Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4)

by Lauren Gilley

  And the man was Gustav, his face plain despite the quality of the security footage.

  “This was taken a week-and-a-half ago,” Will explained, and Much pressed Play.

  Gustav continued out of the building, but stepped to the side and held the door. Two men stepped out behind him – or, rather, slunk out. They walked slowly, cautiously, with bent knees, heads snapping side-to-side. An entirely inhuman way of moving, their arms held in close to their middles. Furtive and animal-like.

  “Those are the wolves,” Trina said, voice tight. “That’s them. The first one is the one I…and then the other one got away.”

  A woman followed them out, walking upright, walking normally.

  “Hannah,” Nikita said. “His Familiar.”

  “This camera was stationed at a rear entrance, one that employees use, only accessible via keycard.”

  “So someone let him in, or he has his own card,” Trina said, grimly. “This wasn’t a case of breaking and entering.”

  “No,” Will agreed. “Most definitely not.”

  Gustav said something to the feral wolves, and both shrank back from him. He caught one by the chin, forced his head up, and locked gazes with him. A moment later, some of the tension bled out of the wolf, his arms relaxing, his posture uncoiling.

  He moved to the other, and repeated the process. Afterward, both of the ferals stood, swaying slightly on their feet; they looked like they’d been sedated.

  Nikita envisioned Sasha in that state, and shuddered. Even worse, he didn’t have to imagine it; he’d been drugged out of his mind at the Institute, and he’d seen that dazed, glassy-eyed look right up close.

  On screen, Gustav turned and walked out of frame, the ferals creeping along behind him, Hannah bringing up the rear.

  “This is what we’d already assumed,” Will said, “but at least now we have physical proof.”

  “Which would be great if we were trying to get an arrest warrant,” Trina said, folding her arms and making a considering face. “I guess we could find him and confront him with this, but that wouldn’t change the outcome, would it?”

  “No,” Nikita said. He curled his hands into fists just for the satisfaction of hearing and feeling his knuckles crack. It was a rare moment of appreciating all that came with being a vampire, physical strength chief among it. “I’m still going to kill him.”

  “Now, hang on,” Will said. He held up both hands in a placating gesture when Nikita turned to him. “Just a moment. Hear me out. Why don’t we try talking to him?”

  Nikita himself was startled by the laugh that burst out of his throat. “Talk to him? Last night, he cornered us in an alley, and let his little mage friend try to barbecue us all. What’s there to talk about?”

  “Well.” Will leaned against the back of Much’s chair, got a swat for it, and retreated to the nearest bed, sitting down on its edge.

  “That’s my bed,” Much said without turning away from the laptop.

  “Then bloody sleep in it before the energy drinks give you a heart attack. Look at it this way,” he said to Nik. “We showed up at the Institute – they didn’t come to us. And when Gustav found us, Sasha was pinning his Familiar to the ground. You can’t exactly blame him for having a reaction to that. We don’t know yet how the mage is involved with him – if at all.

  “What I want to know is why he’s chosen to work with the Institute. From what we’ve seen, signing on with them is at best a case of losing your autonomy, and at worst becoming a prisoner and science experiment. With the exception of Vlad, perhaps – and that’s the result of his absolute ruthlessness – you don’t control the Institute, they control you. So what is Gustav doing with these ferals? What’s the motivation behind it all?”

  “I don’t care,” Nikita said.

  But Trina said, “I do.”

  He sent her a sharp look that she ignored.

  “Is it blackmail?” she said. “Is he brainwashed? If we’re going to have to keep dealing with these jokers, then I at least want to understand the game they’re playing. Maybe Gustav is a cackling supervillain who needs taking out,” she said with a gesture toward Nikita. “But maybe they’re holding someone he cares about hostage. Maybe it’s more complicated than we know.”

  “I thought,” Nikita said, as calmly as he was able, “that you didn’t want to have anything else to do with that place. And now you’re suggesting we help him?”

  “No.” Her expression hinted at guilt. “No, I’m not saying that – but what if he needs help?”

