by Laken Cane
He said nothing for a long moment, his smile fading. He shuttered his eyes and blanked his face, as though she might see something he wasn’t willing to share. Finally he blew out a hard breath. “That, Rune Alexander, depends on who you ask.”
“I’m asking you.”
He looked away. “I don’t know anymore. And that’s the fucking truth.”
No answers. More questions.
And she hadn’t really expected anything else.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“I’m going after Johnson,” she told Bill Rice. “I’ll need to take a couple of the crew with me. If Eugene asks—”
“Rune, Eugene Parish wants you on his side. He won’t fire you or try to kill you if you want to go hunt COS.”
“What about Iris? I have a feeling she runs things here as much as Eugene does.”
He inclined his head. “You’re probably right, but Eugene still controls Iris. She’ll do as he commands.”
She nodded slowly. “Good to know. But it’s not COS I’m hunting. I need to find that fucking lab. I need to find the Other teens Johnson is taking.” She shook her head, almost afraid to voice the question. “What do you suppose they’re doing to those kids?”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed his temples, and she noticed the gray growing there had spread. The lines radiating from the corners of his eyes were deeper, as well. He was looking old. “Nothing good, Rune. Nothing good.”
“Yeah.”
“Who do you need to take with you? I suggest Owen, because he’s not cleared to work yet, and one of the big guys. We can manage for a day.” His attempt at a smile failed.
She frowned. “What’s wrong with you, Bill?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it without saying anything. He stared down at his desk, tracing invisible patterns on the wood. “Do you ever wonder which side you’re really on?”
“Side?”
“Good or evil. Wrong or right. You know.”
She laughed. “Yeah, Bill. I’ve wondered. I spent my life trying to beat the evil out of myself. I finally figured out that we’re all good, and we’re all evil. Some of us tend to lean closer to one than we do the other.”
He nodded and shot her a wry smile. “I suppose. Go to work, Rune. Be careful chasing the evil.” He hesitated, then went on, his words almost tumbling over each other. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” She stood. “You be careful, too. The fucking assassin is going to try everything to get to me. Who knows who he’ll grab next.”
He snorted, looking a little closer to his normal self. “I don’t think I have to worry.”
She left his office feeling better, though she wasn’t sure why. It helped knowing the Annex—Eugene Parish—wasn’t going to fight her every move.
But something was going on with Bill Rice. If he decided to talk to her, she’d listen. That was all she could do.
He was, in a strange sort of way, her friend.
Elizabeth had wanted to call Reverence and question law enforcement about Johnson, but Rune didn’t trust them. She didn’t want them giving Johnson a heads up.
She didn’t want to give them a heads up.
She called Jack. “I’m off to Kentucky.”
“I’m in my office. Where are you?”
“Parking lot.”
“I’ll be right out.”
Jack swore losing his eye hadn’t affected his ability to fight.
It hadn’t.
Much.
She called Strad while she waited for Jack. “Jack is going with me to Kentucky. I want you to stay here and lead the crew while—”
“I’m going with you.”
She sighed and hung up after telling him to meet her in the parking lot. She was going to have to do something about the fucking berserker and his…berserkerness.
That thought made her miss Gunnar.
She ignored Bill’s suggestion that she take Owen, but as she and Jack piled into Strad’s car, the cowboy jogged from the building, one hand held to his stab wound.
“Shit,” she said. “Hang on, Strad.”
Owen jumped into the back seat with Jack. “I’m no good here. Mind if I tag along?”
She shrugged. “I guess not.”
She spent almost the entire drive to Kentucky with her cell glued to ear, explaining to the rest of her crew why she hadn’t asked them to go with her.
“Some of you need to stay here and protect River County,” she’d said. “We’ll be back before morning.”
And if she was owed anything at all by the fates for having done any tiny bit of good, she’d have Johnson—dead or alive—in the trunk on the way back out of the coal country of Eastern Kentucky.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epik was a fucking liar.
The only person living on Pine Road in a big yellow house was an old lady who peered at them through faded blue eyes and waved a shotgun around with practiced efficiency.
And she claimed to know nothing of a doctor, a man named Johnson, or anything at all suspicious from any of her neighbors.
Rune and Strad returned to the car, waiting for Jack and Owen to come around from the back of the house. None of them wanted to give up.
“He wanted to get you out of town, maybe.” Jack pushed at his eye patch and glared at nothing.
“I knew he couldn’t be trusted,” she muttered. “He’s got some major problems.”
“Why this place, though?” Strad crossed his arms and frowned. “There’s something here.”
“You think so?” She was doubtful, but hopeful.
“The kid lied,” Owen said. “He might have wanted to send you into a trap, or he might have lied to get you out of River County. Doesn’t appear to be a trap, so…”
“Dammit.” She yanked her cell from her pocket and punched in Ellie’s number.
“Rune? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, baby. Everything calm there?”
“Yes, just the normal calls.”
“Johnson isn’t here. I want you warn the rest of the crew to be cautious while we’re gone.”
“I’ll let them know.”
