Lanny reeled back, feeling like he’d been slapped. “Wow. How long’ve you had that one in the holster?”
Jamie’s face colored again, this time with shame, and he ducked his head. “I’m sorry, but it’s true.”
Lanny processed for a minute, really thought about that accusation.
He and Trina had been the detectives on the scene the night Chad Edwards drained and turned Jamie. How could anyone have looked at his slight, still body and felt anything but sadness and guilt? When he’d awakened, immortal and terrified, they’d explained things to him. Lanny had let him stay at his place those first few nights, until he got his bearings.
But Jamie had stayed. Had chosen to stay.
“No,” he said. “No, that’s bullshit. It sucks that you got turned, and that your old roommate thinks you’re dead, and you had to quit school. Yeah, I get that.
“But nobody’s ever told you that you don’t belong here. Nobody’s ever said you’re dead weight.”
Jamie started to protest.
“No, shut up. If you felt like you weren’t part of the pack, why did you come with us to Buffalo? To Virginia? You walked into that mansion with us all on your own, people shooting at us and everything. When we’re hanging out, having a drink, talking about all this crazy shit, you’re right there. So what gives now? You getting cold feet?”
“I…”
“I think you got spooked. I think you’re freaking out, and you want me to give you an excuse to run.”
Jamie’s gaze lifted, hurt and guilt flickering across his features.
“You want me to tell you that you don’t belong – that we don’t need you or care about you – so you can take off without feeling so damn guilty about it. Look at you – your face? Guilt. I interrogate murderers for a living, and I can tell when someone feels like shit for what they’re doing.”
Jamie bit his lip, and didn’t say anything.
Guilty.
Lanny sighed, and let the stern note bleed out of his voice. “Everybody’s scared, kid. Even me.”
Jamie’s brows lifted, doubtful.
“Nik’s over there learning how to swordfight, we’re talking about storming a lab like it’s a freaking castle, and Trina and I are definitely gonna lose our jobs. So yeah, scared.
“But what are we gonna do? This is our life now. This is our pack. If you don’t want to be a part of it, no one’s gonna stop you, but don’t put that on us, ‘cause we’ve gotten kinda attached at this point, and–”
The rest of his sentence turned into an oof, as Jamie tackled him in a hug.
Lanny blinked down at him a moment in surprise. Then he felt the heat of the kid’s face against this chest, the unsteadiness of his breath, and hugged him back. Patted the back of his head. “You’re alright,” he soothed. “Maybe a little fucked up,” he added with a laugh, “but that means you fit right in.”
~*~
When Nikita flipped him the bird, Val finally put his hands up, laughing, and turned away from the match. “Clearly, I’m a distraction, he called over his shoulder.”
“Bite me,” Nikita growled.
“Oh, no, darling, you’d enjoy it too much.”
A scan of the rooftop revealed that Mia and Anna were working together – and that Mia was smiling. He smiled, too, and kept looking: Trina held her own against Kolya; the former Chekist was letting her get in some good hits, but it was still an admirable performance on her part.
Alexei stood off to the side, arms folded against the chill. Dante stood beside him, but a half-step back, his shoulder stooped slightly in an effort to lessen his height advantage over the tsarevich; whether this was intentional or unconscious, Val couldn’t tell. Farther back, freckles visible in his pale face, was the mage. Alexei had called him Severin.
Val drifted in his direction, unhurried, slouching, even, but Alexei intercepted him.
“What do you want?”
“Such hostility.”
“Your charm doesn’t work on me,” Alexei spat, “and if you’re hoping for concession to your royalty, let me remind you that I outrank you.”
Foolish child, Val thought. From irresponsible hedonist to playing at being your father’s proper heir. But he had been a sickly boy; one not just spoiled – but coddled. Cossetted, kept apart from his peers and raised like a child made of spun sugar, apt to melt in the gentlest rainstorm. We all have our traumas.
He wiped the smile from his own face, and watched Alexei’s soften a fraction in response, uncertainty flickering in his gaze. “I thought to inquire after your mage–”
“He isn’t mine.” He blushed. That was interesting.
