He didn’t want to be here at all, but he had no choice.
This was where the inter-species offices were located for Manhattan, and where Nick had to check in every night he was on duty. It was also one of only two precincts in the city that Midnight detectives were cleared to work out of, as of about six years ago.
They liked to keep everything pretty tightly controlled, when it came to vamps.
The wider jurisdiction for Midnights also gave them the freedom to assign him to cases in any part of the city, not just those that fell within a particular geographical area.
Very few vamps got cleared to work on the kinds of cases they gave Nick. For the same reason, he was under constant, intense scrutiny—too much scrutiny to let himself start thinking about food while he was on the job.
The very last thing he needed was some human cop getting jumpy because they happened to notice Nick’s eyes were redder than usual, or his canines happened to be extended the slightest bit, just because his stomach was a little rumbly.
As for his food-obsession right then, Nick still blamed that damned alley hit, if only for putting the thought of hybrid and seer blood in his head.
Still, after what they found in that alley, he was interested enough that he couldn’t help wondering if they’d gotten the lab results back on the victims yet.
Even more than the victims, he was damned interested in that painting.
He wondered if they’d managed to get anything on the artist.
Back at the crime scene in the Bronx, Nick stuck around the alley long enough to see the lab techs run spectrometer scans and take scrapings off the alley wall, hoping to pick up enough DNA or other trace evidence to ID whoever made the mural.
While he stood there, one of the techs told Nick that whoever it was, they’d spent hours on the damned thing. The tech pointed out the fineness of the lines and brush strokes, not to mention the detail in the faces and the reproduction of the alley itself.
Nick hadn’t noticed on first glance, but the artist even included details of irregularities in the alley’s cement floor, along with scrapes on the metallic paint of the walls, dirt smudges, steam coming off one of the pipes running the length of the right side of the alley. The level of detail made it look in parts more like a photograph than a painting.
The whole thing was bizarre, and not only because some whacko chose to paint the faces of professional killers and their hybrid murder victims as an act of vandalism.
Nick knew, from listening to them talk, that Morley and Jordan both thought the person who painted the image was connected somehow to whoever ordered the hit on the six hybrids.
They theorized the mural was some kind of message—either to the victims when they arrived in the alley and saw their likenesses there on the wall, or as a warning to someone else.
That, Jordan hazarded, or the painting might be a calling card of some kind, a message to someone else about who’d done the job.
Nick had his doubts.
About both theories.
He was still standing by the corridor entrance to the long, weirdly egg-shaped room, when someone called out his name.
Well, not his name exactly, but he knew they were talking to him.
“Midnight! Hey! Come over here. Check this out.”
Gritting his teeth, Nick snapped out of his quiet little reverie, which hadn’t exactly been pleasant but had the advantage of being… well, quiet.
Walking towards the small crowd he hadn’t noticed clustered around Jordan’s desk, he saw them all looking down at something that apparently lay in the middle of it.
Nick knew most of them by name already, despite only having been here a few weeks.
He’d always had a good memory for faces, even as a human.
Now, he remembered almost everything.
“Hey.” The cop who’d called him over, a female homicide detective named Charlie, was hunched over what Nick now recognized as a liquid monitor on Jordan’s desk. “You might want to take a look at this… since you were there with the others when they found it.”
Charlie’s full lips smiled at him as she said it, accentuating the curve of her cheekbones, and the almond slant of her eyes. Those eyes were a stunning, light-brown color, and looked almost too big for her face.
Charlie was some kind of Eurasian-black mix, and shockingly pretty.
Her round, muscular butt rested on the corner of Jordan’s desk, and as she glanced between Nick and that monitor, the smile on her face grew as she looked him over, appraising his physical appearance openly.
Nick couldn’t help but see a second, more knowing quirk touch her full lips after she’d taken in the details of his body and face.
Christ. He hoped she wasn’t another vampire groupie.
No way was he starting up something like that, not with someone he worked with; he didn’t care how damned pretty she was. Being the vampire in the equation, if anything went sideways, as it eventually would, it would all come down on him.
Probably like a ton of bricks.
Unfortunately, the longer he watched her stare at him, the more he found himself thinking she had that look.
Something in those light-brown eyes just screamed, “I’ve never been bitten by a vampire before, but I bet it’s really hot,” and/or “I really want a vampire fuck-toy of my very own, and won’t my friends be jealous if I brought him to dinner.”
Not. Gonna. Happen. Lady.
“Well?” she said.
Charlie quirked an eyebrow at him, folding her arms.
It occurred to Nick that he’d come to a full stop, and was just standing there, staring at her.
“Do you want to look or not?” she finished, motioning towards the liquid monitor by her leg. “It’s your case as much as Jordie and Morley’s, right?”
Hesitating, he nodded, then stepped forward, wary.
Walking around her to get closer to the monitor from the other side, he craned his head and neck, doing his best to get a look at the curved screen without leaning too close to her.
He stared for a few minutes before something clicked, and he realized what he was looking at.
“That’s security footage,” he said, surprise reaching his voice. “You got the whole thing on surveillance? Is it a drone? Or stationary?”
