Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4)

by Lauren Gilley

  She’d gone about a block when she heard it: the growl.

  An unusual lull in traffic, a quiet stretch of sidewalk without pedestrians, save the handful a hundred yards ahead at the bus stop. She wouldn’t have heard it otherwise; wasn’t sure she heard it even now.

  She froze, and glanced back over her shoulder.

  There were two of them. A dozen paces behind her, heads low, some stray bit of light from an upper window catching in their eyes. They could have been dogs, big dogs, in the dark like this. Shaggy, unkempt, stray dogs, the kind that became urban legends.

  But she knew they weren’t. She also knew, with a start, that she’d seen them before. In a dream, once. She remembered the snow, and trying in vain to plunge through it, growing weaker and slower with every step. Remembered the way the wind had played with Prince Valerian’s long pale hair, a flapping banner against the soot-colored sky as he whirled into existence and took their lives, quick and bloody, with a flashing length of steel.

  But that had been a dream, and this was real. The wolves were real. And there was no dashing prince with a sword to save her.

  Her first instinct was one of violence. Her hand went to the gun on her hip. But she was on a street that would soon be busy, in the middle of a city. And even if they meant to tear her to shreds, these were no mere animals, but werewolves. Would a bullet even stop them?

  She didn’t have time to debate that, because they charged.

  Trina bolted.

  Panic welled up and threatened to choke her.

  But there was no time for that. Run, every part of her screamed, and she ran.

  First order of business: draw them away from civilians.

  Second order: don’t die.

  She leapt into a sprint, the cold air scraping down into her lungs right away, adrenaline seizing all her muscles and darting along her nerves like lightning. She didn’t run everyday anymore, not like she had in the Academy, but she could still turn the speed on when she needed to, and she did now.

  The slap of her feet on the pavement drew gazes from the bus stop. She ducked left and down an alley, between two office buildings. A long alley, dotted with dumpsters and smaller, silver trash cans. At the other end, she could see the first silvery threads of daylight suffusing the air, a beacon drawing her.

  But a snarl and the scrabble of claws on pavement told her she’d never make it that far. Already her initial burst of speed was failing. A sudden side stitch grabbed at her, took her breath.

  Shit.

  The pulled-up ladder of a fire escape loomed ahead. She slowed – snarling, growling, snapping, wolves gaining behind her – crouched, and launched herself into the air. Reached, flailed – and just managed to grip the bottom rung of the ladder. Her weight pulled it down – stomach swooping, skin prickling, she nearly lost it – and the moment it stilled, she scrambled up. Hand over hand, panting, soles of her shoes slipping. It seemed to take forever, but then she was on the landing, flopping onto its cold metal like a landed fish, gasping for breath.

  The wolves went nuts down below, leaping, whining, and snarling at her. She looked through the metal mesh and saw the flash of ivory fangs, and the glimmer of eyes. She shuddered. They didn’t look like the wolves in nature documentaries: savvy, majestic. Intelligent. There was a hazy blankness to their rage. Rabid. Soulless. Val had explained it to her in the dream, and Will had again over the phone just an hour ago: ferals were the result of a foul turning. Somehow, these had lost their humanity.

  They could still take a human shape, though, she realized a moment later, when one of them shifted, and put shaking pale hands on the rungs of the ladder.

  “Oh, shit.”

  She scrambled up, legs weak from her run, lungs struggling. Her pulse throbbed like a wound. She hurried up the next ladder, the whole fire escape shaking beneath her as the shifted wolf hustled up behind her. He was still snarling. When she hit the landing, she risked a glance. He was so much faster than her, so much stronger, not even winded. But his face–

  Blank, so utterly blank, and slack, save the rictus that flashed all his teeth, the canines pointed.

  She started for the next ladder, but pulled up short. She couldn’t outrun him, there was no way. He was already emerging, already on level with her, hauling himself up the last step, the growl pouring out of his open mouth, saliva dribbling down his chin.

  No one could have looked at him and thought him remotely human.

