43
“Hold the bars with both hands, like that, yes. I believe all the metal’s connected. Conducive, that way,” Val had said. “And just wait. This might take a moment.” He’d wrapped his own hands around his bars, as well as he could, so his thick cuffs were touching the steel.
“Wait for what?”
“You’ll know it when it happens.”
That had been…how long ago? He didn’t know.
He’d never been electrocuted before.
Fuck.
As awareness returned, he realized that he’d let go of the bars at some point during his fit. Seizure. Whatever it was.
Rooster blinked open blurry eyes and saw that extra lights had been turned on overhead, so bright they hurt – or maybe that was the aftereffects of electrocution.
Voices echoed off the stone walls. Shuffle of feet, clank and creak of his cell door opening.
He lifted his hands and saw they were trembling. Not only that, but the shock seemed to have reversed Red’s pain-suppressing magic. His entire left side was alive with hurt.
Still, it wasn’t the worst off he’d ever been.
His vision finally settled in time to see that three guards had come down; two were headed for the cell on the end, and one had come in to see why he was spasming on the ground.
“Shit,” the guy said, leaning low over Rooster, not protecting his sidearm at all. “Do you think…agh!”
Not his most impressive performance, and it hurt like hell, but the guard ended up unconscious on the floor, and Rooster got shakily to his feet with the man’s gun in his hand. He bent down to retrieve the stun baton from his belt, too. Armed it…and caught the first of the other two guards in the face with it when he turned to see what all the noise was about.
He turned the gun on the other.
“Wait,” Val rasped. He’d pushed himself up to a sitting position from his electrified sprawl on the floor, but he shook like a newborn foal. The crazy fuck was smiling, though. “Leave them alive. P-p- damn it. Please.” He gave a few wheezy coughs. “I need to…to…”
Rooster cracked the man across the temple with the gun instead, and he dropped like a bag of hammers to lay beside his twitching colleagues. “What’s the plan here?” He ached all over, and it felt like his teeth were vibrating, he couldn’t stop shaking, but adrenaline was as powerful a drug as any. And as his head cleared by the second, Rooster knew the urge to move. If they were making a break for it, it had to be now, and it had to be fast.
“Cuffs,” Val panted, with a gesture that was either meant to jangle them, or was just a spasm.
“Keys?”
“Check them.”
Unsteadily, hurrying and clumsy, he did, and hit pay dirt.
“The collar first,” Val instructed when Rooster knelt in front of him. “Watch the electrodes.”
There were electrodes, he saw, more than a dozen, tiny round things trailing green wires, stuck down the back of Val’s neck, across his shoulders, and down his chest. And inside the cuffs and the collar, there were spikes too, he saw, leaving bloody scratches on Val’s pale skin.
“Jesus Christ, what is this?” It was mostly rhetorical. And partly a reaction to the smell. Up close like this, it became readily apparent that no one had allowed Val to bathe in a very long time.
“It’s a shock collar,” Val explained with a weak laugh. “Like for a dog.”
“Yeah. I got that.”
The metal was new, untarnished, and it opened with a quick turn of the key. Val hissed as Rooster drew it away, and they didn’t have time. This was taking too long.
“Here.” Rooster moved one of Val’s trembling hands up to the guy’s own collarbone, and the electrodes there. “Pull those off while I get the cuffs.”
He complied with a soft grunt of effort.
The mass of chains, cuffs, and collar hit the stone floor with a sound that seemed bigger than it ought to be. Val blinked at his bloodied wrists a moment, chest hitching as he breathed.
“Can you stand?” Rooster asked.
“Yes, just…Here. Drag him to me.” He gestured limply to one of the unconscious guards.
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Rooster was already in deep as it was. And fuck these guys, seriously. Fumbling a little, he managed to move one of the guards close to Val. Close enough for Val to grab the man’s arm and drag him, with much difficulty and cursing, up into his lap. He turned his head with a shaking hand, so the guard’s throat was exposed; Rooster could see the pulse beating just beneath the skin.
“What are you doing?”
Val ran his tongue across his lip, staring down at the man’s neck. He took a few deep breaths, and muttered something in a language Rooster didn’t understand. It sounded reverent, like a prayer.
“We don’t have time–” Rooster started.
And Val ducked his head and bit the man’s throat.
~*~
Fulk dreamed of vampires. Strange ones, three of them – one in particular who smelled faintly of Sasha.
Then he snapped awake and realized he could smell vamps. Barely. It was more a tingling down the back of his neck. He growled, an automatic reaction, and Annabel stiffened as she came awake against his chest.
“What?”
There had been a dozen things he was probably supposed to do – the least of which was make sure Sasha and the girl hadn’t killed one another. But between the lulling warmth of the bath, and the sticky heat of Annabel’s skin pressed against his, he’d pushed responsibility aside and let the moment turn into the kind of slow, melting sex that left him breathless, panting endearments against her throat. After, they’d pulled down the sheets on the bed and stretched out on the cool silk, limbs intertwined. Fulk hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but he obviously had.
He sat up, now, fuzzy-headed, still very much naked. “Vamps. Close.”
Anna bolted upright, cursing like a sailor…or like the Southern farm rat she’d been when he met her. “Motherfuck…shit, shit, shit. Where are my fucking…” She scrambled off the bed, snatching for the clothes they’d left scattered.
Fulk got to his feet, but didn’t reach for his clothes. He went to his wife, and caught her by the shoulders.
She froze, head tipping back. “What?”
“Stay here for me. Please.”
She heaved a ragged breath. “Say something like that one more time, you chivalrous asshole. I dare you.”
“Anna.”
