Lanny stood a moment, hand on the doorframe.
You guys are all I have.
Then he followed.
Alexei sat at the kitchen table, coffee, bagels, and microwaved blood in coffee mugs already set out.
“Making yourself at home?” Lanny asked, dropping down into the chair next to him, surveying the tabletop and its precise spread. Not just bagels, arranged on a platter he hadn’t even known he’d owned with a decorative pile of strawberries, but two kinds of cream cheese, butter, jam, and plates of sausage and hashbrowns. Clear glasses of orange juice, and little pitchers for coffee creamer; a sugar bowl. All of it set in a way that was both practical and pleasing to the eye.
Easy to forget he was a real prince, raised in a palace, but then he’d go and do something like this.
“Here.” Alexei set a loaded plate in front of him, and slid over a steaming mug of blood. “Fighting’s all well and good, but there’s no need to live like animals all the time.”
Lanny picked up the plate and squinted at the delicate blue scrollwork at its edge. “This isn’t mine. Where did you get it?”
“A consignment store.” He cut into his sausage with knife and fork, dipped it into his blood, and then popped it in is mouth.
Lanny swallowed a wave of revulsion and put his own mug to his lips. I’m that, he thought. A thing like him, that drinks blood.
As was Jamie, who pulled out the chair the farthest from them – not very far at all, given the smallness of the table and the room around it – and started loading a plate of his own, mouth set in a line.
You guys are all I have.
There were moments in every day when Lanny forgot he was a vampire. Moments when he relished it. And moments, like this one, when it frightened him; when he felt like a child who’d been told terrible news. When that forever Nik always talked about stalked round the edge of the bed at night, growling at him. Or laughing. I’m not me anymore, he would think. And Trina would have frowned and insisted otherwise. Different dietary needs, was all.
And forever.
His violence, though, he knew with a sick feeling that had him setting his mug down, had always been there. Lying quietly when he was at school or work. Surging under his skin, a crackling electricity when he was fighting.
Jamie took a bite of bagel, picked his head up, and found himself being watched. His brows popped up with obvious agitation, and with a question.
Lanny shook his head and reached for his food. One thing at a time. He was hungry, and he needed to eat. Forever would crush him if he let it, but he could eat, so he would.
“Do you work today?” Alexei asked, scrolling on his phone with his free hand, distracted.
“I’m on call.”
“Hmm.” More scrolling. “Will you go see Trina after breakfast?”
Lanny looked at Jamie again, but he was hunched over his food, and wouldn’t look back. When he glanced Alexei’s direction, he found the tsarevich watching him with a bored little lift of his brows.
“Fuck this–” Lanny started, and braced his hands on the table, ready to shove to his feet. He didn’t have to sit here and let–
Alexei sighed and motioned him back down. “No, no, not like that.” A pointed glance toward Jamie – and a deepening of Jamie’s frown in response – brought Lanny up short. “I’m thinking logically. If you plan on seeing Trina today, and you were supposed to go back to her place last night, then you’ll need an alibi for your face.”
“An alibi.”
“Yes, an alibi is an excuse–”
“I know what an alibi is, dipshit, I’m a cop.”
“Of course,” Alexei said, patronizing. “Do you have one?”
He didn’t, and the set of Alexei’s brows made him want to smack the guy. “I’ll – tell her I was mugged, or something.”
“Yes, mugged.” Alexei looked like he suppressed a smile. “You, boxer, cop, vampire, of the turned blood of Grigory Yefimovich, were mugged…and lost.”
“We’ll say there were ten guys.”
“And why didn’t you go home afterward?”
“I…”
“Tell her,” Jamie cut in, setting his bagel down with disgust, “that you got into it with another vampire. Not,” he rushed to say, when Lanny tried to protest, “that you were boxing for money. Shit. No, just say you ran into a hostile vamp on your way home, that you fought, that we helped you, and that you were afraid to lead the guy back to her place.”
“That…doesn’t suck. But I didn’t take any of her calls.”
Jamie huffed in annoyance and returned to his breakfast.
