by Laken Cane
He remained silent for so long she thought he was not going to answer. Then, “He used to play with me when I was a child.”
His tone was blank, but held, somehow, everything.
Her lungs constricted. “Shit,” she whispered. “Assassin…”
“He’s Other,” Will said. “When I knew him his power was growing. He was telekinetic. He’s half demon, from what I understand. I don’t know what else he is, or what he can do.”
“Then he’s the monster Leon mentioned,” Rune said.
“He is always bored, and always desperate to find something new. Something entertaining. He’s seen everything. Done everything. And no matter what, he won’t leave River County until he grows bored and moves on, or until he dies.”
She lifted her chin. “Then we’ll kill him.”
He may have smiled. The mask moved over his lips. “That may prove difficult.”
“It’s going to happen,” she snarled. “No matter how difficult it may be. Everyone in that group is dead. They just don’t know it yet.”
“Angel cannot capture me,” he said, then finally, he turned his head to look at her. “He gave up trying years ago. But now, he will think he has a chance. Sylvia Crane is desperate and foolish. Angel will kill her, he will kill Ben, and he will return Roma to you.”
“If…” But she knew.
“If you give him the assassin,” Jack muttered.
Will nodded, his eyes glittering like shiny black coal through the eyeholes of his mask.
No one spoke. The silence was dreadful and heavy and seemed only to grow as Will and Rune locked stares and did not move.
At last, Rune looked away and the assassin, without a word, slipped from the room.
She could get Roma back.
But she might have to deliver Will to a sadistic monster in order to do so.
Chapter Fifteen
“Mama!”
Rune knelt and opened her arms. “Come here, kiddo.”
Halfway to her, Kader got distracted by a toy. “That’s mine,” she said, and changed direction abruptly. She rushed to the toy, plopped down beside it, and seemed to forget that just a second ago she’d been happy to see her mama.
Rune laughed and stood. “She’s faster,” she told Ellis, “and steadier on her feet.”
Ellis nodded. “She changes every day.”
Rune glanced at him. “She’s not a normal kid. Don’t think of her like she is and you won’t be disappointed when she changes.”
“I will never be disappointed with anything she does. It’s just…I already miss the fat, wobbly little baby she was a couple of days ago.”
“She doesn’t need blood,” Rune said. “She might someday want it, but she doesn’t need it to heal.” She crossed her arms, watching the child. “Unlike me.”
“Someday she mightn’t need me, either,” Ellis murmured, and it was almost a question.
Rune squeezed his arm. “It won’t matter how strong she is physically. She will always need you. I will always need you.”
And there was something in his eyes she didn’t like.
“Ellie?”
“What will you do when you need me and I’m not here, Rune? I know how much you love me. How much you need me. I know I’m part of you. So what will you do when I’m not here?”
She drew back at his fierceness. His pain. “That won’t be for a long fucking time, so stop that shit, Ellie.” But his words brought to the surface a fear she kept hidden. A fear she controlled.
Exist without Ellie?
No.
Oh God, no.
Kader stood and looked at them, her lower lip out. Her eyes filled with tears.
Ellis rushed toward her. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
“I want my Ellie,” she shouted, and then began to bawl.
Ellis scooped her from the floor, his eyes wide. “I’m here,” he cried. “Your Ellie is here, honey.”
But Kader refused to be consoled.
“We can’t talk about things like that when she’s around,” Rune told him.
“Oh, sweet baby,” Ellis said. “I’m not leaving. I’m not going away.”
She didn’t calm. If anything, her wailing became louder.
“For God’s sake,” Rune muttered, and backed away. The kid’s crying was hurting her sensitive ears.
Ellis bounced the sobbing child. “Listen to me, young lady. Stop crying this instant and listen to me.”
Kader’s sobs lessened and finally trailed off. She wiped her nose on Ellie’s shoulder, then sniffed.
Ellis kissed her wet cheek. “I won’t leave you, Kader. Okay?”
