Page 5 of Almost Midnight (Vampire Detective Midnight #8)

CHAPTER 5

CHAPERONED

Lara St. Maarten had a car waiting for him out front.

Nick couldn’t even pretend to be surprised.

He’d known exactly which one of his three “employers” had offered to chaperone him and house him in the probationary period after his second arrest in as many weeks. There’d never been a question in his mind about who would have agreed to such a thing.

Hell, he assumed it was her idea.

He didn’t bother to say a word to the obviously-vampire driver with the crystal-colored eyes, or ask where they’d be going.

He knew where they were going.

He just hoped it wouldn’t only be Lara St. Maarten herself who’d be waiting for him. She either had his wife, Malek, and Tai, with her, and also staying at her building in the Golden River, or else she knew where they were. If she had them housed somewhere else, Nick had no doubt she’d use that as leverage over him, too.

Either way, she held the cards.

Nick had nothing in mind to try until he knew where Wynter and the kids were, and what St. Maarten intended for the four of them now.

The only other person who might have picked him up would have been one of Farlucci’s people, but that wouldn’t have been to come and live with him, much less for Farlucci to act as Nick’s personal chaperone. Wherever the fuck Farlucci had his undoubtedly palatial private lair, there’s no way Nick would be getting an invitation to live there, not now, and likely not anytime in the near or distant future.

Farlucci would only pick him up to bring him in to work.

That possibility had crossed Nick’s mind, as well, given how smug the I.S.F. agent had been about Nick being cleared for work in the vampire fighting cages. Clearly, that I.S.F. prick wanted Nick to know that the official notification of his fitness had gone directly to his human employer, without Nick himself being consulted.

The agent wanted Nick to know Farlucci could order Nick back into the ring to fatten his wallet, pretty much whenever he snapped his fingers.

Pulling shit like that was another not-so-subtle fuck you.

A lot of the freaks who chose a career with the racial authorities were racists down to the bone. They loved to toss digs like that at non-humans. It probably gave them a chubby, since they did it to Nick whenever circumstances offered the slightest chance.

The fact that Nick was famous likely only goaded that impulse more.

He barely grunted when the limousine driver politely shut the door behind him and walked around to the driver’s-side door. She settled herself in front, then smiled at him in a friendly way through the connecting window.

“There’s blood in the refrigerator, if you’re hungry,” she said cheerfully.

Nick didn’t answer.

Still, he knew he’d probably eat.

He hadn’t eaten in almost seventy-two hours. They’d held him for two days, and the last blood he’d had was Wynter’s, and that was well before they’d made it to the area of the portal. More to the point, he wasn’t about to leave himself vulnerable right now. A hungry vampire was a weak vampire. Maybe worse, a hungry vampire was a vampire that lacked self-control.

Still, he didn’t grab for the fridge handle right way.

Maybe that was pride.

Maybe it was stupidity.

Maybe it was something else entirely.

He glanced around the back of the car. His eyes took in images flickering on news reels, each one playing on a different semi-organic screen. Those screens covered the insides of all the windows, with each window showing a different channel.

It all felt both alien and disturbingly familiar.

He knew which one St. Maarten meant it to be.

She meant for him to feel at home, to be reminded of the normality of his life here.

But it didn’t feel normal to him now.

It didn’t feel like home, either.

He watched a news program about violence increasing in the New York Protected Area, mostly due to the political radicalization of organized crime. Nick stared blankly at images of dead humans with their throats ripped out, while a serious newscaster talked about how several prominent politicians had been pounding their fists about the need to crack down on the vampire underworld. Nick knew that meant the White Death.

He wondered if there was any truth to it, or if it was more grandstanding.

He barely noticed when, about twenty minutes later through heavy traffic, they turned onto a road he’d once been reasonably familiar with, but hadn’t visited in a long time.

By then, he’d drunk through the entirety of two blood bags he’d found in the small fridge. He’d stopped at two, but found himself eyeing the third, now considering drinking down that one, as well. In the end, he reached for the bag with a grumble and tore off the seal.

He drank it down rapidly, but barely tasted it.

Briefly, their location distracted him.

The familiar street led into the Dorsal Community.

It was the richest, most exclusive block of the swath of New York City known as the River of Gold––a sea of thin, dizzyingly tall skyscrapers that lined Central Park West. Those skyscrapers housed the richest residents of Manhattan proper.

The tallest among those was Phoenix Tower, where Lara St. Maarten lived, at least when she was staying in Manhattan.

Nick watched it grow closer through the virtual windshield, his eyes on the flaming bird on the side of the building, and that sick feeling in his gut worsened.

