Page 110 of Almost Midnight

Hell, they might send in planes, if they knew Tai was with them.

Until they had absolutely no choice, only vampires would do the scouting. They would also form the front line of defense, at least for now. Zoe had agreed with Nick on that. She had agreed immediately that if the H.R.A. thought dangerous, telekinetic seers were working side by side with vampires, that wouldn’t be good for anyone.

So Zoe led six of her vampires to the front of the building.

She sent Charlie, who’d been watching the back doors with her iffy, recently-harpooned leg, back to the front of the building to meet up with the van. She’d left three vampires on the back door in Charlie’s place, mostly as scouts.

Kit had just informed them that their drones had gone dark, which likely meant, she told Nick sourly, that someone found the signal, and snipped it. The drones either plummeted to the ground, or the military hacked into their signal and was now using the drones themselves.

None of that boded well for them.

It boded even less well when their escape plan included lugging a four hundred pound vampire out of the building with them. It meant they couldn’t ditch the van, for one. It also meant they likely couldn’t go back to Manhattan, at least not tonight.

They would have to find some place to hide out here, in the less densely-populated part of the dome, in a place with few to no cameras.

“How much more?” Tai grumbled.

Nick didn’t have time to answer before Malek did.

“One more flight,” he said, looking up the next section of stairs. “Then we’re back at the ground floor.”

“We’ve got visual again,” Kit said. “Surveillance camera on the access road.”

“How long?”

“Two minutes. That’s generous.”

Nick grunted, then stepped forward, wrapped his arms around Jordan’s waist, and hefted the vampire up over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

It felt like his shoulder might splinter in half and break, but miraculously, it held.

“Go to the van,” he told the kids.

Tai huffed at him, her small hands on her small waist. “Why the hell were we carrying him, if you could do that all along?”

Nick had the inappropriate desire to laugh. “Go to the van,” he scolded instead. “You little brat. Protect Ms. James and Kit and the rest. I’m right behind you.”

Malek and Tai hesitated for an instant, but when Nick glowered at them, they turned and ran away. Luckily, seers were pretty fast, too.

Nick walked as well as he could up the last flight of stairs, then through the opening at the top, which was still propped open by multiple bodies.

He stepped over one of them without looking down, then began moving faster down the corridor in the direction of the front of the building.

“Tai and Malek are headed your way,” Nick grumbled into the comm.

“Yeah, we heard.” Kit sounded amused, but also worried. “Don’t suppose you can run?”

“They’re that close?”

“We’re watching them pull into the parking lot right now.”

Nick cursed under his breath.

“That wasn’t two minutes,” he informed her, fighting his worry with sarcasm.

“No shit,” she said. “I said the estimate was generous.”

“That’s more than ‘generous,’ Katarina.”

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