White Wolf (Sons of Rome Book 1)

by Lauren Gilley

  Val shuffled around so he could look inside the box, shoulder-to-shoulder with Sasha. “Like what?”

  “Like…” And it came to him, finally. “Like hell.”

  “As in actual hell? With Satan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What?”

  “Interesting, that’s all.” He motioned toward the head of the wrapped, crumpled form. “Get on with it, then, let’s see.”

  Sasha reached for the rotting line and paused, hands hovering over the body. It was warm, just like Feliks had said.

  Not it, but he. He was a person, and he was alive.

  And warm.

  Sasha took a shaky breath and hooked his fingers in the linen. There was a knot at the back of its – his – head and it took a long, tense moment to work it loose, the old fabric shredding under Sasha’s touch. Then he drew it down, inch by inch, until it was gathered at the base of the body’s neck.

  Val whistled.

  Sasha had seen enough grainy black and white newspaper clippings at the university library to know that this was Rasputin, without question. He looked like he had in the morgue photos, battered and bruised, lips pulled back in a pained grimace. His forehead was a raw and pink mess, the residual ruin of the gunshot he’d taken at point blank range.

  Sasha touched his cheek with trembling fingers. Warm, alive, a slow but steady pulse beating inside him.

  He snatched his hand back, chills chasing across his skin. “How could he survive that?”

  “Vampires can survive almost anything,” Val said, “save the loss of their hearts.”

  Sasha glanced at him, and saw that, for once, he wasn’t mocking.

  “Rasputin’s killers were industrious, but they didn’t know what he was, and they didn’t know about the heart. They failed.”

  “Will I be able to wake him up?” Sasha asked, already dreading the prospect.

  “Oh yes. You will–”

  Val disappeared.

  Monsieur Philippe stood at the truck’s tailgate, expression thunderous. “What are you doing?” he shouted.

  Sasha blinked at him.

  The mage lifted both hands, and fire leapt to life in his palms. “Sasha!”

  The wolves started growling.

  Philippe glanced at them, startled, on his left and right. They were all on their feet now, circling him. When he looked back at Sasha, he was still furious, but Sasha caught a whiff of fear, too. He didn’t trust or like the wolves, as well he shouldn’t.

  Where had that thought come from? Sasha didn’t know, but he felt it lodge in his heart, and begin to fester.

  “I told you,” Philippe said, spit flying he was so angry, “that Grisha wasn’t to be disturbed on the trip!”

  Sasha had never been rebellious a day in his life, but he felt that way now. He shrugged.

  “Did you – are you,” Philippe spluttered. “What the hell were you thinking? You could have awoken him!”

  “No,” Sasha said calmly. “I wasn’t going to. I just wanted to look at him.”

  “I ordered you not to!”

  The wolves were still growling, not threatening yet, but warning. Siding with their alpha.

  Sasha said, “You’re not my master. I don’t have to take orders.”

  The mage made an enraged sound, pushed beyond words. In the glow of the fire he held, he was turning a mottled red. “You – you – you fucking brat! I made you! By God, I can unmake you, too.”

  The alpha female’s growl changed, openly hostile now.

  Sasha said, “I’d like to see you try.”

  Philippe opened his mouth to speak –

  And Nikita arrived, pushing past the wolves, taking a tight grip on Philippe’s arm. “What’s going on?” he snapped, all Cheka authority and coldness.

  Pack, Sasha thought, and the wolves accepted Nikita’s presence, calmed under it. He himself felt calmer. He had no master, no, but he would bend to the wisdom and authority of his friend.

  Philippe stared at Nikita a long moment, fire burning in his palms, and then the flame winked out and he sagged visibly, looking like nothing but a tired old man.

  “Why are you screaming at him?” Nikita asked, and Sasha realized he wasn’t cold at all. No, he was angrier than Sasha had ever seen him. His captain’s mask was hanging on by a thread, and beneath, he was all violence.

  Philippe’s own rage was barely suppressed. “I explained to him, at length, how important it was not to disturb the body until we were safely back in Stalingrad, and here he is touching it.” He turned his vicious gaze back on Sasha. “Were you trying to wake him?”

