46
“If I don’t go back to work, I’ll get fired,” Sasha reasoned. He gripped the doorframe between the kitchen and the living room and told himself it was just to have something to do with his hand, and not because he was swaying on his feet again.
Withdrawal, Trina had declared it, a hand pressed to his sweat-damp forehead. She’d prescribed – non-professionally, of course – plenty of rest, fluids, and foods that would be gentle on his stomach. Sasha knew that his wolf metabolism would purge his system sooner than that of a human, and that this was only temporary, but he felt terrible. Shaking from the inside out, in turns hot and then cold, nauseated and crampy.
At the kitchen stove, Nikita hummed a disagreeing sound and flipped another pancake onto the plate he held, already heaped to a level that made Sasha’s stomachache worse. “No working. Working isn’t resting.”
Sasha huffed with annoyance, and told himself the sound wasn’t as unsteady as it had been yesterday. (It was, but he refused to acknowledge the truth.) “But I missed so many days already–”
Nikita set the plate down too forcefully with a sound like it might break, and turned to face Sasha, expression carefully blank – too blank – his knuckles white where he gripped the spatula. “I said no.”
Sasha gave a truly sad excuse for a growl. “You’re not my mother.”
Something flickered in Nikita’s eyes before he doubled down on the blank impassivity. “No. She would make you borscht instead of pancakes. Like a good nurse.”
He moved with deliberate care as he set the spatula aside, moved the skillet off the eye, and took the plate to the table where a fork, napkin, and bottle of syrup already waited. He pointed at the pulled-back chair. “Come eat.”
Sasha’s stomach grumbled, even as his tongue grew thick and salty with revulsion at the idea. Instead, he folded his arms, stuck his chin out and said, “I can’t lose that job. The tips alone–”
“Shut up about the fucking job,” Nikita snapped in Russian. “You can’t even comb your hair, so I don’t want to hear one more word about the job.”
And there was the anger that Nikita had been keeping so carefully under wraps the last three days.
In the car on the drive back, and now here at home in their apartment, Nikita had been unfailingly gentle and attentive. Soft smiles and gentles touches. Offers of blankets, and socks, cool washcloths on Sasha’s overheated throat and face. He’d cooked, and puttered quietly around the apartment; the floorboards didn’t even creak when he tiptoed from one room to the next. He’d helped Sasha bathe when he was too shaky to stand upright in the shower, had washed his hair and used the much-hated hair dryer to blow it out after. He’d been as sweet and overwhelming as any mother.
He hadn’t been much like himself at all. Not once had he shown the fury Sasha knew he must feel.
It was a relief to see it now.
“I know you’re very angry,” Sasha said.
A muscle ticked in Nikita’s jaw.
“Because I was stupid enough to let myself get caught–”
“No.” Nikita sliced a hand through the air to cut him off, eyes flashing again. “I am – I am – enraged. That they hurt you. That they touched you. I’m not angry with you.”
“But…” The room titled, and Sasha didn’t think it was just the dizziness. “I was so stupid. I went off alone, and I didn’t think…”
He trailed off when Nikita let out a growl of his own, this one sharp and punched-out, forceful. “That was stupid. You were stupid. But I can’t–” He sucked in a sudden breath, and then couldn’t seem to stop.
He was hyperventilating.
He was panicking.
Oh, Nik.
Sasha pushed off from the doorframe and went clumsily around the table to throw his arms around his best friend, who was very much melting down. Sasha pressed his face into Nikita’s throat and whimpered, wondering if this was the first time since this whole ordeal began that Nikita had allowed himself to feel any way about it. Had he strapped his emotions down tight under that old black coat and put one foot in front of the other? Yes. That was his way.
“I’m sorry,” Sasha said, stroking the tense line of his back. “I’m sorry I made you worry.”
Nikita pressed his nose and lips to Sasha’s temple, his breaths short and harsh. He squeezed Sasha tight, and tried, unsuccessfully, to swallow the wounded sounds that gathered in the back of his throat.
“You take very good care of me.”
Nikita sniffed hard. Sasha felt warm, wet droplets at his hairline.
They stood that way for a long time, the morning sunlight stretching slowly across the floorboards like a lazy cat.
In a suspiciously thick voice, Nikita said, “I’ll talk to Brian. He won’t fire you.” Because he had Rasputin’s gift for persuasion, and he would use it in this case, to ensure Sasha got to keep the job he liked best.
