by Laken Cane
“In hell,” she said, remembering the assassin’s words. “The lab is in hell. And how the fuck do we get into hell?”
“Kill people and shit?” Lex suggested.
Jack snorted. “Yeah, but we can’t be waiting that long.” He slammed his blades back into their sheaths.
“I think I know a way,” the berserker said from the back doorway. Then he opened his arms.
It was the first time in her life Rune could ever remember making a sound that resembled anything close to a squeal. She ran, too fast, and leaped at Strad.
He was ready for her—else he’d have been knocked over by the sheer force and speed of her body.
“Damn you, Berserker.” Her whisper was lost as she pressed her lips to his warm throat, but it didn’t matter. He heard her.
He squeezed her, hard, and released a long, tired, contented breath. “Hi, sweetheart.”
She pushed herself out of his arms and cleared her throat, almost afraid to look at her crew. They’d be watching her with grins and smirks, the bastards.
Strad looked like he’d been run over by a truck. Several times. He was a huge, battered, bloody mess. He hadn’t taken time to clean up, and there were no signs that he’d seen a doctor.
She glared at him. “Are you okay?”
He grinned.
She put her hands on her hips. “Where’s Owen?”
“No idea. He was alive when I left him. I checked my phone and heard where you were heading.” He lost his grin. “I wasn’t going to let you walk into this alone, Rune.”
“And you and Owen kicking the shit out of each other. That solve anything?”
He shrugged, but a smile played at the corners of his swollen lips. “I feel better.” Then he studied her, his expression serious. “I did what I needed to do. When you do what you need to do…”
“What, Berserker?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
His smile was rueful. “We’ll see.”
“Men are idiots,” Lex said, then wrapped her arms around Strad’s middle, giving him a hard hug before pulling him further into the yard. It no longer made her cry to touch the berserker. “Now tell us how we get into the lab.”
“Remember,” he said, “When you were in the clinic, and—”
“Of course,” she yelled. “The circle!”
And then they all understood.
“Yes,” Rune said. “That power circle. It will get us where we need to go.”
How any of them knew that, she couldn’t have said. But it was a deep, unquestionable fact.
It was as though when the circle had happened, it had given them that knowledge, and they’d somehow forgotten it.
I know you. How did I forget?
The berserker reached out for Rune’s hand, and then for Lex’s. The other four were quick to join, and there was absolutely no doubt in any of their minds that they were doing the right thing.
And that with more of them in the circle, something big was going to happen. Something always did.
Strad let go of her hand long enough to wipe away a trickle of blood that slid from his ear and down his neck, causing Rune to frown. “Berserker?”
“I’m good.” He smiled, and she thought he seemed much too happy for someone who’d taken a beating.
But he’d be okay. He was the berserker.
“What now?” Jack asked.
“I think that’s up to Lex,” Denim said.
“Not just me,” Lex said. She motioned at Rune. “To you, as well.”
Rune nodded. She wasn’t sure what to do, or what she’d done last time, but she and Lex were the sparks that would start that particular fire.
She started to close her eyes, but right before she did, she saw Owen.
He limped out from the back doorway and leaned weakly against the house. He looked like he’d already been to hell and had somehow managed to find his way back.
He watched them with longing on his broken face, but he made no attempt to join them.
As though he knew he wasn’t one of them.
Not really.
She wouldn’t have recognized him if she hadn’t been so familiar with his hair and his particular way of holding his body.
“Shit,” she murmured, near tears.
The berserker had nearly killed him.
She squeezed Strad’s hand, getting his attention, and he followed her gaze across the yard and to the injured cowboy.
The berserker sighed. The others stiffened, unsure if Strad was going to finish Owen off or ignore him.
He did neither.
“Owen,” he roared. “Are you waiting for one of us to carry you over here?”
Owen straightened, or tried to, then hobbled to them as fast as he could. The twins broke apart to allow him between them, and then, with the last of their crew in his place, the circle was complete.
“Strad.”
He looked down at her, then frowned. “What’s wrong?”
She smiled and shook her head.
He waited.
“I…”
But he squeezed her hand. He knew.
She didn’t have to say the words.
He knew.
And across from her, Owen peered at her from his swollen, battered face, then limped toward her. There was determination in that limp.
Ignoring Strad, he grabbed her upper arms and leaned down to whisper something to her that left her breathless.
And a little horrified.
Then he went back to his place like nothing had happened.
The berserker stared at her, the look in his eyes angry and the tiniest bit exasperated.
“See?” Lex called. “Your fight solved nothing.”
But it had. The berserker had done what needed doing, and there was nothing else to do—because he wasn’t ready to kill Owen.
Not yet.
The rest was up to her. Exactly as it should have been.
Yeah, she’d settled on the berserker.
But something about Owen got to her.
She shivered, and threw him a quick look.
“I know you want me, too. That won’t stop. I won’t fucking let it.”
“Fuck you,” she mouthed.
But he just smiled.
