Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  She looked at Rooster.

  He was gaping at her. “Your hair…” he said.

  He sounded delusional; blood loss. There was no time. “Your leg,” she prompted. “Rooster, come on.”

  He moved to comply, wincing.

  And she heard the bullet take him in the shoulder. The soft, fierce thump as it bit through meat and muscle. He shook, pushed forward by the impact. Red grabbed at his shirt, tried to catch him, and only succeeded in slowing his face-plant.

  He landed on his side with an animal sound of pain, teeth gritted, face white from blood loss and shock.

  Jake stood five paces away, hands steady on his gun, expression hard to read in the shifting, wind-tossed shadows. Behind her, Red heard the rustling of brush: the rest of the team, moving into position, surrounding them.

  Rooster twisted with a low groan, glancing back over his good shoulder. “Vest, huh?”

  Jake’s eyes flicked to him, briefly, before coming back to Red. He did in fact wear a vest, visible between the torn-open halves of his shirt.

  “Shoulda shot you in the fucking head,” Rooster said. He forced a wheezing, humorless chuckle.

  Red had been angry before.

  She didn’t have words for the way she felt now.

  Banking on the fact that they wanted her alive, she slowly straightened, empty palms turned toward Jake. Her bare hands were more dangerous than any weapon, and the way his throat jumped as he swallowed told her he knew that.

  “I didn’t want it to be this way,” Jake said.

  “Me neither,” Red said. She felt the power gathering beneath her skin; it hummed like a colony of bees. She could see the shimmer of heat above her hands, little curls of steam lifting up toward the last flare of the sunset. The wind shifted, pulled in toward her warmth, coming at her from all sides now, tree trunks groaning. “This is going to hurt very badly,” she said, quiet, bored, almost. “And I’m not sorry.”

  She called the fire, and it came.

  It erupted from her hands. From the ground, a protective circle around the two of them, a huge, blinding white column of fire. She felt her hair lift in the draft; felt the heat enfold them. Rooster looped a weak arm around her legs, held her steady, and the fire never touched him. It was Red’s to command, and it knew that she loved him, that he was to be protected.

  She was aware of a sharp pain in her right arm, like a bee sting. The fire danced. Wavered.

  Two men, nothing but dim shadows on the other side of the fire, circled them. Red gathered the flames in close, into her open palms, and then shot it toward them.

  Screams. Stink of scorched flesh.

  Another pain, this time in her leg, and her knee buckled.

  They were shooting at her, now.

  She gathered the flames to her, swirling them around herself like a cloak, preparing to send them–

  It felt like she was shoved. Like someone hit her across the backs of the thighs and shoulders with a monstrous baseball bat. One moment she was standing, and the next she was on the ground, twitching, teeth closing on her tongue until she tasted blood. The fire went out. Her power fritzed, and flickered, and died in her veins, leaving only weakness, and a horrible twitching.

  She’d been electrocuted.

  The woman from before, dark-eyed and fierce-looking, stood over her, holding the Taser whose leads were now attached to Red. Her hair was frizzed from the heat, soot marred her forehead, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.

  “I need the cuffs!” she called to Jake.

  Rooster, curled on his side in the dirt, moved like a striking snake. Red saw the flash of silver as light caught the blade of his knife, and he sunk it in the woman’s thigh.

  When she yelled and went to her knees, Rooster sat up and cold-cocked her in the face. She went over like a felled tree, unconscious. And dropped the Taser.

  Bleeding, shaking, hardly able to sit upright, Rooster leaned over and pulled the leads from Red’s twitching body. The spasms lingered, but they were already fading, the last of her energy funneling power through her, healing her; she could already feel the bullet wounds starting to close.

  She was so tired. If she closed her eyes, she would fall into a deep sleep, and when she woke, she’d be only a little sore, but mostly whole.

  Rooster was looking down at her, swaying; a little trickle of blood leaked from one nostril. “Finish him, sweetheart.”

