by Laken Cane
“Come,” he said, “but be careful. You don’t want to be sucked in.”
Roma drew back, paling. “Where is it?”
He pointed toward two trees whose branches were tangled together like two lovers holding hands. “Between them. Between them is the portal.”
Rune swallowed. “Where’s the girl?”
“I’ll show you,” he promised. He headed for the trees and Rune walked at his side. The others followed, but a bit more slowly and a lot more carefully.
When they stood before the trees, Will dropped to his knees beside one and ran his hand over the thick rope he’d tied to its base.
“What the—” Then Rune paled and put her hand over her heart. “Tell me you didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” Jack asked, frowning.
Will didn’t answer.
Before he could begin tugging the rope, Rune raced to him, dropped to her knees, and wrenched the rope away from him. Then she began to pull it, as hard and fast as she could.
And even with her great strength, the rope didn’t want to move. Something held it on the other side, something strong, something awful. The path was powerful.
They couldn’t hear Tasha’s screams while she’d been inside the portal, but when Rune pulled her out, her screams, breathless and mindless, were so loud and filled with horror that Rune had to fight not to cover her ears.
And she remembered. She remembered when Will had captured and salted Gunnar and then imprisoned him inside the tiny box. Had buried him.
So when the child hit the ground, her body quaking and jerking in the throes of a seizure, Rune turned, still crouching, and punched the assassin. She didn’t think when she hit him, didn’t think that she had also been willing to sacrifice the girl to catch the griev—she just struck out blindly and with overwhelming rage, and she slammed her fist into his jaw.
The assassin didn’t know any better. He saw absolutely nothing wrong with torturing other people when he thought he needed to.
After all, it was how he’d been treated since he’d left his mother’s womb.
His face caved beneath the force of that rage-filled punch. She felt the bone shatter, felt it with a deep satisfaction in the dark of her soul.
And then she leapt to Tasha, crouching beside her even as Will hit the tree, ricocheted off, and tumbled into the invisible portal.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
She almost went in after him.
Almost.
But Tasha broke out of the seizure—or whatever it was—and threw herself at Rune. She wrapped her arms around Rune’s neck so tightly she cut off the air.
“Thank you,” she screamed. Over and over and over. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Rune met Raze’s eyes over the girls head. They stared at each other, solemnly.
“Thank you,” Tasha cried.
Levi knelt to cut the rope from the girl’s leg. “Shit, Rune,” he whispered.
Rune felt bloody tears trailing down her face.
For the assassin, for the girl, or for herself, she couldn’t have said.
She guessed it was probably for all of them.
With a suddenness that caught them all off guard, Jett Ramsey roared into the field, scattering the crew—except for Rune. She sat where she was, locked in Tasha’s desperate embrace.
He disappeared, then reappeared in front of Rune, right in her face, screaming. No words, just…screaming. With Tasha still clinging to her, she threw herself away from him, skidding across the hard ground so fast she felt it burn all the way to her spine.
She jumped to her feet, one arm around the pitiful girl, and looked around wildly for the griev.
But once again, he was gone.
Her crew ran to her and surrounded her in a tight circle of protection, facing outward, their weapons ready.
But Jett Ramsey was fast, and he was insane.
Rune had seen his eyes. Flat, black, and as blank as rocks.
Tasha’s father no longer lived behind those eyes.
No one did.
And the assassin…
He was in a bad, bad place.
Fuck me.
“Get the girl to talk to him,” Jack said.
“Jett Ramsey isn’t in there for her to talk to,” Rune muttered. And she wasn’t so sure Tasha was capable of speech, anyway.
“Try,” Roma yelled. “Fucking try.”
The girl was terrified.
They all were.
One touch, and they were dead.
Roma released the ammo she had waiting in her slingshot and a tree twenty feet away burst into splinters and green and gold confetti.
“Did you get him?” Raze roared.