Because Owen, he knew as well.
Chapter Fifty-One
The power hit her as it had before, encompassing her, devouring her. Zings of electricity shot through her body, and unlike before, this time it was complete.
The circle.
Someone cried out.
The energy grew and thrived, created by and from the monster and the demon, then forced itself through every one of them.
It was something incomprehensible and went beyond anything any of them had ever imagined existed.
It was…life.
Magic. Their magic.
Power, raw and real.
The exquisiteness of that power hurt. Hurt, because it was too right, too good. Too much.
Just…too much.
And when she thought she would explode from it, it flung her away from her people. She landed against the fence, hard, but it didn’t hurt her.
She couldn’t have been hurt right then. Not by anything.
At last, she opened her eyes, expecting to be underground. But she wasn’t—she was still in the backyard, against the fence the power had tossed her into.
Her crew lay scattered about the yard. They slowly began picking themselves up, their movements slow. Dazed and befuddled, they walked toward her.
“Wow,” Levi said. Then he began to cry. Loud, ugly sobs.
Denim and Lex grabbed him and the two of them embraced him, holding him as he cleansed himself of the black. The evil.
He washed it away.
Rune could feel it, as surely as Lex felt her when they fought, or when she read one of them.
So that’s what it’s like.
The berserker and Owen were still battered, still bloody, but they stood without wobbling, and she knew they could fight.
While the effects of that power rushed through them, they were beyond the reaches of their human frailty.
“It might not last long,” she told them. “Let’s do this.”
But do what?
Lex pulled away from Levi, who had quieted. “Rune. Look.”
She saw it then. It swirled and danced above the ground on the other side of the yard.
The same green magic that had left Epik’s dead body.
“There you are,” Rune whispered.
“What?” asked the berserker, frowning. “What do you see?”
They still couldn’t see it.
But that was okay. She and Lex would show them the way.
So she led them to the green mass, and Lex followed behind.
“Do exactly as I do,” Rune told them. “Step where I step. Lex will guide you from behind. You won’t lose your way between us.”
She could taste their awe, their fear.
It tasted like icing, and she wanted to turn to them and lick it from their bodies. Could the others see what waited in that hellish passage as they made their way to the lab?
She couldn’t be sure. There was nothing in her ears but the sounds of wind. Sometimes hot, sometimes freezing. It roared like the harshest blizzard, the strongest of tornadoes.
There was nothing to see before her, but in her peripheral vision she kept seeing flickers of images. Once, she saw a mist-covered mountain, on the peak of which sat a black mansion. Lightning flashed in brief, blue streaks, lighting up a midnight sky.
Then to her left, a hot, arid wasteland. The ground was cracked and thirsty, and unfamiliar trees grew in straight lines toward a red sky. She heard the harsh cry of crows and the echoing screams of some distant, tortured soul.
She thought she saw Cree Stark, a wide collar around her neck, chained to a castle wall.
She forced herself to take another step, the temptation to turn and run back to her world nearly overwhelming. But then, right in front of her, Damascus came rushing from the blackness.
“Where is my Nicolas?” she screamed.
And then, confused, “I know you. How did I forget?”
Rune fell to the path, to whatever it was she walked upon, and for one second she lost the will to continue.
There were things she did not want to know. Did not want to see.
But she was grabbed from behind and hauled to her feet. “I’m here,” the berserker murmured.
That was all.
And that was enough.
She wasn’t alone in her world or any other.
Was that, then, her biggest fear?
That she would be alone?
Maybe.
Maybe now that Nicolas was gone she no longer feared the threat of madness as violently as she once had.
Maybe she’d forgotten how to.
Whatever, when the berserker spoke to her, she stiffened her spine and walked on.
Strad had her back. The entire crew had her back.
And later when there was time and she was not afraid of falling off the path into the darkness beyond, then she would allow herself to think of Damascus.
The witch was not finished with her yet.
“Fuck you,” Rune muttered. “I’m ready when you are.”
Ahead and off to the right she saw a brightly lit room, full of tables and cabinets and stainless steel.
The path continued, but she didn’t want to walk into whatever lay beyond.
“This is our stop,” she said.
She stepped into the building and stood staring silently, trying to get her bearings.
They were no longer between worlds—they were in the lab.
The crew walked out of the green swirl of magic and stood beside her, big-eyed and pale-faced.
“Did that really happen?” Denim touched the scar on his face, panting slightly.
Beside him, Levi shuddered. “Was I the only one who saw the witch?”
Rune blinked. “You saw Damascus? And the castle on the hill?”
Raze nodded. “I did. And the wasteland.”
Strad squeezed her shoulder. “You weren’t in there alone, Rune.”
“No.” And she was relieved. The world—or worlds—they’d passed through hadn’t been just for her. Hadn’t been her imagination. Her crew had witnessed them as well.
Owen came through, followed by Lex.
Owen said nothing, but Lex was full of words. “The wasteland. It was familiar. I think my father came from there.” She rubbed her eyes, hard. “I could see. In the…tunnel, or whatever it was—the path. I could see in there.”