  That’s right: Jake was still on his feet somewhere, cowering from the fire. But he would come soon.

  She gathered air into her lungs. “Leave him!” she shouted, and hoped Jake could hear her. “You can have me, but you leave him alone! Understand? That’s the deal: take me, but leave him. Don’t you dare hurt him!”

  Rooster’s face blanked. “Red–”

  She reached up and pressed her palm to his forehead. Drew on what little of her strength remained, and pushed it, just like always, through his skin, and bone, through all his atoms.

  Please let it be enough, she thought.

  She retained consciousness just long enough to see his eyes roll back. To watch him collapse.

  Was just drifting into the black when Jake came to stand over her, a pair of fat silver cuffs in one hand.

  31

  The Ingraham Institute

  The baroness had brought him a mirror. A compact, folding one of the kind ladies carried in their purses. “I know you think you’re so slick,” she’d said, laughing fondly, “but I see you trying to fix your hair. I just thought.” She’d grown serious. “You might like to have this. And this.” A simple plastic comb that nearly brought tears to his eyes.

  “I don’t need these,” he’d said, gruff to cover the emotional clog in his throat. “I can make myself look however I want when I go dream-walking.”

  “Sure. But that’s not the point, is it?”

  “No…no, I suppose it’s not.”

  He pulled the mirror now from its hiding place under his sleeve, in the crook of his elbow, where he tucked it when one of his guards brought his meals so they wouldn’t see it and take it from him. A man with a small token was somehow more pathetic than one with nothing, and he didn’t trust their indifference; in his experience, no one ever missed the opportunity to inflict little tortures when it was convenient.

  He opened it and tilted it to catch the meager light of his cell. His reflection – his true one, and not the glamour he conjured when he went wandering – was a horror. Sunken cheeks, sunken eyes, chapped lips. His hair hung in greasy snarls; it had bypassed dirty, and then filthy, and become the lion’s mane of a wild man. Humans would have said he looked like someone raised by wolves, and the irony of that thought sent him into a fit of laughter, his voice echoing off the bare walls around him, sounding more than a little insane.

  “My,” he murmured, quieting, dashing the tears from his eyes with the back of one trembling hand. “Radu the Handsome. Look at you now.” He snapped the mirror closed and slipped it back up his sleeve. Later, he would open it back up and prop it as best he could on his cot; get out his comb and, perhaps with the aid of a little of the olive oil-based salad dressing stolen from his next lunch tray, he’d begin the laborious task of working the knots free. Now, though, he wanted to be somewhere else. With someone else. Not with any of the immortals and their allies whom he visited, no. They were diversions, possibly assets, but they weren’t…they weren’t people who saw him. They saw Valerian the Brother-Killer. Radu the Handsome. They saw someone who wasn’t to be trusted.

  Sometimes he was summoned.

  Sometimes he slipped onto the astral plane and found other immortals shining across the vast distances like beacons, like drawing like.

  But sometimes, like that one time, and all the times that had come after it, when he was able to return to that place, he thought his mother’s gods must have been smiling on him after all to allow him such a gift. Something precious and secret that was his and his alone.

  He wanted to go there now. To her.
/>   Valerian moved into the corner of his cell, pressed his back against the stone walls, let his head fall back and closed his eyes. Calm, he had to be calm for this. He’d just fed, and though it was weak, the pig’s blood gave him enough strength to send himself down into that dark, thoughtless place where his magic lived. He had to go down, first, then the magic would draw him up, pull his consciousness from his body in a dazzling helix, send him to the dark, uninhabited plane where time and distance meant nothing.

  He saw something, a bright orange flicker, but he tucked his head and kept going, going, all the way to the place that he’d earmarked with a little white dot.

  His projection coalesced in the wood-paneled office of a barn in Colorado. Sunlight fell through curtained windows, glinting off the glass of all the framed photos and award shadow boxes that were hung on every inch of wall space. Ribbons in all the colors of the rainbow fluttered in the breeze of a window AC unit. An orange cat sat on a tack trunk and licked itself.

