls to use his real face for his public persona. Now that Nick knew what he was, and knew that face wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill vanity avatar, Yi’s race struck him as borderline obvious.

  Maybe Yi just figured it didn’t matter in a world where seers were extinct.

  Nick looked at Wynter again.

  She hadn’t glanced over at Jordan’s words.

  She hadn’t reacted at all, or moved from where she faced the door, and Malek hadn’t moved from where he stared up at her, his mismatched eyes glowing in the blue-green tint of the monitor screens. Both of them looked completely gone.

  Biting the inside of his cheek, Nick fought not to call out to her.

  His gaze followed that glow back to the screens, instead.

  He zeroed in on the view from the camera pointed just outside the bunker’s door.

  The humanoid shape he’d seen via the camera before, made of pale green, morphing metal, had stopped pounding on the outside of that door. It just stood there, maybe a yard from the bunker’s hatch. It swayed slightly, but otherwise didn’t move.

  It looked almost like it was paralyzed, frozen in place just before it had been about to throw itself against the door a third time.

  “Why isn’t it turning back to liquid?” Kit muttered.

  Nick flinched. He hadn’t realized she stood so close to him.

  He glanced at her, then frowned, realizing she was looking at the same monitor. He went back to staring at the pale green, animal-like being there, and shook his head.

  “I don’t know,” he muttered.

  Maybe that thing, the metal animal outside, could only make itself so small, in terms of atoms and molecules. Maybe its liquid form was simply too thick for this particular door. Maybe the organics in the door prevented it from passing through, or made it so difficult, so time-consuming, that knocking the door down the old-fashioned way––the human way––was more efficient.

  Or maybe Wynter simply stopped it.

  The more Nick thought about it, the more Nick suspected the last one to be true.

  Even as he thought it, he saw movement in the monitor and flinched.

  The creature wasn’t attacking, though.

  It slowly lowered its smooth and shiny metal arms.

  Then, slowly, like a wicked witch in a storybook, it began to lose form.

  It reminded Nick of a sped-up film of a candle burning.

  The machine-animal melted downwards, with a sensual symmetry that disturbed him even more than the eyeless, faceless creature it had been. Nick couldn’t tear his eyes off it, even after most of it writhed on the cement just outside the door, filling up the landing from the bunker’s hatch to the cement stairs.

  Nick stared at it so intently, he didn’t notice the people coming down the stairs until they were already upon it.

  He tensed when he saw them, feeling a shiver of fear that the machine would attack. For a split second, he braced to see another bloodbath as the pale-green, liquid metal reconfigured to tear the men and women in Archangel uniforms limb from limb, leaving them in parts all over the cement stairs.

  But that moment never came.

  The machine remained where it was, writhing and roiling in its liquid state. It once more looked more than anything like green-tinted mercury; its perfect, glass-like surface reflecting everything around it, as if made up of nothing but eyes.

  Nick watched the Archangel employees approach it cautiously.

  The mostly human unit––Nick tracked a few vampires sprinkled in––didn’t leave the staircase, or even descend all the way to the lower stair. As far as Nick could tell, they didn’t speak out loud, either, or even use headsets, not at first.

  After making a series of hand gestures back and forth, two of them pushed their way to the front of the pack. They raised the black end of a metallic-looking hose. The hose fed out of a backpack the burly human in front wore, but trailed out and up the stairs behind him. Two more of the uniformed team, a vampire and a human, held a thicker part of the hose higher up on the stairs, their expressions grim.

  The guy in front, the burly guy, aimed the funnel-shaped end down at the liquid metal.

  Nick stared at the hose, frowning, about to ask––

  When a clear liquid shot out the end of it, throwing up clouds of steam as it made contact with the air, and the metal on the floor.

  It took Nick another second to realize what it was.

  Liquid nitrogen.

  A hell of a lot of it.

  He glanced at the other cameras, and saw four more muscular soldier-types, three male and one female, carrying a giant case at the top of the stairs. Maybe it was because of the museum, but the case reminded Nick of a sarcophagus. Realizing it must be for the nano-animal, he wondered how the hell they’d shape it to fit it in there.

  He continued to wonder as they descended the stairs with the thing, as other soldiers moved out of their way. He stopped wondering when the case began shifting shape as he watched, clearly morphing to match the shape being frozen to the cement floor at the bottom of the stairs. They hadn’t been scared off using organic machines, even now.

  It should have annoyed Nick, but he didn’t have the energy.

  Watching as the humans and vampires all donned gloves and protective goggles, Nick suddenly felt a dense hardness in his chest relax.

  It was over.

  This thing, this particular thing… whatever the fuck it had been… was finally over.

  As he thought it, Wynter turned her head, staring at him.

  Her eyes glowed faintly in the light of the monitors, like Malek’s had done.

  She didn’t speak.

  Once he’d seen the look on her face, she didn’t have to.

  Nick understood her perfectly, without her having said a word.

  Nothing was over.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Chapter 35

  Waffles

  Nick stared up at the high dome with a sigh, at the blue sky surrounding a yellow orb that was all the prettier because it didn’t hurt him.

  That alone, the fact that he could lounge out here at all, rather than hiding in the shade like some kind of gargoyle, still felt like pure decadence.

  It also reminded him that most of what he could see around him was fake.

  The water was real.

  The waves, in their way, were real.

  The sun loungers, the cocktail tables, the drinks, the plates of food, the umbrellas––those were all real, too, as were the people sitting around him, filling them and drinking them and eating them.

  Pretty much everything else was fake.

  He didn’t care.

  At the
same time, the very fakeness of it all reminded him where they were, the pure absurdity of where they were, even as it made him question why he’d stayed. At this point, he was just trying to enjoy the sun, and maybe get mildly drunk, or as drunk as his vampire constitution would let him.

  He barely let himself listen to the words flying back and forth around him.

  He knew if he listened too hard, or thought too hard about any of it, he’d join in.

  His voice would be added to the chorus, and he didn’t trust himself to stay rational if that happened. He certainly didn’t trust himself to add anything remotely useful to the conversation.

  So he remained silent.

  He watched the waves, felt the fake sun on his vampire skin.

  He let the rest of them argue.

  He even contemplated just getting up, grabbing a board, and going in––naked, if necessary, since he still wore most of the tuxedo he’d taken off that guy in the park. He tried to remember if he was wearing underwear, then shoved all of it from his mind when he felt Wynter’s eyes on him.

  Unlike the others, she’d stayed mostly silent, too.

  The rest of them––St. Maarten, Kit, Malek, Morley, Jordan, Gavin Kingsworth, Police Lieutenant Jag Acharya, the curator of the Natural History Museum, a male human named Dixon Beauchamp, a number of Archangel employees and bodyguards, not to mention Charlie looking pretty disheveled in the red dress, plus a few high-level types from the I.S.F. and Homeland Defense––all sat and stood around a group of tables and loungers by the water.

  St. Maarten had brought them all here.

  She’d brought them together to informally debrief, and to make some collective decisions before the formal debriefs started.

  For reasons Nick couldn’t even begin to fathom, St. Maarten had chosen this as the location for their mini-conspiracy.

  It didn’t fully surprise Nick to learn that Archangel owned the place.

  That might have been funny to Nick, under different circumstances, but it didn’t surprise him, really. Perhaps it should have explained why St. Maarten chose this as a meeting location, but it didn’t really do that, either.

  Mostly, everything about the meeting itself annoyed him.