Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  His mouth set in a way that suggested he was glaring at her. “I’ve never turned anyone, not for any reason. Why would I turn him?”

  “Because I’m your family!”

  “Guys.” Sasha wedged between them with a wriggle of his shoulders; it wasn’t quite a human gesture. “Don’t fight. Please. Let’s just find him, and then we can talk. Yes?”

  Trina stared at Nikita a long moment, wanting him to know that she was pissed, that they would talk about this later, while her heart pounded and sweat gathered between her shoulder blades. If she let it, the fear would choke her, so she focused on the anger instead.

  “Fine,” she bit out. She forced her expression to soften as she turned to Sasha. “Can you do the old nose trick again?”

  He smiled. “It’s what I’m best at.”

  With Sasha in the lead – his head up, nose lifted fractionally as he tested the air – they headed down the sidewalk, following the trail of scent Lanny had left behind. Trina wondered what her partner smelled like to a werewolf’s senses; was it the same sweat-bourbon-cologne cocktail she smelled when she pressed her face into his neck? Or were those superficial things swamped with the specific, biological scent of age, gender, and health?

  Nikita walked beside her, and when she glanced down at her feet, she noticed that their strides were evenly matched. They both walked like people who didn’t have the patience for slow pedestrians. A purposeful, out-of-my-way kind of walk.

  And it wasn’t a coincidence – it was genetic. She’d inherited the walk of a Chekist.

  It was hard to stay angry with him in any real way when she thought about who he’d once been, and all that he’d lived through and seen. “Did you explain it to him?” she asked, in a more neutral tone this time. “Why you wouldn’t turn him?”

  He snorted. “I might be a monster, but I can express myself, you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Fair enough.” She sighed, and some of the tension in her chest eased. Worrying about Lanny was taking up all her energy; it was nice not to have to hold a grudge, too. “So?”

  “Immortality is not a gift,” Nikita said. “No matter what spoiled Russian princes might think.”

  “That sounds like a story.”

  “Yes, well, I told your Lanny that it’s not a decision he should make lightly – living forever.”

  Ahead of them, Sasha cocked his head a fraction, and Trina thought he must be listening to them.

  Nikita took a breath and continued, lighter. “But I told him I could make him healthier. Help fight the cancer. Better, and surer, and not painful, like the chemo.”

  “Wait. What?”

  “I gave him a few sips of my blood.” He reached with the hand holding the coffee and tugged up his opposite sleeve, revealing a faint, silver-pink scar on his wrist. “It’s not permanent, I don’t think. But it will help.”

  Trina ground to a halt, twisting her head so she could really see him.

  One corner of his mouth lifted in a little facial shrug. It was hard to tell, with the glaring morning sun, but she thought he blushed. “You love him. I couldn’t just let him die.”

  She wanted to hug him, but didn’t think that would be a good idea.

  Sasha turned around, beaming. “We’re getting along again? Good!”

  Nikita sighed. “Sasha.”

  “Right. Yes. Tracking.” He went back to work and they followed him again.

  It was a gorgeous, albeit sticky-hot day. One of those last hoorahs of summer, when the asphalt sizzled, but the air held the first faint whiff of September. A day when the kids ran and whooped and swung around lampposts, trying to wring that last precious drops of freedom out of each day before the new school year started. The air smelled of hot dogs, soft pretzels, and warm garbage.

  All of this was lost on Trina, whose worry ratcheted up another notch with each step. Every moment they didn’t find Lanny was another moment he could be in danger, lost, hurt, or in lock-up.

  That was the most-likely possibility: that he’d gotten drunk and passed out and been dragged into a holding cell until he sobered up. That was the least-frightening option, to be honest. At least then he’d be safe, and in the company of their own.

  She’d just decided that must be it when Sasha didn’t just halt, but froze. All that moved were the ends of his hair, tossing gently in the breeze, and his nostrils as they flexed and tested the air.

  “What?” Nikita said, and then he took a deep, audible breath and said, “Oh shit.”

