Red Rooster
Copyright © 2018 by Lauren Gilley
The tsarevich smoked a long moment, glancing out
across the yard.
“Don’t look out there; there’s no answers there,”
Nikita said. “Why are you coming along? Why are you helping?”
He took a deep breath, shoulders lifting and dropping.
When his gaze returned, he seemed younger somehow; the polished, charming royal
veneer had vanished, and he looked now like a lost child. “It’s…it’s been
lonely,” he admitted, haltingly. “No one ever…there have been times when – when
turning wasn’t an accident. When I just wanted a companion. But they never
stayed.” His eyes flicked up to Nikita’s, his smile small and melancholy. “Everyone
I ever turned left me. I think there’s something – something in the blood. It
turns people…wrong, somehow.”
***
He stared at her a moment, the infuriating curve
of her smile, the way she was amused by all of this. “Were you this smug in the
Army?” he asked, and the smile dropped off her face. “Did you drive your CO up
the wall?”
“No,” she said, getting to her feet. “I was a
model soldier,” she said over her shoulder as she went to the fridge, and
pulled out the box of injections. Her fingers shook a little as she worked the
clasp.
Jake knew that everyone on the team had received
a medical discharge from the Army, but he had no idea what sorts of injuries
any of them had suffered. He wanted to ask her, suddenly: what was it for you? Which part of you starts to fail when you wait too
long between shots?
***
Jack let out a deep, tired-sounding breath. “Ah,
kid.” He leaned over and patted Rooster’s forearm. “You did the best you
could.”
“But that wasn’t good enough.”
Jack sent him a level look. “Most of the time
it’s not. Mainly because the world is full of people who don’t try to be anything – good or otherwise.”
Rooster…couldn’t disagree with that.
“Sometimes enough
isn’t possible, and all you can do is good.”
***
His eyes.
She recognized a bit of herself in him. Or, not really. He wasn’t like her, she
didn’t think, but he was different.
Not altogether human.
“Are you a doctor?” she asked, voice a rough, dry
scrape.
He didn’t flinch, but his mouth tightened. “No.
But you’re a mage.”
“A what?”
He cupped his hand; it was empty, the gesture was
unmistakable: the way she held her own hands when she called fire.
“I didn’t know that’s what it was called,” she
admitted.
He took a breath, nostrils flaring, brows
pinching together over his long, straight nose. “Do you know who your parents
are? Were?”
“I don’t have parents.”
“Yes, you do. I can smell them in your blood.” He
growled; a quiet pulse of sound, a rumble like an unhappy dog.
Yes, he was different.
As always, excellent!
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