Seeing Red

by Lyra Evans

  “So I guess that means you won’t be cooking for me,” Niko said without thinking. It was a joke, based on Cobalt’s confession that his first career choice had been to be a chef. But something twisted in Niko at the thought of something as domestic as cooking and sharing meals.

  “Your apartment has an electric range, does it not?” Cobalt asked. Niko said nothing, as Cobalt already knew the answer. “I’m sure I can manage with that then.” He leaned in close to Niko, his breath hot against Niko’s ear. “I’d love to try my hand at making that cherry crumble for you.”

  Niko shuddered as Cobalt’s teeth scraped along his lobe, catching the point of his ear and nibbling on it. He felt his head roll back, exposing his neck to Cobalt who quickly flicked out his tongue and moved down, kissing and nibbling against Niko’s skin. Niko felt himself growing hard, Cobalt’s hands sliding over his stomach, down to his thigh and toward his steadily bulging erection.

  A bubbling sound cut through the sensations, and Niko’s eyes snapped open. The pot on the fire was boiling over, and he reached forward abruptly to pull it from the flames. Swearing as he set it down on the ground near them, he waved his hand in the air, having burnt himself lightly.

  “Are you all right?” Cobalt asked, reaching for his hand. Niko allowed him to take it and study his palm. It was slightly red in the orange light of the fire, but it was nothing serious. More painful than damaging. He nodded quickly, but words failed him when Cobalt lifted Niko’s palm to his mouth and pressed a slow, soft kiss there.

  Licking his lips, Niko felt the building blocks of his concerns crumble away. It was difficult to worry about anything when Cobalt fixed him with that stare—bright and molten and full of desire. As though Niko was the only thing in the world, and he had never wanted anything more.

  “It’s fine,” Niko said, slowly taking his hand back. He smoothed his palms together, trading back and forth until the injury was balanced between both hands, which amounted to no injury at all. Holding his hands up for Cobalt to see, he added, “See? Fixed.”

  Cobalt smiled at him. He reached for the pot, picking it up without pain now it had cooled somewhat, and stirred the contents with a spoon from a camping set. Offering the pot to Niko first, he shifted closer.

  “You should eat,” he said, and Niko took the pot, cocking an eyebrow.

  “So should you,” he answered.

  Cobalt shot him a look Niko recognized. It seemed harmless at first, but it was underpinned with the dominance Cobalt exuded most clearly when they had sex. The kind of dominance that brought Niko to his knees. He had never been particularly submissive, but Cobalt could get him to obey with a word and a look.

  “Eat,” Cobalt instructed, and Niko felt himself picking up a bite with the spoon before he could stop himself.

  The meal was some kind of meat sauce with short noodles. It smelled passable, but the moment the sauce touched his tongue, Niko knew why these types of meals were only used in survival circumstances. The tomato sauce was strikingly sweet with a strange tanginess that should have been cut by the undeniable inclusion of sugar in the recipe. The meat was granular and indistinct, the noodles almost paste.

  Forcing himself to swallow, Niko looked around for the package. “Did I overcook this, or—”

  Cobalt laughed. “I suspected it wouldn’t be terribly appetizing, based on the ingredient list and the instructions.”

  Scandalized, Niko looked back at the mischievous Selkie. “You tricked me into being a guinea pig!” Cobalt laughed, and Niko spooned out more of the almost inedible mush and tried to force-feed Cobalt.

  Catching his hands, Cobalt pushed the spoon away from his face. Meat and noodle sludge went flying into the heart of the fire, causing it to sputter out ash and embers. Cobalt jerked backward, allowing Niko to jump onto him, pinning him to the ground and spooning another serving out to try and make him taste it.

  Cobalt laughed, hands catching Niko’s wrists as he squirmed beneath Niko, refusing to taste the concoction. Niko struggled with him, determined to win, but as Cobalt threw his head back in laughter, Niko felt the hollow part of his chest flutter with warmth. And for a moment, he was overcome.

  He dropped the spoon and leaned down to kiss Cobalt. Cobalt hummed into it, his hands smoothing up Niko’s arms to gather him in and press their bodies together. The sound of his soft hum filled Niko from the inside out and set his soul on fire. Flicking out his tongue, Cobalt eased Niko’s lips open, and their tongues slid languorously over one another. When Niko pulled back to breathe, Cobalt licked his lips.