She growled, and snapped her teeth together. But when he’d dressed and was leaving the room, she stood with her arms wrapped around herself, glaring at him.
“Be careful.”
“Always.”
~*~
The plan was simple, and also terrifying.
“They have Sasha. I don’t care how many of them I have to cut down,” Nikita had said back at the cabin. “If you can’t handle that, then you don’t need to come.” He’d been dispassionate, ice-cold.
Trina had insisted she could do this, and so she would.
Through the scope of the rifle, she watched the team of black-clad guards milling around on the manor’s front steps. Watched a shadow detach itself from beneath a window, and melt up the side stairs. Watched an echo on the other side do the same. Lanny and Alexei, the distraction. Pandemonium as the guards noticed them, and split their attention to both sides to intercept them.
And then there was Nikita. He stalked up the steps like the predator he was, breeze playing with his long coat.
“You’re just going to walk right in?” she’d asked before.
“Yes. It’s the last thing they’ll expect.”
And that’s what he did. He carried a variety of handguns, and she wouldn’t let herself look away as he used one to clear out the guards.
The bodies fell. One after the next. The gunshots were distant cracks, likes eggs breaking. And then the three of them swept inside the massive double front doors, Nikita on point.
Trina took a deep breath…
And heard a twig snap down below.
She jerked her face off the stock and glanced down, letting the rifle’s weight pull it down, too, so it was aimed at the man standing beneath her tree.
Eyes wide and white-rimmed in his dark face, he was dressed in dark green, head-to-toe, some sort of tactical gear. He carried an AK, with a knife and a sidearm strapped to his hip.
He was not, she noted, wearing the black of the front door guards.
Slowly, he lifted an empty hand up, palm toward her. Wait.
They were both breathing hard, the competing rhythms louder than the birdsong around them.
“You one of them?” she asked.
“No. You?”
“No.”
They stared.
“What are you doing here?” Trina asked. Her hands sweated on the stock, and she tightened them.
An echoing sheen of sweat dampened his forehead, glittering in the slanted sunlight. “I’m on a rescue mission. How ‘bout you?”
“Same.”
More staring.
“I’m Deshawn,” he said, finally.
“Trina.”
A sound startled her, and she flinched; Deshawn flinched. It took her a moment to realize that what she’d heard was a walkie-talkie, and not her own.
“Those are my friends,” Deshawn explained, pointing to the radio on his belt. “I need to check in.”
She nodded, and he reached for it with deliberate, careful slowness.
“Who are your friends?” she asked.
“You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”
“Try me.”
~*~
Rooster’s brain whited out. All he could think was an endless loop of holy fucking shit as he stared down at the man…the whatever he was…drinking another man’s blood from his throat like a…like a…
Oh.
Like a vampire.
Finally, Val released the seal he’d made of mouth and throat with a sucking pop and tipped his head back against the edge of his cot. He exhaled in a long, low groan, eyes shut, mouth curved up in a smile…red and wet with fresh blood. He licked his lips. “My God.”
Rooster thought he might be sick.
“Do you know how long it’s been?” Val’s voice came out dreamy, satisfied. He cracked his eyes open to blue slits. “Hell, I don’t even know how long it’s been. Too long.”
Rooster took a step back.
“Oh, relax. Bring me another one.”
“What? No.”
Val chuckled. “Fine. I’ll do it myself.”
He pushed the man – the body; it was no longer breathing, the skin an awful gray color now – off his lap and got to his feet with only a little wobble. He looked much steadier; the shakes had receded. He shut his eyes again, expression blissful, as he pushed his hair back with both hands. His face was flushed now, deep spots of color under each cheekbone. The scratches on his wrists and neck seemed paler, as if they were healing by the second.
He wiped his palm across his mouth, and then looked at it. And then licked the last traces of blood off his skin. “Mm.” His gaze flicked up to Rooster, and he smirked, all teeth. “Horrified?”
Rooster didn’t respond.
“Step aside.” He gave a dismissive flick of his fingers, and when Rooster stepped back, Val bent down and hauled the second unconscious guard up by his collar like he was a doll. Like he was nothing.
Rooster’s stomach convulsed and he turned away, unable to watch.
He could hear, though, and that was almost as bad. The quiet, wet sounds that, if he shut his eyes, could have been almost sexual.
He swallowed his rising gorge. “Look, you need to hurry up.”
A pause. A slurp. “Don’t rush me,” Val said, voice thick. Thick with blood.
After an eternity, one in which any number of things could be happening upstairs, Rooster heard the body hit the floor with a meaty thump.
“Ah,” Val breathed on a satiated sigh. “One more.” When he moved past Rooster to get out of the cell, and into the hallway, moving to the third guard, his steps were the rolling strut of a predator. All shakiness and exhaustion had left him. In tattered rags of clothes, his hair a snarled mess, he had the bearing of a king, as he pinned the guard with a foot to the groin – the man came awake with a shout of pain – and bent to lift him up into an embrace as gentle as a lover’s, as strong as a monster’s.
Rooster shut his eyes, and finally, it was finished.
Val walked up to him, grinning, lips, and tongue, and teeth red. “Now, what will we do about your problem?” he murmured in a voice like silk.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Rooster said, hand tightening on the grip of his pilfered gun.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it, darling.”
Rooster started to move – shove him, shoot him, duck him, something – but Val was too fast. His hands closed on Rooster’s shoulders, an immovable grip, and before Rooster could react in any way, Val lunged in and kissed him.
But kiss was too kind a word. Val attacked his mouth. Rooster had time to register a press of lips, the oily heat of fresh blood, a tongue shoving roughly between his lips. The copper of blood inside his mouth.
