Rooster looked at him, chest tight. “What are you, then?”
Rob grinned, flashing those too-sharp teeth again. “ ‘Now this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die,’ ” he recited. “I always loved Kipling, and I don’t think that’s just my English bias talking. I am a wolf, friend. Richard’s wolf, and this is my pack.”
Rooster looked at Deshawn, brows raised.
“No.” Deshawn shook his head.
“Only my Merry Men,” Rob explained. “The rest of our ranks are filled with highly capable humans.”
“This is bullshit,” Rooster said.
“Yeah,” Deshawn agreed. “But what’re you gonna do?”
“Ugh,” Much said. “Can we just get on with it?”
“Yes, yes,” Rob said, waving. “Next slide, please.”
~*~
“The Institute isn’t some kind of big evil government entity,” Rob explained. “Their heart’s in the right place. But their methods are questionable at best.
“Humans and immortals haven’t had much in the way of meaningful interaction in the last few centuries. The last, most notable instance was of Vlad Tepes leading his armies against the Ottoman Empire.”
A new slide clicked into view, a painting of a man with an angry, scowl, a dramatic mustache, and a ridiculous hat.
“His supporters accused his brother of killing him and arrested him. Valerian. I tried to buy him from them, but.” Rob shrugged. “They wouldn’t negotiate and they went deep underground.”
Rooster listened, disbelieving, thoughts growing fuzzier and fuzzier by the second.
“We’ve been in business for a long time now. I haven’t wanted to be on the Institute’s radar, so we haven’t intervened. But when I met Deshawn, I realized things have gotten really out of hand over there.”
“Red…” Rooster started, and trailed off, overwhelmed.
Rob’s expression became grim. “She’s a mage. A kind of vampire Familiar that can wield all sorts of magic. There aren’t many of them left – to my knowledge, Philippe was the only one of record who’s ever worked willingly with the Institute. So I see they decided to breed their own. Raise them up as lab rats.” His brows drew together, gaze darkening. “If I’d known that, before…” He shook his head. “We’re going to help you get her back, Rooster. And I’m going to have a word with whoever’s in charge.”
“A word,” Rooster said with a snort.
Rob just smiled, cocky. “It’s high time those of us that are left make our presence known. If the Absence is awake again…as you Yanks say, shit’s about to hit the fan.”
~*~
“We’ve got sandwiches,” Deshawn said as he led the way into a fairly standard mess hall. Long tables, vending machines, and a stainless steel kitchen that looked cold at the moment. He went to the fridge and started laying packaged lunch meats and cheeses out on a big butcher block island.
Two guys with crew cuts and green camo sat at a small table off to the side, eating and talking quietly.
Rooster’s attention went to the gray-headed, round-faced man slumped over another table, plastic cup at his elbow, snoring into the crook of his other arm.
“Is that…?”
“Tuck, yeah,” Deshawn said, following his gaze as he started setting bread slices on plates. “He’s like that a lot.”
“’Kay.”
Deshawn sighed. “I know you’re freaking out.”
“No I’m not.”
Deshawn put exactly three slices of ham on the bottom of each sandwich. “You are.”
And Rooster snapped. “Yeah, okay. I am.” He turned away from the sleeping man – fucking Friar Tuck – and stormed over to the island. Braced both hands against its edge and realized he was shaking. “Yeah,” he said, biting off the word now. “I’m freaking the fuck out. The Deshawn I used to know would be too.”
Deshawn wiped his hands on his pants legs and lifted a deceptively calm look. “Oh, that’s how you wanna play this?”
“I’m not playing, asshole. This is – this is – it’s fucking insane!” he spluttered. And oh shit, black spots were crowding his vision. He gripped the counter hard and tried to take deep breaths. Fuck this. Fuck all of this.
Deshawn’s tone softened, became soothing. “I know, man. Hey, I know, okay? It’s insane, yeah. It took me a long time to believe any of it. Just give it a minute to sink in.”
