Okay, so that last part wasn’t one hundred percent true.
Still, close enough.
Nick didn’t exactly want Jordan or Morley making the connection between St. Maarten’s employee, Malek—who Jordan and Morley both met, at least in passing—and the prescient painter who first showed up during the Kellerman case.
Jordan snorted, rolling his eyes.
Nick didn’t wait for him to editorialize.
“I was checking it out when you called me,” he added. “That’s where I was. In the Cauldron. When I got the call about the case, I was standing right in front of it.”
“Let’s see it,” Jordan said. “The painting. You recorded it, right?”
Nick nodded.
Sending a command through his headset, he instructed it to project the image on the blank wall of the van across from the instrument panel.
“Gertrude,” Morley said out loud, talking to the NYPD’s artificial intelligence. “Dim the lights in here. Instruments, too. Everything but Midnight’s headset.”
The melodic, androgynous, but also strangely female voice rose at once.
“Of course, sir.”
The lights cut out, leaving the back of the van in pitch darkness apart from the projection coming off Nick’s headset. The painting from the bombed-out church grew stark and sharp on the inside of the van, the side of which had a faint curve. Nick’s headset projection program compensated for that curve in seconds, until it was barely noticeable.
A beat after the image grew visible—as long as it took for the two human detectives to understand what they were looking at—both of them went totally still.
The three of them sat there, silent, for what felt like a full minute.
Then Jordan turned, looking at him.
“Who the hell is this guy?”
Nick frowned, staring at the face of the vampire in the painting. “I don’t know. I was hoping one of you would. He looks kind of familiar to me—”
“What?”
Jordan blinked at him, frowning.
Looking between Nick and the painting, Jordan seemed to realize what Nick meant.
“Nick… I didn’t mean the vampire in the painting. I meant the artist. Your Picasso with the fucked-up psychic visions. The weird, freaky guy who seems to follow your cases around, painting them before they happen. Who is he?” He glanced at Morley, frowning. “And how the hell have we not found him by now?”
Before Nick could think of a cogent answer to that, Morley spoke up.
“We were told to leave him alone,” he said.
The words were blunt.
They also contained an edge of anger Nick couldn’t fail to hear.
When he and Jordan turned, staring at the senior detective, the human’s expression lost some of its anger. Sighing, he leaned against the instrument panel behind him, folding his wiry arms over his chest.
“Don’t ask,” he muttered. “It’s above both of your pay grade. Not to mention mine. Suffice it to say, if we’re offered help, we’re allowed to take it. What we’re not allowed to do is pursue the guy offering the help, pick him up, pick up any of his associates, locate his residence, try to I.D. him… or ask him any damned questions.”
Damon and Nick exchanged looks.
“When did this happen?” Nick said.
“Never you mind about that, either, Tanaka.” Morley motioned vaguely towards the painting projected on the van wall, using one of his hands without unfolding his arms. “As for why that vampire looks ‘familiar’ to you, are you really going to tell me you don’t know who the hell that is?”
Nick frowned, looking back towards the painting.
The image had stabilized where he projected it, so he no longer had to hold his headset steady to keep it hanging on their makeshift screen.
“Should I?” he said, after staring at it a few seconds longer.
Jordan and Morley exchanged looks.
Then Jordan laughed, that time in disbelief.
“Damn, Tanaka.” He shook his head, hiding part of his smile with his fingers. “I forget sometimes, just how new you are to New York—”
“Are you going to tell me who the fuck that is?” Nick growled.
Before Jordan could answer, Morley did.
“Straven.” He took a sip of coffee after retrieving his mug off the console next to him. “It’s Straven… the famous architect and designer. The same architect, designer, and celebrity artist who wrote up the blueprints for the building our thief couple just blew up.”
“Straven?” Nick looked between the two of them and the image. “I thought he was a hybrid.”
Morley shook his head. “No. It’s a pretty closely guarded secret, what they are. They usually wear high-grade contacts, color their skin… keep to themself during the day. We in the NYPD know, of course, if only because I.S.F. keeps us informed of things like that, especially when the person has a high profile, like Straven. I think it’s less a safety issue with that joker than a part of their schtick… they like keeping people guessing about their race, from what I’ve been told. They’re also a bit of a diva, but I suppose that comes with the territory.”
“They?” Nick said, quirking an eyebrow when he picked up on the pronoun. He glanced at Jordan, who was frowning, looking at Morley. “Then it’s a—”
Morley gave him a flat look.
“Hermaphrodite. That’s the word I was given, at least. I’ve also heard ‘androgyne.’ From what I’ve read, both are accurate. Physiologically, they are both, and additionally, Straven chooses not to identify as either gender, so technically they’re not a ‘he’ or a ‘her’… not in any sense of the word. They’re androgynous, hermaphroditic and nonbinary… so all three. I’ve heard they get pretty pissed off if you refer to them with a gendered pronoun, although they tend to flip between gender markers in dress, clothing, demeanor. They look pretty male in this image, so I get why you’d be confused, but I’ve seen Straven look really damned feminine at times, too. They’ve also been married three times, once to a male, once to a female, and once to another nonbinary. Like I said, they like to keep their identity fluid…”
Glancing back at the painting, and at the image of Straven, Morley shrugged.
