Page 62 of Golden Eagle

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Jamie looked nothing less than suspicious when, after breakfast, Alexei washed and put away all the dishes, pulled on his jacket, and said, “I’m going out for a little while.” He didn’t ask where he was going, though, which was good – Alexei wouldn’t have told him, and the refusal would have left Jamie even more sullen.

Something was going to have to be done about him. Plainly, he wasn’t going to be content waltzing through eternity, aimless and pleasure-seeking, like regular vampires.

The day had dawned sunny, but clouds were rolling in now over the building tops, the morning turning cold and overcast. A breeze tumbled bits of paper trash, and pulled at the hems of coats. The air was a riot of scents, the humid promise of oncoming rain the strongest. It left Alexei feeling…unsettled. More so than expected.

He was grateful to duck into the old building and head down the ladder to Nameless.

The werewolf doorman gave him a look, but opened the door wordlessly; Alexei privately wondered if he was mute.

The bar wasn’t empty; it never was. Alexei spotted Dante in his usual booth, a girl sitting on either side of him. And near the back noted a few loners: a vampire and a wolf, sitting at separate tables. No sign of Gustav.

But the wolf, a female drinking beer and paging through a magazine, smelled like his bound Familiar.

Ah, he thought, and headed that direction.

Her head lifted slowly when his shadow fell across her table, and she arched her brows, expression otherwise bored. “What?”

He put on his best courtly smile. “Good morning.” His mother’s crisp British accent, without a hint of Russian. The accent of his homeland, he’d noticed over time, came out when he was in a state of high emotion – or when he was around other Russians. “I hate to overstep, but I think – I think – you might be able to help me. I’m looking for Gustav.”

She stared at him a moment, expressionless, then snorted and looked back down at her magazine: motorcycles, he saw. “He’s not here.”

“So I’ve noticed. But I thought perhaps, you being his Familiar–”

Her head snapped up, gaze narrow this time, openly hostile.

“–you might be able to put me in contact with him.” Hopeful lilt at the end, still smiling through his mounting unease.

“Like I said, Gustav’s not here,” she said. “And I’m not giving his number to some fancy little prince shithead.”

She knew who he was, then. He swallowed. “That’s an impertinent way for a wolf to speak to a vampire, don’t you think?”

“This isn’t theOld Country.” She put a dramatic, offensive fake accent on the words. “Beat it, fancy pants.”

For a moment, he was swamped with rage. It swept through him like a tide, red as the blood on the basement floor the night his family was slaughtered; black as the bruises that still sometimes swelled beneath his skin, that had crippled him as a human boy.How dare she, he thought, and for that moment of radiant anger, he wasn’t the vampire that bummed around Manhattan, couch surfing and occasionally turning a promising lover. He was Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of all the Russias, heir to the empire, and he ought to kill this insufferable peasant for her insolence.

Quick as it came, the rage was gone, leaving him feeling helpless and wrongfooted as the child he’d been when that old life had died. His hands curled to fists, and he turned away from her, mentally berating himself. No wonder Nikita was the de facto leader of their little dysfunctional pack: Alexei couldn’t even command respect from–

“Lex,” a voice called, when he was almost to the door.

He pulled up short and realized he was right beside Dante’s table. Dante was grinning at him over the rims of his perpetual sunglasses, and the women, cozied up at the vampire’s sides, looked at Alexei with an experienced, heavy-lidded sort of consideration. They might have been compelled.

Bristling with unhappy energy, his errand derailed, Alexei realized he was very, very open to suggestion all of a sudden. “What?” he asked, voice snapping.

Dante laughed, flashing his fangs. “Jesus, you’re wound tight. I was gonna ask if you wanted to join us, but now I think I’m gonna insist.”

“And if I refuse?”

Dante flicked the tip of his tongue over a fang, and despite the excess of hair product, and the terrible shirt, he was more than handsome when he smiled like that. He knew it, too. “Oh, you won’t.”

And he didn’t.

~*~

“You want something to drink?” the blond asked, putting on a little show as she slipped out of bed and got to her feet. The curtains were open, and sunlight glinted off her nipple piercings. Her mascara was smudged, and she didn’t look unhappy about it, patting absently at her wrecked hair. She didn’t seem to notice the two small puncture wounds at her throat, already clotted from saliva. A few words from Alexei had seen to that oversight.

“No, sweetheart, I’m good,” Dante said, flopping back onto his pillow with a contented sigh. “You girls help yourselves, though. Fridge is fully stocked.”

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