by Laken Cane
BOOKS 1-3 BUNDLE
RUNE ALEXANDER SERIES
BY LAKEN CANE
1. SHIV CREW
2. BLOOD AND BITE
3. STRANGE TROUBLE
Master Table of Contents
Shiv Crew
Blood and Bite
Strange Trouble
Shiv Crew
By Laken Cane
Copyright © 2013 by Laken Cane
All rights reserved.
Edited by A. Chance
For more information about the author, you can find her online at www.lakencane.com, www.facebook.com/laken.cane.3 and www.twitter.com/lakencane
Dedications
To Jennifer, for the friendship and the support.
To Georgia Woods, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Taliesin Publishing, for tirelessly answering questions, beta reading, and never failing to believe in me and my books.
To Antonia Pearce, one of the best friends I’ve never met.
Table of Contents
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Part Two
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
About Laken Cane
Part One
SIGNIFY
Chapter One
Rune Alexander commando crawled closer to the fence. A sharp stick poked her ribs but a little pain was the least of her worries. It was hard to slide over the frozen, uneven ground when she had two guns holstered at her hips and a blade in each of the five sheaths strapped to her body, but she had no choice.
She held up a hand and made a forward motion, then waited for Jack and Z to move up beside her.
The moon gave enough light to see by—a very good thing considering she couldn’t stand up and flash a light at the small group in the middle of the cornfield.
RISC—Spiritgrove’s Regional Investigations of Supernatural Crimes unit—would demand pictures, and she had to play by the rules. She gave a quick nod to her left, and Z readied his telescopic camera to get a couple of shots. There’d be no flash to give them away. The pictures would be grainy, but they could be enhanced later if there was trouble from one of the ever-present Other rights and protection groups.
“How many?” she whispered. “Six?”
“Eight,” Jack replied. He tried to whisper, but it was as though he was just too big to whisper. His voice was a low rumble.
Good enough.
Just then someone began to scream, and she had to force herself to remain calm. She couldn’t afford to fuck up.
RISC’S captain, Jeremy Cross, had pulled her into his office before she’d left to have a quick talk. Technically, she answered to him. RISC trumped SCRU. Shiv Crew was just Spiritgrove’s criminal recovery unit.
“You get something for me tonight, Rune, or I’m pulling Shiv Crew off this case and sending someone else out.”
Yeah, he was getting heat from Bill Rice, the police director, but she was doing everything she could. He knew she always did.
The murderers could be any one of the many supernatural groups populating the world, but she’d bet it was either rogue vamps or wolves. They were the groups with the biggest balls.
“Z, check the fence.”
He pulled a tiny electric fence indicator from his many-pocketed vest and tested the fence. “Nope.”
“Awesome.” Now they just had to get past the fence without anyone noticing them. The same moon that worked for them was working for the dirtbags on the other side as well.
She was leader of her little crew, and she’d go first. Always. When she took on new members, she gave them one chance to get that right. If the words, But you’re a woman. Let me take point, were ever spoken, that person was history.
“Going through,” she murmured. “You know what to do.” Of course they did. Neither man was a rookie.
They all stood, carefully, and the men held the barbed wires apart so she could climb between them. She helped when it was Z’s turn, but Jack was so big he got stuck on the barbs. They clung to him like greedy lovers, and she sighed as she waited for him to quietly extract himself.
Jack was a proud sort. He stared at her with narrowed eyes as they crept closer to the group, waiting for her to smirk or be a smartass.
She ignored him and pulled her guns—handguns loaded with special silver bullets designed to take down the monsters. The silver exploded within the body, doing horrendous damage as the melting fragments raced through the bloodstream. Big or small, were or vampire or shifter, silver kicked paranormal ass.
The screams came again, closer together and more desperate, and she pushed everything from her mind but getting those screams to stop.
Fucking Others.
Time was running out for the tortured human. With the two men beside her, Rune loped as silently as possible through the shadows, holding tightly to the lethal guns.
Three people, six guns, and two dozen shivs against eight Others. Those were not good odds for her crew, but they had the element of surprise on their side.
They were spotted—or more likely scented—seconds later, and the Others scattered. From the glimpses Rune got of their clothing she assumed they were vampires. Black everywhere. Hair, clothing, everything was black except for the telltale pale skin that gleamed almost green in the moonlight.
Rune and Jack would kill anything living—or dead—that moved. They were the best shooters in the group and rarely missed anything. Z was the best retriever Rune had ever used. He would secure the victim while Rune and Jack covered him. No matter what else was going on, if there was a victim, Z would get him or her out.
She only hired the best.
