by Laken Cane
She frowned and opened her car door. “Stay away from me, Cruikshank.”
“I told you. I can’t do that.”
“Why not? Wanting to hurt me is not a good enough reason to risk your life.” She narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out what his motives were. Asking him wouldn’t get her answers.
“I warned you about Owen,” he said, the wet his dry lips. “I did that.”
“So?”
“I’d think you’d pay me back for the information.”
“You want fucking money?”
“No. No, I don’t want fucking money.”
“Do you want to die? Because that’s something I can do for you.”
“Maybe,” he said, his eyes glittering. “Maybe that’s exactly what I want.”
She dropped her fangs, suddenly and unreasonably hungry. She left the car door open and strode toward him.
“I’ve gotten addicted to your blood,” he said.
She almost tripped. “What did you say?”
“I’m addicted.” The second time his words were whispered, but no less real. “I need you to…” He shook his head and motioned helplessly. “Fix me. I need my fix.”
“That’s not possible.” She’d never fed him, and she’d never bitten him.
“I’m getting more and more desperate. More and more sick. It wasn’t bad at first, maybe because I’d gotten such a tiny amount. But it grew. Every day.”
“What the fuck are you addicted to?” she asked him. “It can’t be me.”
His attempt at a smile was pathetic. “I’m sorry. I’m too tired to keep chasing you, too tired to keep trying to think of ways to make you feed my addiction.”
She clenched her fists. “I’m not feeding you, dude, and the only way I’m going to bite you is if I eat you after. Believe me. You wouldn’t like that.”
“I was there when Jeremy was cutting you. I was there.” He rolled his hand into a fist and hit the hood of her car. “Your blood splashed into my eye.”
He listened to her shocked silence for a moment, then gave a terrible giggle. “A tiny little drop. Into my eye! What are the chances?” Quickly, he sobered. “I was the one recording that shit, Rune.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry.”
But then he glanced at something behind her, and his face paled further. “The end,” he muttered.
She shot out her claws and turned in a crouching whirl. Owen stood a few feet away, a blade in his hand. “I knew you’d show up sooner or later,” he said to Cruikshank.
Cruikshank said nothing.
“Owen,” Rune said, withdrawing her claws. “I’ve got this.”
He blanked his face, but a cold darkness slid through his eyes.
“Owen,” she repeated, her voice sharp. She waited until finally, he looked at her. “I said I’ve fucking got this.”
“Do you?” Owen put his stare back on Cruikshank, as though looking away might somehow release the reporter and he’d lose him once again. “Are you going to kill him?”
“I…” She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Cruikshank. Jeremy. Cutting, watching…
Damn him. Damn him.
“Fuck,” Sam whispered.
“Then you don’t have this,” Owen said, and he went after Sam Cruikshank.
Chapter Twenty-One
Gunnar was right. She was becoming soft.
And right then, as she watched one of her men handling something she should have handled, she hated her softness.
She didn’t want it.
But Owen wouldn’t have listened to her, no matter what she wanted. Owen was gone, lost in his killing zone, and she would have to fight him to have a chance at bringing him back.
He paid no mind to the injury she’d given him. With her crew, injuries were often pushed aside. Ignored. They had to be.
“Owen,” she said, once, barely aware she’d opened her mouth.
Owen tossed Cruikshank the blade, then pulled his gun from its holster and threw that to him as well. “Do your best, bitch,” he said. “You shouldn’t have fucked her up.”
He stalked Cruikshank, his face dark, his hair flopping over his slender shoulders but all she could really see was an image of herself tied to the bed and her blood flying into Cruikshank’s face as Jeremy sliced her up.
She put the back of her hand to her mouth when she unintentionally released a sound a little too close to a sob, then shoved her other hand against her stake wound. The pain in her chest sharpened in response to the pain in her mind.
Sam’s bullets flew wild and pinged off Wormwood’s gates, and finally he threw the gun at Owen’s grimly smiling face and held up his hands. He seemed to have forgotten he still held a blade, but it didn’t matter. It was not a fair fight. Cruikshank was not a fighter.
He, as Jeremy had been, was better suited to hurting the restrained and helpless. Or watching as they were hurt.
And Owen was a stone cold killer.
He pursued the reporter, his hands empty of weapons, his face blank, throwing hits that wouldn’t disable Sam, but would prolong the agony of his death.
But Cruikshank wasn’t Owen’s responsibility. He was hers.
She shuddered and dropped her fangs, reaching deeply for her monster and shaking off the emotions and memories of a different time.
She refused to cower and cry while one of her men destroyed her enemy. She ran at Owen and even though he had to have caught a glimpse of her coming, he had no time to react.
She shoved him—not nearly as hard as she could have but he hit the fence anyway and slid to the ground. “Sorry baby,” she said, her voice growly and rough. “But I told you I’ve got this.”
Her monster smiled.
Cruikshank backed away, his blade still firmly in his grip, the look in his eyes changing from terror to hope. He thought she was going to save him.
“Why?” she asked him. “Why wouldn’t I kill you?”
