The Prescient: A Science Fiction Vampire Detective Novel (Vampire Detective Midnight Book 3)

by JC Andrijeski

  Hesitating, Nick added,

  “Right now, it might be the best scenario we could hope for. After all, they’d already made the damned thing. Really, stupid as it was, Straven and Silverton might have actually done what Straven claimed. They may have saved us from a much worse fate.”

  “What about Brick?” she said, looking up at him with another delicate frown. “He knows about this, right? What if the vampire mob gets their own copy? Or makes their own prototype?”

  Nick felt his jaw clench.

  He wasn’t sure how to answer that, so he only shrugged.

  “I told them,” he said. “Morley and Jordan. They’ll tell I.S.F. And Home-Sec. And Archangel will know… and the military. Really, that’s why the Human Racial Authority was created. I’ve got to assume they’ll be on high alert for that very thing.”

  “That won’t stop him,” Wynter said, matter-of-fact. “Brick.”

  “No,” Nick agreed, shaking his head. “It won’t.”

  “Is he going to expect more from you again?” she said, sharper. “Now that you reached out to him, is he going to expect you to be back in his life again, Nick?”

  Nick wasn’t sure how to answer that, either.

  In the end, he didn’t.

  He picked up her hand, kissing her fingers.

  “I want to go home,” he told her, soft.

  She glanced at Malek, that scrutiny still in her eyes, and nodded.

  “We will,” she said absently. “After we do this.”

  Now they were inside a bombed-out church, a relic from the last civilization, and a relic from that civilization’s end.

  Nick clicked on his headset lamp, panning it out over the church’s brick walls, stopping when his eyes and the beam of light found the painting Malek had brought him out here to show him, just two short days before this one.

  It felt like weeks ago now… months.

  It was bizarre that it had essentially been hours.

  Nick felt Wynter react next to him when she saw the painting, right before she released his fingers, walking directly up to the eight- or nine-foot high image. He watched her face as her eyes flickered over the details.

  Then he followed her gaze to stare at the painting himself.

  It was almost annoying how much more sense the image made now… after it really wasn’t much use to any of them.

  Nick saw the image of Straven’s face, and that time, he could see the fear in the depiction’s expression, the reflection of fire from the bombings in the vampire’s faintly-tinted eyes, what Nick had previously mistaken for the scarlet of an aroused or feeding vampire.

  He saw the Sphinx building, as he had the first time.

  This time, however, Nick also saw the Osiris Building painted in the background, burning after the lower part of it collapsed. He also saw an image of Anubis painted in the foreground, on the side of the mural closer to where he stood.

  Squinting and stepping closer, he saw Silverton’s face reflected in the glass of the untouched building behind Anubis. In the building behind the Sphinx, he saw reflections of the two thieves—the feral-faced woman with the silver dreadlocks and her doting husband.

  Looking down towards the ground, Nick flinched.

  About a foot off the ground, he saw the green and white tile of Silverton’s lab, and the humans who were taking off their clothes in front of what looked like a long, one-way window.

  He also saw a face that could have been Brick’s.

  “Fuck,” Nick said, not sure if he was disturbed or impressed. “It’s all here.”

  Wynter pointed at an image he hadn’t seen, of a rifle muzzle coming out of a window of a tall, blue and white building Nick realized in some shock was the Isis Tower, across the street from Le Chat Noir, where Straven had met their end.

  “Would that help them find the shooter?” Wynter said.

  Nick snapped a few close ups of that part of the painting, so he’d remember where it was. Glancing at Wynter, he reached over and caressed her perfect jaw.

  “It can’t hurt,” he said, shrugging as he lowered his hand.

  He forgot Malek wasn’t standing with them until the seer spoke.

  Wynter and he both turned at once, staring at his dark form outlined in moonlight near an opening in the opposite church wall.

  “This way,” the seer said, his voice patient. “It’s out here.”

  Nick exchanged looks with Wynter, then caught her hand again, twining his fingers in hers. He wasn’t cold, but shivered anyway as he limped towards yet another hole in the crumbling wall, ducking his head to get through the opening and out into the night air.

  He found himself standing in a small walled yard, what might have been part of a garden when the church still stood, or even a small chapel for contemplative prayer.

  “Up here,” the male seer urged.

  Nick looked up, scowling when he saw where the seer was, in spite of himself.

  He didn’t argue, though.

  Exchanging another look with Wynter, he limped over to the crumbling stone stairs, and began making his way slowly up them.

  He didn’t get winded anymore, not as a vampire, but his leg throbbed like hell by the time he reached the top. When Wynter sidled up next to him, wrapping her arm around his waist and pulling him into her, he leaned against her gratefully, putting his hand out to balance some of his weight on the stone rampart above a long field that stretched out before them.

  “This used to be a cemetery,” Malek’s calm voice explained.

  Nick turned his head, seeing the black-haired seer sitting on the edge of the wall, his long legs dangling down.

