Kill Switch (Rune Alexander Book 9)

by Laken Cane

  “Sorry,” she murmured, when he stared at her with black, shiny eyes. “I’ve been neglecting everybody, not just you.”

  He was heavier—or maybe she was just weaker. His feathers were glossy and thick, and he glowed with health. But when he tilted his head, crimson droplets fell upon her skin.

  “What happened, little dude? Roma, help me look for his wound.”

  But they found nothing—just droplets of blood on her skin that seemed to have fallen from nowhere.

  As though tired of their examination, he gave an annoyed caw and took off, his wings slapping her face as he went.

  He landed high in a tall tree before cawing urgently. His voice echoed inside her mind and she knew immediately what he wanted.

  “I have to follow him,” she told Roma. “Go tell Raze.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “First, you’re going to tell Raze where we’re going.” She turned to jog away, calling back over her shoulder, “You can catch up.”

  Roma muttered something Rune didn’t quite catch, then sprinted away.

  Shiv Crow cawed again, and she forgot about Roma as she ran across the hill. He flew above her, guiding her, urging her on with strident impatience.

  Eventually she stopped watching the bird and ran full out, using her speed to leave the crow behind. She knew where he wanted her to go.

  The cemetery was quiet and appeared abandoned. She stood in the midst of the tombstones and waited.

  High above her, Shiv Crow circled and gave a shriek of approval.

  The minutes ticked by.

  And finally, a man walked toward her, his stare on the ground.

  “Gunnar,” she murmured.

  He looked up, meeting her gaze, and she was unable to suppress a gasp. It was nearly impossible to reconcile Gunnar the Ghoul with the stunning man approaching her. But she knew him.

  She saw her ghoul lurking in the intense, fierce eyes.

  “Why are you so unhappy?” she asked. “Do you miss your…ghoulness?”

  The multicolored strands of his hair flowed over broad shoulders, pouring like water over a frame that bore no resemblance to the skinny, stiff body he’d once worn.

  She missed his ghoulness.

  “I am still the same, Your Highness. Inside I am still the ghoul.” He hesitated. “I would like that body back.”

  She frowned, folding her arms to keep from hugging him to try chasing the misery from his face. “Why?”

  “Because this,” he said, slapping his chest, “is the unfamiliar, hated body of an enemy. This is not Gunnar the Ghoul. And the longer I am trapped inside, the more I will change.” He pressed his fist to his chest. “You must help me or I fear I will become your enemy. You must help me before I am no longer able to help you. To protect you. To guide you.”

  “To manipulate me,” she said, angry before she knew she was about to be.

  He opened his mouth, then closed it and nodded. “I am sorry. I guide you because it is my duty and I would not see you fall.”

  “But I have fallen.” She clenched her fists as rage rose inside her. “I have been shattered. I have been alone. Gunnar the Ghoul didn’t break my fall. He threw me into the fucking abyss.”

  His eyes watered and he couldn’t look at her. “I did only what had to be done, Rune.”

  Had he called her Rune before? Maybe. She couldn’t remember it, though. And she didn’t like it.

  “You could have told me everything. You could have warned me. Just a fucking heads up, dude. Why didn’t you do that?”

  “Because I could not.”

  “Would not.”

  “It is the same.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He swallowed so hard she heard his throat click. “I am as fate is, Your Wrathness. And fate cannot give voice to things that might sway you. Fate can only guide and allow you to make the choices. Else there would have been a different outcome.” He looked at her then. “Can you understand that?”

  She took a deep breath, tamping down the pain masquerading as anger. “What do you need me to do to help you?” she asked, finally.

  “You are here. That is enough. I must now find the entrance through which yon caged creature has passed.”

  She put a hand to her stomach. “There really is another portal. I knew there had to be.”

  The old Gunnar peered at her through eyes heavy with wisdom and dark with portent. “You will be tempted to step through it. To once again walk the path.” He shook his head. “You must not.”

