15
New York City
“Keep an ear out,” Lanny had said earlier, “and if things go south, then you step in.”
Jamie had been breathing harder than he was proud to admit. “Things go south? Step in?”
“They’re expressions.”
“I know they’re expressions. That whole sentence was nothing but expressions. What do you mean by them?”
Lanny had sighed like he couldn’t believe he had to put up with this. “It means you need to sit at the table behind theirs, listen, and if Dr. Fowler tries to pull some shit, you hit him over the back of the head with a napkin dispenser. Got it? I’d give you a gun, but I think you’d just shoot yourself in the foot, and we don’t have time for that.”
So, deeply insulted, a little bit scared out of his mind, Jamie sat at a window table in the agreed-upon coffeeshop, right behind Dr. Fowler, waiting for Trina to arrive. He’d never been anyone’s backup before, and he didn’t much feel like it now.
You’re a vampire, he reminded himself. You aren’t helpless.
Small comfort.
He nursed his cappuccino and tried not to think about how much the man sitting behind him smelled of chemicals.
~*~
Trina wasn’t nervous. Well, she was, but she’d suppressed it. She had a task, and no amount of nerves would keep her from it. She wondered, faintly, if this was the way Katya had felt, taking a steamer to Stalingrad, a rifle slung over her shoulder. On her way to kill Nazis.
She clocked Dr. Fowler through the window of the coffeeshop and walked past him without turning her head, shoulders back, gaze forward, strides brisk. She made it inside, down the aisle of tables, and managed not to acknowledge him at all until she was sitting across from him. Then she pushed her sunglasses up into her hair and said, “Thank you for meeting me,” in the chilliest voice she could conjure.
He seemed properly off-kilter. “Yes, well. Of course. Thank you for – I think we can both help one another.”
“Hmm. Maybe.” She pulled her phone from her pocket, a photo already pulled up on the screen. It was a close-up Harvey had sent her of the teeth marks in the abdomen of one of their vics. She set the phone down on the table and slid it just close enough for him to see, keeping her hand on it. “Take a look at that, Dr. Fowler, and tell me what you see.”
He made a face, clearly taken aback. “This is…this is a crime scene photo–”
“Autopsy, actually, but close enough. These right here?” She pointed. “They’re teeth marks. Fang marks, as in, not human teeth.” She pocketed the phone and sat back. “When were you going to tell me that your escaped patients are werewolves, doctor?”
He stared at her a moment, gaping, sufficiently shocked. He blinked, and shook his head. Some of the coyness crept back into his voice. “Detective Baskin, I’m surprised.”
She lifted her brows.
“That you would even entertain an idea like that. Werewolves? Oh, is this a joke?” He looked relieved, and then stern, a transparent attempt at acting. “I didn’t take you for someone who would use murder victims to play pranks, but clearly–”
“You know who I am,” she said, and he stilled. “The Ingraham Institute was founded in 1942 in Stalingrad. The first person they studied was a nineteen-year-old from Siberia named Sasha Kashnikov. If you work there, then you know that. Just like you also know that you’ve seen my last name on some paperwork somewhere. Let’s not play the monsters-don’t-exist game, because you’re obsessed with them.”
He stared at her, jaw clenching.
“You’re in charge of the wolves that killed that family, which makes you my number one suspect at the moment.”
He smiled, thinly. “Do you think that will hold up in a court of law?”
“Crazier stuff has.”
His smile widened. “You’re out of your mind.”
“No. I’m impatient – there’s a big difference. Where’s Sasha, Dr. Fowler?”
Now his smile curled up at the corners, Grinch-like and smug. “I’m sorry. Who?”
“Where’s Sasha?” she repeated, and this time the question was punctuated with a soft click.
Dr. Fowler’s smile faltered; he jerked a little in his chair. “You didn’t.”
“I very much did.” The Smith & Wesson .45 fit her hand with the familiarity of an old friend, reassuringly cool and heavy. “If you’re going to operate outside the law, then so am I. I’ve had very little sleep in the last week, you’ve kidnapped my friend, and I’m an excellent marksman. So unless you want me to Han Solo your ass through this table right now, you’ll tell me what you did with Sasha.”
