“No, but I know your record, and it’s spotless. You’re keeping something to yourself, and you’re a good leader, so you’re not out to sabotage us all. You’re having second thoughts.” She smiled a fraction when she said it, pleased that she’d figured him out. “Why?”
Jake held her gaze stubbornly for a long moment, and then caved, glancing away, exhaling tiredly through his nose. He’d never before been the one to back down first in a game of chicken; but he guessed he wasn’t the same man he’d been then. The Major Treadwell who’d sacrificed himself for his unit had died in a desert inferno; the blind man who’d crawled back, who’d been given a second chance and the leadership of this hackneyed team, wasn’t so unwaveringly sure of himself.
“I had an encounter with her in the diner,” he admitted. “She spilled coffee on me – it was an accident, but it burned my hand all to be damned. But. Then. She touched my arm and she…I don’t know how she did it, but the burn healed. Right there.” He lifted his unblemished right hand. “I ought to be red and blistered, and I’m fine.” He shook his head. “They told us she was powerful, and that she could control fire – crazy comic book shit, right? – but they didn’t tell us she could heal people, too.”
When he glanced back, Ramirez had her brows furrowed. “Maybe they didn’t know.”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “And maybe they don’t know anything. You read the same file I did. In all the records of Ruby Russell and Rooster Palmer hurting people, were any of the victims civilians?”
She looked up toward the ceiling, chewing on the inside of her cheek, thinking. “I dunno.”
“Well, I do. And they weren’t. The only people they’ve ever harmed were trying to apprehend them.”
Her gaze snapped back to him, sharper than before. “So what are you saying?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know when I do.”
18
Sasha
Smell was his strongest sense, and that was what returned to him first as he swam up out of the darkness, becoming aware that he was alive, and that he felt really, really terrible. Sasha dragged a ragged breath in through his mouth and smelled sweat, and urine – his own – and the sickly-sweet tang of chemicals mingling with the two; his body trying to get rid of the drug they’d used to put him under. But under those scents he detected metal, and fresh paint; bleach and lemon-scented disinfectant; rubbing alcohol, and latex gloves. And humans. Lots and lots of humans.
He tried to open his eyes and they were crusted shut.
Opened his mouth and his lips pulled apart like half-dried, peeling paint, his tongue thick and coated.
He could hear voices, indistinct murmurs, and the hum and swish and beep of machines. The distant thump of doors opening and closing.
There was something…something…
He finally got his eyes open a crack and recoiled from the bright light above him, growling brokenly in the back of his throat.
“He’s awake,” a man’s voice said, and shoes shuffled across slick tile floors.
There was a cool slab beneath him, and cuffs pinning his wrists, and ankles, and torso to it.
Two things hit him all at once, blasting through the last of the drug’s fog:
One: he was in a lab. He knew because he’d been in one before.
And two: there was a vampire here. Somewhere near. And he wasn’t one that Sasha had ever scented before.
He opened his eyes, not caring that they watered beneath the assault of the light. Opened his lungs and nostrils, sucked in air, trying to take in as much of his surroundings as possible.
A young man in a white lab coat approached him and he growled, a low, deep, constant rumble.
The young man hesitated, eyes widening. “Um…doctor?”
A second man stepped forward, this one older, more confident. An unremarkable man with glasses and gray hair, a pleasant smile.
“Hello, Sasha,” he said. “My name’s Doctor Talbot.”
Sasha bared his teeth, opened his mouth, and snarled.
The doctor chuckled.
Something tugged at the crook of his elbow – a needle. He had an IV. And Dr. Talbot’s hand was on the line, pressing the button there.
Oh, Sasha thought, as the room tilted. More drugs. Sending him back under.
Where was Nikita? he wondered, frantically, panic clawing at his insides as his vision wavered. He would be so worried, so frantic, and trying not to show it, not letting anyone help him. Nik needed to feed, he needed Sasha to…to…
Please no, he thought, wildly, desperately.
