Page 186 of White Wolf

“Yes. Can I go inside?”

“Sure.” She opened the door for him and he walked in with a certain air of…stalking. A hunter on the prowl. He took deep breaths through his nose, nostrils flaring, eyes scanning slowly back and forth.

Lanny stepped up beside her; he looked dead on his feet, circles dark as bruises smudged under each eye. “The fuck is he doing?” he muttered.

“Scenting,” Sasha called back over his shoulder as he moved deeper into the apartment. “Wolf, remember?”

Lanny said something she couldn’t hear and finally took a sip of his coffee. “Damn. Sugar much?”

Trina elbowed him, but was secretly pleased. That sip was a sign of trust; whether he realized it about himself or not yet, Lanny was starting to trust that these guys were on their side, no matter how much he played devil’s advocate with her.

Ahead of them, Sasha went straight to the couch and knelt in front of it. He set his drink aside and got down low, face hovering an inch from the cushions, sniffing like a dog. Well, like awolf.

“I smell vampire blood,” he said, looking back at them over his shoulder, eyes sapphire-bright. “He turned him. Or at least tried to.”

Trina let out an unsteady breath. “That’s what I wondered.”

Sasha nodded, looking pleased. “You have good instincts, Katy–” His gaze flicked to Lanny and he cut himself off. “Very good,” he said instead, standing again, retrieving his coffee. “Now let’s follow the trail and see where he went.”

~*~

“You know,” Lanny mused as they followed Sasha down the sidewalk. “We bring him onto the force and we could retire all the drug-sniffing dogs.”

Trina checked her grin before it could get wide enough to make him suspicious. She was so tired, probably the smile was just because she was loopy, but she felt the first flutter of hope in her chest. If her crazy, stupid plan was going to work, Lanny had to like these Russian boys at least a little. Trust them enough to bare his throat to Nikita.

Love her enough to want to live.

And if not her, then at leastsomething.

A sobering train of thought.

“Shh, let him concentrate,” she said.

“He’s justsmellingeverything. How much concentration does that take?”

A good deal, apparently. He’d stopped talking a few moments ago, and had led them almost five blocks.

“Shoulda followed in the car,” Lanny said.

“Hush.”

Fifteen minutes, and a lot of Lanny complaining, later, Sasha came to a halt at the foot of a red-brick building with a broken fire escape and a row of out-of-order, taped-over buzzers by the front door. The windows were all covered from the inside; a few were cracked.

“Um,” Lanny said, squinting up at it.

“He’s here?” Trina asked. “Right now?”

“Right now,” Sasha said, voice distant. He was staring up at the building with the kind of intensity she only ever saw in…well, in dogs, again. She hated to keep making canine comparisons, but they were right there, in her face. So.

He frowned, a little dent sprouting between his fair brows. The morning breeze toyed with his hair and he smoothed it back with both hands. “Hmm.”

“What?” Trina asked, uneasiness crawling down the back of her neck.

“There are two of them.”

Lanny shuffled his feet. “Alright. So?”

Sasha made a face. “Two is more complicated.”

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