by Laken Cane
“Stay with me,” Jack said, smiling. “I could use your help watching over the Shimmer Lord.”
Roma wasn’t the only smooth talker in Shiv Crew.
She put a hand to her chest, nodding mindlessly. “Of course. Of course I will help you.” She barely glanced at Rune as she took Jack’s arm and walked with him to the cave entrance.
Rune didn’t spare Will another glance. She took off like a centuries old vampire and in a few short moments, the cave was far behind her.
Gunnar was waiting.
She was not surprised to find him there, stiff, still, and silent, his beautiful gaze distant, as though he’d gone somewhere inside his mind to wait.
Perhaps to Skyll.
She was unable to keep the heat of embarrassment from climbing her neck when he looked at her. “Can you leave the cemetery?” she asked.
He nodded. “I suppose I must.”
“I’d think you’d appreciate the freedom.”
He curled his lip. “There is no freedom.”
“Gunnar—”
“I have a gift for you.”
She lifted an eyebrow, and took a step toward him. “You do? Is it candy?”
“No. I would not share that.”
“Let’s have it, then.”
He held out his hand. “Take it.”
She frowned and stared at the gleaming black splinter in his hand. “Is that fucking obsidian, Gunnar?”
“Yes. It is for luck.”
“Bad luck?”
He glanced at her then. “You will take it into battle with you. It is not real obsidian. Just a reminder. A talisman. Take it.”
She sighed, then gingerly lifted the nasty splinter from his palm. “Thank you,” she said, doubtfully. “You’re not the best gift giver.”
She turned and walked away, realizing a few minutes later that he wasn’t behind her. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered, and backtracked to find the ghoul standing exactly where she’d left him. “The fuck? Come on, Gunnar.”
He was scared. Fear made his eyes a little too wide and he’d clenched his hands into fists at his sides. He was so stiff he looked like a cardboard cutout.
He was afraid to leave the world in which he’d been trapped for so very long.
“Gunnar,” she said, her voice gentler. “Time to go.”
His lip trembled. “I’m still a ghoul, Rune.”
“I know.” She held out her hand. “I know that, Gunnar.”
He stared at her hand for a few seconds before reaching out to tentatively take the offering. He walked beside her, silent, tense.
“You don’t deal well with change,” she said, keeping her voice light. “I don’t either.”
He nodded.
There was no more talking until he took his first hesitant step out of the graveyard.
“That’s it then,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper of regret. “That’s it.”
She hoped with everything inside her that he would get himself back to normal once he entered Skyll.
Because if he didn’t—if the new Gunnar returned—then her ghoul was dead.
And she really didn’t want another loss.
She let go of his hand. “Come back, Gunnar.”
He looked away. “I will try.”
She began to walk off the hill, back toward the caves, when Gunnar spoke again. “Run, Your Plodderness. I can keep up.”
“Of course you can. I forget that you’re…” She shrugged and without another word, she pushed off and began to run.
He stayed beside her the entire run back to the caves. She had the feeling that if he’d wanted to, he could easily have left her in the dust.
“What do you want to do?” she asked, as they walked into the cave. “You’ll need to…talk to the Shimmer Lord?”
He nodded. “He won’t know exactly where he entered but perhaps I will see it through his memories.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. Just do what you can to find it. And hurry, Gunnar.”
He frowned. “For what reason?”
She blew out a tired breath. “Because I need you to hurry. I have to get back to the Annex. My kid—”
He staggered into the wall, a hand to his chest.
“Gunnar!” She grabbed his arm and steadied him. “What’s wrong? Are you having a fucking heart attack?”
He shuddered and leaned weakly against the cold wall. “I received a hit from the creature you have caged.”
“A hit? What does that mean?”
“I feel him,” he murmured. “He is…he is terrible with wrath and hatred and rage. And he is not your Shimmer Lord, Rune.”
“The fuck he isn’t. I know he is. I felt him, too.” She drew back, rubbing the gooseflesh from her arms.
“No, no.” He shook his head hard. “No. He is not your Shimmer Lord. The thing has absorbed the Shimmer Lord. Eaten him. That fellow is no more. He was not strong enough.”
“Then who is it? Who is that thing? Who is inside that thing?”
“Oh, Rune. I would not like to tell you.”
“Gunnar,” she screamed. “Who the fuck is it?”
Jack and Roma were suddenly there, their weapons out, casting hurried glances about the hall as though they were looking for the enemy in the shadows.
She forced herself calm, but she wanted to throw up. She knew he was going to give her bad, bad news.
Terrible news.
“Who?” she whispered, and bit back the words she wanted to speak.
Don’t tell me.
But he did tell her, his stare ashamed and reluctant and filled with horror. “It is your berserker, Rune.”
Chapter Eight
She did throw up then, and Gunnar moaned as though he felt—and she had no doubt that he did—everything she was feeling at that moment.
His words, his terrible, chilling, impossible words.
“It’s your berserker.”
“That thing,” Jack said, his voice hard, “is not Strad Matheson. Don’t you think Rune would have known that? She felt the fucking Shimmer Lord. Don’t you think she’d have felt the fucking berserker?”
