Page 172 of Red Rooster

“This is the one?” he said. Heavy accent, something she didn’t recognize.

“Yes,” Dr. Talbot said. “This is…Ruby.” He stumbled over the name; she’d only ever been “dear” before, when she’d been a serial number and not a human.

The man – Vlad – stared at her without expression. “She’s young. And small.”

“Yes, well, you know as well as I do that a mage’s power isn’t rooted in the physical. She’s quite strong, I can tell you.”

Red curled her hands into fists; her knuckles went white.

Vlad squatted down in front of her, so they were on eye level. His gaze moved across her face like a physical touch; she felt it against each freckle. “You look like your mother.”

“I don’t have a mother.”

One corner of his mouth twitched. “You are angry. That’s good. I can use that.”

She pressed her lips together to keep from baring her teeth at him.

He seemed to know it. He smiled, and his canines were long and sharp. He stood and turned to Dr. Talbot. “I want to see how she gets on with the boy. Sasha.”

“Very good. We’ll set up a supervised meeting between them.”

Vlad cast a look back at her over his shoulder. “You should have told her what she was, doctor,” he said, tone gently scolding. “From the beginning. What we all are. And what we’re up against.”

A note of unease in Dr. Talbot’s voice: “Of course.”

~*~

Annabel thought Fulk was intended to be Vlad’s wolf Familiar.

Annabel was wrong.

Sasha realized that the moment his escort led him into a white, brightly-lit room and he saw the redheaded girl standing in the far corner, wrists cuffed together with a short piece of chain the same way his were.

She stank of fire. The mage girl.

He growled before he could stop himself, a gentle rumble that prompted the guard behind him to nudge him with the end of his baton. “Hey, none of that.”

Fulk entered, his presence like a soothing hand down the back of Sasha’s ruffled neck. “Let’s all be civil,” he said, cool gaze directed toward the guard. “That will be all, private. I have them firmly in hand.”

The guard muttered “creepy fucker” under his breath and quit the room. The door closed behind him with a resounding thump.

Fulk held both hands clasped loosely behind his back; against the clean white backdrop of the room, his black-clad legs looked especially long. He’d left off his red jacket and wore a sleeveless Def Leppard shirt. He could have looked like a degenerate; he looked instead like the baron he was. It was all in the carriage, the lofty angle of his head.

He looked first at the girl, and then at Sasha.Cameras, he mouthed, and Sasha darted a glance up into the corner and spotted one, wrapped in black shatterproof glass.

Sasha nodded.

Fulk turned back to the girl. “I have to apologize on Sasha’s behalf. He doesn’t care for mages. Had a rather bad experience with one, so, it’s understandable. But he’s actually quite pathetically friendly when you get to know him.”

Sasha growled, but it wasn’t especially threatening. A token protest.

The girl’s head lifted; she leaned to the side a fraction to see around Fulk, to send her startled gaze Sasha’s way. She had very green eyes. Save the smell, she reminded him nothing of Philippe, so that was at least one point in her favor.

“Well, you are,” Fulk said mildly. To the girl, softer, almost kind: “I trust someone’s explained to you about Familiars?”

Her gaze moved back to him, inscrutable, and she finally said, “Yes.”

“Good, then we can skip that part.” He began a slow, dignified pace, back and forth across the room. “The two of you have the honor of having been chosen by Vlad to be his left and right hands,” he said, as if reading from an official announcement. Words he’d been told to say, Sasha knew; he could scent the other wolf’s disgust with the whole business. “As such, it’s important that the two of you learn how to work together.” He paused, glancing between the two of them. “And that you not kill one another.”