12
New York City
Lanny eventually came back to bed just before dawn; she felt the air mattress give beneath his weight. But he made no attempt to speak or touch her, and she drifted off before she had too much time to lament this strange distance between them.
When she woke, daylight streamed through the windows, and Lanny was gone. In fact, everyone seemed to be gone.
She sat up, blinking, and saw that the other air mattresses had been neatly made up, blankets folded, couch cushions plumped back up.
Colette sat at the kitchen table, dreads pulled up into a topknot, sipping from a cereal bowl-sized mug. “Good morning.”
“Morning.” Trina got to her feet, self-consciously tugging at her rumpled clothes, and made her way to the kitchen. Colette had been kind enough to loan her some yoga pants and a silk robe to sleep in, but she didn’t relish the thought of putting yesterday’s outfit on again this morning.
“There’s tea,” Colette said, “and I started the coffee maker. I always got the impression cops lived off coffee.” She said it kindly, smiling.
“We do,” Trina said, and poured herself a massive cup. “Do you know where the guys went?”
Colette’s smile was small and pleased. “I’ve been meaning to reorganize and deep clean the basement for ages. It seemed like a good job for a bunch of restless hands.”
Trina snorted. “And they went willingly?”
“I let them know it would be in their best interest if they did.”
She smiled, and sat down across from her hostess. “Thank you for letting us stay. This is all happening really fast and I have no idea what I’m doing, and…” She shook her head. “Thank you.”
Colette’s smile slipped away, expression becoming more thoughtful, engaged. Trina wondered if this was the face she used when she was doing a reading for a customer. “How did Nikita find you? Was he looking?”
Was there any sense in lying? She didn’t think so. “I’m still not exactly sure. I was having these nightmares, and I think they were his nightmares. The snow, and the wolves, and Sasha howling like his heart was broken. And one night I was – well, for lack of a better term – I possessed him. I think. Not on purpose. But I was in his mind. And he showed me what happened in 1942. I don’t understand how it happened, and I’m not sure he does either. But…”
“But what?”
Here, she hesitated. “Sasha thinks someone helped connect us. Psychically. And I think he’s right. I think it might have been Val.”
Colette’s brows went up. “Prince Valerian? Hmm. Could be.” She stared down into her tea, troubled now. “He’s always liked to wander. I haven’t ever known him to provide a connection for two people like that, but it’s possible. If he’s stronger, now.” A barely noticeable shudder moved through her, and she sipped her tea.
“You’ve met him?”
“Oh yes, child. Briefly. Here and there. But it was enough.”
“Enough for…what?”
“Enough to know that it’s a good thing he’s locked up, and I hope he stays that way.”
“Huh. Nikita seems to think along the same lines.”
Colette nodded.
“Can I ask why?” She thought of the flash of the sword, of the mirth sparkling in the prince’s eyes. She’d honed her instincts as a detective, and she’d met a lot of people, men and women both, and she’d learned to spot evil hiding behind a smile and a show of fake tears. Val was unsettling, yes, but he didn’t stir the kind of certainty that had pushed her past decorum and straight into terrible confessions. He seemed genuine, somehow. She couldn’t put her finger on it.
Colette set her mug down on the table with a quit click. “You don’t know who he is, do you?”
She stiffened. “He said he was Vlad the Impaler’s brother.”
“Yes. That’s the short answer. The long answer is that Vlad Dracul, of the first convening of the Order of the Dragon, had three sons. The eldest was half-mortal, birthed by his human wife. The second and third sons were purebred vampires, their mother was Dracul’s beautiful and mysterious Nordic mistress. The young ones were taken hostage by the Turks as boys, raised up by the sultan with the hope that they would eventually become rulers sympathetic to the Ottoman Empire’s expansion into Romania. Vlad Dracula grew up to become the Impaler; he launched a new crusade and ruled Wallachia with an iron fist. His little brother, Radu, grew up to become a traitor, and a brother killer.
“Both are dangerous. Both are wicked in their own ways. I wouldn’t care to meet either of them in the flesh.”
“Radu?” Trina asked.
“He calls himself Valerian. I don’t know why. But I know that he shouldn’t be trusted. He was in chains long before the Institute bought him, and that’s where he should stay.”