Alexei chuckled and said, “I think you’re on your own for that one.”
~*~
When Trina reached the hospital, that awful rear loading bay entrance she knew so well, she found Harvey standing outside with her shoulders pressed back against the sun-glazed bricks, white coat drawn tight around her middle, smoking a cigarette. She blew out a plume of gray smoke as Trina approached, expression haunted in the fraction of a second before she put her shields up. Then she dropped the cig to the ground, and stubbed it out with the toe of her sneaker.
“No Lanny?”
Trina tamped down the worry that flared to life in her belly. “Just me.” She offered a smile she knew was weak. “Same as the last one?” she asked, propping a shoulder against the wall, wishing, not for the first time, that she smoked, too. Maybe it would settle this burst of nerves.
Harvey folded her arms, fingers twitching restlessly. The wall threatened to crumble, a flash of true fear. “Not exactly. Come take a look.” She paused in the act of punching in the door code. “Did you eat yet?”
Trina’s stomach twisted with dread. “No.”
“Good.”
The coldness of the morgue closed around her, tight and unforgiving as a hand when she followed Harvey inside. The door fell shut behind them with a loud metal clang, and goosebumps broke out down Trina’s arms, beneath her jacket. There was probably no place safer than right here, in the basement of the hospital, behind locked doors, surrounded by dead men without grudges or agendas.
But.
Harvey led the way into her lab, into the smell of old blood and fresh bleach, of chemicals of preservation…and something that wasn’t a scent at all. But a sense. A feeling of wrongness that slid down her back like cold oil.
A white drape covered the big steel table in the center of the room, but the bumps beneath it weren’t large enough to belong to a human body.
Not a whole one, anyway.
Harvey walked around to the far side of the table, snapping on gloves, and Trina moved to stand opposite her with a heavy sort of reluctance. She’d been here dozens of times; hundreds. This was her job. So why was she so hesitant now?
Because for the first time, the murders in this city had a link to her, however tenuous. The people dying had died at the hands of supernatural creatures…and as someone whose entire friend group was now composed of said creatures, it cut too close to the bone.
“Ready?” Harvey asked, and it sounded like an unnecessary kindness.
Trina schooled her features, and shoved the disquiet away. “Yeah.”
Harvey lifted the drape without ceremony.
An arm, hand attached, and a leg, foot missing. Badly mutilated. Unmistakable claw marks down the calf. The worst was the messiness; the way the limbs had obviously sat in the sun for a while, before being found.
“The scene,” Harvey said, sliding into her cold, professional tone; the ME voice of a doctor who’d seen more than her fair share of death, “was not too far from the boathouse in the park. A morning jogger found the remains. Bundt and Crusoe got the case. There was” – she hesitated a moment, a brief falter – “blood. Everywhere. And some other bits of tissue; organs, some bones. These are the only limbs even partially intact. The rest was just…scraps. There are” – she pointed to indicate – “puncture wounds consistent with canine teeth. Scratches consistent with the number o
f claws and relative size of large canine paws.”
“Wolf,” Trina corrected, quietly.
Harvey didn’t so much sigh as let out a shaky breath, and Trina looked up from the remains to get a read on her expression. What she found, behind Harvey’s clear splatter glasses, was a wide-eyed look akin to desperation. “Okay, wolf,” she said, voice tight. “What the hell am I supposed to tell the detectives when they come to the postmortem?”
It probably shouldn’t have, but her sudden burst of panic surprised Trina. “What did you tell them last time?”
“The truth. That something ate that poor man. And something ate this – well, judging by the size, shape, and musculature of the hand and arm, I’m guessing man, but I won’t know for certain until DNA gets back.”
“Okay,” Trina said.
Harvey’s brows lifted; she looked truly hostile for the first time in Trina’s memory. “That’s all you have to say? ‘Okay?’”
“We’re looking into it. We’ll find the guy – the wolf, who’s doing this, and we’ll–”
“What? Arrest him?” She coughed a harsh, humorless laugh. “Trina, this is absurd. This is–”
“I know,” Trina started, and Harvey interrupted.
