Jamie realized he hadn’t taken a breath in a long moment, and sucked one in now. “You mean…”
“Russia was a test. To see if a wolf could be used to kill vampires. It was a successful test…right up until Sasha and Nikita ran off and disappeared.”
Jamie’s heart pounded.
“We’ve tried to trace the information backward. But when the lab caught fire in Stalingrad, only a handful of files were recovered, and eventually uploaded onto databases. Much and Tuck have been able to hack them, but the trail toward the financial backers runs cold. Redacted US government files; dead ends; whoever did it was crafty and doubled back again and again like a fox. Everyone Ingraham knew when he studied here in the States disappeared. Anyone he might have confided in – just gone. No trail.”
“A cover-up,” Jamie breathed.
“Yes. And a thorough one. Someone in this country came face-to-face with an immortal. Or several. Someone became so petrified that they decided to begin a living biological weapons program. Sasha was a success, but a lost one. Now they have Liam and Lily Price’s children; and God knows why the Prices cooperated with them. They’ve clearly tried to turn more wolves, but their mages are young, inexpert, and they were poor turnings. Or else the human subjects weren’t strong enough to manage.
“Finding Vlad Dracula was a major coup for the Institute. And now, with his help, I think the government is going to start taking an active role in the coming war they’ve let us throw ourselves at for decades.”
“Valerian.”
“Sorry?”
“He’s here in town. He showed up last night.”
Will’s brows lifted. “Really? He escaped?” Before Jamie could answer, he said, “Or was set loose.”
“He said his brother let him go.”
“Hm.” Will sat back and linked his hands over his belly, thumbs fiddling with the hem of his shirt. Considering. “I’ve never met him, but from what I’ve heard over the years, Vlad Tepes isn’t the kind of man to change his mind about something like that. They hate one another. It’s a legendary family feud.”
“Valerian called it a ‘misunderstanding.’ He said they mended fences.”
Will snorted. “Vlad Tepes doesn’t mend fences, either. Still.” He pushed a hand through his hair, fluffing it. “Hm,” he hummed again.
“What?”
“This is an unexpected development. Valerian changed hands many times over the centuries. There was an auction, once. Rob tried to buy him – to free him, of course.”
Jamie’s stomach rolled. “Free him if he’d help you, you mean?”
Will grinned. “Nikita’s pessimism is catching, I see. We would have asked for his help, yes. Asked. It’s his uncle that birthed the plague of mindless, ravenous vampires on the world.”
“Plague?” Jamie said faintly.
“It will be if it isn’t stopped. Already our run-ins with the afflicted have increased. Things were mostly quiet for a very long time, but something is stirring. Vlad will be involved, doubtless. What I can’t understand is why he wouldn’t want his brother at his side.”
“Alexei has his phone number, now. Maybe he’ll share and you can ask him yourself.”
“Maybe so,” Will agreed, his gaze tracking back and forth across Jamie’s face. Measuring him, probing.
Jamie swallowed, but he was proud he kept his expression blank; that he didn’t – hopefully – betray that chaotic pulse of anxiety inside him. Will could no doubt sense it, maybe even smell it, but it was important to him that he at least put on a brave outward face.
He said, “How could one or two people make a difference? If the war that’s coming is gonna be as bad as you think?”
Why do you need Nik and Sasha? he meant.
Will offered a smile. “You’re forgetting who my pack alpha is. Sometimes, one or two people make all the difference. It’s been the individuals of history that have brought about the greatest changes.”
Jamie couldn’t argue with that. Could think of no proper response.
Will said, “But I give my word that we won’t bother Nikita and Sasha again. If they don’t want to join us, we won’t press.”
Jamie didn’t know him well enough to know if he could be trusted – but the mythical reputation of Robin of Locksley went a long way toward creating goodwill.
From the bed, Much said, “Found him.”
~*~
“Will you stay in New York?” Alexei asked. His food sat untouched in front of him, his belly too tight with nerves for eating to hold any appeal.