“Your demon sees, doesn’t it, Lex?”
Lex nodded a little too fast. “But my demon sees shapes and red and black. I saw. Like you see. With normal vision. Oh God.” The she bent forward and began to cry.
There was fear in her sobs, and that was normal.
But there was also joy in it. Yearning.
Exhilaration.
Rune knew right then something that even Lex probably did not. Lex would need, someday, to go to that world. It called to her.
It let her see.
And she would believe she belonged there.
Someday.
“But this is not that day,” Rune murmured. When her crew looked at her questioningly, she shrugged. “Let’s do what we came here to do, and get the fuck back home.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
The room in which they stood was empty except for steel tables and cabinets. There were no people, no jars of monstrosities, no tank babies.
They pulled their weapons and walked toward the one door in the room, a long, thin door that listed slightly to the right.
And when she yanked open that door, beyond was…
Hell.
They stepped into a room massive in size and filled with such a cacophony of sounds and strange sights that it seemed almost impossible that they would ever be able to adjust to it.
It wasn’t a room, really, but more of a…a world. A piece of a world.
“What the fuck is this?” Rune pushed her hand against her stake wounds.
The lab appeared to be about the size of a football field, but then, in the far distance—surely miles—lightning lit up a black sky.
The air was thick and hot and burned her lungs when she tried to inhale. Her body didn’t like the magic there, didn’t want any part of it.
Steel tables, row after row after row of steel tables, covered the floor.
Lex shuddered. “Where are we?”
“Is it the lab?” Jack asked. “This whole…place?”
“Yeah.” And Rune had a bad, bad feeling.
She didn’t want to say the words aloud—speaking the name might somehow summon the evil witch—but the word lay heavy and mean upon her tongue.
Damascus.
“She’s here,” Lex whispered, and her voice was full of horror.
“No,” Levi said, as though he already knew. “Who is, Lex?”
Don’t say it. Don’t say it.
“My mother,” Lex murmured. “My mother is here.”
Rune whipped her head around to stare at the little Other. “Karin is? Not…”
Not Damascus?
“Fuck,” Denim said, looking wildly around, blades in both hands.
Rune looked at Strad. She didn’t have to say anything. He understood that Lex and the twins were going to have some trouble.
“She’s only a human woman,” Jack said. “I know she put you three through some shit, but if she’s here, that ends tonight.”
Levi blew out a quiet breath and gathered Denim and Lex close to him. “We’re not children,” he told them.
“We’re not helpless,” Denim added.
But Lex wasn’t convinced. She hugged herself, her eyes moving sluggishly, her body almost still.
She was terrified out of her mind.
“Lex, are you sure she’s here?” Rune asked.
Lex shuddered. “No,” she said, finally. “Raze?”<
br />
“I’m right here,” he said, harshly.
He wasn’t angry at Lex. He was full of rage over what Karin had done to her.
He moved to stand behind her, and she backed up slowly until she was pressed against him.
When he looked at Rune, his strange gray eyes weren’t full of pride that she felt safe next to him. They were full of helpless, confused rage.
Inside his eyes were the questions they all wondered. What the fuck had Karin Love and COS done to Lex and the twins?
Rune knew some of it.
She didn’t want to know the rest.
“You’re Shiv Crew,” the berserker told them. “Remember that.”
The twins nodded. “Shiv Crew,” they echoed.
“Rune,” Jack said.
“Yeah.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s go kick ass.”
And they stepped farther into the room.
Into the hell created, somehow, by Orson Blackthorne.
In that hell lived monsters. Monsters of every imaginable sort. Some of them were without faces, some without brains, some, surely, without hearts.
They were vocal, though, and in each voice was a slice of the hell from which they’d been created, in which they existed.
Their homes were cases sunk into black walls, fronted with glass. Side by side, they circled the room, staring out at the rows of tables. The monsters had no room to walk, or sit, or move in their upright glass coffins.
Rune saw four of them leaning hideously against the glass, eyes staring into whatever afterlife had awaited them.
The sadness was overwhelming.
The despair was suffocating.
“Rune,” Strad said, and pointed.
“Holy shit.” There were windows, all set deeply into the wall on the right side of the cases. “Holy shit,” she said again, when she stood staring out, Lex and Strad at her back.
“What do you see?” Lex whispered.
Rune swallowed. “Cages,” she said. “I see the cages on Spikemoss Mountain.”
“If we broke through the window,” Owen said, “would we be on the mountain?”
“Maybe,” Strad said. “But maybe not in our world.”
Rune drew away from the glass, shivering. “Let’s take care of Blackthorne, find the girl and baby, and get the fuck out of here.”
“Please, please let it be that easy,” Lex begged, but her voice was devoid of any belief that it would be.
Owen cleared his throat, then thumped his chest. He was damaged from the beating he’d taken, but Rune knew that wasn’t what was bothering him.
