45
Trina lowered her great-grandmother’s rifle with a surprisingly steady exhale. Without the scope, the front lawn of the manor house was dotted with shapeless black blurs, all of them still.
She’d pulled her gun on her share of suspects in her time as a beat cop, and then a detective. But before today, she’d never killed a man.
Now, she had more than half-a-dozen under her belt.
She didn’t know how she felt about that, so she resolved to consider it later, when there was time to weigh and measure her own morality.
For now, a group of ragtag escapees limped into the forest, and she shinnied down the tree to greet them.
When she landed on the leaf litter below, Deshawn said, “That was some damn impressive shooting.” He’d watched the whole thing through high-tech binoculars, on the radio with his team inside.
“Thanks.” She slung the Mosin-Nagant back of her shoulder where it weighed against her spine more than it ought to.
Rustling announced an arrival. The first to step through the screen of shrubs were the tall blond with his arm supporting the little redheaded girl, both of them flanked by archers in green hoods. Deshawn’s people.
The next popping and snapping of branches had Trina standing up on her toes, breath catching.
Lanny.
And then Alexei.
And Nikita…carrying Sasha. A big, limp white wolf that he cradled like a baby to his chest.
Trina swallowed a sudden lump in her throat. “Is he…?” She didn’t dare say it.
Lanny came to her; he looked whole, not limping, not favoring either side. He had a scratch on his forehead, but it was already healing. He pulled her into a short, hard hug, the sweat on his skin gluing them together, his breath hot against her scalp as he sighed.
“He’s alive,” he said. Then, quieter: “Nik’s pretty fucked up in the head about it, though.”
She stepped back, hands still clasped around Lanny’s thick biceps, and looked at her great-grandfather. He was utterly expressionless…in a spooky way, his gaze trained on the wolf, the best friend, that he carried.
She nodded. “We need to get somewhere safe.”
“Where’s Jamie?”
“He texted me. He’s coming.”
The sharp snap of a twig behind her heralded his arrival; everyone turned toward him, hands reaching for weapons, and he emerged from the underbrush with hands raised, empty palms flashing white in the gloom of the forest. “It’s just me.” His gaze came to Trina. “I think I got what we need.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
She turned back to Deshawn…standing between her, and her people, and his people. He extended a hand. “You guys need a lift? We got a bird.”
She accepted his shake. “No, thanks. We’re good.”
He nodded, and produced a small black business card from one of his pockets. “Here, that’s us. If you ever need a friend.”
“Thank you,” she said, and meant it.
She didn’t take a deep breath until the manor was far, far behind them.
~*~
Sasha shifted back to his human form on the long walk back to the rental cabin, but he didn’t wake.
Nikita laid him out on the rental cabin’s bed and dragged over a chair to sit beside him and wait. And wait.
Sasha’s chest rose and fell in a shallow, rapid rhythm. His lashes flickered as his eyes moved beneath the lids; restless, but never opening. Smudged with shadows, sunken. Just like his cheeks, and his belly beneath his ripped and stained white shirt. He’d always been slender, with knobby wrists and ankles, caught in that slim teenage shape forever. But he looked like he’d lost ten pounds or more since Nikita had last seen him. His hair needed washing, clinging in greasy clumps to his forehead. Nikita reached to push it back off his face instinctively, lingering after, hand cradling the top of his skull, feeling the sweat and excess body heat there in his skin.
“Nikita,” Trina said from the doorway. So gently. “We can’t stay here. We’re too close to the manor and it isn’t safe.”
“He’s feverish,” he said. His mouth was so dry it was hard to form words; brittle and crackling on his tongue. In Russian, “What did they do to you?”
“Nik,” she prompted.
“When he wakes.”
She gave a cut-off little sigh and walked away, easing the door shut most of the way. He could hear the others’ conversation out in the main room; it flowed over him like white noise.
“We can’t just–”
“Shh, he’ll hear.”
“He’s out of his damn gourd anyway.”
“Sasha smells like chemicals. They poisoned him.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I know that. I can smell it.”
“Would you two keep it down?”
“What about Val?”
“What about him?”
“He was loose, but he didn’t get out. I don’t think.”
Nikita scraped his blunt nails gently along Sasha’s scalp, slow pets, the way he’d always liked. He did smell of chemicals: strong human medicines, and street narcotics, the kind of nasty stink he sometimes detected on bums and junkies.
