#TeaserTuesday 9/3: The Tsarevich

Extra long teaser today! 

Golden Eagle © copyright 2019 by Lauren Gilley

Alexei and his father, Tsar Nicholas 

When they finally came up for air, the angle of the sun had changed, and the women, and their clothes, were gone. One had left a Post-It note stuck to the fridge, a pair of phone numbers with a little smiley face in the corner. Dante flicked it with a fingertip before he opened the freezer in search of ice. 

Alexei, in a borrowed velvet dressing gown, sat at the breakfast bar, a wadded-up paper towel pressed tight to his lip. It was still bleeding where Dante had bit it over an hour ago. The blood had made a mess of the sheets.

“Turning didn’t fix that?” Dante asked, frowning, as he pulled back and tossed Alexei a tube of frozen margarita mix.

Alexei barely caught it, then pressed it to his lip, hissing at the sting of cold. “It’s livable, now,” he said. “But it could still send me into a sleep if I wasn’t careful.”

“Ah.” Dante leaned a hip against the edge of the counter, draped in another velvet robe, and studied him a moment, arms folded. “Are they true? All the stories about your family?”

Alexei pressed the margarita mix tighter to his lip, and resisted the urge to scream. He stared at the other vampire until he glanced away, gaze flicking across his expensive kitchen.

It was an apartment with lots to look at. A shockingly spacious third floor walkup that Dante had furnished with a bit of Victorian flair, and populated with relics, knick-knacks, and curiosities that bore the patina of true wear. From the Persian rugs, to the hand-painted Japanese fans in shadow boxes, to the Louis XVI chairs, Alexei thought all of it authentic. A story behind the acquisition of every piece, no doubt. Dante might have called himself that – Dante, ugh – and he might speak with a modern American accent, and style himself like an eighties throwback, but the apartment hinted at more than one century of life. And occasionally, but only occasionally, his mask slipped, and Alexei caught glimpses of something very old and very lonely in his eyes.

He looked that way now, blunt nails tapping at the granite countertop, gaze resting unseeing on the medieval tapestry hung above the TV. It was a hunt scene, a mounted human pursuing a white stag, and the loneliness on his face left Alexei’s chest aching in an unfamiliar, unwanted way.

He pulled the tube of mix down and dabbed at his numb lip; no blood this time. “Some of them are true,” he said, surprised at his own openness. “Not the more lascivious ones.” He swallowed a growl as he remembered the things said of his mother, the bits of court gossip his sisters had whispered to him, cheeks blazing with righteous indignation. That Mama was a whore; that she gave herself to Rasputin; that she was a German spy trying to bring down the empire, and Papa. All those tales of orgies, and devil worship, and dark magic.

Well, there had been the seances…

“Rasputin, though,” Dante said, turning back to him, spark of curiosity in his gaze. “That part was true.”

“It’s true that he was a vampire.” It took an effort not to bristle. Not to show his fangs, and hiss, and defend the man he’d called Grisha, whom he’d loved, for so long. “And it’s true that he saved my life during my hemorrhages.”

“He turned you.”

“Slowly. One drop at a time, over years. I didn’t realize it had happened until–” His voice cut out, and he couldn’t go on.  He’d never put it into words, what had happened in that basement; what had happened afterwards, in the cold dark of the forest. When he woke up, and clawed his way out of the pit, and overtook a young Bolshevik soldier barely older than himself. Fangs in a white throat, a choked gasp, and his first taste of human blood. A feast.

He blinked the vision away. “I never told you who I was, but you’ve known all along.” More curiosity than accusation.” The first time he’d met Dante, months and months ago, before he’d even met Nikita and the others, he’d been at Nameless, trolling, if he was honest. Dante had caught his eye with that grin of his, and told his female companions of the evening, “What do you think, ladies? Should we let an actual prince join us tonight?”

