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“No,” he said grimly. “Nothing. You? Any news at all on that big military rescue? Have they sent you any kind of E.T.A.?”

Morley grunted. “No.”

For a second they just looked at one another.

Then Morley hooked a thumb at the door.

He looked worried briefly, his eyes carefully studying Nick’s.

“Meet you down there?” he said.

Nick nodded. “Yeah. I’m going to the dining car, too. If you don’t see me, I’m already heading down to the car.”

He watched Morley walk to the cabin door, sliding it sideways before he entered the corridor and began walking in the direction of the bathrooms.

After another sigh, Nick pulled himself to his feet to follow him.

* * *

Nick tossedthe empty blood bag into the opening of the silver shopping bag, and wiped his mouth. The bag still sat in the backseat of the police vehicle.

Wiping his mouth again, Nick fought to keep the synth-blood down.

It hadn’t tasted too bad, as far as synths go.

He could have opted for real blood, but the enriched synth bags actually worked better for bursts of power and strength. They supplemented the fake blood with iron, stem cells, and gods knew what else to act as a more condensed form of sustenance for vampires.

Nick wanted all the extra strength he could get right then.

Unfortunately, his nerves were so ratcheted up and out of control all it did was make his tension and uneasiness around everything worse.

He had to hope that anxiety translated to something actually useful on the field.

While they waited their turn in the vehicle queue to leave the train, Nick and Morley went back and forth on where they should go once they disembarked.

Morley wanted to go to the Archangel compound first.

He wanted to see if they could be of any help there before they abandoned that angle and went straight for the portal. Morley hoped if they got there quickly enough, they might be able to keep the doppelganger and his newborns from getting anywhere near the portal in the first place. He thought Lara St. Maarten had probably outsmarted them anyway. Morley told Nick those newborns were likely circling the castle grounds, trying to figure out where to dig to extract Wynter and the others from wherever they were hiding.

Nick had his doubts.

He wasn’t a seer, but he got his own kind of hunches.

His hunches told him by the time they got to the Archangel compound, they would already be gone. They told him if they did that, the doppelganger and his people would slip through the portal and Nick would lose them forever.

Nick, who was terrified he’d miss them at the portal, wanted to go there first instead.

He hoped to get there early enough they might set up an ambush of some kind, since their options were pretty limited with only two of them.

One relatively fucked up vampire and one older-than-middle-aged human against thirty or forty newborn vampires weren’t odds Nick felt good about. Nick thought maybe they could hold them off the portal at least.

Maybe they could hold them off until Forrest got there with some vampire backup.

Or, better yet, they could keep them back until the military and various racial authorities and law enforcement units sorted out their shit and actually gotthe fuck up herebefore the whole damned thing was over.

Something about waiting for anyone to save them made Nick’s heart hurt.

He didn’t believe anyone would save them.