Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  He lifted arms that felt like stone pillars and pulled up short; thick metal cuffs locked on his wrists bit into his skin with unusual sharpness, and he hissed at the resultant pain, letting his hands fall to the mattress. He wiggled his feet and felt similar cuffs there; heard the rattle of chains.

  His next breath left his lungs in a rush, and panic tightened like a vise around his ribs, preventing him from drawing air back in. He stared up at the acoustic ceiling tiles and opened his mouth, panting shallowly as sweat bloomed across his body.

  Trapped.

  A prisoner.

  He couldn’t get loose, and Nikita was, Nik was…

  Panicking wouldn’t help, but he couldn’t stop it, the hot and cold waves of fear shifting through him, leaving him light-headed. Or maybe that was just the drugs.

  A quiet knock sounded at the door.

  He held his breath.

  The knob turned, and the door swung slowly inward. He heard the clip of shoes and then the door shut again.

  When he took his next breath, he smelled…

  Forest. Resin. Wet earth. And the faint musky undercurrent of…

  Wolf.

  He sat bolt upright before he remembered the cuffs; they bit hard, hurt badly, but he managed to get upright, swaying a little from the headrush.

  “Oh, hey, it’s alright,” the intruder said, her voice soft, Southern at the edges. Kind, somehow.

  When his equilibrium had steadied, he saw a girl standing with her back to the door. Slight, fresh-faced. A tumble of dark hair and shiny, cotton candy pink lips.

  He took a few more ragged breaths, confirming what he’d known on the first sniff: she was a wolf. Like him.

  Or, unlike him, given that she was loose, and he was chained to a bed.

  He worked his jaw a few moments, trying to peel his dry tongue off the roof of his mouth before he could form words. When they came, they were halting and cracked. “Who are you?” He didn’t have the energy to be polite.

  She smiled softly like she understood.

  “I’m Annabel. And I’m thinking you must be Sasha.”

  No sense lying, he guessed. They already knew who he was – Dr. Talbot standing over him, “Hello, Sasha, my name is Doctor Talbot,” and that reptilian smile that made Sasha shiver even now, just at the memory. “Yes.” He darted his tongue across his lips, but both were dry, and so it did no good. “How do you know my name? How does – he know my name?”

  Her brows knit together in concern, and she took a hesitant step forward.

  He growled before he registered the impulse to do so, a weak and sad little rumble in his chest.

  She made a low chuffing sound in response, gaze soft, body language non-threatening. It’s okay, she projected. I won’t hurt you.

  “I’m not sure exactly,” she said. “Dr. Talbot said the Institute was founded a long time ago. 1941, maybe?”

  “Forty-two,” Sasha said, pushing back against the memories that crowded his mind: nervous Dr. Ingraham with his stumbling Russian; Rasputin lying on a table, looking dead; the pain of a knife across his palm; the slippery Latin words on his tongue…

  He realized he’d shut his eyes and opened them again, seeing that the girl – Annabel – had inched closer, expression achingly sympathetic.

  “They musta had files or something leftover,” she said. “They knew all sorts of stuff about you.”

  He curled his hands into fists and felt hot little trickles of blood slide down his knuckles from the lacerations where the cuffs had bit into his skin.

  “But I know your name because Val told it to me,” Annabel continued, and Sasha stilled.

  “Val?”

  She smiled. “The one and only. He told me all about you, asked me to see if I could get in here and check on you. I don’t think he’d ever admit it out loud, but he’s worried about you.”

  “Val…he’s here?”

  Her smile turned wry. “Subbasement two. The dungeon.”

  “The…” His thoughts were racing, too quick to keep up with his exhausted, shaking body. He dipped his head forward and caught it between his hands.

  Val was in the dungeon.

  Val would be no help springing him out of here.

  He didn’t really know anything at the moment, but he knew that: he had to get out of here.