“Because I have your blood inside me,” he said, gently. “Because we are linked by my brother. By your need.”
“Hmmm,” she said. She walked to stand before him, almost curious. “Your reasoning is skewed.”
“But I’m right.” He glanced behind her to where Owen stood waiting, and he looked a little less sure. “He’s the one you need to kill. He’s the one with secrets he doesn’t want you to discover.” He offered her his blade, as though she had no other way to kill Owen. “Go on.”
She laughed, breathing a sigh of relief that her monster hadn’t melted into a puddle of gooey softness. She was still Rune. She was still a warrior. She did not shrink from doing what needed to be done.
“I can end your suffering,” she told him, “but I can’t feed you to do it.”
With Cruikshank would go the last of that part of her that needed someone to make her pay for who—and what—she was.
She would always, as Lex had said, find the silence through violence and sex. But she was finished beating herself up.
“Feed me,” he whispered, “and I’ll tell you what else I discovered about Owen.”
She shook her head. “You know I won’t.”
He dropped his blade and spread his arms. “Kill me then, because if you don’t, I’ll be one more desperate man causing you no end of pain. Also,” he went on, “it’s fucking miserable. You’re worse than a zombie, Rune.”
He didn’t want to live with his addiction, and she couldn’t allow him to anyway. He was right—he’d cause her constant pain to get what he needed. He knew he could do that by hurting the ones she protected.
She scooped the blade from the ground and thrust it into his heart, unwilling, for some reason, to impale him with her claws. Maybe it was just too personal.
His blood seeped onto the thirsty ground and she watched it go, shocked that the moment was a little sad.
The end of Sam Cruikshank.
The end of anything that had remained of Jeremy Cross.
She felt Owen beside her. They stared at each other for a long moment, somethin
g unfamiliar passing between them. Something new.
And she had no idea what it was.
He leaned over to pull his blade free, wiped it on Cruikshank’s shirt, then slid it into his belt. “I’ll take care of the body.”
“We’re okay,” she said.
“Yeah, we are.”
Still, she didn’t move. “Are you the good guy or the bad guy?” So ridiculously simplistic, so crucial.
He said nothing for a long moment, his smile fading. He shuttered his eyes and blanked his face, as though she might see something he wasn’t willing to share. Finally he blew out a hard breath. “That, Rune Alexander, depends on who you ask.”
“I’m asking you.”
He looked away. “I don’t know anymore. And that’s the fucking truth.”
No answers. More questions.
And she hadn’t really expected anything else.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“I’m going after Johnson,” she told Bill Rice. “I’ll need to take a couple of the crew with me. If Eugene asks—”
“Rune, Eugene Parish wants you on his side. He won’t fire you or try to kill you if you want to go hunt COS.”
“What about Iris? I have a feeling she runs things here as much as Eugene does.”
He inclined his head. “You’re probably right, but Eugene still controls Iris. She’ll do as he commands.”
She nodded slowly. “Good to know. But it’s not COS I’m hunting. I need to find that fucking lab. I need to find the Other teens Johnson is taking.” She shook her head, almost afraid to voice the question. “What do you suppose they’re doing to those kids?”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed his temples, and she noticed the gray growing there had spread. The lines radiating from the corners of his eyes were deeper, as well. He was looking old. “Nothing good, Rune. Nothing good.”
“Yeah.”
“Who do you need to take with you? I suggest Owen, because he’s not cleared to work yet, and one of the big guys. We can manage for a day.” His attempt at a smile failed.
She frowned. “What’s wrong with you, Bill?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it without saying anything. He stared down at his desk, tracing invisible patterns on the wood. “Do you ever wonder which side you’re really on?”
“Side?”
“Good or evil. Wrong or right. You know.”
She laughed. “Yeah, Bill. I’ve wondered. I spent my life trying to beat the evil out of myself. I finally figured out that we’re all good, and we’re all evil. Some of us tend to lean closer to one than we do the other.”
He nodded and shot her a wry smile. “I suppose. Go to work, Rune. Be careful chasing the evil.” He hesitated, then went on, his words almost tumbling over each other. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” She stood. “You be careful, too. The fucking assassin is going to try everything to get to me. Who knows who he’ll grab next.”
He snorted, looking a little closer to his normal self. “I don’t think I have to worry.”
She left his office feeling better, though she wasn’t sure why. It helped knowing the Annex—Eugene Parish—wasn’t going to fight her every move.
But something was going on with Bill Rice. If he decided to talk to her, she’d listen. That was all she could do.
He was, in a strange sort of way, her friend.
Elizabeth had wanted to call Reverence and question law enforcement about Johnson, but Rune didn’t trust them. She didn’t want them giving Johnson a heads up.
She didn’t want to give them a heads up.
She called Jack. “I’m off to Kentucky.”
“I’m in my office. Where are you?”
“Parking lot.”
“I’ll be right out.”
Jack swore losing his eye hadn’t affected his ability to fight.
It hadn’t.
Much.
She called Strad while she waited for Jack. “Jack is going with me to Kentucky. I want you to stay here and lead the crew while—”
“I’m going with you.”
