Page 35 of Almost Midnight (Vampire Detective Midnight #8)
CHAPTER 35
THE DOOR
A shot exploded into the glass wall, just inches from Wynter’s head.
Pieces of the organic sheered off, nicking her face and hands, and slicing at part of her neck. The scent of her blood rose without warning, extending Nick’s fangs.
Wynter screamed.
Then she threw herself sideways, just in time to miss another shot from a plasma rifle.
“GO!” Nick bellowed. “GO GO GO…EVERYONE THROUGH THE DOOR!”
He was already running for his wife.
He didn’t look back at the soldiers he could now hear.
They hadn’t come from the corridor but from some other doorway in the seamless-looking metal walls of the round room. Nick’s ears and nose told him that much, but he already had Wynter’s arm by then and was dragging her with him to the still-widening opening in the wall.
He practically threw her through that opening, just to get her behind the glass.
More shots exploded into walls, and sent up sparks from some of the green-metal terminals when they got hit. The smell of hot plasma discharge lit up the air, and burned the inside of Nick’s nose.
The seers moved almost as fast as Nick, and Jordan had ahold of Charlie before Nick had even thought to tell him to grab someone. Rose dragged her son Forrest through the widening opening, and Nick had to remind himself that the seer who looked around thirty was probably closer to three hundred, but would have her full strength likely for another two or three-hundred years.
Then he saw Morley, and darted back outside of the glass door.
“Close it!” he shouted at Tai, even as he left to get his friend.
Morley had been all the way on the other side of the organic door, by the panel on the opposite side where it opened.
More shots sang overhead.
Nick felt a hard pressure as one of them must have passed within inches of his shoulder before exploding into the organic glass.
He didn’t have time to care about that.
He also didn’t have time to ask permission.
He grabbed his friend roughly around the waist, but hopefully not so roughly that he broke anything. He held Morley in front of himself so he could use his vampire body as a living shield. Without so much as adjusting his hold, he ran for the opening in the door, carrying James Morley in front of him like he might have once carried a large dog.
Unlike the decontamination chamber, this door apparently allowed you to close it before it had completed its cycle. The gap was already narrowing when Nick made it to the other side, and set Morley carefully back on his feet.
Only then did he realize the old man was covered in blood.
“Fuck,” he said. “Are you shot, James?”
The human looked at him incredulously. “Am I shot? What in the hell is wrong with you, Midnight?”
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Nick asked, feeling a bit put-out. “I was trying to save your life, you raving idiot.”
“Well, you might want to look to your own life, first,” James retorted back. “It wasn’t me they were shooting at, you old fool. Or did you really not notice?”
Nick blinked, then looked down at himself.
He lifted his arm and winced, before looking at his shoulder, which he realized only now did hurt, if not quite like it would have if he’d been human. That feeling of pressure and near miss he’d experienced when he went back for James hadn’t been a near-miss at all. They’d hit him square in the muscle, and the longer he stared at it, the more it hurt.
He was still staring at the wound when Wynter walked up to him, her face decorated in small cuts and nicks from the organic panel.
Looking at her, he glanced at the wall.
It was closed, but those soldiers could still probably get inside.
They didn’t have much time.
Moreover, they were shooting at the organic glass, and it was cracking and shedding shards in more than one place now.
“We can’t stay here,” he said.
Nick’s eyes turned towards the portal, which stood only twenty or so feet away from where they stood.
He’d thought they’d have more time.
To talk about it, at least. To say their goodbyes.
But it wasn’t going to be like that going this way, either.
He turned to look at his wife.
“We have to go,” he said simply.
She looked at him, blinked, then looked at the portal herself.
Another heavy blast hit into the organic pane, and it made the whole thing shudder and groan. The glass hadn’t finished vibrating before Nick was moving. In less than a second, he had his arm around Wynter on his good side, and he was bringing her with him in the direction of that glowing green and gold rift.
He didn’t look back.
Again, he didn’t need to.
He knew the others were right behind him.
He heard voices on the other side of the glass by the time he’d crossed those twenty or so steps. His feet brought him right up to the mouth of that light-filled doorway.
He heard shouts, threats.
He fleetingly wished he could have done something to close the rift behind them once they were gone. Blow it up, make the cave collapse, something.
But in the end, it was too late for all of that.
It was too late to even flip those H.R.A. pricks the bird.
Nick walked right up to the portal and into that shocking gold-green light without hesitating so much as a single second. He left that world the way he’d come into it, without so much as a single goodbye, not even to whatever remained of Dalejem or Brick, or even to the still-living Zoe and her continuing crusade to crush any one of the humanoid races that dared to fuck with vampires, much less try to enslave them.
Nick had no idea if he’d see his friends on the other side.
He had no idea of anything, really.
But he hoped.
He hoped an awful lot.