  “Hey,” Annabel said, and the careful gentleness bled out of her tone, replaced by something realer, more solid. A sturdy Southern sort of forthrightness that he found strangely reassuring. She moved to the foot of the bed and leaned down, trying to catch his eye. “Val said something else. He’s been in contact with your friends. They had a séance, he said, and he talked to – damn, what did he say their names…? Trina, and Lanny, and Nikita–”

  He jerked his head up, which was a stupid idea because it kicked off another dizzy spell. He didn’t care, though. “Nik? He talked to Nik?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. He and the others. They’re coming to get you.”

  He sucked in a breath through his mouth. “But they – but…” The panic returned, clawing up his throat, choking him. “They can’t! It’s too dangerous, and–”

  “Honey, you gotta breathe.”

  He tried to, the breath catching on barbs of his own making. He’d never been a fearful or anxious person, not even during the war, but now…

  “Here, breathe with me,” Annabel said, taking a deep breath and letting it back out slow, mouth pursed in an exaggerated O. “Again. Come on. Passing out won’t help anyone.”

  He inhaled, and exhaled, and after a few minuets it was easier, and the black spots receded from the edges of his vision.

  When he was calmer, Annabel said, “I won’t lie to you. It won’t be easy. This place is locked up like Fort Knox, and there’s eyes everywhere.”

  He glanced toward the ceiling, and she shook her head. “No, I already checked. Otherwise we’d be having this conversation in sign language. But we’re gonna get you out, okay? So you just have to hold on a little while until we get it figured out.”

  Slowly, Sasha nodded. “I…I can do that.”

  She grinned wide enough to flash the very tips of canines that were just a touch too sharp. “Attaboy. We can–”

  The door banged open.

  Sasha caught the sharp scent of an agitated wolf – an agitated alpha male wolf – a fraction of a second before a snarl pulsed through the room.

  “Oh, shit,” Annabel said, and turned.

  An arm caught her around the waist and she was lifted off her feet – “Oh, for the love of God, Fulk,” she muttered – spun around, and set behind a man – a wolf – who turned toward Sasha with teeth bared and blue eyes flashing.

  Sasha started growling back before he could reason that it probably wasn’t a good idea. He was chained, and he couldn’t fight like that, but instinct wouldn’t allow him to go down quietly.

  The other wolf was tall, and slim – a distant, rationally-thinking part of his brain likened those traits to his own slender frame – with a thick cascade of long black hair that fell past his shoulders. Pale. Dressed in a clinging black t-shirt and skinny jeans; engineer boots with lots of straps up the sides.

  He looked like a rock star.

  Like a Hollywood vampire, even.

  But he smelled and sounded like a rival.

  Sasha ducked his head as much as he was able, trying to shield his throat. The other wolf did the same, his growl growing louder, more violent, high and frenzied–

  “Stop!” Annabel shouted, throwing herself between them.

  The other wolf startled hard, gaze going to her. Anguished. “Get out of the way–” He had a British accent under his awful snarl. And he looked at Annabel like…

  Oh.

  It clicked into place for Sasha, then: they were mates.

  His growl died in his throat. He straightened. Tested the air with his nostrils. Mates. Philippe had said that wasn’t possible, that wolves were, by nature, loners. But that wasn’t true; it had pained him t
o hear it at the time, had felt wrong to him. Wolves were pack animals. He’d thought of the simple joy he’d felt when the rest of his pack pressed up around him, four- and two-legged, and he’d recoiled from the idea that wolves weren’t supposed to mate. To have a partner in life on whom they leaned. Whom they loved.

  And here, right in front of him, stood proof that Philippe had been a liar: a mated pair. When he breathed now, he could smell the ways their scents overlapped and held one another: his on hers, and vice versa.

  Despite his circumstances, he found a kernel of happiness, and he smiled because of it.

  “Fulk. Stop.” Annabel put her hands on her mate’s – on Fulk’s – chest and he stopped. He could have pushed her aside, but he didn’t; he let her hold him back.