She sighed and hung up after telling him to meet her in the parking lot. She was going to have to do something about the fucking berserker and his…berserkerness.
That thought made her miss Gunnar.
She ignored Bill’s suggestion that she take Owen, but as she and Jack piled into Strad’s car, the cowboy jogged from the building, one hand held to his stab wound.
“Shit,” she said. “Hang on, Strad.”
Owen jumped into the back seat with Jack. “I’m no good here. Mind if I tag along?”
She shrugged. “I guess not.”
She spent almost the entire drive to Kentucky with her cell glued to ear, explaining to the rest of her crew why she hadn’t asked them to go with her.
“Some of you need to stay here and protect River County,” she’d said. “We’ll be back before morning.”
And if she was owed anything at all by the fates for having done any tiny bit of good, she’d have Johnson—dead or alive—in the trunk on the way back out of the coal country of Eastern Kentucky.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epik was a fucking liar.
The only person living on Pine Road in a big yellow house was an old lady who peered at them through faded blue eyes and waved a shotgun around with practiced efficiency.
And she claimed to know nothing of a doctor, a man named Johnson, or anything at all suspicious from any of her neighbors.
Rune and Strad returned to the car, waiting for Jack and Owen to come around from the back of the house. None of them wanted to give up.
“He wanted to get you out of town, maybe.” Jack pushed at his eye patch and glared at nothing.
“I knew he couldn’t be trusted,” she muttered. “He’s got some major problems.”
“Why this place, though?” Strad crossed his arms and frowned. “There’s something here.”
“You think so?” She was doubtful, but hopeful.
“The kid lied,” Owen said. “He might have wanted to send you into a trap, or he might have lied to get you out of River County. Doesn’t appear to be a trap, so…”
“Dammit.” She yanked her cell from her pocket and punched in Ellie’s number.
“Rune? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, baby. Everything calm there?”
“Yes, just the normal calls.”
“Johnson isn’t here. I want you warn the rest of the crew to be cautious while we’re gone.”
“I’ll let them know.”
“Thanks.” She hung up and shoved her cell back into her pocket with a little more force than necessary. She wanted Johnson. She wanted the lab.
“Rune,” Jack murmured.
She recognized his hushed tone. “Where?”
“Left window, second floor.”
She glanced up, casually, while pretending to push her hair out of her eyes. She saw it. A girl, her face pressed to the glass, her mouth opening and closing with a strange, desperate motion.
Help, help, help.
The poor girl was a terrible, frightening sight, but something in Rune’s chest eased.
Epik hadn’t lied.
The fucking grandma had.
“Plan?” Strad asked.
“Let’s go kick in some fucking doors and get that girl out.”
“I’ll watch the front,” Owen volunteered.
“Go,” she said, and led the others to the back. “Strad, get the door.”
He didn’t bother checking to see if it was locked. Usually doors shattered with one kick from the berserker, but this one resisted.
“It’s steel or some shit,” Jack said. “You won’t kick that motherfucker in.”
After Strad’s third kick she motioned him out of the way. There was no time. She took a deep breath and kicked the door right under the knob.
The door flew inward like a train had slammed into a car and the crew streamed through the doorway
.
The house wasn’t a home—it appeared to be a warehouse. Boxes lined the walls, stacks upon stacks of boxes, lining the walls and piled to the ceilings. In every room they came to.
“Strad, take this floor. Jack, upstairs with me.”
The house was dark and quiet, and there was no sign of the sinister old lady. No sounds from the frantic girl.
But they were there. Somewhere.
A thud, then another, sounded from the top part of the house, and Rune left Jack behind as she streaked up the stairs.
There was nothing there.
She kicked doors open and flew through large rooms with barred windows and hideous, peeling wallpaper. She hesitated only once as she stood over beds so out of place in the old house it took her a second to process them.
They were made of steel and cement and lined with silver, heavy poles at the four corners. Silver restraints were attached to the poles.
The mattresses, which were blocks of cement, were covered with stains. The reds of fresh blood, blacks of old blood, and the yellows of urine. The scent of vomit clogged her nostrils, and she was hit by a feeling of despair so sharp it took her breath.
The spirits of past occupants of those horrific beds were screaming.
Help, help, help.
Over and over.
But the girl they’d seen in the window wasn’t a ghost. Not yet.
A hoarse scream sounded suddenly, so drawn out and full of agony that it held Rune frozen in its tormented grip until finally, it faded.
Jack spied her as he started to run by the room in which she stood. He skidded to a halt. “That came from the basement.”
Of course it was in the basement. Whatever it was, whatever terrible, painful acts had been committed, the results would be found in the basement.
Basements were fucked up that way.
She and Jack hurried back to the first floor, and it took them a few precious moments to find the basement door.
Rune leaped down the steps. She wasn’t taking her time, but it was as though her feet were mired in quicksand.
The screams didn’t come again, but there was a reason for that.
The girl was dead.
She’d been granted a quick death, but what had come before was written all over her body. There had been nothing quick about that.
