Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  It was all too much, suddenly. The absurd turn his quiet life had taken.

  “Okay.” He slapped his hand down on the table, harder then he’d ever been able; all their water glasses jumped. Whatever. He wasn’t sorry. “What are we going to do? What am I–” He broke off, throat tightening. “What am I going to do?”

  Sasha looked sympathetic.

  Nikita looked like an asshole – because he was one.

  “We’ll find somewhere for you to lay low,” he said, dismissive. “Until we figure out–”

  “No,” Jamie said, through his teeth this time. “What am I going to do? With my life? I’m legally dead, and I…” Oh shit, he was breathing too hard, loud and rough enough to attract a concerned glance from the next table. “I…”

  Alexei laid his hand over top of Jamie’s, and Jamie jerked out from under it, almost dumping his plate in his lap.

  Alexei sighed. “You should calm down.”

  “I can’t. My roommate saw me getting coffee this morning, and she screamed. And I can never go home…”

  When he was thirteen, and weighed no more than a wet cat, according to his grandmother, Brent Hardman had taken a box cutter to the oil painting he’d spent three months painstakingly perfecting in hopes of entering it into a local youth art show. He’d left it in the art room at school, and went in early one morning, flipped on the lights. The canvas in tatters. The yellow-handled box cutter – the same one Brent had been flipping over and over on the bus yesterday, the one he’d tucked in his pocket before the driver could see – on the table beside it. No painting; no entry for the contest; no chance to get into the exclusive May-Thorough summer program for gifted young artists…

  He’d tilted the box cutter under the harsh lights, watched the light catch its blade. And he’d wondered. He’d almost…thought about the way his blood would look, welling against his too-white skin. Running off his wrist, dripping onto the tile. An art piece all its own.

  He’d wondered, as a kid, what it would like to no longer be alive. Simpler, he’d always thought. Being dead wasn’t complicated.

  Except now he was dead, on paper, and blood was something he had to drink, and everything, everything was complicated and awful.

  He put his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. “I don’t want this,” he whispered. “None of it. And I don’t know what to do.”

  Alexei laid a consoling hand in the middle of his back, and this time he didn’t try to avoid the touch. It was a measure of small comfort, if nothing else, genuine or not.

  “Jamie,” Nikita said. “Look at me.”

  He did, through the gaps in his fingers, hating him.

  “It doesn’t matter if you want this. It happened.” His voice lowered a fraction; a tiny note of sympathy crept in. “It won’t be easy, learning to live this way. But you can’t collapse. If your life before was worth something, then this one has to be as well.”

  Sasha turned to smile at his friend, expression almost proud.

  Nikita ignored him, staring steadily at Jamie. “We can help you. And right now, we need your help, too. Someone’s abusing immortality in this city, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

  Jamie let his hands fall slowly down to the table. “But – but I’m an artist.” And it sounded like Nikita was asking something of him he’d never contemplated before.

  He nodded. “Not just. Not anymore.”

  ~*~

  “I don’t even know what to think anymore,” Captain Abbot fumed. “Something ate them? Ate them?”

  Lanny tossed his stress ball from one hand to the other and said, “Wouldn’t be the first time a dealer had a buncha riled up pits.”

  Abbot stopped his pacing, spun, and pinned his glare on Lanny. “And you. The vics were your neighbors.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lanny said, blandly. They’d all learned it was best not to respond in kind when the captain got like this.

  “We’re working on some possible leads,” Trina said.

  He swung his glare to her – long enough to make her want to wriggle down into her shirt collar – then muttered something unintelligible and stormed toward his office.

  “That went well,” Lanny said.

  She sighed. “Speaking of leads…”

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Jesus, don’t pull a muscle.”

  “What if we go back to the scene, and I” – he tapped the end of his nose – “tried to follow them?”

  Something about the gesture, and the offer, struck her as unbearably cute, so she hated to burst his bubble. “Sasha already sniffed it out, though. Said the trail ends. They must have gotten in a car.”

