Sasha didn’t bother to tamp down the soft growl that built in his throat.
“Want us to take a look?” Nikita asked, and his voice had gentled. Sasha was proud of him for that.
“Yeah, that’d be good.”
Sasha’s hackles went up the moment they stepped in the lab. He smelled wolf. The ferals he’d tracked before, the ones whose scent had been used as bait by the Institute.
He growled.
Dr. Harvey stood on the far side of the table, gripping the edge of the white drape. She lifted her brows in response to Sasha’s growl, and he cut off immediately, offering her a sheepish smile.
“Sorry.”
“It’s alright,” she said, voice touched with wariness. “I don’t like the way it smells, either.”
“It smells familiar,” Nikita said, stepping up to the table beside Trina, looking down expectantly.
“Friend of yours?” Harvey asked dryly, and pulled back the drape.
Nikita took a short, sharp breath, and forced it back out through flared nostrils, muscle leaping in his jaw as he clenched it. He didn’t sway, though; didn’t show any of the usual signs of fainting or falling ill. He was well-fed, this time, in both ways that counted.
Sasha allowed himself a quick burst of pride before his gaze dropped to the table, and then he was checking a growl again. He pushed it down and stepped up alongside them, on Trina’s other side.
“Eaten, yes,” Nikita said.
Trina nudged him with an elbow.
“You said it, not me. And yes, it’s true. It’s also very irregular for a wolf.”
Sasha thought of the Russian wilderness, the musk of a deer; his own hands, tendons stark in their pale backs, as he gripped at shaggy coat; the give of flesh beneath his teeth, blood filling his mouth.
He blinked down at the human remains on the table, and wanted to be sick. He felt Nikita’s gaze, a quick check over the top of Trina’s head, but shut his eyes, and inhaled deeply, trying to sort out all the scents that lay in the dead limbs in front of him.
Blood, yes, dried and clotted. Fear-sweat, long evaporated, a rank layer over the regular sweat of exertion. And the wolves: two, both male, and healthy; their saliva stank of something desperate and wild, a dumb excitement. And a third wolf, one distant, not involved with the killing, but one that had brushed up against one of the murderers: Gustav’s Hannah.
He opened his eyes, and found Dr. Harvey watching him critically.
“The victim is male,” Sasha told her. “Healthy. I think he was probably running for exercise, before he had to run for his life. They tore him apart while he was still alive.”
“Jesus,” Trina breathed.
Dr. Harvey swallowed. “Yes, that was my conclusion, too, based on the amount of bleeding.” She indicated the raw edge of the dismembered leg with a gloved pinky finger. “Is it the same – wolves – as before?” She only stumbled over the word a little.
“Yes. The two ferals. And they’ve been in contact with Hannah.”
“She orchestrated the attack, then,” Nikita said. “She’s the captain.”
“Which means Gustav is,” Sasha said. They traded a look over Trina’s head, and Nikita had pulled on his old Cheka mask, the flat, terrifying look that meant he was on the war path – only his eyes betrayed his worry.
“If you can tell all that by smelling this” – Trina said, gesturing to the table – “why weren’t you able to track down Gustav yesterday?”
Nikita paced away from the table, hands clasped together in the small of his back; the pose did nice things to his shoulders. Stood him very upright; made it easy to imagine he wore his long, black leather Cheka coat. “We kept catching trails. Him, once, then her. Then both of them together. But they always stopped.”
“What do you mean ‘stopped’?”
“Just what I said,” he said with a hint of impatience. They ended. One went into a bodega, and vanished. Another ran right into a brick wall. The wolf, Hannah, doubled back a few times, and then ended at the curb.”
“Okay.” Trina was starting to sound impatient, too. “What does that mean? Don’t tell me you two got fooled by fox hunting tricks.”
Nikita snorted.
“She probably got into a car at the curb,” Sasha said, before things could devolve into outright glaring. Trina might not have her great-grandfather’s guilt complex, but they resembled one another in ways beyond the blue-gray eyes they shared. Stubbornness, for instance, and pride. “The other trails, though, like at the bodega, had to have been scrubbed.”