  “Then he can get it somewhere else. From someone who isn’t one of us.”

  “I just…” She sighed.

  “Don’t play the hero,” he said, voice half a growl. “There’s nothing heroic about our family, and never has been.”

  “Hey,” she snapped, gaze flashing. “That’s bullshit and you know it. Don’t push your disenchantment off on me – especially after I’ve been inside your head, you damn martyr.”

  They glared at each other for three whole seconds before he remembered they had an audience.

  He looked away first.

  Will lifted his brows, mildly curious.

  “Fuck it,” Nikita said. “Go find him and talk to him if you want to so badly, but I don’t have anything to say to him.”

  “Um,” Jamie said, just above a whisper. He shrank down when they all turned toward him. “Alexei’s actually talked to him. At his bar.”

  Silence.

  “He has a bar?” Trina asked.

  Nikita already knew that, because Colette had told him. He said, “So that’s what’s wrong with that little shit. Dumbass.”

  “When was this?” Will asked sharply.

  Jamie chewed at his lip. “Day before yesterday. And before that, I think.”

  Trina breathed out an unhappy sound. “So he’s been hanging out with this guy, and he let us go in blind last night? Oh, that brat…”

  Nikita took a step toward Jamie, and the other vampire took three steps back, face paling. Nik pulled up short, shocked by the drama of Jamie’s retreat. But he didn’t soften his tone. “And you didn’t think to tell us this? You didn’t think that might be valuable information to have?”

  “He…he asked me not to…say anything.” He dropped his head afterward, miserable, small-voiced.

  “So your loyalty’s with him,” Nikita said.

  “Oh, good Christ,” Much yelled. He pushed back his chair, stood, and turned to face them all, his fine-boned face a thunderhead. “I don’t have a fucking clue why Sasha would want you to bind him, because you’re the stupidest, most overbearing, miserable sod I’ve ever met,” he fumed, jabbing a finger toward Nikita. “He didn’t tell you” – he waved toward Jamie – “because he’s bloody afraid of you, you asshole. You can’t shout at people, and demand their loyalty – that’s not how a pack works! This, here” – Nik, Trina, Jamie – “isn’t a pack. It’s a bunch of people bitching at each other.”

  “Much,” Will said, but he sounded more amused than chastising.

  “I’m right,” Much insisted. “You know it, even this douchebag knows it, but he’ll never admit it. You don’t have a pack, and you never will, because you don’t listen to a fucking thing anyone says to you. Binding has existed since the first vampires, but because you decided it’s bad, then it must be, and fuck whatever Sasha wants, right? Who cares if your pack is scared, or upset, or anything so long as they listen to you. So long as they’re loyal, right?”

  Nikita took a few shallow breaths through his mouth, his chest tight. He couldn’t decide if he was furious…or mortified.

  “Much, that’s a bit harsh,” Will said, and he was definitely amused now. “I’m sorry,” he added to the three of them. “He gets a bit worked up sometimes.”

  “Fuck you, I’m right,” Much said, and flopped back down in his chair.

  More breaths for Nikita. I never asked for a pack, he thought, and knew the words were petty, awful. I had a pack, a human pack. The boys
I grew up with, and they burned alive in the snow for nothing.

  He saw the white of the snow, felt its cold biting through the wool of his trousers, its dampness bleeding through the old, cracked leather of his gloves. He saw the bright arcs of blood, the crumpled wolves. Heard the cry of the ravens, and the screaming. All the human screaming. The men he’d called brothers dying horribly, while he stood transfixed in the relentless beam of Rasputin’s gaze. He could still scent the rancid breath, wine-sour, and hot; remembered how it had felt to tip his head helpfully to the side, exposing his throat.

  “Nik.” Trina touched his arm, and he jerked in place.

  He’d closed his eyes, he realized, and swayed on his feet. His skin felt clammy beneath his clothes, and he couldn’t take a deep breath.

  Trina studied him with knitted brows. “It’s alright,” she said softly.

  I know that. He wanted to snarl it at her. He’d been alive for a hundred years, and here she was trying to comfort him. It was unseemly.

