Page 176 of White Wolf

“I will walk right out that door.”

“Do. I’m calling your bluff.”

He muttered something and settled deeper into the booth.

Sasha chuckled. “I like this. You two are like us.” He pointed at himself and then Nikita with his thumb.

Nikita’s mouth quirked in a fast, humorless smile. “No one’s like us, and that’s a good thing.”

Their drinks arrived. Lanny threw his straight back and ordered another.

Nikita sipped his vodka, held it in his mouth a long moment, then nodded and swallowed. “Alright,” he said, when the waiter was gone again. He looked at Trina then, really looked at her, and she had no doubts. He was her kin; anyone could have told that just looking at them, but she could feel it, too. That spark of family. “Everything I showed you,” he said, “it happened. Just like that.”

She opened her mouth to speak, and a low, sad, sympathetic sound came out instead, surprising her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry all of that happened to you both.” And to the others, all the ones they hadn’t been able to save.

They both nodded a quiet thanks.

Trina cleared her throat. “How did you wind up in America?” Here, of all places.

Nikita said, “That’s a long story.”

~*~

No contact with anyone, they’d agreed. Everyone was dead, anyway – everyone but Pyotr and Katya, hopefully safe, hopefully learning how to forget the horrors they’d seen. Nikita knew they would both be plagued by nightmares, and he wanted to be beside Katya in bed when they hit, wanted to pull her into his chest, tuck her sweet head under his chin, and whisper that it would be alright, stroke her hair.

But he couldn’t do that. It wasn’t safe; nothing about him was. And he hoped she found someone new to cuddle up to almost as much as he fervently, ashamedly hoped that she never loved anyone else.

Sometimes, late at night, while Sasha lay curled up against his back, snoring softly, he imagined that Pyotr and Katya had gone off somewhere together, bound by their experiences, trusting no one else. It brought him a bitter, painful sort of comfort, that thought, and he rarely slept.

They were going to the far reaches of Siberia, and from there to Alaska, down through Canada. They were following the Whites before them, and going to the New World, and going to live quietly in some American city where no one who knew what they were would ever find them. No contact, they’d said.

But then they were in Tomsk, and Nikita knew he wouldn’t try to stop Sasha from seeing his family.

They reached the city limits after nightfall, a small blessing, and crept down the snow-piled streets with steps too easy and quick to belong to mortals. The terrain didn’t slow them like it once had, and Nikita, jacket pulled tight in the front, whipping around his legs, worried that someone would push aside a heavy wool curtain and see them passing beneath the oil lamps, grow suspicious of their ease of travel. But no such thing happened, and they finally reached the wooden two-story house where Sasha had grown up, its elaborate white trim-work brighter and cleaner than the snow, freshly painted just before the temperatures dropped.

Sasha pulled up short, gasping, breath steaming in big puffs that rose up to the black Siberian sky like train smoke. “Oh,” he said, soft and reverent, as a shadow passed across the lighted upstairs window. “I wonder…”

“You can’t go in,” Nikita said, as gently as he could manage, standing beside him and putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Sashka, but you know–”

“I know.”

A few errant, fat flakes drifted down from the heavens.

Sasha leaned forward, feet firmly planted, his heart warring with his common sense.

Finally, he gave a sound like a sob, turned and pressed his face into Nikita’s chest, tucking his shoulders in so he seemed small.

Nikita hugged him. “It’s alright.” Stroked his hair, his quivering back. “It’s alright, little brother.”

Sasha hunted game, and they feasted on venison and, once, badger, which tasted foul but filled their bellies. They hiked all the way deep into reindeer country, to the edge of the world, where the clouds fought with the snow for supremacy, the world a smear of gray on gray, fluffy and thick in the lungs, cold as death. They swam across the Bering Strait, hands and lips blue when they crawled out onto Alaskan ice on their bellies, gasping for breath.

It was easier after that, by comparison. If they could survive swimming beneath floating chunks of ice, the cold biting into their bones and burning their eyes, they could survive the long walk to California…and they did. Hitching rides when they could. Nikita stole a truck in Washington state and they picked enough pockets to buy gas and food. He wasn’t proud of that, but it had kept them alive.

He told them all of this, but left out one particular memory: the first time Sasha offered his throat. He would never discuss that with anyone but Sasha – and even that would be an effort, if it ever happened.

They’d left a reindeer-herder camp the day before, its hide tents and packs of yowling dogs, the humans wrapped up so tight against the cold that only their eyes and the raw, red bridges of their noses were visible. They’d bummed some meat from them, cooked over the fire, and then gone on again, nesting for the night like animals in a hollow Sasha dug in the snow, lined with pine boughs, sheltering them from the wind.

Nikita had been feeling steadily weaker all day; he’d chalked it up to exhaustion, especially when eating didn’t ease the sensation of inner trembling. They crawled into their little pine-scented den, and settled back-to-back like always. The snow insulted them, and their body heat quickly filled the small space. But Nikita couldn’t stop shivering; he clenched his teeth tight to keep them from chattering. The cold was coming from inside him somehow. It lay inside his bones, wrapped cruel fingers around his organs.

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