Page 18 of Almost Midnight (Vampire Detective Midnight #8)

CHAPTER 18

THE MONASTERY

The next time Nick woke, the place where he was felt completely different.

He woke up lying on something a lot softer.

He could move his arms and his legs.

He could smell a lot more people nearby.

The room he was in felt smaller than the one he remembered, too. Not quite cramped; he had a sense of a high ceiling overhead, one that stretched up at least a story, if not two or three. But the stone felt damp, and it had the faint smell of mold and musk, like he’d been put on a bed in a wine cellar, or possible an underground root garden.

On the other side of that door, he could smell a lot of people.

That place next door smelled warm, inviting, and he could hear voices even through the thick stone, although not well enough to make out individual words.

It was enough to get him to lurch upward, into a seated position.

Once he was semi-upright, he realized his arm was fitted with an IV.

He stared at the bag of what smelled like synthetic blood hanging from a hook over where they’d left him. The bag was huge, and now, completely empty. He stared at it, a little bit in awe, then down at himself.

Fresh bandages covered his side and ribs where he’d been hit by the plasma bolt.

When he flipped over his arm, he saw that someone had sealed the ugly gash with a wound-closing gun, then wrapped it in a thick, sticky, but transparent bandage over the whole thing that likely had blood plasma in it, and other organic material that would make his flesh regrow faster. Between that and the giant bag of synthetic blood, his skin had likely begun to knit itself back into one piece already.

His hands and thigh had been treated the same.

So had his face and head.

His throat had been covered in yet another gummy bandage.

That’s when it occurred to Nick that he was completely naked under the metallic blanket he wore. He glanced around the small compartment for clothes, and then, even more absurdly, for a mirror. He wanted to know just how fucked up his face and body still looked.

He reached a hand and fingers back up to his face tentatively, and followed the line of the bandage on there with his fingers. He could feel bruises and other broken parts of himself on his chest and shoulders and back, and it occurred to him he’d probably hurt himself more than he realized in that fall.

He swung his legs carefully over the side of the bed. He kept the metallic sheet wrapped over his lap, at least over his crotch.

He carefully… carefully… disconnected the IV from the band around his arm.

He waited a few seconds after he’d done that, trying to decide how he felt.

Then he rose even more carefully to his feet.

He stood for a few seconds without moving, simply evaluating his body.

He tested muscles, flexing his arms carefully, then his thighs, calves, shoulders. He tentatively touched the hole in his abdomen. It hurt, but not an unbearable amount.

He still gripped the metallic sheet in one hand.

It was bizarrely difficult and complicated, but he wrapped it carefully around his waist below the gash in his side, and lightly over the sealed cut that ran down the length of one leg. He tied the ends together on his good side, wincing a little when he had to twist his waist to reach. He still moved excruciatingly slowly and carefully, not wanting to rip anything open, or disturb any of the healing flesh.

His head hurt.

He wasn’t hungry, but he felt depleted somehow, anyway.

He imagined he would be hungry again, and probably soon, even though they’d probably been feeding him from that bag for most of the night. His body was likely using every drop they’d given him to reknit his vampire flesh.

He was a little shocked at how much it had replaced of what he’d lost already.

He shuffle-stepped towards the door.

He moved slowly.

He took his time.

He could see where he was now; it was a small, cave-like, obviously underground cell, but not in the sense of a prison or jail cell. Remembering they were in the basement of a church, it crossed his mind that they might’ve left him in a prayer or meditation cell.

Whatever it was, it was quiet.

Deathly quiet.

They were far enough underground here, a drone wouldn’t hear them from above.

No wonder Malek and Tai had never been bothered here.

No wonder Malek had been reluctant to take Tai out of the Cauldron, where she’d been safe. The older of the two siblings hadn’t wanted to bring Tai into the larger New York Protected Area at all when Nick first met them. He’d been afraid of what might happen to her out there, and now, Nick almost understood.

He could feel the anxiousness in him rising already at the thought.

He was remembering bits and pieces of the things Tai had told him the last time he’d been awake. They’d disabled their implants and comms. They’d de-networked their headsets, which likely would be enough on its own to make St. Maarten apoplectic.

Nick didn’t even know how many of them were here.

He’d seen Malek, Wynter, Tai.

He swore he’d smelled Charlie, at least once.

He had memories of seeing Kit holding his other arm and wrist while she and Malek dragged him out from under the truck.

He might’ve glimpsed other faces and bodies under those dome stars, carrying him across the field in the dark, but he couldn’t remember.

Tai mentioned Morley. Had Morley been there? Morley hadn’t been helping to carry him too, had he? If so, Nick didn’t remember seeing him.

