Page 114 of Midnight Coven

“What’s the address on that thing?” Morley asked. “Or does it have one?”

“I’ll ping you. One sec.” Nick activated the headset and was a little shocked when visuals erupted all around his head. Without him sending a single impulse, it had already connected to Morley’s headset as a nearby contact, and began downloading the data found there.

“Jesus,” Nick muttered.

“What?” Morley frowned at him.

“Nothing. Just… never mind about the other thing.”

He asked the high-tech spyware gadget to pull up the painting Morley told him about, from the last communication he’d had with Jack Bird, a.k.a. Malek, Tai’s brother.

As the image crystalized in the empty, dark space of the road in front of the vehicle, Nick dug into the metallic shopping bag again, and found that strangely shaped, lumpy thing at the very bottom. As soon as he pulled it up into his lap, he found he knew what it was.

He knew before he caught so much as a whiff of the scent.

Somehow the bag was so well sealed, he couldn’t smell it at all.

But he knew what it was.

He knew without question.

Once he fully understood what he held in his lap, he practically groaned.

Blood.

The whole damned thing was an enormous blood-bag.

He looked at Morley.

“You don’t care if I eat, do you?” Nick winced at the question, not sure what he would do if Morley said no. He was pretty sure he would eat it anyway. His vampire politeness only went so far. “I could really use it right now,” he admitted. “I’m weak as hell. I’m so hungry I can’t think straight… and getting knocked out didn’t help.”

Morley was already waving him off, a faint frown on his lips.

“Why the hell would I care if you eat? I watched my girlfriend do that for years. Eat, Midnight. Eat yourself into a coma if you need to.”

Nick snorted.

Still, he felt nothing but relief.

He was already pulling the soft straw off the side of the bag.

He looked around for some kind of opening, some place to put the straw, and finally realized the straw was already connected to the bag. Then he looked for how to open the end of the straw once he realized that was sealed, too.

He finally found a small lit indentation that looked like a button.

He pressed it with his thumb.

Then he stopped, staring at the specialized, semi-organic bag St. Maarten had sent.

His first whiff of the contents had just reached his nose.

He nearly groaned again, but bit his tongue harder that time, hard enough to draw blood.

Jesus fucking Christ.

St. Maarten had sent him seer blood.

Not just seer blood… she’d sent him Wynter’s blood.

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