“No. None of your faces show in that one, either.” Looking back at the female vampire, he added, “I wouldn’t worry. They know you’re mercs, Nadia. They don’t care about you. They wanted the person who hired you.”
He glanced at Harrison, quirking an eyebrow pointedly.
“…and they aren’t looking for a kid.”
Nick glanced at Wynter, forcing his eyes away when he saw the hard, angry look in her eyes. Noting the expression there, he looked away with a shrug.
When he returned his gaze to Nadia, the female vampire’s mouth was curled in a delicate frown. She looked at the biggest male in the group, a giant with a shaved head and a blue and green python tattoo coiling up his neck. Bright red, war-like tattoos drew lines down both of his cheeks, matching arrow tats on both of his biceps.
“Okay,” Nadia said to him. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go.”
The big male frowned, glancing sideways at Nick. “This one comes with us?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry. Nick’s cool. He can handle himself.”
Nadia looked at Harrison next.
“You should know… if the cops do show… if anything goes sideways at all, we’re gone. And we keep the money. Got it? You’ll just have to sort out the thing with your father on your own. I’m not sacrificing my people for that bullshit.”
Harrison nodded, pausing only to glare at Nick.
“No problem,” he said coldly. “As long as I can shoot her myself.”
Even as he said it, though—Nick saw it happen.
The thing he’d been waiting for.
An opening.
Chapter 27
Opening
The big, bald human with the red arrows and python tattoos leaned down towards Wynter.
In the process, he inserted the bulk of his body halfway between Nick and the other two armed, male humans.
He also looked away.
In the same bare fractions of a second, Nadia turned from Nick, just enough to face the other two mercs, both of whom were younger and less buffed-out than python, no-neck guy, but still holding plasma rifles and looking like they’d done a few military tours themselves.
When she did, she blocked the rest of their view of Nick.
More importantly, she took her eyes off him.
Nick moved without thought, grabbing both ends of her shotgun from behind.
Grabbing the hard, metal stock, he brought it up in a single, hard slam.
He caught her in the throat before she’d managed to twist liquidly around, snapping the bone in a rough twist. In the same fluid motion, he dropped the stock of the rifle in one hand, bringing it around and over her body and up to his shoulder before she’d hit the ground.
He fired at the first male in front of him, a black-haired, Asian-looking male with bulging and vein-covered biceps and a dragon tattoo that crawled up one side of his face. The human merc hadn’t recovered enough to even begin to raise his weapon.
Nick didn’t wait.
Swiveling sideways, he shot the second one, a blond, twenty-something kid, the youngest of the three. That one had just enough time to know what was about to happen to him. His puppy-brown eyes bulged in his face, right before Nick shot him at point blank range, erasing that face from the kid’s body, and nearly decapitating him in the process.
Swiveling a third time, Nick dropped.
He shot upwards as soon as he had the shotgun’s muzzle aligned, pulling the trigger the instant the big male with the python tat straightened from where he’d been bent over Wynter.
He shot that one in the middle of the chest, aiming upward from where he crouched in the giant male’s shadow under the overhead light.
Yanking the gun’s stock back to chamber a fourth shell, he was about to turn around, when a hard slam jerked him forward, nearly throwing him to the floor.
Realizing he’d been shot, and in the middle of the back, Nick gritted his teeth, turning around without rising from the crouch. Gripping the shotgun in both hands and holding it in a line across his chest, he threw it up with all of his might, aiming it at the blond kid’s head.
He heard the crack as the metal stock slammed into the blond kid’s nose and face, knocking him backwards into the door to Wynter’s office.
Nick knew he was out before he even looked at him.
Even so, he rose to his feet, crossing the short space and crouching beside the kid, grabbing him around the throat.
He bit into his neck without a second thought, without even considering that Wynter was watching this from the floor behind him.
Injecting the kid with enough venom to stun him for hours, he took a good, long drink, directly from the vein, figuring the kid owed him, given that Nick’s chest and back now had gaping holes from the fucking Glock the kid had been wearing somewhere on his person, probably to use on Wynter.
He got everything he needed, verifying more or less what the kid and Nadia had already told him, not to mention what he’d put together once he realized St. Maarten had been wrong, that her baby boy wasn’t some victim of her evil ex-husband, however much of a prick the guy might be.
Unhooking his fangs from the kid’s neck, Nick scowled, staring down at his closed eyes and broken face. The gun had more or less obliterated the kid’s nose, and broken at least a few of his teeth.
But he was alive. Nick hadn’t broken his skull.
He honestly wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed.
Shoving that from his mind, he turned finally, his eyes finding Wynter’s face.
She was staring at him.
He gauged her expression, which held an unabashed shock, her chest moving in rapid pants under the silk kimono, which he realized for the first time was covered with orange and blue koi fish.
Rising smoothly to his feet, still moving like a vampire, he crossed the floor to where she was, and knelt in a single, fluid move.
He took off the gag first.
By then, tears were sliding down her cheeks.
“Don’t cry,” he said, gruff.
