by Laken Cane
“Rune,” he almost screamed. “Levi is killing Gustav. Come quickly.”
“Where are you?” She was already running, dodging other employees, her heart racing. Levi, Levi.
She understood his level of pain. He would kill Gustav.
“Basement. Cafeteria. God, Rune. Run.”
She ran, clutching her phone with a grip nearly strong enough to break it, not really to save Gustav, but to save Levi.
To save Ellis.
“Shiv Crew, report to Monitor One. You have a run. Shiv Crew, Monitor One.” The voice booming over the loudspeaker was unfamiliar. Ellis had been replaced already, and obviously the new guy was unaware that right then, his coworker was being beaten to death by a man who might never climb out of the hole into which he’d been buried.
She flung herself into the echoing stairwell and leaped down the stairs, pretty sure she caught the dim sound of screams in the distance.
When she reached the cafeteria the doorways were full of knots of people, watching whatever was happening within. At nearly the same time she began shoving her way through the crowd, she spotted six Annex operatives coming from the opposite direction.
Unless they’d been ordered to put Levi down, they’d shoot him with a tranquilizer to neutralize him.
Then anything could happen. If they figured Levi was out of control…
And Eugene wasn’t there to run interference. Iris was.
That made Rune a little nervous.
So she swerved at the last minute, going instead for the operatives. She shot out her claws. “Stay back,” she said.
“We’re—” the man in the lead started to say.
“Stay the fuck back. He’s mine. I’ll handle the situation.”
“Then you’d better do it fast,” the op said. He brought his gun up. “You have thirty seconds.”
She didn’t waste any time. Levi had finished taking his rage out on Gustav and had begun methodically and calmly beating him to death.
He straddled the fallen man, his blows landing with solid thuds. Gustav didn’t move.
When Rune flew to Levi and looked into his face…
No one was there.
She grabbed his fist before he could land another punch on the mess that had been Gustav’s face. “Levi.”
There was no rage in his eyes. Only emptiness. He was a shell absently finishing a job.
He didn’t resist when she pulled him off Gustav. She led him away as the waiting operatives converged on the injured man. They’d take care of him.
And she’d take care of Levi.
She’d forgotten about Ellis, but when she started to walk back through the doorway, Levi beside her, she saw him.
He’d collapsed back against the wall, his face paper-white. He put a fist to his chest, as though to hold in his heart. She couldn’t hear him, but she saw the words form. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Levi stared straight ahead as they walked, acknowledging no one.
Broken.
She held out her hand to Ellie, silently, and waited for him to come to her before she left the nearly empty cafeteria.
He took her hand and glanced at Levi once, and in that glance was fear, sharp and hurt.
Maybe love was there, too, but it was covered with the other shit.
“Fuck me,” she whispered.
The berserker stood outside the doorway, waiting.
She wanted to back away from the truth in his eyes, from the finality. She wanted to shut it out and pretend everything was okay.
But she couldn’t.
“Give him to me,” Strad said.
She shook her head. “I’ve got him.”
Lex streaked suddenly toward them, her cry full of rage and sorrow. “Get away from him,” she screamed.
Denim was at her back.
“I wouldn’t hurt him, Lex,” Rune murmured.
Her cell buzzed, insistently and filled, somehow, with doom. She pulled it from her pocket and stared at the text.
Gustav is dead.
Levi had murdered an innocent man.
Lex knew. She straightened her shoulders and took a breath, then reached for her Levi.
He stood in the circle of her arms, unmoving, uncaring.
“What the fuck has happened?” Denim’s voice was angry, but beneath that anger was a confused, trembling tone that meant he had no idea what to do to help his brother.
And he was terrified.
That time when trained, armed operatives marched down the hall, they walked behind Iris.
She stopped when she was fifteen feet away. “We’ll take him, Rune.”
Rune glimpsed movement from her peripheral vision and saw Jack and Raze striding toward them.
