He raised his gun.
And stumbled back from a sudden, searing wall of fire.
It was so hot, Nikita gave up on keeping his eyes open and tucked into a fast roll across the carpet. When he came up, squinting, he saw the mage at the helm of the fire: a very young redheaded girl, face gone white with strain.
The fire roared, then flickered, caught, retracted.
She gritted her teeth and made a low, anguished sound of frustration. She couldn’t hold it much longer, he understood.
“Thank you, dear, that’ll be all.” Val – a bedraggled, shaggy, rag-clad version of the polished prince who’d appeared in Trina’s grandmother’s living room – strode past the last flash of fire, a sword of his own in-hand. “I’ll take it from here.”
Vlad muttered something dark in Romanian.
Val answered in kind.
Light sparked along blades as swords came together with a sharp ring.
Nikita didn’t bother to watch. He scrambled across the rug and dropped to his knees beside Sasha, still in his wolf shape, curled up with his legs tucked, eyes shut, whining quietly.
“Sashka.” He stroked his fur, but got no response.
“Can you carry him?” Lanny asked from above him. “We need to go.”
“Yes.” And he gathered his wolf up in his arms.
~*~
Fulk had left their bedroom with his sword in his hand and his heart in his throat. Chaos meant one thing: the rescue attempt was underway. And he knew, with a certainty that made him feel sick, that only someone with sword training and preternatural strength had a prayer of getting between Vlad and the doomed rescuers.
He’d reached the portrait gallery when a man dressed all in green crashed through one of the soaring windows and rolled into a ready crouch, one hand braced on the carpet runner, the other on the butt of a handgun.
Not a man, but a wolf.
He stood up slowly, eyes trained on first the sword in Fulk’s hands, then Fulk’s face. His brows rose up until they disappeared into the glossy dark curls that fell over his forehead.
“Le Strange?” he asked.
And that was when Fulk noticed he wore green. Lincoln green.
It had been a long, long time since he’d bumped into one of Locksley’s boys, but he’d been left with an impression. If memory served, this one was Scarlet.
“Are you one of Sasha’s people?” Fulk asked.
Scarlet’s brows raised another notch. “Sasha? We’re here for the girl. And her angry Marine.”
“Oh.” He hadn’t expected that.
Scarlet smiled a little. “You gonna get in my way?”
Fulk didn’t know. “You broke my window,” he said to stall.
Scarlet’s smile stretched. “Word has it it’s not your window anymore. Or did you invite the Institute in?”
He didn’t get a chance to answer. A howl shivered through the air: Annabel’s.
Any other time, Fulk would have never turned his back on Will Scarlet. But now, with his mate calling him, he turned and bolted. He heard Scarlet behind him, running too, and didn’t care.
The gallery T’d into the main hallway, and at the intersection, another Lincoln green-clad wolf darted past, headed for the main staircase – and the cacophony that floated up from it. Fulk hung a hard left and followed, falling in beside the second wolf.
Who was Rob Locksley.
The man glanced over and managed a double take, even as he was running. “Le Strange?”
“Get your people out, and stay out of my way,” Fulk snapped.
They pulled up at the railing, gazes drawn down, all the way to the massive foyer where a fresh batch of guards had finally arrived from the barracks and were pouring in through the front doors.
“Ah, shit.”
~*~
It was those cuffs, Rooster knew. He didn’t know what they were made of, or how they did it, but they sapped Red’s energy, and her power. She’d had just enough juice for one forceful show, but in the aftermath, she crumpled.
Rooster caught her around the waist with his free arm and towed her toward the door – toward the light that poured in across polished floors, a beacon drawing them out of his place.
He pushed everything – the clang of sword meeting sword; the curses and hurried movements of the others – from his mind save leaving. Getting Red to safety.
They staggered out of the room that looked like a library into a soaring space with a grand staircase and a marble inlay floor. The foyer.
He heard the thud of boots just seconds before he saw an incoming wall of black-clad armed guards.
