Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  Rooster took a step back.

  “Oh, relax. Bring me another one.”

  “What? No.”

  Val chuckled. “Fine. I’ll do it myself.”

  He pushed the man – the body; it was no longer breathing, the skin an awful gray color now – off his lap and got to his feet with only a little wobble. He looked much steadier; the shakes had receded. He shut his eyes again, expression blissful, as he pushed his hair back with both hands. His face was flushed now, deep spots of color under each cheekbone. The scratches on his wrists and neck seemed paler, as if they were healing by the second.

  He wiped his palm across his mouth, and then looked at it. And then licked the last traces of blood off his skin. “Mm.” His gaze flicked up to Rooster, and he smirked, all teeth. “Horrified?”

  Rooster didn’t respond.

  “Step aside.” He gave a dismissive flick of his fingers, and when Rooster stepped back, Val bent down and hauled the second unconscious guard up by his collar like he was a doll. Like he was nothing.

  Rooster’s stomach convulsed and he turned away, unable to watch.

  He could hear, though, and that was almost as bad. The quiet, wet sounds that, if he shut his eyes, could have been almost sexual.

  He swallowed his rising gorge. “Look, you need to hurry up.”

  A pause. A slurp. “Don’t rush me,” Val said, voice thick. Thick with blood.

  After an eternity, one in which any number of things could be happening upstairs, Rooster heard the body hit the floor with a meaty thump.

  “Ah,” Val breathed on a satiated sigh. “One more.” When he moved past Rooster to get out of the cell, and into the hallway, moving to the third guard, his steps were the rolling strut of a predator. All shakiness and exhaustion had left him. In tattered rags of clothes, his hair a snarled mess, he had the bearing of a king, as he pinned the guard with a foot to the groin – the man came awake with a shout of pain – and bent to lift him up into an embrace as gentle as a lover’s, as strong as a monster’s.

  Rooster shut his eyes, and finally, it was finished.

  Val walked up to him, grinning, lips, and tongue, and teeth red. “Now, what will we do about your problem?” he murmured in a voice like silk.

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” Rooster said, hand tightening on the grip of his pilfered gun.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it, darling.”

  Rooster started to move – shove him, shoot him, duck him, something – but Val was too fast. His hands closed on Rooster’s shoulders, an immovable grip, and before Rooster could react in any way, Val lunged in and kissed him.

  But kiss was too kind a word. Val attacked his mouth. Rooster had time to register a press of lips, the oily heat of fresh blood, a tongue shoving roughly between his lips. The copper of blood inside his mouth.

  Then Val pulled back, his grin awful. There was a fresh, weeping bite mark on the inside of his arm. He’d bitten himself?

  Rooster wanted to vomit. He started to spit.

  “It’s not theirs,” Val said. And then: “Swallow that.”

  Rooster did, only because his throat was convulsing, his whole body was convulsing. A shudder rippled through him, as exhilarating and pleasurable as an orgasm.

  Val clapped him on the shoulder. “Wipe your mouth.” He did the same for himself. “And let’s go.”

  ~*~

  It was a suicide mission. Or it would have been, for someone else. Someone who wasn’t a former Soviet attack dog too hell-bent on killing everyone in his path to worry about jeopardizing his comrades. He’d never been any good at keep his friends alive before, why start now?

  Nikita mowed through guards in the manor’s soaring foyer. A group of lab technicians in white coats cried out and threw themselves down onto the expensive rug, hands flying to cover their heads.

  “Where is Aleksander Kashnikov?” Nikita demanded, shouted really, his accent thicker than it had been in years. When no one answered, he fired a shot straight overhead, and heard crystal shatter. A few thick pieces rained down on the floor around them, and the lab coats screeched collectively. “Where is he?”

  “You’re fucking insane,” Lanny muttered, and Nikita was dimly aware that he was clearing the rest of the foyer, checking for threats. “I love it.”

  Nikita lowered his Smith & Wesson, so its barrel was trained on the huddled techs as he stalked toward them, wooden bootheels kissing the floor with a sound like gunshots. He was reminded, ridiculously, of walking across the Kremlin’s high-gloss floors.

