Page 24 of Almost Midnight (Vampire Detective Midnight #8)

CHAPTER 24

TRANSITIONS

“We need Nick in here!” a male voice shouted. “Someone tell him we need him in here right now!” A pause. “Tai, no! Get back! Can’t you see he’s not in his right mind?”

The voice was deep but clear, and still young-sounding. Nick knew it as Malek’s before he had time to think about how panicked the young seer sounded.

Gaos. He hadn’t warned them like he should have.

He’d warned them, but not enough.

Jordan was a newborn still.

He was a new newborn still.

Worse, he was a different kind of newborn than he’d been when they hiked with him up a mountain to reach that portal. Damon would be a lot stronger now. He’d likely be a lot angrier now. He’d be a lot more “vampire” than he’d been in those early hours of his transition. He’d also be grappling with emotional intensities he’d never dealt with before in his life.

He must’ve been feeding on blood for days by now.

Over a week, most likely, although time blurred so much for Nick, with the strange dreams and being shot and stabbed and knocked over walls, he honestly had no idea how long it had been. Long enough, he guessed, for Jordan to be going through some shit.

Nick had already broken into a run.

He aimed his feet for the glass doors at the end of the corridor.

Inside, he could see some kind of commotion happening.

Thank the gods, he could also see at least three of Brick’s vampires in there with them.

Kit must’ve gotten them access to the cell, or whatever they called the “room” where Archangel had been holding Jordan.

And gaos, Damon had to be out of his mind. He had to be completely overwhelmed by the smell of the seers. Hybrids were bad enough, but two full-blooded seers like Malek and Tai smelled like heroin and candy and insanely good fucking and a blow job combined with a foot rub and ice cream to the average vampire. Especially to a very young vampire who wasn’t accustomed to his own biological urges and had no idea how to control himself yet.

No way would Damon be able to control himself.

The idea was ludicrous.

The realization made Nick panic, and finally got him completely out of his own head, where he’d been lost thinking about Brick and about Brick dying, trying to make sense of his sire’s last words.

Brick seemed desperate to speak to him before he died.

It struck Nick now that he’d stayed alive through sheer force of will, struggling to hold on until he got out everything he’d wanted to say. Typical Brick grandstanding, and needing to have the last word, but Nick couldn’t help but be bewildered by his determination, too.

As for the words themselves, Nick couldn’t make sense of a lot of Brick’s disjointed speech, not yet, anyway, not entirely, but the parts he did understand, or thought he understood, were enough to have his head spinning.

Another portal.

That’s what he’d been telling him, wasn’t it?

There was another portal.

If Brick was right, the one in Nice was still there.

Nick fought to shove Brick’s words out of his mind, to concentrate on the here and now, but he only halfway succeeded.

He needed to, though. He needed to focus. He needed to fucking concentrate. He needed to get them all out of there alive before he could even begin to think about portals in prehistoric caves on the shores of France.

Nick fought to think about their best options now, with the H.R.A. and Archangel about to burst in on them, with Lara dead, Brick dead, and likely every human law enforcement officer on the planet about to make them public enemy number one.

He needed a way to move Jordan out in one piece, and with no seers or humans decorated with baby newborn vampire bites. Nick would strongly prefer if they got out of there quietly, and before the H.R.A. or one of the human militaries arrived, especially after what Brick just spent the last seconds of his consciousness trying to tell him.

If Nick was even half-right about what those words meant, they had damned good reason not to lose any of their people right now.

Losing them to an H.R.A. torture prison would be particularly grossly ironic.

At the thought, Nick switched his comms back on.

He used the mind controls, without slowing his sprint down the corridor.

“Kit.” He didn’t wait for her to respond. “How much time?”

He was nearly to the glass doors before she answered.

“Wyter’s got the drones in the air. She and Forrest are each controlling one.” Her voice shook a little. “I’m watching right now, Nick. We’ve got visual on military trucks reaching the bridge from the Manhattan side.”

Fuck. The facility was only about ten minutes off the highway after the bridge. Fifteen if there was any amount of traffic. The bridge itself would be five minutes.

Maybe ten.

“How many?” he asked.

“Ten. So far.”

“Traffic?”

“It’s wide open, Nick. It’s two in the morning.”

His jaw clenched. “Intercept any more transmissions?”

“I’m getting a few. Mostly N.Y.P.D.” Kit sounded grim, and Nick couldn’t help but note how quiet Morley, Forrest, and Wynter were in the background. Kit lowered her voice in a way that made Nick think she’d switched to sub-vocals. “Nick. You need to hurry.”