“Do you, though? A few months ago, I learned vampires and werewolves exist. That they aren’t just movie monsters – and I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t watched Sasha–” Her voice hitched, a tremor moving through her, as she doubtless recalled the day Sasha had shifted in front of her, to show her that it was possible. He’d been smiling afterward, until he realized how rattled she’d been. “It was the best way to prove it,” he’d said.
“You know what I did that night?” Harvey continued, voice flat and tight like she was fighting to keep it even. “I went home, and I peed in a goddamn cup, and ran a drug test on myself.”
Trina felt her brows leap. “You…you did?”
“Of course I did.” Like it was a foregone conclusion. “I watched a man turn into a wolf. What part of that would lead me to believe that I was sane or sober?”
Trina was startled by the confession, but maybe she shouldn’t have been. Harvey had always been the soul of practicality; a medical doctor, dealing in facts, and stats, and hard truths. It broke her heart a little to hear her doubt herself like this.
“Christine,” she started.
If anything, her low, soothing tone seemed to further agitate her friend. “Why are you so accepting of it?” Harvey asked. “Did you doubt? At all? Or did you just eat up whatever they told you?”
Trina bristled. “Okay, I get that you’re scared–”
Harvey’s jaw set.
“–but you weren’t in my head the night I got to look at Nik and Sasha’s memories. At my dead great-grandmother’s memories. Of course I questioned. I’m a detective: it’s my job to question anything and everything. It’s also my job to piece together the evidence in front of me and come to a reasonable conclusion. In this case, vampires and werewolves are real.” And things scarier than that, she didn’t say. “And I’m just me,” she pressed on. “Human, and…ill-equipped.” A chill moved down her spine, and the breathlessness of true fear threatened. She pointedly didn’t look back down at the limbs on the table. She remembered the dream she’d had before Virginia, the wolves chasing her, and Valerian appearing to cut them down. She’d been choking on the panic, then – and that had only been a dream. What would the real thing feel like? What would…
She swallowed. “Honestly? I don’t feel well-adjusted. Sometimes I think I’m just bulling ahead so I don’t freak the hell out.”
Harvey’s posture relaxed a fraction, expression softening.
“Someone’s fucking – eating people, in this city. I’m just…trying my best,” she finished, lamely.
Harvey took a deep breath, and let it out in a sigh that lifted the loose hairs escaped from her bun. “I know.” Her gaze swept downward, toward her latest victim. “If you figure out who’s doing this – that Gustav guy, Nikita said? – what’s the plan?”
The buzzer sounded, up on the wall, and they both turned to look at the computer monitor set up over on the desk. The security feed at the back door revealed Nikita and Sasha, standing side-by-side. Nik was looking over his shoulder, scanning the loading bay. Sasha stared into the camera, and waved, smiling, face round, wide, and distorted by the convex lens.
“If our culprit’s a vampire, I think they’re the ones who are gonna have to take care of it.”
13
Sasha pinched himself. He knew it was silly, but he’d been doing it all morning, taking the vulnerable skin on the inside of his forearm between thumb and finger and tweaking hard enough to bruise. He kept waiting for this to be a dream. Was terrified it might be. And what if it was? What would he do, then?
He’d awakened first this morning, a rarity. It was always Nik – always a light, troubled sleeper – who woke first, and, on the nights Sasha spent sleeping across the foot of his bed like the faithful wolf that he was, spent at least an hour smoking, fighting his own nauseating anxiety until Sasha got up and went to make breakfast. But this morning, when his eyes fluttered open, while his body was drowsy and pleasantly heavy, still, he’d sensed immediately that Nik still slept. Slept deeply. He’d turned his head on the pillow, and there he’d been, facing away, the sheet pooled at the narrow span of his waist, caught on a too-sharp hipbone. The pale pink of healing claw marks down his back, where Sasha had marked him, while they’d…
Sasha had swallowed down a sudden surge of happiness almost like panic. It had been perfect. He wanted to remember it. He wanted more of it. And he was afraid he might mess it up somehow.
