by Laken Cane
Rune wasn’t sure what to say, except, “Sure.”
Raze narrowed his eyes at the little Other, though she couldn’t see him. “Why?” His voice was growly and low, and Rune watched as expressions of slowly dawning understanding grew in the twins’ eyes.
They glanced at each other, then at Rune.
She looked away. It was not her secret to tell.
Only now, it wasn’t much of a secret.
Lex shrugged. “I’d rather be out here. I don’t like hospitals. I don’t like the scents, the…” she gestured. “Sometimes the emotions of the sick are overwhelming. I’d rather stay outside.”
Raze nodded, satisfied, then took her arm. “I’ll walk you back to Matheson.”
She grinned, vibrating slightly. “I can find my way to him, Raze. Somehow. He’s what…twelve feet behind me?” Her voice was slightly dry.
Raze dropped her arm and avoided everyone’s stares. He cleared his throat, then turned and strode away.
Rune hadn’t the heart to grin.
Lex made a wry face and shook her head, then went to the berserker. Rune watched him for a moment. He looked down at Lex, and didn’t seem at all surprised by her company.
He glanced up, straight at Rune, silently holding her gaze as the cops talked on.
His stare was like a physical touch, hot and hard, and she felt it penetrate every single part of her body.
And her mind.
Owen took her arm. “Let’s get to work.”
The berserker transferred his stare from Rune to Owen. The expression on his face darkened immediately as he took in the cowboy’s grip on her arm.
But Lex wrapped her hands around his big forearm.
He stared for a second longer, promise in his blue eyes, then let Lex calm him.
Shit.
The berserker and his possessiveness were getting out of hand.
And fuck if it didn’t excite the hell out of her.
She shuddered. “Yeah. Let’s get to work.”
Owen grinned.
“You shouldn’t push him, Cowboy.”
“I’m pushing you,” he replied. “Just you. If Strad Matheson gets in my way…” He lowered his voice, though the others were trying hard not to listen. “If he gets in my way, we will fight.” He slid his fingers down her arm before finally releasing her from his hot, tight grip. “And that’s not your problem.”
“Fuck you,” she whispered, her heart beating like she’d just fought a pack of wolves.
But he only smiled.
“How was Ellis?” Levi interrupted, and she’d never been so grateful for anything in her life.
She cleared her throat. “Fine. He sounded strong.”
I’ll take the basement,” Owen said, once they were inside the hospital.
She watched him walk away. She watched his slouchy, casual walk, his long, too stringy hair flopping with uncared-for abandon over his shoulders. Watched his fingers as they caressed the hilts of his holstered blades…
And for one brief, hot second, imagined him naked on top of her.
Fuck. No.
Just no.
But still, her gaze lingered.
“Rune,” Jack said, a tone of sympathy in his voice, “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes right now.”
“I might,” Levi said, and grinned.
They couldn’t help but grin back at him.
“Let’s find the kid,” she said. “I’ll take the third floor.”
She smiled as she climbed the stairs. It felt damn good to smile after all the horror. Sometimes a person just had to take a smile when it offered itself.
That made her think of Z, and her smile dropped as though it’d never even been there.
Maybe it never had.
But lingering in her mind was an image of the cowboy and the berserker, and she felt something tighten inside her.
Something hot and dangerous.
Something fucking delicious.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Strad called her before she’d covered half the third floor. “You found her?”
“She’s in the wooded area across from the emergency department.”
“I’m coming.”
She was careful until she left the floor, then she streaked down the stairs like lava from a volcano. Urgency made her heart beat hard and fast, and familiar dread curled inside her stomach.
Little Stefanie was Amy all over again, and she wasn’t letting anything happen. Not this time. Not to this kid.
Raze met her as she ran across the floor toward the exit doors. “I called the others.”
“Good.” She hadn’t wanted to take the time.
Once outside, she left Raze behind as she ran almost full out to where Strad waited. It was only then, when she stood beside him and he ran searching fingers over the bandage on her chest that she realized her stake wound was practically healed. It no longer hurt.
“Where is she?” She pulled away from the berserker’s touch, impatient. She looked around. “And where is Lex?”
“Come with me.” He guided her with a hand to her back, deeper into the small wooded area.
She spotted Lex. The Other vibrated gently, her eyes dancing and her head slightly tilted. Watching, in her own mysterious way, the little girl.
Stefanie crouched upon the cold ground, her back to them.
She was dressed only in a tiny pair of pink pajamas. Her feet were bare. She appeared not to notice as the crew gathered a short distance behind her.
All her attention was on the small crowd of zombies standing before her.
“Shit,” Rune murmured. “What is she doing?”
“Sometimes she whispers,” Lex said. “She’s talking to them. She’s talking to the zombies.”
“Holy fuck,” Denim said, his voice low. “What do you want us to do, Rune?”
“We can’t kill them while she watches.” She chewed on a fingernail for a few seconds. “I’m going to talk to her. As soon as I get her away, destroy them.”