Then Val pulled back, his grin awful. There was a fresh, weeping bite mark on the inside of his arm. He’d bitten himself?
Rooster wanted to vomit. He started to spit.
“It’s not theirs,” Val said. And then: “Swallow that.”
Rooster did, only because his throat was convulsing, his whole body was convulsing. A shudder rippled through him, as exhilarating and pleasurable as an orgasm.
Val clapped him on the shoulder. “Wipe your mouth.” He did the same for himself. “And let’s go.”
~*~
It was a suicide mission. Or it would have been, for someone else. Someone who wasn’t a former Soviet attack dog too hell-bent on killing everyone in his path to worry about jeopardizing his comrades. He’d never been any good at keep his friends alive before, why start now?
Nikita mowed through guards in the manor’s soaring foyer. A group of lab technicians in white coats cried out and threw themselves down onto the expensive rug, hands flying to cover their heads.
“Where is Aleksander Kashnikov?” Nikita demanded, shouted really, his accent thicker than it had been in years. When no one answered, he fired a shot straight overhead, and heard crystal shatter. A few thick pieces rained down on the floor around them, and the lab coats screeched collectively. “Where is he?”
“You’re fucking insane,” Lanny muttered, and Nikita was dimly aware that he was clearing the rest of the foyer, checking for threats. “I love it.”
Nikita lowered his Smith & Wesson, so its barrel was trained on the huddled techs as he stalked toward them, wooden bootheels kissing the floor with a sound like gunshots. He was reminded, ridiculously, of walking across the Kremlin’s high-gloss floors.
“Are you deaf?” He reached them, and toed a cowering woman’s hand away from her face. She made an animal sound of terror and looked up at him through a sheen of tears. “Where is my wolf, bitch?”
“So angry,” Alexei mused at his side, but made no move to stop him.
“D-d-downstairs,” the woman stuttered.
Then that was where he would go.
He didn’t realize he was in the process of stepping over the woman until a restraining hand landed on his arm.
“Whoa,” Lanny said when Nikita snarled at him. “I get it: you’ve got a one-track mind tuned to Sasha. But maybe we should figure out how to get downstairs first, yeah?”
Nikita snarled again, because this was going too slow.
“Yeah,” Lanny sighed. “Come on.”
~*~
Jamie wasn’t ready to shoot people. Even if he could work the gun – which he knew he could thanks to practice with Trina’s dad – and even if the threat was very prevalent – which it was at the moment – killing wasn’t something Jamie could stomach.
“You killed last night,” Nikita had told him levelly, and he’d been overcome by a wave of nausea.
It hadn’t felt like killing. That night – “come here, little one” – with the weight of a comforting hand at his nape, and the heat of a living body at his chest, the wonderful, thrilling bloom of fresh blood in his mouth, he’d felt so very alive. How could death beget that kind of wild self-aware life?
In his sated, post-blood ecstasy, it had been so easy to overlook the two dropped bodies. The way Nikita and Lanny had hefted them over a fence and into a tangle of roadside kudzu.
But he had killed.
And he didn’t think he could do it in good conscious, unless his blood lust was up.
So for now, the plan was to blend in. To find Sasha.
They’d bought a cheap blazer on the way down, and as soon as they were past the door, he ducked into a dining room with a table as long as a football field and shrugged into it. Put a pair of useless glasses on his nose and a fake ID badge hanging out of his pocket. A disguise that would have never worked under normal circumstances, but right now, with Nikita and Lanny creating a violent distraction, Jamie might be able to slip in unnoticed.
He took a deep breath, started forward, and caught his reflection in a gilt-framed mirror.
Just weeks before, he’d been worried about final exams and portfolios. Now? He was a party to murder, and rescue, and had fed off a man’s blood. Had taken his life.
He shivered all over, and walked deeper into the house.
~*~
There were two doors that led to the cell, one made of bars, and one that looked like something used to secure a bank vault, or the hold of a Navy ship. Beyond that was a spiral stone staircase, straight out of a castle, and the only way was up.
Val went first. They encountered more guards on the ascent, but Rooster never had to fire off a shot. Val broke one’s neck and sent him tumbling down the stairs past Rooster. Another he looked like he might bite, and Rooster hustled him past with a terse, “Not time.” Val sighed and slammed the man’s head against the stone wall.
At the top, they emerged into a long, low-ceilinged stone room that Rooster recognized by smell: the place of dust and mildew. He saw boxes arranged on several long rows of metal shelves; boxes stacked in corners; boxes gone damp and sagging apart, spilling books like rice from a sack. Boxes that looked charred at the edges.
He couldn’t see any guards yet, but heard shouts and running feet.
Val grabbed his sleeve and towed him around a shelf. “You’ll probably need that gun now,” he said, primly.
He slid into the role of shooter without thought. He handled a gun the way other men handled shaving razors, or the gearshifts of cars. A brainless, instinctual exercise, without flinching. One. Two. Three. Four.
He turned to find Val dropping the fifth, wiping his mouth with his tattered sleeve, eyes electric with something like joy. “Come on.”
Another staircase, and then–
It had to be a lab. A seemingly endless stretch of low tables and desks cluttered with everything from computers to beakers. A stunned once-over revealed designated workstations, metal tables, half-walls and curtained partitions; industrial coolers and fridges, big banks of monitors. Heavy wooden doors lined the walls. And it was chaos: tipped-over chairs, strewn papers, abandoned monitors. Rooster saw flashes of white as techs hid beneath tables. Others were disappearing behind the sliding-shut doors of an elevator. Screams. Shrieks.
“Shit,” he murmured, and was almost overwhelmed.
