Page 6

THE PRESENT

Nick blinked,and shook his head.

He stared into the swirling mist of the portal, and fought to focus his eyes.

Where had that come from?

What the fuck even was that?

Was it memory? Fantasy?

Was the portal warning him in some way?

Or was being this close to an inter-dimensional opening torn in the fabric of this world somehow causing the streams to cross? Bringing up things he’d forgotten, that everyone told him he’d taken a lot of pains to forget?

Nick stood there, briefly paralyzed, his chalk-white, vampire hand outstretched towards the portal door. He wondered how long he’d been frozen in that position. Had all of that flashed through his mind in seconds? Minutes? Longer?

It must have closer to seconds, as no one around him seemed to notice.

Well, no one behind him had apparently noticed, at least.

Since Nick stood between all of them and the portal, with only the morphing and churning opening in the side of the mountain in front of him, that was everyone.

Everyone stood behind him.

Every one of them waited for him to walk through.

Every one of them held their breaths, even now, and waited to see what would happen when he crossed that threshold.

So why was Nick hesitating? What was making him pause, given what they’d all decided? He’d beenexcitedto go through the portal, hadn’t he? Nick could feel the part of himself that wasstillexcited, not just at the prospect of returning to his home world, where everyone he’d known was likely long-dead, but at the prospect of living in a place where he might still be free, where he mightnotbe enslaved, where he could marry his girlfriend and they could buy a house and live a life that was far more ordinary and anonymous.

So what was making him hesitate?

It had already been decided that Nick would go first.

Well, no one officially “decided” that he would do that. No one even said it, not in so many words… not inanywords, come to think of it.

It was simplyunderstoodthat Nick would be first.

He would be the first of their group to walk through that lit opening, and plunge them into all of its frightening and wonderful possibility.

All of them felt a little drunk.

All of them felt a little off-balance, a little reckless, a little crazy.

Maybe it was thewaythey’d made the decision.

Maybe it was how quickly they’d all coalesced around the same thought, the same impulse, the same daring and risk, even members of their group Nick didn’t know, or had never thought would want to give up their lives in this dimension.

Like Forrest Keanu Walker, famous lawyer and activist and imbedded Mi6 operative––what the hell washedoing here? Why would he agree to any of this, given what he’d be giving up, leaving this dimension for another one?

Why would Zoe, Brick’s second, give up her spot in the upper echelons of the White Death? Hadn’t she worked for centuries to climb that ladder? Hadn’t she told Nick, more than once, that she aspired to lead her own coven one day?

Had she decided that day would never come, if she stayed here?

Had she surmised she’d never get her shot at the top spot with Brick standing in her way? It was true, Brick would never surrender it, no matter how long both of them might live. That was a given, and Nick knew it.

Zoe likely knew it, too, whatever Brick promised her.