Almost. They’d almost made it out. So close.
Rooster tightened his arm around Red, pulled her into his side. “Stay with me,” he said, and trained his sights on the leading guard.
The guard who took his next step, then stiffened, then collapsed to the floor.
With an arrow sticking out of his neck.
Rooster glanced up wildly, and found Rob and Will standing on the balcony above, fresh arrows nocked.
He couldn’t help it; he laughed.
44
The first meeting of the blades moved up Val’s arms as a shockwave. He felt the collision in his bones, in his back teeth, clenched so tight he thought they might crack. Vlad had always been the physically stronger of the two, and he was proving it now, well-fed, rested, fit from a strict training regimen.
But Val had the emotional advantage.
He was fee.
And his belly was warm with fresh human blood – he could weep with ecstasy to taste man-blood on his tongue for the first time in so long.
So Val braced his feet against the floor, met his brother’s next strike with a parry, and laughed, high and wild, the sound as bright and sharp as the meeting of the swords.
“You’re wounded, brother,” Val said, stepping back, blocking, parrying. “I can smell blood.”
Vlad grunted – disapproval, and not effort, Val thought.
“I hope it won’t affect your fighting.”
Vlad surged forward with an aggressive flurry of strikes.
Val deflected them, but he had to retreat seven steps backward, arms shaking with the effort. Shit, he wasn’t going to be able to keep this up for long. The long muscles in his back were already starting to burn.
But he grinned at his brother, even if his laugh was breathless. It was too fun not to goad him like this.
The next clang sent sharp bolts of pain shooting up Val’s arms, and he spun away, gasping, retreating.
Vlad granted him a moment, his own broad chest heaving. “What do you think is going to happen?” he asked, brows set at stern angles. “That you can overpower me? Because you can’t.”
Val panted; sweat on his palms made his sword grip slippery. The others, he noted – Nikita and sweet Sasha and their pack; and the mage and her Marine, her Gullinkambi – had left. He registered scuffles and barked orders, and much milling about out on the front steps. Heard, even, the distant crack of a rifle, and male shouts of alarm. They’d gotten away, then, all of them.
In that sense, he’d been victorious.
Even if his brother was about to run him through.
“How about this,” he said, struggling to get his breathing under control. Beneath his ratty clothes, sweat poured down his body. His left calf cramped up, sharp and sudden. “Let me leave, and you won’t have to see me again. You won’t even have to hear from me. All I want is to be left alone.”
He’d meant it as a jest, a challenge. But as soon as he said it, Val realized it was the truth. With a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, Val acknowledged that his aspirations of the past – to be seen as a worthy member of his famous family; to foster a peace between the Empire and Romania, not to help the Empire, as all his doubters had claimed, but to finally drag Romania out of an endless crusade; to gain some sort of brotherly affection from Vlad; to lead – were just that: past. All he wanted, all that he’d wanted for year
s now, was to lie down in spring grass and watch clouds scuttle across the sun. Feel the breeze. Smell modern cities, and the insides of restaurants, and eat until he was painfully full. He wanted to know the texture of Mia’s hair against his hand. To sit a horse again. To sleep on silk sheets, and know a willing sex partner, and run until his legs were jelly, the wind in his clean hair.
He was a purebred vampire prince. Romanian Royalty. Roman royalty.
And all he wanted was to disappear into the world, and never be reminded of those things again.
“Please,” he said, voice twisting piteously. “Just let me go.”
Vlad stared at him. Lifted his sword. Attacked.
Val brought his own up with arms that screamed in pain, and the strike sent his blade spinning out of his hands. He gave a wordless cry of alarm and pain, and reached for the gun he’d picked off a dead guard and jammed in his fraying waistband. He wasn’t sure he’d know how to use it, but he’d watched Rooster. It couldn’t be that hard…
Vlad’s blade caught him where his neck and shoulder joined. Cleaved him there. Cracked him open. The sword hit his sternum, on the inside, skidded around his heart, lodged in his ribs. Not fatal. But.