“Thank you.” Sasha blew a warm breath against the side of his neck, gratified by the goosebumps it raised. “Help me eat the pancakes? My stomach still isn’t so good.”
Nikita made an assenting sound and let Sasha pull back.
Nikita was the last to let go.
They sat across from each other at their wobbly café table and Sasha smothered the pancakes in syrup, to which Nikita rolled his eyes. They were red-rimmed, but Sasha didn’t comment.
Instead, he said, “Tell me what happened.” Because he’d felt too poorly up ‘til now to hear the whole story.
Nikita told it in a bored voice, which was no less than Sasha expected. But his fingers twitched on the tabletop when he spoke of meeting Trina’s family – his family. Sasha ached for him, thinking of Kolya, the son as an old man, meeting his unchanged, unknown father. He wanted to crawl into Nikita’s lap, but forced himself to shovel in pancakes instead.
“That was stupid,” he said when Nikita talked about walking straight in the front door of the manor.
Nikita shrugged. “But it worked.”
“Because you had more help than you expected.”
“Hmm. It worked out.”
“You said that.”
“I’m saying it again. That’s all there is to it.”
A dark worry blossoming, Sasha set his fork down. What he’d managed to eat so far rolled over ominously in his stomach. “Nik. It was a suicide mission.”
Nikita studied the fake wood grain of the tabletop.
“Did you…would you have cared if you died?”
Nikita’s head lifted, eyes slate gray in the late morning light. “As long as you escaped, I didn’t care what happened to me.”
Sasha groaned. “Ugh. You are terrible.”
Nikita tilted his head.
“No, you are. Are you so– Do you not– How do you think I would feel?” His voice cracked. “If you died. Do you think I would be okay?”
Nikita went very still.
“What do you think I would do? Shrug, and say, ‘Oh well, he didn’t care if he died, so I don’t care either.’ Do you think I would find a new roommate? Do you think I would be even close to alright?” His voice shook, and it had nothing to do with withdrawal. “Or you so selfish that you don’t care what that would do to me? Or are you just an asshole?”
Nikita’s throat moved as he swallowed. “You know I don’t think that.”
“Then why are you so quick to sacrifice yourself?”
“Because I can’t…” The words grated out of him. “I can’t think when…” His chest lifted and fell, quick shallow breaths again.
Sasha did go get in his lap that time, though the kitchen chair groaned and threatened to collapse. Though there wasn’t room. He tucked his head under Nikita’s chin and was grateful for the hand that lifted immediately to run through his hair.
“I think,” he mused aloud, “we’re what they call codependent.”
Nikita snorted.
“Promise me something.” When Nikita didn’t respond, Sasha cupped the back of his neck and squeezed. “Promise.”
“Yes, yes, alright.”
“No more suicide missions. No matter what. That goes for both of us.”
Nikita petted his hair some more. Faintly: “Alright.”
“Nik?”
“Hmm?”
“Will they come after us? Vlad, he–” A shiver stole through his body.
“No, bratishka. They won’t.”
Another silence fell, this one peaceful, warm with the comfort of closeness.
“Nik?” Sasha asked after a while, as an idea struck. “What happened to Val?”
Nikita stiffened, just a moment, one second of pause, and then his fingers continued sliding through Sasha’s hair, down around the curve of his skull. But that pause was all Sasha needed to know.
“He didn’t get out, did he?” A sweeping sadness filled Sasha like a wave.
“He might have, we don’t know,” Nikita hedged.
“But you don’t think he did.”
Nikita sighed. “I think it isn’t likely.”
Sasha whimpered.
“He made his own decision,” Nikita said, firmly. “I went there for you, not him, and he knew that.”
“Nik. Val’s the one who told me how to turn you – to save you. He’s the reason we’re here now, together.”
“Oh,” Nikita said. And then again, when it had fully sunk in. “Oh.”
“Maybe he’s alright,” Sasha murmured into the collar of his friend’s sweater.
But he didn’t believe that.
~*~
Trina stirred sugar into her coffee with lazy movements and didn’t glance up until the man who’d taken the seat across from her cleared his throat.
“Oh.” She feigned slow surprise, and lifted her head to greet him with a smirk. “Hello, Dr. Fowler.” Inwardly, she heaved a sigh of relief. Up ‘til this moment, she’d seriously thought he might turn up with his feral wolves or a handful of armed guards.