Had he really seen Kit? Or had he imagined that, too?

Had there been more of them?

Jordan.

Gaos. They had to find some way to get Jordan away from Archangel.

Or should they?

Would it be better to leave him where he was? Let him build a life for himself as a regular Midnight? What right did Nick have to make him a fugitive, a criminal, before he’d even adjusted to the idea of what he was? Why force him into a life on the run, a life possibly controlled by Brick and the White Death?

Nick could so easily get Damon killed.

He shoved the thought out of his mind before it could make him sad.

He tugged carefully on the metal door.

His mind spun back to who would be waiting for him out there.

How had they found him?

He could guess the answer to that last question, however.

It had to be Malek. Malek the prescient always seemed to find Nick the wayward vampire. If not Malek, then his sister, Tai, and her own unusual abilities. It had to be one of them, or possibly both of them, who knew where to look.

Nick hadn’t had any of Wynter’s blood in his system, so she couldn’t have found him on her own.

Nick got the door open and walked through.

He made his way down a narrow, stone corridor with smooth, worn tiles.

It was cold down there, but the cold didn’t bother his vampire skin.

He noted the temperature even as he cocked his head, listening for the group he could hear much more clearly now that he was getting closer. They were in a larger room up ahead, with a higher ceiling. From the acoustics, it was also made mostly of stone, but Nick could hear other things affecting the sounds, as well: more people, of course, but also more furniture. More materials like wood and glass and clay, and more things to bounce sound off of.

He heard Kit’s voice right as he thought it.

At that point, he’d crossed roughly half the length of the corridor between the cell where they’d housed him and the larger room where they were all talking.

“No,” she was saying, her Brooklyn accent jarring in the quiet stone corridor. “I’ve told you. She’s got that whole place wired, and I don’t have access right now.” She let out a sigh. “Supposedly there’s some kind of backdoor into the system. If I can find that, then we maybe have a chance. As it is now, the second I try to shut down cameras, or take control of the security systems, that whole place goes on lockdown… and there’s no way we can get him out like that.”

“Is there any more word on whether they might move him?” a different voice asked. “There was a rumor coming from inside, wasn’t there? That he might be moved?”

Morley that time.

“That’s the latest, yeah,” Charlie answered. “I got that from Bix, in I.S.F. The word internally is that they might be moving him after what happened at the H.R.A. facility the other night. They’re not exactly being open with that information, of course. The best I’ve got is a rumor that a possible move is planned out of security concerns.”

Charlie sighed, and Nick heard frustration leak into her voice.

“I doubt whether even Acharya knows the truth,” she admitted. “Or where they plan to move him, if they decide to go ahead with it at all. The only thing Bix told me is, all the security protocols changed the instant the H.R.A. put out that capture order on Nick. They changed again with the new notices on the White Death. It’s like they’re treating Damon as a potential accomplice now, just because of what he is.”

“And who he knows,” Morley remarked dryly.

Nick felt his throat close.

Gaos- damn it.

What H.R.A. facility? What in the hell was Charlie talking about?

Wasn’t Jordan supposed to be in something run by Archangel?

And what the hell were any of them even doing? In addition to risking their lives, coming into the Cauldron amid an H.R.A. raid with a kill/capture order out on him, now they were raiding mysterious H.R.A. facilities somewhere? Did they all just decide to flush their lives down the toilet while he was out of it for a few days?

And for what? Just to drag him out from under that fucking truck?

He probably wouldn’t have even died if they just left him there.

He likely would have gone into a vampire coma for a few weeks, but he eventually would’ve come back from it on his own.

“He’s coming,” an achingly familiar, maddeningly too old and too young voice said, high and clear the way only her voice could be. “He’s in the hallway outside. And he’s already convinced himself he’s killed all of us. So he’s probably going to be grumpy.”

Nick grunted under his breath, rolling his eyes in spite of himself.

Fucking Tai.

That kid really was a piece of work.

The room fell silent after she spoke.

Nick found himself walking faster, in spite of himself, his jaw now clenched as he made his way to the lit opening at the end of the stone corridor.

By the time he reached the entrance to the other room, he was mostly just annoyed.

He hadn’t even looked inside really, when he began to speak.

“I’m not grumpy,” he growled, using his best old-man-vampire voice. “Do I think everyone I give a damn about in this gaos- damned dimension collectively lost their gaos- damned minds? Yes. Do I wonder if you all might be suffering from head injuries? Probably. I’m out of commission for a few hours, and, what? You all got together and decided to commit mass suicide for no fucking reason? Can’t imagine why that might make me grumpy, squirt––”

As the last word left his mouth, Nick looked around the room for real…

…and instantly fell silent.

