36
ON THE OTHER SIDE
Trina came back to herself with an awful start. Her eyes flipped open, and her lungs filled on a desperate, too-big gasp. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she was chanting before she even knew which way was up. She was cold, so cold, shivering, back teeth chattering. And she was lying on her side on the hardwood floor of her bedroom, curled up in a little ball. She ached all over, and her head throbbed. And if the pale light filtering through her curtains was anything to go by, it was morning.
“Jesus!” she cried, and forced herself upright.
Big mistake.
The room tilted and she slapped at the front of her dresser, damp palm skidding against the wood. How could she be sweating if she was this cold? Did she have a fever? Did she…
But no. She knew why. As horrifying as it was to contemplate, she had to face facts that she hadn’t simply been dreaming all night. Healthy, stone-cold sober people didn’t pass out on the floor and dream up elaborate family histories about Russian werewolves and vampires. If she’d had to guess, she would have said she felt exactly like someone whose mind had been hijacked.
“Jesus,” she said again, just a whisper this time.
Slowly, the room righted itself and her vision cleared. The awful dizziness seemed to pass. The chills eased.
Sasha had said something, just before the connection was lost. We want to meet you. They were here, in the city.
There was just enough light to make out the small, familiar shape of the bell on the floor beside her. She reached for it now with no hesitation; of all the things she’d learned, this bell was the least of it. She lifted it to her face, close enough to make out all its dings and scars. It felt the same – smooth from years of handling, cool from sitting out – but heavier almost. It held meaning now. This was a family heirloom, yes, but before that had always lent itself to vague ideas of dusty old men smoking in fancy pre-Revolution Russian salons. Now, she could see the faces of the people it had belonged to before her: the ruthless mage, Monsieur Philippe; the troubled tsarina, Alexandra; her great-great-grandmother, keeping it hidden and safe, a talisman against the Communists. And then Nikita. With his beautiful blue-gray eyes, and his deep sadness, and deep love, and the sound of his tired heart breaking in a clearing where the snow ran red.
A lump formed in her throat and she curled her hand tight around the bell. We want to meet you. She was going to meet them. Right the hell now.
Her cellphone dinged, and she got unsteadily to her feet to retrieve it from her bedside table. She had a new text message from an unfamiliar number.
This is Sasha. Followed by a string of smiley faces and the wolf face emoji.
Her smile started deep in her gut and bloomed across her face with an accompanying joy that made her teeth ache. She clapped her hand over her mouth, trying to keep it from growing even more. They were real. They were real.
Where can I find you guys? she sent back.
He sent an address that instantly brought to mind a tired brick façade with unchecked ivy growing over the ironwork bars on the ground-floor windows. She knew that building, could be there in ten minutes.
She was in the process of tapping out a response when she heard her couch springs creak in the other room.
Lanny.
Oh shit, how had she forgotten Lanny? She hadn’t, not really, but when she heard him roll over, heard the soft sound of the knitted throw sliding to the floor, the last vestiges of her vision faded away and she was left staring down the barrel of cold reality.
Her great-grandfather the vampire, and his werewolf BFF were currently living in New York…and one of them might be her murder suspect.
Shit.
Her partner was a) hungover, b) not going to believe this shit, and c) dying.
Double shit.
She let out a shaky breath. And then her phone rang. Thankfully, her voice was steady. “Baskin.”
“Trina, this is Harvey,” the ME said, and her normally no-nonsense tone sounded off. “I don’t know how to say this and not sound like an idiot. But. Well. Your DB from the club with the bite wound? Yeah, it’s missing.”
~*~
She took a hot, fast shower that went a long way toward waking her up fully, and then popped a K-Cup of dark roast into the Keurig for good measure.
“Fuck off,” Lanny mumbled when she shook his shoulder, turning his face into the back of the couch, eyes squeezed shut tight.
He had both arms flung over his head, his shirt riding up to reveal a stripe of lean, taut belly that was pale in comparison to his arms and face. No shirtless sunbathing this summer, apparently.
Trina teased her nails across the exposed skin and he grunted and tried to pull his knees up. “There’s coffee.”
“Go away.”
She slapped his hip. “Get up, or I’ll pour the coffee on you.”
“Ugh, you suck,” he said with great feeling, but struggled to a mostly-upright position, eyes still shut.
“Lanny, Harvey called,” Trina said, kneeling down to dig under the sofa for his boots. He’d managed to kick them underneath in his sleep. “Our DB’s gone missing from the morgue.”
That got his attention.
He sat the rest of the way up with a gag and a moan, wiping his hands down his face. “What?”
“Chad Edwards’ body is no longer in the morgue,” Trina said, setting the boots up side-by-side at the edge of the couch. “Put your shoes on and I’ll get the coffee.”
She went to do so and heard him swing his legs over the couch with a heartfelt groan. “Wait. What?”
For once she was glad for the tininess of her apartment, dumping spoons of sugar into his coffee while she explained over her shoulder. “His body’s gone missing from the morgue. Which means.” She slid a mug for herself under the drop and popped in another K-Cup; turned to carry his coffee to him. “Either we’ve got a body snatcher on our hands. Or…”
“We’ll watch the security tapes.” He squinted up at her when she tapped his shoulder, reached with two shaking hands to take the mug. “Wait. Or what?”
She shrugged. “Or…he got up and walked off.”