He was so angry. So very angry.
And he believed.
She knew he believed, because he was so angry.
It was a horror they wouldn’t have wished upon anyone.
And it was their berserker.
“God,” she cried.
Gunnar’s words echoed through her mind. Over and over and over.
“God!”
Gunnar walked away, heading resolutely toward the room. “I did not know,” he threw back over his shoulder. “I swear to you. I did not know. I knew only what you saw, what you believed. What you knew.”
“Fuck you,” she whispered. “No.”
Jack and Roma stood frozen, unsure and horrified.
And Gunnar was back in seconds.
She didn’t want to hear another word, but she had to know. “Tell me, Gunnar. Tell me what you felt.”
He put his hands on her shoulders, his eyes black and flat and dull, even in the wavering light from the wall torches. As though no one lived behind those eyes. They were no longer beautiful—not really. They were filled with dark, appalling knowledge and the unbearable voice of the…the creature.
And he told her what she wanted to know. What she did not want to know.
“He tried to come back to you. He tried to come back to you through the hole opened by the escaping lord. Owen was killing Dray—and Strad knew he had a way home.
“The path was an awful path—not a path walked before. He fought the Shimmer Lord in the tunnel. In the tunnel they were set upon by every horror ever birthed in Skyll.
“And there they were joined. Melted together by fire and ice and magic. The path…”
He was a stranger. Gunnar did not exist behind those eyes. Surely, he did not.
He shuddered, something so terrible in his stare that she had to look away. “You cannot imagine what he suffered, your berserker. Oh, how he scr
eamed. You cannot imagine.”
He leaned closer and whispered, “That path was unkind, my dear. There is no name for that path. And that is the path I must walk now, to regain myself.”
He pointed toward the cave room. “And I will walk it to save your berserker, if you wish it.” He tilted his head, looking suddenly like a mad, curious scientist. “But after what was forced upon him, he will never be the same. Never be…your berserker. He is now the twisted berserker. Tell me—do you wish it, my dearest monster? Or shall we kill him? Shall we end him and his suffering?”
She covered her face and sobbed.
It could not be.
But he was there.
Her berserker. In the next room.
Somewhere in that horror of a creature lived her berserker.
That creature is your berserker.
Jack grabbed Gunnar by the back of his neck and flung him away from her. “Shut the fuck up,” he roared. “Stay away from her.”
The ghoul smiled a secret, nasty smile. “If she wishes it, I will try.”
She clutched her stomach and her words left her lips in a breathless half-scream of horror. “Save him.”
And almost before she’d spoken the words, Gunnar simply disappeared.
Oh yes, he was faster than she was.
He was faster than wind, than light, than God.
He was gone.
And then, that exact, horrible second, she realized what she’d done. She pushed away from the wall and shot after him, her heart in her throat. “No,” she screamed, finally, when she was able. “Kill it. Kill it, Gunnar.”
Because the berserker…
No.
The berserker was dead.
Dead.
And gone.
No one was in the room.
The cage was empty.
Gunnar and the creature were gone.
Gunnar would carry him through space and time and figure out where the portal waited.
She had no doubt he would find it.
Because of her, he’d travel back down the path with the…thing—
Berserker.
—that was made up of the Shimmer Lord and crawlers and magic and hell and her fucking berserker, and he would do what he needed to do.
Because there was no one as strong as Gunnar.
She’d sentenced Strad Matheson to something worse than death, because she was selfish and weak and she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of a reality in which the berserker did not exist.
Gunnar would take it—him—to Skyll and dump him. Whether he’d admit it or not, Gunnar knew there was no way Strad was coming back from that.
He couldn’t pull him from the creature he’d become.
The ghoul wasn’t saving Strad.
He was saving her.
She threw back her head and wailed, unable to contain the screaming agony and thread of madness in her battered, tortured brain.
Roma was there, rubbing her back, murmuring soothing words that meant nothing at all.
“I’ve lost my mind,” Rune whispered.
“No, Rune. You’re just fighting the darkness.”
“The darkness has won.”
“Yes,” Roma agreed. “But only for a little while.”
Jack walked across the damp floor to stand beside her. “You don’t have the luxury of defeat. You can’t lose to anything. There’s a baby.”
And when she said nothing, just stared into space, he grabbed her arm and jerked her around to face him. “Snap out of it, Rune!”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay, Jack.”
The only way she could live with it was to put it away.
So she put it away.
She was an expert at putting things away.
She swallowed the darkness and kept one glowing responsibility on her mind—the child.
“Okay,” she said, again.
“What do we do now?” Roma asked. “Do we wait to see if he comes back?”
“He won’t come back here,” Jack said. “The portal isn’t in the caves.”
“We’re going home,” Rune said. “If Gunnar returns, he’ll go to Wormwood.” But really…did she expect him to come back?
No. Not really.
She walked toward the doorway, only then noticing the assassin with his back against the wall, blending in with the shadows.
When she started to walk past him, he shot out a hand and stopped her. “He’s not coming back, is he? You’ve lost me my chance.”
