45
LIVE FOREVER
To Trina’s surprise, Lanny offered up his place to Jamie, somewhere to lay low until they could figure out what he should do next. He’d looked crestfallen when he realized he couldn’t go home to the place he shared with his roommate, a roommate who thought he was dead. Trina had promised to get all his canvases and paint supplies to him as soon as she could, and Sasha offered to stay with him for a little while, get him settled, make sure he had something to eat – “not blood,” he whispered to Trina as they left.
Once she’d collapsed onto her sofa next to Lanny, leaning against his side, she said, “He seems sweet, doesn’t he?”
She felt him nod, his head rustling against hers. “Yeah.”
“I have a feeling life is only gonna get more complicated from here,” she said, and shoved away the sudden spike of pain, pretending Lanny would be here for all of it, ready to nod and gasp and curse at all of it with her.
He squeezed her hand. “I think so, too.”
~*~
Lanny never wanted to be a cop. In his big, boisterous, loving, crazy family, he’d always felt a half-step out of place. He was bigger than his brothers, more aggressive, more energetic. Always juiced and spoiling for a fight.
When he was fourteen, he broke a boy’s nose in the locker room at school. It wasn’t his fault, not at first – he at least hadn’t started it.
Timmy Riggs had been the kind of skinny, nervous boy who would probably grow up to be six-five and two-eighty, cosmic revenge for his tiny childhood, but always the sort to keep to himself and not bother anyone else. Unfortunately, though, he’d been the target of all the douchebag idiots too stupid and slow to make the football team, all those angry meatheads looking to take it out on someone smaller. Timmy was a popular target.
On the day of the nose-breaking, Lanny walked into the locker room after gym to change back into his school clothes and found Joseph Petri and Andy Rudolph holding Timmy up by his shoulders and hips over a toilet, laughing manically, threatening to dunk him while Timmy held his breath and refused to beg.
Lanny could have let it go. Walked away and not incurred the other boys’ wrath. But he’d been incensed, and impressed: little Timmy with his teeth gritted and his eyes shut, determined not to scream. Lanny had to admire that.
“Hey, fuckfaces,” he called, slamming an open locker shut to get their attention.
Both boys turned to him, almost dropping Timmy, who caught himself with both hands on the toilet seat.
Lanny proceeded to taunt them, suggest they had tiny dicks, and ended up fist-fighting both of them. At the end, Lanny had a few bruises, Andy was unconscious, and Joseph was slurping blood from his broken nose.
It was after that – once his mother was done chewing him out twice over – that his father pulled him aside, into his study that smelled of books and expensive cigars, and explained to him that some men had more violence in them that others. Dad was the one to take him to the gym for the first time. To encourage his boxing dreams while Mom clutched her rosary and fretted.
Early on, Lanny knew he wanted to box for a living. To be in Pay-Per-View fights and appear on commercials, and expend all his violent energy in the ring.
He’d never wanted to be a cop, but he’d convinced himself it was just temporary. A part of him had always thought he’d have time to heal, to get whole, to maybe have another surgery, and get back into the ring.
The cancer had hit him like a Mack truck. Maybe he wasn’t a fighter like he’d always wanted to be, but he hadn’t counted on death coming for him like this, now, with smiling jaws and laughing eyes.
Nothing to be done, the doctors had said.
Just buying time.
Tell his family he loved them.
One last chance for goodbyes.
No.
No, no, no.
Fuck that.
Trina was so tired that it was easy to slip away from her and out the door. Sasha must have been awake, because he answered his call immediately, gave him an address of a building only a few blocks away.
The whole walk there, Lanny waited for some sense of self-preservation to kick in, but it never did. In the middle of the night, exhausted beyond belief, counting the minutes left of his life, he couldn’t find a reason to turn back.
When he knocked, Sasha opened the door, smiled at him. “Come in.”
That was when his breath caught and his heart started hammering. Shit. What was he doing?
But it was too late for those thoughts, because he was standing in the middle of a surprisingly cozy living room, Nikita seated with a glass of vodka and a cigarette in a battered corduroy recliner just this side of well-loved. He wore gray sweatpants and an often-washed AC/DC t-shirt, his hair soft and messy like he’d been running his hands through it, or sleeping. Lanny saw Trina in the shape of his face, the assessment in his eyes, and shivered.
The door closed softly behind him, and that was that. He was trapped.
Nikita exhaled a stream of smoke and said, “To be honest, I thought you’d turn up sooner.”
