Rune Awakening

by Genevra Black

  Edie didn’t think he was scared of her—the way he looked at her told her that much—but he looked afraid of something. She, too, failed to school her features. She was sure she looked as surprised as she sounded. “We— You have?”

  Satara shifted and grabbed Edie’s wrist tightly, keeping her from going forward. “You have?” she echoed. “Who? Who has?”

  The bouncer moved to unhitch the velvet rope denying them access. “Just go in. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Edie.” Satara came close, speaking right into her ear. “Have you spoken to anyone in the Gloaming?”

  “No,” she whispered back, “never. I don’t think?”

  “They knew you’d come. We need to leave.”

  “But Cal—”

  “If he’s here, they only brought him here to lure you out.”

  Edie clenched her jaw so hard she thought her teeth might shatter. The bouncer was looking at her tensely, impatiently. “On second thought,” she murmured, averting her eyes, “it’s getting late, so we should go—”

  “I said go in.” In one smooth movement, the revenant reached forward and clamped an impossibly strong hand around her upper arm, yanking her toward the door.

  The sound of distant screeching tires and blaring horns barely registered in her ears as blood roared through them. Whoever was waiting for her past those doors, she had a feeling they had sent those wraiths after her; they had ordered Scarlet to take Cal and do god-knew-what to him. Satara was right: whoever had “invited” her to The Ash Wyrm Club wanted to trap her, or worse.

  And even before the wraiths and Cal, she had a feeling they had meddled in her life before. Dad….

  Could it be the same people who had killed her father?

  Edie tried to pull her arm away from the bouncer, but he only held tighter, cutting off her circulation. She could already feel herself bruising. “Let me go!”

  Somewhere nearby, maybe a couple blocks over, someone was laying on a car horn.

  “Stop it!” Satara ducked under one of the adjacent rope barriers, flanking the revenant and grabbing his shoulder. When Edie looked, she saw fear shining in the shieldmaiden’s eyes.

  The hand on his shoulder didn’t do much to impede the bouncer, but he was distracted enough that he loosened his grip on Edie and turned to look at Satara. When he did, the shieldmaiden was waiting with a punch lined up.

  A crack resounded, then a muffled grunt, and Edie was finally free. She tumbled to the ground.

  Mercy shrieked and went to her side. “Edie! Are you okay?” she gasped, trying to help her up and losing her wool coat in the process.

  The revenant roared wordlessly at Satara. The commotion was already starting to draw attention. People passing on the street slowed, and some stopped; some patrons from inside the club had apparently seen them through the tinted windows and were now starting to creep out the doors. Blearily, Edie managed to sit, glancing around at them. There were a couple human-looking people who she assumed must be vampires or witches or something, an ethereally beautiful creature with pale hair and a tail, and a diminutive hooded figure.

  She looked to Mercy. “I’m all right. Go.” Grabbing one of the silver posts connecting the rope barriers, Edie managed to pull herself up.

  “I’m not leaving you,” Mercy insisted, her voice desperate.

  Behind them, Satara blocked a swing from the revenant with a gasp, braids swaying, before shouting, “Get back to the subway!”

  Edie mouthed, What? Did Satara really think they’d just leave her there? But there was no time to question her commands, especially not when a super-strong zombie was moments away from tearing her arms out of their sockets. Instead, she grabbed Mercy’s wrist, leaving the wool coat behind, and began to run across the street.

  But Mercy was tugging against her hold, gasping. “Edie!”

  Why was she resisting? They had to get—

  The screeching of brakes finally managed to penetrate her panicked thoughts, and Edie stopped dead in her tracks, frozen to the spot as a pair of headlights sped toward her at top speed. The car was so close that she could practically feel the heat coming off the engine; there was no way she was going to avoid it, even if she started running now. She was going to die, and this time not to some otherworldly monster, but because she hadn’t looked both freaking ways.