He knew what St. Maarten wanted.

He knew, and it felt like death.

* * *

“I don’t understand why you’re blaming this on me,” Lara St. Maarten said, her voice colder. “I didn’t close the portal, Detective.”

Nick stared at her for a few seconds, for the first time wondering if maybe she had closed it. The idea hadn’t even occurred to him until then, but now it suddenly felt like a real possibility. He was forced to dismiss the odd thought seconds later.

No, she hadn’t closed it.

Probably.

St. Maarten continued to watch him, her eyes cold.

“You’re angry at me because you… quite wisely, I might add… hesitated to go through an inter-dimensional portal with mindless abandon. The smarter angels of your nature, Detective, decided maybe it would be better to stop, think, consider. Given you had absolutely no idea where that doorway might lead, or whether that place or time or dimension would kill you the instant you landed… or kill your friends and family, more surely, even if you survived… pardon me for not being overly broken up that you came to your senses at the last second!”

Her lipsticked mouth pursed as she shook her head.

“Do you really want to aim your temper tantrum at me?” she scoffed. “What possible purpose does that anger even serve now? Especially since it was your own common sense that caused you to pause before doing something so monumentally stupid?”

Nick didn’t answer.

At his silence, Lara St. Maarten sniffed haughtily.

“…I don’t know if I should be flattered or not that you’d rather credit me for that rational hesitation, Nick, instead of your own better judgment.”

“We would have been through it, if you hadn’t stopped us,” Nick growled.

“It would have been a very foolish thing to do,” she snapped back.

“Don’t even pretend that’s why you put a stop to it,” Nick warned, a touch colder himself. “You didn’t rush up there with the fucking Leash to protect us… certainly not to protect me. You came up there to make sure I didn’t abscond with your favorite weapons.”

“Ludicrous,” she scoffed. “You are utterly paranoid, Nick. When have I ever done anything but help you and those children––?”

“Paranoid?” he cut in. His anger spiked, in spite of himself. “You brought those fuckers up there, knowing exactly what they were. Knowing exactly what they do to my kind. They fucking murdered two vampires right in front of us, and disappeared Walker into a gods-damned black hole run by the H.R.A. If he’s not dead already, he might not ever see daylight again––”

“Nonsense.” She snorted, refolding her thin arms. “Your flare for the dramatic really has no bounds.” She glared at him in open warning. “I hope you don’t speak like this in front of your N.Y.P.D. superiors, Nick, because you sound like some kind of anti-human radical.”

“What part of what I said isn’t true?” Nick snapped.

“How about all of it,” she shot back. “Mr. Walker is perfectly fine. Mi6 is negotiating for his release as we speak. At worst, he’ll be banned from returning to the Protected Areas of North America for conducting illegal activities on our soil.”

Nick let out a skeptical grunt.

She gave him a scathing look, her nostrils flaring.

“As for those vampires who were supposedly ‘murdered’ for no reason,” she said, making air quotes with her fingers. “Both of them were wanted criminals who had only recently escaped confinement. They’d been convicted of the murder of their mutual human employer. The main reason they picked Forrest up was to explain his association with them––”

Nick let out a humorless snort. “What an absolute crock of shit!”

She rolled her eyes, her expression irritated. “As I said, your penchant for drama, exaggeration, and conspiracy is unparalleled, Nick.”

“As is your capacity for treating me like I’m a fucking idiot,” Nick snapped back. “You did this, Lara.” Nick growled low in his throat. “You did it. All so you could keep your pet seers. All so you wouldn’t lose the illegal weapons you have in Tai and Malek. And now you expect me to just go back to working for you, like nothing happened––”

“I expect no such thing,” she said, her voice even colder.

She drew out a menacing-feeling pause.

“But since we’re discussing it,” she went on acidly. “I find it exceedingly interesting that you intended to remove three of my best and most irreplaceable assets, people I actually care about, and have known for decades, incidentally, without so much as telling me.”

Her voice grew harsher, more openly angry.

“You didn’t even intend to tell me about it, Nick,” she repeated furiously. “You had no intention of telling me a damned thing about what you were doing, or why you were doing it. You made a unilateral decision to risk their lives, to completely disappear them from mine, without so much as asking me what I thought about that idea. You didn’t even bother to run the odds on the likelihood any of you would survive. Or the likelihood you’d reach a world or a dimension where you’d be better off than you are now––”

“Jesus fuck, you are so insanely full of it,” Nick growled.

“Am I?”