Across the round, linen-draped table, Val over-buttered the last bite of a raspberry scone and popped it into his mouth, smiling as he chewed. On the first bite, his eyes had widened, and he’d murmured, “Gods, that’s delicious,” with sincere reverence.
He gave a one-shouldered shrug and reached for half a poppy seed bagel. “For a while, at least. But I’ve promised Mia we’ll eventually return to her farm.” He turned a warm, fond look on his mate, but Mia was staring at her plate, slicing a wedge of melon into tinier and tinier bits with her butter knife.
Val shifted his attention to Alexei, his expression hardening ever so slightly. It was a subtle change, the way the true warmth melted into a pleasantness that was all for show. Still beautiful, still charming, still smiling and gracious, but Alexei was royalty, too; he knew a court persona when he saw one.
He tried not to be offended. It was starting to become a habit, and not a healthy one.
“I suspect we’ll be here for some time, though,” Val said.
“What will you do here?”
“Live,” Val said, simply. And then, “Eat good food.” He gestured with his bagel, and then coated it in thick globs of cream cheese. “I want to see all the sights. Smell the ocean. I want to go up to the very top floor of one of these wondrous buildings” – some of the court façade slipped, and let true enthusiasm through, his eyes glittering in the filtered sunlight – “and look out across a modern city all lit up at night. I want” – his voice caught – “to stand in the rain, and smell the stink of humanity, and lie in the sun with my eyes shut until my skin burns. I want…to live.” And his voice sent shivers up Alexei’s spine, because Val hadn’t lived, not for centuries.
Asking anything of him would be horrible.
But everyone thought Alexei was horrible anyway.
He waited a moment. Watched Val set down his bagel, and sip his coffee. Watched Mia lay her hand over his, where it rested on the table. Val twisted his wrist and twined their fingers together; Mia’s face remained almost blank.
Then Alexei, as casually as he could, said, “That’ll make you the highest-ranking vampire in the city, then, I guess.”
Val went perfectly still for a moment, his gaze catching on Alexei’s face, brows lifted and body tense. Then he reached for his coffee again and said, “I doubt that.”
“No, you are,” Alexei insisted. “You are–”
“I know what I am.” Short, sharp. Pointed. “There’s no need to lay all my ugly titles on the breakfast table, is there?”
It was a dismissal, and a cutting one. At another time, under different circumstances, he would have ducked his head, eaten his bagel and lox, and kept his mouth shut.
But now, he cleared his throat and said, “What I mean is–”
Val’s gaze snapped up to meet his again, his jaw tight, and in that moment, Alexei was catapulted back to the manor house in Virginia, to a library, and Val’s brother drawing a sword from a scabbard on his back.
“Alexei, what are you doing?” Sasha asked quietly.
“I’m only curious.” He could hear that he sounded too defensive, but couldn’t rein it in. “When someone like him arrives in a place, the power dynamics change. Less powerful vampires will either bow or challenge you.”
“I’m not here to challenge anyone,” Val said, breezily. “We’ll need to find a place to stay on a more permanent basis, though. The hotels have been fascinating, but they ar
en’t cheap, and I suppose our good baron will run out of funds at some point.”
“One of my neighbors is a real estate agent.” Dante sounded relieved for a chance to change the subject. “I could see if she has any listings she could show you. There’s a vacancy in my own building, for instance.”
“Lovely,” Val said. “Mia tells me one needs an agent to secure a residence?”
“Oh, yes,” Dante said, and launched into a helpful explanation.
Mia kept slicing her melon down to microscopic pieces.
Silently frustrated, Alexei let his gaze wander, and accidentally caught Sasha’s eye. The wolf was studying him, unhappy frown tugging at one corner of his mouth.
“We’ll need several bedrooms,” Val said. “The wolves will live with us, I assume.”
“Of course,” Dante said.