“Anyway, that’s not the point,” he continued, taking another sip of artificial coffee. “Did the artist tell you why Straven was in this painting?”
Nick shook his head. “No.”
“Is whoever hired the Gormans targeting Straven’s buildings for some reason? Targeting Straven themself?”
Nick shrugged, staring at the painting with a frown.
“No idea,” he said.
“You have no idea?” Morley said, sharper. “Or you actually asked the artist and they have no idea, either?”
Nick glanced at him. “Both. I did ask him. I asked him a bunch of things, after I saw the painting myself. He claims he just ‘paints what he sees in his head.’ That he has no idea what any of it means.”
“Sounds like a seer,” Jordan muttered.
Nick glanced at him.
There was no way to talk about Malek or these paintings without bringing up the possibilities surrounding his race. St. Maarten must have known that when she had Archangel contact the NYPD to admit Malek’s existence to them officially.
Because it had to be St. Maarten and Archangel who issued the parameters around Malek’s involvement with the police.
It had to be.
Either way, in both admitting to and protecting Malek and his abilities, she must have known she’d be raising questions about what he was.
Typical of her, that she hadn’t bothered to give Nick any kind of fucking head’s up.
“Yeah,” he said. “Or a really unusual hybrid.”
Jordan’s lips pinched as he seemed to be thinking about that.
Nick aimed his next words at Morley.
“How has Straven managed to keep their race secret all this time? I thought they were a celebrity in their own right, going to rich
-people, high profile events all the time?”
Morley shrugged. “That’s probably how. They’re rich.”
Nick thought about that. “But how do they feed? How are they registered with the I.S.F…. or wearing a vamp barcode… if no one knows what the hell they are?”
Morley sighed, lowering his coffee cup to his thigh.
“I don’t know the full story, Tanaka. I doubt anyone does at our level. But Straven’s clearly got powerful sponsors and protectors. I don’t know how that happened… how they found Straven in the first place, or how Straven’s able to opt out of the normal naming protocols by the I.S.F., much less I.S.F.-regulated housing or feeding restrictions. I can tell you that the information inside the NYPD is strictly need to know, and mostly restricted to the brass—”
“Yet you just told us,” Nick pointed out.
Morley gave him a flat look.
“Need to know includes murder cases, Midnight,” he said, his voice as flat as his eyes. “Now’s when I give you both the speech, though. We’re under contract not to give out any information about Straven’s race, or their gender, or their physiology, or any other information we obtain about them in the course of our investigation. I don’t just mean press, Midnight. I mean anyone. If any one of us is caught mentioning Straven to anyone we know—girlfriend, boyfriend, drinking buddy, guy at the taco stand—or even anyone unauthorized within the department, the penalties will not be light.”
Morley’s gaze grew harder as he stared at Nick.
“I shouldn’t have to tell you, but they’ll be significantly less light for you.”
Nick’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t bother to answer.
He did know that.
That was just the way things were for vampires in the world.
Well… not for the Stravens of the world.
Definitely for the Nick Midnights of the world, though.
“So?” Nick said, looking between the two of them.
Morley gave him another half-puzzled frown.
“So… what?”
Nick frowned back at him, making a show of checking his watch, although he could see the time clearly in the projection of his headset. “Straven’s a vampire. It’s night time… for at least six more hours. Where’s this Straven now?”
Chapter 4
Of Course
Morley sent Nick.
Because of course he did.
Even Nick had to admit he was the right choice, given where Gertrude, the NYPD’s A.I., told them Straven was expected to be for most of the night.
Nick’s fight had been an early one.
It had also been short, like Malek said.
He was out of there by around 9:00 p.m., given that fights started early this time of year. The dome followed the course of the sun on the outside, which meant it rose late and set early in the winter, just like it did in the real sky outside the dome… which they could no longer see from inside New York Protected Area.
Since it was just after midnight now, that gave them a minimum of five, but more like six hours to find Straven and question them… assuming the famous vampire went home when the sun came up, and didn’t just continue partying inside windowless buildings while the day rose for the rest of the world.
In any case, given that it was New York, and a Friday no less, it was still early.
Morley called Straven’s people to set up the interview, and was informed the vampire would speak to them that night, given the urgency of the situation. Presumably Morley told someone in Straven’s team that the NYPD had reason to believe Straven themself might be in danger, or that they might have been targeted in some way in the initial attack.
Equally presumably, Morley probably didn’t add that they suspected this because of a painting made in the Cauldron by a possible prescient…
…or that, based on that painting, Straven might just as easily be a suspect.
Morley told them Nick’s badge ID number, and said he’d send their Midnight down in the next hour or so.
Jordan offered to come with him.
Nick went back and forth on whether that was a good idea.
Humans could be disarming for vampires.
It didn’t hurt that Damon was a good-looking guy.
From the small amount of research Nick had time to do before he left the area of the Sphinx building, it was clear Straven was an equal-opportunity consumer. Of course, that didn’t mean much; that was probably true for eighty percent of vampires.