But that wasn’t what went down his throat like a jagged lump of metal. The thing that was slowly making his brain implode.
“You’re supposed to be the normal one,” he admitted, and the last thread of control snapped. “Jesus, D, you’re the stable guy. With the wife, and the kid, and – and fucking table manners.”
Deshawn cocked a deceptively mild eyebrow.
“You know what I mean! You’re the guy with his shit together; not the guy who goes and gets a crazy, probably illegal job with a buncha fucking werewolves they made a Disney movie about!”
“Oh, I get it. I’m just your support system. The boring sidekick. Got it.”
“No, that’s not what I–”
“I should stay home, and get fat, and leave all the scary shit to you, right?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Deshawn sent him an unimpressed look. “You’re not my wife, or my mom, so do me a favor and stop acting like it.”
Rooster sighed, deflating. He was still too shocked and exhausted to carry anger for very long. “That’s not what I meant,” he repeated, pathetic this time.
Deshawn added a little mustard and laid the top slices of bread on the sandwiches. Slid one across to Rooster. “Eat that.”
Rooster picked it up and took a dutiful bite.
“As long as we’ve been friends,” Deshawn said, “I thought you knew me better than this.” He sighed. “Me joining the Corps, that wasn’t just putting in my time. It didn’t traumatize me, the things we did over there; I’m not broken. I don’t have any regrets – except that you got hurt.”
Rooster set the sandwich down, stomach too tight to eat.
“I thought – I think everybody thinks – that when you get out, you can take a deep breath again. That you can go back to your life. That you have nightmares, yeah, but that it gets better over time. You start to feel human again.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t like that. It…” Rooster could see his friend struggling to say it just right. “I was so goddamn bored. I was climbing out of my skin.”
He breathed a laugh. “I know that makes me sound shitty, but it’s the truth. I was home with my family, I was trying to set up my own business, and all I could think was that I was wasting my – I dunno – my talents. Not everybody has the stomach to do what we do,” he said, seriously, looking at Rooster. “It just seems like a waste not to spend my time protecting the people who need it. Doing something positive. Any kid on summer break can cut grass; but I can put a bullet in a man, and not even lose any sleep.”
Rooster went still; he’d been standing still, but he realized, when a moment of perfect calm stole over him, that he’d been twitching. Yeah, he thought, I get that. A bone-deep understanding passed between them. Maybe they were sick, but it didn’t matter: there was no changing it.
“I have a family,” Deshawn said, “and I love them more than anything. But I’m a Marine, too, and that’s not something I can switch off. I’m not more normal than you, brother. I’m just not.”
Slowly, Rooster nodded.
“Now. You gonna tell me again what I’m like? Or can we actually get some shit done?”
40
The Ingraham Institute
Dr. Talbot came to see her. She’d been waiting for that; dreading it. And in some ways, the dread was the worst part of it, so Red knew a moment’s relief when the door to her room opened and the smiling, bespectacled doctor walked in with a file tucked under one arm.
Just a f
ew hours ago – though she didn’t know for sure because she couldn’t see the sun and there wasn’t a clock in her cell of a room – a motherly, kind-faced nurse had come to help her sit upright and get her back against the wall. The cuffs had stayed on, but a longer chain had been stretched between the two, so she could lower her arms from her chest; hold a spoon to eat the soup offered to her; rest her fists now against her thighs as she sat, cross-legged, on the bed and watched Dr. Talbot shut the door and move to take the chair across from her.
Her heartbeat pounded, but she felt disconnected from it; like its impression was muffled by the cuffs, too, just like her power.
Dr. Talbot sat, settled his white lab coat around himself, put the file in his lap, and beamed at her. “It’s wonderful to see you again, ah–” He not-so-subtly peeked into the file. “Ruby, now, is it?”
She didn’t respond.
“There’s a lot to catch up on,” he continued, unperturbed. “Both for you, and for us. But suffice to say we’re all extremely glad to have you back in the fold.”