  Malek kicked his heels lightly against the stone wall, his expression serene.

  “Tai and I used to come up here a lot,” Malek added. “No one bothered us here.”

  He gestured gracefully out over the grounds of the cemetery below.

  “That’s a minefield now,” Malek added, still gazing out over the moonlit grounds. “They are afraid. Many of the mines are still there… kids died, not long after the Cauldron was opened to refugees… so now no one comes here. No one but me and Tai.”

  Wynter and Nick exchanged glances.

  Then Nick cleared his throat, looking out over the barren ground, what seemed to stretch for miles in front of them.

  He saw holes here and there, ragged craters that must be what remained of mines that had been set off… possibly by kids playing tag in the grass, or scrounging for food. The thought made him wince, shivering slightly as he pressed into Wynter.

  “Is this what you wanted to show us?” Nick said after another beat.

  Unsure what to say about it, if so, and not wanting to offend the seer since Malek had just saved his life, Nick cleared his throat.

  “It’s nice up here,” he said, somewhat lamely. “Peaceful.”

  He felt a ripple of nervous humor on Wynter and glanced down.

  He looked away when he saw her holding a hand over her mouth, trying not to laugh.

  If Malek noticed, he was too polite to mention it.

  “Not exactly, no,” the seer said calmly. “Not the field. Not the cemetery.”

  Raising an arm and hand, he pointed, and Nick squinted, trying to follow the direction with his eyes.

  “What?” he said, when the seer didn’t go on.

  Nick still saw nothing but dirt and crabgrass, with the occasional broken headstone reflecting moonlight.

  “What am I looking at? Help me out here, Mal.”

  The seer looked at him, his expression puzzled.

  “The wall,” he said simply. “I wanted to show you the wall.”

  Frowning, Nick looked back towards the moonlit field.

  That time, refocusing his eyes, he saw it.

  Once he had, he went utterly still.

  Next to him, he felt the precise instant Wynter saw it, as well. She sucked in a breath, shock bleeding over her light as she pressed into his side.

  Nick continued to stare.<
br />
  He tried to count them.

  Then, realizing there were too many for that, that even his vampire vision wouldn’t stretch that far, he gave up.

  Reluctantly, he looked at Malek.

  “Have any of those happened yet?” he asked the seer.

  The black-haired male shook his head cheerfully, back to lightly kicking the stone wall with his moccasin-clad feet.

  “Nope,” he said, smiling at Nick. “Not yet.”

  Nick swallowed, nodding.

  He looked back at the cemetery.

  He hadn’t really looked at the wall when they first got up here, in part because so much of it was in shadow. Now that he was focused there, however, the images were unmistakable.

  Every panel of that wall contained a painting.

  Some contained a few.

  Every single painting near enough for Nick to see in any amount of detail appeared to be totally different from the painting next to it.

  “No repeats?” Nick clarified. “Each one is different?”

  “All different,” Malek confirmed with a nod. He frowned then, his brow scrunching as he continued to kick his heels lightly into the stone.

  “I think they’re connected, though,” he said.

  “Connected?” Nick turned, frowning.

  The seer nodded. “Yes. I think so.”

  “How?” Wynter said. “How are they all connected, Malek?”

  The seer stared out at the wall, at all of his hours and days and weeks and months… and likely years and decades of work.

  Then he shrugged, looking back at Wynter with a faint smile.

  “No idea, Ms. James,” he said politely. “None whatsoever.”

  She nodded back, letting out a strangled kind of laugh.

  There wasn’t much humor in it.

  “Gotcha,” she said, glancing up at Nick.

  Nick didn’t return her gaze.

  He stared out over the moonlit cemetery, at the dozens, perhaps hundreds of paintings, and his mind went totally blank.

  Then, when a bird made a sound somewhere overhead—or perhaps a bat, picking up insects brought out by the full moon—Nick’s mind returned to the present.

  Looking at Wynter, he squeezed her up against his side, noting her frown with a faint frown of his own. He could see the question there, too.

  He could see it, but he had no idea in the world how to answer it.

  “I want to go home,” he announced. “It’s time to go home. All of us.”

  There was a silence.

  Then Malek nodded, climbing down off the wall, and landing lightly on the balls of his feet.

  “I agree,” he said.

  Before Nick could react to that—even to let out a breath of relief—the tall, ghostlike seer turned away from them both. Moving rapidly, almost silently, he began descending the stairs they’d taken to reach the top of the wall.

  Within seconds, Nick couldn’t hear him at all.

  He glanced at Wynter.

  His girlfriend …mate, his mind interjected, annoyed… was watching Nick’s face, her eyes worried now, borderline cautious.

  Reading the look there, he hugged her tighter, leaning down to kiss her mouth.

  He knew what she was worried about.

  He knew, but now wasn’t the time.

  Now was the time to go home.

