Page 6 of Almost Midnight (Vampire Detective Midnight #8)

CHAPTER 6

THE QUEEN HAS SPOKEN

He controlled his voice with an effort when he asked Lara about his wife.

Even so, the Archangel C.E.O. didn’t answer his question, not at first.

She very deliberately stared out the long windows of her penthouse apartment instead, her expression that of a long-suffering mother tired of dealing with her disobedient child.

“Where is she?” he asked again, his voice unmoving.

St. Maarten looked down at him finally, from the slight rise in her main living room.

It was more like a receiving room than a true living room, of course.

Nick had always viewed the set up as a modern-day throne room, one designed that way very deliberately, with its sunken living room overlooking huge windows with a breathtaking view of Central Park. The apartment’s front door and foyer led directly into that lower part of the room, leaving any guests standing roughly four feet below the raised ring around the back.

That area, where St. Maarten herself invariably chose to position herself, was only accessible from a deeper, more private area of the house.

Lara changed the furniture in that area fairly frequently, but it always had an air of the gilded perch. From there, she figuratively and literally looked down upon her subjects, her guests, and her employees. The platform now housed a dark green couch with a low coffee table that looked to be made primarily of organics, but the base and trim were bright gold.

She was standing, however, as she glared down at Nick, who stood in the sunken part of the room, like all good vassals.

Maybe she stood simply to gain those extra few feet on him.

Or maybe he simply annoyed her more than most of her guests.

“Has Farlucci contacted you yet?” she asked coldly.

“Just answer the question, Lara.” He knew she hated it when he used her first name. She likely hated it with every fiber of her being, especially when he did it in such a familiar, annoyed, and condescending way. It only made Nick want to do it more.

“Where is Wynter?” he growled. “Where are the kids? Where the fuck did you put them now? Or am I really not allowed to know that?”

She sniffed, her expression rippling with that annoyance.

“They are here, of course,” she said haughtily.

“Here?” He stared up at her. “Here, where? What does that mean?”

She glared back at him, but he saw a glimmer of reluctance in her eyes, like she regretted that she’d told him anything at all.

It made him think she was likely telling him the truth, at least.

“All of you will be staying with me from now on,” she said stiffly, that reluctance still in her words. “And before you ungraciously but predictably tell me to fuck off, Detective, you might want to think about whether you have any other realistic alternatives apart from an H.R.A. cell.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Particularly, any options that would allow you to share an accommodation with your, err… mate.”

She said the last word with obvious distaste.

“You cannot return to the Northeastern Protected Area,” she added, a touch colder. “You are already being watched whenever you are outside one of my facilities, and you will definitely be picked up again if you try to leave the New York Protected Area, given everything that has occurred over the past few weeks.”

She sniffed again, tossing back her head and hair.

“Many within the racial authorities are still suspicious of you, despite the death of your doppelg?nger. There are still some who think you must have been working with him, or possibly obstructing the investigation from the inside. The H.R.A. and their enforcement branch, The Leash, will be watching you from now on, especially. The I.S.F. only rescinded twenty-four hour surveillance orders when I offered to do it for them, and to provide them with daily reports and select footage. The N.Y.P.D. won’t tolerate you living outside vampire-designated housing anymore, like you had been with Ms. James. They won’t even allow it inside the boundaries of New York. Not without a special dispensation, which only someone like me can provide.”

Nick grunted again, but didn’t speak.

Lara’s eyes grew sharp as glass.

“The days when I could entirely shield and protect you from the racial authorities, even when you were outside a building under my direct control, are over, Detective,” she said crisply.

The finality in her words could not be missed.

Nick felt his fangs extend a little more, and looked away when he smelled a touch of wariness on the middle-aged human. He knew, even before he noticed the pink tint to his vision, that his eyes must be turning red, too.

She’d clearly seen that.

He couldn’t afford to make her so nervous she had him locked up for real.

For the same reason, he forced himself to remain quiet.

He forced himself to control his anger, to flatten his mind, his expression, his emotions, like he had in front of the Leash interrogators.

He stared out the window at Central Park, and for the first time in a very long time, he felt exceedingly unfree.

He’d let himself grow too used to that illusion of freedom.

“You have a fight tonight, I believe,” St. Maarten said next, her voice slightly subdued. “I would go to it, if I were you.”

Nick glanced at her, but she was obviously dialing her emotions back, too.

She was at least dialing them back from where he could see them.

“All of you will need to behave exceedingly normal for a while,” the Archangel C.E.O. continued, her voice back to businesslike, unemotional. “Ms. James is already at work, just so you know. She will be commuting via train to her job as principal of Kellerman Preparatory School every day for the rest of this week, and for the week after that, and the one after that… and so on. Tai will be going with her and attending school, just like she had been when you all lived up there. Mal will be working for me, as he had before. Kit will go back to work for me, as well. You and Detective Morley will also be returning to work.”

