Nikita shuddered against the images.
“He’s a wolf,” Val continued. “Not the child I met in the snow. Not the confused boy who admired the color of your eyes on the train – oh, yes,” he said, when Nik stiffened in his arms. “Do you think he ever didn’t find you lovely? He’s adored you always. He turned you because of it. And maybe you would have rather died bloodless in that snow bank, but now he’s a wolf – your wolf – and he loves it, and he loves you, and I know you love him more than you’ve every loved anyone or anything, you miserable thing. Bind him, Nikita. For him, and for you. Stop worrying about the past, or the old way of thinking, or what it means to be human – you aren’t. Bind him, and love him, and learn how to dance, because the world’s hateful enough, and you shouldn’t deny yourself something precious like this. And it is precious. Believe that.”
Val pulled back a fraction, smiling softly when Nikita opened his eyes, and smoothed his thumbs across the dampness on Nik’s cheeks. “Please tell me some of that got through your thick skull.”
Nikita rolled his eyes – eyes that ached with unshed – and a few shed – tears, and felt his face heating beneath Val’s palms. Shame, again, like always, already. For showing emotion, for being weak…
But that was what Val had been talking about. Berating himself – punishing himself. He’d grown up in a very different time; its weight dragged at him, still. Couple that with his nature, throw in his former career, his history…
Val tapped his cheeks with his thumbs. “You’re doing it again.”
Nikita blew out a breath, and nodded. “Old habits.”
“Hmm, yes. Just like I seem unable to comfort anyone without offering to fuck them.” He said it teasingly, fangs flashing, but something flickered in his gaze that told Nikita he’d said something very true – that he was self-conscious about.
“Not anyone?” he pressed.
“Most,” Val corrected. “I’m a very good fuck, though.”
“I figured,” Nik said, dryly.
“My greatest weapon, really.”
“Might be better to get a gun.”
“I have my sword. Not with me now, obviously – but you’ve seen her. Mercy.”
Nikita snorted, and felt the pressure of real laughter building in his chest. They were bantering. People did it all the time, but it felt like a bit of a revelation now, between the two of them.
Val beamed at him, without artifice, and looked incredibly boyish. He was prettier like that – when he was being honest – than when he worked at seduction. “Shall we go down and assure our lovers we haven’t run off together?”
Nikita still had questions; still wondered how Val meant to fit in here, if he even did, or if he’d grow bored of this modern city and want to drag his mate and his wolves back to the Old Country that had birthed him.
But he didn’t feel the need to ask those questions now. “Yeah,” he said. “I gotta finish my shift, too.”
As Val fell in beside him, and they walked back toward the door, he felt a hundred pounds lighter. Peaceful, even.
A sharp gust of wind, promising even colder temperatures, blasted across the roof…bringing with it the scents of wolf, and man. Something that said Val’s, and something that stunk like old, stale dirt recently turned over.
“Val!” a man’s voice shouted.
Nik stopped, and turned, already coiled for action, his peace gone in a flash, and spotted three figures. Two hauling themselves up over the edge of the roof, like they’d climbed up; a man and a woman. Wolves. A man who was just a man – and who smelled wrong – stood in front of them, clothed in a long black jacket with its hood up.
“Oh, fuck,” Val murmured, tensing beside him. “Le Strange–”
“Jesus Christ, he got away!” the male wolf who’d spoken snarled. He had an accent. “We’ve chased him all over the bloody city!”
Nikita wasn’t listening, his attention caught by the eerily still human in the hood. He didn’t stand like most humans, wasn’t flat-footed with his shoulders jacked up. Didn’t hold himself like he was ready for a confrontation, one of those awful, mortal things full of posturing and machismo. No, he held himself like–
The thought hit him like a gut punch, painful and unwelcome, but there was no denying it, not judging the lightness of the man’s stance, the way he held his arms, the finely-crafted tension in his body.
It was a stance he’d seen before.
A dancer’s stance.
