PAIN RIPPLED THROUGH him, forcing him to avert his eyes.

Clenching his jaw, Dalejem looked away from the opening into the shipping crate, forcing his eyes up to the high ceiling of the cargo hull instead, focusing with an effort on the metal catwalks above where he crouched. Taking a breath to clear his head, he turned his gaze back a few beats later, staring down through the narrow opening between the oval, hatch-like door and the crate’s metal side.

He held his breath, watching the two males fuck.

It wasn’t easy, even now.

The more muscular one, the male on top, closed his eyes, letting out a low growl as he held down the other, a male seer with a taller but narrower frame. The seer on the bottom groaned as Dalejem watched, gripping the male on top with white-knuckled hands, making a lower, more pained sound as the other arched into him.

Again, Dalejem closed his eyes, clenching his jaw.

Gaos. What the fuck was he doing?

What did he think he was doing here?

He knew what he’d told himself.

Now, for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine how he’d been so arrogant as to believe his own bullshit. Now that he was out here, he wondered if he’d just end up getting himself killed, along with everyone else on this ship.

He’d told himself he was giving Nick a chance.

He’d told himself he was trying to save the vampire’s life––long enough to determine if there was anything there worth saving.

If Brick and the other vampires were telling the truth, Nick was going to come down off this. He was going to come down off this no-consequences, zero-empathy, repression-free high, and he was going to be left with the emotional after-effects of what he’d done.

Like Dalejem intuited back when Nick was human, Naoko Tanaka had been sitting on a virtual powder keg of repressed emotions, resentments, angers, unresolved feelings.

Those included but weren’t limited to: anger, bitterness, self-hate, sexual repression, jealousy, rage. He’d buried all of it under an affable personality, under nice guy syndrome, under duty and patriotism, family obligations, only son obligations, friend obligations, social obligations… and whatever the hell else humans tortured themselves with.

His new vampire nature both exploded and gave free-reign to all of it––once Nick was finally able to wholly and completely not give a fuck.

As a result, all of that repressed crap came up.

His anger at Black for marrying Miri, his anger at Miri for not wanting him, his anger at both of them for leaving him in that cave on Koh Mangaan, then leaving him at the mercy of vampires in their so-called “escape” and nearly getting him killed in that tree. His anger at the fucking world for never getting what he wanted, for disappointing his parents, for vampires and seers taking over his world, for being the “nice guy” and never being rewarded for it, for being the one who always had to take the higher fucking road.

His vampire nature didn’t care about any of that.

His vampire nature did not give a fuck.

But sooner or later, Nick was going to come down.

Nick was going to come down, and he was going to come down hard, and Jem didn’t intend for the ones to catch him to be more goddamned vampires.

He sure as hell didn’t intend for Brick and/or Dorian to be the ones to help Nick through that transition, or to impart their so-called “vampire wisdom” on Nick when he was vulnerable to believing anything that might help him hate himself less.

So Jem decided it wouldn’t be Brick and Dorian who Nick saw when he came down.

It would be him––Dalejem.

He knew, even at the time, it was a foolish conceit.

He knew it was dangerous, stupid… probably selfish and immature.

He also knew, if he didn’t do it, no one would.

Nick would die at the hands of Black, most likely––or he’d be pulled into the vampire family and end up like the rest of them. He’d find some way to rationalize and repress in vampire form, and they’d lose Nick Tanaka forever.

Now, watching Nick with Solonik, seeing what he’d already done to the high-ranked infiltrator through his venom, Dalejem was back to thinking he, Dalejem, was an idiot.

He wondered just how stupid and arrogant he’d have to be, to think he could do this. Even if he managed to keep Nick from Black, there was a damned good chance he could end up like Solonik himself in a few weeks.

He’d end up like Miri on that roof, or Black in that government lab.

He’d end up like all seers under the thrall of vampire venom, only forever.

Vampire food, a sex slave––a mental cripple.

He’d kept his distance so far, mostly to keep from tipping off Black as to where he was, and therefore, tipping Black off to where Nick was. He knew Black wouldn’t be rational about this. Black probably couldn’t be rational about this.

Jem understood that. He really did.

He also knew Black might kill him for this, if he found out Jem stood between him and Nick Tanaka.

For the same reason, he knew if he didn’t find some way to hide Nick from Black, this whole thing would be over, the instant Black caught up with them.

Therefore, Jem waited three days to approach.