  She released Mercy’s wrist and held out both her hands, as if that could stop the momentum of a two-ton vehicle.

  At the last second, with a great roar from the engine; the car turned sharply and avoided her. It skidded to a halt near the opposite curb, almost tipping, then it lurched and the metal frame protested loudly as the left tires hit the pavement again.

  With a groan, the car settled, the headlights flickering for a moment before coming back in full force.

  Edie still couldn’t move. She felt her knees growing weaker as the onlookers, as well as Satara and the revenant, turned their attention to the near-accident. Numb, she watched as Mercy ran over to the driver’s side door of the car, Satara following close behind—fortunately with both her arms still intact. The bouncer was nowhere to be seen, but the swinging glass doors of the club indicated he’d stormed inside.

  After a moment, Edie slowly let herself go. She gave in to her shrieking blood and weak body and slowly sank down, sitting heavily on the pavement. Couldn’t she go a day without almost dying? At this rate, she was going to have a heart attack at thirty-five—if she wasn’t murdered before then.

  Mercy’s voice reached her, though Edie was turned away from the scene, chin tucked up against her chest: “Hey— Edie! Edie, there’s no one….”

  “What?” She turned her head.

  “There’s no one driving the car,” her friend replied helplessly.

  “Edie,” Satara said, urgency mounting in her voice.

  Brows furrowed, Edie turned to take another look at the car. It had just looked like any white convertible when it had been careening down the street at vehicular-manslaughter speeds. But now she recognized the make of the car: a ’63 Eldo.

  No … she didn’t just recognize the make. She knew that car.

  A thrill of genuine joy shot through her body, and she was able to harness the feeling and pull herself to her feet.

  Moving Mercy to the side, Edie laid her hands on the driver’s side door to peer inside for herself. She was right; there was no one. The engine purred when Edie touched the car, and after a moment, it beeped once and shone its brights.

  She gripped the door for dear life and breathed, “Ghost.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  When Cal woke, it was like waking from a vivid dream. He could feel the loss of a thousand memories of a past life; mere seconds after he became lucid, they flew completely out of reach. It almost seemed like a life that had belonged to someone else. He couldn’t recall any details, he just knew there had been something … and there wasn’t anymore.

  Freezing pavement bit into his back through his shirt, and a light rain fell on the torn planes of his face. He could smell exhaust and ozone and the aftertaste of something stale on his tongue.

  What had he done...? Another night of gambling gone wrong? Had he gotten shitfaced and mouthed off to someone?

  He lay there, still, for a long time. His head ached like someone had driven a spike through it, and trying to open his eyes only made it worse. Lying there so still, just listening, things began to come back to him. The city noise and the smell were so different here. Dread crept up his spine as he remembered he wasn’t in Vegas anymore.

  Anster. Holloway. He was on the East Coast. The kid had sent him to look after some broad in a nightclub, and....

  He had no idea. In place of a memory, there was just a gaping blackness. There was nothing. The feeling made his skin crawl, and he forced his eyes open, staring up at the hazy night sky for a while. Nothing, no memory. He couldn’t even remember if he’d had something to drink, or where the girl he was supposed to be watching had gone.
How was that possible?

  With a groan, he eased into a sitting position, dragging himself backward a bit so he could rest against the nearby brick wall and take in his surroundings. He was in some sort of shipping area, in an alley—two thoroughfares on either side of a wide brick building, leading to an open space filled with boxes, a couple of dumpsters, and him. Cal craned his neck and looked upward and around, hoping he’d spot a street sign.

  Nothing.

  He tried to stand, but found he felt ... weak. He was shaking like a naked tree and an empty, miserable feeling gnawed in his chest, like something was eating away at his heart. He couldn’t remember anything that had happened, but somehow, he knew it had been humiliating—had to have been. Someone had done something to him, then dumped him back here like a piece of garbage.

