Boyfriends and girlfriends kissed, didn’t they? Just like Alexei Romanov had kissed Seven.
“Let’s not bother poor Gustav, he needs his rest,” Dr. Severin said, coming to take Seven’s elbow in a gentle grip. Behind him, the three guards held unsheathed stun batons, thumbs hovering over the activation buttons. “Come on,” Dr. Severin said, towing him, just a little.
Seven went.
As they walked back the way he’d come, the guards walking in a tight knot several paces behind them, Seven said, “Why is Gustav here?”
Dr. Severin still held his elbow, the lightest touch, just his thumb and the tips of two fingers. “He needed a secure place to heal, after – after that unpleasantness. I’m afraid he’s healing more slowly than we expected. I suppose,” he said, his voice going faraway, like when he was thinking aloud, rather than conversing, “it’s true: the theory that some vampires are more powerful than others, and that it’s a biological condition, and not merely psychic. Fascinating.”
“No.” Seven halted, and Dr. Severin halted a step later, after he’d lost his grip. He turned to face him, brows drawn together over the rims of his glasses in confusion. “Why is he here? Why is he Nikita Baskin’s enemy? Why did he want me to attack him and his allies?”
It had been Gustav leading the charge last night, in the alley. His order to unleash the fire, and still hazy and rattled, something inside him broken loose, Seven had listened without question; had thrown fire at Baskin, at his whole troop of allies. At the prince who’d kissed him, and tampered with his mind, and run away.
“My. Well.” Dr. Severin glanced up one side of the hallway and then down the other. They were out of the basement lab, and in the proper basement; small, rectangular windows too small to fit through let in streetlamp light from outside. The occasional passing flare of a car’s headlights. “Excuse me,” he said to the guards, “you can leave us. We’ll be fine from here.”
The guards lingered, but Dr. Severin sent them a smile, and a little wave, and they went back to their posts. Then the doctor came to Seven’s side, took his elbow again, firmer this time, and said, “Let’s go to my office.”
They went up in the elevator, two floors, and down a hallway painted a soft gray, and lined with framed diplomas and peaceful landscape paintings. They passed several other doctors in lab coats, all of whom Dr. Severin greeted politely, bobbing his head and inquiring after their wellbeing. All answered, and all of them darted a glance toward Seven.
Frightened. Always frightened.
When they’d reached the familiar – coffee-scented, dimly-lit, book-lined – inside of Dr. Severin’s office, he shut, and then locked the door. His pleasant facial expression melted into something tense as he went around behind his desk and sat.
Seven sat down in his usual chair, across from him.
Dr. Severin massaged the back of his neck a moment, wincing. “Alright,” he said at last, blowing out a breath. He darted a glance toward the door, though he’d locked it. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.” Voice hushed, quivering with nerves. “But Gustav came to us, originally.”
He locked gazes with Seven, stared at him, like he wanted those words to mean something.
He let out another breath. Nudged his glasses up. “What I mean is: shortly after the attack on our other branch – the Virginia branch, I told you about this?”
Seven nodded.
“Yes, well, that’s when we became aware that Nikita Baskin and Sasha Kashnikov weren’t the only immortals of interest living in the city. Alexei Romanov was with them–”
Soft lips, wet press of a tongue…
“–and this was a boon the Institute hadn’t even conceived of. A tsarevich, a member of the Russian royal family, and an offspring of Rasputin, no less. The same blood that powered Baskin powered Alexei. To study him, would have been…” His voice grew faraway again, a moment, and then he gave himself a shake. “But. If nothing else, it was thought he might make a valuable ally. Only…there was the truce. And how could we approach a member of Baskin’s pack when we’d promised to leave them be?
“Shortly after that, Gustav approached us. He offered up his services in any way they might be helpful, and he said that he believed, given time, he could bring Alexei around to our way of thinking.”
“Our way of thinking,” Seven echoed.
“The War, of course.” He said it with a capital W. The War. As if it was the only war.