Three days of no sleep, of hiding out in the cargo hold of the ship, which smelled of oil and feces, sweat, metal and brine, depending on which part of the hold he hid himself. Jem hid himself in the smelliest parts of these, to try and disguise and overpower his own scent, so the vampire wouldn’t find him.

He dared not sleep.

He knew if he slept, if he entered the Barrier for any amount of time at all, for any reason––which would happen if he let himself fall unconscious––Black’s team of infiltrators would find him in minutes, if not seconds.

Seers couldn’t hide while they slept.

Well, they couldn’t hide from other seers.

Specifically, they couldn’t hide from other military-trained infiltrators who were actively looking for them, as Black’s team most certainly was by now.

Like humans, when seers slept, their aleimi, or light-body, left their physical body. The instant that happened, Dalejem’s light would pop back up on the grid for any tracking seer who knew his specific frequency.

Black had at least four seers who could give him exact markers for Jem’s light. Back on Old Earth they had to memorize everyone’s light signatures on their team, in the event anyone got lost, kidnapped, or found themselves in trouble in the Barrier.

For the same reason, Yarli, Mika, Holo and Jax knew his light.

More seers on Black’s infiltration team probably had his light signature by now, too.

Dalejem could keep them out while he was awake. He was Adhipan-trained, and his shielding skills had been above average even for their elite team.

If he let himself doze off, he was toast.

Well, more specifically, the vampire below him, currently getting his rocks off inside his seer lover-slash-prisoner, was toast.

Dalejem couldn’t let that happen, not until he either had some other means of shielding his light, like, say, a construct––or, his mind muttered, quieter, like a vampire––or else he was far enough away that he could explain to Black what he was doing and how much time he needed before the seer came after him with a fleet of drones and a squadron of pissed off infiltrators screaming for blood.

Until then, he had to stay awake.

No amount of training could compensate for basic seer biology. The only way to stay invisible right now was to stay out of the Barrier altogether.

That meant no sleep.

Of course, he couldn’t go without sleep forever.

Already, his reflexes were suffering… both by slowing, and by turning glitchy. Already, he startled too easily, jumping at shadows, hallucinating threats.

He also caught himself spacing out when he shouldn’t.

Like he’d just been doing, watching Nick fuck that sociopathic seer, Solonik.

Grimacing, he shoved the images out of his mind, forcing himself to think in straight lines.

He couldn’t push things much further.

He needed to do this now.

When the sun came up that morning, slanting through the view ports near the dirty laundry crate where he’d been holing up for the night, he decided he wouldn’t make it another night, not without putting his life in danger for real.

He used the GPS tracker to confirm the seer and vampire were still where Dalejem initially found them; that Nick hadn’t moved his captive to some other part of the ship. Dalejem knew Nick had to be feeding the seer somehow, and obtaining him water. Presumably he’d been moving around under cover of night to raid the ship’s larder and its water cache, leaving the seer behind in the nest he’d built inside the crate.

That same morning, Dalejem also used the GPS tracker to determine where they were––meaning all of them, meaning the location of the cargo ship itself. He’d intended to leave at least a full day’s gap between himself and Black before he made a move.

From what he could tell, he had almost that.

The ship hadn’t followed the coast when it left California, but headed straight out into the Pacific from the shipyards in Oakland. From the line across the map on his hand-held, or “smart phone,” as they called them here, the ship and all of them on it appeared to be heading for Asia, likely either China or Russia, if they continued along their current trajectory.

From the Cyrillic letters painted in black on the dark blue hull, Dalejem guessed the ship was owned and operated by a Russian shipping conglomerate. The smatterings of Russian, Polish and Ukrainian he’d overheard from the crew supported that theory.

Dalejem had no idea why Nick chose this ship.

He supposed it didn’t really matter.

It’s possible his choice was just as random as it appeared; which had a kind of logic to it, as well. It was difficult to follow someone when even they didn’t know where they were going, much less why.

Assuming his Russian was still passably decent, and the written version here was close enough to the Russian on his version of Earth, the name of the ship was the Monchegorsk.

Rubbing his face with a hand and blinking to try and clear his head, he looked back through the opening in the crate’s hatch. Staring through the narrow slat, he fought the pain that wanted to rise in his light.

He had to be careful.

He couldn’t risk the seer feeling him, either.

Solonik would undoubtedly tell Nick if he did feel him. From the way Solonik was looking at Nick right then, he’d do pretty much anything he could to protect the vampire, including kill for him, if he thought Nick needed someone killed.

Both the seer and the vampire still appeared to be pretty damned distracted at the moment, however.

