Page 160 of Almost Midnight

It was still strangely dark, but that dark felt immediately different.

Nick smelled bodies now, heard grunts and sounds as others followed him and Wynter into a dank-smelling cave, one filled not with organic machines, but with living beings that seemed to teem under his feet and fill the air all around him: earthworms and mice, rats and spiders, bats and houseflies. Lichen and water teeming with living matter dripped from a ceiling that smelled like sulfur and other minerals.

There was so much in those first few wafting scents, Nick felt dizzy with memory and familiarity and total disbelief at everything he could smell.

It was all… real.

He hadn’t smelled so much living matter anywhere in so long.

Not since he and Jem and their gardens before any of the wars.

Not since before the wars ended, before so much of the planet got razed of all living beings, including all the flowers and trees.

Not since he’d been on those fields with Brick, toting weapons that weighed probably as much as he had as a human, even at his most muscular.

He remembered digging Jem’s grave, covered in rich earth, using the shovel rhythmically in the dark while tears streamed down his face.

At that point, he hadn’t been able to feel anything yet.

The death hadn’t felt real, despite all the years and months and days he’d had to prepare for it, as he watched his mate age and slowly die in front of him.

Nick gasped, unable to see past his memories, fighting to breathe even though he hadn’t breathed in hundreds of years, and his lungs no longer held air.

That’s probably why he didn’t at first see the people standing in that cave right in front of him, despite his insanely keen vampire eyes. To him, it might as well have been full daylight where he was, even though he knew he was inside a cave, and the only light came from semi-organic torches that let off a sickly, green-yellow glow from where they spat and hissed quietly at the edges of his vision.

Then a body flew at him.

Nick caught hold of it instinctively, then held on tighter when the smell of her filled his nose. He blinked his eyes, and suddenly he could see again. He looked down at the dark hair on the head whose face pressed against his chest, and he wondered if he’d died.

He wondered if this was where vampires went at the end.

You were supposed to be reunited with all of your friends when you went to heaven, weren’t you? They were supposed to be waiting for you, waiting to greet you and embrace you and welcome you home.

Then he looked up and saw a pair of gold eyes staring at him in shock.

They familiarity of those, too, hit him like a punch to the middle of his chest.

The woman was disentangling herself now, pulling back and away, mostly so she could look up at him. She stepped back, but only a few feet, and stared at Nick with a near-puzzled look in her eyes, her relief fading slowly as it turned into something closer to confusion.

He watched her eyes scan over him, staring at his face, his hair, his clothes.

Her eyes stopped on the half-moon Midnight insignia on his chest, and the ones on his armbands. Then her eyes dropped down to Wynter.

She stared at Nick’s mate in something like curiosity at first, then Nick felt his muscles tense as recognition and disbelief slowly grew over her face.

“Aura?” she gasped.

Nick looked down at Wynter’s face.

His wife looked confused, too, almost hostile, but something about that name meant something to her. Nick could see that it did, but he could also feel through his wife’s blood that she didn’t really remember.

She knew just enough to be disturbed, without having any idea why.

Who is this woman?Wynter thought at him.Who is she, Nick?

Nick looked back at the dark-haired woman standing there, still dumbfounded that she was there at all. He no longer believed he was in heaven, but it felt damned close.

It’s Miri,he thought back simply.It’s Miriam Black… looking exactly the same as she did the last time I saw her.

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