“If he’s so terrible,” Trina said, and realized she was angry, “then why not execute him? Why keep him locked up and take his blood like some sort of lab rat? That’s inhumane – at the very least.”
“You lock human criminals up in prisons.”
“Not for centuries.”
Collette gave her a patronizing smile. “Don’t try to apply human morality to the things that happen to us. It won’t get you very far.”
~*~
Nikita took the train to Queens. He’d always found it soothing; there was no view, but something about the rattle and the sway sent him back home, to the trains of Russia. Perhaps not a fond time, but a familiar one. It seemed fitting, given his errand today.
The Ingraham Institute was, oddly, right out in the open. He’d envisioned an underground lair with caged lights and sinister service elevators. Instead, he faced a modern, five-story glass and concrete building with front planters full of tiny cypress trees. He stood on the sidewalk, looking at his reflection in the front doors. He probably should have dressed better, for the benefit of the security cameras, but he planned to take care of those right away. He tugged up the hood of his sweatshirt to cover his face, affected a limp, and entered through the airlock. He passed a bank of elevators, the restrooms, and vending machines, and another glass door let him into a waiting room where men and women with various braces, casts, and crutches flipped tensely through magazines.
These were the wounded vets searching for a miracle cure.
Several looked up when he entered. One even nodded in a commiserating way. You, too? his look said, like he saw something wounded in Nikita’s face.
He nodded back and limped to the reception desk. The girl stationed there wore purple scrubs that matched her nail polish; her blonde hair had been styled into careful barrel curls, her makeup flawless. He didn’t see a ring on her finger.
She glanced up. “Hi, how can I…” Her eyes widened, dilated. Caught.
“Hello,” he said, and turned his voice to velvet. Pushed his will out through the air between them, imagined it as a net draping over her, wrapping her up, cutting her off from any thoughts or wants or needs that were not his own. “I was wondering if you could help me.” Help me, do for me, give me what I want, and I’ll reward you.
She opened her mouth and half-smiled, a breathless, gasping sort of sound leaving her lips, almost like ecstasy. “Y-y-yes. I can help you.”
He corrupted people. That’s what he was best at. Before, as an agent of the oppressor in a black coat, he’d corrupted slowly, a little at a time. His boys, Sasha, Katya. And then he’d devoured Rasputin’s heart and he’d gained the ability to corrupt immediately. He could have laid this nurse back across the desk and had her any way he wanted. Could have drained her dry and she would have thanked him for it.
He corrupted, and he hated himself for that.
But sometimes it came in quite handy.
~*~
Lanny picked up a chair – it was the plush, cozy kind that came with a matching footstool, dark brown with orange and green flowers – and, marveling at the ease of it, shifted it to one hand, balanced precariously by one leg in his palm, the arm of it resting against his head. “Shit,” he said, laughing. “This is never gonna get old.”
Colette had said her basement needed “some tidying,” which was so gross an understatement it was basically a lie. But it was a large basement, one with little root cellars and closets dug into the sides, and it was packed cheek-by-jowl with what looked to be centuries’ worth of furniture.
The job seemed like busy work, but Lanny hadn’t felt like he could argue with Colette. He didn’t think anyone could.
“Here, kid,” Lanny said, “catch.” And tossed the chair to Jamie.
Jamie scrambled to set down the painting he held and said, “Oh shit, no!” eyes wide and panicked. He lifted his arms, though, and caught the chair. Cringing the whole time, and then gasping in surprise when he saw that he’d done it. “Fuck you,” he muttered.
Lanny chuckled. “You’ve gotta lighten up a little. What good are super powers if we don’t use them?”
Jamie lifted his brows. “Is that what you’re doing when you’re moping around scowling at nothing? When you tried to beat Alexei to death? Lightening up?”
Lanny plucked up the chair’s footstool and chucked it across the room.
Jamie caught it with less theatrics this time, expression smug. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“Shut up.”
“Uh-huh.”
It was quiet a moment as they picked through Tiffany lamps and elaborate chess boards, dusty rolled-up rugs and pottery that looked ready to crumble at a touch – Lanny let Jamie move those, not trusting his own indelicate hands.
