40
ROMANOV
The sun was coming up, red-gold over the building tops, pigeons swarming for breakfast crumbs. Jamie Anderson’s (dead?) body had been taken to the morgue, the apartment had been dusted, printed, swabbed, and turned upside down. Harvey had shot them odd looks and taken her crew with her back to the morgue. The CSIs had loaded their gear and trundled off in their van to the lab. The roommate’s boyfriend had come and collected a bag of her clothes and toiletries.
“We’ll seal it up,” Lanny told Officer Dubois, taking the tape from him. “We’re gonna have a specialist come in to consult.”
And they did.
Trina was dead on her feet and running on fumes when Sasha showed up just after seven, a giant paper Starbucks cup in one hand, a carrier with two more swinging at his side from the other. He was dressed in a loose black t-shirt and painted-on black skinny jeans with ripped knees tucked into combat boots. He looked every bit the nineteen-year-old, too-long shaggy hair, aviator shades and all.
His smile was sincere and brilliant, though. “Good morning!” He held out the cardboard drink caddy. “I didn’t know what you like, so I got you both black with cream and sugar.”
“Thank God.” Trina took it from him with a grateful sigh, passing Lanny a cup before taking a deep swig from the other. Oh, wow, a lot of sugar. “Thanks for coming.”
Lanny frowned down at his coffee like it might bite and said nothing.
“Oh sure,” Sasha said, pushing his shades up into his hair. His blue eyes almost seemed to glow in the dim hallway as they flicked toward the apartment door. His smile faded, replaced by a thoughtful look. “I could smell him in the lobby.”
“You could?” Her heart gave a little bump of alarm. “Do you…recognize him? It’s a him?”
“A male, yes. A vampire. Also yes.” He sipped his coffee. “Not fresh–”
“About five hours ago,” she said.
“Yes. Can I go inside?”
“Sure.” She opened the door for him and he walked in with a certain air of…stalking. A hunter on the prowl. He took deep breaths through his nose, nostrils flaring, eyes scanning slowly back and forth.
Lanny stepped up beside her; he looked dead on his feet, circles dark as bruises smudged under each eye. “The fuck is he doing?” he muttered.
“Scenting,” Sasha called back over his shoulder as he moved deeper into the apartment. “Wolf, remember?”
Lanny said something she couldn’t hear and finally took a sip of his coffee. “Damn. Sugar much?”
Trina elbowed him, but was secretly pleased. That sip was a sign of trust; whether he realized it about himself or not yet, Lanny was starting to trust that these guys were on their side, no matter how much he played devil’s advocate with her.
Ahead of them, Sasha went straight to the couch and knelt in front of it. He set his drink aside and got down low, face hovering an inch from the cushions, sniffing like a dog. Well, like a wolf.
“I smell vampire blood,” he said, looking back at them over his shoulder, eyes sapphire-bright. “He turned him. Or at least tried to.”
Trina let out an unsteady breath. “That’s what I wondered.”
Sasha nodded, looking pleased. “You have good instincts, Katy–” His gaze flicked to Lanny and he cut himself off. “Very good,” he said instead, standing again, retrieving his coffee. “Now let’s follow the trail and see where he went.”
~*~
“You know,” Lanny mused as they followed Sasha down the sidewalk. “We bring him onto the force and we could retire all the drug-sniffing dogs.”
Trina checked her grin before it could get wide enough to make him suspicious. She was so tired, probably the smile was just because she was loopy, but she felt the first flutter of hope in her chest. If her crazy, stupid plan was going to work, Lanny had to like these Russian boys at least a little. Trust them enough to bare his throat to Nikita.
Love her enough to want to live.
And if not her, then at least something.
A sobering train of thought.
“Shh, let him concentrate,” she said.
“He’s just smelling everything. How much concentration does that take?”
A good deal, apparently. He’d stopped talking a few moments ago, and had led them almost five blocks.
“Shoulda followed in the car,” Lanny said.
“Hush.”
Fifteen minutes, and a lot of Lanny complaining, later, Sasha came to a halt at the foot of a red-brick building with a broken fire escape and a row of out-of-order, taped-over buzzers by the front door. The windows were all covered from the inside; a few were cracked.
“Um,” Lanny said, squinting up at it.
“He’s here?” Trina asked. “Right now?”
“Right now,” Sasha said, voice distant. He was staring up at the building with the kind of intensity she only ever saw in…well, in dogs, again. She hated to keep making canine comparisons, but they were right there, in her face. So.
He frowned, a little dent sprouting between his fair brows. The morning breeze toyed with his hair and he smoothed it back with both hands. “Hmm.”
“What?” Trina asked, uneasiness crawling down the back of her neck.
“There are two of them.”
Lanny shuffled his feet. “Alright. So?”
Sasha made a face. “Two is more complicated.”
Trina’s hand landed on her gun out of reflex. “Normally I’d call for backup in this kind of situation.”