  But his throat was too tight for speech.

  Behind him, he heard the door click shut, and twisted a look over his shoulder.

  “Jamie left,” Trina said.

  “If I may,” Will said delicately, “I’m going to suggest that you all – take some time for yourselves. Go about your regular activities. Much and I will attempt contact with Gustav. We’ll contact you afterward and we’ll go from there. Does that sound fair?”

  “It does,” Trina said, guardedly. “You’ll keep us in the loop?”

  “Of course.”

  Nikita swallowed and finally got some words out. “If I find him first, I won’t be asking him questions.”

  Will offered a wry smile. “I figured as much. That’s why, forgive me, I’d like you and yours to take a step back for a bit. You’ve said you don’t want to be involved with the Institute, and after seeing…well, I think that’s best. We’ll take it from here, keep you informed, and let you know if we need your help. Otherwise I think your energy might be better spent on…domestic matters.”

  Trina snorted. “That was diplomatic.”

  “I do try.”

  Much kept his back turned, but Nikita swore he could tell the kid was smirking just looking at the back of his tousled blond head.

  ~*~

  Kolya was getting restless as a caged tiger in the hotel room, pacing, playing with his knives with alarming proficiency; flipping them up in the air, even juggling with them. He’d tossed one at the wall, and it had landed, point embedded in the sheetrock, and Fulk had stood up from the couch, quivering with suppressed anger and said, as calmly as he could, “You know what? This isn’t working.”

  It was Anna’s idea to go for a walk, and while she wouldn’t say it was going well in the usual sense, nothing disastrous had happened, and some of the tension had left Fulk’s face as they walked through the cool mid-afternoon air, the city reassuringly busy around them. Sometimes she wanted to hide in hollows in the forest, covered in drifts of old leaves, wolf-shaped and attuned to every snapping twig. And sometimes she wanted to be two-legged, and human, holding hot coffee and window shopping; wanted to hide that way.

  They reached a newsstand, and Kolya came to a halt, head tipped back, gaze running across the headlines of the papers clothes-pinned on a string overhead.

  His posture – arms slack at his sides, hands open, neck tilted and face one of naked confusion – struck her as woefully childlike. An image incongruous with the man who’d thrown a knife into a wall an hour ago.

  She moved to stand beside him, glancing up at the headlines. Most were political. She spotted a few entertainment-related ones; the NCAA football match-ups and predictions for the upcoming weekend.

  “Can you read any of them?” she asked, quietly.

  “Some.” He lifted a hand and pointed at one paper. “Dancer?”

  The photo was a moody, black-and-white shot of a slender, popular actor, a beam of light from out of frame falling across high cheekbones, and carving shadows down the clean, strong lines of a throat.

  “Actor,” she explained. “He’s in movies. Films?”

  He nodded, slowly.

  The newsstand owner was giving them the stink-eye. Fulk stepped up beside her, peeling bills out of his wallet. “Copy of the Times, and three Snickers.”

  They moved on, Fulk paging absently through the paper.

  Anna held out a Snickers to Kolya and he stared at it. “What,” he said, flatly.

  “It’s candy. It’s good.” When he continued to stare: “Chocolate. And not Army chocolate, either. Good shit.”

  That had him reaching for it.

  Anna watched him tear open the wrapper and take his first careful bite, worrying belatedly about what would happen if he had a peanut allergy he didn’t remember. Of course, the odds were no one with any major allergies had survived the Soviet Union of his original life.

  He chewed a moment, and his eyes widened.

  “Good, right?”

  He nodded, and ate the rest of it in a few efficient bites.

  Fulk’s phone chimed with a text alert and he fished it out of his back pocket. Sighed a moment later. “Val says he’s spending the day with Sasha.”

  “Huh. With just Sasha?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Hmm. I wouldn’t have thought Nikita would want him alone with Val.”

  Fulk made an inquiring noise.

  From the corner of her eye, she noticed Kolya watching her, his gaze pinned to the side of her face. Any mention of his friends captured his attention.

