Page 63 of Almost Midnight

They had to be. They definitely weren’t vampires, and Nick increasingly doubted they were fully human. That only left hybrids.

Which meant they probably weren’t cops.

Hybrids only worked for the H.R.A.

As Nick stared at them, his suspicion grew into something a lot more like certainty. Perfect bone structure, high cheekbones, a faint tilt to the corners of their eyes, both of which were pale blue, of an eerily similar shade. Contacts? It struck him as likely. They probably worked with some kind of dual-purpose lenses with virtual components for targeting, enhancing night vision, and whatever else.

They both had inhumanly perfect mouths. Long necks.

Both of them were above-average in height.

One might have been over six and a half feet, using the measurements Nick grew up with. The other was maybe an inch or two less, depending on the shoes they both wore.

They must be hiding their smell.

Pheromone spray?

They were definitely wearing something that blocked out their half-seer blood, making them smell human even to a vampire well-accustomed to the smell of seers. Which made sense, again, if they worked for the H.R.A.

But absolutely none of that boded well for Nick.

Fuck.

He felt his shoulders tense as he looked between Morley and the two agents.

Should he let Morley handle this? Play stupid?

Call Lara St. Maarten? Wynter?

Nick had never been picked up twice for the exact same thing.

Getting cleared in their system was never easy, but once hewascleared, Nick had found that it generally stuck. They didn’t like admitting they were wrong, not in either direction, not without some concrete reason to have changed their minds.

Had they found more “evidence” to pin on him? Had they decided to charge him for one or more of his doppelgänger’s crimes? For his doppelgänger’s actual death? For being involved in bringing Walker to the portal?

Or was it something new? Something he knew nothing about?

Had they decided he was some kind of rogue or traitor?

Had they dug up something on his prior association with the White Death?

Did they know about Wynter?

Was Brick right? Had the portal changed things? The fact that Lara more or less admitted that Archangel had been dabbling with portals in the past threw a lot of things into question. Was the H.R.A.alsomonitoring and watching for portals around the world?

Of course they would be, if they knew about them.

There was no possible way the human racial authorities would ignore something as huge as spontaneously-appearing inter-dimensional portals. They’d view something like that as amassivesecurity threat, especially when non-human races were involved.

Nick felt his muscles start to bunch up.

Even apart from Morley’s reaction, Nick could feel something really fucking off with this. He fought the visceral instinct that told him to run.

Even so, despite that dense, panicked feeling, despite his strong sense that something deeply bad was about to happen, he never would have predicted the next step in this little dance.

Morley turned, and stared directly at Nick.

The old man looked pale under his dark skin.

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