Watching a half-dozen Leash agents talking in low voices by an armored vehicle, Nick gave them a wide berth. He headed for the building’s lobby, where Jordan said to meet them.
He saw Morley first.
The tall, rail-thin, African-American detective stood just inside the old-fashioned revolving door, drinking fake coffee out of that hideous Yankees mug he always carried with him. The damned thing was blinking and morphing with its old-school American flag image, interspersed with virtual fireworks over the ancient Yankees symbol.
Morley watched Nick approach, his thin face unsmiling.
The detective didn’t usually look this old.
Despite his salt and pepper hair, Nick normally thought of him as being close to the “middle” part of middle age, and pretty damned fit. Looking at him now, he realized Morley was probably pushing sixty, which was edging past the upper part of that age bracket.
Being a vampire still fucked with his head when it came to human age.
Truthfully, he’d thought of Morley as more or less his own age.
That was despite the fact that Nick looked closer to his late twenties than his late fifties, not to mention that he had a few centuries on the old man.
He stopped in front of his human boss, frowning.
“Where’s Damon?” he said, referring to Jordan. “What the fuck happened here?”
Morley’s full lips pursed in a sideways frown.
Motioning with his head for Nick to follow, he turned, leading them deeper into the building’s three-story lobby. He walked up to a round security station that stood almost exactly in the middle of the bronze-plated space.
Nick glanced around, noticing the whole interior was plated with that same bronze, with three of the walls etched in Art Deco, minimalist skylines in gunmetal gray, gold, and black. Every surface he saw was so clean, you could have eaten off it.
The security station was empty.
Nick wasn’t surprised. He’d seen a guy in a rent-a-cop uniform outside, surrounded by Homeland Defense and Regional Anti-Terror, looking like he was about to shit his pants.
“This is looking pretty big, boss,” Nick muttered, once Morley was leaning against the edge of the security station. “You sure we’re in the right place? Is the NYPD just here to look pretty while the goon squad does its thing?”
Morley turned, giving him a hard look.
“We’re supposed to get access to the scene,” he said. “I sent Jordan to check.”
Nick stared at the human detective, trying to wrap his head around what he saw in his eyes, in the hard set of his mouth. Nick’s jokes often went down like a bag of rocks with the old man, but they usually earned him an eyeroll at least, or some quip about what an idiot he was. This time, he saw zero amusement or even irritation in Morley’s eyes.
He wanted to ask, but something about the expression there made him hesitate.
What the fuck had happened here?
“We’re taking the custody of the remains?” he said, wary. “I saw our squints outside, cooling their heels.”
Morley was already shaking his head. “No. I.S.F.”
“The human, too? Or just Nuñez?”
“There is no human. The private-sec specialist was a vampire.”
Nick frowned. He was about to press Morley for more, but the elevator doors opened in front of him, shifting his gaze.
He watched a group of six uniformed I.S.F. techs carry a black body bag out of the elevator car. They lugged the center-heavy bag between them, one on each corner and two in the middle.
From the way they carried it, it was too heavy.
Meaning, it was too heavy to be a regular body.
It was definitely too heavy for the female Midnight, Nuñez.
Vampires tended to weigh significantly more than humans, even small vampires. They often weighed half as much again, compared to humans of the same height and build. But even with that extra density of bones and flesh, Nuñez was only about five-two.
From what Nick could tell, whatever was in that body bag was too heavy even for the private-sec guy, Ming, who’d been described as over six feet tall, and built. That would be true even if he was a vampire, like Morley claimed. The six men carrying it could barely support the load, and at least two of them were vampires.
So what the fuck was inside?
Gold bars? A steel beam?
A body encased in one or both things?
Nick frowned, trying to decide if there was any way in hell his NYPD headset channel would be secure in here, given all the federal and global racial units both inside and outside the building. He decided there wasn’t.
Any way in hell, that is.