Dante looked at him now without any of the wicked gleam of then, or even of earlier today. He seemed another person entirely, as the sharp angles of his face were softened by an almost sheepish smile, a blush coming up in his cheeks. With his hair in wild disarray – longer than it appeared when it was all slicked back – and the plum velvet of his robe framing the slender, almost bony lines of his chest and clavicles, he looked like the curator of this houseful of oddities, and not just a modern shmuck. “I recognized you,” he said, almost gently. “Older than the photographs, yes, but your eyes and your nose – unmistakable. You look like both your parents at once.”

Alexei stopped breathing.

Dante straightened, movements slow, like he was trying not to startle a wild animal. “I want to show you something,” he said, softly, and padded barefoot out of the kitchen and down the hall.

Alexei slid off his stool and followed, blood pounding in his ears.

Dante went into the second bedroom, the one whose door always stayed shut. He opened it now, and flicked a switch that illuminated two old fashioned desk lamps, with green glass shades, their glow dim and inviting. It was a study, the walls nothing but loaded bookshelves, even around the window, where a section had been cleverly cut out and framed to allow the light in. A desk, and three chairs; a tufted leather ottoman. Books stacked on the floor, even; a drinks cart. Easy to imagine Dante snuggling down in the wingback with a drink, putting his feet up, and reading. Easy to imagine this version of him doing that, anyway; this unguarded, oddly soft version who was apparently not a playboy, but a scholar.

He cleared a space on the desk, and turned to his shelves, murmuring to himself and ticking off titles with a fingertip running along the spines of books. He pulled down three and laid them on the blotter, opening the leather covers with great care.

Alexei stood rooted in the doorway, dizzy, and not from blood loss. The pounding in his head intensified; he felt like a little boy again, in his father’s arms, going down, down, down the stairs to their doom…

“Lex,” Dante said softly, and the faintest hint of a British accent touched his voice. He’d paused in flipping through the books, worried look turned up to him. “It’s alright. Come see.”

He moved to the desk on wooden legs; almost limping, like he had as a boy, when hemophilia had lamed him. Dread churning in his gut, he looked down at the open books…

And found photographs. Old black and white ones.

Dante pointed to one with a slender finger, a group shot of men and women in formal clothes. At the center, seated, was a small, elderly woman with a shawl and a glittering kerchief on her head. And standing above her…

Alexei sucked in a breath when he recognized his parents.

“This was 1894,” Dante explained, voice low, soothing. “At Coburg. A family wedding. Your parents were only engaged, then.”  He turned the pages, slowly. More photos; handwritten notes on the lined pages above and below them. “Here. You were only a little thing.” A family photo, his own tiny face staring up at him, where he was seated on his father’s knee. And there was Mama, looking tired, and his sisters: Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and little Anastasia, the tomboy, the closest thing he’d had to a brother growing up.

A harsh sound filled his ears, and he realized it was his own breathing: sharp, panting breaths through an open mouth. He was hyperventilating.

“Alexei–”

He turned and fled. Attempted to. His legs were clumsy, and he couldn’t breathe, and he was shaking, and dizzy.

Dante came around the desk and intercepted him with laughable ease. Caught his shoulders and squeezed tight enough to hold him in place. Alexei would have had to wrestle him off, and right now, he couldn’t; could only growl feebly as he was pressed back against a bookcase and held there. He hissed, and showed his fangs.

But Dante’s face looked anguished. “I know, I know, I know,” he said in a rush, panting. “Let me explain. Please? It’s alright. I promise – please, Alexei.” Desperate, when Alexei tried to shove him off.

“Why do you have all those photos?” Alexei growled. If his pulse sped any faster, he would pass out. He tasted copper when he wet his lip, and found that the bite had reopened.

“Because it was my job. I’m a historian; I was employed by your great-grandmother Queen Victoria. Alexei – Lex.”

Dante looked very worried, in the moment before Alexei’s eyes shut.

Fuck, he thought, and passed out.