“Work?” Val asked in the same delighted, curious tone he’d used earlier when he said, Gangsters?
“You guys have jobs?” Mia asked, sounding surprised.
“At a club. I bartend and Nik bounces. Oh crap, I need to change.” He glanced down at his clothes, frowning, judging. “Or, well, maybe it’s alright.” He’d forgotten he’d worn work clothes. His heart was pounding; he was actually nervous.
He pushed a hand through his hair, which he’d taken down earlier, and when he glanced up, Val was smiling like he could read his mind. Sasha flushed, but all Val said was, “Well, I for one have always wanted to see a nightclub somewhere besides television. Lead the way.”
“You’re going to be a club person, aren’t you?” Mia said with a mock-theatrical groan.
“I have no idea,” Val said, too innocently.
Sasha led them to the Whistle, pedestrian traffic growing thicker around them on the sidewalk. People getting off work, getting dolled up, going out for a night of drinks and laughter and forgetting all the ways the day had insulted them.
Sasha’s pulse kept ticking up, notch by notch, so that when they finally reached the club – as the sun winked out of sight between buildings, and the sky turned indigo velvet overhead – it was galloping along as if he’d run here. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been nervous to see Nikita. He thought it might have been last century, in Moscow, and shame flared hot and awful in his belly.
A line had already formed behind the purple velvet rope and its golden stanchions. Young people in tight, glittering, low-cut finery, jewelry flashing on wrists, throats, and earlobes.
Nikita was working the door tonight. Sasha picked up his scent twenty paces away, and the familiar notes of it were like a soothing hand down the back of his neck, scratching at his nape. He was still nervous, though; still worried that he’d find his mate scowling and surly. His heart still pounded.
He hastened his step, breaking away from Val and Mia, jogging the last bit of distance.
“Hey, no cutting,” someone who already sounded halfway to drunk called from the line as he went past.
“I work here!” Sasha called over his shoulder, and kept going.
Nikita would have scented him, too, before he even came into view. So it wasn’t surprise on his face when Sasha pulled up in front of him. It wasn’t anger or impatience, either.
It wasn’t…anything. A perfectly smooth, perfectly neutral expression. It was his work face, the one he wore when he checked IDs and waved patrons inside the club – but it wasn’t one he normally turned on Sasha.
“Hi.” Sasha deflated a little.
“Hi.” Nikita blinked, and for a moment, quickly, something like sadness flickered across his face. But then it was perfectly composed again. “Did you have a good time?”
Sasha strained to hear disdain, anger, even mockery in his voice, but there was none. Not a shred of emotion.
His chest ached. “It was fine. Val had a good time.”
“Good.” Nikita’s gaze shifted to the side, so he was looking over Sasha’s shoulder – at Val and Mia, no doubt. It returned. “Are you here for your shift?”
“Yes. I didn’t change. You think this is alright?” He opened his jacket to show his black shirt and ripped jeans.
Earned a nod. “You look fine.”
Nikita would never be the sort of person given to public displays of affection, and PDA at work would always be off-limits. That wasn’t something Sasha needed, anyway. Because, ordinarily, Nikita would have found some small way to send affection through the air between them; a smile, tiny and subtle, or a roll of his eyes, or a quick brush of fingers against Sasha’s arm. Even something as simple as a tangible lessening of his tension; Sasha always loved when he could tell that his presence alone had soothed some of Nik’s ever-present anxiety.
And that had been when they were still just…friends…if what they’d been had ever been as simple as friendship. Now – lovers, mates – Sasha wanted that bit of reassurance. That connection, no matter how quiet and subtle.
It wasn’t there, though. Nikita had strapped every bit of emotion down so tightly that nothing showed through. No glimmer of stray feeling.
Sasha had spent the walk over worried about disapproval – and it turned out that this absence of anything was so much worse.
~*~
Nikita had called them codependent before, half-joking, but it turned out they were, and it wasn’t funny at all.