“Is that a thing that can happen?” Trina asked, turning to him.
“I don’t…know, exactly.”
Her brows lifted. “Know anybody who would?”
Nikita turned around, frowning. “Maybe,” he said, and his tone said that’s enough. Sasha sent him an I’m okay look, which was ignored. “If anyone does, it’d be Colette.”
Trina turned to face him, brows still elevated. Well?
“I’ll call her,” Nikita consented, jaw still tight.
“Alright,” Trina said, with an exhale, and looked at the table again. She didn’t flinch, or wrinkle her nose, or show signs of any emotions save mental weariness and frustration.
Sasha knew that detectives, cops, like soldiers and doctors, had developed a kind of immunity to distressing, gory sights. And probably it was Trina’s training kicking in now, but…He wondered. Wondered if, blood kin to Nikita, she just had a high tolerance for this sort of thing.
“Say you talk to Colette,” she continued, “and say she helps you track him down. Then what?”
“Then I kill him,” Nikita said.
“Oh, is that all?” Trina said dryly.
Nik’s hands opened, fingers long and stark, and then curled into fists again, still tucked away behind his back. He looked at her over his shoulder. “You think I don’t have the experience?”
Trina met his gaze steadily. “Did I say that?”
“I’ve been killing my own kind for longer than you’ve been alive.”
This tension, Sasha realized, was getting way out of hand, and was terrible besides. He traded a look with Dr. Harvey, who looked baffled by the stare-down between the relatives.
In truth, Sasha knew Nik wasn’t angry with Trina; he had a sinking suspicion he knew what the problem was, and that Nik was, unhealthy to the bitter end, directing more than a small dose of anxiety at someone he figured he couldn’t offend permanently: his family.
The thought brought a quick smile to Sasha’s lips, but he smoothed it away, and said, “Nik, Trina–”
Dr. Harvey beat him to the punch. “How do you kill a vampire?”
Everyone turned to look at her, which broke up some of the mounting hostility in the room.
“I’m genuinely curious,” Harvey said with a shrug. She lifted a hand, fist clenched in an unmistakable gesture. “The old stake trick? Or is it holy water?”
Nikita snorted again, but sounded at least half-amused this time. “You cut out the heart, and destroy it.”
“Ah,” Harvey said, without expression. “Guess that makes sense.”
“You said this isn’t normal for wolves,” Trina said, and her tone, to Sasha’s relief, had become professional: a detective puzzling out the evidence, rather than Nik’s irritated relation.
“It’s not,” Nik said.
“Because wolves don’t need to eat anything besides human food, correct?”
“Right,” Sasha said.
She stepped back from the table, and folded her arms, mulling it over. “So why go after a human? A defenseless jogger?” She held up a staying hand. “I know they’re feral. But if this other wolf, Hannah, is with them, can’t someone control them? I mean, they were used as bait for you,” she said to Sasha. “So clearly they have handlers of some kind. If they really are mindless, then they aren’t to blame – someone is letting them do this. Or even encouraging it.”
“Hence killing Gustav,” Nik said; he started
pacing again, behind her, hands flexing.
Sasha wanted to take his hands into his own, and still their movements; it looked painful at this point. That kind of agitation.
“I’m on board with that,” Trina said, and Sasha caught Harvey’s small, checked frown. “But I’d really like to know why this is happening.”
Nikita paused, and turned a mild look on her. “Sometimes, you never find out why.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be the case, here.”
“Hm.”
An intercom on the wall buzzed, and startled all of them.
“Shit,” Harvey said, letting the drape fall, and snapping off her gloves.
“We’ll let you get back to work, Christine,” Trina said, moving toward the door.
Harvey breathed an unamused laugh as she moved toward the intercom panel. “I’ll let you know if I find anything else.”
“Thanks.”
They walked out with Trina, to the loading bay again.
Trina paused and rested her forearms on the steel rail overlooking the bay, sighing deeply, shoulders slumping.