  “Vampire,” Sasha said, and shivered like a dog shaking water off its fur. Then, low and angry: “Alexei.”

  “He was here?” Trina asked, trying to ignore the way her pulse tripped.

  “With Lanny,” Sasha said.

  Nikita said, “There was blood.”

  “But…” An image of Chase Edwards’s drained and lifeless body popped into her mind and her breath caught hard and sharp in her lungs. “But we talked to him. He wouldn’t hurt Lanny. Would he?”

  Nikita turned to give her an unreadable look through the lenses of his shades. “A vampire would do anything.”

  Sasha took off at a run down the sidewalk.

  They could only follow.

  Trina kept in good shape, but Sasha was an unnatural kind of quick. He looked like he was only jogging, but no matter how fast she accelerated – dodging pedestrians with a muttered “excuse me” – he continued to pull away from her, nothing but a bobbing patch of bright hair.

  Nikita kept pace with her, though. Steadied her arm when she tripped. Steered her around a newsstand with a few deft movements.

  She was a cop, and not an optimistic one, so she knew what they were going to find. Still, it was a shock.

  Sasha ducked into an alley. Trina skidded and nearly fell when she did the same, catching herself against the side of the building.

  In the alley stood a dumpster.

  And behind it, boots sticking out, lay Lanny.

  ~*~

  It hurt when Alexei bit him. Sharp like a bee sting, like the needle teeth of his grandmother’s old Pomeranian who liked to nip ankles. But the pain seemed unimportant, distant, like a memory. It was something he couldn’t flinch away from.

  The night around him tilted, a warm blur of light and dark, all its varied scents peeling back from the spicy cologne that filled his sinuses. The heat of the night paled beside the wet heat of Alexei’s mouth on his throat. The warmth of his body where their chests were pressed together. Hot touch of skin where Alexei’s palm cupped the back of his neck.

  It should have disturbed him, this closeness with a stranger, being held by a man who was neither brother, nor friend. But Lanny knew only peace. A fuzzy, welcome sort of contentment. He felt a pull at his throat, and his eyes slipped shut, and the black velvet of the void welcomed him with open arms.

  He slept. Dreamless and endless, as his cells broke apart and knitted back together in stronger, healthier shapes. Somewhere deep inside his body, a low hum started, like the purring of an expensive imported car. Blood coursed thick, and red, and glossy through his veins, bathing the tumors, eating them away like acid. The legends and the novels had gotten it wrong, over and over, every time: he did not die. No. He transformed. The vampire cells made room for what they needed, and dug deep. Made him their home. Altered his DNA.

  He slept.

  And when he woke, it happened slowly, and in stages. He became aware of the heaviness of his limbs, the pounding in his head. He felt a shakiness steal through him, like the jitters from too much coffee. Felt his lungs work, and his stomach clench, empty and hungry.

  He lay on something soft and he twisted onto his side, blindly seeking the light that he could sense but not see. He opened his mouth and it tasted like he’d been sucking on car keys; traced his teeth with his tongue and got snagged on something sharp – on his fang. The copper heat of fresh blood bloomed on his tongue, filled his mouth, and two things happened.

  His stomach growled, and something that hadn�
�t been there before in his throat answered. A jungle-cat roar that startled him fully awake.

  The sound tapered off into “…holt shit!” as he bolted upright.

  The light was too bright, and he squinted against it, just making out his surroundings. He was in Trina’s apartment, on her sofa. And the place…smelled. Not bad, but very much like her, and coffee, and the clean laundry in the bedroom, and his own sweat on the sheets, the musk of sex, soap and shampoo in the drains in the bathroom and…

  Oh. The smells. So many of them, and so intense. He shut his eyes like that could somehow block them up, brought his hands to his tender head. He could smell the bowl of apples sitting on the kitchen counter, the bits of tuna clinging to a paper plate in the garbage that she’d fed to the neighbor’s cat.

  He leaned forward and dropped his head between his knees, and that was when another scent hit him, the most overwhelming of all. Trina. Alive and vibrant in a way he’d never understood before. He could hear her heart beating. And faint, beneath her skin, he smelled her blood, and something inside him clenched.

