43
OPEN WOUND
Sasha wasn’t one to brag, but he knew he was one hell of an excellent bartender. He didn’t tire easily, and he had deft hands, a sense of smell and taste three times as sensitive as any human. He genuinely liked people, for the most part, and chatting with customers came naturally. He liked hearing about their days, their quietly comforting human problems – two nights ago a beautiful young woman had cried into her margarita about a boy, and within an hour Sasha had managed to convince her that she was much better off without the guy, and she was smiling when she left, leaving behind a generous tip for him. He didn’t gossip with the servers, didn’t flirt inappropriately. He was a model employee.
The only hitch had been that he was a package deal.
The Wet Whistle’s manager, Brian, had looked doubtfully at Nikita when he’d applied for the bouncer position. The bouncers already on staff were the neckless, shaved-head, amateur MMA fighter types, bulging out of their shirtsleeves. But within five minutes, Nikita had arm-wrestled all of them, and then bodily thrown one out the front door as a demonstration.
“Helluva lot stronger than you look,” Brian had said. “You’re hired. I’d shake your hand, but I’m afraid you’ll crush my fingers.”
So Sasha served drinks, and Nikita gave the loud and rowdy types the boot. Sasha thought the Wet Whistle was better off for it, and he knew Nikita was. He was the sort of man who needed a job or he started to feel worthless.
Nikita was at the door tonight, checking IDs, and the club was filling up with its usual student and millennial crowd, making their way to the bar in tides before heading off to the tables and the dance floor.
Sasha set a dirty martini on a cocktail napkin and slid it across the bar to a young woman with dyed-black hair and wicked sharp eyeliner.
She took the drink with a low, throaty “thanks,” and left behind a napkin with a phone number on it. Sophie, she’d printed her name, dotted the I with a heart. Call me, the note said.
Sasha smiled a little before he tucked the napkin under the bar with dozens more like it. Something about his artfully shaggy hair, the fineness of his features, and easiness of his smile, possibly even his all-black ensemble, appealed to the young women here. He styled himself dangerous, but physically he came across kind and approachable. Puppy, he heard in Ivan’s voice, and his smile slipped away.
Maybe he’d call Sophie later. Nikita was always in want of a woman, but couldn’t seem to approach them himself.
It must have started raining outside, a summer thunderstorm he could only just make out above the pounding of the music, because the incoming customers were sprinkled with raindrops, laughing and shaking water out of their hair. He offered one girl a towel that she took with a grateful smile…that quickly turned speculating.
He was a good bartender. His tip jar filled up fast.
Alexei showed up just after ten.
Above the miasma of competing perfumes, body sprays, human musk, sweat, and alcohol, Sasha scented him the moment he walked in. All vampires smelled a little bloody, the dark flower crush of an open wound, raw and pulsing.
He also smelled cautious tonight, and when he appeared, slipping through the crowd to get to the bar, he looked meek and cowed, head bent down at a submissive angle.
“Hello,” he said, quietly, climbing onto a stool and folding his hands on the bar top. He looked up at Sasha through lashes that looked blue in the overhead neon bulbs.
“Hello.” Without asking, Sasha pulled down a tumbler and poured two neat fingers of vodka.
“Oh. Um.” Alexei fumbled for his wallet, and Sasha waved him away.
“On the house.”
“Thank you.” He sipped it slow and careful, like a child having his first taste, wincing a little. “Nikita hates me, I can tell.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Sasha said, and mostly believed it.
“You should have seen the way he looked at me when I came in. He hates me.”
“Hey, can I get two Bud Light longnecks?” a customer asked, and Sasha pulled them from the cooler.
“Don’t say hate,” Sasha said, though he had no doubt Nikita’s death glare looked hateful in the extreme. He passed the beers along and turned back to Alexei. “He’s hated some people, yes, but not you.” How could he explain all the hurt and disappointment that lived in his friend, though? The way all his dreams had been crushed until he didn’t care about anyone or anything.
He sighed. “Nik is…complicated.” He made a face. How cliché.
Alexei breathed a soft laugh. “Yes. I figured that out.”
“He spent his whole human life devoted to your family, and then he meets you, and you’ve turned someone. You have to understand about Nik – he doesn’t like being a vampire.” He dropped his voice on the last word, just loud enough for inhuman ears to catch.
