by Laken Cane
And that was the fucking truth.
His voice was stronger. “Tell me about Llodra.”
She swallowed convulsively.
Maybe she was mistaken after all. Maybe it had just been a dream. “I dreamed…” But she couldn’t talk about what else she’d seen as she’d slept. Couldn’t. “It was just a dream. Are you able to get up?”
“Yeah. But Rune…”
“What?”
“Your claws. Were they silver or did I imagine it?”
She smiled. “I have silver fucking claws.”
Later, in the shower, as she leaned her forehead against the wet wall and let him cleanse her of lingering blood and cold semen, she thought maybe she understood what love was.
And she would be okay.
She’d learned to live with her pain. Lex was right. She did find the silence through sex and violence.
Forty-five minutes later she and Strad climbed into their respective rides, and she called the crew.
It was time to get to work.
It had snowed, and a couple inches of the frozen white stuff decorated naked tree branches and the sidewalks, and it seemed as though the world was asleep.
The sadness lingered—a depression she wasn’t sure she’d ever lose. Maybe because of everything, maybe because of nothing. It was just who she was, and when it became too harsh, she would do what she had to do to ease it. To beat it back so she could function.
And she knew one thing without a doubt.
If Strad and the crew hadn’t been in her life, she would have run screaming and naked into the dark, as insane as the mad master vampire, Nicolas Llodra.
She was, after all, her father’s daughter.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
They met at Wormwood, except for Ellis, who’d returned to the RISC building.
“I don’t think we’ll need to go back to Rock County,” Rune said.
“We won’t? How will we find Llodra, then?” Levi asked. He stood beside his brother, and Rune had a feeling he wasn’t going to let him out of his sight for a while.
Lex stood off to the side, not looking at either of them. They’d both hurt her, and she wasn’t ready to forgive them. At least not now that they were safe.
Rune smiled as Denim caught her staring. He grinned and sent her a wink. He’d apologized a hundred times for running away.
“I’m glad you did,” Rune had told him. “If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have found little Fie.”
He’d found her wandering the woods, her body damaged but not broken.
She’d never said a word.
Rune believed she’d called on the zombies to shield her fall. That was the only explanation. She had controlled her zombie mother, after all.
Denim was so damn grateful to Rune for saving Levi’s life. He didn’t care if Levi was inclined to obey Rune’s every command—and that had surprised even Lex.
“He’s alive,” Denim had said, finally letting Rune out of his embrace. “I can never repay you for that.”
Marta had lied about finding him and sending him home. He’d never seen the vampires.
Big shock.
“Rune,” Levi prompted. “How can we find him?”
Rune shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable with Levi’s question.
“He could be anywhere.” Jack leaned against the fence and watched her.
They hadn’t yet entered the gates of the vast graveyard, but Gunnar stood silently just beyond them, waiting.
She closed her eyes as she inhaled the heady scent of the hot coffee Jack had brought her, then took a sip before she spoke. “I think I can…”
“What?” Raze asked, frowning. He stood protectively behind Lex, and Rune knew it was to make the Other feel less abandoned. Raze was not happy with her pain.
“I think I can call him,” Rune said. She went on when no one said a word. “I fed from Damascus. It was fucking disgusting but I think that gave me some of the knowledge she has. And power. Or maybe because Llodra forced some of his blood into me.” She waved her hands impatiently. “Whatever the reason, I think I can—”
“Fuck me,” Z said, his eyes wide and horrified. “You can control him because he’s dead. Just like me and Levi. That’s why you control us.” He started toward her.
Jack put a hand out and stopped him. “Don’t, dude.”
Z ran his fingers through his dirty blond hair, then over his face. “We are dead, then. The two of us.” He nodded at Levi. “We’re fucking dead. She just won’t let us lie down.”
She flinched at his caustic laugh, wishing with everything inside her that she could make it right. But she couldn’t. “I can’t let you die, Z.”
“Then you’re a selfish bitch,” he said. “You’re a selfish fucking bitch.”
“I love you,” she said, her voice cracking.
He snorted, and the tears standing in his eyes spilled over. “If you loved me, you’d let me go.”
She realized right then that her Z, the Z she’d known, he was already gone. Already dead. He was right.
And she needed to let him lie down.
She sobbed then, and pushing away Levi’s consoling hand, ran for Z. She fell to the ground at his feet and wrapped her arms around his legs. “I’m so sorry,” she cried. “You have to forgive me, Z. You have to forgive me.”
He stood stiff and silent, as did the entire crew.
“I’m so sorry. Oh God, I’m so sorry.”
And at last, he rested his hand on her head. “Rune…”
She stared up at him, drowning in her tears, in her heartache. “Don’t leave me, Z. Don’t leave me. Don’t make me let you go.”
“Sweet thing,” he whispered, his fingers gentle in her white, white hair. “I have to.”
She broke then. Just broke.
But she understood the truth. She had to let him go. She had to let him lie down.
Because it was his life, his death, and his choice.
He was not hers to keep.