“–but what I really wanted was to speak with you.” He dipped his head. “Your majesty.”
Alexei sucked in a breath, clearly shocked, and then made a visible effort to smooth his features.
Val elected to ignore the slip; to treat him like the tsar he was trying now so valiantly to be. “Shall we sit?”
After a long moment of consideration, Alexei jerked a nod, and they settled on the electrical box together. Dante sat on Alexei’s other side; hovering, Val thought. Protective but nervous, uncertain, but emotionally invested.
“I’m not sure if you go in for fate,” Val began, “but it’s been my experience that, though coincidences happen, often the largest coincidences are in fact a bit of destiny.” When he earned a doubtful look, he said, “The first time I ever dream-walked away from my own familiar environs, the first time I entered the astral plane and stepped into someone else’s life, I found myself in Byzantium – in Constantinople, meeting the emperor pro-tem…who would go on to be the last emperor: Constantine Dragases.” Even after all this time, saying his name was painful. “I didn’t understand the significance, then. He was my friend, and I enjoyed talking to him; he was a kind man, without children of his own, and surprisingly amenable to the idea that an apparition could speak to him.
“I had no way of knowing, at the time, that Mehmet would one day throw Constantine’s bloody head at my feet.”
Alexei blanched. At his other side, Dante’s lips thinned, gaze sorrowful.
“Perhaps I meet the people I do because they’re doomed, and I’m their angel of death. Perhaps meeting me, being touched by whatever magic I possess, alters the course of their lives for the worse. Perhaps I have a kind of foresight that I don’t yet understand. But I don’t think it’s mere coincidence that your path and mine have crossed.” And he told him what Liam had said, his theory of the three Romes.
Alexei grew paler and paler throughout the story, until there didn’t appear to be a drop of blood left in his face. The façade he’d been holding carefully in place finally cracked and sloughed off, and beneath, he was a scared boy again. “I’m not – it can’t – there’s no way–”
“I don’t mean to frighten you,” Val said. “But I thought it important to tell you.”
Alexei stared at him, gaze flicking back and forth. “Why?”
“Because if it turns out that Liam’s correct, and it is going to require the heirs of three empires to defeat Romulus – if it comes down to Vlad needing me, then I’m going to need you. I’m going to ask you to join us.”
He stood, then, and walked away, leaving the boy who’d dubbed himself the Tsar of All the Russias dumbfounded.
~*~
When they were all sweaty, sore, and tired – Nikita was starting to see the flickers of black spots at the edges of his vision, signs of exhaustion and low blood sugar – they gave up all pretense of anything like poise and sat down on the hard gravel, cross-legged in a loose ring. And they formulated a plan.
Then came the part that left Nikita’s palms clammy.
By the time they all stood, and stretched, and complained of rumbling stomachs, a gray dawn was breaking over the rooftops, sharply cold; the air smelled of snow. Lanny was offering to treat anyone who wanted it to breakfast at his favorite diner. Annabel was yawning into Fulk’s shoulder.
Heart
in his throat, Nikita said, “Val?”
And the prince must have heard something telling in Nik’s voice, because he froze at once in the process of zipping up his jacket, head swinging around, gaze finding Nikita’s. “Yes?” He sounded almost eager.
Gooseflesh broke out across Nikita’s whole body, unrelated to the cold. “Before you go…” Warmth beside him, pressing against him: Sasha, taking his hand, lacing their fingers. “I wondered if you could help us with something.”
Val studied them, gaze dipping down to their hands, to Sasha’s face, and then to Nik’s. Nikita knew the moment understanding clicked, the soft flash of wonder in his eyes. “Yes. Yes, of course.” He turned to Mia. “Darling, will you go down with Fulk and Anna? I won’t be long.”
They earned some curious looks, and a concerned one from Trina.
Kolya seemed ready to linger, but Lanny clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Dude, you ever have waffles?”
Finally, they were alone.
