“Are you hurt?” Nikita asked, and she managed to shake her head.
She dry-heaved for what felt like a long time; when it was over, and her stomach had stopped clenching, the hand left her neck and hooked her under the arm, helped her stand upright again. She was too weak to thank him, to do anything but wipe her mouth with the back of her hand and lift her eyes to his.
He looked worried, but not panicked. Things were handled, then. “Feliks and Monsieur Philippe are tending to Ivan,” he answered her unasked question. “He’ll be alright. The Germans are dead.”
She nodded. Croaked, “Good.”
He pulled a flask from inside his jacket with his free hand and passed it to her. “Drink that, and sit down.”
She didn’t argue.
~*~
The flask was full of vodka. Two long sips quieted her stomach and eased the shaking in her bones, warmed her insides so her teeth stopped chattering.
She was a marionette, going where she was told, sitting down when guided.
Four sips of vodka brought her back to herself completely – that and the cold wet nose that nudged her hand.
She was sitting with her back against a tree, on a rare dry patch of ground, and one of Sasha’s wolves was licking her knuckles. It was the omega, the rangy one with the sweet eyes.
“Hello,” she murmured, turning her hand over so his tongue slid against her palm. It was oddly comforting.
Over top of the wolf’s worried face she saw Sasha’s, head cocked to the side, his hood and the brightness of his eyes making him look less human by the moment.
“Katya, are you alright?” he asked, earnest and kind.
She flicked her tongue across her dry lips, chasing a drop of vodka. On an empty stomach, she already felt the heat of it spreading through her, going right to her head, fuzzing the sharp edges of everything – especially her fear. “I am.” Her voice came out rough and she cleared her throat. When Sasha frowned, she offered him a bare smile. “Promise. But thank you.”
She scanned her surroundings for the first time. Ivan sat a few feet away, stripped to the waist with his jacket draped across his shoulders, Feliks fussing with a length of bandage that had been wrapped around his midsection and which was darkening with blood.
“How–” she started to say.
“The bullet only grazed him,” Monsieur Philippe answered, appearing at her side with a swirl of fur. “He’ll be just fine, though you wouldn’t know it to listen to his griping. How are you, my dear? Do you need something for the nausea?”
“No, I…”
But he was crouching down in front of her, taking her chin delicately between gloved fingertips. Looking into her eyes. “Hmm. How’s your head? Seeing double?”
“No.” She wanted to flinch away from him, but found she couldn’t, too wrung-out to care.
“Good. Your pupils look fine.” He peered into them, his own gaze cheerful and inscrutable as ever. “I think it was maybe just the shock that made you sick, and not the fall.”
She released a deep breath when he let go of her. Looked around for Nikita and found him standing with his arms folded, white-faced and grim.
“I want to see the bodies,” she said, raising her voice to be heard.
His brows lifted, and she expected some sort of reprimand. But he said, “You sure?”
“Yeah. I need to.”
He nodded.
~*~
First was the man who’d pulled her out of the tree. She made herself look at his face, the pulpy mess of bone, and blood, and brain matter. Memorized the shape of it because this was war. It was so easy to think of it in terms of ideals and speeches and flags, but it was this: the breaking-open of living things.
Next were the two she’d killed with her rifle; tidy shots that had dropped them where they stood.
Another had been shot at close-range, in the back, as he fled.
The last had been burned. A black husk, still smoking.
“Who did this?” she asked, covering her nose and mouth with a hand to block out the smell.
Nikita gave her a surprised look. “You haven’t seen the old man’s fire trick?” He made a circular motion with one hand.
“No.” She thought of his fingers against her face, tried to remember if they’d felt warmer than they should.
“You should ask him to show you. He likes that,” Nikita said, bitter. “I tracked ahead about half a mile.” He nodded toward the snow-veined mud that lay ahead of them, disturbed by only one set of footprints. “These were the only ones. Must have been scouts. Or deserters.”
