3
A LUMP IN THE THROAT
Snow again. The crippling cold. And the blood. Always the blood.
She lay on her back, and the wet cold of the snow bled through her clothes, bit through her skin and found purchase in her bones. Too cold to shiver, too cold to hurt, too cold to scream. Above her the sky wheeled white and endless, sifting fat flakes, clawed by the hard black talons of leafless tree limbs.
She didn’t want to die, but she thought she might.
A face appeared above hers, well-made, blue-eyed, pale hair blowing in the ceaseless wind. He didn’t snarl at her this time. No, he crouched beside her, the careful touch of his hand achingly warm against her face. His fingers trembled. His breath left his mouth in a shaky rush, pluming like smoke.
“Nikita,” he said, and she woke up.
Someone was pounding on her apartment door. Sloppy, forceful raps, like whoever it was wanted to knock their way straight through the door.
Trina sat up with a start, covers falling down around her waist, night breeze warming her dream-chilled skin. She felt cold. She glanced down at her hands and half-expected to find her fingers frostbitten and black.
A familiar voice called her name, muffled by the door. “Trina, let me in.” Lanny.
“Shit,” she said, though her rapid pulse immediately settled. In those first disorienting minutes, she’d thought her blue-eyed stranger might be standing out in the hall, trying to growl and claw his way into her home.
She shivered at the thought and swung out of bed.
Her apartment had been a loft at one point, but someone had walled off the corner beside the bathroom so they could claim it was a one bedroom. Her living/kitchen area was tiny, and she’d made it tinier with overstuffed secondhand furniture, rugs, and bookshelves, a few potted plants. It was cozy and eclectic, and it felt like home.
She resented the hell out of these nightmares that made said home feel like an emotional minefield.
When she opened the door, the smell of bourbon threatened to choke her. “Jesus, Lanny.”
The doorframe was holding him up by the shoulder, one hand clasped loosely around a bottle of Jim Beam. Head slumped, eyes glazed, the scent of alcohol pouring off his skin he was so sloshed, and he still wore his shield, a stray flicker of light catching on its polished surface at his belt.
“You’re gonna get canned,” she said, and grabbed him by the jacket. “Get in here before someone sees you.”
“Good evening to you, too,” he slurred, staggering into the apartment. The toe of his boot caught the rug and for one horrifying moment, she thought he’d faceplant right there on the floor. He managed to catch himself, though, and made it to the couch, flopping down with a drunken huff. “Shit,” he muttered.
“Yeah. Shit.” She relocked the door, sliding the extra bolt and chain. She leaned back against it a moment, after, staring across the dim room at her partner, frustration building at the base of her throat like acid reflux. “Where’ve you been?” she asked, as casually as she could manage.
He lifted a hand and made an aborted gesture, arm flopping back to his side when he was too tired to hold it up. “Around. Was at Beck’s for a while.”
“You didn’t get that bottle at Beck’s.”
“Nah, that was the bodega downstairs. After Beck cut me off.”
Trina sighed, chest aching. Her eyes started to burn. At a different time, if she was well-rested, if the sun was shining, she would have called him an idiot and left it at that. But now, raw from another nightmare, too tired to hold her tongue, she said, “Lanny, why are you doing this to yourself? What’s going on?”
He breathed a humorless laugh, the corner of his mouth hitching up in a dark smile. He shook his head. “Doing this to myself? Jesus.” He patted the couch cushion beside him, clumsily. “Come sit by me. I wanna tell you something.”
“Lanny–”
“Please.” And his voice went soft and broken, and she couldn’t refuse.
She sat down next to him, sitting sideways with her legs curled up, so her bare knees almost touched his thigh. This close to him, the smell of liquor pooling between them, she was made aware that he was fully-clothed, and she was only in shorts and a worn, thin tank top.
His gaze was trained on her face, though. Glassy with alcohol, but unwavering. Eyes that were beer bottle-brown shot through with gold, warm and always mischievous, now dark and serious, full of something heavy and painful.
She wanted to touch him, hand twitching with the impulse. Something was wrong, something was so wrong. She could see it in the lines around his mouth, feel it in the weight of his gaze.
“Tell me,” she prompted.
