Page 30 of Almost Midnight (Vampire Detective Midnight #8)

CHAPTER 30

THE GRAVEYARD

It turned out the person they were meeting in Antibes wasn’t some old friend of Walker’s, or someone he’d worked with in Mi6, or another vampire he was close to.

It was his actual, biological mother.

Ruth Quill Walker was a full-blooded seer, and apparently that, along with Walker being her only child, was reason enough for her to agree to come with them on this insane journey, despite not knowing Nick or the rest of them at all.

Forrest assured them he had communicated to his mother all the risks.

Rose Walker been passing as a high-proportion hybrid for over forty years.

She was likely running out of time in this dimension for that reason, alone.

To Nick’s eyes, she looked about thirty, thirty-one in human years, and while hybrids had longer lives than pure-blooded humans, people would definitely start to ask questions when she reached a hundred or even eighty and still looked to be in her late twenties.

Unlike Nick and Jem in their early years, she didn’t have the option of simply moving to a new city or town, or changing her name to side-step inconvenient aging quirks.

That world no longer existed; it hadn’t for a few hundred years.

It was no longer enough to fudge your identity details, or even make yourself your own legal child or grandchild, if you started looking disturbingly young for your age.

Anywhere Rose Walker went in the human civilized worlds would have a record of her that included a comprehensive list of her biometrics, not to mention a blood sample and all legal documents that went with being a registered hybrid.

She could maybe fake her death.

The White Death did that kind of thing, along with other groups involved in organized crime. There were even hybrid groups out there that facilitated those types of identity reboots, not to mention rich, connected people like Lara St. Maarten, who had done that for Tai, Malek, and Wynter.

There was no guarantee she wouldn’t get caught, though, so it was risky.

It would also probably require her moving to a completely different part of the world, not to mention the nightmare of creating a new identity when everyone’s ident was loaded and locked inside the same system.

The penalty for being caught would be steep.

As a full-blood, her entire species was officially extinct.

She’d be a legal non-entity.

For the same reason, she’d either be handed over to an organics science team, or end up as a lab rat in some other underground facility, probably for the rest of her life. That, or they’d try to turn her into a weapon like Tai, or even breed her. Nick didn’t even want to think about the horrors she’d likely experience if the wrong person found out what she was.

Forrest said she wasn’t at direct risk yet, but it was only a matter of time.

They both clearly understood that.

Even now, she had to pay exorbitant fees on the black market every quarter to obtain hybrid blood that would allow her to pass her regular check-ins. For every routine exam, she had to pay to get her blood contaminated with hybrid and human components, and it had to be consistent enough across each test that they didn’t suspect foul play.

Without Forrest there to look out for her, she’d likely be caught even sooner.

He offered her a pipeline into the black markets while operating as “Keori” that she’d probably struggle to replicate on her own.

Anyway, that was hardly the point.

If Forrest was leaving, so was she.

Nick didn’t even question that. It seemed obvious.

Moreover, he wondered if Forrest’s real reason for leaving might have more to do with his mother than otherwise. They way they embraced when they met up in Antibes, and the way they spoke to one another, using seer hand gestures and switching languages fluidly, definitely suggested they were extremely close.

Nick glanced at the four men in black outfits who’d met them on the dock.

He had to assume they were Mi6.

Or military.

Walker knew at least one of them well enough to embrace him, too. The others he seemed friendly with, as well. Nick wondered again how they would have managed any of this without Forrest’s help. Nick still fought with a tinge of resentment of the guy, mostly because he’d once been married to Wynter, but also because he was just annoyingly fucking competent.

The rest of them hung back while Walker made his greetings on shore.

None of them had slept all that great, although every one of them looked significantly more rested and less wrung-out than they had while they’d been in that van.

It had been strange as fuck to step out of the top of that hatch, after winding around debris in the corpse-choked waters of the Mediterranean.

Compared to what they’d seen around New York and the edges of the North Atlantic before the sub picked up speed, the place was a graveyard.

It made Nick almost appreciate that animals had mutated and found ways to adapt and survive in other parts of the ocean.

Following along the coast in that heavily-shielded submarine had been downright disturbing.

Nick noticed the sub hadn’t waited around for them, either.

As soon as they’d all climbed out of the hatch, the vehicle closed itself up and moved quickly through the locks out of the dome and back out onto the water. Nick didn’t have to ask what direction they would be heading. The Mediterranean grew more contaminated and toxic the further east one went.

They’d be going west, back towards the Atlantic, likely as fast as they could.

It really hit Nick just how far out of their way the ship’s crew had gone for them, and then he had yet another reason to be grudgingly grateful to Forrest Keanu Walker.

“You’re starting to like him, aren’t you?” Wynter asked quietly.

She tugged on Nick’s arm as she said it, her voice faintly teasing.

Nick didn’t look down. His mouth hardened a touch.

“Am not,” he grunted.

“Are too.”

“Nope.”

“Yes. You are. I can tell.”

