Page 180 of White Wolf

He gave her a guarded, considering look. “This generation is soft,” he said, finally. They don’t–”

Suddenly she was furious. With him. With her whole secret-keeping family. “Don’t lump me in with ‘this generation,’” she snapped. “I don’t deserve that and you know it.”

He snorted. “Nobody gets what they deserve,dorogaya moya.”

No, nobody did. The bad often got away, and the good were left to pick up the pieces. She thought of Lanny’s diagnosis. Of the man – the creature – in front of her, everything stolen from him, down to his mortality. “I don’t deserve it from my own family,” she amended. “I expected better from you.”

He smiled and it was wicked, unfriendly. “You expected wrong.” He started to turn away.

“Do you know why I became a cop?” she asked, and he paused. “Because my dad was a cop. Andhisdad was a cop. I was starting to think maybe that’s because you were a cop…but I guess you’re just a Commie, huh?”

He moved faster than a human could have; that proved, once and for all, what he truly was.

Between one blink and the next he was right in front of her, leaning into her face, his hand hovering around her throat – not touching, but warning; there and ready to close, to choke, if she provoked him. It was a clear threat. But she wasn’t afraid.

She felt the greasy touch of smoke against her face when he spoke. Low, rough, furious. “Don’t call me that.”

A wild, unhinged laugh built in her chest, and she swallowed it down. Now sheknewthey were related, because her reaction was immediate and unstoppable. “Then don’t act like that,” she said, just like the disappointed relative she was. “If you’re as strong as I think you are, what’ve you got to lose by helping us?”

“Hey!” she heard Lanny say, and then Sasha’s soothing voice as he intervened. If not for him stepping between them, she knew Lanny would have been on top of them, a strong right hook aimed at Nikita.

Her great-grandfather moved away from her with a snarl, pacing up the sidewalk a little ways, standing with shoulders rigid, head tipped back.

“Don’t you fuckingtouch her,” Lanny said, and she heard a scuffle as he tried to duck past Sasha. “Let go, shithead.”

They were somehow, blessedly alone out here. A few couples walked hand-in-hand across the street on the opposite sidewalk, and three doors down a laughing, rowdy group of young people waiting to get into a restaurant made enough noise to drown out their little family tableau.

“Nikita,” Trina said, soft, thinking he could probably hear a lot better than she could, “if you…youdrink…from Sasha, it’s because you don’t want to hurt anyone. Whoever bit our victim needs to be stopped, and I can’t even begin to know where to start. Lanny and I need your help.”

A beat. Then he turned to her, expression laced with defeat…and, she thought, a little bit of fondness. “You look a little bit like her, you know,” he said. “Your great-grandmother. And you’re pushy like she is.”

Trina smiled.

39

BELIEVE

Lanny was quiet in the passenger seat on the way back to the precinct, which wasn’t unheard-of, but Trina could feel the tension vibrating off of him. He wasn’t the sort of man who kept his thoughts – or feelings – to himself; then again, he’d kept the thought that she was beautiful from her, so who knew what else he was hiding? She figured he was going to let loose, though, sooner rather than later, so when she parked in the lot behind the precinct, she killed the engine and then turned to him.

“Okay,” she said. “Say it.”

He stared straight ahead through the windshield, brows jumping in silent question.

“Lanny.”

“What?”

“You’re thinking so hard over there I can smell smoke.”

He made a mocking sound in his throat.

“You still don’t believe? Is that it?”

“Oh, I believe.”

“Then what–”

“Were you just gonna let him do it?” he exploded, and it was a relief. She wanted to get this over with.

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