Alexei sat up straighter, clearly surprised. “He doesn’t?”
“I think he doesn’t mind being alive,” Sasha amended. “But he doesn’t like the blood-drinking. The cravings. He…” He trailed off before he said too much.
“Wow,” Alexei said. “That’s so strange. I love it.”
“Really?” Sasha thought he shouldn’t be surprised, but somehow was. He realized that, keeping close company only with Nikita, he had no idea how the general vampire population felt about their abilities.
“Oh yes. I was sick as a human. I couldn’t play like a regular boy. Everyone tiptoed around me – what’s the American expression? They stepped on eggshells?”
“Walked on eggshells.”
“Yes, that. All of them did. Mama cried all the time, and prayed at my bedside. I nearly died at least once a year. All our palaces and riches, but no one could buy me a better body.” His gaze turned inward, heavy with remembered sadness. “Vampirism is a gift for me. I’ll always be grateful to Grisha for giving it to me.”
His gaze lifted to Sasha’s. “When did Grisha turn Nikita? I don’t ever remember seeing him at court.”
“Well…” Sasha started. Here came the awkward part.
“He was an officer, plainly. Was he Okhrana?”
“No…Cheka, actually.”
It took him a moment to place the word, but then Alexei’s eyes widened. “But that would mean…”
“It was after the empire collapsed, yes.”
Alexei looked like he’d seen a ghost – like ghosts could actually scare vampires.
“But…but how?” He sounded completely rattled. “Grigory was dead by then! He was…”
“Shh, shh,” Sasha said, patting the air, aiming for soothing. “I know it’s a shock–”
“He was dead! He was!”
Two women approaching the bar paused, eyeing Alexei warily.
Sasha leaned toward him. “You have to calm down, okay? Please? I’ll explain everything if you–”
“He didn’t come find me,” Alexei breathed. And then, voice cracking, “Why didn’t he come find me?” He started to cry in sudden, jerking spasms, tears flooding his eyes, chest hitching.
“Oh boy,” Sasha said with a sigh. He pulled out his phone and fired a quick text to Nikita: take your break now, pls. I fucked up.
~*~
It was the slowest and warmest and safest she’d felt upon waking in weeks. A cynical part of her mind – which sounded an awful lot like her mother – said, Ha, you just needed to get laid. But really, she knew it wasn’t about the sex – which had been fantastic – so much as it was about Lanny. About sex brimming with love. The life-affirming, comforting, at-last perfection of it.
She opened her eyes to the nighttime darkness of her bedroom, the light from Imperial Palace reflected in her dressing table mirror.
Lanny lay against her back, the two of them pressed together shoulder-to-hip. His strong, muscled arm was heavy around her waist, his breath warm and even against the back of her neck. The pillowcase, her whole bed, smelled like him: aftershave, sweat, bourbon. She imagined a tang of sickness, some outer sign that he was dying…
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, wanting to hold on to the peace just a moment longer. It was only a matter of time before their phones rang and they had to pull their clothes back on and pretend to be invulnerable again. Just a little longer…just a little bit.
“Mmm,” Lanny hummed into the fine hair at hair at her nape. “You’re thinkin’ awful loud.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Wasn’t sleeping.” He petted her stomach under the covers. “You okay?”
In a million ways, no. But right now, in this patch of quiet, she was perfect. “Yeah.” She hated the catch in her voice.
And of course he heard it. His hand shifted to her hip and tightened, a gentle urging.
Trina rolled over, shifting in minute increments without dislodging his arm, until she faced him, her hands braced on the solid warmth of his chest. His heart beat a steady rhythm against her palms. The reflected light afforded her a faint glimpse of his face, the lines of jaw and cheek and nose, the glimmer of his eyes.
“You need to do chemo, Lanny,” she said, and the words felt like opening up her chest cavity and inviting him to take hold of her heart. She hated begging, always had, but she’d do it for Lanny. “Have surgery. Radiation. Go to one of those fancy Cancer Treatment Centers of America. You have to do something. You have to fight it.”