“I know.”

“You need to really, really hurry.”

“I understand.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m about to enter Jordan’s cell. I’ll let you know when we reach the stairs.”

“Front door.”

Nick hesitated, then nodded. Kit would have mapped out the fastest route.

“Right,” he said only.

Nick tried to see Jordan through the glass wall, and hit the panel to the side after searching for it for longer than he should have.

“Going in now,” he said, as the door swung inward. “Keep me informed.”

He didn’t turn off the comms, or the cameras in his headset.

Whatever Wynter and the others saw, they’d just have to deal with it.

* * *

Immediately, Nick saw why Malek had been yelling.

The seer had a plasma rifle butt against his shoulder, and he was aiming it at Damon’s abdomen. A smart move, really, since a shot there wouldn’t kill him, but blowing a hole through Jordan’s back would definitely drop him.

It would also put him out of commission, probably for weeks.

Nick leapt forward without hesitation.

He pushed past Malek mostly to let the seer know he was there, not really wanted to get shot again himself, particularly not at close range. He put himself directly between the seers and Damon Jordan, his friend, and put as much thrall in his voice as he could possibly muster.

“Jordan!” he growled. He made himself bigger, extending his fangs. His vision swam with red once his irises began to follow his own aggression. “Calm the fuck down! We need to take you out of here, and we don’t want to hurt you!”

Damon tore his eyes off Malek, seemingly with an effort.

He looked briefly at Tai, and Nick saw a hard flood of lust reach his dark-red eyes. The look there wasn’t sexual exactly, but with vampires, especially newborns, that line was thin as fuck. Nick reminded himself that Damon couldn’t help himself, that he would be a fucking idiot right now, that he was all id and anger and compulsion and hunger and strength he that he had no way to control or even comprehend.

Damon wouldn’t know how to channel any of those feelings or impulses in productive ways. Nick couldn’t let it mean anything, not until his friend got a few long months of steady rehabilitation and a tough-love crash-course in being a vampire.

Why fucking humans thought they could help a vampire through this was beyond him.

Archangel clearly hadn’t taught him shit.

“Damon!” he snapped. “You’re five seconds away from being knocked out! Then I’m going to have to carry your heavy ass, and it’s going to annoy me.”

Again, the dark-red eyes shifted to Nick.

Nick saw a confusion of emotions there briefly.

He found himself remembering what it was like being a newborn.

All that strength and see-sawing emotion, the elated highs of realizing what your new body could do, followed by crashes and intense depressions when you realized you’d become a monster and you were dead and there wasn’t a fucking thing you could do about it.

Realizing you’d never enjoy being in the sun again.

Realizing you’d never have biological children.

Realizing you’d never enjoy food, or drink, or any of the simple pleasures of being alive you’d enjoyed while you were human.

Realizing other humans would fear you, and treat you differently.

He remembered the rage. The feeling of being cheated.

Like Nick, Damon hadn’t gone into this willingly, either. His human life had been stolen from him, just like Brick had stolen Nick’s from him.

Nick saw some of that emotional see-saw reflected in Damon Jordan now, as they looked at one another. But Damon didn’t look angry, like Nick had been for so long. He didn’t look like he wanted to hurt people, or fuck, or drink excessive amounts of blood as a way to deal with his own rage at what happened to him.

He mostly looked afraid.

“Knock me out,” the newborn blurted.

His voice was different now. Deeper, more melodious. More vampire.

He put thrall into his words from the sheer intensity of his want. Nick would’ve bet a lot of credits Jordan had no idea he was doing it.

Still, it was eerie, the kick it had behind it.

Jordan already had a lot of power, even being so young.

More than anything, though, Nick felt relief at the other’s words.

If Jordan was self-aware enough to know he was completely out of control, he was already a few hundred steps ahead of where Nick had been when he’d been as a reckless, rage and revenge-filled newborn in Paris all those years ago.

Nick glanced at Tai, who nodded, once.

Then she closed her eyes.

Nick felt a twinge of nerves when a kind of current began to crackle around her.

The air itself seemed to vibrate, to nearly catch on fire, although Nick couldn’t see anything exactly, not with his eyes. It was a feeling, like she embodied that spark herself, and he could feel the fraction of a fraction of an instant right before it ignited.

He worried briefly she might kill Damon on accident––

––when Damon’s eyes abruptly rolled up, and he collapsed on the organic tile floor.