But Seven had seen many wars in the films they showed him: flickering black-and-white images, and full-color what they called “reenactments,” with actors playing the parts of generals and soldiers long dead. Wars with swords, and shields, and arrows blotting out the sun. Wars with guns, and tanks, men screaming, dying in the mud.
There had been wars. Innumerable wars.
But this war. The War. It hadn’t even started. But it was the specter that loomed over every day here at the Institute. The thing he was training for – the thing he’d been bred for. The product of a father and mother he would never meet.
Maybe the reason his sister, the one who now called herself Red, had run away.
They don’t own you.
He found that his throat was dry, and swallowed. “Why would you want – Alexei?” He nearly stumbled on the name.
Dr. Severin planted his hands on the desk and leaned forward, incredibly serious. “Because we need every powerful immortal we can get.” He held eye contact a moment, then sat back with a sigh, scrubbed a hand through his wispy hair. “Gustav thought…well, he thought he could convince the tsarevich. There was bad blood between him and Baskin, he said. He agreed to work for us until he could accomplish what we wanted. But now…Alexei here with Baskin…”
“Work for you how?”
Dr. Severin paused in the act of swiping through his hair, and sat up straighter. His gaze sharpened. “Nothing, really.” His voice sounded strange. “Just tying up some loose ends.”
Seven tried to puzzle out the meaning of that, but failed. He didn’t know enough; he had no frame of reference for things like this. Probably because he’d lived his entire life here, in this facility, dressed in loose, white clothes, every bit of food and research material he’d consumed having been carefully selected for him.
They don’t own you.
What had his sister – what had Red found on the outside? In his letter, Robin of Locksley had spoken of her having friends, having people who loved her. This Rooster person. Someone who, doubtless, didn’t wear a white coat and draw her blood and ask her probing questions about her health. Would Red have understood this conversation he was having now? Would she have known who was good, and who was bad? Who should be believed?
Could he believe the people here, who fed him, clothed him, educated him – but who were frightened of him? Or did he believe the boy who’d kissed him? His friends?
“What does Gustav do for you?” he asked.
Dr. Severin blinked. “For us,” he said. “What he does for us.”
“Yes. For us.”
Dr. Severin knuckled his glasses again. “Like I said: he ties up loose ends.”
And what did that mean?
33
The wind shifted, blowing his hair off his forehead, revealing his face fully.
Yes, it was Kolya. That was his nose, his cheekbones; that dark, too-long hair, downy-soft, was his, too. And the width of his shoulders, the way he held himself; the lightness coiled up in his legs, ready to send him leaping and spinning. Once upon a time, Nikita had known the members of his squad better than he knew himself: every breath, every step, every tiny hint at a facial expression. He’d watched Kolya die almost a century ago: a gout of flame, a fallen, blackened husk of a corpse…
Detachment. It reared up at the most useful of moments. To protect soldiers, and hired killers, and sufferers of trauma. It had saved his life on more than one occasion. Had enabled him to exact Stalin’s violence on the country he’d been born to.
Detachment cam
e now. His heart stopped, and the immediate, screeching wave of panic was cut ruthlessly off, so that he floated, his awareness narrowed down to tiny details, committed to cataloguing and proving.
He was looking at Kolya, just as he’d appeared in the moments before his death, still a handsome, surprisingly elegant, thoughtful man in his late twenties.
But then he noticed the scars. The ones on the backs of his hands were pink, still-healing, an uneven zig and zag without a pattern. Like the stitching on a patchwork quilt. He had them on his face, too, silver in the moonlight. Across the bridge of his nose, over one eye, and under the other, a long one down the length of his jaw.
His eyes were big, dark, his mouth a flat line. No expression.
Nikita became aware of something on his shoulders – around them. Awareness returned, like the blood rushing back to a limb that had been asleep, filling him with prickles – and nausea. The weight across his shoulders was Val’s arm.
It was Val’s voice in his ear, low, attempting-at-soothing, but urgent with worry. “Nik. Nikita. Darling. Listen to me. I know what you’re seeing seems impossible. I’m going to explain it to you. I’m going–”
“Is it real?” Nik wasn’t aware of having spoken until he heard his own voice – hoarse and raw – echoing across the rooftop.