He met her stare-for-stare. “I didn’t do anything with him. It’s like I’ve already told you: I work with helping vets. Sasha is of no interest to me.”
Her hand tightened on the gun. “You’re on very thin ice, doctor.”
“As are you, I believe. You have no evidence for your case – at least not any that you can actually take to your captain, and the clock is ticking.” He leaned forward, voice lowering. “It seems like everything’s been upside down since your life got tangled up in other people’s business. If I were you, I’d forget about Sasha and worry about your job.”
She leaned forward, too, though the gleam in his eyes sickened her. “Last chance.”
“You won’t shoot me.” He held her gaze a moment, then smiled with satisfaction and got to his feet. “I’m sorry we couldn’t work something out, detective. It’s a shame.”
“Wait,” she said, just before he turned away. “Not today, you’re right. I won’t. But someday. Eventually. I will shoot you. And I can promise I won’t miss.”
He snorted, amused. “Good afternoon, Trina.” And walked to the door.
When he was gone, Jamie twisted around in his seat, his eyes huge. “Um. What.”
Trina sighed and holstered her gun. “Yeah. I know. Let’s hope that bought the guys enough time. I kinda got…carried away.”
“Are you really gonna shoot that guy?”
“One day? Yeah. I think so.”
~*~
Lanny reached for his badge when they crossed into the lobby, intending to flash it, but Nikita batted his hand down.
“You won’t need that. Watch.” And he proceeded to turn the brain of everyone they encountered into worshipful mush.
“This is seriously creepy,” Lanny said, as Mona the Adoring Nurse led them to Dr. Fowler’s office. “That’s what you did to me, isn’t it?” He turned to glare at Alexei, who walked beside him.
Alexei, the little shit – he was a prince after all; weren’t they all little shits? – shrugged, as remorseless as ever. “It was for your own good.”
“So was hitting you in the face. How did that feel?”
Ahead of them, Nikita snapped his fingers, a voiceless command to shut up.
“Who the fuck put him in charge?” Lanny muttered.
Alexei snorted in an agreeing way.
The office door was locked. “Oh, I can,” Mona started to offer, and Nikita snapped the handle off with one effortless twist of his hand. Lanny heard the other half hit the floor inside the office, and Nikita pushed his way in.
They all filed in after, finding the space surprisingly cramped; Lanny had expected someone with Fowler’s penchant for theatrics to work in an office with a massive, ornate desk and shelves full of oddities. Instead, the space felt just like any hospital office, with a cheap desk and rolling chair, white walls, and several wall shelves of plastic-covered file folders.
“Mona,” Nikita said, and his voice was off: soft, and low, and cloying in a way that made Lanny’s skin crawl. “Why don’t you go stand guard for us?”
Her voice was wrong too: slow and syrupy. “Okay.” She wandered out, smiling, dazed.
“Dude,” Lanny said, and shuddered. “That is fucked up.”
“You can probably do it too,” Nikita said absently, sitting down in the desk chair and waking the sleeping computer.
“I what?”
“It’s hereditary. Well. I guess that’s what you’d call it. It can be passed through breeding and through siring.”
“What can?” Lanny was starting to feel panicked.
“Enchantment,” Alexei explained. “Rasputin could enchant others, which is why I can, and why Nikita can.”
“You can too,” Nikita said, clicking away on the keyboard. “Ah, here we go.”
“But…I don’t want to.”
“I’ll teach you how,” Alexei said with a wink. “You might like it.”
“What? Ew, no–”
“Hand me the flash drive,” Nikita said, snapping his damn fingers again. “Quickly.”
“Bite me,” Lanny said as he handed it over, then chuckled. “Shit, you probably will. God, what is my life now?”
Alexei grinned.
Nikita turned around slowly; the chair squeaked as it spun. His gaze was downright hateful. “Sasha,” he said, forcing the enunciation, “is locked up somewhere having God knows what done to him. You two idiots can crack jokes about your horrible lives on your own time. We need to find him. Now.”