“So what?” He gave her a bare glance, his eyebrow quirked. “Isn’t that what you wanted? One big happy fucking family with your ex-husband, me, and the rest of the brood?”

She laughed.

It was a real laugh, and he relaxed slightly when he heard it.

He could feel her again, which definitely helped.

He’d fed on her before they came upstairs, mostly so they could hear one another, and so they’d be more tightly connected once they were no longer inside the sub. Unfortunately, they’d gotten almost no alone-time at all, not even for the feeding himself, so he was feeling distinctly uncomfortable in other ways.

He tried not to think about it.

If he let himself obsess on that, it would only get worse.

Forrest walked back to them then, and jerked his chin.

“Okay, I think we’re all set,” he said. “They’re waiting for us at the science outpost. They’ve got a few of the shielded transports, so we’ll take a train to the edge of this dome, a bit further north, and then their back-up transport down to the science dome itself.”

Nick felt a whisper of nerves down his back, but couldn’t really pinpoint from what.

For the same reason, he only nodded to the other man’s words.

“Lead the way,” he said, making a slightly over-the-top flourish with his hand.

If Forrest Walker noticed, he didn’t comment.

* * *

The train ride was quick, only about twenty minutes, since they were only traveling through two stations. They got off inside another part of the same dome, then were driven to the dome doors, where they parted ways with the black-clad Mi6 agents, who pulled Forrest aside for only a few minutes to confer with him about whatever it was Mi6 agents conferred about.

Then the agents left, and Nick exhaled a short sigh of relief, in spite of himself.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them… exactly… but anyone human and official made him nervous as fuck right then.

Some part of him kept waiting for a legion of black-clad agents to emerge out of the shadows and shackle them. He’d half-expected it disembarking from the sub, then again when they got off the train, and now while they changed hands between Mi6 and the science team.

Jordan was still a little bit of a complication.

The Mi6 agents actually offered to take Jordan off their hands when they realized he was a recent newborn, to house him somewhere in Antibes while the rest of them went out to survey the “science bubble,” as they called it.

Nick wasn’t sure what Forrest told them about what they were doing in this part of France, but he felt certain he hadn’t told them the truth, or not all of the truth, at least. When they made the offer to “hold onto” Jordan, Nick guessed they meant the offer sincerely. He let Walker handle the explanations to his colleagues about why they couldn’t do that, and whatever he’d said, it must have been convincing, because they didn’t mention it again.

Now the members of the science team driving the armored vehicle were surveying the handcuffed and half-drugged Jordan with more than a little skepticism, too.

“He’s fine with other vampires,” Forrest assured them. “We’ll need him out there, for the archeological spot we’re going to check out. He and our Galileo here…”

Forrest waved at Nick, the only other vampire in the group, who was apparently now a vampire research scientist, or Galileo, and no longer a vampire cop, or Midnight.

“…will be stuck doing all the truly dangerous and difficult scouting. We weren’t crazy about bringing a newborn, but he’s the only one they had on offer for such difficult work at the Kellerman Labs.”

One driver seemed to accept Forrest’s explanation.

His eyes immediately relaxed and he nodded.

The other one continued to look dubious, to say the least. He didn’t say anything as he watched them load Jordan into the back of the armored vehicle, and handcuff him to one of the seats. He must have decided not to press the point, but he only really seemed to relax after Nick tested the strength of the cuffs and couldn’t break them.

Seconds later, both drivers had climbed into the front of the vehicle.

Nick and the rest of them strapped into seats in the back.

Nick and Wynter exchanged looks.

“You ready for this?” he asked her.

She smiled, and it lit up her whole face.

Seeing the genuine happiness in her eyes, he tried to make himself feel the same.

He only partly succeeded.

Truthfully, he wasn’t sure about any of this.

He’d started to tell her about what he’d learned, both from his dreams and what Malek was able to tell him. He’d started, but somehow, he hadn’t been able to do it, not really. He wasn’t sure how much any of it mattered now. Whether or not he’d fought in the wars here, or for the right reasons, probably wouldn’t be a big priority to her now. As to whatever trauma she might have suffered as a child, she’d have to work that out wherever they ended up.

She maybe wasn’t from here, but if Malek was right, she wasn’t from Nick’s world either. Did that mean she wouldn’t be happy there with him, either? Would she start to feel like the place was alien to her?

Gods, he was a coward.

Why hadn’t he said anything to her when he had the chance?

Days had passed on that submarine.

Nick could have told her all of it. They could have discussed it like adults.

He had no right to decide what did and didn’t matter, not when it was their whole lives at stake. Anyway, weren’t they just as likely to land on her home world as his? What had he been repeating to them all for the past five days? Portals are not predictable.

And they weren’t. So why did he assume they’d end up back on his home world?

Why the fuck hadn’t he talked to her?

“I need to talk to you,” he blurted, even as he realized he was still staring at her face. “Before we leave. Before we leave for real, I mean.”

She only smiled wider, her eyes knowing.

“No,” she said simply. “You don’t.”

“I do, though.”