But those vampires weren’t interested in fighting. They wanted only to escape, which was strange for rogue vampires. Surely they were rogue. The Spiritgrove vampires answered to master vampire Nicolas Llodra—and only rogue vampires would dare attack a human. Unless…
Unless they had his permission. Not likely. Llodra had been known to deliver his vampires to Spiritgrove Law Enforcement himself if they committed a crime. He, like most vampire masters, wanted nothing more than to live in the shadows and avoid human persecution.
One of the vampires was uncharacteristically slow. Rune pulled an eight-inch shiv from a sheath on her side and sent it flying through the air to find him.
He screamed as the silver pierced his body, and fell to the ground. He must have been a new vampire. Older ones were less vocal and much less clumsy.
A vampire wouldn’t die unless she got him through the heart and then took his head, but she didn’t want to kill him. She’d need at least one of them for questioning.
For good measure and because one couldn’t be careful enough when it came to the vampi
res, she aimed her gun and shattered one of his legs as well.
He’d heal, the son of a bitch, but because he was shot up with silver he’d heal almost human slow.
She heard a scream as one of her men managed to shoot a fleeing vampire, heard it with grim satisfaction.
Never panic was the first rule of Shiv Crew. That rule had saved their lives more than once.
Then suddenly, it was over.
For a long moment there were no sounds.
Rune kicked a rock. All the vampires had escaped but one. “Fuckers.” She glanced over to where Z tended the human, a girl around nineteen or twenty years old, who sobbed quietly into Z’s chest.
The one vampire she’d managed to catch lay still as death on the ground, his arm and leg destroyed. “Silver the undead fuck, Jack. I’ll call this in.”
Jack pulled heavy silver wire from his pocket and wrapped it around the body of the vampire, though it wasn’t really necessary. With silver drifting through his bloodstream, he wasn’t going anywhere.
The skin hissed when the wire touched it, and the scent of cooking vampire meat drifted through the air. She could only imagine how the silver must be burning him on the inside.
She shrugged away the uneasiness that plagued her whenever she had to subdue an Other in such a painful way. They brought it on themselves.
The paramedics would transport the girl to the hospital, and in a couple of days, Spiritgrove law enforcement and RISC would question her. Rune would sit in with RISC and if need be, ask a few questions of her own…if Jeremy would allow it.
“They were expecting us,” Jack said.
But that doesn’t make sense.
Yeah, they may simply have been evil rogues out to stir up some trouble, but she wasn’t feeling it. Rogues wouldn’t have run—they would have fought like the crazy desperadoes they were.
She called the station and the paramedics, then strode to Z and the girl. A shiver of unease ran down her spine. It didn’t make sense, and she didn’t like it when things didn’t make sense.
“Z.”
At her voice, he released the girl and stood, flinching when she gave a little scream and launched herself at him. She hugged his legs and trembled, her breathing harsh.
“She’s in shock, Rune. Did you call it in?”
“Yeah.”
“ETA?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
He shot a worried look down at the girl. “She’s in a bad way. Fifteen minutes is fucking eternity. Maybe we should drive her to town.”
She knelt down to look at the girl. Women were Z’s biggest weakness. He’d been known to lose his easygoing attitude and go ape shit when a female was hurt. It was one of his best qualities and one of his biggest flaws.
“I need a couple of minutes with her. See what you can find in the clothes of the vamp and search the ground before RISC gets here.” It was something Shiv Crew always did. She wasn’t guaranteed any information from the law enforcement agencies that had her beneath their thumbs, so she did as much of her own investigating as possible before they took it out of her hands. Bastards.
“She’s too injured. You shouldn’t—”
She looked at him. That was all, just looked at him.
He ran his hands through his gorgeous dirty-blond hair. “Fuck, Rune.” But he went without another word.
The girl huddled on the ground. Her sobs had dwindled and finally stopped. A long fall of dark hair hid her face, and she didn’t even flinch when Rune knelt down before her.
Rune pushed the girl’s hair out of her face. “I’m going to shine a light so I can see you. I want to see how you’re doing. Okay?”
She fished a small flashlight from her pocket and gave an experimental flash to the ground before shining it over the victim. “Shit.”
“Thirsty,” the girl said.
“I know, baby. The paramedics will be here soon and they’ll take care of you.” The girl had been beaten savagely. Her face was swollen and seeping blood. Her throat was torn from careless fangs, her chest covered with cuts and bruises. “Can you tell me your name?”
The victim looked around, her eyes dazed. “I’m thirsty.”
Jack walked up to stand behind her. “Anything?”
Rune shrugged off her coat and after taking a couple of knives from the pockets and slipping them surreptitiously to him, put the jacket around the girl’s bare shoulders. It was November, and her attackers had stripped her naked.