  Because she was his mate. And he didn’t want to hurt her.

  “He’s chained up,” Annabel continued. “Look.” She stepped to the side so he could see Sasha, one hand still clenched tight on his arm.

  The other alpha took in a few ragged breaths through his mouth, chest heaving. Slowly, slowly, the fight drained away – or, rather, was pulled back into something manageable. A human level of aggression that could be packaged and dispensed at will.

  “Babe,” Annabel said, “meet Sasha. Sasha, meet Fulk. My husband. The territorial jackass,” she tacked on, growling a little herself in clear warning.

  Her mate stopped growling. Mostly. Just a low rumble deep in his chest. His lips closed over his teeth, and when he wasn’t snarling, Sasha could see that he had sharp, cruel features. And that his hair was pulled back at the crown, thin, elaborate braids arching over each ear in an almost elvish fashion.

  “Fulk,” Annabel said, patient, quiet. “You’re gonna stop freaking out soon, right? Before Ad-vla comes to see what all the fuss is about?”

  Sasha had gone through a phase in the early nineties when he thought pig Latin was hilarious. It was, admittedly, a short phase – about a week – because Nikita hated pig Latin worse than he hated country music, and that was saying something. So Sasha had dropped the habit, but not the knowledge.

  “Vlad?” he said, and both halves of the mated pair turned to regard with him surprise. “I’ve talked to Val, remember? I know who his brother is. And that he’s awake.”

  They blinked at him.

  He gave a little wave, cuff heavy on his wrist. “Hello. I’m Sasha.” His head was clearing, his anger ebbing. “Are you mates? You are, aren’t you? I’ve never met mated wolves before.” He managed a smile.

  Fulk looked at him, and then at Annabel. Back to Sasha. “What?”

  28

  Buffalo, New York

  There were plenty of beds, but Nikita never sought one. The idea of sleep was laughable.

  Dawn saw him on the back patio, sitting with his back to the dew-damp wood of the house, one leg pulled up and the other dangling over the rail. He’d lost count of the number of cigarettes he’d smoked, the butts dropped in an empty soda can, the smoke curling upward in lazy swirls against the indigo backdrop of the fading night sky.

  “Smoking will kill you, you know,” Alexei said somewhere behind him, and Nikita’s fingers spasmed on the filter in his hand. “That’s what all the advertisements say. And the doctors. And people on the street.”

  Rustle of fabric, click of a cheap lighter, quick inhale. The first drag. Audible relief in the exhale.

  “You and I,” Alexei went on, wandering into view, coming to lean against the rail a few feet down from Nikita, arms dangling over it, “we come from a generation in which everyone smoked. All the time. Just to keep from going crazy.”

  Nikita took the last drag from his own smoke and dropped it into the can. “We’re not from the same generation,” he reminded, and for once, the words weren’t laced with contempt or leashed fury. They were just words. He was starting to think that though he’d never like Alexei, never trust him, maybe never even respect him, it required too much energy to continue hating him. His hatred, he’d decided, would go toward the people who’d taken Sasha from him. The people who he was going to enjoy killing with his bare hands when the time came.

  “That’s right,” Alexei said, the faint light of pre-dawn flashing off his teeth as he smiled. “I’m older than you.”

  “Only in years. Not in any way that counts.”

  Alexei chuckled. “You are very stubborn. It’s a pity you didn’t work for my father. Things might have gone differently for your sheer stubbornness alone.”

  Nikita hummed a sound that was neither agreement nor disagreement. He wasn’t so sure he would have been any better than a puppet in Nicholas’s time – same as he had been in Stalin’s.

  “Did you sleep?” Alexei asked.

  “What business is it of yours?”

  “In general? It’s not. But given our mission, it’s important that you’re rested. That you’ve fed. That you don’t faint.”

  Nikita growled at him, quietly.