He didn’t register falling, or Vlad drawing the sword back out of his body. Didn’t hear or feel any of it.
Suddenly he was on his back, looking up at the high coffered ceiling, the heat and strength bleeding out of him, heart throbbing jaggedly. He couldn’t breathe. The light was fading.
Vlad’s face appeared above his. “A kill for a kill,” he said, emotionless.
“No.” His voice came out a thin rasp. His vision blacked over. “I never…wanted to kill you.”
And then he was gone.
~*~
Fulk vaulted over the railing, landed lightly on the balls of his feet, and entered the library just in time to see Vlad cut his little brother almost in half. He watched, sick to his stomach, as Val crumpled, and Vlad braced a fit on his hip, leaned back, and pulled his sword free with an awful sucking sound and a fresh arterial spray of blood.
Vlad stepped back, and watched Val twitch and spasm, and bleed all over the carpet without any expression.
Fulk couldn’t say that he liked Val, not the way that Anna did. But. This…
“Did you kill him?” Fulk asked, and Vlad whirled to face him, bloody sword lifting.
His dark eyes moved over Fulk, noted his own sword. “No. But he will sleep for a while. He can’t cause any more trouble.” His head tilted. “Maybe I should have killed him, yes?”
Fulk swallowed hard. He was aware, suddenly, that he’d done nothing of any use today. He hadn’t helped anyone escape, hadn’t taken Annabel and fled. He was still here, same as ever. His sword might as well have been a matchstick for all the good it had done.
“Do you hate him?” he asked, nodding toward Val, who it was hard to look at.
“No,” Vlad said, like it was obvious. “He has always been full of hate, and that is not useful. It is a waste.”
Fulk didn’t respond.
“What has happened to the wolf? Sasha?”
“I think he’s gone.”
“Ah.” Vlad looked at him and Fulk wanted to squirm. “Then it’s a good thing there are other wolves here, yes?”
~*~
“We need leverage,” Trina had said, and Jamie had understood. The best way to push back against a secret, sinister organization was to expose it.
He found the computer terminal on the main floor, in a room that looked like a parlor. It could have been nothing; it looked like an afterthought. But when he touched the mouse, the screen lit up, and oh. Yes, this was something.
He used the keycard he’d swiped to log in, plugged in the flash drive he’d brought, and started moving files.
45
Trina lowered her great-grandmother’s rifle with a surprisingly steady exhale. Without the scope, the front lawn of the manor house was dotted with shapeless black blurs, all of them still.
She’d pulled her gun on her share of suspects in her time as a beat cop, and then a detective. But before today, she’d never killed a man.
Now, she had more than half-a-dozen under her belt.
She didn’t know how she felt about that, so she resolved to consider it later, when there was time to weigh and measure her own morality.
For now, a group of ragtag escapees limped into the forest, and she shinnied down the tree to greet them.
When she landed on the leaf litter below, Deshawn said, “That was some damn impressive shooting.” He’d watched the whole thing through high-tech binoculars, on the radio with his team inside.
“Thanks.” She slung the Mosin-Nagant back of her shoulder where it weighed against her spine more than it ought to.
Rustling announced an arrival. The first to step through the screen of shrubs were the tall blond with his arm supporting the little redheaded girl, both of them flanked by archers in green hoods. Deshawn’s people.
The next popping and snapping of branches had Trina standing up on her toes, breath catching.
Lanny.
And then Alexei.
And Nikita…carrying Sasha. A big, limp white wolf that he cradled like a baby to his chest.
Trina swallowed a sudden lump in her throat. “Is he…?” She didn’t dare say it.
Lanny came to her; he looked whole, not limping, not favoring either side. He had a scratch on his forehead, but it was already healing. He pulled her into a short, hard hug, the sweat on his skin gluing them together, his breath hot against her scalp as he sighed.
