Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2)

by Lauren Gilley

  ~*~

  This guy was batshit crazy.

  Maybe that was the point, he thought, briefly: lock him up with a psycho who drove him so nuts he eventually hanged himself with his own boot laces.

  “Look, man, I have no idea what you’re going on about, but it’s got nothing to do with me.” He shifted back on the cot so he could rest his head against the cool stone wall, and pointedly didn’t glance back over at his fellow prisoner: Val, he’d said his name was.

  “Hmm, maybe not,” Val said. “A coincidence perhaps. But I wonder.”

  Rooster bit back a sigh and pushed up the sleeve of his hoodie. Started picking at the edges of the duct tape.

  “Do you believe in coincidences? Because I don’t. They happen, to be sure, but in general, pessimist that I am, I don’t think chance comes much into play…What do you have there?” The chains clicked together as he pushed up onto his knees.

  “A phone,” Rooster said with a grunt as he pulled the tape loose, and took a good chunk of his arm hair with it.

  “Ooh.” Val gave another creaky chuckle. “How did you sneak that in, I wonder?”

  “Magic.” Which was apparently what was giving him three bars of coverage this deep underground. Huh.

  There was more chain-rattling as Val perked up another notch. “Who are you going to call?”

  “The Ghostbusters,” Rooster deadpanned. When he didn’t get a response, he turned to glance over at his fellow prisoner, thumb hovering over the Call icon. Val was frowning at him. “You know. The Ghostbusters?”

  Val’s expression turned sad. “I’ve been locked up for five-hundred years. I’ve learned quite a lot about your world, considering, but not all of it.”

  “Five hundred…” Jesus. “Are you. Um.” He wet his lips. “One of those…those wolf things?”

  A fresh smile stole across Val’s face, knife-sharp, and there was just enough light for Rooster to make out the sharp points of his canines. “Oh no. I’m much worse.”

  Rooster turned back to his phone.

  “You didn’t answer me. Who will you call? The person who magicked your phone?”

  “Friends.”

  “Ah. An escape plan.”

  Rooster hesitated another moment. The guy was just staring at him, with his too-sharp teeth, like something out of one of those terrible movies Red loved. “What?”

  “Do you really think these friends of yours will be able to get you out of this cell? That they’ll fight their way down three levels to find you?”

  “I…” Deshawn would try, and probably get himself killed in the process. As for Rob and the others, he only had legend to go on, and no firsthand knowledge.

  “Here’s a thought.” There was something suggestive, almost obscene, in Val’s smile now. “How about you set me loose, and let me help you?”

  Rooster looked at the bars. At the phone. At his lack of weapons. And back at the blond in shackles. “You’re serious.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I dunno if you noticed this or not…but you’re chained up as fuck, man.”

  “An inconvenience, yes.”

  “Dude–”

  “But now that you’re here–”

  “Look at me.” Rooster gestured around him. “You’re not the only Rapunzel in this tower, okay? I have to sit on my ass and wait to be rescued, too.”

  Val snorted. “So unimaginative. Listen to me.” He rocked forward and pressed his thin face to the bars. “If you get a gun away from one of the guards, will you know how to use it?”

  For the first time in days, Rooster felt himself crack a smile. “Yeah. You could say that.”

  ~*~

  Jake didn’t knock, just let himself into Dr. Talbot’s office, and was rewarded, momentarily, by the affronted look the doctor lifted toward the door. It was smoothed over quickly to a look of surprise, because Talbot was nothing if not committed to his kindly doctor façade, but for a heartbeat, Jake had seen what lay beneath: something oily, desperate, and angry.

  “Major Treadwell,” he began. On his computer screen, angled so that Jake could see, a man’s face stared out: a live Facetime session. Jake noticed, absurdly, that the man on the other end of the line had startlingly red hair; the same color as Ruby Russell’s.

  But speaking of Russell…

  “Sir,” he said before the doctor could say anything else. “It’s Roger Palmer. He walked up the driveway about ten minutes ago.”

