“Look, it’s not my fault your gramps is having a big bisexual crisis or something.”
A couple passing the other way on the sidewalk gave him a sharp look.
Trina sighed. “Ugh, you’re terrible.”
“What part of that statement wasn’t true? And I tried, okay? He’s a stubborn asshole.”
She sighed again, softer this time. “Yeah, I know. Where are you now, have you left yet?”
“Walking back now.”
“Meet me at the hospital instead. Harvey has something she wants to show us.”
Alarms chimed in the back of his mind. “Oh shit, what?”
“She said it was our kind of thing, so I’m thinking…monsters.”
~*~
It took a lot to impress Trina, especially these days, but Christine Harvey managed with flying colors. She’d taken the knowledge that Trina’s great-grandfather was not only still alive, but young-looking, and a vampire, in stride like a champ. Had even helped them by looking at Sasha after his imprisonment, testing his blood for drugs to the best of her ability. She’d just rolled with it, the knowledge that immortals existed, and that they could present a problem in New York.
“So,” she said now, peeling back the sheet that covered the face of her latest DB. “Something tore his throat out.”
That Trina could see, going by the gory wound in the poor man’s neck, clotted with dry, blackened blood.
“And gutted him, too,” Harvey added.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a bear attack.”
“Yikes,” Lanny said with a wince.
Harvey sent him a look. “Yeah. Yikes.”
“Hey.” He held up both hands, which just served to highlight his grungy old workout gear. “I never gutted anybody, okay? I’m all about that pig’s blood life.”
Trina sighed. “We got a name?”
The case had come in to Simms and Bukowski, but Harvey had called them when she got the body on her table. She didn’t even bother to consult the chart, now. “Walter Rendell. Forty-eight. He’s a contractor who was overseeing the new Adamant building – it’s an accounting firm. They had a new-build going in, and he was pulling double shifts, according to his colleagues. Was at the site last night, after everyone else. They found him this morning, torn to pieces.”
Trina looked down at the wound in his throat and her stomach quailed. She remembered a manor house in Virginia, Sasha unconscious, and wolf-shaped. “Any chance the wounds were made with a human weapon of some sort?”
“This is punctures and tears. No clean edges, like from a knife. Not of any kind I’ve seen, at least.”
“Still…” Trina said, holding back a wince. “There’s lots of things that could…do that.” She gestured, and looked away.
Harvey covered the vic’s face again. “Could it?” she asked, dryly.
“I’d like to believe that.”
“It was a wolf,” Lanny said. He frowned, expression more serious than normal. “I can smell it.”
“You might have led with that.”
He shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”
“Lanny.”
“Three wolves, actually,” he elaborated. “Two I’ve smelled before.” He inhaled deeply, brow furrowing. “And one I haven’t.”
All the fine hair stood up on the back of Trina’s neck. “The ferals?”
“Yeah. Think so.”
“I’m sorry,” Harvey said, slicing her gloved hands through the air like someone was safe at home plate. “Ferals?” She only sounded a little panicked.
Trina and Lanny shared a look.
“I don’t know what that means,” Harvey said, “but I’m guessing a ‘feral’ werewolf is somehow worse than a regular one. It sounds worse.”
“Um,” Lanny said elegantly.
“It’s fine,” Trina said, and earned lifted, doubtful brows. “No, really. We’ll take care of it. Where was the body found?”
They got an address, and a few more details she’d gleaned from the detectives, and bid Harvey a good night.
In the hallway, headed for the exit, Lanny said, “I caught a whiff of a vamp, too.”
“You what?”
“I didn’t wanna say it in front of Harvey and freak her out more. But, yeah. It was real faint, though. More like one of the wolves smelled like a vamp…? I dunno. I can’t explain it. But there’s one that’s put his stink on this, somehow.”
Trina sighed. “Nikita won’t be happy about that.”
“Is Nikita ever happy about anything?”
“He’s dealing with some stuff.” She heard the defensiveness in her voice, and pointedly didn’t glance Lanny’s way to catch whatever face he made in response. “Speaking of which: what exactly did you say to him tonight?”
They reached the heavy double doors at the exit and pushed through. The nights were getting colder, and Trina immediately wrapped her arms around herself as they walked to the railing that edged the loading dock, and leaned against it.
Lanny dug out a cigarette and took his time lighting it.
She cleared her throat.
“Hm. Yeah.” He made a face on his first exhale, turning his head to blow the smoke away from her. “I talked to him. Both of them, actually. Said they were being stupid, respectively.”
The news settled in her stomach, something akin to dread that she didn’t understand. “Shit.”
“Keep in mind they’ve been together a long time, babe. Longer than you’ve been alive. I’m sure they’ve been like this before.”
“Yeah.” But this seemed like it had to be different: it wasn’t just the two of them anymore. They’d become a part of a pack, perhaps unwillingly. And Nikita had finally met his son, and the tsarevich that had been a part of the family he’d been loyal to for so long. Sasha had been taken from him…That was a lot of change in a short span of time. “I just feel bad for them.”
Lanny nodded in understanding, and took another drag, gazing out over the half-dark parking lot.
She took a moment to admire his profile. The little bump at the bridge of his twice-broken nose; the way his lips fit against the cigarette filter; the strong, corded lines of his throat, framed by the popped-up collar of the leather jacket he’d pulled on over his workout gear.
She took a deep breath and tried to let it siphon away some of her tension on the exhale. She worried about Nik, because he was her family, and she worried about Sasha because he was Nik’s family, and a sweetheart, and pack besides, at this point. But she couldn’t let that worry consume her; couldn’t obsess about things she couldn’t change.
“What else did you do tonight?” she asked, shifting closer. They wouldn’t touch outright or put arms around one another – no one knew they were together, and broadcasting it publicly seemed like a bad idea – but the proximity was nice. He put out heat like a furnace, tangible even at a few inches away.
“Worked out.” His gaze slid over, touched with amusement, but curious. “I told you that.”