She could wait here. With Kolya.
She couldn’t decide if that made her nervous. Knee-jerk instinct said yes: he was resurrected, the product of the same magic out there throwing flames at Gustav and his wolves.
But, even with the scars, even quieter than he had been, this was the same man she felt like she’d spent months with through Nik’s memories. This was the loyal friend who’d died in a blaze of fire to protect his pack.
The same fire, she realized with a lurch, blazing below. A fire he doubtless wanted nothing to do with.
She met Kolya’s gaze, and nodded. He nodded back. “You go ahead,” she told Lanny with an encouraging smile. “We’ll be fine, and I’ll play sniper.” She hefted her rifle in demonstration.
Lanny hesitated, his own smile slipping.
“We’re good,” she urged. “Go look after Gramps, huh?”
He snorted, and went.
~*~
Alexei stood rooted, horror-struck, gripping Dante’s coat until his knuckles ached, and watched as Seven – Severin – advanced slowly, relentlessly toward Gustav and his injured wolves, driving them back with blast after blast of flames. It looked effortless, the way they jetted from his palms, nipping at his targets, leaving them singed and smoking.
Gustav tried to resist at first, tried to command the mage to turn on them instead, but he quickly realized he was about to be burned to a crisp, and fled. His wolves, limping and sad, trotted after him, and they headed back up the driveway the way they’d come.
Alexei realized how loud the flames had been when they ceased, the rushing vacuum created by hot air, like a fierce wind in his ears, and the sharp crack and lick of oxygen combusting. Severin watched the retreating immortals a long moment, hands lowering slowly to his sides. Then he turned to face Alexei again.
Movement behind him drew Alexei’s gaze a second – Nikita and the others leaping off the top of the warehouse, landing light as down – but he couldn’t take his eyes off the mage for long, Severin walking closer, one careful step at a time. Like he was – almost as if–
He was nervous, Alexei realized with a start. The idea that someone with that kind of power could feel nervous around anyone was preposterous, but he was looking the evidence of just that right in the face: the flicker of lashes, the whitening of already-pale cheeks as a jaw clenched. Power or not, Severin was only a boy, and he wasn’t locked up where he was supposed to be; had turned on someone whose orders he’d followed. Of course he was nervous.
“Thank you,” Alexei said, and meant it. He let go of Dante’s coat, finally, assuming he would run – he didn’t, though. Hung back behind Alexei, breathing in a quiet rattle. “Don’t take this as an insult, but, what are you doing here?”
In his strange, flat voice, one that now vibrated with the faintest hint of emotion, the mage said, “I asked one of the guards how to find Gustav, and he told me.”
“He just…told you?”
“I showed him the fire.” He lifted a hand, a contained ball of flame curling to life in his palm. He looked at it almost wonderingly. “And he told me. He saw Dr…saw my teacher. I burned him. This is his coat.” He touched it with the fingers of his free hand, running the pads of them over the lapel. “I think he’s dead.”
A few hours ago, Alexei would have turned to Dante, searching for support, for an answer, a theory. But that was before Dante had admitted to lying, and betraying. Before he’d decided to act like – to be a tsar. Tsars had to make their own decisions.
“You killed your teacher?” he asked, fighting to keep the fear from his voice.
“He wouldn’t let me leave,” Severin said, nearly pleading. “And I wanted to come and warn you about Gustav. I wanted to help you.”
“Why?”
The boy took a deep breath. “Because I want to understand. I don’t know why you…” The fire in his hand winked out, and he reached up, slow, hesitant, and pressed his fingertips to his lips. Why you kissed me, he didn’t say.
Alexei suppressed a wince. To distract you. To manipulate you. It was nothing. It meant nothing. But those weren’t admissions you made to someone who shot fire from his hands.
“And,” Severin continued, thankfully, “they don’t own me, but they think they do.”
Alexei felt his brows go up. “You know that?”
The boy reached into his pocket and withdrew a folded, crumpled piece of paper. He unfolded it with great care, smoothed out the corners of the pages, and held it out toward Alexei.
