Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4)

by Lauren Gilley

  “She saved your life,” he said, frostily.

  “Where were you guys?” she bit back. “We’ve been pinned down for ten minutes!”

  “They were doing a sweep of the stairwells,” Anna said. “We had to fight out way here.”

  “And they’ve brought significant backup,” Fulk said, baring his teeth at no one in particular. Mia was drawing more earnestly at his arm, now; the muscles in his forearm flexed beneath the pull of her mouth.

  “Vampires,” Much said, rejoining them.

  Fulk looked at him, expression going strange. “Not regular vampires.”

  Much’s brows jumped up and down. “The afflicted ones? Christ, I didn’t think they had any of those in America.”

  “They do now, somehow, because they’re in the building, and coming this way.”

  As if to prove his point, another roar sounded, this time closer, louder.

  Fulk gave a little hiss. His face looked paler, Trina thought. “Here, darling, that’s enough.” He got his wrist loose, and lifted it to suck at it himself a moment, laving the marks with his tongue until they stopped bleeding.

  Trina wondered if that was ever going to look normal to her.

  Mia tipped her head back and breathed through her mouth a moment, gasping. Licked the blood off her lips and teeth. Amazingly, the gunshots had stopped bleeding. New color bloomed in her cheeks. “Shit,” she said, on a deep exhale. She blinked, righted her head, and was lucid again. Pain etched her face, but she was herself, and very much not dead. “God, that hurts like a bitch.”

  “We’ll need to have someone have a look at you later,” Fulk said, tugging his sleeve back down. “An X-ray to be sure there’s no bullets still inside. But you should be able to walk.”

  “Can you?” Anna asked her, hand still on her shoulder.

  Mia wiggled her feet. “I think so.”

  More gunshots echoed beyond the door Fulk and Anna had come through; several thumped into the wood of the door itself.

  “They’ll have that down, soon,” Fulk said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Anna stood, and helped Mia up.

  “Those other vampires,” Trina said. “Even if we get out” – which she really doubted they’d be able to do – “what will they do?”

  Fulk made a grim face, and didn’t answer.

  Trina wished she’d told Miguel to evacuate the building before all of this started.

  She turned, and saw Kolya standing over a slumped Dr. Fowler. Fowler held a hand to his face, over one eye, where Kolya had obviously decked him. Fucking bastard, she thought savagely, and took a step toward him.

  She didn’t reach him, though.

  Mia strode past her, shaking, but not limping. She reached Fowler in a few long strides – Fulk and Anna protesting loudly – leaned down, and gripped the front of his shirt in one hand. She dragged him up – up, up, until his toes dangled, only the tips scraping the carpet. He reached for her hand, scrabbling at it, trying to pry it loose, but it didn’t matter. He was a human, and she was a vampire, and, streaked with blood, probably carrying more than one bullet, Mia carried him over, and slammed his back against the wall. Brought her other hand up, and gripped his jaw with white-knuckled force, until he cried out in pain.

  “What’s coming after us?” she snarled, her voice more growl than girl.

  When he didn’t speak right away, she tightened her hand. He yelped, and, jaw nearly crushed between her fingers, said, “Devils. They’re awful. They’ll kill you.”

  She shook him. “Why would you side with them instead of us? Why would you support Romulus?”

  And that’s what he was doing, wasn’t he? That was the whole point of the New York branch. Not to fight in the coming war, the way the Virginia branch claimed. Dr. Fowler and those who worked under him were trying to prove themselves valuable enough to keep alive. They’d already decided Romulus would win the coming war, and they wanted to prove their worth to him, so they might serve him.

  “Because,” he choked out, “I want to live.”

  With the hand at his jaw, Mia pulled his head toward her, snarling, her teeth bared – and slammed the back of his head against the wall.

  “Whoa,” Jamie said, reaching out.

  Much stayed him with a hand.

  Mia pounded his head against the wall once, twice, three times…again and again. Until the sheetrock cracked and caved in. Until blood spattered, and ran down the back of his neck.

