by Laken Cane
Rune’s cell rang and she snatched it from her pocket, rushing eagerly toward the quiet peacefulness of her kitchen. She looked back in time to see Jack and Raze staring after her with forlorn, desperate faces.
She laughed as she answered her phone. “This is Rune.”
“Rune, it’s Will.”
She automatically put her free hand to her stomach. “The creature?”
“As fucked up as always. He’s going through changes, though. You should come down here.”
“Why?”
“Gunnar is back. He needs you.”
“He’s there? In Killing Land?”
“Yes. He said this is where he needs to be and he asked for you.”
Gunnar had disappeared and no one had seen him since that day in the Killing Land cemetery, when he’d stunned them with his…his beauty.
Something tight she hadn’t even been aware of loosened in her chest. “He’s okay, then,” she murmured.
“Yes.”
Jack and Raze both walked into the kitchen.
“We’ll be there in a couple of hours,” she said, into the phone. “We’re leaving now.”
Raze high-fived Jack. “Told you,” he said.
Jack grinned.
When Rune, followed by Raze and Jack, hurried back into the living room, Ellis took one look at her face and sighed.
He picked up the baby and walked over. “Go to work,” he said. “I’ve got this.”
“You sure?” Rune asked.
“I knew it was a longshot,” he said, but winked. “Go save the world, and I’ll do the party thing.”
She grinned. “Thanks. I noticed all the guests are made up of Annex ops or their spouses, but I’ll call for a couple extra guards anyway.”
Ellie’s face fell. “None of the neighbors would come. And the Others are too afraid to show up in a place crowded with humans, even if they are Annex ops.”
“Things will straighten out eventually, Ellie.”
He rubbed his cheek against the baby’s soft hair. “Aly is on her way over, too. We’ll be fine.”
Aly was one of the baby’s nurses. Of the four Eugene lent them to help care for the baby, Aly was Rune’s favorite.
“Anything from Bill?” she asked.
“No. And I’m worried about him.”
“I’ll check in on him before I head to Killing Land,” she promised, then leaned forward to kiss her baby on the cheek. “See you soon,” she murmured. “Happy Birthday, Kader.”
Chapter Two
Kader.
She and Z had a baby and Z might never know.
He would never be there to do normal things like teach her to fight or gift her with her first blade—that duty had fallen to the child’s “uncles.”
Z couldn’t teach the child to dance like he did on the battlefield or to shoot or to take out rogue vampires and enemy humans.
He wouldn’t be there to make sure Rune didn’t fuck it up.
At first, it’d been overwhelming, and her grief for Z had nearly crippled her.
But finally…
It sank in that she had a kid.
A baby.
Her baby.
And she’d dug herself out of the blackness.
She had a child.
The child was created from magic and love and power. Of Skyll and blood, of human and monster.
The gargoyles had very nearly killed it.
Rune shivered as gooseflesh erupted over her entire body. That horrible thought tried to take over at least a couple times a week.
She shook it off.
Eugene had made sure her baby lived. Not only lived, but thrived.
She didn’t care what he’d done in the past—he’d devoted himself to her baby, and she loved him for that.
She owed him and would owe him forever.
Eugene Parish was her fucking hero.
No wonder she’d been so emotional, so ready to cry without provocation, so soft. She’d been pregnant and her hormones were all over the place.
Pregnant.
She didn’t care what magic had created the child.
The magic had been between her and Z, and they had made a baby.
For months, she’d found it difficult to care about Killing Land and Brasque Dray and portals, but the lack of interest had been temporary, much as the horrible depression had been.
Thanks to a fucking gargoyle, she hadn’t been able to carry the baby. Kader had spent her first months in an artificial womb in the Annex.
Once again, rage flared.
Bellamy Delaney was a dead gargoyle. She might not know that yet, but she was.
And Rune was finally ready to return to Killing Land. She had a portal to find.
Except now her reasons for finding it had changed.
If she found the portal, she could send someone back to Skyll to tell Z about the baby. Once upon a time she’d been determined to get back into Skyll herself, but that was no longer an option.
She couldn’t take a chance that Skyll would keep her and leave her child without the protection of her super monster mother. Her world despised Others with a passionate hatred cut with fear and covered with envy.
So she would not reenter Skyll, but she’d return to Killing Land.
Gunnar was waiting for her, and she was worried about him.
“I’m starving,” Roma said, interrupting her thoughts. “I’m glad we’re going to Damon’s. They have great food.”
“I’m stopping at the Annex first,” Rune told her. “We have time.”
“My stomach doesn’t think so,” Roma muttered.
Rune sped around a lumbering truck and shook her head. “Let’s hope an enemy doesn’t get his hands on you. You’d do anything for food.”
“I’ve thought about that.” Roma shot a worried glance at Rune. “I would hold out for as long as possible.” She rubbed her belly. “But I do get so hungry. I could use half a dozen burgers.”
“That was fast.”
“What?”
“You’ve lost your aversion to meat.”
“I’d eat this car if it had a little roadkill clinging to it.”
Rune laughed. “You’re warped.”
