by Laken Cane
Owen grinned. “We’ll do our best. And after this, Rune, you and I are going to—”
“After this,” the berserker interrupted, his voice soft and even, “you and I will need to talk.”
Owen inclined his head. “I guess we will.”
“Get rid of them, Alexander,” Peyton said. “Because if the military comes in, it’s over for all of us.”
Without waiting for either one of them to say another word, Rune ran at a car and leaped over it, landing on the other side with the coming zombies.
Then with a niggling, confusing reluctance, she shoved all her worries away and began to do her best to thin out the monsters.
There was no scent of tempting, fresh blood this time. These zombies had not fed—a little fact she was extremely grateful for. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. The bastards came at her, disregarding her slashing claws, their teeth snapping eagerly.
But there was a whiff of magic. She caught the strong, familiar scent of Damascus. Damascus was gone. Why did her scent linger?
Rune slashed throats and drove her claws into cavernous eye sockets, and it was like slicing dehydrated meat.
They were hungry. So hungry. Their moans beat at her brain, begging her for something. Anything.
Each time one fell, she felt it tug at her heart. Like she was killing innocents. But they were zombies. They couldn’t think, or feel, or reason.
They couldn’t.
And she wasn’t their fucking mother.
She fought harder, angry now, and let herself do what she did best. She couldn’t worry about the three men with her, couldn’t worry about anything other than stopping the zombies.
Occasionally she heard a gunshot, and figured one of the zombies had wandered close enough for the cops to put it down without risking the crew.
She stumbled only once, when her concentration was broken by Owen.
It was the first time she realized he was truly one of them. He was Shiv Crew.
And it wasn’t because of his flawless execution as he wielded his silver, wasn’t the way he danced with fearless finesse through the throngs of zombies. Wasn’t even the way his straight-as-sticks hair flew out behind him as he turned to slice a zombie neck at the exact moment he drop kicked another.
It was the look in his eyes.
She recognized it, though she couldn’t name it. It was the look all of Shiv Crew had.
It was the look that told her she could trust him. The one that told her he’d give his life for the innocents, for the crew, for her.
Just as she’d give hers.
So she stumbled, because right then, Owen became one of them.
She didn’t know, with the thick soup of magic and mayhem and mystery, with all the pain and death and torment, why they were.
But she realized without a single doubt they’d been brought together for a reason.
They’d been born for Shiv Crew.
And while she might be damaged and broken and a little fucking crazy, she had a purpose.
That somehow made it okay, to know it was out of her hands.
She had no control over any of it—over life, or circumstances, or death.
She let it go, and she not only accepted Owen, but she got a hell of a lot closer to accepting Rune.
She might never know exactly who she was, but that was okay.
She was…
She was.
Chapter Forty-Two
Rune and the crew cut through the zombies in a way the bullets couldn’t. They mowed them down, stepped on their decapitated bodies, fought and hacked and sliced and didn’t quit until they stood unchallenged on dark hill of dust and bones.
But she knew it was a temporary victory.
The zombies had been awakened, and there were worlds of dead beneath the ground. Death, jealous and hungry, was coming to claim the living, and who could be sure death wouldn’t win?
In the end, death always won.
“But this is not the end,” she muttered. Not yet.
The older cop she’d spoken with earlier picked his way over the carnage until he stood beside her. His eyes gleamed with admiration. “You people sure are something to watch. Especially you, Alexander. I’ve never seen anything move that fast.”
“Anyone,” Jack correctly, gently.
Red climbed the man’s face. “Well sure, of course. That’s what I meant.” But he didn’t look at Rune. “Some are saying that little girl is responsible. That’s why River County is the only place with the new zombies.” He looked at her then. “You believe that?”
“No,” she answered. “I don’t.”
He shrugged. “I hope not. For her sake.”
“What are you going to do?” Owen asked, as they walked back to their cars.
She was silent until they reached the vehicles, then she leaned against her car and stared at all of them. “I have to talk to Llodra.”
The berserker, his big arms splattered with bits of the zombies, watched her. “Why?”
“I need to find out what he knows. What if I’m the one making the new zombies because I drank the witch’s blood? Am I calling them? I need to find out how to stop. And I don’t have a clue.”
“Why would he know?”
“It’s just a thought. I don’t know who else to ask.” Llodra had told her she could release the dead once she held them. Llodra always knew more than he should have.
He fucking owed her that much. But the chances of finding him to ask were slim. Llodra held the threat of Ellis over her head, sure, but he wasn’t going to take a chance that she or the crew might change their minds.
She was his daughter, and they would always be connected. She could call him, but he wouldn’t answer.
She climbed into her car and pulled her cell from the glove box. As she was punching in Raze’s number, Owen started to walk around the hood to get in the car with her.
“No,” Strad said. “You’ll ride with me. It’s time for that talk.”
Rune hesitated. “Berserker—”
“We’ll meet you at the twins’ house,” Strad said, and turned to stride toward his truck.