  She lifted her chin. “What happened to being fate? To letting me make my own choices?”

  Storms fought and grew in his incredible eyes. “I will go. You will not.”

  “Why not? I don’t want insinuations or puzzles or fucking hints. Why should I not go back to Skyll?” She wasn’t entertaining the notion—she just wanted to know why she shouldn’t. “Why should I not go back and bring my crew home?”

  He was angrier than she’d ever seen him. He got in her face and spoke through clenched teeth. “Because you have a child of the future to protect. Because they are not your crew. Because if you do, you may become the thing you have imprisoned inside that cave. Because crawlers and creatures you have yet to meet will find you and you will wish with everything inside you that you’d listened to your old ghoul. That is why.”

  He softened beneath the devastation that was surely in her face. “You must not walk the path. Not ever again. Your duty is done. Your journey is over. Your destiny has been fulfilled, there. You will now be Rune Alexander the monster, the mother, the warrior—here. You belong here, now. You chose here. There are no other crossroads for you. Not when it comes to Skyll.”

  For her, there were no other worlds to visit.

  There were no other worlds.

  She put her hand to her throat. No.

  “They will hear your words,” he said. “I will relay them for you and you will be prepared for disappointment when I return. Zeveriah Kader will know he has given you a child—but he will not remember who you are. Alexis Love will know you wish her to fight at your side—but she will not walk back into darkness for you. Owen Five will know your pride in his leadership, but he will only sigh regretfully and continue to rule his world.”

  She backed away, but he followed her, his unrelenting, sharp words shredding her heart.

  “Strad Matheson will know your pain, but he will not return to comfort you or to whisper lies into your eager ears. Those people are no longer yours. And they do not deserve to be.”

  She gave a harsh sob and jerked away from him, wanting only to hide, to forget, to escape the red agony and black sadness.

  But desolation and bleakness were strong and they were cruel. They battered her unmercifully even as she stood lifeless and frozen and stared at the ghoul with horror in her heart.

  “I am sorry,” he said, finally.

  She shook her head and backed away from him. “I don’t believe you. You have reasons for your words, but no matter where those four are, they will always be mine. And I won’t release them until…” She fisted her hands and whispered the rest through cold lips. “I won’t release them, Gunnar. Not to Skyll, not to the path. Not ever.”

  He sighed. “And I will carry your wishes with me into Skyll.”

  “If you want to return, you need to fucking help me find the portal.”

  He nodded. “I will help you. It is why I am here. But the assassin cannot travel with me. Give me your word on that.”

  “I’ll keep him here.” She frowned. “Do you know why he wants to go to Skyll?”

  He looked at the ground. “Because in Skyll he can be…normal. He can show his face. Maybe he can find the magic to heal his body. And most of all, in Skyll he can hide from those who seek him.”

  “So why do you want him to stay here?”

  He didn’t look at her. “You ask why like a child. Always asking why.”

  “Gunnar. Why?” She crossed her arms and waited, glad she ha
d something to focus on besides the ones she’d left in Skyll.

  Finally, he held out his hand. “Candy.”

  She dug into her pockets immediately, surprised. “Yeah, sure.”

  He lifted the packaged bar to his nose in a gesture so familiar and endearing that her breath hitched. She wanted Gunnar back. She missed him.

  The man standing before her was Gunnar, and he wasn’t. And if he’d been telling her the truth, Gunnar the Ghoul might disappear forever, gobbled up by the beautiful Gunnar the Wise.

  “I want the ghoul back,” she said, without meaning to. “I can’t lose him, too.”

  He lowered his hand, and his stare softened. “Thank you, Princess.”

  He was changing.

  “The assassin has more power than even the berserker.” He slid the bar of candy into his front pocket and finally answered her question. “Because he holds…” He paused, and shrugged. “Something. He can protect you when the time comes. But he has to want to protect you more than he wants all the things he will find in Skyll.”

  “I can’t make him want that.”

