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He bit his tongue so hard it bled.

Nick… you were right. He’s here. He’s already here. He’s got a whole army of vamps and they’ve already broken through the perimeter. Brick doesn’t know any of them. He says most of them are newborns. He says it looks like he’s been building the army for weeks.

Her fear rippled through Nick’s body, bringing a hard pain to his chest.

She kept talking, sending him anything she could.

…He might have started back while you were both still in San Francisco. We don’t have enough out here to fight them off… Brick says they would kill all of us if things got really violent and bloody. They’ve killed almost a dozen guards outside the building already. There’s a panic room here, but you’re right, Nick, it’ll probably only slow them down. He’s taking hostages, not just killing, even now. He’s got a number of humans who work for security already. St. Maarten says he’ll likely venom some of her human techs––

Nick could see it. He could see where they all were.

He’d never felt so helpless in his life.

At the same time, he understood why Lara thought they’d be safe.

He knew the property. He’d even visited it once. It was a large stretch of land St. Maarten owned in the Northeastern Protected Area.

It was a fortress.

It should have been enough.

Swallowed inside a sprawling, isolated patch of wilderness, a mansion overlooked a crystal blue lake. Made of stone, protected by organic fields, surrounded by a massive wall, a moat, electric razor wire, armed drones, watched by government and private satellites, not to mention a manned guard tower and front gate––it should have been impregnable.

It housed its own security team.

Kit did her magic too, automating a lot of the security functions and installing a sophisticated surveillance system.

From what Nick could see through Wynter, now that she was letting him look, Lara brought Wynter and Tai to the castle-like house the day Nick got arrested. She brought Mal, Kit, Brick, and Zoe up that same evening.

She brought everyone from Mal’s painting, in other words.

She’d even invited Charlie, Nick’s colleague, to join them up there, knowing Charlie was one of Nick’s friends, and might also be targeted.

Luckily, now at least, Charlie turned St. Maarten down.

Ironically, she’d likely done it due to work and everything going on with Nick.

Nick had been to the mansion before.

He’d visited maybe five weeks earlier, so he still had a clear picture in his mind of the layout, as well as the road up there and most of the cruder security.

It was beautiful up there.

Lara St. Maarten’s fortress sat on the edge of a wildlife bioengineering preserve that was also owned and operated by Archangel. It provided a lot of the animals that now lived in the woods and forest around Wynter’s house.

Kit had been onsite when Nick visited.

She’d been going through some kind of routine check on all the security systems, making sure there weren’t any lags or glitches, updating software, looking for bugs, looking for any sign the system could have been breached.

She called Nick because she was in town.

Nick offered to take her to lunch.

In the end, they just ate at St. Maarten’s place.

Nick groused about that at first. The kid couldn’t stop work long enough for them to go anywhere to eat? She had to eat at her workplace like some kind of drone? The idea irritated him, which made him scowl and gripe about St. Maarten overworking her.

Which of course made Kit roll her eyes.