Page 204 of Golden Eagle

“He threatened you?” Nikita asked.

When Dante’s gaze snapped toward him, Nikita wanted to recoil from the chilling, haunted look in his eyes. “Working with him was the only was to secure my freedom.”

“Freedom from what?” Alexei demanded. His tone was still biting, but his expression, Nikita glanced over and noticed, had shifted, doubt creeping in at the edges of his anger. He might want to play at tsar, but he was still young emotionally, still too-trusting, too freshly hurt by Dante to give up on him completely.

Dante must have seen that, too. He uncoiled a fraction, sitting upright. He hesitated. “It might be easier to show you than to tell you.”

Alexei bared his teeth.

Slowly, Dante put his feet down on the ground and sat forward, undeterred, expression softening. “It was also the truth when I told you I was a dream-walker.”

Nikita felt his brows shoot up; Sasha made a quiet sound beside him.

“Shit,” Lanny breathed.

“It’s how I found you for them,” Dante said. “It’s also how I know what Gustav’s true intentions were. I’m…” He held out one pale, slender hand. “I can show you, if you’ll let me. I don’t know if I can explain it in a way you’ll understand.”

“Because I’m stupid?” Alexei snarled.

“No.” Dante swallowed. “Because it’s difficult to talk about.” He sat there, hand outstretched, waiting.

Trina caught Nikita’s gaze and shrugged. “It’s not like he can do anything with all of us here.”

Nikita shrugged back. “Your call,” he told Alexei. “Lanny can punt him down the stairs if you want him gone.”

Lanny cracked his knuckles right on cue.

Dante’s hand trembled, but didn’t lower. “No more lies,” he said, like a promise. “I only want you to see.”

Alexei considered a long, long moment, fingers drumming on the tabletop. He flicked a sideways glance at the mage, shivered all over like a horse covered in flies, and finally jerked a nod. “Fine,” he said through clenched teeth, gaze on the table. “Show me. Show me thetruth.”

“I will,” Dante said, rising, exhaling long and shaky with obvious relief. His long legs looked like they nearly buckled on the walk over, but then Nikita and Sasha slid over, and he settled on the bench across from Alexei. “May I see your hand, your grace?” he asked, with perfect reverence.

Alexei shoved one sleeve up and smacked his hand down on the tabletop, rolling his eyes in a very un-tsar-like manner.

Dante set his own delicately atop it, and closed his eyes.

Alexei stared sullenly off to the side a moment – and then his eyes popped wide – and then they glazed over.

~*~

Alexei felt a gentle probing at his mind; not the shove of will that came with compulsion. It was a light, tickling touch, like fingertips sliding along his forehead.It’s only me, Dante’s voice said. He had the sense of a door opening, of being waved inside. Invited in.

His vision faded to gray, and panic swelled – but then he was spinning dizzily on a field of black dotted with white pinpricks like stars.

I’m here, Dante said, inside his head.I’m right here.

Then he could see…

An alley. Grimy red brick illuminated by a flickering pair of sconces on either side of a door. There was a poster, an ad for a band playing next Tuesday at a place called The Dungeon – next Tuesday in2015.

He heard sounds, and finally placed them: the slap of shoes on pavement, the uneven sawing of breath. Someone was running. A tall, rangy figure barreled around the corner, careened off the wall with a stumble and a curse, and pressed on, pursued by dogs – no, bywolves. A half-dozen of them, shaggy, hulking things, snarling. The light caught the glimmer of saliva, the gleam of ivory teeth.

The running figure passed the sconces, and their yellow light slid across his sharp-featured face: Dante. Gaze hectic, pulse leaping visibly in his throat, wild and exhausted.

The alley was a dead end. Dante leapt when he reached it, scrabbling at the brick with fingers and nails, a low, awful, scared-cat whine caught in the back of his throat. The wolves reached him–

A new scene: a cell. A concrete floor with a drain in the center, white cinderblock walls, and a door of fat silver bars. A stick-thin figure in white scrubs, dark hair buzzed close to his scalp, huddled by the back wall, wrists circled with heavy silver cuffs that trailed silver chains across the floor, and up the wall to silver loops mounted with screws with quarter-size heads. Alexei knew it was Dante, even before he lifted his head in response to the sounds of footsteps out in the hall, but the sight of his face still sent an awful start through him.

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