Nik sighed. “They do make a good point about the Institute.”
“The…what?” The word hit him like a slap.
“The Institute created them, did they not?” Will asked. “It only makes sense–”
“Gustav is there,” Sasha said, grim-faced. “With them. Helping them.”
“Shit,” Lanny murmured, his panic over Trina receding in this face of this new, wholly different kind of panic. He felt very small, and rooted to the spot. “Why didn’t we think of that?”
~*~
She told the story twice. Once to Abbot, and then to the IAB agent – a smarmy jerk named Jennings – once he arrived, late, pressed, bearing more coffee, and looking at her with big-eyed seriousness, encouraging her to feel comfortable with him.
He chased me, I told him to back down, she said. He pursued me up a fire escape. Tried to jump on me. I fired.
Jennings frowned at her a lot. She knew it didn’t add up: she’d fired more shots than necessary to subdue him – to subdue a human. And there was no way of explaining the shot to the head, there just wasn’t…so she didn’t.
She gave her to-the-point, bare bones accounting, and then fell silent. Answered questions in monosyllables.
There was no coming back from this, she knew. She knew anyway, before Jennings closed-off expression told her as much.
After, she turned in her gun, but kept her badge. For now. Was released assigned with desk duty and told that IAB would be in contact about the nature of her investigation. She wouldn’t get her gun back until she’d been cleared; until it had been deemed a “good shoot.”
“Thank you,” she said, polite but flat, and left the interrogation room, headed toward the bullpen still in her bubble of trancelike calm.
A bubble that threatened to burst when she got to her desk and found the one person waiting for her too sweet to keep on the other side of her armor.
“Hi,” Sasha said, standing, offering a smile so sympathetic that her shield of numbness shivered, and cracked. Her eyes stung.
She took a few shuddering breaths. Tried desperately to hold on to her mask. “Hi.”
He took a step closer, hair sliding out from behind his ears as he tipped his head. “I’m sorry we weren’t there,” he said, low, just for her. So earnest.
“Why would you have been? I can take care of myself.”
“I know.” He opened his arms. “But I’m still sorry.”
It turned out she couldn’t hold out against that kind of sincerity and kindness very long, not from him. She stepped into his hug, and even though he was lean, his arms were strong, and he wrapped her up tight, his cheek warm against hers.
She shivered, and closed her eyes against the tears, and would not let them fall. She hugged him back, though, for all she was worth.
“It must have been very scary,” he murmured in her ear.
“Not any scarier than the stuff you’ve seen.”
“That’s not the point,” he chided gently.
It felt like a moment of weakness, holding onto him like this, letting him hold her up, but she took it. He smelled faintly of a dense wood, of pine and clear water.
There were things to do, though.
She sniffed hard, and was proud to be dry-eyed when she pulled back. Sasha kept one hand lightly on her elbow, and she didn’t try to shake him off. “Where’s everybody else?”
“Outside.” A crease formed in the smooth skin between his brows. “Will and Much showed up.”
“Ah.” Shit was about to get even more complicated.
“They have some ideas, and I think Nik might finally be willing to listen.”
~*~
They went to The Lion’s Den. A big circular corner booth under a Tiffany lamp, enough low conversation around them to create a sense of privacy. Lanny sat too close to her, their sides pressed together, his hand sweeping slow and mindless up and down her thigh beneath the table. He needed to touch, Sasha had explained to her before they’d walked out of the precinct earlier. It was instinctual, a mate thing, needing to comfort himself with the fact that she was in one piece.
Sasha was on her other side, and Nikita beyond him. Robin Hood’s men sat across from them, a practical arrangement; Trina didn’t have to crane her neck to meet Will’s gaze when he said, “What happened earlier?”
It was different telling a wolf about it. She didn’t have to edit anything, and he didn’t watch her like he was trying to decide if she was fit to stay on the force. He folded his hands together on the tabletop, ignored his glass of dark beer, and listened with his head cocked at an angle of lupine attentiveness. Nodding occasionally.