“He wasn’t there,” Roma whispered. “I didn’t mean to shoot.”
Silence descended as the crew stood in a little knot of anxiety, waiting. For two minutes, no one moved.
“Let me through,” Rune said, finally. The pain in her back had subsided and her thoughts, slightly scrambled from her collision with the ground, were clear.
She had the girl, and she’d use the girl.
She’d never tie her to a tree and shove her into hell, but she could try to either reach the father inside the griev, or get him close enough to shove him in after Will.
Tasha had grown quiet, but when Rune glanced at her she could see a spark of knowledge in her eyes. She didn’t appear to be able to take her wide, horrified stare from Rune’s face.
“I know it was bad in there,” Rune said, keeping her voice low and calm. “But you’re going to have to snap out of it, Tasha. Your father is going to kill us all if we don’t stop him.”
Tasha said nothing, and she didn’t blink. Just kept her stare glued to Rune as though by doing so she wouldn’t see anything else—like the horror inside the portal.
Rune walked them through the opening between Levi and Raze, talking the entire time.
Tasha showed no sign of hearing a word she said.
She pried the girl’s hands off her and then grabbed her upper arms, holding her back when she tried to cling once more. “Are you with me, Tasha?” She shook the girl. “Tasha. Say something.”
But Jett appeared once again, and before any of the crew could get a shot off, he disappeared, only to reappear a few yards away.
He’d stopped screaming.
“Tasha?” Rune murmured, watching the griev.
“I’m here,” Tasha whispered. “I’m still here.”
“Good, baby,” Rune said. “That’s good.”
Jett screamed.
Surprising them all, Tasha whipped around to face him. “Daddy, don’t,” she cried. “They saved me.”
He roared, then moaned, and there it was—the emotion. He walked a few steps closer and gave them a chance to actually look at him.
He was the same guy Rune had seen in the picture, and he wasn’t.
There was nothing that meant anything to him but his daughter, and he kept his stare on her the same way Tasha had kept her stare on Rune. With desperation.
His daughter was in the hands of his enemy, and he didn’t know what to do.
He couldn’t seem to close his mouth and drool, thick and ropy, dripped from between his swollen lips. His skin was covered with sores, and green-tinged, dried pus took the place of his fingernails.
Maybe he’d touched too many people.
Jett Ramsey wasn’t long for the world. He was breaking down.
Which explained two things.
One, why his handler was having him kill on such a large scale and two, why Ramsey was fighting whatever hold the doctor had on him to see his daughter.
“Wait,” Rune said, when Roma readied her slingshot. “It’ll only scare him away.”
“Dad,” Tasha said. She covered her face and sobbed, but only for a minute. Rune didn’t try to hurry her. She wondered how the girl was functioning at all.
And she wondered how many minutes they would have before the broken Jett Ramsey went after them all.
&n
bsp; Jett screamed again and arched his back, his hands scrabbling at the air. His howls were not full of rage. They were full of agony.
“Daddy,” Tasha cried, and yanked herself from Rune’s grip. She’d taken half a dozen running steps before Rune could stop her.
“The doctor is hurting him,” Tasha yelled, struggling in Rune’s arms. “Let me go.”
“Tasha, he’s not himself. He’ll hurt you.”
But Ramsey dropped to his knees, his head bowed. When he raised his face, there was, for the first time, some semblance of understanding in his eyes. He worked his mouth, releasing sounds that made no sense, and finally, finally, he spoke a word.
“Help.”
Then he threw his body backward and began to beat his head on the ground.
Rune forced Tasha’s face against her chest. “Don’t look,” she said.
But the sounds…
“We don’t have to kill him,” Raze murmured. “He’s going to do that for us.”
But Jett Ramsey did not die.
He rose from the ground, leaving behind jellied blood, bits of bone, and tufts of hair, and he stood. Somehow, he stood.
His eyes were terrible. Terrible with the deepest hopelessness Rune had ever seen.