  Dr. Talbot’s face blanked over with shock. “He what?”

  “He was unarmed. Walked all the way from the road; several cameras picked him up.”

  “He’s alive?” A spark of anger glimmered to life behind the lenses of his glasses. “I thought you neutralized him?”

  Jake thought of the trees bending toward the girl, the unholy light in her eyes. The unemotional tone of her voice as she’d bargained with him…and he’d known he would go along, because she was a girl wrapped in fire.

  He heaved a sigh. “I left him unconscious and bleeding out in a forest in Wyoming. There’s no conceivable way he could have found his way here.”

  “And yet,” Dr. Talbot’s voice was deadly calm, “he did.”

  “I’m going to interrogate him. Personally. I was just headed back to the cells now, but I wanted to let you–”

  “The cells?” The doctor braced his hands on the desk and shoved himself to his feet, the color bleeding out of his face. “You put him down there with Valerian?”

  “Well, yes, those are our only cells…” But the fine hairs on his arms lifted. What had he done?

  Dr. Talbot said, “Go and get him.”

  ~*~

  Trina tipped her head back, all the way back, and looked up at the hammered-pewter sky through the interlacing branches of the tree she was supposed to climb. A stout oak with wonderful thick branches, perfect for hooking her legs around and maintaining her balance while she took her shots.

  She let out a wobbly breath. “I’m not a sniper.”

  Beside her, Lanny snorted. “Yeah, I knew that.”

  “Smartass,” she said without any heat, and turned to look at him. He wore jeans, and a black shirt under a Kevlar vest. Very dressed-down detective on a bust. He carried a shotgun propped on one shoulder, and a .45 at his waist. “You look hot.”

  “That’s what I was going for.”

  Trina crashed against him; threw her arms around his waist and he caught her hard with his free arm, squeezing her so tight she felt her ribs shift. She pressed her face into the collar of his shirt, tucked her nose over it so she felt warm skin, and took a deep breath of him.

  “Don’t get killed,” she said.

  “Don’t decide you like sniping so much that you run off and join the Army.”

  “I am so serious right now, Roland.”

  “I know.” He dropped his face into her hair, breath warm down the back of her neck.

  She held him a long moment – as long as she dared; not long enough – and finally pulled back, dashed at her eyes with the back of one gloved hand. “You better go.” It hurt to look at his face, its familiar, comforting array of planes and lines.

  “You wanna boost?”

  “Yeah, that’d be good.”

  He did it wrong, grabbing her by the waist and lifting her, sure to get a double handhold on her ass when he pushed her up to the lowest branch. But it made her chuckle, and she figured that was the point, especially when she looked down and saw his wistful, tight-edged smile.

  “Be safe,” he said.

  “You too.”

  I love you.

  With one last glance, he melted off into the underbrush, much quieter and smoother than he’d ever been as a mortal man.

  Trina took a deep breath and started climbing, the Mosin-Nagant heavy against her back.

  43

  “Hold the bars with both hands, like that, yes. I believe all the metal’s connected. Conducive, that way,” Val had said. “And just wait. This might take a moment.” He�
��d wrapped his own hands around his bars, as well as he could, so his thick cuffs were touching the steel.

  “Wait for what?”

  “You’ll know it when it happens.”

  That had been…how long ago? He didn’t know.

  He’d never been electrocuted before.

  Fuck.

  As awareness returned, he realized that he’d let go of the bars at some point during his fit. Seizure. Whatever it was.

  Rooster blinked open blurry eyes and saw that extra lights had been turned on overhead, so bright they hurt – or maybe that was the aftereffects of electrocution.

  Voices echoed off the stone walls. Shuffle of feet, clank and creak of his cell door opening.

  He lifted his hands and saw they were trembling. Not only that, but the shock seemed to have reversed Red’s pain-suppressing magic. His entire left side was alive with hurt.

  Still, it wasn’t the worst off he’d ever been.

  His vision finally settled in time to see that three guards had come down; two were headed for the cell on the end, and one had come in to see why he was spasming on the ground.