  “Are you deaf?” He reached them, and toed a cowering woman’s hand away from her face. She made an animal sound of terror and looked up at him through a sheen of tears. “Where is my wolf, bitch?”

  “So angry,” Alexei mused at his side, but made no move to stop him.

  “D-d-downstairs,” the woman stuttered.

  Then that was where he would go.

  He didn’t realize he was in the process of stepping over the woman until a restraining hand landed on his arm.

  “Whoa,” Lanny said when Nikita snarled at him. “I get it: you’ve got a one-track mind tuned to Sasha. But maybe we should figure out how to get downstairs first, yeah?”

  Nikita snarled again, because this was going too slow.

  “Yeah,” Lanny sighed. “Come on.”

  ~*~

  Jamie wasn’t ready to shoot people. Even if he could work the gun – which he knew he could thanks to practice with Trina’s dad – and even if the threat was very prevalent – which it was at the moment – killing wasn’t something Jamie could stomach.

  “You killed last night,” Nikita had told him levelly, and he’d been overcome by a wave of nausea.

  It hadn’t felt like killing. That night – “come here, little one” – with the weight of a comforting hand at his nape, and the heat of a living body at his chest, the wonderful, thrilling bloom of fresh blood in his mouth, he’d felt so very alive. How could death beget that kind of wild self-aware life?

  In his sated, post-blood ecstasy, it had been so easy to overlook the two dropped bodies. The way Nikita and Lanny had hefted them over a fence and into a tangle of roadside kudzu.

  But he had killed.

  And he didn’t think he could do it in good conscious, unless his blood lust was up.

  So for now, the plan was to blend in. To find Sasha.

  They’d bought a cheap blazer on the way down, and as soon as they were past the door, he ducked into a dining room with a table as long as a football field and shrugged into it. Put a pair of useless glasses on his nose and a fake ID badge hanging out of his pocket. A disguise that would have never worked under normal circumstances, but right now, with Nikita and Lanny creating a violent distraction, Jamie might be able to slip in unnoticed.

  He took a deep breath, started forward, and caught his reflection in a gilt-framed mirror.

  Just weeks before, he’d been worried about final exams and portfolios. Now? He was a party to murder, and rescue, and had fed off a man’s blood. Had taken his life.

  He shivered all over, and walked deeper into the house.

  ~*~

  There were two doors that led to the cell, one made of bars, and one that looked like something used to secure a bank vault, or the hold of a Navy ship. Beyond that was a spiral stone staircase, straight out of a castle, and the only way was up.

  Val went first. They encountered more guards on the ascent, but Rooster never had to fire off a shot. Val broke one’s neck and sent him tumbling down the stairs past Rooster. Another he looked like he might bite, and Rooster hustled him past with a terse, “Not time.” Val sighed and slammed the man’s head against the stone wall.

  At the top, they emerged into a long, low-ceilinged stone room that Rooster recognized by smell: the place of dust and mildew. He saw boxes arranged on several long rows of metal shelves; boxes stacked in corners; boxes gone damp and sagging apart, spilling books like rice from a sack. Boxes that looked charred at the edge
s.

  He couldn’t see any guards yet, but heard shouts and running feet.

  Val grabbed his sleeve and towed him around a shelf. “You’ll probably need that gun now,” he said, primly.

  He slid into the role of shooter without thought. He handled a gun the way other men handled shaving razors, or the gearshifts of cars. A brainless, instinctual exercise, without flinching. One. Two. Three. Four.

  He turned to find Val dropping the fifth, wiping his mouth with his tattered sleeve, eyes electric with something like joy. “Come on.”

  Another staircase, and then–

  It had to be a lab. A seemingly endless stretch of low tables and desks cluttered with everything from computers to beakers. A stunned once-over revealed designated workstations, metal tables, half-walls and curtained partitions; industrial coolers and fridges, big banks of monitors. Heavy wooden doors lined the walls. And it was chaos: tipped-over chairs, strewn papers, abandoned monitors. Rooster saw flashes of white as techs hid beneath tables. Others were disappearing behind the sliding-shut doors of an elevator. Screams. Shrieks.

