Page 123 of Almost Midnight

Bubbles ran up the sides instead, and vibration shivered the glass.

Walker explained to all of them that the ship sent out a loud, sonar-like pulse, both as echo-location but mainly to warn any living creatures to get the hell out of the way. He said it was shockingly effective; there hadn’t been a collision with this type of high-speed underwater vehicle since they’d first been put out into the field.

Still, Nick couldn’t help growing a tad nervous as they continued to pick up speed.

The crew brought them food, maybe to distract them.

They seemed used to people growing nervous in their ship; it also struck Nick that they were inordinately proud of their unusual vehicle.

They’d even named it, calling it Fiona Flower, or “Fi” for short.

Not long after all the humans and seers ate, they started to fall asleep.

Wynter, who sat next to Nick in a set of two chairs on the port side of the submarine, more or less fell asleeponNick, after convincing him to lean his own chair back so that they would be level and she’d have more room.

She’d lasted about three minutes after he acquiesced.

Nick got a pillow from one of the crew members once she was out. He slid the pillow under her head, wrapped her in a thick blanket, but otherwise, he left her alone.

Once he had her where she seemed comfortable, he adjusted his own weight in the comfortable recliner, and turned his head to look out the window at the churning water and bubbles. He enjoyed the feeling of motion as they accelerated through the ocean; it felt almost like being on a ship, like being rocked to sleep under the waves.

Eventually, he found himself closing his eyes.

CHAPTER28

THE OCEAN

“Well, isn’t this interesting…”The lulling, Louisiana-tinged words slid like silk down Nick’s spine, making him stiffen, mostly in blank shock. “…I’d honestly thought you and your twin fuck-buddies must have dropped down on a different world, one much more savory and seer-friendly than this one…”

Nick didn’t turn his head.

The voice alone brought up such an intense, bewildering cacophony of memory, dread, fury, disbelief, confusion, and rage, he didn’t move at all at first.

The owner of that voice plunked themselves down on the barstool next to him.

Then, and only then, did Nick’s head turn.

It happened seemingly against his conscious will, yet he was powerless to stop it. Nick stared at the familiar, handsome, large-featured face, the stylishly-rough, auburn hair half-up in a ponytail like a Mongolian pirate, and the wry humor in his cracked-crystal eyes.

“Clearly, you did not enter where and when we did, my prodigal seed,” the older vampire crooned. He motioned to the bartender with languid fingers, aimed his index finger at the liquid in Nick’s glass, then made the sign for two. He looked back at Nick, a full smirk on his face. “How are you enjoying our little paradise so far? You are drinking… apparently, excessively… and clearly alone. Trouble in paradise, offspring?”

Nick stared at those humor-filled eyes.

He still half-wondered if he could be hallucinating.

Had someone dropped something into his drink? How in the gods was he staring atBrick,after so many, many years of living without him on this world?

Things had changed a lot in that time.

The world he lived in now had already careened dangerously past the one he remembered as a human. The changes had crept up around him over decades like a slow-moving infection, with smoke billowing from coal factories in the early industrial age changing to emissions controls and bluer skies, cleaner water and cleaner human beings and better sanitation, then roads filled with cars and skies filled with airplanes and drones and satellites, then wars that wreaked devastation that made the industrial pollution seem quaint and almost cute.

That war had been raging for years now, more years than Nick could count.

He probably should have cared about that.

He probably should have tried to do something before it was too late.

After all, he knew what Charles was.

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