So after breakfast he went out on the front stoop, ignoring Colette’s raised-brow look that said, Is that wise? It was fine. He just needed to breathe some air that wasn’t tainted with vampires.
But then he scented the two wolves who’d killed that family, and the wolf that lived inside him had raised its hackles and pressed right up against his skin, growling and snapping his teeth.
When Nikita hung up on him, Sasha slipped his phone in his pocket, and went down the porch steps, following the trail.
It was a bright and warm morning, the sunlight angled, now, as summer slowly gave way to fall. In another month his breath would be a vaporous cloud, and scented with the first iron-filing notes of frost. Now the sidewalk boasted pedestrians in good measure, people out shopping on their lunch breaks, the proprietors of all the Boho-chic storefronts that neighbored Colette’s building.
Sasha knew that he didn’t look casual, the rolling, prowling gait he’d settled into, the set of his shoulders, his hands poised at his sides. He didn’t much care. These feral wolves smelled wrong. And now that he knew what they’d done…that they’d killed an innocent family…
To be a werewolf was to be an actual wolf: patient, cunning, territorial, and pack-oriented. It was nothing like the movies said: being overtaken by a creature that drove you to blindly attack and kill, rabid and unreasonable. Sasha had never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it, and these two deserved it.
They’d passed Colette’s building without lingering, so her wards must have worked; they’d tailed their little band and then, when they reached the steps, were sent off on a wild goose chase in the wrong direction. Their scents were fresh, though, only minutes old. They’d turned right at the red light, and so did Sasha, lengthening his stride as the scents grew closer, warmer. He started growling, and didn’t seem able to stop. A woman gave him a sharp look and side-stepped out of the way. He was too focused on the hunt to apologize.
The trail led him another block, and then veered down into an alley, the kind that was the perfect place to hide. Crammed with dumpsters and smaller trash cans, stacks of pallets and shipping boxes. The unwashed, dirt and urine stink of them was strongest here, burning in his nostrils, drawing a deep, rumbling growl out of his chest.
Sasha made it about three paces into the alley, had reached the first dumpster, when he felt a sharp pinch at his neck, like a bee sting. He slapped at it, and his fingers brushed the feathering of a dart.
Oh no.
Oh, Nik was going to kill him.
He spun. Tried to. His movements were already unsteady, his heart lurching and slowing. His vision swam and he had just a moment to make out the silhouettes of several men blocking the mouth of the alley before the drug swept over him like a tide, and everything went black.
13
Nikita got within five feet of Colette’s front steps and froze. He smelled the feral wolves, and Sasha. Which he’d expected. Trina stood at the top of the steps, though, expression one of careful control; the face of a police officer about to deliver unfortunate news.
“What?” he asked, heart hammering.
Trina took a deep breath. “Okay. I need you to promise that you’re not going to do something incredibly stupid.”
He growled, and her brows shot up.
“Nikita.”
“Tell me.” He could already predict what she’d say, though. That was the beauty of being a chronic pessimist: you were so rarely proven wrong.
She was brave enough to look him in the eyes when she said, “Sasha wandered off about an hour again, and he hasn’t come back.”
Nikita let the words hit him, took them in, interpreted them. And spun away from her, following the fading scent trail on the sidewalk. Already an hour old; where was he now? How far had he gotten? Had he found the wolves? And had they–
“Nikita,” she snapped. “This counts as something stupid!”
He ground to a halt, almost staggering. It felt like someone was sitting on his shoulders, pressing down on his lungs, constricting his breathing, driving him right down through the sidewalk. He opened and closed his hands, fists so tight his nails scored his palms. The pain was good; it grounded him.
He half-turned, speaking over his shoulder, voice jagged and full of glass. “Why did you let him leave? You were all supposed to stay here.”
“Let him? I’m not his keeper, and he sure as shit didn’t ask for permission.”
It wasn’t her fault. He took a deep breath and tried to tell himself that. “Stay here. I have to go and find him.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
“No.”
“I’ll go,” Alexei said. When Nikita turned all the way around, he saw that the tsarevich had joined her on the porch. “I know you don’t care if anything happens to me.” He gave a small, rueful smile as he loped elegantly down the stairs and came to stand beside Nikita. “Two is always better than one, yes?”
Nikita sighed. “Yes. Thank you.” He glared at Trina and jabbed his finger toward the building. “Go back inside.”
“Don’t disappear,” she shot back, and, thankfully, slipped back through the door.
Nikita set off down the sidewalk, following Sasha’s scent, not caring if Alexei had any trouble keeping up.
“He seemed restless,” Alexei said, and though his voice was pleasant, comforting even, Nikita didn’t want to hear anything he had to say about Sasha. “I don’t think he likes being cooped up.”
Nikita growled at him, which startled a group of teenagers passing the other way. “Freak,” one of them accused.
“I didn’t chase him outside,” Alexei said in his own defense, snorting. “It was your order he disobeyed.”
“I don’t give him orders. He isn’t my pet.”
“He’s your Familiar.”
“No, he…” Nikita choked on another growl and it hurt to swallow. “We are friends. Brothers. Equals.”
Alexei murmured something disagreeing to himself.
“What?”
“I hope that he’s alright, I said.”
Nikita hated him…but not in the cold, all-consuming way that he hated these feral wolves. Their scents lay like toxic waste beneath the fresh pine-and-earth scent of Sasha, unnatural and twisted.
“I wonder–” Alexei started.
“Shut up.” And he actually did.
Sasha hadn’t gone far. The scent trail turned right at the light, went a block, and took another right in an alley. Where the scent just stopped. Nikita smelled humans, lots of them. And chemicals. Sasha was gone.
But.
The afternoon sunlight glinted off something against the base of a dumpster, and he knelt to pick it up. It was a 10cc syringe. Empty. And it reeked of a drug that wasn’t the kind humans injected into their veins for fun.
“There’s another one over here,” Alexei said, bending for it. “Junkies, probably.”
“No.” Nikita brought the needle to his nose and inhaled: Sasha. And blood. “They injected him with this.”
He stood up slowly, shakily, his pulse thundering in his head. He thought he might faint, and for once it had nothing to do with his constant hunger.
Alexei looked at him, regal brows knitted together. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” Nikita curled his hand tight around the syringe. “It was a trap.”
*
“Next time, use a handkerchief,” Trina said, picking up the syringe with a bit of tissue.
“What,” Lanny said, “you’re gonna take this to the lab?” He snorted to show what he thought of that idea.
“Well, I…” She sighed. He was right. You couldn’t print a syringe your immortal great-grandfather found in conjunction with the unreportable kidnapping of his werewolf best friend. “Nikita,” she started, but he wasn’t listening to their exchange.
He paced the width of Colette’s second floor, hands knotted behind his back, head tipped down, face an expressionless mask. If he’d had his black coat, he would have looked like an enraged Chekist commander about to hand down a death sentence. He reached the couch and spun back, closed the distance to the kitchen table with a few long strides, and did the whole thing again.
“Nikita,” she said, louder this time, “we’re going to get him back.”
He started muttering in Russian, the harsh consonant sounds emphasizing his furious panic.