Page 95 of Midnight Coven

He remembered when he’d first met Damon, how much the younger detective had hated vampires, how everything about them sickened him. Nick wouldn’t have felt so bad seeing Morley turn. Morley lived with a vampire romantically for years. He likely could come to grips with being one himself. Knowing Morley, he’d find some kind of peace with it and turn himself into some kind of Zen vampire superhero, a tireless warrior of the Light.

But Damon? Nick wasn’t so sure about him.

Damon might not be able to adapt.

A lot of newborns killed themselves, unable to come to terms with it.

Or Damon might adapt the way Nick initially did, with a whole lot of rage and violence and anger. He might lose his shit for months, even years, until the newborn phase ended.

Nick already knew he’d try to finish turning him, though.

He couldn’t just let his friend die.

“I can see you thinking about making him your pet.” The other Nick smiled when Nick lowered his eyes, meeting that scarlet-infused gaze. “You really do think you’re still human, don’t you,brother?”The clear eyes in that disturbingly familiar face grew cold. “Is that why you felt free to steal my mate? Is that why you think you can gather these people around you? Pretend you still have some kind of family?”

Nick blinked.

He knew it was a human mannerism, one he used to convey disbelief, but he did it out of habit. When he opened his eyes after that fraction of a second, the other vampire smirked.

“He told me about you,” the doppelganger said. “He told me how weak you were. He told me you never fully accepted what you had become.” After a pause, those muscular shoulders shrugged. “Then again, he also told me you were dead, so maybe I should take the other things he told me with a grain of salt.”

Those cracked-crystal eyes continued to study Nick’s face.

The other Nick seemed almost fascinated by him.

“It is uncanny, isn’t it?” the Stranger mused. “It’s like they cloned me.”

Nick felt his jaw harden more.

“What do you want?” he asked again.

“I want to go home,” the doppelganger told him.

“Youarehome,” Nick growled.“I’mthe one who doesn’t belong here.”

There was a silence.

Another slow smile grew over the other vampire’s face.

“See,” the other vamp said. “Now I know you’re lying.”

“I’m not,” Nick growled. “This isn’t my world. I thought you were dead… but you have to be the Nick who grew up here. The Nick who got married. Had kids. Who lived in San Francisco as a human and retired from the SFPD. Hate to tell you, bud. None of that was me. I never had children. I never got married. My family moved out of that home long before I got here. I never retired from the SFPD because I never got old. I got turned into a vampire before I got anywhere near retirement age.”

The other Nick frowned.

Nick’s words might have raised some memory or thought from that other life. They might have caused him a flicker of doubt, of questioning what he believed.

Then again, they might not have.

If they did, it was there and gone.

The other Nick, still gripping the spear in one hand, used a few of those fingers to begin unwrapping that hand of the black bandages it wore. He didn’t speak as he did it.

He also didn’t look away from Nick’s face.

Nick frowned, watching as the vampire finished unwrapping his hand and arm.

Before Nick could make sense of what he was seeing exactly…

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