Eyes of Ice

by J. C. Andrijeski

  Gliding liquidly to his feet, he hooked a punch, hard, to the other’s kidney, more as an experiment, in part to see if he could land it, and in part to test the other’s reflexes, and his awareness of his periphery. He followed with another solid hook with his other arm and fist, that time aiming for the small of big vampire’s back.

  When the larger vampire fell forward, Nick took advantage of the other’s lack of grounding and whipped around with a hook-kick to the opposite kidney.

  The vampire hissed behind his mask.

  Nick landed, lightly, a bare ripple of gravity and muscle before he leapt up again, twisting in the air to kick the vampire in the face, getting a warm ripple in his belly at the crunch sound he heard––right before the vampire slammed into the transparent wall.

  All of that happened in a handful of seconds.

  Three. Maybe four.

  A calm fell over his mind.

  This was familiar.

  This was something he knew.

  More to the point, he’d been locked in his five-hundred-and-twenty-five square foot apartment for a month and a half. He hadn’t even had live-feeds to entertain him.

  He hadn’t been allowed to hunt––really hunt––in more than twenty years.

  He hadn’t been allowed to really fight outside of simulations.

  It might have been crude to call this his happy place.

  But yeah.

  This was Nick’s fucking happy place.

  He stalked behind the larger vampire, waiting for him to get back to his feet.

  He waited, patient, for the other male to face him.

  The giant pulled himself up. He turned, facing Nick slowly, growling under his breath.

  His eyes were scarlet above the mask. That calm, Zen vibe Nick glimpsed in him before, the vague amusement he’d seen, had entirely vanished. Blood trickled from under the tight dark braids. Nick saw more blood trickle out from under the mask, down the marble-white throat, and knew the crunch he’d heard was the male’s cheekbone.

  That hard mask would probably be hurting him soon.

  The growl grew louder. Then the vampire hissed at him from behind the mask.

  That blankness Nick had seen was gone now, too. Fury shone there, a murderous, mindless fury Nick knew, that geared right into that warmer place in Nick’s gut.

  Animal to animal. Blood to blood.

  Nick remembered this. He remembered, and not only from the wars.

  He remembered the satisfaction of it. He remembered the near gratification that came of fighting the animal part of himself, of ripping it apart with his bare hands.

  Looking at the other vamp now, that animal was all Nick saw.

  The white skin, bloody-splattered face, sharpened claws, and Maori tattoos came at Nick with a thick arm cocked, growling at him in murderous, animal fury, those knife-like nails aimed at Nick’s eyes.

  Nick leapt all the way to the wall that time, climbing up it for a bare few seconds, then leaping off it for the other side.

  Rather than landing on the wall, he kicked off it, twisting in the air.

  His eyes locked on the other male as he whipped around above him.

  His heels connected solidly with that thick chest, throwing the vampire backwards.

  That time, the other lost his battle with gravity altogether.

  The dark head with the purple, black and red braids slammed into the transparent wall with a loud crack––a much louder crack than what Nick heard when he busted the giant’s face.

  The walls shimmered, vibrating all the way up to the ceiling.

  Nick landing lightly on the balls of his feet in the middle of the ring.

  He never took his eyes off the downed male.

  He stared at him from a half-crouch, waiting for him to get up, to move. He waited for him to snarl, to rush at him again, to slash at him with those long, sharpened claws. He waited for him to fight… to give as good as he’d gotten. Without fully acknowledging it, at least not until some hours later, Nick waited for the other male to try to kill him.

  In some way he couldn’t explain to himself, he longed for it.

  It took him a few seconds more to realize the fight was over.

  He’d broken the giant’s spine. Some part of it, at least.

  He straightened slowly, still wary.

  Only when he was really sure the other vampire wasn’t playing possum, when he was sure the crack he’d heard came from other’s spinal column… did Nick take his eyes off the downed giant.

  For the first time, he looked out the walls of the transparent cage.

  He saw rows and rows of humans on their feet.

  They weren’t cheering.

  They weren’t booing.

  They weren’t screaming, or stomping their feet on the paneled floors. They stood there, shock etched on their faces, seemingly frozen.

  They stared at him.

  They stared at the giant vampire bleeding on the mat.

  Then, suddenly, Nick saw the stadium erupt.

  The sound was muted through the thick walls, but he saw the paralysis break, saw them jumping up and down, even as the rumble of shouts and foot-stomping vibrated the outside of the cage.

  Nick stared around, his fangs still extended behind the mask, his throat still emitting a low growl. Even so, he felt dazed, borderline drugged, more in a detached kind of tension and puzzlement than anything that felt like true aggression. He just stood there, staring around at the human crowd moving and shouting behind the organic wall––

  When the doors opened on either side of the transparent cage.

  Sound flooded the small space, shocking him.

  He hadn’t realized how quiet it was until the quiet ended.

  The roar of the crowd grew deafening.

  It was like someone had turned the volume from mute up to the highest setting.