“Thanks.” She hung up and shoved her cell back into her pocket with a little more force than necessary. She wanted Johnson. She wanted the lab.
“Rune,” Jack murmured.
She recognized his hushed tone. “Where?”
“Left window, second floor.”
She glanced up, casually, while pretending to push her hair out of her eyes. She saw it. A girl, her face pressed to the glass, her mouth opening and closing with a strange, desperate motion.
Help, help, help.
The poor girl was a terrible, frightening sight, but something in Rune’s chest eased.
Epik hadn’t lied.
The fucking grandma had.
“Plan?” Strad asked.
“Let’s go kick in some fucking doors and get that girl out.”
“I’ll watch the front,” Owen volunteered.
“Go,” she said, and led the others to the back. “Strad, get the door.”
He didn’t bother checking to see if it was locked. Usually doors shattered with one kick from the berserker, but this one resisted.
“It’s steel or some shit,” Jack said. “You won’t kick that motherfucker in.”
After Strad’s third kick she motioned him out of the way. There was no time. She took a deep breath and kicked the door right under the knob.
The door flew inward like a train had slammed into a car and the crew streamed through the doorway.
The house wasn’t a home—it appeared to be a warehouse. Boxes lined the walls, stacks upon stacks of boxes, lining the walls and piled to the ceilings. In every room they came to.
“Strad, take this floor. Jack, upstairs with me.”
The house was dark and quiet, and there was no sign of the sinister old lady. No sounds from the frantic girl.
But they were there. Somewhere.
&nb
sp; A thud, then another, sounded from the top part of the house, and Rune left Jack behind as she streaked up the stairs.
There was nothing there.
She kicked doors open and flew through large rooms with barred windows and hideous, peeling wallpaper. She hesitated only once as she stood over beds so out of place in the old house it took her a second to process them.
They were made of steel and cement and lined with silver, heavy poles at the four corners. Silver restraints were attached to the poles.
The mattresses, which were blocks of cement, were covered with stains. The reds of fresh blood, blacks of old blood, and the yellows of urine. The scent of vomit clogged her nostrils, and she was hit by a feeling of despair so sharp it took her breath.
The spirits of past occupants of those horrific beds were screaming.
Help, help, help.
Over and over.
But the girl they’d seen in the window wasn’t a ghost. Not yet.
A hoarse scream sounded suddenly, so drawn out and full of agony that it held Rune frozen in its tormented grip until finally, it faded.
Jack spied her as he started to run by the room in which she stood. He skidded to a halt. “That came from the basement.”
Of course it was in the basement. Whatever it was, whatever terrible, painful acts had been committed, the results would be found in the basement.
Basements were fucked up that way.
She and Jack hurried back to the first floor, and it took them a few precious moments to find the basement door.
Rune leaped down the steps. She wasn’t taking her time, but it was as though her feet were mired in quicksand.
The screams didn’t come again, but there was a reason for that.
The girl was dead.
She’d been granted a quick death, but what had come before was written all over her body. There had been nothing quick about that.
A silver collar was locked around her neck, obviously to keep her from shifting, and it’d been there awhile. The metal had melted into and melded with the girl’s flesh.
But she wasn’t a werefox. “She’s not Megan,” Rune muttered, staring at the ravaged female.
The girl’s handlers hadn’t cared about her. They’d cared about what she hosted.
She’d been pregnant. Her belly had been sliced open, the fetus within stolen. Then a blade had been sent into her heart.
“Rune,” Jack called. “Through here.”
He stood peering into a black hole cut into the wall. The piece of wall that had once worked as a secret door, hiding the hole from casual view, lay in pieces on the floor.
The berserker had been there.
Jack pulled a penlight from one of his pockets and clicked it on.
“Ready?”
She shot out her claws and stepped into the black darkness of the tunnel.
Yeah. She was ready.
With an image of the dead girl burned into her retinas, she ran down the grim, dark tunnel.
She saw a light after about two minutes of cautious running, and in seconds was climbing some crude steps to the outside world.
She shook off the lingering effects of claustrophobia and watched as Strad jogged toward her.
“I couldn’t catch them,” he said. “They had a car waiting. I heard it leaving. They were almost out of the tunnel before I went in.” He balled his fists and his rage swirled around him like a lethal, invisible field. He wanted to kill.
She knew the feeling.
“Here’s the trail back to the house,” Jack said. “You don’t have to go back through the tunnel.” The crew was familiar with her claustrophobia.
She let Jack walk ahead and put her hand on Strad’s arm to halt him. He stared down at her, his eyes blazing, his lips a hard line, the scar Lorraine had given him standing in stark relief against his skin.
She shivered. How easily he awakened her need with just one fierce glance.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“The girl in the basement. That was your blade in her heart.”
He closed his eyes, hiding for a second the pain in their blue depths. “She was suffering.”
She nodded, then began walking once more. “There were…beds upstairs. What the fuck were these people doing?”
“I don’t know.”
She pulled her cell from her pocket. “I’m going to report this to the Annex. I’ll call Ellis and he can have them send a team to go over the house.”
