Page 26 of Almost Midnight (Vampire Detective Midnight #8)

CHAPTER 26

HOPE AND WAR

“I’ve been remembering more,” Nick began, his voice clear but quiet. “It started a while ago, really. Long before I asked Tai and Malek to help me with it. Even before my doppelg?nger showed up, and I started confusing my memories with his.”

Nick glanced around at the faces.

They all looked attentive, intently focused on Nick’s voice.

“Maybe it even started while I was in San Francisco for that fight,” Nick continued. “Maybe it got triggered when I first went to the doppelg?nger’s house in Potrero Hill, or when I first learned that this wasn’t my world, that I was the stranger here, and that the things I thought were my memories might not all belong to me, either.”

He swallowed, glancing at Wynter.

“If I’m being honest, though, I think it really started when I met Wynter.”

Her eyebrows rose, but she didn’t exactly look surprised.

Nick frowned, thinking.

“I started getting glimpses of Dalejem when I was with her, and I started dreaming about bits and pieces of my old life… just enough that I starting noticing the inconsistencies. The story I’d believed all that time, the one Brick had carefully constructed for me, slowly began to fall apart around then.”

Thinking, remembering the guilt he’d felt, the first few times he woke up to dreams and memories of Dalejem, he shrugged.

“Anyway,” Nick said, dismissive. “The point is, the process had already begun. But since we were up on that hill, and I was staring into the portal, it’s gotten significantly worse. Those few sessions I did with Tai and Malek seem to have accelerated it even more.”

He glanced at the two seers, who looked back at him seriously.

There was another silence.

“Some of what Brick told me might be connected to those memories,” Nick added carefully. “So I thought I should probably tell you at least some of it.”

He looked at Wynter.

“First of all, I’m ninety percent sure the portal Brick told me about in France is the same one I came through… and Dalejem came through… and later Brick and Zoe and whatever other vampires came through some time later.”

He hesitated.

“There might be others who came through, too,” he added carefully. He studiously avoided looking at Wynter. “Brick heavily hinted at that, anyway. He suggested at least one other person came through from my world, but at a different time than either of us.”

He glanced at Wynter again. That time, he made himself hold her gaze.

“I think it might have been you, Wyn,” he said, softer.

He watched her eyes widen, and slowly shook his head.

“I don’t know for sure,” he cautioned. “And I can’t explain it, because it means you and Dalejem might’ve been on the same world. But Brick definitely hinted that you came through that door from our world, too.” His voice turned gruff as he motioned vaguely with a hand. “You would’ve arrived much later, of course,” he said. “Well after Brick and Zoe arrived, and a fuck of a long time after me and Jem got here. And if you were on my home world the same time as me and Jem, I don’t think it was for very long.”

He met her gaze.

“I think you must have gotten there on accident. I think you must’ve actually been from a different place altogether.” He hesitated, then exhaled, half in frustration. “I can’t explain it, like I said, but given that Tai and Malek aren’t from this world, either, I can’t help wondering if you might be from the same world as them. Which doesn’t answer the question of how you got to any of these places… but Brick hinted at a possible answer to that question, too.”

Again, looked at his wife.

“One of the things he said while he was dying was that Dimitry Yi started the wars.” Nick frowned as he tried to recall Brick’s exact words. “He said he was a shapeshifter… which we already knew… and that he pretended to be Charles, mostly so he could lead Charles’ old followers into a new racial war on this world. Brick said the wars here started because of him. He said Yi found Charles’ people somehow, and brought them here, essentially to conquer this world.” Nick frowned as he glanced around at bewildered faces. “…Which means he’s likely been traveling around in space and time for ages. And probably recruiting and/or outright kidnapping seers wherever he could find them to join his cause.”

There was a silence after he finished.

Wynter blinked at him, her expression lost.

Tai and Malek looked paler, too.

