Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  A twinge of sympathy found its way through her suspicion. “What did they do to you?” she asked.

  His eyes opened a crack and slid over. An aborted smile quirked one corner of his mouth. “Kidnapped me. Drugged me. They keep drugging me.”

  She blinked, surprised despite herself. He wore the same kind of cuffs that she did, but if he was…what Fulk had said he was. What they were. Then maybe it wasn’t so simple as cutting off a flow of power like he was an electrical box. Not like with her.

  “Is it because you’re a – a wolf?” she asked, stumbling over the word a little.

  “No.” His smile stretched, his chapped lips cracking. “It’s because they made me. Seventy-five years ago. And they know I hate them.” His Russian accent lent the words gravity. Hinted at a threat.

  “Seventy-five…” She lifted her brows. “But you look–”

  “I was nineteen when I was turned.” When she only stared: “You look surprised. And you can make fire.”

  “Yeah. Very true.”

  He shut his eyes again with another unsteady sigh. “Did they leave him alive?”

  The skin on the back of her neck prickled. “Who?”

  “The human you smell like. The one they took you from. Is he alive?”

  “They won’t tell me. I hope.” It hurt too viscerally to think otherwise. “What about you?”

  He made a small huffing sound and smiled again, eyes still closed. “Mine is very stubborn.” The smile slipped. “And he feels very guilty. All the time. He will come for me, even though he shouldn’t.”

  Red shifted to a more comfortable position, one that mirrored Sasha’s: feet on the floor, back to the wall. “That sounds like Rooster.”

  He snorted. “His name is Rooster?”

  “Well,” she said, defensive, “what’s your guy’s?”

  “Nikita.” The name full of longing and worry and hopeless affection. She wondered if her own voice had sounded that way to him.

  “Another Russian, huh?”

  “What’s wrong with Russian?”

  “What’s wrong with Rooster?” she shot back. Then softened: “His name is Roger. Rooster’s just a nickname.”

  “I figured.”

  They lapsed into silence.

  It wasn’t uncomfortable, so Red couldn’t explain the way the confession built and built in her gut until she had to bring it up and let it out. Maybe it was the unlikely comfort of knowing the person beside her was a prisoner, too, brought here against his will.

  “I was born here,” she said, quietly. Fulk had said wolves could hear like dogs – like real wolves. That she could speak softly enough to keep the cameras from picking up the words.

  Sasha lifted his head away from the wall and looked at her.

  “Not here, exactly, in this place. But at the Institute. The one in New York. I was raised there. In a lab.”

  “Shit. Really?”

  “Fulk says he can smell who my parents were, but I never met them. I’m just…an experiment.” A weapon, she added silently, because she understood, finally. She guessed Sasha was a weapon, too.

  “I…” he started, and then cocked his head, eyes going to the ceiling.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I think something’s happening.”

  ~*~

  Of all the ways in which this job was worse than deployment, Jake had to give it to the bastards that the accommodations were decent. Well, lavish, actually.

  Jake left his own sumptuous suite, with its four-poster and giant gilt mirror and real Oriental rugs, and walked down the hall to rap on the door of Ramirez’s room. When he didn’t get an answer, he looked first one way down the hall, and then the other. This was one of the windowless passages on the second floor, and though the hall was wide, the dark paneling and flickering sconces gave the impression that the walls were slowly closing in on him. Despite its richness, the manor had the air of a haunted house about it, and he suppressed a shudder.

  “Ramirez,” he called, and knocked again. “Adela. You alright?”

  “Fine,” she barked from the other side. Which wasn’t like her. She was coy, infuriating, and superior. But she wasn’t snappish.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Asshole.” But that wasn’t a no, and he was starting to worry.

  He cracked the door and peeked in, then eased it open the rest of the way when he saw that she was sitting on the side of the bed in workout gear, her head in her hands.

  “Hey,” he said, taking an uncertain step forward. “Is it your leg?” She wore shorts, and he could see the heavy bandage on her thigh. “Do you need to go back to medical?”

