Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4)

by Lauren Gilley

  The window was open, as he’d expected, and a shadow sat perched out on the fire escape, black, hunched, and faintly man-shaped against the backdrop of lighted windows across the street, dawn silver over the building tops.

  Careful to make enough noise to be heard, Nikita swung out of the window and landed on the cold metal of the fire escape, the bite of air-chilled metal oddly bracing, even as goosebumps shivered across his chest. He’d grown used to modern comforts, but there was a part of him that would always enjoy the bracing of the cold; the way it reminded him of the country that had birthed him.

  Kolya sat on the ground, knees drawn up to his chest, arms folded over them, hood pulled up to cover his ears. He turned his head a fraction when Nikita settled down cross-legged beside him, his expression shuttered – not with blankness, no, but in the way it had always been. Nikita had practiced his captain face in the mirror when he was a human, but he’d always thought it had nothing on Kolya’s stone cold regard.

  “Did you sleep?” Nikita asked, fingers busy shaking out and lighting a cigarette. He needed it badly.

  “A little.” Kolya turned away – a small relief; Nikita wondered what he saw when he looked at him now: an old friend, still fresh in his slowly-returning memory, or a total stranger. He stared out at the building opposite; blinds and curtains rattled in windows, and more lights came on, warm yellow against the chill of the morning. “Your place is big.”

  “Not really.”

  “Bigger than what we had before, and for just the two of you.”

  Nikita breathed out a plume of smoke. “Guess so.”

  Yellow cabs went by down below; a bus belched exhaust. Nikita heard the distinct clatter of the bodega owner downstairs pushing up the metal roll-top grate he pulled down snug over the front of his shop every night to deter window breakers. The coolness of night had suppressed the hot garbage-piss-damp smell that persisted across the city, dulled it down to a faint tang beneath the scents of exhaust, cold concrete, and the tangle of notes funneled along by the breeze.

  It was 2019, and he sat beside a friend he’d known for a hundred years, both of them young-faced, still…and haunted.

  “You’re a civilian, now,” Kolya said, surprising him.

  Nikita took another drag and spoke on the exhale, smoke swirling upward. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Old habits,” he explained, when Kolya sent him a sideways, curious glance. Sometimes, he didn’t say – too often – he went through his days like he was still waiting for something. For a chance to revolt, for the moment to strike. He lived in a holding pattern, still, though he was in a new country, one in which he wasn’t a political puppet. Like the man who’d convinced a small cadre of brave souls to work toward a revival of empire with him.

  Those days were long gone, but the mindset wasn’t. It was part of the reason, he suspected now, he’d tried to preserve boundaries between himself and Sasha. They hadn’t lived like two free creatures enjoying the trends and small joys of each decade, but like soldiers; spare, self-sacrificing, still waiting for the call to arms. Denying.

  Well, Nik had lived like that. Sasha had thrown himself into each new music genre, each movie, each fashion trend. As joyous and carefree as he could while Nikita weighed him down. With an inward snort, he realized he was the ball-and-chain in this relationship.

  He shook his head, stubbed out the last of his cigarette, and lit another. When he offered the pack to Kolya, he realized the other man was staring at him, brows knitted. “What?”

  “You’re still not happy, are you?”

  “Did coming back to life make you even more annoyingly perceptive?” he quipped, before he could think better of it, and wanted to kick himself.

  But Kolya didn’t seem perturbed. No, in fact, the tiniest hint of a smile tweaked his lips at the corners. “No.” A frown, a brief shadow of one, flitted across his face, but then retreated. “It’s helping. My head, I mean.” He rapped it gently with his knuckles. “Being back with – with people I knew before. When I was me.”

  “You’re still you,” Nikita said, a touch desperate, needing it to be so.

  Another hinted smile, this one melancholy. “But you are sad,” Kolya said, and damn it, Nik had hoped that topic had been dropped.

  He let out a deep, smoke-laced breath. “I’m not. It isn’t – I’m not sad.”

  “You still hate yourself, then.”

  “I–”

  “You’re still punishing yourself.”

