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Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2)

Page 19

by Lauren Gilley


  “Yeah,” Jamie said, and his stomach grabbed in a sudden, shocking pulse of fear. He’d felt borderline nauseas and sweaty all day, between having to act as backup, and then the revelations that Sasha was truly gone, that Nikita could apparently choke the life from a child without hesitation – even if the said child was a mage, whatever the hell that meant. But it hit him fully now. Hit him hard. He was about to leave the city in the company of scary near-strangers – leave his home – on an insane rescue mission. He just…

  The parking garage tilted around him and he realized he’d stopped breathing.

  “Whoa,” Lanny said, in front of him suddenly, hand on his arm. “Sit down.” He lowered Jamie to a concrete parking chock as his knees gave out.

  “I – I – I–”

  “Head between your knees. Come on. Don’t pass out on me.”

  Jamie pitched forward, and Lanny’s hand settled on his back, between his shoulders.

  “Nice deep breaths. In and out. You’re alright.”

  Black spots crowded his vision and steel bands tightened around his rib cage. He couldn’t draw a deep breath, couldn’t fill his lungs. It was an asthma attack…

  Only, he didn’t suppose vampires had asthma.

  “Breathe in, breathe out,” Lanny said, hand still rubbing circles.

  Just as his throat was closing up, and his vision was nothing but spots, logic won out and Jamie dragged in a gulp of air. He made an awful choking sound, and started to cough.

  Lanny gave him a thump. “There. Alright, there you go.”

  “How are you so calm?” Jamie gasped, head tipping back so he could look up at the man. “How are you just – just accepting this?”

  Lanny shrugged. “I dunno. I come from a big, crazy family. When someone fucks up, you all pitch in and help them. Trina’s like family. So.” Another shrug. “It’s just what I gotta do.”

  “And you’re just okay with the being a vampire part?”

  “No, not really. Beats dying, though.”

  Jamie lifted his brows, asking.

  “Docs only gave me about six months.” Lanny glanced away and did one of those tough-guy, I-don’t-have-emotions sniffs. “If drinking a little blood’s what I gotta do, then that’s not so bad, I guess.”

  Jamie took a few deep breaths. “What if I didn’t want to go? To Buffalo? And then to Virginia?”

  Lanny gave him a sharp look, voice even when he said, “You can stay here.”

  His chest was tightening again. “My whole life all I wanted was to go to art school. I’m only a semester from graduating!”

  “You could probably get a new identity and re-enroll.”

  “I don’t want to start over. I – had accomplished things! I don’t…and that’s gone! All of it! I…”

  Lanny sighed and squatted down in front of him, gaze serious, but not unkind. “Kid, listen to me. When I was your age, I was the best fucking heavyweight boxer in this city. I was a beast. I was going places. And then.” He held up his right hand. Under the knuckles misshapen from pounding the hell out of bags and faces alike lingered old, white scars, thin and precise. They followed the bones of his hand, all the way down to his wrist. “My big rival shattered my hand to pieces in a bar fight.” His mouth twisted, the memories obviously painful even now. “It took three surgeries to get me so I could hold a fork again. Another one before I could write with this hand.

  “I didn’t become a cop because I had a hero complex, some kinda noble idea of keeping my city safe.” He sneered, a quick Elvis curl of his lip. Then sobered. “I was qualified. It was something to do to fill the time. And eventually I found out I was pretty good at it, and it wasn’t so bad.”

  He offered a lopsided smile. “So this is you getting your hand ruined and figuring out what you’re gonna do after. You’re not in art school anymore. You can do whatever you want.”

  “Whatever I want?”

  “Well, I mean, don’t kill anybody. I’d have to arrest you, then.”

  Jamie snorted because he couldn’t bring himself to laugh. “What would you do, if you were me?”

  Lanny lifted his brows, cocked his head the other way. “Well. I’m going to Buffalo.”