Unless the teller was his ma, his captain, or Trina, Lanny didn’t, as a general rule, like to be told what to do. But beneath the harsh mask Nikita wore, abject terror flickered in his pale eyes. Whatever panic Lanny might have felt about his theoretical brainwashing abilities, Nikita was feeling ten times that – because his best friend, probably his only friend in the world, who he probably loved more than regular people ever loved their friends, had been kidnapped. And, okay, yeah: Lanny got that.
He schooled his features and nodded. “Yeah. Alright.” He jerked his chin toward the screen. “What’d you find?”
Nikita closed his eyes a moment, took a deep breath, nostrils flaring. “I don’t smell him.” Just a whisper. “He’s not here.”
Lanny hadn’t smelled him either, but hadn’t wanted to say anything. “What does the computer say?” he pressed.
Nikita lingered a moment, eyes shut, like he could will the horror away. Then he turned back to the screen. “Um.” It was the first time Lanny had heard him utter that syllable; it was rattling to hear. Fearless leaders didn’t show hesitation. “This is a schedule. A shipping one. Lots of dates here – including this afternoon. ‘Live specimen’ it says. I think…” He took a rattling breath. “I think they sent him to Virginia.”
“Okay. What’s the address?”
“It’s a post office box. It isn’t…there’s not…” He was hyperventilating.
“Hey.” Lanny rested a hand on his shoulder and felt the hardness of muscle clenched tight as bone. Nikita was strung so tight it was a wonder he didn’t crack apart like marble. “We’ll find him. You’ve got two cops and some serious freaky weirdos on your side.”
Nikita snorted.
“So we’ll find him. Save all that to the drive and then we’ll sniff around a little more – literally. If we can’t find anything, we’ll hook back up with Trina, have another meeting, and go from there.”
“Yeah. I…okay. Yeah.” The last just a murmur, quiet and scared.
That was when Lanny understood: this wasn’t about a job, or about preserving the life he’d had before. He was in this now. This world he hadn’t known existed. Hell, he was related to it. He’d been dying, and now he wasn’t; now he had an obligation to the family of the woman he loved.
“Alex and I are gonna go see what we can find,” he said, patting Nikita’s shoulder.
“Alex?” Alexei asked, scandalized. “Oh no. I don’t like that.”
“You turned me into a vampire; I’ll call you whatever I want.” He stepped back. “Meet us out in front in fifteen,” he told Nikita.
“Yeah.”
Lanny peeled away and headed out the door.
Alexei followed.
Funny, he thought: the prince had always been just that – a prince. He’d never led, and wasn’t about to start now, no matter how bratty and entitled.
Mona stood at the end of the hall, so Lanny turned the other way, toward an EXIT sign and a stairwell. “If you were hiding a werewolf hostage, where would you keep him?” Lanny asked.
Alexei said, “The basement, of course.”
~*~
A guard stood at the bottom of the stairs in front of the door to the basement.
“Watch,” Alexei said. “Learn.” He smiled and his voice turned sugary and soft. “Let us through,” he said, and the man in uniform tugged the door open and stood aside as they entered.
It was, Lanny had to admit, a handy skill.
And then all such thoughts were swept aside as he got a good look at the open expanse that stretched before them.
White walls, white floors, and table after table. Some that looked normal, more that looked like doctor’s office exam tables, elevated and covered in paper. Some with, he noticed with alarm, gynecological stirrups at the ends.
“What the fuck?” he said to himself.
A boy appeared in front of them, not there one minute, and right in their faces the next. Lanny almost hit him.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said, his voice flat, his hair bright red.
Alexei startled a moment, but recovered admirably. “Sure we are,” he said, smiling at the boy, leaning forward to put his hands on his knees so the two of them were on eye level. “What’s your name? Why don’t you show us around?”
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” the boy repeated, frowning.
“Um…” Lanny started.
Alexei’s smile turned brittle, teeth bared. “Show us around,” he commanded.
The boy tilted his head. “Who are you?”
“Fuck,” Lanny said. “We’re fucked.”
Alexei held up a staying hand. “Hello,” he said, trying again. “We’re looking for a friend of ours. Maybe you’ve seen him. His name is Sasha.”