He took an unsteady breath. “Remember when I used to talk about my hand?” He pulled his booted foot up onto the couch and rested his hand in his lap, palm-down, so the webbing of scars across the bones was visible. “And I always said it was the worst thing the doc could have ever said to me?”
He’d been a boxer, once. Before he was a homicide detective. Before he was a beat cop. Before he hit a skid and his life went off the rails, a year-long bender of booze, and pills, and trying to beat back the sweeping depression. Before the fight with Rodrigo Ramon that shattered his hand: two opponents at the same bar, bad blood, accusations of a fixed match…too much to drink, a pool cue…a jagged beer bottle. Roland Webb was going to be the heavyweight champion of the world…until he wasn’t.
“Yeah,” she said, throat dry.
Lanny’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. His eyes were hungry, despairing. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t.” He reached for her hand and curved his own around it, pulled it toward him.
She didn’t breathe.
Carefully, like he was afraid he’d crush her, he pressed her fingers to his throat, that tender patch of skin in the shadow of his jaw. She felt the heat of him, the prickle of stubble. And a lump.
A low, wounded sound left her mouth, and she bit down hard on her lip.
“I went in for a physical and they found this,” he said, and his eyes were wet now. His voice vibrated through his throat, into her hand, dark and ragged. “I’ve got maybe a year left, and that’s if they start treatment right away.”
“You…”
“I don’t wanna go out like that,” he said. “No hair, and ninety pounds, and shitting my pants. No way.”
“Lanny.”
“I’m dying, sweetheart. That’s what’s wrong.”
He’d never called her sweetheart before, but she didn’t want him to start now, because of this.
It didn’t seem possible, him dying, not when his pulse thumped so strongly against her hand. But she felt that lump. She’d watched him grow depressed and self-destructive in the past few weeks.
Anger boiled to life inside her, because grief was too vast and painful to handle right now. She’d be angry up until the end; anger kept a person going, when all grief ever did was pull you under.
She sat up straight and let her hand slide down the side of Lanny’s neck, over the jut of his collarbone, pressed it to the heavy muscle over his heart. She’d always wanted to touch him here, and now she was, but it was all wrong. “Lanny, listen to me. You’ve got to get treatment. You’ve got to. You’ve got to fight this. You, of all people, can’t give up without a fight.”
His grin was half grimace. “I was never any good at fighting, though.”
“No. Don’t gimme that maudlin shit. You were good. You were the best.” She reached for his once-broken hand and pulled it into hers. “This is a war wound, Lanny, it isn’t a sign of weakness.”
“Shit,” he said, and tilted his head so the back of the couch supported it. “I didn’t come up here for a pep talk.”
“Then why did you?” she challenged.
He laced his fingers through hers, clumsily, and gave her hand a tug. He was too uncoordinated at the moment to reel her in properly, but she got the gist. “I’ve been meaning to tell you how beautiful you are for a long time now. Fucking beautiful, Trina.”
It took a second for his words to sink in. And then: “What?” She shook his hand free. “What? Are you kidding me? No, just no.”
“But you are, and I–”
“Do not finish that sentence,” she warned, getting to her feet. “Don’t you dare say you’ve always thought that.”
“But I have.”
“Fuck you,” she said, without heat. “You wait until you’re dying and drunk off your ass, and then you tell me this? Just fuck you, Lanny.”
“You can if you want.” His grin was uneven and sad.
“Ugh,” she groaned. There was a headache building at her temples, tightening like a band. Everything about this moment was warped. “I’m not having this conversation right now.”
“Well we gotta do it soon. I ain’t got long.”
“That is not funny,” she scolded. She wanted to get worked up, really yell and let him have it. But she found she couldn’t.
He slumped deeper into the corner of the couch, eyes half-lidded and glittering. His Adam’s apple jumped as he swallowed, drawing her eyes to his strong throat, the pulse thumping in the veins there. She couldn’t see the tumor. She wondered, perversely, how many more there were, lurking under his beautiful skin, killing him from the inside out.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice hoarse.
Her heart broke. “Here, lie down. You need to get some sleep.”
She crouched down and tugged his boots off, urged him to stretch full-out across the couch. She pulled the knitted throw blanket off the armchair and draped it across him after he’d wrestled his way out of his jacket.
“Not cold,” he protested, slurred and sleepy like a child.