“Kill,” he begged. “Kill.”
In the next second he growled like a wild animal and then, he ran at the crew, his hands out.
He was no longer scary.
He was just pathetic.
Rune shoved Tasha to Jack and shot out her claws. Jett didn’t try to fight when she sliced into his wrists, severing his hands.
And it didn’t hurt her at all.
She could have pushed him into the abyss, but Jett Ramsey had suffered enough. Instead, she took his head.
He didn’t try to fight or run or teleport.
He was there to get her to kill him, and she was going to give him what he wanted.
Part of her wanted to save him—because that’s what Eugene wanted—so he could be studied. But that part was miniscule and she ignored it.
She killed Jett Ramsey.
Jack kept Tasha from looking, somehow, though the girl struggled and fought and screamed.
Rune grabbed the head in one hand and the back of Jett’s tattered shirt with the other, and before the girl had a chance to see what had once been her father, she ran. Dragging the body, she ran.
It fell apart before she reached her car, but she continued on with the remains. At last, she shoved the body and head into the back, then took one second to hide her face against the side of the car and breathe.
Jett Ramsey was dead—killed not by her, really, but the doctor who’d controlled him. She was just taking possession of the pieces that remained.
It was far from over. There was something—someone—far worse than the broken griev. The hard shit, that was coming.
It was time to find the doctor.
And Jett Ramsey would show them how to do that.
Chapter Thirty
“We weren’t capable of fighting him,” Roma said. “That scares me.”
The crew gathered around Rune’s kitchen table, drinking coffee after the dinner they’d just finished. Except for Jack. He drank something a little stronger—but didn’t appear to be affected by the alcohol.
Rune left him alone.
“Scares us all, Roma,” she said.
They’d discussed it for two days, and she was sick to death of talking about it. They knew that if Jett Ramsey had wanted to, he could have killed them.
So yes, it scared them all.
Roma seemed unable to let it go, as though she needed someone to reassure her. To tell her they could have taken the griev. But they weren’t going to waste energy lying to her. She knew the truth.
“If we don’t find Stavish soon,” Jack said, “those motherfuckers are going to be all over the world. That is scary.”
It was the stuff of nightmares.
No one mentioned Will Blackthorne.
Rune wasn’t ready to talk about him, and really, neither were they. They had enough painful shit to wade through, and the assassin’s tumble into the portal would have been too much.
They’d get to it, eventually.
“Poor bastard,” Raze said.
Rune thought for a second he was talking about Will, but realized he was referring to Jett Ramsey. Raze never had been a big fan of the assassin.
Tasha, traumatized and grieving, had packed a bag and fled the county. Her father had given her instructions on where to go should she need to escape. He’d also, she’d told Rune, left her enough cash to see her through a couple of years.
She refused to tell Rune where she was going.
“We have to find that fucking doctor.” Rune downed her coffee. “Time is running out.”
Her phone rang. “Yeah?”
“Rune.” Luc sounded tired, but calm. “Any news?”
“No. I’m waiting to hear from Eugene. How are things there?”
“We’re starting to recover. Silas is tending our injured and we’re still finding and burying our dead.” Rune could almost hear her shrug. “We’re used to shit, Rune. We’ll be okay.”
“Do you need anything from me?”
“No. I’m calling because I heard from Jill.”
Rune put a hand to her stomach. “Where the fuck has she been?”
“Said she just needed to get away. To go stand around a bonfire with strangers in a strange city. She said I should get used to her bailing like that, because that’s who she is.”
“Cell phone?”
“She didn’t have the money to keep it going. And before you ask, no, she won’t take any money. She’s coming back to Killing Land to help with things.”
“At least she’s okay,” Rune murmured.
Luc hesitated. “Rune, I think she’s dying.”
Fuck me. “Dammit, Luc.”
“I gotta go. A few of the guys have made enough chili to feed us all, and I’m starving.”
