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Nick found himself face-down on the cement.

Panic exploded over his spine, cheekbone, jaw, and neck as the being on top of him clamped its jaws back around his throat.

The vampire didn’t climb off him until he’d pumped him so full of venom, Nick felt nauseated, sick, dizzy, and sluggish to the point of fighting unconsciousness.

His vision blurred.

His limbs grew numb and heavy.

The being grabbed his shoulders and flipped Nick roughly to his back. Nick stared up dumbly, unable to move, his mind blank and paralyzed as he made sense of the dark auburn hair curtaining two blood-red eyes and a ghostly white face.

He felt his sire’s venom surge through his blood, like electric fire.

That was an unwelcome familiarity, too.

Brick smiled, his lips dark and wet.

“Now, now, my darling boy,” the older vampire crooned. “Can’t have you spoiling things, can we… not when we’re so close to the final act.”

Nick fought to think through the words, to make sense of them.

He fought to open his mouth, to speak, to make a sound.

He couldn’t so much as lift his hand.

Brick pulled something cylindrical and glass out of the pocket of his coat. Uncapping it swiftly with his teeth, he spit out the piece of plastic, then crouched back down over Nick. He stabbed the syringe into Nick’s neck and his deft fingers depressed the plunger.

Darkness swam over Nick.

His vision went black before he even felt the bite of the needle.

31

THE AFTERMATH

We pushed our way through the crowd, fighting the panicked mob to get closer to the place where the smoke and the choking fumes originated.

The rhythmiccrackof rifle shots had stopped.

The window above the designer clothing store had fallen silent.

Alisha was staring down at her tablet again, but she was no longer using different-colored dots to track their movement down the streets. She was looking for any trace of where they might be now, and she was looking for Nick along with Dalejem and the girl.

To do that, Alisha had actual footage from the CCTV cameras filling most of her screen, with smaller inserts showing faces flipping through the software and looking for points of comparison with the faces being picked up by the cameras. Alisha was basically watching the program scan faces in real time, which she said synched faster.

Mostly, she was scanning the area around the explosion, but she was gradually widening the circle and adding more cameras.

“Can’t you just run all of them in the city?” Dog asked her.

Alisha didn’t look up from the tablet, keeping one arm up to shield it from being knocked too hard by anyone shoving into her.

“It would slow down the program,” she said, distracted.

“You’re sure it was the girl who was last seen walking on the street?” Black asked her, his voice loud over the clanging sirens of police and emergency vehicles. We were close enough now, the shouting of cops and the screaming were both getting louder, too. “She was alone? The girl? Without Jem?”

“Unless he had his face covered, and he changed his gait enough to fool the surveillance, and he wasn’t walking next to her… she was alone,” Alisha answered, also in a near-shout, yet still sounding distracted.

“Can I see it?” Black asked.