  Nikita’s hand tightened on the old man’s arm, knuckles white with the effort. “He wouldn’t do that.”

  “You can’t accidentally wake him,” Sasha said, a little thrill in his belly because, for once, he was the one with the information. “It takes blood. And a Latin incantation.”

  Philippe’s face went gratifyingly blank. “How did you learn that? Did you–” His eyes widened. “Valerian.”

  “He said for me to call him Val, like his friends do.”

  Philippe bared his teeth. “That bastard–”

  “Calm down, Monsieur Philippe,” Nikita said, and it was an order. He looked up at Sasha and rolled his eyes. “Cover the starets back up, Sasha,” he said, courteous, soft, “and come down here please before the old man has a stroke.”

  “Here, Monsieur.” Katya appeared, Ivan’s vodka canteen in her hand. “Will you have a little of this? Come sit by me.” She towed him back to camp, but not before he threw one last murderous glance back at Sasha.

  When they were gone, the wolves crowded around Nikita, licking his hands.

  “Care to explain?” he asked Sasha, one brow ticking upward.

  Sasha sighed. “Yeah. Just a minute.” He draped the linen back over Rasputin’s face, shut and locked the footlocker. In truth he was glad to hop down out of the truck and get away from the awful, invasive scent of the not-dead holy man, but he wasn’t going to be badgered around by Monsieur Philippe.

  He landed lightly next to Nikita, the wolves nosing and snuffling him in greeting.

  “So,” Nikita said mildly, “found your backbone?”

  Sasha frowned at him.

  “Oh, come on. You’ve gone along with everything he’s said. You let him stab you through the heart.” The narrow scar across his chest throbbed as if responding to the words, a little painful reminder. “Why the insubordination now?” Nikita wanted to know.

  Sasha dropped his voice to a whisper. “Because I can’t stand the smell of him.” He waved toward the truck. “There’s something wrong with him.”

  Nikita didn’t react the way Philippe had. “Of course there is,” he said. “He’s a sex maniac, and a khlyst, and he turned an entire country against its emperor. There’s a lot that’s wrong with him, the least of which is the fact that he’s a vampire. In fact, the vampire bit is the thing that makes the most sense, if you ask me.”

  Sasha stared at him. “Philippe says all those things are just stories. Propaganda.”

  “Some of it probably is, yeah.” Nikita shrugged. Reached out and clapped Sasha on the shoulder, gave a reassuring squeeze. “We’re all in this up to our necks, Sashka. It’s a little late to cry morality now.”

  “Oh.” He sagged a little. “Yeah. It’s just…” He’d given in to his wolf side, let his senses rule his thoughts and actions.

  “Whatever he is.” Nikita leaned in close, tone confidential. “He’s not worse than Stalin, right?”

  “Right.” Sasha twitched a smile. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me. It’s the old man you upset.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And who was he talking about? Valerian?”

  “The prince I told you about. The one who visits, but isn’t really here.”

  “Hmm.” Nikita stepped back, worry warring with disbelief in his eyes. “Well, don’t say anything too revealing to him, al
right?”

  “Yeah, alright.”

  “Good.” He reached up and ruffled Sasha’s hair – and then froze, shocked. “Oh, uh…” Started to pull back.

  Sasha grinned at him. “It’s okay. Wolves like to be petted.”

  Nikita snorted. “I’ll remember that.”

  27

  WAKE THE SLEEPER

  It was a long, uncomfortable, grueling trip back to the Ingraham Institute just north of Stalingrad. Sasha apologized to Monsieur Philippe, but there was something strained there, a subtle shift in power that Nikita thought irrevocable. Once a dog stopped respecting its master, the balance never shifted back the other way.

  But though long, the trip wasn’t horrible. Moments – catching Katya’s eye and smiling, laughing with his brothers over an unpalatable meal – were even wonderful, in the way that small, stolen, precious things are wonderful in the middle of a war.

  And on June first, they reached their destination, Grigory Yefimovich’s lifeless form in tow.

  Nikita wanted a shower, figured he ought to have a hot meal, and then he wanted a warm bed, and Katya. But first things first.

