Still, while annoying, the smells weren’t that big of a deal.
They mattered even less when he caught a wave.
Despite everything he’d said being accurate, the water did make his skin itch if he stayed in it too long.
Eventually, the sensation started to bother him enough that it took a lot of the fun out of the chaotic satisfaction he got from riding the violent surf.
Today, the rain eased that enough that he’d managed to stay out a few hours longer than usual. Often the rain was as toxic as the ocean water, but today it provided some relief. The clouds must have carried that rain at least a few hundred miles before dumping their load on him, likely from either Canada or New England.
His skin was raw from the polluted seawater anyway, although his regenerative abilities were already going to work on the burns that covered parts of his skin.
By the time he got home, it would look like nothing had been there at all.
For now, though, he was a little red-faced and raw.
And yeah, his skin itched.
Walking up to the security gate, he gripped the card he’d locked onto his wetsuit, hefting up the titanium board he used to keep it from being ripped apart by the waves. Wiping the layer of scum off the front of it, he waved the card over the reader, waited for the light to flash green.
Once it did, he stepped towards the portal where the force field would open.
The crackling, almost alive-feeling current retracted around the transparent door, another full-organic that was part of the outer dome shielding system.
Nick waited for the light on the door to go green, then pushed it inward.
Inside the decontamination booth, he shook his head, letting out a sigh as the spray hoses kicked in, washing off the toxic seawater and smoky air. He just stood there, relaxing in pure physical pleasure as the hard jets hit him from all sides, lowering his head so that the largest of those jets beat right into his scalp, washing the algae and seawater off every inch of his head.
He raised his arms next, letting it wash off every inch of the wetsuit, then the board.
A few minutes later, a series of beeps let him know the process was finished.
He stood there, waiting, while warm air dried him off for a few minutes more.
He combed his fingers through his hair, shaking his head vigorously to try and speed up the process. Even so, the whole assembly-line mechanism finished relatively quick.
He picked up his surfboard again, right as the dryer shut off, and the door flashed green, telling him he was free to leave decontamination.
He walked out of the cubicle and back under the shaded overhang.
He’d parked in the underground garage just below where he stood.
Whoever planned the dome exits had done so in a very vampire-friendly way. He didn’t have to go out into the sun at all.
Even so, he found himself looking up at the mirrored windows of the building directly in front of him, using the reflection to stare briefly at the artificial blue sky and white, cumulous clouds reflected in the one-way glass.
Inside the dome, it was easy to forget what it was like on the outside.
Nowadays, only vampires ventured out there.
Vampires and exiles, but the latter never lasted very long.
Exile was the same as a death sentence these days.
Adjusting his grip on the board, Nick aimed his feet towards the tunnel to his left, where the elevators that could take him down to the lower-level parking lot lived. He’d just entered the glass doors into the building’s lower lobby, when someone cleared their throat pointedly.
He froze, turning his head.
His guardian angel sat at a mushroom-shaped table on a smaller, mushroom-shaped stool in front of the coffee bar inside the building’s glass doors.
“You survived,” she observed wryly. “I guess you weren’t kidding.”
Nick blinked, staring at her.
Then he broke into a smile, in spite of himself.
“You look pretty rough, though,” she added, assessing him ruefully. “Like you got in a fight with a sandblaster… or maybe a vat of acid powder. Aren’t you afraid it will mess up your movie-star good looks, Mister Vampire?”
“You didn’t seriously wait for me?” he scoffed. “For four hours?”
“I can’t have cute dead guys on my conscience,” she said, rolling her eyes expressively, yet clearly unembarrassed. “Not even cute, cocky, weirdo, undead-dead guys.”
“Weirdo?”
“You surf,” she said pointedly. “You’re a vampire. That puts you firmly in the weirdo bucket, buddy.”
Nick laughed.
Again, he almost couldn’t help it.
She looked him over, stirring her coffee with a spoon as she frowned in his general direction. “Huh,” she said after a pause. “You weren’t kidding about blowing off steam. Despite having a bit of toxic burn face, you look about a million times better, Mr. Vampire.” She blew up her bangs. “I guess it’s stressful, being an undead hunk.”
Nick rolled his eyes back at her. “If you’re going to mock me incessantly, at least lose the ‘Mr. Vampire’ bit. My name’s Nick.”
“Nick what?”
Tensing a little, he felt his good humor fade.
“Midnight,” he said after a pause.
She rolled her eyes at him.
“I meant your real name,” she said. “I’m not a total asshole. That wasn’t like a trick question or whatever.” Grunting at him, she added, “Although color me surprised you’re a cop. You have a bit of that boy scout look to you. For a vampire, you look positively kitten-like.”
Again, Nick couldn’t stop himself from laughing.
Jesus. Who was this girl?
“Tanaka,” he said, blunt. “Nick Tanaka.”
“That Japanese?”
“Yes.” He jerked his chin towards her. “What about you? Dare I ask for your name?”
