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Vampires move so fast, and it all happened so quickly and in near silence, I couldn’t really track it all in the moment, or make sense of which thing happened first. Piecing it together after, I came up with a rough timeline, but really, it’s only a guess.

Nick must have been gradually coming out of his daze from vampire venom or tranquilizers over a period of at least a few minutes. While Brick gave us his little speech about multi-dimensional versions of Jem, and his explanation for everything that had happened, Nick had been slowly regaining his ability to move, to think, to see, and somewhere in that, he must have come up with some kind of plan.

I strongly suspected it hadn’t been a very well-thought-out plan.

He’d likely wanted, more than anything else, to be free of Brick, and no longer his hostage. He didn’t want to be used as leverage against us, or against Dalejem, or as a means of Brick getting whatever he wanted from us.

Whatever Nick’s precise thoughts had been, he kicked viciously back at his sire, writhed out from under the wooden spike, and managed to get free for a split second.

He wasn’t fast enough.

As is often the case with tranquilizers––along with alcohol, anesthesia, or any other body or mind-altering chemical––Nick likely overestimated the amount he’d managed to recover in the minutes since Brick first hit him with the drug.

They both moved so fast, my eyes couldn’t track it.

A blur of motion flared in front of me as Nick managed to wrench his way free.

I barely saw it when Brick lunged after him.

I saw them struggle, briefly, Brick’s arm around Nick’s chest from behind, his fangs dripping as he hissed and sank his teeth into the torn area of Nick’s shoulder and neck. I heard Nick snarl, saw him stumble backwards, then kick violently off the rock, throwing them both hard in the same direction, likely in an attempt to slam Brick’s back into the stone––

Then they vanished.

They were gone so fast, in mere fractions of a second, it was a few more seconds before anyone screamed.

Then Aura did.

She screamed loudly, heart-wrenchingly.

Dalejem didn’t make a sound, but his reaction was more alarming.

He ran for the rift in the stone wall.

“NO!” I screamed frantically. I ran after him, and so did Black, so did Angel, who’d joined us on the ground without my noticing.

We all ran and I screamed out his name again––

Dalejem vanished through the opening in the rock.

All of us were so busy staring at his absence, gasping and shrieking and in shock, no one thought to grab the girl.

Aura ran into the rift a second later, pelting forward and leaping at the stone like a hare.

“Goddamn it!” Black growled.

He stood in front of the rift, breathing hard, his chest heaving. I could tell by the fire swirling through hisaleimithat he didn’t dare get any closer. I honestly didn’t blame him. I could feel my own light reacting to the pulling energy there, as well.

Black turned around and glared at the rest of us.

He held up his arms, now standing maybe five yards from the rift himself.

“Anyone…” he snarled, eyes blazing. “And I meananyonewho fucking works for me…” He glared daggers at me, then at Angel. “Any one of you bastards takes so much as agoddamned steptowards this fucking thing, I’m shooting you.” He glared at me again. “Don’t fucking test me, wife. I mean it. I’ll put you in a wheelchair for a month, if I have to…”

Everyone stared back at him, frozen in place.

Honestly, I don’t think it had even occurred to any of us to run into that wall.

I loved Nick. I loved him like my own brother. I loved him and Angel more than probably anyone else in my life apart from Black. Nick was family to me. He was dear, dear family to me, and I’d definitely die for him, if I had to. Dalejem, and not only because he was Nick’s mate, had become family to me, too.