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It wasn’t grief.

Oddly, it might have been fear.

Nick had never lived as a vampire in a world without Brick.

Something about Brick always being there had grounded him, given him a sense of continuity, of family, maybe even validated his own vampire-ness on some level. Now, as Nick looked at his sire, he knew, without doubt, that Brick would soon be gone.

“Why?” he asked only.

His puzzlement, his confusion, came out plainly in his voice.

Brick chuckled.

It brought splatters of blood to his lips.

He looked up at Nick, almost fondly, and Nick saw that the vampire king knew his time was winding down, too.

“I knew you would leave me,” he said.

Nick’s confusion deepened. “What? Leave you? Leave you how?”

“I knew she would tell you,” Brick said, patient, as if he thought that would clarify things. “I know you. I know you, Nick.”

Well, that didn’t clarify shit.

“What does that mean?” Nick asked, gruff. “What did you not want Lara to tell me?”

But Brick didn’t seem interested in clarifying further.

He forced out more words.

“It’ll be hard to get to… now,” the vampire king said. “Outside the dome… far from the nearest… collapse. But the cave is there. It’s still there. Just… outside… in the graveyard…”

Nick felt his eyes widen.

The cave.

“France?” Nick blurted. “Are you talking about the cave in Nice?”

Brick smiled at him wider, his lips now dripping with blood. “Smart boy. You do remember. I can’t go back. Now… it doesn’t matter…”

Nick felt his throat close.

“Where you landed…” Brick said. “Came first… you and that…” Brick’s lip curled.“Dogof yours. Landed early. Hundreds of years early…”

His fingers clutched at Nick’s hand, but he couldn’t hold on.

“I came later…” Brick managed. “You’d been here, and the dog was dead. You were half-dead, too… drunk… like a corpse…”

Nick felt his fangs lengthen.

“War was already… it was happening…” Brick managed. “Yi. That seer fuck… he started it. He started the whole thing…”

Nick felt his eyebrows go up.

Yistarted the war? How the fuck had Yi started it?

“Pretended to be Charles…” Brick said in a whisper. “Knew about our world. Knew about the war… he pretended… shapeshifter. Fucking demon… and he had Charles’ followers. Found them. Somewhere. Maybe the dragon…”