“Humor me.” When he was settled, she leaned down and pressed a lingering kiss to his forehead. He tasted of sweat and liquor.
“I meant,” he said, as he faded into unconsciousness. “I love you.”
“I know.” Her eyes burned. “I love you too.”
He was out before she left the room, breathing deep and regular.
She lingered a moment, watching him in the dim glow of the ambient light that filtered through the window. Grief welled in her throat and she struggled to swallow it down again. It didn’t seem real, not when he was warm and alive and sleeping on her sofa. Not when her family had long since fallen apart and she had no one left but him.
I’m not ready, she thought, biting hard at her lip to keep it from trembling. Oh please, I’m not ready.
The stillness was broken by the ringing of a bell.
She jumped, and hurried into her room, going for her phone.
But the screen was blank. And it wasn’t that kind of ringing anyway. It was light, almost musical. It…
A chill skittered down her back. She turned, slowly, toward her dresser. The sound was coming from the top drawer. It was her family heirloom bell. The one with “Our Friend” inscribed in Cyrillic on the inside.
It was ringing.
“Jesus,” she whispered, shivering. “Oh, Jesus.”
It had to be a hallucination. It couldn’t be real. A trick of the mind. An echo bouncing in from the street.
But the window was closed.
And it was still ringing.
She took a deep breath, told herself she was being stupid, and yanked open the drawer. It was the bell, sitting perfectly still in its corner, emitting sound impossibly.
It went silent when she touched it. She stood a moment, breathing through her mouth, fingers against the cool bronze, silence loud in her ears. It must have been her imagination. That was the only way to explain it.
She drew the bell up by its chain and lifted it from the drawer, brought it to her face. It looked innocuous, the same dinged-up, tarnished bit of metal it had always been.
“I don’t…” she said to herself…
And then there was an incredible flash. She felt a numbness overtake her, felt herself falling, crumpling. She thought she hit the floor.
But then her vision cleared, and there he was, her blue-eyed stranger.
She gasped, and when her lungs expanded, they felt too-large somehow. She felt energized, full of leashed power, awash with the kind of adrenaline she had never known.
She was sitting upright in a ratty corduroy chair, feet planted on the floor, hands on her knees; she flexed them and felt denim beneath her palms: jeans. She looked at them, and they were a man’s hands, large, and white, and strong-looking.
“What,” she said, and her voice was not her own. Deep, masculine, and faintly-accented. “What,” she said again, panicking now, energy flooding her limbs in a terrifying way.
“Oh,” the stranger said, and came to kneel at her feet, hands on her knees, face tipped up to hers. Young. Sweet. Trusting. He was beautiful, blue eyes wide with wonder. “Nikita,” he said. “I think it’s happening again.”
She was panting, could hear the rush of her own breathing, lungs working beautifully. “I can’t…I’m not…who are you?”
“Shh, shh, it’s alright.” He sounded Russian. Oh shit, oh shit, she thought. All her father’s crazy rambling about Dark Forces, and here she was, in someone else’s body. “Ekaterina, it’s you, isn’t it?”
“H-h-how do you know my name?”
He smiled, teeth white and sharp. “I am the best of friends with your great-grandfather. We’ve been looking for you.”
“We?”
Slowly, as if he didn’t want to startle her, he lifted her hand (but it wasn’t her hand!) into his and moved them both to her chest – smooth with muscle, no longer her own, a man’s chest. His fingers were long and pale and delicate. “Yes, we.” He couldn’t stop smiling, expression beatific. “Nikita and me. Your great-grandfather. And I’m Sasha.”
“I…” She closed her eyes, wanting desperately to wake from this new, too-vivid kind of nightmare. The snow and the blood were better than this…this interaction. It felt so real.
Sasha stroked her face, fingertips warm against her cheek. “It’s alright,” he whispered, but she wouldn’t open her eyes.
He sighed, quiet, patient. “I think you had better show her, Nik. If you can.”
Though her eyes were shut, it began to grow light behind her lids. A slow-creeping gray light that seemed to exist inside her head.
“It’s alright, Katyusha,” Sasha said, stroking her face again. “He’ll show you. Let him. He’s your family.”
Sashka, she thought, unbidden. Someone else’s thought. Little brother.
And then she fell through time.