* * *

“Goddamn,” Tai huffed, sweat running down the side of her face. “You weren’t kidding about how heavy he is. It’s like he’s made entirely of metal…”

She looked at Nick almost accusingly.

“Are you this heavy?” she asked, indignant.

Nick rolled his eyes, and started to answer, but Malek broke in, grinning.

“He’s heavier,” the older seer informed his sister.

Nick rolled his eyes for real.

“What the hell are either of you two doing on vampire-carrying duty right now?” Nick grumbled. “You should be upstairs.”

“You put us on this,” Tai reminded him curtly, mostly to save her own breath as she struggled to hold up just one of Jordan’s arms. “You didn’t want us visible. And vampires are stealthier than we are. And they can hear cameras. So you and your new vampire queen told us to hang back until we could bring Jordan to the car…”

Nick acknowledged her words grudgingly.

She was right, of course.

Nick had told her to hang back, at least until there was some compelling reason to put her or her brother in harm’s way. He had them wearing their masks again, too, knowing that either of their faces showing up where Archangel operatives might see them would likely only bring more firepower their way, and likely faster.

Hell, they might send in planes, if they knew Tai was with them.

Until they had absolutely no choice, only vampires would do the scouting. They would also form the front line of defense, at least for now. Zoe had agreed with Nick on that. She had agreed immediately that if the H.R.A. thought dangerous, telekinetic seers were working side by side with vampires, that wouldn’t be good for anyone.

So Zoe led six of her vampires to the front of the building.

She sent Charlie, who’d been watching the back doors with her iffy, recently-harpooned leg, back to the front of the building to meet up with the van. She’d left three vampires on the back door in Charlie’s place, mostly as scouts.

Kit had just informed them that their drones had gone dark, which likely meant, she told Nick sourly, that someone found the signal, and snipped it. The drones either plummeted to the ground, or the military hacked into their signal and was now using the drones themselves.

None of that boded well for them.

It boded even less well when their escape plan included lugging a four hundred pound vampire out of the building with them. It meant they couldn’t ditch the van, for one. It also meant they likely couldn’t go back to Manhattan, at least not tonight.

They would have to find some place to hide out here, in the less densely-populated part of the dome, in a place with few to no cameras.

“How much more?” Tai grumbled.

Nick didn’t have time to answer before Malek did.

“One more flight,” he said, looking up the next section of stairs. “Then we’re back at the ground floor.”

“We’ve got visual again,” Kit said. “Surveillance camera on the access road.”

“How long?”

“Two minutes. That’s generous.”

Nick grunted, then stepped forward, wrapped his arms around Jordan’s waist, and hefted the vampire up over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

It felt like his shoulder might splinter in half and break, but miraculously, it held.

“Go to the van,” he told the kids.

Tai huffed at him, her small hands on her small waist. “Why the hell were we carrying him, if you could do that all along?”

Nick had the inappropriate desire to laugh. “Go to the van,” he scolded instead. “You little brat. Protect Ms. James and Kit and the rest. I’m right behind you.”

Malek and Tai hesitated for an instant, but when Nick glowered at them, they turned and ran away. Luckily, seers were pretty fast, too.

Nick walked as well as he could up the last flight of stairs, then through the opening at the top, which was still propped open by multiple bodies.

He stepped over one of them without looking down, then began moving faster down the corridor in the direction of the front of the building.

“Tai and Malek are headed your way,” Nick grumbled into the comm.

“Yeah, we heard.” Kit sounded amused, but also worried. “Don’t suppose you can run?”

“They’re that close?”

“We’re watching them pull into the parking lot right now.”

Nick cursed under his breath.

“That wasn’t two minutes,” he informed her, fighting his worry with sarcasm.

“No shit,” she said. “I said the estimate was generous.”

“That’s more than ‘generous,’ Katarina.”

He heard her shrug. “No one’s perfect.”

“I thought you were. You certainly seem to think you are––” Nick grumbled back.

“I see the kids,” Kit broke in, sounding relieved. “They’re at the door. They’re headed our way.”

Nick felt a flicker of relief.

Maybe they would get out of this. Barely.

“You’ve got Charlie?” he asked.

“Yup. Everyone but you, numb-nuts. And Jordan. Oh, and the vampires, of course.” She hesitated, then added, “I don’t think they’re coming, Nick,” she said, apologetic.

Nick frowned. He moved his legs marginally faster, even as he used his mind to change channels on the comm. “Zoe. Where are you?”

“We see them,” she informed him coolly.

