White Wolf (Sons of Rome Book 1)

by Lauren Gilley

  “Take him with you.” And that was an order. If anyone besides her boss or her family had delivered it, she would have bowed up her back.

  Instead, she sighed and said, “Yeah, alright.”

  Nikita gave her one last serious look, flicked a glance to Sasha, then hiked his burden a little higher and started down the alley, into the shadows. Just before he disappeared from sight, she had the absurd thought that, from behind, carrying a body, his silhouette looked like a cross.

  ~*~

  The fluorescent lights of the morgue had a way of making the living look like the dead. There was something eerily corpse-like about the bags under Dr. Harvey’s eyes when she flicked her gaze up from her paperwork and said, tone flat, “You what?” She looked like a woman at the end of her patience, and Trina knew the feeling.

  “The lab came back about some fibers and I wanted to check the body,” she said, rolling her eyes and pretending it was an imposition, commiserating, while inside her heart pounded what was fast-becoming a normal panicked rhythm. “Total bullshit, I know.”

  Harvey sighed and checked the time in the corner of her computer screen. “Oh. It’s morning.”

  “Rise and shine,” Trina said with a hollow chuckle.

  Harvey snorted as she got to her feet, swaying a little with exhaustion. “You look like I feel.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Pretty bad.”

  They walked down to the cold storage room, where the dead waited in their metal drawers.

  “I’ve got his autopsy scheduled for later today,” Harvey said as she found the right drawer and slid it open at waist-level, revealing the sheet-draped body. “This couldn’t have waited?”

  “No, sorry.”

  “Hmm. It’s alright. I was about to fall asleep in my” – she lifted the sheet, and Jamie Anderson, pale and bruised-looking, opened his eyes – “coff - eeee!” The last turned into a shriek, followed by an angry, terrified shout of, “Stop doing that, you assholes!”

  ~*~

  Lanny rustled up some scrubs from a linen closet somewhere, and Sasha bought coffee and a sandwich at the cafeteria – in the upstairs, non-dead part of the hospital. In a small, out of the way, deserted waiting room, Jamie Anderson held the sandwich in one hand, coffee in the other, and looked between the three of them.

  “Um,” he said.

  “Yeah. ‘Um’ about sums it about,” Lanny said.

  Jamie took a big breath that jacked his narrow shoulders up to his ears and let it out slowly. “Okay. So. I’m not dead.”

  “Definitely not.” Trina smiled at him, and it was genuine. She’d been a little afraid that being turned changed a person irrevocably. Maybe Chad had been a nice guy, and the change had morphed him into someone callous and violent.

  But to her immense relief, Jamie had awakened scared, confused, but polite and gentle. He was a slender, almost-physically delicate boy, saying “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir,” ducking his head in deference and reaching to nudge at glasses that were no longer there. Trina found that she liked him immediately. He was shy, and nervous, and very cute, cheeks flushed from nerves and fright. Nothing about him was monstrous.

  “What do you remember?” she asked him.

  He frowned and shook his head, looked down at his feet. And then pulled back, clearly marveling. “I can see,” he said, awed. “How…” Shook his head again and looked back up at her. “I could tell someone was following me.” He sighed and looked disappointed in himself. “Maybe I shoulda, I dunno, called 9-1-1 or something. But I didn’t want to be, you know…” He scowled down at his hands. “I know I’m small, and yeah, okay, maybe I’m not all muscly and macho.” Covert glance toward Lanny. “But I wanted to think that maybe I could look out for myself. Not be the wimp who had to call the cops because he thought he heard footsteps. And I was only a block from home.”

  “Anybody can get jumped,” Lanny said, “doesn’t matter how big or how strong. Beefed up gym rats get stabbed and mugged, same as everybody else.”

  “Yeah, well.” Jamie shrugged. “I got inside my building and thought that was it. The door was locked, no big deal. But then.” He shivered and chafed his hands together. “I was taking my shoes off and somebody knocked on my door. Jessica was out for the night, but she forgets stuff all the time, comes back to get it. I thought it was probably her, and I just opened the door.”

