by Laken Cane
Elizabeth shook her head. “I’m sorry. I know a purge is the last resort, but this is it. Llodra’s insanity will pass through his nest like wildfire. All his vampires will be affected.”
“It’s not a disease,” Levi argued. “It’s not been proven that a master’s madness—”
“Levi,” Rune interrupted. “She’s right.” She looked at Elizabeth. “We’ll start now.”
“Thank you. And Rune, about the new hire—”
“You’ll have to assign him to a different department.” Rune stared at her boss, knowing her eyes were dead but uncaring that the woman see. She wasn’t in the mood to play nice. “I hire for Shiv Crew and we don’t need anyone new to train right now.”
“Rune—”
“Not right now.”
And Peel backed down. “All right. Just until we get this vampire purge behind us. While Shiv Crew—except for Strad—I’ll put him with the new hire—concentrates on this latest threat, he and Strad can cover your usual jobs.” She hesitated, then gave Rune a pointed look. “We will discuss it again another time.”
Good enough. Rune nodded. “Come on Levi. Let’s get to work.”
The berserker had enough to worry about. He didn’t need to put himself in front of the vampires while his mind was on his son. He’d be compromised whether he’d admit it or not. Let him babysit the new guy.
“Where are we going first?” Levi asked.
“First? My office. Get the rest of the crew in here—except Strad.” I don’t want to see him.
COS, the mad vampire, Strad…
Compartmentalize, Rune.
Blood and Fire.
The flayed man.
Fuck. Fuck me. She shut the door to her office and gave in to her need to moan, to give voice to all the bad stuff going on.
One quick moan. Then she’d put the emotions away and do her job.
Ellis was the first one into her office. He peered at her with an anxious frown. At last he sighed and sat down. “You’re not okay. All this, it’s too soon. Too soon after the clinic and…”
And Jeremy. And even Mitch.
She should have listened to her gut about Mitch to begin with. She’d known all along she couldn’t trust him.
She changed the subject. “Are things better with you and your guy?”
He smiled. “Since yesterday? No. Not really.”
“I’m sorry, Ellie. Want me to kick his ass?”
He laughed. “You wouldn’t even try.”
“For you? I’d kill the world for you.”
He dashed away quick tears that sprang to his eyes. “We’re all a little overly emotional right now, aren’t we?”
She nodded. “We went through a lot.”
“I sometimes wonder if it’ll ever end.”
She clenched her fists. “Ellie…”
“I’m just tired. Sleepless nights from…” He motioned helplessly. “You know.”
“Yeah.” Fuck love, anyway.
Levi came into her office with Denim and Lex. Lex looked better, but then, she never let shit keep her down for long.
Mitch had refused to allow Lex to remain Shiv Crew after Rune had hired her, but even before she’d left for the clinic Rune had rehired her. In a battle, Lex was…spectacular.
Jack came in, followed by Z. She looked at them all for a moment. “I wish Raze was here.”
“Tomorrow,” Z said. He looked around. “Did someone call in Strad?”
“No,” Rune told him. “Peel is sticking him with the new guy.” That wasn’t a reason not to have called him in, but her crew understood.
Jack sat down and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Elizabeth is putting us on Llodra?”
“Yes. We have a purge order. Llodra isn’t going to be an easy catch.”
“Open vampire season,” Levi said. “Once again.”
Rune didn’t want to kill all the Spiritgrove vampires any more than Levi did but they didn’t have a choice. “She’s right, baby. The madness seems to affect them all. I don’t know why it happens that way, but I’ve seen it too many times to shrug it off.”
If she was somehow connected to his line, she was doomed. Maybe she was anyway. She didn’t know who she was from. Or what.
Growing inside her mind was a seed of an idea. If she killed off the River County vampires, the madness would be halted in its tracks. It wouldn’t reach her.
All she had to do was kill Llodra and his children. Cut out the contagious cancer and bury it in the darkness.