Alexei waited a beat, and then took it.
“Be careful with it, please,” Severin said, hushed. “It’s the only thing I have.” The last he said with a wonder that edged toward horror. Like maybe it was just hitting him that he’d killed, and threatened, and escaped the only home he’d ever known, all because Alexei had kissed him and forced his way inside his mind.
Or, well, maybe not the only reason. The note brought a new perspective to the situation.
It was the one Will Scarlet had slipped into Severin’s pocket while he stood dazed in the threshold of the security office, a letter written in an elegant hand, signed by Robin of Locksley, Familiar of Richard Plantagenet, telling Severin about his sister, the girl Red, and about the wide world that awaited him beyond the Institute’s chilling white walls.
Alexei held it with only the tips of his fingers, and passed it back as soon as he was done. “I guess this made a big impression.” When Severin frowned at him in clear confusion, he said, “Do you believe what it says in this letter?”
“I know that my sister left. I know – I know there are things they won’t tell me there. Wouldn’t tell me.” Past tense. Whatever his conflicted feelings on leaving – on what he’d done in order to leave – he clearly didn’t plan on going back.
The others had approached, ranged apart from one another, a net slowly closing in on them.
“Care to clue us in?” Nikita called.
Severin whirled.
Before he could question the wisdom in it, Alexei reached out and touched his arm. “Wait. They’re my friends.”
Friends. The word came automatically.
“Easy, bud,” Lanny said, lifting his hands to show they were empty. “We don’t wanna see your little fire trick again.”
“Why’s he here?” Nikita asked.
It was Severin who answered. He drew himself up taller a fraction, leveled an unreadable gaze on Nikita, and said, “To help.”
Nikita stared back a moment, then his brows went up. “Well,” he said. “Alright.”
~*~
“They’re still breathing.” Kolya stood over the big vampire that Trina had shot first. Someone else – probably Kolya – had stabbed him in the throat, and that was what had finally sent him crumpling to the ground. His eyes were shut, his face lax and pale, and every breath made a sick, wet sucking sound as air whistled through the gaping wound in his windpipe.
Trina grimaced. “Yeah, they do that. The only way to really kill a vampire is to take the heart out and destroy it.”
He lifted his head and gave her a glance through a blowing screen of long hair, like he was trying to judge whether or not she was kidding.
“Yeah.”
He looked back to the vampire, head cocking to the side as he studied the comatose immortal. He twirled the knife in his right hand, a dexterous flick of his wrist that sent the blade flashing, and reversed his grip on it. “Alright,” he said, and started to sink down to the ground.
“Wait,” Trina said, and swallowed hard against a swell of nausea.
He lifted his head. “You don’t want to kill them?” He sounded shocked by the idea.
She had a quick little moral argument with herself, like the day she’d shot the wolf. The same ugly sickness churned in her gut, and cold sweat prickled down the back of her neck. These vampires had come to kill them; wouldn’t have hesitated to bash her head with a pipe, or snap her neck. Would have cut the hearts out of her own vampires; what vamp wouldn’t
love to claim he or she had been the one to bring down Nikita Baskin? He was more or less hated by his own kind, she’d come to accept. If they showed mercy to these few, it wasn’t a mercy that would be rewarded. This big one lying at her feet? As soon as he was well, he’d come gunning for them again.
She took a shaky breath and said, “I don’t know if I’ve got the stomach for it, but…yeah, Nik would want them dead.”
Kolya nodded, and twirled his knife again. “I’ll handle it.”
She turned her face away as he went to work, knuckles pressed hard to her mouth.
Don’t be such a baby, she told herself. You’re a killer, too.
Her life as a detective had never seemed farther away.
38
Kolya made short work of the hearts. When Nikita and the others got back to the roof, they found a bloody pile of them. They dragged the bodies together, after, and the mage boy – Severin – the scent and sight of whom left Nikita choking back a constant growl – supplied the fire necessary to burn the lot of it.
