Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  “Okay, major,” she said, and he didn’t correct her. He’d told her, and all the other nurses, that he’d been discharged and shouldn’t be addressed by his rank anymore. None of them had listened. “Hop down and I’ll take you to see Dr. Talbot.”

  Jake unrolled his sleeve and slid off the table, following obediently behind June as she opened the door and led him out into a bright white hallway lined with heavy wooden doors. That was the thing that always stuck out from the rest of the manufactured hospital environment in the basement of Blackmere Manor: the reinforced, medieval-style doors, silly-looking in their modern frames. He’d always wondered if they were original to the mansion, a stab at blending the old aesthetic into the utilitarian blandness of the lab; but then he’d heard the screams, and he’d begun to think they were practical doors, designed to keep people out…or in.

  The hallway where he received his regular injections opened into a wider hall, this one lined with labs, full of techs and scientists in white coats hurrying back and forth, eyes glued to the tablets they carried. They swiped their way in and out of doors with key cards, never sparing so much as a glance at Jake or his nurse escort.

  That hall led to a massive room with soaring cathedral ceilings, and no windows, the heavy dark stone giving the place the air of an underground sanctuary…or a massive tomb. Jake had no idea what happened here, only that there were more scientists, and lots of tables heaped with expensive-looking equipment, voices echoing off the walls.

  A banded and studded wooden door set along one wall led to a narrow, cramped, lamplit room that looked like it had once been a storage area of some sort, and which now served as Dr. Talbot’s office. One of them, at least. On his first visit here, his eyes bandaged, Jake had been led into a room that felt wide and airy, and smelled of lilies, and whose floor had been slick hardwood that clicked beneath his shoes when he walked. This was definitely not that room.

  The nurse gave a cursory knock, then heaved the door open and announced, “Major Treadwell is here for his appointment, sir.”

  “Oh, good, send him in,” the doctor replied, voice lifting in that eager way Jake had come to expect as normal.

  It set his teeth on edge.

  Nurse June motioned Jake in and then closed him in with Dr. Talbot – and the man in a black suit seated off to the side of Dr. Talbot’s desk, lenses of his glasses catching the lamplight, legs crossed at the knee, tidy white hands clasped together in his lap.

  Jake pegged him as a suit right away, some alphabet agency type with friends in high places; the sort of man who’d never broken one of his manicured nails, never served his country, nor his city, nor his community in the capacity of a warrior.

  “Good evening, Major Treadwell,” Dr. Talbot greeted, sitting forward eagerly and folding his hands together on the desk. “I trust your treatment went well?”

  Jake halted in front of the desk and fell into parade rest out of old habit. “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re feeling well?”

  “Very well, sir.” And he was. Fit, and vital, energy coursing through his veins in a way it hadn’t since Basic.

  “Excellent.” The doctor beamed at him a moment, and then reached for the thick manila file folder that waited on the corner of the desk, one out of a stack of others just like it. It landed on the blotter with a slap. “Have a seat, Major Treadwell.”

  He didn’t want to – he wanted to get out of this room as fast as possible – but he did so, settling on the edge of a dusty leather wingback that looked as if it had been dragged down from the upstairs part of the house.

  “Major,” Talbot said, “I’d like to introduce you to Special Agent West.” He gestured to the suit, and dread began to gather in the pit of Jake’s gut, a stone gaining momentum as it rolled downhill, heavier and heavier.

  One side of Agent West’s mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. “Dr. Talbot’s been telling me all about you, Major,” he said. He had the sort of unremarkable, unobtrusive voice that nevertheless raised goosebumps down your arms. Or at least did on Jake’s. “He says the serum trial has worked better than the doctors could even hope. And that you have a spotless record to justify its use.”

  “Had,” Jake said. “I was discharged.”

  Agent West’s mouth stretched a little wider. “A minor hurdle.”

  His pulse kicked up a notch, and he knew it wasn’t the result of the adrenaline rush that usually followed an injection. “Hurdle to what?”