A pause. “Yes. He’s real.” Val stressed the pronoun. “It’s him. It’s your friend. Only, he’s–”
He cut off when Kolya stepped forward. One step, and then another.
Nikita watched him come, closer and closer, close enough to smell the sharp notes of ash, and the earthier tones of graveyard on his skin. Close enough to see that, though his face was slack, his eyes glimmered with riotous emotion. He watched him come, and he knew horror. This thing, whatever it was – how could it be his friend? The Kolya he’d known was a charred ruin, buried beneath the snow – beneath decades of snow. Sasha hadn’t fed him Rasputin’s heart; hadn’t put the killing, saving, immortalizing blood in his mouth. Kolya was dead.
But this thing that looked like Kolya kept coming, and coming, and stood right in front of Nikita, close enough to reveal another scar, not the pink-and-silver patchwork that was new, but one that was old, so old, one right at his hairline, a mark where he’d fallen as a dancer, and cracked his head open on the edge of a makeshift stage. A mark that he’d touched, sometimes, on the coldest of days, massaging at it as he mulled over a particularly thorny problem.
Hadn’t all their problems been thorny?
Nikita’s mouth opened again, of its own volition. “Kolya?” he croaked. “It’s not – you can’t be – how?” Then: “I’ve gone mad, this isn’t, I’m seeing this, this can’t…”
Val’s arm squeezed. “I will explain. But it’s real. He’s real. Nikita, please–”
And then Kolya spoke. Impossibly. His voice flat, his eyes gleaming. “I remember.”
Nikita couldn’t breathe.
Slowly, as if testing out the words, like unearthing something hidden in the bottom of an old trunk, Kolya said, “You should eat.”
Silence. Traffic passing on the street, the wind playing with an old bottle, rolling it across the tar paper and gravel of the roof. But between the living things standing there, not a sound.
Kolya’s jaw worked a moment. “You – you never ate. And I – we–” His eyes widened suddenly, impossibly bigger. Panicked. Tension in his face; a shudder that wracked his frame. “The train. On the way to – to Siberia. And Ivan’s pirozhkis…” He sucked in a deep, deep breath, with a sound like a drowning man who’d been underwater. Harsh, frantic: “I remember.”
“Kolya,” Nikita said again, and the word hurt, broke open all the old wounds, some he hadn’t even known he carried.
Kolya shuddered again – and then he fled.
Everything went blurry, then.
He heard the scramble of feet, muffled curses. Sound of bodies colliding. Two arms went around his waist, held tight as a vise: Val was holding him – he was trying to run, feet scrabbling over the roof. Val lifted him, held him close, all that good pressure around his ribs, flooding his body with endorphins.
“Nik. Nik, listen.” A chant in his ear, low and sweet, almost crooning. “It’s alright, listen, listen. They have him; Fulk and Anna have him. We’ll go see him, okay? You can talk to him. You can touch him. Okay?”
Val carried him over, like he was a child, and Nikita stopped struggling. It was easier to breathe when he didn’t struggle.
“Here we go, here we go.”
He was too strung-out to be embarrassed by being treated like a flighty lapdog. Val carried him over, and set him on his feet, loosened his grip, but didn’t let go.
Kolya lay on his side on the roof, Fulk crouched over him, one leg kicked over his now-still body, caging him in, long-fingered hands braced on his side and shoulder. Anna had moved to his head, cradled it on her lap, stroked his hair.
“It’s alright,” she was saying. “You’re fine. Just relax.”
Kolya’s head didn’t move, but his gaze slid up to Nikita, and another shudder moved through him, curling his body up even tighter.
“I remember,” he said again.
~*~
Sasha was back behind the bar when Annabel appeared. His greeting – and his momentary burst of excitement – died when he took a good look at her expression. “You need to come up to the roof,” she said, and then added, before he could vault over the bar, heart already pounding, “It’s nothing bad. But Nik needs you.”
He was dimly aware of her following as he shoved his way to the back of the club and up the stairs.