  Cal didn’t remember his father—he didn’t remember being raised, let alone alive—but dammit, he was a man. Men weren’t supposed to feel so ... vulnerable. Violated. Not men like him, anyway. That wasn’t the way things worked.

  Was it?

  Managing to rise to his feet, he shuffled over to a nearby crate and sat, clutching his head in both hands.

  What had happened to him? Thinking hard at the memory and trying to force it to reveal itself only hurt. And the more he did it, the clearer it became that he wasn’t going to get back what he’d lost.

  But where was— Ghost should have been waiting for him outside the club.

  I swear to Christ, if those fuckers took her....

  Stealing memories was one thing, but no one touched his car. The sheer rage that thundered through his body now was enough to spur him to his feet. He peered hard down one of the alley thoroughfares. He was definitely not in the same place, and he didn’t recognize any of the storefronts across the street. Why the fuck had this place changed so much in the past ten years?

  “Bullshit,” he rasped. Jesus, he felt like he was about to fall over. Sometimes, if he exerted what magic he had too quickly, he felt like this—just completely drained and weak. But he hadn’t been exerting himself ... that he could remember.

  And there was the goddamn fucking problem.

  Cal reached up and touched his face. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost control over his glamour—not enough energy.

  It’s going to be okay. Just hold on, and she’ll be here.

  “What?” The sudden, strange, intrusive thought surprised him enough that he said it out loud. For some reason, he got the distinct feeling Edie was already looking for him. Just stay put, came another thought.

  The wall. The wall he used to block her out of his thoughts had been reduced to rubble somehow, and she could feel him, was sending reassurances down their connection.

  “Oh, fuck that.” He tried to think harder, tried to push back against her and contain the panic escaping him like a horde of cockroaches, all tumbling and running over each other’s backs to get out first. He’d had enough of people getting inside of him to last a lifetime. “Fuck that!” he repeated, his voice raw as he sat heavily on the crate again.

  Somewhere in the distance, he heard the squeal of brakes and a long horn.

  It was no use. He didn’t have any energy left to deal with this shit. Laid bare like this, leftovers in an alley, he let his mind go limp and just closed his eyes, laying his forehead against his knees.

  He wasn’t sure how long he kept his head down. Mostly, he counted the moments by slow breaths, trying to quell the nausea. It could have been minutes or an hour; he barely registered the sound of squealing tires and three car doors shutting hard in quick succession.

  “Cal?” It was her voice, so sweet and soft that it scared him. Didn’t seem like the kid of someone like Richard Holloway had a right to be so gentle.

  “I’m fine.”

  “What happened?” She knelt by him. When she touched his arm, her hand was so cold it burned, but he didn’t say anything—didn’t even move away, even though being touched at all was making his spine tingle with anxiety and anger.

  “Don’t know,” he managed, sitting up straighter but keeping his eyes on the pavement. “Can’t remember.”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” someone asked.

  Other voices? He raised his head and spotted Satara, lingering nearby but keeping a respectable distance. And then, behind her—

  Mercy. “Shit.” He ducked his head, blocking the view of his ruined face with one arm. Eyes wide, he looked to Edie and demanded in a hiss, “Why the hell did you bring her here? My … face isn’t working.”

  “It’s fine,” Edie said, frowning and taking her hand from him. “She knows.”

  Well, shit. Not only had he been captured by someone, but he’d failed his task. With an exasperated exhale, he lowered his arm and turned to glower at Mercy. “Great.”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” Satara repeated, her voice gentler this time.

  Cal strained to figure out where exactly his memory went from fuzzy to completely gone. Slowly, taking his time with each word, he said, “I remember ordering a drink from the bar and then sitting in a booth in the corner. I was watching the stage....”

  Had he finished his first drink? He couldn’t remember. But no way he’d gotten blackout drunk off one glass of Scotch.

  “I don’t know what happened to— I can’t remember.” He gritted his teeth and looked away, like he’d find the answer somewhere on the ground.

  “It’s okay,” Edie said, rising from where she’d been kneeling. “We know.”

