Page 23 of Red Rooster

So he ran. Bumping into people, drawing outraged shouts, elbowing and squeezing and cutting across traffic to the blare of horns and squeal of brakes.

He didn’t stop until he reached the lobby of Lanny’s building, and then he collapsed against the mailboxes, breathing raggedly through his mouth.

He still held his coffee, though some of it had slopped out through the drinking hole in the lid and scalded his hand; the skin gleamed pink and angry, though the pain was already receding. He’d crushed the sandwiches in his other fist, the bag crumpled up and starting to tear beneath his fingertips.

He sank down slow, until his butt hit the tile, and sat with his heart racing and his mind struggling to process something that felt like instinct, though it was a completely foreign sensation. Tears blurred his vision, and he pressed his forehead to his knee, blinking furiously.

“I’m not a monster,” he whispered. “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not…”

~*~

“I have no idea what I’m going to do,” Trina admitted. “I can’t tell my captain what’s really happening, but I have to actually pretend to be following body-snatching leads. Shit.”

Sasha made a sympathetic noise in the passenger seat and took another bite of his hamburger.

“I’m half-tempted to track down Alexei and arrest his ass. He is the culprit, after all.”

“Oh no,” Sasha said, swallowing. “Don’t do that.”

She glanced across the interior of the unmarked car toward him, brows lifted in question as she took a bite of her own burger. They were parked in front of Burger King, partly because they’d both been hungry, but mostly because she was at a big fat dead end in her investigation. She’d never had this problem before: she knew exactly who’d committed the crime, but couldn’t do anything about it.

“The police wouldn’t believe you,” Sasha explained, “and if they did, you couldn’t keep Alexei in a cell anyway. You have to have silver to keep a vampire locked up.”

She slumped down deeper in her seat. “How helpful.”

“And Alexei,” Sasha said, frowning out through the windshield. “Nik isveryangry. If Alexei is smart, he’ll be hiding.”

“Yeah, well–”

Sasha sat bolt upright suddenly, burger falling out of his hands and landing on the floorboards.

“What?”

He growled, a low, deep, threatening sound.

“Sasha–” Trina started.

And Alexei Romanov stepped in front of the cruiser and waved at them through the windshield.

~*~

Lanny detected it the moment they stepped into his building’s lobby: a presence. Not just the hum of awareness that signaled someone standing behind you, not any sort of ambient noise. He could smell someone – pick up his individual scent, know it was ahim, one with a faint whiff of blood about his person – and knew that whoever it was had passed through recently and only once; knew that whoever it was was still in the building.

“Did you forget about Jamie?” Nikita asked, and then it all slotted into place.

“Shit, yeah.” Lanny stood in front of the mailboxes, nose full of scent, and matched the name and the face to what he was detecting. Jamie Anderson. Little guy. Artist. Newly a vampire.

“Damn,” he muttered, rubbing at his nose with the back of his hand, trying to block some of the relentless odor of another vampire – a male, arivalhis brain said. “This is really fucking weird.”

“Hmm,” Nikita hummed, and led the way up the stairs. Over his shoulder, he said, “Try to control yourself. You’re a lot bigger than he is.”

Lanny refused to make any promises. By the time he fitted his key in the lock, the back of his neck felt tight, his upper lip twitching against his fangs.

But then he got the door open, and there was Jamie curled up on the sofa in a miserable little ball, hugging his knees to his chest, and the fight bled right back out of Lanny. Not a rival at all; just a kid.

Jamie’s head snapped around when they entered, and for one moment he seemed to relax, sagging back into the couch cushions. He opened his mouth to speak – and then froze, eyes widening. He took a deep breath in through his nose, sniffing. Stared at Lanny. “Oh my God, you’re one too, now.” He snapped his mouth shut, gulping audibly. “And I don’t even know how I know that, but I do. I cansmell it.” With a groan, he pressed his face into his knees.

“Alright, alright,” Nikita said. He shut the door and went to set the bag of blood on the counter. “Come here both of you. Yes, Lanny is a vampire now,” he said to Jamie. And to Lanny: “Where’s your microwave?”

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