Page 89 of Red Rooster

“I should have told him,” Trina said, a blanketing guilt replacing her anger. She took a deep breath that did nothing to ease the tightness in her chest. “Things have been so crazy, and it hasn’t come up. I just.” She shook her head. It was just blow after blow for Nikita. He’d survived a lot – survived horrors – but everyone had a breaking point. Even ex-Chekist vampires. She wondered if they were nearing the edges of his.

“I’ll go check on him,” Jamie offered, rising.

He wouldn’t be much comfort, but Trina let him go, knowing she had to stay here and keep hashing things out with her parents.

Both of whom studied her with unusual expressions. Part regret, part sympathy, part fear.

She felt very tired, suddenly. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

They sighed together.

“Not unless we had to,” Dad said. “We were betting on that being a really, really slim chance.”

“So none of this is a surprise to you?” She gestured to Lanny and Alexei beside her.

Her dad winced.

Her mother said, “Well, it’s alittle bitof a surprise.”

“God, Mom…”

“You didn’t expect us tobelievevampires, and werewolves, and all thoseexisted, did you?”

“Ouch, Mrs. B,” Lanny said, deadpan. “That hurts.”

“You know what?” Trina held up a silencing hand. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry. So. Whatever. Just assume I’m going to be pissed about this for a while.” And she would.

“Sorry, bug,” Dad said, his smile genuinely apologetic. Then he seemed to realize something, gaze sweeping back and forth across the kitchen. “Hey. If Nik’s real…then where’s Sasha?”

Trina blew out a breath. “That’s actually why I dragged these guys up here.”

~*~

Sasha always said that Nikita liked to punish himself. He said it as sweetly and supportively as it could be said, but still. Nikita always denied it, because that wasn’t the sort of thing a person could own up to and continue to do. He was in denial – was it really punishing yourself if everything truly was your fault? He didn’t think so. He’d done terrible things in his unnaturally long life, for the Soviet Union and then for himself afterward, and he thought a little guilt was his due. Or a lot of guilt, in his case.

Sasha would have had something to say about this, the way he stood amid the sparkling dew and twittering birds of early morning, digging his nails into his palms until his hands bled, hating himself.

Warringwith himself.

When he’d awakened propped against a tree on a snowy November morning in 1942, and Sasha told him what he was now, had seen the way Katya recoiled from him, he’d known that any future he’d envisioned for the two of them was gone. The possibility starved out the moment Rasputin’s heart crossed his lips. He wasn’t a man anymore, but a beast. Athing. A creature with insatiable cravings and too much strength in his hands. One who would, inevitably, kill the woman he loved in a fit of lust, or rage, or thirst. The most important thing was to keep her safe, and he was the greatest danger of all. Clean cuts always healed the fastest, so he’d never allowed himself to search for her. When he started to imagine what it could have been like, he sliced the thoughts away, never letting them fester, never letting them haunt him.

(A few had festered anyway, digging deep, impossible to weed-out roots in his mind. Portraits of what could have been: staying with her, holding his child when it was born; sinking his fangs into a pillow in bed so he wouldn’t be tempted by Katya’s throat. She would grow old, and he would stay twenty-seven, smooth-skinned and unchanging. Would he turn her? Would he sentence her to the cold, terrifying depths of forever out of the selfish need to keep her with him?)

But now. Now that she was gone.Last year. He faced the truth: he hadn’t cut anything away, had only stowed it in a locker somewhere deep, and now the lock was busted, and all of it was spilling out, slick and dangerous as oil. He could have seen her again, but he’d never looked. Had she ever missed him? Had she grieved for him? Or was she glad he never showed his face again?

None of those questions mattered, because she was gone now. Just like Sasha was gone.

Christ, Sasha…

Footsteps crunched on the gravel behind him, a slow approach, and there came a quiet clearing of a throat. Jamie.

Nikita stood with one hand braced on the trunk of a dogwood tree, staring unseeing at the dew-drenched field, clenching his teeth, shaking, choking, hating, aching. He would have turned around and roared at Jamie. Sent him running. But he didn’t have the strength to do so.

Sasha would have cupped a gentle hand around the back of his neck. Told him he needed to feed. Told him nothing was his fault, that he’d done his best.

But Sasha wasn’there.

Behind him, Jamie took a breath, preparing to speak, and there was nothing he could say that Nikita wanted to hear.