  Jamie blew out a long, slow breath, and forced his thoughts to slow, considering his options – meager as they were. He could do as Lanny suggested and get a fake ID – there were people who made those – so that he could start over; reinvent himself, re-enroll. Or he could go somewhere new and start over there; new name, new identity, no longer the weak, asthmatic boy who needed so many sick days. He could…

  It dawned on him slowly, then, that he could do any damn thing he wanted to. And might get the chance to, if being a vampire truly meant being immortal. Nikita and Sasha looked like they were still in their twenties, and had been alive for over a hundred years at this point.

  “You don’t have to come with us,” Lanny said, standing and extending a hand, “but you’re welcome to.”

  Jamie considered it a long moment…and then took his hand.

  ~*~

  Trina had one more thing she wanted to do before she left.

  The shadows lay in long stripes on the sidewalk, the sunlight golden and slanted through the windows of the coffeeshop when Harvey pushed through the door and scanned the tables. Trina gave a little wave and steeled herself for the conversation ahead as the ME approached.

  When Harvey reached the table, she stood beside it a moment, arms folded, hip cocked, expression tight. She was pissed, and Trina didn’t blame her. “You understand you’re probably going to get benched, right? The captain’s going to bump you down to Cold Cases.”

  “If it happens, it happens,” Trina said. “I’ll accept the consequences of my actions.”

  Harvey huffed out an impatient breath. “But your actions don’t make any damn sense, Trina. Why are you throwing your career away? What could be worth that?”

  “Why is it bothering you so much?” Trina countered.

  Harvey bit her lip a moment, quietly fuming, and then sat down across from Trina. “Because,” she said, biting off the words, “I know how hard I had to work to get where I am, and you had to work that hard, too. A spotless record; no mistakes. No sick days, no romantic relationships, no distractions.” Her breathing had picked up, short and sharp. “I worked my ass off, and I spend all my time taking apart dead people. You’re a good cop, Trina. When you come into my morgue, I know you’re going to leave it and go bust the son of a bitch who put that body on my table. You sacrificed just like I did; we lose sleep for the same reasons. And you’re just…just giving up!” Her hands fluttered up and slapped back down into her lap, defeated. “I just don’t understand. We’re doing good work – how can you let that go?”

  Trina took a deep breath and cradled her coffee in both hands. “I get it,” she said, because she did. They had their dedication in common: the sleepless nights, the nonexistent personal lives. If you gave your every waking moment to a career…what were you left with when the career crumbled? What happened when your driving force in life was suddenly ripped away?

  Harvey’s brows lifted. So?

  “Okay,” Trina said, chest tight. “You’re not going to believe any of this, but I’m going to tell you, because you’re right – walking away from the force would be insane…unless I had a very good reason. I had been having these nightmares,” she started, and then she told her everything. As plainly and succinctly as possible. Careful not to skip over the impossible parts.

  Harvey’s face smoothed over halfway through, a dazed sort of blank.

  By the time she finished, Trina was out of breath. “My job is important because people are, in general, important. I care about justice. And in this case, the people are my people, and the justice is the kind that the legal system can’t guarantee. So. I’m not just risking my career for nothing. Sasha saved my great-grandmother in 1942. He’s literally the only reason I even exist. I owe him this. I owe him a hell of a lot more than this, but I’ll s
tart with a rescue mission. He’s family.”

  Harvey opened and closed her mouth a few times. “The…the guy. The one who was at your desk. The blond one. He’s a were…wolf?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s…from World War Two?”

  “Yes.”

  “And is best friends with your great-granddad. Who’s a vampire.”

  “Yes.”

  Harvey took another few breaths. Nodded. “Okay. Okay. No…not, it’s not okay.” She shook her head. “Are you–”

  “Christine,” Trina said. “I know it sounds nuts. But when have I ever said anything crazy? You know me. I’m not a liar. I…” She sighed. “You don’t have to believe me. I just wanted to tell you the truth. Finally. At least that way you’ll know I didn’t run off for no reason.”

  Harvey stared at her a long, unblinking moment. She splayed her hands out on the table and finally looked down at them, drawing in a deep breath. “I want to tell you you’re full of shit.”

