Nick scowled.
So did Kit.
“You were going to send him in there cold? Really?” Kit said, her voice still significantly less than friendly. “What a peach.”
Charlie’s full mouth quirked, that time in more of a smirk.
She looked from Kit back up to Nick, that smirk still on her lips.
“Why not? You’re a good cop, Nick. You’d notice if anything weird was going on, assuming there’s anything to notice. You’d at least be able to tell me the layout, how many vamps he’s got down there, what kind of condition they’re in… if they’re all fighters. And if you heard or picked up on anything weird, you could tell me that, too.”
“Why is the NYPD taking an interest in this?” Nick said, still frowning. “Now, I mean. There’s got to be all kinds of illegal vampire shit happening… probably all over the city. The laws are basically set up to screw vampires in that regard. Not to mention the bullshit going on in the black-market sex trade, including by The White Death. Was there some kind of mass vampire disappearance, or––”
“You could say that.” Clenching her jaw, she looked at Kit, then back at Nick, shifting her weight between her feet. “We’ve been finding dead vampires, Nick. A lot of them. Whatever this is, it’s new.”
Nick frowned. He exchanged looks with Kit, who frowned with him.
“Is I.S.F. involved?” he said, looking back at Charlie.
Charlie nodded. “Yes. But it’s murder. They’re locals. Technically this falls with us. If it turns out whoever’s doing this is operating in other protected areas, then it might go to I.S.F., but we’d still be working with them.”
“How do you know it’s not some kind of intra-species thing?” Nick said. “We’re not exactly easy to kill. We’re a hell of a lot harder to kill for a human, unless you’re talking serious firepower––”
“They’ve all been harvested,” Charlie said. “Blood. Venom. Vampires don’t generally do that to other vampires––not in territory fights. When vamps do harvest, it’s generally for money, and they don’t kill them afterwards.”
“Cause of death?”
“Alligators.” She glanced between the two of them, wincing a little at whatever she saw in Kit’s face. “In every case, the killers used alligators to extract their hearts. They’ve been dumping the bodies outside the main shields. Mostly on the northeastern border. They dump them on the trash piles there, let the sun deal with them… or they drop them in the river.”
She added,
“…We haven’t found the hearts yet.”
At their silence, Charlie’s expression hardened.
Looking between the two of them, she refolded her arms.
“We don’t have much forensic evidence,” she admitted, frowning. “We don’t even know how many vamps they’ve killed. We can only guess.”
Kit let out a disbelieving sound.
Nick glanced at her.
His young, human, tech-punk friend, now boxing champion in her weight class for most of the New York Protected Area, straightened from a small, bright-blue backpack at her feet, after stuffing both of her hand-wraps inside. Her bare hands, now free of the same wraps, were bruised and bloodied all the way to her wrists.
“You’re sending Nick in to deal with professional vampire killers?” she said, her voice openly hostile. “Alone? And you weren’t even going to warn him?” She looked at Nick, scowling. “Gee, Nick. With friends like these––”
“We haven’t found any fighters among the dead vampires,” Charlie cut in, giving Kit a warning look. “Not a single one. Contracted or not.”
“Then what’s Farlucci’s connection?” Nick said, drawing Charlie’s eyes back to him. “What got you onto him in the first place, if there are no fighters among the victims?”
The homicide detective exhaled, still gripping her own elbows.
“We find the dead bodies after fight nights,” she admitted. “The disappearances seem to correlate with fight nights, too. We think they might be luring vampires here. To the rings. Maybe with the promise of work. We’re pretty sure most of these vamps weren’t able to get I.S.F. certified for employment, for whatever reason… so they’re likely to be vulnerable to any promise of work, legit or not.”
Kit let out another outraged, disbelieving sound.
Charlie spoke over her.
“––We don’t know the exact connection,” she said aiming a warning look at the younger woman. “But there’s definitely some relationship to the fights. It’s what put Farlucci on our radar. He’s the major player in pro-vampire fighting in the New York Protected Area. He’s also rumored to have some connection to the black market in vampire blood.”
Nick and Kit exchanged looks.
After a pause, Kit shrugged.
“Your funeral, man,” she said, speaking as if Charlie wasn’t there. “How much do you trust this person?”
“Farlucci?” Nick said, frowning.
“No.” Kit aimed a thumb at Charlie without looking at her. “This bitch. The one who was about to send you into the alligator pit with zero head’s up.”
Charlie turned, scowling at Kit.
Ignoring the traded death stares between the two of them, Nick thought about Kit’s question. He would have said before that he trusted Charlie well enough.
She was a cop.
Nick never got any kind of inkling she might be dirty.
The fetish thing could be annoying, but she wasn’t overtly racist, either.
Now, however, given what she’d just confessed she’d been about to let Nick do, he found himself siding more with Kit’s take. He definitely found himself re-appraising Charlie, wondering how well he knew her, and whether she was just overly-enthusiastic to solve this case, or if there was something else going on.
Then there was the other thing.
The thing that didn’t have anything to do with Charlie.