Lanny scowled out of reflex. “This ain’t the kind of thing you decide on a whim.”
“No. It’s not. Have a seat.” He gestured to the worn-out sofa with his cigarette, and Lanny sat.
And that was when the enormity of what he’d done hit him. He wasn’t visiting a friend. Hell, he wasn’t even interrogating a suspect of walking alone through a bad neighborhood. He’d walked right into the proverbial lion’s den, and he had the distinct feeling that the department-issue gun on his hip wouldn’t do him a bit of good if one or both of them decided to rescind their hospitality.
“This’ll help,” Sasha’s voice said, and a cool glass was pressing into his hand.
He’d zoned out, he realized, startling back to the moment at hand to find his fingers curled around a tumbler of vodka.
“It’s all we have to drink,” Sasha said with an apologetic shrug, going to sit in a wingback chair that had once been ornate, and now looked lived-in. “Unless you want Coke? Would you rather?” He made a move to rise.
“Nah, it’s fine.” Lanny was surprised by the rough scrape of his voice. Shit, he was scared. In more ways than one. He brought the glass to his lips with a hand that only shook a little and cracked a smile he knew looked like a sad imitation; it was the same smile he’d given to his family right after his hand shattered, when they were trying to convince him he still had his whole life ahead of him. “Kinda cliché, though, isn’t it? Russians drinking vodka?”
Nikita snorted, and one corner of his mouth twitched like he almost smiled. “You have no idea.”
Sasha said, “I do like American whiskey. Jack Daniel’s is my favorite.”
“Yeah?” Lanny said.
“It’s like caramel,” the Russian boy said, his face expressive and open, going thoughtful. “Sweet, like vodka is not. Yes, I like it.” He smiled, and maybe it was that first sip of liquor, but Lanny smiled back. The kid was irrepressibly cheerful and…and just nice. He didn’t fit in New York at all – but maybe nice didn’t fit in anywhere anymore.
Nikita said, “You’ll drink anything.” Made a dismissive hand gesture that made Sasha laugh.
“You’re just boring,” he shot back.
What was it like, Lanny wondered, to have been alive with someone for so long? To know what they thought, felt, dreamed? To be that strongly linked? Sometimes, if they were lucky, people had lifetimes together. But what did forever feel like? Did it burn? Or was it the balm that made life worthwhile?
Belatedly, he noticed that both of them were staring at him.
All the laughter bled out of the room.
Nikita drank off his vodka and said, “When were you diagnosed?”
He’d been expecting the question, but still, Lanny’s breath caught in his throat. “Trina told you?”
“No. I smelled it on you the second we met.”
“Oh.” The air left his lungs on an explosive sigh. “Yeah, um…” The idea of it, smelling something like cancer, like one of those trained dogs…
“It’s in your lymph nodes,” Nikita said, his matter-of-fact tone – like he just knew – as unsettling as icy fingers down Lanny’s neck. “The ones in your throat, and under your arms, and in your groin. It’s spreading to your organs. You seem alright now, but you’ll be dead in a month or two.”
Lanny opened his mouth to respond, and made an embarrassing whimpering sound instead.
“You’re a proud man, Roland,” Nikita continued, and it wasn’t a question. “You don’t want to die, but you aren’t the sort to ask for help. You’re here because of Trina. Yes?”
“Yeah,” he croaked.
“But you don’t like it.”
“Should I?”
That finally earned him a real smile. Or a close approximation of one.
Nikita shook his head, lips turned up at the corners. “No, definitely not. Do you hate me, or are you afraid?”
Lanny hesitated, and Nikita lifted his dark brows. “Both,” he admitted gruffly. “A little.”
Sasha said, “Nik is a very good vampire, though.”
“Sashka,” Nikita said, scolding.
“You are,” his friend insisted.
“You ever, what’s the word, turned anyone before?” Lanny asked, interrupting them.
“Never.” The first edge of emotion crept into Nikita’s voice. “Not even when I wanted to.”
“Your girl?” Lanny guessed.
Nikita pressed his lips together, hand tightening on his glass until his knuckles turned white.
“Katya,” Sasha said, when it became apparent that Nikita wasn’t going to answer.
“Trina’s great-grandmother?” Lanny said.
“Yes.” Nikita’s voice was all gravel and grit. His throat jumped when he swallowed. “I left her human.”
Lanny felt like he stood on the edge of a cliff when he said, “Do you regret it?”