She let a touch of warning return to her words.

“I have already made myself responsible for you, and agreed to house you,” she said flatly. “This is now all taken care of legally, Detective, as Archangel is under H.R.A. contract. I have explained the stipulation of the I.S.F. already, and how it will be resolved. Kit will be taking care of that end of things, just as she did when you lived off-site.”

Nick felt his jaw harden, but his emotions honestly felt mixed.

This could be a fuck of a lot worse, he reminded himself. You could be in an H.R.A. cell, or dead, or emptied of organs… or Wynter could be dead. She could be disappeared, like Forrest Walker. They could have put her somewhere where you’d never see her again.

Or he could be like Walker, who Nick still didn’t fully believe was as protected by Mi6 as St. Maarten wanted him to believe.

The kid could be in a black site somewhere.

Malek could be locked up.

Morley could have been fired, or thrown in a human prison for “race treason,” or some other trumped-up charge they gave to humans who made the mistake of befriending non-humans.

“Jordan?” Nick asked, abrupt. “Where’d they put Damon?”

“I imagine your partner, Damon Jordan, will be returning to work eventually, as well, and perhaps sooner than you think.” She tilted her head in a way that conceded Nick had a point. “But you are correct, Detective… he’s not going back to normal life just yet. Right now, he is under observation at a vampire scientific and care facility in Brooklyn that specializes in transitions of government employees in the line of duty.”

Nick grunted under his breath.

He didn’t meet her gaze.

That was a polite way of describing what happened to Damon, who’d been attacked and killed as a human, and turned into a vampire by a psychopath against his will.

The government euphemisms were downright sick at times.

So were the things they labeled “cures,” which had a habit of normalizing the unthinkable, rather than actually helping anyone put in that godawful situation.

Nick had never been to one, but he’d also heard a fair bit from Brick and his people about such “facilities,” and how they oversaw vampire transitions.

Jordan would likely be stuck in a room while they force-fed him calming medications––medications that vampire metabolisms burned through in under an hour––and talked to him in condescending voices while he was chained to a wall.

He’d hear a lot about his need to “come to terms” with his new status as a vampire, and, as a byproduct, as a second-class citizen of the human Protected Areas. He’d learn the joys of being owned by the state. They’d explain to him, in euphemistic, bullshit language, about how he no longer had any legal rights, not even to full personhood.

They’d feed him synthetic blood bags and tell him he’d graduate to H.R.A. live feeds when he could “learn to control himself.”

They’d also likely give him an official designation.

From what St. Maarten was implying, they’d already decided he would continue to be a cop, which made sense. Which meant he’d be designated “Midnight,” like Nick.

The thought made Nick feel sick.

It had to be Jordan’s worst nightmare, becoming a vampire.

He’d fucking hated vampires when Nick first met him.

Hell, he probably still did hate them; he’d just made an exception for Nick.

“He didn’t get in trouble for what he did by that portal?” Nick asked her, gruff.

She blinked at him, as if confused by the question.

Then her hazel eyes cleared.

“For killing a murderous vampire?” She scoffed, tossing her head. “No. They’re more likely to pin a medal on him for that.”

“Can I visit him?” Nick asked next, giving her a harder look.

She sniffed, tilting her chin a touch higher. “Of course you can visit him, Detective. I had him placed in an Archangel facility, in a privileged ward, with my best technicians. I had hoped you would do more than simply visit him. I had planned to have you sign a contract to act as his vampire liaison, Nick, and possibly––”

“Yes,” Nick cut in. “I’ll do it. Just give me the contract. Whatever it is, I’ll sign it.”

A small amount of the hardness went out of her mouth.

Her eyes continued to survey him warily, but she seemed to sense that a large part of him had strategically backed down from their fight.

For now, at least.

“Do we all stay up here?” Nick asked next. He gestured expansively around at the living room and the view outside. “All of us crammed up here, in your luxury penthouse with you, Lara? Sharing the high-end chef, the indoor pool, the rumpus room, the theater, and the virtual playroom? That sounds… cozy.”

She rolled her eyes at him openly.

“No,” she said, a touch coldly. “When I said you would be staying here, I thought it would be patently obvious I meant the building, Nick… not my private space.”

She fingered a lock of her hair back behind one ear, and sniffed.

“I have already arranged for separate apartments for each of you on the floor below this one,” she continued stiffly. “Malek has stayed there before, as have vampires and seers who work for me directly. Tai stayed there for a few months, too, while she was first being trained. I have given Ms. James the largest suite, with an additional, smaller, attached suite set aside that the H.R.A. will be told belongs to you. I don’t have any illusions that you will use it, of course, not the bedroom, at least––”

“What about Kit?” Nick broke in. “Is she going to be forced to bunk with the rest of us? I’m assuming she has the H.R.A. breathing down her neck, too?”