“Shall we go inside?” Val asked, his voice very soft, his expression even softer.
Nik’s heart was racing. He nodded. “Yeah.” A croak through a dry throat.
“Nik,” Sasha said, whimpering a little; he could feel and hear Nik’s fluttering pulse, and smell his anxiety. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, baby. He’s going to show us something.”
But Sasha chewed his lip and looked thoroughly unconvinced.
All the way down through the building, Nikita reminded himself of the reasons not to do this – but those internal protests were faint, now. Once he’d decided on this course of action – once he’d stopped shying away from it and accepted it as something that, while strange to humans, was accepted and appreciated between immortals – the decision had clicked into place in his mind, a missing puzzle piece he hadn’t thought to long for until now. The idea of it still scared him – how easy it would be to become corrupted by this kind of power; how corruptible he’d always thought himself to be, when he looked at his shoddy human career as a killer. But there was one thing stronger than all his doubts and fears, all his anxiety and self-recrimination: his love for Sasha. That had never failed him, never flagged, not in all their seventy-seven years of knowing one another.
When they were inside the apartment, and the door was shut, Sasha took hold of the front of his jacket and towed him gently around so they faced one another, his own gaze hectic. “Nik, what’s going on?” His cheeks were pink from the cold outside, his lips chapped, his hair – the pieces escaped from his bun – wild from the wind. He was beautiful.
Nikita caught his chilled face in both hands and said, “It’s alright,” though his pulse was still flying. It was anticipation, now; worry that he’d get it wrong somehow.
Val unzipped his jacket and made himself at home in Nikita’s favorite chair, the one that faced the sofa. He glanced over, expectant, but not rushing.
“Nik.” Sasha’s gazed moved over his face; his breath hitched. “What are you? Why is Val…”
“Shh. I thought Val could help us…figure out how to perform a binding.”
Sasha stared at him, eyes widening, pupils shrinking down to pinpricks. Realization came slow – of course it would, because Nikita had been denying this for so long…But when it came, it hit him hard. His eyes filled with tears, and his face crumpled, and he threw his arms around Nikita’s neck, hugging him so hard Nik felt a vertebra pop.
“Really?” Sasha whispered. He was shaking.
Nikita cupped the back of his head. “Really.”
~*~
“Alright,” Val said, leaning forward in his chair. Nikita had never seen him like this, delighted in a way that was so genuine he seemed to radiate light, and still so soft and quiet. “Think of a binding not as a bending to will, but as a marriage. A union of souls.” He brought his hands together, fingers laced, to demonstrate.
Nikita and Sasha sat pressed together on the sofa, across from him. Nikita’s palms were damp, his mouth was dry, but he was excited, he realized. He felt a little curl of shame, deep in his gut, and banished it savagely. No, no shame, no guilt. This was a good thing. This would keep Sasha safe; it would bring them closer. This was like a marriage.
Whatever his face was doing, it caused Val’s smile to widen. “I thought you might like that idea. Now. I did it with my Familiars the way Vlad did it with his. Wolf bites first, and then the vampire bites. Sharing blood together. Then, with open, untroubled minds, and willing hearts, you find yourselves on the proper plane. You find one another. Then it’s only a matter of acceptance.”
“That…sounds too easy,” Nikita said.
“Oh, it is, if it’s a mutual binding. If both parties are in harmony.”
“What do you mean by ‘find’?” Sasha asked.
“I’m not sure I can explain it all that well. It’s an exercise of the spirit, rather than the mind. I would try to come along, if I could, and guide you, but a binding is a sacred thing. There shouldn’t be any intruders.”
“So we just…swap blood?”
“That’s the crux of it, yes. Don’t be nervous, darlings. Once you start, it’s as easy as breathing.”
Nik turned to his mate; met his eager gaze, searched his beloved face for any signs of hesitancy – but there were none. The room seemed airless around them. “Ready?”
“Ready.” His pupils widened, and his canines elongated, subtle fangs.
Nikita offered his bared wrist, and Sasha took it reverently in both hands, fingers trembling faintly. “You’ll have to bite hard.”