He had to assume anything he said over any channel would be overheard.
Sliding closer to Morley along the security station counter, he leaned in so that he was basically in the other’s face. He made his voice low enough that none of the I.S.F. vampires would hear him, either.
“What the fuck happened?” he murmured. “Are we going to talk about this?”
“Not here.” Morley’s dark eyes trained past him, focused on the six I.S.F. uniforms struggling with the body bag. “Let’s see what Jordan says. We’ll go somewhere after.”
Nick thought about that, then nodded.
The I.S.F. techs were passing them now, and Nick’s nose wrinkled involuntarily at the smell. Whatever was in that bag, it smelled of blood.
Vampire blood.
Dead vampire smelled significantly worse to his discerning vampire palate than dead human, but Nick got enough of a nose-full to guess female, not male.
Feeling eyes on him, he glanced up.
A male vampire, one not wearing contact lenses, stared back.
The vampire held one corner of the body bag, his red hair shaved around the sides and back and done up in a matted ponytail on top. The shaved sides of his head showed implant tattoos, which must have been expensive to obtain, not to mention painful as fuck.
The only way to get them there would be to attach them to the bone.
Nick stared at the image of a leaf-green snake writhing around the back of his head, under the dark red ponytail. The other image he saw, when the male vampire turned his head, was of two crossed daggers.
Khanjar daggers… with Anubis heads.
Nick tensed.
He recognized that symbol. It was a calling card, one of many that belonged to the White Death. That specific symbol signified someone who killed for them.
Nick’s eyes flickered back to the vampire’s face. He found the male smiling at him, his colorless, cracked-crystal eyes showing recognition.
He knew who Nick was.
The realization made Nick’s muscles clench all over again, his shoulders, abdomen and legs bunching up where he stood. He felt a side of himself gear up unconsciously, even more than it did when he was about to walk into the ring.
This fucker knew him.
He was White Death, or had been, and he knew Nick.
How the hell did Nick not know him?
He found himself reaching unconsciously for his thigh, looking for a knife he hadn’t worn there in years… in decades…
Then the obvious answer hit him, and he felt his shoulders relax.
The fights. Of course.
This asshole didn’t know him from the vampire underground––or from the White Death.
He knew Nick from the damned fighting rings.
Hell, this guy probably wasn’t White Death at all.
In fact, the more Nick thought about it, the more it sank in how much more likely that was. This jackass worked for I.S.F., for fuck’s sake, in what appeared to be a low-level role. The I.S.F. wouldn’t knowingly put an ex-White Death soldier––an ex-vampire terrorist, essentially––into a position like that.
Anyway, working for the I.S.F., a vampire regulatory and enforcement body, after being in White Death, was like painting a target on your chest in hybrid blood.
No, he was likely just som
e poor, deluded, poser dickhead.
The symbol was old. Hardly anyone used it anymore. He probably just thought it looked cool and got it without finding out what it meant.
Nick wondered if he should be the one to tell him.
Wearing that symbol, without having earned it, would definitely get him killed if he ran into the wrong vamp.
The red-haired vampire was still staring at Nick, that faint smirk on his lips, as he helped the others carry the too-heavy body bag to the antique revolving door. Before they’d quite gotten there, that door spun inward, ejecting a tall, handsome black man in his early thirties, wearing a NYPD windbreaker.
Nick saw Jordan glance at the six I.S.F. assholes, then down at the too-heavy body bag, before refocusing on the red-haired vampire, noticing his stare backwards into the building. Jordan followed that stare all the way to Nick, without slowing his pace.
Nick had to give his friend credit.
Damon didn’t miss much.
The younger detective walked right up to them, his mouth curved in a half-frown. He aimed a thumb at the I.S.F. techs, who were already disappearing through the door.
“You know that guy, Midnight?”
Nick shook his head. “No.”
“Another fight fan?”
Nick scowled. “No idea.”