“Though they may take their own place if they wish. Perhaps neighboring flats?”
“It might be possible.”
Alexei looked down at his plate, and took a few measured breaths. He supposed he was stupid, naïve, or both to have assumed that Val would want to play vampire politics here in the twenty-first century.
~*~
Val and Dante carried the majority of the conversation for the rest of the meal, Val asking about the finer points of apartment rentals – and inquiring about places to buy furniture with which to fill an apartment – in a back and forth that was pleasantly empty of any real meaning.
If Sasha had been concerned about Alexei before, now he was actively worried. Everything from the tension in his clenched jaw, to his lack of appetite, to his probing questions directed toward Val proved that he’d intended this to be a business meeting of sorts. He wasn’t just asking, but inviting Val to challenge the hierarchy of New York vampires – and it was an unestablished, piecemeal hierarchy at that.
Though he’d been human royalty, and doubtless some immortals knew who he was, Alexei held no special place among the vampires of New York. There was a furtiveness here, in this New World city, built on Greco-Roman governance, and not the monarchies of old. Nikita had earned himself a reputation, but he wasn’t any kind of leader; his isolationist tendencies saw to that, just as surely as his birth and his former occupation. Dominance was an individual thing here: vampires met, and they parsed out who was stronger between them. The weaker vampire either gave sway or was made to give sway.
But Alexei, it seemed, wanted a leader to rise. Unquestioned, all powerful, royal.
How much, Sasha wondered, was that want about anything besides besting Nikita somehow?
“Is he always like this?” Val asked, out on the sidewalk, as he, and Mia, and Sasha stood and watched Alexei and Dante retreat around the corner, heads tucked against the wind. “Or have I happened along in the middle of a pack squabble?”
“He’s been weird lately,” Sasha said, and felt bad for reducing the situation like that. He wanted to care more, really he did…but he was tired, too. “I don’t know why.”
Val shrugged. “Princes are weird,” he said, simply, and then turned a smile on Sasha. “You don’t fancy playing tour guide, do you?”
He smiled in return. He felt a momentary twinge of guilt – a sense that he’d been away from Nikita too long, and that he should go home. But the sun was shining, and Val was smiling at him, and he’d never set aside his worries and enjoyed himself like this before. It sounded wonderful.
“I’d love to.”
28
People were looking at them. With their desks pressed together nose-to-nose, Trina wasn’t sure which of the two of them was drawing the most attention. Her for getting put on desk duty, or Lanny for having what must have looked like a psychotic breakdown to those who’d witnessed it.
She tried to keep her head down and ignore it.
The truth of it was, she was behind on her paperwork, and, if looked at the right way, this break from her normal schedule gave her a chance to get caught up.
The even truer truth, though, was that she hated paperwork, and she wanted to be outside, on the street, picking up new cases and following through with leads on older ones, even if that made her more than a little morbid.
She’d been staring at the same report for the past ten minutes, and wasn’t sure when she’d blinked last. Eyes burning, she sat back, blinked a few times, and reached for her coffee. The mug was empty, and she was afflicted with a case of the shakes. How many cups had that been?
Lanny sent her another concerned glance. He’d been doing that all morning, even before they got here; she’d caught him staring over her shoulder at her reflection in the bathroom mirror earlier, his brows knitted and his mouth set in a flat line.
“Stop that,” she told him now.
He glanced away with a sigh, and his concerned gaze became a scowl when he made eye contact with Detective Hadley.
Hadley nearly choked on his own coffee and hastily spun his chair away.
“If you don’t stop,” she whispered, “you’re going to be riding a desk, too.”
“I’m riding a desk right now,” he pointed out.
“Riding it permanently. Aren’t you supposed to be on call? Who’s been assigned to you?”
“Some dumbass floater.”
“Lanny.”
“How the hell am I supposed to go out on calls when–” He cut off as Abbot puffed up to their desks, one of the young, as-of-yet assigned freshly minted detectives floating along in his wake. Trina thought his name was Garcia.