“I don’t know why you don’t remember, honey,” Nick said next, his voice softer. “I’m sure there’s a reason. Maybe you even did it yourself, like I did. Or maybe Yi did it to you… or Archangel. I get the sense Lara has been collecting Yi’s refugees for a while.”

He cleared his throat, glancing around at the rest of them.

“Either way, it would explain how you could’ve ended up on my world,” he said with a shrug. “The portals are unpredictable… look what happened to me, and Brick, and the rest of us who might’ve gone through. We eventually ended up at the same place, but not at the same time. Brick was holding on to me when we went through that portal. We went through it together, but the portal still ripped us apart, and sent us to completely different time periods.”

He shrugged again.

“It’s possible Yi tried to take you, and the portal did the same… sending you to me instead, and to Jem… and then following us again, but arriving at a different time.”

There was another heavy silence as they all stared at him.

Nick cleared his throat.

He wondered just how crazy he sounded.

“It’s just a theory,” he clarified. “It’s just one possible way this all makes sense.”

He cleared his throat again.

Then, stumbling over his words, he began to tell him some of the things he remembered. About the cave in Nice, seeing a young girl who looked a lot like Wynter with Jem on the cave floor. He described falling through the portal, seeing Brick as he was torn away from him as they tumbled through space, being shocked at the arrival of Dalejem when he was still trying to determine what had happened to him.

He described his earliest memories of being on this world: silent beaches and endless stars, birds that filled the skies, the quiet without cars or planes or radios or phones or television, the endless stretches of empty land, fields of golden grain, fruit and vegetables and lush trees. He described water so clean and fresh and unspoiled it shocked Jem the first time he drank it, and oceans so teeming with fish Nick could catch them easily in his bare hands.

He tried his best to be accurate, to extract every detail of his recollections. He told them all of it, every thing he could remember: the good, the bad, the funny, the difficult.

He described the first time Dalejem got attacked by an angry mob.

He described his memories of being a nobleman in the south of France.

He described watching the world change around them: the wars, the religious purges, the Crusades, the changing technology, learning to care for animals and birds, learning to ride horses and hunt and use a bow and a sword, and even a jousting pole. He described seeing his first car on this world, and realizing how wondrous and horrible it was, to see and hear and smell one after all those years of silence and pristine air.

He described what he remembered of his marriage.

Of the early years on this world, when it was only him and Jem.

He described them living in a pretty house on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.

He described them laughing as they tried on the local clothes, changed their names, decided on professions, and learned what to lie about to keep from being branded witches or demons or gypsies. Nick described his memories of horse auctions and riding in sailing ships to Egypt and Africa. He described Dalejem growing gardens, and the two of them taking in orphans. He described some of their funnier interactions with locals, and the tiresome need for both of them to constantly explain their odd appearance and strange eyes.

He described his efforts to build tools, and plows, and even foundries and waterwheels. He described how they’d practiced new dialects, or full-blown languages, or sometimes simply tweak their accents to disguise the last place where they’d lived. He told them about learning to say the things that would keep them safe and unnoticeable and accepted.

They’d learned to go to the right churches, proclaim the right beliefs.

Invite the right people to dinner.

Help out whenever their local village needed it.

Most of all perhaps, he described learning when it was time to let go, to move along to the next town, or six towns down from that one, or sometimes a whole new piece of coastline because they’d lost the ability to blend in with their surroundings.

He described Jem growing old.

He tried to convey that objectively, unemotionally.

He told them when the seer could no longer move houses again.

By then they were traveling as grandfather and grandson, and everyone praised Nick for being such a loyal lad, taking care of and doting on his pappy the way he did.

Nick tried to make that amusing.

He tried to make it an inside joke.

Jem tried as well, but Nick found that harder to take for some reason.

Then Jem got sick. He got really sick, and Nick didn’t leave the house at all other than to get medicine, water from the well, and food.

Jem made Nick promise he would live, that he wouldn’t end his life when the natural thing finally occurred. Foolishly, stupidly, Nick agreed.

