Page 56 of Golden Eagle

“What do you mean ‘stopped’?”

“Just what I said,” he said with a hint of impatience. They ended. One went into a bodega, and vanished. Another ran right into a brick wall. The wolf, Hannah, doubled back a few times, and then ended at the curb.”

“Okay.” Trina was starting to sound impatient, too. “What does that mean? Don’t tell me you two got fooled by fox hunting tricks.”

Nikita snorted.

“She probably got into a car at the curb,” Sasha said, before things could devolve into outright glaring. Trina might not have her great-grandfather’s guilt complex, but they resembled one another in ways beyond the blue-gray eyes they shared. Stubbornness, for instance, and pride. “The other trails, though, like at the bodega, had to have been scrubbed.”

“Is that a thing that can happen?” Trina asked, turning to him.

“I don’t…know, exactly.”

Her brows lifted. “Know anybody who would?”

Nikita turned around, frowning. “Maybe,” he said, and his tone saidthat’s enough. Sasha sent him anI’m okaylook, which was ignored. “If anyone does, it’d be Colette.”

Trina turned to face him, brows still elevated.Well?

“I’ll call her,” Nikita consented, jaw still tight.

“Alright,” Trina said, with an exhale, and looked at the table again. She didn’t flinch, or wrinkle her nose, or show signs of any emotions save mental weariness and frustration.

Sasha knew that detectives, cops, like soldiers and doctors, had developed a kind of immunity to distressing, gory sights. And probably it was Trina’s training kicking in now, but…He wondered. Wondered if, blood kin to Nikita, she just had a high tolerance for this sort of thing.

“Say you talk to Colette,” she continued, “and say she helps you track him down. Then what?”

“Then I kill him,” Nikita said.

“Oh, is that all?” Trina said dryly.

Nik’s hands opened, fingers long and stark, and then curled into fists again, still tucked away behind his back. He looked at her over his shoulder. “You think I don’t have the experience?”

Trina met his gaze steadily. “Did I say that?”

“I’ve been killing my own kind for longer than you’ve been alive.”

This tension, Sasha realized, was getting way out of hand, and was terrible besides. He traded a look with Dr. Harvey, who looked baffled by the stare-down between the relatives.

In truth, Sasha knew Nik wasn’t angry with Trina; he had a sinking suspicion he knew what the problem was, and that Nik was, unhealthy to the bitter end, directing more than a small dose of anxiety at someone he figured he couldn’t offend permanently: his family.

The thought brought a quick smile to Sasha’s lips, but he smoothed it away, and said, “Nik, Trina–”

Dr. Harvey beat him to the punch. “How do you kill a vampire?”

Everyone turned to look at her, which broke up some of the mounting hostility in the room.

“I’m genuinely curious,” Harvey said with a shrug. She lifted a hand, fist clenched in an unmistakable gesture. “The old stake trick? Or is it holy water?”

Nikita snorted again, but sounded at least half-amused this time. “You cut out the heart, and destroy it.”

“Ah,” Harvey said, without expression. “Guess that makes sense.”

“You said this isn’t normal for wolves,” Trina said, and her tone, to Sasha’s relief, had become professional: a detective puzzling out the evidence, rather than Nik’s irritated relation.

“It’s not,” Nik said.

“Because wolves don’t need to eat anything besides human food, correct?”

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