* * *

The room held a lot more people than he’d expected.

He found himself looking around at a wide, underground space, probably an old kitchen and dining room for the monks, or priests, or whoever originally built this place and lived and prayed and slept and ate here.

The faces he’d thought he would see in the room turned to stare at him in the doorway, but a number he hadn’t expected also looked over at where he stood under the stone arch.

The room wasn’t brightly lit, but it was illuminated enough that even a human could have made out all their individual features. Lamps sat on stone counters and in the center of wooden tables, reminding Nick of the shockingly vivid dreams he’d been having.

Some of the people sitting there had recently-cleaned plates and bowls sitting in front of them on the thick wooden tables. Those tables looked ancient, or at least made of ancient materials, and also reminded Nick of his dreams.

The kitchen looked about three hundred years old.

Maybe even older, he thought sourly, glancing to his left and seeing the tall stone fireplace with its soot-stained, white-washed walls and clay tile hearth. A kettle hung over hot coals, steam drifting lazily from the spout from where it hung on a hinged hook. It was so similar to things he’d seen in his dreams, Nick could only stare at it for a few seconds.

His eyes swiveled back to all of those faces.

He stared around at the people sitting on chairs and benches around the two long tables that took up most of the center of the room.

Morley was there, holding a hand-thrown, clay mug filled with what smelled like coffee, but definitely synthetic coffee, not the real stuff. Next to him sat Kit, with Malek on her other side. Tai sat next to Wynter, a little further down on Morley’s other side. She also held a clay mug filled with synthetic coffee.

It occurred to Nick that the smells that filled his nose were those of breakfast, not dinner. They were bacon and synthetic grain cereals and artificial eggs and toast.

It wasn’t the middle of the night, like he’d thought when he woke up.

It was morning.

Finally, his eyes swiveled to the second table.

Six other beings sat around that one.

Only one had a plate on the table in front of them, which had been scraped clean of artificial eggs and toast. That same individual held the only mug at that table, too, which also smelled of coffee. None of the beings sitting in a ring around him had mugs in their hands, and they were dressed distinctly differently than Nick’s family and friends.

Nick’s eyes met Brick’s eyes and features first.

The tall vampire winked at him, but his crystal eyes didn’t change focus.

A faint smile tugged at Brick’s full lips, and what might have been an “I-told-you-so” glint shone from his cynically amused eyes. His long auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and he wore a strangely militaristic outfit, one fitted with knives on both sides, with two sword handles visible behind his back in the traditional cross-scabbard they’d all worn during the war. Armored plating covered his legs, arms, torso, abdomen.

The armor was all deep black when viewed straight on, but glinted with a faint, iridescent, sheen when it caught the firelight.

That sheen distinctly hinted at organic components, and likely a lot of them.

Which probably explained why the armor appeared so lightweight, and so precise and form-fitting. If the sword handles hadn’t been visible, and all the knives, it barely would’ve been noticeable as combat gear at all.

Well, to most people, at least.

To Nick’s eyes, it was unmistakeable.

The vampires sitting around Brick all wore identical uniforms.

They were all outfitted for battle.

Then Nick glanced back at the single non-vampire sitting among all of those chalk-white faces and knives and swords… and did an abrupt double-take when he looked at his face. It didn’t occur to him until that exact instant that he hadn’t until then.

The identity of that person truly did surprise him.

Forrest Keanu Walker was the lone mortal sitting there, surrounded by vampires who seemed to hover over him protectively.

Well, that explained the cryptic comments about an H.R.A. facility.

If Walker was here, then he clearly hadn’t gotten here because the H.R.A. decided to let him go. They would have deported his ass to one of the former-U.K. protected areas if they had, and told him never to return to North America again.

Fuck, though, it was hard to be angry once Nick focused on Walker’s face.

The male hybrid looked thinner, nearly gaunt.

He definitely looked worse for wear since Nick had last seen him.

While Nick didn’t know precisely how long ago that had been, he knew conditions in the H.R.A. facility where they’d housed him must have been pretty damned horrific for Walker to look this fucking bad in such a short period of time.

It looked like they hadn’t fed him at all.

He also showed obvious signs of torture and abuse.

A days-old bruise covered most of one side of his face, and Nick could tell he’d been mistreated in other ways, just by the way he sat in his chair. His open collar showed a dark red ring around his neck that only had one meaning for a seer that Nick knew of.

Those H.R.A. fucks had collared him.

Nick couldn’t help looking the rest of the hybrid over, feeling sick and angry as he did.