  He looked over and down, noticing that she had been on her knees, one knee in a puddle and the other in a pile of glass shards. She either didn’t notice or didn’t care; she just brushed herself off and looked at him seriously.

  He paused. “What?”

  “We know who took you.”

  A wash of anxiety spread through Cal’s upper chest, suddenly filled with fury. “Yeah?” he rasped. “Well, let’s go fucking get them, then.”

  But she shook her head. Why was she shaking her head? Did she think he was going to just sit there and let this ... whatever this feeling was ... happen to him? “We need to go see Astrid and tell her what happened.”

  “Since when are you the fucking voice of reason?”

  “Before anything else, we all need to rest.” She turned away from him.

  Cal reached out, hovering off the crate far enough that he could take her smallish wrist in a firm grip. When she turned, their eyes met. She looked scared and exhausted.

  “Edie. I need to know.”

  She hesitated. “I know. I’ll tell you, but you have to promise me you won’t run off to go break heads.”

  Her plea was frustrating, to say the least. Someone had got inside of his mind and screwed around, and she just expected him to sit back and bide his time? He couldn’t hurt Richard Holloway for the things he had done to him, but he had this mystery asshole—someone living and tangible. Someone with 206 bones, all waiting to be broken.

  With a raw throat, he asked, “Why won’t you let me?” It was like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the part of his brain that kept a barrier between how he felt and what he said. He was furious, embarrassed. He sounded like a toddler trying to parse why the world was so damn unfair.

  Edie turned and stood in front of him in such a way that the other two women were blocked from view; she wiggled her wrist from his hand and looked at him seriously. “Cal, come on.”

  Those were the words of someone asking to get punched in the face. But somehow, it was different, the way she said it. She wasn’t trying to get him to shut up; in this moment, she was acting as that part of his brain, the one that protected him. She was stopping him from saying something he might regret in front of Satara or Mercy. Something weak.

  “Okay,” he mumbled. Fury still slithered through his pectorals and down his arms, rage so vast he couldn’t place it all on one person. There would be plenty of time—later, when no one else was watching—to yell at Edie and demand that j
ustice be served.

  He was sure she didn’t need to be told how he was feeling. He could feel the pain radiating from himself. For a second, as she helped him up and directed him toward the car—thank god Ghost was fine, without a scratch on her—he thought he saw her tearing up.

  Cal slid into the driver’s seat with a thump, and Ghost started up, purring under him without him even turning the key.

  “Thanks, baby,” he said, stroking the wheel. Behind him, he could hear people piling in; after a second, Edie climbed into the passenger seat.

  “We ready?” she asked, peering at him carefully.

  “Yeah.” Cal wasn’t sure how to feel about the concern in her eyes. It was easier to ignore it for now. He gripped the wheel a little tighter, dreading the thought of navigating the city with his head still spinning like it was. For a second, he wondered if anyone else in the car even knew how to drive, and if he would have to ask them.

  But Ghost growled a little louder under him, and with a jerk, she started ahead and pulled out of the alley completely of her own accord. Cal put his hand on the shifter, just resting it there while it worked itself into first gear.

  Maybe pretending he was well enough to drive wasn’t fooling Mercy or Satara—he knew he wasn’t fooling Edie—but it made him feel better, at the very least. Shouldn’t have expected anything less than this; he took good care of Ghost, and she took care of him. She was the only thing he’d had in a long time.

  Until now.

  The realization that Edie cared—and he was still keeping things from her—made him itch.

  The Wounded finally broke the silence with words that burned like hot coals: “And here you stand before me, yet again, with no hellerune.”

  Zaedicus, on his knees, looked into the eyes of the conjured vision and saw nothing but hatred radiating from them. They were red as the flecks winding up the Wounded’s arms, following the avenues of those deep, sunken scars. The high-wight had been alive for many centuries and seen many things; yet when he looked at those scars, he still went cold.