Around four o’clock, Nikita found himself on the verge of calling Will and demanding to be of some help just to avoid being alone with his obsessive thoughts about Sasha, and his no-doubt delightful afternoon with Val. He’d berated himself, plopped down on the couch, and just…stewed. Selfish, stupid, self-sabotaging.
Sasha loved him. Had waited for him, though he certainly didn’t deserve that kind of honor. Had been his constant companion, his nursemaid, his unfailing, closest companion. He’d become his world, and his love wasn’t a thing that could ever be doubted.
But Valerian was beautiful. Was glib, charming; flirtatious and alluring. He wasn’t surly, and grumpy, and, in general, a joyless companion.
He wasn’t Nikita. That difference hadn’t ever felt as weaponized as it did now.
Sasha went inside, though every inch of Nikita was screaming to reach out and touch him. Like the urge he’d felt to take his hand last night, but stronger, more territorial. Wait, he wanted to say. I’m not angry, I love you, I’m scared, he’s better than me, isn’t he? Frightening, frantic wonderings he left unsaid.
He turned his head, watched Sasha slip through the black club door, his gut churning, head swimming. He hadn’t eaten enough today. Hadn’t fed last night, when he should have, when they’d gone to sleep back-to-back.
“Hello,” a pleasant voice said behind him.
He gritted his teeth, and steeled himself before he turned to face Val.
The prince’s mate stood beside him, touching, her hand on his arm, that same look of suppressed panic on her face that she’d worn last night at the bar. Nikita had only seen her twice now, but he wanted to say, Does she make any other faces? A cruel thought, one he choked back, and managed instead to say, “Hello.” Cool, dismissive. Uninterested.
Val’s smile widened from blandly pleasant to delighted – the bastard. “Will it ease your mind if I swear that I’ve done nothing untoward today?”
Nikita ground his molars, and didn’t answer.
Mia frowned, her hand tightening a fraction on Val’s arm in silent censure.
Val chuckled, his gaze going to the line of people waiting – a line that was now looking at him, some with admiration, curiosity, fascination – and a few with scowls.
“Dude, no cutting,” one guy called.
“I assume,” Val said turning back, “that you have the power to get us inside?” His brows lifted hopefully.
Nikita could say no. A small realization. He did have the power in this situation, and, the bad part: he wanted to flex it. Just because he could; just to push back against this prince who thought he could waltz into their lives and get them all revolving around him.
But that would disappoint Sasha.
So Nikita said, “Yeah.” He waved them toward the door, and said to the first few people in line, “They’re on the VIP list.”
That quieted everyone; if anyone looked like he belonged on a VIP list, it was Val.
Val dipped his head in a kind of discreet bow. “Why, thank you, dear.”
Fuck you, Nikita thought, and watched them go in.
It was going to be a long night.
~*~
“I’ve been looking through old case files,” Garcia said as he hustled back up to their desks, arms loaded with file folders, and Trina bit back a groan.
Lanny and his temporary new partner – chalk-pale and shaky with the unmistakable signs of a rookie who’d just come across a scene his stomach couldn’t handle yet – had returned hours ago, and Lanny
had met her gaze and given a single nod. Yes, it had been the ferals again – or, feral, singular, since she’d taken one out. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to be working on this case; was instead supposed to stick to overdue paperwork, contemplate her own behavior, and pray IAB deemed it a good shoot. But no one else in the precinct was equipped to handle this particular case, especially not a green newbie like Garcia, no matter how eager and helpful he was being.
At this point, all that eager, helpful energy was a hindrance. Lanny kept trying to send him on errands, but he was damn efficient, and always popped right back into view. He’d dragged a spare chair – old, squeaky, halfway to broken – over to their pushed-together desks, and clung on the side like a barnacle that refused to be scraped off.
