by Laken Cane
Killers.
Rune wondered for a second if that was how she and her crew looked to them.
Most of the ops didn’t appear to be armed with guns, but those who stood in the front aimed assault rifles at Rune’s crew.
The Next soldiers were dressed all in blue, with layers of protection from their heads to their feet. Helmets with face shields, though Rune saw that some of them were bareheaded. Perhaps they felt that the helmets slowed them down. None of them wore gloves. Gloves would have hindered them.
“Go for their throats,” Rune murmured. “It’s where they’re most vulnerable.”
Then a woman, covered with armor, stepped from the crowd of Next ops. The fighters with rifles covered her, ready to cut in half any enemy who made a move on their leader.
Rune wondered if she’d have time to tear out the woman’s throat before those deadly bullets took down her crew.
She wouldn’t risk it. Not yet.
“Lee Crane,” she said.
Lee Crane was around sixty years old, with short, iron-gray hair, pale skin, and kind eyes.
Kind eyes. The fucking leader of the Next had kind eyes.
“Hello, Rune,” she said.
“There’s not going to be a deal,” Jack growled. “We’re not trading Rune in exchange for you leaving Killing Land.”
Lee laughed. “Oh, I’m not here to make deals.” She looked at Rune, and suddenly, her eyes weren’t kind anymore. They cut Rune to her very soul. “I’m going to take everything I want. Just as I always do.”
“Exactly what is it you want?” Rune asked.
“Why, you, of course. And when I want you, I will have you.” She smiled. “I believe I warned you of that.”
Rune smiled. “Be careful what you wish for. You’ll come to regret wanting me.”
“Perhaps,” Lee agreed. “Perhaps not.” She half-turned, and when she once again faced Rune, she pulled another woman forward.
“Jill,” Rune whispered. “Let her go, asshole. She’s got nothing to do with any of this.”
“You have a soft spot for her, I believe,” Lee said. “Sometimes we forget that the monsters have feelings too. But then we remember, and we exploit those feelings. Those weaknesses.”
Jill stared at Rune, something in her eyes, but Rune couldn’t figure out what it was. Her face was dead white, her eyes red and rimmed in black. Luc thought she was sick. Yeah, she was sick.
Rune said nothing.
Lee seemed almost bewildered by Rune’s silence, but then she shrugged it off and continued. “My soldiers will take you,” she promised, “likely before this battle is done. You’ll be kill-switched before the day is out. I’m going to save the world, Rune, and you’re going to help me do it.”
She gestured at the people standing around Rune, and seemed genuinely regretful when she continued speaking. “I apologize in advance for killing your crew, but…” She shrugged. “We all fight for what we believe in and casualties are unavoidable. At least I’m giving your crew a chance. It will be a good fight. We could have slipped in and gunned you all down.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because that would have been wrong. That would have been murder.” Lee shook her head, her eyes lit with an intense, sincere light. “I am not a murderer, and I won’t allow my people to be. They will kill your crew and whatever man stands against them, but they will do it in a fair fight.”
“That’s the right thing to do.” Rune shot out her claws so hard and fast that the two Next ops closest to her drew back in alarm.
“It is,” Lee agreed. “But I will give you this one chance to turn yourself over to me. A lot of lives will be saved if you give yourself up. I’ll take you either way—fight or don’t, it’s all the same to me.”
“We will fight,” Roma said.
Rune lifted her chin and stared Lee down.
Lee shrugged. “As you wish. When this land has lost most of its people, I’m taking it over.” She raised her voice. “Remember what I told you. I will protect you from the monsters. No more will they fall into Killing Land. No more will they lead you. No more will they make you live in fear!”
Rune couldn’t decide whether the woman was mad or just that arrogant. She’d have to be mad though, at least to some extent.
“Why are you holding Jill? If you’re sure you’re going to take me, why would you need to use a helpless human for insurance?” She smiled, but had never felt less like smiling in her life. “You’re not as sure as you pretend, are you? You know I’m going to take out half your ops before you can blink. My crew and the Annex will take out the rest of the sons of bitches. And you…” She leaned toward the older woman. “I’m saving you for Eugene Parish.”
Lee paled, Rune was certain of it. And that gave her immense satisfaction.
But then Lee straightened her shoulders and glanced at Jill. “I’m not using Jill against you.”
“Then let her go.”
“I used to be a fighter,” Lee said.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. And even now, I do enjoy time on the battlefield, though my talents are better utilized elsewhere. Like, for instance, in the lab.” She smiled. “Rune, I’d like to introduce you to the doctor who invented the kill switch that killed poor Jett Ramsey. The one who invented a delicate and very, very amazing device that will help me make the world a better place.”
Rune froze.
So the doctor was in Killing Land.
“The doctor chose the Next,” Levi murmured.
Lee’s smile widened. “Indeed.” She raised her voice. “Say hello to Rune, Dr. Johns. Oh yes,” she added. “Johns is our gifted doctor’s real name. No reason to hide now.”
