“Sasha,” Nikita said, like a command, then grabbed Trina’s arm and dragged her around the corner and into her bedroom.
“Hey!” It was a token protest. Lanny’s eyes were all pupil right now, and it was freaking her out. And she couldn’t have pulled loose if she wanted to. Nikita didn’t crush her wrist, but his hand was locked more securely than any cuff.
He heeled the door shut when they were inside and then let her go.
Trina lifted her wrist to examine it: no marks; he’d been careful.
“You don’t need to be alone with him right now,” he said, matter-of-fact.
“I’m not afraid of Lanny,” she said, and it was only half a lie.
Nikita sighed and tilted his head, not buying it. “You saw him in there. He’s not in control.”
“He’s fine.”
“You don’t believe that.”
No, she didn’t, but she didn’t know what to believe right now.
Well, almost.
She turned away from him, massaging her temples and the headache gathering there. “Shit, this is all my fault.”
“Why? Because you sent him to me?”
She whirled back around, doing her best to shield her expression…probably failing. “Yeah, because I sent him to you. So you could–” She was hyperventilating. Chest heaving, pulse pounding. She made a gasping sound and bent double, hands on her knees. Shit.
Nikita stepped in closer, his shadow falling across hers on the rug. When he spoke, his voice was uncharacteristically soft. “He needs some time to adjust. It will be fine, Ekaterina. Don’t fret.”
She tipped her head back and caught something vulnerable in his gaze. “I didn’t want him to die,” she whispered.
“Of course you didn’t,” he said, his hand landing on her back, light and soothing. “And he won’t. We’ve just got to see him through this.”
“You’re not going to…put him down?”
He flashed her a crooked half-smile. “He’s your mate. Even if he’s an asshole.”
A laugh bubbled up in her throat, surprising and welcome.
His smile widened, a little strained; she’d only ever seen him smile naturally and easily when he was looking at Sasha. He patted her shoulder and stepped back, growing serious again. “This isn’t going to be easy for him, though,” he warned. “Whoever you are before you’re turned, that’s who you are after. Only everything’s more intense.”
She straightened and nodded. “You were all about denying yourself before,” she said, and he made a face. “And you still are. But Lanny’s always had a bit of an impulse control problem.” She pushed back against a sudden onslaught of fear, but little cold rivulets trickled through, like dead fingers walking down her spine. “Can we…” How strange, in this moment, that she trusted this man – this vampire – more than she trusted her own partner and lover.
“We can help him, yes. But he has to want to behave.”
Tears filled her eyes, sudden and hot, and she blinked them away. Her laugh was humorless this time, more of a cough. “That’s what I told him about chemo: he had to want to get better. And Jesus, Nik, I have no idea what he wants anymore.”
He waited a beat. “Well. He came to see me. So I think that means he wants to be alive for you.”
She nodded.
He studied her a moment, then his expression firmed, like he’d decided something. “Come. I’ll take him back to our place with me. Sasha can stay and watch you.”
“I don’t need watching.”
“Then he can help you track criminals. I don’t know. But I’m not leaving Lanny alone with you.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he said, “Get over it.”
“God, you’re a dictatorial asshole.”
“Yes,” he agreed, and opened the bedroom door.
On the sofa, Lanny was in the process of devouring a plate of runny scrambled eggs like a starving man.
Sasha stood at the stove, a fork in one hand, tending to a skillet full of bacon. “Who wants breakfast?” he called, and it was officially the strangest morning of her life.
3
A few blocks west, morning sunlight fell through the gaps in the curtains and woke Jamie Anderson from the deepest, most restful sleep of his life. He turned onto his side and took a deep, unrestricted, pain-free breath; he smiled. His lungs worked beautifully, in a way they never had, and the sun touched his face with warmth and gentleness. The mattress cradled him like a cloud. Comfortable and content, he basked a moment, untroubled by any of the daily worries that gave him chronic indigestion.
And then he remembered last night.
He sat up with a gasp, eyes flipping wide, heart slamming against his ribs. “Oh my God, oh my God,” he said to the empty room that wasn’t his.
All of it came flooding back: the shadow following him home, the knock on the door, the stranger who’d invited himself in, the fogginess of his own thoughts and resistance. He remembered a kiss that had turned to a bite on his neck, and clapped his hand to the spot now, feeling only the sensitive, slightly-raised flesh of a new scar. He recalled waking up, the faces hovering over him, the chill of the morgue.
The morgue. Oh shit, he’d died. Hadn’t he? But then those people…the two cops, Lanny and Trina, and the other guy, with the pale hair. Sasha. Who could growl like a freaking dog.
They’d told him he was a vampire, and brought him here, to this apartment, and somehow, he’d managed to convince himself that he’d imagined the whole thing.
But here he was, and he could breathe.
He’d been born with asthma; had almost died when he was two, and then again at six. At twelve, the one and only time his mother had let him go away to a boys’ summer camp upstate, when a bee sting had triggered a panic attack, which had triggered the worst asthma attack of his life. According to his then-best friend Evan, he’d been dead a whole thirty seconds in the ambulance before the paramedics revived him. It was normal for him: the diminished lung capacity, taking hits off his inhaler, staying indoors when it was too cold, or too hot, or too smoggy.
But this was a completely foreign sensation: breathing deep and free and easy. He wasn’t dizzy, or shaky, or achy. Air moved through his open throat into lungs that worked like bellows, and it took him a long, stupid moment to recognize the euphoria in his blood for what it was: oxygen. For the first time in his life, he was getting enough oxygen.
A mirror sat positioned across from the bed and he looked up into it, reaching out of habit for his glasses on the nightstand. His hand froze. He didn’t need the glasses; he could see clearly. He stared at his reflection, his own familiar, narrow face made new by the lack of wire frames, and he saw color in his cheeks and lips. No longer waxy and china-white, his face glowed with the subtle pinkness of health.
He smiled, and then startled hard when he saw the fangs. Carefully, watching himself in the mirror, he probed the point of one canine with the tip of his tongue and watched as both fangs descended a fraction; he could feel it in his jaw, some new muscle that forced those new, wicked teeth longer, more dangerous. More useful. When he pulled his tongue back, and relaxed his mouth, they retracted again, so they were proportionate. They didn’t push at his lip like the fake fangs in movies. No, these were designed by nature, sophisticated predator camouflage.
“So that’s that,” he said aloud, and took a deep breath just for the joyous novelty of it. “Now what?”
*
Nikita didn’t drag Lanny out of the apartment, but it was a near thing. “Go with him. It’ll be fine,” Trina said with an encouraging smile she didn’t feel. Much to her shame, when they were gone, and she’d heard their footfalls go down the stairs, she was flooded with relief.
“Shit,” she muttered, sinking down onto the couch.