  Smacking his lips together, he smirked. “It’s not that bad.”

  Niko cocked an eyebrow. “Oh? You’d like some more then?”

  A hand curled around Niko’s neck, and Cobalt pulled him back into another kiss. “Maybe,” he said, kissing Niko deeply again. They stayed that way for a while, until they broke the kiss, foreheads pressed together, eyes closed, just breathing each other in. “I’ve missed you.”

  In three words, the chasm between them returned. Niko exhaled slowly, coming back to himself. With deliberate slowness, he lifted himself off Cobalt and settled onto the sleeping bag next to him. Cobalt sat up, watching him, and sighed. Niko tried not to read into it; he didn’t think it was a sound of disappointment, but he pushed it from his mind anyway. To distract himself, he pulled up the map with the location they assumed belonged to Preston.

  “Do you have a sense of where we are right now?” Niko asked, studying the map. He knew they were close to the river, which was to their left. That would indicate, as long as they were facing North, that they were on the correct side. If it was the river he thought it was. If the river was actually a stream, they might be much farther off than anticipated. But with a look around them in the ever-increasing darkness, Niko realized there were few identifiable landmarks to use.

  Night was upon them now, the sky an inky black beyond the grey-greens of the canopy above the fire. Smoke stung at Niko’s eyes, and he waved the map toward the fire, trying to blow the excess smoke away from them.

  “I’d estimate we have about half a day’s hike tomorrow to reach our destination,” Cobalt said, picking up his bottle to take a drink. “Whether or not Preston is, in fact, there is another issue entirely.”

  Niko thought about this, looking more closely at the coordinates on the map. The location seemed to be walled, on one side, by a short cliff of sorts. He had difficulty reading topographical maps well, but the narrowing lines and short strokes seemed to indicate as much. There was also a waterfall further down that same ridge, which Niko took to be the one from one of the images in Preston’s condo. Logic suggested the cabin would be built back to the cliff. Or possibly side to it. He squinted at the swirling lines that indicated terrain shifts.

  Setting the map down, he glared outward at no one. A string of curses played in his head, condemning him for not paying closer attention in the wilderness classes and not taking a more active interest in those skills. Nothing to be done about it now, though, so Niko turned his thoughts to how they might approach Preston’s would-be cabin.

  “We can’t just knock on the front door,” he said aloud without context. Cobalt seemed to pick up on his train of thought quickly though.

  “Certainly not if there is any kind of security,” he said, reclining along his sleeping bag. The lack of soft support didn’t appear to bother him. Hard ground, rocks, and gnarled tree roots made little difference in his apparent comfort than if he’d been on a feather mattress. “Knowing what we do about Preston, I have to imagine there will be security.”

  Mouth downturned in a frown, Niko sucked on his tongue. He hadn’t really thought this far ahead. That Preston would have security of some kind along his property made perfect sense. And also made everything significantly more difficult.

  “There’s no mention of any kind of official warding installed in any of Uri’s notes,” Niko said, flipping through the pages his ex had delivered to them. “If he does have magical
security, he did it off books. All the companies in Maeve’s Court are bound by law to report their warding to the city, for the sake of emergency services.” But the reality that the Woods had branches reaching through every corridor of Maeve’s Court infrastructure made Niko rethink. “But who the fuck knows, at this point. Maybe he’s got more security than Maeve herself.” He tossed the papers aside. “This is fucking hopeless.”

  He pulled up his knees and wrapped his arms around them, propping his chin atop them to stare into the fire. His expression was flat, but his emotional state was an earthquake-ruined street, waiting for the aftershocks.

  “There is hope,” Cobalt said, his voice stern. A lighthouse in a storm. But Niko was sailing blind. “We will prove that Preston killed Sade, framed you, and is somehow controlling the Chief of Police. We will prove that he is the criminal you called him out to be.”

