Page 108 of Almost Midnight

“I understand.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m about to enter Jordan’s cell. I’ll let you know when we reach the stairs.”

“Front door.”

Nick hesitated, then nodded. Kit would have mapped out the fastest route.

“Right,” he said only.

Nick tried to see Jordan through the glass wall, and hit the panel to the side after searching for it for longer than he should have.

“Going in now,” he said, as the door swung inward. “Keep me informed.”

He didn’t turn off the comms, or the cameras in his headset.

Whatever Wynter and the others saw, they’d just have to deal with it.

* * *

Immediately,Nick saw why Malek had been yelling.

The seer had a plasma rifle butt against his shoulder, and he was aiming it at Damon’s abdomen. A smart move, really, since a shot there wouldn’t kill him, but blowing a hole through Jordan’s back would definitely drop him.

It would also put him out of commission, probably for weeks.

Nick leapt forward without hesitation.

He pushed past Malek mostly to let the seer know he was there, not really wanted to get shot again himself, particularly not at close range. He put himself directly between the seers and Damon Jordan, his friend, and put as much thrall in his voice as he could possibly muster.

“Jordan!” he growled. He made himself bigger, extending his fangs. His vision swam with red once his irises began to follow his own aggression. “Calm the fuck down! We need to take you out of here, and we don’t want to hurt you!”

Damon tore his eyes off Malek, seemingly with an effort.

He looked briefly at Tai, and Nick saw a hard flood of lust reach his dark-red eyes. The look there wasn’t sexual exactly, but with vampires, especially newborns, that line was thin as fuck. Nick reminded himself that Damon couldn’t help himself, that he would be a fucking idiot right now, that he was all id and anger and compulsion and hunger and strength he that he had no way to control or even comprehend.

Damon wouldn’t know how to channel any of those feelings or impulses in productive ways. Nick couldn’t let it mean anything, not until his friend got a few long months of steady rehabilitation and a tough-love crash-course in being a vampire.

Why fucking humans thought they could help a vampire through this was beyond him.

Archangel clearly hadn’t taught him shit.

“Damon!” he snapped. “You’re five seconds away from being knocked out! Then I’m going to have to carry your heavy ass, and it’s going to annoy me.”

Again, the dark-red eyes shifted to Nick.

Nick saw a confusion of emotions there briefly.

He found himself remembering what it was like being a newborn.

All that strength and see-sawing emotion, the elated highs of realizing what your new body could do, followed by crashes and intense depressions when you realized you’d become a monster and you were dead and there wasn’t a fucking thing you could do about it.

Realizing you’d never enjoy being in the sun again.

Realizing you’d never have biological children.

Realizing you’d never enjoy food, or drink, or any of the simple pleasures of being alive you’d enjoyed while you were human.

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