  Dr. Ingraham was about to wet himself with excitement. “Oh,” he kept saying. “Oh. Oh my. Oh…this is wonderful!” He hovered around the metal table where the wrapped body had been laid out, hands leaping like birds, starting toward the starets but not brave enough to actually touch. “How should we proceed, Monsieur Philippe?”

  The old man looked truly old, the journey having taken its toll. Lined, gray, and tired. And, Nikita thought, every time the man’s eyes went to Sasha, the smallest bit less confident.

  “It will all depend on Sasha,” he said, sounding pained. “He’s been practicing the words.”

  He had been, and held the sheet of paper on which Philippe had written out the Latin phonetically now, brow crinkled as he studied the phrases, lips moving silently as he tried to commit them to memory.

  Last night, their final night on the road, Nikita had pulled Sasha off to the side. “Okay, be honest with me. If this feels too awful to you, if you don’t want to wake the bastard up, just tell me, and we’ll find another way.”

  Sasha had looked shocked, mouth falling open. Then he’d smiled, grimly, and gripped Nikita by both shoulders. “Thank you, my pack brother,” he’d said, quietly, reverently. “That means…thank you. But no. We’ll go ahead with it. I’ll do it.”

  Nikita had been filled with a painful sort of relief. He had no idea what their Plan B could be, if Sasha backed out of this crazy scheme. But at the same time…he had little faith in the idea of waking a Rasputin, notoriously opposed to Russia’s war endeavors, who would side with them, and help them win back the empire from the Communists.

  Now he felt sick, sweating under his clothes, covered in goosebumps as he contemplated the shrouded figure on the table.

  Philippe looked around the room, making eye contact. “If we could have some privacy,” he started.

  “No,” Nikita said, right away. “You send out all the lab rats you want, but we’re staying.” He gestured to his boys, ranged alongside him, propping up a blank space of wall.

  Philippe lifted his bearded chin. “I–”

  “You’re asking Sasha to do something important, and from what I hear, dangerous. He needs his pack here, and we’re staying.”

  Ivan’s snort said, deal with it.

  Philippe held his gaze a long moment, then gave a sharp nod and glanced away. “Very well. Dr. Ingraham?”

  “Oh.” The doctor wilted. “I had hoped that I might watch.”

  “You may. But please ask your staff to wait outside, and to be prepared, as we discussed.”

  “Of course.” The doctor hustled his team out with murmured apologies.

  When the door closed, it sounded like the shutting of a tomb.

  Dr. Ingraham came back to the table. “Everything’s ready,” he said, quiet and deferential.

  Nikita hated him.

  “Sasha?” Philippe asked.

  “Yeah, I’m ready.” He folded up the paper and shoved it into his pants pocket. Exhaled shakily, glanced up and met Nikita’s eyes, offered a shaky smile.

  “You’re fine, puppy,” Ivan said, and Sasha’s smile got a little wider.

  “Thank you, everyone.”

  “Be quick about it,” Feliks said. “I’m hungry.”

  Sasha chuckled, and Nikita could have hugged his boys for doing that.

  “Let us know if you need anything,” Katya said.

  Sasha nodded, and grew serious. It was time.

  Monsieur Philippe stepped forward and produced a small, sharp knife from his sleeve, and began to cut away the linen shroud that bound Rasputin. Slow, sure movements. Soft snick of the knife. Faint rip of the rotted linen. He moved around the body, cutting a clean line down to the feet and back up the other side. Then slowly peeled the shroud away, revealing the infamous starets at last.

  Katya made a small, shocked sound, but it was otherwise silent.

  Nikita held his breath.

  Rasputin lay with his hands folded on his breast, eyes closed, mouth set in a pained snarl. Unmoving. His face, under his thick, coarse beard, was sunken, cheeks hollow and gray, the blue tracks of veins visible in his temples and eyelids. The gunshot wound had been cleaned of blood, but was a pink and pulpy, ugly mess on his forehead. He breathed shallowly, impossible to detect, unless you looked close.

  It was him. It could be no one else.

  Everyone exhaled at once.

  Kolya, always so quiet, said, “My God.”

  “You didn’t believe?” Philippe sounded amused.

  No one answered him, because of course they believed, it had just seemed so ludicrous, though.