Could Sasha detect him in his sleep, he wondered? Was Nikita’s familiar scent a comfort?
“Sashka.” He trailed his fingertips down behind Sasha’s ear, down the side of his throat, over the fluttering pulse there. “Can you hear me?”
Sasha murmured wordlessly and shifted on the bed, a tiny half-roll, wanting closer to Nikita, pushing into his hand.
“Sasha.”
His eyes opened to slits, that well-loved pale blue that should have been cold but had always been full of such youthful warmth. His gaze – glassy and unfocused – moved back and forth across Nikita’s face. He worked his jaw a moment, wet his lips. “Nik? Is it…are you real?” He made a pitiful attempt to lift one limp hand.
Nikita caught his hand with his free one, and squeezed it tight. “Yes, bratishka. I’m real. We’re going home.”
Sasha smiled faintly, rolled the rest of the way over, pressed his face into Nikita’s hip, and fell back to sleep.
~*~
“How’s she doing?” Deshawn asked, stopping to lean a shoulder against the wall beside Rooster, mirroring his posture.
When they’d walked into Lionheart – Rooster for the second time, and Red for the first – Much had met them with a bored, put-upon expression and walked them to a locker room. “No one else will come in,” he promised, sulky and teenagerish, and left them alone. Rooster sent Red in first, and now stood outside, letting the cool concrete wall hold his weight, breathing in and out in a slow, regular rhythm. Trying not to think too much about any one thing.
Red had been inside a long time.
“Okay,” he said, automatically. Then: “Quiet.” He cast a glance down the hall; once inside the main stone structure, the Lionheart facility was made smaller and more modern and usable by hallway, conference rooms, and bright electrical lighting. He could have been in a military facility anywhere in the world, its exposed ceiling pipes and its bleach-scented cleanliness a sort of comfort.
“She’s been through a lot,” Deshawn said.
He didn’t have to say that neither of them knew exactly what she’d been through. Through the chaos of the escape, and then the nerve-wracking ride back up into the mountains overlaid with the loud chop of the rotors, there hadn’t been a chance to talk about her captivity.
Rooster recalled something she’d said once, years ago, something she’d brushed off, and tried to laugh about, but which had tightened the skin around her eyes and mouth until her smile was a brittle mask. “I think they were going to try to breed us. Maybe even to each other.” With other children she’d claimed were her siblings.
His hands closed into fists inside his hoodie pocket.
If the way he clapped his shoulder was any indication, Deshawn knew it. “Maybe this isn’t the time to have this conversation, but I think you probably already know this: you two can’t keep going like you have been. Running. I don’t how the Institute keeps finding you, but they do. You guys can’t keep doing this on your own anymore.”
Rooster sighed, but nodded. He knew that. To be honest, he’d known that two towns and two shitty hotels ago. But he hadn’t wanted to believe it.
“I talked to Rob before Double Dee and I flew out to get you,” Deshawn continued. “There’s a place here for you – both of you. If you want it.”
Rooster searched his friend’s face, thinking for at least the tenth time in the last few days that he’d never really known him…but that wasn’t true, was it? He hadn’t known about Lionheart. About werewolves, and storybook heroes made flesh. But he’d known that Deshawn was the sort of person who wanted to help others; that if he offered safe harbor, he meant it.
“Is this you telling me I can stay as a friend? Or is this a job offer from Rob?”
“Both,” Deshawn said, hand tightening, eye contact steady. “You don’t have to decide right away.” He squeezed one last time and step back. “Talk it over with Red. When y’all are ready, come to the mess hall. It’s Tuck’s night to cook.”
Tuck. Another mage.
Rooster wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he thought it might, might be a very good thing for Red to have a chance to talk to someone like her. Someone who could answer her questions without wanting to lay her out on a table and “breed her.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “Yeah. Thanks, man.”
~*~
The showers were the communal kind, with stainless steel walls, and no curtains. Red felt small, exposed, and chilled as she shed her clothes and left them folded on the bench beside the fresh ones Rooster had dug out of her bag for her. But the boy – Much? – with the snarling mouth and beautiful hair had promised they’d be left alone. The locker room stretched empty and gleaming around her, so she cranked on the hot water and stepped beneath the spray when it started to steam.
When the jets hit her, skin immediately pinking under the heat, she realized that the chill wasn’t physical; it resided in some deep untouchable place beneath her breastbone.