When Jamie finally spoke, his tone was hushed, and Lanny was expecting it. The air had vibrated with hesitant silence, the kind that wanted to be broken. “Hey, um,” he said. “You and Trina – you’re dating, right?”
He snorted. “I dunno what you want to call it. We’re something.” Or at least they had been, before his turning. She twitched every time he touched her now, and he couldn’t blame her for that. She smelled nice – too nice – and he didn’t trust the wanting that built when he was around her, the need that was focused strongest in his mouth and throat and belly.
“Are you nervous about, you know, hurting her? Accidentally?”
“What do you think?” He hadn’t meant to snap, nor to growl. But.
“It should come in handy at work, though,” Jamie said, changing the subject. “Chasing down criminals, making arrests. You’re not wrong about the super powers.”
No, he wasn’t. Lanny opened his hand across the lid of an old steamer trunk, examined the fine, pale web of surgical scars that mapped the bones beneath the skin. His bad hand, the one that had been mangled in a bar fight years ago, the one that had lost him his preferred career, felt better than it ever had. He flexed his fingers and there was no stiffness, no catch in the joints. He made a fist and a thrill moved up his arm, down his spine. Healed; being turned had healed him.
He caught Trina’s scent before he heard her voice: the lavender soap in Colette’s bathroom, and Trina’s skin, its own unique smell. She paused in the other room to tell Alexei and Sasha that breakfast was ready.
His whole body was vibrating by the time she propped a shoulder in the doorway and said, “Bacon’s on if you guys are interested.”
Jamie set down the lamp he held and headed for the stairs with the glee of a kid who’d just heard the ice cream truck.
Lanny waited, until it was just the two of them.
It softened her edges, made her look more feminine and vulnerable than she ever wanted to seem.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” She fiddled with the hem of her shirt and glanced across the room, toward the massive hanging lamp with its stained-glass grapes and leaves that Jamie had gone nuts over. “Damn, is that a real Tiffany?”
“That’s what the art major said.”
She whistled. “Damn. There’s probably all sorts of amazing stuff down here.”
“Probably.” He didn’t give a damn about rare furniture. “Maybe after breakfast you can come sort through it with us.” He was a little ashamed of the hopeful note in his voice, but unable to stem it.
“Maybe.” She frowned. “We need to go back to work. I called the precinct and said we were out chasing leads, but that won’t work as an excuse long-term. Shit.” She massaged the spot between her brows with a fingertip. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. I hate sitting around feeling helpless. Like some damsel.” She spat the word, lip curling in disgust.
“I seriously doubt there’s ever been a damsel in your family.”
She smiled, faintly, looked up at him through her lashes. “Mom plays one, sometimes, when she wants something from Dad.”
“But not you.”
“Nah. I’m all Baskin.”
Just like her great-grandfather.
And he was all Webb – which sometimes meant he was as contemplative as his father, but most of the time meant he was blunt and fiery as his mother.
“Is it going to get better?” he asked.
“Is what going to get better?”
“Us.”
She stared at him a long moment, and he felt the push-pull of one step forward, two steps back. She had leaned into him outside the hospital yesterday, but then she’d flinched away walking up to Colette’s door last night.
“You’re the one who said I was the same person,” he said, bitter now.
“I know,” she said, softly. “You are. It’s just…instinct, I guess. Fight or flight.”
“Because you don’t trust me.”
“Because it’s still early. You went through a major change, and I don’t think it’s fully sunk in yet. It’s going to take some time. You – we should both – be patient.”
He snorted.
“What do you want me to say?” She sounded like she was really asking, looking for him to shine a light on this situation that neither of them had ever expected.
He shrugged. “I dunno.” And he really didn’t.
~*~
Disabling the security cameras and destroying the footage of him entering the building was an easy enough task, with Mona the nurse guiding him straight to the security center and watching him adoringly as he charmed the guard on duty.
Figuring out what the hell the Institute was up to was more complicated.
He used the charmed guard’s ID badge to swipe his way into several labs, and sat at a desk in one now, unsuccessfully trying to hack his way into the computer system.
“Can I help you with anything?” Mona asked, voice spacey and drugged-sounding, as she hovered behind his chair.
“No, I need a doctor’s password, and I–”
“I’ll go get one.”
She was gone before he could turn around and order her to stay.
