He settled in across from her, smoothing his tie, situating the chair. Like with Romero, all movements she knew well. Little professional tics.
“We’re waiting for Abbot?” she asked. Couldn’t imbue any sort of animation into her voice.
“Oh, well.” He shrugged and looked nervous. “You know how it is. IAB wants to send somebody. Gotta go through all the paperwork. That dumb shit.” He shrugged, but his smile didn’t go all the way on both sides.
She nodded.
“He was chasing you?” he asked. And he sounded so casual, like her friend and fellow detective asking a simple question.
But she was in this room, and nothing said here would be taken casually.
Silence fell.
Delgado jiggled one leg, keys and change rattling in his pocket, and glanced at her surreptitiously like he thought she might fill that silence.
She didn’t.
And then she heard the yelling.
“Fuck you, no–” Lanny’s unmistakable voice said.
Romero pushed off the wall, hands-up. “Hey,” he said, “hey, she’s–” His back slammed into the wall, the breath leaving his lungs in a hard rush.
Lanny had shoved him.
He appeared in the doorway a moment later, leather jacket hanging open, sweats underneath, breathing like a racehorse, face still bruised. “What the fuck?” he said, half-growling. She could see the tips of his fangs; emotion had rendered him careless. “She’s not a fucking suspect, what the–”
Romero put a hand on his shoulder, and oh shit, this wasn’t going to go well.
Trina stood, just as Romero was thrown backward. Her hip bumped the table, and coffee slopped all over. “Lanny,” she snapped.
Everything seemed to stop.
Romero was caught in a tableau, half-falling, all of Lanny’s strength holding him upright. Inhuman strength; he would probably wonder at it later.
Delgado sat staring at her, motionless.
“Lanny,” she said again, voice flat.
He whirled to face her. The chaos on his face. The terror and aggression. It was staggering.
She swallowed and said, “Stop.”
He dropped Romero and turned to face her. Dropped him. He’d shown too much of his true, new self. There would be no way to come back from it, she registered.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Who was it?” he asked, heedless of her calm tone. “One of those assholes they lured Sasha with? A feral?”
She gave him a look. “Not now.”
“It was, wasn’t it?”
Romero collected himself with an indignant cough.
“Whaddya mean?” Delgado asked, looking between Trina and Lanny.
“My partner,” Trina said, before Lanny could answer. “Is just concerned. He wasn’t involved at all.”
“You can’t seriously be questioning her,” Lanny said.
Delgado’s gaze kept flicking, back and forth; he looked as unsettled as Trina had ever seen him.
“Lanny, get out, you’re only going to make this worse.”
Romero straightened his jacket with a sharp gesture. “Man, what the fuck?”
“Lanny–” Trina started again, uselessly. She might as well give orders to the wall for all that he would listen.
Then Captain Abbot’s voice cut above everyone else’s. “What the fuck is all this? Huh?” He bulled into the room with his head down, his shoulders rounded for a fight, gaze already fierce enough to strip paint. He looked at each of them in turn. “Which one of you idiots shot somebody?”
Trina lifted two fingers in a small wave. “That’d be me, sir.” She was still numb. They were only words, and true ones at that; she found they came easily.
“In self-defense,” Lanny growled. A real vampire growl. God, he was so fired after this. “She didn’t do anything wrong, Captain.” Too aggressive, his tone too sharp. Fired, fired, fired.
Abbot swung around to look at him, and recoiled visibly a moment when he got a good glimpse of Lanny’s face. His eyes looked fevered; the tips of his fangs showed. “Jesus, are you high or something?” To Romero and Delgado: “Get him the fuck outta here if he’s gonna be like this.”
Lanny growled again.
Trina had to stop this, she knew. Whatever the fallout, it was vital that she get Lanny to calm down. He was a gun half-cocked lately, and this had all the earmarks of a full-fledged disaster in the making.
She slipped between Lanny and Abbot. Put her back to her captain, ignored his spluttered protests, and focused all her attention on Lanny. She’d been wanting him to keep acting like a human all this time – but he wasn’t one, anymore. And it wasn’t his human side she needed to appeal to. Not now – maybe not ever.
