by Laken Cane
Jeremy was no longer staring after the retreating bodies of Lex and Ellis, but still, a knot of worry grew inside her stomach. Lex was on his dark radar.
I’m going to develop a fucking ulcer.
She walked away with her men, shaking Jeremy from her mind.
“I’ll have paramedics waiting outside the gates,” Mitch called after them. “For the human. And just in case…”
He didn’t have to finish. They all knew what he meant to say.
Chapter Eighteen
Shiv Crew stood silent and watchful, staring up at the gates of Wormwood. From within came the sounds of battle. The battles of Others were like none other. They brought a certain level of animal wildness and otherworldliness that no human could understand or match, no matter how evil he might be.
Finally, Rune spoke. “Ready, guys?”
Raze nodded and hefted his blades—heavy silver with ornate hilts that would have been too long and heavy for most men.
“Remember,” she said, knowing she didn’t have to keep reminding them about her father, but unable to stop.
Once they were inside, the twins pushed the gates shut behind them.
“Wait,” Levi said. “Look.”
Rune glanced through the bars of the gates. A man was picking his way quickly but quietly to the fence.
“A fucking reporter?” She hadn’t even noticed the man following them. “Mitch has created some monsters of his own.”
The man saw them watching but only shrugged and lifted the camera hanging around his neck. He was dressed for winter. His hood and thick coat hid him well.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Rune called, and without waiting for an answer led her men toward the sounds of battle. The reporter wasn’t going to get much on camera standing outside the gates. The battling Others were deep inside the graveyard. But if he came inside those gates the Others wouldn’t have to get him. She would kick his ass herself.
Post lights had been placed sporadically throughout Wormwood, but the place was still too dark. There were some types of darkness a light couldn’t touch.
Her crew fanned out in an inverted V, blades in one hand, guns in the other. In seconds, they found the Others.
They didn’t fight in a careful knot of wolves versus vampires but were spread about Wormwood in a haphazard manner. Their rules were simple and obvious. The vampires were to kill the wolves, and the wolves were to kill the vampires.
As she watched, a vampire flew from a tree and struck a shifter who was fighting another vampire. The ambushed shifter—in the form of an enormous dog—nonetheless held his own against the two until one of the vampires struck his chest with stiffened fingers. His hand went into the furry body like a shiv and came back with a bloody heart. The shifter dropped and the vampire held the heart to his mouth.
That vampire was her father.
“Already,” she murmured. “Daddy.”
He heard her, or maybe he felt her. He dropped the messy organ and ran toward her. He was fast, but nothing near as fast as an older vampire. And he was hungry.
Z and Jack stepped in front of her with weapons drawn. “Stop,” Jack commanded, and the vampire obeyed him, his stare on his daughter.
“I would never hurt my baby,” he said.
Rune pushed her way between her two men. “Go,” she said. “Do what we’re here to do. I need a minute with my…with him.”
Jack nodded to Z. “Look for the girl. I’ll hang out here.”
Rune didn’t even try to argue with him. She was compromised with her raw emotions and her mind on her father and needed someone at her back. She gave Jack a quick nod, grateful.
She turned back to her father. “Dad.” She spread her hands, unsure, now that she had him. “Daddy. I’m…I didn’t know.” I wish I still didn’t.
The vampire’s face was sunken and pale, his eyes as dark and hot as cigarette burns in a dirty white rug. “I needed to talk to you, darling.” His voice was as deep and comforting as she remembered. “I’d hoped for a long time you’d never see me, but once you did… Come here, baby. Come here.” He opened his arms.
Jack walked to her father and put his gun to the vampire’s head. “Hug your father if you want to, Rune.” He looked at the vampire. “I’m sure you’ll understand the precaution, sir.”
Rune’s father opened his mouth, his body shaking with soundless laughter. “Sir. I haven’t been called sir for many years.” He turned his face toward Jack, despite the gun pressing into his skull. “You’re right to take care of her. Don’t ever stop.”
