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In the end I deliberately separated from him.

I started walking through rooms Black wasn’t in.

I waved my arms, wandering over different parts of the floor in every room, looking for more virtual murder scenes to trigger, more things Brick left for us to find. More and more, I wondered if the vampire king was just wasting our time… keeping us locked up in here, confused, isolated, distracted… wasting so many minutes of our time… keeping us away from our friends… away from where we might help them.

Maybe Black was right.

Maybe we should focus on trying to get out of this damned house.

Fuck solving Brick’s stupid murder… or whatever the hell this was.

Fuck doing his little dance.

Maybe we just needed to focus on breaking down the door.

The others either felt the thought on me, or they got there on their own.

Nick tried it first.

When the third virtual image of a dead body appeared, that time on an old butcher’s block in the kitchen, he walked back out to the foyer, his jaw set in a hard scowl.

Strangely, it was Dex who followed the most closely behind him.

I didn’t see either of them exchange a single word, but all of us trailed after the two of them. I watched, half fascinated, half-worried, as Nick prepared to make a run for the front door. I saw his face that split second before he ran. I watched him release something, some part of himself he’d been holding back, something he habitually slowed down so he’d appear more human. He let that thing go… and his bodymoved.

He moved like liquid, blurring across the foyer floor.

He ran so fast, my eyes couldn’t follow him.

There was simply a black streak, a cool wind as he whipped by.

I didn’t see him again until he slammed into the door.

His large, dense, vampire body immediately got thrown violently back.

He hadn’t just failed to make it through the door.

Something in that door either shocked him violently, or physicallythrewhim backwards, in the opposite direction. It looked like a cartoon animal bouncing off a rubber floor.

Nick landed on the carpeted foyer.

He choked, gasping, lying flat on his back.

Then the gasping stopped.

For a few seconds he didn’t move at all.

He must have been stunned, but for those first few seconds, I completely forgot he was a vampire and I was positive he was dead. He didn’t breathe. He was chalk white. He stared up, eyes open, and looked so much like a corpse I didn’t think but threw myself down on the carpet by his head. I screamed at the top of my lungs.

I gripped his face until Dalejem shoved my hands off, hanging over his mate.

He stared down at Nick’s eyes, gripping his hair and neck.

“Nick! NICK! GAOS! NICK!”

Nick blinked.

He focused on Dalejem. Relief reached his cracked-crystal eyes, even as his muscles visibly clenched and unclenched. He winced, then grimaced, like he was in a lot of pain. Again, if he’d been human, I would have been sure he’d broken his back.