Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  “Have you ever killed anyone?” he asked.

  No hesitation: “Yes.”

  “Have you ever killed one of your friends?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Fulk said.

  Sasha took a deep breath…and it got caught halfway to his lungs. He’d been able to shore up his panic and push himself through the days here. The conversations with the doctors, all the blood samples, and the tests. Earlier, they’d put him on a treadmill with a dozen monitors taped to his chest and had him run until his legs gave out. It had been uncomfortable, yes…but suddenly it was all unbearable. Pressing down on him. Annabel had said the others were coming, but were they? And here he’d been cooperating. And was about to be made Vlad the Impaler’s Familiar, and he couldn’t…

  “Sasha.” Fulk stood over him.

  Oh. He’d sat down on the floor, somehow. Or maybe his knees had buckled. Sasha tipped his head back and looked up at the other wolf.

  Fulk snapped his fingers. “Sasha, get up.”

  His breath sawed in and out of his lungs as if he’d just staggered off the treadmill. “I can’t – I just…but Nik…”

  Fulk sighed and crouched down in front of him, something almost like softness in his face. “You’re having a meltdown.”

  “I can’t – I won’t…”

  “Listen to me.” His hand closed around Sasha’s neck and squeezed. “I know,” he whispered, too low and close for the cameras to pick it up. “I know, alright? I belonged to the same master for centuries, and I still have nightmares. I know. But right now, it’s more important to stay alive, and to earn some trust. You won’t see Nik again if you fuck this up. Alright?”

  Sasha breathed. In and out.

  He thought about Nik being hungry, and irritable, slipping into one of his too-long sleeps because he refused to feed.

  He thought about the warmth of sunlight falling on the bed through the window, sheets that smelled like pack; the awful buzz saw snoring that Nikita denied. Shoulders touching on the sofa, fingers combing through his hair. Safe, and warm, and not owned, but loved.

  He closed his eyes and breathed some more. Worked on slowing his lungs.

  “Okay,” he whispered.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  ~*~

  He got them to shake hands, though Sasha visibly flinched. Just a fraction. The girl, Red, remained stoic throughout, but Fulk could feel the vibrating anxiety lifting off her like steam. She was worried, and frightened…and furious, too. The mages he’d known – the girl’s own father, judging by scent commonalities – had possessed a smug superiority. Not her. She was just enraged.

  Fulk had no idea how it would all shake down; he knew things were coming to a head, could feel the pressure swelling to fill all the dark crevices of the manor, but right now, he was just tired.

  He stripped on his way through their opulent suite, down to his CKs by the time he reached the bathroom with its historic marble and modern fixtures. He started a bath and unbraided his hair in front of the mirror.

  His fingers picked with careful familiarity through the tight little braids that Anna liked to layer over his ears. Each day was a slight variation on a similar theme: pulled back at the crown so it didn’t fall into his eyes, but artfully twisted and threaded with flowers, and sometimes even jewels. “Better than a doll,” she’d said on more than one occasion, laughing, beaming, pressing her soft warm cheek to his as she kissed the corner of his mouth. He liked it long, that had been the style in the year of his birth, but he’d gladly let her shave it if that was what she wanted. The simple joy she found in his hair, playing with it, styling it, filled him with an echoing sort of joy.

  As if summoned by thoughts – really, it was the scent, the magnetism of having imprinted on one another as mates – Annabel appeared in the threshold, shoulder propped against the jamb.

  “Mm,” she hummed, Southern accent coming through strong. “Look at the handsome thing I stumbled across. I’m a lucky, lucky girl.”

  He shook out his loose hair; a piece fell over his left eye and he flicked it away with his fingers before he turned to face his wife. His mate.

  Her expression flickered, gamely trying for aroused, but falling more toward the worried truth.

  “Sasha’s falling apart,” he said, voice heavier than intended. “And this girl, Red, I don’t…” Why, he wondered, did the responsibility of things always fall to him, of all people?

  Anna came to him, soft and yielding now, the façade wiped clean. “Oh, baby.” She hooked her arms around his neck and pulled his face down into her throat. Stroked his hair. “It’s okay.”