“Deserters would have hidden. They wouldn’t have fired on us.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Just probably?”
A grin touched his lips as he turned to her. “You’re feeling better, then, if you’re arguing with me.”
She was struck all over again by the clean lines of his face, but it was a quieter sensation that stirred in her stomach this time. The fierce attraction tempered with a sense that he was safe, that he was looking out for her.
She sighed and nodded.
“Was that the first time you’ve killed a man?”
Had he asked mockingly, she couldn’t have stood it. But it was a simple question, laced with sympathy even. So she nodded. Her voice came out small and wavering. “Yes.”
He reached for her, telegraphing the movement, not wanting to startle her, and squeezed her shoulder. “I wish I could tell you that it doesn’t get easier, but unfortunately, it does.”
She nodded again, swallowed, felt a sob building in her throat.
“You’re a very good shot,” he said, kindly. “You saved us all today.”
She leaned into the scant comfort of his hand on her shoulder, and her legs buckled.
His arm went around her shoulders, quick and instinctual, solid and grounding.
Katya told herself it was a wave of dizziness that pressed her head down onto his shoulder, but it was the simple need for comfort and closeness.
His neck smelled of sweat, and dirt, and gun oil, just as she’d thought, but sweeter than she’d imagined.
Somewhere behind them, she heard the murmur of voices, but they were alone here, and she allowed herself a moment to bask in something as strange and wonderful as human contact in the aftermath of death.
19
REMAINS
“I think it best not to let the wolves eat them,” Monsieur Philippe said, a suggestion for which Nikita was grateful.
They piled the bodies up – a messy business – and then Philippe stood over them, hands cupped in the air. Nikita knew what was coming, but it was still a shock when he heard the thump and hiss of fire leaping to life from his palms and igniting the corpses.
“Shit,” Katya said beside him, stunned.
“I know.”
They left the remains to smolder – it smelled alarmingly of every other kind of cooked meat – and headed up a slow rise to a wooded ridge that proved to be the site of an abandoned village.
Five wooden cottages and a one-room church sat hunkered down amongst the tree trunks, their windows dark, sills piled with snow that had melted and refrozen a dozen times into long wet spikes. One door hung open, the floorboards warped with water damage.
Nikita stepped through and almost choked on the smell of dampness and mold. A few heavy cooking pots had been left behind, and bed frames, but no personal effects. The cobwebs and squirrel nests suggested the residents had left years’ prior.
“They’ve been gone a long time,” Sasha confirmed, sniffing the air in what was now a normal sight, head tipped back, nostrils flared as he searched for scents none of them could hope to pick up.
“Before the war,” Nikita told him, and earned a startled look. “When the state took up all the farmland.”
“Oh.”
“Good place to camp out for the night,” Kolya said with a meaningful look, and Nikita nodded his agreement. None of them had said it, but he
knew they were all thoroughly rattled after their run-in with the Germans. Walls, and a roof, and a more solid defense would be welcome.
“Excellent idea,” Philippe said. “Though I believe one of the cottages with, um, with its door shut would be preferable.”
~*~
They found one that had been carefully shut up before its owners migrated. It was cold, musty, and the spiders had found their way in through the cracks, but it was mostly clean and it kept the wind off. Feliks knocked a bird nest from the flue with an old broom handle and soon they had a fire going in the hearth, its orange and yellow shadows cheerful across the floorboards.
They sat in a half-circle around the fireplace, choking down SPAM and pumpernickel sandwiches, the wolves warm, solid, and musky at their backs. There was a time when having seven wolves in a cottage with you would have been a horrifying prospect, but now Nikita could only feel glad that no one would have to sit up and keep watch tonight; nothing could sneak past the wolves.
Katya sat beside him, and he noticed. In a way that he probably shouldn’t, but couldn’t seem to help. She’d stuck close…after. Even once she’d pulled away, her warmth had lingered against his side, the shape of her head burned into his shoulder like a brand.