  “Shit,” he murmured, and was almost overwhelmed.

  A young man with glasses and a pocket protector tried to sneak past, and Val snatched his arm. The kid squealed and went limp.

  Val gave him a shake. “My weapons. Where are they?”

  The kid went the color of spoiled milk and gaped up at him. “I – I – I.”

  “My sword, you idiot. My daggers. I know they’re here.”

  “Tr-try the – the weapons room,” he finally stammered. When Val dropped him, Rooster thought he might have fainted. Val leaned down, snapped his laminated ID badge from his lapel, and stepped over the poor boy.

  No, not a poor boy. These were the people who’d treated Red like a science fair project. Fuck all of them.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Rooster growled, tailing Val as he began opening doors and looking for the promised arsenal.

  “Believe me,” Val said, trying another, and then another in rapid succession. “When we run into my brother, you’ll wish I was armed…Ah! Here.”

  Like everything else about this place, the weapons room was impressive as hell. Cabinet after cabinet of guns and knives in all varieties. An indoor shooting range.

  And set off by themselves, two ornate wooden cases with velvet lining the color of blood. One was empty. The other held an honest-to-God sword. The daggers arranged around it had jewels set in the hilts, but the sword – simple, masculine, and gleaming – was the showstopper.

  Val pulled the little padlock apart like it was made of taffy and murmured something low in another language as he lifted the sword from its velvet bed. Tilted it so the overhead light ran down its length in one long flash.

  “Hello, gorgeous,” he said in English, and smiled with all his teeth showing.

  “Let’s get a move on,” Rooster growled.

  There was a scabbard, too, sturdy leather with an intricate strap that Val ducked through so sword and scabbard lay down his back. “Yes, fine. Let’s get the children.”

  ~*~

  The walls of their room dampened the scents and sounds beyond, but Sasha could still tell that something was happening. A great stirring of panic that lifted his hair on end.

  He wanted, so badly, to believe that Nikita…that the others…And yet he feared it, terribly, because Nikita was brave, and stubborn, and wonderful, but this place was a fortress, and rescue wasn’t possible.

  “Sasha,” Red said beside him. “What are you–”

  “Shh.” Footsteps just outside the door. He grabbed her wrist, straining to listen, ready to bundle her into the corner as best as his shaky limbs could manage if someone came through the door with the intent to hurt them. They were too valuable to kill, he knew, but there was no way Dr. Talbot would let Nik waltz right in and drag them out. “Listen.”

  An electronic chime as a keycard was used, and the lock disengaged.

  Sasha began to shake – shakes on top of drug shakes – and he gritted his teeth, fighting with a sudden wave of faintness. He couldn’t black out now.

  The door opened to two scents: one vampire, one human. Not Nik, and not Vlad, a stranger, but…

  Someone knelt down in front of him on the floor. Blue eyes, and tangled waist-length blond hair. Smell of human blood, and rags for clothes; pommel of a sword protruding over his shoulder.

  He wasn’t polished and gleaming, dressed in velvets and high-gloss boots, and Sasha could actually smell him now, for the first time. But there was no mistaking…

  “Val?” he asked, and to his great shame, tears filled his eyes.

  The prince who’d first visited Sasha when he was eight, who’d told him how to kill Rasputin, and save Nikita, smiled at him now, so tenderly. He reached to touch Sasha’s face, cupped his cheek, swept his thumb across it. The warmth and solidity of him was a shock. “Hello, sweetheart.”

  “Are you – are you really here?” As if the touch wasn’t enough proof.

  “Yes, I really am. Let’s get those awful things off, shall we?” He produced a key. “Your Nikita’s here, and he’s mad as a wet cat.”

  “Nikita’s here?”

  The first cuff came undone with a little click. “Yes, can’t you hear all the shooting?”

  ~*~

  Val knelt down in front of a pale-haired boy, face melting into sweetness, and they talked about…something, as Val undid his cuffs.