“You gonna be there for that?” he asked. “When I’m passed out in a hospital bed, puking my guts up. When I’m a hundred pounds, and I can’t stop shitting my pants–”
“Stop.”
His voice stayed even and low, pillow-talk volume, but the words themselves were relentless. “When my hair falls out, and my skin’s hanging off my body. When my dick can’t get hard, and I can’t hold you, can’t stay awake, can’t even fucking breathe. Is that what you want to watch? ‘Cause that ain’t fighting, sweetheart. That’s dying. It’s not graceful and it’s not brave. It’s ugly, smelly, fucked-up business. You wanna watch that?”
She bit her lip, hard. “I want as much time with you as I can get.”
“That kinda time ain’t worth having.” He shook his head a fraction, pillow rustling under his face. “I’m a fighter, yeah, which means I know when it’s time to tap out.”
She wanted to scream. To slap him. Wanted to shake him and ask him why the hell, if he was so afraid of weakness and frailty and sickness, he wouldn’t at least entertain the idea of asking Nikita for a favor – for the favor. Or, hell, Alexei. Even Chad Edwards, if they managed to find him.
But he was a stubborn asshole, so she bit her lip again and didn’t say those things.
Instead she shut her eyes and leaned her face into the dark, warm hollow of his throat, breathed in the scent of his skin. “So let’s pretend,” she said. “Just for a minute. Let’s pretend you aren’t sick. What would we do then?”
Lanny sighed, and for a moment she didn’t think he’d answer. But then he said, “We gotta tell my ma for starters.”
Trina smiled, and he must have felt it because he continued, voice getting warmer. “And get ready, ‘cause she’s gonna scream. Like, real loud, and real deep. It’s like a roar, really. You might wanna put your hands over your ears.” In an alarming imitation of his mother: “Roland, finally! You finally did something responsible.” He chuckled. “And then she’s gonna hug you so hard you can’t breathe. Pop will be happy, too, but he won’t crack anybody’s ribs about it.
“She’s gonna want to host the engagement shower, too.”
Her heart lurched, but she managed to keep her tone casual. “Oh, there’s gonna be an engagement?”
“Well, yeah. And every Italian motherfucker in Queens is gonna be at the party. Jeeeeesus. I can see it now. Fuck. Maybe we should just elope. I mean, she’d kill us, but we wouldn’t have to do all the showers and brunches and awkward out-of-town relatives bullshit.”
“I’ve always liked the idea of Vegas.”
“With Elvis. Shit, yeah, we gotta find an Elvis to officiate. But original Elvis, not that fat jumpsuit shit.”
“Original, right,” she said, trying, unsuccessfully, to stifle a giggle against his neck.
“No capes at our wedding.”
“One-hundred percent onboard with that.”
“I want seven kids.”
“What?” She laughed. “I’m not giving birth to seven children. Fuck that.”
“Five?”
“Try two.”
“Aw, come on, at least three.”
“Negotiable.”
Doubt crept into his voice. “You want kids, right?”
“I do.” She scratched at his chest in reassurance. “But we’d have to have a bigger place than either of our apartments.”
“Oh yeah. Nice two-story in Queens. You won’t miss the city, will you?”
“Nope. I want a dog.”
“Yeah? What kind?”
“Big fluffy shelter mutt. Good with kids. Too lazy to run away.”
“Minivan?”
She snorted. “Hell no.”
“That’s my girl.” He stroked her back, nothing sexual about it, just a gentle petting, broad sweeps down her spine. She felt his face press into her hair, the flicker of his lashes. “Shit,” he whispered.
She slipped her arm around his strong ribcage. He felt so very warm and alive. “I know,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut against the threat of tears.
They held one another, breathing in the quiet, until their phones rang.
~*~
The booths at the Whistle had high backs and black, padded vinyl seats which absorbed sound decently. They were afforded a reasonable amount of privacy in the one Nikita chose, for which he was grateful because Alexei couldn’t seem to stop crying. His sobs had died down, but tears kept leaking from the corners of his eyes and he sniffled and huffed and buried distressed whines in his hands.
“You’ve got to stop,” Nikita said flatly.
Sasha sent him a look that was half have pity and half yeah, I know. He was sitting next to the distraught vampire on the theory that his presence always helped calm Nikita, but the sight of his best friend so close to another vamp was making Nikita’s skin feel too tight.