“I know.” He lowered his head, lamplight gleaming on his lowered, platinum lashes, on the baby-fine softness of his cheek. A few more hairs slipped loose of his bun, and Nikita tucked them behind his ear, so he could see his face, watch the flicker of his tongue as he wet his lips.
At the last moment, Sasha glanced up at him through that pale screen of lashes, and said, “Come find me.” And bit.
He did bite hard. It hurt. But the moment Sasha’s fangs pierced his flesh, Nikita was flooded with a drug-like calm.
The last time anyone had fed from his vein, it had been Rasputin, and he’d been compelled, a false calm, like his head was full of cotton batting.
But this…this was true peace, euphoric and perfect. He basked in it a moment, stroking the crown of Sasha’s head, watching his throat ripple as he swallowed, drawing slow mouthfuls of Nikita’s blood into his body.
“Nikita,” Val said, light as spring raindrops, “your turn now. Go on. He’ll be waiting.”
Slowly, dreamily, Nikita thumbed aside Sasha’s collar, leaned down, and nosed into his throat where he was warm and vital, where his heartbeat was strongest. When he bit, the blood exploded on his tongue in a way it never had before, like perfectly ripe fruit, sweet enough to make his teeth ache. The first swallow left his body humming, the room spinning. His lashes lowered, his eyelids so heavy, and then–
Fog. He stood in a void of indeterminate shape or color. There was no sky, and no ground, only dark edges providing the semblance of borders, and a thick, viscous fog that boiled up from the ground like something in an old black and white movie.
Come find me, Sasha had said. But Nik turned in a circle and saw only fog – and the flaring tail of his own coat. A glance down proved that he was dressed as he had been the day he met Sasha for the first time: the black, waxed wool of his uniform, the boots and gaiters, the long, black leather coat that he’d worn the day they rescued Sasha in Virginia, sinister and symbolic. Black gloves on his hands, and, when he reached up, the black fur hat with the hammer and sickle.
He sucked in a breath, and the fog rushed into his mouth, filled his lungs, damp and choking.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Something had gone wrong, surely. This was supposed to be like a marriage, Val had said, but here he was, dressed in funeral black, Stalin’s killer again, back to square one. And he–
Something stepped toward him through the fog. The vapors
parted, and it was Sasha in wolf form, tall, and shaggy, and white, eyes the same burning blue that they were when he was human-shaped.
Nikita took another deep breath, and it was easier now. “There you are. It looks like you found me, instead.” He gestured to his clothes. “Sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
Sasha walked right up to him, and nosed at his gloved hand. Nikita scratched behind his ear automatically, and Sasha leaned into the touch, eyes closing.
“I’m not sure what we do now. How will we know when it’s worked?”
Sasha’s eyes opened, and he snuffled at Nikita’s pants leg, and the inside of his coat. Then he sat down on his haunches and reached up to delicately paw at his knee with one massive, clawed forefoot. He shot Nik one of those penetrating wolf looks, like he could see right through his skull and knew every thought churning through the coils of his brain.
“What?”
Sasha pawed him again, harder this time.
“I know, I know, I don’t want to be wearing this.”
Sasha’s head cocked to the side, and his gaze narrowed. Wolves could in fact look judgmental, and Sasha did so now.
“I don’t–”
Sasha whined.
“He said to be open, right? To be honest? Well, this is me, right here.” He flapped his arms. “I’m the monster who took you away from your mother, who let Philippe–”
Sasha growled.
Nik sighed. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
Sasha sneezed a yes.
“Did you know that it’s very hard to stop repeating the lies you’ve always told yourself?” he asked quietly. “To let go of all the bad things you think you represent?”
Sasha shoved his head up under Nik’s hand again – his bare hand. The glove was gone – the outfit was gone. He wore what he’d been wearing on their sofa, jeans, hoodie, and his old denim jacket. Sasha’s fur felt warm, and thick, and soft, and he luxuriated in it a moment, scratching at his scalp.
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 55