Page 28 of Red Rooster

Sasha’s hand tightened on Nikita’s shoulder, a silent question.

One Nikita didn’t have an answer for.

He was saved by the bell, as it were. Trina and Lanny’s phones both started ringing.

~*~

“I told Captain Abbot you were sick. You didn’t have to come,” Trina offered, in what she hoped was a diplomatic tone.

Dispatch had been as close to worked up as she’d ever heard on the phone: three DBs, an unimaginable amount of blood, and a hysterical witness blubbering about animals ripping her neighbors apart. And the address? Lanny’s building. The apartment next door to his.

It was their case, and they had to go; there had been a tumble of voices and some flailing of arms, and now here they were in the car, Lanny a fucking vampire who couldn’t control himself, and they’d left all the other vampires looking shiftily at one another.

This whole thing was officially a bad idea.

Lanny snorted. “Tell him I made a miraculous recovery. ‘Cause. You know. I kindadid.”

“Yeah. Well.” She swallowed hard and told herself she wasn’t nervous about being alone in the car with him. Shewasn’t. “This place is gonna look like an abattoir, apparently. Isn’t that gonna trigger…something?”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, too forcefully. That same voice he used when he insisted he didn’t miss fighting that much.

She cast a quick glance from the corner of her eye and saw that his jaw was clenched tight, tendons standing out stark in his throat. The bruises from Nikita’s fingers had already faded. “Lanny, I’m serious–”

“So am I. I’m coming with you.”

“Don’t pull any kind of chivalry bullshit on me,” she warned. “I’m about sick of Nikita doing it.”

“When have I ever been chivalrous?” But he was. His daddy had raised him to be, and even if he was an ass, he was the sort of person who used his body as a human shield and opened doors for ladies, even ladies who were his grouchy partner.

“Are you afraid to be around me?” he asked, and her hand tightened involuntarily on the wheel.

“No,” she said, fast. “Nik was worried, but I’m – I’m not.”

He sighed. “You know I’d never hurt you, right?”

“Lanny,please,” she scoffed. “Did you really just ask that?”

But it was a valid question, and they both knew it.

She turned right at the next corner and there was Lanny’s building, ambulances and patrol cars parked out front, yellow tape fluttering between two signs.

Her stomach somersaulted as she wedged the cruiser into a spot about twenty yards down the sidewalk and killed the engine. Every vampire she knew – and how crazy that she knew more than one – had been with her when this call had come in. So if an animal really had ripped three people apart, it was a new animal, some as-of-yet-uncatalogued threat.

“Ready?” she asked.

He took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

It seemed a lifetime had passed since that first bizarre case: Chad Edwards dead in an alley, an ugly bite mark marring his pale throat. Today, they flashed their badges, ducked the tape, and Trina walked up the stairs with a partner who was also an immortal creature of myth.

The second they crossed the threshold, Lanny ground to a halt, head thrown back, nostrils flared. “Wolf,” he said, voice a low, big-cat growl, his eyes flashing.

Trina suppressed a shiver. “How do you know?” But she didn’t doubt him, not really. Only marveled at the change in him.

He shook his head, eyes closing, face taut with concentration. “I…I dunno. I just.” Another deep inhale. “It’s wolves, I can tell.” His eyes popped open, coming to her, pupils huge. “Like Sasha, but not him.” He showed his teeth in a grimace. “These are…these arenasty. Sasha smells like pine needles. These smell like…somethingbad.”

“Okay,” she said. “I believe you.” She pointed to the staircase. “You okay to go up?”

“Yeah.”