That was the thing where, the more he thought about her words, her description of the case, the more Nick found himself thinking he couldn’t just walk away.
He was a cop. He was a vampire.
He’d been locked in his apartment for over a month.
Anyway, he’d been damned lucky to get the I.S.F. employment designation himself, given his past.
There, but for the grace of… whatever.
One of those dead vampires could easily be him.
“All right,” he said, gruff.
Kit turned sharply, staring at him.
Nick only spared her a glance before he looked back at Charlie.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “Only next time you pull that shit on me, I won’t. Moreover, it’ll be the last case we work together, if you lie to me or withhold anything important again. I’ll also file a racism claim with the I.S.F., which will go on your record. Even if they don’t do a damned thing about it––”
“Oh, they will,” Kit muttered audibly. “They will do a damned thing about it. I’ll make sure it’s at the very top of the pile of things they do a damned thing about…”
Charlie didn’t seem to hear anything past Nick’s first few words.
Relief suffused her striking features, taking some of the hardness out of her high-cheekboned face. Her full lips slid into a smile.
“Hey, thanks Nick. Thanks. And I’ll never do that again. I swear I––”
“You’ll keep it off the books, too,” Nick growled. “Whatever I find out, you’ll have to confirm through a warrant. I can point you in the right direction, assuming there’s anything there to point at. But you’ll leave my name out of it. And I better not get ID’d on the feeds.”
“Nothing about you touches any of this,” she said, holding her hand up in a little kid’s promise. “Nothing official.”
Still watching his face, she added,
“You can even record it with your headset, if they don’t disable it. It won’t track back to you. I’ll log it as coming from a confidential informant. I’ve got authorization to use C.I.
s for this, so I can strip all the identifying information off whatever you get. Like you said, it won’t be enough on its own, but it might get me a warrant. Assuming you find anything––”
Nick cut her off.
“I want to see everything, Charlie. Every single thing you have on this joker. And on the murders. Now.” He checked the timepiece inside his headset. “We’ve got less than an hour before I should head back down there––”
“Of course,” she said hastily, still looking relieved. “Sending it over now…”
Her eyes slid briefly out of focus.
A bare second went by before Nick got a ping in his headset that he had an info-packet waiting for him.
He hit the download button without a thought.
When his eyes refocused on Charlie, she was grinning at him.
“Thanks, Nick,” she said, her voice sincere. “I mean it. You’re the fucking best. Anything you can find for me on this, any insight you can give would be amazing. And I’ll definitely owe you a favor, the next time you need––”
Kit broke in, her voice sharp as cut glass.
“––How ‘bout you stop thanking him, and remember this. You get him killed, and I’ll break your goddamned face. Right before I rip the heart out of your chest with an alligator and toss you outside the fucking dome.”
Charlie froze.
Eyes wide, she turned slowly, blinking at the young tech-punk in incredulity.
Kit’s expression didn’t flinch.
Her voice lowered to a harder threat.
“You can think about where you went wrong in your life for those two seconds you stare up at the real-Sun and breathe in the real-air and feel the radiation starting to cook your skin,” she added coldly. “One bonus: you’ll probably make a mutant dog or eagle really fucking happy when they stumble upon you as a morning snack…”
Nick looked at Kit.
The kid’s face was utterly immovable, without a shred of humor in her eyes.
He looked back at Charlie, quirking an eyebrow.
At the incredulous look on the human detective’s face, he shrugged.
“Don’t piss off my friends,” he said.
Chapter 5
Strange Feelings
The crowd around the vampire ring seemed to have tripled since Nick came down here the first time. It might not have been any denser at its core, but that core had since spread outwards to consume three times as many seats.
He kept glancing back over his shoulder as he walked, making sure Charlie and Kit were in his visual range. When they got to where they were right above the ring, Charlie tapped her headset and shouted at him over the roar of the crowd.
He didn’t make out her words the first time.
Right when she yelled, the crowd’s roar grew deafening.
Triumphant shouts and screams of disappointment went up all around him, presumably over something that just happened in the ring. Nick was close enough now, he could almost see the actual fighters, not just the three-dimensional virtual versions that were fighting overhead.
“Just go ahead!” Charlie shouted, when the noise died down. “Find your way inside! We need to go up higher! I’ll take Kit somewhere on the next few tiers!”
Nick nodded, letting her know he’d heard her, and understood.
He must not have reassured both of them.
Kit pinged him via her headset, letting him know they were connected, that the channel was open, then spoke to him from where she walked behind Charlie, fighting through bodies to keep up with the taller human.
“Hey, big guy,” she said. “Be careful, okay? We’ll be here. We’ll find you… right after the match, but be careful, Nick. If you get a bad vibe, get the fuck out of there. I mean it. Fuck Charlie. Fuck the money. Fuck all of it. Just get the hell out and ping me. I’ll meet you wherever.”
Nick gave her a fleeting look, finding her eyes in the crowd, and nodded.
“Don’t worry, kid,” he said. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”
“No shit, Sherlock. But you tend to break yourself a lot,” she reminded him. “So that’s not super comforting.”
He glanced back to roll his eyes at her, and she grinned.