It doesn’t make sense.
No. But her fear of madness understood no logic.
“We’ll tear River County apart looking for them. There are nests all over and we’ll clear the old ones while looking for new ones. This morning we’ll go to his house in Willowburg. That fucking place needs burned to the ground.
“But there are things I want you all to look for.” She hesitated. “First, the two…hybrid dogs, or whatever they are, that Llodra has captured.”
“Fire and Blood,” Levi murmured. “I think they’re spirits, or ghosts…something like that. They were the strangest things I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some strange things.”
Rune took a deep breath. Just talking about them made her anxious. “We have to save them.”
“Noted,” Jack said. “What else?”
“Human bite junkies. Levi and I spotted a few of them.”
“Tools and dogs,” Jack said. “Speaking of tools, has anyone heard from Amy?”
Rune sighed. “My inbox was full of emails from her. I didn’t go online until I came home, so…” She spread her hands. “I still haven’t had a chance to read them. She’s probably pissed.”
The crew had discovered Amy when they’d gone to purge a nest from an abandoned high school. Amy had helped save the vampires and had given them a lot of information they might not otherwise have gotten. At least not that quickly.
“Anything else?” Z asked.
“Yes. Llodra has been torturing his people. I want to end their suffering as quickly as possible. When you enter a room, check for tortured vampires. Nailed to the wall, hanging from irons, whatever. If you can, kill him or her first.”
“Are we taking different locations?” Levi asked. “If we are, I want to go back to that house with you.”
“The house is huge,” she replied. “We’ll all search it. After it’s cleared, we’ll spread out to different nests. Everyone ready? Kill kits stocked?”
Everyone nodded affirmative and they filed out the door, loaded down with silver.
“Call me if you need anything,” Ellis said, heading back to his office. “And please, be careful.”
The house was dark and quiet when they finally reached it. No one was there sleeping, but she hadn’t really expected Llodra to be there. No, he’d have grabbed his people and gone into hiding.
Maybe the excitement of being hunted was what he needed. If she caught him, she could give him what he most wanted. Peace.
It would give him something to look forward to in his madness, his desolation. And she felt for him—the sort of empathy only another like him could feel. She could stumble into the wasteland of that dark existence all too easily.
“Ready to go in, Rune?” Z asked, and they all watched her, uncertain.
She shook off her thoughts. “Yes. But…”
Levi frowned. “What’s wrong? Do you feel something?”
God yes. “I need to say this. If I end up mad, one of you has to end me. Swear it to me now.”
They stared at her, silent.
“You have to,” she told them. “I won’t be capable of doing it any more than Llodra is.”
“Rune,” Denim said. He looked at her, then away. “Llodra is…old. If you were to go mad, we’d be long gone by then.”
None of them could look at her. She felt the blood drain from her face. He was right. Most likely she was fucking immortal—whether she wanted to be or not. She hefted her vgun. “Let’s go in.”
>
Jack kicked in the locked door and then stood aside so she could go in first. If the berserker had been invited to this little event, he’d have gone in first no matter what she’d said. He seemed to think it was his duty. His right.
But she didn’t need a guard or a man to shield her from the evil. Most of her crew knew better than to try.
They went carefully through the long hallway, vguns ready. It was too dark, the shadows too ominous. “Lights,” she said, and as one they flipped on the long, thin flashlights they’d attached to the barrels of the vguns.
They entered the large room where Llodra had sat on his throne, then spread out. There was a lot of house to clear.
She went first to the throne. She wanted to be sure Llodra hadn’t left Blood and Fire. He wouldn’t have—but she had to check.
The spot where the tortured vampire had been nailed to the wall was empty except for dark stains. Blood. “Fuck you, Llodra, you crazy son of a bitch.”
She’d destroy him, but the bastard would do more damage before she could find him. It was true that hurt people hurt other people, and Llodra was in fucking agony.
