Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  “Yeah,” he murmured, dazed.

  Even holding his arm up over his face like Dracula – and no, the irony was not lost on her – Lanny led the way the last few steps to the threshold of the apartment next to his, and crossed it first.

  Trina had seen some nasty scenes in her career in law enforcement, particularly the Satanist cult slayings, but none of them had prepared her for what awaited them in that apartment. This was no human mutilation, no carving of organs in a fit of Hannibal Lector lust. Lanny’s poor neighbors had been set upon by wild animals. The carnage was unimaginable. Trina found she couldn’t look directly at any of it.

  A battle-hardened veteran of the force, Davis, walked them through the scene. Cause of death was safe to call, even without Harvey there yet: exsanguination due to evisceration. Trina breathed through her mouth, and they were in and out in under five minutes.

  Ten minutes later, she stood on the sidewalk in front of the building, gulping down hot summer air and willing her stomach to quiet. “How you holding up?” she asked Lanny.

  He leaned forward and braced his hands on his knees, breathing in loud gasps. “There were two of them,” he said, quiet enough that only she could hear. “Two wolves, and two humans. And the wolves smelled…dirty.”

  She gathered her hair back and snapped an elastic off her wrist, tied it up off her hot neck, giving him a chance to elaborate.

  And he did. “Like sweat, and BO. Like they hadn’t had showers in a long time, you know?”

  “What do you think that means?”

  “Dunno. We need to get Nik and Sasha in there.”

  In the midst of her shock and disgust, Trina managed to scrounge up a smile.

  He tipped his head back. “What?”

  “You called him Nik.”

  He frowned. “That’s his fucking name. So?”

  “So I’ll call them.” She wiped her smile away, grateful to have found it at all, given the situation.

  ~*~

  Trina was incredibly grateful that she didn’t have to attend the press conference, and was already dreading her next interaction with Captain Abbot. Pair their lack of decent leads on the disappearing bodies – there was just no explaining the truth to the man – with the new massacre, and she didn’t envy the captain’s job of fending off questions in front of the press.

  She couldn’t do anything about Chad Edwards and Jamie Anderson, but she could figure out who – or what – had killed the Meyers family.

  Harvey came and went, grim-faced, pale. “Parts are missing,” she told them. “The bodies looked like they were chewed on.”

  The neighbor across the hall, stuttering and whimpering, claimed to have heard snarling and barking; she’d seen two huge, shaggy dogs leave the apartment, but no one on the street had seen such a thing.

  “They shifted,” Nikita said when he joined them after nightfall. All the CSIs and uniforms had gone home save the token duo left to guard the scene. Trina and Lanny stood propped against the building, tired and sore from being on their feet. Nikita had walked up with the unconscious swagger of a gangster from an old movie, Sasha at his side, Jamie and Alexei trailing behind. He wore all black, and his denim jacket with the Romanov patch sewn on the collar. He finished the last quarter inch of a cigarette, dropped the butt, and ground it out beneath his boot, smoke mingling with his words when he spoke. “They shifted on the stairs and left the building as humans. As human as they’re capable of being, anyway.”

  “Can you scent them?” Lanny asked.

  “Oh, yes.” He tipped his head back and to the side, expression faraway. “Two. Ferals. Human handlers; one of them was bleeding – one of the wolves, I mean.”

  Beside him, Sasha bared his teeth and growled unhappily.

  “Ferals?” Trina asked.

  “Not all turnings go well,” Nikita said, and she remembered, through the visions he’d shared with her, Monsieur Philippe talking about a Russian wolf named Mitya who’d been a drooling idiot. “Some minds can’t last it. They’re wild.”

  “Okay, that’s terrifying. But that begs the question: did you know there were other wolves in the city?”

  “There weren’t,” Sasha said, sounding strangled. “I would have found them by now.”

  ~*~

  Trina walked them up. Nikita smelled wolf on the stairs, against the walls, the musk of dirty, mud-clumped fur and unwashed human skin caked with filth. Madness, he’d long ago learned, smelled of dirt, saliva, and noxious fear sweat. He smelled it here, thicker as they climbed; and he smelled traces of Jamie and Lanny, even himself, where they’d walked only hours before.