  He winced. “It’s fuzzy after that. I invited this stranger in, but I don’t know why. I let him take me into the living room and sit down on the couch. Let him all up in my personal space, even though I’m not into guys like that. I just.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t me. And everything was all warm and good and I just didn’t care. And then my neck hurt.” He touched it now, reflexively, fingers skating over the healing bruise there, the little scabs where Chad’s fangs had punched through the skin. In some ways, the way the bite healed was the biggest proof that he was in fact alive; dead skin didn’t knit itself back together.

  “Vampires,” Sasha started, and Jamie jerked hard, turning an incredulous look on him. “Can charm their, um, their victims. Some are better at it than others. You couldn’t have said no if you wanted to.”

  Jamie looked at him, then at Trina, then at Lanny, blinking, blank-faced. “I’m sorry. Vampires?”

  Trina gave him a sympathetic wince. “I know it sounds crazy.”

  “It sounds fucked up,” Lanny said.

  Sasha said, “But it’s true. And you are one now.”

  “Oh my God.” Jamie looked like he tried to bury his head in his hands, then realized they were full. “Is this some kind of sick joke? Or are you guys having some kind of, I dunno, Twilight LARP that got way out of hand?” He looked almost as hopeful as he did terrified. “Is this a gang initiation? Am I–”

  “No,” Sasha said, leaning forward in his chair, expression sympathetic. “It’s very real. Here: listen.” He gave one of his low, rumbling, obviously-not-human growls.

  “Shit!” Jamie leapt to his feet, coffee slopping out of his hand and splattering across the tile. He dropped his sandwich and backed away from them, toward the wall.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Trina said, getting slowly to her feet. She held a hand toward him, empty, soft, non-threatening. “It’s not a trick, and we’re not a gang or nerds.”

  Lanny snorted. “You’re kind of a nerd, honey.”

  “Shut up. Jamie, it’s okay. I promise. I know it sounds beyond crazy, but it’s true. Let Sasha explain it to you, okay?”

  His gaze moved from her, to Sasha, and back again. He breathed in little gasps, chest hitching under the too-big scrub top.

  “Jamie,” Sasha said, face open, kind. “You wear glasses, yes? But you can see now perfectly fine without them. Better than you’ve ever seen. Yes?”

  Jamie didn’t respond, save a little hitch in his breathing.

  “You’ve always had trouble breathing, yes?” Sasha continued. “You’re gulping like someone who’s used to it. But it’s just reflex. Your lungs are clear. You’re getting more air than you ever have.”

  Jamie’s eyes widened, big as saucers. “How…?”

  Sasha stood up slow, so slow, easing toward the frightened boy a fraction at a time, hands held up in a defenseless pose. When he was within striking distance, he held up one flat palm. “Hit me. Hard as you can.”

  “What? No.”

  Sasha grinned. “Come on, I can take it.”

  “No, I…” Jamie pressed his lips together, blushing. In a small voice: “I can’t hit very hard.”

  Sasha’s grin widened. “Try. I bet you surprise yourself.”

  Jamie stared at him a long moment, and, finding that he was serious, adjusted his stance and balled up a fist. “Don’t laugh,” he muttered, and then hit.

  Sasha, supernatural and super-strong in his own right, didn’t get knocked back. But his hand jumped, and the smack rang through the waiting room. Trina could see that the punch had been forceful, that it would have sent even
someone as tough as Lanny staggering back.

  Sasha shook out his hand, smiling. “See?”

  Jamie looked down at his own unimpressive fist. “I…okay. Wow. Okay.”

  “Do you believe?” Sasha asked.

  Some of Jamie’s amazement faded, replaced with a careful consideration. “I believe something. Just not sure what yet.”

  “Okay. We can work with that.”

  ~*~

  Nikita had lived in New York long enough to know all the good, hidden little spots to perform this sort of thing. It wasn’t the first vampire he’d put down in the city, and he suspected it wouldn’t be his last.

  The warehouse sat between a parking lot and the kind of four-story apartment building that had slowly evolved into a combination crackhouse/whorehouse as families moved out and seedier elements moved in. It was the kind of place where everyone kept their heads down and no one looked too long at strangers.