  His hair hung in greasy clumps around his face, haphazardly cut by a knife. A patchy beard, tattered, ill-fitting clothes. A loose collar hung around his throat, heavy metal, large enough to survive a shifting without strangling him. He reeked of wet fur and unwashed human skin, of blood and death.

  Trina drew her gun, and her hands stopped shaking. She would give him a choice.

  “Turn around,” she said, “and go back to your master. This is your one chance to do the right thing.”

  Her words didn’t seem to register. He stalked toward her, hands curled into claws, growling continuously. He lowered his head, guarding his throat, and gathered himself to pounce. She saw the tension in his arms and legs, the coil before the spring.

  Trina took a breath, and fired.

  The first round caught him in the chest, right in the sweet spot. At close range, she couldn’t have missed, but it was perhaps her best shot ever. A .45 slug straight to the heart.

  The force of the impact knocked him back three steps. He staggered, and went to his knees. But he didn’t collapse and go into death throes like he should have. He coughed blood, but then he growled again, and started hauling himself up against the rail.

  “Shit,” she breathed, and fired again. And again. And again.

  Finally, he lay still – mostly. His limbs twitched, and his eyes rolled. Pink foam leaked from his mouth.

  She thought about old movies, about silver bullets, and nearly burst into hysterical laughter. She couldn’t, though, because of the tightness in her throat, and the frantic pounding of her heart.

  Down below, the other wolf circled, whining. Then he shifted, too. The same blank expression tipped up to her – only he was whimpering instead of growling. A dirty face framed by dirtier hair, rags for clothes.

  She felt sorry for him. For both of them. Whatever terrible things they’d done, it hadn’t been a conscious decision. It was a rabid kind of madness, but not malice.

  “What’s your name?” Trina called down to him.

  He whimpered and shrank back.

  “Who did this to you? Where are you from?”

  He ducked his head, and took off. Near the mouth of the alley, the shadows shifted abruptly, and he lit out onto the street on four legs instead of two.

  Trina looked down at the wolf at her feet – still in his human skin. Still twitching, struggling, growling and whining. He tried to sit up, despite the blood pouring out of his body.

  Silver, she thought numbly. She would have needed to put a silver bullet in his heart to kill him.

  To kill him cleanly.

  The wolf met her gaze, his own as glassy as it had been to start. But furious, now. The gaze of an animal backed into a corner by something he didn’t understand.

  “What should I do now?” she asked, her anxiety spiking anew. Now that the immediate threat was gone, her adrenaline ebbed, and made room for cold, clammy fear. Her hands shook, and her voice cracked, and her breathing came quick and choppy. The gun felt too heavy in her hand. This wasn’t like picking off guards from a distance with Katya’s rifle in Virginia. This was up close and personal; she could smell his blood, his sweat, his unwashed skin. She had a choice to make here. She could call the precinct and tell them she’d apprehended an attacker – and then what? They’d cuff him, pack him off, get him medical care. But his healing would be inexplicable. As would his madness.

  Hey, guys, I caught a werewolf.

  She couldn’t do that. And he had…he was…

  “Shit,” she said aloud, and put a round
in his forehead.

  21

  The racket at the front door woke Nik. Someone was knocking – was pounding – with the side of a closed fist, it sounded like. A frantic rhythm.

  “Guys!” A muffled shout. Lanny.

  Nikita groaned and buried his face in Sasha’s hair. It was silky soft, even tangled, and smelled like both of them. “Hasn’t he ever heard of a phone?” he grumbled.

  Sasha chuckled, his ribs jumping under the arm Nik had around his waist. “You complain when they call, too.” He shifted, and Nik tightened his arm with a low growl. Sasha laughed, and sat up. Nik cracked an eye and saw him beaming down at him, face still puffy and pillow-creased from sleep, his hair wild on his shoulders. Fading bite mark bruise on his throat. Stunning. “Come on, we have to go see what he wants.”

  Nikita growled again.

  Sasha leaned down and kissed him, then went springing out of bed like the nineteen-year-old he still looked, and shimmied into sweatpants.

