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THE VAMPIRE

N ick ditched the umbrella first, setting it on a glass counter silently as he gazed around the room, getting his bearings. He was inside a boutique designer clothing store on the north side of the Champs-Elysées . Clean, white rows of summer clothing hung artfully along each wall. A smaller number of widely-spaced central displays showed the newest acquisitions, most of them dresses hung at different angles on tiered display racks.

He removed his leather gloves by tugging on each finger, and set those down next to the umbrella. He removed the long jacket next, then the hat and sunglasses.

He used the time to think.

He knew he was likely the only person on their team who could bring Dalejem down.

He was definitely the only one who could do it alone.

He’d deliberately stayed out of most of the detailed planning discussions on the plane, listening without really contributing much, other than to occasionally point out that Dalejem wasn’t a complete fucking idiot, so they might want to reconsider this or that suggestion that would definitely only be work if he was an idiot.

Nick had gone from thinking Brick was definitely behind this, to thinking Brick was definitely behind this, but he was probably working with those fuckers at Prometharis.

There’s no way they were controlling Jem through vampire venom alone.

It had to be one of those goddamned implants.

Nick tried not to think about the possibility of someone drilling a hole in his mate’s skull, putting an implant inside that Brick could then use to turn Dalejem into a murderer and a slave. He tried not to spend time being even more furious with himself for not noticing, and not realizing something was really fucking wrong until a few weeks ago.

When had they implanted him?

When could they have implanted him?

Had it been the afternoon when Jem came in with a bloody cut on his scalp, claiming he’d gotten it surfing with the neighbor, Bill, laughing as he described how he’d miscalculated a wave and his board whacked him in the head? Had it been when Jem told him he’d gone to see Holo at Black Industries, and let him do a biopsy on a strange lump he’d found under his skin, partly just so Holo could practice?

Had one of those times been when they’d put it in him?

How had Nick not noticed?

Why hadn’t he checked to see where Jem had really gone those days?

He tried not to think about some worse possibility.

He tried not to remember the fact that Brick specifically referenced Dalejem murdering Dorian in San Francisco, pretending all was forgiven.

Of course that was bullshit.

Of course Brick would never have “forgiven” Dorian’s murder, and not only because Brick considered the entire seer race his mortal enemies.

Jem murdered Brick’s favorite psychopath, and the most loyal of all of Brick’s lieutenants. Brick would never let that go. That Jem had done it to keep Dorian from kidnapping Nick was irrelevant. That Dorian tried to kill Jem first was irrelevant. That Nick would have killed Dorian himself, and had, in fact, been actively trying to do so when Jem shot explosive arrows into Dorian’s chest was also entirely irrelevant from the vampire king’s point of view.

Jem killed Dorian.

It was Jem who owed the vampire king the blood debt.

Hell, Brick would never forgive Dalejem for Nick. The fact that Jem killed Dorian to protect Nick likely only incensed Brick more.

Nick felt his fangs extend as he stood there, remembering all of this.

Really, that had been the sin that Brick would never stop trying to reverse. How much did Brick really care about his minions? Not a lot, as Brick didn’t care much about anyone, whatever their race. Brick did care about his pride, however.

He also had a highly-attuned sense of ownership.

He cared very much about the resources he personally collected to keep his coven (and, of course, himself) unassailable. Brick had very specifically collected Nick. He’d seen him in the window and gotten it into his head that he wanted him, and therefore that he owned him. He would never forgive the slight that Nick had chosen Dalejem over him.

Nick swallowed down the thought, feeling sick.

How had he not realized all of this from the beginning?

Wishful thinking, most likely.

He’d wanted to believe that Brick would, if not forgive him, then at least forget about him in time. He’d hoped Brick would decide Nick was too much trouble and move on, find someone new on which to focus his bizarre fixations, find other, more interesting vampires fill the holes he and Dorian left behind.

Well, and hopefully not the way he’d acquired Nick.