A young man with glasses and a pocket protector tried to sneak past, and Val snatched his arm. The kid squealed and went limp.
Val gave him a shake. “My weapons. Where are they?”
The kid went the color of spoiled milk and gaped up at him. “I – I – I.”
“My sword, you idiot. My daggers. I know they’re here.”
“Tr-try the – the weapons room,” he finally stammered. When Val dropped him, Rooster thought he might have fainted. Val leaned down, snapped his laminated ID badge from his lapel, and stepped over the poor boy.
No, not a poor boy. These were the people who’d treated Red like a science fair project. Fuck all of them.
“We don’t have time for this,” Rooster growled, tailing Val as he began opening doors and looking for the promised arsenal.
“Believe me,” Val said, trying another, and then another in rapid succession. “When we run into my brother, you’ll wish I was armed…Ah! Here.”
Like everything else about this place, the weapons room was impressive as hell. Cabinet after cabinet of guns and knives in all varieties. An indoor shooting range.
And set off by themselves, two ornate wooden cases with velvet lining the color of blood. One was empty. The other held an honest-to-God sword. The daggers arranged around it had jewels set in the hilts, but the sword – simple, masculine, and gleaming – was the showstopper.
Val pulled the little padlock apart like it was made of taffy and murmured something low in another language as he lifted the sword from its velvet bed. Tilted it so the overhead light ran down its length in one long flash.
“Hello, gorgeous,” he said in English, and smiled with all his teeth showing.
“Let’s get a move on,” Rooster growled.
There was a scabbard, too, sturdy leather with an intricate strap that Val ducked through so sword and scabbard lay down his back. “Yes, fine. Let’s get the children.”
~*~
The walls of their room dampened the scents and sounds beyond, but Sasha could still tell that something was happening. A great stirring of panic that lifted his hair on end.
He wanted, so badly, to believe that Nikita…that the others…And yet he feared it, terribly, because Nikita was brave, and stubborn, and wonderful, but this place was a fortress, and rescue wasn’t possible.
“Sasha,” Red said beside him. “What are you–”
“Shh.” Footsteps just outside the door. He grabbed her wrist, straining to listen, ready to bundle her into the corner as best as his shaky limbs could manage if someone came through the door with the intent to hurt them. They were too valuable to kill, he knew, but there was no way Dr. Talbot would let Nik waltz right in and drag them out. “Listen.”
An electronic chime as a keycard was used, and the lock disengaged.
Sasha began to shake – shakes on top of drug shakes – and he gritted his teeth, fighting with a sudden wave of faintness. He couldn’t black out now.
The door opened to two scents: one vampire, one human. Not Nik, and not Vlad, a stranger, but…
Someone knelt down in front of him on the floor. Blue eyes, and tangled waist-length blond hair. Smell of human blood, and rags for clothes; pommel of a sword protruding over his shoulder.
He wasn’t polished and gleaming, dressed in velvets and high-gloss boots, and Sasha could actually smell him now, for the first time. But there was no mistaking…
“Val?” he asked, and to his great shame, tears filled his eyes.
The prince who’d first visited Sasha when he was eight, who’d told him how to kill Rasputin, and save Nikita, smiled at him now, so tenderly. He reached to touch Sasha’s face, cupped his cheek, swept his thumb across it. The warmth and solidity of him was a shock. “Hello, sweetheart.”
“Are you – are you really here?” As if the touch wasn’t enough proof.
“Yes, I really am. Let’s get those awful things off, shall we?” He produced a key. “Your Nikita’s here, and he’s mad as a wet cat.”
“Nikita’s here?”
The first cuff came undone with a little click. “Yes, can’t you hear all the shooting?”
~*~
Val knelt down in front of a pale-haired boy, face melting into sweetness, and they talked about…something, as Val undid his cuffs.
Rooster didn’t really see any of that. His eyes went straight to Red, who sat crouched against the wall, wrists cuffed together. She looked toward the door, and in the second before she recognized him, the sheer terror on her face made him want to stomp back out into the main lab, drag lab coats out from under tables, and put bullets in them.
He watched her see him, really see him, and she scrambled to her feet and ran to him. She couldn’t put her arms around him, but that didn’t matter. He caught her and tucked her into his chest, enfolded her into his own arms, big enough for both of them.
He didn’t say anything, because he couldn’t. He pressed his face down into her red hair and felt the warmth of her breath in the hollow of his throat, listened to the way it hitched and caught.
“You came,” she whispered. “You came.”
“Yeah,” he choked out.
When he lifted his head, he saw that Val had got the boy up on his feet, though he was wobbly. Val had an arm looped around his waist. The boy’s hair was glued to his forehead with sweat, and the dark circles beneath his eyes stood out prominently against too-pale skin. He looked sick.
Val studied him with clear concern. “Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t look it. Where’s Talbot?”
“Prob – probably in his office,” he boy said, and his teeth were chattering.
Val growled – actually growled, like an animal. After the blood-drinking, it still managed to surprise Rooster, that catlike sound.
“Here.” He steered the shaking boy toward Rooster and Red. “Make sure he doesn’t fall down. I want a word before we leave.”
“What the hell?” But all he could do was catch the boy by the shoulder and pull he and Red along with him as Val charged out of the room and toward a door marked with the name Dr. Edmund Talbot on a gold placard.
“Watch him,” Rooster said, entrusting the sickly kid to Red, who laid a comforting, if insubstantial hand on his shoulder, and scanned the lab around them. It was eerily quiet. Everyone had either fled, or was hiding. How there weren’t more guards coming at them, Rooster had no idea. His hand tightened on his gun.
