He knew there was a good chance he’d out himself as a vampire if he let himself think about Wynter in any real way, especially in relation to seeing her in person. His fangs had already extended slightly, just from letting himself go there at all.
Then there were his eyes.
He was wearing colored contact lenses designed to disguise his tell-tale vampire irises, which normally looked like colorless, cracked crystal. Those contacts definitely weren’t foolproof, though. They should work fine when he was in a calm, normal state of mind that kept his eyes that glass-like color.
If his eye color changed in a real way, all bets were off.
Like all vampires, when Nick was engaged in one of the three F’s––feeding, fucking, or fighting––or just thinking too hard about one or all of those things––his irises flushed a bright, glowing scarlet.
The lenses were designed to disguise that, but they were the cheap kind, and sometimes the color leaked through.
Nick’s contacts were a dull brown color.
They fucked with his vision a little, but he was mostly used to them.
That said, he really should shell out for some good ones.
If he didn’t have a habit of losing and/or trashing the damned things, he would have by now. Maybe he’d ask St. Maarten about getting some that mimicked the color of his original, human eyes, which had been closer to hazel, or at least brown with more nuance.
The expensive lenses tended to have minimal vision impairment, and usually could compensate entirely for the blood-red of an excited vampire via organics.
If St. Maarten wanted her own pet vampire on the NYPD, maybe she’d be open to accessorizing him in style. Hell, even the high-end lenses probably could be covered by interest on the money she earned in an hour, if not a few minutes.
He was still turning this over as he reached the end of the tunnel.
Kit gave him precise directions.
She told him which train to take, which station to get off, which exit to leave from the train station. She told him what direction to walk down the street, which subway tunnel entrance he should walk down, and where it should dump him in the auditorium, which happened to be right above the ring where her match would be held.
From her descriptions and explanations, he knew the space would be big, consisting of four rings in total, with the stadium holding almost a hundred thousand people. There were a few dozen entrances, which is why she’d been so precise about how he should leave the train station once he got to this part of Queens.
Even given what he knew, when he walked out of the tunnel and into the stadium lights, he stopped briefly, stunned at the scene that unfolded once his eyes adjusted.
He emerged at the top of a steep flight of stairs, looking down over a massive, bowl-shaped auditorium made up of curved stone benches that formed concentric rings all the way around him on both sides. From what he could tell, most of those seats were taken.
It looked like some kind of futuristic Roman Coliseum.
He was still standing there, getting his bearings, when something happened in the ring directly below him.
Shouts, screams, boos, and whistles went up, deafening as the crowd on either side of him erupted, more than half of them rising to their feet. They began stomping as soon as they’d straightened, chanting and stomping, wiping out Nick’s hearing entirely.
He looked down, and realized they were stepping down on sensors on the floor––sensors that made heavy, percussive sounds, like slightly different tenors of bass drums. The sound echoed up to the ceiling and back, sounding strangely prehistoric, like a sound one would hear before the human sacrifices began.
Kind of oddly fitting.
Humans on both sides of him stomped hard on the sensors, hitting those thunderous drums, clapping their hands in rhythm as they shout-chanted take-down calls at the two women circling one another in the ring below.
“TAKE HER DOWN! TAKE HER DOWN! TAKE HER DOWN, DOWN, DOWNTOWN!”
“TAKE THE BITCH DOWN, CARA!”
“FUCK HER UP!! FUCK HER UP!!!”
Nick winced at the last, but mostly because it came from right next to him. He turned his head to take in a group of teenaged humans who were screaming down at the women in the ring below, throwing bright green sticky popcorn and cupping their hands around their mouths.
“FUCK THAT BITCH UPPPP!”
“PUT HER IN THE TOILET AND FLUSH IT, CARA!”
Weirdly, the grin returned to his face.
He resumed walking, taking the concrete stairs one by one, hands in his pockets, but now he was looking around, trying to get the lay of the land.
He wondered if it was too early to go down closer to the ring, see if he could find Kit. The likelihood of finding her in this mob struck him as unlikely in the extreme, anyway, she’d told him to come down to ringside when her match was about to start, so she could get him a place in the VIP section with her family and friends.
She said she’d leave his name with security.
According to Kit, they should let him in, unless the area was too crowded with rich sponsors and their guests.
Touching his ear, Nick checked the electronic program they’d given him in his headset when he bought his ticket at the gate.
He immediately saw that it had updated.
There were two more fights before Kit’s.
He had plenty of time. Likely well over an hour… if not two.
He definitely had time to hunt down where they were hosting the non-human fights, check that scene out for a few rounds.
At the thought, he glanced around, looking across the auditorium at the other three rings in the massive flat area at the bottom of the stairs.
He pulled up the map that came with his electronic program, looking at the fights listed for the other three elevated rings.
He found the non-human matches at ring four.
Kit’s was ring two.
Looking for the row where he could cut across and walk around in that direction, he hung a right a few tiers down and began moving through a crowd that was laughing, weaving, clutching beers, smoking artificial weed and smokeless mook pipes, and generally bumping into him and one another on their way to whichever fight, bathroom, bar, or food station they were heading towards.