Heartbroken, she hugged his legs and cried, hoping he’d change his mind. Maybe, he’d change his mind.
In the end he knelt beside her on the cold ground and at last, she got her Z back. If only for a moment.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and murmured for only him to hear, “I did love you. I loved you the most.”
He nodded, wiping away her tears. “I know. I know, sweet thing.”
“The crew will be broken without you, Z. I will be broken without you.”
But she was already broken. And Z couldn’t live as he was now, not even for his crew. Not even for her.
His death was his, between him and his God.
He said his goodbyes then, embracing each of the crew, before taking Rune’s hand and leading her into Wormwood.
They left the crew there and walked alone.
When she passed Gunnar, a lone tear traced a track down his dirty cheek. He bowed, just the slightest, and backed away.
She couldn’t breathe, but that didn’t really seem to matter. She still lived. She still walked hand in hand with her Z, walked to where she’d give him his death.
It was the right thing to do.
And finally, in the fresh snow beneath a small tree, its limbs reaching beseechingly toward the sun, she let him lie down.
Her tears flowed with his blood, scarlet upon the pristine snow.
“I’ll never stop crying for you, Z.”
But Z was gone.
Her crew found her there later, sitting in the snow. Z lay on the ground, his head in her lap and a smile frozen on his lips.
Z had found his peace.
Rune never would.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Elizabeth is good,” Owen said, putting away his phone. “She’s going to make it.”
Rune nodded. “I’m glad.” But she wasn’t sure she’d ever really be glad again.
The crew curled in on themselves, each grieving in his own way for Z.
Levi had gone to find E
llie. “He’s the only person who can make me believe I’m still alive.”
Raze walked toward them, returning from an errand Rune had sent him on.
“Did you get them?” she asked.
He held up dozens of thin, long chains of silver. “I did.”
Strad stood at her back. “You need to fight, Rune. Try to call Llodra. Let’s get this over with so you can go fight.”
The daylight had been chased away and they hadn’t left the graveyard. Jack had called to have Z’s body taken out. The crew was his family, and they’d give him a proper burial.
So much death.
So much loss, and pain, and fucking death.
Strad was right. She needed to fight. She needed to give the pain a release before she drove her claws through her own brain.
They walked deep into Wormwood, away from any humans who might be close enough to get decimated by a mad vampire.
Strad took her shaking hand and the crew circled around her.
“We’re right here,” Raze said. “Let the fuckers make one wrong move, and they’re dead.”
“I want to take him alive,” Rune said. “If he comes, don’t kill him.” This time, Nicolas Llodra was hers—and in the end, forcing him to live was the worst punishment he could get.
Denim looked at Lex. “I’m sorry I let you down, Lexi.”
Lex nodded.
“I’m going to try to call him,” Rune said, and closed her eyes.
She pictured his face, and silently called his name.
Nothing happened.
She had to mean it.
An image of Stefanie’s little face floated into her mind. An image of the bloody walls of RISC, of Elizabeth going to answer an order that Rune hadn’t even had the right or authority to give.
Of Amy, chained in the darkness where no one could hear her crying.
And of Ellie, blind and deaf and terrified, stuffed under a table in her ruined basement.
She breathed out, the sound too loud in her ears, like a waterfall rushing over a cliff. She opened her eyes but saw none of her crew.
She saw him. Saw his face, his haunted, crazed eyes.
Come to me, Nicolas.
She felt him running through the night to reach her, felt his torment, his fear, and his dread. His knowledge.
He’d saved himself from the witch, but he could not save himself from Rune. And before it was over, he was going to wonder if he wouldn’t have been better off with Damascus.
Marta and her children were at his back.
The female vampire quaked behind Llodra, her face buried in his shirt.
“For what you did to the girl,” Rune told her, “you’ll die.” She was cold and hot at once. She felt them, the vampires, fighting her command but eager to please her.
She did not want to be queen of the dead.
When she was finished with Llodra she was going to find a way to scrape the power out of herself like the fucking tumor it was.
But then, much like her monster did, it woke up inside her and rubbed sensuously against her body.
It seduced her, that power, that dark, heady magic.
It grew stronger.
“On your knees,” she told the vampire.
She felt the power, but still, she was shocked when Marta fell to her knees. Even though she held the power to command those she’d brought back, she was shocked.
“Please,” the beautiful vampire begged. “I had to save Nicolas.”
“You can’t trade an innocent for evil.” Rune walked to her and without hesitating, shot her claws into Marta’s heart. When she fell, Rune took her head.
“See what you’ve become,” Llodra accused. “Kill me, then. You’re a mad, coldblooded killer just like me.” He smiled. “Just like your—”
“Shut up. I don’t mean to kill you. That would be rewarding you for everything you’ve done. You’re going to exist, Llodra. But you will never be free.” She stood in front of him, Marta’s blood dripping from her claws onto the frozen ground. “You will never have peace.”
He shuddered, his black eyes sparkling in the moonlight. “You will want to reconsider. You will want to release me.”
