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Nick blinked but still saw the cute, retro kitchen with powder blue appliances and walls.

He saw the living room filled with high-tech gadgets and trendy furniture made of body-conforming organics that were virtual reality compatible.

But that wasn’t what he looked for in the dark.

He was looking for her.

For the girl.

Just then, he heard a scream from downstairs.

* * *

Nick leaptout of the bed.

He moved so fast he might have broken his neck if he’d still been human. He moved like he was in the middle of a fight, like he’d woken up surrounded by armed soldiers conducting a full-scale attack on every person in the house.

Being inside that twisted, vampire mind just a few minutes ago didn’t help.

He streaked across the room and down the stairs before he’d made so much as a sound.

He landed lightly on his feet at the bottom of the stairs.

He stood there, muscles tensed, staring around his girlfriend’s living room.

Or wife.

Wife’s living room.

In Nick’s mind at least.

Briefly, he saw that other living room behind his eyes. He saw the more modern furniture, the multiple screens, the trendy, VR-capable couch, the stairs with the sensors and moving steps up to the second floor.

But Wynter’s house was simpler.

Warmer.

More house-y.

He fought to see past the other.

He didn’t want to see the other at all.

He fought to pull himself out of that other place entirely, the family home where that broken vampire in Nick’s mind had killed everyone, leaving their drained, terrified faces and dead bodies behind for someone who loved them to find.

Just thinking about it now made him feel like he wanted to throw up.

Vampires didn’t really throw up, but that didn’t seem to matter either.

It was the kind of revolting, twisted shit Nick remembered from when he first got made a vampire, when he was dealing with Brick and Dorian every day, who liked to play with their food, and who liked to terrorize humans, who got sadistic pleasure from the power they had over them. They never simply fed.

They raped, manipulated, enthralled, humiliated.

They were assholes, in other words.

Once Nick got past the newborn stage, he didn’t want to be an piece of shit serial killer like his sire and his sire’s second.

Dalejem saved him from that.