  This particular warehouse was his favorite. The second floor had once been comprised of wall-to-wall windows on all four sides, all of which had been removed or shattered in the intervening years since its closure, the gaping frames strung up with blue tarps that had all gone to flapping tatters by this point. Empty of everything save the humped fingers of old pipes dug into the ceiling, its floor cool stained concrete, light from the apartment building filtering through the shreds of faded tarp, this was the place where Nikita set down Chad Edwards’s body.

  Under the damp and decay, the sharp fresh notes of death and the lingering smudges of former vampire disposals, he could smell the oil and metal tang of the machinery that had once been stored here. He could hear the sounds of passing traffic, distant laughter, and shouting. He could hear, faintly, that Chad Edwards’s heart was still beating.

  It wasn’t like in the movie, with wooden stakes and garlic, and crosses. But maybe the stake was the closest approximation of truth, because it all boiled down to the heart. That’s where the life was. It was the reason Rasputin had been shot, stabbed, poisoned, and drowned, and yet still lived, healing slowly in his tomb: they hadn’t removed the heart.

  Nikita reached to the small of his back, the sheath tucked in his waistband. The knife he drew with a quiet sound had been Kolya’s, once upon a time. He touched the hilt, briefly, to his forehead. “Thank you, my brother,” he whispered in Russian. And then he knelt to his grisly task.

  There were two separate fires burning on the concrete floor when someone climbed into one of the empty windows.

  He knew it was Alexei by scent, so he didn’t acknowledge him right away. Alexei may have been a tsarevich in another life, but in this one, he was an impulsive child of a vampire, and he seemed to know it, approaching Nikita slowly, head and shoulders lowered in deference, respecting him as the superior creature that he was.

  “You killed him,” Alexei said, voice heavy with sadness.

  “I put him down like the rabid dog he was,” Nikita corrected.

  The former heir stared into the flames – it was an ugly fire, the man-shaped center black and charred now, the smoke the thick, black greasy kind that left smudges on the exposed beams of the ceiling. The smell threatened to choke Nikita, but he stayed, needing to make sure that it was done.

  “How many others have you done this to?” Nikita asked.

  He didn’t answer for a long moment. Then: “I didn’t…I didn’t turn them. The others.” He wiped at his face, features drawn and miserable in the firelight. “I didn’t ever mean to.”

  “You can’t control yourself.”

  “No! No, I can, I…” His shoulders slumped further. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know what to do with you,” Nikita admitted. He knew that, in any other situation, he would have already dealt with the murderer. But this was Alexei Nikolaevich, and Nikita was adrift.

  “Do with me?” Alexei’s head lifted, showing a little rebellion for the first time. “Are you the lord of all vampires?”

  Trina’s words came back to him, in a wry twist of his subconscious. “I’m someone interested in justice,” he countered.

  Alexei drew himself upright, visibly bristling. “And this is justice? Chekist murder?”

  “Is it murder if it’s a monster you’re killing?”

  The tsarevich frowned. “Humans eat animals. Are we any different in that aspect?”

  “They don’t eat them live.”

  “Because they think it’s wrong? Or because they can’t? We are stronger, faster, we live forever – are we not the superior species?”

  “We aren’t a species, we’re a curse,” Nikita said, some of his low panther growl bleeding into his voice.

  Alexei took a step back, chin kicked up to a defiant angle. “You’re in denial about what you are.”

  “I’m not the one killing and turning innocent people because I can’t control my hunger. Your majesty,” he tacked on, sneering.

  “Sasha said I’m a disappointment to you.” His face became soft, sympathetic. “I think maybe everyone is.”

  “Just greedy blood-drinkers.” But was that true? Hadn’t everyone disappointed him at some point? Everyone save his brave Katya, and his Sasha, his dead brothers. His Trina, who a part of him wanted to pull into a crushing hug – my baby, my baby – save for his worry that he would indeed crush her.

  He shoved all sentimental thoughts roughly aside. “Immortality isn’t a blessing, Alexei. I suspect you don’t know that yet, but you’ll learn it, in time.”

