by Laken Cane
Rune barely realized she was chewing and swallowing. She could have been eating the dog and wouldn’t have noticed a difference.
“I miss her,” she said, finally. “Even when she’s quiet, she has a loud presence. I feel her when she’s here.” She speared a green bean. “I bet she’s starving.”
“She eats more than any woman I’ve ever known,” Jack said.
Denim laughed. “Any woman, hell. She eats more than Raze does, and you know that’s saying something. I once saw her eat an eighteen-inch pizza and then look around for more.”
“What the fuck is she, Rune?” Jack asked. “You know, don’t you?”
The others leaned forward, waiting to hear.
“She doesn’t want us to know,” Rune said. “I found out by accident.”
“She’s ashamed of her monster,” Jack said.
“Yeah.” And Rune knew exactly how that felt.
“What’s there to be ashamed of?” Levi asked. “Is she a frog or something?”
Rune grinned, though tears threatened. “Or something.”
“Poor kid,” Jack said.
“Yeah,” Rune said. Then, “Anyone heard from the berserker?”
“Rune,” Denim said. “You need to sleep.”
“I can’t fucking sleep. Not until I get her back.” She stood. “I can’t fucking sleep.”
Ellis put a hand on her arm. “Eugene will have trackers all over this, Rune. The vampires are searching as well. They will keep looking, and they won’t stop until they find her.”
“Neither will I.” She downed the rest of her coffee then set her mug on the table.
“Two hours,” Ellis begged. “Come lie down. The crew won’t sleep if you don’t, and they can’t handle it. Please.”
She looked around at them. What had they gotten, two or three hours sleep? They’d had a battle. If they didn’t take time to recover, they wouldn’t be able to fight the battle that was coming.
She blew out a tired breath, then nodded. “Two hours. All of us.”
She’d planned to wait until the others were asleep and then slip out. She stripped off her clothes and fell across the bed, and the next time she became aware, the sun was shining.
She called Eugene, put the phone on speaker, then set it on the nightstand so she could dress as she talked. He didn’t seem to sleep nearly as much as he should have, and she wasn’t surprised when he answered the phone without the least hint of grogginess in his voice.
“News?” she asked, pulling on a soft pair of old jeans. “Anything at all?”
She knew he’d have called her if anything had happened. Still, she had to ask.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “They’re quiet.”
“What are they waiting on?” she asked, angry. “If Sylvia wants her fucking mother, why aren’t they asking for a trade?” She yanked a t-shirt over her head, then scooped the phone up and strode into the kitchen. After she poured herself a cup of coffee, she headed to see if any one of her crew had slept as long as she had.
The rooms were empty and the couch, where Jack had slept, held only a blanket and pillow.
“Fuck you guys,” she muttered.
“Rune?”
“The crew. They’re not here. They left me sleeping like a useless baby and went out to work.”
“I’ll see you when you come in,” Eugene said, and hung up.
She opened the backdoor and stepped out into the fenced backyard. She’d heard Kader’s delighted laughter as she’d poured her coffee, and she needed a fix of baby and sunshine.
Kader sat in a swing, kicking her feet, demanding Aly push her again.
“There’s mama,” Aly said, when she spotted Rune walking toward them. “Hi, Mama!”
“Where is everybody?” Rune asked, leaning over to plant a kiss on the top of Kader’s head.
“Push,” Kader said, ignoring Rune.
“They said to tell you not to be mad.” Aly gave the child a gentle shove. “You needed to sleep.”
“Ellie?”
“He went grocery shopping.” Aly looked at her. “Are you okay?”
Rune took a deep breath to clear her head, thought about calling Jack, then decided against it. She’d see them at the Annex. Besides, if anyone had found so much as a clue about Roma, they’d have called her immediately.
She needed to take a minute to hold her daughter.
Then a soft ding from the backdoor alarm let her know someone was ringing the front doorbell.
“I’ll get it,” Aly offered. “You can push Kader’s swing. Would you like that, sweetie pie?”
“Please,” Kader said.
Rune’s chest eased a tiny bit. “Thanks, Aly. And check the fisheye before you open the door.” Annex ops left when she arrived home—that was the arrangement. She’d call a couple of them back in before she went to work.
“I know the drill,” Aly said, dryly.
She jogged away, and Rune knelt beside her daughter. “Do you have a kiss for me, kiddo?”
Kader pursed her lips and rammed her kiss into Rune’s cheek, impatient to get the kisses over with so she could swing. “I want Ellie.”
“Me too,” Rune said, then stood and began pushing her child. “He’ll be here soon.”
“Now.”
“Soon.”
Kader grinned, and for one heart-stopping second, Z peered from her eyes.
“Son of a bitch,” Rune whispered. “Are you Z’s or Strad’s?”
“Yes,” Kader said, leaning back in the swing and kicking her feet. “Swing me!”
Aly let the screen door slam as she walked out, carrying a small box. “Package for you, Rune. Whoever delivered it was gone when I opened the door.”
Rune frowned. “I’m not expecting anything.”
Kader left her swing and trotted to Aly, her hands out. “That’s mine.”
Aly grinned. “I don’t see your name on it.”