“Kit,” she said at once. “Kit Fiorantino.”
He nodded politely. “Italian?”
“Mutt,” she said promptly. “Given my mess of a family tree, I don’t ask a lot of questions.”
Nick smiled. “Nice to meet you. I’ve got to go home now—”
“Why?” she said, pointed. “I thought your kind doesn’t sleep?” She held up her coffee cup. “I thought we could have a coffee or something. Celebrate the fact that you didn’t cut off your head in the force fields from some rando wave.”
Taken aback, he frowned.
Then, after another pause, he sighed.
“We don’t,” he said, shrugging. “…Sleep. But everyone needs time alone, Kit. Quiet time. Without people. Without stimulus. I don’t get a lot of that while I’m working. None, actually.”
“One cup of coffee,” she said. “I insist. Anyway… didn’t you just spend like four hours alone? ‘Without people?’” She made exaggerated air quotes with her fingers. “Or were there mutants out there with you, surfing the big curls?”
Nick frowned, thinking about this.
“Surfing is different.” Still thinking, he made a short wave with his free hand. “It’s just… different. It’s alone time, but a different kind. I need to go home and regroup.”
He didn’t add that he also needed to eat something.
Even so, he found himself thinking, trying to explain the rest to her.
He had no idea why he wanted to.
Maybe she just seemed like a decent person, and he didn’t know anyone here, in New York. Maybe some part of him was feeling a little too relaxed after the hours of surfing. Maybe she was just the first person to actually treat him like a person since he left L.A.
In the end, he just looked at her, that frown still toying with his lips.
“You know what I mean?” he said.
He watched her think about that.
Slowly, she began to nod.
When she looked at him next, he saw understanding in her blue eyes.
“Yes,”
she said seriously, meeting his gaze. “I guess I do. But I still think you should have a coffee with me, Nick Tanaka, vampire detective. That way, I have an excuse to hang out with you again.”
Looking at her, he realized she did understand.
He also realized she was wearing him down.
He was about to concede defeat, sit down with her at the little table, when his stomach cramped, hard enough that he winced, clenching the surfboard in his hand.
It decided things for him.
Holding up the board, he held her gaze. “Raincheck? On the coffee?”
She frowned, then seemed to see something in his eyes.
He meant it. He meant it about meeting her later.
Maybe that’s what she saw in him.
After a pause, that doubt crept back into her expression.
He found himself thinking a lot of people had lied to her in the past. She was so completely guileless, he could believe it, especially here.
“How would I even find you?” she said, dubious.
Staring at her a beat longer, he found himself relaxing even more, weirdly charmed by her openness, and disarmed. He felt himself more or less giving in to that vulnerable look she gave him, in spite of himself.
Hell, he could take this young human out for a goddamned coffee.
After all, she’d tried to save his life.
Completely unnecessarily, of course, but it was the thought that counted.
“I’m a cop,” he said, giving her another half-smile. “I’ll find you.”
Chapter 5
Devil’s Cauldron
Nick pulled out of the parking lot and into the midday sun and blue skies.
He wore dark, mirrored sunglasses over his glass-like, clear eyes, despite the sun-shielding of the windows he’d paid to have installed in his antique car.
As for the car itself, he bought that before the war, and managed to hold onto it even after the government seized most vampire assets and froze their bank accounts.
Back then, he still had enough human friends, he managed to sign it over to one of them before the I.S.F. showed up at his door.
Also, they were enough of a real friend to give it back to him when the dust settled.
Unfortunately, that friend was dead—too many years ago now.
More years than he really wanted to think about.
Stroking the original dashboard, Nick felt a flush of gratitude towards her, just like he did whenever he slid behind the wheel of the car, a 1970 Mercury Cougar Eliminator 428 Super Cobra Jet, which had been rare as hell, even back when he bought it.
The thing was pretty much a unicorn now.
His friend had been into muscle cars, too.
Pushing her from his mind, he pulled onto 15th Street, heading west to 8th Avenue, so he could make his way back up to Washington Heights and his apartment.
He lived in a vampire-designated zone, of course, so he didn’t have a lot of options, in terms of housing. On the plus side, the government paid for his apartment, since he worked as a Midnight. He didn’t have much of anything in the way of assets besides the car, which he would never sell—but at least he wasn’t homeless.
“Gertrude,” Nick said, activating his link to the department A.I. “Run a citizen’s record check for me, would you?”
“Of course, sir. Name?”
“Surname, Fiorantino. Given, Kit. Human. Approximately twenty-two to twenty-eight years old. Five-seven. Short brown hair with blue-dyed tips. Multiple body decorations, most of them anime characters. Muscular. Wears enhanced lenses. Might have a fighting background.”
Pausing, he added,
“Given is probably a nickname. Look for possible matches with more conventional given names for United States humans, specifically those born in the Protected Region of New York. Probable residence is Queens, New York.”
“Working on it, sir.”
Nick glanced out the window while he waited.
In this part of the city, there wasn’t much to see.