Bill called before Rune had a chance to put her cell back into her pocket. “Rune. Eugene has some information to share.” He hesitated. “Disturbing information. Bring the crew and head in. Basement lab two conference room.”
“We’re on our way.” She stood and pushed her phone into her pocket. “Eugene has something. Let’s go see what it is.”
The room was already crowded when the crew arrived, full of ops, techs, and scientists.
“Rune,” Bill called, when he caught sight of her. “Come.”
She and her crew walked through the crowd to join him. “Where’s Eugene?” Rune asked. She looked around the room, halting her search abruptly when her gaze landed on Gavin Delaney.
He held her stare for a long, tense moment before finally she looked away.
Fucking gargoyles.
At that moment Eugene entered through the double doors at the back of the room. He strode toward them, his cheeks slightly flushed and his eyes glinting with excitement. “Take a seat,” he said. “Everyone, take a seat.”
There was a flurry of movement as everyone sat. Rune stood to the side with Bill and her crew, impatient.
“What’d you find, Eugene?” she asked.
He blew out a hard breath. “We’re about to tell you. Everyone listen up. You can ask questions after.” He turned and beckoned to a slightly bent, white haired man standing nervously at the doorway through which Eugene had just entered. “I’m going to let Dr. Stimmer explain exactly what he and his people found when they examined Jett Ramsey. These findings are preliminary, and as he gets further into his investigations, I’m sure he’ll have more to tell us.” He gave his scientist a nod and stepped back.
Dr. Stimmer ran a finger around the collar of his shirt, cleared his throat, then tapped gently on the microphone. “Yes,” he said, and cleared his throat again.
“I’m guessing he’s not too comfortable with public speaking,” Levi murmured.
Rune grinned. “Shhh.”
“Yes, then,�
� Stimmer said. “So what we’ve found is a piece of magnificent technology. Just magnificent.”
His voice was thin and a little high, and as though it was a nervous tic, he reached up to tap the mic again. “Used for evil purposes, perhaps, but magnificent, just the same.”
He floundered for a moment before finally soldiering on. “Yes. So what it did. I will explain in layman’s terms because most of you wouldn’t understand and it would only confuse you. You will let me know if I lose you.”
“We thank you, Doc,” someone called out, “for not using any of them there big words.”
There was laughter, which seemed to confuse the doctor.
“Everybody shut up and let him talk,” Eugene ordered. “Get on with it, John.”
“Of course,” Dr. Stimmer said, his face reddening. “What we have, among other things, is a sort of…well, a kill switch.”
Rune crossed her arms and shifted from one foot to the other.
Kill switch.
“It was attached to the poor fellow’s brain, I’m afraid,” Stimmer said, shaking his head, his eyes brightening. “The creator of this device had control of Mr. Ramsey’s life—and death. If he disobeyed or got out of control, one push of a button and the poor fellow’s brain would have exploded. So his handler—”
“That’s not what happened,” Rune interrupted. “He was breaking down, and I killed him. There was no sudden death caused by his handler.”
The doctor began nodding frantically before Rune finished speaking. “Sure, sure. See, we believe the device malfunctioned. It was an imperfect tool—magnificent, but imperfect—and it malfunctioned. The handler lost control of it before the fellow’s death. I would think Mr. Ramsey was driven mad long before he died. Oh, my yes. Long before.”
He smiled around at the roomful of people. “Given time and the right sort of backing and research, why, this device could—”
“John,” Eugene said.
“Oh, yes, then. Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “Yes, then. Sure.”
Rune was pretty sure she’d never been more annoyed by anyone in her entire life.
“This kill switch will not work on humans, of course,” he continued, finally. “Only Others—very strong Others, at that—would be capable of surviving such an implantation in his…” He turned to gesture at Rune. “Or her brain. And I think the Other would have to be immortal, at least as immortal as one can be—to function with such a device. But given time—”
