Page 66 of Almost Midnight

One more flight.

Maybe two.

He would have to guess.

Luckily, his vampire senses could pinpoint to an eerie degree when it came to physical feats, even ones Nick didn’t perform very often.

Or at all.

For the same reason, he didn’t let himself think that time, either.

He reached the next platform, then the next, then his vampire spacial thing told him it was time. He didn’t slow down.

He didn’tlookdown, either.

He leapt up to the metal bannister on the building’s twenty-somethingth floor, and he launched himself through the air, throwing his arms forward, pressing his thighs and legs together, and getting as much speed and distance as he could.

He didn’t hear the shot.

He barely felt the projectile cut through his uniform pants, or tear into his vampire skin and flesh until it impacted the bone.

He felt a twinge of worry…

But then gravity kicked in, and Nick began to drop.

CHAPTER16

THE WALL

Nick didn’t land gracefullyon his feet on the other side of the Cauldron wall, like a vampire usually would, even on such a long jump.

Nick didn’t even clear the damned wall.

The shot must have knocked him off-course, or possibly slowed his propulsion in some other way. Whatever it did, Nick hitintothe top of the wall with most of his body, and his clothes caught viciously on the coils of razor-wire, jerking him to a stop and slashing at his face, hands, jacket, and side.

He (luckily?) had enough momentum behind his leap to tumble over to the other side, cutting into himself even more the entire way, until he hung from the razor wire for a very long-feeling second. Then, the sheer weight of his bizarrely-heavy vampire body, along with the stubbornness of gravity, yanked him free.

He fell straight down onto the rusted-out hulk of a car.

He didn’t even get the cushion of the tires; the car was jacked up on blocks.

He was lucky again, he supposed, that he didn’t crash through the car’s roof and slash his body up even more on the jagged metal, which already had a hole rusted through the center from water damage. Because of the razor wire, Nick fellstraightdown, and didn’t clear the distance to the main body of the car.

He made a Nick-sized dent in the thing’s trunk, instead.

It still hurt like fuck.

It hurt so badly, Nick couldn’t move at all for a few seconds, even knowing the agents and whoever they’d called for backup were likely already on their way to the Cauldron’s entrance. Since that entrance was only maybe a hundred yards away from the rusted-out car, Nick didn’t have much time.

He definitely didn’t have time to lie there and feel like shit.

The understanding reached him right around the time he managed to roll off the car’s trunk and onto the dirt.

He let out a painedoof.

He blinked once. Twice.

He stared up at the star-filled sky, knowing it wasn’t real.

---