The boy blinked at him. “Yes,” he said, toneless. Creepy as one of those fucking kids from The Shining. “He was a bad wolf.”
“Where is he?” Lanny demanded, half-elbowing Alexei out of the way.
The boy blinked some more. “Gone.”
~*~
Nikita clicked through files in a rush, scanning each only briefly before rejecting it or saving it to the flash drive. Most were useless. But words jumped out at him here and there: wolf, subject, volunteers. This wasn’t just about Sasha, in all likelihood: Trina would want as much information about the Institute’s operation as possible. She had that look on her face, that mulish set to her mouth that reminded him so much of Katya. This place had offended her, and she wanted to pick it apart.
But for him, it was entirely about Sasha.
His heart lurched and skipped, his pulse erratic and loud to his own ears. His palms and the soles of his feet itched with anxiety. Sweat slid in slow beads down his spine, gathered in the dip of his lower back. A panic attack, humans would have called it. That sounded about right.
Every time he blinked, he saw Sasha laid out on a table in a secret lab north of Stalingrad. Saw the delicate blue tracks of veins beneath his skin, the youthful knobbiness of elbows, the finger-wide gaps between ribs. And he saw Philippe’s knife driving into his heart. He replayed the sound, over and over, of the blade pushing through skin, and meat, and ribs, and finding home.
He used to think that being turned was the worst thing that had ever happened to Sasha; a stupid hope that had been dashed the moment he realized he was missing. There were worse things, much worse, and he imagined them all, breathing in short little gasps through his mouth, as he finally abandoned the computer and went to find the others.
He took the long way. Walked through every floor, from one end to the next, nostrils flared, searching… But really he’d known the moment he walked into the lobby that Sasha wasn’t here. He’d never been here. He clung to some sort of feverish hope, though, until he finally reached the basement, waved a security guard aside with a look, and found Lanny and Alexei standing in front of a red-headed little boy looking like a couple of cobras who’d been charmed by a mongoose.
“What are you idiots doing?”
Their gazes darted to him. Alexei seemed frightened. “I can’t – he won’t listen – there’s no–”
The boy turned his head slowly, his expression one of glazed indifference, reptilian and shiver-inducing.
And then Nikita caught the scent: scorched paper, singed hair. The scent of flame made flesh that all of his ilk shared.
Horror warred with fury. He snarled, and felt his lips peel back, his fangs dropping. “He’s a mage,” he growled.
Lanny blinked.
Alexei, though, took a hasty step back, hissing.
“Get out, both of you,” Nikita said, and for the first time in hours he felt a welcome sense of calm close over him. Being without Sasha – having any distance between them at all – made him want to claw at his own face. But this…this he could handle. This stirred up only one emotion: cold hatred.
For once, Alexei didn’t argue. He grabbed Lanny – “Hey, wait, what’s going–” – and dragged him back out through the door.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” the boy said, looking up at Nikita without fear, or anger, or any emotion at all.
“No.” Nikita lifted his hand, and settled it around the boy’s throat. “I’m not.”
~*~
Trina knew when they trooped in that that news was bad. If they’d found Sasha, they would have called her. Their long faces confirmed what she’d already thought: that Sasha was gone.
“No luck, huh?”
Alexei shook his head. “There was no sign of his scent there.”
Nikita threw the flash drive onto the table, expression hard to read as he stared at it. “I found a shipping address in Virginia. It’s a P.O. box.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, at least that’s a start.” She tried to inject a little hope into her voice.
He snorted and dropped into a chair, head tipped down.
Lanny came to stand in front of him, arms folded in a way she knew was intended to make his already-impressive biceps look even bigger. “You gonna tell her what you did?”
“No.”
“What did he do?”
“We found this creepy fucking kid in the basement,” Lanny said, voice tight with anger, tendons leaping in his neck. “And this one’s all ‘I’ll take care of it.’” His Russian accent was horrible. “And he killed him!”
“You what?” When Nikita continued to stare down at his lap, she glanced at Alexei, who shrugged. “Nik, did you kill a child?”