  Nik shot him a glare. But he couldn’t argue. He’d been punishing himself – because he hated himself, and because the weight of guilt crushed relentlessly – since he was a boy, and it persisted still. Even after his confession; even after the ecstasy of Sasha in his arms. He still denied himself – and them. It was the reason Val had breathed hotly against his ear last night, and kissed him, and showed him a story worse than his own, worse than most people could have imagined.

  Bind him.

  He sighed. “I’m trying to do better.”

  Kolya stared at him, silent, and Nikita fought the urge to shift his weight beneath the scrutiny.

  “Things are different now,” he said, and heard the defensive edge in his voice. “Sasha and I – we can – it’s okay that we – and we are.” His jaw and throat felt tight, and he took another drag.

  Kolya blinked at him, expression softening a fraction. “Do you think it bothers me?”

  They’d shared an apartment in Moscow; had shared tents and bedrolls and rented rooms and train cars. He swallowed “Doesn’t it?”

  “No. Not at all.” Softer, like he was explaining it, “You love him.”

  Nikita glanced away.

  “You always have.”

  He took a few careful breaths, and nodded.

  “You deserve to be happy, Nik.”

  His eyes burned, and he took another drag, feeling helpless.

  “Christ,” Kolya said. “I’ve felt like a balloon with its string cut this whole time, but lecturing you just brings me right back.”

  Nikita couldn’t stop a startled laugh, and nearly choked on his cigarette.

  Kolya chuckled, and that was a beautiful sound, after all these years. Nikita laughed until tears slipped down his face, and wiped them away with the back of his hand, pretending they were only mirth, and not also joy, and relief, and wonder, and grief, too.

  “What have you been doing?” Kolya finally asked, conversationally, and Nikita started talking – and didn’t stop. Their adventures pouring out, one after the next, stories he’d never voiced to anyone. Softened by his own voice; not the raw look Trina had had inside his brain, aided by Val’s power, but told the way he wanted to tell it.

  And the way he wanted to tell it, he realized, as he went, was shockingly honest.

  “Your great-granddaughter?” Kolya asked, brows lifted when Nik spoke of Trina.

  He smiled. “She’s ferocious. You’ll love her.” He frowned a moment later. “Not that way, though. She’s spoken for – even if he is an idiot.”

  Kolya grinned. “So he’s like you, then?”

  Nikita elbowed him, the way he would have decades ago, and it felt good. It felt right.

  The sun was up, still pale gold in the way of fall, slanting down between the building rooftops, when Nikita realized he could smell coffee. He broke off in the middle of trying to describe the situation with Alexei when he heard the barely audible sound of footfalls on the floor inside, and a moment later Sasha stepped elegantly out of the window, dressed in sweats and one of Nikita’s more tattered old hoodies, balancing three steaming mugs of coffee, a blanket slung over one shoulder. “Good morning,” he greeted, with a quiet smile, and Nik and Kolya reached, automatically, for mugs. After, Sasha cradled his own, and snuggled down on Nikita’s other side, casually tossing the blanket around both of them.

  Nikita shivered down into its familiar warmth with a pleased hum, leaning into Sasha’s side.

  “Was the bed comfortable enough?” Sasha as
ked, blowing the steam off his coffee, his face – when Nikita glanced sideways at it – soft, still-sleepy, pillow-creased, and the picture of peaceful contentment.

  “Better than anything I remember,” Kolya said. “Everything’s more comfortable in the future.”

  Nik snorted, and Sasha laughed, quietly.

  “I’ll make breakfast in a minute,” Sasha said, gaze wandering out across the morning, smiling into his mug.

  Nikita’s heart clenched hard, overfull with love. “We’ll make it together,” he said, nudging his mate’s knee with his own.

  It was Sasha’s turn to hum a satisfied note.

  Bind him, Val had said. And Nikita thought that, maybe, he understood just what that meant, and not what his old anxieties had led him to believe.

  He turned to Kolya. “I don’t have any idea what the day will bring,” he said, taking a deep breath, feeling anticipatory, and on the edge of something. “But you can stay. You can always stay.” Please stay, he didn’t say.

  Kolya lifted one shoulder, and grinned in a lopsided way. “Where else would I go?”

  Inside the apartment, a phone rang.