She shook his hand off her arm. “Get the fuck away from me.”
“She saved your life,” Roma said. “You cannot walk that path.”
“I can,” he said. “I can walk any path.”
Rune turned up her lip. “If anyone can return, Gunnar can. And if he does, you have my blessing to go get fucked by the path. And I hope she fucks you real good. You can give your eternal loyalty and protection to that foul bitch.” She grinned, could feel the hideous smile stretching her lips, and she couldn’t seem to stop. “For I don’t need it.”
He took a step back and his glance went to Jack and then to Roma. “She’s mad.”
“She’s not mad,” Roma said. “She’s just…so very sad.”
“Because it’s not over,” Rune entreated, her anger dissipating beneath her pain. “You can understand that, can’t you? It’s not over. It’s never over. And I have eternity to see how often and how deeply I can be so very sad. So yeah, it’s going to fuck with me sometimes.”
“But you’ll be okay,” Jack said.
“Yeah, baby. Yeah, I’ll be okay.”
She would.
It was just going to take a while.
It’d take her a long, long time to stop seeing images of the creature and to stop imagining Strad’s raging, helpless eyes staring out at her from its horrific face.
Chapter Nine
“Do you think he was aware in there?” she asked, once, on the way back to River County. “Do you think he knew?” She paused. “Do you think he saw me?”
Neither Roma nor Jack answered, and she hadn’t expected them to.
She’d spent a restless night walking the caves. A couple of hours before dawn appeared, she’d shaken Jack and Roma awake, eager to leave Killing Land.
“I think he did,” she went on. “He’s the berserker. I think he knew. And I’ve condemned him to exist like that forever.”
Jack took his hand off the wheel and clutched her fingers. “Hush, honey.”
She nodded.
“Eugene kept Gage alive,” Roma said, desperate to get Rune out of her misery. “Can you believe that?”
“What I can’t believe,” Rune said, “is that I’m trying to help the gargoyles.”
“Why did you hate them?” Roma asked. “I mean, before the female injured you.”
“I didn’t hate them, really.” Rune sighed and ran her fingers through hair that needed a good washing. “The gargoyles believe I’m evil. They feel about me the way I used to feel about myself. They made me remember what that was like.”
“And they made you believe it.” Jack squeezed her fingers. “Part of you still believes it.”
She looked out the window, watching the town of Killing Land fly by as Jack sped down the street. The town looked eerie and empty in the foggy half-light of the early morning. She shook her head, smiling slightly. “I am my monster. I’ve come to love the little sonofabitch.”
“So have we,” Jack said.
“Gavin and Bellamy think they’re better than you?” Roma’s voice was sharp and full of indignation. “That’s what they think?”
“Yeah,” Rune answered, “but I really don’t care. What they think about me doesn’t matter.”
And it was the truth.
Finally.
She no longer cared that gargoyles might find her lacking, or evil, or bound for hell.
Bigger things had come along and driven her self-hatred and shame away.
She no longer cared if she were evil.
> She’d do what she had to do and she’d do it with a clear conscience.
Evil? Maybe.
She just didn’t care.
Their notion of evil wasn’t hers.
“Fuck them,” she murmured.
“I’ll be happy when Killing Land and the caves are behind us,” Roma said.
“It’s not exactly a happy place.” Then she sat up straight as her absentminded stare registered something in the distance. “Jack, stop the car.”
He slammed on the brakes. “What is it?”
“Fucking Leon Lafitte. And this time I’m talking to him.” She remembered suddenly how fear had gripped her heart after she’d returned from Skyll. It’d been, she was certain, because she’d been pregnant and part of her had been trying to protect the unborn baby she hadn’t consciously been aware of.
The baby was no longer inside her.
And neither was the fear.
She rushed toward Leon, her fangs dropping. He leaned against a scraggly tree in the yard of an abandoned house, and as she approached him, he slowly straightened. He had a gun in his hand and pointed at her heart before she crossed the street.
She sneered and strode up to him, pressing her chest against the gun barrel. “What the fuck do you want, Leon?”
He stared at her for a long, tense moment, his tattooed face blank. Finally, the corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Me, I don’t want nothing, Rune Alexander.”
“You want to get revenge for Annie’s death? I’m here. Let’s get it over with.”
He flinched at the mention of Annie’s name and his flat, brown eyes went even deader, if that were possible. “If I want to be killing you, you won’t see me coming.”
“Then what do you want? Are you trying to scare me? That doesn’t seem to be working out so well for you.”
Jack and Roma stood a few feet away, weapons aimed steadily at Leon, but he didn’t give them cause to kill him. He shrugged and took his gun away from her chest. “Just wanting you to be aware of me.”
“Awesome! I’m aware. Now what?”
He ran his hands over his smooth, inked scalp. “Could you maybe move back a step or two, yeah?”
She blew her thwarted rage out in a long breath and stepped back. “Talk to me, Leon.”
“You know me. What I can do.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t blame you for Annie. I blame the bitch that killed her. You give her to me, we square.”