And even as Rune glanced around for the doctor, Jill raised her hand in a tiny, almost sheepish wave. “Hello.”
Lee’s laughter, not evil or resentful but completely amused, rang out at the shock on Rune’s face. “I can see you weren’t expecting that.”
Jill.
The homeless woman who reminded her so much of her mother.
Jill was the doctor.
Jill was the one who’d forced Jett Ramsey to destroy first those who’d angered her, and then the Killing Land residents who’d allowed her to live among them.
“After I take you, I’ll take your daughter,” Lee said. Her eyes were bright, her voice excited, as though she were having a fiery conversation about some amazing discovery with her colleagues. “It should relieve you that the two of you will be together. You for now. Her for later.”
Rune shook her head like a maddened bull. “Kill them,” she said, so quietly she wasn’t sure anyone heard her.
But her crew heard her.
“Kill them,” she screamed.
The Next ops closed around Jill and Lee Crane, and the two women melted away like ice cubes in the sun.
“You think the slayers are serious adversaries? COS is nothing compared with the Next…”
But the Next—or at least the woman who led them—had just made a terrible error in judgment, and they weren’t as fucking bad as they thought they were.
Too bad her soldiers would suffer because of her arrogant impatience. They were just ops, but they worked for her, and they would kill—and be killed—for her.
And though the rotting disease had killed many of them, some of the Next ops were Other.
Lee Crane had hobbled their Otherness, however, and they fought as humans.
Rune never understood how Others could fight for the very organization that sought to end them. She’d stopped trying to understand.
But she could kill them, and she could pray that her crew would survive that day.
Just like that, the fight was on.
Killing Land was made for death. There was something in its air, and in its people. There would always be blood soaking into its ground.
Its people had asked her to lead them, only to betray her.
She’d kill the Next, and she’d kill the doctor.
And she would kill the fucking land.
Lofty goals, but a girl had to aim high.
“Don’t let my crew die,” she begged, and she went after the Next, claws flashing. “Do not let them die.”
Do you ever get tired of fighting the monsters?
She caught sight of some of the Landers fighting—whether they’d decided to turn on the Next, fight through their fear, or hadn’t been in on the Next’s deception, she didn’t know.
She welcomed the help.
But it wasn’t enough.
Landers fell.
As much as Lee Crane believed it wasn’t murder, what she was doing, it was murder. The Landers—all of them, not just the ones who’d turned on Shiv Crew, and not just the ones who fought, but those who ran, screaming, to escape the battlefield—they fell.
They were pursued with steely purpose and slaughtered like terrified sheep. And the land—that killing land—eagerly drank their blood offering.
Shiv Crew couldn’t protect them all.
So they fell.
She spun to run her claws through a Next op’s exposed throat and glimpsed something that made the tightness in her chest ease just a little—Annex ops, wearing the familiar black uniforms, had arrived.
Eugene must have been nearly certain the Next, or other, equally fearsome groups would show themselves. The number of Annex ops he’d sent to camp out at the edge of town matched the number of Next ops. Everywhere she looked she spotted an Annex op fighting a Next op.
Luciana shoved her gun up under a Next op’s face shield and blew half his head all over Rune’s face.
Lee Crane might have felt guns were wrong in the fight she’d brought to Killing Land.
The Landers and Shiv Crew had no such qualms.
“Sorry,” Luc screamed, and turned to take out another of their enemy.
Rune grinned, even with the rage, even with blood all over her, even with a man’s brains sliding down her face.
I am my monster.
Always.
She fought harder and faster than she ever had. The more of the enemy she took out, the fewer her crew would have to deal with. The lower the risk.
The armor the Next wore would have stopped a bullet.
It did not stop Rune’s claws.
She found out quite by accident that the armor was no match for her long, lethal silver claws. And that made killing the enemy a hell of a lot faster.
Don’t let them die.
As she charged forward through the unending crush of bodies and spraying blood and hideous screams, one continuous plea repeated in her mind.
Don’t let them die.
There was nothing else.
They could have used Will—so, so much—but she’d sent him down the unkind path. Maybe he’d return.
Maybe he wouldn’t.
She was becoming accustomed to losing her people.
But as soon as she had the thought, she realized how untrue it was. If she lost any of the others…
No.
When we want you…
Almost before the insidious message wafted through her mind, four Next ops saw their moment, and they jumped her.
Before she could fight them all off, more of them joined the party.
She’d known she would be the end target—she just hadn’t expected it to happen that quickly. She’d expected the battle to wind down a bit.
But they were striking while there were still so many people in the melee that no one was going to see Rune’s attack. No one was going to come to her rescue.
They were all just trying to stay alive.
Caught with her claws in the ribs of a dying soldier, she wasn’t ready for them.
She was suddenly in the middle of a mob of not just trained fighters, but knowledgeable ones.
Fighters who knew they’d die one way or the other—at Rune’s hands, or worse, maybe, at the hands of their leader if they failed to bring her the monster she wanted.
