“Hi, Christine,” Sasha said with an easy smile.
Harvey smiled back at him – and just him. No one was afraid of Sasha. The folded arms and tense spine were for Nikita, he knew. “Hey, guys. I told Trina you didn’t have to come tonight–”
Nikita waved her off. “Might as well. Where is he?”
She led them through the swinging doors into her exam room, and the scents hit Nikita the second he crossed the threshold: blood, death, gore, wolves.
Familiar wolves.
Sasha growled beside him.
The body lay sheet-covered on the slab, and Harvey went to its head, lips twisting in a wry smile. “Lanny said that two of the wolves smelled familiar.”
“The ferals,” Sasha said with a low growl.
But the problem was, all three smelled familiar. Nikita just couldn’t place the last, the female, the one who was obviously bound to a vampire master.
Harvey folded the drape back, revealing a pale, dead face, and a throat savaged by fangs. “I thought,” she said, tone careful, polite, “that you guys might have a better feel for who our perp might be than Lanny. No offense, but – he’s kind of an idiot.”
“And a new vampire besides,” Nikita said, stepping up to the table, leaning low, inhaling.
A memory assaulted him: a sidewalk, snow, Christmas music. A vampire with an accent, and a female Familiar…
He sucked in a breath. “Gustav.”
Sasha whipped around, eyes wide. “Hannah,” he said, like a curse. “His wolf. It’s her.”
“Acquaintances of yours, I take it?” Harvey said, doing an admirable job of masking her nerves.
Nikita’s stomach tightened; he gagged, and spun away from the table. Choked on nothing – there was nothing in his stomach.
“Shit,” Sasha said.
“Is he alright?” Harvey asked, distant, as if from down a tunnel.
Nikita swayed, and barely caught himself against the wall, the tile cold and slick beneath his palm. He retched, and nothing came out, and he was going to faint–
An arm came around his shoulders, iron-strong. He heard Sasha say something polite and excusing, a murmur compared to the rush of blood in his ears. His feet shuffled, and his vision turned to black spots, and when it came back, he was leaning against the railing that overlooked the loading dock, Sasha holding him upright.
A wrist appeared beneath his nose. “Feed,” Sasha said sweetly, “or I’ll force you.”
His fangs elongated. The world narrowed down to his mouth, full of saliva, and the thumping vein in front of him, freely offered.
Blood. Wolf blood. Sasha’s blood.
He opened his mouth, and breathed across the tender inside of his wrist–
“Hullo!” someone called from down in the loading dock.
Nikita reeled back, vision swimming. Inhaled. Smelled two wolves. Saw them, man-shaped, standing below.
One tall fellow with pleasing features and glossy dark hair, and the second short, slight, and tow-headed. A teenager, at most.
Sasha’s wrist fell away, and his arm tightened across Nikita’s shoulders. He growled, body tightening where it was pressed to Nik’s.
“Hello,” the dark-haired stranger said again, softer. He had a British accent. “I’m assuming you’re Nikita Baskin and Sasha Kashnikov?”
Nikita couldn’t answer, his throat clotted with nausea, his head spinning.
Sasha bowed up beside him, growl touching his voice. “Who wants to know?”
“Friends. Potentially,” the man – the wolf – answered. “We saw your work in Virginia, and we want to discuss a potential business arrangement. An alliance.”
Sasha’s growl deepened.
“This,” the strange wolf said, touching the boy’s shoulder, “is Much. And I’m Will Scarlet. We’re friends of Robin of Locksley – his pack. And Familiars of Richard the First, the Lionheart, King of England.”
Nikita shut his eyes, and tried very hard not to succumb to unconsciousness, belly gnawing at itself.
“Perhaps we should get him something to eat before he passes out,” Will Scarlet suggested.
And then Nikita did just that.
4
Nikita came to propped up in the corner of a dim booth, Sasha warm beside him, a hand resting on his thigh beneath the table, a grounding pressure.
“He alright?” an unfamiliar voice asked.
“Yes, fine,” Sasha said, faux cheerful. “Just needs to eat.”
“Right. I’ll get your order right out.” Footsteps retreated.
Nik cracked his eyes and took a breath, inhaling familiar scents. They were at the Lion’s Den, wedged into a favorite booth, his face resting against the wall paneling just beneath a beer sign. His limp hand had been curled around a tumbler of vodka. Sasha beside him, and, across from them, the two wolves: Will and Much.
Nikita conjured a pathetic growl.
Sasha patted his leg. “Drink your vodka. I ordered you a grilled cheese.”
It took three tries to lift the glass, and he only barely managed not to slop the vodka down his shirtfront.
Scarlet watched him with what Nikita read as careful blankness.
Much, however, for all that he looked fifteen, and sullen, his pale hair framing his face, sneered openly, lip peeling back off his teeth.
“Much,” Will said with a sigh. To Nikita: “He’s rude. Ignore him.”
“Hey!”
Nikita managed a sip, the chilled vodka splashing across his tongue in waves of cold and then hot, a welcome fire down his throat.
“You helped us escape,” Sasha said, hand pulling away – Nik immediately regretted the loss of its heat and weight on his thigh. “At the mansion. You were with Red.”
Will nodded. “We were, yes. She and Rooster are a part of our team, now.”
“Who?” Nikita asked.
Much snorted.
Will sent him a surprisingly patient look.
Sasha rested a hand on Nik’s shoulder. “Vodka,” he prompted, gently.
Nikita drank some more.
“The mage from the Institute,” Will said, speaking low enough so as not to be overhead – and slow enough for Nikita’s foggy brain to keep up. “The redheaded young woman who used her fire against Vlad Tepes.”
It rang a bell. Faintly.
“She and her human companion – Rooster – have been under our protection for the past few months. Working alongside us.”
Nikita frowned. “How did you find us outside the hospital?”
Will’s indulgent look suggested he’d already told this to Sasha. Nik wanted to hear it for himself.
“Trina, actually. She gave her name and information to one of our officers – Deshawn Williams. She didn’t mention this…?”
She had. He thought. He was too fuzzy from low blood sugar. Trina had called tonight, told him about the murder, suggested he go talk to Harvey, but she hadn’t said–
Sasha’s hand landed on his arm, and Nik realized he was glaring at Will Scarlet. Growling, a little.
“Trina didn’t know,” Sasha said, soothingly. “They didn’t call ahead, which I told them was rude, and they’ve agreed not to do it again. But. They got into town, and when Trina wasn’t home, they picked up our scents and came to find us.”