The second she was done, he said, “You did the right thing.”
Something inside her unclenched. He wasn’t her pack, wasn’t really even her friend, but she’d needed to hear that, she realized. Badly.
“The thing with ferals,” Will continued, “is that it isn’t a case of mental illness. It isn’t an injury. It’s not something that can be improved over time. Left alone, they can at best be insensate, and at worst murderous. They kill to live, but they’re incapable of any kind of interaction. I’ve seen some cases, over the years, of a feral or two running with a regular wolf pack. They are always liabilities. They can be steered, occasionally, by a powerful master. But they understand neither reason nor morality.”
She frowned, thinking of the second wolf, the one who’d looked up at her and whimpered. “They were friends. He knew that I killed the first one, and he was unhappy about it.”
“Of course,” Will said, head tilting the other way. “But as I said: you did the right thing. The only way to stop their violence is to put them down, and that’s what you did.”
“You wanna come tell my boss that?” she asked wryly, and reached for her glass. One vodka was definitely not going to be enough right now.
“I understand that your career is in jeopardy.”
“Do you?” Lanny asked. “’Cause I don’t think you do.”
Will took a slow breath, and showed the first hint of something like frustration. “Seeing as how we weren’t there this morning, I’m afraid I have no control over what happened – though I do put forward my condolences for any harm that may become of it. But I do think I – we–” Much snorted “–can help in another way. Nikita tells me you’ve come to an uneasy truce with the Ingraham Institute.”
“More like we threatened each other into a standoff,” she said. “But, yeah, more or less. Given what I was threatening them with, I find it hard to believe they’d just turn their wolves loose to eat random civilians. Showing up on the news isn’t really their style.”
“I agree, but they’re the source of those ferals. That’s where they were turned.”
“So they escaped,” Lanny said.
“Or.” Will’s eyes caught the lamplight, a fast, inhuman gold shimmer. “They were stolen.”
The penny dropped. “Shit,” she murmured, and wanted to kick herself for not having added it all up before. She’d been…distracted.
Nikita had been uncharacteristically silent throughout, arms folded tight across his chest. His scowl was pretty characteristic, though. Even sharper-edged than normal. “What he’s taking forever to say,” he said, anger deepening his accent, “is that Gustav stole the ferals. Yes? And is using them. Or, trying to.”
Trina said, “But why would he?”
“Because he’s evil and stupid,” Nikita said. “Why does anyone do anything? Fucking wars have been fought for less reason.”
Will’s face was carefully blank as he looked at Nik. “Indeed. But I still think it’s the likeliest possibility. Do you disagree?” When Nikita didn’t answer, he said, “I haven’t smelled the corpses, but you have. You said you recognized the scents of the ferals, and Gustav, and his Familiar.”
“Yeah,” Nikita said tightly.
Sasha moved, shifted a little, and Trina figured he laid a hand on Nik somewhere.
Nikita sighed, and some of the v
isible tension bled out of him. He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “Yeah. We did. And, yeah.” Grudging. “Your idea doesn’t suck.”
Will grinned.
“If that’s true,” Trina said, “why in the world would he want them? And why would he be letting them run wild?”
“Does that matter?” Will asked.
“To me? Yeah, it does.”
“Detective,” Nikita said by way of explanation, and she thought he sounded proud.
“If we go back to the Institute,” Lanny said, “the truce is over.”
“Yes,” Will said. “As much as my alpha would like to wipe the Institute off the board for their atrocities, I feel a full-scale attack is premature. We need evidence – and I think Gustav is our best source of information to that end. We need to find him.”
“We haven’t been able to,” Lanny said. “What makes you think you guys can?” His hand had stilled on her thigh, starting to relax, and he wasn’t shaking as badly anymore.
“Well,” Will said slowly, smile flirting with one corner of his mouth, “forgive me my presumption, but I’ve had the impression you’ve all been a bit…preoccupied, shall we say…with personal matters.”
Trina felt her face flush immediately.
Sasha squirmed in his seat beside her.