He sighed. Why did anyone enjoy enchanting people? They were so stupid and worshipful when they were under the influence.
When his phone rang, he kept one eye on the door as he answered it.
“It’s me,” Sasha said, voice low and urgent. “I can smell them.” Low, urgent, and angry.
Nikita didn’t need to ask who it was his wolf could smell, nor if he was sure. Sasha was never wrong. “Where?” he asked instead.
“A few blocks away.” On the other end of the line, Nikita could hear the rush of traffic, and a sharp sniff as Sasha scented the air. “I could catch up to them, easy.”
Mona the nurse reappeared, towing a confused, disgruntled doctor along behind her.
“What in the world?” he said. “Who is this.”
Nikita took a deep breath. “Sasha, listen to me. Colette has the house warded. When they get close enough, they won’t be able to follow the scent to the door, and whichever humans are with them are going to catch a bad case of amnesia. Go back in the house, keep the others safe, and wait for me to get back.”
Sasha’s answer was a growl.
“Sashka.”
“How did you get in here?” the doctor demanded, voice rising. “Who are – I’m calling security.”
“Please,” Nikita barked into the phone, ended the call, and got to his feet. “Hello,” he said, rich dark velvet and melting chocolate. Calm, he pushed into the air around him. Help me. You know you want to.
The doctor cut off mid-sentence, face slowly going blank, mouth hanging open as his pupils blew.
“Now,” Nikita said, “would you mind logging me into the system?”
“Not at all,” the doctor said, and moved languidly toward the keyboard.
~*~
Sasha didn’t realize just how many hours a day he spent walking until he was forced to cool his heels for a while. He’d always liked Colette’s place, and goodness knew moving furniture was good exercise, but sitting around waiting for a threat to bypass them went against every instinct he possessed. Their little band was starting to feel very much like a pack – even if a pack with far too many vampires and only one wolf – and his lupine side wanted to be out on the streets, prowling, hunting, going on the offensive.
He stepped outside to get some air. That’s what he told himself. He was tired of looking at Alexei, of listening to him breathe, of smelling him. Ugh. No one understood – except for Nik. The scent of all vampires, that dark copper tang, made him want to bow up his back and show his teeth. He felt the urge around all of them, even little Jamie – all except for Nik. Nik was the exception to most things.
So after breakfast he went out on the front stoop, ignoring Colette’s raised-brow look that said, Is that wise? It was fine. He just needed to breathe some air that wasn’t tainted with vampires.
But then he scented the two wolves who’d killed that family, and the wolf that lived inside him had raised its hackles and pressed right up against his skin, growling and snapping his teeth.
When Nikita hung up on him, Sasha slipped his phone in his pocket, and went down the porch steps, following the trail.
It was a bright and warm morning, the sunlight angled, now, as summer slowly gave way to fall. In another month his breath would be a vaporous cloud, and scented with the first iron-filing notes of frost. Now the sidewalk boasted pedestrians in good measure, people out shopping on their lunch breaks, the proprietors of all the Boho-chic storefronts that neighbored Colette’s building.
Sasha knew that he didn’t look casual, the rolling, prowling gait he’d settled into, the set of his shoulders, his hands poised at his sides. He didn’t much care. These feral wolves smelled wrong. And now that he knew what they’d done…that they’d killed an innocent family…
Sasha had never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it, and these two deserved it.
They’d passed Colette’s building without lingering, so her wards must have worked; they’d tailed their little band and then, when they reached the steps, were sent off on a wild goose chase in the wrong direction. Their scents were fresh, though, only minutes old. They’d turned right at the red light, and so did Sasha, lengthening his stride as the scents grew closer, warmer. He started growling, and didn’t seem able to stop. A woman gave him a sharp look and side-stepped out of the way. He was too focused on the hunt to apologize.
Sasha made it about three paces into the alley, had reached the first dumpster, when he felt a sharp pinch at his neck, like a bee sting. He slapped at it, and his fingers brushed the feathering of a dart.
Oh no.
Oh, Nik was going to kill him.
He spun. Tried to. His movements were already unsteady, his heart lurching and slowing. His vision swam and he had just a moment to make out the silhouettes of several men blocking the mouth of the alley before the drug swept over him like a tide, and everything went black.