  They’d just missed these animals.

  Nikita wished they hadn’t; unlike the family who’d opened their door and stepped into a nightmare, he could have put a couple of rabid ferals down.

  In the apartment, the bodies had long since been taken away, but he could still smell blood, and shit, and the hot meat of ripped-out organs. Blood had soaked the rugs, the floorboards; splattered across the walls and furniture.

  Sasha stood in the center of the room, revolving slowly, mouth tight and brows drawn low. He whined, and said, “Why would they do this? Why?”

  Trina stood against a patch of miraculously clean wall, arms folded. “You said they had human handlers, which means they weren’t here on their own.”

  “No,” Nikita agreed. “They were used as hunting dogs.”

  “What – or who – were they tracking?”

  He sighed. “I think they were tracking us.”

  5

  Ingraham Institute

  Blackmere Manor

  Undisclosed Location near Richmond, Virginia

  He’d been alone for so many decades that he’d long since bypassed the disbelief, the rage, the grief. The madness. 1550 had been a particularly bad year; if he tilted his arm just so under the light he could still make out the faint, white tracks of scars down the inside of his forearm where he’d clawed himself. But, like all long-term prisoners, Valerian had settled. There had always been guards, some more sadistic than others; some terrified; and there had always been those who would use him. A few mages, another vampire, once. And then, beginning in the seventeen-hundreds, an endless string of doctors who wanted to poke and prod him like one of their lab specimens. Some he’d cooperated with; one he’d decapitated. The guards had thrown boiling oil on him, then; it had taken two years for his hair to grow back.

  He’d projected his consciousness often, with varying degrees of success. It was easier now that the Institute had taken over his care; they kept him well-fed and he was stronger, could reach farther, stay for longer. He’d made some exceedingly interesting friends that way, as of late.

  But he hadn’t had real, in-person company in so long. In centuries. So long that he’d begun to think that he wasn’t lonely at all, and that in his lifetime of captivity and confinement, this might be as close to decent as he could get.

  And then the wolves had come.

  The Baron Strange was a legend, arguably the most notorious wolf in existence, certainly the oldest still living. Valerian had smelled him the moment he entered the basement, the unmistakable musk of wolf filtering through the air vents and into Val’s shitty little cell. He’d sat up so suddenly that he’d yanked his chains, their silver-lined titanium cuffs biting into his wrists.

  Truth told, he’d been disappointed when he finally met the man – wolf – himself and saw that the great Fulk le Strange had become soft and hesitant in his old age. He’d given up, Val supposed, just as he had. Grown weary of expending so much energy on ruthlessness.

  But that wasn’t it at all. Le Strange had found a mate, and he would behave like a housepet so long as he thought his cooperation would keep her safe.

  Fulk was entertaining, but it was Annabel le Strange who had reminded Valerian that he was, in fact, lonely.

  He heard her now, the faint scrape of her boot soles across the concrete floor, and sat up from his listless slouch in the c
orner, pushed his hands through his ratty, knotted hair – for what little good it would do. He’d been beautiful once; he supposed he still was, but he could feel the dirt caked into every crease, taste the foulness of his own breath. He tried gamely to pick the tangles from his hair with his fingers, but it did little good. Beyond a mouthful of fresh blood, his greatest fantasy was of a steaming bathtub.

  The first door in the sequence unlocked with a low, deep thud and a hiss of air releasing. Then he could smell her sharply, wolf and pine needles and warm late-summer air. The hinges of the barred door creaked when she pushed through it, and her footsteps came down the hallway to the end, to his dim cell. She appeared on the other side of the bars in cutoff shorts, harness boots, and a faded old long-sleeved Zeppelin shirt.

  She smiled and held up a little glass bottle. “Look what I brought you.”

  “What is it?”

  She turned it on its side and slid it through the meal slot; it just barely fit. “Mocha Frappuccino. It’ll change your life.”