“Real badass, your gramps,” Lanny said.
“Hush. Nikita.” He deigned to flick her a sideways look. “What did you do?” If he was this upset over Sasha…if he was growing unhinged…
“I didn’t kill a child,” he said. “I killed a mage.”
“Oh.” Surprise knocked her back in her chair. “They have a mage?”
“They don’t anymore.”
“Because you killed him,” Lanny insisted. “Jesus, is no one else disturbed as fuck about this? He killed a little kid.” He looked to Jamie, to Alexei, finally to her, betrayal in his eyes. “Christ, Trina, say something!”
She took a deep breath. “You didn’t see Philippe. Not the way I did.”
“Oh my God. You’re…you’re okay with this? You’re okay with this.” He scrubbed a hand back through his hair. “How are you okay with this?”
“I didn’t say I was.” But, oddly, she was. She felt that dissonance inside herself again, the part of her that had urged Lanny to seek vampirism as a means of staying alive. She’d always thought that she was reasonable, and moral; shocked by all the things that were supposed to shake her. Properly repelled. But she was finding, more and more, that her hard moral line wasn’t so hard; it shifted. A startling, unwanted realization, but an undeniable one all the same.
Nikita sighed. “Mage or not, he was a witness – a witness we couldn’t enchant into forgetting he’d seen us. A witness who could tell everyone in that building that we’d been there, and then come set us all on fire. Is that what you wanted? You’re a cop,” he said, disgusted. “Think like one.”
“You aren’t supposed to kill kids.”
“I didn’t.” Nikita met his gaze, eyes dangerous and pale. “I killed a monster.”
Trina cleared her throat. “Guys?”
They took a long moment to turn toward her, staring one another down.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking while you were gone, and the address confirms it: Sasha’s in Virginia.”
Nikita nodded. “I’ll–”
“We’ll,” she insisted, “need to all be working together on the same page. No heroes, no running off half-cocked. We need to go to Virginia, and we need to find the facility. Maybe you guys can track Sasha by scent, but maybe not. We need some intel, and lucky for us, we’ve got a man on the inside.”
Everyone stared at her.
“Val.”
Nikita said, “No.”
“Yes. He’s there. He’s our only source of information, and unlike these Institute people, he’s never actually tried to hurt any of us. In fact, he’s been a help. So. We need to call him up and have a conversation.”
Lanny snorted, face screwed up like he’d bitten into a lemon. Disgusted with all of them. “Yeah? How you gonna do that?”
“Philippe conjured him with a séance once.”
“You a witch now?”
“No.” She smiled a little. “My grandmother is.”
No one had been expecting that.
“How about a trip to Buffalo?”
~*~
Lanny was angry with her. He probably thought she was monstrous for not caring about the boy Nikita had strangled. But those were problems for her to worry about later. Now she had to pack.
It had only been two days, but she thought there was a dusty stillness about her apartment, like it was already preparing for her to leave it for longer. For who knew how long. She’d already called the precinct and told them there was a family emergency – not a lie – and that she’d didn’t know when she’d be back in town. She wasn’t sure if she’d have a job when she got back; she wasn’t sure if she cared at this point.
She dragged her suitcase out of the closet and started stuffing clothes in it, some for summer, some for fall, plenty of essentials.
Nikita stood with his shoulder propped in the bedroom doorway, hands in his jacket pockets. “You don’t have to do this,” he said, quietly, and she paused.
Trina set down the shirt she was holding and turned to face him.
Away from the others, he looked younger. Less certain. No, scratch that: he looked terrified. He’d chewed at his lip until his fang drew blood, and the quickly-closing scab looked angry and painful. He’d been running his hands through his hair, and it fell limp and greasy on his forehead.
She stepped closer, wanting to comfort him, not sure how. “You two have been together a really long time.” She tried to duck her head and catch his eye, but he wouldn’t look at her. “I know you love him–” He flinched away from the word, and she put her hand on his arm; he flinched from that, too, but not as violently. He took a shivery breath. “No, it’s okay. I know. He’s the only person you’ve got in the world.”