  Trina waited.

  “But he was dead. He was. And he walked away.” She lifted her head, expression raw and vulnerable. “How is any of this possible?”

  “It just is,” Trina said, helplessly.

  Harvey blew out a breath and nodded. “Well. If you need any help…”

  Trina smiled. “I appreciate it. But I’ve got enough. I think.”

  Harvey nodded again, sharper this time, expression firming. “You’ll let me know how it goes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And when you get back in town?”

  “Yeah. Thank you, Christine.”

  Harvey waved her off. “Nah. Just…go save your werewolf. Or the world. Whichever comes first.”

  Trina started to stand.

  “Oh, and vampire or not, please tell me Webb finally made his move. Because watching the two of you dancing around each other was getting really old.”

  Trina smiled. “Yeah. He did.”

  Harvey chuckled. “Lanny Webb the vampire. Shit. That’s kinda hot.”

  Trina laughed, and it was the lightest she’d felt in days. Their mission might fail, but she wouldn’t allow herself to think it. Not now, and not in the days to come.

  She left the coffeeshop with a clear conscious and the thought that maybe, just maybe, they could take on the world. Her crazy band of boys and her.

  Nikita waited a half a block down, parked along the curb. They’d picked up the car between stops at her place and his, an old black Barracuda that, for all its time sitting in a parking garage, gleamed like new, painstakingly waxed and buffed, lovingly preserved.

  He stood leaning against the passenger window, ankles crossed, sunglasses shading his eyes. If she hadn’t known better, she would have said he looked like your typical sulky young man in his denim and combats, arms folded, expression daring anyone to speak to him. But Trina could read the tension in his stance, the way he held his shoulders pulled in close; could decipher the downward curve of his mouth for what it was: fear. Worry. He was a barely-held-together mess of nerves and guilt and grief.

  They had to get Sasha back. Had to.

  “Ready?” she asked when she reached him.

  He nodded and opened her door. “Are you?”

  A loaded question, one for which she didn’t have a true answer. So she flashed him a smile, and slid in.

  16

  Farley, Wyoming

  Rooster was from a small town originally, though that seemed a lifetime ago, now. After he got blown up, when he was discharged with a mountain of doctor referrals, crutches, and the kind of limp that inspired kids without filters to ask probing questions, the idea of returning home to that small town had sent him into a downward spiral of panic attacks.

  He imagined all the horrors:

  Bob at the hardware store shaking his hand and declaring him a hero, staunchly not looking at his crutches.

  Mrs. Peterson across the street welcoming him back with a too-familiar, warm hug, her grip faltering when her hands patted across the chunks of muscle and fat that were missing, the places where the doctors have carved him up so they could piece him back together.

  His old friends from school, the ones who’d never joined up or gone off to college, Ty, and Everett, and Jason, grimacing as they slapped him on the bad shoulder, flinching away when the pain made him sweat.

  The church ladies bringing him casseroles that he ate straight from the dish, standing up over his dead mother’s kitchen sink, watching his dead father’s grass grow too long in the backyard because his own body was half-dead and he couldn’t even push a goddamn lawnmower.

  He would have become the reclusive, skittery, broken vet who lurked behind his door when neighbors came calling, the kind of guy the kids started telling haunted house stories about. He’d known, the second he got his first real glimpse of his full-body reflection in a hospital mirror in Germany, that he would never marry or have children. No one would ever want him. But to be that brand of sad in the town where he’d grown up, where everyone shook their heads, and clucked their tongues, and pitied him…unbearable.

  He could have kissed Deshawn for his invitation to come and live in Queens – he had cried a little, Deshawn gripping his good shoulder in reassurance. In New York, no one knew anything about him except that he had his back up and he walked with a noticeable limp. Deshawn and Ashley lived in a nice neighborhood full of families, but he was never pestered, never suffered any awkward questions; no one wondered why he wore long sleeves and long pants even in the summer months, or why he never came to any of the block parties. In New York, he was no one’s friend, or former employee, or ex-friend; he was just the weird white guy who lived in Deshawn and Ashley’s basement, and everyone seemed fine with that.