Nikita breathed a humorless laugh. “Yes, and no. Yes for me. No for her. Not ever – she didn’t deserve that.” He looked up then, and Lanny had no idea what his own face was doing, but it prompted Nikita to say, “You’re surprised.”
“No, I…well, I mean. Yeah. Who doesn’t want to live forever?” But he heard the hollow sound of his voice.
Nikita cocked his head, and for a moment, he didn’t look quite human. Same face, same shoulders, same unruly dark hair, same threadbare shirt. But something in the tilt of his head spoke of prehistoric times, when birds bigger than men walked the earth; spoke of an hour in the night that no living thing had seen.
Lanny shivered.
“You don’t want to live forever,” Nikita said. “Do you?”
“I…”
“It’s alright. I think better of you for it.”
He sighed, and felt something that had previously been locked tight inside him loosen. Like a muscle cramp that finally eased. “I was raised Catholic,” he said, and then the valve was open, and he could give voice to the things he hadn’t been able to tell Trina. “I believe in God. In heaven. I think our souls go there when we die. Well, mostly.”
Nikita nodded.
“What happens…what happens if you don’t die? If you cheat death…doesn’t that make God angry? Shit, I sound like a kid.” He wiped at his face, trying to ease the tension between his brows.
“A good question,” Nikita said. “And I don’t know the answer.”
“Well that’s comforting.”
Nikita drained his vodka and, unasked, Sasha got up to take the glass into the small kitchen and pour him another. “Maybe I should tell you some things, and then you can tell me some things, and then we can really talk.”
Lanny didn’t know what that meant, but he was adrift here, so he nodded.
“Here’s what I do know about vampires,” Nikita continued. “They are immortal. They require food and drink, just like humans, but they also require the blood of living things. Animal blood can get you by, but there’s a natural craving for human blood – it’s stronger. We” – he said, gesturing between himself and Sasha – “have a theory that it goes all the way back to Rome, that it’s an instinct that helps turn people into subjects. You can literally hold their life in your hands.”
He made a disgusted face, took a sip of his refreshed vodka, and pressed on. “Humans can be turned. Which you saw. But vampires can breed, too. And unless you cut the heart from their bodies, they can’t be killed. Mostly.”
“That what you did with Chad Edwards?”
“Yes.”
“You done that a lot?”
“When necessary. When I come across a vampire who kills people when he feeds.”
“Nik believes in humanity,” Sasha put in. “He has a big heart.”
“No. I’ve had enough of killers, is all.”
The two immortals stared at one another, Sasha’s gaze asking for a little lenience, Nikita glaring back at him. They created the sort of tableau that Lanny had only ever seen in affectionate, but long-suffering marriages. The thought made him want to laugh, and maybe it was the vodka, but in that moment he couldn’t help but like them, at least a little. And he approved of Nikita’s attitude toward the whole thing. He guessed.
Nikita sighed, exasperated, and finally gave Sasha a tiny smirk – the boy beamed in response and settled down into his chair, satisfied – before turning to Lanny. He grew thoughtful. “You watched me snap Chad Edwards’s neck tonight, and then you came to see me.”
“Yeah.” His voice had never sounded this rough, this shaken, not even after his toughest nights in the ring. Lanny was someone who could take a physical hit…but this introspective, getting inside his own head shit…that messed him up. “Yeah,” he repeated. “If I get treatment, I’ll die slow and painful. And if I don’t get treatment, I’ll die slow and painful. I guess I just…I thought that was it, you know? But then Trina found you, and. Shit. Yeah. I don’t know what I’m supposed to want, now.”
“Most people would want the chance to stay alive. To be stronger, healthier,” Nikita said. “That’s normal.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you love Trina?”
Lanny blinked. He hadn’t expected that question. But this guy was her relative; he had a certain right to want to know a man’s intentions toward her. “Yeah.”
“And you want to be with her, marry her, have children with her?”
“Of course.”
“Are you asking me to turn you for her? Or for yourself?”
“For…” Too late, he realized the question was a trap.
Nikita’s smile was half-gotcha, half-apology. “If I’m being a good great-grandfather, then I have to say that I want you to worship the ground she walks on. I want you to ask me to turn you for her sake, because it will crush her when you die, because you love her so much you can’t bear to imagine her going through that kind of pain.
“But if I’m being honest? This isn’t something you do for someone else. If you don’t want it, really don’t want it, you’ll regret it. Forever. Forever is a lot of regret.”
“Yeah, I–” All the tension in his spine gave out at once, and he slumped. Took a shaky breath. “Yeah.”