“Here – let me just – put that there–” He rearranged the mug that held Trina’s pens and paperclips, moved Lanny’s coffee, shoved over the little tray that served as a physical inbox, and laid his files out. Lanny looked faintly murderous, and Trina shook her head at him. “There. Now. I did a keyword search for past cases. For–” He hesitated, voice going shivery, and then said in a nauseated rush – “dismemberment, disembowelment, that sort of thing. And apparently there’s a street gang called the Hyenas who–”
“Nah,” Lanny said. “Gonna stop you right there, kid. This wasn’t them.”
“But…” Stricken, Garcia looked between the open file and Lanny’s unimpressed face. “They like to use meat cleavers and–”
“You were on the scene,” Lanny said. “Did that look like the work of a meat cleaver to you?”
He gulped. “I don’t…um…I’ve never…”
If he puked on Trina’s desk, she was going to make him drag the whole thing outside and hose if off.
Lanny rolled his eyes, but when he spoke, it was with his educating voice, and wasn’t mocking. “Okay, look. Sometimes there’s a commonality between one case and another that’s important. But you can’t take somebody killed by a knife and apply some kind of universal Knife Logic to it all. A hitman might use a knife, but so could a battered wife who’s reached her breaking point and grabs the first thing at hand. So you have to look at the case from every angle. We didn’t have much of a body; it was torn to shreds, and that’s not something we normally see. But this wasn’t a street gang.”
Garcia blinked at him. Nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“Let’s break it down,” Lanny said.
Trina sat back in her chair, feeling a smile threaten. He would deny it, but of the two of them, he was the better teacher. He wasn’t fancy, didn’t like to use buzzwords or follow manuals, but he had a way of explaining things that cut through all the bullshit and put things in their plainest terms. That made them accessible.
“When a gang kills, it’s to do one of two things, or sometimes accomplish both things at once: send a message, or eliminate a rival. Sometimes it’s an initiation, but it’s not ever random: the person they kill died for a reason, no matter how fucked up that reason is. Most gang-related murders we see are GSWs, or efficient, clean stab wounds. If a gang cuts somebody up into pieces, it’s to hide the body – not to stick in an alley in broad daylight with witnesses. And they sure as shit don’t cut the body up right there on the scene. Dismemberment is something you do in a secure location, and you dump the body somewhere else. Right?”
“Right.” Garcia nodded, took a breath, and calmed a bit. A little color came back into his face.
“No gang worth its salt would do what we saw this morning. So then we think, ‘okay, maybe a crime of passion.’ We talked to the widow: he worked in a sporting goods store, and he went hiking on weekends upstate with his buddies. He doesn’t care about team sports or horse racing – so no gambling. Doesn’t owe anybody a bunch of money as far as she knows.”
“He could have kept her in the dark.”
“He could have. But think: you try to shake somebody down for what he owes you, do you pop him real quick” – he made a gun with finger and thumb – “stab him” – a fast jab with the same hand – “or do you take the time to give him the lawnmower treatment?”
God, Trina thought, as Garcia’s brows went up. What an image, you jerk. She held back a chuckle, though.
“And think about the time it would take a person to do that to another person,” Lanny continued. “That wasn’t a five-minute crime, dude. That was involved. It was slow work. For a human,” he repeated it, stressing the word.
Garcia let that sink in a moment. Sat up straighter. “You think an animal did it.”
“Give the kid a cookie.”
“But what kind of animal? I mean – did something get loose from the zoo? A big cat or something?” He was already digging out his phone, no doubt to Google it.
“Who knows,” Lanny said, catching her gaze and holding it. “Maybe you should go look that up.”
“Yeah.” Garcia stood, still staring at his phone. “I’m not getting good reception in here. Lemme just…” He pointed vaguely over his shoulder and headed for the doors.
“Take your time,” Lanny called after him. When he was gone: “Jesus Christ, we’ve got to knock this fucker out of the game.” He tapped the notepad on his blotter, where he’d doodled a rough but unmistakable wolf. “I don’t care what the point of it is: he’s got to stop chewing up New Yorkers.”
Trina nodded.
“Shame you didn’t get both of them at once the other day.”