  The mage fussed around the body a moment, sweeping back stray hairs, ensuring the linen shroud was folded at his waist, preserving some sense of modesty. Finally, he stepped back, hands folded together, clearly ecstatic. “We’re ready.”

  Nikita’s skin felt too tight. His stomach clenched and he swallowed hard, tasting bile. Should he pray? He didn’t think anything holy could get to them in this room. God probably wasn’t listening.

  “Sasha,” Philippe said, “proceed.”

  Sasha took a deep breath, visibly shaking, and stepped up to the head of the table. Philippe handed him the knife and he studied its blade a moment, light glinting down its length, before he drew it down the center of his left palm, blood welling in its wake. He didn’t flinch or hiss; tipped his hand over the slumbering vampire’s face. Thin trickles of red ran down his palm. Dripped, dripped, dripped. Onto Rasputin’s exposed, yellow teeth.

  There was something obscene about it, the shocking, unexpected intimacy of fresh blood.

  Sasha began the invocation to wake, slow and stumbling at first, unsure, but relaxing into it as he went. His Latin had a distinct Russian accent, but Philippe had said that wouldn’t matter. It was the words themselves, and, most important, the blood. The wolf blood.

  Finally, in forceful Russian: “Thus I command you to wake, Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin.”

  A last runnel of blood sluiced from Sasha’s palm, a grisly splatter across Rasputin’s face.

  And his eyes opened.

  They were huge, and gray, and wild. The hypnotic eyes that all his devoted female followers had spoken of, filled now with confusion and terror.

  Nikita was overcome with a sudden, intense revulsion. He hated this man – this creature. The ruin of the Romanovs. The laughingstock of a nation perched on the eve of revolution.

  Alive and in the flesh.

  Their only hope for a White revolution of their own.

  The starets opened his mouth on a gasp, the sound ancient and dusty. He wheezed and hissed. Licked the blood from his lips, eyes sliding left and right. He attempted to turn his head, and let out a hoarse shout, face screwing up with pain. His moan raised all the hairs on Nikita’s arms, sent hard chills skating down his back.

  Sasha looked horrified.
He took a few quick steps back, pulling his injured hand into his chest, smearing blood on his shirt.

  Rasputin tried to speak, but the words were garbled. He sounded like his throat was full of grave dirt.

  Nikita cast a glance to his right, and saw his brothers and Katya all in similar states of shock and disgust, eyes huge in pale faces.

  Dr. Ingraham breathed something in English that might have been a prayer or a curse. He was openly gaping.

  Philippe was the one who stepped forward, rather than away, face radiant with something that looked, sickeningly, like love. “I’m here, Grisha, I’m here.” He put a hand on Rasputin’s shoulder and smiled down at him. “It’s me, Philippe.”

  Rasputin moaned again.

  “Dr. Ingraham, the blood, please.”

  “Oh! Right!” The doctor rushed to the door and put his head out into the hall, fired off rapid orders to his assistants.

  Two assistants used a rolling cart to push the door wider, wheeling in stoppered glass bottles of blood.

  Dr. Ingraham seemed electrified, bustling to the counter along the wall, pouring blood into a tin mug.

  Philippe took it from him and wedged his free arm beneath Rasputin’s head, lifting him. The starets gave a wordless shout of pain, eyes rolling.

  “Here, this will help. Fresh and warm,” Philippe murmured, bringing the mug to his lips.

  Nikita realized he couldn’t watch. He turned his head away, and his gaze landed on Sasha.

  Sasha, who’d performed a miracle, who now sat slumped against the wall, cradling his injured hand, eyes wide and frightened – ignored by all the excited people rushing to tend to the newly-awake starets.

  Nikita went to Sasha. Knelt at his side, blocking his view of what was happening on the table. “Sasha.” He pushed his damp hair off his forehead, thumbed at skin that was cold and clammy. “Sashka. You okay?”

  His teeth were chattering, and now that Nikita was close, he could hear that he was whinin, softly, a lupine sound. He didn’t answer, instead brought his hand to his mouth and tried to lick the wound.

  “No, no. Here.” Nikita caught his wrist and pulled his last, grimy handkerchief from his pocket, pressed it into Sasha’s bloody palm. “Let me get something–”