With that in mind, please enjoy diving back into the mess with the gang. ❤
From
Red Rooster
Copyright © 2018 by Lauren Gilley
2
Manhattan, New York
Present Day
A phone was ringing. The gentle chiming of the
iPhone’s alert was far preferable to the shrill call of the landline it had
replaced, but it was still an unwanted disturbance at – Nikita cracked his eyes
open a crusty millimeter and read the dial on the bedside clock – four-thirty
in the morning. As Sasha would say: ugh.
Speaking of Sasha.
Nikita could feel his warmth and weight down near
the foot of the bed, curled up like a puppy on top of the covers. That happened
often; he had his own bed – his own room, even, small though it was – but he
didn’t like to sleep by himself. He snored soundly now, comforted by proximity
and the safety of pack.
The phone stopped, and was silent a moment. Then
started up again.
Nikita nudged Sasha with his toes. “Sashka.”
He got an unhappy whine in protest.
“I know you can hear that. It’s yours.”
Sasha huffed, and snorted, but sat up and fished
his phone from his hoodie pocket. “Yes, hello?” he mumbled sleepily without
checking the screen. And then his eyes popped open and he straightened his
spine.
Nikita felt a thrill of nerves go down his back
and sat up too, swiping the sleep from his eyes. “What?”
“It’s Trina,” Sasha said. “You better talk to
her.” He passed the phone over like it was a bomb about to go off.
Nikita took the phone with no small amount of
trepidation. “Hello?” he asked when he put it to his ear.
Trina breathed raggedly through her mouth,
suppressed panic clear in her voice. “I can’t find Lanny.”
~*~
Trina wasn’t an alarmist – she was Russian, for
God’s sakes – so when she woke and found that Lanny was no longer in bed beside
her, she didn’t panic. When she didn’t find him in the bathroom, or in the
kitchen, though, and he didn’t come back after an hour and didn’t return any of
her calls…then she started to fret. When she’d showered, nibbled on some toast,
and checked in at the precinct, and there was still no sign of him? Then she panicked. A little.
And she called Nikita. Well, Sasha, really.
Her great-grandfather, it appeared, was not a
morning person. (Though if myth and legend was to be believed, no vampire was.)
He stood with one shoulder propped against the façade of his building, in
rumpled clothes and unlaced combat boots, sporting bedhead and mirror-lensed
shades, a Starbucks cup in one hand.
By contrast, Sasha looked bright-eyed, his own
sunglasses nestled in his shiny, freshly-washed hair, his boots laced tight and
his iced coffee down to the dregs.
“He came to you?” Trina asked, and felt her brows
scale her forehead. “He asked you to” – a woman laden with shopping bags and
two yelling children passed them on the sidewalk and she dropped her voice to a
whisper – “turn him?”
Nikita shrugged, and the gesture struck her as so
completely Russian – and so completely familiar. It was the same one-shoulder
shrug her grandfather used when he wanted to be evasive. Not just her
grandfather, she reminded herself – Kolya Baskin was Nikita’s son. Maybe one day that would stop
sounding strange.
“He asked,” he said, voice gravelly as it had
been on the phone a half hour ago. “I said ‘no.’”
“You said no?”
“Don’t shout.”
She took an aggressive step forward, figurative
hackles lifting. “He’s dying, Nik.
Why the hell would you tell him no?”
His mouth set in a way that suggested he was
glaring at her. “I’ve never turned anyone, not for any reason. Why would I turn
him?”
“Because I’m your family!”
“Guys.” Sasha wedged between them with a wriggle
of his shoulders; it wasn’t quite a human gesture. “Don’t fight. Please. Let’s
just find him, and then we can talk. Yes?”
Trina stared at Nikita a long moment, wanting him
to know that she was pissed, that they would
talk about this later, while her heart pounded and sweat gathered between her
shoulder blades. If she let it, the fear would choke her, so she focused on the
anger instead.
“Fine,” she bit out. She forced her expression to
soften as she turned to Sasha. “Can you do the old nose trick again?”
He smiled. “It’s what I’m best at.”
With Sasha in the lead – his head up, nose lifted
fractionally as he tested the air – they headed down the sidewalk, following
the trail of scent Lanny had left behind. Trina wondered what her partner
smelled like to a werewolf’s senses; was it the same sweat-bourbon-cologne
cocktail she smelled when she pressed her face into his neck? Or were those
superficial things swamped with the specific, biological scent of age, gender,
and health?
Nikita walked beside her, and when she glanced
down at her feet, she noticed that their strides were evenly matched. They both
walked like people who didn’t have the patience for slow pedestrians. A
purposeful, out-of-my-way kind of walk.
And it wasn’t a coincidence – it was genetic.