She ignored the streams of empathy running through her. She wanted to join Fie on the ground and stare at the zombies, who stood swaying and quiet.
She could only imagine how the child felt. She wouldn’t be able to force her emotions away. Wouldn’t even want to. In her little heart, she loved the zombies.
“They’re my friends,” she said softly, as Rune knelt beside her. “Don’t take them.”
Rune ran a hand over Fie’s long hair, gently. “Oh, sweetheart. You have George. A lot of people care about you.”
Fie looked at her then, taking her solemn gaze from the zombies. The zombies stayed put. Not long ago she had trouble controlling one zombie. Now she talked with Rune while controlling eleven of them.
“George won’t wake up.”
“I’m sorry, baby.”
Fie pointed at the zombies. “I want to go with them. I want to live with my zombies.”
“You can’t do that, Fie.”
“They saved me. They saved me when the lady threw me away.”
Rune closed her eyes for a long, painful second. She had no idea what to say. Not an inkling. She wanted to snatch the child off the ground and run with her, run until the girl forgot her pain.
Kids were resilient, sure, but there had to be a limit to what they could witness and experience and remain sane. There had to be.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat and said nothing. She just didn’t know what to say.
Strad knelt on the other side of the child, his eyes holding the same torment Rune felt. “Fie, I have a present for you.”
She looked at him quickly, interested. “What is it?”
Rune waited, as curious as the child.
“When I was chasing bad guys through the woods, I found a little lost puppy. It was all alone, with no one to take care of it.”
“Just like me,” Fie said.
“The puppy needs you, sweetheart.” He held out a big hand. “And you need the puppy. Can I bring hi
m to you?”
She studied his hand for a long moment. Finally, she put her hand in his. “Can we take the zombies, too?”
“No, little one.”
He stood, and she allowed him to lift her into his arms.
“Where is the puppy?” she asked.
Rune stood with them and took off her jacket, then wrapped it around Fie’s cold body. As she and the berserker walked past the others, she gave them a nod.
They’d get rid of the monsters.
“She’s so much stronger.” She looked at Strad as he carried the child back into the hospital. “Incredibly strong.”
“Because of the witch,” he replied. “Just as you were.”
Rune nodded. The child was a necromancer, and having been inside and then spit out of the witch, she’d absorbed some of her power.
“I’ll bring you the puppy,” Strad told the child, when she was once again ensconced in her room, surrounded by nurses and a woman from social services.
“Where’s Lane?” Rune asked.
“On her way,” someone answered.
“I want my puppy.”
“I’ll bring it soon,” Strad promised.
One of the nurses was an older, frowning woman with short gray hair and cold eyes. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head, not intimidated by the berserker. “You can’t bring pets in here, sir.”
Strad ignored her. He leaned down, murmuring something into Fie’s ear that only she heard. Whatever it was, it made her eyes light up.
Rune had no doubt he’d sneak a puppy in to visit with the girl. She also knew he hadn’t actually found a dog, but he would buy the cutest puppy River County had to offer.
Following Strad’s lead, Rune leaned down to whisper in the kid’s ear. “Baby, are you calling the zombies?”
Fie smoothed down the hair of her doll and refused to answer.
Rune tried again. “We’re not angry with you. I just need to know if you’ve brought them here.”
Fie sucked in her lower lip, but at last she turned to her head to stare into Rune’s eyes. Then, slowly, she nodded.
Rune winked at her, then straightened to look at the berserker. “Let’s go.”
Out in the hall, she told him what Fie had said. “I’m not sure if she’s still bringing them from their graves or calling the ones that are already here.”
He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, ignoring the people who stared at him as they walked by. “And we need to figure out how to get her to stop.”
Rune rubbed a hand across her face and sighed. “She needs someone to…train her, I guess.”
“How do you keep from calling them?”
Shame slapped her in the face. Hard. “Because I can’t call them. Llodra took that power.”
“There’s something still inside you. I saw you out there. You felt it.”
The panic was immediate. “It was the fucking witch. I can’t call the dead.”
“I think the witch’s magic sparked something already inside you.”
Fuck if he wasn’t right. What did it mean? That she, too, was a necromancer? She couldn’t control the vampires—that power had gone when Llodra had sucked it out of her. But whatever the fuck magic made her master the zombies, that was still there.
Strad was right. She still felt them. She put the back of her hand to her mouth. “I don’t want it.”
“It’s who you are, sweetheart. It doesn’t make you evil.”
But it did.
And she was no longer able to sort out what had been the witch, what was the zombies, and what was just…Rune Alexander.
Super fucking monster.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“We have to concentrate on taking the zombies out,” Rune said.
“More will come.” Raze folded his arms and stared at her, waiting. Just as they all were.
She had no real answers. “Until the zombie threat is neutralized, we have to do what we can. When they come in, we destroy them.” But she knew as well as they did that was not going to solve the problem.
The zombies were spreading.
Everywhere.
Sure, Shiv Crew could put them down as they arrived, but it was only a matter of time before someone was bitten.