  But Niko wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t make the pieces fit together in his mind. No one believed Niko. At least, no one of consequence. Despite his unwavering statement that Preston was involved in the auction and the Woods, no one took it seriously. If Preston had puppet strings tied to the Chief, Courtier Palm, and other important people, it wasn’t a surprise he faced no repercussions at the official level. But even regular people seemed to think Preston was no danger, despite his identity and work being shrouded in mystery. Even the conspiracy tabloids dropped the story. How was Niko to prove anything if even the quacks refused to believe him?

  And if no one believed him, why would Preston go to this trouble? Why have Sade released only to kill him? Why not just set him free and torture Niko that way? As long as Sade was roaming free, Niko would not have let up on tracking him. It was a very effective distraction. Wasn’t it?

  “And how did he even get to Sade?” Niko asked aloud. Again, Cobalt seemed to intimate his sequence of questions. “He’d have had to come from behind, knowing there was a way in there he could hide.” The runes in the fencing were indication enough of that. Runemagick was complex and difficult; it required special study and practice. As far as Niko knew, only highly trained, specialized runeworkers could activate rune spells. “He set Sade up.”

  Cobalt quirked a brow. “Yes,” he said, as though it was obvious. Niko shook his head.

  “No, I mean, even the location,” he said. “He must have sent Sade there specifically. It was all too well prepared. But Sade couldn’t have known he was going to get tortured and killed. He would never have gone. And he didn’t trust anyone. Whatever Preston did or said, Sade had to think he was entirely in control. But the moment he saw Preston, he would have gone on alert and tried to fight.” Niko pressed his fingertips to his temples and rubbed in circles. He was hungry, he realized, and the abandoned ‘meal’ was inedible. Searching through his bag, he pulled out yet another protein bar.

  “Sade did not see him coming,” Cobalt said, reasoning it through. “There were paw prints outside the crime scene, remember? Could Preston have approached in Wolf form?”

  The protein bar was better than the instant meal, but it had a strange, cutting sweetness to it that manufactured health food often had. Swallowing, Niko found it left a strong aftertaste.

  “Sade was paranoid,” Niko said. “After what I did to him, he wouldn’t trust anyone fully, and he was constantly checking behind him and around him wherever he went. He would have snapped and killed a rabbit if it had happened into that warehouse unexpected.” The fact of the paw prints still irked Niko in other ways. The unique details of them were strange, and that they were only located beyond the fencing, beyond the road was too specific. Preston had been so careful not to leave a trace of himself anywhere else, but across the road he’d decided to throw caution to the wind and transform, leaving paw prints behind?

  “What are you saying?”

  Niko shifted his shoulders, rolling them to stretch his neck. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I just think there’s more to this. Everything about it seems off. Even the timing.”

  Cobalt watched him in silence for a moment. “How do you mean?” he asked. Niko felt as though he was on the tip of something, just flicking at the lifted corner of a piece of wallpaper. All he needed was a better grip, and he could pull the whole thing down.

  “Why now? Why not three months ago? Why not in three months? Why not right after Sade was released?” Niko asked. “If this was meant to pin me, right after his release would seem like the most logical point, no? The moment I snapped? Like his release was just too much for me to take. But letting him roam around for a couple weeks? It’s weird.”

  Somewhere, in the distance and depth of the forest or the mountains, a Wolf howled. The piercing, pitch-perfect tone cut through the night and chilled Niko to the core. He instinctively looked up, searching for the source of the sound. It was too far away to be a real threat, but Niko tensed anyway. There was no way it was Preston; he wouldn’t be that stupid, and it wasn’t a Full Moon. But Niko reached for his gun.

  Pulling out the magazine, he emptied it of bullets, one by one. Then he pulled the slide back; the cartridge in the chamber popped out. He set the unloaded gun next to him and palmed one of the bullets. With a slow breath and a moment of focus, he made a trade. When he opened his hand, the bullet he held was no longer copper alloy, lead, and steel. Instead, it shone silver in the firelight.

  “Is that necessary?” Cobalt asked, watching as Niko took the next bullet and made the same trade.

  Turning lead and alloys to silver was draining on him, but Niko continued regardless. “Only one way to stop a Werewolf,” he said. “No way I’m going to face Preston without silver bullets on hand.”