Jordan looked up, frowning from where he sat just to the right of Charlie. Glancing at her, Jordan aimed his enhanced eyes back at Nick with a scowl.
Great, Nick thought.
Jordan wanted to get into Charlie’s pants.
He now saw Nick as a sexual rival, on top of everything else.
If Nick was right about Charlie having a thing for vampires, that wasn’t going to help his and Jordan’s relationship any, either.
“Stationary,” Jordan said, still scowling after that too-long pause. “It’s owned by the warehouse on the right side of the alley, but subsidized, so it’s also a government feed.”
Nick nodded, not taking his eyes off the recording.
“They get the whole thing?”
“Not the murder,” Jordan said. “Tapes were clean for that. The squad that performed the hit must have hacked in and disabled the cameras before they took out the hybrids.”
Still frowning, he added sourly,
“But we got your Picasso. The system was still up and working when the painting was made, a few weeks earlier. We just got the footage from the Feds.”
“A few weeks?” Nick stepped closer, interested in spite of himself. “Were you able to ID him? The artist?”
“Artist.” Jordan grunted, giving him a disbelieving look. “No, Midnight. We weren’t able to ID the ‘artist.’ Not yet.”
Nick frowned, still staring down at the image.
He could only see the guy’s back.
Whoever he was, he was big, with broad shoulders. He was also tall. He wore a threadbare, light-gray, sleeveless sweatshirt with the hood up, along with paint-splattered black pants, so Nick couldn’t see his face.
“Did he have
his barcode covered, or—”
“No barcode.” Jordan pointed at the image on the screen. “See? You can see his left arm right there. You see any kind of barcode, Midnight?”
Nick frowned, refocusing on the man’s arm.
Jordan was right.
The pale inside of his strangely muscular forearm was completely bare.
Jesus. That was completely unheard of.
Even weirder, the outside of that same arm, all the way up to his shoulder, was covered in brightly-colored tattoos. The arm on the right was completely unadorned as far as Nick could see. There wasn’t a single design anywhere on it—or on his neck or face—official or not.
Nick wondered what lived on the parts of skin the sweatshirt and pants covered.
“Any chance it’s prosthetics?” Nick said.
When Jordan didn’t answer, Nick glanced at him.
“The arm. Could he have covered up the bar code?”
Jordan frowned a little, then shrugged. “It’s possible, I suppose. I don’t know why he wouldn’t cover up all his ink, if that’s the case. Or why he’d wear a sleeveless shirt unless he was signaling he had no reg number.”
Nick thought about that, pursing his lips.
Then he nodded. He couldn’t really disagree with Jordan’s logic.
The clothes themselves were damned weird. Not only were they retro as fuck, but Jordan was right. Why bother with prosthetics when a long-sleeved shirt would have done the trick?
A shirt would have at least dealt with cameras, if not the scanner patrols.
And conversely, why would someone with no reg barcode wear a sleeveless anything? The guy hadn’t even waited until it was dark out. He’d done it in broad daylight, while committing vandalism on private property. If he’d been anywhere in the world in the past twenty or so years, he must have known he was likely being recorded.
The whole world was under surveillance these days.
In a city as dense as New York, where there was still a fair bit of money and enough vamps to make people nervous, it was more or less a given.
“Were you able to follow him?” Nick said. “When he left? Were you able to see where he went?”
Jordan looked up at him, his mouth hard.
“We’re working on it, Midnight,” he said, his voice cold.
Making a show of checking his watch, he looked up at Nick’s face.
“Aren’t you out of here?” he said, his voice pointed. “Sun’s coming up, Midnight. Don’t you turn to stone or something, once it’s daylight? I thought that’s why they only had your kind working at night.”
Nick frowned, then glanced at the clock on the wall of the bullpen in spite of himself.
He’d forgotten to check the time.
He’d had three crime scenes to walk before the one in the alley, starting at around 7 p.m.
It was almost 6 a.m. now.
Again, Jordan wasn’t wrong.
Rather than waste time with words, Nick gave them all a brief bow of his head—without really thinking about where the mannerism came from, or even what he meant by it, exactly—and stepped back from the desk. He kept his eyes on Jordan, who watched him back away, until he was a good six feet from where they all huddled.
Turning on his heel only then, Nick headed for the elevator that would take him to the lower floors of the building.
Despite the time, he couldn’t leave yet.
He was required to check in at the station every night, give a verbal report, then submit to a physical to make sure he hadn’t been feeding while he’d been out on the job.
He was a Midnight, after all.
Chapter 4
Weird Hobby For A Vampire
“Hey! You! With the black hair!”
The voice caught in the wind. That wind gusted higher as he turned, tunneling by the wall, rattling the fence by the outside gate.
It was always windy out here.
The creaky, metal overhang made it even harder to hear; the wind tore the woman’s voice away, pretty much the instant the words left her lips. Nick turned his head in her direction before it occurred to him he could have pretended not to have heard her shout.
If he’d been human, he wouldn’t have heard her.