“Strad.”
He stopped, but didn’t turn back to face her. “What, Rune?”
“He’s one of us. Just remember that. He’s Shiv Crew.”
Owen tossed her a smile. “I really can take care of myself.” And he joined the berserker.
She sighed and lifted her phone to her ear as Jack climbed in beside her. He’d ridden over with Strad, but the berserker wasn’t going to want company when he had his talk with Owen.
“Raze,” she said, and started her car. “Tell me.”
“They picked up the twins,” he said. His voice was careful. “They picked them up and drove half a mile out of town before they spotted me.”
“And?” She didn’t like the way he was speaking, like he was hurting and each word he spoke made it worse.
“I had to let them go. One of them called me from Denim’s cell. He told me to back the fuck off.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She heard a click as he swallowed. “I heard one of the boys screaming,” he whispered. “And I backed the fuck off.”
It shouldn’t have been a shock, but it was. She began sobbing, and dimly realized Jack was pulling her from the car. He carried her to the passenger side, tucked her in, and climbed under the wheel. “Fucking motherfuckers,” he muttered. “Fucking motherfuckers.”
He hadn’t heard Raze’s words, but he knew. Just as they all did.
“I’m lost,” she said. Then, “Take me to Wormwood.”
He didn’t question her, just turned them in the direction of the big graveyard.
She had him make one stop so she could run inside a minimart and pick up half a dozen Baby Ruth candy bars.
Surprisingly, no zombies were rising from the many, many graves at Wormwood. She was thankful, because she wasn’t sure she could have battled them.
She was too…dark.
Too fucking sad.
“Wormwood is protected, Your Highness.” Gunnar told her. “Those buried here will stay buried.”
His eyes lit up when she handed him all six candy bars, and she felt a slight easing to her depression. “I need to find Llodra,” she said.
He frowned. “Might I ask why?” He held a bar of candy to his nose and inhaled gently.
“I think I’m creating the new zombies. I think I’ve awakened them somehow, and I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to make them…” she gestured, frustrated. “I don’t know how to make them go back to sleep.”
He tilted his head, the look in his eyes soft. “It is not you, Rune. It is the mad master. Surely you knew this?”
“Llodra?” But then suddenly she did know. “Oh, fuck me. Fuck me.”
Jack leaned toward her. “What? How is Llodra waking them?”
“He took the power of Damascus from me. He’s calling them on purpose.” She laughed and shoved her knuckles against her mouth, cutting her lips as she smashed them against her teeth. “He’s calling them with the witch’s power. With my power. He wants a zombie apocalypse, and why wouldn’t he?”
Jack nodded. “That makes sense. Now we just have to hunt the fucker down, kill him, and this will be over.” He nodded at Gunnar. “Thanks, dude. Come on, Rune.”
But she shook her head. “We can’t. We can’t hunt him.”
He adjusted his eye patch. “Why the fuck not?”
She blew out a tired breath. “You know why. The same reason we let him go to begin with. Because he’ll turn Ellis if he even suspects a threat.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Jack said, shrugging off her concern.
“It doesn’t matter if Llodra turns Ellie, Jack? Really?”
“It doesn’t matter that Llodra has the power to call one of his vampires to deliver the last bite. We’ll put Ellis somewhere safe, somewhere silver, at night. Just until Llodra is dead.”
He started to stride away, then turned back. “We know what we’re up against now, Rune, and we’ll handle it. We can’t let the evil win just because it holds shit over our heads. You’re just…” He ran his hand through his hair, his entire body stiff. “You’re afraid. But you’ll fight past the fear, and we’ll hunt the fucker down.”
He walked to her, leaned down, and put his forehead against hers. “We will win, sweetheart. We will win for one simple reason.”
“Why?” She grabbed with both hands on to his hope. His belief. “What reason?”
“Because we can’t let them win.”
But she wasn’t convinced. “No matter what? No matter that Lex, the twins, and Ellie might be casualties of this war?”
He straightened and stared down at her, his eye glittering. “No matter that we all might be. This is what we do.”
He was right. People would die. People they loved.
But they would keep fighting.
Gunnar backed away with his candy. “You’ll fight the evil no matter the cost to you, because it’s what you were born to do.”
She got it.
Everything she’d realized while fighting the zombies, looking at Owen…she got it. It solidified in her mind, and at last, she got it.
She looked at Jack, and parted her split lips in a smile. “Then let’s get to it. It’s time to make things right.”
Past time.
Chapter Forty-Three
“This room is safe,” she told Ellis.
“Oh,” he whispered, his hand over his heart. “I can’t—”
“Only for a little while. I won’t leave him alive, baby.”
“You won’t be able to find him,” Ellis said. “And I’ll have to live in fear for the rest of my life.”
“This will not last forever.”
“Even if you get him, there are vampires everywhere. I might get bitten. Someday, I might get bitten.”
She put her fingers over his lips. “Someday you could wreck your car or have a stroke.”