It had all happened so fast – by the time he could register shock, and then fury, fear for her, she was already back on her feet and putting a bullet through the Nazi’s face.
He’d dared to touch her, that German. Every ounce of rational thought had abandoned Nikita in that moment. If she hadn’t shot the man, Nikita would have gouged out his eyes with his thumbs and driven his knife through his throat. He was still reeling from the impulse; violence was in his job description, but a dispassionate, clinical sort. This, though – this had been like the urge to kill Philippe when he’d first thought Sasha dead.
If he’d had any delusions about his burgeoning feelings toward Katya, he didn’t hold them any longer. He wanted to drag her into his tent like a caveman, sure, but his sentiments went deeper than that.
It terrified him.
Ivan crammed the last bite of disgusting sandwich in his mouth and rooted around inside his coat with a grunt of discomfort.
“Don’t mess up my bandage job,” Feliks told him.
“Fuck off. Oh, here it is.” He pulled out a big canteen that Nikita would bet ten-to-one contained vodka. “I want to propose a toast.” Yep, vodka. “To the sniper who saved all our asses today.” He thrust the canteen across Nikita and toward Katya with a wide, sincere grin.
Katya watched him a moment, expression guarded. Finally, her lips twitched – not a smile, but some sign of emotion – and she took the canteen, sipped at it gingerly.
Ivan grinned at her the entire time, taking the canteen back when she handed it and tipping it back for a deep slug. “Here.” He shoved it into Nikita’s hands. “Drink up to our Nazi-killer.”
He slid a sideways look to Katya, and found her almost smiling now, dabbing her lips with the back of her hand.
He imagined he could taste her mouth on the canteen when he drank.
“Did they teach you how to spar at your sniper school?” Kolya asked. He sounded disapproving – Katya would probably think so – but Nikita recognized his problem-solving tone; she needed hand-to-hand training, he’d decided.
Katya’s eyes shifted between them all. Still uncertain, still on-edge.
Nikita squeezed her knee in what he hoped was a reassuring way before he could second guess the wisdom of the gesture.
“Not really,” she said. Her pulse fluttered in her throat, a visible tremble in the firelight.
Kolya made a grunting sound of acknowledgement. “We’ll start tomorrow.”
“I…” Katya started.
“I can help,” Sasha chimed in, smiling and excited. “Kolya and Feliks taught me, before I was – well, now I’m really fast.” And strong as a goddamn ox, he didn’t say.
“Kolya and Feliks?” Ivan asked, mock-offended. “Was I just holding up the wall?”
“You, too, I mean, of course–”
Nikita turned his shoulder to their bickering so he could face Katya. “It would be a good idea,” he said, almost consoling. Maybe she really didn’t like the idea.
But she took a deep breath and reached to smooth a stray piece of hair back, a gesture that looked unconscious, but somehow brave, coupled with the smile she attempted. “No, it would be good. Maybe they have some tricks they can show me.”
Surprised, he felt his own smile threaten. “Yeah. Kolya’s probably the most dangerous person I’ve ever met.”
Her brows quirked. “Yeah, but Kolya didn’t try to strangle me this afternoon.” Another act of bravery, trying to joke about the attack.
There was a story there, he knew, something that went deeper than the Germans she’d shot today. But he left it for now. “Don’t insult his mother’s cooking and he won’t ever.”
Another weak smile, and then Monsieur Philippe spared him any more awkward attempts at private conversation.
“I have a proposal,” he said. “Sitting around a fire calls for storytelling, doesn’t it? Let’s have some stories.”
“Monsieur, I think that’s the first good idea you’ve had,” Ivan said, laughing.
~*~
“Where did you get that book?” Feliks wanted to know. “The one you read from when you…” He gestured toward Sasha, whose resulting grin looked wolfish in a very literal sense.
“The wolf book,” Philippe said, sitting up a little straighter, eyes seeming to brighten. “Now that’s a story.” He folded his hands in his lap and told them.