They left behind black, greasy, smoking lumps on the rooftop, and went in search of a secure location where they could try to make sense of all that had happened that morning.
Colette was not happy to see them.
Even less happy to see a mage on her rear doorstep.
But Sasha’s smiles and batted lashes were very hard to refuse, Nikita knew from long experience.
They were all scattered across her spacious upstairs kitchen/living room area, with its low, plush furniture, and its long plank table, and its colorful accents and fragrant herbs in tiny pots along the windowsill.
Nikita sat at the table, Sasha’s shoulder pressed to his, across from Alexei, and, beside him, the mage Severin. Colette had made tea, slammed the tray full of cups down on the table, and headed back downstairs to attend her clients, muttering curses all the way.
Nik owed her one hell of a muffin basket after this, but he’d have to worry about that later. Right now, he was staring at an Alexei Romanov who looked greatly changed.
That morning, his voice had been oddly stilted on the phone. “I’m confronting Gustav in two hours, and I’d like for you to be there, if that’s convenient for you.” Formal, and reserved, and stiff. The unusual nature of the request had left Nikita agreeing automatically, mostly out of curiosity.
At the warehouse, he’d settled some, then cool and composed, though still formal. He sat erect now, hands folded together on the table, features schooled – though Nikita could sense fatigue and emotion flickering at his edges, trying to break through. Maybe it had something to do with whatever Gustav had told him, or maybe with the fact that Dante sat on the far side of the room, huddled up miserably in a chair, arms clasped around his raised knees.
Jamie finished pouring everyone tea – set steaming mugs down in front of Nikita and Sasha – and retreated to the sofa. It was silent after, save the patter of light rain against the window; the cloud cover had finally broken.
Someone else would have handled it more adroitly, but Nikita had never had much use for elegance. He met Alexei’s gaze and said, “You’re acting like an adult today.”
Sasha fidgeted on the bench beside him, a silent, Nik, that’s rude.
Alexei said, “I’m acting like what I am.”
A stupid little shit? Nikita wondered. But said, “What’s that?”
“The last tsar of Russia.” It was said with such seriousness, such meaning, that Nikita couldn’t laugh.
He wrapped both hands around the hot mug in front of him. “The last tsar,” he echoed.
Alexei took a deep breath. “It’s what I am.”
“It’s what you would be – if your father hadn’t been formally deposed before his death. The empire is gone, Alexei.” He was almost gentle, when he said it, remembering his own young, stupid, human self, tugging on his black gloves, donning his hat with its hammer and sickle, and telling himself the empire could be rebuilt. Back when he’d thought empire was the best, most beneficial form a government could take. He’d learned better since then…even if the word stirred something deeply buried in his psyche. That word had meant something to him once, and he felt suddenly, irrationally nostalgic for a time he had never loved, and which had never loved him.
“The empire is gone,” Alexei agreed, a muscle leaping in his jaw. “I know I don’t rule over anything – and I don’t want to.”
Nikita lifted his brows, inviting explanation.
“But,” Alexei continued, “I’ve behaved recklessly, for far longer than I should. There have been accidents.” Something like true regret touched his gaze, but was gone in the next blink, replaced by a purposeful kind of determination. He’d chosen to be determined, even if he didn’t quite feel that way. “I’ve lived like someone who wasn’t brought up as an heir. I’ve lived like someone–” Here, he faltered, emotion touching his voice, briefly, like a fist closing around his throat and then turning loose in the next breath. “Someone my parents wouldn’t approve of. Someone they wouldn’t be proud of.”
“Alexei,” Trina broke in from the tufted velvet ottoman, where she sat with legs folded, rim of her mug at her bottom lip. “You can’t know that. Don’t torture yourself.”
He closed his eyes in response, but didn’t turn his head to acknowledge her. When he opened them again, they were wet. He blinked and said, “I want to be the man my papa raised me to be.” He bit his lip, hard, and closed his eyes again, wrestling.
Nikita gave him a moment. “What were you talking about with Gustav?” he asked, finally, when it didn’t appear that Alexei was going to resume.