All of Shiv Crew, except for Owen and Z.
Unspeaking, not even glancing at each other, they formed a line in front of Lex and Levi.
“He’s ours,” Rune told Iris. “We won’t hand him over.”
“That’s fine. We came prepared to take him.”
“We’ll handle it,” Raze said. “You don’t want to fight us on this.”
Iris ignored him. She slipped to the side, motioning to her ops. “Do it.”
She had to have known that no Annex ops were going to take Shiv Crew.
Which meant her judgment was clouded and she was not thinking clearly. Not even a little bit.
“Ellie,” Rune said. “Take Levi and run. We’ll find you.”
The chances of Ellie getting Levi out of the building were slim, but it was worth a try.
Before she had time to say anything else, the operatives charged, and then there was only the fight.
The violence.
And the crew threw themselves into it with a bloodthirsty eagerness that left room for nothing but blood, pain, and darkness. They had to take down the enemy.
They were Shiv Crew.
It was what they did.
Part Two
MAYHEM
Chapter Thirty
It wasn’t always easy to tell enemies from allies. But when the choice was kill or be killed, everyone not fighting with them fought against them. Annex or not, the ops were trying to take out the crew, and that made them the enemy.
The hall was wide but in no way a proper battlefield. The crew blocked the Annex operatives from slipping by them to grab Levi, who, even as Ellie coaxed and prodded, refused to run.
He didn’t fight, either. He stood against the wall and watched the fight with an apathetic face and dead eyes.
Ellie ran.
After that, Rune concentrated on fighting and making sure her crew didn’t end up trampled and bloody upon the floor.
She swung her silver claws with a practiced ease, barely noticing as they plunged in and slid through flesh and became coated with the sticky heat of blood.
After her crew was safe, she’d have to feed. She was hungry.
Jack flung a man against the wall, leaving a messy splotch of blood when the dead op slid to the floor, then he turned to Rune.
“Mom and dad are coming,” he shouted, gutting a particularly stubborn op, “and they look pissed.”
Iris had backed away but as the men thinned out, Rune could see her watching with narrowed, angry eyes. And something else.
Sorrow?
Her operatives kept fighting. And Shiv Crew kept putting them down.
But Elizabeth, stiff and firm and unflappable, marched into the middle of the two groups of battling ops, and if the berserker and Rune hadn’t leaped to surround her, she might have not have survived the next second.
She’d known the crew would protect her.
“Stop it.” Her voice rang with a command that sounded over the clash of blade against blade and fist against flesh. “Stop.”
The Annex ops, as though waiting—hoping—for someone else to tell them what to do, threw down their blades and backed away.
“You can’t command them,” Iris said, pushing her way forward.
“I believe I just did,
” Elizabeth answered.
Rice pushed his way through the ops and shiv crew to stand at her side. “What is this about, Iris? You killed your own men.”
“Alexander and her crew killed these men after he killed my son.” Her voice broke and she pointed at Levi. “He beat Gustav to death, and I will make sure he is punished.”
“Iris,” Bill murmured, and in his eyes was something soft and horrified.
Rune stomach tightened, and she pushed her fist against it to try and loosen the knots. She’d had no idea Gustav was Iris’s son. It wouldn’t have made a difference, though, since she’d not reached Levi in time to stop him from killing the boy.
But that wasn’t something Iris would ever be able to get past. She was going to demand Levi’s head, and Rune couldn’t see a way out of that.
Rice looked at Rune. “Truth?”
She glanced at Levi, then back to Rice. “Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t care what happened,” Iris said. “I want the ones responsible for killing Gustav. Stand in my way and I’ll see to it that Eugene terminates every single one of you.”
“Iris,” Rice said, gently. “Go to your office. We’ll figure it out.” He looked around. “Ellis? Call housekeeping and get this mess cleaned up.”
Rune finally noticed Ellis standing alone halfway down the hall, and realized he’d been the one to summon Rice and Elizabeth.