And then he was gone again.
19
Buffalo, New York
It was a long driveway. A trio of black mailboxes, hand-painted with the Baskin name, marked the head of it; two well-worn grooves in the heat-burned summer grass led down a slight incline, across a wide expanse of empty field, and then began climbing again toward the compound. That’s what her dad always called the place: the compound. With three main houses, half a dozen smaller domiciles that housed her cousins who wouldn’t fly the coop, two workshops, and three warehouses, it certainly looked and felt like the sort of place someone would call a compound.
Nikita slowed the Barracuda as they started to climb the long, gradual hill that would take them to the main house, his gaze darting between the windshield and the windows to either side. He made a snorting, choking sort of sound when they passed the first warehouse: a massive steel building painted classic barn red.
“You didn’t tell me your family’s a bunch of farmers,” he muttered, and she couldn’t decide if he sounded disgusted…or uncertain.
“Furniture makers,” she corrected, filled with a strange mix of emotions herself. Turning into the driveway, going over those first ruts where rainwater had carved the gravel away from the shoulder of the road, had always tugged at the knot she seemed to carry with her when she was away from home. Whether it was the drama of high school, or the stress of community college, or the rigors of the academy, patrol, and finally her detective work, the world outside these fifty acres fed tension into her body. A transfer so gradual she never noticed it until she started down the old familiar tire tracks in the grass of the front field and realized she could breathe again, her chest loose and her heart light.
She felt that now, the relief so sudden and strong it was almost dizzying – that’s how crazy things had been. But she knew trepidation, too. Her dad had met Lanny, but no one else had. And it wasn’t just her lover – her immortal lover – she was bringing to meet her entire family. She had no idea which would be stranger to everyone: the return of the prodigal great-grandpa, or the presence of the former heir to the Russian empire.
It was a toss-up.
“How much farther’s the house?” Nikita grumbled.
She checked the rearview mirror and saw Lanny and his Expedition keeping pace behind them. “One of the houses, you mean. And not much farther. Up past those trees.”
“One? Jesus…”
The driveway curved through a copse of ancient, towering oaks, their wide trunks limned in the dazzling, dew-drenched gold of first light. They’d stopped and waited, on the way up, choking down burgers at an all-night diner; Lanny and Nikita smoking cigarettes in the parking lot as the breeze from passing eighteen-wheelers tried to blow out their matches. Exhausted, dreaming of her bed in her old room, and her mother’s strong embrace, Trina had wanted to drive straight through. But she’d realized, considering the company she was bringing, that turning up at four in the morning, in the bewildering dark, wasn’t the best idea. And it turned out that she’d needed to see the place in the sunrise light, smiling as they cleared the last of the trees and the main house came into view.
It was low and sprawling, built by hand by her grandfather and his half-brother when they’d first come to America, an unremarkable brown board and batten siding with a gently sloped roof. There’d been no blueprint, and the inside was gloriously confusing and unconventional, rooms leading into other rooms, go
ing on into seeming forever.
Her grandparents’ new place looked down on it from the hill above, and off to the right, her uncle had built a midcentury stone ranch whose windows caught the orange fire of the rising sun. Beyond lay the other outbuildings, the cottages, the rest of the warehouses and the workshops, all of it threaded down narrow tracks that wended through trees older than her entire family lineage; but those three houses were the heart of the place.
Trina let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “Home sweet home,” she murmured. When she glanced over at Nikita, his mouth was set, his knuckles white on the wheel. “Don’t forget we’re Russian. This isn’t even gonna be close to the weirdest thing they’ve ever heard.”
He looked like he tried to smile, the expression pained.
They parked both cars in the gravel in front of the house, beside her dad’s truck, and Trina registered surprise and nervousness on everyone’s faces.
“Dude. Farmer Baskin,” Lanny muttered.
“Not a farmer,” she said. “Also, why do you guys sound like that’s a bad thing?”