Jordan gave a half-laugh. “Yeah. Well, he looked like an asshole.”
Nick agreed.
“You still giving a speech tomorrow?” Jordan said next, grinning at Nick and nudging him. “I got a tux and everything. The whole NYPD’s supposed to be there. Every precinct. Plus the governor. No pressure, though.”
Nick felt his mouth twist in a harder scowl.
Damn. He’d forgotten all about that stupid banquet.
“I don’t know about a speech,” he muttered. “The Lieutenant said he might want me to congratulate them… say a few words…”
“Sounds like a speech to me.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “He mostly lectured me up and down about how I had to be there, or else. I guess he was afraid I’d blow it off. He made a big deal about how I had to represent the department. How being a ‘celebrity’ made it my responsibility.”
Nick scowled, remembering.
“Fuck. I probably have to get a tux, too,” he muttered.
Jordan laughed. “You look so depressed about that, Tanaka.”
Nick aimed his scowl at his friend, but Jordan only laughed harder.
“The Lieutenant told us you were giving a speech,” he grinned, nudging Nick again with his palm. “He said you were going to be poster-boy for all the new Midnights the governor’s putting on the payroll. Part of his new ‘friendly neighborhood vampire cops’ policy. So lots of media, Midnight. Lots of human reporters. Lots of weirdo fight groupies trying to get into your pants. Plus you’ll have all those vamp rooks there, dressed in their spanking new uniforms, listening to you adoringly––”
“You really are an asshole, you know that?” Nick grunted.
“You get stage fright, Midnight? Need some pointers?”
“Fuck off.”
Morley barely seemed to hear any of this.
He was staring at Jordan too, that ugly-ass coffee mug still gripped in one hand. It struck Nick that he hadn’t seen the detective take a single sip off that mug since he got here.
“We get access?” Morley said.
Jordan hesitated, his smile fading.
Then he nodded, reaching into his windbreaker pockets and pulling out two badges on lanyards. Nick noticed only then that Jordan wore a third one around his neck already. It declared them NYPD, but also had “ACCESS APPROVED” stamped across the front in virtual.
“Put these on,” Jordan grunted. “And keep them on. Took me a half-hour to get them. They’ve got this site locked up tighter than a weasel’s asshole.”
“Lots of experience with weasel’s assholes, then?” Nick said, his lips twitching.
Jordan knocked into him with a shoulder.
“Shut it, celebrity boy. Just put the damned thing on and try not to get us thrown out.”
Nick gave him a mock-offended frown, but truthfully, he was ridiculously glad Jordan was there. Morley was acting nothing like how Nick had grown accustomed to Morley acting, and it was starting to weird him out.
Between him and that vampire with the White Death tat, Jordan, even Jordan giving him shit, was a welcome dose of normalcy.
He was about to say something more, when a ping hit his headset.
Nick answered without thought.
“Midnight.”
“Nick.” A relieved male voice. “Nick. Thank goodness. Are you in the building? The one with the dead vampires?”
Nick frowned.
Then he blinked, flinching as an angular face rose in his virtual screen.
The eyes appeared last, like a perverted Cheshire Cat––one iris a pale, translucent blue, the other nearly black.
Recognizing the face there, even more than the voice, Nick scowled.
“Nick,” the seer said. “I need to talk to you.”
Nick switched to sub-vocals, glancing at Jordan. “This isn’t a good time, Mal. I’ll call you back.”
“But there’s a painting. I have a painting for you. And I need to talk to you––”
“Great. I’ll see it later.”
“But Nick––”
“Not now,” Nick growled.
He disconnected the line.
When his eyes came back into focus, Morley and Jordan were both staring at him.
“Who was that?” Jordan knocked into his shoulder again, smiling a little. “Whoever it was, they made you make your ‘I’m going to bite you’ face.”
“It’s nothing,” Nick grumbled. “A source. I’ll call them back later.”
“A source?” Morley’s eyebrows went up.