  “Shit,” the guy said, leaning low over Rooster, not protecting his sidearm at all. “Do you think…agh!”

  Not his most impressive performance, and it hurt like hell, but the guard ended up unconscious on the floor, and Rooster got shakily to his feet with the man’s gun in his hand. He bent down to retrieve the stun baton from his belt, too. Armed it…and caught the first of the other two guards in the face with it when he turned to see what all the noise was about.

  He turned the gun on the other.

  “Wait,” Val rasped. He’d pushed himself up to a sitting position from his electrified sprawl on the floor, but he shook like a newborn foal. The crazy fuck was smiling, though. “Leave them alive. P-p- damn it. Please.” He gave a few wheezy coughs. “I need to…to…”

  Rooster cracked the man across the temple with the gun instead, and he dropped like a bag of hammers to lay beside his twitching colleagues. “What’s the plan here?” He ached all over, and it felt like his teeth were vibrating, he couldn’t stop shaking, but adrenaline was as powerful a drug as any. And as his head cleared by the second, Rooster knew the urge to move. If they were making a break for it, it had to be now, and it had to be fast.

  “Cuffs,” Val panted, with a gesture that was either meant to jangle them, or was just a spasm.

  “Keys?”

  “Check them.”

  Unsteadily, hurrying and clumsy, he did, and hit pay dirt.

  “The collar first,” Val instructed when Rooster knelt in front of him. “Watch the electrodes.”

  There were electrodes, he saw, more than a dozen, tiny round things trailing green wires, stuck down the back of Val’s neck, across his shoulders, and down his chest. And inside the cuffs and the collar, there were spikes too, he saw, leaving bloody scratches on Val’s pale skin.

  “Jesus Christ, what is this?” It was mostly rhetorical. And partly a reaction to the smell. Up close like this, it became readily apparent that no one had allowed Val to bathe in a very long time.

  “It’s a shock collar,” Val explained with a weak laugh. “Like for a dog.”

  “Yeah. I got that.”

  The metal was new, untarnished, and it opened with a quick turn of the key. Val hissed as Rooster drew it away, and they didn’t have time. This was taking too long.

  “Here.” Rooster moved one of Val’s trembling hands up to the guy’s own collarbone, and the electrodes there. “Pull those off while I get the cuffs.”

  He complied with a soft grunt of effort.

  The mass of chains, cuffs, and collar hit the stone floor with a sound that seemed bigger than it ought to be. Val blinked at his bloodied wrists a moment, chest hitching as he breathed.

  “Can you stand?” Rooster asked.

  “Yes, just…Here. Drag him to me.” He gestured limply to one of the unconscious guards.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  Rooster was already in deep as it was. And fuck these guys, seriously. Fumbling a little, he managed to move one of the guards close to Val. Close enough for Val to grab the man’s arm and drag him, with much difficulty and cursing, up into his lap. He turned his head with a shaking hand, so the guard’s throat was exposed; Rooster could see the pulse beating just beneath the skin.

  “What are you doing?”

  Val ran his tongue across his lip, staring down at the man’s neck. He took a few deep breaths, and muttered something in a language Rooster didn’t understand. It sounded reverent, like a prayer.

  “We don’t have time–” Rooster started.

  And Val ducked his head and bit the man’s throat.

  ~*~

  Fulk dreamed of vampires. Strange ones, three of them – one in particular who smelled faintly of Sasha.

  Then he snapped awake and realized he could smell vamps. Barely. It was more a tingling down the back of his neck. He growled, an automatic reaction, and Annabel stiffened as she came awake against his chest.

  “What?”

  There had been a dozen things he was probably supposed to do – the least of which was make sure Sasha and the girl hadn’t killed one another. But between the lulling warmth of the bath, and the sticky heat of Annabel’s skin pressed against his, he’d pushed responsibility aside and let the moment turn into the kind of slow, melting sex that left him breathless, panting endearments against her throat. After, they’d pulled down the sheets on the bed and stretched out on the cool silk, limbs intertwined. Fulk hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but he obviously had.