So yeah… Jordan might prove a good distraction.
He also might act as a kind of shield for Nick himself, in that most vampires who attended these types of clubs either went to pick up humans, or brought their own humans with them.
On the other hand, cop or no, Jordan wouldn’t be all that safe in there.
There was nothing a bunch of depraved vampires liked more than a virgin, and as far as Nick knew, Jordan had never been with a vampire—in any sense of the word.
Nick also wasn’t too keen on having Jordan see how a lot of vamps behaved when they were primarily in the company of their own kind. They tended to be less inhibited in those environments, and less shy about full-blown indulging in their natural proclivities, versus blending with human ideas of “normal.”
He and Jordan were friends.
Truthfully, though, that friendship still felt vaguely fragile to Nick.
He’d been a little shocked the male cop accepted him at all, much less so quickly, given that Jordan seemed to have some pretty harsh opinions of vampires when the two of them were first introduced.
Truthfully, he thought Damon Jordan was a racist prick when they first met.
Jordan thought he was…
Well, a vampire.
And yeah, some of Jordan’s assumptions about Nick because of his race were bullshit.
At the same time, Nick knew Jordan wasn’t exactly wrong in a lot of those assumptions, either. He wasn’t wrong about how a lot of vampires behaved, or how they viewed humans, or how they approached sex, especially when no one official was looking.
For the same reason, Nick wasn’t overly keen on reminding Jordan exactly what he was—or what he was capable of.
He knew Jordan might see things in that club that could give him reasons to side-eye him, or, at the very least, wonder what the hell Nick got up to on his weekends off… or after his pro-fights, for that matter, when he got hit up by a bunch of willing vampire and fight groupies, male and female, human and vamp.
Before he could decide, Morley nodded, looking only at Damon.
“Yeah. I think that’s a good idea,” the older detective said. “It’s better to have a human there, too.” He glanced at Nick, almost like he’d seen his thoughts. “…Humans are distracting in places like this. Right, Midnight?”
Nick did his best to hide his misgivings.
He answered Morley’s question with a nod.
He knew it wouldn’t exactly make him look innocent if he put up a fight.
As for Jordan himself, Nick couldn’t help noticing his human friend’s interest didn’t come across as one hundred percent work-related. There was definitely an element of curiosity hovering around the human detective.
Nick had to assume Jordan hadn’t been to a lot of vampire clubs.
Truthfully, given his physical reaction in terms of elevated pulse and temperature when Morley gave him the thumbs up, Nick wondered if he’d been to any.
They took a robo-taxi from downtown to midtown.
Most of the high-end clubs lived there.
Again, hardly a surprise, given who Straven was.
Nick considered warning his human friend what he was about to walk into.
He considered giving him advice, or a list of things he probably shouldn’t do.
In the end, he said nothing.
He couldn’t figure out a way to say any of it that wouldn’t over-dramatize where they were going even more—or come off as condescending, or pique the human’s curiosity more tha
n it already was, or worse, make him paranoid.
They left the taxi after Jordan swiped the payment box with his ident-tat and his detective’s badge, so the fare would be charged to the NYPD.
Nick shoved his hands in his pockets, waiting outside in the drizzle while Jordan paid.
He looked up at the flickering neon sign of the club, which didn’t have a name, just a stylized, Art Deco image of two dark red fangs. Those fangs were surrounded by a subtle but highly-detailed virtual hologram of a voluminous shadow that transformed between wings, smoke, and a whipping, Jack the Ripper-style cloak.
Unlike most of the clubs on the main avenue, versus the alley where they now stood, no other holographic images climbed up around the building, trying to get the attention of passersby, or compete with nearby businesses.
Whoever came here already knew where they were going.
A thick metal panel lived directly under the neon fangs, guarded by a gigantic vampire with no neck who could have worked at the fights alongside Nick. Apart from stylized metal rivets, the door itself was entirely featureless.
The Puerto Rican-looking vampire nodded at Nick when the robo-taxi moved off, then did a double-take, staring at his face.
“Tanaka!” he said, his tanned face breaking out in a grin.
He rose, fast, vampire-fast, from the beat-up stool where he’d been sitting.
Before Nick could decide how to react, the other vampire extended a muscular arm and hand covered in organic implant tattoos that ran with the same blood-red color as the fanged sign above. Still grinning that shit-eating grin, he offered the hand to Nick.
“You’re Nick Tanaka!” He let out a booming wolf howl. “The White Wolf!”
He threw his head back, howling louder.
Nick looked up and down the alley while he howled, feeling his jaw clench as he suppressed the impulse to tell the bouncer to shut the fuck up.
The other vamp finished his longer, more drawn-out howl and laughed in delight, smacking Nick good-naturedly on the shoulder.
“Fuck, man! No one told me you’d be here tonight!” He looked behind him, seeing Jordan, then the robo-taxi, which was backing out of the alley. “No entourage? You a one-man vampire, Wolf?”
The Prescient: A Science Fiction Vampire Detective Novel (Vampire Detective Midnight Book 3) Page 7
