Eyes of Ice
Page 38
All of it was scorched black, or coated in white powder from the extinguishing chemicals, and probably from plaster and other materials that had been pulverized from the walls and ceilings.
Nick stared out over the massive crater in the building.
He tried to look around the corner, to where Silverton’s office had been.
There was nothing there, as far as he could tell.
Just the lights of the city, and Morley and Jordan’s headset lights, reflected on the mirrored sides of the building across the way.
“Did they find any bodies below?” Nick said, glancing back at Morley.
The senior detective shook his head.
“No, not that I’ve heard. You smell anything at all, Tanaka? Like maybe parts of them could still be up here?”
The detective glanced to his left, frowning at where what looked like an old-style copy machine stuck out of part of the wall, dripping black fluid of some kind.
“…Maybe stuck in a wall, like the rest of this stuff?” he added after a beat.
Nick shook his head, managing to not roll his eyes with an effort.
“The other smells are pretty much overpowering everything else right now,” Nick said. “I doubt I can smell much more than you can right now, boss. Pretty much everything smells like smoke and chemicals… and burnt plastic.”
He looked down the hole in the floor again.
Tilting his head then, he frowned.
“Wait,” he said. “I think I see something.”
He didn’t think that time.
Gauging the distance with his vampire eyes, he made a snap decision.
“I’m going to go check it out,” he said, glancing at Morley. “Wait here.”
Morley frowned. “What? No. Don’t do that––”
But Nick had already stepped forward, letting himself fall through the two missing stories to what must be the eighty-fifth? Eighty-six?
Anyway, the floor that started up again at the end of the crater.
He heard a startled cry from Jordan as he disappeared through the opening.
Nick barely had time to recognize it before he landed in a crouch on a solid feeling floor, one completely covered in debris and more of that white powder.
He glanced around, that time using his nose to find what he thought he’d spotted from the floor above. He found it in seconds. The glint of the old-fashioned watch, which is what first caught his eye from that upper floor, was still strapped around its previous owner’s wrist.
“Found an arm,” Nick called up.
Seeing a flickering of lights, he glanced up and saw Morley and Jordan peering over the edge of the broken floor, their headsets making him blink, and eventually throw up a hand to shield his eyes.
“Don’t get too fucking close,” Nick growled. He switched to his headset, opening the channel to both of them. “Watch the edge,” he said. “You’re too close, both of you… I told you to stay away from the edge there.”
“You’re out of your mind, Midnight,” Jordan said.
Nick ignored that.
“Why don’t you two take the elevator down here?” he said instead. He looked around, making a more concerted effort to count floors that time. “Eighty-fifth floor,” he said after a pause. “So three floors down. The structure seems intact down here. And there’s a body here. So something for us to, you know, do actual detecting on.”
Jordan laughed.
Nick could practically see Morley roll his eyes.
Still, the senior detective’s voice was almost amused when he answered.
“On our way.”
WANT TO READ MORE?
Continue the rest of the novel:
THE PRESCIENT
(Vampire Detective Midnight #3)
Series Summaries:
VAMPIRE DETECTIVE MIDNIGHT features vampire with a past and homicide detective, Naoko "Nick" Tanaka, in a futuristic, dystopian version of New York City. After a bad incident in Los Angeles, Nick gets transferred to the NYPD, where he works as a "Midnight," or vampire in the employ of the human police department. When Nick arrives in New York, he really just wants to be left alone, but life, and the residents of New York, have other ideas.
QUENTIN BLACK MYSTERY SERIES is a dark, gritty paranormal mystery romance with science fiction elements, starring brilliant and mysterious Quentin Black and forensic psychologist Miriam Fox. 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.
BRIDGE & SWORD SERIES is an epic, apocalyptic world and alternate history of Earth, one peopled by a second race called “Seers,” a psychic, hyper-sexual, emotionally volatile and immensely powerful race discovered in Asia at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. It stars a woman grappling with her role in bringing about the end of one world and the start of a new one. Follow Allie Taylor and her antihero partner, Dehgoies Revik, as they fight terrifying enemies and one another in a passionate story spanning centuries, filled with unpredictable twists, turns and betrayals, and an epic battle of light vs. dark.
THE MORPH SERIES is a science fiction mystery romance centering on shifters from another world, called morph. Earth humans remained blissfully ignorant of the existence of alternate dimensions until Nihkil Jamri tries to save private detective, Dakota Reyes, while he is surveying Earth.
ALIEN APOCALYPSE is a post-apocalyptic dystopian romance series about a tough girl named Jet Tetsuo who grew up on Earth following an alien invasion. Forced into living among her conquerors, she learns to navigate a dangerous world of sexy aliens, enemies who pose as friends, treacherous humans, traitors and unlikely allies, even as she becomes their most famous fighter in the Rings, their alien version of the coliseum.
Books in the Vampire Detective Midnight Series
(Recommended Reading Order)
VAMPIRE DETECTIVE MIDNIGHT (Book #1)
EYES OF ICE (Book #2)
THE PRESCIENT (Book #3)
Books in the Quentin Black Mystery Series
(Recommended Reading Order)
BLACK IN WHITE (Book #1)
Kirev’s Door (Book #0.5)
BLACK AS NIGHT (Book #2)
Black Christmas (Book #2.5)
BLACK ON BLACK (Book #3)
Black Supper (Book #3.5)
BLACK IS BACK (Book #4)
BLACK AND BLUE (Book #5)
Black Blood (Book #5.5)
BLACK OF MOOD (Book #6)
BLACK TO DUST (Book #7)
IN BLACK WE TRUST (Book #8)
BLACK THE SUN (Book #9)
TO BLACK WITH LOVE (Book #10)
Black Dreams (Book #10.5)
Books in the Bridge & Sword Series
(Recommended Reading Order)
New York (Bridge & Sword Prequel Novel #0.5)
ROOK (Bridge & Sword #1)
SHIELD (Bridge & Sword #2)
SWORD (Bridge & Sword #3)
Revik (Bridge & Sword Prequel Novel #0.1)
SHADOW (Bridge & Sword #4)
KNIGHT (Bridge & Sword #5)
WAR (Bridge & Sword #6)
BRIDGE (Bridge & Sword #7)
Trickster (Bridge & Sword Prequel Novel #0.2)
The Defector (Bridge & Sword Prequel Novel #0.3)
PROPHET (Bridge & Sword #8)
A Glint of Light (Bridge & Sword #8.5)
DRAGON (Bridge & Sword #9)
The Guardian (Bridge & Sword #0.4)
SUN (Bridge & Sword #10)
Other books by JC AndriJeski
Alien Apocalypse
The Culling (Part I)
The Royals (Part II)
The New Order (Part III)
The Rebellion (Part IV)
The Morph
The Morph
Crash Morph
Standalones
Shadow Wings
Red Magic
About the Author
JC Andrijeski is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal be
stselling author who writes paranormal mysteries, urban fantasy, and apocalyptic and cyberpunk-y science fiction, often with a metaphysical bent.
JC has a background in journalism, history and politics, and currently traipses around the globe, eats odd foods, and reads whatever she can get her hands on. She grew up in the Bay Area of California, but has lived abroad in Europe, Australia and Asia, and from coast to coast in the continental United States.
She currently lives and writes full time in Bangkok, Thailand.
To learn more about JC, please visit https://jcandrijeski.com
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“Seeking Truth in Made-Up Worlds”