“Fuck you, don’t cry.” She stared at him, and he avoided the wonder and disbelief in that stare. “I thought you were going to kill me. I thought you were going to kill me and run off with her.”
Nick had gotten up to walk over to the giant with the serpent tattoo, who had stopped breathing already. Fishing through the human’s pockets, he hit paydirt on the third one, pulling out the handcuff keys and palming them.
“Why the hell would I do that?” he said, gruff.
“Besides the fact that you’re fucking terrifying?” She looked around at the dead bodies on the floor of her office. She winced as her eyes paused on the kid, Harrison. “Christ, Nick. You killed all of them. In like… two seconds.”
“No.” Nick shook his head. He gazed ruefully at Nadia. “She’ll recover. Unless someone rips her heart out before she wakes up in a few hours… or cuts off her head.”
“You killed the kid?”
“No. He’s still alive. I just fucked up his face.”
“Oh.”
Bending down behind her, he unlocked the cuffs, using the long, narrow key pick to open them one by one.
As soon as her wrists were free, she smacked him and he winced.
“Hey,” he said. “Calm down. Gunshot.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Why didn’t you leave the house as soon as I fucking told you to?” he said, glaring back at her. “It took me over an hour to get here. You sure took your sweet fucking time—”
She glared at him in disbelief. “How do you know I didn’t try to leave?”
“Because you’d be dead by now, if they came that fast,” he growled. “I told you to go to a friend’s house, Wynter. Somewhere safe.”
“I was going to,” she said, rubbing her wrists. “And for your information, you’re wrong. They came right after you and I hung up.”
“Oh.”
Still rubbing her wrists, she frowned. “Honestly, I was
going to go to New York. I don’t really have a good place up here.” She glared at him. “Especially since I just got fired… thanks to you.”
Nick looked at her.
Not sure what to say to that, either, he didn’t answer.
Then something else occurred to him.
“New York.” He grunted, scowling. “Let me guess? You were going to stay with your boyfriend. Gavin. The prince.”
She hit him again.
“Stop that,” he growled. “Gunshot wound. Don’t you have any fucking gratitude at all?”
“He’s not my boyfriend. I never let that disgusting creeper touch me. Despite his bullshit threats.” Still rubbing her wrists, she scowled at him openly. “He tried to blackmail me into sleeping with him. Like he probably did with his poor wife—”
“Why didn’t it work with you?” Nick said mildly.
She hit him again, and he winced, laughing in spite of himself.
“Jesus!” he said. “Why did I save you? You just want me dead.”
“I called his ex-wife,” Wynter hissed. “I called St. Maarten. She got him to back off.”
“Oh.”
Nick stared at her. He wished he didn’t feel as relieved as he did.
He knew it wasn’t fair. If she’d slept with Gavin Kingsworth, he would’ve had no right to say a single fucking word about it. He had no right to judge shit.
He was relieved, though.
Truthfully, he was more relieved than he could fully process at first.
“You like me,” she said, hitting him again. “You like me, Nick.”
That time, he didn’t flinch… or laugh.
Staring at her blue-green eyes, watching them grow bright as she stared back at him, a near-vulnerable look growing in those light-filled irises, he found himself giving in.
“I like you,” he said. “I like you a lot, Wynter.”
She bit her lip, nodding.
Tears spilled down her cheeks a second time, but her voice remained strong as she nodded again, wiping her cheeks angrily with her hand.
“Damned straight, you do,” she muttered angrily.
That time, Nick didn’t think.
Sliding down next to her, leaning against the base of her antique desk, he wrapped his arms around her. When she softened against him, he pulled her to his chest, and most of the way into his lap. Ignoring the gunshot wound, ignoring the fact that he was bleeding all over the silk kimono and her hair, he pulled her tight against him.
He squeezed her in a hug and held her there, even though it hurt.
They sat there, unmoving.
They were still sitting there when Nick first heard the sirens.
Epilogue
Compromises
Nick stood in the round living room of the palace-like penthouse apartment.
Hands in the pocket of his coat, he gazed out the massive, rounded windows overlooking New York City at dusk, watching lights come on in the park below.
He was still wearing the same clothes he’d worn at Kellerman Prep.
When Jordan let him out of the cell under the 17th Precinct building, Nick decided to come here after he found out who bailed him out.
Ms. Veronica Racine met him in the lobby, just like she had the first time he’d come to visit this building.
This time, she was even warmer than she had been the first time Nick met her. In fact, when she first saw him, she gave him a hug, only pulling back from the startled Nick when he winced from the gunshot wound.
“Sorry!” she exclaimed, looking at the bulky part of his shirt where he wore a bandage under his button up shirt and coat. “I forgot you were injured, Mr. Tanaka! My apologies!”
He’d been so stunned, he’d only nodded.
Seconds later, he’d followed her to the elevators, listening to her chatter about how Ms. St. Maarten had been busy since she’d been released from custody, and how she’d let “Lara” explain to him with what, and how grateful all of them were for what he’d done—
At a certain point, Nick lost track of a lot of it.
The sheer warmth and gratitude from the woman in the dark-red, leather suit had been enough to make him tongue-tied.
