by Laken Cane
She met his shuttered gaze. “Thank you. I won’t forget this.”
“I couldn’t let him die. Not if there was a chance you could save him.” He gave a tight smile. “I tried.”
He glanced behind her and she turned to watch Jack as he walked up to stand beside her. “Are we going to fight?” she asked.
“No, Rune.”
“I have to try.”
“I know.”
But she wasn’t sure she even could try. She’d fed Levi, she’d lost half her hand, and now she was running on fumes. She wasn’t sure she had the blood to save Z. But she was sure as hell going to give it a shot.
Z lay unmoving on the cold pavement, his skin greenish and covered with sores. His hair was gone, all but a few stubborn strands. He smelled like infection and death.
“What can I do to help?” Jack asked, kneeling beside her.
“I might pass out. I might try to run.” Yeah, the pain was that bad. “I need you to hold my wrist to his mouth.” Then she transferred her stare to Owen. “And if he can’t keep me there, I need you to.”
He nodded. “You got it.”
She dropped her fangs and lifted her wrist to her mouth, slicing open a vein. She began to bleed at once.
Taking a deep breath, she pushed her wrist against Z’s lips. “Drink, Z,” she ordered. “Drink.”
Of course he couldn’t hear her, but the blood ran into his mouth anyway, just as it had with Levi.
But there was no pain.
Terror squeezed her lungs and she couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t working. She needed to feed in order to heal him. It wasn’t going to work.
“God,” she cried. “I have nothing left to give him.” And weeping, she took her wrist away. He’d taken some of her blood, but it was as though she’d given him a drink of water.
She couldn’t feel it working.
There was no fucking pain.
“Get Lex,” she said. “I’ll feed and—”
“He’s too far gone,” Jack said, gently.
And she knew he was right.
She stretched out beside Z, wrapping her good arm around him and burying her face against his chest. She didn’t care that his shirt had been splashed with vomit and blood, didn’t care that the stench of him was enough to make a person sick.
“You know Z loves you.” Lex’s voice echoed in her mind.
Yes, she knew.
He was her Z, and she couldn’t save him.
“Don’t call me sweet thing,” she whispered.
Her cell began to ring, and one of the guys, Jack, most likely, pulled it from her pocket.
“Yeah?” Jack was quiet for a minute. “Owen brought Z in. She fed him. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
She forced herself away from Z, flinching as her half-eaten hand hit the pavement. Out of habit she lifted her right hand to push her hair out of her face, then remembered her hair was gone. “Tell me,” she said to Jack.
“That was Strad. They’re surrounded by zombies and could use some help.”
She nodded. “We’ll have to…” She gestured at Z, unable to finish the sentence.
Jack stood and drew a long blade. “I’ll do it.”
She wanted to be strong. She wanted to do the right thing, to take the blade from Jack and say no, no. It’s my responsibility and I will do it.
“Okay,” she said.
“Wait.” Owen held up a finger, his voice sharp.
Desperate for anything, any small hope, Rune looked at Owen. “What?”
Owen pointed at Z’s face. “He looks better. You might not have healed him, Rune, but you might have. I’m going to put him in the house across the street.” He met her hopeful gaze. “We can’t take a chance on killing him if he’s going to heal.”
“I’m not going to let him become a fucking zombie,” Jack said, and lifted his blade.
“Jack. No.” She gave Owen a nod. “Take him in and leave him. Be quick.”
When things went wrong, they went wrong in a hurry.
Jack didn’t say a word.
He might live, was all Rune could think. He might. He could.
They waited impatiently until Owen completed his task and climbed into the back with Lex and the children. “What’s this?”
Lex began explaining. Rune stared out the window as Jack sped them away from the site, from Z.
The daylight faded into a cold darkness. It’d been winter forever. Cold, weak sunlight, gray days, frigid nights. Summer was a distant memory and every single part of her longed for it.
Jack’s stomach growled and it took her half a minute to figure out what she’d heard. She rummaged in the glove compartment until she found what she was looking for. “Eat this.”
He smiled. “Gunnar’s Baby Ruth?”
She nodded but couldn’t bring herself to smile. “I remember a time when I was a hard ass, Jack.”
“You’re still a hard ass, honey, but you love your crew.”
“Yeah,” she said, almost afraid to say more. Even she could hear the tears in her voice. “But so do you and you didn’t fall apart.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You call that falling apart? When this is over, Rune, I’ll grieve for the ones we lose. I’ll grieve hard.” He reached over to pat her leg, then took the candy. “If any one of us had to deal with half the shit you’ve dealt with, we’d be insane. Or dead. So yeah.” He ripped the packaging off the candy and took a gigantic bite. “You’re a hard ass.”
“I’d like a burger,” Lex said.
“As soon as we get a chance, we’ll raid a grocery,” Rune promised.
“Want a bite?” Jack asked, waving the candy over his shoulder.
“No, thanks,” Lex answered.
Owen grabbed the candy and finished it off. “Got any more of those?”