She knelt down to peer under his throne but found nothing more than spider webs and something that looked like old pizza crust.
Food for the tools, most likely.
The vampire bite was addictive, true, but she couldn’t imagine any human willingly living in the cesspool of Llodra’s household. Maybe before he’d gone insane…
But not now.
She stood and started to head up the narrow stairs when Jack’s familiar roar of rage shook the house.
Fuck me. This isn’t going to be good.
“Jack,” she yelled. “Where are you?”
Levi ran into the room, his vgun up and ready. “He’s in the basement, Rune. Come on. I’ll take you.”
Z met them at the bottom of the old wooden stairs. “Rune.”
Shit. She closed her eyes for a long moment. “What is it?” She didn’t want to know. She really, really didn’t.
It was so bad he couldn’t even say the words. He gestured helplessly, his pale face and wide eyes making her stomach roll with fear. Yeah, it was bad.
“Show me,” she whispered.
Z simply nodded and turned around, leading them back through a maze of small rooms with what seemed like packed dirt floors. The ceiling was so low the men had to duck to walk through.
Their lights weren’t enough to chase all the shadows back but were enough to see by. It would have to do. Rune wasn’t sure she wanted to see better, anyway.
“He used these rooms for cells,” Z said, his voice so choked she could barely understand him.
Her stomach knotted and she clenched her vgun tight enough to hurt her fingers. “Z. Tell me.”
But he entered another small room and stood to the side to let her and Levi pass. Jack stood staring at something on the floor, and for a moment she thought it was the tormented man she’d seen the night before.
Jack turned to look at her. “God, Rune. I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” But she knew. He was sorry for having to show her what he’d discovered in the horror of a basement.
She began to shake as her brain screamed at her to get out, get out while she could. But she was Shiv Crew captain and she did not flinch away from the bad stuff.
At first she didn’t understand what she was looking at, but slowly, her brain made sense of what her eyes were seeing.
A person. A female chained to the wall. A girl so skeletal and filthy she barely resembled a human. For human it was—the stench alone was enough to tell her this person had soiled herself before finally succumbing to what was surely a merciful death.
“My God,” she murmured. “What a horrible way to die.”
“Rune,” Jack said, his voice hoarse.
And suddenly she understood. “Oh, no. Oh please, no.”
Llodra had left them a present.
The tortured female.
It was Amy.
Chapter Nine
She stumbled back so fast she fell, barely feeling it when one of the men grabbed her arm, yanked her to her feet, and pulled her from the room.
Someone was moaning and when she realized it was her she shut her mouth. She shut the fuck up.
Fuck me. Fuck me.
Amy had suffered unimaginable shit. Fucking little bite junkie, so full of life with her purple hair and her drama. How eagerly she’d fought to save the vampires. How badly she’d needed to belong. Just to belong.
“I told my dad all about you and Shiv Crew. He thinks I could be Shiv Crew material.”
Now she understood Jack’s roar. It hadn’t been rage so much as anguish.
She tried to shake off the guilt but it wasn’t going anywhere. None of the crew was going to get out of those shackles anytime soon.
She went outside to get some air and some sunshine and to call Elizabeth. The boss would want to send some people to get photographic evidence. She’d have Amy’s remains picked up as soon as possible.
“Did you find anything else in there?” Elizabeth asked.
“No. There was nothing else. He left her there for me and that was all he needed to do.”
“You have no idea why he would want to hurt you?”
Rune shifted the phone to her other ear. “I don’t know. Because he’s angry, maybe. Angry at what he’s become. He needs someone to take it out on. I don’t know.” She did not want to have a connection with Llodra.
“You might need to take the rest of the day off.”
“No. I need to work. But Amy’s father…”
“I’ll find his contact information and send someone to his house.”
Rune wanted to volunteer to go knock at his door and break the news to him, but in the end she couldn’t. “Thanks.” She hesitated. “Have them give him my number.”
“Of course.”