“You fucking well are,” he snapped. “Given the amount of work you and Brick have put in, trying to convince me that this was my world… I highly doubt my home dimension is the dystopian hellscape you’re pretending. You wouldn’t bother, if that was the case. You certainly wouldn’t bother to the extent you’ve bothered over the years. You’d just tell me the truth about how shitty my real planet was, and warn me off trying it––”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said coldly.

“Don’t you?” Nick retorted. “All those faked videos, Lara? The ones you showed Wynter, knowing she’d show me? The videos of me and Dalejem opening limousine doors? The ones with Miriam and Black, that supposedly came from ‘recovered records’ Archangel had on file here? I’m assuming Brick helped you put those together. Or possibly you got the information from me in some way, after one of your numerous brain scans or reprogramming sessions with the I.S.F. However the exact process worked, you faked a fuck of a lot of documentation, Lara, to not care at all about me trying to get back to my home world. Why go to all of that trouble? Why spend so much effort trying to convince me this was the same world where I was born? What were you trying to hide from me?”

“Nothing!” she hissed.

“Right. So you just had a bunch of fake footage of me and my seer mate lying around for shits and giggles? Then you just happened to assign Wynter to the task of going through them, knowing full well she’d show them to me once she saw what was on it?”

St. Maarten only glared at him, silent.

At the wholly unapologetic stare she aimed at him, Nick let out a disgusted sound, feeling the pain in his chest and gut grow hotter.

“Of all the manipulative, gaslighting, fucked up shit to foist on me. And on Wynter for that matter, who believed the ones of Dalejem were of her––”

“They weren’t fake,” she snapped.

Nick stared at her. “Bullshit.”

“They weren’t.”

Nick rolled his eyes.

He shook his head in disbelief as he stared at her.

“Well, I admire your commitment to the lie––” he began coldly, but she cut him off.

“Do you really think that was the only portal to have ever opened before, Nick?” she asked coldly. “Do you think you are the only being to have ever walked through one of those doors? That Brick is? Or Zoe? Or Wynter herself?”

The silence grew thick.

Nick stared at her through it.

“Are you saying you’ve been to my old world?” he asked, feeling strangely faint. “Are you saying those records came from there? That you went back there and stole data from the place where I was born?”

She bit her lip, almost like she was second-guessing, or even deeply regretting her own words. He saw her cheeks redden as she slowly shook her head, then fingered her perfectly cut, disturbingly symmetrical hair back into place.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter now,” she said crisply. “The deed is done. The portal is closed.”

“Don’t you mean this portal?” Nick growled.

“Do you know how to conjure another one?” she sneered at him.

Nick’s stare turned into a glower. He knew she probably saw an open threat in his eyes now, but he didn’t care.

“No,” he answered her belatedly. “I don’t know how to conjure one. And thanks so much for that, Lara. It wasn’t enough that you unilaterally made that decision for all of us… unlike me, who actually asked them…” he added, with venom in his words. “No, you had to kill a few vampires and kidnap a half-blood seer just to make sure we understood what a bad idea it would be to cross you again…”

“You are delusional,” St. Maarten snapped. “Those vampires dying was your doing, Nick. Not mine! If you hadn’t tried to take all of them with you––”

“I thought they were wanted criminals?” he growled.

“They were!” She looked angry again, and now flustered.

“Bullshit!” Nick snarled. “Gaos. Will you just stop already?”

He stared at her, fighting back the urge to threaten her openly, or even to use his thrall on her. He wondered if it would even work on Lara St. Maarten. He had his doubts. She probably had some kind of implant that neutralized vampire powers of persuasion.

“The sheer lengths you’ve gone to, to keep me from knowing other portals have appeared,” he said next. “The sheer lengths you and Brick went to, to convince me that this was my dimension, my Earth, that everyone I knew back there was dead, that my entire world was dead from self-immolation. Fucking videos and fake research jobs. An antique car… did you do that, too? Or was that little detail Brick’s? All to convince me that there’s no other place that’s even remotely less terrible than it is here––”

“You don’t know that it’s not true,” Lara snapped.

“The hell I don’t!”

“A wish-fulfilling belief is not knowledge, Detective Midnight,” she said coldly. “And now, thanks to you, everyone you care about believes the same fantastical nonsense you do. Even Tai and Malek, who should know better, will have to live with the very false impression that just on the other side of that door lay some kind of seer paradise, just for them. A seer and vampire sanctuary waiting for you and the rest of your friends!”

“You don’t know that it doesn’t exist,” he countered coldly.

“Those records are a hundred years old,” she retorted.

“That doesn’t mean the planet is gone,” Nick retorted back. “Or that the humans and other races there made the same sick choices your people did. Or that the timeline you encountered mirrors ours in any way!”