  Even now that he could walk, now that he was once again a broad-shouldered, capable tank of a man, small towns made Rooster’s skin itch. Too many close relationships; too many curious eyes following the newcomers. The strangers. The ones who didn’t belong.

  But of course, Red, deprived of any kind of normal childhood, loved little single stoplight places like Farley.

  She cupped her hands around her eyes and pressed her nose to the front window of a shop crowded with colorful, western-print fabrics and mannequins wearing fringed leather jackets. “Oh,” she breathed, breath fogging the glass, that single syllable full of delight and longing. “Look at that, Roo.”

  “What?” he asked, distracted, scanning the street for the tenth time.

  It was evening, and after a day cooped up in the hotel room, Red had pleaded for a walk around town. He hadn’t denied her that simple pleasure, but the back of his neck was crawling. The citizens of Farley, on their way home from work and school, stopping into cafes and diners for dinner, passed some looks their way. The late, slanted sunlight caught Red’s hair in a dazzling shower of copper; people would remember her hair, and no doubt the cagey man who’d trailed along after it.

  A box of hair dye hung from a drugstore bag around his wrist.

  “This jacket,” she said, and then sighed. “Rooster, you’re not looking.”

  He sighed too, inwardly, and turned to give her his attention. “Which jacket?”

  She tapped the window and leaned back in.

  The jacket she indicated was on a mannequin positioned deeper in the store, a cropped, light brown suede number with motorcycle lapels and fringe along the hem and all down the insides of the arms.

  He snorted. “That gaudy Pocahontas shit?”

  “It’s beautiful!” she insisted, scandalized.

  “Uh-huh.” In truth, it would look cute on her, but he didn’t want to imagine the price tag.

  Too late, he realized that the shop’s proprietress had spotted them and was now waving at them. Then crooking her finger and inviting them inside.

  “Damn it,” he murmured.

  Red turned to him, trying and failing not to look plaintive. “Can we?”

  Like he could tell her no. “Sure.”

  The
jacket fit like a dream, and Red made it work. Over her plain white t-shirt, jeans, and boots, paired with her brilliant hair, she looked like one of those candid celebrity-on-the-street photos in the gossip magazines, making something throwback look chic.

  “It’s perfect on you,” the shop owner said, clapping her hands, beaming like she knew she’d just made a sale.

  Rooster jammed his hands in his pockets and thought about the credit card that was working through some sort of miracle, and the cash that wasn’t going to last through the next week.

  Red stood in front of the shop’s three-way mirror, arms held out to the side, turning this way and that, watching the fringe on her sleeves flutter. Rooster could see his own reflection, too, tight-jawed and closed-off, looming behind her, looking like a creep, or a kidnapper, or the world’s sulkiest big brother.

  Jesus.

  He wished, like he so often did, that life was different, because Red deserved things. This jacket, sure, but also a stable home. Parents. A chance to go to school. Friday nights of underage drinking and kissing boys and laughing with other girls her age. Mondays in the hallowed halls of some ivy league college, studying to become something important; something that made good use of her smarts and her passion.

  The kid deserved a future, and all he could give her was one long, drawn-out escape plan.

  “…Sir?” The proprietress was talking to him.

  He shook off his thoughts and tried not to glower at the woman. “Yeah?”

  “I was just telling your daughter that this particular jacket has been marked down.”

  “Daughter?” He choked on the word.

  “Oh, um.” The woman blushed. “Your…um, I was…The jacket’s on sale,” she pressed on. Determined – he’d give her that.

  In the mirror, Red bit her lip like she was trying not to laugh.

  “Marked down by how much?” he snapped.

  “It’s one-twenty–”

  “I’ll give you one-hundred flat for it,” he said, deadpan. “Take it or leave it.”

  Red spun to face him, green eyes wide. “Oh no, we can’t. You shouldn’t–”

 

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