But he would try his best. Damn, would he try.
So he’d rolled over, toward his best friend, his partner, his everything, who was now also his lover, and put his arms around him, and snuggled up close to his back. And waited for him to wake.
After Trina’s phone call, they’d decided they ought to get up, shower, dress, and go find her. See what was troubling her. There was nothing else they had to do that day, Sasha reminded him, and Trina was pack and family, to boot.
They’d showered together. Pulling apart had been difficult, and then, when they were standing together at the foot of the tousled bed, naked, the new sun painting Nikita all in marble, Nik had looked at him, and cocked a single brow, that cocky, self-satisfied look he so rarely used, and never on Sasha. Sasha had bridged the gap, and touched his face, and kissed him. Then they’d stumbled to the bathroom, and into the crowded shower stall, kissing, hands sliding wet and warm over one another.
I’m addicted, Sasha had thought, palming over the stark cut of Nik’s abs, and lower, the soft flat of his belly. One taste and he was totally, cripplingly addicted. They’d been kissing, hot water beating on their shoulders, and pouring down their faces, flavoring their kisses, but he’d wanted more. Like skin was too great a barrier now.
The thought left him feeling foolish, and greedy. Finally, finally things had taken a turn, and still he wanted to go beyond that, somehow. A nameless yearning that left him aching.
He’d gotten awkwardly to his knees in the tub, leaning in to return Nikita’s favor of last night.
“Oh, you don’t have–” Nikita started, and cut off with a low moan that echoed off the tiles, hands clenching in Sasha’s wet hair, pushing it off his face so he could see. “Baby.”
He wanted to hear that again, and again, and again.
After he’d come, slumped back against the tile, panting, head tipped to show his throat, and the starkness of his collarbones, Nik had pulled him to his feet and reeled him in. “Come here, come here, come here.” A chant, hands sliding down Sasha’s back, settling on his ass, encouraging.
Sasha came all over both their stomachs with little prompting, only a squeeze, and a little rutting, and Nik’s breath warm against his ear, calling him baby some more.
They rinsed off, toweled dry, and dressed, after. Ate toast. They did
n’t speak, and for the first time in weeks, it wasn’t a loaded silence, but a contented one.
Finally, when they’d put the dishes away, and the coffee was gone, Nikita sighed and said, “I guess we better go check on her.”
Sasha had hugged him from the side, trapping his arms at his side, and kissed him loud and smacking on the cheek. “See? You’re sweet,” he’d said, laughing.
Nik had grumbled, but a smile tugged at his mouth.
Sasha had laughed some more.
They went to Trina’s place, and found her away, but her scent trail was fresh, and Sasha followed it the short walk to the hospital – to the morgue.
“Oh,” he said, pulling up short when they reached the now-familiar loading bay, and the key panel-locked steel door at the top of the concrete stairs. “You don’t think…?”
“No,” Nik said, right away, and Sasha wondered if he remembered finding the man’s boots sticking out from behind a dumpster. “She would have called. Must be a case.”
“Must be,” Sasha agreed, worry twisting in his stomach, and pressed the buzzer.
The door unlocked a moment later, and they stepped into the cool, chemical-smelling hallway to find Trina waiting for them, arms folded. Not exactly defensive, but not relaxed, either.
Sasha picked up worry; tracked the tension in the set of her shoulders.
He smiled at her. “Hi.”
Her mouth twitched to the side, a reluctant, but true smile. “Hi, Sasha.”
“Another body?” Nikita asked, because small talk had never been his strong suit, and because Sasha knew exactly how guilty he felt for being snappish with Trina earlier, but that he wasn’t going to apologize and play soft. That had never been his style.
Sasha loved him anyway.
Trina’s expression tightened in response to the bluntness. “Yeah. In the park. Still working on an ID.”
“Your case?”
“No. Someone else’s.” She paused. “It’s just pieces, left. The vic was eaten.” The last she said matter-of-factly, without any emphasis on the final word, but her throat moved as she swallowed hard.
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