It struck him as a hell of a coincidence, if so.
The train was starting to pick up speed for real now, moving faster than he remembered from that morning. He could feel it vibrating under his back, could see the cabin walls shimmering faintly from the acceleration.
Remembering it was a nonstop train, that it was arriving at the station almost an hour earlier than the commuter shuttles he and Jordan had been forced to take the day before, he tried to reassure himself he’d be there soon.
It didn’t really work.
He didn’t want to think about why he was so worried.
He didn’t want to think about who he was so worried about.
Staring up at the ceiling through his faintly vibrating vision, he exhaled, human fashion. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he found himself wishing he could sleep like a human, too.
Chapter 25
The Dark Castle
Cold wind buffeted the train platform, echoing a disquieting moan through the dark opening of the tunnel leading south towards the New York Protected Area.
Nick estimated that the air up here was probably about fifteen degrees colder than it had been in the dome around New York City.
Nick didn’t really get cold.
Even so, he took the opportunity to wrap his coat around his face, hiding as much of it as he could as he made his way towards the stairs up to the station terminal.
He was already thinking about the parking lot beyond it, where hopefully he could pick up another driverless taxi that took cash.
He checked the time inside his headset.
3:57 a.m.
She still hadn’t called.
Cursing lightly under his breath, he tried to decide what he’d do if she didn’t call.
He could assume she was safe.
He could assume she’d followed his directions exactly, and that she was hunkered down at a friend’s house somewhere, safe and sound. He could trust that she’d managed to avoid cameras on her way out of her place, paid with cash, left her headset behind, remembered not to use her ident-tat to buy anything, stayed off major streets.
She wasn’t stupid.
She would know why he asked her to do all that.
She wouldn’t risk it, no matter how annoyed she was with him.
He didn’t tell her about the painting.
Maybe he should have told her.
Frowning, he shook off the thought.
Why scare the shit out of her for no reason? What possible good would it do her, to know any of that? The important thing had been to get her out of her house, and as quickly as possible.
Anyway, it was pointless to second-guess the decision now.
He had to decide what to do.
He contemplated asking Kit if she might be able to track Gavin Kingsworth, find out where he was—and more to the point, if he’d been on the dark net recently. Kit might be able to tell him if Gavin had sent any messages or large sums of cash in the last few days.
Like, say, to his hybrid-killing buddies, as advance payment for tying up loose ends.
Loose ends like his psychic, hybrid, schoolteacher girlfriend.
He should have asked Wynter about Kingsworth.
He should have warned her about him, at least.
Hell, for all he knew, she’d gone running to him, thinking he was her “safe space” after Nick told her to get out of her own place.
At the thought, which hadn’t occurred to him until then, Nick frowned, even as he pushed through the outer doors to the street behind the train station.
He checked his timepiece.
Four a.m.
Fuck.
He walked to the driverless taxi stand, trying to decide where he should go now. He didn’t know any of her friends.
He didn’t know anything about her, really.
Still thinking, he walked to the door of the taxi at the front of the queue, thought for a few seconds, then punched in his destination.
“Kellerman Preparatory School,” the machine droned back at him. “If this is correct, press yes.”
Nick hit the green button, and the door popped open.
He figured at the very least, he could try to figure out if there was any surveillance in that library room where Wynter took him the day before.
He might also have a little chat with that Harrison kid—assuming he hadn’t been yanked off campus, given that his father just accused his birth-mother of murder.
Maybe they’d have more than just a chat.
Maybe he’d pump young Harry full of just enough venom to find out how much the little shit knew about what his father and mother had been up to.
Maybe then Nick would have a better idea which of Harrison Kingsworth’s parents was a racist mass-murderer, and which was being railroaded by their psychopathic ex.
The school was dark when he got there.
The grounds were dark.
The trees and paths winding around the castle-like building were dark.
The corridors and stone hallways were dark.
The cafeteria building was dark.
The residential halls behind the cafeteria were dark.
The whole damned school was too fucking dark.
Nick hadn’t expected that.
He’d expected much of the campus to be lit, if only with walkway lights. He thought the halls would be lit. He thought the student residences would be partly lit, if only to aid bathroom runs in the middle of the night. He figured the odd student bedroom window would be lit, since there was always at least one kid up working out in the predawn hours, studying for an exam, or just unable to sleep. That left only the classrooms, the majority of residence bedrooms, and the administrative offices.
Where the hell was their security?
They had security, right?
With a bunch of rich kids sleeping here every night, they had to have security guards cruising around, making sure those kids weren’t sneaking out at night, doing drugs, running away, whatever else it was kids got up to at a place like this.
They had to have that… didn’t they?
Feeding paper money into the payment box in the driverless taxi, and thinking to himself he should get a dummy card off Kit to pay for things when he was on the run from the cops, he grunted humorlessly.