But it was just him, looking harried and put-out.
He smoothed his hands down the thighs of his slacks beneath the table, and it looked like a nervous gesture. “Detective Baskin,” he said, tone clipped. “It seems like you’ve been busy.”
“Hmm,” she hummed, noncommittal. “Is a cop ever not busy?”
His mouth tightened, tugging harshly to one side. His voice came out an angry hiss. “The damage you’ve caused, you and your friends–”
She held up a finger, and he fell into a sputtering silence. “Before you go off on an angry supervillain tirade, let me introduce my friend Jamie to you.”
On cue, Jamie stood up from the table behind her and sat down to her left. He set his laptop on the table, turned it toward Dr. Fowler, and clicked Play.
“You’re going to want to watch this,” Trina said. “Though I imagine you’ve seen it before.”
Though reluctantly, Dr. Fowler’s eyes went to the screen…and then widened. He made a shocked, outraged sound that he quickly smothered with the hand he pressed over his mouth.
“How did you–? When did…”
“I think he gets it, Jamie, thanks.”
Jamie shut the laptop lid.
Trina folded her arms on the table. “Okay. So. Here’s where we’re at: we have this video. And before you go thinking that you can whack me over the head and steal the computer, you should know two things. One: I’ve got two vamps watching my back right now.” She didn’t glance toward the corner where Lanny and Alexei sat with coffees and untouched Danishes. Through the process of their rescue attempt, the two of them had become friends. Alexei was currently laughing – eyes scrunched up and mouth open – at something Lanny had said. But both of them had their bodies angled toward her, ready to leap to her defense.
“Two,” she continued. “We’ve already uploaded this video to several other computers, some flash drives, and the cloud. So. You can’t get rid of it. And I have a friend who’s been instructed to upload it to YouTube should I suddenly disappear.”
He took several deep breaths, staring at her.
“You’re a smart man, Dr. Fowler. I think you know what kind of global panic would break out if the general public saw what’s on this video.”
He swallowed. His expression cycled through several variations on fury, but she could see the defeat there, too. Finally, he said, “What do you want?”
She flashed him her coldest, angriest smile. “I want, in no uncertain terms, to be left the hell alone. Lanny, Jamie, Alexei, Nikita, and Sasha. My family – because I have no doubt that at this point you know who and where they are. You’re going to leave all of us alone. Forever.”
“You’re an idiot,” he seethed quietly. “You have no idea what’s coming.”
“I have some idea.” She nodded toward the computer. “And if I ever feel like I need to get involved, then I will. But right now, you and your Institute are going to have to make do without us. The monsters you’re making can do all sorts of things, but they can’t navigate the PR storm that’ll rain down on your heads if that video leaks. How successful do you think your war efforts will be if the voting public starts demanding to know just exactly where their tax dollars are going?”
He glanced away, eyes shiny behind the lenses of his glasses.
“What’ll it be, Doc?”
“Fine,” he bit out, and pushed to his feet.
Trina watched him walk all the way out the door, down the sidewalk, and around the corner before she collapsed onto her elbows, letting the table hold her weight. “Holy shit, I didn’t think that would work.”
“You didn’t?” Jamie asked, scandalized.
“It was worth a shot.”
Across the café, Lanny winked at her.
~*~
“…should have both your badges for this!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not even a goddamn phone call! And with open cases!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stop saying that, I’m trying to yell at you!”
“Yes–” Lanny started, and Trina stepped on his foot.
Captain Abbot had been screaming for a while. His face had turned an alarming shade of plum and Trina thought the big vein in the middle of his forehead could blow at any moment. The office door was shut, but she glimpsed the occasional curious face peeking in through the gapped blinds.
It was no less than they deserved, so they’d resolved to endure it and then offer apologies.
Momentarily derailed, Captain Abbot braced his hands on the edge of his desk and took several huge breaths. Trina wondered if she was about to have to administer CPR.
“Sir,” she said, and his glare was enough to make any vamp or werewolf cower. “It was completely unprofessional of us, and we’ll understand if you need to take some sort of disciplinary action. But we were afraid that announcing the trip would tip off the dealer we were trying to track.”
He stared at her a moment. “The dealer who sicced the dogs on our vics,” he said, slowly, repeating their concocted story back to them. “Who went underground. Who you tracked to Virginia.” His gaze flicked between the two of them.