His eyes lifted, frightened and ashamed through the screen of his lashes. “I should have had him with me. I shouldn’t have–” His breathing hitched. “I shouldn’t have left him. If something happens to him…” He swallowed, throat clicking.
“It won’t.”
His mouth twisted.
“He’s really tough. You know that. You showed me that. Have a little faith, and I promise we’ll get him back.”
“You don’t have to,” he repeated. “Your job–”
“Isn’t the most important thing in the world. My family comes first, and that includes you and Sasha.”
He breathed shallowly a moment, then jerked a nod and pulled back.
She returned to packing, marveling a little at her willingness to abandon the career she’d worked so hard to cultivate. But no, she told herself with a mental shake. She loved her job because it was a way to help people – to right a few of the world’s wrongs. But the second that job prevented her from doing the right thing? Well, it wasn’t worth much after that.
Her phone pinged with a text alert from Harvey: call when u can.
Trina sighed. She needed to make one more stop after this, before she threw caution to the wind.
Speaking of which…
Just before she zipped her bag, she turned back to her sock drawer and contemplated the little bronze bell in its corner. The bell that had rung in Nikita’s pocket a lifetime ago.
“Dark forces, huh?” she murmured, and slipped the bell into her own pocket. She had a feeling they would need all the help they could get.
~*~
“Huh,” Jamie said when he caught sight of the car Lanny had stored in his building-supplied parking spot. It was a five-or-so-year-old Ford Expedition, plain gray, dirty and unremarkable.
Lanny opened up the rear hatch and started stowing their things in it. “What?”
“I was expecting something…more you,” he said, gesturing to the SUV.
Lanny glanced back over his shoulder, frowning. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know.” Jamie shrugged. “Your apartment was all home gym, and protein powder, and every issue of Maxim ever. I guess I was expected a jacked-up Jeep, or a hot rod or something.”
“A…hot rod? Wow.” He whistled. “First off: insulting. Way to stereotype. And second: you don’t know shit about cars, do you?”
Jamie felt his cheeks heat. “I know…a little.”
“Uh-huh.” Lanny resumed stowing their bags. “This is practical. I can fit my whole home gym back here, thank you very much.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t say ‘ah,’ like you know shit about me.” But it wasn’t said meanly. Jamie was beginning to learn that beneath the muscles, and the broken nose, and the intimidating cop routine, Lanny was actually kind of fun. And funny. “I’m offended you think I’m such a douchebag.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Uh-huh. This all your shit?”
“Yeah,” Jamie said, and his stomach grabbed in a sudden, shocking pulse of fear. He’d felt borderline nauseas and sweaty all day, between having to act as backup, and then the revelations that Sasha was truly gone, that Nikita could apparently choke the life from a child without hesitation – even if the said child was a mage, whatever the hell that meant. But it hit him fully now. Hit him hard. He was about to leave the city in the company of scary near-strangers – leave his home – on an insane rescue mission. He just…
The parking garage tilted around him and he realized he’d stopped breathing.
“Whoa,” Lanny said, in front of him suddenly, hand on his arm. “Sit down.” He lowered Jamie to a concrete parking chock as his knees gave out.
“I – I – I–”
“Head between your knees. Come on. Don’t pass out on me.”
Jamie pitched forward, and Lanny’s hand settled on his back, between his shoulders.
“Nice deep breaths. In and out. You’re alright.”
Black spots crowded his vision and steel bands tightened around his rib cage. He couldn’t draw a deep breath, couldn’t fill his lungs. It was an asthma attack…
Only, he didn’t suppose vampires had asthma.
“Breathe in, breathe out,” Lanny said, hand still rubbing circles.
Just as his throat was closing up, and his vision was nothing but spots, logic won out and Jamie dragged in a gulp of air. He made an awful choking sound, and started to cough.
Lanny gave him a thump. “There. Alright, there you go.”
“How are you so calm?” Jamie gasped, head tipping back so he could look up at the man. “How are you just – just accepting this?”
Lanny shrugged. “I dunno. I come from a big, crazy family. When someone fucks up, you all pitch in and help them. Trina’s like family. So.” Another shrug. “It’s just what I gotta do.”