Mook was the new trend, according to the human news.
Still technically legal, the water pipes were stuffed with a lab-grown mushroom-plant concoction (“mook”) that had a pleasant, almost sweet taste and smell.
Nick tried it once, while he was still in Los Angeles.
It did nothing either to or for him, presumably because vampires were immune to the effects, but he’d heard from humans the high lasted a good ten to twelve hours. It was also supposed to be significantly stronger than the high from artificial marijuana. From their descriptions, Nick gathered it was more akin to the magic mushrooms and LSD he grew up with in San Francisco.
He almost wished it did work on vampires; it would have been fun to experiment with while surfing, especially with his vampire senses.
It might be fun to try with Wynter, too.
Shoving that from his mind, he clenched his jaw.
He smelled mook all around him now.
The smell reminded him of clove cigarettes, also from when he was a kid.
Making his way slowly through the crowd, he fought to keep his movements slower, clumsier, more human-like than they needed to be. He was still determined not to call attention to himself, or out himself as a vampire.
The crowd got thicker, the closer he got to the non-human ring.
It became a crush of sweaty, jerking, drunk, shouting, pungent bodies by the time he got in the vicinity of the ring itself. He immediately regretted going that way and frowned, looking around for a way out––or at least a better vantage point.
Even with his height, he couldn’t see much.
He decided to go higher, and veered right.
As he walked, he glanced over his shoulder and up
at the virtual recreation of the fight, which floated a good thirty feet over the ring. He focused on it just in time to see a muscular vampire with bright green hair catch a shorter, stockier vampire in the chest with a flying side-kick, connecting with a satisfying snap of his hip and foot.
Nick had no trouble following the motion with his vampire eyes, even wearing contacts, but the virtual display immediately showed a significantly slowed-down replay a few meters above the real-time stream––presumably for the humans watching.
Nick’s eyes remained on the real-time transmission.
The ring for the nonhumans was caged.
The bars were transparent organic, so he hadn’t noted the difference initially.
Those same transparent walls did nothing to obscure the view from spectators, but they vibrated with a hard clang when the green-eyed vampire pressed his advantage, leaping on the other vampire and slamming him into the cage wall.
The strategic implications weren’t lost on Nick, who found himself immediately fascinated. The walls made sense in terms of safety precautions for the audience, given the differences in force and speed for vampires compared to human fighters. They also presented some interesting opportunities for the fighters themselves.
The vampires also wore face-masks.
The masks wrapped around the backs of their heads, encasing their mouths and noses, wrapping around their jaws––presumably to keep them from forgetting themselves and ripping out the throats of their adversaries, mid-fight.
Even as he thought it, the stocky vampire smashed a fist down on the green-haired vampire’s shoulder, forcing him to his knees with a loud crack.
The shorter vampire––who had spiky brown hair, shaved on the sides, and a gigantic organic implant tattoo of some kind of sea monster that covered his bare, pearly-white back––leapt sideways to avoid the other’s returning swing. His tattoo flashed with different colors as he swung a massive arm, catching the green-haired vampire in a solid right hook to the jaw before the other could rise the rest of the way to his feet.
The green-haired vamp dropped his weight––deliberately that time––before the tattooed vamp could hit him again.
Rolling sideways, he leapt up to the walls of the cage, using the sparking metal walls to leap around and over the stocky one. Landing directly behind him, he swept the shorter vamp’s leg, shoving him forward in the same move.
The caged walls vibrated again.
A cheer went up when the vamp with the brown mohawk hissed at the other, his eyes scarlet.
Nick grinned, in spite of himself.
Now, this––this was more like it.
He turned back towards the steps, aiming his feet for hopefully a place to sit, or at least a place to stand reasonably comfortably, and marginally outside of the main thoroughfare––
When someone grabbed his arm.
“NICK!” The female voice shouted at him, loud, laughing delightedly. “Midnight? Is that you? Holy shit!”
Nick turned, feeling his muscles abruptly tense.
He found himself staring into the face of Charlie, the female homicide detective Jordan had been trying to fix him up with earlier that day.
“How the hell did you get out?” she said, knocked into his space and spilling part of her drink on him.
She didn’t seem to notice.
He scowled.
Fuck. What were the odds?
There had to be ninety-thousand people in here, minimum.
“Aww,” she said, laughing at his expression. “Don’t worry, Midnight. I won’t tell on you.” She leaned into him. He realized she was drunk when she coiled her arm around his waist, squeezing against his side. “Where are you going? Looking for a place in the cheap seats?”
Nick fought with what to say.
He didn’t want to piss her off, especially since she could cut his newfound freedom off at the knees, and barely five hours after he’d finally escaped his apartment.
Anyway, he liked Charlie.
He just didn’t like her the way she seemed to like him.
Disentangling himself carefully, at least enough to put a few inches between them, he leaned down to her ear.
“Thanks, Charlie.”
She laughed at his attempts to extricate himself, but held up her hands agreeably.