Then he opened his arms once more to Rune. “Give me one last hug, my darling.”
She couldn’t have refused him for anything. She walked into his arms, her heart crying, even if her eyes could not release the tears. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
He enveloped her with skinny arms that had the subtle hint of vampire strength. He smelled different, but she could pretend, for a few seconds, that he was the same. That she was the same.
“It was never your fault, baby girl. When—”
“Shhh,” she said. Some things he could not say in front of Jack.
He glanced at the big man, then put his dark stare back on her. “It was never your fault,” he repeated. He touched her chin with cold fingers and refused to let her look away. “I swear that to you.”
“My mother…”
“You did her a favor, child. Did you know we can’t kill ourselves, even if we don’t want to…live?” His smile hurt her. “Being immortal is living in unimaginable pain and knowing you will never, ever find peace.”
Her heart broke, broke in ways she no longer thought it capable of breaking. She’d done that to him.
Jack, his gaze constantly darting, murmured, “We need to hurry, Rune.”
As though fearing she’d take off before he was finished, the vampire grabbed her upper arms and held tight. “Child. End me.”
She tried to jerk out of his grip. “God, Daddy. No.”
“Do it. I want to find peace. I want to join your mother. Rune, please.”
She glanced around. The sounds of the battle greeted her, and she realized how deeply she’d been concentrating on her father. Had he tried to mesmerize her? It wouldn’t matter. She’d been tested by vampires before. Their gazes had no effect on her. “I can’t,” she whispered. “Don’t ask me. Please, please.”
Another nail in her coffin of guilt.
“Rune,” the vampire said, unwilling to let it go, even for her. “I need—”
“Leave her be,” Jack snarled.
Her father’s smile was sad, but determined. “Try to remember Rune, always, that I loved you.” Before she could reply, or think, or move, he dropped his fangs and went for her throat.
Jack blew his head off.
She screamed, scooping bits of her father off her face and slinging them onto the ground, fighting the dizziness trying to overwhelm her. “God, Jack…”
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry.” Jack looked lost, his eyes clouded with sorrow for her. “I’m so sorry.”
“God,” she repeated. “My dad…”
Jack fell to his knees, blade at the vampire’s chest. “I’ll stake him so he can rest the way he wanted, and then I’ll take you home.”
No. She was stronger than that.
She pulled her blade and knelt on the other side of her father. A blade of silver would do the work of a wooden stake, as long as it was left in his heart until he became dust. There was nothing left of his head to take. “I’ll do it. It’s my job to do.”
With Jack standing guard, keeping the vampires and wolves at bay, she gave her father his peace.
She could only wish to be so lucky.
“Can I take you home?”
She stood, staring down at a body that wouldn’t be there when she passed that way again. “No. There is work to do.”
She felt as though a lifetime had passed in the last few minutes.
She wasn’t about to antagonize a grav
eyard full of vampires, no matter what Jeremy wanted. She would find the human captive and get the hell out. The Others could continue destroying each other in peace.
Still, Shiv Crew being inside Wormwood put a damper on the fighting. She could feel the Others there, watching, waiting. She motioned for Jack to give her a boost onto a rather tall, lumpy rock.
“We only want the human,” Rune yelled. The Others would hear her. “Give the human over, and we’ll leave you to it. Get in our way, and we’ll butcher every fucking one of you.”
Nothing.
She jumped down from the rock. “Shit. Stubborn fuckers. We’ll have to flush them out.”
But Jack put a hand on her arm. “Hold on.”
She looked in the direction of his stare and watched as a dark figure detached itself from the deeper shadows and began walking toward them. He wasn’t alone but seemed to be forcing someone else—a smaller figure—to walk along with him.
When the two were about twenty feet away Rune knew exactly who both people were. Llodra, master of the River County vampires, and Amy, the little bite junkie.
She squeezed Jack’s arm. “This could go badly.”