Nikita sent a look Sasha’s way, brows flicking upward in question.
Sasha rolled his eyes, and earned a smirk. But Nik dug out his smokes and went about lighting one as he leaned on the rail beside Trina. Sasha went to stand on his other side, in the spirit of giving them space – but also wanting to press his shoulder to Nik’s and enjoy the way his own scent lingered on Nik’s throat like handprints.
“I’ll handle him,” Nikita told Trina, in a voice that probably wouldn’t have sounded all that soothing to a stranger, but which Sasha knew to be one of his gentler tones. “You don’t have to worry about it.”
She sighed again, and half-turned her head, expression pained. “I know. That’s not the problem.”
“What is?”
“This is all just…” She shut her eyes a moment, brows drawing together. When she opened them, she fixed Nikita with a look. “Why now? I’ve spent my whole career chasing down some really sick people, but why now, in the past year, am I chasing down superpowered immortal sick people? If wolves and vampires have existed since Dracula’s time – since before that – then why is that all I see everywhere I look now?”
“They’ve always been there,” Nikita said, still gently, then corrected himself. “We’ve always been there. Here. It’s just, since you met us–”
“No,” Sasha spoke up. “Something’s changed, something that’s affecting all immortals.” His stomach clenched. “It’s the war.”
Nik took a hard drag on his cigarette and huffed on the exhale. “No,” he said, but sounded anxious.
“War,” Trina said, frown deepening. “The one Dracula was talking about? The one Robin Hood’s guys are talking about?”
Nik’s head whipped toward her. “You saw them?”
She winced. “They kinda bought Lanny and me dinner the other night.”
Nikita let slip a tiny growl on his next drag.
Sasha leaned forward so he could peer at Trina around him. “Last night?”
“Yeah.”
“We saw them the night before.”
“Guess you got the whole recruitment speech, too,” Nikita said with disgust, flicking the butt of his cigarette over the rail and down into a puddle. It went out with a hiss.
“Actually, no,” Trina said. “Not really. They wanted us to help them recruit you guys.”
Nikita stilled, halfway through reaching for another cigarette.
Trina’s gaze shifted to Sasha, concerned now. “They want you guys to join their war effort, which we told them you won’t do. But they also said it was important that you be…bound, Sasha.”
Nikita made a low, angry, catlike sound, and shoved away from the rail. “No.” He sliced a hand through the air. “No. Fuck them, no.” He whirled on Trina, growling, shoulders jacked up. “They already have an entire pack of wolves, but they need Sasha? No, fuck them, if they think they can–”
“They wanted you to bind him,” Trina interrupted, and he cut off mid-rant. “They want him to be your Familiar. And then for the two of you to work with them.”
A not-unpleasant chill skittered down Sasha’s back. Familiar. He remembered all too clearly what it had felt like to be Rasputin’s – he tried to shove the memories away when they surfaced. How he’d hated the hazy, contented way he’d felt in his master’s presence, knowing it was Rasputin of all people; vile in every sense.
But if it was Nik…his beloved Nikita…to whom he was bound. To feel his love and devotion through that blood bond, to belong to him…
The thought did pleasant things to his belly.
But Nik radiated distress. In a flat voice, he said, “Absolutely not.”
Okay, that hurt.
Trina looked steadily up at her great-grandfather. “I told Will you wouldn’t go for it.”
“Good–”
“But then he explained to me that Sasha is a very strong wolf, and that if you don’t bind him, some other vampire will try to force a bond some day.”
Copper tang of Grisha’s blood in his mouth. The forceful shove at his mind. Let me in, let me in. Standing, frozen and stupid, as ravens wheeled, and dived, and Philippe threw fire at his pack.
He barely managed not to choke, the air suddenly heavy in his lungs.
Nikita snarled. “I’d like to see someone try. I dare them–”
“Nik,” Trina said. “Have you ever thought about not being so goddamn miserable and defensive for one fucking second?”
If the words surprised Sasha, Nik looked like he’d been slapped. His growl cut off, and his shoulders dropped, and he stared at her, uncharacteristically wide-eyed.