Lanny snorted into his coffee and took a tentative sip. When it appeared to go down alright, he took a more aggressive one. “Right. Okay.”
Trina took a deep breath, worn out already just thinking about explaining it to him. “Lanny, something happened while you were passed out.”
That got his attention. He lifted his head and opened his eyes all the way, bloodshot and exhausted, but fixed on her face. “What? Did somebody–”
She waved him to silence. “It wasn’t a bad thing, I don’t think. I learned some things. And I need you to listen without interrupting me. Okay?”
He stared at her a moment, then finally nodded.
She took another deep breath, and began.
She told him about the bell ringing, about touching it and finding herself somehow in the body of her great-grandfather, a sweet-faced werewolf kneeling at her feet, knowing her real name, urging Nikita to show her what had happened in 1942, when the world was at war…and changing forever. She told him about the band of secret Whites hidden within the Cheka, their mission to retrieve Sasha and take him to Stalingrad. Told him about Monsieur Philippe, about the horrifying, violent moment when Sasha was turned. About the girl sniper Katya, whom Nikita had loved, and who’d loved him back – her great-grandmother. Told him about Rasputin. About all the blood. The grief. About the copper tang of blood filling Nikita’s mouth, his devoted wolf making him immortal.
Told him they were just a few blocks over, and wanting to meet her.
Through all of it, Lanny drained his coffee and his eyebrows climbed steadily toward his hairline, forehead crinkling up like an accordion.
When she was done, silence reigned for a full minute. A minute in which Lanny didn’t blink.
Finally, he took a huge breath and said, calm and rational, “So. Okay. You are very drunk.”
She smacked him in the shoulder.
“Ow!”
“I’m sober, you asshole. Look at me. Do I look drunk?”
He peered at her with bloodshot eyes.
“Oh, like you could tell,” she huffed. “I’m being serious. I know it sounds insane, but it’s true. You know my family’s Russian. I showed you the bell before. It – it kinda makes sense. In a way.” Even though it sounded ludicrous to her own ears as she tried to explain it.
Lanny extended his empty coffee mug toward her, expression considering. “How ‘bout a little more?”
~*~
They needed to get to the morgue; Harvey would have bodies in need of drawers backing up if they didn’t get down there and have a look at the scene. Trina ought to at least fire off a text to let the doctor know they’d be along soon.
But the two of them sat at the tiny café table in her kitchenette and Lanny smoked two cigarettes while she explained it again. In the wash of early sunlight, his face looked a wreck, but he seemed awake now, after the second cup, his cig burning down to embers in the hand he had braced on the tabletop.
“Believe me or don’t,” Trina finally said, breathless and worn out from talking. If anything, going through it a second time had only made it that much more real in her mind. “Here.” She pulled out her phone and showed him the text from Sasha. “That’s Nikita’s…friend, or whatever he is.” His wolf.
Lanny’s eyes moved over the text twice and he nodded, stubbing his cigarette out in the little decorative plate she’d set out for that purpose. He seemed to choose his words carefully, voice threaded with smoke. “So your great-granddad is a vampire. Who lives with a werewolf. And they want to meet you.”
Her heart pounded in her throat. “Yeah. That’s the gist of it.”
“Let’s say I believe you…”
She snorted and he shot her a look that said hold up.
“…let’s say I do. Now.” He was using his Interrogation Voice on her, the one that got all the weepy women to spill their guts; it pissed her off. “Let’s think, just for a minute, about what that might mean to our case. The one where a guy got all his blood drained outside a nightclub.” His brows went up meaningfully.
“Lanny, am I drunk? Or do you think my great-granddad’s our murderer? It can’t be both.”
“I think,” he said, still careful, “that your dad told you a lot of wild stories when you were growing up, and you haven’t been getting enough sleep lately–”
“How can I when I’ve got drunk idiots banging on my door in the middle of the night?”
And then it hit her all over again: Lanny was sick, Lanny was dying, Lanny wouldn’t seek treatment for the big lump in his throat. He…
She was hyperventilating. She clapped a hand over her mouth to cover the sound of it.
Lanny sat forward. “Hey, hey.” Reached for her. “It’s not–”
Trina surged to her feet, hip catching the edge of the table and rattling it. “We’ve gotta get to the hospital,” she said. “Harvey…the morgue…”
She took the two small steps to her sink and peered out the window above it, trying to compose herself. Her upstairs neighbor’s cat, Snickers, sat on her fire escape, bent in an impossible pretzel, washing her back legs with her tongue. A cute cat, calico, with one tattered ear. Sometimes, Trina passed her mostly-empty tuna cans out the window, little bits of burned bacon. She focused on the soothing, unremarkable movements of the animal, tried to get her breathing under control.
Behind her, she heard Lanny’s chair scrape back, the scuff of his socked foot on the linoleum as he walked up behind her; the unsteady sniff of a deep breath, because when he drank too much his several-times broken nose puffed up on the inside and he sounded like a bear crawling out of hibernation the next morning.
“Trina,” he said, low, quiet, full of gravel. His hand landed on her shoulder and his warm breath fanned across her cheek. “Sweetheart–”
“You need to brush your teeth,” she whispered, and he stilled. “And then we need to go.”
It was silent a moment, neither of them breathing.
Then his hand fell away. “Alright.”
It was another long moment before she could move.