  “From what Sasha said about him, I get the impression Nikita is, uh, a bit territorial. And Val – well, Val’s very charming.”

  That earned her a very different kind of look from her husband.

  “What? He is. You know he is. And Sasha’s very sweet, and, well…”

  “Val’s mated,” Fulk said, firmly.

  “He charmed you.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Fulk bristled.

  “Uh-huh.” She patted his arm. “I’m just saying: Val’s got a soft spot for that kid. If Nikita won’t bind him, and he wants to be bound, it makes sense that Val would do it.”

  Val and Mia had returned to the hotel from the bar last night in two very different states: Mia as composed and silent as any shell-shocked soldier Anna had ever seen, and Val glowing and nearly rapturous as he recounted every detail of the pub, and the company they’d kept for a few hours.

  “Oh, you should have seen them,” he’d said, tossing his jacket on the bed, throwing his arms out theatrically, beaming. “I could smell them, and I could have touched them, if I’d wanted to – I did touch Sasha. Oh, sweet little Sasha. Nikita nearly took a swing at me.” He’d laughed, throaty and delighted. “Why he won’t bind that wolf I haven’t a clue. How can he have been alive and free in the world this long and know so little about what it means to be a vampire?”

  “Willful ignorance,” Fulk had suggested. If he’d sounded more than a little sullen, Anna had bene gracious enough not to point that out to him.

  “No,” Fulk said now, staring ahead, jaw getting tight.

  “No, what?”

  “No, he won’t bind him. We don’t need another wolf.”

  She laughed. “I don’t think it’s up to you, baby.”

  A low growl slipped through his clenched teeth, and she laughed again.

  A sign ahead caught her eye. “Ooh, look, a coffeeshop.”

  “Darling, it’s New York. There’s a coffeeshop on every corner.”

  “Har har. I want a latte, you old grouch. Come on.”

  Later – really just twenty minutes later, when she realized what had happened, and that the solution wasn’t as simple as jogging down a sidewalk and catching up to him – she would blame herself for the slip. She was the one who dragged them into a charming, tiny, crowded, red brick coffeeshop redolent with the scents of roasting beans and baking pastries. She’d jostled them into the line, and she’d been the one to d
uck out of the line to go snag a little notecard with the menu printed on it from the rack at the counter. That was what had diverted Fulk’s attention for the critical moment.

  But somewhere between the start and the middle of the line, she realized Kolya was missing.

  29

  The body lay in the narrow fire break between a Pre-War apartment building and an art deco one that housed a bodega on the first floor, and offices above. The space was so narrow that Lanny had to turn sideways and squeeze the few paces down to where Harvey crouched awkwardly beside a downspout, hem of her white lab coat carefully tucked up so it didn’t drag in the blood on the pavement.

  “Oh, God,” Garcia said behind him, shoe soles scrabbling as he pushed back out of the narrow alley and went out on the taped-off sidewalk to be noisily sick.

  Harvey lifted her head and called, “Nobody let him puke on any evidence,” expression disgusted.

  Lanny had the back of one hand pressed to his nose. He wasn’t in danger of being sick – he’d been a cop and a boxer too long to let the unspeakable go to his stomach – but the scent was overpowering; it threatened to make his eyes water. He smelled not just death, but death that had been torn up. Death that had been devoured, parts of the body never meant to see the light of day laid bare to the narrow stripe of blue sky far overhead.

  Harvey’s gaze shifted to his face as he drew up in front of her, and her face settled into worried angles. Fear shone in her eyes. “It’s like the others,” she said in an undertone, and lifted up the white drape at her feet without preamble.

  He wasn’t able to make out any visual particulars of the gore she uncovered, though, when he inhaled, some instinct in the back of his skull thought liver. Because being a vampire was damn weird.

  There was another scent, too: wolf. With that now-familiar, wild, metallic tang of the feral that fled the scene with Trina.

  “Same one?” Harvey asked quietly.

  He took a breath, and dropped his hand from in front of his face. “Yeah. Same one.”