  Nikita rolled slowly onto his back and blinked up at the ceiling. “Let’s run away,” he suggested, only half joking. “We can go back home, to Russia.”

  Sasha came to lean on the edge of the bed, his expression going momentarily serious. “Darling,” he said, and Nik shivered. “Wherever you are is home. But we have a new pack, now, and they’re very young. And sometimes stupid. We should look after them.” He softened it with a smile afterward, and Nikita was helpless but to smile back.

  “You’re probably right. Damn it.”

  Sasha grabbed his outstretched hand and tugged. “Get up.”

  He did get up, and pulled on clothes, and answered the door himself, because some backward part of his hindbrain said that he should shield his mate from any intruder, even one who was pack. So he only opened the door halfway, and blocked the entrance with his body.

  Lanny froze, fist suspended in mid-air. He reeked of panic.

  “What?” Nikita asked.

  Lanny’s eyes swept over him, taking in his rumpled shirt, and even more rumpled sweatpants. But they returned to his face, and all he said was, “I just got a call from the precinct. It’s Trina.”

  ~*~

  Lanny managed to stammer out the main gist of the story as they walked. It was a cold morning, the air biting, the sky a silver-gray scented with approaching rain. Trina had been pursued by a man, chased up a fire escape, and, finally, when cornered, had shot him. Killed him.

  The three of them picked up the scent of wolf a block from the crime scene. Even Lanny stopped his frantic, bouncing walk, pulling up short like he’d walked into a wall, inhaling deeply.

  Sasha sneezed loudly, and shook his head, grimacing. “Ugh. It was them. Both of them.” The ferals.

  Nikita met his gaze, his pulse leaping. “And she killed one of them.” No mean feat. He didn’t think Lanny would understand the magnitude of it.

  “Come on,” Lanny growled impatiently, and set off again.

  Sasha’s expression went worried, and they followed.

  It would have been impossible to miss the alley. It was all roped off, squad cars lining the sidewalk, cops milling. As they approached, Dr. Harvey alighted from the coroner van, kit in her hand, white coat fluttering beneath a windbreaker. She noticed them, and paused.

  “Lanny, you can’t–” she started.

  “Where is she? Is she still here? Is she okay?”

  Harvey sighed and glanced to Nikita. “Restrain him if you have to. He can’t be on the scene.”

  Nik put a hand on Lanny’s shoulder, just in case. Lanny ignored it, and went right up to the fluttering yellow tape that sealed off the alley.

  “Delgado!” he called. “What’s happening?”

  A suit-clad detective stood from his crouch at the base of a fire escape, and ambled over, his face heavy with exhaustion. Nik could related; he thought modern detectives had even less sleep than he had as a Chekist captain.

  “Webb,” Delgado said as he approached, expression grim, shaking his head. “You can’t be here.”

  “I don’t give a shit,” Lanny spat. He was shaking under Nik’s hand. “Where’s Trina? Is she alright? Did she get hurt?”

  Delgado glanced over his shoulder, toward the swarm of investigators. Then he sighed and stepped in closer, dropping his voice. “From what I hear, no. Evans took her in for an informal questioning. She was shook up, but not hurt. IAB’s already been called.” In a grave voice, “She killed a civilian.”

  The alley reeked of wolf. The body was up on the first landing of the fire escape, white sheet fluttering in the breeze. Blood had dripped down onto the pavement.

  Sasha had turned away, still sneezing. Nik hated the stink of the feral wolves, but to Sasha, they were anathema.

  “I…” Lanny said, floundering. “She…”

  Nikita tightened his hand and reeled him back a step. “Let’s go to the precinct and see her,” he whispered. “Come on. Get it together.”

  “Yeah,” Lanny said, gaze still fixed on the draped body, voice faint. “Yeah, okay.”

  They turned away as a unit, and Lanny, to Nik’s surprise, leaned into the weight of the hand on his shoulder.

  “She’s fine,” Nik said.

  Lanny snorted. “You don’t know that.”

  “I know that if she’d been injured, she’d be at the hospital instead of the precinct right now.”