Nikita finished off his vodka and set the glass aside on a little round table. “Stand up,” he ordered, and did so himself.
Lanny found that his knees were shaky, and it took him two tries to gather himself and get vertical. He flicked a glance toward Sasha, whose eyes were troubled, but who smiled in encouragement.
Nikita closed the distance between them with two predatory strides, his gate rolling and graceful even in close confines. Not human those two long steps said. And something more sinister Lanny decided not to think about.
The Russian was only a hairsbreadth shorter than him, but Lanny had the distinct impression he was somehow looking up at Nikita.
“You want me to turn you?” Nikita asked, and his eyes changed, pupils dilating.
Lanny’s stomach clenched tight. “I…” He felt sweat pop out on his temples. “Shit, I dunno.”
Once upon a time, Lanny had been the fastest boxer in town. He’d had cobra reflexes, could duck any punch. He kept up a rigorous gym routine, and he knew he was still fast. Faster than any suspect who’d ever tried to deck him, for sure.
He should have been able to dodge Nikita, and that fact alone was enough to break him out in goosebumps when suddenly there was a hand around his throat, a thumb digging into his windpipe until he gasped.
He hadn’t even seen Nikita move.
Man, if he had that kind of speed, and strength – Lanny started to choke a little – just imagine what he could do in the ring…
Not the time.
Nikita leaned into his face, snarling low like a mountain lion, teeth bared. “I’ve never turned anyone in my life and you think I’ll turn you?” he hissed.
Lanny’s answer came out a garbled plea.
Nikita made a disgusted sound and threw him back into his chair. He landed so hard he almost tipped over, and air rushed to fill his lungs, bruised throat sending sharp darts of pain up into his jaw and down into his collarbones.
Through a painful coughing fit, he noted Nikita pacing away from him, hands on his hips, shaking his head.
“All you mortals are the same,” he lamented, staring down at the carpet, thick dark hair falling across his forehead.
A cool hand touched the back of Lanny’s neck, and Sasha appeared in front of him, holding a glass of water. “Here, drink this. Sorry.” But his worry was clearly for his friend, his gaze shooting to Nikita.
“Yeah?” Lanny wheezed, missing the scornful tone he’d been shooting for. “How’s that?”
Nikita’s eyes were still dilated when he turned his head, tips of his fangs still showing. “You’re not afraid enough.”
“What?” His voice was coming back to him, but he was still covered in gooseflesh, shaking inside his skin. He sipped the water Sasha had given him.
Nikita sighed. “You’re afraid, yes.” He relaxed a little, which in turn helped Lanny relax. Walked over to the table where he’d left his glass. “But it’s still exciting – the idea of all that power. And you’re afraid, but not afraid enough.” He lifted his wrist to his mouth, and bit it.
Lanny watched, sickened and fascinated, as blood welled against Nikita’s lips. As he reached for the empty glass and then held his wrist over it, blood dripping down into it in crimson spatters.
“You don’t see the power as a responsibility.”
Drip, drip, drip.
“And so you abuse it.”
The blood ran quicker. Several ounces stood in the bottom of the glance, enough that it lapped up the sides a fraction.
Nikita brought his wrist back to his mouth and sucked at it. Slid the flat of his tongue across the punctures his fangs had made.
The whole room seemed to tilt sideways. Lanny had the sense that he’d been watching a movie, one of those hokey, gaudily-spooky things teenagers flocked to, and that somehow he’d managed to step through the screen.
Wounded hand tucked in close to his chest, Nikita picked up the glass with the other and turned to Lanny, eyes normal again, expression resigned. He offered the glass. “You can drink this, if you want to. It isn’t a cure – not a permanent one – but small doses will keep the cancer in check without killing you the way chemo does.”
Lanny looked at the glass of thick, dark blood. Then at the man’s face. “Are you serious?” His stomach lurched at the thought.
“Afraid so. It’s your choice, but this is the only help I can offer you.”
Do it, Trina’s voice said in his head. Buy some time.
“It won’t make me…?”
“It won’t turn you, no.”
“It sounds too good to be true.”
“It probably is.”
But what choice was there?
“This is insane,” Lanny said, and reached for the glass.
~*~
He sat with his forearm resting on his knee, watching the punctures in his wrist knit together. A few last drops of blood welled, and then the skin fused, dark pink, then pale, then white. He licked the blood away absently; his own taste didn’t elicit so much as a twinge of hunger tonight.