“She will be staying here, as well,” St. Maarten confirmed, back to being stiff.

“She has family,” Nick pointed out.

Lara St. Maarten’s eyes grew a touch colder.

“You seemed a lot less concerned about her ‘family,’ Detective, when you planned on relocating her to a completely different dimension without their knowledge or consent.” Her eyes bored into his. “They have been informed of the new arrangement. They were sensible. They would like their daughter safe. They, unlike you, thanked me for protecting her. They also, upon hearing of the circumstances from the H.R.A., thanked me profusely for keeping her from going through a dangerous portal to an entirely different dimension.”

Nick didn’t answer.

He didn’t bother to point out that it had been Kit’s decision to walk through that portal with the rest of them… not his.

His eyes returned to the park outside the window.

The colors were starting to change as the dome’s artificial sun got closer to the horizon. It turned the park orange and pink, with touches of gold and red. The barest edges of the coming night were already growing visible. The faintest glow of the virtual advertisements were beginning to light up areas by the park and nearer to the horizon.

Wynter would be back soon.

He would still get to live with her.

They wouldn’t wake up to birdsong, with a view to the woods behind her little house, the kid sleeping on the couch downstairs, and the deer wandering through her backyard, looking for stray apples and carrots.

Still, it wasn’t nothing.

St. Maarten hadn’t separated them.

While he knew it was for cynical reasons, he couldn’t help but be grateful.

“I have another request,” Nick ventured.

He continued to stare at the park.

“Of course you do.” St. Maarten scoffed.

When he didn’t go on immediately, she fingered another piece of her unnaturally straight bob off a high, angular cheekbone. When Nick continued to not speak, a few seconds later, she motioned him forward impatiently.

“What is it?” she asked crossly. “Say the words, Nick. Out loud. Now. You have a fight tonight. Or didn’t you hear me? Farlucci has been pestering me all day.”

Nick continued to watch the park turn more golden and redder.

“I want your people to help me to remember,” he said. “If you’re okay with that.”

He watched the colors change and darken under the dome.

“If I can’t return to my world, I at least want to remember it,” he went on flatly. “I can’t get over something I don’t understand well enough to accept.”

He turned to look at her directly, his voice still emotionless.

“I’d like to remember how it happened… how I got here. I also want to know what I’ve been doing here, all of this time. I want to know who I came with through the portal, what happened to them, and how the war went down. I want to know what part I played, how I ended up in the White Death, and what I did while I was with them.”

He studied her face, his voice a touch harder.

“I’ve had dreams that strongly suggest it was Brick who pulled me through that door,” Nick added. “…and that I wasn’t exactly willing. For the same reason, I’d strongly prefer if that information wasn’t entirely filtered through the dubious explanations of my sire, who likely has strong motivation to lie about what really went down. I’d rather it wasn’t filtered through anyone, for that matter. I want to remember… really remember… the truth of what happened to me. At this point, I don’t even know if I fought in the war at all. My doppelg?nger did… I’m reasonably sure of that… but I don’t know if I did. If I did do that, I want to know who I fought for. And why. I also have a vague memory of people being…”

He thought of Charles, of the seer he’d always believed to be the individual who began the wars here, on this dimension.

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

“…dead,” he ended bluntly. “People I also seem to think came here, even after they’d died. I need to reconcile all of these things. I want to know which things are true and which aren’t. I’m tired of living with memories I don’t trust, stories told to me by Brick and others that feel only half-true, or maybe not true at all.”

Nick’s jaw flexed.

“I want the truth about myself, and how I got here,” he repeated, gruff. “I deserve that. Don’t I? If I’m never going to go back… if I’m never to see my home world again, or be with the people I left behind, I at least deserve to have that part of myself back. Don’t I?”

There was a silence.

Nick noticed St. Maarten’s expression had changed, however.

She looked curious almost, even intrigued.

She also looked just the tiniest bit relieved, like she saw this as a good sign.

Like she thought Nick’s request might mean he was willing to seek acceptance.

Of course, it could be an act.

It was probably an act.

Unless she was simply trying to figure out how to use his confession, his mostly-true vulnerability around his desire for the truth of his life, to her advantage.

“Done,” she said. “I can’t promise anything––”

“I wouldn’t expect you could,” Nick cut in. “Which is why I didn’t ask for any guarantees. Only for your help. Or your lack of obstruction, at least.” He gave her a warning look. “I’d like Tai for the seer side of things. And Malek.”

She nodded slowly, but he saw her lips pinch.

“Not Wynter?” she asked.

“Not right away,” Nick said. “It’s personal for her. It might make things harder.”

Lara nodded slowly a second time.

“All right,” she agreed.

He fought not to read anything into the strange look that grew in her eyes as she continued to stare at him.

He knew it likely didn’t bode well for him.

If he got to the truth in the end, he almost didn’t care.