She smiled. “I’m going to put you in a silver wrapped box and let you lie forever in the dark where you can’t hurt anyone else. But you will have plenty of time to think.”
“I have a trade to make with you.”
“On your knees before me, Llodra.”
He tried to disobey her. His face tightened, his lip curled over his teeth. He stiffened and tried to command his own body, but it was no longer his. He fell to his knees.
“Good,” she said. She glanced at his face and then looked away. “Raze, give me the silver.”
Her crew stood ready with silver shivs in one hand and guns loaded with silver bullets in the other.
Marta’s vampires moved with restless terror. They had no master now, but that wasn’t Rune’s problem.
“Go,” she told them.
They stared, their eyes wide and disbelieving.
“Go,” she screamed.
They went. One minute they were standing in a tight knot of fear and the next they had fled.
And Llodra was alone with the humans.
Alone with her.
He stared up at her with bottomless dark eyes. “Answer me this, Rune. When the choice is the life of your Ellis or my freedom, which will you choose?”
She shuddered as a cold chill snaked down her spine. “What the fuck are you talking about?” She’d known it wasn’t going to be easy. She’d known.
“I knew this day would come, and I have taken steps to protect myself.”
She didn’t want to know what steps. Did not want to hear. “Tell me.”
“One more bite will make him turn. One more bite and he will become the thing he most fears.” His eyes glittered. “You did not know he was horrified with the thought of becoming like you, did you?”
His smile froze her soul. She couldn’t speak.
“I have vampires waiting. Ellis is my insurance. Will you let him turn so you might punish me, Rune?”
Strad roared and grabbed the vampire by his throat. A long silver blade flashed as he twisted it into Llodra’s chest.
“Strad, no,” Rune yelled.
“We can’t let him live, Rune.”
“Not even for Ellis? Let him go, Berserker.”
The effort it cost him to drop the vampire and back away was extreme, but he did it. And Llodra never once lost his smile.
“That’s why you took him,” Rune said, trying not to whimper. And now, for the rest of his life, Ellis would be one bite away from turning. “I can order you not to call your vampire.” But she knew even as she said it that Llodra would have been smarter than that.
“Rune,” he said, the look on his face almost pitying. “You might kill me now, but one day, Ellis will be turned because of it.”
Llodra would not suffer for his crimes. “But you will—”
“No,” he snapped. “You will no longer command me. Release me. Release me now or Ellis will become one of the undead before the sound of my voice fades from your nightmares. I swear that to you. Release me.”
She could not even cry. “I don’t know how,” she whispered.
“Say the words, if that will make it real to you. Say the words and set me free.”
She gave up.
Llodra was not hers to command.
No more than Z had been. No more than Levi was.
And just like that, Llodra was free.
He stood, no longer smiling. “I am free,” he muttered. “Only not really. Oh, if only you’d killed me, Rune. Then I would truly be free. Do not hunt me again. Ever.”
She shook her head, unable to speak. But then, a terrible thought, a horrifying realization leaped into her mind. “I could have released Z? I could have saved him?”
Llodra sighed, and then, he was gone. But his words floated back, hung in the air, and choked the life out o
f her. “You have the power of Damascus. You may release anyone you do not wish to hold.”
Her legs gave out and she fell to the ground, her horrified stare pinned to her crew. She could simply have released Z and he would not have been hers to command. He could have lived.
She had killed him when she could have released him.
She moaned. There was no energy for anything else.
The crew knelt beside her. They said nothing. There was nothing they could say.
“I don’t want it,” she said. “I don’t want it.”
She didn’t want anything. Not the power, not the grief, not the knowledge that it was too late.
She felt a touch on her shoulder and glanced around to find Gunnar the Ghoul staring back at her with wide eyes and frozen features.
“Your Highness.” He stepped away and held his hand up, palm toward her, as if to ward off a killing blow. “I can take the power.”
“Gunnar?” She couldn’t think. Couldn’t imagine what he was saying to her. “What, Gunnar?”
She’d killed Z, right there in the snow. Killed him. All she wanted was to go back to that moment. He hadn’t needed to die.
She hadn’t needed to kill him.
Gunnar twisted his fingers. “It is what I do. I cannot leave the graveyards, but I can absorb power. All you have to do is give it to me.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Still staring at Gunnar, she nodded, but didn’t comprehend what he was saying. She heard a buzzing, like a bee had gotten trapped inside her skull. A dozen bees.
“Not now, Gunnar,” Strad said.
She whipped her head around to stare at him. “What did I do, Strad? What did I do? I could have released him. He could have lived.”
“He was dead after the zombie bit him, Rune. Even if you’d released him, it wouldn’t have mattered.” He squeezed her shoulder. “He didn’t want to come back.”
Levi sprinted to the group, his face pale and covered with a sheen of sweat despite the cold. “What’s wrong?” he cried. “Rune, I can’t read what you’re telling me.” He fell to his knees in front of her and put his fingers to his temples. “My head is…I can’t…”
She forced herself to focus on his face. “Shhh. You’re not mine, Levi. You’re free. I didn’t realize I could let you go.”