She’d inherited the walk of a Chekist.
It was hard to stay angry with him in any real
way when she thought about who he’d once been, and all that he’d lived through
and seen. “Did you explain it to him?” she asked, in a more neutral tone this
time. “Why you wouldn’t turn him?”
He snorted. “I might be a monster, but I can express myself, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah. Fair enough.” She sighed, and some
of the tension in her chest eased. Worrying about Lanny was taking up all her
energy; it was nice not to have to hold a grudge, too. “So?”
“Immortality is not a gift,” Nikita said. “No
matter what spoiled Russian princes might think.”
“That sounds like a story.”
“Yes, well, I told your Lanny that it’s not a
decision he should make lightly – living forever.”
Ahead of them, Sasha cocked his head a fraction,
and Trina thought he must be listening to them.
Nikita took a breath and continued, lighter. “But
I told him I could make him healthier. Help fight the cancer. Better, and
surer, and not painful, like the chemo.”
“Wait. What?”
“I gave him a few sips of my blood.” He reached
with the hand holding the coffee and tugged up his opposite sleeve, revealing a
faint, silver-pink scar on his wrist. “It’s not permanent, I don’t think. But
it will help.”
Trina ground to a halt, twisting her head so she
could really see him.
One corner of his mouth lifted in a little facial
shrug. It was hard to tell, with the glaring morning sun, but she thought he
blushed. “You love him. I couldn’t just let him die.”
She wanted to hug him, but didn’t think that
would be a good idea.
Sasha turned around, beaming. “We’re getting
along again? Good!”
Nikita sighed. “Sasha.”
“Right. Yes. Tracking.” He went back to work and
they followed him again.
It was a gorgeous, albeit sticky-hot day. One of
those last hoorahs of summer, when the asphalt sizzled, but the air held the
first faint whiff of September. A day when the kids ran and whooped and swung
around lampposts, trying to wring that last precious drops of freedom out of
each day before the new school year started. The air smelled of hot dogs, soft
pretzels, and warm garbage.
All of this was lost on Trina, whose worry
ratcheted up another notch with each step. Every moment they didn’t find Lanny
was another moment he could be in danger, lost, hurt, or in lock-up.
That was the most-likely possibility: that he’d
gotten drunk and passed out and been dragged into a holding cell until he
sobered up. That was the least-frightening option, to be honest. At least then
he’d be safe, and in the company of their own.
She’d just decided that must be it when Sasha
didn’t just halt, but froze. All that moved were the ends of his hair, tossing
gently in the breeze, and his nostrils as they flexed and tested the air.
“What?” Nikita said, and then he took a deep,
audible breath and said, “Oh shit.”
“Vampire,” Sasha said, and shivered like a dog
shaking water off its fur. Then, low and angry: “Alexei.”
“He was here?” Trina asked, trying to ignore the
way her pulse tripped.
“With Lanny,” Sasha said.
Nikita said, “There was blood.”
“But…” An image of Chase Edwards’s drained and
lifeless body popped into her mind and her breath caught hard and sharp in her
lungs. “But we talked to him. He wouldn’t hurt Lanny. Would he?”
Nikita turned to give her an unreadable look
through the lenses of his shades. “A vampire would do anything.”
Sasha took off at a run down the sidewalk.
They could only follow.
Trina kept in good shape, but Sasha was an
unnatural kind of quick. He looked like he was only jogging, but no matter how
fast she accelerated – dodging pedestrians with a muttered “excuse me” – he
continued to pull away from her, nothing but a bobbing patch of bright hair.
Nikita kept pace with her, though. Steadied her
arm when she tripped. Steered her around a newsstand with a few deft movements.
She was a cop, and not an optimistic one, so she
knew what they were going to find. Still, it was a shock.
Sasha ducked into an alley. Trina skidded and
nearly fell when she did the same, catching herself against the side of the
building.
In the alley stood a dumpster.
And behind it, boots sticking out, lay Lanny.
~*~
It hurt when Alexei bit him. Sharp like a bee
sting, like the needle teeth of his grandmother’s old Pomeranian who liked to
nip ankles. But the pain seemed unimportant, distant, like a memory. It was
something he couldn’t flinch away from.
The night around him tilted, a warm blur of light
and dark, all its varied scents peeling back from the spicy cologne that filled
his sinuses. The heat of the night paled beside the wet heat of Alexei’s mouth
on his throat. The warmth of his body where their chests were pressed together.
Hot touch of skin where Alexei’s palm cupped the back of his neck.
It should have disturbed him, this closeness with
a stranger, being held by a man who was neither brother, nor friend. But Lanny
knew only peace. A fuzzy, welcome sort of contentment. He felt a pull at his
throat, and his eyes slipped shut, and the black velvet of the void welcomed
him with open arms.