“Hey,” she said, low and soothing. “Hey, hey, hey, look at me. Just at me.”
He did, his pupils dilating, his breath arresting one long moment before he started sucking in deep, panicked lungfuls again. He was locked in.
Moving slowly, Trina reached up and laid one hand on the side of his face, and the other on his throat. His skin was clammy, his pulse racing against her fingers. “I’m okay,” she said. “Not even a scratch. I mean, I’m out of shape – thank God I didn’t have to run that far – but I’m good. See? Come here, smell if you need to. No blood.”
And he did smell. He stepped in close and dropped his face into the side of her throat, scenting her. Touched her hair, her shoulders, her arms. Pulled back to rake his gaze over her. He was shaking. “Did it? Are you–”
“Fine. Totally fine. Let’s put the sharp teeth away, okay?”
“The – sharp–” He flicked his tongue over a fang, and his eyes widened. “Shit. I…” He hyperventilated some more, and Trina tightened her hand on his neck.
“It’s fine. It’s fine. Just take a sec, and dial it back.”
A few more hitched breaths, and then a deep one. Another. He blinked and his pupils started to shrink back toward regular size; the glow faded from them. That had been new; she’d thought she’d seen Nikita’s and Alexei’s flash in moments, but she’d never been staring at them like this when it happened; hadn’t known for sure that something ethereal and inhuman flared to life in their irises.
“That’s better,” she murmured, squeezing at his neck in regular pulses – pulses that his own pulse slowly matched. “You okay?”
He ducked his head, and nodded. “Yeah.” His voice was still rough, but no longer with a growl; with regular old shame. He rubbed a hand down his face. “Yeah. I’m…shit. Sorry, guys.”
No response.
Trina finally glanced toward the others in the room. They’d all clumped together, a line of slack-jawed mortals with wrinkled dress shirts and bad haircuts. At another moment, she would have laughed, and ribbed them about looking like cops out of a crappy made-for-TV movie.
But now, with Lanny still shivering beneath her hands, she felt the morning’s first curl of real dread. Romero, Delgado, and Abbot didn’t just look shocked, but truly frightened. Dazed, almost. It didn’t matter that none of them probably believed in the supernatural; they’d all seen what she’d just seen in Lanny: that there was something very, very different about him now.
“What the hell?” Abbot said, voice uncharacteristically faint.
“Go,” Trina whispered to Lanny, and gave him a gentle shove toward the door. She wanted him to go home. To get the hell out of the precinct and find Nikita or Jamie or anyone else in their pack to sit with him. Even Alexei, whose vampiric experience far surpassed Lanny’s own.
He let go of her reluctantly, and made a tiny sound almost like a whine. She had vastly underestimated the distress a vampire would feel for a mate in danger – though she shouldn’t, she thought with a mental headshake. She’d seen Nikita in Virginia.
“Go,” she said again, and found a reassuring smile for him. “I’m fine.”
He gave her a look that threatened to crack her shields, baleful as a stray dog, full of regret and worry. But th
en he did go, and Delgado and Romero followed a moment later, at a safe distance, practically creeping.
Go faster, she willed Lanny. He was in no state to try to laugh and shrug off what they’d just seen.
Abbot cleared his throat.
Trina pushed all extraneous thoughts away and turned to him. She was the one with the composure here, even if her fate was in his hands. “Will IAB be here soon, sir?” she asked.
He blinked in response to her tone, flat and professional.
“I’d be happy to give you a statement, first, if you’d like.”
He blinked a few more times. “What the hell’s with Webb?”
“Trust me, sir: you wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”
22
Alexei was freaking out.
He’d dreamed of Ekaterinburg. Of the exact black of the sky that final night, of the smear of yellow light from the upper windows. Of the barking voices of the men who’d ushered them across the courtyard. Papa’s arms strong and close around him; the steady pounding of his heart against Alexei’s ear. He’d dreamed of his little spaniel, Joy, jerking and yipping on his lead, because Anastasia hadn’t wanted to leave him behind. The crunch of snow beneath black boots.