  36

  When Seven entered the basement lab, he found the vampire Gustav sitting on the edge of his bed, looking mostly improved, the wrist of his wolf Familiar held to his mouth as he fed. The wolf whipped her head around, defensive gaze landing on Seven.

  Seven halted a few paces away. “They said you’re well.”

  Gustave hesitated – went tense – and then pulled back with a thorough swipe of his tongue across the wound he’d left in the female’s wrist. He sat back, still cradling her arm, licking his lips clean.

  Seven had been educated about vampires from the beginning, since his earliest memories sitting in a white-walled classroom in which a white-clad doctor flashed pictures up on a screen, telling them about all the most notable vampires recorded in history. About the brothers Vlad and Valerian, and the vampire Rasputin whom the Institute had worked alongside for a time. About the Duke of Havisham, abandoned by one Familiar and killed by another – this last lesson had been left vague, the instructor-doctor visibly nervous, wiping his brow.

  So Seven understood that vampires required the ingestion of the blood of living things to keep healthy and whole; that their eye teeth were fangs, and that they were possessed of certain heightened sensual impulses.

  But he could claim no sympathy for their physical condition. What was it like, he wondered, to pierce the flesh of another being and take their blood into your mouth? To swallow it down and grow stronger upon it?

  Confounding.

  Gustav regarded him a long, silent moment, and then said, “I’m not well, but I’m much improved.” He released his Familiar and she stepped back, and rolled down her sleeve. “Thank you for your concern, though, child.”

  His tone was hard to place, but Seven knew child well enough. Knew that this creature thought him less than those around him; an adolescent not yet to be trusted, the way everyone else was. Child. A baby. A young one. Someone who needed the guidance of his elders.

  “Are you leaving?” Seven asked.

  Gustav sighed, and shared a glance with his Familiar, after which she withdrew and disappeared behind the curtain. To Seven, he said, “Yes. I have tasks to complete, still. A meeting.”

  “A meeting with Alexei Romanov, the vampire?”

  Gustav’s mouth fell open, his eyes sprang wide, and for a moment, he resembled the guards who feared Seven. Then he smoothed his expression and said, “And how could you possibly know that?” He stood, and buttoned the cuffs of his sleeves, dressed no longer in a colorless gown, but in a suit and shirt, fine human clothes that Seven was never allowed to don.

  “I heard Dr. Severin talking to Dr. Reed,” he said. “Alexei Romanov called you. He wants to see you.”

  “Yes, well.” Gustav cleared his throat, and his brows jumped, and Seven thought he looked unhappy. “Apparently, no phone call is private around here.”

  “Why does he want to meet you?”

  “To negotiate some sort of alliance, I’d wager.” He stepped into polished shoes, no longer paying attention, ready to leave.

  “He kissed me,” Seven said, and, after, didn’t understand why.

  Gustav lifted his head, sharply, his gaze narrow a moment. Then he laughed. “He did, did he? That little seducer. Did you enjoy it?”

  “Are you going to harm him?” Seven asked, and Gustav’s smile slipped. “The way you’ve harmed the test patients?”

  “Only if he doesn’t cooperate. He could be a great asset to our–”

  “You shouldn’t,” Seven said, and when he took a tiny step forward, he felt the crinkle of paper in his pants pocket, the letter from Rob Locksley, word of Seven’s sister, of her life outside this facility.

  Gustav studied him a moment. “Other people will kiss you, if you like,” he said. “You should tell your handlers it’s something you want. But you don’t want anything to do with Alexei Romanov. He’s a stupid puppet, is all.”

  “He’s the last Tsarevich of Russia,” Seven said, with a mental sensation like the floor tiles were tilting beneath his feet. Alexei was a prince, he’d read so himself in the files. How could a prince be a puppet? Princes made puppets of others.

  Gustav bared his teeth in an unpleasant expression. “Oh, yes.” His accent sounded thicker, all sharp, blocky consonants. “Tsarevich of Russia. How special they are. How beloved that whole family. Get yourselves murdered by revolutionaries and suddenly the whole world forgets what monsters you are.” He hissed at the end, and snatched his suit coat off a hook with savage force. He met Seven’s gaze with an unusual directness; he normally avoided all eye contact. “Alexei will serve his purpose, just like all you little freaks here. And when he’s no longer of use, he’ll join the rest of his spoiled, rich family in hell.

