Page 33 of Almost Midnight (Vampire Detective Midnight #8)

CHAPTER 33

THE OTHER SIDE

Nick had barely staggered out of the still-opening glass door when hands were on him. He wanted to wave them off, to tell them not to touch him, but several sets held him, and one was already yanking off the hood he wore, and unsealing the front of his suit.

Then Wynter was in his face, gripping his hair in her fist.

“Drink,” she demanded, her voice hard. “Don’t even think about arguing with me.”

For some reason, he didn’t.

His fangs extended and he bit into her without thought, drinking mindlessly for almost a minute before he made himself stop.

He retracted his fangs and pulled his mouth away as soon as he could feel the effects of her blood rushing through his system. He wanted to let out a groan.

The instant he felt her blood reach his head, it was like the sound turned back on.

“STOP!” a voice shouted. “STOP! YOU’RE KILLING HIM!”

Nick’s mind snapped on, even as he turned.

Jordan was latched to the throat of Forrest Walker, whose eyes had rolled up and whose face had gone slack.

Nick didn’t think.

He walked up to Jordan and grabbed him by the jaw.

He filled his voice with his most commanding thrall.

“Let him go of him right now,” he barked deeply. “I’ll break your jaw and at least your spine if you don’t.”

He felt Jordan jerk as if woken from a trance.

He let go of Walker so quickly, he nearly tore out the hybrid’s throat in his rush to pull away. Nick had ahold of Walker’s neck with his other hand, so he managed to keep that from happening, but only because he had a few centuries’ worth of experience with newborns, and knew it was a danger.

Jordan stared at him, wide-eyed, as Nick sealed Walker’s neck with venom-infused saliva, then handed him off to his mother, Rose, and Wynter, who also stood there.

Nick faced Jordan, and held up both hands.

He didn’t lessen the thrall of his voice.

“Calm down,” he commanded. “You’re fine. It was an innocent mistake.”

“An innocent mistake?” Rose Walker asked, indignant.

Nick didn’t turn to glare at her, mostly because he needed eye-contact with Damon at the moment, but he sure as fuck wanted to.

“Yes,” he growled. “Feeding a newborn hybrid blood is like feeding someone heroin when they asked for a goddamned aspirin.”

However Rose Walker took that, she chose not to answer.

“Did I kill him?” Jordan stammered.

“No,” Wynter said, sounding annoyed. “And honestly, it would be his own fucking fault if you did. Nick’s right. I don’t know what Forrest was thinking.”

Nick silently agreed, but decided it would sound less convincing coming from him.

Anyway, he’d said it once already.

He kept his eyes locked with the young vampire’s.

“Damon,” he growled. His friend’s eyes were still wild and overly wide. “Calm the fuck down. It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. Not on purpose. It’s natural. You don’t have any control yet… and both of us nearly died.”

“He’s not dead, though?” Jordan asked again. His voice still sounded horrified, like he couldn’t believe what he’d done. “Are you sure? Why isn’t he talking?”

“He’s all right,” Nick began, annoyed. “I’m sure they’d tell us if he wasn’t.”

“I’m all right,” Walker gasped, his voice weak.

“He’ll be fine,” Wynter added, still sounding annoyed herself. “He’s weak, and he will be until we get him some sleep and real food, but he’s okay.”

Nick felt his shoulder’s sag in relief.

He knew his venom should have sealed the cut, and at least kept Forrest from bleeding out all over the floor of the cave. But, despite what he’d told Jordan, he hadn’t been totally sure he hadn’t gotten there too late.

Thank Christ for small favors, at least.

Nick assessed Jordan’s eyes a last time, decided he would be okay, too, and looked around the chamber where they now found themselves.

He could feel his vampire flesh starting to knit itself back together even now.

He glanced at Jordan, and saw that the sunken look of the newborn’s face had lessened, and his skin looked more substantial again.

He could feel his own body roaring back to life thanks to Wynter’s blood, and when he clenched his hand into a fist, it felt almost like vampire flesh again.

At the thought, he began taking off the suit.

He knew, somehow, that it was truly decontaminated, but he still wanted it away from his skin and flesh. He looked around at the others, and saw that they were all wearing only their civilian clothes again, too.

Wynter looked like she might even be cold. With the protective suit gone, she wore nothing but dark pants, a long-sleeved top, and low boots. Like all of them, she still wore the same clothes she had on when they broke into the Archangel facility.

She pulled a small pack off her shoulders as he watched.

He realized in surprise that she must have been wearing it under the suit. She unfastened the top, yanked a cloak out, and wrapped it around her shoulders. Then she reached into the bottom, pulled out what looked like a protein bar, and handed it to Forrest Walker.

Nick could have kissed her.

She glanced at him and quirked an eyebrow.

He saw the faint humor in her eyes and smiled.

You’re forgetting two things, love of mine, she thought at him quietly, her thoughts steel. One, I live with a vampire, one with a notable tendency to half-kill himself on occasion, and when he does, he needs blood, and I’m the one who gives it to him.

She pursed her lips, lifting her chin a little.