He’d dreamed of the Cheka that had killed his family. Their black fur hats, and their long black coats, and the vacant black of their eyes. Monsters, all of them monsters.
And he’d awakened moments ago, to daylight, and his heart in his throat, and to the scent of cooking food, and the echo of Gustav’s words last night.
Your mother’s killers.
It didn’t matter that Nikita hadn’t pulled the trigger himself: he was one of those black-clad monsters. He always had been, and people didn’t change, did they?
He lay, disoriented, pulse pounding, ears ringing, for a long moment, gulping air through an open mouth. Then he became aware of the sound of humming. The sizzle that went with the smell. Someone cooking breakfast – and humming old big band tunes from the forties.
Two hands gripped the back of the velvet sofa where he’d collapsed in the wee hours, and Jamie’s face appeared above his.
“Dante’s making breakfast,” he said. “He’s kind of a weird dude.”
Alexei licked his dry lips. “You don’t say.”
He sat up. Daylight fell in warm panels through the open drapes of Dante’s living room, sparkling off the shiniest of his displayed treasures.
A peek over the back of the couch revealed Dante standing at the stove, his hair soft and loose on his shoulders, wearing his velvet dressing gown, head tipping back and forth as he hummed and turned bacon with a fork.
“He wakes,” he said, all British, and sent Alexei a grin over the kitchen island. A sharp grin, but a worried cast to his gaze.
Alexei rubbed his eyes. “Are you Basil this morning?”
“Mostly. Come over here and eat, the first batch is already done.”
“I’m not hungry,” Alexei grumbled, but he lurched to his feet, stretched out his sore back, and shuffled over to perch at the island, on the stool beside Jamie’s. “The first batch” proved to be bacon, scrambled eggs, and French toast sticks with big puddles of real syrup. He still felt mildly queasy with nerves, but his stomach rumbled, and he fell on the food like a starving man.
“Well,” Dante said, and sipped his coffee.
“Well, what?” Alexei snapped between bites. He became aware that Jamie was staring at him, rather than eating, a more worried version of the calculating look Dante gave him over the rim of his coffee mug. “What?” he demanded again, slowing, looking between them.
Dante set his mug aside slowly. “It seems you have a choice to make.” With his true accent, it sounded like a dire statement; like he himself had presented the choice. Even in his robe, and with his hair wild, there was a gravitas to him. It was easy to imagine him in formalwear, bowing before the queen he’d served.
Jamie said, “You don’t really believe that Gustav guy over Nik, do you?”
There was a blunt way of putting it.
Alexei sighed and set his fork down, stomach cramping. He didn’t want to look at either of them, and stared at a space on the spotless countertop. “Nikita was a Chekist. And Chekists killed my family. Would have killed me if not for Grisha’s gift.”
“Grisha,” Dante said with polite disdain. “Grigory Yefimovich was a lecherous cretin. The entire world thought he was–” He left off when Alexei shot him a glare, his expression smoothing. “Disrespecting your mother and sisters.”
“Lex,” Jamie said beside him, earnest, trying to be convincing. “If Nikita had any bad intentions toward you, you would know by now. We’re pack,” he said, leaning in closer, his eyes huge. He was such a newborn, it very nearly disgusted him. “Whatever Gustav said, he wasn’t–”
“And why would Gustav lie?” Alexei said, sneering, and turned back to his breakfast.
“The same reason any of us lie,” Dante said after a beat, his voice heavy enough that Alexei felt his gaze tugged upward, against his will. Dante looked sad, his lean face drawn. “To fool someone.”
Alexei snorted, and shoveled up another bite of eggs.
“I will say this, though,” Dante added. “In my experience, the best liars are always charming.”
Just like he was.
Like Gustav.
And Nikita, Alexei thought with another tightening of his nerves, had not one scrap of charm.