He promised.

When even that hadn’t satisfied his mate, he made a blood vow.

In the end, Jem had died.

Jem had died, and Nick’s life, for close to a hundred years after, went completely dark and empty and cold, like he had died, too.

* * *

There was a silence when Nick got that far in the story.

Nick didn’t look up as he trailed off; he couldn’t really deal with the emotions that would come with seeing how they all felt about his story so far.

In the end, someone had to say something, to move on from that moment, so Nick cleared his throat, gesturing vaguely but gracefully with a hand.

It didn’t occur to him until after he’d done it that it was one of Jem’s graceful gestures he emulated. He and Jem had moved and spoken and gestured so much alike by the end, Nick had forgotten where he’d picked it all up.

But now he saw the green-eyed seer doing it again, somewhere behind his eyes.

In a candlelit room, Dalejem, ex-warrior of the Adhipan, still young and dark-haired, gestured and laughed and told Nick about the crazy interaction he’d had in the village, or with one odd neighbor or another.

Nick wiped his eyes, realizing only then that he’d been crying.

He cleared his throat.

When he glanced up, he caught Wynter’s gaze first.

Her eyes were a confused tangle of feelings and empathy and love. She stared at him, and he saw her thinking, too, putting everything together around all the things he’d said.

“You believe him,” she said. “You think the portal is still there.”

Nick nodded slowly.

“But you and Jem… you really never tried to go back through it?” she asked, puzzled.

Nick grimaced, then slowly shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?” Morley asked, from the front of the van.

Nick raised his gaze to look at the gray-haired human.

“I more or less told you why,” he said, his eyes flat as he shrugged. “The portals are unpredictable. No uncertain, unknowable hope that we might get home was worth the risk that we could lose one another.”

At the silence his words produced, Nick shrugged.

“Honestly? I only have the vaguest memories of having discussed it with him, but I know we did, and I suspect we did at length.” Thinking about that, remembering the glimpses he got of one of those talks, he frowned. “From what I remember, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to risk it. We didn’t want to be separated. We couldn’t be.”

He looked at Wynter, feeling a flicker of pain, suddenly, at how far away she was, and how long it had been since they’d been connected by blood.

He missed her.

He missed being alone with her.

“Also,” he said, forcing his eyes off her face. “We didn’t want to end up somewhere worse than where we were.”

Still thinking, he grunted wryly.

“We kept living in the vicinity of that damned portal though, funnily enough. For all of Jem’s life, we moved up and down the French Riviera coast… almost like we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to close the door on that other world entirely. Despite our mutual decision, something in us couldn’t completely let it go.”

Nick glanced around at their pale faces, his words strangely apologetic.

“Our lives were pretty nice,” he admitted. “They got complicated at times, sure, but we were together, and happy, and the more comfortable we got here, the harder it was to rationalize taking that big of a risk. I mean, Brick hadn’t come with us. We had no enemies, no problems, not for years. All of that came much later, with Yi, the outing of the races, the eventual wars. Everything after Jem died is pretty blurry to me still, frankly.”

He frowned, wincing a little.

“Brick told me I didn’t even join the war until the last few years of it,” he admitted. “He said I was ‘depressed’ and ‘dead inside’ even then, and it must have been decades, if not longer, since Jem had died. I think I just gave up, so I probably didn’t see the point of going back to my home world. It might’ve even seemed like a form of suicide, and I’d promised Jem.”

Nick stared down at his hands without seeing them.

“By then, I must’ve run into other vampires and seers, too,” he added. “But I have no memory of that. From things Lara said, I’m pretty sure seers and vampires were coming in through portals fairly regularly in those early years… likely, thanks to Yi and his fanatical followers, at least in part. I’m pretty sure Yi was actively recruiting for years before he launched the first battles.”