Jamie chafed at his arms as if he was cold, jaw trembling slightly. “You told them we were coming, right?”
“I did,” she hedged. She’d texted her mom about an hour ago that she was coming and bringing friends – she’d just failed to mention who said friends were.
He nodded, looking unconvinced.
Alexei was the only one who seemed unbothered. He surveyed the land around them with a small, pleased smile. “I like it. Reminds me of holidaying in Poland.”
“Glad the tsar approves,” she said, only half-joking. “Okay, so–”
She heard the front door of the house open behind her, and her mother called, “Trina?”
She turned around with a smile ready, heart pounding. “Hi, Mom.”
It was clearly a workshop day, her mother dressed in an old, patched pair of her husband’s overalls, the ankles cuffed, the front pocket holding a pair of yellow leather work gloves. Her hair was pulled back, little auburn wisps framing her face. Trina hadn’t inherited her eyes – warm brown, expressive and nothing like the cold, calculating Baskin blue. Eyes that moved across their little group with open curiosity. “When you said ‘friends,’” she started, “I didn’t think – oh, hi, Lanny.”
“Hi, Mrs. B.”
“…that you meant…” And then her gaze found Nikita. And widened, mouth opening a fraction in shock.
Trina knew exactly what she was thinking of. In the Russian tradition, there was a short stretch of hallway in the house, between the den and the kitchen, that was completely dominated by family photos: a variety of posed school portraits and candid shots. In the very center was a blown-up black and white snapshot of her grandfather, Kolya, and his wife, their arms around one another, standing on the building site of the house, before they’d even broken ground. In that photo, her grandfather looked Hollywood handsome: lean and broad-shouldered, with a narrow, sharp-edged face, and light eyes; his smile just a little wicked. In that photo, Kolya Baskin was the spitting image of his father: Nikita.
“Mom,” Trina said, holding up a hand. “Please don’t freak out.”
Her mother brought a hand up to her throat…but only swallowed a few times, nodding, eyes pinned to Nikita who stood frozen like a deer about to bolt. Finally, she nodded. Blew out a deep breath. “Okay. So. I guess the stories were true.”
“What?” Trina said, and felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. “What stories?”
Her mother’s eyes flicked to her briefly, then back. “Your grandpa knows them better than me, obviously. But.” She took a deep breath and managed a shaky smile. “Hi, Nikita.”
Nikita swallowed, throat bobbing, but said nothing.
“Do vampires eat breakfast? ‘Cause we’re making a literal ton of food.”
“I dunno about him, but this one does,” Lanny said, and smiled wide enough to show his fangs.
Mom blinked at him, then sighed, expression becoming resigned. “Young lady.” Her gaze came back to Trina. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
~*~
He shouldn’t have come here. That thought pounded inside Nikita’s head like a heartbeat as he sat at a long, handmade plank table in Steve and Rachel Baskin’s kitchen, an awful, cold numbness overtaking him like frost creeping across a statue. After Sasha was taken, every conscious thought had been dedicated to worrying about the horrifying possibilities that lay there. Sasha wounded; Sasha held captive; Sasha tortured. Food tasted like ash; breath felt like the scrape of knives in his lungs; all he’d cared about was finding him, freeing him, getting him back and looking over him with his own eyes and hands to make sure he was whole. And then ripping the throats out of the bastards who’d taken him. He’d been compromised by his worry, and that was why he’d let Trina talk them into coming here.
Which he now knew was a horrible mistake.
“So let me get this straight,” Steve Baskin said, turning away from the counter to set a heaping plate of bacon on the table in front of them. “You,” he said, speaking to his daughter, “managed to find your great-grandad, and Alexei Romanov, and get Lanny turned into a vampire all in one go. Right?”
Trina glared up at him. “And you knew he existed” – she gestured toward Nikita – “and just decided to never mention it?”
Steve propped his hands on his hips. “We didn’t know. Nobody did. It was just stories my grandmother used to tell.”
“Why didn’t I ever hear any of them?” Trina asked hotly. She vibrated with anger.