“That’s right,” Trina said with a confidence she didn’t feel. They decided to admit to getting as far as Virginia on the off chance they’d been captured by a traffic cam or something. You couldn’t be too careful, Nikita had reasoned. The best lie was the one that stuck closest to the truth. “But like I said, the trail went cold.”
“We’ve got CIs on the lookout for him,” Lanny said. “And a reward’s been offered. If he shows his face again in New York, we’ll know about it.”
Their captain gave them a long, flat look. He didn’t believe them, she knew…but they had a spotless record, and Abbot wasn’t the sort to start thinking the worst of his people.
Finally, he let out a deep exhale through his nose; it whistled faintly. “You’re both damn lucky you’re my best detectives, you know that?”
Relief crashed through her.
“You’re both riding a desk for the next week. And my body-snatching problem? I want it solved.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Absolutely, thank you.”
They talked over one another and ducked out of the office before he could change his mind.
A half-dozen heads whipped back toward computers and open case files as they stepped back into the bullpen, and Lanny smirked. “Buncha vultures. Coffee?”
“Dear God, yes.”
They went out to the cart on the sidewalk, and once they had warm paper cups in hand, leaning against the stone retaining wall in front of the precinct, Trina took her first deep breath of the afternoon.
Fall was coming, the days a little shorter, the heat an echo along the ground, the air smelling cooler and sharper, the first faint hint of an autumnal ripening. She tipped her head back and stared up the crisp blue wedge of sky she could see, framed on all sides by the lines of building roofs.
Lanny pressed his shoulder against hers, an undemanding touch that she returned with pressure from her side.
He breathed a quiet chuckle. “Can you believe we pulled that shit off?”
“No. Gonna take a few more days to sink in.”
“Do you think they’ll really leave us alone?” He didn’t have to clarify who.
She winced. “I hope so. At least for a little while. That video…that’s the sort of thing that could cause one hell of a mass panic. They don’t want it getting out.”
“What about the other video?”
She frowned, and turned to gauge his expression. He looked mostly relaxed, a little tired around the eyes. Content. Healthy, which was the most important. But she saw the worry, too; faint, but persistent.
She offered a wry smile. “It feels like I accidently watched something top secret that would keep regular folks up at night if they knew the actual state of the world. Which. I did.” She sighed. “It’s terrifying. It’s unbelievable. But do I think that we could do anything significant to push back against it? No, I really don’t. So. I say we do what we can. Here in our city. For as long as we can.” Until the literal wolves gathered outside the door.” She reached up to touch his throat, the smooth place where a tumor had once lurked beneath the skin. “We have time now, and I want to take advantage of it.”
He covered her hand with his own. “Me too.”
Around them, pedestrians flowed down the sidewalk in an endless stream; cars belched exhaust, and people shouted, and horns honked, and New York greeted the coming of fall with its usual brash forthrightness.
Time, Trina thought with a smile. Nikita was probably right, and immortality wasn’t a gift. But time was. To her at least. They could figure out forever later; for the moment, she was going to relish every last bit of now.
~*~
Jake woke, and slept; and woke, and slept. He didn’t know how many times that happened, only that there was so much pain, and he just wanted to go under again.
Finally, he woke fully, to the beeping of monitors and the drone of the heat working. His eyes were crusted almost shut, and it was long moments before he could blink them clear. His head ached abominably, and his body felt leaden. He lay on a hospital bed, hooked to all sorts of machines, but he was in a fancy, paneled bedroom in the upper part of the house.
Someone was seated in a wingback chair beside the bed, but when he tried to turn his head, pain arced through his skull and his vision whited out.
“Easy, easy, don’t move,” Dr. Talbot’s familiar voice soothed. He stood up and moved into Jake’s line of sight, a paper water cup with a straw held in one hand.
Jake tried to open his mouth to ask what had happened…and couldn’t. His jaw wouldn’t work.
He sucked in a panicked breath through his nose.
“Easy,” Dr. Talbot repeated. “Your jaw was broken and we had to wire it shut.”
A high, distressed whine rose in the back of Jake’s throat.
“You have to settle down,” Talbot said reasonably. “Thinking about it will only make it worse.” He brought the cup forward. “Here, try to drink a little water, that might help.”
He wrapped his lips clumsily around the straw and managed uneven suction. He sipped water through his teeth, just enough to wet his tongue and throat. He almost choked, but managed to swallow it down.