  He shifted forward – chains slithering over the floor – and plucked the offering from the shelf. “To be fair, it doesn’t take much to change my life.”

  “You know what I mean.” She dropped gracefully to the floor and settled cross-legged, casual and relaxed in a way that no one ever was around him.

  The bottle was sealed with a bit of plastic – a marvelous invention – and Val smiled inwardly as he peeled it off and listened to the satisfying pop of the top when he twisted it. Whenever Annabel brought him gifts, they were always still enclosed in their original packaging: a silent assurance that they hadn’t been tampered with. He could still remember the cramping of his abdominals after those cretins in 1976 had slipped him poisoned milk. They’d laughed when he’d started to vomit up his own stomach lining. That was alright; he’d clawed their larynxes out with his fingernails a few days later, gotten his first taste of human blood in a decade. So. It all worked out in the end.

  Annabel laughed when he took an experimental sniff of the drink. It smelled like milk, and coffee, and chocolate, and the faint tang of chemical preservatives and sweeteners.

  “It’s good,” she said. “I swear.”

  He took a sip, and found she was right. Not homemade, but sweet, and thick, and better than the slop they brought him on his dinner tray every night.

  “Yes,” he agreed, “thank you.”

  She clapped her hands together once, satisfied. “I brought you something else, too.” Her smile turned sly before she glanced back the way she’d come, held out her hand, and made a kissing sound with her lips.

  A cat trotted up to her, butted her palm with its tiny striped head. It was small, probably young, only a year or so. A female orange tabby with big golden eyes that it turned on Val with curiosity, and not a touch of fear.

  Animals had always liked him.

  “I thought you might like to have a friend down here,” Annabel explained, and something shifted in the dark confines of Val’s heart, pushed at old rusty padlocks and rotted hinges.

  “Oh,” he said, and took another sip of his drink. “Well. I suppose that was thoughtful.”

  She chuckled, the sparkle in her eyes indicating she could see right through him. “She doesn’t have a name yet. I thought you could give her one.”

  Val capped the bottle and set it down slowly, the cat watching him the whole time. He wiggled his fingers and she came to him, slipping right through the narrow bars and padding up to him with her tail aloft, expression bright and eager. He folded his legs and she climbed up into his lap, purring and butting his chin with her head.

  Oh, dear. That was lovely.

  “Hello, beautiful,” he murmured, reaching to scratch behind her ears.

  Her purring intensified and she leaned into the touch, happily kneading his leg.

  “Ooh, she loves you,” Annabel said.

  “Yes.” He ran his hand down her back, watching her spine lift into the motion. “Unfortunately for her.”

  When he glanced up, he found Annabel watching him with sympathy.

  “Don’t pity me. It makes me feel pathetic.”

  She snorted. “We wouldn’t want that.”

  The little cat circled and then laid down in a tidy coil, warm and purring.

  “Can I ask you something?” Annabel said.

  “Ah.” He smiled. “I knew you didn’t come to bring me a cat.”

  “Hey now, I did! Don’t make me out like one of them.” She was of course referring to his captors – whom he guessed were her captors as well, in a way. “But you said some things to Fulk the other day, and I’ve been curious.”

  “About what, my dear?”

  “You said Alexei Romanov is still alive.”

  “He is. Have you much interest in Russian nobility?”

  “Don’t get cute.” She tried to look stern, but was smiling. “That whole story – the whole family getting killed? The Bolsheviks? – that’s crazy. Who isn’t interested? But you know what I mean.”

  They studied one another a moment, and Annabel’s eyes narrowed, some of her true steel peeking through the youthful veneer. “They left Fulk and me alone for a long time,” she finally said. “And then they called. Things are in motion, Fulk says, and he’s right. Something big is coming. He’s always wanted it to be us against the world, but just the two of us can’t fight off something this big. It’d be nice to know if there’s any friendlies out there.”

  “Friendlies,” he mused aloud, stroking the cat. “I’ve never known any in my own life.”