A sound brought his attention back to the door: Val kicking it in. There was a splintering crack, as if a brace had been broken, and the door flew inward to reveal Jake standing just inside, gun at the ready.
A gunshot.
Val shuddered as the bullet hit home.
Rooster lunged forward, bringing his gun up.
But Val, somehow, though Rooster could see the gory exit wound in his back, didn’t fall. Instead, he laughed. “Lovely try, Major,” he said.
Jake tried to move, to get off another shot, but Val was impossibly fast. He batted the gun away with one hand, and gripped Jake’s jaw with the other.
“But you missed the important part.” Val’s hand tightened, knuckles going white, and there was a crack of bone breaking.
Jake let out a high, thin scream, and Val tossed him away. He landed half-over a chair that then toppled, and lay still.
“Oh,” Red gasped, clutching at Rooster’s sleeve.
A man with glasses fumbled across his desk, a horror-struck, desperate attempt to defend himself while being too panicked to go about it properly. Rooster recognized that emotion. Reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there, wanting to flee, your knees too weak to hold you up.
Val leaned over the desk and clapped both his hands over the man’s, pinning them to the wood. “All my love to the family,” he said, and turned back to the door.
“Oh, him you don’t kill?” Rooster asked.
Val hesitated in the doorway, and though he feigned bored, Rooster saw a little tic in his jaw. “His daughter doesn’t deserve that.” Then he shouldered past them.
Rooster spared Jake a glance; he had no idea if he was dead, or just unconscious. At the moment, he didn’t care.
~*~
Nikita caught another vampire’s scent behind him just in time to duck the knife that knocked the hat from his head and buried itself in the paneling of the library wall.
“Shit,” Lanny muttered, whirling, shotgun at the ready.
Alexei yelped, and tripped, and dragged himself up hastily.
Nikita spun as he stood, gun leveled on the creature in the library doorway.
He was Nikita’s height, but broader through the shoulders. His face, the harsh angles of it, its stony utter lack of expression, pinged something way back in Nikita’s memory. The widow’s peak, the tied back long hair. This was not a young vampire, oh no. No laboratory creation. This was the real deal.
And he carried a sword.
“Who are you?” Nikita asked him in Russian.
He answered in Romanian, an old dialect. “The Son of the Dragon.”
Dracula.
“Did he just say–” Lanny started, and Nikita waved him to silence.
His heartbeat throbbed under his skin, a painful pressure that felt like it would punch through him like he was only made of tissue paper. Under the strong blood-spice of Dracula – of Vlad – was a hint of a transferred scent: the pine needle musk that Nikita’s sheets smelled like back home.
The house was pandemonium beyond this room, filled with the thump of running feet, shouts, confused questions, the crackle and squawk of radios. But here, in this book-lined room, Nikita could think of nothing but that familiar scent. Just a trace. Fresh. Alive.
“Vlad Dracula,” he said with formality. “I think you’ve met my wolf.”
Vlad slid into English, too. Accented, but perfect, like an expat who’d been speaking it half his life, and not just a few weeks. “I have met Sasha, yes. But he’s not bound to a master, that I can tell. Not yet.”
Nikita flashed his fangs with a low, warning growl.
“You’re the one in the file. The Chekist.” He pronounced the word like it amused him. “Nikita Baskin.” He tipped his head to the side, weighing. “You are a young one.”
This was a game. No, it was a dance. Nikita felt the weight of Kolya’s knives sheathed at his back and wished suddenly, desperately for this old friend. Kolya was the dancer, he thought with choked-back panic. Not me. With everyone else in this horrid castle, he could rely on brute force, on terror, his powers, the still-impressive black coat that had frightened Soviets, and frightened a whole new generation of peasants today. But here now, with the Wallachian prince of legend, intimidation wasn’t an option. There was only winning…and winning might mean death.
He fought to keep his voice neutral. It came out tight. “Where is Sasha?”
“He is safe,” Vlad said mildly. He didn’t move, but the sword caught the light somehow, a persistent glimmer. “You should not worry.”
“There are other wolves,” he said, thinking of the ferals they’d never been able to find back in New York. Of the wolves that Val had told them resided here…And where were they? The baron and his American baroness? Hiding? Choosing not to take sides? Assholes. “You can use them. For your tests.” To be your slaves, he didn’t say. “You have no need of Sasha. He isn’t a good war dog anyway. He wouldn’t be useful.”
But he remembered Sasha’s chin smeared with blood, the appalled excitement in his eyes, glinting bright as the sun-warmed snow. That was the beautiful thing about Sasha: he was all youth, and spark, and heart, and curiosity. He killed like he did everything else: passionately.
If he was doing it for someone he loved.
Vlad’s face did something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Is that why you don’t use him?” His head tipped the other way. “Or do you use him for other things? He smelled like you, all the way down to his scalp.”
Another growl rippled up his throat, unbidden, this one a direct challenge. “I don’t have a beef with you. Whatever you’re doing here, I don’t care. All I want is Sasha.”
Vlad seemed to consider it. Or pretended to. “No.”
Nikita started forward, brought up short by Lanny’s hand on his shoulder. He growled again, a true snarl this time.
“Do you want to fight me?” Vlad asked, and he sounded truly curious, the bastard. “Maybe I should tell you first: I have no…what’s the word? Fetish? Yes, fetish. I don’t care about Sasha. He is young, and skinny, and a boy besides. I don’t want a pet, Captain Baskin. But if I’m to go into battle, I need a wolf at my side. That’s how it was done in the old days – in my father’s days. And then again in mine. A wolf to act as right hand. My wolf died over five centuries ago, and so you see, I have need of one. Dr. Talbot said he would provide, and he has provided Sasha. Sasha who is, as I say, not bound to anyone. He is, as the Americans say, free for the taking.”