  “Perhaps I should explain,” Dr. Talbot said with a little sigh, and a falling-away of his bright and open smile. He looked older, then, small and tired. He adopted a serious expression, more in keeping with his status as a doctor, and somehow it eased some of the mounting dread in Jake’s gut.

  “Here at the Institute,” the doctor said, “we’ve been working for decades on medical technology that is only just now enabling us to make incredible breakthroughs in the healing of combat trauma – as you of course know.” Yes, he knew. “For me, personally, I’d like to see this technology integrated into civilian medicine, but the work has attracted many curious eyes – including those at the Pentagon. They have a valid interest. It’s our belief that, with prompt and proper application of our VT-1431 serum, the men and women of the armed forces could not only be saved and healed, but allowed to return to combat.”

  Return…

  Return to…

  Combat.

  Oh.

  Jake opened his mouth to speak, and made a tiny, undignified gasping sound instead. “Are…are you serious?”

  “Quite,” the doctor said, hint of a warm smile returning.

  “In the future,” Agent West interjected, “there would be no reason for an officer in your position to be discharged. But seeing as how that’s already happened, there will of course be all sorts of red tape to cut through.”

  “There’s no precedent for this sort of thing, you understand,” Dr. Talbot said. “It will take time.”

  “In the meantime,” West said. “We think a show of tactical and physical competence could really help your case.”

  “Yeah.” Jake’s voice came out a strangled, hope-choked whisper. “I mean, yes, sir, absolutely.”

  Dr. Talbot brought out the beaming smile again. “It just so happens,” he said, “that we’ve got a mission in need of a man like you.”

  6

  Evanston City, Wyoming

  Rooster leaned a shoulder against a stack of folding chairs at the tent’s exit, and to the casual observer, he might have looked bored with the proceedings. The casual observer might not have seen that the fingertips of his right hand rested on the butt of a Colt M1911 in his waistband. They for sure wouldn’t have seen the shoulder holster he wore under his battered denim jacket, nor the Beretta M9 within it. There was no way they could have guessed that the shaft of one boot contained a slender, wicked boning knife inside a sheath, and that the other housed a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38. The casual observer wouldn’t know that Rooster Palmer carried an entire arsenal in the back of his pickup truck. Right now, he was just a grungy guy with too-long hair who didn’t seem properly enthralled with the spectacle taking place in the center of the tent.

  That was the way he wanted to be seen.

  Right now, all eyes were on Red.

  She stood on a little stage made of pallets and plywood, wearing the flowy white dress with the long, fluttery sleeves they’d bought in a thrift store in Pasadena to serve as her costume. Red had ripped and re-stitched it over and over so that it had a pieced-together, but pleasing look, like something a Bohemian princess would wear. Her mane of red hair fell in waves and curls down her back, gleaming beneath the Christmas lights strung up on poles around the tent. She had her back to Rooster, and he watched her hair shift and glow like superheated copper as she moved. She held both hands up above her head, tilted back at the wrists, fingers splayed in an elegant gesture. And in each palm, she cupped fire.

  The Wyoming families who filled the tent
watched with open-mouthed, rapt attention as the two points of flame swelled, crackling audibly. Rooster knew they were searching for matches, for oiled cloths, for propane gas lines snaking up Red’s arms, madly wondering how she was doing it, and delighting in it anyway.

  Red held her pose a moment, the fire getting larger, brighter, and then she swept her arms out and down, the flames streaking around her in a circle.

  Gasps. Exclamations. A few scattered claps.

  Red executed a tight spin, fire twining in ribbons around her, grinning with her whole pixie face, wild and exuberant.

  A casual observer would have thought she liked performing.

  Rooster knew that, for thirty minutes at a time, in a grubby carnival tent, Red got to feel exactly like herself, and not a science experiment.