He hadn’t really let himself think about that yet—meaning the utter and complete shitstorm he’d created for himself, running off like he had.
He might have to run.
He might really have to run, after this.
He’d make sure Wynter was okay, first.
Hell, maybe she’d even want to come with him.
But that thought was so absurd, so filled with delusion when he contemplated the reality of it, he shook his head, snorting in derision at his own brain.
If he ran, he had only one real option open to him.
If the NYPD decided to take him down—if Nick couldn’t talk his way out of this, get off with a suspension or a formal reprimand—Nick had exactly one other option, not including hanging around, waiting for I.S.F. to rip his heart out of his chest with one of those claw-like machines they called alligators.
He didn’t let himself think about that particular option most of the time, but the truth was, he had someone he could call, if things got really bad. He had someone who could disappear him into the vampire underground, likely in a matter of days… if not hours.
It meant giving up on legitimate living altogether.
It meant selling himself, body and soul, to the illegal vampire networks. Nick knew what that meant—what it really meant. He knew what they’d want, as payment for their help. They would own his ass. There would be no turning back.
More than that, it meant going back to that life.
Killing. Viewing humans as food.
Viewing humans, hybrids, and seers as the enemy—or worse.
Viewing them as slaves.
It meant giving in to the vampire versions of Dimitry Yi. It meant joining—or rejoining,
in Nick’s case—the Eifah of the vampire world.
For the same reason, Nick long ago swore he’d never go knocking on that particular door again.
But that’s one of those things people always told themselves when they weren’t being faced with a mind-wipe, or having their heart ripped out of their chest by a mechanical claw.
One phone call.
One phone call, and his days of being housebroken were over.
Shaking off the thought, angry at himself that time, he slammed the door of the taxi behind him, shoving his hands in his pockets. As the taxi cruised slowly away along the school’s circular driveway, Nick turned and began making his way up the pitch-black walkway, using his natural vampire gait and tread to move silently.
There was no moon, no stars.
Clouds covered the sky, making it even darker than it would have been.
He reached the main building, and gripped the handle of the semi-organic metal security door, expecting it to be locked.
It wasn’t.
Frowning for real now, Nick pulled the door open.
He closed it carefully behind him after he walked through, now actively working to make as little noise as possible.
He walked down the same hallway he and Jordan walked the day before, staying to the shadows and not making a sound. He didn’t slow until he reached the stairs, and then it was only long enough to assure himself there was no security waiting.
It hit him as he looked around. The cameras were all dark too.
He could generally hear and see cameras. He could see the electricity coursing through the walls, if nothing else—in the same way that semi-organic materials looked differently to his vampire vision than dead metal, wood, or plastic.
In here, he could see nothing.
The walls were utterly black.
It looked and felt like someone had cut the power to the whole building.
Frowning, he stared up the marble staircase.
Moving as quietly as he had in the hall, he began to climb.
He didn’t slow again until he got to the fourth floor, and that was because he heard something.
Not on the fourth floor—on the one above, where the administrative offices were.
It was faint, but someone was upstairs.
He couldn’t hear words, but he heard movement through the ceiling, enough of it that it couldn’t be the creaking of the wind or settling of the building. He was still staring up the last flight of stairs when he heard a door close.
Frowning, Nick stared up through the dark.
He began walking up, moving slower now, but vampire-slow, his steps silent as he made his way up the deeply-shadowed outer wall of the staircase. He could hear multiple people now. The sounds came from the right of the staircase, in the direction of the faculty offices. The faculty library, where Wynter had brought him to go through the files, was to the left at the top of the stairs.
Whoever was here now, they were definitely on the other side.
Remembering Bird’s painting, Nick felt his muscles tense, rock-like under his skin.
He didn’t stop moving.
He reached the top of the stairs, and slid to his right, making his way with overt caution, aware a door could open at any minute and possibly expose him.
He walked carefully along the wall, straining to listen.
He could see where the light was coming from now.
It was the door straight ahead of him.
The principal’s office.
Wynter’s office.
He was so focused on that door, on the faint light he could see coming from the window above it, illuminating an angled rectangle of ceiling, he almost didn’t see the kid until he’d nearly walked into him. Luckily, he was moving so quietly, so smoothly, staying to the darkest part of the wall, the kid hadn’t seen him either.
Nick came to a stop, staring at the tell-tale, metallic blue mohawk.
Yanno Lee.
Follower of Harrison Kingsworth and Dimitry Yi.
Nick contemplated him, watching him lean against the wall outside the door.
He wondered if he was trying to eavesdrop on whatever was happening inside that office. Then, after watching him for a few seconds, he realized he was the lookout. They’d left him outside, telling him to keep watch—either because they didn’t want him to know or see what was happening inside, or because they expected to be at whatever they were doing for a while, and eventually expected company.
Nick didn’t care about the exact reason.
Within seconds, he had dragged the kid away from the door.
