by Laken Cane
He didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t twitch.
“You’ve fucked with the wrong monster, assassin. Don’t push me, or you’ll end up blind as well as scarred.”
She left him there, his chest barely moving as, perhaps, he took stock of his body parts, happy to find them all intact.
She walked toward the watching Jack. “Now,” she said, “let’s get our ghoul. The assassin will behave.”
Jack froze in mid-nod and his eye widened with horror a millisecond before the assassin pressed himself against her back, brought his blade around, and with a swift brutality she should have been ready for, sliced her throat.
Then he was gone.
Chapter Fourteen
He was good. He’d somehow hidden one of his blades—and she couldn’t think of how, or where.
Yeah, he was good.
She rolled on the ground, her fingers to her cut throat, gurgling on her blood. Waiting, choking on the pain.
Jack didn’t even try to go after the assassin. He knelt beside her, his face pale. “Rune!”
She closed her eyes and felt him pushing his hands against her throat, trying to staunch the flow of blood. Or maybe he just needed to do something to help.
He knew she’d heal. She had healed from worse than a cut throat. But it was a son of a bitch to witness.
Fucking assassin hadn’t believed she’d keep her end of the deal. His desperation made him want to believe, for a while, but he’d known better. He’d known he’d die, with no hidden Gunnar to save him.
Or worse, that she’d restrain him and haul him into a prison cell to suffer for the rest of his miserable days.
He’d try to think of something else that would force her hand. And the next time, he might succeed. She had to bite him, because that was the only sure way to kill him.
But God, she didn’t want to bite him.
Finally, she healed enough to let Jack help her to her feet. “Gunnar is going to die before I can fucking dig him out,” she said, her hands to her knitting flesh.
Technically, Gunnar was already dead. He’d have to be beheaded, his heart ripped out and destroyed, and his remains burned to actually end him.
But that would be a quick death, not a lingering one that would give him days to slowly fade away.
So what the fuck had the assassin done to him?
“What can I do?” Jack asked.
“Nothing unless you have a shovel hidden somewhere on your hot body.”
He grinned, his face regaining some of its color. “No, but I may start carrying one.”
She fell to her knees on the ground beneath the tree, shot out her claws, the only tools she had, and started digging.
Jack stood at her back, his gun out, watching for threats.
“Gunnar,” she called, once.
She got no answer.
By the time she struck the hard top of what appeared to be a metal box, her fingers were aching and her claws were covered with dirt.
The box was too short and too thin to hold a grown man, even one as skinny as Gunner. At least that’s what she told herself.
The top of the box wasn’t difficult to lift—it wasn’t secured by padlocks. Instead, it was wrapped with thin twists of silver rope.
Which wouldn’t hold the ghoul, would it? He wasn’t overly sensitive to silver.
She frowned, urgency making her pant as she tossed the chains away and lifted the lid. The hinges barely made a sound.
For a second she was too stunned, too sick, to move.
“Gunnar,” she whispered. “God.”
At least she thought it was Gunnar.
The assassin had crammed the ghoul into the box, breaking his brittle bones to get him to fit.
Gunnar’s eyes were open.
Staring and rubbery as they bulged from dried, shrunken sockets. His skin was gray and so dry she was afraid it would blow away if she exhaled.
The hours he’d spent trapped in that tiny box inside the ground, unable to move, to hope…
But maybe he’d hoped a little. Hoped that she’d come.
He wore a hideous smile, but only because his lips had retracted away from his teeth.
Strands of his fuzzy black hair had been caught beneath the blade driven nearly entirely through his forehead. There was another blade through his heart.
One blade was obsidian, one silver.
Whether the different blades had been chosen by accident or design, she might never know.
A white, grainy substance covered him, lying in scattered piles upon his clothes, his skin, and in his hair. She caught glimpses of it in his mouth, lying upon his dry, swollen tongue.
Salt.
She closed her eyes. Certain ghouls were sensitive to salt. Salt them, and it was like salting a slug. But that was only true, she’d heard, for the ancient ghouls.
Which meant Gunnar had to have been nearing at least eight hundred years on earth. Older than eight hundred years and ended by a fucking assassin who’d been sent to take her out.
“Gunnar,” she cried.
“Your Highness,” he croaked.
She screamed and fell back, scrambling with the thoughtless fear of a child from the hole she’d dug.
He couldn’t move. His body stayed in its horrifyingly broken position, his legs folded under him, his arms forced, somehow, behind his back.
“Help,” he said. His voice was as dusty and light as a bird’s discarded, long-forgotten feather.
“Oh fuck me,” she whispered, and slid back into the hole.
And then, once there, she had no idea what to do. One tug would pull him apart. She sat back on her heels and wiped her hands on her clothes. “What can I do, Gunnar?”
If he could have moved his eyes, he would have averted his gaze at that question. She understood what she had to do, and he knew it.
“Shit,” she murmured, and lifted her wrist to her mouth.
“Wait,” Jack said. “You can’t spare it. I’ll take this one.”
She could have cried. He was right. “Jack. You’re sure?”
He offered her a hand. “Come out of there and let me give Gunnar some blood. We all want to do our part.”