“There,” Kader said, poking the box with a chubby finger.
“That says it belongs to your mama,” Aly told her. Then she relented. “But maybe if it’s something fun, mama will let you have it. If it’s boring, you and I will go have some ice cream today. Deal?”
“Yes.” Kader stood with her hands on her hips, watching impatiently.
“That child cannot be one year old,” Aly muttered.
Rune took the box, her mind no longer on Aly or Kader. It was on the package.
Immediately, she wanted to wash her hands. Residual horror clung to the exterior of the box and transferred itself to her skin, and her flesh began to itch.
The box felt…ugly.
So ugly.
Her cell rang, and in that instant, even before she looked at the display, she knew. “Take care of her, Aly,” she said, and strode back to the house.
Kader’s protest’s faded as Rune shut the door and then carried the box and the still ringing phone toward her bedroom.
And finally, willing her voice not to shake, she hit speaker and placed the phone on the dresser. She put the box beside it, then stepped back and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Talk to me, motherfucker.”
“Open the box,” he ordered.
Her chest hurt. She didn’t want to go to the dresser. Didn’t want to open the box.
“Don’t hang up,” he told her. “Oh, and Rune?”
“Yeah?”
“Welcome to hell, you beautiful, evil bitch.”
She was crying before she touched the box. Her heart was ice in her chest and her stomach hurt so badly she found it hard not to crumple to the floor from the pain.
“Go on,” her nightmare caller said. “Do it.”
She lifted the lid, and the first thing she saw was a folded slip of paper, resting atop a thick yellow envelope. She unfolded the paper.
I bet you’re not laughing now.
She sat the note aside and grabbed the envelope, her heart stuttering. The packet was heavier than it looked. She shot out a claw and ripped it open, and her a
nger, her fear, was so loud she had a hard time withdrawing the claw.
She tilted the envelope and an item slid out.
The slingshot landed with a clatter onto her dresser. The nicks and scars from battle were not new. The blood covering it was.
Before she lost her nerve, she shook out the last item in the envelope.
A severed finger hit the handle of the slingshot before falling to the shiny surface of the dresser.
“No,” she whispered.
The enemy had Roma, and they could do anything they wanted to her. They were cutting off pieces of her to prove it.
Chapter Eleven
“Roma will be okay,” Raze said, glaring at no one. He wasn’t ready to be up and back to work, but no one could have kept him in a hospital bed. “We don’t know what she is. She might pull out some kind of magic and kill the assholes.”
“Sure,” Jack said, nodding. “She’s just biding her time. Maybe she’ll bust out that magic shit after she’s lost a couple of toes.”
Raze glowered at him. “Suck on that bottle some more. That’ll give you a—”
“Don’t,” Rune said, quietly. She paced the room, unable to sit still. She was waiting for Ben to call her back—or Sylvia.
After she’d opened the package—after she’d seen Roma’s fucking finger—Ben had hung up. And he had yet to call her back.
He was enjoying himself.
“You can reattach a finger,” she told Eugene. “You put me back together after I decapitated myself. You can work with a fucking finger.”
He simply nodded.
Bill sat at the table, and like Eugene, he barely spoke. He stared at his hands and didn’t look at her once.
“What the hell is she?” Raze asked. “Why would she keep her Other a secret?”
Rune didn’t figure he really cared, but he needed something to fixate on—something that didn’t include torture and the cutting off of body parts.
I’m sorry, Roma.
She jerked out of her thoughts when her cell rang.
The Annex would record the call, see if they could isolate any background noise, and try to get his location. They’d find out where the asshole was hiding. And when she found him…
“I’m here,” she answered, her voice steady. Emotionless.
“Masking your pain,” he said. “That’s okay. I can hear it anyway. Worried about your little friend, aren’t you? Tell me how you felt when you saw that finger.”
“What do you want?”
“Not a thing that I won’t eventually take. Don’t be impatient. I’m not.”
She ground her teeth so hard her jaw ached. “Let me talk to her.”
“I’m afraid she’s unable to speak at the moment.”
“You want me. Take me. Let her go. This is between the two of us.”
He was silent, but his silence was full of need. He wanted her—wanted to trade for her—but something was holding him back.
“Take me,” she said, keeping her voice low and persuasive. “You can have me right there, right in front of you…close enough to touch. Or hurt. Make the trade, Ben.”
“You figured out who I am. You remember me.”
“Yes.” She swallowed. “Ben, I—”
“Don’t you dare,” he said, his voice hard. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and kept her silence.
“I need your opinion, Rune,” he said. “I can’t decide which body part to send you next. What do you think? Ear? Thumb? Or something much more…personal?” He kept his voice jolly, but it vibrated with rage.
“Whatever I did to you,” she told him, “Or whatever you think I did, that’s nothing compared with what I’m going to do to you.”
He laughed. “I’m sure you’d beat me soundly, given the chance. But you won’t ever get the chance. Don’t you understand, yet? This is the beginning of your end. Your power? I’m going to take that from you. Your control? You’ve already lost that. And all you can do is sit and watch as your world crumbles.”