  At the last, she pulled him forward, limp and dangling, and with both hands snapped his neck in one easy movement, for good measure. When she dropped him, he fell in an unnatural pile of wrong angles.

  She stood breathing hard, still growling, chest heaving.

  Something slammed into the far door, the one Much had locked. Again. Again. There was snarling, and scratching, and all the immortals went instantly taut. Those were vampires out there – wrong ones. Devils.

  “There’s not enough line to rappel down to the street,” Kolya said, his voice as flat and informative as ever.

  “We’ll have to fight out way out,” Fulk said, surveying them. “Humans, or vampires?”

  “Humans,” they all said together.

  45

  Sedatives didn’t work very long on vampires, even the strong ones. As hazy gray consciousness returned, and Alexei blinked open gummy eyes, he decided, based on his nausea and the way the lights burned his eyes, he’d been hit with enough to drop an elephant.

  A few attempts to move revealed that he was strapped down at the arms and legs. He blew out a breath and blinked some more, working on getting his vision clear. A terrible wave of dizziness came, and then passed. He thought he might be sick, bile building at the back of his throat, but he swallowed, and that passed, too.

  “Hello, Your Majesty,” Gustav said, pleasantly.

  Alexei lifted his head up as best he could, and searched for the bastard.

  As if waiting for such a cue, he paced into view, hands clasped behind his back, casual and unbothered.

  A second glance, though, proved that his face was too pale, his eyes too wild. He was trying to play the wily villain, in control of this situation, but he wasn’t.

  Pathetic a thought as it was, being strapped to a table, Alexei saw that weakness as something that could work in his favor. “Where’s Dante?”

  Gustav’s brows knitted a moment before understanding dawned. “Ah.” He walked up to the table Alexei was strapped to, and looked down at him. “Norrie, you mean.”

  “He prefers Dante.”

  “And I prefer it when my friends cooperate, but we’re past that now.”

  “We were never friends.”

  “No, but we could have been.” Gustav tilted his head, and looked apologetic. “It’s a shame, really.”

  Someone approached from Alexei’s other side. A vampire, though one dressed in scrubs, wearing gloves…carrying a hypodermic needle.

  Fear lanced through him, sharp and painful, clearing the last of the drug’s aftereffects. “If you want revenge, just cut my heart out and get it over with. What the fuck’s with the mad scientist routine?” He struggled against his bonds, but he knew they were silver without being able to see them, and he couldn’t do more than rattle them. A cool, gloved hand touched his arm, and Alexei snarled up at the vampire dressed as a doctor.

  It did no good. The vampire didn’t respond, only pressed in with the needle, and it bit into the vein on the inside of his elbow with a sharp pinch. When it was in place, the vampire attached a tube…attached to a blood bag. They weren’t simply drawing a vial.

  Alexei’s mouth filled with saliva, and nausea returned.

  “What are you doing?” he growled.

  Gustav answered. “Had you been more cooperative – if you hadn’t fallen back onto the bad habit of trusting those sentimental idiots you call friends – we could have taken this sample under different circumstances.”

  The bag began to fill, ounce by ounce. Alexei could fe
el his strength ebbing; swore he could feel the blood rushing down toward the needle, always so quick to leave him. “What are you talking about?” It felt important to keep talking, for some reason; to stay awake.

  “It would have still been unpleasant – giving blood always is. Especially for you, I’d imagine, given your chronic condition. But we have to have a large sample, you see. We’ll pack it in ice, and get it transported as quickly as possible, but we need enough. It would be easier to take you with us, but if watching mortals conduct their little experiments has taught me one thing, it’s that an unwilling prisoner is just a hassle. A liability. And you, poor thing, just can’t help but be unwilling, can you? They’ve crawled inside your brain.”

  “What the fuck does that even mean? Why do you need my blood? You’re a vampire. You don’t need a goddamn miracle drug.”

  The bag filled, filled, filled. His stomach lurched, and his pulse tripped and stuttered. The room seemed to tilt.