The fold. Like she’d been a part of something. Like she hadn’t been laid flat on a steel table and had a grown man’s fingers push a speculum in her and announce her ready for breeding.
“I understand that your powers have matured significantly in the last five years…” He trailed off, waiting, one hand lifting in a little go on gesture. He wanted her to tell him about that.
She swallowed hard, and said, “Where’s Rooster?”
It was gratifying to see that, even for just a second, she’d knocked Dr. Talbot off his course. “Oh. Um.” He recovered, but that momentary waver had been enough to give her hope; to let her see: this man, who’d been a part of her birth, and her raising, and her treatment as a fatted calf, was uncertain. Maybe he was even a little afraid of her.
Rooster thought she was sweet. A guileless child. Even under the fire. But Talbot knew better.
“That’s your friend, hmm? Yes, well, I’m afraid that–”
“No,” she said, firm, and the doctor’s mouth fell open. “I made a deal with that guy. Jake.” The fucking liar. “He said he’d leave Rooster alone if I went with him. And I did. So where’s Rooster?”
Dr. Talbot blinked at her a moment, dumbfounded. Then his expression shifted into annoyance…laced with that sharp uncertainty that gave her hope. “I assume he’s wherever Major Treadwell left him. But.” His brows gathered. “Something to think about, young lady: that friend of yours killed a lot of men in the past five years. He’s very lucky to be alive; he ought to be on death row.”
“Is he safe?” she pressed.
Dr. Talbot blanked his face with obvious effort. Shrugged. “I don’t know. Major Treadwell’s orders were to shoot to kill if necessary.”
They stared at one another.
Dr. Talbot sighed. “I can see that you’ve changed since we knew one another last. Appealing to your sense of responsibility is obviously not going to work outright. Very well.” He opened up the folder and paged through the papers inside. “Here.” He pulled out a glossy photo and held it up so that she could see it.
She refused to lean forward, or squint, or show any interest. But she couldn’t help but register the grisly scene that he’d offered. Rocky, sandy soil; a distant mountain range; the corner of a modest brown house. And people. A half dozen laid out across the ground like stepping stones; outstretched legs, reaching arms, necks snapped back. And they looked like they’d been…chewed. Pulpy, messy wounds. Clumps of gore strewn across the hard-packed dirt.
“Afghanistan,” Dr. Talbot explained. “Up in the mountains. One man wiped out an entire village. He feasted on them. And he wasn’t a man at all anymore; he was a corrupted thing.” He took a breath, and afterward, he looked tired. Old. “Five hundred years ago, a very brave prince marched, in secret, deep into the heart of the retreating Ottoman Empire, across deserts and through villages where the locals had never seen an outsider, and didn’t care whose empire they were a part of. He found a secret, safe underground place, and he buried his uncle there – along with all of his uncle’s germ warfare.
“There are so many idiot, spiteful little terror cells that have cropped up in the wake of Usama bin Laden’s death, and one of those groups, searching for religious relics to sell, found something very, very different. A pre-biblical plague has been loosed upon the world; it’s what did this.” He rattled the picture. “It’s a threat we’ve known could come, that we’ve been preparing for for a very long time. It’s why you and the others like you were created.
“There hasn’t been a full-scale outbreak yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Eventually, someone will wake the uncle, and then. Well.” He shrugged. “No one wants to see that happen.”
Red kicked her chin up. “I don’t believe you,” she said.
But she’d seen the photo. Oh, God, she’d seen it.
“Of course not,” he said with a sigh. “But maybe you’ll believe the prince.” He turned toward the door. “Vlad?”
A slight pause, and then the door opened, and Red wished for the cuffs to be gone all over again.
The man who entered reminded her, in a vague sense, of Fulk. Long dark hair and sharp features…but this man was broader, more heavily muscled. And the wide plane of his forehead, the slant of his cheekbones spoke of a culture farther east than Fulk’s crisp Britishness. And there was such overt threat coiled within this man’s body, a sense of other, a hard edge.
