Page 249 of Golden Eagle

“You’re not so bad yourself.” She leaned down to kiss him – and kissed him until she felt him soften, some of the tension draining away. “Now come on,” she said. “Rock-paper-scissors for the good knife?”

~*~

Trina had sat down on her couch to change her shoes, yawned a few times, complained that the shoes she wanted were under the coffee table like she’d thought, and then promptly fallen asleep sitting up. Lanny had eased her down onto her side and spread a throw blanket over her.

He stood in the cramped kitchen with Jamie and Kolya, he and Jamie sipping microwaved mugs of blood. The upstairs neighbor’s cat was at the window above the sink, gulping down the tuna Kolya had set out for it after it had scratched pitifully at the glass long enough.

Lanny was tired, but not as tired as Trina, and the blood was helping wake him up. A little coffee, after, and a ham sandwich, and he’d be good to go. The strange feeling in his chest wasn’t fatigue, but a kind of nerves he didn’t normally experience: a worry about the magnitude of this all.

“It’s funny,” he said, quietly, speaking before he’d decided to do so. The nerves wanted an outlet, apparently. “I usually get psyched before a fight. Excited, you know? But right now, I’m–”

“Pants-shitting levels of terrified?” Jamie said. “Yeah, me too.”

Lanny chuckled into his mug. “No, not that bad – no offense, kiddo, no shame in that. But this feels like – I mean, I’m cocky. I get that. It gets me into trouble. But this is a big deal, what we’re going up against. This feels like…we might not win.”

Jamie took a shallow breath, said, “Shit,” and turned to pluck the whiskey down from the top of the fridge.

Now he’d scared the kid. Good job, Webb.

Kolya opened cabinets until he found the glasses, got down three, and took the bottle from Jamie’s trembling hand, pouring out shots for all of them. “Wars happen, and someone has to fight them. My father said that, when I was very small. I remembered it the other day.” He repeated the saying in Russian, the unfamiliar cadence of the language lending an extra weight to the words. “I don’t remember his face,” he said, frowning, “but I remember that.”

“Comforting,” Jamie deadpanned.

“No,” Kolya said, shrugging with one-shoulder. “It wasn’t meant to be. Some things are inevitable, I think.”

Lanny and Jamie exchanged a glance.

Lanny said, “Kolya, were you always this terrible at pep talks, or is this an undead thing?”

Jamie snorted.

Kolya seemed to consider the question seriously, swirling the whiskey around in his glass. “I think I was always cheerless. Maybe more subtle, though.” He looked at Lanny, his gaze shiver-inducing. “Which is worse: being afraid? Maybe dying? Or knowing you could have helped, but running away instead?”

Lanny drained his glass. “You make an excellent point.”

~*~

With the aid of a light compulsion to send the concerned staff away, they gathered, all of them, in one of the unoccupied ballrooms at the Waldorf, where Will and Much were staying. A table draped in a white cloth held the blueprints of the Institute Much had managed to obtain from the city.

(They’d all decided by mutual, silent agreement not to bother asking the hows of it. Robin Hood’s boys opened doors and acquired documents. It was just a thing they did.)

It was a large room, with gleaming parquet floors, soaring ceilings, and a wall of tall windows that let in the muted glow of the sunset, the floor patterned with shadows from the mullions. The main lights were off, so as not to attract attention, but Will had produced a small, battery-powered lantern to illuminate the blueprint.

“These are from when the building was originally constructed, in the eighties,” Much said. “It was a factory, then. I penciled in some of the renovations I could detect from the security footage I hacked, but, basically, this isn’t totally trustworthy. The things to concentrate on are the entrances and exits. There’s a parking garage here, with underground access to one of the basement levels – if Virginia is anything to go by, there’ll be multiple basements. From the rooftop, you’ve got possible escape routes over these buildings…”

He might be a sullen brat most of the time, but when it came to practical matters, Nikita had to admit he knew what he was doing.

When they’d gone over all the details, and everyone nodded, tight-faced but prepared, Val clapped his hands together and said, “Best of luck, everyone.” His smile was feral, the glint in his eyes delighted. “Gods, but sometimes revenge just hits the spot.”

Sometimes, a person forgot he was Vlad Tepes’s brother – a grave mistake.

When they dispersed to go through last minute preparations and quiet goodbyes, Will caught Nikita’s attention and pulled him aside. “Here. Your guns are nine millimeters?”

“Yeah.”

He produced a box of ammunition, three neat trays stacked one atop the next. “Silver,” he explained.

Nikita gave him a questioning look.

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