  He pulled back, hands braced on her shoulders. “No, darling, it’s not.”

  She sighed. “I can at least say it, though. And no matter what, we’ll stick together.” Her eyes were imploring in a way they hadn’t been in a long time. They’d been together so long, attached and connected, reading one another’s impulses. They hadn’t had to ask such a thing in forever.

  He nodded. “Right.”

  She studied him a moment, eyes widening in reaction, finally. “Fulk.”

  The best way to say terrible things was just to say them; he’d never had trouble delivering bad news before Anna came along, but after over a century together, the words scraped his throat on the way out. “If Sasha’s friends come for him, and they manage to pull off an escape, I want you to go with them.”

  For a seemingly-endless moment, she didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe, didn’t react. And then her face twisted up and she shoved him, hard. He took a step back and his hip hit the edge of the counter.

  “You dumbass,” she hissed. She slapped him for good measure, hands hitting his chest with a satisfying smack. Her mouth worked, and her chest heaved as she sucked in a few breaths. “Dumbass,” she repeated, eyes wild in a way he knew meant she was overcome.

  He caught her wrists in both hands when she moved to strike him again. “Darling, listen to me.”

  She growled.

  “I’m being completely serious.”

  “So am I, and you’re a dumbass!” Her eyes glittered like jewels, sheened with tears she fought valiantly to check.

  He leaned in close so they were almost nose-to-nose. She smelled like acrid panic. “Listen,” he repeated, gently, chest aching. “I think they’ll fail. They can come and throw themselves against the walls all they want, but they won’t succeed.

  “If, though. If by some miracle they get inside, and they get hold of Sasha – I won’t stop them, but I can’t help them. And when Sasha is gone, they’ll take it out on me. I won’t let them have you, too.” He growled now, lower, deeper, darker. A threat to anyone who would dare touch her. “Vlad’s not getting a matched pair in us.”

  “Then come with me.” She twisted her wrists, but not to get away; only to wrap her hands around his own wrist-bones and cling tight, nails scoring his skin. “We’ll go together. We’ll go right now.”

  How many times had he dreamed of such a thing? Stealing away in the dark; leaving the car, all their things. Shifting and running four-legged through the tangled Virginia forests. Running beneath full and new moons. Not stopping until they dove off a cliff into the California ocean. Cutting his hair, hiding in Bali, or Bangkok, or Anchorage.

  But if they got caught…when they got caught.

  He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to Anna’s. Steam from the bath filled the room, hot and choking. “They only want me,” he murmured. He was the legend, the one with the strength to make wolves, the one who could make the perfect Familiar for vampire royalty. “Let me keep you safe. Please, darling.”

  “No.” A shaky whisper, but he felt the tensile steel in her fingers where she gripped him. “Together or not at all.”

  He whined.

  She whined back.

  “Come get in the water with me.”

  He unclothed her deftly, gently, long fingers lifting off her black tank top, work
ing the button fly of her cutoffs. He twisted off the taps and tested the full bathtub with one hand – the water was so hot it almost burned. He lifted her up and stepped inside, careful, folded them both down into the tub, Anna perched sideways in his lap, his long legs bent, toes snugged up to the porcelain.

  The tap dripped, soft plunks into the water.

  Annabel pressed her face into his throat, her breath even warmer than the steam.

  He gripped her shoulder too tight, but she didn’t protest. “I’m so sorry, darling.”

  She made a soft inquiring sound, a little wolfish ruff.

  “I always wanted you to be free, and I can’t…” The lump in his throat rose and he choked it back down.

  “Oh, baby,” she murmured, smoothing her hand across the red mark on his chest where she’d smacked him. “That doesn’t matter to me. It never has.”

  But it had, once. Freedom. It had been worth death, for her. He still felt sick every time he remembered plunging the knife into her heart. Forgive me, darling. But then her eyes had opened, and she’d known him right away, and she’d smiled with blood in her teeth. He’d turned her into a creature made to be owned, and she’d only ever thanked him for it. Rejoiced in the chance to be together forever.