Lanny was gone, the stained glass sitting on the coffee table, still giving off a faint heat from the man’s fingers. His smell – sick and scared – still tainted the air and it made Nikita’s skin itch.
Sasha settled at the near end of the sofa, close enough for his scent to drown out the others in the room. One of those automatic, comforting, wolfish things he did without being asked.
“You regret it?” Sasha asked, pale brows drawing together over worried blue eyes.
“Regret what?”
Sasha’s voice dropped to a whisper, head ducking slightly. “That I turned you.”
Pain lanced through Nikita’s chest, like a blade right through his heart. “No. Sashka, no, come here.” He opened his arms and Sasha came with a whimper, folded himself into the corner of the chair, legs flung over its arm, pressing the top of his head under Nikita’s jaw and curling himself up tight in his lap.
Nikita kissed the top of his head. Held him. Rubbed his arms and let a low, hopefully soothing rumble loose in his chest. “No, I don’t regret being here with you. Not ever. I was dying a horrible, painful death, and you saved me.”
Sasha whined, distressed, a shiver moving through his frame. “But you told Lanny–”
“I know, I know.” Nikita ran a hand down the back of his head, cupped the vulnerable curve of his skull, fingered the silky long lengths of his hair. “But I’m not him. We’re not them. Don’t compare it.”
Sasha breathed in fast little exhales, warm and damp against Nikita’s throat. “I want you to be happy, though.”
“I am.” And in that moment, with his wolf in his arms, Nikita was. Happy in a selfish way, glad that he had his wolf all to himself, all the time. Same job, same apartment, no friends, no one else but them. Sasha would forever be the outgoing, exuberant boy he’d been at nineteen, and Nikita would always be the bitter, jaded asshole who clung to what little he had left.
“I know I shouldn’t have done it,” Sasha whispered, and Nikita stilled.
They had versions of the same conversation too often; knowing that time was endless led to more than normal amounts of contemplation. But both of them were always careful to skirt the real issue that lay at the heart of it. Nikita’s turning was an accepted fact; they never talked about Sasha’s determined “I’m going to save you,” and they never reminisced about the way Sasha had fed him the heart, bite-by-bloody-bite.
Sasha burrowed in closer and Nikita went back to petting him. “Don’t say that.” His voice was rough and hitched.
“It was selfish,” Sasha said. “You didn’t want me to, but you were too weak to say no, and I forced you. You never wanted to be here now. It’s my fault.” His voice was the miserable, grief-filled whimper of a child, and it broke Nikita’s black heart.
“No, no. Don’t. Listen to me.” Nikita cuddled him in close, spoke with his lips against the top of his head. “It wasn’t selfish, and I don’t regret it.”
Sasha’s answering whine was doubtful.
Nikita sighed. Raked his fingers through pale hair. “You know what I think? I think we’re supposed to be here right now.”
Sasha shifted a little, nosing at the soft patch of skin under Nikita’s ear, quiet canine snuffles of curiosity. This was Sasha’s weakness: he didn’t need blood, could get by on regular food just fine, but after a long day of playing human, he had to decompress and let the wolf side take over, act like the overgrown lapdog he really was, deep inside. If Nikita was honest, he enjoyed it; this was why humans had therapy dogs for anxiety: it was hard to fret when someone who loved you wanted to sit in your lap.
“I think...surviving – that day.” That terrible, bloody, unforgettable day that they never talked about. “I think maybe it gave us a chance to do something worthwhile. For me to make up for all the awful things I did when I was pretending to be a Soviet. I always told myself I was biding my time…but the time never came.”
He sighed again. “I think I’m still waiting, in a lot of ways. And I think I’ve had it wrong this whole time. Still. Shit, I’m always wrong.”
“Nik–”
“No, let me finish. There’s no magic right time coming. If I want to make up for the evil I’ve done, then I have to go out and actually make up for it. Be proactive – like you were, when you turned me.” He scratched at his shoulder in the way that always made Sasha’s head tilt to the side; it worked now, like clockwork. “I didn’t get to save the empire,” he said, and for the first time in a long time, something warm started to unfurl in his chest. “But maybe I can help Trina. Maybe that’s a good start.”
“Hmm,” Sasha hummed.
“What do you think?”
“I like it.”
“Yeah? You don’t have to, you know, you could–”
“Shut up,” Sasha said, fond now, happiness coming back into his voice. “I go where you go.”
