Page 239 of Golden Eagle

Finally, he nodded. “Show me why Liam Price wants me.”

And perhaps that would go a ways toward explaining why the hell Liam’s Price’s son was so attached to him.

“Alright.” Dante pulled his hand back. “Lie down, sweetheart.”

They settled on their sides, facing one another. “What do I–”

“Close your eyes,” Dante instructed. “Try to relax. Let your guard down, if you can.” A moment later, his hand landed on Alexei’s face, a light touch on his cheek. “Breathe.”

Alexei took a deep breath – and fell.

~*~

He opened his eyes and found that he stood in a drift of dirty, half-melted snow, the edges of brown leaves peeking up through the screen of it. It was evening, the light the low, blue shadow that came when early spring was still mostly winter, the clouds heavy, the air breathtakingly cold. Bare tree trunks surrounded him, ranged close together. He smelled frost, leaf mold, freshly-turned soil – and death.

He started to turn – and there was Dante beside him, his hair scraped viciously back and clubbed with a bit of ribbon, wearing a tailored, shabby old suit with leather elbow patches on the jacket. Clothes from his mortal life, it seemed.

“I know this forest,” Alexei said.

Dante nodded, morose, and motioned over his shoulder.

Alexei turned around.

A boxy lorry sat parked amongst the trees, its tailgate lowered, a lantern poised their illuminating several long bundles bound up in greasy old canvas tarps. Another lantern was held aloft by a man standing at the edge of a deep hole, the tips of shovels rising rhythmically over the edge, flinging out black, wet earth.

“Hurry, you whoresons,” the man with the lantern barked in guttural Russian.

Another man walked down the length of the truck, smoking a cigarette, a heavy woodsman’s saw propped over one shoulder.

“I know this forest,” Alexei repeated, faintly.

It was the place where his family had been robbed, dismembered, burned, and buried.

It was the place where he’d awakened.

Dante touched his shoulder. “We can go–”

“No. I want to see.”

A wave of dizziness hit him; the ground seemed to tilt, and his vision blurred.

When it cleared, he stood right beside the pit. The sky was darker. A fire burned a few paces away, its smoke a noxious gray against the fast-approaching night. One of the Bolsheviks fed it with dripping lumps that were not logs.

Alexei turned his head and saw himself, young, gangly, deathly-pale, laid out on a tarp. His jacket had been stripped, and his shoes, his belt, his pockets turned out. His lips were blue, his face shadowed.

One of the men knelt down beside him, saw in-hand, measured a moment, and then rested the jagged teeth of the saw on Alexei’s thigh. Drew his arm back, applied pressure–

The lantern light caught the wet glimmer of fresh blood welling up around the saw teeth.

The man paused a moment, wondering. Alexei’s eyes snapped open; his chest lifted on a gasp that was nearly a scream.

The mandidscream.

Alexei – his current, adult self – stood by, unseen, and watched the boy he’d been sit up, eyes wild, and reach out with stark white hands for the man who’d meant to cut him into pieces. Grab his throat, and drag him in close. Bite his neck with new fangs, instinct driving every cell in his body to latch on, to feed, to kill, to survive.

The man’s scream choked off into a wet gurgle. Young Alexei held him tight with both arms, close as a lover, and twisted, rolled; they both went toppling into the open pit.

The other henchmen came running over, lanterns swinging.

---