  She sat up, pushed herself up, hands on her knees. Her hair, tied back in a loose knot, looked damp, like she’d just had a shower. She was very obviously not wearing a bra under her Nike tank top. And she was glaring at him. “Boundaries, dude.”

  But what snared his attention was her foot. The right one. Because it…wasn’t quite the same as the left. And then he jaw the faint pink line of a scar around her calf.

  “Hey. Eyes up here, asshole.”

  He jerked and lifted his gaze to meet her furious stare. Not just angry, but desperate, spooked. Self-conscious. “Sorry–”

  “What do you want?”

  “You got hurt. I wanted to check on you.”

  She sneered and dragged the folded blanket over from the end of the bed, up into her lap; it shook out over her knees, hiding her bandage…and her mismatched feet. “Right. ‘Cause you’re such a nice guy.” When she angrily tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, he saw that her hand was shaking.

  “Because you’re part of my team, and I was concerned,” he said. “What happened with Vlad?”

  She made a face, but not fast enough. He saw a ripple of shock, even fear, before she shuttered her expression and just looked sour. “Nothing.”

  Jake waited.

  “He’s creepy as shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  She glanced up at him, finally, some of the fear peeking through her façade. “Do you know what’s in the injections they give us?” she asked.

  He shrugged. They’d told him it was an experimental drug, and he hadn’t cared what was in it or what the side-effects might be. There were people capable of living without sight – capable of thriving, even – but he didn’t have the grace or the temerity to be one of them. He’d signed – as best he could without being able to see the pen or paper – and never asked twice about the shit they were pumping into his veins.

  “Why, do you?” he asked.

  “I think–”

  The walkie on his belt crackled to life. “Major Treadwell,” one of the guards said. “We have a situation.”

  ~*~

  Rooster wasn’t proud of the way his stomach turned over when one of the guards cinched a blindfold tight around his eyes. Rob had warned him that something like this might happen, and he’d been mentally preparing himself, but he was already without weapons; take away his vision, and he felt breathlessly vulnerable in the worst way.

  At least no one noticed the phone, though. He was patted down roughly, the guard’s hand clapping right over the bulge taped to his arm, but the glamour must have worked, because he was cuffed and marched forward, the phone still there.

  He tried to keep his breathing slow and regular. Strained his other senses. He was marched up the big stone front steps – he tripped on the first one and was caught by rough hands, shoved forward so that he was forced to find his balance – and then across hard-surface floors that sent all their footfalls echoing through what sounded like a wide-open space.

  And then a voice said, “Wait,” and he knew who it was.

  That motherfucker Jake.

  Rooster ground to a halt, and clenched his jaw to keep from saying what he wanted to, which was some variation on I’m gonna fucking kill you, asshole. He tested his cuffs, but they held.

  “Where did he come from?” Jake demanded,
and Rooster took a small bit of satisfaction in the fact that he sounded unmoored. “Nevermind, just…”

  Low murmurs of conference, and then Rooster was pushed forward again. Hard. He tripped on the edge of a rug and was hauled upright. Shoved on.

  They walked for a long way, a time during which Rooster heard distant voices, strange echoes, and the chirp and crackle of walkie-talkies. A sense of bustling activity, and of worry. And of soaring ceilings that trapped and projected sound in unexpected ways. He’d walked through countless bases and buildings, and this place sounded like none of them.

  Finally, he was put in an elevator and rode a short distance down, his stomach dropping unpleasantly. A hand settled on the back of his neck, and squeezed, once, almost gently. He knew that was Jake, somehow, and he longed to be able to drive his elbow back through the guy’s nose.

  When they stepped off the elevator, Rooster was hit with a strong smell of dust. Dampness and disuse. Their footfalls echoed differently here, and the air was cold, and stale.

  Another walk. And then a staircase leading down, and around. And down, and around.