  Slowly, he opened his eyes and lifted his head. There she stood, leaning against the opposite wall, Nikita and Sasha flanking her. He’d smelled them too, he realized, but their scents had kicked off very different sensations. Whereas Trina stirred something like longing…and hunger…Nikita left him bristling. And he had the strange urge to pat Sasha on top of the head.

  “Try it,” Nikita hissed through his teeth, “and I’ll take your arm off.”

  He’d been staring at Sasha, and dragged his gaze away, over to the vampire – the other vampire. Shit. “What?” His own voice held the low rumblings of a growl.

  Nikita lifted his lip and flashed his fangs. “You may be a vamp now, but he’s not your wolf. Don’t look at him like that.”

  “I’m not.” But he had been. Something instinctual in him knew that wolves were meant to serve and help vampires. Combine that with his human history of fighting, and he wanted to challenge Nikita, throw down right here and battle it out for supremacy the old-fashioned way.

  He realized his mouth was open, that he was panting, fangs showing.

  Nikita lowered his head, eyes hooded and aggressive. “You’d lose,” he said, dark and certain. “Sit down, boy, before you get hurt.”

  Was he standing? When had that happened?

  “Lanny,” Trina said, and stepped forward. Tried to, anyway; Nikita grabbed her arm and held her in place. She sighed, but didn’t shake him off. “Lanny,” she started again, “sit back down, okay? Take a deep breath.”

  He sat.

  He didn’t take a deep breath, because the sensory overload was making him both sick and hungrier.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “We were hoping you could tell us,” Trina said. She was giving him the sort of bland-but-guarded look that she used on suspects during interrogation: not picking sides, but listening; concerned, but not actually caring. He didn’t like having that look directed at him…but he did like watching her pulse beat in the soft skin just under her jaw, that little hollow in her throat where her flesh was thin enough he imagined he could see the faint blue trails of veins. Imagined he could smell the blood, hot and salty and–

  “Lanny,” she snapped, brow furrowing. “We know Alexei turned you. But how?”

  He shook himself – mentally and physically – and tried to focus.

  Nikita gave him a sharp glare that said he knew exactly what Lanny had been thinking.

  “I left,” he started, frowning. The memories were fractured, sharp at the edges and painful to grab hold of. “I left you guys’ place, and I was walking back…and I felt great. I mean, like I was twenty again. And then all of a sudden Alexei was there. Right in front of me. He said…he said he could help me. If I wanted.” He could feel his frown deepen, digging grooves in his forehead. “And I just…shit, I just walked up to him. And he bit me.”

  “He enchanted you,” Nikita said grimly. “Rasputin was a master at that, and he was Alexei’s sire.”

  Trina’s face paled. “You mean – Lanny, you didn’t ask him to turn you?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t need him to. Not after I had the–” He mimed knocking back a drink. “So no.”

  Sasha gave a small, unsettled ruff. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

  Nikita wore the weary, but unsurprised expression of someone who’d long since given up on the small moments of decency in the world. “I shouldn’t have left him alive.”

  Trina turned toward him sharply. “You can’t kill him.”

  “He can’t control himself. Of course I can.”

  “Yeah, but he’s not just some random vampire. He’s a Romanov.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “Um, guys?” Lanny said. “What’s gonna happen to me?”

  All three of them looked at him, then, all worried to an extent.

  “We’ll figure something out,” Trina said at last, but she was a beat too slow, and her smile was a bit too forced.

  ~*~

  “Sasha,” Nikita said, like a command, then grabbed Trina’s arm and dragged her around the corner and into her bedroom.

  “Hey!” It was a token protest. Lanny’s eyes were all pupil right now, and it was freaking her out. And she couldn’t have pulled loose if she wanted to. Nikita didn’t crush her wrist, but his hand was locked more securely than any cuff.

  He heeled the door shut when they were inside and then let her go.

  Trina lifted her wrist to examine it: no marks; he’d been careful.

