"Jesus," Niko hissed. This was only getting worse. "I have to get out of here."
He threw off the blanket and grabbed the clothing from the little table. He was none too steady on his feet as he tried to step into the nylon pants. He fell back, his bare ass planted on the bed. His head was spinning. "Damn it. I need to report in with the Order. Think your good buddy Jack has a computer or a cell phone I could borrow?"
"It's two o'clock in the morning," Renata pointed out. "Everyone in the house is sleeping. Besides, I'm not even sure you're well enough to make it down the garage stairs. You need to rest a while longer."
"Fuck that. What I need is to get back to Boston ASAP." Still seated on the bed, he slipped on the warm-ups and hiked them over his hips, tugging the drawstring tight to cinch the extra-large waistband. "I've lost too much time already. Gonna need someone to come up here and haul my lame ass back in - "
Renata's hand came down on his, surprising him with the contact. "Nikolai. Something's happened to Mira."
Her voice was as sober as he'd ever heard it. She was worried - bone-deep worried - and for the first time, he noticed the smallest fissure in the otherwise unbreakable, icy facade she presented to any and all around her.
"Mira is in danger," she said. "They took her with them when they came to arrest you at the lodge. Lex sent her off with a vampire named Fabien. He...he sold her to him."
"Fabien." Niko shut his eyes, exhaled a curse. "Then she is probably already dead."
He wasn't expecting Renata's choked cry. The raw sound of it made him feel like a callous jackass for speaking his grim thoughts aloud. For all of Renata's strength and tough independence, she had a very tender spot reserved for that innocent, remarkable child.
"She can't be dead." Her voice took on a wooden edge, but her eyes were wild, desperate. "I promised her, do you understand? I told her I would never let anyone hurt her. I meant that. I would kill to keep her safe, Nikolai. I would die for her." He listened, and, God help him, he knew her pain better than she could ever guess. As a boy, he had made a similar pact with his younger brother - Christ, so long ago - and it had nearly destroyed him to have failed.
"That's why you came after me at the containment facility," he said, understanding now. "You risked your neck to break me out of there because you think I can help you find her?"
She didn't say anything, just held his gaze in a silence that seemed to stretch out forever. "I have to get her back, Nikolai. And I don't think...I'm just not sure I can do it on my own."
Part of him wanted to tell her that the fate of one lost little girl was not his problem. Not after what that bastard Fabien had just put him through at the containment facility. And not when the Order had its hands full with other, more critical missions. Life and death on a massive scale, true do-or-die, save-the-world kind of shit.
But when he opened his mouth to tell her so, he found he didn't have the heart to say that out loud to Renata now.
"How's your shoulder?" he asked her, indicating the wound that had been bleeding a few hours ago in the truck and driving his already weak control nearly to the edge. On the surface, it looked better now, bandaged in clean white gauze and smelling faintly of antiseptic.
"Jack patched me up," she said. "He was a medic for the Marines when he served in Vietnam."
Niko saw the tenderness in her expression when she spoke of the human, and he wondered why he should feel even the slightest twinge of jealousy, particularly when that human male's military service aged him well into his AARP years. "So, he's a Marine, eh? How'd he end up working in a Montreal youth shelter?"
Renata smiled a bit sadly. "Jack fell in love with a local girl named Anna. They got married, bought this house together and lived here for more than forty years...until Anna died. She was killed in a robbery. The homeless kid who stabbed her for her purse did it while he was high on heroin. He was looking for money for his next fix, but he only got about five dollars in change." "Jesus," Niko exhaled. "I hope the piece of shit didn't get away with it."
Renata shook her head. "He was arrested and charged, but he hanged himself in jail while awaiting trial. Jack once told me when he heard that news, that's when he decided to do something to help prevent another death like Anna's, or another kid from being lost to the streets. He opened his house - Anna's Place - to anyone who needed shelter, and gave the kids warm meals and a place to belong."
"Sounds like Jack's a generous man," Niko said. "A hell of a lot more forgiving than I could be."
He had the strongest urge to touch her, to just let his fingers come to rest on her skin. He wanted to know more about her, more about her life before she got mixed up with Sergei Yakut. He had the feeling things didn't come easy for her. If Jack had helped to smooth her path, then Nikolai had nothing but respect for the man.
And if she could trust the human, so would he. He hoped like hell Jack was all Renata believed him to be. It would be a hell of a thing if he proved otherwise.
"Let me have a look at your shoulder," he said, happy to change the subject.
When he moved toward her, Renata hesitated. "You sure you can handle that? Because I'm fresh out of tranq rounds, and it hardly seems sporting to mind blast a vampire in your feeble condition."
A joke? He chuckled, caught off guard by her humor, especially when things were looking more than a little grim for both of them. "Come here and let me see Jack's handiwork."
She leaned forward to give him better access to her shoulder. Niko moved aside the soft cotton blanket she was wrapped in, letting the edge of the fabric slide down her arm. As carefully as he lifted the bandage and inspected the cleaned, sutured wound beneath it, he still felt Renata flinch with discomfort. She held herself perfectly still as he gingerly checked both sides of her shoulder. The bleeding had slowed to a trickle, but even that thin rivulet of scarlet hit him hard. He was out of the woods as far as Bloodlust went, but he was still Breed, and Renata's sweet sandalwood-and-rain blood scent was intoxicating, especially up close.