Still, it was better to talk to her now than to risk her freaking out and calling someone.
“It’s all right,” he called. He held up his arm, showing her the red “V” on his inner forearm. “I’ll be fine!”
She was already walking towards him, though.
Sighing a bit, internally at least, he waited for her under the shadowed overhang, gripping his board more tightly in his other arm.
She walked right up to him, and he found himself a little surprised at the completely business-like and unafraid expression on her face, given that he’d just flashed his race-cat tattoo at her. She looked at him impatiently, like stopping vampires from going outside the main dome was an everyday occurrence for her.
He stood there as she looked him over, her lips pursed in a frown.
He found himself doing the same back to her.
Something about her annoyance with him made him want to laugh.
She was young, maybe in her early twenties, which made it even stranger.
She looked like a street fighter, or maybe a semi-pro boxer.
Brown, spiky hair, cropped short, dyed with bright blue, metallic-looking tips. Pale blue contact lenses, presumably to match her hair, but likely also data-enhanced. Her skin was on the dark side, but no real pinpoint on her ethnicity. Muscular arms. Human ident tats, obviously. She also had some decorative ones on her upper arms, mostly anime characters and dragons, from what he could tell.
She really did look like a boxer.
She might have been someone he sparred with at his old martial arts studio back in San Francisco.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she said. “Are you stupid?”
Strong Queens accent.
Now that he could hear her properly, the accent about knocked him over.
Nick frowned, then glanced down at the surfboard he had tucked under his arm.
“You really need me to answer that?” he said, speaking loud over the wind.
“Do you have any idea what the waves are like out there?” she half-shouted back.
Reaching up, she used one hand to hold back the bangs of her short hair, presumably because it was hurting her face being whipped back and forth in the wind.
“It’s like a fucking hurricane out there,” she shouted. “There’s a reason for the energy shields, you know? You got a death wish, mister?”
Nick again displayed the “V” on his arm.
“I’m sturdy,” he assured her. “I’ll be fine.”
She stared at his face a minute, then snorted a half-laugh.
“Get the fuck out of here,” she said, only on her it sounded more like ged-da-fuq-oudda-here. “You’re serious? This is your idea of fun?”
Nick nodded. “I’m serious. And yes, this is my idea of fun.”
“Why?”
Nick stared at her. He honestly couldn’t decide if he liked her frankness, or if she was starting to annoy him with her overly personal questions.
“Why the hell do you think?” he said, again holding up the titanium board. “I want to surf.” He motioned towards the security gate, the one opening in the wall where the force-field could be dropped with the right key card. “The report says no sun today. That means vampire-safe. We get regular reports, with estimates on—”
“You know that’s because the sky’s filled with smoke, right?” she cut in. “Not clouds. Not fog. Not a solar eclipse. Toxic fucking smoke, dude.”
“Again,” he said, as patiently as he could. “I’m a vampire. Smoke isn’t going to give me lung cancer. Or emphysema.”
“Not exactly my point,” she said, aiming her finger at the door as she continued to hold her hair back against her head with one hand. “You’d be going out into an apocalyptic waste
land, Mr. Vampire… with waves over a hundred feet tall, that will throw you into those force fields at around two hundred miles per hour. Vamp or no, you’re not completely indestructible are you?”
“Damn near,” he half-shouted back. “And I won’t let myself be thrown into the force-fields, don’t worry. I’ve done this before.”
“But why?” she said. “Why not just do it in virtual?”
Thinking about this, he shrugged.
“Not the same.”
She frowned, staring up at him like she thought he was pulling her leg.
“You’ve done this before?” she said finally.
He nodded. “Sure. Whenever the sky’s bad enough.”
Her frown deepened.
She glanced at the gate, then back at him.
“I’ve got no authority to stop you,” she admitted. “Not if you have a pass code—”
“I do,” he said at once, holding up the card he had locked to his wetsuit. “I got clearance to do this when I moved to New York… but I did it in Los Angeles before I moved here. And San Francisco, where the waves are worse than here.”
Seeing her mouth scrunch up skeptically, he had to restrain another laugh.
“It’s fine,” he assured her. “Really. I appreciate the concern, but…”
He hesitated, then found himself adding, for reasons he couldn’t explain to himself,
“…it’s how I blow off steam. I need this right now.”
Her stare remained flat.
Then she snorted, almost like she couldn’t help herself.
“Weird fucking hobby for a vampire,” she shouted next.
Nick opened his mouth, about to argue.
He shut it a few seconds later, realizing she wasn’t wrong.
Four hours and change later, he dragged himself up out of the dark, algae-filled water about a dozen yards from where he’d first gone in.
He hadn’t been lying to his would-be guardian angel from Queens.
The water, despite the poisonous algae and toxic fumes, didn’t bother him.
The smoke-filled sky bothered him even less, although the smell of both things wasn’t exactly pleasant. He usually brought nose-plugs when he remembered, maybe for psychological reasons as much as practical ones, since it didn’t do much to cut the smell, given what he was.
Vampire Detective Midnight Page 4