“The book,” he began, “is, as you might have guessed, wrapped with the skin of a wolf. Legend says it’s as old as the first wolves, but I don’t believe that. It would have taken nothing less than magic to preserve the leather, no matter how well-tanned, for this long.” He chuckled at his own joke and continued:
“It is, essentially, a spell book. It’s also a history of the relationship between wolves and their keepers – all of it in Latin, of course, or else I’d let dear Sasha read it.”
“Keepers?” Nikita asked, skin prickling with uneasiness.
“Yes. There are preternatural creatures who are born, but wolves are not among them. All wolves are made – through a process much like what you witnessed, Captain. Throughout history, they’ve always been made with a purpose in mind: to serve and to protect.”
“And let me guess,” Nikita said with a sneer, “you’re Sasha’s keeper.”
“I’m not, no.” If he was lying, he hid it well. “Sasha’s master is my master. He’s very old, and very powerful, and currently sleeping beneath the earth. Recovering.”
The only sound was the crackle of the flames.
In a small voice, Katya said, “Recovering from what?” As she spoke, she shifted closer, so her knee pressed into Nikita’s thigh.
Philippe looked sad. “Grievous wounds. The men who attempted to murder him thought they’d succeeded. He was examined at the morgue, pronounced dead, and interred.
“Thankfully, he had allies who knew of his great gifts of healing. His body – still very much alive, only slumbering – was exhumed in secret, and he was taken to a secure location where he could heal in peace. He still lies there, buried, ready to be reawakened.”
The fire crackled.
“He’s a vampire,” Sasha said, and Nikita actually jumped a little.
“What?” everyone said at once.
“Yes,” Monsieur Philippe said. To the rest of them: “Gentlemen, you’re sitting with a werewolf and his very literal pack. Don’t tell me you draw the line of disbelief at vampires.”
Nikita felt his heart pounding against the walls of his chest in that acute and painful way it did when he was nervous. He was nervous, he realized, skin prickling with a sudden cold sweat.
And then Philippe turned and looked directly at him. “Do you doubt me?”
Nikita swallowed, grateful that his voice came
out clear and strong. “No. Not about that.”
The old man snorted. “The plan remains the same. And I continue to promise: no harm will come to Sasha.”
“Even though he belongs to a vampire?”
“We all have masters,” Philippe said. “We all serve men greater than ourselves.” He lifted his eyebrows meaningfully, and Nikita thought about his mother’s worried face as she tucked him in, thought about her tales of tsars and tsarinas…and he ground his teeth together.
Beside him, he could hear Katya’s breathing, fast and shallow. Yet another unsuspecting victim he’d pulled into his doomed quest to start a revolution.
~*~
He drank too much. He knew that, and knew also that he’d wake shaky, with a bad headache, sluggish and dim-witted. He didn’t care. He thought drinking too much was a natural reaction to finding out that, one: vampires were real, and two: the boy you’d come to think of as a friend, as a little brother, was the property of one.
By the time he went out to piss, he was off-balance. Had to catch himself on the doorjamb and take a moment getting the door shut behind him.
Shit, he’d had far too much.
He was in that underwater stage of drunkenness in which his surroundings seemed achingly clear, but he stumbled through them, clumsy and slow, thoughts getting muddled between his brain and his tongue.
“Fuck,” he murmured to himself, when he finally slumped against a tree and the night spun around him. It took a full minute figuring out the mechanics of his pants. He felt better after, though. Somewhat. The cool air felt good against his face and throat, and the quiet soughing of the wind in the branches sounded almost like a lullaby.
The crunch of footfalls sent him lurching around, clutching at the tree trunk to keep from falling over, wild, drunk panic surging through his veins. He had his revolver on his hip, but not his carbine, and he probably couldn’t shoot straight anyway. Maybe if he shut one eye…
But it was only Pyotr, pale-faced in the moonlight.
White Wolf (Sons of Rome Book 1) Page 23