“You’re coming with us?” he asked.

He already knew the answer.

He should have known, really, even before Kit more or less confirmed it. Brick had told him. He’d told Nick what Zoe would do.

“No,” she said, her voice unchanging.

He nodded, mostly to himself.

He made his way around a left turn, and then he could see the smoke scorched walls leading out from the facility’s main lobby.

“We can provide you a distraction,” Zoe said.

“Much appreciated.” He fought to think, even as he half-jogged towards the building’s entrance. “Zoe.” He hesitated, his eyes making out the dark-paneled van up ahead. “Brick told me. About France. He told me––”

“I know what he told you,” she said calmly. “The answer is still no, Nick.”

“What if she’s still there?” he asked cautiously.

There was a silence.

In it, Nick could practically see Zoe shaking her head.

“There’s no place for me in that life,” she told him simply. “This is my world now. These are my people. And I have things I want to do here.” She fell silent, then added, quieter, “I followed him willingly, Nick. I always followed him willingly. I’m not like you.”

Nick didn’t know how to answer that.

Probably because he agreed with her.

They weren’t the same. They never had been.

In the end, he only nodded, picking his way over rubble to reach the dark vehicle.

“Anything you want me to tell her?” he asked finally.

“Miriam?” Zoe let out a low snort, as if amused at the idea of Nick passing on a message to her biological sister. She might be amused at his humanness, like Brick had always been, and his insistence on treating her like some part of her was still human, too. “Tell her not to take any shit from that seer she’s married to,” she said wryly.

Nick frowned. “That’s it?”

“You can tell her more than that, Nick,” Zoe said, a little softer. “Tell her I’m good. Tell her I hope she’s good, too. You can even tell her that I miss her, but that I decided to stay anyway.” She hesitated for the first time. “Tell her it’s not because of her, Nick. Tell her I have a life here. People I love. I think she’d like that.”

Nick nodded. “Yeah. I think she would.”

Zoe smiled. Nick heard it in her voice through the line.

“If you’re feeling generous,” she added in her husky vampire voice. “You could also tell her you think I made the right choice, Nick.”

Nick frowned.

Did he think that?

She was making a choice he understood, on some level at least, but did he think it was the right one? It definitely wasn’t the choice Miri herself would have made, not the Miri Nick used to know, at least. That Miri would never choose power over family.

It never would have made sense to Miri to want control over an organization as vast and corrupt and rich and violent as the White Death.

But Zoe wasn’t Miriam.

They’d never been very much alike, as far as Nick could tell.

For Zoe, maybe this was the right choice.

Maybe it was her only choice, given who she was.

Before Nick could think how to put any of that into words, or even if he should, or what he really believed, Zoe let out a low laugh. It was a surprisingly warm laugh, but it held a touch of cynicism, too.

“You need us to stick around?” Nick asked, clearing his throat. “The kid could help, you know. She could at least clear the way, and––”

But Zoe cut him off.

“No,” she said, decisive. “The H.R.A. aren’t the only ones who called in reinforcements, Nick. We’ll be fine. And this was the plan all along.”

Nick heard the added meaning behind her words, and swallowed.

He’d known Brick likely had his own agenda in coming here, but he hadn’t realized the full extent of it. It wasn’t just the H.R.A. and Archangel and the other human powers-that-be who wanted this fight. The White Death and the vampires wanted it, too.

They were done living in the shadows.

They were done letting humans torture their brethren and fuck up this world.

At the thought, Nick glanced around the front of the building, and saw rows and rows of armored vehicles parked there with dark-tinted windows. The windows faced away from the building, and towards the line of human military trucks now approaching the entrance to the massive car-park. None of those military-style SUVs had been there when they arrived.

Nick counted over fifty of them before he stopped.

Zoe hadn’t been kidding about reinforcements.

It looked more like she’d called in her own fucking army.

“I guess we’ll be going out the back,” he muttered in the comm.

Zoe laughed again, and that time the sound was higher, more melodious.

“See you around, Nick,” she said, that cynical smile still in her voice.

“No,” he said, a little sadly. “You won’t, Z.”

“No,” she agreed after a beat. “I guess I won’t.”

Before Nick could decide if there was anything left to say, Zoe Fox, newly-crowned Vampire Queen of the White Death, Nick’s best friend’s little sister, his sometimes-lover while he’d been a soldier in the White Death, and now Brick’s most beloved and personally chosen successor, hung up the line.

Nick knew, somehow, he’d never see her again.