She put her cell back into her pocket and closed her eyes, letting the sun warm her skin. It was cold in the house—cold and damp and draining.
Rune wasn’t a sunshine lover, normally, but right then, she needed it. Her crew was inside, tearing the place apart just in case they’d missed something the first time.
She stood in the overgrown yard and stared at the house, shivering despite her jacket. Don’t think about it.
Amy crying, chained on the floor, scared…
Don’t fucking think about it.
It’s my fault.
No.
But how could she not feel responsible? She’d taken off to the clinic with not a word to Amy. No goodbye, no explanation, nothing.
She hadn’t even read the emails.
Now she would, and it would hurt. But Amy had hurt much worse. The least Rune could do was read her fucking emails.
The door opened and the crew filed out, quiet and somber.
She’d given them Jeremy—had owed it to them. He’d hurt them as much as he’d hurt her and they’d needed a piece of him.
But Llodra was hers and she wasn’t sharing him with anyone.
He was hers to kill.
Amy’s death hit Lex hard. She’d read Amy when they’d first met and had seemed to take a liking to the girl. But after Amy had gone back home to her father, the entire crew had just…forgotten about her.
“Do you want to go home, Lex?” Rune asked, as the Other stood shivering between Denim and Levi.
“No. I don’t want to go home to the quiet. I don’t want to think about her.”
Rune nodded though Lex couldn’t see her. It was easy to forget Lex was blind. She took a deep breath. “Okay. There’s nothing we can do for now. Let’s go to work.”
Goodbye, Amy.
They’d all lose themselves in work but tonight when it was dark and quiet, the memories would come. And the guilt.
Rune knew she needed to feed. When her body needed nourishment she was more likely to spiral down into dangerous territory.
“Sometimes it feels like there i
s something wrong with Spiritgrove,” Lex said, walking beside Rune.
“Bad shit happens everywhere, baby.”
“I know,” Lex answered, her voice dry. “I grew up outside River County and lived through some harsh things.”
Harsh things. Yeah.
“But still. Spiritgrove seems to attract more than its share of nightmares.”
“That it does,” Rune agreed.
“I’ll ride with you.”
“Okay.”
Rune climbed into her SUV, starting up the car and turning on the heater as Lex buckled herself into the passenger seat. She held her fingers to the vent. Winter was never going to be over and she was sick of it.
She waved as Jack pulled away from the curb and honked at her. Levi was with Jack, and Denim was with Z. They’d all meet up at the office after they’d checked out every vampire haunt they could find before darkness started to threaten.
“We could use Raze right now,” Rune murmured.
“Tomorrow,” Lex replied. “He’ll be with us tomorrow.”
“And eager to fight. Cooped up in that jail all this time…he’s going nuts.”
“He wouldn’t let us visit.”
“I didn’t give him a choice.”
Lex’s smile was faint. “You never do.”
Rune lifted an eyebrow, not sure how to take Lex’s remark. She shrugged and forgot about it. “Have you ever tried to read Raze?”
“Yes,” Lex said, unashamed. “But I got nothing. I can’t read Jack, either. But Z…” She smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. “You know Z loves you.”
“Z loves all women,” Rune said, and fiddled with the heater.
“He’s a protector. He cares about women, but you he—”
“Lex. Shut it.”
Lex shrugged. “Sorry.”
“Z is too good for me anyway.”
Lex was quiet for two minutes. “Why did you ask if I could read Raze? Is there something you need to know?”
But it was not her secret to tell. “No. I just wondered.”
“This summer, when I can put the windows down and feel my surroundings, will you teach me to drive?”
No one had ever called Rune a coward. “This summer I’ll take you to a quiet country road and let you get behind the wheel.”
Lex’s jaw dropped. “You will?”
Rune laughed and reached over to give the girl’s arm a quick squeeze. “Hell yeah!” It wasn’t Lex’s fault she was blind. If she wanted to drive, she was going to fucking drive.