“You fucking–”
“Hey,” Lanny said, squeezing Nikita’s shoulder hard. He must have been very strong as a man, because as a vampire, his big boxer’s hand threatened to dislocate Nikita’s shoulder. To Vlad: “Okay, look. Mr. Dracula. Shit. Wow. Anyway. You can see my friend here is upset. And you get that, right? He’s not normally the sort of person who sticks his nose in other people’s business. Which is ironic since he was secret police, you know–”
“Lanny,” Alexei sing-songed, the tone belied by an undercurrent of stress. “Perhaps stick to the point, starshoi, yes?”
“Yeah. What I’m getting at is: these guys? Nikita and Sasha? They’ve been together, just the two of them, a real long time. They’re like a coupla old marrieds. I haven’t met a lot of wolves, but there have to be others, and it’d be real great if you could – bond, or whatever – with one of them. You don’t wanna break up best friends like this, huh? Also, he’s freaking out. Look at him. I don’t wanna ride all the way back in the car with him when he’s like this. Come on, bro, whaddya say?”
Nikita vowed to kick Lanny right in the balls at the first opportunity, the stupid meathead.
Or maybe hug him, because that little spiel had made him feel like family.
Vlad took a step forward, and they collectively tensed. They were all of a height, but Vlad managed to look down his nose at them. “When my uncle wakes, it won’t matter that you and your friend are together. Nothing will matter. Are you so selfish that you would stand in the way of my war over one person? That you would let friendship be the thing that breaks the world?”
Nikita felt a brittle smile steal across his face. “You arrogant idiot. The world’s broken a thousand times. You missed most of it while you were asleep. It always breaks, and stupid people always die trying to keep it from breaking, and it always mends itself in the end. I can live through that. I have. But I won’t live without him.” He’d find a way to end it all, finally, once and for all if that was the case. “Get in my way, and I’ll go through you, Son of the Dragon or not.”
Lanny hissed out a breath. “Writing checks you seriously can’t cash,” he whispered.
“My lord Dracula,” Alexei said, taking a hesitant, non-threatening step forward. He must have finally shaken off his shock. “I’m sure there’s something we can work out. We are both, after all, royalty – both princes, even – and I’m sure, just as my papa would say, that there is nothing a little diplomacy won’t–”
Vlad turned a look on the tsarevich that made even Nikita’s knees feel weak. “Shut up. Russian princess.” He turned back to Nikita. “Through me it is, then, Captain.” He lifted his sword.
“Both of you, go,” Nikita said, shrugging Lanny off, and raising his gun. “Find Sasha. I’ll hold him.”
Lanny cursed extravagantly, calling him an idiot, but he grabbed Alexei, and they went.
~*~
The noise coming from downstairs. The scents.
Annabel’s hands, clammy with nervous sweat, skidded and slipped as she popped the latch on the box that Fulk had dragged out from beneath the bed. Most of his treasures of the past – he called it “old junk,” but she’d seen the way he looked at some of the jewelry and, especially, a few hand-carved wooden figures – were kept safe at a self-store facility in Georgia. But this box went with them everywhere. Just in case. His one concession to the threat that they pretended didn’t exist, but which had haunted their every step, from Beijing, to Paris, to Rio.
She finally got the latch and flipped the lid back. He’d pulled his longsword out just minutes before. The shortsword remained. And the American cavalry saber; that was the one she pulled out and unsheathed, the hiss-ting of the blade drawing a familiar comfort.
Stay in the room, sure. Like hell.
She was headed for the door when a sound froze her in her tracks. Downstairs was a discordant symphony of panicked noise, but this sound had come from above. Faint, but distinct. She–
She caught the first faint whiff of strange wolves before a dark shape moved toward the window, a blur, and the glass shattered.
Fulk!
Anna threw her head back and howled.
~*~
For such a short distance, the elevator moved awfully slow.
Rooster had Red shoved behind him while they waited for it to arrive; she gripped the back of his hoodie with both fists, not wanting to let go. He understood; if he could have spared his gun hand, he would have picked her up and carried her against his chest. Beside them, the boy, Sasha, braced himself with one shoulder against Rooster’s and fought hard shivers that left his breath coming in short, sharp pants.
Every second the elevator took to come was another second when they could be set upon.
“Come on, come on,” Rooster chanted under his breath.
Only Val seemed unbothered. He swayed gently side-to-side, dreamy smile on his face, watching the doors with obvious anticipation. Weirdo.
After what felt like an eternity, the car arrived with a polite ding and the doors slid open…
To reveal two men in jeans and Kevlar. Both carrying guns.
“Shit.” Rooster fingered the trigger of his stolen gun–
And Val laughed. “Detective Webb and his pet tsarevich in the flesh.”
“Hey,” one of the men, the younger one, protested.
The other guy, dark-haired, with a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once, opened his eyes wide in surprise. “Dude. Val? You’re loose?”
“Very much so. You were looking for us?”
Both men – neither of which made aggressive moves toward them – peered around Val’s shoulders.
“Sasha,” they both breathed out at the same time, relieved.
Broken Nose stepped off the elevator and went to the blond boy, took him by the shoulder and peered into his face, brows knitting. “Shit, kid, what’d they do to you?”
“I’m f-f-fine.” Sasha brought a hand up to cover the other man’s. A clumsy movement.
“Yeah, you look fine,” the guy quipped. Then he looked up and met Rooster’s gaze, not-so-subtly positioning himself between Sasha and everyone else. “Who are you?”