He eased the door carefully shut and moved to stand beside Dr. Talbot’s chair, gaze trained on Red.
“This is the one?” he said. Heavy accent, something she didn’t recognize.
“Yes,” Dr. Talbot said. “This is…Ruby.” He stumbled over the name; she’d only ever been “dear” before, when she’d been a serial number and not a human.
The man – Vlad – stared at her without expression. “She’s young. And small.”
“Yes, well, you know as well as I do that a mage’s power isn’t rooted in the physical. She’s quite strong, I can tell you.”
Red curled her hands into fists; her knuckles went white.
Vlad squatted down in front of her, so they were on eye level. His gaze moved across her face like a physical touch; she felt it against each freckle. “You look like your mother.”
“I don’t have a mother.”
One corner of his mouth twitched. “You are angry. That’s good. I can use that.”
She pressed her lips together to keep from baring her teeth at him.
He seemed to know it. He smiled, and his canines were long and sharp. He stood and turned to Dr. Talbot. “I want to see how she gets on with the boy. Sasha.”
“Very good. We’ll set up a supervised meeting between them.”
Vlad cast a look back at her over his shoulder. “You should have told her what she was, doctor,” he said, tone gently scolding. “From the beginning. What we all are. And what we’re up against.”
A note of unease in Dr. Talbot’s voice: “Of course.”
~*~
Annabel thought Fulk was intended to be Vlad’s wolf Familiar.
Annabel was wrong.
Sasha realized that the moment his escort led him into a white, brightly-lit room and he saw the redheaded girl standing in the far corner, wrists cuffed together with a short piece of chain the same way his were.
She stank of fire. The mage girl.
He growled before he could stop himself, a gentle rumble that prompted the guard behind him to nudge him with the end of his baton. “Hey, none of that.”
Fulk entered, his presence like a soothing hand down the back of Sasha’s ruffled neck. “Let’s all be civil,” he said, cool gaze directed toward the guard. “That will be all, private. I have them firmly in hand.”
The guard muttered “creepy fucker” under his breath and quit the room. The door closed behind him with a resounding thump.
Fulk held both hands clasped loosely behind his back; against the clean white backdro
p of the room, his black-clad legs looked especially long. He’d left off his red jacket and wore a sleeveless Def Leppard shirt. He could have looked like a degenerate; he looked instead like the baron he was. It was all in the carriage, the lofty angle of his head.
He looked first at the girl, and then at Sasha. Cameras, he mouthed, and Sasha darted a glance up into the corner and spotted one, wrapped in black shatterproof glass.
Sasha nodded.
Fulk turned back to the girl. “I have to apologize on Sasha’s behalf. He doesn’t care for mages. Had a rather bad experience with one, so, it’s understandable. But he’s actually quite pathetically friendly when you get to know him.”
Sasha growled, but it wasn’t especially threatening. A token protest.
The girl’s head lifted; she leaned to the side a fraction to see around Fulk, to send her startled gaze Sasha’s way. She had very green eyes. Save the smell, she reminded him nothing of Philippe, so that was at least one point in her favor.
“Well, you are,” Fulk said mildly. To the girl, softer, almost kind: “I trust someone’s explained to you about Familiars?”
Her gaze moved back to him, inscrutable, and she finally said, “Yes.”
“Good, then we can skip that part.” He began a slow, dignified pace, back and forth across the room. “The two of you have the honor of having been chosen by Vlad to be his left and right hands,” he said, as if reading from an official announcement. Words he’d been told to say, Sasha knew; he could scent the other wolf’s disgust with the whole business. “As such, it’s important that the two of you learn how to work together.” He paused, glancing between the two of them. “And that you not kill one another.”
Then he just stood there.
Sasha shifted forward a cautious step, the chain between his cuffs chiming against itself. “It’s true, I don’t like mages,” he said, stiff and formal.
The girl watched him, outwardly calm. But Sasha could smell her fear; sense the fluttering of her pulse, rabbit-fast.
Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2) Page 39