But Iris wasn’t leaving. “I am head of Annex with Eugene not here. I say what happens and what does not happen.” She pointed at Levi. “You killed my son. Are you afraid to face his mother?”
Levi said nothing, but finally, a dim spark lit his eyes as he watched her.
She turned up her lip. “You’re no warrior,” she spat. “You’re not even a man. Go on, then. Hide behind your mistress and her claws.”
“Shut up,” Rune said. Her heart hurt, not only for Levi and the darkness that had been growing inside him, fostered pretty much since birth, but for Iris and her pain.
Levi pushed himself away from the wall and walked toward her. “Do what you need to do,” he said.
Denim stepped in front of him, Lex at his side. “No,” they both said.
But Levi put his stare on Rune. “I killed a man in cold blood. I beat the fuck out of him even as he begged me to stop. I didn’t give him a chance.”
“No, Levi,” she whispered.
“You can’t protect me from what has to come after.”
“He’s right,” Iris said. “He’s mine now.”
“Rune,” Lex begged.
Rice and Elizabeth watched, waiting.
Rune looked up at the berserker. Her eyes felt too wide, too dry. Her heart was fluttering, beating too fast, hurting her chest.
She was suffocating.
The wounded ops began dragging themselves and their injured down the hall. The dead were left where they lay.
Did she always do what was right?
No.
And she wasn’t going to start with Levi.
“Take him out, Berserker,” she murmured. “Take him the fuck out.”
Strad didn’t hesitate.
He walked toward Levi, and Lex and Denim backed away, leaving Levi unprotected against the berserker.
Lex bent over, her hands on her knees, and her thin sobs beat the air like the wings of a trapped butterfly.
“Are you sure, Rune?” Elizabeth murmured.
“Yeah. I’m sure.” Fucking liar.
Levi pulled a blade, then another. Both hands full of sharp silver, he watched the berserker come.
“Don’t make me cut you, Strad,” he said, his voice as grim and hopeless as the look in his eyes.
Levi needed to be punished. He needed someone to take away the darkness.
Rune understood. She’d been there.
“I’ve got you,” Strad said, and before Levi could decide whether or not he really wanted to cut the berserker, Strad punched him in the temple.
Levi, perhaps with a look of resentful inevitability on his face, went down.
Strad yanked him off the floor, threw him over his shoulder, and strode away.
No one, not even Iris, dared try to stop him.
Chapter Thirty-One
“We’ll fix him. We have to fix him. We have to fix everything.” Lex clenched her fists and paced the large room, not even pausing when her foot hit a chair leg and she stumbled.
Rune frowned at Lex’s sad and uncharacteristic clumsiness, but she understood it. Lex’s mind was cloudy, full of worry. She couldn’t “see” as well.
Ellis bit his fingernails, grimacing when Rune pulled his fingers from his mouth. “I don’t think it can be fixed this time,” he said.
“Bill will call when we’re cleared to go back to the Annex.” Rune took a drink of her coffee, trying to seem calm. She was pretty sure no one was fooled. She was worried about Owen, left in the hands of the Annex while the crew wasn’t there to protect him. Worried about Levi, whose dormant darkness had been awakened by his rape and deepened by Ellie’s unfaithfulness.
Dr. Haas had taken Levi in without a word. She’d assigned him to one of the clinic’s more spacious rooms. She was no stranger to Shiv Crew, and she knew that while Levi was there, some of the crew would stay to guard him. They’d need some space.
Levi watched them from his bed. The nurses had hooked him up to an IV and a monitor, much as Owen was at the Annex. Except Owen hadn’t been restrained.
They’d tied his hands to the bedrails, not to protect others from him, but to protect him from himself.
“He’ll try to kill himself,” Denim had murmured, his face turned away from Rune. “I know he deserves punishment, but I love him too much to care. If you want him to live, restrain him.”