  “Hannah, come.”

  His Familiar fell in behind him, and he stormed toward a side door marked with a red EXIT sign, leaving Seven standing, wondering…considering.

  ~*~

  Trina’s phone woke her; not the alarm, but an incoming call. And by the time she’d rolled over, pulled a lock of hair out of her mouth, and disentangled herself from beneath Lanny’s arm, she winced to herself. She’d forgotten to set her alarm last night; should have already been cramming toast in her mouth, halfway out the door and ready for another thrilling day of weapon-less desk duty.

  She was slipping. And the worse part was that she didn’t care anymore. She’d always prided herself on being a good detective; on caring about justice, and doing things by the book, and solving crimes because she had the stomach to handle it, and the kind of curiosity that might have gotten her in trouble otherwise.

  But she found, to no small amount of personal shame, that she didn’t…care, like she once had. Meeting Nikita – coming face-to-face with a great-grandfather who was still perfectly preserved as he’d appeared at twenty-seven, immortal and blood-drinking – had smashed through all her priorities. She hadn’t realized it, at first; maybe Nikita’s clannish personality had rubbed off on her over time. But her sense of justice was aimed elsewhere, now; was pinned on shadowy institutions and the looming dark threat of a war that sounded like pure fiction, but which scared her down to her bones.

  “Wha…?” Lanny asked blearily, pressing his face into her blanket-covered hip.

  The call had gone to voicemail, and she thumbed the screen awake to see that it was from Nikita. She sighed as she pulled up her contact list. “Team meeting, I’m guessing.”

  But, inwardly, she felt a little thrill of anticipation. The desk could wait. Pack was everything.

  ~*~

  The door to Dr. Severin’s office stood open, and the doctor himself was in the process of stowing notebooks into his briefcase. He lifted his head, and nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose when Seven filled the doorway, expression cautious before he smiled and said, “Good morning. You’re up early.”


  “What is Gustav going to do to Alexei Romanov?”

  Dr. Severin went still a moment, his smile freezing, and then slowly fading. “Seven,” he said, almost stern, “don’t you have lessons to be preparing for?”

  Seven stared at him.

  The doctor zipped up his briefcase and came to stand before Seven. “What is it this morning? Physical fitness?” he asked, attempting another smile. “You want to make sure you’ve got on the right shoes, and tape your wrists, right? You don’t want another sprain, like last time.”

  “He called him a puppet. What’s he going to do?”

  Dr. Severin let out a deep breath, and his shoulders slumped. “Seven…damn it.” He stepped around him, peered out into the hallway, both directions, and then shut the door. He set the briefcase down and set a hand on Seven’s shoulder. It trembled.

  “Seven. Listen to me: you don’t need to worry about any of this.”

  How many times had he been told that in his life? More than he could count. His questions about historical events or his own powers had been answered readily, effusively. But each time he inquired about his parents – the two people whose genetic material had created him – or his larger purpose, he was shut down. You don’t need to worry about it. That’s not for you to know. It will be explained in time.

  But no explanations had ever come. And now he had a letter in his pocket, crinkling when he walked, in which a man who claimed to know his sister was offering him answers – had already given him some, in just a few handwritten lines.

  A vampire named Alexei had broken into this facility, and kissed him, and now the vampire Gustav talked about him as a puppet…but he wasn’t. Because a puppet was something someone else controlled; something that dangled on strings, that had a hand inside it. Puppets didn’t have free will. Puppets were owned…

  Just like Seven.

  They don’t own you.

  “Why was he here?” Seven asked. “What does he want? Why is he your enemy?”

  “Seven–”

  “Why?” It wasn’t until he saw Dr. Severin take a staggered step back, eyes wide, that he realized he’d shouted. And in the process of screaming, he’d broken loose something vital inside himself. Some crucial bit of cold self-control. In the aftermath, he felt frenzied, like a wire come loose, hissing and spitting sparks. He felt alive in a way he never had, no longer merely conscious and cerebral, but an active sort of living.