He nearly said that Dalejem had been dead here, on this world, for hundreds of years.

He didn’t say it, though.

He pulled the thought back at the last minute.

Lara St. Maarten didn’t seem to notice.

She rolled her eyes, not hiding her disdain.

“Whatever, Nick,” she said dismissively. “You can believe whatever you wish. Just know that your fanciful beliefs have repercussions. Now you must deal with the consequences of the false hope you have given all of your supposed loved ones.”

Her eyes grew darker.

“Unfortunately, so must I. You fed them false expectations, childish dreams, a fantasy of some ‘perfect world’ where humans and seers and vampires all supposedly live in harmony and equity… something we both know is unlikely in the extreme, if not outright impossible. If they are upset about losing that now, that is entirely your fault, Nick.”

Nick stared at her in disbelief. “You think they’d be happier thinking every dimension in the universe fucking hates their kind?”

“I think reality is always preferable to delusion, Nick.” She folded her arms tightly. “You need to grow up. Stop living in the past, with your dead seer husband, and join the present, with the living. Be here for Wynter, and for that seer child, who loves you. They need you, Nick. Your mythical, long-dead world doesn’t. It hasn’t needed you for a long time.”

Nick bit his tongue harder.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

St. Maarten continued coldly, “You need to face facts, like an adult––”

“Face facts?” Nick growled. “What facts would those be, Lara? The continual need for me to come and go whenever you click your manicured fingers? Purely because you feel entitled to own me, my wife, those two seer kids––?”

“Malek is an adult,” St. Maarten cut in.

“Only by human standards,” Nick retorted. “And he’s not exactly had a normal life, has he? Being forced to raise that kid since she was practically a baby?”

“What do you know of it?” St. Maarten re-folded her arms even tighter. “I’ve been looking after the two of them far longer than you have, Detective. You want to play father with them? Fine. I’ve not interfered, even though you’ve barely been in their lives, and you’ve hardly been a ‘good’ role model for either of them when you have been. You still know almost nothing about what either is even capable of… or what it takes to keep them from doing immense harm to themselves and others…”

Nick felt his fangs extending as she continued.

Her voice grew more biting.

“…But, please, please, do feel free to ‘educate’ me on who they are, Detective, as well as their circumstances in life, and what would be best for both of them. Clearly you know everything about them, and I know nothing. You surely know everything it entails to keep the girl, in particular, from accidentally killing the people she loves, like she did her parents. I’m sure it wouldn’t even occur to you to thank me for what I’ve done to keep her from killing you, Detective. Or Ms. James. Or Kit, or Jordan, or Detective Morley, for that matter.”

She fingered more hair out of her face.

She still wasn’t finished.

“Ms. James,” she muttered under her breath. “Who, incidentally, you insist on calling your wife, even though such a designation would mean life imprisonment or worse for her, and a near-certain death sentence for yourself.”

At Nick’s silence, she scoffed at him openly.

She seemed to take his silent glare as tacit agreement.

The truth was, her words made him so fucking angry, he didn’t trust himself to speak.

He knew they were a threat.

He definitely heard them as a threat.

Moreover, he knew he wouldn’t have any choice but to cave to that threat, at least for the time being, even knowing he could trust a single word she said. He also knew St. Maarten would utterly deny it, if he accused her openly of making that threat.

She would keep playing this game and he’d keep getting angrier and angrier and it wouldn’t win him a fucking thing. He’d wasted too much time arguing with this self-absorbed, manipulative narcissist as it was.

She wasn’t going to admit to anything.

She would never feel bad or guilty for what she’d done.

She’d convinced herself she’d saved all of them from themselves.

She probably thought she’d even saved Forrest Walker, despite just standing there while the H.R.A. decapitated his girlfriend and his friend right in front of him. She probably thought Walker owed her a thank you, too, after she stood by and let them haul him off to an extrajudicial prison where he’d likely been tortured and starved for weeks.

Only for weeks, if he was lucky, or for years or possibly until he was dead if he wasn’t.

Nick had heard stories about those holding cells. He’d been told by Brick and others in the White Death about the sick, nightmarish shit the H.R.A. was prone to wreak on non-humans, seers as well as vampires. To them, Walker wasn’t a person at all.

But pointing any of that out to Lara St. Maarten was a complete waste of time.

Nick had let himself forget what she was.

He’d let himself forget she’d never stop wielding the stick of her mere race over him.

She believed it. She one hundred percent believed she was superior, so why would she ever care to see things from Nick’s point of view?

“Where is she?” Nick asked finally.

It was the only thing left to ask.