Page 51 of Red Rooster

10

Trina slid the small, white card across the table and a superstitious, silly part of Nikita didn’t want to touch the thing. He pushed through the urge to flick it away and instead picked it up between thumb and forefinger, bringing it to his face so he could read it in the dim light.

Dr. John H. Fowler, M.D; Ph.D.

Ingraham Institute of Medical Technology

“Treatment for a once-distant horizon of health.”

They were seated at two pushed-together tables in the Lion’s Den, the quiet murmuring of the evening crowd of patrons providing a wall of privacy around their odd little group. He would have preferred to be at home, but he didn’t trust privacy now; they had been tracked to Lanny’s home, and not while they were out on the street. That meant the Institute didn’t want to make a scene – not a public one, anyway. He could handle two feral wolves no problem, but if he got the others hurt, the ones who depended on him…well, he’d done that more than enough for all the lifetimes he was going to be forced to live.

So here they sat, letting humanity serve as a shield of sorts.

He flipped the card over and read the number and email address on the back. “He knows who you are,” he said, passing the card to Sasha, who, rather than read it, brought it to his nose and sniffed at it, growl rumbling deep in his chest.

“He knows I’m Lanny’s partner, at least. Because I’m assuming he knows Lanny’s a vampire,” she said. She looked exhausted, elbows braced on the table, hair frizzing at the temples.

Nikita cocked a brow. “Is that it? Or, in some archive deep in their institute, does the name ‘Baskin’ mean something?”

“I…” she trailed off, eyes widening. She clearly hadn’t thought of that.

“How did they know to look for me?” Lanny asked. He’d had just enough whiskey to forget how much he seemed to dislike all of them, leaning forward onto the table. “Because I get that they were trying to track me this morning, sure, but why? They shouldn’t have known I was a vampire” – he winced after he said it, voice dropping – “or that I even knew any.”

“Because of Chad?” Trina suggested.

“But how did they know to look forme?”

“Scent markers,” Sasha said, tossing the card onto the table with a look of disgust.

Nikita prodded him with a little nudge of his elbow.

Sasha took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “Everyone has a scent, yes? No two people are the same. But I can smell relation. I can smell when people are mates, or mother and children. There are…I don’t know. Markers there. Like threads. Lanny smells like himself, but there’s a thread of his sire – of Alexei.” He flashed his teeth, briefly, at the vampire in question.

“They heard about Chad on the news and when they tracked him, they found all of our scents. Found Alexei’s…and the vampire Alexei spawned.”

“What do they want with us?” Jamie asked, face ashen. He rubbed at the condensation on his beer glass with nervous fingers.

“To study us,” Nikita said. “To draw our blood, and cut us open, run tests, and use our bodies to make human medicine.”

“Nice,” Lanny muttered.

Jamie drained half his beer in one gulp.

Trina said, “You can’t know that.” But her voice wavered.

“It’s what they were trying to do in the forties in Russia,” he said, giving her a level look. “Only now technology’s caught up with what they want to do. So. Worse, I’d imagine.”

“You’re not serious,” Alexei said, face betraying his worry.

“I told you what they did with Rasputin. What they did with Sasha. These people – they want to live forever, but they don’t want to bemonsters.” He downed his vodka; when he set the glass down, Trina was giving him a sad look. Pitying.

“If that’s true” – and he knew she believed him, could see it in her eyes – “then what are we going to do about it?”

“We?” He snorted. “You’re human.”

“And closely linked to all of you. Has it been that long since you were a cop? What’s the first thing you do when you can’t track someone down? Haul in their known associates and grill them.”

“Shit,” he said, because yes, she was right. But he didn’twanther to be. In seventy-five years what he was had never touched the family he’d left behind; never hurt his blood. This wasn’tfair.