“And you’re just okay with the being a vampire part?”
“No, not really. Beats dying, though.”
Jamie lifted his brows, asking.
“Docs only gave me about six months.” Lanny glanced away and did one of those tough-guy, I-don’t-have-emotions sniffs. “If drinking a little blood’s what I gotta do, then that’s not so bad, I guess.”
Jamie took a few deep breaths. “What if I didn’t want to go? To Buffalo? And then to Virginia?”
Lanny gave him a sharp look, voice even when he said, “You can stay here.”
His chest was tightening again. “My whole life all I wanted was to go to art school. I’m only a semester from graduating!”
“You could probably get a new identity and re-enroll.”
“I don’t want to start over. I – had accomplished things! I don’t…and that’s gone! All of it! I…”
Lanny sighed and squatted down in front of him, gaze serious, but not unkind. “Kid, listen to me. When I was your age, I was the best fucking heavyweight boxer in this city. I was a beast. I was going places. And then.” He held up his right hand. Under the knuckles misshapen from pounding the hell out of bags and faces alike lingered old, white scars, thin and precise. They followed the bones of his hand, all the way down to his wrist. “My big rival shattered my hand to pieces in a bar fight.” His mouth twisted, the memories obviously painful even now. “It took three surgeries to get me so I could hold a fork again. Another one before I could write with this hand.
“I didn’t become a cop because I had a hero complex, some kinda noble idea of keeping my city safe.” He sneered, a quick Elvis curl of his lip. Then sobered. “I was qualified. It was something to do to fill the time. And eventually I found out I was pretty good at it, and it wasn’t so bad.”
He offered a lopsided smile. “So this is you getting your hand ruined and figuring out what you’re gonna do after. You’re not in art school anymore. You can do whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want?”
“Well, I mean, don’t kill anybody. I’d have to arrest you, then.”
Jamie snorted because he couldn’t bring himself to laugh. “What would you do, if you were me?”
Lanny lifted his brows, cocked his head the other way. “Well. I’m going to Buffalo.”
Jamie blew out a long, slow breath, and forced his thoughts to slow, considering his options – meager as they were. He could do as Lanny suggested and get a fake ID – there were people who made those – so that he could start over; reinvent himself, re-enroll. Or he could go somewhere new and start over there; new name, new identity, no longer the weak, asthmatic boy who needed so many sick days. He could…
It dawned on him slowly, then, that he could do any damn thing he wanted to. And might get the chance to, if being a vampire truly meant being immortal. Nikita and Sasha looked like they were still in their twenties, and had been alive for over a hundred years at this point.
“You don’t have to come with us,” Lanny said, standing and extending a hand, “but you’re welcome to.”
Jamie considered it a long moment…and then took his hand.
~*~
Trina had one more thing she wanted to do before she left.
The shadows lay in long stripes on the sidewalk, the sunlight golden and slanted through the windows of the coffeeshop when Harvey pushed through the door and scanned the tables. Trina gave a little wave and steeled herself for the conversation ahead as the ME approached.
When Harvey reached the table, she stood beside it a moment, arms folded, hip cocked, expression tight. She was pissed, and Trina didn’t blame her. “You understand you’re probably going to get benched, right? The captain’s going to bump you down to Cold Cases.”
“If it happens, it happens,” Trina said. “I’ll accept the consequences of my actions.”
Harvey huffed out an impatient breath. “But your actions don’t make any damn sense, Trina. Why are you throwing your career away? What could be worth that?”
“Why is it bothering you so much?” Trina countered.
Harvey bit her lip a moment, quietly fuming, and then sat down across from Trina. “Because,” she said, biting off the words, “I know how hard I had to work to get where I am, and you had to work that hard, too. A spotless record; no mistakes. No sick days, no romantic relationships, no distractions.” Her breathing had picked up, short and sharp. “I worked my ass off, and I spend all my time taking apart dead people. You’re a good cop, Trina. When you come into my morgue, I know you’re going to leave it and go bust the son of a bitch who put that body on my table. You sacrificed just like I did; we lose sleep for the same reasons. And you’re just…just giving up!” Her hands fluttered up and slapped back down into her lap, defeated. “I just don’t understand. We’re doing good work – how can you let that go?”
