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They had ahold of his wrists.

Fuck.

He started to writhe his arms and legs, cautiously at first.

“No,” a voice said, quiet but firm. “Don’t fight us, Midnight.”

Nick stopped dead, right before he would have whipped into fighting for real. One of the people there must have seen that on him, the tensing of muscles, the set of his jaw––

Wait. He knew that voice.

But it was more than just the voice he knew.

There was more than one person there.

They’d dragged him out from under the truck.

Before he could make up his mind what he should do, he was completely out from under the metal chassis, even his feet, and the fingers around his wrists squeezed his flesh firmly and meaningfully, but not painfully.

Something in the way the person did that made Nick pause again.

Were these friends? That felt almost… friendly.

Reassuring, maybe.

At least not actively sadistic.

Nick looked up, then tilted his head all the way back. He looked first at the one who’d squeezed his wrist, who also happened to be the stronger of the two people who had ahold of him. They dragged him together over the dirt and grass, but one of them was bigger, stronger, taller, and they smelled more pungently to Nick’s vampire nose.

He saw long, black, shaggy hair with some curl to it.

He saw broad shoulders.

He saw tattoos of colored feathers and hollow bones.

He saw lanky arms, long legs, brightly-colored tattoos.

Then the dark head turned and two different-colored eyes stared down at Nick from a preternaturally handsome face. The person next to the male, who held Nick’s other wrist, was huffing and puffing more than the tall male, but Nick recognized that face, too.

He tried to speak her name, but couldn’t force the words past his lips.

Fuck. What was wrong with him?

“There’s some kind of poison in you,” a quiet voice whispered from near his head. That person wasn’t touching him, but he could smell her. “Something in the bullet I’ve never seen before,” the soft whisper added. “Not the usual toxin Archangel and the H.E.A. use… something worse. We have to get it out of you.”

Nick fought to make sense of the words.

He understood each one of them separately, but somehow the collection of them just turned into muddled gibberish in his head. He wanted to pull them apart and rearrange them until they made sense, but he couldn’t quite manage it.

When he lifted his head next, two more people were gripping his ankles, and two more appeared at his sides.

He recognized all of them.

One of those faces, in particular, he knew so well his chest grew a sharp pain.

She glared at him with absolute fury in her eyes.

Something about that fury was so familiar, so reassuring, it only made him try to reach for her, first with his hand, which he’d forgotten was already being gripped by the wrist, and then with his whole body.