They stared at each other, and finally, the calm sureness in her face must have soothed him. He nodded, catching her fingers with his as she moved them from his lips. “Something is different.”
She smiled. “I am different.”
“Why?”
“Because there is less doubt.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
She kissed his cheek, then nodded toward the door to the silver-laced holding room. In the last few hours she’d had it rigged so no one could use the keypad to get inside. Ellis could come out once it was daylight and she didn’t have to worry that Llodra’s vampires might force a RISC employee to drag Ellis out.
She’d told Rice what she needed and why, and he’d had the room stocked with a cot, water, and a TV, among other things.
“If you need me,” she said, “if you just need to hear my voice, you call me.”
“And if…”
She nodded. “When I have the twins and Lex, I’ll let you know.”
“I’ll be out as soon as it’s dawn,” he told her.
“And unless I call to tell you Llodra is dead, you get into this room at least half an hour before dark. Promise me.” She ushered him into the room.
Somehow, somewhere, Llodra would know she was coming for him. He’d feel it. They were connected.
And he’d come sneaking in.
Ellie must be kept safe. No matter how long it took, she wasn’t letting Llodra get to her boy.
She’d called Strad three hours earlier, as soon as she and Jack had left the graveyard, and told him to get a couple hours of sleep. He was going to need them. She told him to pass the request on to Owen, and hadn’t even thought to ask how their talk had gone.
He hadn’t offered the information.
It hadn’t really mattered.
She needed to feed. That was what mattered.
In her car, she headed to Strad’s apartment, ridding herself of silver blades as she drove. Five minutes from his place, she called his cell.
He answered immediately, his voice as clear as if he hadn’t been asleep. “Yeah?”
“Open your door for me.”
He clicked off.
She pulled into his driveway and jumped out of the car. She slammed her door shut and when she turned around he was there, barefoot and shirtless in the cold predawn, his hair flowing messily over his massive shoulders.
They stared at each other across the few feet separating them, and her hunger, her need for not only his blood but for him, rose up and took over.
“Don’t put a claim on me,” she said. “That will only get you hurt.”
“Shut up, Rune,” he said, softly, tenderly, and in the next second, he lifted her into his arms and carried her into his house.
Just like a fucking caveman.
She lay against the solid smoothness of his chest, her fingers entwined in his long hair, staring up into his carved, wild face.
He let her down once they reached his bedroom, but pulled her against his body and held her, for five long minutes, without saying a word. Without moving.
Letting the hunger build.
Finally, she lifted her hands to his back and held him to her. She ran her tongue over his chest, her body tightening when he shivered.
“Strad,” she murmured. “Just for a minute.”
But it would be longer than that.
The world outside didn’t exist right then, didn’t exist as they took time to refuel, recharge.
She pushed his jeans over his hips, impatient to feel him, all of him, against her.
He stood quietly as she slid her hands over his taut stomach, and lower.
She wrapped her fingers around his hardness, closing her eyes at his indrawn breath. Then she stepped back, leaned over, and took him into her mouth.
He tasted like life.
She pulled that life into herself eagerly, and felt his fingers in her short hair as she sucked him.
His fingers tightened ag
ainst her scalp when she moaned, tightened hard enough to hurt. That was all it took—she lost her patience.
He was ready for her. He caught her when she tore her mouth from his cock and jumped into his arms, ready when she dropped her fangs and drove them into his throat.
She sucked in his blood a different way than she’d sucked his dick—that she’d done with deep, slow strokes, enjoying the moment, savoring the feeling.
His blood she took with eagerness and overpowering hunger.
To him there might have been little difference.
He lowered her to the bed while she clung to him, her fangs buried in the side of his neck, and with hurried desperation, he managed to push her pants to her ankles.
Neither one of them cared that it was rough and barbaric, that the coupling was an animalistic, rushed act. He squeezed himself inside her, fucked her as she fed, and that was all they needed.
For a while.
Chapter Forty-Four
Llodra could have been anywhere, but she believed he’d gone to regroup in the destroyed, human-free Rock County.
She knew him. She felt him. And Rock County would have been a perfect place for the vampires to start over, if not for one thing.
Rune.
Finding an empty city would have taken time. Even traveling through strange cities to find one that would accommodate him would have been risky. Nicolas Llodra was strong, but there were other masters as strong—even stronger—than he was.
With Rune’s promise not to hunt him, he might have settled into the newly emptied city. It was, after all, closest to the curtain behind which his maker had disappeared, and if she came again, he’d be ready for her. He had her magic, her power, inside him.
At least, that’s what Rune believed.
It would take everything she had to fight COS and rescue Lex and the twins. She couldn’t have Llodra hanging over her head. She couldn’t worry about Ellis while she fought the church.
“One day,” she told what was left of her crew. “Let’s find him in one day, because that’s all the time we can spare. Then we’ll take on COS.”
Was it the right thing to do?
It felt right to her and the crew didn’t argue, so that was the plan.