“Perhaps.” Roma shrugged. “But I’ve come to terms with it. Shall we take some extra food to Killing Land for the guys?”
Rune had sent the others on to Killing Land. She and Roma could meet with Tasha and she’d catch her men up when she joined them at the caves.
“No. They’ll get themselves something to eat when they’re hungry. Besides, if we bought extra food from Damon’s, you’d eat it long before it reached Killing Land.”
“I wouldn’t need to,” Roma declared. “I’ll be taking along a little something extra in case I get hungry along the way.”
Roma followed her into the Annex after Rune parked the car, but veered off to wait in a break room. “Come fetch me when you’re ready to go.”
“I will.”
Rune strode toward Bill’s office, thankful she didn’t run into Logan Rees, the woman who supervised along with Bill. Logan Rees was no Elizabeth, and the crew had yet to warm up to her.
She rapped her knuckles on Bill Rice’s office door, then opened it and went in without waiting for him to answer.
She’d seen him only once in the previous two weeks.
“Bill,” she said, when he didn’t turn around. “I’m heading to Killing Land to deal with the creature. And Gunnar’s back…”
He stood at his wall of windows, his back bowed. “Go to Killing Land, Rune.” He didn’t turn around. “When you’ve taken care of your Shimmer Lord, we’ll talk.”
She remained silent for a while, but he never turned around. “I want to help you,” she said.
“Why?”
“You know I care about you.”
“Mom and dad,” he murmured, a smile in his voice.
“Yeah.”
He turned to face her, finally. “I’ll stop in to see Kader this evening.”
“Good. She adores you.”
“Our little girl monster.” His voice held only affection.
She shivered, but didn’t know why.
“Is she safe, Bill?” she finally whispered. She remembered suddenly the little black-haired baby, the one Owen had stolen and taken into Skyll. The one the berserker had promised to find for her.
The one Damascus had said was fated to destroy her—and hers.
And her heart hurt for the little black-haired baby, who’d never had a chance to be loved.
“You know she’s not,” Bill said. “But we’ll do the best we can to help you protect her.”
She nodded.
“A lot of powerful groups are going to want her. They’ll try to take her. You have to start her training early.”
“Already started,” Rune told him. “I just wish her father were here.”
“She has a lot of fathers, dear. And we’ll give her everything we have.” He looked at her, paused, and then went on. “Just as we do you.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Then she’s a lucky kid. But…she scares the fuck out of me.”
“Being a mother will make you more vulnerable than you’ve ever been. But you’ll do what all the parents before you have done—you’ll deal with it. Do everything you can to keep your child safe. After that, it’s out of your hands.”
She glared. “Thanks for the nice talk.”
“Go take care of business,” he said, smiling. “If you find the portal, call me.”
“Why?” She suddenly had a bad feeling.
“Because I need to know. Before…”
“Before?”
He shook his head. “Just let me know.”
But she knew she wouldn’t.
She didn’t want to lose Bill.
She wouldn’t lose him. Not to Skyll.
Jealously unfurled inside her.
Give Bill to the berserker, the cowboy, and the blind Other?
No. Fuck them.
They didn’t deserve him.
She needed him. Her kid needed him.
“Sure,” she lied. “Okay.”
She said goodbye and then went to collect Roma, unsettled. “Ready to go eat?”
“Always,” Roma said. “Next stop, Damon’s!”
Damon’s was a rather large local restaurant that offered home-cooked meals, a jukebox, and fresh, hot donuts. The woman who ran it was somewhere between fifty and sixty years old with long gray hair to her waist and half a dozen very young, very handsome boyfriends.
“Rune,” she yelled, when Rune walked into the restaurant. “Good to see you, girlie!”
Rune winked. “Hey, Daisy.”
The humans in the restaurant stopped chewing and stared, some of them mumbling angrily. One man threw down his fork and stomped from the restaurant, not bothering to pay for his meal.
He must have figured the place owed him for allowing an Other in to ruin his lunch.
Daisy ignored the muttering. She pursed her lips, then squinted at Rune and Roma. “Four double cheeseburgers, a jumbo bag of fries, one large strawberry shake, and a couple dozen donuts to go.”
Roma nodded solemnly. “Yes. What will you have, Rune?”
Rune shook her head. “Warped.” She caught sight of Tasha sitting quietly in a corner booth, slumped low in her seat, her stare on the table.
She seemed to think if she didn’t look at anyone, they wouldn’t see her.
“We’ll be over there,” she told Daisy.
“I’ll send a waitress with some coffee.”
Rune nodded and she and Roma headed for the booth and their desperate client. “Tasha,” Rune said, when she reached the booth. “Mind trading us places?”
Tasha slid hurriedly from the bench, allowing Rune and Roma to have the wall at their backs. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. My father always had to sit with his back to the wall, and I guess it’s become a habit for me, too.”
“What’re you looking at?” someone snarled.
Rune glanced at the speaker, a thin young woman seated in the booth across from them. She glared at Roma, as though Roma had done something to greatly upset her. Her pupils were dilated and she twitched constantly. She scratched her chin, then her neck, then her arm.
The man who’d smashed himself up against her leered at Roma. “I think she’s looking at me.”