Since then, she’d left him alone in here after offering him a drink, even offering to get him a blood bag if he was hungry.
Nick was hungry.
Even so, he declined, thanking her in another confused mumble.
That was probably twenty minutes ago now.
Clenching his jaw a little, he wandered closer to the curved window, if only to distract himself with the view.
Stepping to the very edge of the organic glass, he gazed down the length of the building, or as much of it as he could see from the odd angle, watching the cars and people on the street directly below.
When a door opened behind him, he turned, starting.
It turned out it wasn’t a door, not exactly.
A panel opened in the apparently seamless wall.
In the background, Nick saw what looked like an office.
In the center of that office stood two extremely high-end looking swivel chairs for virtual immersion. They looked like something out of a science fiction movie, each equipped with multi-angle swivel capacity inside a system of round, artistically-designed rails that followed the chairs for 360 arcs in multiple directions, creating an egg-like shell around each one.
The tech-geek that lived inside him still, even after what felt like a million years of being a vampire, would have loved to take one of those things for a ride—maybe while experiencing a flight-combat simulation, or maybe a dogfight in space.
Hell, the vampire in him wouldn’t mind taking those for a spin, either.
He was still staring at the virtual stations as she walked in.
She strolled more than walked, wearing an old-fashioned, heavy silk robe, like something a movie star might wear in the forties or fifties. It brought that Ava Gardner comparison back to his mind, even as she smiled at him, wearing bright red lipstick.
Behind her trailed Jack Bird, a.k.a., “Malek,” the prophetic seer.
He’d finally changed his fucking clothes.
Nick supposed that was something, at least.
Malek now wore a dark, military-style jacket over a blood-red T-shirt and dark pants. He looked like he belonged in a trendy coffee shop in the Village, maybe holding a guitar.
Nick wasn’t sure how he felt about seeing either of them.
“Naoko,” she said, smiling wider, and briefly holding out her hands in a welcoming gesture. “Thank you so much for coming. You must be exhausted.”
Nick frowned faintly, looking between the two of them.
He didn’t bother to remind her that vampires don’t sleep.
Anyway, he was tired.
“Yeah, well,” he said, cautious. “I appreciate you getting me out. They said all charges were dropped. They didn’t say how you pulled that off.”
“Pulled that off?” She snorted, draping herself elegantly over the long, narrow sofa surrounded by plants and trees, the same one where she’d been sitting when he first met her. “Pulled what off, Detective Tanaka? They had absolutely no reason or right to hold you. Moreover, you saved their asses. Not only did you catch the real murderer, but you got the entire confession on digital recording.”
Nick touched his ear in reflex.
They’d given the head set back to him when they let him go.
That was after a few hours of Nick chilling in that cell, a collar around his throat. They left him in there for hours, naked, bleeding from a gunshot wound, chained to the wall with organic chains that clipped to the collar, along with his wrists, ankles, elbows and waist.
No one came in to talk to him.
No one asked him any questions—not even over the comm.
They didn’t even send in anyone to dress the wound until they’d probably already decided to let him go.
About an hour after they did, Jordan appeared with the keys to the chains, and the
stack of Nick’s bloody clothes.
The younger detective unlocked Nick’s chains, one by one, removed the collar, then tossed him the pile of clothes, informing him he’d made bail.
Then Jordan left.
He didn’t say another fucking word to him.
He didn’t even tell Nick whether or not he was fired.
Given what Ms. Lara St. Maarten had just said, however, they must have downloaded the contents of Nick’s headset before they cut him loose.
He’d been holding the headset in his pocket the whole time he’d been talking to Nadia and Harrison. He turned the recording function on and stuffed it in his coat pocket seconds before they found him in that dark corridor, feeding on Harrison’s friend, Yanno Lee.
“…You also managed to accomplish all of this with minimal scandal to them,” Ms. St. Maarten went on, her voice a touch more acidic. “You cleared their beloved governor. You even managed to do so without outing him as a rapist Nazi sympathizer—”
“Ah,” Nick said. “So that’s it? You promised to keep quiet?” Nick frowned, in spite of himself. “I suppose I have to keep quiet about that part of things, too?”
“Naturally.” Her green eyes sharpened. “The governor’s son unfortunately fell in with the wrong element. As a result of this, he killed his stepmother in a fit of rage. He then called a mercenary group he found on the dark network to come clean up his mess, and to kill some other hybrids to cover up his family’s connection to the crime—”
“And the kids?” Nick said, his mouth harder. “The ones they butchered in that park?”
“Part of my son’s twisted fanaticism and brainwashing, of course,” she responded smoothly, resettling her long legs on the sofa and tucking them under the thick robe.
“…After what he’d done to his stepmother, he got intoxicated by the power,” she added. “That, combined with the racist ideology he’d been exposed to, and his manipulation by the cult leader, Dimitry Yi, gave my poor Harry the idea to kill off classmates of his that he’d discovered were not pure-blooded human.”
“Poor Harry,” Nick muttered, clenching his jaw. “Right.”
“You must have questions,” Ms. St. Maarten said, her voice a touch sharper.
Vampire Detective Midnight Page 29