When she was out, he adjusted his eye patch and peered down at Gunnar. “Son of a bitch,” he murmured. “Poor little guy.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Feed him, Jack.”
“How are your claws?”
She looked at her bloody, scraped fingers. “Good.”
She would have dug through rock to get to Gunnar.
“Let’s haul him out of there,” Jack said.
They pulled him out, box and all. Once he’d fed, they’d get him out of the deplorable coffin. Rune was still afraid to touch him.
Jack held out his wrist, and she flinched as she shot her claws back out through her throbbing fingers. She cut his wrist, then watched anxiously as he pushed the bleeding wound against Gunnar’s teeth.
The ghoul didn’t move or drink or blink his staring rubber-ball eyes.
“Come on, Gunnar,” Rune said. “Come back to us.”
“Might be too late,” Jack said.
“No. He spoke. He’s aware. Give him a minute.”
Jack crouched patiently, his wrist to the ghoul’s mouth. He didn’t appear overly shocked at Gunnar’s condition. They saw it all.
Just as Gunnar gave a small twitch and the first stirrings of relief came alive inside her, she heard a shout and turned to see the berserker, his long hair streaming over his shoulders, jogging toward her.
“What now?” She stood up, waiting for him to reach her.
Jack stayed quiet and still, his wrist to Gunnar’s mouth. His stare was hard, though, and he’d already slid his free hand down to grasp his gun.
Then Strad stood beside her, his gaze going, for a brief second, to Gunnar.
“Is it Owen?” Rune asked.
“No. He’s good. But one of the memory wiped shifters is remembering,” Strad told her. “And he wants t
o talk to you before he dies.”
Chapter Fifteen
She blew out a hard breath, pressing her fist against her abdomen, as though she might push away the sudden churning inside. “Which one? And why the fuck is he dying?”
He shook his head. “Elizabeth said his memories are making him self-destruct. That’s all I know.”
“Oh hell, Strad.”
“Yeah.” He pointed his chin at Gunnar. “He’s watching you.”
She turned to look at the ghoul, then fell to her knees beside his broken body when she saw him staring at her with a tortured desperation. “What can I do for you, baby?”
Jack had pulled his wrist away and was sitting back on his heels, watching, ready to lend more blood if it was needed.
“Unbend me,” Gunnar said, his voice still rusty, still weak, but stronger than it had been. “So the blood can reach my constricted parts.”
Shit.
She glanced at Jack. “Help me.”
But when she and Jack tried to pull one of Gunnar’s legs from beneath him, his hoarse, agonized screams echoed through Wormwood.
She let go of his leg and closed her eyes against his pain. “God, Gunnar.”
Jack reached across Gunnar’s contorted body and squeezed her hand. “Back away, Rune. I’ve got this.”
He stood, and before she could understand what he was about to do and make him fucking stop, he leaned over and plucked Gunnar from the box.
The berserker helped Jack, forcing the frozen, broken limbs straight while Jack held the tormented ghoul.
She flinched at the sounds of his cracking bones—her men had to re-break bones that had attempted to knit in their unnatural positions. Gunnar’s face was turned toward her, and he watched her with a weary but fierce anguish in his eyes even as he shrieked.
That image would be imprinted upon her mind for a long, long time to come. The sounds of his screams and snapping bones would join the other voices and horrors in her nightmares.
The raw, brutal cruelty of the assassin would stay with her as well as she sought him out. As she gave him the bite that would end him.
She didn’t always get the enemy.
She’d get that one.
Except…if she left him alive with his addiction, there could be no better punishment. Eventually, he’d have to kill himself.
Either way, the assassin would suffer.
Gunnar’s shrieks became moans, and his gaze never once left her face. She stood at his side, unwilling to turn away from his pain. She owed him that.
She took his hand and caressed his long, stiff fingers, silently begging Strad and Jack to hurry.
After an eternity, her men eased Gunnar to the ground. The berserker grabbed the metal box, flinging it away with a rage-filled roar.
“Water,” Gunnar said, his eyes averted, as though his requirements were shameful.
“Water?” Rune asked.
“To wash away the salt,” he whispered. “It continues to weaken me. I cannot leave Wormwood until it is gone.”
Rune nodded. “There’s a stream. One of you carry him. Follow me.” The memory-wiped shifter would have to wait until she took care of Gunnar.
Jack picked up the ghoul, and Rune trotted ahead of them, leading the way to the stream. The berserker followed behind, a menacing guard. If the assassin were stupid enough to attack, Strad would be ready.
She turned to Jack once they reached the stream, her hand on Gunnar’s arm, squeezing gently. “Lower him in, Jack. Careful that you don’t—”
“Your Horror, please,” Gunnar said politely. “Move.”
Strad stepped up behind her as she watched. He cleared his throat. “Rune.”
She glanced at him, then looked back at Gunnar and Jack. “Yeah?”
“I’m going to put my arms around you.”
She continued to stare at Gunnar and Jack as the ghoul got his water, but for an instant, she didn’t see them. Her mind was frozen on Strad’s words. “I won’t attack you if you touch me, Berserker.”
She didn’t want to change. She didn’t want the way her crew treated her to change. But the fucking church had guaranteed both those things to happen.