Dalejem watched, wincing again as his light reacted to the look on the violet-eyed seer’s face. He watched Solonik tilt back his head, exposing his already heavily-marked throat to the vampire. Despite how pale the seer was, it looked a lot more like a request than even an offer.

The dark-haired vampire gripped the seer’s hair in his fist.

Dipping his mouth and face, he sank his fangs slowly, sensually into Solonik’s neck. Just as slowly, just as luxuriously, he began to drink.

A few seconds later, the vampire let out another low growl.

Dalejem watched Nick’s face, watched the vampire drink with such obvious pleasure and abandon, he couldn’t help but react to that, too. He couldn’t feel the vampire, not like he could the light of the seer, but the look of complete and utter contentment on him, the slackening of his facial expression in undisguised desire, worked on him in its own way.

Somehow, not being able to feel Nick affected him more.

Maybe because he very, very badly wanted to feel him right then.

The male seer gasped when the vampire lifted his mouth, stopping his feeding with obvious reluctance.

For a moment Nick just hung there, looking down at the male seer’s face.

Then he let out a low, rumble of a sound, almost a purr. Stroking the seer’s hair out of his face, the vampire adjusted his body over his, leaning his weight.

When he spoke, Dalejem jumped in spite of himself.

The vampire’s voice held a pulling, melodious want coupled with an overt affection.

The combination brought Dalejem’s pain back all over again.

“Don’t tempt me, cousin,” the vampire murmured. “Don’t let me kill you on accident.”

The seer reached up, caressing the vampire’s face. He continued to stroke Nick’s skin, caressing his muscular chest and arms, tracing lines and muscles in his throat and face.

Both of them were completely naked.

Both of them were hard again, too, despite having recently finished, and even though that hadn’t been their first time fucking in the last few hours.

Clearly, vampires were closer to seers than they were to humans, at least when it came to their sex drives. Dalejem had been told the blood connected them, too. He couldn’t help but wonder if that connection was similar to the light connections shared by seers, or if it was something different entirely.

Biting his lip when he realized how much he was letting his mind wander, not to mention how distracted he’d let himself get by the sex, by Nick’s naked and erect cock, by a whisper of annoyed jealousy he was struggling to admit to himself, and the fact that all of that was being made worse by his lack of sleep, he withdrew from the opening yet again.

For a few seconds he only crouched there, fighting the images of the vampire and seer together out of his head.

He knew it wasn’t exactly helping him do what he’d come here to do––as in the reason he’d made this crazy trip in the first place. All it did was make him second-guess his motives all over again, and wonder what in the hell he thought he was really accomplishing, assuming he did manage to save Nick’s life.

Pulling carefully out of the opening, he leaned even more carefully on the metal bulkhead to the left of the hatch, doing everything in his power to not make a sound.

Black warned him vampires had better hearing than seers.

They had faster reflexes, better hearing, better physical sight.

They also had extra senses, from what Dalejem had been told by Black’s tech team.

Physical senses––not like the quasi-physical ones of seers.

Dalejem didn’t have a full education on vampire versus seer anatomy, at least not yet, but he’d read in the tech reports about how vampires could feel air displacements, in addition to having all of the physical senses shared by seers and humans. From what Black’s lab rats could determine, it wasn’t simply an extension of those other senses, although that might play a part. They seemed able to sense the level and movement of air pressure itself, even feeling displacements at a significant distance from their skin.

The report Dalejem read postulated this as occurring through some other mechanism entirely, something that had no parallel in seers or humans.

Right now, all that meant was Dalejem had to be really damned careful.

The GPS tag he’d managed to shoot into Nick’s neck after he jumped off the California Street building got him this far.

It led him to the docks in Oakland.

It led him to this crate.

Jem spent a few hours that morning checking out Nick’s crate from all angles, until he found this hatch. It gave him a good thirty feet between where the vampire lay with his seer lover and where Dalejem crouched with a tranquilizer rifle.

Raising that same rifle slowly, Dalejem checked the chamber, even though he’d already done it three times before.

Taking a final breath, he turned then, facing the opening.

He was a good shot.

He’d been a good shot since he was a young seer in Asia, back when the only person around to teach him was his father. He might not have been the natural killing machine Dehgoies was, back on Old Earth, but he was close.

Now that he looked through the scope of the rifle, he realized how close to the vampire he really was.

There was no way he could miss.

In those last few seconds before he pulled the trigger, he found himself throwing up a prayer to the gods anyway.

From what he knew of vampires so far… and Nick… and Black…

He was definitely going to need it.