“If they don’t clear us in the next half hour,” Rune told them, “I’ll have to go in and break Owen out.”
“That’ll mean leaving River County,” Raze said. “Probably forever.”
Rune swallowed. “I’ll do what I have to do.”
“We,” Raze said, gently.
“Don’t you understand yet, Rune? We’ll follow you anywhere,” Lex said. “Someplace where the Annex can’t touch us.”
“The Annex has a long reach and a longer memory,” Elizabeth said from the doorway.
Strad, who’d been standing guard in the hall, was at her side. He gave Rune a quick nod, then went back to his post.
Rune shuddered as a sense of foreboding hit her. “Elizabeth. Tell me.”
“Eugene is flying in. He’ll be at the Annex within the hour.”
“Why are you here?”
Elizabeth’s gaze went to Levi. She sighed. “Iris decided to have me killed. If it hadn’t been for Bill, I’d be dead right now. I’ll return when Eugene calms her.”
“If he calms her.”
“He’ll control her. Iris has no doubts about Eugene’s power.”
“Maybe,” Jack said, “but it was her son who was…who died. She won’t be easy to appease.”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “She will not.”
“The Annex might decide to come after us,” Raze said. “We killed one of theirs. Then we killed a dozen Annex ops.”
“You didn’t kill Gustav,” Levi said. “I did.”
No one disagreed.
“You are one of theirs. And you didn’t murder operatives,” Elizabeth said. “They attacked you. You defended yourselves.” She sat down and folded her hands, then looked at Rune. “Let’s wait and see. Eugene wants you on his team. He’s not going to take a chance that you’ll run off and join the Shop or the Next.”
“He’d kill her first,” Denim said, finally speaking.
“No,” Elizabeth disagreed. “Worse—he’d lock her away. But let’s wait and see what he has to say.”
“He’s not going to do anything to me,” Rune said, folding her arms.
“Don’t underestimate him, Rune. If he wanted you controlled, I’m not sure he wouldn’t succeed.”
“We need to get Owen out of there.”
Elizabeth’s cell rang, her ringtone a terse, hushed chirping. She glanced at the display, then put the phone to her ear. “Yes?”
Rune tapped her fingers on her coffee cup, her stomach churning.
Elizabeth listened for a few more seconds, then clicked off without saying another word to the caller. She stood.
Lex left her place at the foot of Levi’s bed. “He chose us.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “He chose you. He wants the crew back to work. You’ll not be attacked.”
“Not a trap?” Rune asked.
Elizabeth’s hesitation was almost imperceptible. “No.”
“And Iris?”
Elizabeth looked at Rune, her face too blank, her eyes too dark.
“He had her killed,” Rune said. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Good,” Lex said, then clapped a hand to her mouth. “I didn’t mean…”
No one said a word.
“He chose you,” Elizabeth said. “Gather your crew and come back to work. Levi will not face retribution from the Annex.”
“I guess I have a little of my mother in me after all,” Lex murmured, and without a goodbye to Levi, she followed Elizabeth from the room.
Rune wasn’t quite ready to leave the twin. She went to his bedside and stared at his beautiful face and his glittering, strange eyes. She leaned over to hug him as Denim watched from his place by the wall. He hadn’t moved since they’d arrived at the clinic.
Ellis stood alone on the other side of the room, as though he didn’t deserve to be close to any of them.
“Levi,” Rune murmured. “You have to come back to us.”
He said nothing for a long, long moment, but kept his gaze glued to hers. “I don’t know how.”
She nodded and caressed his ravaged cheek with the pad of her thumb. “We’ll help you.”
“Right now,” he said. “Right now I want to hurt you. I want to kill you.”
“No, baby. You want to hurt you.”
Ellis bolted from the room.
“God,” Rune whispered. “What did that fucking monstrous bitch do to you?”
Levi smiled, and though Rune was familiar with the demons that could live inside a person, that smile shook even her.