In the quiet of their little unremarkable apartment, Nikita petted his friend’s hair and smiled up at the water-stained ceiling. “I’m glad you’re here with me,” he said.
Sasha echoed him, a warm chuff of breath that said so many things, all of them affectionate.
Their little pack of two.
~*~
Lanny felt alive. He felt eighteen and untested. Uninjured. Felt strong.
He’d never been one for drugs. He drank too much, had spent too many nights in bars, both before and after his injury, but other than a little pot he’d never experimented with anything else. So he couldn’t say for sure that the blood – the honest to God blood, oily and hot and tangy like sucking on keys; and the worst part, not as disgusting as he’d anticipated – had hit his system like cocaine, but that was the closest comparison he could make. It was a high, he knew that much, a punch of adrenaline, and a sort of clearing, too. His sinuses had opened, his tired eyes had lost their scratchiness. It was like caffeine without the shakiness. As he walked back to Trina’s apartment, he could detect none of the little everyday aches and pains that he’d learned to live with the past few years. The stiff neck, the tender knee, the achy back and the constant dull fire in his wrist from his bad hand – all gone. He took deep breaths of night air and smelled so many things: the grease of a twenty-four hour diner, the exhaust of cars and trucks, the garbage from an alley, the lingering notes of perfume and cologne long after a crowd of club-goers had passed, like the scent had lingered on the concrete of the sidewalk.
He was alone, and he felt wonderful. He tipped his head back, searching for stars through the light-smudged sky, chuckling quietly to himself. The cancer wasn’t something he’d been able to feel in a tangible way, but he imagined he could feel it receding now; shrinking down to little pebbles; powdering into dust.
God, he loved this city. Always had. New York wasn’t a place so much as it was a being, something sentient that put little feelers through your skin, the mother tree all the little symbiotic plants fed from. Shit, he never got philosophical like this, but it seemed a correct thought, somehow. In the slow crush of depression, of uselessness, of the drudgery and sickness of his job, he’d forgotten how much he loved this damn place, and it wasn’t acceptable anymore. This moment, laughing to himself in the brightness of a New York night, felt like remembering that love.
He heard something, the scuff of footsteps on the sidewalk ahead, and righted himself so he didn’t run into anyone.
A man stood three feet away, hands in his jeans pockets, staring at him.
Staring.
All the sensations hit him afresh, the ones that had previously seemed innocuous: he was alone, and it was late. The streetlamps cast dim puddles, and the sky was its usual muddy pink-purple-yellow, the night colored by light pollution. But there were still deep shadows in the alleys. Blinds in all the windows. The kind of alone that was colder for all the people around you who didn’t look and didn’t care. People got murdered on the streets all the time, and nobody even noticed, in this city.
Phantom insects crawled down the back of Lanny’s neck when he realized he recognized this young man not just by sight – but by scent as well. The blood he’d drank pulsed in his stomach, pulsed in his veins.
Rival. Enemy. Danger.
Vampire.
“Hello,” Alexei Romanov, former tsarevich of Russia, said.
Lanny ground to a halt, pulse accelerating. “Were you following me?”
The heir’s face was apologetic. “Yes. Sorry. Nikita refused you, didn’t he?”
“Don’t you worry about that. I’m fine.” He moved to charge past the kid.
Alexei caught him by the arm. The touch was gentle – but the strength behind it was not. Hopped-up on vampire blood or not, this boy who looked like he’d just stumbled out of a library could have lifted Lanny up over his head one-handed if he wanted to.
“Wait,” Alexei said. “A minute. Please?”
Lanny tensed his arm, and the fingers around his elbow tightened. He had the impression the please was just a formality. “Make it fast.”
He nodded. “Nikita sees his power as a burden. But it’s not. It’s a gift. One that could save your life.”
“I…” Lanny started, and then trailed off. The urgency and worry fuzzed and then faded. He had nothing to be afraid of. Alexei didn’t mean him any harm.
Right?
“I can help you,” Alexei said, leaning in close, close enough that his warm breath fanned across Lanny’s face. Wow, his eyes were really cool, the pupils big as teacup saucers, the irises shining around them, almost glowing. “Do you want me to help you, Lanny?”
No.
Wait.
Maybe?
“I…” he tried again. “Sure.”
Alexei smiled, friendly, sharp-toothed, pleased. “I only want to help.” He ducked his head into Lanny’s throat.
There was pain, a bright spark of it.
And then he was fainting, falling, shutting his eyes.
Blackness.
~*~
When he woke, everything was different.
He was different.