  Lanny snorted again, but didn’t argue.

  “It was them,” Sasha said from Lanny’s other side. “The ferals. She got one of them.” He sounded proud.

  “And without silver,” Nik said.

  “Guess you can kill anything if you put enough bullets in it,” Lanny said.

  “Most things,” Nikita said, because vampires were the exception – to all sorts of rules, really.

  Sasha said, “But where did the other one go?”

  “Home,” Nik said. “Wherever that is for him.”

  They walked the rest of the way to the precinct in silence, Lanny bristling with nerves.

  “Hey.” Nikita pulled him up short before he could go charging up the stairs, and the look he cast around was wild, eyes white-rimmed and unfocused. “You need to calm down first. Don’t run in there and make everything worse.”

  He expected resistance, but Lanny actually listened, nodding slowly. “Right, right.”

  Nikita decided to press his luck. “This isn’t about you. It’s about her, and how you can be helpful.”

  Lanny nodded. And then turned a sudden, sharp look on Nikita. “Yeah. I know.”

  “Really?” Nikita shot back, brows lifting. “’Cause lately it’s seemed to be all about you.”

  “Says the guy who’s never had a real fucking relationship in his whole fucking life,” Lanny shot back.

  “Have you?” Nikita countered.

  Sasha pushed between them with a sigh. “Stop.” It had the effect of cold water over both of them, stepping away, dropping their hostility. “Go see Trina,” Sasha told Lanny, “and be supportive. We’ll be out here.”

  Lanny looked between the two of them, expression grim, but finally nodded, and went up the stairs at a walk.

  Nikita put his hands in his pockets and slouched back against the bricks. He fingered the packet of smokes in the right one, wanting a cigarette, but a dark glance from a uniformed officer stayed his hand. No sense looking even less reputable, he supposed.

  Sasha fell in beside him. “They have to figure things out for themselves, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Trina and Lanny. They have to sort out their differences by themselves. You can’t fix their relationship for them.”

  Nikita could feel that the face he made wasn’t friendly or attractive, though Sasha smiled in response, sunshine-bright.

  “You know you can’t.”

  “I know,” he groused. But, though his hand tightened on his pack of smokes, he didn’t crave one as badly. Sasha’s laugh filled him with a warmth that eased the endless, shaking anxiety inside him. It always
had, but he’d always forced his gaze away too soon, worried he’d give himself away, that he wasn’t allowed to have this.

  He let out a breath and felt lighter for it. “I know,” he repeated.

  Sasha cast his smile out across the street and pressed their shoulders together. “I think it’s sweet. She’s your family and you’re worried about her.”

  “You’re my family.”

  “I know,” he said easily. “But she’s family by blood. She’s…” He hesitated. “You didn’t get to ever see your…” Your baby, he didn’t say. Not until a few months ago, when he was already an old man. When he didn’t even need Nikita anymore. Never had, really, not with Pyotr doing such a good job.

  His stomach tightened in the old familiar way – but not as painfully. They’d all been fine without him, probably even better off. And now he knew what happiness tasted like, and he had a chance with Trina – to be of use to the family he’d never known before.

  An idea started to coalesce. He didn’t give voice to it, not yet, but he leaned into the place where he and Sasha touched, and Sasha leaned back, and that was alright for now.

  ~*~

  She’d been in this interrogation room countless times.

  It was funny how something as simple as sitting on the opposite side of the table could change the entire landscape.

  She wasn’t panicking, though. Wasn’t worried. Didn’t feel anything, actually. A professional sort of numbness, one she’d donned like a shield and which settled over her heavily. Impenetrable.

  They’d left the door open, to make things look casual. But through it, she could glimpse Detective Romero leaned back against the wall, shoulders slouched, chewing gum, gaze hooded. She’d seen him look like that through the one-way mirror before, when she was observing one of his interrogations.

  Delgado entered, bearing two steaming cups of coffee. Precinct mugs, and not the disposable paper they gave to actual suspects. “Here we go,” he said cheerfully, setting one down in front of her. He’d remembered she liked lots of cream.