  A low grating sound, and a hiss, like an airlock. Clang of metal.

  A vault, maybe. At the very least a cell.

  Rooster’s pulse pounded like parade drums in his ears; his heart felt like it might crack a rib.

  Finally, he was pulled up short, and turned around.

  The blindfold was removed.

  Two guards flanked him, holding his arms though he was cuffed, and Jake stood in front of him. His expression, truly pained, slowed the burst of hate that rushed to fill Rooster’s chest. Slowed, but didn’t stop.

  Rooster said, “Where is she?”

  Jake sighed. “How did you find this place?”

  “I wasn’t in the Army. I can actually get shit done.”

  Jake’s lips pressed together a moment. “Whatever you’re trying to do here, Rooster, you didn’t succeed. Now’s not the time to be a smartass. The people here are gonna want answers, and it’ll go easier on you if you talk to me.”

  “Okay, let’s talk. Where is she?”

  Jake shook his head. I tried, his expression said. He stepped back out of the cell; the two guards at his arms removed his cuffs. Locked him in. The barred door slid shut with an ominous clang.

  And then Rooster realized that he understood something. That he’d overlooked all the signs: the outward reluctance, the apology. The fact that he was still alive.

  “The drug trial,” he said, and though the other two guards walked on, Jake lingered, half-turned away. “The one for wounded vets. You were one of the ones they let in, weren’t you?”

  Jake stiffened, a quick, reflexive movement, and Rooster knew he was right.

  “I tried to get into the trial,” Rooster said, and was surprised to find there was no bitterness in his tone. Look at what these people had done to Jake; he didn’t wish himself in that position, the gun hand of some shadow organization. “But they rejected me. Said I wasn’t ‘stable’ enough. What about you, huh? You plenty stable?”

  Jake looked at him a long moment; a muscle in his cheek spasmed like he was about to say something. But in the end, he walked off, silent, and the two heavy doors shut with the finality of coffins closing.

  Rooster let out a deep, unsteady breath and glanced at his surroundings. There was a stone wall at his back, and on his right; bars ahead, at the door, and to his left, between this and another cell. A metal cot frame with no mattress and a stainless-steel prison toilet were the only furnishings.

  At least he wasn’t cuffed anymore.

  He sat down on the edge of the cot and plucked at the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Might as well make the call; he was stuck and there was nothing he could learn here, down in the bowels of this fucking place.

  A low scraping sound launched him to his feet. His pulse leapt, and he spun a tight circle in his cell, arms outstretched, wishing like hell it was a knife strapped to his arm instead.

  “Somebody there?” he barked, putting every ounce of Marine Corps bravado he possessed into the words.

  Sound like an inhale. An exhale. A chuckle, dry and rusty. He heard the first sound again, the metallic scrape, and he saw movement. Not in the cell beside his, but in the one beyond it. It was dimly lit, and his view was of shadows sliding over one another, down low against the floor.

  Then another shift, and a face slid into the dim light of a caged bulb.

  A lightly-accented man’s voice said, “Oh, don’t worry, I can assure you I’m chained up – how is it you Americans say? To hell and back? I don’t know.” A pale hand lifted and pushed snarled, pale hair back from the face, revealing blue eyes. “I am like you: a prisoner.”

  Rooster eased back down to the cot. “Yeah? What are you in for?”

  “Killing my brother,” the man said. “Or, attempting to, I suppose. Only I wasn’t actually attempting. I just needed the great lout to sleep for a little while.”

  “O…kay.”

  “It’s all very tedious.”

  Great, Rooster thought. They locked me up with a fucking lunatic.

  “It’s very boring down here,” the man said, and Rooster noticed two things when he shifted again:

  One: he wore a heavy silver collar and matching cuffs, all of it hooked together with a mass of chains.

  And two: there was a little orange cat curled up on one of his thighs.

  “I’m Val,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “Rooster.”

  A pause.

  “Oh,” the man said, finally, smile forming on his gaunt, shadowed face. “Rooster. Oh, really?”

