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It made Nick sadder than he could even think about.

He’d wanted that world once too.

Maybe that was another thing that saved him. Nick had never gotten that, never had it as a human. So when they turned him into a vampire, he hadn’t lost as much. He hadn’t had so much warmth and love and happiness taken from him, since he’d never had it to begin with. He’d had friends he loved, sure. He’d had his parents, his sisters.

But he’d never had a family of his own.

Nick was still feeling all this through the other Nick, walking up the mountain, blind, following Morley without thought.

Then, out of nowhere, a familiar sound ripped Nick out of his thoughts.

Without thought, he looked up.

The slow, steady, rhythmic thuds took him less than a second to identify.

Helicopter.

Morley saw Nick look up and followed his gaze to the sky. He didn’t hear the helicopter until a minute or so later, when the thudding heartbeat of propellers finally grew loud enough to reach his human ears. Nick saw the exact instant when Morley understood.

His eyes widened, even as he began scanning the sky for real.

Nick could see the bird already though, banking high above the snow-capped mountain to make its final approach. Nick already knew who it was.

He knew exactly who had found them.

Forrest Keanu Walker to the damned rescue.

Jesus.

Maybe Nick was developing a little bit of a crush on Wynter’s ex-husband, too.

Hell, if Forrest managed to save there asses out here and keep Wynter from being kidnapped by that psycho and thrown through a dimensional portal, Nick might be getting ready to ask Wynter if she was up for a foursome.

Although really, if they were going to play those kinds of weird sex games, they should be inviting Morley. After all, it had been Morley who pushed Nick, indirectly or not, to call Walker and get him to bring the cavalry up there.

The thought made him snort out an involuntary laugh.

Morley looked at him like he’d lost his mind, but Nick only pointed up at where the bird had just emerged from the clouds and begun to drift down in the direction of the clearing.

Nick had given Walker extremely precise, down-to-the-inch directions describingexactlywhere the inter-dimensional portal was located. He’d done all of it with numbers and maps over the virtual comm, so Walker’s pilot should knowexactlywhere they were going. Nick watched as the helicopter floated down roughly twenty yards from that same area of the map, landing on a patch of grass above where the doppelganger and his army of newborns were still making their way up the hill.

Walker hadn’t just beat them to the portal.

He’d managed to cut them off.

He would definitely get to the portal’s clearing first.

The thought made Nick chuckle out loud.

Gaos.If Walker managed to find and bring enough vampires with him, this thing might really, actually, finally be over.

They might have stopped it.

They might have really stopped it from happening.

Nick and Walker still would need to tread damned lightly.

The doppelganger had Wynter, Kit, Tai, Mal, Lara, and whoever else they’d kidnapped before they drove them up here. They might have brought Brick. They might have more Archangel staff and technicians.