~*~
Eyes shut, head tipped back, Sasha beside him and the sun warming his face, Nikita thought he might fall asleep leaning against the front of the precinct. But then he caught the scent of wolves, and came instantly awake.
“You.” He pushed off the wall, and put himself in front of Sasha as Will Scarlet and Much the Miller’s Son approached.
They pulled up several paces away.
Much rolled his eyes and muttered, “Told you.” He turned away from them all.
Will held both hands up, placating. “Trina called me.”
“She what?” he growled.
Sasha touched his arm. “Let’s hear what they have to say.”
Nikita caught the edge of a smirk on Much’s face, and growled again, low.
“We’re not trying to interfere with pack dynamics,” Will said, and he didn’t just sound earnest, but smelled it, too. Not a trace of anxiety – the shithead. “But Trina reached out. We’re all on the same side here.”
Sasha’s hand tightened on Nikita’s arm, a quick reflex, a staying motion.
Nikita said, “And what side is that?”
“The one that’s working against the Ingraham Institute.”
~*~
Lanny sat down in a chair in the break room, put his head between his knees, and concentrated on breathing for long minutes. Thought consciously about pulling his growl back, and retracting his fangs, and trying to stuff his rampaging instincts – still new, raw, and unwieldy – back into some kind of manageable compartment.
His heartbeat slowed gradually; it had eased some while Trina was talking to him. While she had her hands on him, skin-to-skin contact. When he could tell that she was whole and unhurt, that the blood on the ankles of her boots belonged to a feral wolf, and not to her. Then he’d been able to dial back some of his panic. But as soon as she sent him away – and walking off had been one of the most wildly difficult things he’d ever done, leaving his mate alone with someone frowning at her – his pulse had accelerated again.
He was shaking, still. He should be with her. He should put himself between her and whatever threatened her and bare his teeth, growl from deep in his throat.
This went way beyond general machismo, he knew. This was pure vampire instinct, and he was in so, so far over his head.
When he felt mostly in control of himself, he lifted his head. Delgado stood against the opposite wall, both hands around a coffee mug, staring at him with no small amount of trepidation.
He swallowed, throat jumping. “You good?”
&nb
sp; Lanny took a breath. “Yeah. I think.”
Delgado’s brows lifted. “What was that?”
Lanny dropped his gaze to his hands, where his fingers were laced, the fresh bruises on top of the old scars on his knuckles nearly healed. “Just worried, you know.”
A beat. Delgado said, “Listen, I love my partner like a brother. But.” Another hesitation. Word would spread; they would all be hesitant now. Maybe even frightened. “That’s not what it looked like.”
Lanny lifted his head again, and sent him a steady look. He intended it to be steady, anyway; one of his best interrogation faces. But Delgado shrank down into his shirt collar a fraction. Scared. “What did it look like?” he asked, levelly.
“Kinda like you and her are sleeping together. Kinda like you’re outta your goddamn mind.”
Lanny snorted. “Which do you think it is?”
“Both.”
“Good guess.”
“Lanny. What the hell’s going on?”
He let out a breath and shoved to his feet. Unsteady, hands still shaking. “When I figure it out, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
Delgado made a protesting sound, but took an extra step out of the way as Lanny walked out of the break room.
He ought to leave the precinct, he knew. Even though it left him grinding his teeth, there was nothing he could do for Trina right now – she was technically safe, in a physical sense. She didn’t need him.
Mate. Mine. Protect.
Instincts so much more powerful than he’d expected. He’d never felt this way before.
So he didn’t leave. Went instead toward his desk, where he’d at least be close by when she eventually got out of her interview.
His desk wasn’t empty.
Nikita and Sasha he almost expected; Nikita didn’t listen to anyone. But Will Scarlet and Much were a surprise.
As was the fact that Will spoke first, standing up and offering a flourishing bow that belonged to another century. “Apologies for barging in. We encountered Nikita and Sasha on the street, and–”
He cut off when Lanny glanced away from him, and toward Nik, and said, “What the fuck?”
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 23