  And at the desk, the person he’d come to see wore pale green breeches, and a white shirt, her black schooling boots with the spurs strapped to the ankles. Her dark-gold hair, pulled back in an efficient bun, looked a little stuck to her head: helmet hair, she called it. She sat with her elbows braced on her knees, her head in her hands, her breath catching and hiccupping. Crying.

  Fear flashed through him, so fierce and sudden he felt sick, even though it wasn’t possible for his projection to do anything with that sensation. He reached out, and then stopped, because he couldn’t touch her. Could offer no physical comfort of any kind. So he let his arm fall and said, with false cheer, “Well, it looks like I stopped in at a bad moment.”

  She jerked, head snapping back, hands slapping down on her legs. Her eyes were red, but dry, as was her face. She’d been fighting the tears, then, working hard to hold them in. Her expression went from shocked to smooth to embarrassed to glad, all in a single heartbeat.

  She sniffed and wiped hastily at her dry cheeks. “Val. Hi.”

  “Hello, Mia.” He smiled, and she smiled back, albeit shakily. “Don’t look so happy to see me,” he teased, but inwardly was screaming, Who hurt you? Who made you cry? Tell me and I’ll put their heads on pikes outside your city walls.

  A tiny voice in the back of his head pointed out how very martial that was: so much like your brother after all.

  “Oh, I am happy. I just.” She shook her head, then winced, and brought her hands up to cradle her skull. “I, um – this is embarrassing. I had…had a bit of a fall. One of my headaches. And Donna sent me in to get some Tylenol and rest, but…” She blinked hard a few times. “I’m sorry. I’m just so frustrated.”

  “You fell?” He closed the distance between them in two long strides, hands coming up to hover fruitlessly above her shoulders. “Where? How badly? Do you need a doctor?”

  Her smile opened across her face like a wound, red-edged and raw. “No, it’s…no.” She turned her head away from him. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  His heart pounded in his throat, quick enough to choke him. He swallowed and said, “Like what?”

  “Like you care.” Then, quieter, “Like you’re real.”

  But I am real. He swallowed again. “I do care.”

  She breathed a shaky laugh. “I guess you wouldn’t be a very good imaginary friend if you didn’t, huh?”

  “Mia–” he started.

  “It’s growing.” She turned back to him, and he shut his mouth so quickly that his teeth clicked together. Her smile tugged at one corner, muscle in her cheek fluttering. Her lovely blue eyes filled with tears. “The tumor. It’s growing again. That’s why I’ve been seeing you more – why the hallucinations are getting worse.”

  His hands opened and closed in the air above her shoulders, utterly useless.

  “The doctors can’t – or they won’t…” She wiped at her eyes again, and her fingertips came away wet this time. Her voice darkened. “My father called, and he says there’s this…this experimental treatment…”

  Everything inside of Val went cold. His breathing caught; back in his cell, no doubt he was hyperventilating with his eyes closed, his stomach in knots. “But you won’t…I mean, you haven’t spoken to him…”

  “I’m considering.” She looked and sounded completely defeated, and it crushed him to see that she’d given up. Even as a small, twisted little voice in the back of his mind whispered, But there’s a chance. He could save her.

  “I don’t want to die,” she whispered. “Maybe that’s really selfish.”

  “It’s not.”

  She spun the chair slowly back around, so she faced the desk, and the myriad plaques that hung above it. Her eyes went to one, dark wood with a gold center, her name etched in the center, marking her the regional champion last year.

  “You have to say that,” she murmured. “You’re a figment of my imagination.”

  Sunlight filled the engraved letters, set them aflame: MIA TALBOT.

