Page 9 of Almost Midnight (Vampire Detective Midnight #8)

CHAPTER 9

KNOCKING DOORS

Nick watched yet another door start to close in their faces.

Morley hadn’t even managed to get out a question that time, or flash his badge.

The woman scowling at them from one edge of the metal panel barely took in the detective’s face before she seemed to make up her mind that she wanted nothing to do with any of it. She glared at Morley with beady, half-glazed eyes that suggested she hadn’t been asleep when they knocked, but more likely doing crazz, the current drug of the day.

Nick knew from the vamps he fought with, that most human feed-bags the I.S.F. sent to leashed vamps now did the drug. It was especially popular with those addicted to certain forms of online betting. Unsurprisingly, the betting was also illegal, and involved losers having to subject themselves to humiliating displays of one kind or another, live, on an underground media feed. Sometimes those displays even included torture, or self-mutilation. The human medical emergency centers had recently seen an uptick of both things.

Game betting had become a disease in the New York Protected Area.

People got addicted to the high of it, and the slim chance they might come out rich, or famous, or both, even as the stakes grew more and more sadistic.

Crazz made them even more likely to take those bets.

Now humans inhaled the lilac-colored powder before they bet on the games, and when they lost, the crazz made the penalties for losing more bearable, apparently––but also more likely that they’d seriously injure themselves. Either because the pain hurt less, or they didn’t remember eating their own shit, or masturbating in front of a few million people, or cutting off an ear, or a finger, or part of their own face, or whatever the game runner made them do, players were more likely to go too far.

As to whether this woman was one of those, Nick didn’t really want to know.

He likely wouldn’t be able to help her, even if she was.

This whole neighborhood was pretty fucking depressing, if Nick were being honest.

But really, it made sense, given the location, and despite their being only about five blocks from the furthest edge of the gated, high-security perimeter of the River of Gold. Only the very poor and very desperate of humanity would choose to live this close to a vampire ghetto.

The woman clearly hadn’t seen Nick, because she visibly jumped when Nick spoke.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” he rumbled out in a low growl.

She stopped cold, caught by the thrall in his voice, the timbre that pulled her closer to his vampire blood. She gripped the door in white knuckles where she’d already stopped closing it, and now the metal panel framed her face, right where her mouth fell open, fish-like.

She wasn’t gasping for air, but her pupils dilated even more.

Her breathing grew into shallow pants.

Luckily for Nick, the drugs didn’t negate the thrall; they strengthened it.

A harder satisfaction warmed Nick’s gut. “That’s right,” he purred at the un-showered and glassy-eyed human. “You might want to cooperate with us willingly, ma’am, or I might just feel the need to––”

Morley stepped in front of him, between Nick and his enthralled.

“Take my card,” the old man said, gruff. He held out one of the metallic, rectangular squares with two fingers. “You can call us, if you think of anything you want to share.”

The woman blinked slowly, as if waking from a deep sleep.

The longer Morley stood there, between her and Nick, the more her face hardened.

She glanced at Nick, then back at Morley, her eyes growing gradually harder, too, as her mind presumably fell back into place. The drug was still there. Nick could see and smell it on her. But she must be past the strongest wave of it.

Her cheeks flushed scarlet as she seemed to realize she’d been about to open her door to the two of them, maybe even invite them inside. She kept her eyes on Morley now, a faint confusion mixed with anger growing in her eyes.

“I don’t remember anything,” she spat at the aging detective, her hard, New York accent like a dagger in the air. “I didn’t see shit. I didn’t hear nothing.”

Before Morley could respond, she slammed the door right in his face.

Morley seemed unfazed.

Nick definitely felt fazed.

He clenched his jaw when his friend turned around, and gave Nick a faintly questioning look, one eyebrow raised. Seeing the scrutiny in those dark eyes, Nick found it was him who broke eye contact first.

“One of these, we’ll have to force the issue,” he muttered.

“Like hell,” Morley warned.

“Then we won’t learn a damned thing,” Nick retorted. “Why bring me, if you’re not going to use me? Don’t you want to find these pricks?”

Morley continued to stare at him levelly, his eyes holding that flat, decidedly cop-like appraisal. He looked at Nick the way cops looked at other cops when they weren’t sure they could trust them, when they thought they might’ve lost the plot. Morley was looking at Nick the way Nick looked at other cops, trying to decide if they needed time on a desk.

Morley must have seen Nick noticing him look.

If so, that didn’t faze him, either.

He continued to look Nick over, a tightness in his mouth.

“You alright, Midnight?” His mouth pursed in a faint frown, his hands fisted in his coat pockets. “You don’t seem… right.”

Nick felt his own hands ball into fists.

He’d been mere feet, mere fingers away from going home––to his real home––a world that might actually allow him to live without a chip in his arm, without constant surveillance, without being forced into unequal contracts and unequal interactions with every human he encountered. He’d thought he’d be back in that imperfect but far better world with all the people he most cared about, including Wynter, including Tai and Malek, including Jordan and Kit, including Zoe, maybe, and maybe even Forrest Keanu Walker and his vampire girlfriend.

He’d thought he’d be there with Morley himself.

But that dream had been snatched away from him.

He’d lost it, before it even felt real.

He’d lost it before he had time to even be happy about it.

Since then, he’d watched two vampires get decapitated in front of him––vampires who hadn’t done a single, fucking thing wrong, as far as Nick could tell, and who’d actually helped save Wynter’s life, and Nick’s life, and all of their lives.