Her tone softened. “I know that what happened in Virginia spooked you.”
“It didn’t spook me,” Nik said, without inflection, face still a blank mask of shock. He looked spooked right now, like someone whose secret had been exposed. Like–
It clicked, then. Sasha had already suspected, already known, in a way. But in that moment, his understanding sharpened, and his chest ached for his friend – for his lover.
He stepped up beside him and put a hand on the back of his neck, squeezed there, a grounding touch, like Nik would have offered to him had the situation been reversed. Nikita slumped a little further, exhaled a long, shaky breath. “It’s alright, darling,” he said, not trying to check the pet name. Nik needed to hear it, witnesses or no.
Trina’s brows lifted, gaze moving between them. She said, “It did spook you, and nobody blames you for that. I think you’ve been running around scared to death and feeling guilty as hell ever since. You’ve been terrible to be around, to be honest. You’re worried about Sasha.” When he started to protest, she said, “You’re terrified something’s going to happen to him. I get that. But can you please stop being a dick about it and talk to us?”
Nik’s mouth pulled to the side, a grim non-smile. He swallowed a few times.
Sasha squeezed his neck again, and felt Nik leaning into the pressure.
Trina continued to look between them, corner of her mouth twitching like she was holding back a smile. There was no way she’d missed that “darling.” “Not that it’s any of my business,” she drawled, and the smile started to break through. “Did you guys, finally…”
“No, it’s not your business,” Nikita huffed.
Sasha grinned. “We did!”
Her smile was dazzling, then. “You guys.”
Nik growled.
“You guys, that’s fantastic!”
Sasha felt a happy warmth stain his cheeks, and leaned against Nikita’s side, so they were pressed flush at shoulders, ribs, and hips. “Thank you.”
“I mean it.” She focused on Nik, then, smile softening. “Nik, I really mean it. I’m so happy for you two. It’s about time. You don’t have to be nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“You’re shaking.”
He was, little chills that
vibrated into Sasha.
“Did you think we didn’t know?” she asked, even gentler. “Nik, honey, we could always tell” – Nik tensed, and she seemed to know, cutting off with a little breath. “You deserve to be happy,” she said, finally.
“I keep telling him,” Sasha said.
“Okay, that’s…that’s enough,” Nikita said, with a little wave from both hands. At another time, even just a week ago, Sasha thought he would have turned away from them. But today, he stood beneath the steady weight of Sasha’s hand, and looked down at the ground instead, evading both their gazes. “We need to focus.”
Trina looked like she wanted to say more.
Sasha gave her an apologetic glance.
“We need to find Gustav, then,” Trina said, back to business.
A beat passed. Two. Then Nik took one last breath and lifted his head, expression composed again. “Yeah,” he agreed, with all his usual cynicism and intent. “We’ll go to Colette, see if she can help with a spell. Find him.” He gave her a pointed look. “You said you wanted to know why he did it.”
“Ideally? And in a broad sense? Yeah, I do. This town’s going extra crazy lately with this supernatural shit – no offense – and I’d love an explanation.” Her darted glance to Sasha told him she already suspected the reason: the war everyone from Dracula to Robin Hood seemed so bound to fight. “But if the Alexei fiasco taught us anything, it’s that arresting and questioning a vampire isn’t a reasonable thing. So. You catch him, find out what you can without getting hurt, and then do what you gotta do.”
“How outside the law of you,” Nikita said, trace of a smile gracing his lips. He needed to smile more; he was so handsome when he did.
“I’m a cop, not a saint,” she said, smirking in a way completely reminiscent of him.
“Speaking of. Where’s Lanny?” Nik asked, relaxing another fraction. He reached out to brace a hand on the rail. “I’m assuming that’s why you called this morning?”
Now it was Trina’s turn to get cagey. She shrugged. “It’s alright.”
“Nuh-uh. What’d that idiot do?” Nik pressed.
Sasha turned his head, so he could whisper, “Don’t pester her,” right in his ear.
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 13
