He’d meant it as a jest, a challenge. But as soon as he said it, Val realized it was the truth. With a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, Val acknowledged that his aspirations of the past – to be seen as a worthy member of his famous family; to foster a peace between the Empire and Romania, not to help the Empire, as all his doubters had claimed, but to finally drag Romania out of an endless crusade; to gain some sort of brotherly affection from Vlad; to lead – were just that: past. All he wanted, all that he’d wanted for years now, was to lie down in spring grass and watch clouds scuttle across the sun. Feel the breeze. Smell modern cities, and the insides of restaurants, and eat until he was painfully full. He wanted to know the texture of Mia’s hair against his hand. To sit a horse again. To sleep on silk sheets, and know a willing sex partner, and run until his legs were jelly, the wind in his clean hair.
He was a purebred vampire prince. Romanian Royalty. Roman royalty.
And all he wanted was to disappear into the world, and never be reminded of those things again.
“Please,” he said, voice twisting piteously. “Just let me go.”
Vlad stared at him. Lifted his sword. Attacked.
Val brought his own up with arms that screamed in pain, and the strike sent his blade spinning out of his hands. He gave a wordless cry of alarm and pain, and reached for the gun he’d picked off a dead guard and jammed in his fraying waistband. He wasn’t sure he’d know how to use it, but he’d watched Rooster. It couldn’t be that hard…
Vlad’s blade caught him where his neck and shoulder joined. Cleaved him there. Cracked him open. The sword hit his sternum, on the inside, skidded around his heart, lodged in his ribs. Not fatal. But.
He didn’t register falling, or Vlad drawing the sword back out of his body. Didn’t hear or feel any of it.
Suddenly he was on his back, looking up at the high coffered ceiling, the heat and strength bleeding out of him, heart throbbing jaggedly. He couldn’t breathe. The light was fading.
Vlad’s face appeared above his. “A kill for a kill,” he said, emotionless.
“No.” His voice came out a thin rasp. His vision blacked over. “I never…wanted to kill you.”
And then he was gone.
*
Fulk vaulted over the railing, landed lightly on the balls of his feet, and entered the library just in time to see Vlad cut his little brother almost in half. He watched, sick to his stomach, as Val crumpled, and Vlad braced a fit on his hip, leaned back, and pulled his sword free with an awful sucking sound and a fresh arterial spray of blood.
Vlad stepped back, and watched Val twitch and spasm, and bleed all over the carpet without any expression.
Fulk couldn’t say that he liked Val, not the way that Anna did. But. This…
“Did you kill him?” Fulk asked, and Vlad whirled to face him, bloody sword lifting.
His dark eyes moved over Fulk, noted his own sword. “No. But he will sleep for a while. He can’t cause any more trouble.” His head tilted. “Maybe I should have killed him, yes?”
Fulk swallowed hard. He was aware, suddenly, that he’d done nothing of any use today. He hadn’t helped anyone escape, hadn’t taken Annabel and fled. He was still here, same as ever. His sword might as well have been a matchstick for all the good it had done.
“Do you hate him?” he asked, nodding toward Val, who it was hard to look at.
“No,” Vlad said, like it was obvious. “He has always been full of hate, and that is not useful. It is a waste.”
Fulk didn’t respond.
“What has happened to the wolf? Sasha?”
“I think he’s gone.”
“Ah.” Vlad looked at him and Fulk wanted to squirm. “Then it’s a good thing there are other wolves here, yes?”
*
“We need leverage,” Trina had said, and Jamie had understood. The best way to push back against a secret, sinister organization was to expose it.
He found the computer terminal on the main floor, in a room that looked like a parlor. It could have been nothing; it looked like an afterthought. But when he touched the mouse, the screen lit up, and oh. Yes, this was something.
He used the keycard he’d swiped to log in, plugged in the flash drive he’d brought, and started moving files.
45
Trina lowered her great-grandmother’s rifle with a surprisingly steady exhale. Without the scope, the front lawn of the manor house was dotted with shapeless black blurs, all of them still.