The whole west side of the city was still pretty much trashed from the war.
About a third of it hadn’t been rebuilt at all in the years since, so it made sense that they’d put the vampire enclaves north of there, where few humans wanted to live anyway.
The contrasts were pretty extreme.
Only a few blocks west from what was now known as the “River of Gold,” a swath of hyper-modern, freakishly-tall, pencil-thin buildings clustered on the west side of Central Park, and just northwest of an elevated park and green zone known as “The Forest,” which ended just north of the Opera House, lived the infamous “Devil’s Cauldron.”
The fenced off, military-protected area of the Cauldron, which started on 66th and Amsterdam and stretched all the way up to 113th Street, was pretty much a wasteland of abandoned, bombed out buildings covered in graffiti. Its residents had special permits that didn’t allow them to leave, and most of them lacked citizenship papers, although legally they were all required to be implanted and registered.
Who got put in the Cauldron?
Mostly run of the mill poor people and those who would be otherwise homeless. Some had mental health conditions, some were busted for squatting. Some got caught with questionable immigration and/or residency tats and papers.
The Cauldron itself, in addition to being an area trashed during the war due to being hit hard with sonic and concussion bombs, was basically the result of the mad rush of survivors who crowded the city in the aftermath of the war, as well as criminals who weren’t quite bad enough to exile, who maybe still qualified for manual labor vouchers, but who couldn’t be accommodated in the overcrowded prisons.
Most of those living inside the Cauldron had nowhere else to go.
On the upper end, the Cauldron started only a few blocks south of the vampire enclaves where Nick lived, and on the west, it went right up to the Hudson and the force fields that covered that whole border of Manhattan Island.
Despite the companies that ran work warehouses inside the Cauldron’s walls—what used to be called sweatshops, and under heavy security—the place was basically a chaotic mess, and not very well policed.
Really, it wasn’t policed regularly at all, apart from drones, private corporate security, and occasional raids, which were closer to military exercises than normal police business.
Still, Nick had worked one sniffer case inside the Cauldron already, in only two weeks of being here, so it’s not like the NYPD ignored it entirely.
On the whole, though, the electrified security fence surrounding the bombed-out, overcrowded area of land was meant to contain the worst of the problems of the city, at least as far as the rest of Manhattan and the New York Protected Area were concerned.
Inside the Cauldron itself, conditions remained bleak.
The zone was plagued with overcrowding and prone to disease outbreaks. It mostly lacked running water, not to mention garbage collection and electricity for the residents.
Even the dirt itself was still contaminated in parts from chemical weapons, most of them utilized by the Army of the Resurrected Fallen, or A.R.F., towards the end of the war. Nick also heard there was a mine field in part of it, still uncleared, for reasons he couldn’t come close to fathoming. With modern tech, they could have done it in a matter of weeks.
Most people drove around the whole area, more or less pretending it wasn’t there, rather than go through the security gates at either end to reach the north or the south of the city by passing through the middle of it.
Wealthy people didn’t go near it.
To be fair, Nick drove around it a lot of the time, too.
He didn’t drive around it every time, though. It depended on his mood, and how big of a hurry he was in to get home.
He hadn’t been lying to Kit when he told her he was anxious to get back to his apartment after his time out on the water. He wasn’t in the mood to add a good forty minutes to his drive, just to avoid a bunch of desperate humans.
He could take care of himself in the Cauldron, even with the bait of his car.
He’d done it plenty of times before.
He was still driving up 10th Avenue when Gertrude, the A.I., intruded on his thoughts.
“I believe I found your human, Detective Midnight,” Gertrude said pleasantly.
“Okay, give it to me.”
“Which parts, Detective Midnight?”
“Whatever you found. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
“Katarina ‘Kit’ Fiorantino,” the voice droned. “Born in Long Island City, Queens, to parents Liliana and Ivan. Twenty-four years old. Trained in biotechnical sciences and security. Currently employed by the Red Sun Corporation as junior director of city security for their biggest contract, which is for the I.S.F.—”
Nick whistled, laughing a little, in spite of himself.
He knew how to pick ‘em.
“Shall I go on, sir?” the A.I. inquired politely.
“Does she box?” Nick said, still smiling bemusedly as he rubbed his jaw.
“She has attained a second-degree black belt in the Choy Li Fut style of kung fu, sir. She competes on the local multisex circuit in Queens, New York Protected Area. Her current ranking is 9-0 for this season, sir.”
“So she’s good?” Nick mused.
“Better than her opponents, apparently, sir,” the A.I. agreed cheerfully.
“She’s not a part of any anti-vampire groups, is she?” he grunted.
“Nothing in her network history or associations would suggest that, sir.”
“Is she political at all?”
“Not overly, sir,” the A.I. replied. “No political activity documented apart from one citation for disturbing the peace and inciting violence against the state, which occurred eight years ago. She attended a protest rally related to freedom of assembly restrictions for hybrids—”
Vampire Detective Midnight Page 5