Someone had set out a fresh bar of Ivory soap, still in the box, and a bottle of Head & Shoulders. Masculine, functional scents. She reached for them, hands only shaking a little.
The problem, she reflected, as she shampooed her hair, was that everything had gone right. And so, so much of it could have gone horribly wrong.
Staying at the Institute, becoming Vlad’s…mage. His left hand? She still wasn’t clear on the details. Would that involve…sex? Would she be a kept pet? She feared so, yes. All of that had left her chest tight with panic; she’d wanted to cry, and kick, and scream. But at the end of the day, she had power. She was valuable. While Rooster – so precious, and brave, and damaged – was only a regular human. He had no value for the Institute, and they could have killed him – would have.
That was unthinkable.
She finished up quickly, not wanting to linger, needing to see Rooster standing in front of her, suddenly, alive and unharmed. When she soaped her arms, she noted that the marks from the cuffs, the scrapes and pinpricks of their spikes, had already faded, looking days old rather than just hours.
It was too quiet in the locker room when she shut off the water. She struggled into the clothes Rooster had left, the t-shirt and yoga pants clinging to her wet skin and making it difficult, wrung her hair out over the drain, and went to find him.
Rooster stood just outside the door, hands in his pockets, the wall looking like the only thing that held him up. It wasn’t the shakiness of deep pain, though; only regular exhaustion.
Red let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding and wrapped her arms around his waist. Pressed her face into his chest, the firm curve of muscle warm beneath the sweatshirt.
“Oh,” he said with a touch of surprise, and wriggled his hands loose so he could put his arms around her in turn.
She took a deep breath and let it out slow, allowing herself to accept the reality of his presence. He’d come to get her. Had come into that awful place to find her…
Her throat ached.
“How did you find me?” Her voice came out pitiful. She snugged her face tighter against him.
“That was all Rob and his guys. I was just along for the ride.”
“Not true.” She turned her head a fraction, and could see his hand on her shoulder. Not gripping, not hovering; his touch had always been a blend of respectful, but sure. Full of caring. It was his left hand – his bad hand. The back of it still bore a spiderweb scrawl of thin, silvery scars. The gunshot wounds in the forest she’d healed with one touch; she’d felt the bullets worm their way from his flesh; felt his body reknitting. But the old hurts, the ones that were already scars the first time they’d met, she’d only been able to smooth and suppress.
Her gift only worked on fresh wounds. The old ones would always be a part of him, as unshakeable as the sun lines at the corners of his eyes.
In her own selfish way, she loved the marks. They proved he was a person who’d made sacrifices; someone who, despite his stoic silence, felt deeply, and passionately.
She felt his face in her hair, the warmth of his breath against her scalp. “Deshawn said we could stay if we wanted.”
She’d already figured as much, but nodded. Anxiety tugged lightly at her stomach. She trusted Deshawn, and she was grateful for Lionheart’s help keeping Rooster safe. But. They were warriors. They weren’t the Institute, but they had a mission. Rooster was a Marine, and she was an engineered weapon. What little she’d seen of Rob Locksley, he didn’t seem the type to let resources go to waste.
No, she told herself firmly. If they asked for their help, it wouldn’t be the same. Not even a little bit.
She eased back a fraction so she could tip her head back, rest her chin on his chest and see his face. “What do you think?”
She wasn’t expecting the anguish that she found in his expression. His gaze slid away from hers and his mouth tucked in at the corners, a frown that looked restrained. “I think I can’t keep you safe.”
“Rooster.”
“So.” He shrugged, uncomfortable. “I think these people are okay. And I don’t know what else to do.”
He stood head and shoulders above her, but she wanted to gather him close and stroke his hair, soothe him as if he was a child.
She stared at him until he finally made eye contact again. “I don’t care where we are, so long as we’re together,” she told him, willing him to understand how much she meant that.
He stared at her a long moment, studying, until the little crease between his brows smoothed, and a softness stole across his stern features.
To her surprise, he lifted a hand and carefully tucked her damp hair behind her ear, callused them brushing gently across her cheek afterward, again and again.
“You came,” she said again, softer this time, the wonder and love settling over her afresh.
The tiniest smile touched his mouth. “Always.”
When he leaned down, she stood up on her toes so she could meet the kiss halfway.