  “Is this–” He struggled to think. “Is this still about World War I? About revenge? Or…That was my father! I was only a kid!”

  Gustav looked down at him – for a moment, there were two of him, blurring out, stretching into a two-headed monster, and then blurring together again – and clucked, like he was so, so stupid. “Leaving you for dead – for them – will be revenge. Personal revenge. The last of your fucking terrible family gone.

  “But the blood isn’t personal. That’s for my master. For his own experiments.”

  Alexei swallowed with difficulty. His vision fuzzed at the edges. He heard a faint, high whining, like a pitiful dog. Was that him? He didn’t know.

  “Ex – experiments?”

  The bag filled, filled, was full. The vampire sealed it off, pulled it away – blood sprayed down on the tile, red and wet – and then attached a second, so that it could fill, fill, fill.

  Gustav’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. “For all that he was a fool, it was Philippe’s idea, originally, to let the humans do some of the work for us. Let them figure it out: humans, despite their shortcomings, are so dissatisfied with life they can’t help but tinker and experiment.

  “The problem with the Absent Ones is that Romulus’s blood is tainted; he can’t create an heir – not one that’s whole, and lasting, and intelligent. There must be something wrong with the blood. But if we take the blood of especially gifted vampires…”

  Whatever he said next was lost as Alexei was hit with another wave of dizziness. His eyes closed, and he nearly lost hold.

  When he blinked again, Gustav was saying, “Rasputin would have been a prize, but we have the next best thing, in you. You were my idea, but you didn’t cooperate…”

  Black spots crowded his vision. When it cleared, he’d turned his head. The vampire doctor was pulling out the needle, but he didn’t put a bandage over the leaking vein. Blood ran hot down his arm, dripped off his wrist, while the vampire dropped both bags into a cooler and snapped a lid on; picked it up and walked around behind Alexei’s head, out of sight.

  “Goodbye, Your Majesty,” Gustav said.

  It took an age to roll his head the other way, and Gustav was giving him a little salute, his wolves – Hannah and Carey – flanking him. “Perhaps you’ll already be asleep before they tear you to pieces.” Then he was gone.

  ~*~

  Hastings herded Severin into the room with a sigh much too deep and explosive to have been simple relief. The orderlies crowded in after them, and one pulled the door firmly shut and locked it.

  He hadn’t expected for anyone to want to lock themselves in with him, not when they were this scared.

  Unless…

  He wasn’t the thing they were afraid of.

  He kept thinking about Alexei’s boots going around the corner. The way he and Dante had looked curled together on the floor, exposed, unprotected.

  “Seven!” a small, excited voice shouted, and he looked at his brothers.

  Eighteen sat up in the bed, his red hair – straight and very fine – sticking up in wild tufts. He bounced up and down, grinning, unable to contain his excitement, a display that would earn a sharp reprimand. “Seven, you came back!”

  Twelve was fifteen-years-old, and had begun to shun such childish displays; Seven – Severin – suspected it had something to do with the recreational films they’d tentatively been allowed to watch, Twelve mimicking the teenagers he saw there: aloof, unbothered, and admired by those around them.

  Both boys would need names, Severin thought. Proper names instead of numbers.

  Your sister’s name is Red.

  “Where were you?” Twelve asked. “They said you were kidnapped.”

  “I wasn’t,” Severin said. “I left on my own. Because I wanted to.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” Dr. Hastings said with a very obviously forced laugh. She crossed the room and sat down on the room’s one stool, a wheeled one that sat in front of the blank white desk that the three of them only ever used to break up the monotony of sitting or lying on one of the beds. They had no paper, no pens, no books here. No way to work or study. Here in their prison. “Those bad vampires lured your brother away,” she told the younger two. “But he’s back now, and the vampires are going to be taken care of.”

  He snapped a glare at her that caused her to recoil. A hand went to her throat, and he wondered if she knew she’d done so. “What does that mean? Taken care of?”

  She breathed out another fake laugh. This one shivered. “Nothing for you to worry about, Seven–”

  “Severin. My name’s Severin.”

