Christopher Golden - Sons of Anarchy - Bratva

“He’s dead,” Oleg said, his voice a groan.

Jax turned to see Oleg trying to force himself into a sitting position again, and failing. He lurched over to Oleg and knelt beside him. Gutshot, blood still foaming from the corners of his mouth, he was close to death.

“Thank you, man. Truly,” Jax said. “You saved my life just now.”

Oleg gripped his arm, staring at him with the dark urgency of words he did not have the strength to speak.

Then his gaze went dull and his grip slackened, and he was gone.

Jax sat down to rest beside the dead man.

His eyes closed.

Jackie. Wake up, brother.

It might have been minutes later, or only seconds, when he heard the quiet burr of Chibs’s voice, and he opened his eyes again. Jax blinked to clear his vision, weak from blood loss, exhaustion, and the beating he’d taken. Chibs knelt to his right, a hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake. To his left, Trinity stood staring down at the pale corpse of the man she’d loved and at the pool of blood that surrounded him where he sat against the wall. She cried silently, mute with grief. For long moments, it was as if she didn’t even realize that Chibs and Jax were there in the corridor with her. Then a dark, familiar anger stole over her face, and she glanced at the gun in Jax’s hand, then over at Lagoshin and the bullet wounds in his torso. He hadn’t been able to save Oleg, but he had taken vengeance for her.

It was cold comfort, but it was all he had to offer.

Trinity spiton Lagoshin’s corpse.

She wiped furiously at her eyes, hating every tear that fell. Death had been no stranger to her life, but when she had lost people she loved, it had been at a distance. The presence of Oleg’s body, the way his mouth hung open as if he might be just about to speak… the dull sheen of his dark eyes… it carved a hole in her chest.

“Jesus,” she whispered, the closest thing to a real prayer she had uttered in years.

Chibs helped Jax to his feet. Trinity went to her brother, and he opened his arms to her, pulled her into a bloody embrace. Her tears had dried, but grief poured from her and he held her tightly, absorbing it all.

She took a deep breath and stood back from him. When he took her by the arm, she saw a pain in his eyes that reflected her own, and she loved him for it. They walked away together, Chibs in the lead with his gun drawn, leaving the dead behind.

They made their way to the steps that passed the ballroom and then down the sweeping, grand staircase. Chibs kept a wary eye on the bodies they found along the way. Pyotr lay sprawled on the stairs. At the bottom, just outside the first-floor ballroom, Vlad lay halfway through the doors with a bullet hole in his forehead. Trinity turned away, unwilling to see the gray and crimson matter that decorated the door behind him.

“You smell that?” Chibs asked as they came around the corner into the hall leading to the lobby.

Trinity had lowered her gaze, staring at the carpet as she walked. Now she glanced up and sniffed the air. She saw Jax nod, knew he smelled it, too.

Gasoline.

They walked into the lobby, found it full of dead men, but there were many still alive, too. Timur and Gavril had fetched full gas cans from the trunks of the cars out in the parking lot and were spilling gasoline all around the corners of the lobby. On the other end of the room, Ilia was doing the same. Opie stood by the front doors, watching the street impatiently for any sign of the police. A heavy, bearded man in a Sons of Anarchy cut turned to see Trinity, Jax, and Chibs entering and rushed toward them.

“Son of a bitch,” the big biker said. “We figured you for dead!”

“Rollie,” Jax rasped, clearing his throat.

Then Opie was there, a strangely calm presence, like an oak tree had just grown up beside them. He took in Jax’s injuries and the grief on Trinity’s face, and she could see that he understood immediately. A ripple of regret passed over his features as if he understood her sorrow, though she knew she might only have imagined it.

“Antonio went looking for you,” Opie said, glancing from Jax to Chibs.

“We saw him,” Chibs replied, turning to Rollie. “He’s not coming.”

“Aw, shit,” Rollie said, and then he shot Jax a blazing glare. “You’ve got a lot to answer for.”

Despite his injuries, Jax stood a little taller. “I’m sorry about Antonio—”

“And Mikey.”

“And Mikey,” Jax echoed. “I’m grateful to you for backing us up. Could be we’d all be dead if you hadn’t shown up when you did. But if you want someone to blame, Lagoshin is upstairs with a couple of bullets in him. He’s the asshole responsible for all of this.”

Rollie’s eyes narrowed. Trinity could see that he didn’t entirely believe Jax.

Then she heard her name and looked up to see Kirill entering the lobby from the opposite end. His voice was hopeful until she met his gaze. What he saw in her eyes stopped him in his tracks.

He swore in Russian, staring at the floor for a moment before glancing at the ceiling. At heaven. His lips moved silently, and she wondered if he was cursing God or talking to Oleg’s spirit, making some promise of revenge. None of it mattered. With Lagoshin dead, the only thing any of them could do was survive.

Several other members of the Sons of Anarchy came into the lobby behind Kirill. Trinity looked beyond them, but that seemed to be the last of the survivors of the massacre at the Wonderland Hotel.

“No sign of the cops yet,” one of the bikers said.

“They’ll be here,” Rollie replied. “We need to move.”

Trinity felt numb as she walked to Kirill. He stiffened as she slid her arms around him, leaned her head against his chest. After a moment, she felt his body relax, any resentment he’d felt toward her forgotten. They would both live through the day—Kirill would be captain of the Bratva in this part of the country, at least for a while—but it didn’t feel to Trinity as if either of them had won. Not even a little.

“We have to take Oleg out of here,” she said quietly.

Kirill stepped back, breaking her embrace. His expression had turned back to its usual stone. “No time.”

“But Oleg—”

“What of Pyotr and Sacha and Vlad? Should we leave them to the fire?”

Trinity flinched.

“We must go now!” Timur called.

Kirill moved around her as if she meant nothing to him, and she supposed that compared to what he had lost today, that much was true. They weren’t friends, and with Oleg dead they certainly weren’t family. Still, she felt as if she was a part of this brotherhood—their sister—whether they returned the feeling or not. She owed Oleg that.

“Trinity, let’s go,” Jax said, and his voice got her moving.

When she walked to him, he took her by the arm, and the two of them followed Opie, Chibs, and the rest outside. Some went out the back door, where the cars were waiting, and others used the front.

“Let it burn,” Kirill said.

Trinity turned to see Gavril snap open an old metal lighter, flicking the thumbwheel to summon the flame. He tossed it through the open door, and it slid along the floor until the flame reached the spilled gasoline. The curtains now on fire, their flame rippled upward, racing along the floor and up the walls, spreading out the doors on either side of the lobby. In minutes, the main body of the hotel would be engulfed.

Jax looked at Kirill. “We good?”

Kirill paused a moment before nodding. “We are.”

Jax took Trinity’s hand to lead her toward his motorcycle, but she hesitated, turning to look at Kirill and Gavril and the others.