  He’d wanted to touch her since the moment he found himself in the middle of her charmingly cozy living room several months back. She’d been curled in an overstuffed chair with a blanket and a book – about vampires, of all things, some silly bit of fiction rot in which two pining would-be lovers were kept apart by sunlight – and he’d been struck by the urge to hook a finger beneath her chin, tilt her head back, and press his face into her clean, smooth throat; see if she smelled the way she looked: petal-soft and rich with strong blood. But as time wore on, and he at first found himself with her by accident…and later by choice and no small amount of effort…he’d wanted to touch her in other ways. Had imagined it alone in his pitiful cell, with nothing but his own dirty hand for company.

  He’d never wanted to touch her as badly as he did right now; wanted to set his hands on her shoulders, knead the tension from them. Press a kiss to the top of her head and tell her that all would be well.

  It wouldn’t, though. She was dying, and there was nothing the doctors could do.

  At least nothing the normal doctors could do.

  He shifted so he stood beside her chair, able to glimpse her face and the grave sadness etched there. “Tell me about your father’s cure.”

  She blinked and her eyes slid over. “I’ve told you before.”

  “Tell me again.”

  She heaved a deep sigh. “It’s experimental. A drug trial that’s only available to wounded combat veterans, which I am clearly not.” She gestured to her elegant riding attire, sullied by dirt down one side where she’d fallen.

  Val tried not to let his panic overtake him again. He gave a sharp nod. “Yes, but if your father’s in charge, then he can do as he sees fit.”

  She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Okay, I may not work in experimental, government funded medicine, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works at all. And besides.” She bit her lip. “Dad is…” She shook her head. “It’s difficult.”

  “He sounds like a horrid man from what you’ve told me,” he agreed, and having met the man, he agreed even more than he could tell her. “But if he could save your life…” He let it hang. They’d had this discussion before. Short of shaking her – which he couldn’t do – and begging her – which wouldn’t work, he didn’t think – he had no way of forcing the issue again.

  “Yeah,” she murmured, distant now.

  How easy it would be if he was truly here now. He would sit down on the desk, and open his legs, take her by the hand and pull her to stand between. Hands on her narrow waist, lips at her brow, her nose, her crushed-rose lips. “Trust me,” he’d murmur against her ear, and she would shudder, and press in closer to him. Lips at her throat, faint salt smell of her skin. She would smell like horses, like hay, like wild exhilaration. And he would sink his fangs, and drink deep, drawing the taint of disease from her body. When she was too weak to stand, he would support her in his arms, and bring his opened wrist to her mouth. “Drink,” he would urge, and she would. And she would sleep, and he
would hold her. And when she woke, she would be well. And immortal. His princess.

  “…Val?” She’d said his name several times by now.

  “What, sorry, yes?”

  She smiled at him, full of affection. “It’s bad enough my students ignore me, but even my imaginary friend does, too.”

  “Don’t call me that,” he snapped before he could catch himself, and she recoiled.

  He took a deep breath and softened his tone. “I’m not that,” he said, more gently. “I’m not imaginary.”

  Sadness touched her smile. “But you’re not real.”

  He swallowed. Clenched his jaw. Tilted his chin up to an angle that had once been imperious, had once sent men scrambling to obey, but probably now just looked pathetic. “I am,” he said with great dignity. “I am real, Mia, and you know it.”

  She held out her hand. She had calluses at the base of each finger from holding reins. “Prove it.” It was more plea than challenge, something vulnerable in her eyes that tugged helplessly at his shriveled black heartstrings.

  He reached for her, and as he’d known it would, his hand passed straight through hers.

  He was only a projection.

  “You have no idea how badly,” he started.

  And she said, “I do.”

  He believed her.

  Val turned away, cleared his throat. Let his eyes wander across the framed photos of elegant warmbloods and their elegant riders decked out in show finery. God, he missed riding. What would it be like to go riding with Mia? Better than blood, better than freedom. He ached for it.

  When he trusted his voice, he turned back. She had opened her day planner and was penciling in notes, head propped on her hand. Tired. From this angle, he could see the dark circles beneath her eyes.