Box Set: Rune Alexander- Vol. 1-3 (Rune Alexander Box Set)

by Laken Cane

  The witch smiled.

  In that smile was every terror ever imagined, every black thing ever thought, every depravity ever invented.

  The witch wasn’t a woman, not really. She was evil wrapped in horror, tied neatly with a bow of rancid blood and sour anguish.

  Her skin was partly translucent. Made up of twisted, knotty veins and arteries, swollen, pulsating organs, and splashes of blood and rot, she was something caught between life and death, something created in the darkest depths of hell.

  As Rune watched, faces of others—victims, they had to be the witch’s victims—flashed over the witch’s skeletal face as though she wore layers of masks that blinked into existence sporadically.

  Like her body was a world, and those people were caught inside, forever.

  Screaming frozen faces with eyes that were still alive. Still aware.

  Rune wobbled as her knees weakened. “Oh, God.” Her eyes hurt. She couldn’t force breath past the fear clogging her throat. She could feel her heart beating, throbbing, hard and fast. Too fast.

  “God can’t help you now,” Damascus said.

  Rune wanted to jump off the roof, to run screaming from the horror before her—she knew, just knew the woman was going to reach out and drag her inside that nightmare with the others.

  The witch was a concoction of all the power she’d stolen and sucked inside herself. She was everyone she’d ever destroyed.

  And she wanted to add Rune to that nasty, bloody mix.

  Rune had been afraid in her life, but never like she was right then. All the self-hatred, all the pain…it was gone. In its place was sheer terror.

  Death didn’t scare her.

  Being one of the people caught inside the disturbing landscape Damascus called a body—that scared her.

  She didn’t care about saving the world. The zombies were far away, a dream, and they were not as important as her need to stay free of the witch.

  But she was not created to hide, shaking as her fear choked her.

  That left her one option.

  She would kill the witch.

  There were no other choices.

  The witch watched her, exposed eyeballs glittering. She wore a knowing smile, somehow, though there were no real lips to prove it.

  But it was there.

  “I do like a challenge,” she said.

  “Then you’re going to love me.”

  And Rune became her monster.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Would her monster be enough this time?

  No.

  She would have to become something more, something she’d never been. It was inside her. She just had to figure out how to drag it screaming from the shadows of her psyche.

  She could.

  Llodra had said so. And if he knew her father, he knew her.

  The witch came at her, her freaky, fucked up face changing every couple of seconds.

  She was fast—faster than anyone Rune had ever seen.

  Rune flew through the air and had her claws reaching for the woman before she was near her. She forced them longer and they blasted from her fingers, right into the witch’s head.

  And there they stuck.

  Damascus howled with laughter, shaking her head from side to side like a crazed bull. “Fun,” she shrieked. “Fun!”

  Rune tried to wrench her claws free, yanking desperately in a frenzy of horror and disbelief.

  But Damascus held her soundly and began to slowly reel her closer, her monstrous head gulping at Rune’s claws like a snake swallowing a deer.

  She was a hideous sponge, and she was absorbing Rune, her monster, and her power.

  Did that mean the witch would be Rune?

  Rune forced herself calm. She found the darkness inside her and embraced it greedily.

  And then, instead of fighting to free herself, she began stuffing her claws, her hands, even her arms, deeper into Damascus. “Eat this, bitch.”

  Damascus stopped laughing.

  Rune was up to her elbows inside the witch’s head. She swam in there, exploring, gathering information. “I see you,” she said, her voice a singsongy whisper.

  The witch didn’t like that. She didn’t like it at all.

  “Get out,” she screamed, and began frantically trying to dislodge Rune. “Out!”

  Rune was powerful and full of a strange magic the witch had wanted to taste, to steal. But she was no longer eager to do anything more than survive.

  Rune smiled into the bulging, glistening eyes. “Got you. Now what will happen to you when I take your power?”

  But Damascus wasn’t going to be that easy.

  She gathered her own darkness and desperation and fought back, as Rune had known she would.

  A power like Damascus would never be easily defeated—but it was enough that she understood Rune was just as strong.

  And then Fie flashed across the witch’s face.

  Rune moaned. “You fucking…”

  “She tasted sweet,” Damascus crooned.

  Damascus had already taken Fie before she tossed her shell of a body off the roof. Most likely she’d killed her long before Rune had even stepped inside the building.

  They both began to fight in earnest. No hesitations, no talking.

  Rune dug her claws inside the witch, trying to scoop out something vital.

  Damascus ran her fingers over Rune’s arms, and where she touched, she left chaos. Rune’s skin began to crack, like mud left to dry in the hot sun.

  Her claws, deep inside the repulsive witch, began to peel and snap. Once again, fear lit her mind and she pulled away, slicing at Damascus as she fought to drag her claws free.

  This time, Damascus didn’t try to stop her. She pushed as Rune pulled. Finally Rune popped free with a savagery that propelled her across the floor, where she lay dazed as she tried to reclaim her mind without the connection to the witch.

  She shuddered, sloughing off the invisible fingers of the witch’s vast and dark mind. Her skin began to repair immediately. Her claws zipped back inside her, and she felt them healing as well.