“No,” Sasha said. “More humans is even more complicated.”
“So what, then?” Lanny asked, growing impatient.
“They’ll catch my scent soon,” Sasha said. He stood there a moment longer, then seemed to come to a decision, standing up straight, shoulders squared. He walked up the steps to the door and yanked it open – Trina heard the lock give way with a protesting clank.
She traded a look with Lanny, who shrugged.
By mutual, silent agreement, they drew their guns and followed.
The building was quiet inside, but hummed with that low-level current that spoke of habitation. People breathing, turning over in their beds, starting coffee. Despite the stink of garbage, and the fifty-year-old peeling wallpaper in the lobby, the abandoned sneaker with suspicious stains on it at the foot of the stairs, the thought of company was some comfort.
She was scared, she realized, as they started up the stairs behind Sasha. She closed her mouth to cut off the ragged sound of her breathing, but her heart was pounding hard in her throat, adrenaline spiking in painful waves.
She snuck a glance at Lanny. His jawline looked sharp enough to cut glass, all the tendons standing out in his throat. He was scared too. If she took his hand in hers, she had no doubt their frantic heartbeats would match. They’d busted into cook houses, participated in raids, gone running after suspects in dark alleys, but she’d never felt this kind of apprehension before. What they stalked now wasn’t human – not anymore. Anything could happen.
Sasha jerked to a sudden halt, threw his head back, nostrils flared wide.
“What–” Trina started.
He took off at a run.
“Shit,” Lanny muttered, and they broke into their own uneven, too-tired running strides.
Sasha moved quicker than a man, though he only looked like he was jogging. His footfalls were light as a child’s, barely touching, almost soundless.
Wait, Trina wanted to call after him, but her throat was too tight.
Up and up, across one landing and then the next, Sasha going faster and faster.
She wasn’t ready.
She thought of the things she’d seen through Nikita’s eyes. Rasputin’s awful red mouth, dripping blood onto the snow.
She wasn’t ready. She…
Her toe caught the tread of the next stair, and she went sprawling.
Everything seemed to happen at once, after that.
She landed hard on her knees, managing to hold onto her gun, slapping at the next stair up with her other hand. The impact hurt; snapped her teeth together so hard she bit her cheek and tasted blood.
Lanny reached for her and grabbed her under the arm.
And two men leapt into view from the next landing.
A vicious snarl echoed through the stairwell, low and deep and threatening, like a Rottweiler on the attack. Trina knew, with certainty, that Sasha had made that sound. And that the echoing growls, the rumbling, angry tones of big cats at the zoo, belonged to the men – who were in fact vampires.
One of whom was Chad Edwards.
“Fuck,” Lanny swore, and dragged her to her feet. He pressed her to the wall and shielded her with his body, trained his gun on the tangle of snarling boys up on the landing. “Hey, shitheads!” he called to them. “Put your fucking hands up!” It was his booming cop voice, and it got results. Sort of.
Chad snapped around, wide-eyed as a wild animal, and then launched himself down the stairs. In one jump, he cleared all the steps to land on his toes on the next landing, a blur of movement that left Lanny swearing and jerking back out of reflex.
Sasha grabbed the other one by the throat and slammed him up against the wall with another snarl, lips peeled back off his teeth.
“We should…” Lanny started, but trailed off, because Chad was gone, no two ways about it, and they both knew they didn’t have a prayer of catching up to him.
“That one,” Trina said, shakily, pushing at his shoulder to get him to let up.
The other vampire had gone limp and pliant in Sasha’s grip, head bowing in obvious submission. Sasha leaned in close, like he was sharing a secret. He pulled back when Trina and Lanny reached the landing, and that was when she saw the bright flash of blood.
“What are you doing?” The question came out shrill and terrified, and she was too wired to care if that made her sound weak.
Sasha turned to her with blood on his lips, pulling a disgusted face, spitting a big red glob onto the floor. “He smelled familiar. Ugh! I had to make sure.”
“Make sure of what?” she shouted.
The vampire looked up at her, big blues eyes, contrite and cowed.
“He smells like Rasputin,” Sasha said, spitting again, coughing on the taste. “And he tastes like him too.”
“What the fuck?” Lanny said, in the bland tone that meant he’d reached his limit and was totally done with the whole scenario.
“How is that possible?” Trina demanded. “Rasputin’s been dead for seventy-five years!”
“Yes, ma’am, he has,” the vampire said…in a Russian accent. “So have I. Or at least I thought so. But he turned me before the assassination.”
Her insides turned to ice. Her skin pebbled into goosebumps. “What assassination?”
“Of the royal family, ma’am,” he said, politely.
“Tell her who you are,” Sasha growled, pressing on his windpipe.
The boy – and he really was just a boy; young and sweet-faced, smooth-skinned – swallowed with obvious difficulty, but managed a nod. “My name is Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, last tsarevich of Russia.”