“Believe me, I’ve thought that.” She felt a headache brewing in her temples. Night had fallen beyond the windows, the early dark of late October, the detective bullpen aglow with soft, warm lamplight all around them. She’d lost count of the nights she’d spent here, poring over evidence, pinning up crime scene photos, running theories with Lanny. It had always been a safe place, a comforting one – a place where everything terrifying in the world could be looked at logically and picked apart piece by piece. Where she could fight evil with her brain, from a careful distance.
But it turned out evil was farther-reaching, and more dangerous than she’d ever anticipated. Not a puzzle to be solved, a compatible disease to be diagnosed, properly treated, and excised.
It was something wild and barbed – fanged – running loose in a forest too thick and dark to navigate with her human sensibilities.
“What I don’t get,” she said, keeping her voice low, and her expression neutral, “is why, if these ferals are too difficult to control – and obviously they are – they don’t lock them back up. These are the same ones who killed your neighbors a few months ago, right?”
“Yeah.” His jaw clenched. “They are.”
“Okay, so we assumed they were hunting for you – or Nik. Following your scents. But, obviously, that went majorly sideways. With the exception of luring Sasha – and that was just scent, who knows if they were even present – nothing they’ve done has served any purpose other than murdering random civilians. They’re a liability. Why keep using them?”
He nodded slowly, mulling it over. “Maybe they didn’t have a vamp working with them before. They thought Gustav would make a difference where human handlers couldn’t.”
“Makes sense. But it’s a failed experiment.”
“Right. And, at this point, they know where we are. They’re not still hunting us.”
“So what are they using them for?” she asked. “They…” It clicked into place, then. “They’re not random.” When she said it, she knew it had to be true. There was no other explanation that made any sense.
“What’s not random?”
“The vics.” Her pulse accelerated, the familiar rush of locking onto a viable theory. “None of them knew each other, all of them had different careers, so we’ve been operating under the impression that these attacks were random.”
“They all happened in the early morning. We assumed it was a breakfast time motivation,” he countered.
“Yeah, but what if it’s deeper than that? What if there’s a bigger connection?”
&nbs
p; His brows went up, face smoothing as he considered. “I dunno. What if there is?”
“Do you have the vics’ files?”
He passed the printouts over, and she woke up her sleeping computer to search for them.
“Got it,” she said, ten minutes later. “They were all in the military.”
“They what?” Lanny got up out of his chair and came to peer over her shoulder at the screen. “Shit, how did we miss that?”
“Kinda had a lot going on.”
“Shit,” he repeated. “Did they serve together?”
“No. Not the same years, and not even in the same branches. But all of them served overseas at some point.”
Lanny snapped his fingers. “That guy who’s with Will and them. Rooker?”
“Rooster. Yeah. Something about an experiment from a few years ago, the Institute experimenting on injured vets.”
They shared a look, and she felt electricity beneath her skin, the adrenaline surge of a hot lead.
She said, “I think we need to talk to Will again.”
~*~
Mia hadn’t been inside a nightclub since she was underage and her friend Megan had gotten them both shoddy fake IDs and they’d smiled their way into an old warehouse lit up with neon, blacklights, and which had smelled like human sweat and feet. She remembered a blue drink in a plastic cup that tasted like battery acid and left her face half-numb, half-prickling with an ugly buzzing sensation. A pair of older boys with acne and too many facial piercings had hit on them, and Mia had ended up holding Megan’s hair back for her in the most terrifying bathroom she’d ever seen.
The experience hadn’t left her with a positive impression of nightclubs, just in general.
She didn’t want to go into this club. The Wet Whistle, the neon signage above the door read. All black from the outside, no visible windows. A place designed to trap the dark inside; a den for every laughing, wild, half-drunk person who wanted to throw their hands up and shake their hair in their faces and pretend, for a little while, that their savagery was an expressible, external trait, rather than the odd collection of daily cruelties that they inflicted upon one another, just because they could.
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 36