When he saw the two of them veer to his right, heading for the steep stairs he’d climbed with Charlie earlier, he felt a whisper of relief.
Truthfully, it was easier to fall into this role if he didn’t have to worry about either of them.
Besides, it was probably better if this guy, Farlucci, and his security team didn’t get too many looks at Charlie… or at Kit, for that matter. Charlie, in particular, was memorable, at least to your average female-interested male––or female-interested female, for that matter, at least if Kit’s glances at Charlie’s ass were any indication.
If Farlucci’s people saw him and Charlie, or even him, Kit, and Charlie as “together” in any meaningful way, they might get curious enough to dig into his background a bit more than they likely had up until now.
Considering Kit was contracted to I.S.F., and Charlie was a cop, that might raise questions. The fact that Farlucci approached him would only protect him so much.
Nick had to assume by now they knew he was a Midnight.
Farlucci would’ve scanned his barcode, if he was even a remotely cautious person. He’d more than likely at least skimmed Nick’s public records in the time since, if only for liability reasons. The promoter couldn’t let anyone into the ring who might be a criminal fugitive, or a member of The White Death, for that matter, not without risking his own ass.
For the same reason, if Farlucci was up to anything shady, he’d either tell Nick to take a hike when he flashed his card at the gate, or Nick wouldn’t be exposed to anything incriminating––assuming Farlucci was involved in the vampire disappearances in the first place.
For all those reasons, this might be a short fucking walk to the gate, then another walk back to the stands to find Charlie and Kit.
Charlie would have to find a new way into Farlucci’s den.
Nick was fully prepared for either thing to happen.
His bigger worry was the Kellerman thing––meaning, the very reason Jordan and Morley wanted Nick to stay home in the first place.
Nick’s face was all over the news for days after that whole thing went down.
The coverage died down for the most part, in the time since, as the world and the news cycle moved on, but some chance still existed that someone down here might recognize him––or one of the media drones might ID him with facial-rec software, like Jordan warned.
If Farlucci’s people learned Nick’s real name, they might recognize it from the Kellerman murders, too.
Farlucci would only need one semi-news junkie on his team, and that would be it.
Shoving all that from his mind, Nick approached the line of black-shirted security guards standing in front of the organic-pane fence that marked the secure area around the caged ring.
The humans guarding that entrance were huge.
Hell, they were monsters, the shortest being around Nick’s height at 6’3 or 6’4”, and the tallest being closer to seven feet.
Nick glanced up at that one, noting his almost entire absence of a neck, and his hard, small-looking, cybernetically-enhanced eyes. Instead of lenses, like Kit wore, this guy looked like he might have replaced the naturals totally.
His irises were opaque gold and black, and shimmered with electro-organic life.
Nick wondered how much he could see with those things, and in how many spectrums.
Pulling the card out of his coat pocket, he handed it to the guard in front.
“Farlucci told me to give you this,” he said. “I’m the replacement for the empty slot.”
The guards exchanged looks.
“You don’t look like a vampire,” the one in front said, a dark-skinned man who had at least some Asian in him. “We only fight vamps here, pal.”
Nick reached up to his right eye.
He pluck
ed out the colored contact lens, then looked up at the one who’d spoken.
The four men standing there exchanged looks a second time.
Then the Asian-whatever guy stepped to the side, while no-neck swung open the gate, pushing it inward.
“He’s down below,” no-neck grunted. “You been here before?”
Nick shook his head. “No. I don’t know shit. He came up to me in the crowd.”
The four of them exchanged smiles. One, a bald man who looked to be in his late thirties with a thick, bright blue beard and tattoos all over his face, snorted a laugh.
Before Nick could ask, no-neck turned to the fourth one, the shortest of the four, a strangely young-looking male with a round face, reddish-brown, curly hair and small eyes set close together.
“Gabriel, take him down, will you? I think the boss is by the pens.”
Nick kept a frown off his face with an effort, holding his expression and eyes entirely blank. He wasn’t thrilled at the very livestock-sounding reference. Or the laugh at his mention of being plucked out of the stands.
Shoving his hands in his coat pockets, he opted to follow “Gabriel” down the cement stairs and not think too much, at least not yet.
His headset pinged.
He picked up without thought, assuming it must be Charlie.
“Yeah,” he said, using sub-vocals so the humans around him wouldn’t hear. “I’m in.”
“Nick?”
He froze… then nearly stumbled on the next step, catching himself before the stumble would be noticeable to the humans around him.
“Wynter.”
He glanced around as he descended into the crowd at the bottom of the steps, realizing he was now in the fighter’s trench that lived just below the ring. Above him, two vampires were grappling, metal masks wrapped around their faces and the backs of their heads and necks.
They slammed into the organic cage while he watched, shaking the wall with a loud clanging sound and vibrating the floor below his feet.
These vampires were bigger; the clang was a lot louder.
A roar of shouts went up in the crowd overhead.
“…This isn’t a great time, Wynter.”
“You’re ‘in’?” Her voice sharpened. “In what, Nick?”
Eyes of Ice Page 7