  “Not any?” she asked, teasing at first. And then her face fell. “Oh no. Val.”

  “Your sympathy is charming, but unnecessary, I assure you. As to your question: I don’t know if they’d be friendly toward you, per se, but there are others. Ones who won’t want any part of any foolish war my relatives see fit to stir up. And who certainly wouldn’t approve of the things they do here in this house.”

  Annabel nodded.

  “What do you think of my brother? Now that’s he awake.”

  She blinked, clearly surprised by the question. But didn’t answer right away; chewed at her lip a moment. Finally, she said, tone careful, “He calls you Radu when he talks about you.”

  A burning sensation blossomed in the pit of his stomach, hot and furious. Pain like a wound. He sucked a quick breath through his teeth and lifted his head, stiffened his neck, shoved uselessly at the old waves of rage that lapped and frothed inside him. “Well,” he said, aiming for crisp, coming off tense. “He would. Valerian was my mother’s chosen name for me. It’s the name my father wanted that always turns up in the history books.”

  The cat rolled over onto its back and reached up with her ginger paws to bat at his fingertips. Her little claws hooked in his skin, sharp enough to make him smile.

  “I’m sorry,” Annabel said.

  “Don’t be,” he snapped, and regretted letting his composure slip. He tickled the cat’s soft belly with his fingers and tried to regain his bored, lofty tone. “So what goes on upstairs? With all you aboveground dwellers.”

  He thought that would earn an eye roll, or at least one of her snorting little laughs. But instead, she frowned.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but that awful old Dr. Talbot is up to something.”

  ~*~

  The first cold prick of the needle was a relief unto itself. Jake had never tried recreational drugs in his life – had never taken a single hit off a joint, no matter how much the other boys had teased and prodded – so he didn’t know for sure that this was what a junkie felt like, but he suspected it probably was. The prep alone was enough to have his muscles unclenching, his jaw slowly relaxing. Rolling up his sleeve. The cool touch of the nurse’s fingertips on his arm. Pressure of the tourniquet. The tap, tap, tap of her nail on the syringe brought all the tiny hairs on the back of his neck to attention. And then the sharp, bee-sting bite of the needle going in.

  He breathed out, slow and deep, rela
xing each limb, willing the constant tension in his stomach away. The serum, the pale, translucent pink of blood plasma, hit his veins with its usual warm fizz. Like champagne moving through his blood, effervescent and invigorating, bringing with it a sense of calm, and a surge of strength, that he suspected must be the work of strong opiates.

  He supposed he’d broken his clean streak, then.

  Not that it mattered.

  “Alright,” the nurse said, cheerful but soothing. “Great job.” The plunger depressed the last of the serum and she withdrew the needle with a practiced movement, pressing a cotton ball to the pinprick with her other hand. “Bend your arm,” she said, but didn’t have to; he was old hat at this by now.

  He bent his arm, putting pressure on the cotton ball, and allowed himself to enjoy the pleasant buzzing in his head while she trashed the syringe and set about finding him a Band-Aid in one of the drawers by the sink.

  Jake had joined the program six months ago, and by now, the novelty of his surroundings had dulled to normalcy. It was amazing, he thought, how quickly humans adapted and then grew complacent; nothing stayed fascinating for long.

  Although Blackmere Manor worked hard to do so.

  The exam room, where he now sat on a paper-covered, padded table, was one of several in the basement of the manor house. Three white sheetrock walls encircled a standard box-shaped space, sink and bank of cabinets in one corner, exam table, biohazard disposal box. But the far wall was composed of old, worn-smooth stone, patches of lichen and damp crawling across its surface. Overhead, the fluorescent tube fixtures hung suspended from long chains hooked into a vaulted stone ceiling laced with modern pipes and wires that clung like poison ivy vines.

  “Here we go,” the nurse – he thought her name was June – said, bustling back up to him. “Let’s see the war wound.” She chuckled at her own joke.

  Jake extended his arm without cracking a smile and watched her smooth a bandage over the injection site. He’d seen war wounds. This wasn’t one of them.