“Somebody trying to get the fuck out of this place,” Rooster said.
The guy stared at him a moment, then nodded. “Let’s see what the weight sensor’s like on this elevator, huh?”
“Lanny,” the other one said. “Nikita–”
“What about Nikita?” Sasha asked, forcing himself to stand more upright.
Val tipped his head back, and looked at the ceiling. “He’s meeting my brother, yes?” A sharp edge in his voice, half-anger, half-anticipation.
Sasha made an unhappy whimpering sound.
“Hey, kiddo,” Rooster said, turning to Red. “How goes it with the fire?”
She looked tired, but she smiled, and twirled her newly-freed wrists. “Ready.”
~*~
The wolf who came in through the window, landing in a neat tuck and roll on the rug, showering glass when he stood up and shook his head, was dressed all in dark green, a hood covering his hair, a bright reddish lick of it poking out the front, glued to his forehead with sweat.
Annabel clutched the saber so tightly her knuckles cracked, but she didn’t swing it. She’d missed her chance, she realized; if she wanted to catch him by surprised, she should have sliced at him as he was rolling, while she’d been gaping in surprise. Now, she’d have to go at him face-to-face, when he could defend himself.
They stared at one another, a long moment that seemed to stretch. He smelled like fresh sweat, like excitement and pumping adrenaline…but nothing darker than that. His face was flushed a bright pink under his dusting of freckles, but she could find not even a trace of malice. If anything, he looked curious.
He tipped his head to the side and gave a soft, questioning ruff.
She growled, but it was more of a question than a threat.
“I like your saber,” he said, gaze shifting to it, and, huh – Fulk had always taught her that to take your eyes off an enemy was as good as lying down and giving up. So. He wasn’t worried…or, a more hopeful voice in the back of her head suggested, he didn’t mean her any harm. “Civil War era, right?”
She swallowed around a dry throat. “Who are you?”
He executed a flourishing bow. “Robin of Locksley, at your service, ma’am.” He straightened with a smile that turned his freckled face to something foxy…and merry. “Now, unless you think we ought to duel, I really should help my friends.”
“Rob,” a voice said at the door behind her, and she cursed herself for her lapse. While she was busy trying to decide if he was friend or foe, others had joined him. No doubt they’d rappelled down through windows, too.
She ducked to the side so she could press her back to the wall and look at both of them. The newcomer was massive, his own green garb stretched tight over arms as big around as her waist.
He spared her a curious glance, then looked to Robin. Rob. “You good?”
They were both English, she noted.
“Yeah, I think so.” Rob looked over at her, brows raised in silent question.
“My husband–”
“Won’t be harmed. Don’t worry.”
“The Impaler’s down there.”
He grinned. “This should be interesting, then.”
~*~
Nikita got off two quick, accurate shots before his magazine was empty. Shots that hit the target, but did nothing, because Vlad was wearing Kevlar. Of-fucking-course he was. And then there wasn’t time to reload, because Vlad was on him with his sword.
Nikita pulled two of Kolya’s knives from his belt, and whirled.
He slashed out, one fast slice, intending to catch Vlad down the back of his arm. He couldn’t get at the meat of his torso, his heart, specifically, but he could get him bleeding. Sever the important tendons and ligaments that held him upright.
But he didn’t get the chance. Even though Vlad had swung with full-body momentum, he recovered almost right away, and he knocked the tip of Nikita’s knife aside with his sword.
There was an awful clanging sound, and a bolt of pain up Nikita’s wrist, and the knife winked like a shooting star as it sailed across the room.
Shit.
Nikita ducked the next swing. It was a big, two-handed sword, and its movements were necessarily telegraphed. But he couldn’t count on being able to dodge every blow. He would tire, and one would connect, and he’d be cleaved right in half.
Another swing, another duck. Nikita swiped low with the knife and was rewarded by a deep slice on Vlad’s thigh. The tac pants slit and he caught a glimpse of a thin red line of blood before he had to duck again, leap back, retreat.
Vlad pushed him relentlessly back across the floor, faster than anyone with a sword that heavy should have been able. Nikita tripped over the edge of the rug and went down on his hip, already scrambling to right himself. His hand touched something soft and fluffy. His hat! He curled his fingers in its fur.
The problem, Nikita realized – because there was always a fatal flaw in every one of history’s great heroes – was that he was fighting a prince, who fought like a prince. And Nikita was just Moscow street trash.
Vlad prepared another swing.
Nikita bolted up, close, inside his guard, and whipped his hat across the prince’s eyes.
Vlad made a startled sound, and it was the opening Nikita needed to drive his knife up to the hilt in his belly, just beneath the edge of his Kevlar.
A grunt, and another swing that Nikita barely danced back from. He put a good seven strides between them, and waited to see what would happen. While he pulled a fresh magazine from his coat pocket, of course. He wasn’t an idiot.
Vlad had a red scrape above one eyebrow where the sharp edge of the hammer and sickle badge had cut him. Nikita got a good look at it while Vlad’s gaze was downcast, fixed to the knife hilt protruding from his gut. He grimaced, wrapped his free hand around it, and pulled it out.
A chill rippled through Nikita, moving from the inside out. He was in Russia again, watching Rasputin’s skull pop and crack and knit itself back together again. Captain, you’re going to have to do a lot better than that.
The bloody knife hit the rug with a soft sound. Vlad lifted his head, snarled, and charged.
The magazine clicked into place, and Nikita racked the slide, but Vlad was on top of him, and there wasn’t time–
A white blur crashed into the prince’s side. Focused on Nikita, caught off guard, Vlad tumbled into a wingback chair that splintered on impact. The white blur was on top of him.