  Something brushed her cheek and she reached up to shove her hair out of her face. There was no time to be shocked about something so mundane as hair.

  The witch was coming. She glided toward Rune, her face full of determination.

  Rune jumped to her feet, shooting out her claws. “I’m not getting trapped inside that darkness,” she murmured.

  But Damascus believed otherwise. She lifted her hands, her lipless mouth moving as she muttered words Rune couldn’t understand.

  A green-tinged fog appeared, swirling between her palms. Then she blew, gently.

  The fog or gas or whatever it was whooshed toward Rune, and she barely had time to get her claws up to block it before the witch released another round.

  “Fie,” she yelled, as she blocked another ball of the noxious green gas. “Can you hear me?”

  Damascus stood still suddenly and tilted her head. “Of course she can hear you. They all can.” She giggled, then stopped abruptly. “I tire of play. I’ll have you now.”

  “How romantic.” But her voice shook. She ignored her fear. She wasn’t ready to give the child up, not yet. “Stefanie!”

  There was, of course, no answer.

  And Damascus hadn’t lied. She was done playing. Her next ball of fog was larger and faster, and broke open to splash upon Rune’s arm when she blocked it.

  It sizzled on her skin and the pain was so intense she couldn’t help but scream. The fog, like acid, began to eat away her flesh.

  She slashed at the witch, gratified when her long, silver claws sliced off one of Damascus’s arms.

  But it didn’t matter. The arm fell to the floor and began to shrivel, crawling across the roof. The blood congealed and turned black, the bones belching little puffs of smoke before turning to ash.

  The witch regrew her arm. In seconds.

  Llodra and Marta had been wrong. Rune couldn’t defeat Llodra’s ma
ker, and she couldn’t send her away. No one could.

  The witch lifted her newly formed arm, pointed her fingers at Rune, and began to make a stirring motion.

  The air itself became the green acid fog.

  “Fuck,” Rune shrieked, and ran. She ran with every bit of the speed being an Other gave her. If the fog enveloped her, it’d devour her skin and meat and leave only the clean bones to drop to the floor.

  And she could only hope if that happened, somehow she’d be dead, not a part of the witch’s horrible little internal commune.

  So she left Damascus behind. Fie and the others souls were lost to her. She couldn’t save them, and she couldn’t defeat the witch. She didn’t know how to.

  She ran toward the edge of the roof, acid mist sizzling at her back, and prepared to jump.

  But at the last second, she threw herself to the side, let the fog roll over her, and turned to drive her claws through the witch’s eyes.

  Right into her brain.

  It wouldn’t kill her, but it would slow her the hell down.

  And as Damascus screamed and scratched furrows into Rune’s arms, trying to dislodge the silver claws, Rune did the unthinkable.

  She began to feed from the witch.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was like drinking poison.

  Damascus tasted of madness, depravity, and a killing rage worse even than the berserker’s.

  Those inside her tasted of deadly sorrow, and pain, and overwhelming depression. Despair was so sharp it was smothering, and Rune couldn’t stand it.

  Nothing matters. She remembered. Nothing mattered. Life was a joke.

  Feeding had been an impulse, and it had been a big fucking mistake.

  She could have handled the witch’s taste, but the broken, grieving sadness of those trapped inside her was too much.

  Their reality was too much.

  And Rune could not handle it.

  She gagged on tears and yanked her fangs from Damascus’s thinned-skinned throat. She’d punctured the visible, pulsating artery, not even thinking about it—it’d been the simple reflex action of a vampire.

  The blood had squirted down her throat in strong splashes, and it didn’t matter that she stopped feeding. She couldn’t get the taste from her mind. The horror inside the witch was something she’d never known existed. Something she’d never imagined.

  She’d been through shit. She’d been hurt, and she’d experienced horror.

  But not like that.

  Not even from Llodra. Not even living with the knowledge that she’d slaughtered her adoptive parents was as unspeakable as what was inside the witch.

  And that changed her mind about everything. She wasn’t leaving until Damascus was dead or gone.

  She couldn’t.

  Nicolas Llodra was right. That was why she existed.

  She destroyed the monsters—true monsters.

  Damascus pinched her artery and it sealed off with a hiss. She stared at Rune with curiosity and satisfaction, which quickly turned to shock, and then hatred.

  “It’s not possible. You cannot live with my blood inside you.”

  Rune wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “It would appear that I can.”

  Her stomach heaved, trying to dislodge the revolting blood, but she swallowed hard and forced herself not to vomit.

  And for the first time, doubt showed in Damascus’s monstrous eyes.

  Rune backed away. Her sensitive ears caught the sounds of engines. Ground troops were coming to kill Rock County.

  Damascus smiled. “I came here to take back what belongs to me. To call him into my presence and spirit him back to my world. Back into my loving arms.”

  “Believe me, lady, I regret not handing him over to you.” Something had changed, and Rune was pretty sure she knew what it was. The witch was giving up. She wanted to go back to her world.

  But Rune didn’t want to let her go. Not alive.

  “I cannot defeat you,” Damascus continued. “Especially not with my blood inside you. Do you know that you are truly immortal?”