It was for that reason that she stiffened when Strad moved behind her and wrapped his big arms around her, pulling her back against his chest.
Anger streaked through her. Anger, hurt, grief.
COS had destroyed part of her. Had destroyed part of Levi.
But the berserker was warm and he was safe. He was.
He had to be.
Gunnar cried out again, full of relief and joy as the spiteful salt was washed away. He disappeared, and when he resurfaced he spat out a mouthful of water.
He splashed and kicked randomly and weakly, like a baby might, but his movements became stronger as he continued to heal.
He was old, and he was strong.
The ghoul would be okay.
She knelt at the water’s edge. “I have to go, baby.”
For an instant she saw fear spark in his dark eyes, but then he nodded. “I will be more careful, Your Liberatorness.”
She hesitated. “How did he do it, Gunnar? How did the assassin capture you?”
He lowered his gaze. “He is sly. He is wily.”
And Gunnar, for all his age and knowledge, wore innocence like a cloak.
“If it’s any consolation, he’s suffering greatly,” she told the ghoul. “He will suffer until he’s dead.”
He frowned, ducked his head beneath the water, then resurfaced. “But that is all he knows. He is a master of suffering.”
She smiled. “Not this kind. He’s addicted to my bite.”
“I see. That is a new level of suffering, even for that one.”
She nodded and stood. “I’ll be back to check on you.”
“I’ll stay in the water until I have healed.” He did not look at Jack, instead staring at the sky as he spoke to him. “I am grateful for your blood.”
Jack grinned. “You’re welcome.”
She turned to go, the two men at her side, but Gunnar’s voice, a little too squeaky, stopped her.
“I may leave Wormwood, Your Highness. I may travel to a less populated graveyard.”
Her heart dropped to the ground. “No, Gunnar.”
He looked away. “I may.”
Strad took her arm. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”
“I’ll bring you candy,” she called. “Don’t go anywhere yet. I’ll be back with chocolate.”
And if her need to keep him close was selfish, that was just the way it was.
Once they were outside Wormwood, Strad stood at his car door making a phone call, and Jack walked with her to her car.
They stared into the darkening sky, both of them lost in their thoughts. Then, “Let’s go get you some coffee,” Jack said.
“Yes. I need coffee. You coming to the Annex?”
“I’ll follow you there.”
“Rune,” Strad called, as she started to climb into her car. “Ellis will have dinner and coffee waiting for you at the Annex.”
“You’re not coming?”
He shook his head. “I’ve been called to sort out a situation in Willowburg.”
“Take Lex for backup,” she told him.
And with Jack following behind her, she drove to the Annex.
She had a feeling the night was going to be as crazy as the day had been.
Chapter Sixteen
“I’ll be back to eat,” she told Ellie, and snatched the coffee he held out for her as she sailed by him on her way to see Elizabeth. “Thanks, baby.”
Elizabeth was waiting for her, pacing the floor. “Good, you’re here. He won’t talk to anyone else.”
She strode down the hall, her heels clacking with a nervous speed that made Rune frown. Elizabeth was not often agitated—and even when she was, she hid it well.
“Strad said the shifter is dying,” she said.
“I believe he is,” Elizabeth offered, not slowing her
brisk pace. “The other shifters are unchanged. They haven’t remembered anything, though.”
“How could the act of remembering kill him?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t know. Here we are. Let’s see what we can get out of him before he is unable to speak.”
Rune touched her arm before she went into the room. “Do you have any news about Fie?”
But Elizabeth wasn’t ready to talk about the child. “No.” She put her hand to the pad on the wall and the door slid open noiselessly.
“And Owen?”
Elizabeth’s smile was slight and tired. “Owen will be fine.”
The shifter was alone in the room—a large room that had been set up to resemble a studio apartment, complete with a kitchenette and a bathroom.
He sat on the sofa, staring at a mural of a forest that took up one entire wall. It was very well done. She could almost believe the picture was a beautiful view outside a window. Almost.
“Do you know his name?” she asked Elizabeth.
“Edward,” he said, causing both Rune and Elizabeth to jump in surprise. “My name is Edward. Edward…” He frowned, then turned to face them. “Edward…” He stood and put his fingers to his temples. “Edward…”
“Shhh,” Elizabeth said. “It isn’t important, Edward.”
But Rune knew it was very important. Important to the shifter. He needed to know his last name. “Hi, Edward. Do you remember me?”
“Of course,” he said. He’d lost weight. His face was hollow and sharp, his eyes too large. His jumpsuit was clean, but hung on his skeletal frame. “I have to talk to you.”
She nodded. “I’m listening.”
“They want the girl.”
“You told me that when I brought you here.”
He frowned. “I did? Yes. Yes, I remember. I did.” He swiped at his nose, which had begun to bleed.
Rune shot a look at Elizabeth.
“Are you okay to talk, Edward?” Elizabeth asked him.
He walked to Rune and stood too close to her, his stare intent. “You’re her,” he said.
“I’m the girl they want?”
His smile was a little sad. “No. We hid the girl they want. You have to help her.”
“I will, but I have to know where she is.”