  They’d seen the flyer for this particular carnival – one of those nameless, knockoff brand fairs with Ferris wheels that got stuck and especially sketchy corndogs that usually set up in empty parking lots for a day or two without much warning – two towns over yesterday, a bit of blue paper tacked to a corkboard outside a diner. They’d just spent their last five bucks on two Cokes and a piece of cherry pie, and Red had sent him one of her pretty please, Roo looks. And. Well. Here they were. The manager had promised them cash if they could pull in a crowd, and people were still coming into the tent, one after the next; Rooster could hear a swelling chatter of voices on the other side of the dirty plastic walls. The fire girl was real – or at least looked it – and everyone wanted to see her with their own eyes.

  On her makeshift stage, Red danced with a dreamy, fairy garden sort of slowness, artful movements of her arms, deep spins that fanned her hair around her shoulders. The audience didn’t watch her – they watched the fire, twisting and writhing and leaping from hand to hand, spinning into elaborate streamers and bursting like overripe tomatoes – but Rooster did. One of those rare moments when he didn’t have to play the guardian. The protector, the chauffer, the decision-maker. The one with the burden of living, and running, and hiding. For the half hour that she danced, he could just watch her use her gift, marveling at the way she’d somehow, right under his nose, grown into a woman.

  Red dropped her hands low, and began the grand finale, a circle of fire springing to life around her on the stage, leaping up waist-high. Women in the audience shouted in mixed delight and fear. Red shot both arms up, straight overhead, and the fire soared to meet around her, enclosing her in a column of flame so powerful Rooster felt its heat against his face. The crowd felt it, too, shrinking back, shielding their eyes with upraised hands.

  And then the fire began to lift up from the floor. There was a gap now; first Red’s bare feet, then her shins, then her knees visible. The fire lifted, impossibly, shrank down, rushed to land in her palms. Down, down, down, until it was nothing more than two handfuls again.

  Red closed her hands into fists, and the flames went out.

  Total silence reigned for the span of a heartbeat.

  And then the applause.

  Red’s arms shook visibly as she lowered them to her sides. When she curtsied for her clapping audience, she wobbled.

  Rooster stepped up to the stage and caught her around the waist when she turned to him. The second she was no longer facing the crowd, the smile dropped away, eyelids flagging and mouth going slack with exhaustion. It was always this way after she used her power; she was always weak, and shaky, hardly able to walk.

  “Come on, Little Red,” he murmured, setting her back into her boots, right where she’d left them on the spongy grass. “Let’s get you something to drink.”

  “Did I do okay?” she asked, leaning into his chest, letting him hold her weight.

  “You always do.”

  He felt the shape of the smile she pressed into his shoulder, happy and sweet, warm as the hood of a running car.

  ~*~

  Rooster bought a bottle of Coke from one of the concession stands and found an out-of-the-way spot behind a tent, where Red could sit down on a plastic crate and catch her breath. The day had been warm, but it was cool now, after dark, the wind toying with her hair. She shivered, and Rooster immediately shrugged off his jacket.

  “I’m alright,” she said, but tucked her nose gratefully into the Sherpa collar when he draped the jacket around her shoulders.

  “Drink your Coke.”

  “Bossy,” she accused, but smiled, and took a few more sips.

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “Fine.” But she tugged the jacket tighter around her.

  Don’t be stubborn, he started to tell her, but a man’s voice intruded on their moment of calm. “There you are,” the manager said, appearing around the corner of the tent, moving toward them as quickly as his stubby legs could carry him. In the ambient light of the fair, Rooster could see that the man had sweated completely through his shirt, despite the chill of the evening. “Thought you’d skipped out without your money,” he said in a way that signaled he wished they would have.

  Rooster shifted a fraction, sliding neatly into place between Red and the manager as he – his name was Bailey, Rooster remembered – drew up in front of them, red-faced and puffing.

  “Jesus, I’ve been looking all over,” he muttered, fishing into his breast pocket and thrusting a square of white paper toward Rooster. “Here. I made it out to cash. The BoA on the corner should take care of it for ya.”

  Rooster folded his arms in a way that he knew jacked his shoulders up and emphasized the span of his chest. “I asked for cash. Not a check made out to it.”