  He sat up, now, fuzzy-headed, still very much naked. “Vamps. Close.”

  Anna bolted upright, cursing like a sailor…or like the Southern farm rat she’d been when he met her. “Motherfuck…shit, shit, shit. Where are my fucking…” She scrambled off the bed, snatching for the clothes they’d left scattered.

  Fulk got to his feet, but didn’t reach for his clothes. He went to his wife, and caught her by the shoulders.

  She froze, head tipping back. “What?”

  “Stay here for me. Please.”

  She heaved a ragged breath. “Say something like that one more time, you chivalrous asshole. I dare you.”

  “Anna.”

  She growled, and snapped her teeth together. But when he’d dressed and was leaving the room, she stood with her arms wrapped around herself, glaring at him.

  “Be careful.”

  “Always.”

  ~*~

  The plan was simple, and also terrifying.

  “They have Sasha. I don’t care how many of them I have to cut down,” Nikita had said back at the cabin. “If you can’t handle that, then you don’t need to come.” He’d been dispassionate, ice-cold.

  Trina had insisted she could do this, and so she would.

  Through the scope of the rifle, she watched the team of black-clad guards milling around on the manor’s front steps. Watched a shadow detach itself from beneath a window, and melt up the side stairs. Watched an echo on the other side do the same. Lanny and Alexei, the distraction. Pandemonium as the guards noticed them, and split their attention to both sides to intercept them.

  And then there was Nikita. He stalked up the steps like the predator he was, breeze playing with his long coat.

  “You’re just going to walk right in?” she’d asked before.

  “Yes. It’s the last thing they’ll expect.”

  And that’s what he did. He carried a variety of handguns, and she wouldn’t let herself look away as he used one to clear out the guards.

  The bodies fell. One after the next. The gunshots were distant cracks, likes eggs breaking. And then the three of them swept inside the massive double front doors, Nikita on point.

  Trina took a deep breath…

  And heard a twig snap down below.

  She jerked her face off the stock and glanced down, letting the rifle’s weight pull it down, too, so it was a
imed at the man standing beneath her tree.

  Eyes wide and white-rimmed in his dark face, he was dressed in dark green, head-to-toe, some sort of tactical gear. He carried an AK, with a knife and a sidearm strapped to his hip.

  He was not, she noted, wearing the black of the front door guards.

  Slowly, he lifted an empty hand up, palm toward her. Wait.

  They were both breathing hard, the competing rhythms louder than the birdsong around them.

  “You one of them?” she asked.

  “No. You?”

  “No.”

  They stared.

  “What are you doing here?” Trina asked. Her hands sweated on the stock, and she tightened them.

  An echoing sheen of sweat dampened his forehead, glittering in the slanted sunlight. “I’m on a rescue mission. How ‘bout you?”

  “Same.”

  More staring.

  “I’m Deshawn,” he said, finally.

  “Trina.”

  A sound startled her, and she flinched; Deshawn flinched. It took her a moment to realize that what she’d heard was a walkie-talkie, and not her own.

  “Those are my friends,” Deshawn explained, pointing to the radio on his belt. “I need to check in.”

  She nodded, and he reached for it with deliberate, careful slowness.

  “Who are your friends?” she asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  ~*~

  Rooster’s brain whited out. All he could think was an endless loop of holy fucking shit as he stared down at the man…the whatever he was…drinking another man’s blood from his throat like a…like a…

  Oh.

  Like a vampire.

  Finally, Val released the seal he’d made of mouth and throat with a sucking pop and tipped his head back against the edge of his cot. He exhaled in a long, low groan, eyes shut, mouth curved up in a smile…red and wet with fresh blood. He licked his lips. “My God.”

  Rooster thought he might be sick.

  “Do you know how long it’s been?” Val’s voice came out dreamy, satisfied. He cracked his eyes open to blue slits. “Hell, I don’t even know how long it’s been. Too long.”