“He’s alive,” he said. Then, quieter: “Nik’s pretty fucked up in the head about it, though.”
She stepped back, hands still clasped around Lanny’s thick biceps, and looked at her great-grandfather. He was utterly expressionless…in a spooky way, his gaze trained on the wolf, the best friend, that he carried.
She nodded. “We need to get somewhere safe.”
“Where’s Jamie?”
“He texted me. He’s coming.”
The sharp snap of a twig behind her heralded his arrival; everyone turned toward him, hands reaching for weapons, and he emerged from the underbrush with hands raised, empty palms flashing white in the gloom of the forest. “It’s just me.” His gaze came to Trina. “I think I got what we need.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
She turned back to Deshawn…standing between her, and her people, and his people. He extended a hand. “You guys need a lift? We got a bird.”
She accepted his shake. “No, thanks. We’re good.”
He nodded, and produced a small black business card from one of his pockets. “Here, that’s us. If you ever need a friend.”
“Thank you,” she said, and meant it.
She didn’t take a deep breath until the manor was far, far behind them.
~*~
Sasha shifted back to his human form on the long walk back to the rental cabin, but he didn’t wake.
Nikita laid him out on the rental cabin’s bed and dragged over a chair to sit beside him and wait. And wait.
Sasha’s chest rose and fell in a shallow, rapid rhythm. His lashes flickered as his eyes moved beneath the lids; restless, but never opening. Smudged with shadows, sunken. Just like his cheeks, and his belly beneath his ripped and stained white shirt. He’d always been slender, with knobby wrists and ankles, caught in that slim teenage shape forever. But he looked like he’d lost ten pounds or more since Nikita had last seen him. His hair needed washing, clinging in greasy clumps to his forehead. Nikita reached to push it back off his face instinctively, lingering after, hand cradling the top of his skull, feeling the sweat and excess body heat there in his skin.
“Nikita,” Trina said from the doorway. So gently. “We can’t stay here. We’re too close to the manor and it isn’t safe.”
“He’s feverish,” he said. His mouth was so dry it was hard to form words; brittle and crackling on his tongue. In Russian, “What did they do to y
ou?”
“Nik,” she prompted.
“When he wakes.”
She gave a cut-off little sigh and walked away, easing the door shut most of the way. He could hear the others’ conversation out in the main room; it flowed over him like white noise.
“We can’t just–”
“Shh, he’ll hear.”
“He’s out of his damn gourd anyway.”
“Sasha smells like chemicals. They poisoned him.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I know that. I can smell it.”
“Would you two keep it down?”
“What about Val?”
“What about him?”
“He was loose, but he didn’t get out. I don’t think.”
Nikita scraped his blunt nails gently along Sasha’s scalp, slow pets, the way he’d always liked. He did smell of chemicals: strong human medicines, and street narcotics, the kind of nasty stink he sometimes detected on bums and junkies.
Could Sasha detect him in his sleep, he wondered? Was Nikita’s familiar scent a comfort?
“Sashka.” He trailed his fingertips down behind Sasha’s ear, down the side of his throat, over the fluttering pulse there. “Can you hear me?”
Sasha murmured wordlessly and shifted on the bed, a tiny half-roll, wanting closer to Nikita, pushing into his hand.
“Sasha.”
His eyes opened to slits, that well-loved pale blue that should have been cold but had always been full of such youthful warmth. His gaze – glassy and unfocused – moved back and forth across Nikita’s face. He worked his jaw a moment, wet his lips. “Nik? Is it…are you real?” He made a pitiful attempt to lift one limp hand.
Nikita caught his hand with his free one, and squeezed it tight. “Yes, bratishka. I’m real. We’re going home.”
Sasha smiled faintly, rolled the rest of the way over, pressed his face into Nikita’s hip, and fell back to sleep.
~*~
“How’s she doing?” Deshawn asked, stopping to lean a shoulder against the wall beside Rooster, mirroring his posture.
Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2) Page 45