  “I’ve had my suspicions.”

  “My blood will not make you happy, my dear. But you have your greedy self to blame for that.” She took one step back, away from Rune. “You cannot defeat me, either. So to stand here and battle is a waste of time.

  “And I am a woman in love.” She grimaced, and for one brief second looked almost human. She sounded human. She tilted her head and was silent for a long moment. Calling Nicolas.

  “He does not answer. He has escaped me. Again.” She started to turn away, but hesitated. “Marta had the child delivered to me. So when you go on your hunt for Nicky, don’t neglect to punish Marta.” She giggled. It sounded more like a sob.

  Rune advanced on the witch, slowly, carefully. “I won’t let you take Stefanie. If you want to leave, you have to release her first.”

  The witch slid farther away, laughing as she went. “You can’t stop me from going.”

  But Rune, who had been inside the witch’s mind, knew otherwise. She grinned and leaped at Damascus. Before the witch could move, she forced her fingers through the sludge in her chest and grabbed her heart. Her black, swollen heart.

  And then she squeezed.

  Damascus screamed.

  “Your weak spot,” Rune said. “Release the child or I will burst your fucking heart.”

  She knew also if she killed the witch, Fie would die with her—but she’d kill them both if she had to. Better Fie die than to exist inside Damascus.

  She squeezed harder.

  “Oh,” the witch cried. “It hurts.”

  “Yeah. That’s always what hurts the most—someone fucking with your heart. Release her and I’ll let you go.”

  She didn’t want to, but she would.

  Damascus opened her mouth, her teeth parting as she dropped her lower jaw. And from the opening, a light started to shine.

  The witch’s body began to heave, as though she were going to vomit. And then she did—she vomited up the spirit of the child.

  Rune thought she might pass out. Dark spots grew and danced in her field of vision as she strained to follow the light, the light that was Stefanie Arco.

  She couldn’t breathe as the power grew, dimmed, then grew again.

  “Go,” she cried, and pulled her fingers away from the witch’s chest. “Go!” Please.

  “I know you,” Damascus whispered suddenly, her face filled with shock. “How did I forget?”

  Then the witch was gone.

  She did pass out then, and when she came to seconds or hours or decades later, the witch was gone and the world was full of sounds she didn’t at first understand.

  Motors and staccato gunfire, shouts and cries.

  Finally, she remembered where she was.

  Fie. She had to find Fie.

  She climbed groggily to her feet and looked around, but the light was no longer there. Maybe Damascus had lied, but she didn’t think so. She’d seen the light leaving her mouth.

  She’d seen the fear in the witch’s eyes.

  Maybe Fie had gone to find her body. Her broken body.

  Rune stumbled down the stairs, each stumbling, lurching step seeming to take an eternity.

  She flung open the doors and ran with a bit more strength to the side of the building where Fie had lain.

  But when she got there, Fie’s body was gone.

  There was only one small shoe, lying with sad abandon in the dirt, surrounded by the prone bodies of five motionless, rotting zombies.

  She had to accept the fact that Fie was gone. But her spirit, that lived on. Somewhere.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The sounds of screaming hit her brain, and she realized it was a sound she’d been hearing for a while—she just hadn’t processed it.

  She forced herself into a jog, her body groaning with pain, and headed toward the screams.

  Fucking Llodra.

  She would find him.

 
It was just a matter of time.

  The screams faded and she ran faster, finally bursting through an open door in one of the squat, mustard-colored buildings to the left of the tower.

  Inside, the floor was littered with rotting bodies of zombies. Marta hadn’t lied about that—when the witch had gone, the zombies had crumbled to the ground and…died. The new zombies.

  The old zombies were still very much animated, and were eating cheerfully of the Others chained with silver to the walls.

  Stunned, Rune stood still for the second it took her to understand what she was seeing.

  Others.

  Chained to the walls.

  The Others who still lived seemed too weak to put up much resistance, but there were some who fought to shift even as they were being bitten.

  But the silver kept the Others from shifting, melting into flesh as they struggled.

  She didn’t see one wolf among them. Elliot was just like Marta. They couldn’t be bothered to help anyone who wasn’t pack or coven.

  Rune shot her claws out, destroying zombie brains before anyone even realized she was in the room.

  She started to kill the bitten Others before she realized that with the witch and her strange magic gone, the Others would not be infected. They’d heal.

  Except for the ones the zombies had injured beyond repair. Those she could not help except by finishing off.

  With the arrival of help, of hope, the Others who weren’t too far gone began to scream once more. The room became a thick, muddy mix of screams, pleas, and cries, and worst of all, the clacking teeth and sorrowful moans of the zombies.

  “Please,” a man begged. That was all. Just please.

  She pulled apart the blood-spattered chains, freeing the Others even as she continued to decapitate the few zombies that remained.

  “Is there a back door?” she asked, calmly.

  One of the Others, a woman with rusty red hair and half her face missing, nodded. She wasn’t capable of opening her mouth to talk, but pointed to the left.

  “Run,” Rune said. She raised her voice. “As soon as I free you, go out the back and don’t stop for anything. The military is here, and they’ll destroy you faster than the zombies will.”