She waited, saying nothing. He wanted a reaction—but mostly, he wanted to talk.
After a few seconds of silence, he continued. “They did things to me, the group I ended up with. You think you know perversion, don’t you, Rune? You think you know evil. But I promise you, you know nothing.”
She swallowed her pity. Her guilt. “What…” She had to stop and clear her throat. “What did they do?”
“They broke me,” he said. His voice was deep and quiet and seemed to slide from the phone to surround the two of them in a circle of intimacy that didn’t include the others. “Then they built me back up as something completely new.”
“And what is that?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just…nothing. But they taught me a lot. Patience, for one thing. I’ve been dreaming of this moment for a long, long time, and it’s finally here.”
“Look,” she said. “You’ve built me up in your mind as the one who—”
“Shut up, Rune,” he said, almost gently. “I hate you so much I think I might love you.” His laughter was genuinely amused. “When I was a kid, I didn’t know what I was.” He breathed quietly for a long, tense moment. “And now that I’m nothing, I no longer need your help.”
“Shit,” she whispered. “Shit.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Shit, indeed.”
“I’ll come to you. Let’s make the trade.”
“I can’t. I can’t until Eugene Parish gives Sylvia the old woman.” His voice became lower, softer, almost teasing. “If you want to see your little friend again, I suggest you convince him to give up Lee Crane. Can you do that, Rune?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Consider it done.”
“Then I’ll call you back when Sylvia lets me know he’s agreed.” He was eager for her. So eager.
“I’ll be ready,” she told him.
“I know you will.” He hung up.
She slid her phone into her pocket and turned to Eugene. “You heard him. Get the bitch ready. We’ll hammer out the specifics when he calls me back.”
Eugene looked at Bill and neither of them said a word.
“Give her fucking mother to her,” Rune said, smacking the table. “She’s not worth Roma’s life.”
“Ben has his own agenda,” Eugene said, finally speaking. “Even if Sylvia Crane gets her mother back, they’re not going to go away until they’ve done everything they came to do.”
“I don’t care,” Rune said, furious. “Make a fucking deal. Do what you have to do. Turn over Lee, or I swear to God I’ll tear this place apart myself to find her. And I will trade her for Roma.”
“Rune,” Bill said, gently.
She whirled to face him. “What? Fucking what?”
“Lee Crane is dead.”
Rune stared at him, disbelief warring with horror. “You’re lying.”
Please, please be lying.
“I killed her,” Eugene said, pale and somber. “It was an accident. She pushed me and pushed me and I…” He shook his head. “I let her get to me.”
“Fuck me,” she whispered, sinking into a chair. “Fuck me.”
“While Sylvia believes her mother is alive,” Bill said, “we might have a chance to find them. To rescue Roma. We just…we can’t let her know Lee is dead.”
Raze stood and put his fingers to the back of his head. The blood had drained from his face, leaving his skin waxy looking and pale. “You’ve killed Roma,” he told Eugene. “You dumb fucking shit. You killed her.”
Jack stood as well. “Lee didn’t get to you. You killed her because you couldn’t stand to give her up. To send her back out into the world. You’ve killed Roma because you had a fucking grudge.”
Eugene finally looked up and the beginnings of anger darkened his face. “I killed her because I lost control. And you know nothing about it. You know nothing.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Rune stood and walked to Raze and Jack. “We’ll have to figu
re this shit out. Ben will call back. He can’t help himself. And when he does, I’ll try to convince him to forget Sylvia and trade Roma for me.”
Eugene shook his head. “Sylvia will have control of Roma—Ben won’t.”
“We’ll figure it out,” she insisted. But she wasn’t sure they would. If Sylvia believed Lee was dead, she wouldn’t hesitate to kill Roma. Time was running out, and she had no idea where they were hiding.
She turned to Eugene. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. “There’s a photo.”
He didn’t look surprised. “Sylvia sent an image to my phone.” He looked at his phone for a few seconds, wordlessly, then picked it up and swiped the screen. “It’s…” He shrugged and fell silent, then held the phone out to her. He’d let her see for herself.
Jack and Raze gathered around her, unwilling to hide from the horror their friend was facing. Whatever it cost them to see it was nothing compared with what it cost Roma to live it.
“God,” Rune whispered, and wished Ellie were there so someone could do something normal like burst into tears.
And for the next five minutes they all stared at Roma’s image. She was battered, bleeding, and wrapped with a thin, silver wire that appeared to completely disable her. He’d placed her in a wooden chair against a peeling, dirty wall, and despite the fact that her red hair was matted with blood, her entire face was swollen and discolored, and her eyes were barely open, she gazed into the camera with a defiance that was unmistakable.
But also, deep in her eyes was a dull gleam of shame. Rune would have recognized that look anywhere.
She didn’t resist when Jack took the phone and slid it across the table to Eugene. She turned to her crew with a renewed determination. “If I make the trade, don’t do anything stupid. Don’t try to give yourselves to him to get me back.” She shook her head. “You know that won’t happen. You know better than to do that.”
They did know.
But…
“If you are taken, we’ll give our lives to get you the fuck out of there,” Jack said, fiercely. “We would never stop trying to free you.”