  “Oh. Right. I knew that.” He covered his disappointment poorly. “Well–”

  “Trina,” someone said, and she glanced up to find one of the young patrols walking toward her desk, a man in an expensive suit following along behind. “You’ve got a visitor.”

  She hitched up straighter in her chair. “I can see that.”

  The man in the suit – iron-haired, but well-preserved, upright and fit for this age – stepped forward and offered a large, tan hand for her to shake. “Detective Baskin? I’m Dr. Fowler with the Ingraham Institute of Medical Technology.”

  She broke out in goosebumps. If she closed her eyes, she could see Dr. Charles Ingraham’s smiling face, hear his stumbling Russian.

  She swallowed and pulled her hand back, hoping Dr. Fowler didn’t notice that it had gone suddenly clammy. “Hello.”

  Lanny gave her a sharp look from behind his desk.

  “May I sit?” Dr. Fowler asked, motioning to the chair angled toward their pushed-together desks.

  Trina had to clear her throat. “Sure.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, doc,” Lanny drawled, his running-interference voice. “But we weren’t expecting a house call.”

  The doctor arranged himself in the chair and favored Lanny with a smile that was polite, but cold. “My apologies. I’m sure you’re both very busy, and I hate to disturb” – his gaze returned to Trina – “but I think we might be able to help each other.”

  Trina lifted her brows. “That doesn’t exactly sound cop-kosher, Dr. Fowler.”

  He chuckled. “No, I guess it doesn’t. I’m sorry, let me try again.” He settled deeper into his chair, hands clasped together on his knee. “At the Ingraham Institute, we’re working on improving health in a number of areas,–”

  Sales pitch, Lanny mouthed.

  “–working on breakthrough drug studies that would treat both physical ailments…and mental ones. I’m afraid that’s why I’m here.” He looked troubled, regretful. “Several murder cases have made the news recently, all fielded by this precinct – by you and your partner – and, well – I believe I may know who’s responsible for these horrible crimes.”

  Lanny held up a piece of paper where the doctor couldn’t see it, holy fucking shit scrawled across it in the blue ink of his favorite pen.

  “Friends of yours?” Trina asked.

  “Patients,” he said firmly. “Patients who are, to put it bluntly, not in their right minds. They’ve been undergoing extensive psychological evaluation and treatment at our facility in Queens.”

  “Treatment?” Lanny said. “What’s that like? Electroshock?”

  Dr. Fowler grimaced. “No, Detective Webb. We’ve come a long way since the days of sanatoriums. The patients I’m referring to are in the midst of a drug trial for a new antipsychotic medication. They’re staying at the facility – a safety measure for them and those around them. And, regretfully, they slipped out.”

  “So they escaped,” Trina said, voice flat. It was taking every ounce of composure not to betray her mounting panic.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have photos?”

  “Well,” he hedged. “I’d hoped you’d allow me and my people to try to apprehend them so that they can return to the Institute and get the treatment they need.”

  She took
a quick, constricted breath. “Doctor Fowler, if this is the work of your patients, this is murder. Whether they’re sent to jail or remanded to your custody is up to a judge, maybe a jury. But it’s not up to me. It’s my job to arrest them and take them into custody.”

  “Of course.” He dipped his head. “I understand. Only…”

  “What?”

  “I hope you’ll be careful.” Something dark flashed in his eyes, there and gone, that left her stomach clenching. “These men are very dangerous. Especially when cornered.” He pulled a white business card from his breast pocket and set it on the edge of her desk. “Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything. I’d like us to work together to rectify this situation.”

  “Right,” she said.

  He stood. “Pleasure meeting you. I wish it had been under different circumstances.”

  “Yeah.”

  When he was gone, Lanny said, “Why do you look like you wanna throw up?”

  She swallowed hard. “Because I do. The Ingraham Institute? That was founded in 1942, by a doctor who was studying Sasha.”