“The good news is that, thanks to your regular injections, the healing is going much quicker than it would under normal circumstances, so we should have you back to normal in no time at all.” Dr. Talbot offered a kindly smile as he sat back down, closer this time, so Jake wouldn’t have to turn his head to see him. “Better.”
Jake managed to waggle his fingers in a gesture that caused Dr. Talbot to smile and nod.
He had so many questions.
Dr. Talbot’s smile melted into a more professional façade. “At this point, after all you’ve been through, I think it’s become apparent that you’ll need to stay on with us if you hope to maintain gainful employment.”
That…
Oh.
Jake’s thought spun slow, but not so slow that he didn’t catch the underlying meaning in the doctor’s words: if he walked away from the Institute now, knowing what he did about the place, they would make sure he never worked again. It was either stay with them, or go hungry. Or, he thought, maybe even wind up at the bottom of a ditch, brakes mysteriously cut.
“Do we understand one another?”
He gave another little finger wave.
“Good. Then I can tell you that Prince Valerian was apprehended and is back in custody. The others, though, I’m afraid.” He sighed. “We’ve lost Sasha, and LC-5, and our security forces suffered a terrible blow.”
He pulled off his glasses and massage his eyes a moment, looking tired and despairing in a way Jake had never seen before. When he slipped his glasses back on, he studied Jake a moment, and then nodded. “I want to show you something.”
A flat-screen TV was set up on the dressing table across from the bed, and Dr. Talbot picked up the remote to turn it on. He shifted from the satellite feed to some kind of internal computer system, tapped through files, and then pressed Play.
A video started up, time-stamped in the corner five years ago. A facility very much like the one downstairs, brightly-lit, a sequence of three steel tables. On each one: a redheaded girl in a white gown…her feet up in gynecological stirrups. The camera didn’t show what happened below the waist, the filming done from their heads, but two doctors moved down the line, speculums flashing silver, examining each girl thoroughly.
Jake felt his gorge rise and swallowed it down.
The shot changed, now showing a sequence of boys in a white room, their hands held out in front of them, brows knit in concentration, as little tiny curls of flames sputtered and then failed in their palms.
“The idea,” Dr. Talbot began, as the video played silently on the screen, “was to manufacture supernaturally strong soldiers for the war that’s to come. It began with breeding the mages: LC stands for Liam’s Children. They are all his, his and his wife’s. Purebred mages raised and honed for battle. The one who calls herself Ruby Russell was the only one with any promise, and she escaped five years ago. Breeding mages, it turns out, is much trickier than it looks.
“We experimented with the blood serum after that. It was Valerian’s, and it didn’t always work. Some people it burned. It wasn’t until we had Vlad awake, had his blood, had perfected the medicine, that we were able to give it to you, and Adela, and the rest of your team.
“But even that is not a perfect solution,” he said, smile rueful as he watched the screen. “The old way, it seems, is still the best: a vampire warrior with his Familiars. I know that what we’re doing is morally unsound. But when you consider the threat we’re facing…”
He stopped the video, exited it, and pulled up another. This one showed the same desert landscape from the still photos Jake had been shown, the footage shaky and handheld, most likely from a cellphone. There was a scream. The shot bounced around, and then an image became clear: a man held another man by the head…and was eating his face.
Jake tried to sit up higher, and grunted in pain.
Dr. Talbot paused the video and turned to him, fear shining in his eyes. “We don’t understand it fully, yet, but Vlad calls it The Absence. His Uncle’s legacy. It consumes, and it spreads. And it serves its master: Romulus.
“The first King of Rome is trying to wake up,” he said. “He will destroy everything as we understand it. Vlad put him in the ground before, and he’s our only hope of stopping him now.
“If Nikita Baskin, and Sasha Kashnikov, and Ruby Russell refuse to help us? Fine. We’ll find others who will.” His mouth became a tight, firm line. “I still hold up stupid hope that Vlad might be able to bring his brother to heel, because we’re going to need all hands on deck for this, Major.”
He stared at Jake. “So. Will you help?”
And what choice did he have?
Jake lifted his hand up and down once, a kind of nod. Inwardly, panic gripped his insides like a vise.
Dr. Talbot smiled. “Very good. Get some rest. You’ll need it.”
He switched the TV back to the satellite feed. It was on TCM, an old black-and-white movie.
It took Jake a moment to recognize it, but when he did, the bottom dropped out of his stomach.
Dracula.