  If they were human, he might have been able to drive her away. Scream lies at her, tell her he hated her, that he didn’t want her anymore; and maybe she would believe it, and tearing his heart out, letting her walk away, would be worth it if it meant she was away from this nightmare. Safe and sound.

  But they were wolves, and their love was a living thing that could be scented, and heard, and touched between them. Lying to each other was impossible.

  “I wish I could make you leave,” he whispered, eyes burning.

  “I know.” She shifted around carefully so she could put both her hands on his face. Wipe the wetness from beneath his eyes with equally wet thumbs.

  She pressed her mouth to his, and it felt like he’d failed, even though he’d done that long ago, when he refused to let her die.

  41

  As far as plans went, this one seemed pretty shitty.

  “Do you have a better one?” John – Little John – asked and sounded somehow kind in his mocking. He was a mountain of a man. Werewolf. Whatever. With a smile to match.

  “No,” Rooster hated to admit, sighing.

  “Alright, then. This’ll work. We do this sort of thing all the time.”

  Rooster glanced over at Deshawn, who nodded.

  John peeled off a strip of duct tape and said, “Hold it steady. Like that.” He taped the small little flip-phone to the inside of Rooster’s arm and then tugged the baggy sweatshirt sleeve down over it.

  “Tuck,” John prompted, and when nothing happened, turned around with a sigh. “Tuck.”

  The friar came awake with a snort. “Wha…? Oh, yes, right.”

  John sighed.

  Rooster silently berated the old man for ruining the Disneyfied idea he’d had of Friar Tuck for most of his life.

  They stood in an armory roughly the size of the house Rooster grew up in, surrounded by enough weapons and tech to storm the beaches at Normandy. Their plan, though, was much simpler than that.

  Tuck fumbled a pair of narrow reading glasses from his pocket and slipped them on his nose; they sat crooked; the lenses were smudged. “What am I doing now?”

  Deshawn sighed.

  John patiently said, “A glamour. For the phone.” He tapped the concealed cellphone taped to Rooster’s arm.

  “Oh, yes! Just a moment.” He laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. Wiggled the fingers of his right hand, afterward, and then passed his palm slowly down Rooster’s arm, not touching, just hovering.

  Rooster felt goosebumps spring up in the wake of his non-touch, and suppressed a shudder.

  They’d told him that Tuck was like Red. A mage, they called it. But Tuck, according to Rob, was much weaker. He had a rudimentary grasp of power, but nothing like the fire-wielding and wound-healing that Red could manipulate without thought.

  But it wasn’t Tuck they were sending in to find Red. Nor any of the wolves.

  Just Rooster. With a glamoured phone.

  Knuckles rapped the doorjamb. “Ready?” Rob called.

  Rooster took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

  ~*~

  Nikita had bragged once, to a young vamp maneater just before he’d put him down, that he’d never fed from a human.

  He couldn’t say that anymore.

  Cut off from Val’s help, unable to contact him, it had taken nearly two days to pin down the exact location of Blackmere Manor in the deceptively deep forest outside of Richmond, but they’d finally found it. Even a half mile away, in a rental cabin, Nikita feel the hum of the place. Power – both electrical, and supernatural.

  His breath came in stutters, but his hands were steady as he unzipped his duffel bag and pulled out the secondary garment bag within. He laid it out on the lumpy, quilt-covered bed, alone for the moment in the cabin’s one bedroom. Hesitated a moment.

  Most would have chalked this bag – the way he’d kept it in the back of every closet of every apartment he’d lived in for the past seventy-five years – up to nostalgia. But it wasn’t that at all. It was fear. A fear that one day he’d stop kidding himself that he was somehow morally superior to all the other monsters. He didn’t kill anymore…except he had. Except he did. And he would kill today.

  With a sound like a gasp lodged in his throat, he unzipped the bag. As it gapped down the middle, revealing what lay inside, the last of his nerves bled out, replaced by a calm so unshakable it felt almost like bliss.

  Yes. This was him. The real him.

