Page 65 of Red Rooster

“I wonder–” Alexei started.

“Shut up.” And he actually did.

Sasha hadn’t gone far. The scent trail turned right at the light, went a block, and took another right in an alley. Where the scent juststopped. Nikita smelled humans, lots of them. And chemicals. Sasha was gone.

But.

The afternoon sunlight glinted off something against the base of a dumpster, and he knelt to pick it up. It was a 10cc syringe. Empty. And it reeked of a drug that wasn’t the kind humans injected into their veins for fun.

“There’s another one over here,” Alexei said, bending for it. “Junkies, probably.”

“No.” Nikita brought the needle to his nose and inhaled: Sasha. And blood. “They injected him with this.”

He stood up slowly, shakily, his pulse thundering in his head. He thought he might faint, and for once it had nothing to do with his constant hunger.

Alexei looked at him, regal brows knitted together. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.” Nikita curled his hand tight around the syringe. “It was a trap.”

~*~

“Next time, use a handkerchief,” Trina said, picking up the syringe with a bit of tissue.

“What,” Lanny said, “you’re gonna take this to the lab?” He snorted to show what he thought of that idea.

“Well, I…” She sighed. He was right. You couldn’t print a syringe your immortal great-grandfather found in conjunction with the unreportable kidnapping of his werewolf best friend. “Nikita,” she started, but he wasn’t listening to their exchange.

He paced the width of Colette’s second floor, hands knotted behind his back, head tipped down, face an expressionless mask. If he’d had his black coat, he would have looked like an enraged Chekist commander about to hand down a death sentence. He reached the couch and spun back, closed the distance to the kitchen table with a few long strides, and did the whole thing again.

“Nikita,” she said, louder this time, “we’re going to get him back.”

He started muttering in Russian, the harsh consonant sounds emphasizing his furious panic.

“What’s he saying?” she asked Alexei.

“Um. He’s very angry.”

He stopped then, and spun to face them. “I’m going togutthem with my bare hands,” he hissed – actuallyhissed, like an enraged puma, hands leaping up to shoulder-height, curled into claws.

“Dude, that’s kinda dramatic,” Lanny said.

Nikita took an aggressive step toward him.

And Trina got to her feet, slapping her hand down on the table. “That’senough. Everybody, that’s e-fucking-nough, okay? Someone drugged Sasha, and took him, and that’s terrifying and awful, but we have todosomething about it. We can’t do anything if we’re bickering and getting theatrical about it. Okay?”

Surprisingly, Nikita backed down first. He went back to pacing, without the Russian cursing this time.

Lanny looked at her. “How do you want to play this?”

A smile touched her mouth before she could help it; she didn’t want to smile, not when things were so serious and Nikita was so upset, and Sasha was God knew where. But it was so much like the old Lanny, the guy who’d never had a problem deferring to a woman and who’d always said she had better ideas than him.

He smiled back, faintly.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. Then, warming to the notion: “I need a notebook. And a pen.”

“I’ll get you one,” Colette said, and Trina had no idea how long the psychic had been standing in the doorway.

“Thanks.”