  Alexei shook his head. “Immortality beats dying early. Take it from the boy with the terminal illness: the burden of forever far outranks the burden of never.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Maybe. But maybe not.” Alexei spared one last glance to the fires – the body and the heart burning separately, crumbling to ashes that Nikita would gather in his pockets and throw into the Hudson. “I expect we’ll see each other again.”

  “Yeah.”

  Alexei bowed, formal and courtly, then turned and leapt through the open window, the tarp nothing but scraps that slid across his shoulders and head as he disappeared from sight.

  Nikita exhaled, his insides empty and shaking afterward.

  45

  LIVE FOREVER

  To Trina’s surprise, Lanny offered up his place to Jamie, somewhere to lay low until they could figure out what he should do next. He’d looked crestfallen when he realized he couldn’t go home to the place he shared with his roommate, a roommate who thought he was dead. Trina had promised to get all his canvases and paint supplies to him as soon as she could, and Sasha offered to stay with him for a little while, get him settled, make sure he had something to eat – “not blood,” he whispered to Trina as they left.

  Once she’d collapsed onto her sofa next to Lanny, leaning against his side, she said, “He seems sweet, doesn’t he?”

  She felt him nod, his head rustling against hers. “Yeah.”

  “I have a feeling life is only gonna get more complicated from here,” she said, and shoved away the sudden spike of pain, pretending Lanny would be here for all of it, ready to nod and gasp and curse at all of it with her.

  He squeezed her hand. “I think so, too.”

  ~*~

  Lanny never wanted to be a cop. In his big, boisterous, loving, crazy family, he’d always felt a half-step out of place. He was bigger than his brothers, more aggressive, more energetic. Always juiced and spoiling for a fight.

  When he was fourteen, he broke a boy’s nose in the locker room at school. It wasn’t his fault, not at first – he at least hadn’t started it.

  Timmy Riggs had been the kind of skinny, nervous boy who would probably grow up to be six-five and two-eighty, cosmic revenge for his tiny childhood, but always the sort to keep to himself and not bother anyone else. Unfortunately, though, he’d been the target of all the douchebag idiots too stupid and slow to make the football team, all those angry meatheads looking to take it out on someone smaller. Timmy was a popular target.
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br />   On the day of the nose-breaking, Lanny walked into the locker room after gym to change back into his school clothes and found Joseph Petri and Andy Rudolph holding Timmy up by his shoulders and hips over a toilet, laughing manically, threatening to dunk him while Timmy held his breath and refused to beg.

  Lanny could have let it go. Walked away and not incurred the other boys’ wrath. But he’d been incensed, and impressed: little Timmy with his teeth gritted and his eyes shut, determined not to scream. Lanny had to admire that.

  “Hey, fuckfaces,” he called, slamming an open locker shut to get their attention.

  Both boys turned to him, almost dropping Timmy, who caught himself with both hands on the toilet seat.

  Lanny proceeded to taunt them, suggest they had tiny dicks, and ended up fist-fighting both of them. At the end, Lanny had a few bruises, Andy was unconscious, and Joseph was slurping blood from his broken nose.

  It was after that – once his mother was done chewing him out twice over – that his father pulled him aside, into his study that smelled of books and expensive cigars, and explained to him that some men had more violence in them that others. Dad was the one to take him to the gym for the first time. To encourage his boxing dreams while Mom clutched her rosary and fretted.

  Early on, Lanny knew he wanted to box for a living. To be in Pay-Per-View fights and appear on commercials, and expend all his violent energy in the ring.

  He’d never wanted to be a cop, but he’d convinced himself it was just temporary. A part of him had always thought he’d have time to heal, to get whole, to maybe have another surgery, and get back into the ring.

  The cancer had hit him like a Mack truck. Maybe he wasn’t a fighter like he’d always wanted to be, but he hadn’t counted on death coming for him like this, now, with smiling jaws and laughing eyes.

  Nothing to be done, the doctors had said.

  Just buying time.

  Tell his family he loved them.

  One last chance for goodbyes.

  No.