“I’ll kick your ass,” the woman said, and dug a little deeper into her skin.
“Now calm down,” the guy said. “They’re Others. They don’t fight fair.” Then he scooped up some strawberry sauce that was melting into his banana split and smeared it on the girl’s cheek.
Still leering at Roma, he began to lick the strawberry sauce off his girlfriend’s face. “You like that?” he asked Roma. “You like this tongue?”
Rune leaned back and let Roma handle it.
Roma caressed her slingshot, but only for a second.
“She probably likes me,” the woman said. “Bean flicker.”
“Shut up,” Tasha said suddenly, surprising Rune.
“You got any money?” the woman asked. “Give me some cash and I’ll leave right now. I have a kid at home. She needs food.” Her eyes brightened, as though she thought they might start throwing cash her way.
Roma leaned forward to peer at the couple.
The man took that as a signal that he should continue licking strawberry sauce off the woman’s face. “I can tell you one thing. There’s enough of me to go around.”
Roma narrowed her eyes. “I’m going to give you five seconds to get yourself and your strawberry-flavored cuntsicle the fuck out of here.”
Rune grinned.
Roma didn’t have to make good on her threat, however, for Daisy strode over and shooed the annoying couple away.
“I’m not paying for that if you kick us out,” the dude shouted.
“I’ll cover it, Daisy,” Rune said.
“Honey, it was worth it to hear Roma say cuntsicle,” Daisy said, laughing.
And finally, they were able to concentrate on Tasha Ramsey.
“Tell us about your dad,” Rune encouraged, after the waitress had brought their coffee and took their order.
Roma’s enormous bag of food would be waiting for her when they left the restaurant, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her from having a bite while they talked with Tasha.
Tasha took a drink of her water, then slid the glass over the scarred table in wet little circles. “Someone has him, Ms. Alexander. Someone bad.”
“Call me Rune. Who has him?”
“A couple years ago there was an uprising at the Forsythe Prison Camp. My father and a few other cops were sent to help squelch it. He’d been trying to find an excuse to get into that camp for a long time. Part of him was terrified, because if he’d been discovered, he’d have become an inmate there himself. Not just because he was an Other passing himself off as human in local law enforcement, but because he’d taken down quite a few humans during his time as a cop.” She licked her lips and glanced at Rune, then back to her water glass. “Rather violently.”
Rune nodded but kept her silence, letting the girl tell her story.
“There was a surgeon in the camp, doing experiments on the Other prisoners. He and my father had an encounter. I don’t know the details, but my dad was upset when he came home.” She paused and stopped fidgeting, staring somewhere into the distance, her mind on the memory. “So upset.”
“Because they were experimenting on Others?” Roma asked.
“That, of course,” Tasha said. “But it was something more. He was freaked out. The surgeon knew he was Other. Somehow, he knew. He taunted my father with the knowledge. Threatened exposure. My dad told me a few weeks ago that the doctor was blackmailing him. He promised to keep the secret but only if Dad did something for him.”
Rune frowned. “What?”
“I don’t know,” Tasha whispered. “I don’t know. But he became withdrawn and afraid. He was worried
about me.” She put her knuckles to her mouth, but still, she didn’t cry. “I told him not to worry about me. I can take care of myself.”
“How old are you?” Rune asked, gently.
“Eighteen in two months.”
The waitress brought their food, but the only one of them who seemed interested in eating was Roma.
“First, we’ll check out Forsythe,” Rune said. “They’ll have the doctor’s name.”
“I called,” Tasha said. “They wouldn’t tell me anything.”
Rune smiled. “They’ll tell me.”
“Yeah, they will,” Roma agreed, finishing off her hamburger.
“Please find him,” Tasha said. She met Rune’s stare, finally. “Something horrible is happening to him. I need you to find him.”
Rune downed the remainder of her coffee and stood. “I will find him.”
“I’ll gather our food,” Roma said.
Rune nodded, then pulled her phone from her pocket. “Give me your information. Home address, phone number. Here’s my number. Text me everything you can about your dad. And a picture. What’s his name?”
“His name is Jett. Jett Ramsey.” Her voice broke.
“We’ll find him, Tasha.”
Tasha nodded. “I know if he can be saved, you’ll be the one to do the saving.”
“Do you have family you can go to?”
Tasha shook her head. “It’s just me and my dad. My mom died when I was little.” She lifted her chin. “I’ll be fine. I don’t need anyone.”
Rune sighed. “Okay, kid. Call me if you need me, you got it? Anytime.”
“I will.”
Rune gave Daisy a wave. “See you soon, Daisy.”
“Be careful, girlie.”
The food was bagged up and waiting on the counter when Rune rejoined Roma, but for once, Roma’s attention wasn’t on the food. She stood at the big windows, her eyes narrowed, body stiff.
“What is it?” Rune asked, walking to stand beside her.
Roma pointed. “An asshole.”
A man, dressed in a suit and topcoat, stood across the street, holding a sign and a black book. A small crowd stood in front of him, and Rune heard distant shouts of “Amen!” punctuating his words.
She frowned. “What’s he going on about?”