Most of all, Nick had wanted to believe the vampire king would hold to the treaty he’d negotiated with Black. Nick managed to convince himself Brick would hold to it. He told himself that, at base, Brick was practical. He’d do it just to keep Black and the other seers off his back, and to stop them from hunting vampires.

Nick should have known better.

He should have known Brick better.

The vampire king was all about vengeance, hot or cold, and like most vampires, he could wait. He could be as patient as he wanted to be, for as long as he thought he needed to be. As long as he won in the end, the time it took to get there was irrelevant.

Vampires’ inconceivably long lives might not have imparted much wisdom, from what Nick could tell, but it taught them to think in decades, or even centuries, rather than weeks, months, or years.

Nick heard another rifle report from overhead and looked up.

He would deal with Brick later.

Right now, he needed to stop Dalejem before he got himself killed.

I t took Nick longer to make his way up to the floor with the window than he thought it would. There had been barriers and time wasters he hadn’t foreseen.

Now, however, Nick finally crept up the fourth landing of the back stairs, with only two left before he’d reach the door to the storage areas above the store.

He’d already broken two locks to get this far.

He’d scared a handful of store employees who’d been hiding in the back rooms when he cracked the lock on the first. Glamouring them––pretty sloppily, Nick was the first to admit––he managed to convince them he worked for French anti-terrorism forces.

Once he felt them going along with his pretense, he convinced them in his horribly rusty French to go back out to the store’s main showroom, then flee out the side doors and into the alleyway behind Champs-Elysées . From there, he instructed them to leave the area. He told them there would be general announcements by authorities when it was safe to return.

Well, Nick assumed there would be.

The second lock he’d broken, Jem must have locked behind him. It led to a rickety wooden stairwell with a worn handrail that led to the storage areas upstairs. As none of the store employees claimed to have the key (the manager had it, a few of them told him, but he had not come to work that day), Nick had been forced to break that door, too.

None of the sounds he heard on the stairwell indicated he’d been heard, but he knew that might not mean much. All he could do is go forward, and hope he wouldn’t get ambushed with a tranquilizer rifle wielded by his own mate.

Or shot. Or stabbed.

He was forced to make his way relatively slowly up the set of very old and creaky stairs.

It was challenging even for his vampire senses, and his vampire ability to adjust his weight to silence his footsteps, to get up there without making a sound. Normally, he would have found another way, but he worried that would take too much time.

He had his doubts he’d be able to surprise Jem completely.

Jem must expect Nick, on some level, whatever they’d done to him.

He’d at least have Nick in mind as a possible risk.

Knowing Dalejem, he had some kind of advance warning system in place, something that would warn him even of a vampire. Nick wasn’t arrogant enough to think he’d be able to sidestep whatever it was. He kept his senses on high alert as he crept closer, walking half on the wall whenever he didn’t trust the stairs, but he knew he had to be ready to move without a second’s notice.

The goal, therefore, was less absolute surprise, and more about whether he could get close enough to overpower the seer with his vampire strength and speed alone. While seers generally had faster reflexes than humans, they couldn’t hold a candle to a vampire.

It was the one thing Nick really had.

That, and the hope Jem wouldn’t kill him, or even want to hurt him too badly.

Nick heard another rifle shot overhead, and while it didn’t thrill him, knowing the person he loved most in the world was firing into a crowd of panicked humans and seers, he felt himself relax marginally about his own position.

Dalejem in that room, firing the rifle, meant he wasn’t on the stairs.

Nick glanced at the wooden railing that ran along the left side of the stairs. It looked a bit sturdier up here. It would definitely be faster to walk up that, than to continue the way he was going. He reached out with a pale hand and tested the wooden braces. He shook it.

A little give, but much, much less than lower down.

It would hold him. He glanced up the stairs again.

Another shot rang out, and Nick clenched his jaw.

It was time. His window was closing.

Whatever Jem was doing up there, Nick could feel it winding down.

Whether that meant the seer had hit all the targets he’d wanted to hit, or if Jem sensed his own opening coming to an end, Nick didn’t know. It amounted to the same in the end. If Nick was going to stop this without his boyfriend ending up dead, he had to act now.