  Screams, shouts, cheers––they shocked his sensitive vampire hearing, bringing back his harder aggression in a rush. The percussive thumping underlying those higher-pitched sounds somehow made that aggression worse––the tribal, rhythmic pounding of feet on sensor drums built into the floor, bass music exploding from the arena speakers, the rolling, trilling speech of the announcer as he narrated something that echoed overhead.

  Nick blinked.

  He barely noticed the humans who approached him on either side until they’d almost reached where he stood.

  By then, he’d already fallen instinctively into a combat crouch.

  “Hey.” Tom stood in front of him, both hands held up, palms facing him. “Calm down, big guy. Fight’s over.”

  Nick stared at him.

  Seeing the tranquilizer rifle in the hands of the other human in the cage, Nick stepped back, dropping into an even lower crouch.

  The growl that came out of the deeper part of his chest rose without his willing it. At the same time, he fought to pull himself back. His survival instincts fought the impulse, even as his eyes darted between the gun and the blond human.

  “Wait!” Tom held up a hand to the man with the rifle. “Give him a second! He can come back.”

  Those hazel eyes focused only on Nick.

  “You got this, man. You can come back… right? Don’t make us dart you.”

  Nick stared at him. He stared into those light blue eyes.

  He fought to hear him.

  A distant, more rational part of his mind could feel where he’d gone.

  He was there again.

  He was there.

  He could feel the part of him that fucking loved it.

  He could feel the part of him that didn’t want to come back.

  “Hey!” Tom’s voice rose, a clear warning. “Calm down. Grant? GRANT! Calm the fuck down! Don’t make us drop you!”

  Nick met his gaze.

  The growl in the depth of his chest grew colder, more menacing.

  Still, he was seeing the other human again. He found himself recognizing him, recognizing his face, his voice.


  As he did, the other Nick slowly began to return.

  The image of the human in front of him changed as he did, flickering behind his eyes, going back and forth, from prey to person from prey to person––

  Then, from his other side, in his peripheral vision, he saw the rifle rise.

  Nick didn’t think.

  All thought of pulling back left his mind.

  All thought of person or prey left his mind.

  He leapt.

  He leapt, twisting in the air even as the rifle’s muzzle rose.

  Before his feet had left the ring’s mat––

  Something hit him dead in the center of his throat.

  There was no gap.

  There was no moment of gray, no gradation, no tunneling vision.

  There was no warning at all.

  Everything went utterly black.

  Chapter 8

  That’s… Not How We Thought It Would Go

  Nick opened his eyes.

  He found himself blinking into a scorching, bright light.

  He scowled, raising his arm to shield his eyes––

  ––but his arm jerked to a stop.

  It rose barely an inch from whatever he was lying on.

  Nick froze.

  Looking down, he focused on his cuffed wrist. He went totally still as he assessed his situation, as it grew increasingly clear that it wasn’t only that arm that was bound.

  Both arms at the wrists, both biceps, both ankles, his neck, his chest, his waist…

  Nick felt each one of the restraints individually, assessing their thickness, their probable materials, the likelihood he could break or tear any of them. As he did, his fangs slowly extended. He realized only then that he wore a mask over his mouth and jaw.

  Fury swam through him.

  He jerked hard at the restraint on his right wrist––

  “He’s awake,” a voice commented. It was businesslike, distracted. “Go on… see to him. Before he tears that table apart, too.”

  In a blink, three bodies appeared over Nick, blocking the light.

  He squinted up at them, disoriented by the change in view.

  “Hey.” A familiar voice.

  Nick’s gaze shifted, connecting with blue eyes, blond hair, a familiar smirk.

  “You going to behave if we take that mask off you?” Tom said.

  Thinking about the question, Nick nodded, once.

  Tom chuckled, glancing at the other two humans hanging over Nick’s bound body. Nick recognized one of them as the no-neck guy who’d been working the gate. The other was a human he’d never seen, a big black guy almost the same height as no-neck.

  “I think he’s okay,” Tom said. “His eyes are clear. Unhook that thing.” He nodded to the no-neck human, who was closest to Nick’s head.

  Nick glanced up at that human’s face.

  He saw hesitation in the light brown eyes, but after a pause, the big male seemed to make up his mind. With surprisingly gentle hands, he tugged up Nick’s head and neck, unhooking some kind of strap in the back, the same one Nick remembered Tom tightening earlier that night, while he’d been fitting the mask to Nick’s face.

  The muzzle loosened, all at once.

  It came off Nick’s face and mouth in the same set of seconds, disorienting him all over again when the organic fabric left his skin.

  Nick worked his jaw, still blinking his eyes up at the bright light.

  For a moment he only lay there, trying to pull his brain back on line.

  He could tell he was still doped from whatever they’d hit him with. He tried to sit up, but again, the restraints stopped him.

  “Do you mind?” he said, his voice terse.

  He raised his arm so that it hit the limit of the restraints, yanking it a few times to make a dull thunk noise with the metal part of the strap, and thus reinforce his point.

  Tom glanced at the person behind him, the person Nick still couldn’t see due to the angle of where he lay on the padded table.

  “He’s fine,” the voice said, still sounding distracted, like he was multi-tasking this with a few other things. “Let him up.”