He’d seen a man he grudgingly liked and admired hauled off by the racial authorities for his political convictions. That was after Nick called that same man, who happened to be Wynter’s ex-husband, for help, and the man unhesitatingly came.

Walker hadn’t fucking hesitated.

He’d come riding in like a damned hero, which should have made Nick hate him more, but he’d been too damned grateful to feel anything else.

Now Forrest Walker was likely in a blackout prison camp somewhere, where no one could get to him. He likely was on an island somewhere, being interrogated by pricks who were as likely to murder him extra-judicially as they were to return him to the U.K., where he was from.

And yeah, Nick felt like absolute shit about that.

Guilt didn’t even begin to cover it.

And that hadn’t even been the end of Nick’s own night.

Nick ended up in an interrogation cell of his own, naked, beaten up by Leash agents, everything he said or did recorded in detail by the human racial authorities. He’d spent the rest of that night and most of the following day being questioned and threatened and hit with electric prods as they asked him about Walker and Wynter and his connections to Brick and the White Death. He’d been asked why he called Walker for help when the police and the H.R.A. were on their way. He’d been asked where Brick was, and the location of White Death hideouts.

Nick hadn’t told them shit.

Then again, he didn’t know very much.

He didn’t know anything at all about Walker’s political work, in particular, or his ties to “radical” race-equality organizations in Europe and North America.

He didn’t know where Brick was.

He didn’t know the current location of the White Death lair; Brick tended to change those every few months, if not more frequently.

Eventually, Lara must have intervened. That, or they decided Nick really didn’t know anything, that it was too much bother to keep him.

Fuck, who was he kidding?

Lara probably intervened.

He’d been summoned to her Phoenix Tower right after they released him, and reminded, in no uncertain terms, that he had no rights, other than the ones Lara St. Maarten and Archangel deigned to give him. That included his right to work, to live outside a prison, to live with his mate, or to live anywhere at all, for that matter.

His only other option was to re-join the White Death.

That would mean being a different kind of slave.

Now he was here, back on the job for all of his human employers.

He’d made Farlucci a shit-ton of credits beating up another of his kind, now he was hunting down murderers for the N.Y.P.D., and tomorrow he would be back on the payroll for Archangel. Everything was supposed to be back to normal. Everything was supposed to be hunky-dory, with Nick once more leashed and obedient, a good boy who did what he was told and didn’t complain… working for humans who would just as soon shoot him as look at him.

Nick was supposed to be cool with that.

He was supposed to just smile and shrug that they’d taken his life away, his choice, any semblance of his dignity.

He was supposed to just accept the fact that Lara St. Maarten torpedoed his one chance to get off this rock, to go home, all so she wouldn’t lose access to her favorite weapons: two fucking kids who’d never gotten a break, either.

It wasn’t just Nick who was a slave again.

It was all of them.

And Morley was giving him grief about his fucking demeanor?

“I’m peachy,” Nick said, deadpan.

Morley didn’t smile. Rather, his faint frown deepened.

“Go home,” the old man said, blunt. “You’ve had it for tonight.”

Nick stared at him. “What?”

Morley stared back, unmoved.

“You’re done,” he repeated. “And I can tell by that attitude of yours right now, you’re not going to be able to talk about where you’re at, so you should probably just go surf or box or do something else to work through some of that fucking anger you’re stewing in.” James shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his long coat. “Go on. We don’t need a bloodhound to knock on doors. I’ll get Charlie out here for that.”

“Charlie shouldn’t have to––”

“It’s fine.”

“You said before they wanted a Midnight on the doors,” Nick growled. “In case you stumbled upon a vamp nest in one of these shit-hole tenements––”

“Tanaka,” Morley warned. “I wasn’t asking your goddamned opinion. Get out of here. Now.” He gave Nick one of his I’m losing patience with you stares. “I’ll call you tomorrow, and we’ll see where we’re at on this thing then. Assuming no one’s ordered me to shut it down.”

He motioned with his head towards the stairs.

“In the meantime, get your ass home,” he grunted. “Maybe see if your wife can blow off work for the day. Take her to the beach, along with those kids. I’m sure you’re not the only one who’s feeling fucked up after everything that happened.”

Nick blinked.

It was pure affect; he didn’t need to blink, not as a vampire, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from doing it, anyway.

He felt his jaw start to harden, too.

He could feel the irrationality behind his anger and annoyance at his friend.

This wasn’t Morley’s fault. Morley was on his side.

Moreover, he knew James was right.

Nick was done for the night.

He wasn’t going to be much help at this point. He wasn’t an asset.

In truth, he was probably a fucking liability. He definitely was as likely to cause problems for the investigation as he was to help it.

Nick didn’t get tired, not like a human or seer did, but he could feel that quality James saw in him, like a piece of catgut stretched too far, made too thin, too easy to fray and snap. He didn’t need sleep, but he needed to step back. He needed to shut down for a while, or at least take a few hours to do very little with his mind, and maybe go surfing, like Morley said.

The beach wasn’t a bad idea, either.

He hadn’t stopped at all since…

Well, not since he’d been pulled back from that dimensional door.

Before that, really. He hadn’t stopped since they picked him up at Wynter’s house and arrested him for a bunch of murders he didn’t commit.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t argue with his friend, even though he could see in Morley’s face that the old man braced for it.

Nick could feel the part of himself that very much wanted to argue.

But he didn’t.

In the end, he only nodded.

Then, without a word, he turned around and walked to the stairs.