Unlike the vampires he sat with, Walker didn’t wear armor, but a white, tunic-like shirt and black pants. His hands had cuts and more bruises, as did his lower arms. His bare feet poked out the bottom of his pant legs under the table, looking swollen, dark red, and possibly broken in a few places. Another shocking purple and black bruise was visible on the top part of his chest, and probably on his abdomen, given the hyper-straight way he sat.

They’d beaten the shit out of him, probably for days.

They’d broken his feet, likely with organic cables or chains.

Nick finished looking at Walker, who seemed almost touched by the appraisal.

When Nick met the man’s gaze, he got a reassuring smile in return.

Nick’s eyes didn’t linger on Forrest Walker’s reaction to his concern; instead, they swiveled towards Wynter, who was watching the interaction closely.

Nick raised an eyebrow at her, tilting his head in Walker’s direction.

“You’ve been busy,” he commented.

Wynter opened her mouth, her eyes a touch harder, but Brick spoke before she could.

“Not her,” Nick’s sire said, that typical self-importance in his voice. “Me.”

Nick’s gaze turned back to the auburn-haired vampire.

“You?” he said flatly. “You broke into an H.R.A. high-security prison?”

Brick nodded, once.

“Yes.” He made a fluid gesture towards Walker, almost a solicitous one. “I did, as it happens. And you needn’t sound so surprised, offspring. I owed the halfling.”

Nick thought about that.

He thought about what Walker had done, how he’d thrown himself in front of his vampire girlfriend, which was what had first gotten Walker dragged off to that van by the H.R.A. in the first place, well before they seemed to know who he was.

Slowly, Nick nodded.

He understood Brick. He understood why Brick would see it that way. Still, the fact that he’d go to that much trouble for a single hybrid was pretty amazing.

Nick frowned as the thought sunk in.

“It wasn’t only for him, though,” he said. “Was it?”

“No.” Brick’s reply was swift, unapologetic. He glanced around the table, his crystal eyes harder. “I had others I strongly wished out of that facility, as well.”

Brick seemed to read some of Nick’s cynicism on his face.

“We had someone on the inside of that facility,” he explained, a touch more curtly. “We’d been monitoring it for months.”

“Why?” Nick asked.

Brick’s eyes flattened more.

“Because, as I told you, dear Naoko, something has changed. It simply changed far faster than I had been expecting it to.” He stared at Nick, as if waiting for him to catch up. “This facility… you are familiar with it?”

“No,” Nick said.

Brick nodded, as if the detail was unimportant. “It is located on a large island. What used to be called ‘Madagascar’ on our old world. Do you remember?”

Nick nodded, feeling his body tense. “Yeah. I remember.”

“This particular prison has been there for some time, but it was rarely used,” Brick went on, his words clipped as he drummed his fingers on the wooden table. “It started off as a research facility, in part. Recently, that changed.”

He shrugged, but his cracked-crystal eyes remained cold where they aimed at Nick.

“I found out a few months ago, they’ve been building it out for the past year,” he continued flatly. “Expanding capacity from several dozen cells on a single floor into something far more grim and comprehensive. My person inside has seen the plans for this, and for several other facilities the H.R.A. intends to build over the next year. The goal is the make the entire island into a massive complex, with both underground and aboveground areas for detention, scientific exploration, and forced labor.”

Brick adjusted his armored sleeves, and leaned back in his wooden monk’s chair.

“The majority of those cells were clearly designed to hold vampires,” he added. “But the plans also indicate the intention of detaining a large number of seers.”

Nick felt his jaw harden. “How many?”

“They already have capacity for three hundred thousand, as of a week ago,” Brick answered curtly. “According to my source, that is for only one of a half-dozen facilities on that island alone.” Brick’s clear eyes held Nick’s. “If they aren’t too particular about comfort, closer to half a million could potentially be housed in that one complex… already, as I said. And, as I also said, that is only one such facility, on one island, with other sites being proposed in other, equally difficult-to-access locations. My source estimates the numbers could be as high as four million on Madagascar alone. Eight to twelve million globally. With room to expand, if need be, for both the work camps and the holding facilities…”

Brick’s eyebrow rose.

“…Or contract, of course, if they decide the numbers are too large to manage.”

Nick didn’t want to understand.

He didn’t want to, but he did.

“You think it’s over,” Nick said, his voice now as hard as Brick’s. “The truce. The wafer-thin pretense of antagonistic races living together in peace. The whole system of ‘tamed’ vampires and hybrids. The specialization categories. The Midnights and Galileos and Centurions and all the rest. You think that’s what changed. You think they’ve decided to turn us into full-blown slaves. Or exterminate us, if they can’t.”

Brick’s stare flattened more.

He didn’t answer.

Then again, he didn’t really need to.