“Nik, dear,” Val said, and placed a hand on his arm. “Perhaps we should–”
The man lifted scarred hands and pushed his hood back. The wind blew his hair across his face, and brought his scent right to Nik: death, ash, dirt, blood. The moonlight struck him, through the thinnest veil of clouds, and Nikita’s brain stopped working.
Kolya. It was Kolya.
32
Will and Much were already waiting for them at their usual booth at the Lion’s Den. Much had his laptop open, its blue glow lighting his face up, showing a lower lip chewed ragged with thought.
“We’ve found a list of the participants in the trial,” Will said in lieu of greeting as Trina and Lanny slid into the big, circular booth.
“I’ve found it,” Much corrected, without looking up from the screen.
Will grinned. “Excuse me. Much found it. Can they see?” he asked his packmate.
Much slid the laptop along wordlessly, and Will set it in front of Trina. She heard a server arrive, and heard Lanny order them both coffee – he could be damn practical, when he made an effort in that direction – but her gaze lasered in on the computer.
Had the Institute been a regular medical research center, and not some secret, government-backed supernatural lab, they would have been sued six ways to Sunday if the participants knew their personal info was being scrolled through in a bar. She was looking at a list of everyone who’d signed up for the trial, sheet after sheet of detailed questionnaires, medical histories, tour information, and all with headshots attached in the upper corners.
There were over a hundred.
“This could take a while,” she said, scrolling slowly, frowning.
“That’s our Rooster,” Will said, gesturing to the screen, and she paused.
Palmer, Roger; USMC, Sgt. In the photo, his hair was long, far too long for military regulation, and tied back in a low, sloppy ponytail. He was probably handsome, with his broad, square face, and blue eyes, very Nordic tough-guy, but his expression was a combination of fury and utter hopelessness. It tugged at her heartstrings, and that was before she read the extent of his injuries.
“Jesus,” she murmured.
Lanny leaned in to read, and gave a low whistle. “IED?”
“Yes,” Will said gravely. “He would be in constant pain if it weren’t for Red’s intervention.”
She sent him a questioning look.
“She can heal fresh wounds – even severe ones. Something in her magic allows her to reknit flesh and ease pain. But so far, she’s been unable to fully heal the old damage in Rooster. She helps with the pain; enables him to live a mostly normal life. But I know she wishes she could do more.”
Trina thought of the big, broad-shouldered man she’d glimpsed briefly outside of the manor house in Virginia, the way he’d walked effortlessly up the hill, cradling a redhaired girl in his arms. “I’d say what she does is pretty miraculous,” she said, and went back to scrolling.
The coffee came, and Lanny ordered them both sandwiches. It wasn’t until he was nudging the basket toward her that her stomach growled and she realized she was starving.
“Hey, don’t get mustard on my keyboard,” Much said.
“Wouldn’t be any worse than the Cheeto dust,” she shot back, but was careful not to hold her food over it.
Finally, she found them. “Here we go.”
The others leaned in close, crowding over either shoulder to see. Will smelled faintly of the woods in autumn, the tang of fallen leaves, the way Sasha had al
ways reminded her of snow.
The two ferals had files listed one after the other: Todd Blevins and Eric Shaw. Both Army, both from the same unit. They’d served together in Iraq and both suffered partial hearing loss and, according to the files, “significant brain trauma.”
“Oh my God,” Trina said, setting her sandwich down, stomach clenching. “They were already suffering brain damage before they turned them.”
“No wonder they didn’t blend properly with the wolves,” Will said, grimly.
Trina sat back, pulse pounding dully. Every time she started to think that the Institute was – maybe – a necessary evil if this oncoming war was going to be as bad as Will and his pack thought, she found out something even more unsavory. “Were they even competent enough to seek treatment on their own?”
“Probably not,” Lanny said, shaking his head.
“A powerful, but inexperienced mage without a shred of agency, and two subjects incapable of making the decision for themselves,” Will said. “There was no chance of it going well.”