Two, she went on haughtily. I have been, for the past several years, the principal over human and hybrid high school students. As such, I have supervised more field trips than you can possibly imagine, and I’ve learned to come prepared. Because, believe it or not, young humans and hybrids are almost as accident-prone and emergency-provisions-free as my husband.

Nick grunted a short laugh, and shook his head.

“Noted,” he said, smiling wider at her.

She looked slightly mollified, and a little less angry at Forrest, too, who was obediently eating the protein bar she’d handed him.

“You have another one of those in there for you?” Nick asked pointedly.

“I was getting to that,” she said, as she reached into the bag again. “I was cold. I wanted the cloak first.” She pulled out a second protein bar and ripped open the top.

Nick watched her take her first bite, then his eyes shifted down the corridor.

There was no doubt they’d found the source of the light.

Artificial lights dotted the corridor all the way down at regular intervals.

The walls in here weren’t rock, like they had been on the other side of the decontamination chamber; instead, they appeared to be made of organic metal.

The metal glowed with its own faint illumination.

“It’s likely we’re not alone down here,” Malek commented.

Nick glanced at the young seer. So did everyone else.

Then Charlie snorted a humorless laugh.

“Yeah, no shit, Mal,” she said, with a fondness that took Nick a little aback. He honestly hadn’t been sure the two of them really knew one another. “Tell us something we don’t know with that super-weird, seeing-eye thing of yours,” she teased.

Malek looked at her.

His expression, as always, appeared deadly serious.

“They’re expecting us,” Malek said in his flat-toned voice.

He paused, seeming to notice only then that he had all of their attention. He looked around at their faces, his expression unmoving, then back at Charlie.

“I don’t think they’re friends,” he added, his voice even more matter of fact.

They all blinked at him.

They all glanced at one another.

Then Nick let out another cynical grunt.

“Fantastic,” he said wryly. He met Wynter’s gaze. “…And of course.”

* * *

It was odd to walk down roughly the same tunnel, at roughly the same angle, only now in full illumination and without the anti-radiation suits.

Nick felt lighter and more alert with every step he took.

He didn’t want to know what he and Jordan must have looked like when they half-fell out of that chamber, not in terms of his face or hands or the rest of him.

They’d gotten this far, and that was miracle enough.

They hadn’t lost anyone yet.

Nick was determined to keep it that way, but Malek’s words hadn’t exactly been reassuring. Whoever was waiting down here, it was clear they weren’t on Team Nick, or looking to score friend points with Team Nick’s motley, mix-raced “coven.”

Nick could feel something else now, too, a feeling he wouldn’t have recognized even a month ago, but now was so unmistakeable, he understood the significance even before he’d admitted it to himself fully.

He felt floaty, light-headed, in a way he hadn’t when the radiation had been poisoning him. He saw whispers of memories behind his eyes, views of himself standing on the battlefield beside Brick, both of them gripping long plasma rifles as they walked side by side into a firefight filled with Charles’ seers wielding swords, and mentally-compromised humans wearing armor that vampire fangs couldn’t puncture.

Nick saw dead bodies strewn for entire football fields in all directions. In his head, the air smelled like smoke and fresh blood, and Nick’s fangs were extended even as rage boiled through him that he had to be there at all.

Then he would blink, and he would see a house just like his parents’ house in Potrero Hill. He would see bonfires on the beach, and his tanned, human arms, and hear laughter as they passed around joints, their boom-box blaring tunes that echoed up the sandy cliffs.

Nick blinked again, more forcefully that time, and the corridor swam back into view.

The portal was close.

It had to be.

Wynter glanced over at him when he thought it, and gave him a slight nod.

He could feel that her and the other seers were reacting to its nearness, too, but he couldn’t tell in exactly what ways. From what he could feel, Wynter was having an especially strong reaction to it, though, which made sense if she wasn’t from this world.

“It’s not just Wynter,” Tai whispered.

Nick glanced at the baby seer, then at her brother, who walked beside her, now holding his sister’s hand.

As Nick looked at their two, pale, dirt-smudged faces, he realized she was right.

It wasn’t just Wynter.

It wasn’t just him.

Maybe it was all of them.

Or maybe it was just those of them who hadn’t been born in this place.

Either way, Nick could feel his blood singing with a kind of chaotic relief.

It was stronger than he remembered from the last time he’d gotten this close to one of the portal gates. It was strong enough to make him feel dizzy, drunk, even euphoric in a way, and dangerously close to out of control. He worried that those feelings would make it difficult to face whatever they’d meet at the end of that tunnel, but the feelings themselves made it almost impossible to hold onto that worry for more than seconds at a time.

For most of the time they walked down that steeply-sloped path, Nick felt like he might vibrate out of his skin.

Then, before he’d found a way to manage all of that, they rounded the last corner.

Nick had been hearing a rising hum in his ears for a while now, what sounded like machinery, but it hadn’t been enough of a difference to prepare him for what he was looking at now.

Maybe it was because he hadn’t heard anything else apart from that hum: no voices, no discordant notes, no clanging, no footsteps, no indication of a single living being rustling around in the wider space. Nick smelled nothing ahead that indicated they weren’t alone.

For that reason alone, the end of the corridor managed to utterly surprise him.

It also made him think Malek was right.

Someone definitely knew they were here.