Pale eyes snapped open. Pale cheeks flushed. “Haven’t you been listening?” He bit his lip before Nikita could retort; let out a breath. “I’m sorry. I’m…I’m trying to tell you that I’m going to be better. In all ways. But” – his eyes flared – “I’m not going to play the stupid child that you reprimand and command. I’m more than that. I don’t deserve your abuse, Captain.” He made the title sound like a slur.
Nikita said, “You don’t?” Just to press.
The Alexei he knew would have bristled, maybe even shouted.
The Alexei across from him now made a visible effort to compose himself. “You murdered in the name of Stalin, in the name of waiting to serve my family,” he said, evenly. “I don’t.”
Simple words, but they hit Nikita like a shove. He took a sip of his tea to hide whatever his mouth did in response.
The worst part? It was fair. Lately, Nikita was having to take long, hard looks at the things he’d always said and done, the codes he’d clung to like lifelines. In his own mind, he could see all the ways Alexei lived as being dangerous, reckless, and harmful to the mortal world.
But was his opinion right? Or was it merely his?
Right, a stubborn voice in the back of his head insisted. It was wrong to take too much from humans. To kill them.
Said the Chekist to the prince…
“I’ve let you treat me like I’m stupid,” Alexei said. “I’m not going to do that anymore.” He swallowed after, throat jumping, which ruined some of the effect.
But Nikita heard him.
He wanted to punch him, more than a little. But he heard.
What if I won’t go along with it? Nikita thought. What if I tell you to go to hell? Are you going to fight me?
But he didn’t voice those things. In truth, he felt something almost like relief. Meeting Alexei in the flesh, the grown version of the sick little boy his mother had shed tears for by sputtering candlelight, who Nikita had always seen as a victim in every way, had been one of the most disappointing experiences of his too-long life. For the Whites of Russia, Alexei – along with the rest of his family – had gained a kind of saintliness in death, pity leading to admiration. But to see that he was frivolous, spoiled, careless – that had left Nikita hating him.
So, yes, he felt relief now, seeing him like this. He said, softening his voice a fraction, “What happened with Gu
stav…your grace?”
Sasha perked up straighter beside him. Nik heard several quick, indrawn breaths as shock moved through the room.
Even Alexei’s brows twitched with surprise; but his shoulders slumped, after; his own relief. “Gustav has been…trying to sway me against all of you. Especially you,” he said to Nikita. “He keeps reminding what you are, what you did. The way your people killed my family.”
“They were never my people,” Nikita growled.
Alexei tipped his head. “How long can a man pretend to be something before he actually becomes it?” He waved when Nikita moved to protest. “I know, I know, but that was the sort of thing he said. He was – convincing.”
Then Alexei lifted his head and shot a glare toward Dante, still curled up in his chair like a frightened child. “And you. You were part of it all along. You pretended to be a historian. You pretended you worked for my great-grandmother!”
Nikita twisted around to see Dante lift his face from where he’d pressed it into his knees, its already narrow lines made longer by the hangdog look he wore. He blinked, the light catching the gleam of checked tears on his lashes. “But I did know her. I am a historian. Lex–”
“Shut up!” Alexei shot to his feet, nearly tripping on the bench and having to catch himself with a palm on the tabletop. The mage looked up at him with wide eyes. He jabbed a finger through the air toward Dante, who shrank back deeper into his chair. “Shut the fuck up! I should’ve let those wolves have you!” His expression was thunderous…though it looked more like an actor playing at being furious; like a hurt, frightened boy posturing. This betrayal cut deep; it felt personal to Alexei, and Nikita realized he felt bad for him; a novel experience where Alexei was concerned.
“Lex–” Dante tried again, voice choked.
Alexei growled.
Trina set her mug aside with a sigh, and a muttered, “God, I am gonna have to be the mom friend, aren’t I?” She smoothed her features to a pleasant, inviting expression. “Dante,” she said, turning to him. “Why don’t you explain it to us?”
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 48