Trina looked at their photos, their gazes frightened – but still human. They’d had no idea what was about to happen to them. Not just a drug, but a knife through the heart, and an incantation, and sharing their already-wounded brains with another entity, one that hadn’t fused properly.
She scrolled again. “I need to look for our vics.”
It took most of her sandwich, and a second cup of coffee, but she found them, all three. They were in a separate section of files, ones marked “on hold.” They’d applied to the trial, filled out all the paperwork, but put on a wait list for a future round of drug testing.
“They didn’t get the drug,” she said, and leaned back to ease the tension in her spine. “So why kill the ones who hadn’t received it, but not the ones who did?”
Lanny said, “Do we know what happened to the ones who did?”
No. No, they didn’t.
“If I may?” Will said, and when she nodded, pulled the laptop over in front of himself. He started scrolling. “I don’t know that this is true of all of them, but I do recognize these two. Well, I know of them, based on what Red told us.”
Back up near the top, he found two profiles: Sergeant Adela Ramirez, and Major Jake Treadwell.
“These are two members of the team who accosted Red and Rooster in Wyoming. The ones who took her into custody.”
“They employ the ones who get the drug,” she said. She was starting to feel numb, a faint buzzing in the back of her head. This was all just so…convoluted. Unnecessarily so.
“Still doesn’t explain why they’d kill the others,” Lanny pointed out.
“What does it matter?” Much said. “They’re evil and stupid. They don’t need a reason.”
He was probably right. But, creeping numbness or not, Trina still wanted to know why.
~*~
When Seven finished his day’s lessons – private, today, with Dr. Severin, working on the elasticity of his power, shooting flame and drawing it back again, quicker and quicker, learning to dampen it and then send it soaring a moment later – he forwent the usual “social time” he and his siblings were allotted and went down to the basement labs. The guards stationed there allowed him through, but they sent him nervous glances; some had sweat at their temples. One spoke softly into a crackling radio.
He wouldn’t have long, then.
No one trusted him, here. Dr. Severin was his favorite, but even he had wild-eyed moments, those times when he looked on Seven not as a pupil, but as something he feared.
He’d learned what fear looked like in the films they were allowed to watch, and he’d realized that was how most of the people here in this place – in his home – looked at him.
The basement lab ran perpendicular to the regular basement: the place where Seven and the others practiced, encased in concrete, and steel, with industrial sprinklers in the ceiling and fire extinguishers bolted to the wall every few paces. It was made of the same white-painted concrete, but the lights were kept lower, the overhead tubes only half-installed to preserve energy; they droned and hummed, and all the shadows had a strange gray cast to them.
He went through a set of windowless steel doors with his keycard, and continued forward through two more sets, past furtive guards, until he reached the main part of the lab. A few doors and glass-walled offices lined the edges, but the center was an open space, studded with steel examination tables, OR-quality light rigs positioned at the head of each, and a drain and sink at the foot. Each table came equipped with rails designed to allow for restraints.
Beyond that lay a row of beds on wheels, with thin, hard mattresses that could lie flat or elevate the sleeper’s head. That was where the vampire Gustav lay, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow, whistling through his broken nose, his face a patchwork of mostly-healed bruises.
Vampires healed quickly – quicker than Seven himself did. He’d tested this once, with a scalpel he’d pulled off a doctor’s tray. Sliced hard and clean through the skin of his wrist, and watched the blood spill down, thick as syrup, the color of hot coals, onto the floor. There had been much swearing, and yelling. Someone had stabbed him with a needle, and someone else had clapped a wad of gauze over the wound he’d made.
It had hurt. He’d lost consciousness. And for the next few days he watched the slow progress of his knitting flesh, from an open place like a red mouth to a smooth, pink line; the doctors admonished him for peeling off the bandages to look, but he’d been curious.
It hadn’t scarred.
