Anna bolted upright, cursing like a sailor…or like the Southern farm rat she’d been when he met her. “Motherfuck…shit, shit, shit. Where are my fucking…” She scrambled off the bed, snatching for the clothes they’d left scattered.
Fulk got to his feet, but didn’t reach for his clothes. He went to his wife, and caught her by the shoulders.
She froze, head tipping back. “What?”
“Stay here for me. Please.”
She heaved a ragged breath. “Say something like that one more time, you chivalrous asshole. I dare you.”
“Anna.”
She growled, and snapped her teeth together. But when he’d dressed and was leaving the room, she stood with her arms wrapped around herself, glaring at him.
“Be careful.”
“Always.”
*
The plan was simple, and also terrifying.
“They have Sasha. I don’t care how many of them I have to cut down,” Nikita had said back at the cabin. “If you can’t handle that, then you don’t need to come.” He’d been dispassionate, ice-cold.
Trina had insisted she could do this, and so she would.
Through the scope of the rifle, she watched the team of black-clad guards milling around on the manor’s front steps. Watched a shadow detach itself from beneath a window, and melt up the side stairs. Watched an echo on the other side do the same. Lanny and Alexei, the distraction. Pandemonium as the guards noticed them, and split their attention to both sides to intercept them.
And then there was Nikita. He stalked up the steps like the predator he was, breeze playing with his long coat.
“You’re just going to walk right in?” she’d asked before.
“Yes. It’s the last thing they’ll expect.”
And that’s what he did. He carried a variety of handguns, and she wouldn’t let herself look away as he used one to clear out the guards.
The bodies fell. One after the next. The gunshots were distant cracks, likes eggs breaking. And then the three of them swept inside the massive double front doors, Nikita on point.
Trina took a deep breath…
And heard a twig snap down below.
She jerked her face off the stock and glanced down, letting the rifle’s weight pull it down, too, so it was aimed at the man standing beneath her tree.
Eyes wide and white-rimmed in his dark face, he was dressed in dark green, head-to-toe, some sort of tactical gear. He carried an AK, with a knife and a sidearm strapped to his hip.
He was not, she noted, wearing the black of the front door guards.
Slowly, he lifted an empty hand up, palm toward her. Wait.
They were both breathing hard, the competing rhythms louder than the birdsong around them.
“You one of them?” she asked.
“No. You?”
“No.”
They stared.
“What are you doing here?” Trina asked. Her hands sweated on the stock, and she tightened them.
An echoing sheen of sweat dampened his forehead, glittering in the slanted sunlight. “I’m on a rescue mission. How ‘bout you?”
“Same.”
More staring.
“I’m Deshawn,” he said, finally.
“Trina.”
A sound startled her, and she flinched; Deshawn flinched. It took her a moment to realize that what she’d heard was a walkie-talkie, and not her own.
“Those are my friends,” Deshawn explained, pointing to the radio on his belt. “I need to check in.”
She nodded, and he reached for it with deliberate, careful slowness.
“Who are your friends?” she asked.
“You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”
“Try me.”
*
Rooster’s brain whited out. All he could think was an endless loop of holy fucking shit as he stared down at the man…the whatever he was…drinking another man’s blood from his throat like a…like a…
Oh.
Like a vampire.
Finally, Val released the seal he’d made of mouth and throat with a sucking pop and tipped his head back against the edge of his cot. He exhaled in a long, low groan, eyes shut, mouth curved up in a smile…red and wet with fresh blood. He licked his lips. “My God.”
Rooster thought he might be sick.
“Do you know how long it’s been?” Val’s voice came out dreamy, satisfied. He cracked his eyes open to blue slits. “Hell, I don’t even know how long it’s been. Too long.”
Rooster took a step back.
“Oh, relax. Bring me another one.”
“What? No.”
Val chuckled. “Fine. I’ll do it myself.”
He pushed the man – the body; it was no longer breathing, the skin an awful gray color now – off his lap and got to his feet with only a little wobble. He looked much steadier; the shakes had receded. He shut his eyes again, expression blissful, as he pushed his hair back with both hands. His face was flushed now, deep spots of color under each cheekbone. The scratches on his wrists and neck seemed paler, as if they were healing by the second.
He wiped his palm across his mouth, and then looked at it. And then licked the last traces of blood off his skin. “Mm.” His gaze flicked up to Rooster, and he smirked, all teeth. “Horrified?”
Rooster didn’t respond.
“Step aside.” He gave a dismissive flick of his fingers, and when Rooster stepped back, Val bent down and hauled the second unconscious guard up by his collar like he was a doll. Like he was nothing.
Rooster’s stomach convulsed and he turned away, unable to watch.
He could hear, though, and that was almost as bad. The quiet, wet sounds that, if he shut his eyes, could have been almost sexual.
He swallowed his rising gorge. “Look, you need to hurry up.”
A pause. A slurp. “Don’t rush me,” Val said, voice thick. Thick with blood.
After an eternity, one in which any number of things could be happening upstairs, Rooster heard the body hit the floor with a meaty thump.
“Ah,” Val breathed on a satiated sigh. “One more.” When he moved past Rooster to get out of the cell, and into the hallway, moving to the third guard, his steps were the rolling strut of a predator. All shakiness and exhaustion had left him. In tattered rags of clothes, his hair a snarled mess, he had the bearing of a king, as he pinned the guard with a foot to the groin – the man came awake with a shout of pain – and bent to lift him up into an embrace as gentle as a lover’s, as strong as a monster’s.
Rooster shut his eyes, and finally, it was finished.
Val walked up to him, grinning, lips, and tongue, and teeth red. “Now, what will we do about your problem?” he murmured in a voice like silk.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Rooster said, hand tightening on the grip of his pilfered gun.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it, darling.”
Rooster started to move – shove him, shoot him, duck him, something – but Val was too fast. His hands closed on Rooster’s shoulders, an immovable grip, and before Rooster could react in any way, Val lunged in and kissed him.
But kiss was too kind a word. Val attacked his mouth. Rooster had time to register a press of lips, the oily heat of fresh blood, a tongue shoving roughly between his lips. The copper of blood inside his mouth.
Then Val pulled back, his grin awful. There was a fresh, weeping bite mark on the inside of his arm. He’d bitten himself?
Rooster wanted to vomit. He started to spit.
“It’s not theirs,” Val said. And then: “Swallow that.”
Rooster did, only because his throat was convulsing, his whole body was convulsing. A shudder rippled through him, as exhilarating and pleasurable as an orgasm.
Val clapped him on the shoulder. “Wipe your mouth.” He did the same for himself. “And let’s go.”
*
It was a suicide mission. Or it would have been, for someone else. Someone who wasn’t a former Soviet attack dog too hell-bent on killing everyone in his path to worry about jeopardizing his comrades. He’d never been any good at keep his friends alive before, why start now?
Nikita mowed through guards in the manor’s soaring foyer. A group of lab technicians in white coats cried out and threw themselves down onto the expensive rug, hands flying to cover their heads.