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She looked up at Nick, and now her awe and fascination were heartbreakingly apparent.

“Did you kill him?” she asked shyly.

Nick shook his head, too. “No,” he said. He grunted then, and I glimpsed his fangs slightly extended. “I wish I had. I wish I’d done it several times over, little one. In a couple of different ways. I’d really like to find out whodiddo it… so I can buy them a drink.”

The fascination in her eyes turned into full-blown adoration.

He lowered his hand back to the area of her cage, and she reached for him.

“I wish it was you, too,” she whispered.

Around and between the metal bars, she wrapped as much of herself as she could around his ghost-white fingers, and squeezed.

Black and I exchanged looks.

That time, our minds remained silent.

16

THE KID

“Fucker should be prosecuted,” Nick muttered darkly. “Goddamned disgusting, perverted, garbage, piece of shit, child-molesting sadist…”

Prosecuted? Black suppressed a cynical snort.

Ever thegaos-damned cop.

It would have been funny, maybe, under different circumstances.

“The fucker isdead,”Black reminded him, his voice equally low. “He’s been prosecuted by someone already.”

“Not for this,” Nick shot back. “Not for what he did.” He glared at Black. He lowered his voice to aim his words only at him. “Shooting was too good for thatfuck.I would have ripped his arms out of their sockets and beat him to death with them. I hope those mad scientists at Prometharis resurrect him just so I can kill him again. Maybe I’ll even turn him into a vampire so I could kill him a fewmoretimes, or at least keep him alive longer so I can hack him to pieces while he slowly rots…”

Black could hardly disagree with the sentiment.

Still, the visuals made him grimace.

“Jesus, Nick––”

“I meant it,” Nick snapped. “What I told that kid? I wasn’t joking. If someone hadn’t already taken him out, I’d keep that fucker alive forweeks.He’d be begging me for death by the end of the first day… then he’d get to watch as I dismantled him piece by piece… I’d feed his entrails to him… then his own fucking cock…”

Black grimaced again.

“I never thought you were joking.” He gave Nick a dark look. “And if hewasstill alive, I would have helped you, brother.”

Nick looked slightly placated by that.

Only slightly.

The two of them had just followed Miriam and the girl seer out the front door of the house. Black kept the staff away with his mind, while Nick used his disturbingly sensitive vampire ears, eyes, and sense of smell to make sure Black hadn’t missed anyone.

The girl gripped Miri’s hand and arm tightly in both of her small hands.

While Black and Nick worked on cutting the bars out of the floor, Nick had explained to the girl that they were all friends, that they would be taking her out of here forever, that she could trust Black and trust Miriam, who were his very close friends. Nick told the girl that Miriam was like a sister to him, that she could trust Miriam with her life.

Black was honestly a little uneasy at just how intensely the girl absorbed everything Nick said. She hadn’t even nodded, just stared up at him with slightly wide eyes, listening with every part of her body. She watched and listened to Nick like he was giving her detailed orders on how to storm the Pentagon to steal military secrets.

Black guessed Nick could have told her he was a resurrected god, that she had to go on a murder spree to provide him withblood sacrifices or he’d bring earthquakes and make the skies rain blood, and the kid would have believed every word.