  He blinked. “Let me say it out loud this time. Holy fucking shit.”

  “The people who sent feral werewolves to track you,” she said, gasping a little, “are fucking government funded.”

  10

  Trina slid the small, white card across the table and a superstitious, silly part of Nikita didn’t want to touch the thing. He pushed through the urge to flick it away and instead picked it up between thumb and forefinger, bringing it to his face so he could read it in the dim light.

  Dr. John H. Fowler, M.D; Ph.D.

  Ingraham Institute of Medical Technology

  “Treatment for a once-distant horizon of health.”

  They were seated at two pushed-together tables in the Lion’s Den, the quiet murmuring of the evening crowd of patrons providing a wall of privacy around their odd little group. He would have preferred to be at home, but he didn’t trust privacy now; they had been tracked to Lanny’s home, and not while they were out on the street. That meant the Institute didn’t want to make a scene – not a public one, anyway. He could handle two feral wolves no problem, but if he got the others hurt, the ones who depended on him…well, he’d done that more than enough for all the lifetimes he was going to be forced to live.

  So here they sat, letting humanity serve as a shield of sorts.

  He flipped the card over and read the number and email address on the back. “He knows who you are,” he said, passing the card to Sasha, who, rather than read it, brought it to his nose and sniffed at it, growl rumbling deep in his chest.

  “He knows I’m Lanny’s partner, at least. Because I’m assuming he knows Lanny’s a vampire,” she said. She looked exhausted, elbows braced on the table, hair frizzing at the temples.

  Nikita cocked a brow. “Is that it? Or, in some archive deep in their institute, does the name ‘Baskin’ mean something?”

  “I…” she trailed off, eyes widening. She clearly hadn’t thought of that.

  “How did they know to look for me?” Lanny asked. He’d had just enough whiskey to forget how much he seemed to dislike all of them, leaning forward onto the table. “Because I get that they were trying to track me this morning, sure, but why? They shouldn’t have known I was a vampire” – he winced after he said it, voice dropping – “or that I even knew any.”

  “Because of Chad?” Trina suggested.

  “But how did they know to look for me?”

  “Scent markers,” Sasha said, tossing the card onto the table with a look of disgust.

  Nikita prodded him with a little nudge of his elbow.

  Sasha took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “Everyone has a scent, yes? No two people are the same. But I can smell relation. I can smell when people are mates, or mother and children. There are…I don’t know. Markers there. Like threads. Lanny smells like himself, but there’s a thread of his sire – of Alexei.” He flashed his teeth, briefly, at the vampire in question.

  “They heard about Chad on the news and when they tracked him, they found all of our scents. Found Alexei’s…and the vampire Alexei spawned.”

  “What do they want with us?” Jamie asked, face ashen. He rubbed at the condensation on his beer glass with nervous fingers.

  “To study us,” Nikita said. “To draw our blood, and cut us open, run tests, and use our bodies to make human medicine.”

  “Nice,” Lanny muttered.

  Jamie drained half his beer in one gulp.

  Trina said, “You can’t know that.” But her voice wavered.

  “It’s what they were trying to do in the forties in Russia,” he said, giving her a level look. “Only now technology’s caught up with what they want to do. So. Worse, I’d imagine.”

  “You’re not serious,” Alexei said, face betraying his worry.

  “I told you what they did with Rasputin. What they did with Sasha. These people – they want to live forever, but they don’t want to be monsters.” He downed his vodka; when he set the glass down, Trina was giving him a sad look. Pitying.

  “If that’s true” – and he knew she believed him, could see it in her eyes – “then what are we going to do about it?”

  “We?” He snorted. “You’re human.”

  “And closely linked to all of you. Has it been that long since you were a cop? What’s the first thing you do when you can’t track someone down? Haul in their known associates and grill them.”

  “Shit,” he said, because yes, she was right. But he didn’t want her to be. In seventy-five years what he was had never touched the family he’d left behind; never hurt his blood. This wasn’t fair.