“Sorry, baby.” Rune stared out the window once more. Her hand was feeling a little better but she left the bandages on. Her claws would rip right through the gauze when she needed them. It might hurt to use them, but to fight the zombies she’d need all the claws she had left.
Z. Get up.
“Did Strad say anything about Denim?” she asked Jack.
“No.”
Even if Denim noticed that Levi was a little different, he’d be overjoyed his brother lived. Surely.
But there was no more time to worry about it.
“We have to put the kids into a secure house while we’re fighting,” she told Jack. “Let’s try one of those.”
He pulled into the yard and right up to the front door of a small white house, then jumped out of the car and went to break in and make sure it was clear.
But when he came back, his face was pale and he drove them away from the little house as though monsters were hanging from the ceiling. “I’ll find another one. Can’t go in there.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll find another.” And that was all he’d say.
He didn’t have to explain. She had a good idea of what he’d found inside the house.
He found another one and went to clear it.
“I know this house,” George said. “My mom’s friend lives here.”
But Fie wouldn’t get out of the car. She hung on to the back of Rune’s seat and screamed.
“Fie, come on,” George said. “They’re going to fight zombies. They might get in the car.” And finally, he was able to pull Fie from the SUV.
They left the children there with promises to return as soon as they could.
“There they are,” Jack said, five minutes later.
Up ahead, tall pole lights shone down on what looked like a hundred zombies. They blocked the street, an undulating mass of rotting flesh and eerie moans. They spilled into yards and lurched into trees, trampling each other in their desperate attempts to find living food.
In the middle of that mess were her men.
Tremors of excitement unfurled inside her belly as she jumped from the truck. If there was anything that would take her mind off
Z and Levi and Denim and fucking hell, it was killing the enemy.
They cut their way through the zombies, desperation riding them as they tried to reach Raze, Levi, and Strad.
Despite her attempts to shut off her thoughts, worry that another of the crew would be infected stayed on her mind.
What if Strad got bitten? He’d decapitate himself before she had a chance to heal him.
Her injured hand screamed with hot agony and the recent, barely healing wound broke open and began to bleed. Not only could she not afford to lose more blood, but the scent of it was sending the zombies into a frenzy.
Their moans and eerie vocalizations were haunting and horrifying. Even as she rid them of their heads she shuddered with a strange empathy and something close to reluctance.
It was like they were all trapped in an ancient insane asylum.
It was like the zombies were her children.
She fought harder.
Dark splashes of blood flew through the air to land in unseen splats, converging with shadows neither the streetlights nor the moon could illuminate.
But the blood was less than it had been when the crew had first fought the zombies. The zombies hadn’t eaten for a while—a little fact they hoped to rectify as they went for Rune and her people.
Still, there was blood—and she needed it. She opened her mouth for it, drank it down, and sighed with delight at the potent mix of magic and life.
And because she drank, her monster woke up.
Suddenly she was Rune the Invincible again.
And that made her ecstatic.
Nothing could touch her. She flung herself into the crowd of zombies with screaming glee, slashing her way to the center. To her men.
She saw Strad thrust his spear into a zombie’s head. He turned to get the one behind him and spotted her.
She winked at him, acknowledging the beauty of his white smile, then she annihilated three zombies in as many seconds.
She was fast, faster even than she’d been before. She didn’t question it. She was somehow better, and she used that speed to thin the zombies.
Her hand was healed.
She hadn’t noticed when all five claws regenerated, but there they were, as strong as ever. Stronger.
She threw her head back and screamed, daring fate, maybe, to take her crew. You won’t get them. You won’t get any of them.
And in that second, once again, something changed inside her. Something big.
“Z,” she cried. She sliced neatly through the neck of a female zombie who possessed some of the longest teeth she’d ever seen, then yelled his name again as she whirled around and took out two males. “Z!”
She could feel him coming toward her, running like a dark, unstoppable force, and she didn’t care that he might be a zombie, might be her slave, might be pissed.
She just didn’t give a fuck.
He slung zombies out of his way as he came for her, came to her, his perfect green eyes bright with life and hate and knowledge.
He might have hurt her then, if he’d been anyone but Z.
But Z did not hurt women. And he especially did not hurt Rune.
His maker, his mistress.
She grinned, could feel it stretching across her face like a hideous mask. “Welcome back, baby.”
He fought with his crew, his cuts as neat and quick and amazing as they’d ever been.
Z.
As though drawn to him, Levi muscled his way through the remaining zombies until he reached Z, and shot out a hand to clap him on the shoulder.
She would swear later she saw a spark fly from his touch. Later, when she had time to recall the events of that moment, that fight.
She’d brought them both back. They were hers now, hers in ways the others were not.
Was she a god?
Fuck no.
She was a goddess.
And as she threw herself back into the battle, she thought she heard the mad master Llodra’s laughter, chilling her to her very bones.
Chapter Fifteen
She couldn’t stay high forever, and when she came down, she came down hard.