  “You can,” he disagreed. “He is already halfway there with the addiction—but addiction is not love, and he feels he can rid himself of that in Skyll. Yet another reason he wishes to walk the path.”

  “Understandable.” Then she straightened. “Gunnar, the assassin is human.”

  He didn’t need her to explain what she meant. He knew. Gunnar always knew. He simply nodded. “He is.”

  “Then he was telling the truth? Those addicted to my blood or bite can enter Skyll?”

  The silky strands of his hair slid over his face and caressed his cheek, and she had the sudden, sharp desire to touch it.

  “He was telling the truth. But that does not matter. You need to secure the assassin’s affections, Rune.”

  “I don’t need his protection. Why is everyone forgetting what I am?”

  “Oh child.” He rubbed his eyes, his shoulders slumping. “You are the one who forgets. How many times have you been crushed?”

  “I am the monster,” she snarled. “I protect.”

  “You do.” He turned away. “But know this. You need the assassin. Your addiction is not enough. You must take him to your bed.”

  Chapter Five

  While she gaped at him, sputtering, he went calmly on. “There are things in his past. Secret things. Magic, dreams, curses, experiments. The one who beds the assassin will be the one to hold him eternally. Fuck him, Rune.”

  She couldn’t speak.

  Gunnar should not have said the word fuck. Not like that.

  But the man standing in front of her should have. He should have said it often.

  His even, white teeth caught on his full lower lip and then he parted those luscious lips, just slightly, his eyes gleaming with a mixture of innocence and some of the deepest, darkest promises she’d ever seen.

  She shivered, sickened, as gooseflesh arose on her skin. Her stomach tightened, and shocks of desire shook her entire body.

  She groaned. “Shit. Shut up, Gunnar.”

  His eyes widened, and she could see the exact moment he understood what she was thinking.

  He shot out a hand and wrapped his strong, warm fingers around her arm. “If I asked you to bite me now, you would bite me.” He pulled her slowly, inexorably closer. “You would feed from me. You would feed me.”

  She couldn’t breathe. Worse, she couldn’t resist him.

  Didn’t want to.

  He held her arm with one hand and put his other hand on her belly, low. Too low. “You would drop to the ground and allow me to do anything I wished to you. With you.”

  He let go of her arm, but she didn’t move. She was frozen to the spot. Frozen with disbelief. Frozen with…

  Lust.

  For Gunnar.

  He slid his palm over her ribs, stopping just below her breast. “You are helpless against me. So how would you be able to protect yourself against someone who meant you harm?”

  Something hard pressed insistently against her body.

  Please God by all that’s holy let that be the fucking candy bar.

  Lust.

  For fucking Gunnar.

  Her ghoul.

  No.

  Oh hell no.

  She didn’t think, didn’t care that she might hurt him, or kill him, or lose him. She grabbed him by the throat and slung him away from her with so much desperation and force that she heard something inside him crack when a tree stopped his swift flight through the air.

  She shook her head like a dazed bull.

  And finally, she regained control.

  “When I fuck a man it’ll be because I want him—not because he’s full of magic and deception, and not because I need protection.” She strode to him and leaned down, clenching her fists, trying hard to resist punching his gorgeous face. “Don’t ever say that to me again. And don’t ever touch me again.”

  She turned to stomp away, then turned back to kick him, once, hard. “Fuck you. You’re stronger than that, Gunnar.”

  She needed to talk to him. She needed to know how he was going to help her find the portal. To find out what he knew about the creature that was made up, partly, of Brasque Dray.

  She couldn’t stand looking at him for another second, no matter what she needed to know.

  Her angry monster might have really hurt him.

  He might really have deserved it.

  But beneath the smooth flesh and perfect hair and mysterious eyes was her Gunnar. The ghoul.

  She couldn’t hurt him. The man he had been was taking over. It wasn’t Gunnar’s fault, really. Was it?