And it wasn’t a blur at all, but a shaggy white wolf, snarling furiously.
“Sasha!”
Nikita leapt up, gun forgotten in his hand, every ounce of concentration and energy arrowing into one goal: get Sasha the hell away from Vlad. Which wouldn’t be easy, because Sasha had Vlad’s sword arm in his jaws, savaging it.
Nikita reached out in a moment that seemed endless, slow-motion. He grabbed for Sasha’s thick ruff, intending to drag him back.
Vlad grabbed Sasha’s face with his free hand. Nikita saw fingertips go for eyeballs, heard Sasha’s whimper, and Vlad shoved Sasha off of him. No, he flung him. Sasha tumbled across the floor and slammed into a low coffee table with a sharp lupine squeal of pain.
The sound tugged at Nikita. Every last bit of him wanted to run to Sasha, to shield him, pick him up, check that he was alright. But he couldn’t do that, not yet, not with Vlad still a threat, getting to his feet, dripping blood all over the carpet and holding his sword in an unflinching grip, gnawed-on arm or not.
Throughout it all, from first glance to the last strike, Vlad had been expressionless and unemotional. Nikita was just something to be dealt with, calmly, rationally. But now, as he lifted his sword, Nikita saw the first flash of rage on the prince’s face.
He raised his gun.
And stumbled back from a sudden, searing wall of fire.
It was so hot, Nikita gave up on keeping his eyes open and tucked into a fast roll across the carpet. When he came up, squinting, he saw the mage at the helm of the fire: a very young redheaded girl, face gone white with strain.
The fire roared, then flickered, caught, retracted.
She gritted her teeth and made a low, anguished sound of frustration. She couldn’t hold it much longer, he understood.
“Thank you, dear, that’ll be all.” Val – a bedraggled, shaggy, rag-clad version of the polished prince who’d appeared in Trina’s grandmother’s living room – strode past the last flash of fire, a sword of his own in-hand. “I’ll take it from here.”
Vlad muttered something dark in Romanian.
Val answered in kind.
Light sparked along blades as swords came together with a sharp ring.
Nikita didn’t bother to watch. He scrambled across the rug and dropped to his knees beside Sasha, still in his wolf shape, curled up with his legs tucked, eyes shut, whining quietly.
“Sashka.” He stroked his fur, but got no response.
“Can you carry him?” Lanny asked from above him. “We need to go.”
“Yes.” And he gathered his wolf up in his arms.
~*~
Fulk had left their bedroom with his sword in his hand and his heart in his throat. Chaos meant one thing: the rescue attempt was underway. And he knew, with a certainty that made him feel sick, that only someone with sword training and preternatural strength had a prayer of getting between Vlad and the doomed rescuers.
He’d reached the portrait gallery when a man dressed all in green crashed through one of the soaring windows and rolled into a ready crouch, one hand braced on the carpet runner, the other on the butt of a handgun.
Not a man, but a wolf.
He stood up slowly, eyes trained on first the sword in Fulk’s hands, then Fulk’s face. His brows rose up until they disappeared into the glossy dark curls that fell over his forehead.
“Le Strange?” he asked.
And that was when Fulk noticed he wore green. Lincoln green.
It had been a long, long time since he’d bumped into one of Locksley’s boys, but he’d been left with an impression. If memory served, this one was Scarlet.
“Are you one of Sasha’s people?” Fulk asked.
Scarlet’s brows raised another notch. “Sasha? We’re here for the girl. And her angry Marine.”
“Oh.” He hadn’t expected that.
Scarlet smiled a little. “You gonna get in my way?”
Fulk didn’t know. “You broke my window,” he said to stall.
Scarlet’s smile stretched. “Word has it it’s not your window anymore. Or did you invite the Institute in?”
He didn’t get a chance to answer. A howl shivered through the air: Annabel’s.
Any other time, Fulk would have never turned his back on Will Scarlet. But now, with his mate calling him, he turned and bolted. He heard Scarlet behind him, running too, and didn’t care.
The gallery T’d into the main hallway, and at the intersection, another Lincoln green-clad wolf darted past, headed for the main staircase – and the cacophony that floated up from it. Fulk hung a hard left and followed, falling in beside the second wolf.
Who was Rob Locksley.
The man glanced over and managed a double take, even as he was running. “Le Strange?”
“Get your people out, and stay out of my way,” Fulk snapped.
They pulled up at the railing, gazes drawn down, all the way to the massive foyer where a fresh batch of guards had finally arrived from the barracks and were pouring in through the front doors.
“Ah, shit.”
~*~
It was those cuffs, Rooster knew. He didn’t know what they were made of, or how they did it, but they sapped Red’s energy, and her power. She’d had just enough juice for one forceful show, but in the aftermath, she crumpled.
Rooster caught her around the waist with his free arm and towed her toward the door – toward the light that poured in across polished floors, a beacon drawing them out of his place.
He pushed everything – the clang of sword meeting sword; the curses and hurried movements of the others – from his mind save leaving. Getting Red to safety.
They staggered out of the room that looked like a library into a soaring space with a grand staircase and a marble inlay floor. The foyer.
He heard the thud of boots just seconds before he saw an incoming wall of black-clad armed guards.
Almost. They’d almost made it out. So close.
Rooster tightened his arm around Red, pulled her into his side. “Stay with me,” he said, and trained his sights on the leading guard.
The guard who took his next step, then stiffened, then collapsed to the floor.
With an arrow sticking out of his neck.
Rooster glanced up wildly, and found Rob and Will standing on the balcony above, fresh arrows nocked.
He couldn’t help it; he laughed.