The area was ominously quiet once the crowd of zombies had been destroyed. The crew regrouped silently, waiting for Rune to tell them what to do.
Z stood off to himself, his back turned, and no one approached him except Levi. Z had glowered at Levi, told him to get the fuck away from him, and hadn’t said a word since.
The crew would give him his space.
For a while.
“Should we get some food then do a search and destroy?” Jack asked.
“No,” she decided. “We try to get the kids out of town.”
They’d been lucky so far. No one had died. She glanced at Z and amended that thought. No one had stayed dead.
“We can’t leave until we find Denim,” Levi said.
Rune nodded. Levi seemed more like his old self. He’d hugged Lex and kissed her forehead, smiling when she’d grabbed him to her and wrapped her arms around him. But even though she’d refused to let him go for ten minutes, her anger was palpable. The twins, her guardians, the two people in the world she could count on, had left her.
Every so often Levi would peer at Rune and frown, but he didn’t ask any questions. He’d squeezed her shoulder once and said, “Thanks for saving my life.”
And that was all.
In the end they split up—Strad drove Raze to get his truck where Owen had abandoned it, and Rune took the others with her to look for Denim. Raze was going to pick up Fie and George as well. If they couldn’t find Denim soon, one of the men would have to take the kids to River County.
She was worried about Denim, but she didn’t share her uneasiness with Lex and Levi. They were worried enough all on their own.
Her cell rang and even before she saw RISC on the display she knew it was bad news. “Elizabeth?”
“They know, Rune. The military is being sent in. You have to get out now. If they find you there—”
“I understand. But first we have to find Denim.”
“There is no time. Don’t take a chance with the crew. Get them out of there.”
“As soon as we can.” She hung up.
“What is it?” Jack asked.
“Elizabeth ordered us out. The military is coming.”
“Not without Denim,” Levi said.
“Fuck.” She hit the steering wheel. Where are you, Denim?
She tossed her cell to Jack. “Let Strad and Raze know.”
Denim was probably already dead. One man alone in a town of zombies, especially zombie Others, was not going to survive long.
She listened to Jack talking to Strad and wished for one weak moment she was back in River County. Back in her bed with the berserker.
“Rune,” Lex said, leaning up from the backseat. “There’s something here. Stop the car.”
Rune stopped immediately. No one made a sound as they listened, searching the night outside the windows for whatever it was Lex had sensed.
And then Rune saw a movement from the corner of her eye. “Vampires.” She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a very bad thing. Her fangs dropped in response. “I’ll talk to them.”
She climbed out, eager. Eager for what, she couldn’t have said. Fighting? Being close to those who were almost her own kind?
But then a vision of Llodra swam into her mind.
Get out of my head, Nick.
She held a gun in one hand and a silver blade in the other.
She felt her crew at her back and her stomach tossed with anxiety. She’d become terrified of losing them, and she was going to have to get over it. It was a dangerous job. She had to stop thinking like an overprotective mother.
But she didn’t know how many vampires were lurking or what they had on their dark minds. She could handle whatever they dished out. Her crew might not be able to.
“Do you think they’re infected?” Jack asked.
“The wolves and shifters were,” she
said. “But the vampires? I doubt it.”
But she had been infected—she’d just managed to fight it off. If she could get infected, so could the other bloodsuckers.
It was the most fucked up zombie infection she’d ever heard of.
“We have no time,” Lex whispered.
Rune nodded and stood still, staring into a blackness barely illuminated by the moon, the streetlights, or her headlights. “I need to talk to you,” she called. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
Laughter floated from the shadows. “I’ll try to control my terror.”
It was a soft, feminine voice, musical and full of sunshine.
“Who are you?” Rune asked, and held her gun a little tighter. There was something about that voice. It was too…sweet. That made her cautious.
Then the woman materialized. It was as though she’d been there all along but Rune hadn’t been able to see her until the woman—the vampire—had allowed it.
Rune brought her gun up. The lady vampire was the most beautiful woman Rune had ever seen. And judging from the indrawn breaths at her back, the crew agreed.
The vampire looked at Rune’s gun. “Please. If you lower your weapon, I will love you forever.” She smiled, and her eyes smiled with her. “It makes me nervous.”
“I’ll keep it where it is. I’ll only use it if you or your people come too close.” Rune smiled back at the lady, pretty sure her eyes did not smile with her. “I promise.”
“I completely understand,” the vampire said, nodding. Silky black hair slid over her shoulders to her waist. “My name is Marta, and I am the vampire mistress of Rock County.”
“I’m—”
“Rune Alexander of River County’s Shiv Crew.” She kept her smile. “You are very well known. Unlike my poor worthless self.” She motioned at something behind her. “My people and I prefer to remain as inconspicuous as possible.”
It was as though they were having tea and cookies. “Marta, we need to get out of this city. The military is coming in and they won’t leave one fucking thing standing—including us if we’re caught here. I suggest you and your children take off.”
Marta widened her eyes. “How awful. We will leave soon, of course.”
“Answer some quick questions first.”
“Happily.”