  “Hello, old friend.”

  ~*~

  It was unremarkable from the street. A beat-up galvanized mailbox with flaking numbers, and a dirt track that led off the road and plunged down through the trees. It was a long driveway. Rooster walked down it for a half hour, until sweat had gathered along his skin, under his hoodie. Fall was approaching – he could see it in the first brown edges of the leaves that crowded overhead, shading his path – but mid-afternoon temperatures remained warm. Muggy. He swatted a mosquito away from his face as he followed a sharp curve. On the right, a hill reared up, faced with granite, shaded by clumps of thin tress. On the left, a ravine opened, deep and jagged as a knife wound, the slope plunging down into a stream.

  Not for the first time, he decided this plan was stupid. His only means of communicating with the others – his team – was with the phone taped to his arm, and he wasn’t supposed to touch it until he was out of other options. They needed a man on the inside, a human man, one the Institute people would be forced to apprehend.

  “What if things go south?” he’d asked back at Lionheart.

  Rob had sent him a smile that he probably thought was reassuring. “We’ll get you out, don’t worry. One way or another.”

  But Rooster had the feeling the “other” included him being dead, and that wasn’t something he wanted to happen before he made sure Red was safe and free.

  After that.

  Well, it didn’t much matter.

  The elevation around him leveled, and after the next bend, he passed through a set of heavy wrought-iron gates with cameras poised on its stone pillars.

  He took a deep breath, and kept walking.

  Then, there was the house.

  Lionheart’s façade was impressive and battle-ready, but nothing like the palatial, opulent stone face of Blackmere Manor. Two sweeping wings that he could see, sun glinting off thousands of mullioned windows and the shape of a conservatory, far off to the left, so far it might be in another zip code. From the gargoyles on the pitched roofline to the iron-banded double front doors, every exquisitely-wrought detail had been designed to terrify and impress.

  But the most terrifying aspect of all was the group of helmeted, armed men in tac gear flooding down the front steps and running at him, shouting for him to put h
is hands up and get down on his knees.

  Rooster curled his hand around the butt of a gun that wasn’t there and knew a crushing, momentary panic. This would never work. This plan was shit.

  But then they were circling him and all he could do was press his hands to the back of his skull and sink slowly to his knees in the dirt.

  ~*~

  Trina turned all the walkies on and tuned them to the same channel. Lined them up on the table in front of her and let out another breath that was doing nothing to regulate her pounding heart.

  Behind her, Jamie paced. Alexei sipped vodka straight from the bottle, passing it every now and then to Lanny who took a slug and passed it back.

  Trina lined up the walkies again. Again. Fiddled with the straps on her Kevlar.

  “Nik,” she called toward the closed bedroom door. “You ready?”

  She heard the latch click, and the tread of boots, and turned…

  And felt her mouth drop open in shock.

  Expressionless, Nikita stepped into the room in black skinnies and t-shirt…under an ankle-length black leather coat. Boots. Gaiters. Fingerless gloves. And perched on his head: the black fur cap with the hammer and sickle. She’d seen him like this before, in the vision Val had shown her.

  Gone was Nikita the grungy millennial, and in his place was Captain Nikita Baskin, Chekist.

  “For real?” Lanny asked.

  Nikita didn’t react. He gazed steadily at Trina. “Ready.”

  42

  Under different circumstances, Red thought Sasha might have been delightful company. He had pale eyes that somehow managed warmth; a pretty smile, two of his teeth just a touch crooked. She liked his hair, the platinum shagginess of it, and the vulnerable curve of his neck when he bowed his head.

  But, circumstances what they were, Red didn’t trust anyone.

  And Sasha seemed to be going through some sort of drug withdrawal.

  He pressed the soles of his slipper-socks to the floor and tipped his head back against the wall, breathing in shallow shudders through an open mouth. His lips and eyelashes trembled; an unconscious vibration she swore she could feel from a foot away. Sweat stood out on his brow, temples, upper lip, and throat, a greasy sheen that glued tendrils of hair to his cheeks. His shirt clung to his chest.