  “You needed to know, Rune,” he called. “You need help.”

  She ignored him and began running back toward the caves. Running away.

  Asshole.

  Jack was waiting for her when she returned. He frowned. “What happened?”

  She’d have cut her tongue out before answering that particular question. At least truthfully. “Nothing,” she lied. “Nothing at all.”

  He stared at her for a moment longer before shrugging and letting it go. “I didn’t find Gunnar.”

  She swallowed. “I did.”

  “You okay, Rune?”

  She nodded and shot a glance at Raze, who was studying her as intently as Jack was and with as much suspicion. “I’m spending the night here, but two of you should return to River County to keep an eye on things.”

  “I’ll stay with you,” Jack said. “Raze and the twins can return.”

  “That okay with you?” she asked Raze.

  He nodded. “Yup. We’ll head back tonight.”

  She walked to the cage, relieved to see the thing inside was calm, quiet, and no more a crawler than she was. “Where’s Roma?”

  “She followed you,” Raze said, straightening slowly. “You didn’t see her?”

  Roma entered the room at that second, and Rune noted the look of relief on Raze’s face. Whether or not he’d admit it, he felt as responsible for Roma as he did for any member of the crew. Maybe more, because he didn’t quite believe she could take care of herself.

  And when he discovered she was a fucking wererabbit…

  A slingshot and a bunny.

  Awesome.

  Roma wouldn’t look at her.

  Rune sighed and pulled the girl back out of the room and down one of the passages. “Let’s hear it.”

  Roma cleared her throat. “I’m afraid I spied on you and the…ghoul. I heard some of what he said. If sleeping with the assassin will—”

  Rune flung her arms wide. “Has everyone lost their fucking minds?”

  “Princess, I know you will do much for your crew. Now you must do something for yourself.” She narrowed her eyes and put her hands on her hips. “Would you have sex with Will Blackthorne if it would save your crew?”

  “It’s not a matter of saving them, is it? I’d rather fuck a crawler—”

  “Rune—”

  �
�—than the assassin, and you know how I feel about crawlers.”

  “Princess—”

  “I can barely force myself to bite through his gruesome skin. Have his scarred, broken dick inside me? I couldn’t survive that shit.”

  “Rune,” Roma said, her gaze desperate.

  “Fuck me,” Rune said. “He’s right behind me, isn’t he?”

  Roma nodded.

  Rune closed her eyes, then straightened her spine and turned around.

  The assassin stood waiting, unmoving, his body as stiff and still as a dead tree limb. She didn’t have to see his face to know he was…

  Hurt? Embarrassed? Angry?

  Something.

  Everything.

  “I told you not to sneak up on me,” she said. “Did you bring the empath?”

  His voice was empty, somehow. Hollow. “I have people searching for her. She will hear that I need her. Perhaps she will come. Perhaps she will not.” Then he turned and walked away, disappearing into the shadows beyond the torchlights.

  “Son of a bitch,” Rune whispered, when he was gone. Her stomach was so tight it hurt, and she forced herself to relax her muscles. “Shit.”

  Roma said nothing, but her eyes were full of sympathy.

  Whether for Rune or for the assassin, Rune couldn’t have said. And she wasn’t going to ask.

  Finally, she blew out a hard breath. “Wait in the room with Jack and Raze.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to find Will Blackthorne and apologize for being an asshole. And I’d rather not have an audience.”

  Roma nodded and without a word, jogged away.

  But Rune didn’t find the assassin.

  She found the gargoyles.

  Bellamy Delaney held up her hand the second Rune spotted her and Gavin, both standing patiently outside the shortcut entrance Will had discovered weeks earlier.

  “Wait,” Bellamy said. “Just let me talk.”

  No. There would be no talking.

  Rune shot out her claws and dropped her fangs, and as a red haze clouded her vision, she streaked toward Bellamy Delaney, murder in her heart.

  She had been taken by rage, and it wasn’t bringing her back anytime soon.