“Sorry!” she shouted back over another roar of the crowd. “Didn’t mean to invade your space, Midnight!”
Hesitating a few seconds, he made up his mind, leaning down towards her ear.
“It’s not personal,” he shouted back. “I have a girlfriend who terrifies me.”
She burst out in a shocked laugh.
Relief suffused him when she grinned up at him, her face guileless as she shoved at him playfully with a hand.
“You’re funny,” she said. “I never met a funny vampire before.”
“Any humor is strictly unintentional,” he informed her, shouting above the roar of a crowd. “I’m actually serious about the girlfriend. I don’t want to wake up with a knife at my throat. Or stabbing into any of my other… body parts.”
“Understood,” she yelled back, grinning wider. “And good for you… for not being a dick.”
Smiling back, marginally at least, he shook his head, then leaned back towards her ear.
“Call it a strong survival instinct,” he said, loud.
She burst out in another laugh, then nudged him towards the stairs he’d been walking towards.
“Let’s find a seat,” she shouted.
He nodded, following her nudge towards the cement stairs.
They managed to push their way up to the next level.
It was barely quieter up there, but it was quieter at least. They also rose up above the densest crush of bodies, although every inch of the cement benches Nick saw was crammed full of people, even if most of them were on their feet.
“Do I want to know how you managed your great escape?” Charlie said, once they’d found an open spot along the balcony, and out of the main flow of traffic. She still had to talk-shout to hear herself speak. “Jordan would shit a brick if he knew you were here. If it was him instead of me you ran into, he’d probably have you handcuffed by now.”
Nick rolled his eyes.
“Yeah,” he said, speaking loudly back, solely for her benefit. “I know. But it wouldn’t be handcuffs. He’d taze me to the ground, then punch me in the face about ten times. I’d wake up naked in a cage, my eyes swollen shut, when he started spraying me with a fire hose––”
She laughed out loud, throwing her head back.
“And no…” he added, still loud. “You don’t want to know how I’m here.”
Still grinning, she shook her head at him, taking a sip of her drink, which Nick realized from the smell was something stronger than beer.
“Aw, Jordie’s okay,” she said, loud. “He likes you, you know. I mean, he really likes you. Not just ‘for a vampire’ likes you. He thinks you’re his bud.”
Nick shrugged. “He’s not wrong.”
Charlie laughed louder, in obvious delight. “You’re the Jordie whisperer. I never thought he’d soften to vampires. Much less befriend one. Much less befriend a pain in the ass one like you. How did you do it?”
“My sparkling personality.”
She laughed again, half-choking on her drink.
Nick smiled in spite of himself, glancing at her. “You should go for him. Damon. He’s single, right? Divorced?”
“Jordie?” She snorted, wrinkling her nose. “You’re kidding, right? I grew up down the street from him. We went to high school together.”
“So? He’s a good guy, right?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’d be like dating my brother.”
Nick shrugged, his voice and expression neutral. “Just saying. He’s not a dick. From what you were saying, that’s points in his favor.”
“Just saying, huh?” She gave him a shrewder, more appraising look. “He put you up to saying that? That I should ask him
out?”
Nick laughed.
It was a real laugh that time.
“No,” he said, blunt, looking at her. “And hell no. And I might have to kill you if you tell him I said anything of the kind.”
She grinned wider.
“You’re asking me to keep a lot of secrets tonight, Midnight,” she said, taking another swallow of her drink. “…Your escape artist abilities. Your secret girlfriend with the homicidal streak. Now you’re matchmaking me with Jordie––”
Groans and cries went up from the crowd.
It pulled their eyes and attention sharply back to the ring.
Nick grimaced when he saw the green-haired vampire crumpled at the bottom of the ring, blood pooled around his head and neck.
The vampire with the brown mohawk was jumping up and down on the balls of his feet, howling, his arms and fists up in the air as he bellowed up through the caged ring.
His scarlet eyes were round as saucers.
He looked completely high.
A vampire with a fresh kill… Nick’s mind muttered.
He’d almost forgotten what that looked like.
The green-haired vampire didn’t react to the other’s victory dance.
He lay on the floor of the ring, losing blood, his eyelids fluttering but clearly showing him to be not fully conscious. His jaw through the mask had been wrenched sickeningly out of alignment, making his face look misshapen, like the muzzle of an animal. It looked like the vampire with the mohawk had practically ripped his lower jawbone off his skull.
Nick strongly suspected the mask was the only thing keeping the bone attached to his face.
“He’s going to be feeling that tomorrow,” Nick muttered, taking Charlie’s drink out of her hand and downing a few swallows.
He handed the cup back to her.
If the female detective minded, she didn’t say anything, or even look at him. She took the cup back when he put it in her fingers and immediately took a long drink of her own.
Her eyes remained riveted to the scene in the ring.
“Ouch,” she said, wincing and grimacing. “Gross. That’s just… eww. Gross.” Her eyes never left the scene as she took a few more swallows of the bourbon and coke.
Eyes of Ice Page 5
