Lone Werewolf Duology (bxb)

6. Hot Child in the City

Volya rode the elevator down to the lobby right away but regretted his haste as soon as he'd spotted Liam. One glance at the singer, leaning against the marble wall—and Volya was conscious of every crease he'd worked into his T-shirt.

Some sorcery made Liam look super-elegant, even though they wore exactly the same stuff. Jeans, t-shirt and sneakers. Correction: Liam had an additional item, a hoodie thrown over his shoulders with its sleeves tied across the chest. On Liam it looked like an effing cape and his attire hinted at the price tag of a few hundred bucks a pop.

Volya's ensemble hollered it was passed down God knows how many times before ending on his body. The best that could be said about it was that his stretched-at-the-knees jeans complimented his slept-in shirt... a motif of sorts.

"Aren't you worried we'll get chased by your fans down Gorky Street, Liam?" Volya asked, after a glance at Liam's phone to ensure he wasn't idly churning air in Russian.

Liam listened to the interpreter app, winked and balanced sunglasses on his nose. "Nope."

Volya ignored the app's curt 'nyet'. The welcome they had received in the Domodedovo Airport still unnerved him. He cocked his brow. "You think we, who gave KGB to the world, would never recognize a pop-star in this masterful popstar-in-disguise disguise?"

Liam took him by the elbow and led them away from the elevators, toward one of the side-exits from the hotel. Once in the street, he assumed a hasty, businesslike pace.

"Walk like you're late for a meeting, and nobody would give you a second look," he instructed.

"I bow to your expertise."

The pedestrians didn't stop to point and wave at Liam. It worked? Well, he would be damned!

"What do you want to do?"

"Just walk around for a bit." Liam let his sunglasses slide to the end of his nose and glanced at Volya's t-shirt over their rim. "Hmm. Maybe shop a little."

Volya gulped at the prospect of:

1: shopping for his clothes, and

2: doing it with Liam.

"Why?" he asked like his closet was overflowing with the latest fashions from Paris.

"To clear my head and stuff?" Liam replied as lightly as he did everything. "If you don't want to, maybe we can snap a few pictures with that ice-cream-cones church, what's-it-called?"

Uh-huh, there it was, the typical behavior of a sinister mastermind. Riiight.

"Sounds like you want St. Basil's Cathedral," Volya replied, feeling like an imposter, since his value as a tour-guide was close to null. He'd never been to Moscow before. Or any other city beyond Rostov. He'd just dreamed about going places like this with Toshka. "I'm... Basically, don't count on me to be much of a guide."

Liam shook his phone, as if it could speed up the digital interpreter. "If I wanted a guide, I'd have invited Marina along."

Volya shivered at the prospect of being lectured in two languages about some pointless trivia.

"No, we don't want that. But, ah... speaking of Marina..." Liam looked relaxed, so it didn't hurt to throw a test ball. "She'd mentioned something called 'genetic memory'. Yesterday."

Liam's amazing shoulders stiffened.

"What's that, do you know?"

"Can it wait until Montana?"

The enforced pauses in the conversation started to irk Volya. He listened to Liam's English sentences, trying to get ahead of the mechanical voice. It was a hit and miss, but his gut clenched the second he got the gist of it.