Page 122 of Red Rooster

He took a deep breath, shoulders lifting and dropping. When his gaze returned, he seemed younger somehow; the polished, charming royal veneer had vanished, and he looked now like a lost child. “It’s…it’s been lonely,” he admitted, haltingly. “No one ever…there have been times when – when turning wasn’t an accident. When I just wanted a companion. But they never stayed.” His eyes flicked up to Nikita’s, his smile small and melancholy. “Everyone I ever turned left me. I think there’s something – something in the blood. It turns people…wrong, somehow.”

A spike of anxiety tightened Nikita’s gut. He’d confessed as much to Sasha before…or had tried to. Every time he expressed his fear that Rasputin had tainted him somehow, Sasha grew frantic with worry and guilt, whining and curling up in his lap, asking for a forgiveness that wasn’t owed because he’d never done anything terrible in his whole sweet life. So Nikita had learned how to keep such thoughts to himself, all of them festering like a sore that would never come to a head.

“It’s only blood,” he said, tersely. “We were already the people we were going to be before it was given to us. If they left, that was on them, and not you.”

“You make me want to believe that. When I look at you and Sasha, together all this time.” His smile flickered, unsteady. “It shows me what I’ve been missing all this time.”

“And what’s that?”

“A family.”

Nikita’s hand shook when he lifted his cigarette.

“I’m not so foolish that I think you’ll ever let me be your family,” Alexei went on. “But I guess…I have nothing better to do. I might as well help you. And then we’ll see.”

Nikita looked away from him, the painful hope shining in his eyes. Along the horizon, the first matchstick flare of pink to herald the sunrise. “Yeah,” he said, breath quivering as he exhaled. “I guess we will.”

~*~

Trina could only nibble at breakfast, mind already on the strategizing that would come after. Nikita would have gone charging off on his own if they’d let him, but Trina had put her foot down: they would make a plan of action, and they would stick to it.

Dad had a recent atlas full of maps that he went to fetch, and Lanny went to get the old whiteboard and markers from Trina’s room while Trina helped her mom load the dishwasher.

So far, Rachel seemed to be taking all of this well. Too well, in Trina’s opinion. She’d always been a practical, accepting sort, but everyone had limits. Trina realized her mother had reached hers when she carried a stack of dirty plates into the kitchen and found Rachel standing with a white-knuckled grip on the counter, staring at the window above the sink and blinking furiously.

She set the dishes down gently. “Mom?”

Rachel jerked as if startled, and straightened. Plunged her hands back into the sudsy water in the sink and began scrubbing a skillet in earnest. “What, sweetie?” she asked, too-brightly, unable to keep the waver from her voice.

“Mom,” Trina said again. She moved to stand beside her mother, rested a hand on her shoulder.

Rachel ducked her head, hair shielding her face, and took a tremulous breath. “I’m alright.”

“No, you’re not.”

She gave a weak chuckle. “Do you think any mother would be, in my position?”

“Oh, Mom, I’m sorry.”

Rachel shook her head, and tucked her hair back, turned a watery smile toward Trina. “Don’t listen to me: I’m just a crier.”

Trina frowned, because her mother was a lot of things, but she’d never thought she was someone who cried easily or often.

“A secret crier, maybe,” Rachel amended. “I blubbered like a baby the day you graduated from the police academy. I was so proud of you, and scared out of my mind. My little baby off to arrest people. I felt like I was sending you off to war. Like I was letting you do something dangerous and not trying to stop you at all.”

“You couldn’t have stopped me.”

“I know that, honey.” Her smile twitched, widened. “I never wanted to be an obstacle in your path. You’re your own woman. Always have been. And I know there are things in life that you have to do. I won’t ever try to talk you out of them. But.” Fresh tears filled her eyes and she tried to blink them away. “I’m going to be scared. And I’m going to cry sometimes.”

Trina couldn’t respond, filled with overwhelming love and gratitude. So she pulled her mother into a tight hug, and they clung to one another in the bright bar of sunlight that beamed through the window.

“Come home safe,” Rachel whispered.

“I’ll do my best.”

~*~

“Bit of an enthusiast,” Trina’s Uncle Raymond said, lifting his ball cap to scratch at his receding hairline, gesturing to the interior of the outbuilding with his hat.