Trina took a deep breath and cradled her coffee in both hands. “I get it,” she said, because she did. They had their dedication in common: the sleepless nights, the nonexistent personal lives. If you gave your every waking moment to a career…what were you left with when the career crumbled? What happened when your driving force in life was suddenly ripped away?
Harvey’s brows lifted. So?
“Okay,” Trina said, chest tight. “You’re not going to believe any of this, but I’m going to tell you, because you’re right – walking away from the force would be insane…unless I had a very good reason. I had been having these nightmares,” she started, and then she told her everything. As plainly and succinctly as possible. Careful not to skip over the impossible parts.
Harvey’s face smoothed over halfway through, a dazed sort of blank.
By the time she finished, Trina was out of breath. “My job is important because people are, in general, important. I care about justice. And in this case, the people are my people, and the justice is the kind that the legal system can’t guarantee. So. I’m not just risking my career for nothing. Sasha saved my great-grandmother in 1942. He’s literally the only reason I even exist. I owe him this. I owe him a hell of a lot more than this, but I’ll start with a rescue mission. He’s family.”
Harvey opened and closed her mouth a few times. “The…the guy. The one who was at your desk. The blond one. He’s a were…wolf?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s…from World War Two?”
“Yes.”
“And is best friends with your great-granddad. Who’s a vampire.”
“Yes.”
Harvey took another few breaths. Nodded. “Okay. Okay. No…not, it’s not okay.” She shook her head. “Are you–”
“Christine,” Trina said. “I know it sounds nuts. But when have I ever said anything crazy? You know me. I’m not a liar. I…” She sighed. “You don’t have to believe me. I just wanted to tell you the truth. Finally. At least that way you’ll know I didn’t run off for no reason.”
Harvey stared at her a long, unblinking moment. She splayed her hands out on the table and finally looked down at them, drawing in a deep breath. “I want to tell you you’re full of shit.”
Trina waited.
“But he was dead. He was. And he walked away.” She lifted her head, expression raw and vulnerable. “How is any of this possible?”
“It just is,” Trina said, helplessly.
Harvey blew out a breath and nodded. “Well. If you need any help…”
Trina smiled. “I appreciate it. But I’ve got enough. I think.”
Harvey nodded again, sharper this time, expression firming. “You’ll let me know how it goes?”
“Yeah.”
“And when you get back in town?”
“Yeah. Thank you, Christine.”
Harvey waved her off. “Nah. Just…go save your werewolf. Or the world. Whichever comes first.”
Trina started to stand.
“Oh, and vampire or not, please tell me Webb finally made his move. Because watching the two of you dancing around each other was getting really old.”
Trina smiled. “Yeah. He did.”
Harvey chuckled. “Lanny Webb the vampire. Shit. That’s kinda hot.”
Trina laughed, and it was the lightest she’d felt in days. Their mission might fail, but she wouldn’t allow herself to think it. Not now, and not in the days to come.
She left the coffeeshop with a clear conscious and the thought that maybe, just maybe, they could take on the world. Her crazy band of boys and her.
Nikita waited a half a block down, parked along the curb. They’d picked up the car between stops at her place and his, an old black Barracuda that, for all its time sitting in a parking garage, gleamed like new, painstakingly waxed and buffed, lovingly preserved.
He stood leaning against the passenger window, ankles crossed, sunglasses shading his eyes. If she hadn’t known better, she would have said he looked like your typical sulky young man in his denim and combats, arms folded, expression daring anyone to speak to him. But Trina could read the tension in his stance, the way he held his shoulders pulled in close; could decipher the downward curve of his mouth for what it was: fear. Worry. He was a barely-held-together mess of nerves and guilt and grief.
They had to get Sasha back. Had to.
“Ready?” she asked when she reached him.
He nodded and opened her door. “Are you?”
A loaded question, one for which she didn’t have a true answer. So she flashed him a smile, and slid in.