Gustav wouldn’t scar, either, but even now, with his vampiric body working to make him whole again, he could tell that the vampire called Nikita Baskin had wrought incredible violence on his fellow immortal.
Seven stared at him a long moment, and out in the hallway, he heard the crackle and hiss of radios as the guards talked to one another – radioed for help, for some doctor to come and take charge of him. He didn’t have much time, then.
He moved to stand by Gustav’s head. His eyes seemed sunken below the closed lids, and the healing bruises around them bore a sickly green cast.
Seven reached out with one finger and touched the very tip of the vampire’s nose.
Gustav’s eyes slammed open like window shutters. He sucked in a breath that stuck wetly in his throat, and his bloodshot gaze pinged wildly before landing on Seven. His tension eased only a fraction, then, and he started to cough. It sounded like his ribs were still in the process of knitting.
“Why were they here?” Seven asked.
Gustav coughed a few more times, torso lifting off the bed, which left him wincing and gasping. He cleared his throat and asked a garbled, “What?”
“Nikita Baskin and his allies. They came here. Why?”
Gustav breathed unsteadily through his mouth a moment, staring at him. His mouth twitched in one corner, and he eased back down to the pillow. He made a sound that Seven realized was supposed to be a laugh, and that twitch had been a smile, hadn’t it? His eyes, though, remained frightened, and too-wide. “You really are a good little robot, aren’t you?”
“Why were they here?” Seven repeated. Perhaps the brain damage he’d suffered hadn’t healed properly yet. Or maybe it never would – maybe he’d be like those two wolves – now one – who raved and foamed but couldn’t speak.
Gustav let out a breath, and exhaustion claimed his brief show at humor. “Looking for answers, I suppose. Looking for me. Or for the wolf.”
“Why?”
“Oh, for God’s – because he’s a do-gooder. A fucking Boy Scout. I have no idea how he ever made it with the Cheka. How does anyone with that much self-righteousness manage to steal bread from children?”
Seven was aware that there were deficiencies in his knowledge of the world. It was something he always made note of when they showed them movies, or gave them recreational books to read. There were turns of phrase, whole concepts, not introduced to them here. When he was younger, like the others, he�
��d thought this place was the world. That everyone lived within these white walls. It had taken years to understand that he was part of a very isolated environment, and that those who lived outside of it found him strange. Were frightened of him.
Do-gooder. He turned that over in his mind. Someone who did good.
What was good? When he grasped a concept in his studies, when he successfully mastered his power, and someone said “good job?”
“They are your enemies?” he asked. That made sense. Baskin had killed one of his siblings, was the enemy of this place, the Ingraham Institute – it would be right for Gustav, whose enemy was also Baskin – to align himself with them.
But Gustav said, “They’re a fucking nuisance, is what they are.” Bitterness in his voice. “I almost had Alexei – could have had him eating out of my palm – but that fucking Russian prick…”
Alexei. Seven grabbed hold of the name. That was who’d kissed him – that was what his companion had called him. Alexei. Last Tsarevich of Russia. Seven had seen his picture in a book, had been instructed on him, told about his family’s murder a century ago, and that Alexei was a known cohort of Nikita Baskin.
But all of that had faded in the moment, last night, when he’d confronted them. When Alexei had preyed upon his mind, and stepped in close so all Seven could see was his pale eyes, and kissed him…
The doors opened behind him, and rapid footfalls moved across the tile. They’d come to collect him. Three guards, and Dr. Severin.
“Come now, come now,” Dr. Severin said, his voice brisk, but warm. He was the kindest of Seven’s doctors: young, with pale, flyaway hair, and a small, slender body. He was always pushing his glasses up with a knuckle and offering Seven crooked smiles and well-dones during their lessons. His was the only private office Seven had been invited into: a tidy space without windows, but with shelves and shelves of books. He had framed photos on his desk, of two fluffy orange cats, and of himself, with a slight woman’s arm around him. My girlfriend, he’d explained, when Seven asked, cheeks going pink.
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 39