Monsieur Philippe had tried to explain, decades ago, that the symbiotic relationship between the three kinds of immortals was an important and persistent one, and Nikita had of course dismissed this out of hand. But he’d never tolerated other vamps sniffing around his wolf. Maybe the old man had been right, and it was an instinctual urge to protect what Philippe would have called his “servant,” but Nikita suspected it had more to do with wanting the last living person he loved to never go near any other blood-drinking, no-self-control bastards like himself.
One thing Philippe hadn’t ever said, but which Nikita had figured out: the vampires were the real monsters. Mages and wolves supported them, sure, but they didn’t require the lifeblood of other people to stay alive. It was the violation that made someone a monster. He’d figured that out before he’d been turned into one himself.
“Alexei,” Sasha said, voice low and soothing beneath the thump of club music. “Come on now, it isn’t as if it’s a shock, right? You said so yourself that you thought he was dead, and he was badly hurt. He was hibernating. He couldn’t come get you.”
“But he was awake when he turned you.” He turned puffy, red, miserable eyes to Nikita. “Why didn’t he look for me then?”
“How could he know you were alive, too?” Sasha said. “We told him about the family. About…” Even after all this time, Sasha stumbled a little bit when he talked about the atrocity.
Was it any different from the thing Rasputin had done to them? No, Nikita didn’t think so.
Sasha said, “It was the middle of the war. When it was over, I’m sure he would have looked for you.”
Alexei sat up a little straighter. “But…but the war is over. It’s been over.” He turned to look at Sasha’s face. “So this time he really is…”
“Dead, yes.” And credit to Sasha, he didn’t flinch when he said it, even though it had been his fangs and fingers that had dug the heart from the monster’s body and fed it to Nikita.
“Oh,” Alexei said, sagging down into the booth again. He wiped at his eyes again, but this time, no new tears sprung forth. “I…oh.”
Nikita had had enough of this. He sighed. “Rasputin was a greasy, psychotic, womanizing piece of shit. He didn’t care about anything but drinking blood and fucking whores,” he said. “You’re better off without him.”
Alexei grew indignant. “He was a good man! A holy man. He–”
“Was probably fucking your mother.”
“You–!” The tsarevich lunged across the table and Sasha grabbed the back of his jacket, holding him back.
“Not helpful, Nik,” he muttered.
But at this point, Nikita was done. He braced both hands on the edge of the table to keep from throttling the kid. Whatever his face was doing, the sight of it thumped Alexei back down in his seat.
“You wanna know about Rasputin?” Nikita hissed, a growl stirring in his throat. “Let me tell about your beloved starets. He woke up caterwauling like a woman – like you’re doing. Wanted blood from women, wanted his ‘little ladies.’ He tried to go after my wife, over and over, every day. Made her crazy.” He tugged his shirt collar down to reveal the jagged white scar that still looked, in the right light, like teeth marks. “Bit into me and drained me dry.”
“He was hungry,” Alexei said, just a whisper.
“No, he was insatiable. He tried to send us off to find him whores. Night after night, one after the next after the next…even in the middle of a war zone…” Nikita was breathing hard, chest pumping like he was running a race. “We woke him up so he could help us win the war, take back the country for the monarchists, and what did he want? Blood and pussy. That’s all.”
“Nik,” Sasha said, gently.
He was getting too worked up, but he didn’t care. Fuck it. Fuck everything. “He had a temper, though, didn’t he?” When Alexei glanced away, Nikita pressed harder. “Yeah, you know about it. A bad temper when you crossed him. We poured out all his wine and told him there’d be no more whores until we’d finished the job at Stalingrad. And that’s when his temper really came out. Have you ever seen a man’s head get ripped clean off his body? You can’t imagine the blood.”
“Nikita, please…”
“He killed my brothers. He killed our pack. And I ate the heart out of his chest.” Nikita spit on the tabletop. “Fuck Rasputin. I hope he burns in hell forever.”
He realized then that he was shaking hard enough to make the table rattle, threatening to rip out the screws that secured it to the wall. He breathed in ragged, panting breaths, and sweat rolled down his body, his clothes clinging to his skin.
