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He could feel them all around the chateau and inside.

Morley seemed to pick up on some of it, too.

Even before the newborns attacked, he’d been on the comm with Acharya, talking about possible scenarios and who they should send up there.

He drove like a maniac the whole way between the gate of the private zone of Long Island and the station for the high-speed train. He aimed their borrowed police car like a ricocheting bullet, weaving through traffic and streetlights, blaring his siren the whole way to get cars and trucks and pedestrians to move out of their way.

He never really slowed down.

He drove up nearly the length of Manhattan that way, too, using his car horn with the sirens to avoid hitting his brake whenever possible.

Morley drove them straight to the station.

He got them in the queue for a car transport, and finally hit the brakes.

The line seemed interminable.

Logically, Nick knew they got there at a good time. They were on board the train with the wheels locked down and heading north in less than thirty minutes.

It still felt like too long.

Nick already knew it was way too fucking long to get to the chateau before the other Nick found a way to break inside.

They wouldn’t make it.

They wouldn’t get up there in time to stop it from happening.

He had to hope Acharya and Lara’s military pals would, but he didn’t think they would get up there fast enough, either.

Staring blindly through the train windows, he listened to Morley in the background, talking to someone in the NYPD.

As he listened, Nick gazed up at Mal’s painting.

He’d never taken it off display mode in the virtual space, not since he first pulled it up with the brand-new headset Lara had given him.

He studied the image minutely, looking for something, anything that might help him, but just looking at the painting made his insides twist. Staring at it for long periods of time only turned that helpless feeling into a simmering, violence-fueled rage. Nick suspected rage wasn’t the core feeling there either, but it felt potentially useful at least.

Everything about the painting hurt his heart.

He gazed at it anyway. He told himself it wasn’t written in stone. Nick felt like some part of him was trying towillit to turn out differently, just by staring at it.

In the center of that virtual canvas, a glowing light vortex shone out the side of a tree covered, sun-kissed mountain.

More trees surrounded the cave-like opening.

Clouds drifted in a blue sky overhead.

The vortex consumed the entire painting, sucking in all that light; it swirled there, gold and pink and pale blue at the edges, deep black and filled with stars at its receding core.

Something about it felt timeless to Nick.

Inevitable maybe.

Like something that had been there longer than the planets themselves.

In the foreground, someone who looked a lot like Nick was dragging someone who looked a lot like Wynter to the black center of that vortex.

Nearby, other vampires stood in a half-ring. Most of them stood under dark umbrellas, their skin shockingly white, their eyes red, their fangs extended. They gripped other people Nick knew and loved: Kit, Mal, Tai, and two figures who looked like Charlie and Jordan.