  “You don’t need to be alone with him right now,” he said, matter-of-fact.

  “I’m not afraid of Lanny,” she said, and it was only half a lie.

  Nikita sighed and tilted his head, not buying it. “You saw him in there. He’s not in control.”

  “He’s fine.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  No, she didn’t, but she didn’t know what to believe right now.

  Well, almost.

  She turned away from him, massaging her temples and the headache gathering there. “Shit, this is all my fault.”

  “Why? Because you sent him to me?”

  She whirled back around, doing her best to shield her expression…probably failing. “Yeah, because I sent him to you. So you could–” She was hyperventilating. Chest heaving, pulse pounding. She made a gasping sound and bent double, hands on her knees. Shit.

  Nikita stepped in closer, his shadow falling across hers on the rug. When he spoke, his voice was uncharacteristically soft. “He needs some time to adjust. It will be fine, Ekaterina. Don’t fret.”

  She tipped her head back and caught something vulnerable in his gaze. “I didn’t want him to die,” she whispered.

  “Of course you didn’t,” he said, his hand landing on her back, light and soothing. “And he won’t. We’ve just got to see him through this.”

  “You’re not going to…put him down?”

  He flashed her a crooked half-smile. “He’s your mate. Even if he’s an asshole.”

  A laugh bubbled up in her throat, surprising and welcome.

  His smile widened, a little strained; she’d only ever seen him smile naturally and easily when he was looking at Sasha. He patted her shoulder and stepped back, growing serious again. “This isn’t going to be easy for him, though,” he warned. “Whoever you are before you’re turned, that’s who you are after. Only everything’s more intense.”

  She straightened and nodded. “You were all about denying yourself before,” she said, and he made a face. “And you still are. But Lanny’s always had a bit of an impulse control problem.” She pushed back against a sudden onslaught of fear, but little cold rivulets trickled through, like dead fingers walking down her spine. “Can we…” How strange, in this moment, that she trusted this man – this vampire – more than she trusted her own partner and lover.

  “We can help him, yes. But he has to want to behave.”
<
br />   Tears filled her eyes, sudden and hot, and she blinked them away. Her laugh was humorless this time, more of a cough. “That’s what I told him about chemo: he had to want to get better. And Jesus, Nik, I have no idea what he wants anymore.”

  He waited a beat. “Well. He came to see me. So I think that means he wants to be alive for you.”

  She nodded.

  He studied her a moment, then his expression firmed, like he’d decided something. “Come. I’ll take him back to our place with me. Sasha can stay and watch you.”

  “I don’t need watching.”

  “Then he can help you track criminals. I don’t know. But I’m not leaving Lanny alone with you.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he said, “Get over it.”

  “God, you’re a dictatorial asshole.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, and opened the bedroom door.

  On the sofa, Lanny was in the process of devouring a plate of runny scrambled eggs like a starving man.

  Sasha stood at the stove, a fork in one hand, tending to a skillet full of bacon. “Who wants breakfast?” he called, and it was officially the strangest morning of her life.

  3

  A few blocks west, morning sunlight fell through the gaps in the curtains and woke Jamie Anderson from the deepest, most restful sleep of his life. He turned onto his side and took a deep, unrestricted, pain-free breath; he smiled. His lungs worked beautifully, in a way they never had, and the sun touched his face with warmth and gentleness. The mattress cradled him like a cloud. Comfortable and content, he basked a moment, untroubled by any of the daily worries that gave him chronic indigestion.

  And then he remembered last night.

  He sat up with a gasp, eyes flipping wide, heart slamming against his ribs. “Oh my God, oh my God,” he said to the empty room that wasn’t his.

  All of it came flooding back: the shadow following him home, the knock on the door, the stranger who’d invited himself in, the fogginess of his own thoughts and resistance. He remembered a kiss that had turned to a bite on his neck, and clapped his hand to the spot now, feeling only the sensitive, slightly-raised flesh of a new scar. He recalled waking up, the faces hovering over him, the chill of the morgue.