  Without another word, without a single thought left in his head, Nick sighed, wincing as he hopped on his good leg to turn his body around, using the stone wall and Wynter for balance.

  Once he had himself oriented and facing in the right direction, he leaned on Wynter’s shoulder, wrapping his arm around her and stepping carefully on his hurt leg as she began guiding him down the stone stairs after the black-haired seer.

  The cemetery remained behind them.

  Silent, covered in moonlight.

  Only the bats could be heard, and from what Nick could tell, they were having a great time, chasing clouds of bugs that clustered over the minefield.

  The bats were having a good night.

  For now, at least.

  For now, that was good enough for Nick, too.

  What to read next

  WANT TO READ MORE?

  Check out the first book in the Quentin Black Mystery series, staring seer P.I., Quentin Black, who lives and works on a different version of Earth - a version very similar to our own.

  BLACK IN WHITE

  (Quentin Black Mystery #1)

  "My name is Black. Quentin Black."

  Gifted with an uncanny sense about people, psychologist Miri Fox works as an off and on profiler for the police. So when they think they finally nailed the "Wedding Killer," she agrees to check him out, using her gift to discover the truth.

  But the suspect, Quentin Black, isn't anything like Miri expects.

  He claims to be hunting the killer too, and the longer Miri talks to him, the more determined she becomes to uncover his secrets.

  When he confronts her about the nature of her peculiar "insight," Miri gets pulled into Black's bizarre world, and embroiled in a game of cat and mouse with a deadly killer--who might just be Black himself.

  Worse, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Black, a complication she doesn't need with a best friend who's a homicide cop and a boyfriend in intelligence.

  Can Miriam see a way out or is her future covered in Black?

  THE QUENTIN BLACK MYSTERY SERIES encompasses a number of dark, gritty paranormal mystery arcs with science fiction elements, starring brilliant and mysterious Quentin Black and forensic psychologist Miriam Fox. For fans of realistic paranormal mysteries with romantic elements, the series spans continents and dimensions as Black solves crimes, takes on other races and tries to keep his and Miri's true identities secret to keep them both alive.

  See below for sample pages!

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  Sample Pages

  BLACK IN WHITE (A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery)

  Prologue / Palace

  FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD Janine Rico was having a good night.

  Scratch that.

  She was having a great night.

  An epically awesome night, by pretty much any standard.

  First of all, getting alcohol was easy, for a change. She and her pals Hannah and Keeley managed to shoulder-tap some epically challenged, can-I-come-party-with-you-kids loser on their very first try, outside a seedy liquor store on Fillmore. The owner, an older Indian man, didn’t care—so loser boy emerged five minutes later with one of the big bottles of peppermint schnapps and another of cheap rum. They ditched him in the park minutes later, running off with two guys from their school and laughing their asses off.

  That was like, hours ago now.

  The boys had gone home.

  They’d been wandering the city most of the night since, determined to make the most of Keeley’s mom being out of town and letting them stay in her condo in the Marina District. They’d stopped at a few parks to pass the bottles around and talk and snap pictures with their smart phones, watching the orange-tinted fog billow in odd, smoke-like exhales across the wet grass. They’d already discussed their plans for the next day...which mostly involved sleeping in, along with ordering pizza and movies with Keeley’s mom’s credit card.

  An epic weekend, all in
all. Awesomely flawless.

  Janine was tired now, though. The cold wind cut her too, even through the down jacket she wore over her hoodie sweatshirt and multicolored knit tights.

  It was Keeley’s idea to stop at the Palace of Fine Arts before they headed back.

  “Nooooo,” Janine whined, flopping her arms dramatically. “I’m ready to pass out. I’m cold. I have to pee...this is stupid!”

  “Come on,” Keeley cajoled. “It’s totally cool! Look...it’s all lit up!”

  “It’s lit up every night,” Janine grumbled.

  Hannah hooked Janine’s arm, but sided with Keeley. “We can take pictures...send them to Kristi in Tahoe and make her crazy jealous!”

  Hannah always wanted to dig at Kristi. Maybe because Kristi’s family was rich, or maybe because Hannah was jealous that Kristi and Janine were best friends.

  Either way, Janine couldn’t fight both of them.

  Her eyes shifted to the orange-lit, fifty-foot-tall, Roman-esque columns. They stood on the other side of a man-made lake covered in sleeping ducks and swans, making a disjointed crescent like ancient ruins from an old amphitheater. The fountain in the lake was turned off, so the columns reflected a near-perfect mirror on the glass surface of the water.

  As they tromped over slippery grass, Janine found herself thinking it did look pretty cool, with the robe-draped stone ladies resting their arms on top of each column, showing their stone backs to the world. Broken by deep black shadows, the stone faces looked otherworldly. Willow trees hung over the lake, rustling over the water as the wind lifted their pale leaves.

  “All right,” she mumbled, rolling her eyes to let them know they owed her.