“Webb,” Abbot barked, gruffer than usual. He looked a little wild-eyed, his gaze landing on Lanny’s forehead rather than his eyes. Still rattled from yesterday. “We’ve got another of those chewed-up DBs, your beat this time. Just bits and pieces left,” he said, without a scrap of tact. “Take Garcia.” Abbot started to turn away, taking Lanny’s compliance for granted.
Lanny said, “You can’t send someone else?”
Abbot froze, and turned back slowly, expression caught between disbelief and mounting rage. A vein pulsed in his temple. “Would I have asked you if I had someone else to send? That’s an order, Detective.”
Lanny held his gaze a beat, then said, “Sir.”
Abbot turned again.
“I don’t need Garcia.”
“Take him!” Abbot barked without looking back, and stormed off.
Lanny glared at his back, until Trina flicked a paperclip at him and recaptured his attention.
Garcia stood beside their desks, visibly fidgeting, and trying to hide that he was – poorly. He looked even younger than he had to be, like a total kid, like he didn’t even need to shave, yet. Trina felt bad about the terrible day he was about to have with Lanny.
“It’ll be an honor to work with you today, sir,” he said. Sir. At another time, Lanny would have burst out laughing. “I’ve heard some great things.”
“Yeah, right,” Lanny snorted. He got to his feet with a deep, aggravated sigh, and reached for his jacket. “Let’s go, then. I’ll drive.” He glanced over at Trina, expression softening a fraction. “You’ll be alright?”
“How could I possibly not be while I’m sitting at my desk?” She smiled. “Go, I’m fine.”
Twenty minutes after he was gone, Nik called, and she took an early lunch break.
~*~
“Sasha’s already inside?” was the first thing Trina asked when she walked up to him in the Waldorf’s hallway.
It was a simple question, innocuous and normal. He and Sasha were always together; why wouldn’t she expect him to be here now?
It stung, though, and sent a fresh wave of cold prickles down his neck, and back, and arms. The lightheaded rush that usually came when he hadn’t eaten or fed properly all day.
“He’s not here,” he said, and thought he sounded as casual as he could manage right now.
Her stride faltered. Her eyes widened. She shook her head and came the rest of the way, so she stood in front of him. “Where is he?” She looked like she wanted to ask more than that,
but was trying to play it cool. Just like him. Sometimes watching her was like looking at his own reflection.
“He went to brunch.”
“With Val?” she asked, expression going apologetic.
Nikita swallowed. “With Val.”
She studied him with undisguised concern for a moment, until he thought he’d have to shrink away. Then she took a breath, squared up her shoulders, and said, “Okay, well, what’ve they got?” She nodded toward the door.
“Let’s find out.”
He let them in without knocking; it would have been polite, but redundant – the wolves inside had already heard and scented them. And Nikita wasn’t in a polite mood, anyway.
Much sat at the room’s small, round table by the window, facing out, with Will behind him, peering at his screen.
Nikita was genuinely shocked to see that Jamie was already here; he’d been too stuck in his own selfish, jealous thoughts that he hadn’t picked up the other vampire’s scent in the hallway.
Slipping. Last night, and now today. He kept slipping…
“Ah, welcome,” Will said, turning to meet them. “Something to drink? Eat? The room service is wonderful.”
“No,” Nikita said. “What is it?”
Will turned to Trina and gave her a careful, correct bow. “M’lady.”
“Hi,” she said. “You said you had something?”
Will looked between the two of them, a smile tugging at his mouth, and snorted. “It runs in the family I suppose. Yes, we have something. And I assumed you’d want to see the footage for yourselves rather than take my word for it.”
“You assumed right,” Nikita said.
Still smiling, Will motioned them over to the computer screen. On it, a black-and-white image had been paused: a man in a suit leaving out an unmarked, solid-paneled door. Brick walls, and an overhead security light. It looked like an alley.
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 33