  Cobalt seemed to chew on his words a moment. Niko considered the last bullet, now bright and shiny silver. He loaded them slowly back into the magazine and reloaded the gun, wondering if he should turn a few more of his extra ammunition, just in case.

  “Is this not playing into his hands?” he asked. Niko paused, meeting Cobalt’s gaze. He didn’t understand. “Making yourself the ‘armed and dangerous’ fugitive they’ve accused you of being?”

  Niko slid the gun back into his holster, clipping it in place. He didn’t have a civilian permit for silver bullets. But given the situation, he wasn’t terribly concerned about that.

  “I am armed and dangerous,” Niko said. “I’m just not a danger to civilians as they claim.”

  Cobalt frowned. “Going in with a silver bullet-loaded gun puts you in a position where you are fully capable of killing him,” Cobalt said, as though Niko was unaware of that. “What good would killing Preston do? It would only serve to prove you are a renegade cop killing for revenge.”

  Niko shot him a look. “Do you really think you’re the best person to lecture me on the problem of murdering for revenge?” Niko asked. The memory of Cobalt holding Vermillion Oak at gunpoint, glaring down in cold loathing at him as he pulled the trigger, floated between them.

  Cobalt held his gaze. “Yes,” he said. “It will only make it easier for them to ruin you.”

  Looking back at the fire, Niko said, “I’ve no intention of killing him unless I have to. But I’m also not going to go in there without a contingency.”

  There was silence for a moment. Cobalt shimmied into his sleeping bag, and Niko made to do the same. “Do I take it you’ve come up with a strategy to get in then?”

  Niko tossed another log onto the fire and settled back to rest. The ground was uneven and painful on his sore muscles. He shifted several times, dislodging pebbles and twigs from beneath him until he found a mite of comfort.

  “That’s a problem for tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll figure something out when I have the cabin in sight.”

  Though Cobalt took that as plan enough and settled to sleep, Niko spent some time staring up at the tarp he’d strung above them. For the first time, he felt the weight of a cold realization drop within him. He didn’t see a way out of this, as it was in that moment. Preston was too well connected, too powerful. There was no way he coul
d prove to the world he was innocent. Even if some people believed him, the people in power seemed to be in Preston’s pocket.

  As he remembered lowering his own gun, allowing Cobalt the freedom to kill Oak at his own discretion, Niko wondered if that wasn’t the right option here too. Maybe revenge was all Niko had left.

  Chapter 15

  Niko opened his eyes as though he had only just blinked. Staring widely ahead, he was instantly awake and aware. Cobalt, who was lying facing him, had his own wide eyes trained on something beyond Niko. When he glanced at Niko, their eyes meeting, he made the subtlest movement to freeze Niko in place. The softness of the sun’s first light filtered down toward them, and in that pale light Niko saw the fear in Cobalt’s crystal eyes.

  Heart pumping hard, Niko felt his every muscle strain to keep from moving. Instinct told him to bold, to peel away from where he was, back to some kind of danger, and escape. But he had rarely seen Cobalt afraid, if ever at all. His concern about the fire hadn’t been fear, really, when Niko compared it to this image. And the reality of that gripped him tightly with tension.

  He listened intently, aching in his muscles and bones. A quiet shuffling and scraping sound met his ears. It was close. Between them and the fire. Had to be. Niko heard the heavy padding sound of paws on the ground and judged by the depth of it the creature was large and heavy. It was an animal, clearly. Not a person. Not a group with guns pointed at their backs. Obviously. And given Cobalt was lifting himself by inches, his eyes still trained on whatever was behind Niko, it hadn’t noticed them. Yet.

  Niko wanted to turn. He desperately wanted to know what the danger was. He wanted to be able to assess the situation fully, to help in solving it. He did not want to be a motionless victim in whatever was about to happen. But with his back to the creature and his position between the creature and Cobalt, he was the most vulnerable.

  His gun was lying, in its holster, in front of his face. His hands, however, were curled up in the fabric of the sleeping bag. Any movement would make noise, and Niko had the sense that would have been a mistake. But Cobalt was mostly uncovered by his sleeping bag, and he got into a kind of plank position without any noise at all. Bending his knees, he reached over Niko to crawl between him and the creature.