He slept. Dreamless and endless, as his cells
broke apart and knitted back together in stronger, healthier shapes. Somewhere
deep inside his body, a low hum started, like the purring of an expensive
imported car. Blood coursed thick, and red, and glossy through his veins,
bathing the tumors, eating them away like acid. The legends and the novels had
gotten it wrong, over and over, every time: he did not die. No. He transformed.
The vampire cells made room for what they needed, and dug deep. Made him their
home. Altered his DNA.
He slept.
And when he woke, it happened slowly, and in
stages. He became aware of the heaviness of his limbs, the pounding in his
head. He felt a shakiness steal through him, like the jitters from too much
coffee. Felt his lungs work, and his stomach clench, empty and hungry.
He lay on something soft and he twisted onto his
side, blindly seeking the light that he could sense but not see. He opened his
mouth and it tasted like he’d been sucking on car keys; traced his teeth with
his tongue and got snagged on something sharp – on his fang. The copper heat of fresh blood bloomed on his tongue, filled
his mouth, and two things happened.
His stomach growled, and something that hadn’t
been there before in his throat answered. A jungle-cat roar that startled him
fully awake.
The sound tapered off into “…holt shit!” as he
bolted upright.
The light was too bright, and he squinted against
it, just making out his surroundings. He was in Trina’s apartment, on her sofa.
And the place…smelled. Not bad, but very much like her, and coffee, and the
clean laundry in the bedroom, and his own sweat on the sheets, the musk of sex,
soap and shampoo in the drains in the bathroom and…
Oh. The smells.
So many of them, and so intense. He shut his eyes like that could somehow block
them up, brought his hands to his tender head. He could smell the bowl of
apples sitting on the kitchen counter, the bits of tuna clinging to a paper
plate in the garbage that she’d fed to the neighbor’s cat.
He leaned forward and dropped his head between
his knees, and that was when another scent hit him, the most overwhelming of
all. Trina. Alive and vibrant in a way he’d never understood before. He could
hear her heart beating. And faint, beneath her skin, he smelled her blood, and
something inside him clenched.
Slowly, he opened his eyes and lifted his head. There
she stood, leaning against the opposite wall, Nikita and Sasha flanking her.
He’d smelled them too, he realized, but their scents had kicked off very
different sensations. Whereas Trina stirred something like longing…and hunger…Nikita
left him bristling. And he had the strange urge to pat Sasha on top of the
head.
“Try it,” Nikita hissed through his teeth, “and
I’ll take your arm off.”
He’d been staring at Sasha, and dragged his gaze
away, over to the vampire – the other
vampire. Shit. “What?” His own voice held the low rumblings of a growl.
Nikita lifted his lip and flashed his fangs. “You
may be a vamp now, but he’s not your wolf. Don’t look at him like that.”
“I’m not.” But he had been. Something instinctual
in him knew that wolves were meant to serve and help vampires. Combine that
with his human history of fighting, and he wanted to challenge Nikita, throw
down right here and battle it out for supremacy the old-fashioned way.
He realized his mouth was open, that he was
panting, fangs showing.
Nikita lowered his head, eyes hooded and aggressive.
“You’d lose,” he said, dark and certain. “Sit down, boy, before you get hurt.”
Was he standing? When had that happened?
“Lanny,” Trina said, and stepped forward. Tried
to, anyway; Nikita grabbed her arm and held her in place. She sighed, but
didn’t shake him off. “Lanny,” she started again, “sit back down, okay? Take a
deep breath.”
He sat.
He didn’t take a deep breath, because the sensory
overload was making him both sick and hungrier.
“What happened?” he asked.
“We were hoping you could tell us,” Trina said. She
was giving him the sort of bland-but-guarded look that she used on suspects
during interrogation: not picking sides, but listening; concerned, but not
actually caring. He didn’t like having that look directed at him…but he did
like watching her pulse beat in the soft skin just under her jaw, that little
hollow in her throat where her flesh was thin enough he imagined he could see
the faint blue trails of veins. Imagined he could smell the blood, hot and
salty and–
“Lanny,” she snapped, brow furrowing. “We know
Alexei turned you. But how?”
He shook himself – mentally and physically – and
tried to focus.
Nikita gave him a sharp glare that said he knew
exactly what Lanny had been thinking.
“I left,” he started, frowning. The memories were
fractured, sharp at the edges and painful to grab hold of. “I left you guys’
place, and I was walking back…and I felt great. I mean, like I was twenty
again. And then all of a sudden Alexei was there. Right in front of me. He
said…he said he could help me. If I wanted.” He could feel his frown deepen,
digging grooves in his forehead. “And I just…shit, I just walked up to him. And
he bit me.”