  “Oh, God,” she said, quietly, on a gasp.

  He turned to his brothers. “I left because I wanted to, and I made friends. It’s different out there, on the outside. It’s better.”

  Twelve frowned, all skepticism – save his eyes, which sparked with wild curiosity. “It’s not safe on the outside.”

  He thought about Gustav and Alexei facing off from one another in an empty lot, about wolves rushing at him, attacking. No, it wasn’t safe. But nowhere was. He would try to explain the distinction later, when they were gone.

  Eighteen had few reservations, being only six. “What’s it like?” He was still bouncing on his knees.

  “It’s…loud. And bright. So many colors. And everyone wears so many different kinds of clothes. And there are so many smells. And…” He couldn’t do it justice. “It’s alive,” he finished, feeling like even that was insufficient.

  But Twelve’s eyes popped wide.

  “I’m going back out. For good. And I want you two to come with me. With me and my friends. They’ll help us.”

  Dr. Hastings stood up, pretend smile falling away. Behind him, he heard the orderlies’ shoes scuff on the tile. “Seven, this isn’t anything you should be talking about. Get in your bed, and get some sleep.”

  He ignored her. Moved his gaze instead between his two brothers. “There’s a man named Rob – a wolf – who knows our sister. Do you remember Five? She’s Red, now, just like I’m Severin. He can introduce us, he said. We can all be together.”

  “Seven.”

  “Would you like that?” he asked them.

  “Yes!” Eighteen said, immediately.

  Twelve was slower to agree, staring hard at Severin.

  You’ve never doubted me, Severin thought, and tipped his head, imploring. Trust me now.

  They couldn’t communicate like that, telepathically, but something in his gaze got through to Twelve. He nodded. “Yes,” he said, just a whisper.

  “Seven!” Hastings barked.

  He lifted a hand toward her. “My name is Severin.” And threw fire.

  ~*~

  They went down an empty stairwell, and through a series of empty halls, footsteps echoing hollowly off the concrete walls.

  “Creepy as shit,” Lanny said.

  Especially when you considered that, at some point, they’d run into a horde of ravenous, senseless monsters who’d probably try to eat them.<
br />
  “Should be getting near–” Will said.

  And a door banged open in front of them. Thick gray smoke boiled out.

  Sasha skidded to a halt, growling, ruff up.

  Nikita stopped beside him, and raised his gun.

  Severin stepped out into the hall, wreathed in smoke, towing two other boys with him. One looked mid-teens, gangly and awkward, and the other was just a little thing, not even ten. Severin had them both by the hands, one on either side.

  The smoke was thick with the scent of charred meat.

  “Your brothers?” Nikita asked, as if there was any mistaking the red hair and freckles.

  “Twelve and Eighteen, for now,” Severin said, calmly, like he hadn’t just burned someone – which he obviously had, given the smell.

  The little one, Eighteen, was crying.

  Will peeked into the room, waving the smoke from his face, grimaced, and shook his head.

  “We’ve gotta move,” Nikita said. “They’ve all pulled back to secure locales and are turning something nasty loose on us.”

  “What about Alexei?”

  “We’ll find him. But we need to get you three outside first.” One disaster at a time.

  “I know where they’ll have taken him. We’ll come with you. We’ll help.”

  “No offense, kid,” Lanny said. “But–”

  “Do any of you have a flame thrower?” Severin asked.

  Val said, “He does make an excellent point.”

  Sasha sneezed, and Nik knew it was an urging. Let’s hurry!

  “Lead the way, then,” Nik said with a sigh.

  ~*~

  Alexei was going to bleed to death. He understood that now. And what a joke: a vampire bleeding to death. The thing that had tried to kill him all his mortal life would finally succeed, more than a century too late.

  This time, it did not hurt as it had when he was a boy; the blood wasn’t trapped beneath his skin, swelling, pressing, pinching. He’d asked his mother once, he remembered distantly, his head all a gray fog, if the pain would stop when he was dead. He’d wanted to be dead, a few times, like at Spała, when the pain was boundless and vicious.