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His mind spun back to who would be waiting for him out there.

How had they found him?

He could guess the answer to that last question, however.

It had to be Malek. Malek the prescient always seemed to find Nick the wayward vampire. If not Malek, then his sister, Tai, and her own unusual abilities. It had to be one of them, or possibly both of them, who knew where to look.

Nick hadn’t had any of Wynter’s blood in his system, so she couldn’t have found him on her own.

Nick got the door open and walked through.

He made his way down a narrow, stone corridor with smooth, worn tiles.

It was cold down there, but the cold didn’t bother his vampire skin.

He noted the temperature even as he cocked his head, listening for the group he could hear much more clearly now that he was getting closer. They were in a larger room up ahead, with a higher ceiling. From the acoustics, it was also made mostly of stone, but Nick could hear other things affecting the sounds, as well: more people, of course, but also more furniture. More materials like wood and glass and clay, and more things to bounce sound off of.

He heard Kit’s voice right as he thought it.

At that point, he’d crossed roughly half the length of the corridor between the cell where they’d housed him and the larger room where they were all talking.

“No,” she was saying, her Brooklyn accent jarring in the quiet stone corridor. “I’ve told you. She’s got that whole place wired, and I don’t have access right now.” She let out a sigh.“Supposedlythere’s some kind of backdoor into the system. If I can findthat,then we maybe have a chance. As it is now, the second I try to shut down cameras, or take control of the security systems, that whole place goes on lockdown… and there’s no way we can get him out like that.”

“Is there any more word on whether they might move him?” a different voice asked. “There was a rumor coming from inside, wasn’t there? That he might be moved?”

Morley that time.

“That’s the latest, yeah,” Charlie answered. “I got that from Bix, in I.S.F. The word internally is that they might be moving him after what happened at the H.R.A. facility the other night. They’re not exactly beingopenwith that information, of course. The best I’ve got is a rumor that a possible move is planned out of security concerns.”

Charlie sighed, and Nick heard frustration leak into her voice.

“I doubt whether even Acharya knows the truth,” she admitted. “Or where they plan to move him, if they decide to go ahead with it at all. The only thing Bix told me is, all the security protocols changed the instant the H.R.A. put out that capture order on Nick. They changed again with the new notices on the White Death. It’s like they’re treating Damon as a potentialaccomplicenow, just because of what he is.”

“And who he knows,” Morley remarked dryly.

Nick felt his throat close.

Gaos-damn it.

WhatH.R.A. facility? What in the hell was Charlie talking about?

Wasn’t Jordan supposed to be in something run by Archangel?

And what the hell were any of them even doing? In addition to risking their lives, coming into the Cauldron amid an H.R.A. raid with a kill/capture order out on him, now they were raiding mysterious H.R.A. facilities somewhere? Did they all just decide to flush their lives down the toilet while he was out of it for a few days?

And for what? Just to drag him out from under that fucking truck?

He probably wouldn’t have evendiedif they just left him there.

He likely would have gone into a vampire coma for a few weeks, but he eventually would’ve come back from it on his own.

“He’s coming,” an achingly familiar, maddeningly too old and too young voice said, high and clear the way only her voice could be. “He’s in the hallway outside. And he’s already convinced himself he’s killed all of us. So he’s probably going to be grumpy.”

Nick grunted under his breath, rolling his eyes in spite of himself.

Fucking Tai.

That kid really was a piece of work.