  ~*~

  Val had been thinking quite a lot about the end of days. Ragnarok, his mother’s people had called it. When the heroes were summoned and Loki’s children broke the world.

  Melodramatic ponderings, perhaps, but he supposed it was only natural that he should sulk and dwell on worst-case scenarios when he couldn’t dreamwalk.

  Hobble him, his brother had said, and he’d rattled the cuffs on his wrists and laughed. Laughed right in Vlad’s face like the insolent little shit anyone who’d ever known the two of them had always claimed he was.

  But then the techs had come in, and they’d pushed up his clothes and stuck little electrodes all down the back of his neck, and along his collarbones, and hooked their trailing wires into the collar that locked around his throat tight enough to choke him.

  It was a shock collar, Vlad had explained. When he dreamwalked, he went down into a sort of trance, and his heartrate slowed, even slower than a normal resting rate, as if he truly did leave his body. When that happened, Vlad said, dispassionately, the collar would be triggered, and it would flood his body with electricity. Three short, sharp pulses designed to pull him back to his body. New technology, he said, the likes of which wasn’t anywhere near ready for human use.

  He’d tried it, once, when Vlad and the lackeys had left, just to see what it was like.

  He was still shaking, fingers spasming of their own accord, nerves still jangling with tiny aftershocks.

  So, naturally, his thoughts turned to the apocalypse.

  For the Vikings, Ragnarok had not been a true final reckoning. Life – a new life – would begin after. It was merely an end to the gods. The old way dying to make room for the new.

  And if the old way was stirring…out where Vlad had buried it…if Romulus truly was waking…

  Then he supposed all the things he kept threatening just to get a rise out of the doctors were indeed unfolding.

  If he was searching for a sign, it had just been dropped two cells over.

  “Rooster,” he said again, and his blood sang in his veins. A dread so acute it felt like joy. “A nickname, hm?”

  A beat. “Yeah,” his new companion – Rooster – said slowly.

  No doubt Val sounded crazy, but that was out of his control, now. His pulse beat like bird wings inside the cage of his chest. “Tell me, Rooster, are you at all
familiar with any of the old religions? Let’s just say, oh, hypothetically…the Norse gods, perhaps?”

  Another pause. “Uh. No.”

  “Okay, not so hypothetically, then. Do you know anything about the Norse gods?”

  “No.” The light was dim, but Val could see him, sitting on the very edge of his cot, big-shouldered, and strong, his too-long straw-colored hair the stuff of longship captains.

  Val could have choked on delight. Could have vomited from the fear. “Well, allow me to elucidate.”

  He was vibrating, and it wasn’t just aftershocks, now. Poppy sat upright on his leg and meowed a little protest. He stroked the back of her neck with shaking fingertips. “I’m only half Norse, you see,” he said. “My mother was Norse. I have her hair. But, that’s not important. Anyway – she talked often, when I was a child, about the old legends. Humans call them myths nowadays, but to her it was religion. Like Jesus on the cross. Father tried to bring her over to Eastern Orthodoxy, as he had done, but she only did it as a token, to please him. Deep down, she still made offerings to her gods.

  “She didn’t like to talk about Ragnarok. A gentle soul, my mother; she could rip a man’s head from his body with one movement.” He mimed doing so, as his chains would allow, and they rattled. Poppy hissed in displeasure and retreated to the shadows. “But talking about the end of the world – of the gods – depressed her. So she didn’t talk about Heimdall slaying Loki, or Balder being the only one to return, but she would talk about the beginning. About the way three cocks crowed to herald the start of it.”

  Rooster stared at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “There was Fjalar in the wood, and there was the soot-red rooster at the gates of Hel. And there was Gullinkambi. Golden Comb. The glorious red rooster that lived in Valhalla, whose crow woke the gods and heroes so that they might ready for the coming battle.” His smile was starting to hurt his face. “Which one are you, Rooster?”