A whisper of unease reached him that he was stalking his own mate.

Fuck that. Fuck any moralistic bullshit around using force.

Jem would do it for him. Jem would knock the shit out of him if their positions were reversed, if that was the only way he could bring Nick in alive. Nick would do the same for Jem. Hell, he’d bite him and venomize him into unconsciousness if he got half a chance.

Better that than waiting for Black to catch up with him, much less Cowboy.

A fuck of a lot better that than letting Brick and his coven take him.

Nick’s resolution strengthened.

He listened up at the closed door a last time.

It was darker up here. The lightbulbs had burned out on this landing and the next––or, more likely, they’d been smashed by Jem––but Nick’s vampire eyes would have seen any movement in those spaces, and heard the slightest breath in a human or a seer’s lungs.

Satisfied it wasn’t a trap, at least not yet, Nick leapt forward and to his left, in the direction of the wooden railing. He planned to balance up there, light as a cat, then run the rest of the way up to the door. He should be inside that room in less than five seconds.

He launched his whole body into the air––

––and something slammed into him, hard.

He had a vague awareness that, whatever it was, it had swung down from the shadows and the rafters above the last segment of stairs. It felt like it had come from nowhere, too quickly for Nick to compensate, but his vampire eyes caught the edge of that darkness.

The blow was precise.

Booted feet hit into his back, right between his shoulder blades.

Nick missed his footing on the narrow wooden railing. He flipped head-forward, and over the railing entirely, instead. He managed to catch himself on a segment of railing below, but before he could throw himself over it and onto the stairs, something big, heavy, and strong leapt directly onto his back.

“Fuck!” he snarled.

His fangs extended, his vision turning dark red.

Before he could turn his head––

––he felt the sharp, unmistakeable pain of fangs sinking into his skin.

“Sorry, dearest one,” a familiar, silky voice whispered in his ear.

The bannister Nick was gripping in both hands cracked, then gave way.

He fell, snarling, unable to stop himself.

The being on his back clamped a strong arm around his throat, then another pinning his arms to his sides.

Nick couldn’t catch onto the next glimpse of railing… or the next.

He fell like a steel girder.

Nick had long known that the age of a vampire determined its strength and speed far more than any visible musculature. It had been a long time since he’d had to deal with that knowledge in a real, hands-on way, however. He thrashed and kicked against the other vampire’s hold on him, trying to get free, but he didn’t make any headway before he slammed into the floor at the base of the stairs.

He barely managed to get his knees and shins under him to keep his head from landing first. The vampire gripping him quickly remedied that.

He held Nick upright, then kicked his legs out from under him.

Nick found himself face-down on the cement.

Panic exploded over his spine, cheekbone, jaw, and neck as the being on top of him clamped its jaws back around his throat.

The vampire didn’t climb off him until he’d pumped him so full of venom, Nick felt nauseated, sick, dizzy, and sluggish to the point of fighting unconsciousness.

His vision blurred.

His limbs grew numb and heavy.

The being grabbed his shoulders and flipped Nick roughly to his back. Nick stared up dumbly, unable to move, his mind blank and paralyzed as he made sense of the dark auburn hair curtaining two blood-red eyes and a ghostly white face.

He felt his sire’s venom surge through his blood, like electric fire.

That was an unwelcome familiarity, too.

Brick smiled, his lips dark and wet.

“Now, now, my darling boy,” the older vampire crooned. “Can’t have you spoiling things, can we… not when we’re so close to the final act.”

Nick fought to think through the words, to make sense of them.

He fought to open his mouth, to speak, to make a sound.

He couldn’t so much as lift his hand.

Brick pulled something cylindrical and glass out of the pocket of his coat. Uncapping it swiftly with his teeth, he spit out the piece of plastic, then crouched back down over Nick. He stabbed the syringe into Nick’s neck and his deft fingers depressed the plunger.

Darkness swam over Nick.

His vision went black before he even felt the bite of the needle.