“He enchanted you,” Nikita said grimly. “Rasputin
was a master at that, and he was Alexei’s sire.”
Trina’s face paled. “You mean – Lanny, you didn’t
ask him to turn you?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t need him to. Not after I
had the–” He mimed knocking back a drink. “So no.”
Sasha gave a small, unsettled ruff. “He shouldn’t have done that.”
Nikita wore the weary, but unsurprised expression
of someone who’d long since given up on the small moments of decency in the
world. “I shouldn’t have left him alive.”
Trina turned toward him sharply. “You can’t kill
him.”
“He can’t control himself. Of course I can.”
“Yeah, but he’s not just some random vampire.
He’s a Romanov.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Um, guys?” Lanny said. “What’s gonna happen to
me?”
All three of them looked at him, then, all
worried to an extent.
“We’ll figure something out,” Trina said at last,
but she was a beat too slow, and her smile was a bit too forced.
~*~
“Sasha,” Nikita said, like a command, then
grabbed Trina’s arm and dragged her around the corner and into her bedroom.
“Hey!” It was a token protest. Lanny’s eyes were
all pupil right now, and it was freaking her out. And she couldn’t have pulled
loose if she wanted to. Nikita didn’t crush her wrist, but his hand was locked
more securely than any cuff.
He heeled the door shut when they were inside and
then let her go.
Trina lifted her wrist to examine it: no marks;
he’d been careful.
“You don’t need to be alone with him right now,”
he said, matter-of-fact.
“I’m not afraid of Lanny,” she said, and it was
only half a lie.
Nikita sighed and tilted his head, not buying it.
“You saw him in there. He’s not in control.”
“He’s fine.”
“You don’t believe that.”
No, she didn’t, but she didn’t know what to believe right now.
Well, almost.
She turned away from him, massaging her temples
and the headache gathering there. “Shit, this is all my fault.”
“Why? Because you sent him to me?”
She whirled back around, doing her best to shield
her expression…probably failing. “Yeah, because I sent him to you. So you
could–” She was hyperventilating. Chest heaving, pulse pounding. She made a
gasping sound and bent double, hands on her knees. Shit.
Nikita stepped in closer, his shadow falling
across hers on the rug. When he spoke, his voice was uncharacteristically soft.
“He needs some time to adjust. It will be fine, Ekaterina. Don’t fret.”
She tipped her head back and caught something
vulnerable in his gaze. “I didn’t want him to die,” she whispered.
“Of course you didn’t,” he said, his hand landing
on her back, light and soothing. “And he won’t. We’ve just got to see him
through this.”
“You’re not going to…put him down?”
He flashed her a crooked half-smile. “He’s your
mate. Even if he’s an asshole.”
A laugh bubbled up in her throat, surprising and
welcome.
His smile widened, a little strained; she’d only
ever seen him smile naturally and easily when he was looking at Sasha. He
patted her shoulder and stepped back, growing serious again. “This isn’t going
to be easy for him, though,” he warned. “Whoever you are before you’re turned,
that’s who you are after. Only everything’s more intense.”
She straightened and nodded. “You were all about
denying yourself before,” she said, and he made a face. “And you still are. But
Lanny’s always had a bit of an impulse control problem.” She pushed back
against a sudden onslaught of fear, but little cold rivulets trickled through,
like dead fingers walking down her spine. “Can we…” How strange, in this
moment, that she trusted this man – this vampire – more than she trusted her
own partner and lover.
“We can help him, yes. But he has to want to
behave.”
Tears filled her eyes, sudden and hot, and she
blinked them away. Her laugh was humorless this time, more of a cough. “That’s
what I told him about chemo: he had to want to get better. And Jesus, Nik, I
have no idea what he wants anymore.”
He waited a beat. “Well. He came to see me. So I
think that means he wants to be alive for you.”
She nodded.
He studied her a moment, then his expression
firmed, like he’d decided something. “Come. I’ll take him back to our place
with me. Sasha can stay and watch you.”
“I don’t need watching.”
“Then he can help you track criminals. I don’t
know. But I’m not leaving Lanny alone with you.” When she opened her mouth to
protest, he said, “Get over it.”
“God, you’re a dictatorial asshole.”
“Yes,” he agreed, and opened the bedroom door.
On the sofa, Lanny was in the process of
devouring a plate of runny scrambled eggs like a starving man.
Sasha stood at the stove, a fork in one hand,
tending to a skillet full of bacon. “Who wants breakfast?” he called, and it
was officially the strangest morning of her life.
Sooooooo good! Thank you! And I didn't see any typos. :)
ReplyDeleteLoved it thank you for the peak. It was perfect.
ReplyDeleteI really want to read this now!
ReplyDelete