The twins slid from the shadows, blades ready, to stand beside Rune. On the other side of Jack, Raze appeared, so abruptly it was as though he’d always been there but she simply hadn’t seen him.
Amy began talking to Llodra, softly, then gave a recognizable cry of pain. “Ow, Nick!”
“Be silent,” he said, and continued dragging her toward the crew.
“Where’s Z?” Rune whispered.
“Don’t know,” Raze said.
Z was unaccounted for, and that made her nervous. It was not smart to wander Wormwood alone, not if you were human. Not even Shiv Crew human.
But Z could take care of himself.
Right then she had the vampire master to worry about. “Hello, Llodra.”
The master’s face was empty, his eyes dark. He’d been around twenty-five years old when he’d turned, and his young face didn’t quite match his status. Or his old eyes.
“Ms. Alexander,” he said, blankly polite. “Here is the human you seek. I imagine you will keep your word and leave us to ourselves.”
His voice was as smooth as silk with just the slightest French accent. Maybe it was affected, maybe not. She’d heard he was three hundred years old, but wasn’t going to ask him.
She glanced at Amy. The girl stood with her head down, as dirty as ever, and as yet un-turned. “Amy. Look at me, baby.”
The girl stared at the ground until Llodra squeezed her arm, then raised a tearstained, resentful face to Rune.
Rune frowned at Llodra. He reminded her of Jeremy, the way he used pain to get what he wanted.
“Are you okay?” she asked the girl.
“I was,” Amy said. “But if you make me go back, I swear I’ll kill myself.”
“I’ve been ordered to bring you out. I have to do that.” She gestured at her men. “It’s why we’re here.”
Nicolas Llodra raised an eyebrow. “Oh? It is not to kill more vampires?” He lifted his face and sniffed the air, his gaze slightly more interested when he looked at her again. “The multilayered Ms. Alexander. What are you, exactly?”
Fucking Others and their freaky noses. She pretended not to notice her men looking at her—wondering at the master’s strange words—and got back to business. “I need to talk to you about the ordered purge. I don’t believe you’re abducting and killing human girls. I just need a way to prove that to—”
His laugh interrupted her. It was not an amused laugh, just a way of getting his scornful point across. “There is no saving the Spiritgrove vampires. It is too late for us. It is right for you to take this little fool.” He shook Amy’s arm. “I do not need her to die by my side.”
“I can’t accept that it’s too late for you,” Rune said. “You’re being set up. Lie low and let me get this shit cleared up.”
He stared at her for a long moment. “I never saw you as naive, Ms. Alexander.”
“Not naive. Determined and stubborn, maybe. I don’t like when things are unfair.”
Something slid through his eyes—something dark and tired and hopeless. Suddenly he shoved Amy toward Rune. “Take the girl.”
Amy fell to the ground at Rune’s feet, sobbing.
Rune stared at him. “We’re the ones sent to do the purges. Think about it.”
“They will simply send someone else eventually if you refuse to do your job.”
“The man who started this,” she said. “The one taking money from the groups. I need to know who he is.”
He tilted his head, surprised. “How did you…” Then he narrowed his eyes and looked at Amy.
Shit.
“I hear things, and not from the vampires. From the wolves.” Yeah, she was throwing the wolves under the bus, but the vampires hated them already. Her words wouldn’t make a difference.
He hesitated, then inclined his head toward Amy. “She knows what I know.” He shrugged. “Ask her. What difference will it make now?”
But Amy had already spilled her guts. It wasn’t likely she had anything new to say. “You need to help me, Llodra,” Rune insisted. “Is this guy involved with COS? Can you describe him to me? ”
“I have not seen him,” the vampire surprised her by admitting. “Only his collector.”
“Who is the collector?”
He shrugged. “A wolf. But that information would not help you. Now you must excuse me. I have some trespassers to subdue.”
It finally dawned on her. The vampires weren’t fighting the Spiritgrove wolves—they were fighting the Dark Others.