He exchanged looks with Jordan, who now also wore the ghost of a frown. Jordan’s expression contained more puzzlement than Morley’s, though.
“Which ‘source’ would that be, Midnight?” Morley said, aiming his eyes back at Nick.
Nick gave him a flat look.
Morley studied his face, nodded. Pausing a half-beat, he answered his own question, likely more for Jordan’s benefit.
“Right. The Artist. The one with the murals. Our soothsayer.”
Jordan flinched, looking at Nick in surprise.
“Really?” he said. “That guy just calls you up? To chat?”
Nick’s annoyed scowl returned.
Seeing the hard look in Morley’s normally calm eyes, he let out an exhale. The exhale was pure mannerism, since Nick didn’t need to breathe.
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Apparently, whoever holds that fucker’s leash has decided I’m his single-point contact now within the NYPD. He calls me now, if he has something he thinks we should see.”
“And this time?” Morley said.
Nick hesitated, then nodded. “Another painting. He mentioned the vault, so he knows where we are.”
Morley and Jordan exchanged looks.
They also exchanged frowns.
“The Artist,” as Morley and Jordan called him, first appeared in their lives during Nick’s first big murder case with the NYPD. Since then, they’d been ordered by higher-ups to leave him alone. They could accept his help if offered, but they were explicitly barred from arresting him, picking him up, or questioning him in any kind of official capacity. They weren’t allowed to follow him, surveil him, or even try to ID him.
He was completely off-limits.
They weren’t even given a name.
Nick knew his name.
Nick also knew the reason for all the secrecy. Malek was a seer––a race of beings both technically illegal and officially extinct. Mal also happened to be a prescient, a crazy-rare gift even back when seers were plentiful.
Nick wasn’t allowed to tell his two human partners any of that, though.
“We going downstairs?” he said, gruff, glancing between Mo
rley and Jordan. “Or are we just going to hang out up here? Wait for them to kick us out for being so damned pretty?”
Jordan snorted a laugh.
Then, rolling his eyes, which were enhanced with pale blue lenses, he jerked his chin towards the service elevator.
“Let’s go, pretty-boy,” he said, knocking into Nick again.
Morley, like before, didn’t say a thing.
He didn’t even frown.
Setting his gaudy coffee mug down on the security station counter, he simply followed them to the bank of the elevators leading to the basement.
Chapter 5
Dead Midnight
Nick stared up at the ceiling.
Next to him, Morley and Jordan stared up at the ceiling, too.
For a long moment, none of them spoke.
Nick fought to make sense of what his eyes were looking at, even as his nose wrinkled, reacting to the smell of vampire blood mixed with chemicals, a more acrid smell that might have been burnt metal… or burnt something, anyway, something his normally-discerning vampire nose didn’t recognize… and the smell of exposed vampire bone.
In the end, he averted his gaze, looking away before either of the two humans.
His eyes took in the length of hallway between the single elevator that serviced this floor, and the giant hatch of the building’s main vault.
Not that his nose was much help there, either.
He could smell a lot. Hell, he could see a lot.
He just wasn’t sure how helpful any of it was.
Chunks of too-bright blood, viscera, and less-specific flesh spackled the bronze walls and floor. Splatters and a few smaller chunks decorated the door to the vault itself, which stood ajar but not totally open, leaving a gap of maybe three feet between the wall and the security-thick door. Nick couldn’t smell anything of an attacker… and none of it explained what he, Morley, and Jordan had just been staring at in the ceiling.
Rather than look back at that ceiling, he frowned at the vault door.
Even the door looked alien.
Everything about it hummed with life, despite the dark green, granite-looking metal that coated its surface. Instead of hinging outward, it slid into the wall to open, the two sides fitting together like massive puzzle pieces.
Fang & Metal: A Science Fiction Vampire Detective Novel (Vampire Detective Midnight Book 4) Page 4