  “I don’t have cash.”

  “It’s a carnival. That’s all anyone pays with.”

  Bailey sneered. “Take it or leave it. It’s all I got.”

  At another time, Rooster might have told the guy to fuck off, grabbed Red, and stalked off without the money. But he thought about the three quarters in the bottom of his wallet, and common sense won out over pride. A check meant they’d have to stay the night here in Evanston City, wait until the bank opened at nine the next morning. Staying meant sitting still in a city in which Red had been spotted using her powers. It meant a risk he wasn’t sure they could afford to take.

  But they couldn’t run any farther on a quarter tank and Red’s magical hand fire.

  With a resigned glare, he reached for the check.

  And Bailey tugged it back. “We’ve got a gig in Cody next,” he said, a professional gleam in his eyes. “Bozeman after that. Your girl’s got some kinda talent. You two could come with us and there’s more where this came from.” He waggled his brows like the sleaziest used car salesman in the world.

  “Gonna have to pass,” Rooster said flatly.

  Bailey sighed. “That’s a shame. How’s she do it anyway? Propane lines in her sleeves, right?” But he squinted, like he doubted that. Where would the tank go, after all?

  “A magician never reveals her secrets,” Rooster said, and snatched the check before it could be pulled back again. The paper was damp from Bailey’s hand.

  The manager snorted. “Suit yourself.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but Rooster glared at him until he shrugged and retreated, waddling back around the side of the tent again.

  Out on the midway, fair-goers laughed and shouted, their voices tangling with one another until it was an indistinguishable murmur, the flow of a river over rocks. The air smelled like fried foods, stomach-turning and greasy. The breeze picked up paper scraps – dropped ticket stubs and candy wrappers – and rustled them around their feet, here in their pocket of relative quiet.

  Same story, different night.

  It wasn’t so bad.

  But it wasn’t what he wanted for Red.

  Rooster stared down at the smudged ink on the check – two-hundred dollars – and wondered if they’d be able to bum some corn dogs and funnel cake on their way out.

  Behind him, Red said, “We’re staying the night?”

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “Guess so.”

&
nbsp; ~*~

  He called her Red.

  He gave her a life, one that was worth sharing, worth protecting. Taught her how to drive. How to shoot a gun. Shared his cigarettes, his bourbon bottles wrapped in brown paper, the glass sticky and him-flavored at the mouth. He taught her the words to every Bad Company song. How to make a bacon-and-grilled-cheese sandwich on a hotel hot plate. Helped her come up with names for all the constellations, because they didn’t know the real ones.

  He gave her the world...and then stood against it with her. But it started with a name.

  She was his Red.

  And he was her Rooster.

  She had a real name, if that’s what you wanted to call it. An official name on the driver’s license and passport he’d bought her. On those documents she was listed as Ruby Jane Russell. It was a nice name, she thought; she liked the way the Rs rolled off her tongue; like a character in a comic book. Which, given her talents, seemed pretty appropriate. Whenever they encountered strangers – which was every day – she introduced herself as Ruby. Red was just for Rooster, who’d saved her, given her a home, even if at the moment it was just a four-door Dodge truck coated in road dust. They’d settle somewhere eventually, he always said, but then someone somewhere would look at her just a little too long, and he’d get twitchy, start throwing duffel bags in the truck. Every time they started to think the Institute had stopped looking for her, there was another team of helmeted, black-clad specialists waiting around the corner.

  Rooster hadn’t killed all of them.

  In the middle of the night, curled up on a lumpy hotel bed, Red wished that he had. She could handle the running just fine, but it was hard on Rooster.

  Like tonight: as they left through the portable corral gates that served as the main entrance to the carnival, she could see the little hitch in his stride that meant he was working very hard not to limp.

  His hand rested steady on her shoulder, though, keeping her tight to his side – his bad one, leaving his right hand free to wield a gun, if he needed to. “Almost there,” he said as they crossed the field that served as a parking lot, and she knew he was talking more to himself than to her.