“Perhaps you haven’t deployed all your resources?” Will suggested. “Perfectly understandable.”
Nikita’s scowl returned, darker than ever.
“But now I say we begin our search in earnest.”
It was silent a beat.
In a small voice, Sasha finally said, “I agree.”
“Wait,” Nikita said. “In exchange for what?”
“Beg pardon?”
Much reached over for Will’s beer and drank it down in a sequence of steady, shallow sips.
“You came here to recruit us, you already said,” Nikita said. “If you help us now, you expect our help in return, right? You’ll want us to join up with your crusade?”
Will frowned. “Do you always break everything down into these sorts of cynical terms?”
“Always. Because cynical terms are the only kind anyone ever offers.”
A beat. And Lanny said, “You’re not wrong, dude. Also.” He leaned forward, gaze narrowing in on Will, expression going hostile. “I don’t trust you.”
“Guys,” Trina said. Exhaustion was setting in. She needed to eat. To have another drink. To take a freaking nap. “Can we please, please skip the pissing contest? Just this once? I need a burger.”
They had the grace to all look at least a little chastened.
It was Much who answered, raising an arm to flag down their server. “I second that. Thank Christ.”
23
They ate, and drank just enough to fortify their rattled nerves. It was four o’clock by then, the shadows already getting long, the chill of the air beginning to turn outright cold as night approached.
“We need to organize, first,” Nikita told Will, who nodded in understanding. They all agreed to meet at seven. Nikita and Sasha called in sick to work. Lanny turned off his phone. Trina called Jamie: pack meeting, right now.
They went to Nikita and Sasha’s place.
Lanny took a deep breath when they crossed the threshold, coughed, and waggled his brows at Nikita.
Nik promptly went over and pulled a bedroom door shut. Firmly.
Sasha blushed.
Lanny laughed. “Look at you,” he said to Nikita. “You’re like a blushing virgin.”
He wasn’t looking, so he couldn’t have seen, but Trina noticed that Sasha’s blush deepened; he ducked his head so his hair covered his face. Oh, Sasha, she thought tenderly, and the moment she thought, I hope Nik’s good to you, she knew, without question that he had been. That he was; that he would be.
“Stop,” Nikita said, with a ringing sort of authority he rarely used. His Chekist voice, she figured, and it worked.
Lanny shrugged and dropped down into a tattered old recliner. “So what are we gonna do about these Sherwood Forest motherfuckers?”
Nikita went into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a glass of chilled vodka. He sipped at it. When he lifted it in offering toward Trina, she said, “Just water.”
He went back for it, calling over his shoulder: “Use them, if we can.”
Trina sank down in the other chair, and wished she’d asked for vodka after all. “I know I don’t have all the vampire, werewolf ‘magical senses.’” She made air quotes with her fingers, and Sasha looked like he smothered a grin over on the couch. Nikita frowned as he handed her a glass of water. “So I can’t get the same kind of read on Will as the rest of you. Though I think we’ve pretty firmly established that none of you have an ounce of trust in him.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Nikita said dryly, settling on the couch next to Sasha. “That was pretty perceptive.”
“Shut up. I’m just saying, even with my lame human senses – detective senses, I might add.” Sasha was definitely smiling, now. “That I don’t get bad vibes off the guy.”
“You just think his hair’s pretty,” Lanny said.
“You, definitely shut up. No, I’m serious. Their guys that I met in Virginia were vets, and they were really professional.”
“They give you good vibes, too?”
“They did.” She stretched out a leg and kicked Lanny lightly in the knee; he grinned. “But, guys. This is Robin Hood we’re dealing with. I mean…I’ve been trying really hard to just swallow all the crazy in our lives down. Rasputin, and Dracula, and, hell, you guys.” She gestured to Nik and Sasha. “Some days, I remind myself that my great-grandfather is alive, and looks younger than me, and it makes my head spin.”
“Babe,” Lanny said, growing serious, concerned.