Val waited for him just beyond the door, wind playing with his hair. His bare arms were crossed, as if he were chilled, but he opened them and reached to catch Sasha by both shoulders, face instantly softening.
“It’s alright,” he said, straight off.
Even though it was coming from Val, it wasn’t much comfort. “Where is he? Anna said he needed me.”
Val gave him a quick, fond smile. “He’s right over there.” He didn’t let go, yet. “He’s just learned something shocking – it’s going to shock you, too. But your Nikita’s already in a rather – fragile – place at the moment, so it’s hitting him hard. He does need you. And, Sasha” – his voice grew serious – “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this sooner. I was hoping to break the news gently, but things have a way of working out on their own, don’t they?” He let go, and stepped back, before Sasha could ask for clarification, indicating a small huddle of person-shaped figures across the roof. He knew Nik straight off, his scent distressed, and Anna’s husband, Fulk. A third person lay at their feet, human, and his scent was strange. Was wrong, was clouded by dirt, and fire, and–
And was familiar. It tickled at his senses in the way old memories did. The way a certain soup would send him back to his mother’s kitchen, or the cry of a crow overhead sent him to Moscow’s raven-filled streets. The way the clack of the subway reminded him of a train car in Siberia, of snow sliding past, almost as crystalline and chilling as Nik’s eyes had been, on that first leg of the journey, all those years ago.
His belly clenched.
But he had to get to Nik. Nik needed him, and that was all that mattered.
He crossed the distance in a few strides, and sank down to his knees beside Nik, grabbed for him right away, touched his shoulder, and then the back of his neck, the skin there cold and clammy.
Nikita turned his head toward him slowly, as if dazed, his expression oddly distant. He blinked a few times. “Baby,” he said. “Sashka.”
“Yes, I’m here. What is it?” His heart pounded, and his skin itched and shivered, his wolf pressed up close to the surface, wanting to come out, wanting to comfort his mate, his vampire.
Nikita’s gaze shifted over his face, not really seeing, but searching. He licked his lips, and said, “It’s Kolya.”
“What?” Sasha leaned in closer to him – and then froze. Kolya. That’s what was familiar about
the scent.
He couldn’t take hold of the emotion that surged inside him. A wave of things too big to classify. He glanced down at the man lying on his side, the one Fulk seemed to be holding down, and yes, that was Kolya’s face, familiar, pack, even if his hair was longer, and his skin bore scars, and he smelled like something that had come from underground.
Kolya. Breathing, and wild-eyed, and very much alive.
Val paced around them, and moved to stand behind Fulk, hands clasped together loosely in front of him, chill bumps visible on his arms. “There’s a very powerful mage named Liam Price – my brother’s mage now, as it happens, forcefully bound – who can perform incredible feats of necromancy. He traveled to Russia, and he’s to thank for Kolya’s return to this plane.” He said it softly, sympathetically, like he was sorry to have to explain at all.
Sasha swallowed once, twice – pushed down a wave of sudden sickness – and then forcibly gathered his wits. It took no small effort, but he could do it. And he must. Beside him, Nikita trembled, already fragile, as Val had said, already hurting, and guilty, and questioning things. This was a blow – this was the sort of thing that couldn’t be comprehended. Sasha had loved Kolya because he’d been pack, but he hadn’t known him like Nikita had, as a childhood friend, as an ally for the long, dark years as a Chekist. It was up to Sasha to be the strong one here, and he would do it.
He took a breath. “It’s really him? It’s not…” He didn’t want to voice his fear, that this was some poppet made of Kolya’s flesh, its mind nothing but a vehicle for some dark sorcerer.
“It’s really him,” Val said, nodding, seeming to understand. “From what I understand, it takes some time for a person’s memories to fully return, and some may never be fully themselves again – not as the people in their old lives knew them – but it’s very much him.”
Face set in grim lines, Fulk eased back, leaving only a single hand on Kolya’s shoulder – he wasn’t trying to get away. “Much as I hate him, Liam’s one of the few necromancers who can perform the full resurrection. He brings back the soul with the body. The whole person.”
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 40