All the energy left him at once. He was so tired these days. The side effect of living too long. “You were a boy,” he said, voice hoarse and exhausted now. “You didn’t see everything as it really was. Don’t tell me that he was holy. He was just another monster – and the worst part is that I ever believed there was any hope.”
His stomach clenched and he thought he might be sick. “I threw my life away for your family,” he told Alexei. “I won’t do it again, not even for you.” He slid out of the booth. “My break’s over.”
Sasha sent him a sad look, but only nodded, and didn’t try to stop him.
~*~
It was quiet a long moment after Nikita was gone – as quiet as it could be in a nightclub.
“I, uh…” Alexei said. “I don’t want to be tsar, if that’s what he’s thinking.”
Sasha shook his head. “It was hard for him to realize the thing he was fighting for could never happen. It’s not about you, and it’s not even really about Rasputin. He’s a righteous man without a cause, and that can be dangerous.” He offered a smile.
Alexei said, “Oh.” He rubbed at his jaw.
“Alexei, we need to find Chad before he turns someone else. Will you help us?”
The young vampire stared down into his vodka glass, utterly defeated. “Yes, I will help you.”
~*~
Nikita stood outside on the sidewalk, hands jammed in his pockets, cigarette on his lip, glaring at everyone who walked past.
“You’ll scare all the customers away,” Sasha said as he approached.
Nikita snorted a plume of smoke.
They were mostly alone, no one in line, pedestrian traffic slow, so Sasha moved to stand beside him, mirroring his pose, following his line of sight across the street toward the dive bar that emitted a tumble of laughter and music every time the door opened.
“It’s not his fault, you know,” Sasha said.
Nikita reached to take the cigarette between his fingers. “Yeah.”
“He was a victim, too.”
Nikita made an unhappy noise. “You sound like a shrink.”
Sasha grinned. “I do watch a lot of Law & Order reruns.”
Nikita sucked down the rest of the cig in one long drag, then dropped it to the sidewalk and ground it under his boot.
“Don’t litter.”
Nikita ignored him. “Why now?” he asked, turning to him with eyes that blazed against the dark backdrop of the benighted street. “He crawled out of that grave in 1918. Why are we just finding him now? In New York? Connected to murders that Trina’s investigating?”
Sasha sighed. “I think–”
“Don’t say Val, damn it.”
“Alright, I won’t. I don’t think it’s got shit to do with him. He’s been around my whole life. It’s his brother.”
“What about him?”
“Someone woke him up.” And that someone must have been a wolf. Sasha shivered a little inside every time he thought about meeting more of his own kind; he couldn’t tell if it was excitement or dread that stirred in his belly. “And it’s like…it’s like the whole immortal world woke up, too.” He made a motion with his hand that mimicked an explosion, or maybe lights turning on. “Can’t you feel it?”
The way Nikita rubbed the back of his neck was answer enough. Surprisingly, he added, “Kind of.”
A car rolled by, slow, full of young people that craned their necks to look at the unremarkable façade of the club, the neon letters the only sign that anything worthwhile lay inside. They moved on without stopping; Sasha could tell they weren’t dressed right to get in anyway.
Nikita surprised him again. “Are you lonely?” It was just a whisper; anyone without Sasha’s hearing would have missed it.
“Lonely? No. I have you.” He knocked their shoulders together.
“You know what I mean.” Nikita wouldn’t look at him, then, staring vacantly across the street.
And after all this time, Sasha did know, just like he knew that Nikita wouldn’t be able to put it into words. He was a well-spoken man, but emotions always got stuck in his throat like chicken bones.
“I’m curious to meet other wolves. And vampires, too. I’m mostly a dog these days, it is in my nature,” he said with a grin, then grew serious. “But I’m not lonely. You’re my favorite person in the world.”
Nikita snorted, but it sounded choked. So did his voice when he said, “Not a person.”
“My person,” Sasha insisted. “My brother. I’m not lonely, and you won’t ever have to be. I promise you that.”
Nikita’s smile was wistful, but he leaned in so their shoulders were touching again.
“I think something big might be about to happen,” Sasha confessed.
“Me too.”
“But we’ll be together for it. Whatever it is.”
“Yes.”
Sasha’s phone rang.