Then he would bite someone else.
At least they no longer had to worry about the military focusing on River County. The news was full of the new zombie infestation.
What had begun with little Fie and the witch was now spreading out in a pulsating radius of horror.
No one wanted to state the obvious.
No one wanted to whisper words too terrible to give voice to.
Zombie apocalypse.
It could happen. It could happen easily.
And if it did, the humans would be wiped out, leaving only the Others.
A world of Others.
But now, the Others were being infected again.
Everyone would die, except for those like her.
And what the fuck would the world become then?
Rune shivered with dread and glanced around at her crew. She could barely function after the death of Z—the black depression and fear lurked inside her, just waiting for a chance to grab her by the throat and make her remember how she hated her immortality.
She couldn’t even imagine how much worse life would become if she lost them all. No. She could not let that happen.
She and the crew had finally gotten a meal. Ellis, who’d left the hospital and was even now ensconced with Rice in the boardroom, had called three different restaurants before he’d found one willing to deliver food to the RISC building.
Sitting around the break room tables relaxing and eating with the crew would have been heaven if not for one thing.
The lack of activity, the quiet eating, the relative and momentary peace—that made it harder for her to keep out the bad shit.
Especially Z.
Lex stared down at her food as though she could see the leafy greens and the meat sitting in a quickly congealing puddle of gravy.
She’d ridden back to RISC with Rune, had sat silently in her darkness until Rune had forcibly yanked her out. “Talk to me Lex,” she’d insisted.
“Every time COS makes an appearance, my brain shuts down,” Lex finally said. “I can’t control my reactions. They control me.”
Rune nodded. “I know.”
“You don’t know some things.”
“I’m not sure I could handle knowing more,” Rune admitted. The thought of what COS had done to Lex, what her own mother had done to her, was enough to make Rune fly into a rage of bloodlust that was almost more frustrating than anything she’d ever felt.
Because she couldn’t get to Karin Love. She couldn’t get revenge for Lex. She couldn’t kill the bitch.
And she wanted to. God, how she wanted to.
But no, Lex’s mother was in prison, eating and shitting and fucking breathing and it made Rune crazy.
“I wish I could get to her,” Rune said. “I wish I could take you to her and let you—”
“But I don’t want to,” Lex suddenly screamed, her fists knotted at her chest. “I don’t want to. I want…I want her to care. I want her to be sorry. I want her to love me.” She laughed, but then her laughter turned to sobs as she stared in Rune’s direction.
Her words were covered with despair. “It’s so stupid. I know it. But I can’t stop it. I want my mother. I want her to want me.” She hugged herself. “The more she hurt me, the more I wanted to be better. The more I wanted her to love me, to be proud of me.” Then she turned away and buried her face in her hands. “Even though she scares the fuck out of me.” Her voice was thick and muffled. “I’m so sorry.”
For the rest of the ride to RISC she refused to speak again, but she reached a hand out to Rune, blindly, timidly.
Rune held her hand all the way to RISC.
The sun set as they finished eating, and when her phone sounded she grabbed it with desperate relief.
“Rune, Bill Rice wants to see you when you’re finished with dinner.” Ellis hesitated. “Alone.”
“Be right there.” She stood and stuffed her cell into her pocket.
“What’s up?” Jack asked.
“I’m going to see Rice. I’ll let you know.”
Lex got up as well. “Bathroom,” she said, when Rune paused.
RISC was not close to being back to normal, but people still walked the halls. Cleaning teams had come and gone. The area in which Llodra had gone on his rampage was being repainted, the floors retiled. But nothing would ever take away the echoes of screams that bounced off the walls.
She and Lex parted ways at the restroom, but before she slipped inside Lex turned and hugged her. Hard.
For a second a feeling of desolation rose up to smother Rune. She shook it off as the door closed behind the Other, and went on alone to meet with Rice.
Ellis stood and squeezed her arm when she entered the room, but Bill Rice remained seated at the long table. He’d become sterner and more solemn since Llodra’s attack on RISC.
“Rune,” he said, once Ellis had released her. “Sit.”
She sat, surprised when Ellis pulled out a chair next to her. Not long ago, he’d have been sent from a meeting such as that one.
Rice didn’t waste time. “I’m almost certain the city is going to push me out soon. And if they get rid of me, you’ll be next. Maybe not until they’ve used you against the current zombie threat, but soon.”
It took half a minute for his words to sink in. “You’re kidding me.”
He shook his head and met her shocked stare. “I’m not.”
“That can’t happen.”
“Every official in River County wants me gone.”
“Why?” She tried to make her voice strong and angry, but it sounded too soft and puzzled for her liking. She tried again. “Fucking why?”
“Because of COS. COS is influencing the humans,” Ellis said.
Rune laughed and pushed her chair back. She couldn’t sit with shit like that in the room. She paced. “I will not believe you’ve let COS take over. Not you, Bill.”
“No,” he said, slowly. “I don’t want COS to have that kind of authority. And I’d fight it harder if…”