“Officials in this town might take some convincing. They’re not going to want to let the case go.”
She shrugged and punched in Ellie’s number. “They can fight that out with Eugene and Rice. The Annex will take it if they want it.”
“Rune.” Strad’s voice was hard.
She looked up at the same moment Ellis answered his phone. “Shit.”
“What is it?” Ellis asked. “Rune?”
She slowly lowered the phone. “Shit,” she said again.
The road before the yellow house was blocked with a dozen cars. More cars, most of them with armed cops crouching behind the open doors, cluttered the front yard.
Men and women, some in uniform, some not, stood silent and grim, guns pointed and ready.
“Bastards must have deputized half the town,” Rune muttered.
Two uniformed cops stood above a wounded Owen.
He knelt in the dirt, his hands cuffed behind him, the bloody ends of his long hair almost touching the ground.
“You sons of bitches are fast,” Rune said, her voice calm. Inside, though, was a different story. Her stomach tightened with rage, and the eagerness to attack was so strong it made her sick to restrain it.
One of the people stepped forward. She was a large, fleshy woman with tightly wound hair, a thin smile, and a rumpled suit.
“Welcome to Reverence,” she said. “We’re here to give you a proper welcome.”
Rune sighed.
It was going to be a long fucking night.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“My name is Wallace,” the woman went on. “Sheriff Erin Wallace.
Rune, Jack, and the berserker could have taken out the Reverence police force and the twitching townsfolk—but not before one of the nervous Kentuckians put a bullet in Owen’s brain.
“What do you want?” Rune asked.
“First, I want you and those two mountains behind you to get on the ground.” Then, without waiting for them to comply, she screamed, “Get on the fucking ground!”
Without disconnecting the call to Ellie, Rune slid the phone back into her pocket. “Why don’t you give me my man and we’ll head back to Ohio.”
The woman glared. “You shouldn’t have come here in the first place. This is my county and I don’t need a bunch of freaks coming in to mess with me.”
“We were following the trail of a doctor named Johnson.” Rune shrugged. “He wasn’t here. Sorry to have bothered you.” She took a careful step forward and pointed her chin at Owen. “Uncuff him.”
“Nope. Now, if you don’t want to lose your friend, I’m going to suggest you do exactly what I tell you to do. I want you on the ground, right now, arms stretched out in front of you. Go on.”
Rune hesitated, and one of the goons behind Owen hit him in the head, almost gently, with his gun.
Owen toppled over, unconscious.
Rune sighed. Owen was going to come out of his recent experiences with a lot of dead brain cells.
He stirred, and the cop who’d hit him yanked him back up to his knees.
“Well?” the sheriff asked. “What’s it going to be?”
Rune narrowed her eyes, judging the distance to Owen and the possibility, if she ignored the sheriff, of any of her men getting out alive.
Wallace pushed her gun against Owen’s ear. “Not being a stupid woman, I personally wouldn’t try it,” she said.
“We’re with the Annex,” Rune said. “I can show you my badge—”
“See, we don’t like the A
nnex in these parts. I’m going to give you one more chance to get on the ground. If you open your mouth again I’m blowing out this pretty boy’s brains.”
The look in her eyes said she wasn’t lying.
“Shit,” Rune whispered, and dropped to her knees. Behind her, Strad and Jack did the same.
“That’s right,” Wallace said. “Now on your bellies. My men are going to relieve you of your weapons. And with all the shit you’re carrying,” she continued, her voice jolly, “that might take a few minutes.”
After they were cuffed, the strangers took their guns and blades with an eagerness Rune could feel. When the crew left Reverence, the chances of reclaiming their weapons were pretty slim.
“Do you know who I am?” Rune asked the sheriff.
“You’re an operative with the Annex,” Wallace said. “Beyond that, I don’t much care who you are.”
Good.
Then one of the women in the crowd, toting a rifle and carrying a lit cigarette between her thin lips, recognized Rune.
“Erin,” she said, stepping forward, staring at Rune with a healthy respect, “that girl is the monster, Rune Alexander. She was on the TV.”
“Well son of a bitch,” the sheriff murmured. “Allie, I do believe you’re right.” She peered at Rune, a glint of curiosity in her eyes. “So your boys here, they must be the Shiv Crew.”
Allie beamed. “I can name them for you, if you want me to, Erin?”
Rune turned her face away from them and rested her cheek on the ground. There was no use trying to convince the sheriff to let them go. But she and her people would lower their guard.
They always did.
“Whew, look at that pile of weapons,” Wallace said, ignoring Allie’s offer. “Some of you gather those up and bring them to my office. Toss those cellular telephones in the trash.”
Dammit. She lost more cell phones…
“Mick, Jerry, Alan,” the sheriff continued, “take the men. Put the girl in my car. Carl, come with me.”
“Where are we taking them, Erin?”
“To jail, Mick. Then I’m going to call and report that we’ve caught some big, mean ole fish.”
“You all be careful,” Allie called. “They’re dangerous and sneaky.”