Her skin was cold and clammy, and the few unmarked parts of her were too pale. She listed suddenly to the side and vomited.
“Fucking monsters,” Rune muttered.
“She able to give you a name?”
“No.” She tilted her head at the distant sound of sirens. “See if Z needs help. They’ll be here in a couple minutes.”
He nodded and walked away, leaving her alone with the abused girl. She’d stopped heaving but was swaying precariously on the hard ground, her eyes unfocused.
Too bad my own abuse doesn’t outrage me as much as a stranger’s does.
But that was totally different.
“Sweetheart, I’m going to help you lie down,” Rune said.
Getting the feet up and the head down was about all she could do. She had enough trouble packing around two guns and her shivs. There was no room for a first aid kit.
The girl lay with her eyes closed, her breathing fast and shallow. Her life was never going to be the same because the monsters had decided it was a good idea to fuck with her.
Z and Jack gathered at her back.
“Nothing,” Jack said.
She nodded, and silently, they waited. The sirens stopped, and she handed Z her flashlight.
He waved it in the air to show the arrivals where they waited, and the sounds of slamming doors, softly humming engines, and low voices reached them.
Suddenly the girl spoke, her words thick. “It’s Preston. He’s killing the other…” She quieted, taking on the stillness of an unconscious person.
“Did she say Preston?”
Rune nodded. “That’s what she said, Z. We have a name.”
“But who the fuck is Preston?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know any. We’ll check the listings.”
“Are we telling RISC?”
She shrugged and started to speak, but a smooth, very familiar voice interrupted her.
“Are we telling RISC what,” Jeremy asked, “and does that question mean you’re in the habit of keeping things from me?”
The fucking cavalry had arrived.
Chapter Two
Rune tossed her car keys onto her desk and then began unloading as many of her weapons as she dared. She was never without a little something. There was even a wicked-looking black shiv lying across the soap dish when she showered.
The monsters were a pain in the ass.
“Don’t get too comfy.”
Rune sighed and turned to face the voice, which came from her diminutive assistant, Ellis. “What is it now?”
Damn, but she was tired. She hadn’t slept for two nights. All she wanted was an enormous cup of black coffee in her chipped pink mug, a hot bath, and a soft bed.
Ellis smiled, his dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’m sorry, Rune. I know you’re exhausted. But there are a couple of boys here to see you about joining the team.” He lowered his voice as though said boys were standing behind him. “They’re very interesting. And look delicious.”
Rune raised an eyebrow. “Were you planning on cooking them?”
“Oh no, sweetie. I’d take these boys raw, just the way the good Lord intended.” He winked. “Shall I send them in?”
“Yeah, send them in. But one of them needs to bring a cup of coffee along with him.”
“You got it.” Ellis backed out of the doorway, his smile never dimming. He was accustomed to Rune’s grumpiness.
She sat down behind her desk, yawning. If she could stay awake through interviewing the delicious boys, she
was going home before someone else could delay her.
She looked up when she heard footsteps.
Damn.
Ellis was right. Her two visitors were hot enough to set the rug on fire. They were identical twins. Their hair was long and dark brown, and each man sported a braided ponytail that reached his lower back.
Matching pairs of jewel-green eyes stared at her from olive-skinned faces with high cheekbones, full lips, and brows that slashed with perfect darkness over their hypnotic gazes.
They weren’t huge, like Raze, the other member of Shiv Crew, and they weren’t bulging with muscle like Jack. They were lean and slender, more like Z.
They looked a little too pretty to be fighting Others, but darkness slid through their calm green stares and she recognized it immediately. It was the same darkness that lived inside her.
She realized she’d been silent a little too long when Ellis cleared his throat. With a smile, he began the introductions. “Boys, this is Rune Alexander. Rune, this is Denim and Levi Montrosa. And from the names alone, you know they belong in Shiv Crew.”
Ellis was always a little too free with his mouth. And his opinion. Didn’t matter that he was usually right.
She pointed her chin at the cup one of the twins held. “That for me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” His voice was quiet and smooth, and he set the cup carefully on her desk.
“Dude.”
He looked up at her tone. “Yes?”
“My name is Rune, not ma’am.”
He nodded. “Got it.”
“Have a seat.” She waited until they’d lowered themselves into the chairs in front of her desk before continuing. Ellis slipped from the room, closing the door quietly behind him. Even through the closed door she could hear him softly singing a song she didn’t recognize. Ellis sang pretty much every waking hour—everything from country to metal. Inwardly, she smiled before getting back to business with her visitors.
“What makes you think you’re suitable for Shiv Crew?” she asked.
“We—”