The kid kicked, fighting to squeal from behind Nick’s hand like a small animal.
Nick didn’t wait.
He sank his fangs into the young neck, injecting a hard dose of venom before it even crossed his mind to feed. Even after he got the venom into him, he didn’t take much blood. He was a little too distracted to even think about it once he could hear the kid’s thoughts.
Then he was cursing, practically screaming inside Yanno Lee’s mind.
In more than one language.
He shout-cursed, feeling the kid whose mouth he still covered with one hand wincing at the loudness of his thoughts.
They had Wynter.
They had Wynter, and there was a goddamned vampire with them.
Chapter 26
Alliance
He was still holding the kid in his hands, when the door swung open in front of him.
Nick blinked into the blinding light, hearing a young-sounding gasp.
Once his eyes adjusted, he found himself staring into a face he recognized. He took in the pale blue eyes, the shock of white-blond hair, the bow-shaped mouth that had been sneering at Nick the last time he saw it.
That mouth wasn’t sneering now.
The boy’s eyes widened in shock as he looked down at the kid Nick let fall unceremoniously to the floor.
Nick held his ground, in a near crouch.
Then another face appeared in that open door.
Nick blinked, then recovered.
He knew that face, too.
It had been a hell of a lot longer since he’d seen that one, though.
He knew that sharp jawline, the narrow mouth, the straight, blue-black hair, the shape of her cracked-crystal eyes. They shone bright scarlet now in the overhead light, looking like she’d just come off a fresh kill.
Giving her a more obvious once-over, he smiled.
“Nadia,” he said, making his voice warm, the slightest bit wry. “What the hell are you doing here? Did you drive all this way just to snack on rich school kids?”
She blinked, frowning.
Then she seemed to take him in for real.
Once she had, she let out a humorous snort.
“Jesus Christ. Naoko Tanaka. Of all the damned bloodsuckers to show up here.” Seeming to think about her own words then, she rolled her eyes. “The teacher,” she grunted. “Of course. I heard her on the radio… trying to talk you into feeding on her or whatever.”
Nick grinned, stepping over the kid with the blue mohawk like he was a piece of garbage someone left on the floor.
“Is this your gig?” Nick said. “This hybrid-killing thing?” He whistled. “I honestly thought it was a human-only thing. I didn’t smell you at all. At either crime scene.”
She lifted an eyebrow, smirking at him as she brought more of herself into the light.
He only saw then that she had an old-fashioned shotgun propped on her bare shoulder over a black tank top and combat pants.
“Yeah, well.” She shrugged, wrinkling her nose. “We’ve gotten better with the man-perfume,” she said. Looking him over, she gave him another wry smile. “Still. You were always pretty good at that. You sure you’re not slipping, Tanaka?”
She gave him a slightly harder stare.
“I would hope you wouldn’t turn in your brothers and sisters, anyway. I know you’re a good dog these days, playing Midnight with the boys in blue, but a
little professional courtesy can go a long way in this world.”
Nick inclined his head, smiling faintly back.
“Noted,” he said.
Before he could go on, her eyes narrowed.
“What are you doing here, Nick?” she said, her voice harder, more business-like. “Not like you aren’t nice to look at, but this isn’t the best time for a reunion. I’m on the job, and we’ve got a pretty tight time-frame for this one.”
“You’ve got the principal in there?” Nick said. “The hybrid?”
She grunted, rolling her eyes as she shifted the gun from one shoulder to the other.
“If you wanted to feed on this one, you missed your chance, Naoko.”
Nick felt a pain slide through his chest, hurting his throat, his heart.
“She’s dead?” he said, his voice neutral.
“Not yet—” Nadia shrugged.
Nick felt something in his chest open.
“—But she will be soon. And I can’t keep her alive for you, brother… sorry. We’re on contract.” She inclined her head towards the human adolescent with the blond hair standing next to her. “He needs this done now. And this is a valued client—”
But that seemed to be more than Harrison Anthony Kingsworth could take.
Before Nick could answer, the tall, blond, seventeen-year-old kid burst out, apparently finally finding his voice.
“You know this asshole?” he said.
Nadia and Nick both looked at him, faint frowns on their lips.
The younger Kingsworth looked only at the female vampire, pointing a finger at Nick.
“This asshole works with the cops. He’s one of them.” Contempt filled his voice. “He came back here to sleep with her. Just like my race-traitor pervert of a father.”
Nick stared at him.
Then he looked back at Nadia.
“Did you bug the library here?” he asked her. “That recording got me in a world of shit. Was that part of this job? With your ‘high-value’ client?”
Nadia frowned. “No.” She glanced at the blond kid. “We didn’t do that.”
“I did it,” Harrison said, his voice a sneer. “I’ve been watching that cunt for weeks. Ever since I found out my dad was coming up here to cheat on his other hybrid whore…”
Vampire Detective Midnight Page 27