  There was a yank and a tug on Nick’s wrists, first on one side than the other. The big black guy unhooked more restraints on Nick’s biceps, then his thighs, then his ankles.

  Nick saw a glimmer of nervousness in no-neck when he reached for the straps around Nick’s chest. That glimmer grew more prominent when the same massive human unbuckled the restraint circling Nick’s neck.

  Once he could feel them all gone, Nick raised his hand, rubbing his throat in some irritation as he sat up.

  “Was that entirely necessary?” he grumbled.

  The four men looked at one another.

  The man who was sitting off to the side, who Nick had already realized was David Farlucci, looked over, too.

  Then, seemingly all at once, they all laughed.

  “Yes,” Tom said, clapping him good-naturedly on the shoulder. “It was absolutely, entirely, and one-hundred-percent necessary, friend.”

  Farlucci was on his feet now, moving away from the low couch where he’d been sitting.

  Frowning faintly, he hit a button on his wrist band, and a complex virtual display with multiple screens that Nick barely had time to glimpse folded back down into itself and vanished, right before an obviously organic panel closed, leaving his wristband featureless, a black-gold infused with threads of dark green.

  He walked right up to where Nick sat on the padded bench. Stopping in front of him, he folded his arms across the vest of his gray, three-piece suit.

  When he didn’t speak immediately, Nick found himself checking out the room.

  It didn’t look anything like the prep room he’d been in earlier, the one with the armor and the face masks and the boxing equipment.

  This looked more like someone’s office.

  That, or maybe a private lounge, but Nick was going with office, and most likely Farlucci’s office, if only for the giant, gold and green art engraving of the sea creature from his business card hanging over the desk, the white stone shimmering with AR-enhanced details. The stone itself may have been granite, or even marble; whatever it was, it looked heavy, real, and old. It must have cost Farlucci a fortune to have it made.

  The fact that Farlucci had something like that placed under his boxing ring in Queens definitely said something about the promoter.

  Nick just wasn’t sure what it said, exactly.

  But something.

  And they were definitely back under the boxing ring.

  Now that Nick’s mind was slowly coming back, he could hear the thumping music and pounding, stomping feet of the crowd above, despite the sound-deadening tech Farlucci must have installed over his whole pit area for it to be so quiet.

  The actual furniture in the room looked expensive and immaculate, and also oddly out of place, given where they were. In addition to the stone carving, what looked like real, original paintings hung on the walls, illuminated with soft lighting. Below the carving, a large, real-wood desk stood out from the wall, with what looked like a real leather chair behind it.

  David Farlucci hadn’t been sitting at his desk, though.

  He’d been sitting on one of the dark blue couches in the middle of the room, with a glass coffee table between them. Some kind of green shake sat in a semi-organic mug on the glass. The blue couches also looked and smelled like real leather.

  When Farlucci broke the silence, Nick’s eyes swiveled to him.

  “That… didn’t go how we were expecting, friend,” the human commented flatly.

  There was a silence.

  A few seconds into that silence, Nick shrugged.

  “Sorry.”

  He rotated and stretched his neck, scowling at the head-rush that greeted him, making him blink to focus his eyes.

  Glancing back up and around at the rest of them, he saw all eyes focused on him and frowned.

  “Is it the money?” he said. “Is that
what all of this staring and weird mafia shit is about? You shouldn’t have offered me double for a win, not without asking me a damned thing about myself.”

  Tom and Farlucci exchanged looks.

  Then both of them laughed.

  Something in Farlucci’s face relaxed.

  “It’s not the money,” he assured Nick, looking him over with more scrutiny. “We’ll transfer the money now, if you’d like. All we have to do is scan your barcode.”

  “Then what is it? What’s wrong?” Nick said, still feeling a bit annoyed and woozy from the drug. “The guy’s all right, isn’t he? The other vamp? I know I broke his back, but––”

  “He’ll be fine,” Tom said, his voice equally reassuring. “He’s sleeping it off in the other room. We’ll give him a new identity for the rings, a few new toys and costume changes, and he’ll keep fighting.”

  Nick looked between the two of them.

  He looked at no-neck, and the big African-American guy who stood a little further back. Neither of the last two had spoken a word, not since they’d unstrapped Nick from the padded table. They all stared at him like he was some kind of zoological exhibit.

  “What?” Nick growled. “Seriously. What the fuck?”

  Again, Farlucci spoke up. “Who are you, friend?”

  Nick scowled, turning to face him. “What do you mean?”

  “You fought in the wars?”

  Fighting to control the anger in his expression, Nick nodded, still frowning as he rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Yes.”

  “As a vampire?” the human queried.

  Nick’s stare hardened. “Yes.”

  “What were you before?” Tom said, speaking up from closer. “Before you were turned?”

  Nick hesitated, again looking around at all of them.

  He was beginning to think this whole fight thing was a mistake.

  He was also realizing he hadn’t really thought it through.

  It hadn’t really occurred to him that his fighting ability might raise questions. Then again, it hadn’t really occurred to him he might lose control like that, and not be able to calibrate his actions a little more closely to what their expectations likely were for him in the ring.