  Rooster didn’t really see any of that. His eyes went straight to Red, who sat crouched against the wall, wrists cuffed together. She looked toward the door, and in the second before she recognized him, the sheer terror on her face made him want to stomp back out into the main lab, drag lab coats out from under tables, and put bullets in them.

  He watched her see him, really see him, and she scrambled to her feet and ran to him. She couldn’t put her arms around him, but that didn’t matter. He caught her and tucked her into his chest, enfolded her into his own arms, big enough for both of them.

  He didn’t say anything, because he couldn’t. He pressed his face down into her red hair and felt the warmth of her breath in the hollow of his throat, listened to the way it hitched and caught.

  “You came,” she whispered. “You came.”

  “Yeah,” he choked out.

  When he lifted his head, he saw that Val had got the boy up on his feet, though he was wobbly. Val had an arm looped around his waist. The boy’s hair was glued to his forehead with sweat, and the dark circles beneath his eyes stood out prominently against too-pale skin. He looked sick.

  Val studied him with clear concern. “Can you walk?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t look it. Where’s Talbot?”

  “Prob – probably in his office,” he boy said, and his teeth were chattering.

  Val growled – actually growled, like an animal. After the blood-drinking, it still managed to surprise Rooster, that catlike sound.

  “Here.” He steered the shaking boy toward Rooster and Red. “Make sure he doesn’t fall down. I want a word before we leave.”

  “What the hell?” But all he could do was catch the boy by the shoulder and pull he and Red along with him as Val charged out of the room and toward a door marked with the name Dr. Edmund Talbot on a gold placard.

  “Watch him,” Rooster said, entrusting the sickly kid to Red, who laid a comforting, if insubstantial hand on his shoulder, and scanned the lab around them. It was eerily quiet. Everyone had either fled, or was hiding. How there weren’t more guards coming at them, Rooster had no idea. His hand tightened on his gun.

  A sound brought his attention back to the door: Val kicking it in. There was a splintering crack, as if a brace had been broken, and the door flew inward to reveal Jake standing just inside, gun at the ready.

  A gunshot.

  Val shuddered as the bullet hit home.

  Rooster lunged forward, bringing his gun up.

  But Val, somehow, though Rooster
could see the gory exit wound in his back, didn’t fall. Instead, he laughed. “Lovely try, Major,” he said.

  Jake tried to move, to get off another shot, but Val was impossibly fast. He batted the gun away with one hand, and gripped Jake’s jaw with the other.

  “But you missed the important part.” Val’s hand tightened, knuckles going white, and there was a crack of bone breaking.

  Jake let out a high, thin scream, and Val tossed him away. He landed half-over a chair that then toppled, and lay still.

  “Oh,” Red gasped, clutching at Rooster’s sleeve.

  A man with glasses fumbled across his desk, a horror-struck, desperate attempt to defend himself while being too panicked to go about it properly. Rooster recognized that emotion. Reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there, wanting to flee, your knees too weak to hold you up.

  Val leaned over the desk and clapped both his hands over the man’s, pinning them to the wood. “All my love to the family,” he said, and turned back to the door.

  “Oh, him you don’t kill?” Rooster asked.

  Val hesitated in the doorway, and though he feigned bored, Rooster saw a little tic in his jaw. “His daughter doesn’t deserve that.” Then he shouldered past them.

  Rooster spared Jake a glance; he had no idea if he was dead, or just unconscious. At the moment, he didn’t care.

  ~*~

  Nikita caught another vampire’s scent behind him just in time to duck the knife that knocked the hat from his head and buried itself in the paneling of the library wall.

  “Shit,” Lanny muttered, whirling, shotgun at the ready.

  Alexei yelped, and tripped, and dragged himself up hastily.

  Nikita spun as he stood, gun leveled on the creature in the library doorway.

  He was Nikita’s height, but broader through the shoulders. His face, the harsh angles of it, its stony utter lack of expression, pinged something way back in Nikita’s memory. The widow’s peak, the tied back long hair. This was not a young vampire, oh no. No laboratory creation. This was the real deal.