  “These people are doctors,” Alexei said, “they can’t arrest us.”

  “Try telling that to Mulder and Scully when they show up with handcuffs,” Trina said wearily. “Or whatever you’d need to catch a vampire.”

  “One of those dinosaur nets from Jurassic Park,” Lanny suggested.

  Idiot, Nikita thought savagely. An idiot he was likely going to have to put up with for the rest of eternity…however long that turned out to be.

  “Jesus,” Trina said, pushing her hands through her hair. “I need some sleep.”

  There were murmurs of agreement, and Nikita realized they were all looking at him.

  For a moment, he had a terrible sense of déjà vu. Up to his ankles in melting snow, scent of pine forest heavy in his lungs, a group of men in black, and one ferocious sniper in army greens, all turning to him for guidance.

  As he had back then, Sasha looked at him now with unwavering faith, wagging his figurative tail.

  “I don’t guess I can talk you into running away?” he asked.

  Trina gave him a flat look that squeezed his heart. So like Katya.

  “Fine. Then I think I might know where we could go.”

  ~*~

  “What is this place?” Trina asked.

  “Somewhere safe,” Nikita said. The I hope was present in the silence after.

  They stood on the sidewalk in front of a three-story brick walkup that was just dilapidated enough to be charming without being scary. Lights glowed in the upper windows, and a beautiful, hand-lettered sign beside the turquoise front door said that the Mysterious Miss Colette’s hours of operation were ten-to-four on weekdays, noon-to-six on weekends. A closer look revealed heavy drapes in the first-floor windows, and an assortment of turned-off neon signs – one of which looked like a crescent moon. The flower boxes overflowed with pink and white and lavender flowers that seemed to glow in the moonlight; Trina could smell strong herbs in them, too.

  “Miss Colette,” Jamie said. “I’ve heard of her. Someone in my class used to have her palm read here.”

  “You brought us to see a psychic?” Lanny asked with obvious disapproval.

  “No.” Nikita finished composing a text and slid his phone into his pocket. “I brought you to see a vampire.”

  A light came on downstairs, and a moment lat
er the turquoise door opened. A woman stood framed in silhouette at the top of the stairs, tall and slender, in a skirt that skimmed the ground. “Don’t you know we’re closed?” she called down in an accent Trina couldn’t place: something warm and rich and flavored with the Caribbean.

  Nikita gave her a very small smile. “Hello, Colette.”

  The woman sighed, and the accent fell away, voice nothing but New York – but still warm. “You don’t ever come around here unless something’s wrong. What is it this time, Nik?”

  “I’ll explain. Can we come up?”

  She stepped forward, into the pool of illumination provided by the security light over the door, and Trina saw dark skin and high cheekbones, big tip-tilted eyes and elaborate caramel dreads that fell past her shoulders. A hunk of crystal hung on a cord around her neck, catching and refracting the light. “I smell three vamps, and only one of them’s you.”

  “They’re friends,” Nikita said, sighing. “Just…please?”

  She stared at them a long, heavy moment. “Alright, fine. But if you break anything you buy it.”

  “Of course.”

  Lanny stepped up to Trina’s side as they moved toward the door, hand settling at the small of her back. She flinched – didn’t want to, or mean to, and settled again right away, but he pulled back, and the silence between them bristled, suddenly.

  Nikita led them up the stairs and into a wide entryway that was. Well. It was dazzling. A heavy round wooden table dominated the space, its surface dotted with vases of all shapes, sizes, and colors, all of them bursting with flowers and succulents, fern fronds and ivy. White candles lay scattered between, and in the front, propped up on a wire rack, were brochures. Over it all hung a massive antique chandelier dripping with crystal, threaded with Christmas lights. Framed photos lined the red-papered walls; Trina caught glimpses of old black and white portraits. Under them sat two neat rows of cushioned chairs.