Dozens of them were concentrating solely on Rune.
And all were armed with long, sharp splinters of obsidian.
Lee Crane hadn’t lied. She knew Rune’s weaknesses.
But Rune was wearing a vest over the one part of her body the obsidian could actually do some major damage. Her heart.
They were prepared for that too—and they stabbed her in whatever unprotected area they could reach. It would weaken her.
And really, that was all they needed.
She cried out but not with pain or fear. She was enraged.
So very sick and tired of the enemy always taking her down with obsidian. Or trying to.
“No,” she screamed. “That doesn’t work, motherfuckers.” She willed it not to work. Not to affect her. Not to hurt her.
Not to take her out of a battle in which her crew would die.
More ops surrounded her. Still, Rune fought them off.
She was a killing machine and they were flesh and blood and not even close to her in power.
But they had the fucking obsidian, and she was bleeding from so many punctures, punctures like little pockets of agony that embraced the evil, slender needles.
Some of them were deflected by bone, but some of them…some of them found the most horribly painful homes.
One of the splinters plunged into her right eye, popping it like a balloon.
She stumbled back, her claws retracting automatically beneath the horrible power of the obsidian, and with her hand to her face, she fell.
She was caught. She was caught because she couldn’t see and she was bleeding out and she hurt so fucking much.
And they just kept coming with their obsidian and their determination and their skill. They took down the monster.
They bore her to the unforgiving ground and threw themselves across her stunned, injured body, smothering her, crushing her…
Her claustrophobia nearly defeated her.
The Next nearly defeated her.
But only for a moment.
Infuriated and dazed and half out of her mind, she exploded from the mountain of soldiers who’d piled on top of her. The world was a blur and her claws wouldn’t come and her fangs wouldn’t drop, but that was okay.
They would.
She just needed a second.
And she could soar.
Screaming, she bent her knees and jumped, leaping into the air to get away from them, high, higher still, the only thought on her mind to wait out the obsidian. To give her body time to expel the splinters, time to heal her eye.
But she began to fall before the obsidian was quite finished with her. She hurtled back down so hard and fast she knew without being able to really see that she’d gone too high and when she landed…
That motherfucker was going to hurt.
She slammed into the side of a tree, tried to grab on to a limb she could almost see through one blurry eye, then her scrabbling fingers lost their tenuous hold and she continued on to the ground.
But the tree had broken her fall—and half her ribs—and she wouldn’t smash into the ground with enough force to really hurt her.
She hoped.
Her crew needed her.
She thought she heard Roma scream her name.
And then…
She hit not the ground but a hard, warm chest, and arms, muscled and familiar, wrapped around her damaged body.
“I told you,” the berserker murmured. “I told you I would always fucking catch you.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Berserker,” she cried. “God, Berserker.”
“He is now the twisted berserker.”
But when had Strad Matheson ever not been a bit twisted?
Just like her.
Did she care?
Did she care that he was twisted or bad or that the potential for future pain at his hands was likely? That she would someday feel the loss all over again because eventually, the berserker would die?
No.
Hell no.
Because she kn
ew him.
She knew he loved her.
And she loved her berserker.
Maybe not the way normal people loved, but it was their love.
He was home.
His grip was hard and her body shivered with the pain of it, but nothing had ever felt better.
Nothing.
Later, when the battle was over and she was able to catch her breath and really let it sink in that Strad Matheson was back, then she might allow her anger at him to resurface. But right then…
“You’re here,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said, his voice guttural and desperate and hungry. “With you.”
As the battle raged around them, she devoured him with her desperate gaze, drowning in his intense eyes, his familiar lips, his long, wild hair.
He’d escaped the thing in which he’d been caught, and he’d somehow managed to walk the path back home.
Home to her.
She buried her fingers in that hair and gave in to her need to kiss him, to taste him. His realness. Him.
Strad Matheson. Her berserker.
She opened her mouth beneath the force of that need, her breath mingling with his, her heart beating so hard, so fast, in perfect time with his heart.
The fight intruded, but she was okay with that. He’d still be there when the battle was done, when the streets ran with blood, when she needed him.
He’d be there.
Roma used her slingshot and Jack his shotgun to hold the enemy away from her and Strad, to give them the moment they had to have.
“The two most powerful people in the battle,” Roma bellowed, “and you have to stop to kiss.”
“Toss me in, Berserker,” Rune said, but inside, she was laughing.
Inside, she was full of joy. Full of energy.
He was home.
The splinters had been expelled by her healing monster, and her eye, though sore when she blinked, was nearly back to normal.
Lee Crane would not get her wish of a kill-switched Rune Alexander.
But Rune would get the kill switch. She had to.
Even as she fought with renewed vigor, she craned her neck to catch glimpses of Strad, to make sure she hadn’t imagined him.
He fought as he always had, with rage and greatness, but yes…
He was different.
And his spear was gone.