“Llodra!”
He turned back to her, impatient. “Yes?”
“You’re fighting the Dark Others tonight. Why?”
“Interesting name for a traitorous bunch of fugitive shifters, Ms. Alexander. Your idea?”
“No. Answer my question.”
“The disgusting animals wish to kill us. When I find my peace it will not be at the hands of these deceitful thugs.”
She frowned. “Why would they want to kill vampires?”
He smiled, his dark eyes hiding too many secrets. “Perhaps they believe it will gain them acceptance, doing your job.”
She motioned to Raze who leaned over to pull Amy to her feet. “Don’t let a Dark Other kill you tonight, Llodra,” she told him.
He turned to walk away, then faced her once more. “The vampire you killed tonight.”
“He was my father,” she said, her voice flat. “Not your business.”
“If times were different I would argue that fact. But as things stand, you did him a favor.”
Yeah. I’ve been doing a lot of fucking favors. She stared at him. “Anything else you want to tell me?”
He smiled. “Good luck, Ms. Alexander.”
Such an unsatisfying encounter.
Preston was one slippery bastard.
And where the fuck was Z?
Chapter Nineteen
She wanted to leave right then—to walk out, go home, and sleep for about a month. But…
“We’re not leaving without Z.” She pointed at the twins. “You two get Amy to the gates. Wait for us there. If she tries to take off, handcuff her. Jack, come with me. Raze…”
Raze didn’t need backup.
Jack frowned after Raze’s departing figure. “You know, you could send me off alone and take Raze as backup.”
She grinned. “You don’t like my company?”
She tried getting Z with her radio, but static was her only reply. Wormwood was a supernatural dead zone.
She wanted to get her men out of the graveyard. The Others would likely wait until Shiv Crew left before continuing their vicious battle, but she wouldn’t have put it past the Dark Others to try taking out the humans one by one.
Llodra wouldn’t let his vampires touch her or her crew. She was the only hope he had, even if he wouldn’t admit it.
; He could hold his own against the shifters. When it came down to a fight, a vampire was always going to kick shifter ass. In her experience anyway.
She wasn’t sure what the Dark Others were up to. Normally, Others wouldn’t come into strange territory and pick a fight with the residents. She’d have to delve into that more deeply later.
“A moment, Your Odoriferousness.”
She stopped walking when Gunnar spoke and immediately patted a vest pocket for a bar of candy. It was a habit. She never entered Wormwood without the chocolate. Gunnar had no use for cash, but she could buy nearly anything from him with candy.
She and Jack waited patiently for the ghoul to catch up to them. He held a hand to his chest, and when he finally stood in front of them, he wiped his totally dry brow with a hanky that had seen better days. Gunnar lived for melodrama.
Jack nodded. “Gunnar.”
Gunnar ignored Jack, his hollow stare on Rune. “I know some things, Your Highness.”
She pulled the Baby Ruth from her pocket and tossed it to him. “You always do, baby.”
He sniffed at the wrapped bar for only a second before he put it away. “It’s about your man, X. Or is it Y…”
She lost her smile and shivered as icy fingers slid down her spine. “Z? What has happened?”
He dropped his voice to a whisper. “He’s in the north corner. You should hurry, Your—”
She ran, Jack at her side. Terror lent her extra speed, and it didn’t matter that she was so much smaller than Jack. He didn’t have to slow his pace. Much.
Still, every second seemed like an hour as they sprinted past crumbling old headstones and ancient vaults.
“There,” Jack said, pointing with his shiv toward a copse of trees. It was dark even with the scattered post lights, but she could make out a shadow different than the others, and it was struggling hard.
They raced toward him, and Jack was already cutting through Z’s bonds when Rune reached them.
She threw herself at him and ran her hands over his body, searching for fatal wounds or broken bones. There was nothing but a swollen, purple bruise over his left eye that wrapped around to his temple to disappear into his hair. “What the fuck, Z?”