  Alexei tsked. “You don’t take care of yourself, bratishka.”

  “I am not your brother.”

  “We are both vampires. Both Russians. Both Whites. Both united in a similar cause. One could argue that we are brethren,” Alexei said.

  “No.”

  “Very well. But I’m right about the rest, and you know it. You live like you already have one foot in the grave, Nikita. Like your own life doesn’t matter. Wearing yourself down until you have to eat, to feed, to sleep. Do you take pleasure in anything?”

  Nikita freed another cigarette from his pack and lit it. “I was enjoying the quiet before you came out here.”

  Another chuckle. The asshole. “Very well. I can take a hint.”

  “Can you?”

  “Yes. I’m much more amenable than you.” He raised his cigarette to his lips, took a drag, and started to withdraw.

  “Why are you here?” Nikita asked, and Alexei froze, turned to him with raised brows and wide-eyed innocence.

  “Lanny drove us here in his car.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  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.”

  A spike of anxiety tightened Nikita’s gut. He’d confessed as much to Sasha before…or had tried to. Every time he expressed his fear that Rasputin had tainted him somehow, Sasha grew frantic with worry and guilt, whining and curling up in his lap, asking for a forgiveness that wasn’t owed because he’d never done anything terrible in his whole sweet life. So Nikita had learned how to keep such thoughts to himself, all of them festering like a sore that would never come to a head.

  “It’s only blood,” he said, tersely. “We were already the people we were going to be before it was given to us. If they left, that was on them, and not you.”

  “You make me want to believe that. When I look at you and Sasha, together all this time.” His smile flickered, unsteady. “It shows me what I’ve been missing all this time.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “A family.”

  Nikita’s hand shook when he lifted his cigarette.

  “I’m not so foolish that I think you’ll ever let me be your family,” Alexei went on. “But I guess…I have nothing better to do. I might as well help you. And then we’ll see.”

  Nikita looked away from him, the painful hope shining in his eyes. Along the horizon, the
first matchstick flare of pink to herald the sunrise. “Yeah,” he said, breath quivering as he exhaled. “I guess we will.”

  ~*~

  Trina could only nibble at breakfast, mind already on the strategizing that would come after. Nikita would have gone charging off on his own if they’d let him, but Trina had put her foot down: they would make a plan of action, and they would stick to it.

  Dad had a recent atlas full of maps that he went to fetch, and Lanny went to get the old whiteboard and markers from Trina’s room while Trina helped her mom load the dishwasher.

  So far, Rachel seemed to be taking all of this well. Too well, in Trina’s opinion. She’d always been a practical, accepting sort, but everyone had limits. Trina realized her mother had reached hers when she carried a stack of dirty plates into the kitchen and found Rachel standing with a white-knuckled grip on the counter, staring at the window above the sink and blinking furiously.

  She set the dishes down gently. “Mom?”

  Rachel jerked as if startled, and straightened. Plunged her hands back into the sudsy water in the sink and began scrubbing a skillet in earnest. “What, sweetie?” she asked, too-brightly, unable to keep the waver from her voice.

  “Mom,” Trina said again. She moved to stand beside her mother, rested a hand on her shoulder.

  Rachel ducked her head, hair shielding her face, and took a tremulous breath. “I’m alright.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  She gave a weak chuckle. “Do you think any mother would be, in my position?”

  “Oh, Mom, I’m sorry.”

  Rachel shook her head, and tucked her hair back, turned a watery smile toward Trina. “Don’t listen to me: I’m just a crier.”

  Trina frowned, because her mother was a lot of things, but she’d never thought she was someone who cried easily or often.

  “A secret crier, maybe,” Rachel amended. “I blubbered like a baby the day you graduated from the police academy. I was so proud of you, and scared out of my mind. My little baby off to arrest people. I felt like I was sending you off to war. Like I was letting you do something dangerous and not trying to stop you at all.”