Page 191 of White Wolf

“Little too much to drink one night?” Lanny asked.

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

~*~

Once upon a time, Nikita’s mother had owned a small newspaper clipping photo of the royal family that she’d kept pressed between the pages of the family bible; she hadn’t dared to take it out except for late at night, when the other families in their shared tenement flat were asleep, their snores carrying through the quilts they’d tacked up for walls. Nikita had memorized each face in that photo, grainy as it was, and so it was the reason he knew, without a doubt, that the young man sitting across the table from him in the police interrogation room was Alexei Nikolaevich, former heir of All the Russias.

Alexei had aged – he looked to be in his mid-twenties now – and had grown into his face a little, the jaw widening, the brows getting stronger. But it was him.

And Nikita wished it wasn’t.

He’d hoped the whole way down here that this was a prank, but face-to-face with the former tsarevich, he knew that it wasn’t.

He’d wanted this to be just another random vampire, like all the others who’d tried to attach themselves to their tiny pack, all the ones who’d smelled the fresh bite mark on Sasha’s neck and wondered what wolf blood tasted like. Those had been easy to turn away, to run from – to kill, in more than one case. But theheir to the empire…when he himself sat here with the Romanov crest stitched into his jacket…that presented a problem.

Chad had been an accident, Alexei explained. He’d gone days without feeding and was starting to feel weak, that hollow pit opening in his stomach that no amount of greasy diner food could fill. He’d sat at the bar of the club for hours, debating with himself, observing the dancing, laughing, drinking young people around him. Chad had been sitting with a girl cuddled up to his side, but he’d thrown Alexei a look across the room that spoke of interest, and things a girl couldn’t offer him. Alexei had downed his vodka tonic in two long gulps and jerked his head toward the alleyway exit.

Chad followed him.

In the alley, beneath the sleek glow of neon, Alexei had backed the human up against the wall and kissed him, ground their hips together, got him pliant and wanting – he explained all this with a dark blush staining his cheeks, embarrassed, knotting his fingers together over and over. When Chad was melting and gasping and begging, Alexei trailed his mouth down the mortal’s throat and then sank his fangs deep.

It was then, with the first bright burst of blood across his tongue, that he realized he was so,sohungry.

He drank, and drank, and drank. And when he pulled back, gasping, the blood on his lips steaming in the night air, he’d realized that Chad was mostly dead.

He turned his left hand up on the table, revealing a faint pink line across his wrist. “I opened up my vein,” he said, voice starting to shake, eyes on the fast-healing scar. “He was so weak, he – I had to dip my fingers in the blood and put them in his mouth. He…” He closed his eyes, anguished – or at least pretending to be. “I thought he was dead.”

“So you just left him in the alley and took off, right?” Lanny said with disgust.

Alexei lifted his head, expression pleading. “I heard someone coming. I thought…they would find him, and–”

“You didn’t wanna get caught,” Lanny said. “Understandable.”

Nikita was starting to like the man. Not that helikedpeople, in general. He approved of his skeptical outlook. And the fact that he was so fiercely in love with Trina that it scared him – scared him more than the sickness Nikita could smell on him.

“No, I thought,” Alexei tried, and then gave up, rubbing at his face. “I’m sorry,” he said, eyes shielded behind his hand. “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

“Maybe you didn’t mean to kill him,” Lanny said, “but you bit a big chunk out of his neck, so you damn well knew you were gonna hurt him.”

Alexei took a deep, shuddering breath.

Nikita’s cigarette had burned down to the butt and he dropped it into his untouched coffee and lit another. The hiss sounded ominous in the small room. “He came to you when he woke up, yes?”

Alexei nodded. When he met Nikita’s gaze, it was with a desperate sort of hope.Oh, little tsarevich, Nikita thought,you’ll find no friend in me. “He was very weak. It wasn’t a good turning.”

“You didn’t give him enough blood,” Nikita said, flatly, though his insides clenched around the remembered taste of Rasputin’s heart, the awful, wet, spongy meat of it, still hot, steaming in the frigid air. “Did you think to feed him again? After he turned up?”

“I…” Alexei’s breath hitched.

“From your own throat? No? Just turned him loose on humans?”

“I can’tcontrolhim!”

“You shouldn’t have turned him,” Nikita said.

“He was going to die!”

“He still is. Only now he’ll be harder to kill.”

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