“No, it’s okay. I can handle it. I just.” She took a deep breath, and then a sip of water. To Nikita: “I know you don’t trust anyone, and I get that.” His mouth twitched, and she said, “I walked through an entire year in your head, Nik. I get it.”
He sank back into the couch cushions, notch between his brows. Sasha scooted over closer to him, so they were touching, and put a hand on his knee. A silent support.
“I don’t blame you one bit. I’ve seen my share of shit, too, in this job, in this city. Trusting the wrong people can get you killed.
“Obviously, there are some really terrifying immortals out there. Dangerous, violent ones. Whoever this Gustav is – and I’m about ready to meet the bastard after all this – I have to assume he fits that bill. But we had lunch with Will Scarlet and Much the Miller’s Son. If ever there was a good guy in all of history, it was Robin Hood. And these are his boys. These are storybook characters in the flesh. I say we let them help. Not just use them, not just keep our backs up and act like shits. No offense, Gramps.”
Nikita made a face, and Sasha turned his head and pressed a laugh into his shoulder. The easy sweetness of the gesture, the trust it showed, put a lump in her throat. She had walked through a year of his life; a hard year. A war year. An awful year. She’d felt her breath hitch and her palms tingle as if she were him. Had looked at Sasha through his eyes, with terrible longing, and fondness, and love. He’d loved Katya, too. She’d felt it. But this, the two of them, was a kind of love that left her aching with vicarious tenderness.
“Nik,” she said, softer. “I think they have a point about you binding Sasha.”
Sasha stilled.
Nik tensed up terribly.
“Nik,” she said again. “I love you both.” Her voice cracked, and her eyes burned. “And I know you love each other.”
Nikita stood up suddenly, vodka slopping out of his glass. Vibrating with tension, rigid as a board. He glared at her. “I will not.” Furious, shaking, words clipped off. “Make a him a slave. Don’t fucking–”
Sasha grabbed his hand, and murmured something urgent in Russian.
Nikita murmured back, anguished.
“It would protec
t him,” Trina pressed.
Nikita’s head snapped around, his teeth bared. “It would force him to me.”
Jesus. “You’re already attached at the damn hip,” she said.
He growled–
And a knock sounded at the door.
Nikita gave her an awful look, lip curled off his teeth, before he threw down the rest of his vodka in one swallow and went to answer the door.
Alexei and Jamie trooped in.
Dante was with them.
“Oh no.” Lanny got to his feet. “You can hang out with whoever you want in your own time,” he told Alexei, and stabbed a finger through the air toward Dante. “But he’s not pack. What part of ‘pack meeting’ didn’t you get?”
Alexei halted at the edge of the rug and stood up straight, hands linked behind his back. A formal posture. The posture of a prince. “I propose we add Dante to the pack.”
Lanny barked a single, harsh laugh.
“I’m not kidding.”
“Neither am I, Daddy Dearest. No. You, hit the bricks, pretty boy.”
“What’s going on?” Trina asked Jamie, snagging the sleeve of his sweater as he tried to slip past her.
He worried his lower lip between his teeth. Radiated guilt. “I’m not saying anything,” he said, and wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I think I’ve fucked things up enough as is.”
“Jamie,” she hissed, but he tugged loose, and slipped through to the opposite side of the room.
She turned her attention back to the unfolding tableau: offspring facing off from sire. With Alexei’s chin kicked up to an imperious angle, he and Lanny couldn’t have looked more different; they came from completely opposite worlds.
Then she looked at Dante – closely. And did a double take.
He was dressed simply, in jeans, t-shirt, and a worn leather jacket that highlighted his leanness. His hair was fluffy and frizzy around his face, rather than slicked-back the way it had been the night before.
But it wasn’t the outfit or the hair that pulled her up short. No, it was his face. The graveness of his expression, the hollows of sleeplessness beneath his eyes. Last night he’d been all smug smiles and charm, and today, all that had been stripped away, highlighting the sharp bone structure, and a depth in his expression that she now knew had been carefully veiled before.
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 24
