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“We’re going up there,” he growled. “We’re already on our way. It’s completely fucking non-negotiable. Morley and I are just about to reach the security gate… then we’re heading for the train station north.”

There was a loaded-feeling silence.

Then someone on the other end smiled.

Nick heard the smile. He heard it even before the virtual avatar program came up, and a face appeared to go with that slight exhalation of non-existent breath.

A silky, shockingly familiar voice rose.

It purred in Nick’s ears.

“Well, hello to you too, my dearest, sweet, calm, ever-the-most-rational of my blood children… it is so nice to hear the soothing patina of your voice…”

Nick watched the avatar lean back in a dark red, velvet-lined chair, something too tacky to be anything but virtual.

Brick adjusted his seat, quirking an eyebrow as he exhaled smoke.

“…Now, now. Talk to papa. Whatever seems to be the trouble, my pet?”

CHAPTER27

THE SIRE

“Youknewabout this guy,”Nick snarled. “He said hetalkedto you.”

His voice only grew more accusing, the longer they were both on the line.

Nick fought not to shout at the other male through the comm, to not to raise his voice to his sire even more than he already was.

“Did you turn him?” Nick demanded. “Did you turn him into a fuckingvampire,Brick, back when we first got here? Maybe you did it just so you could control him, like you did with me? Or maybe just toscrewwith me?”

There was a dense silence.

Then Brick sighed, clucking impatiently under his breath.

“Brick. Did you––”

“No,” he said simply.

“No?”

“No… I did not turn your deluded, murder-happy little doppelganger into a very attractive pet for me to fuck,” Brick finished, annoyed. “For the love of the Source. We came herelongafter he got turned, Naoko. Do the fucking math. We came here well into the end years of their vampire and seer wars. He would have been a hundred years old already. Probably more.”

Muttering under his breath, the older vampire added, “I always forget how bizarre you are with the dates… with your memory here. You’ve always been confused about that end of the timeline. I suppose I should have realized there might be a reason for that before now… some confusion of memories between that version of you and this one.”

Nick frowned.

Theendof the wars?

Brick was a compulsive and unapologetic liar and manipulator. He lied for any and all reasons, sometimes for reasons so bizarre Nick couldn’t fathom the point.

Yet somehow Nick believed this.

He believed everything Brick just said.

“We came here after the war already started?” Nick asked. “Not before?”

“Not before. We came here in the midst of Charles’s crazy little acolytes trying to overthrow this little world… a bit of a disappointing déjà vu, I must say. That wasn’t a bleep on the historical timeline I was keen to repeat, to be honest. Not in any world.”