“No, Nick. You don’t.” She gripped his hand tighter. “I’ve seen a lot of your dreams. I saw the one with Brick, in that bar… and I know what’s bothering you. Trust me, it doesn’t change anything for me. It doesn’t.”

Staring into her eyes, he saw the understanding there, and realized he really didn’t need to explain.

Damn. He really didn’t deserve her.

* * *

The ride to the science lab and its isolated bubble, roughly twenty hard miles north of the city of Nice, was bumpy and uncomfortable and vaguely anxiety-inducing.

It also felt shockingly quick.

About halfway through the trip, Nick ended up close to the front with Walker, mostly to watch how the two humans drove the monstrous thing.

He could feel the walls and floors and ceiling of the truck vibrating, and when he asked what that was, he was told it was a mobile version of the same tech that was used on the greater dome walls. It wasn’t as strong, since the truck wasn’t big enough to house an energy source large enough to emulate the domes, but it worked the same way.

The submarine also used that tech, Forrest explained.

But being so much bigger, with over half of its bulk devoted to energy storage and a massive fusion reactor, the submarine’s shields were exponentially stronger than what they could manage with the all-terrain vehicle.

The ride was rough, though.

Nick asked the drivers a lot of questions.

They were hesitant at first, and Nick thought he might need to use vampire tactics to get them to cooperate, but in the end they seemed to make up their minds about him and talked him through all the quirks of the vehicle. They answered his questions about the gears and manual settings, showed him how the shields engaged, how the comms and maps and the different sensors worked. They warned him that the GPS wasn’t always reliable in the more toxin-infused areas. The satellite links didn’t work as well, they explained, or the comms.

Gauges across the front measured the health of the shields against different toxins. It also showed signal strengths, toxicity levels both inside and outside the vehicle, and how they fluctuated in strength and composition.

They were grim about the realities as one got closer to the water.

They said it was even worse once you got past Monaco.

The waters around Italy and into Greece and Turkey were so bad that any city or town within fifty miles of the coasts had been evacuated years ago. All of the islands were deserted, even Crete. The coast lost so much usable land, a lot of that region had been absorbed into northern protected areas, especially what had been Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Russia––places with greater landmass, and the ability to absorb the displaced populations.

The reality was, most of the people living along the coasts died before the war ended.

It was a big reason why hatred towards seers had been so intense during the post-war period. Ironically, now vampires, who’d been human allies during the wars, were hated and feared more than seers. Nick suspected that was at least partly because seers blended in with humans better than vampires did.

And there was the humans-as-food thing, of course.

But that made him think of something else.

When he retreated to the back of the vehicle, Nick deliberately sat next to Malek.

“The seers never left, did they?” he asked the young male quietly.

Malek looked at him, blinked.

He didn’t answer at first, only frowned.

Nick pressed the point. “I know Yi left. It sounds like his father came to get him that time, too. But the rest of them? They didn’t leave.”

Slowly, Malek shook his head, thoughtful.

“No, I don’t think they did.”

“Did you ever paint anything about that, Mal?”

There was another silence.

Then Malek grimaced. “I think I did once, yes.” He looked at Nick, his mismatched eyes wider. “I thought it was the future when I painted it. Usually, I paint the future.”

“What did you paint?” Nick asked.

He glanced around the back of the vehicle, but no one was listening to them.

“The humans killed them,” Malek said. “In my painting, they were rounded up in pens and taken out with bioweapons.”

Nick winced. “Is that part of what we’re seeing here?”

Malek blinked, thoughtful. “I don’t know,” he said after a pause. “Possibly. I do think they killed the seers partly in retaliation for what happened here.” Malek focused on Nick. “Yi ordered them to kill everyone in Europe. Everyone.”

“I figured.” Nick exhaled.

Malek frowned. “Why would he do that?”

Nick shrugged. “I can think of a few reasons. But mostly, it smacks of desperation. I don’t remember that part of the war, like I told Forrest, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn they were losing the war when Yi gave that order. I suspect he decided he’d rather go out in a blaze of glory than retreat and live to fight another day.”

“But he did live to fight another day,” Malek pointed out.

Nick glanced at the young seer. “His followers didn’t.”

Malek nodded. “Yes.”

Nick leaned against the metal side of the armored vehicle. “I guess there’s one good thing. At least those seers who started the war won’t be returning to my home world again. I guess that’s a silver lining. Sort of.”

“No.” Malek exhaled air out through his lips. “They cannot. I think that is right. I think they never left here, Nick.”

“This place feels like a graveyard,” Nick added under his breath. “Doesn’t it?”

Malek thought about that, too.

“It does,” he agreed.

They sat in silence for a few seconds longer, then Nick looked at Malek again.

“I don’t think we should wait,” Nick said. “I think we should go tonight, Mal.”

Malek’s eyes were even more serious when they met Nick’s.

“I could not agree more,” the seer said gravely.

Something about the way he said both relieved Nick and made that uneasy feeling crawling around his belly and spine even worse.