He looked at his wife. “I don’t know when you came, but I suspect it was well after Jem died, and likely after Brick and Zoe. It might’ve been sometime during the war, but it’s more likely, given your age, it was sometime after the war ended.”

There was another silence.

“So Zoe and Brick came through together?” Wynter asked.

Nick nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I only remember Brick going through, since he grabbed me and we fell through together… but Zoe told me she followed him. They must’ve landed here roughly at the same time, like me and Jem.”

“Brick brought you through on purpose?” Kit asked, her mouth a frown, as if that part of the story had just sunk in. “Why the hell would he do that? Why would anyone do that?”

“It was an accident,” Nick admitted. “That’s how I remember it.”

Kit and Malek exchanged looks, but Kit nodded. “Right.”

“We were fighting,” Nick admitted. “And he’d just bit Jem.”

“That sounds more plausible,” Charlie muttered.

“So how did Dalejem fall through?” Walker asked, causing everyone to look at him.

His voice held more open curiosity than the others, maybe because he had less reason to walk on eggshells around the whole Nick-Jem-Wynter mess. He likely still didn’t understand the full significance of it, or who Jem and Wynter were to one another.

“Jem told me he ran after me.” Nick frowned then, stopping his own words. “No,” he said, still frowning. “Well, not no,” he amended. “I do remember him telling me that, although I’ve only just remembered it now. But he said something else about that, too…”

Nick trailed.

“I think he said someone else ran after me first,” he said slowly. “He said that other person ran after you, and Jem followed.” Nick’s eyes once more found Wynter’s. Another pain hit his heart. “I think he must’ve meant you.”

Wynter didn’t answer, but Nick saw her bite her lip.

Nick forced his eyes off her with an effort.

He refocused on his friends.

He could see the effect of his words over the past hour or so starting to impact them.

He saw a faint excitement on their faces now.

It looked like a few of them were trying to suppress that excitement, or temper it, at least, but it shone in their eyes, like a spark of hope they couldn’t quite tamp down.

He even saw that excitement in Wynter now.

Nick was about to try and say something to all of them, maybe to temper their enthusiasm a bit, or remind them what he’d said about “the portals being unpredictable,” and how they still really had no idea if it was still there, or if they could find it if it was––

When Forrest Walker suddenly jerked in his seat.

He touched his ear, and his eyes went directly to Nick’s.

“Our ride’s here,” he said.

Nick nodded, then glanced around at everyone else. They looked, if anything, more nervous and excited and confused than they had even a few seconds ago.

Nick hoped like hell he wasn’t getting their hopes up for nothing again.

He wanted so badly for this all to turn out right for a change.

He wanted his friends to be safe, for Wynter to be safe, his family to be safe.

He knew “safe” would always be something of an illusion, no matter where they all ended up, but at the very least, he didn’t want them living in a world that considered them dangerous animals, where they lived with the constant specter of being murdered or tortured simply for living their lives.

He didn’t want to live through another racial war.

He didn’t want them to have to do it, either.

He didn’t want Wynter or Forrest living their lives in terror of being locked up and tortured. He didn’t want Malek and Tai to be forced to work as assassins, spies, killers, or oracles for human governments or defense contractors, or kept as quasi-prisoners in the houses of rich psychopaths who barely saw them as living, feeling beings.

He didn’t want Damon to have to live the way Nick had done as a Midnight.

He didn’t want him shipped off to a work camp on Madagascar, either.

Even just living a dehumanizing existence of constant surveillance and check-ins and blood tests and torture-like reprogramming and certified H.R.A. feeds was bad enough. The world the humans seemed to be envisioning now sounded like a doomed hellscape.

Even if Zoe won the war, Nick suspected it wouldn’t be to create a world he wanted to live in. It wouldn’t be a world he wanted his loved ones to live in, either.

He wanted them to have a shot at a normal life.

He wanted another chance at what he’d had with Dalejem.

He thought everyone should have that.

Everyone deserved a real life, at least once.