Her mother came to the table, a plate of bagels in her hand. “Well, honey, they weren’t nice stories. Monsters, and the war, and all that blood.” She made an elegant face of distaste. “They weren’t the sorts of things I wanted to tell my little girl.”
“Unbelievable,” Trina muttered.
“Lanny,” Steve said, brows knitting in concern. “How did this – are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah.” Lanny shrugged, and Nikita could tell his bravado was entirely fake – in the part of his brain that was managing to catalogue all of this and read emotions. “I’m cool. I mean, I wasn’t. This guy” – he jerked a thumb at Alexei beside him – “didn’t even ask, or anything. I was pissed. But. Yeah, so I had cancer…? Was kinda dying. I guess it all worked out.” He shrugged again, inelegant caveman that he was.
Steve opened and closed his mouth a few times, traded a helpless look with his wife. “Alright…”
In the awkward pause that followed, Nikita’s brain latched onto one small, important detail. The only thing capable of breaking through his fog.
“Wait,” he said, voice coming out rusty, and all eyes turned toward him. It was the first word he’d spoken since they arrived. “You said…your grandmother.”
Steve turned to him, expression full of so much unselfish, freely given sympathy that Nikita had to turn his head away, pulse flaring hot in his throat, stomach churning. “Yeah,” Steve – his grandson – said quietly. “Katya.”
Nikita stared at a knothole in the wood of the table and forced his lungs to work. Inhale. Exhale. “Is she…?” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“No, I’m sorry.” The room had gone silent, no sound save the gentle tone of Steve’s voice. “She passed last year.”
Last year. And all the time up until then she’d been here, in Buffalo, a car trip away. If Trina had found him a year ago, if he’d thought to look…
He couldn’t breathe.
“Nik,” Trina said, sad and soft, but he was already moving, shoving up from the table and stalking back through the house to the door.
Last year. Another chance to torture him.
~*~
“I should have told him,” Trina said, a blanketing guilt replacing her anger. She took a deep breath that did nothing to ease the tightness in her chest. “Things have been so crazy, and it hasn’t come up. I just.” She shook her head. It was just blow after blow for Nikita. H
e’d survived a lot – survived horrors – but everyone had a breaking point. Even ex-Chekist vampires. She wondered if they were nearing the edges of his.
“I’ll go check on him,” Jamie offered, rising.
He wouldn’t be much comfort, but Trina let him go, knowing she had to stay here and keep hashing things out with her parents.
Both of whom studied her with unusual expressions. Part regret, part sympathy, part fear.
She felt very tired, suddenly. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
They sighed together.
“Not unless we had to,” Dad said. “We were betting on that being a really, really slim chance.”
“So none of this is a surprise to you?” She gestured to Lanny and Alexei beside her.
Her dad winced.
Her mother said, “Well, it’s a little bit of a surprise.”
“God, Mom…”
“You didn’t expect us to believe vampires, and werewolves, and all those existed, did you?”
“Ouch, Mrs. B,” Lanny said, deadpan. “That hurts.”
“You know what?” Trina held up a silencing hand. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry. So. Whatever. Just assume I’m going to be pissed about this for a while.” And she would.
“Sorry, bug,” Dad said, his smile genuinely apologetic. Then he seemed to realize something, gaze sweeping back and forth across the kitchen. “Hey. If Nik’s real…then where’s Sasha?”
Trina blew out a breath. “That’s actually why I dragged these guys up here.”
~*~
Sasha always said that Nikita liked to punish himself. He said it as sweetly and supportively as it could be said, but still. Nikita always denied it, because that wasn’t the sort of thing a person could own up to and continue to do. He was in denial – was it really punishing yourself if everything truly was your fault? He didn’t think so. He’d done terrible things in his unnaturally long life, for the Soviet Union and then for himself afterward, and he thought a little guilt was his due. Or a lot of guilt, in his case.
Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2) Page 21