She’d pulled her gun on her share of suspects in her time as a beat cop, and then a detective. But before today, she’d never killed a man.
Now, she had more than half-a-dozen under her belt.
She didn’t know how she felt about that, so she resolved to consider it later, when there was time to weigh and measure her own morality.
For now, a group of ragtag escapees limped into the forest, and she shinnied down the tree to greet them.
When she landed on the leaf litter below, Deshawn said, “That was some damn impressive shooting.” He’d watched the whole thing through high-tech binoculars, on the radio with his team inside.
“Thanks.” She slung the Mosin-Nagant back of her shoulder where it weighed against her spine more than it ought to.
Rustling announced an arrival. The first to step through the screen of shrubs were the tall blond with his arm supporting the little redheaded girl, both of them flanked by archers in green hoods. Deshawn’s people.
The next popping and snapping of branches had Trina standing up on her toes, breath catching.
Lanny.
And then Alexei.
And Nikita…carrying Sasha. A big, limp white wolf that he cradled like a baby to his chest.
Trina swallowed a sudden lump in her throat. “Is he…?” She didn’t dare say it.
Lanny came to her; he looked whole, not limping, not favoring either side. He had a scratch on his forehead, but it was already healing. He pulled her into a short, hard hug, the sweat on his skin gluing them together, his breath hot against her scalp as he sighed.
“He’s alive,” he said. Then, quieter: “Nik’s pretty fucked up in the head about it, though.”
She stepped back, hands still clasped around Lanny’s thick biceps, and looked at her great-grandfather. He was utterly expressionless…in a spooky way, his gaze trained on the wolf, the best friend, that he carried.
She nodded. “We need to get somewhere safe.”
“Where’s Jamie?”
“He texted me. He’s coming.”
The sharp snap of a twig behind her heralded his arrival; everyone turned toward him, hands reaching for weapons, and he emerged from the underbrush with hands raised, empty palms flashing white in the gloom of the forest. “It’s just me.” His gaze came to Trina. “I think I got what we need.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
She turned back to Deshawn…standing between her, and her people, and his people. He extended a hand. “You guys need a lift? We got a bird.”
She accepted his shake. “No, thanks. We’re good.”
He nodded, and produced a small black business card from one of his pockets. “Here, that’s us. If you ever need a friend.”
“Thank you,” she said, and meant it.
She didn’t take a deep breath until the manor was far, far behind them.
*
Sasha shifted back to his human form on the long walk back to the rental cabin, but he didn’t wake.
Nikita laid him out on the rental cabin’s bed and dragged over a chair to sit beside him and wait. And wait.
Sasha’s chest rose and fell in a shallow, rapid rhythm. His lashes flickered as his eyes moved beneath the lids; restless, but never opening. Smudged with shadows, sunken. Just like his cheeks, and his belly beneath his ripped and stained white shirt. He’d always been slender, with knobby wrists and ankles, caught in that slim teenage shape forever. But he looked like he’d lost ten pounds or more since Nikita had last seen him. His hair needed washing, clinging in greasy clumps to his forehead. Nikita reached to push it back off his face instinctively, lingering after, hand cradling the top of his skull, feeling the sweat and excess body heat there in his skin.
“Nikita,” Trina said from the doorway. So gently. “We can’t stay here. We’re too close to the manor and it isn’t safe.”
“He’s feverish,” he said. His mouth was so dry it was hard to form words; brittle and crackling on his tongue. In Russian, “What did they do to you?”
“Nik,” she prompted.
“When he wakes.”
She gave a cut-off little sigh and walked away, easing the door shut most of the way. He could hear the others’ conversation out in the main room; it flowed over him like white noise.
“We can’t just–”
“Shh, he’ll hear.”
“He’s out of his damn gourd anyway.”
“Sasha smells like chemicals. They poisoned him.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I know that. I can smell it.”
“Would you two keep it down?”
“What about Val?”
“What about him?”