Kader nodded, then pushed against him. “Put me down. I want ice cream. Ice cream, okay. Carbs.”
Both Rune and Ellis laughed.
“She’s a strange kid,” Rune said.
“She doesn’t like it here.” Ellis set Kader on her feet. “She needs her own bed. She needs Grim.”
Rune nodded. “We’ll take her home for a while. I need to think and I can’t do it here.”
“You need the berserker,” he said, sternly. “That’s what you need.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“Not until Roma is back,” she replied.
He nodded. “I’ll get her ready to go and we’ll meet you downstairs. Tell the crew to join us. They could use some home cooking.”
It’d be good for all of them to go home for a while. They all needed something normal.
Ellis spoke again before she stepped through the doorway. “What about Reign?”
“I can’t take her out of the hospital. She’s in bad shape, baby.”
“I know,” he said. “Poor little thing.”
When she, Ellis, and Kader left the Annex, it was dark. She wanted to talk to Nikolai—she hoped he’d have something to report.
The berserker followed them like a silent shadow, shotgun held in his fist, and Jack walked in front of them. No one was sure what a bored half-demon might do. Will had suggested French might want to test Rune, and if she were busy fighting him, her crew would need to get Ellis and Kader to safety.
The Annex dispatcher had sent the twins to check out a claim that two wolves were sneaking around the city, killing sign-wielding humans who were asking for donations to outfit hunters.
Raze had gone on ahead with three Annex ops to clear Rune’s house. No one knew where Will had disappeared to, and Rune hadn’t seen Luc or Leon for hours. She’d texted them, so they’d show up at her house if they wanted to.
Despite the fact that she’d officially hired them, she knew they didn’t really feel part of the Annex or Shiv Crew. They would, but it’d take time.
For a few hours after she got home, Rune felt almost normal. Her mind remained chaotic and her body was so tense her muscles hurt, but she sat at the dinner table, surrounded by those she loved, listening to their voices as they talked and laughed, and she felt almost normal.
Ellie busied himself cooking, and Kader played with noisy innocence on the floor. When Grim slinked in an hour after they arrived, the little girl sprawled across his big body and went to sleep.
Fifteen minutes later, the twins arrived.
But Roma was missing, and they could not be happy until she was safe.
“Will thinks you’re going to sacrifice him,” Jack said, after they’d finished eating. “Are you?”
She didn’t look at him as she carried her mug to the sink. “He knows I won’t sacrifice one person for another.”
“You’d sacrifice yourself,” Denim said.
“This is Will Blackthorn we’re talking about. He knows nothing but torture and betrayal,” Levi told her. “He’s not going to believe there’s even a possibility that you won’t trade him for something you want.”
She said nothing.
“Rune,” Raze said. “Are we giving up Will for Roma?”
She met his unflinching stare. “You think we should.”
“Yeah,” he said, without a second’s hes
itation. “Yeah, we should. He can handle torture. He can get himself out of it, eventually. Roma’s dying. She’s being cut into little pieces. Fuck yeah, we should trade him.” He shrugged. “Then when Will is dying and pieces of him are being sliced off, we’ll see about trading one of us to get him back.”
“Will has more power than even the berserker.”
Will would be okay.
He would.
And finally, she nodded. “I know.” But that didn’t make her feel any better.
She’d wanted to take Kader home, to go find a few moments away from the Annex, but the truth was she’d just needed to go home and breathe. She’d needed to try to clear her mind and think about the assassin. About giving him to a man who’d terrorized and tortured him so she could get Roma back.
“I know,” she repeated, a little more firmly.
Strad pushed away from the wall, set his coffee cup on the table, and walked to stand in front of her. He said nothing, just watched her.
She clenched her fist and rapped her knuckles against her forehead, a little too hard. “I keep hearing her, Berserker.” Her voice was raw and raspy and so rough it hurt her to speak. “I keep hearing her cries. I can’t shut them out.”
He covered her hand with his, carrying it from her head to his chest. “I’ll help you.”
“How? By fucking me?” Her laugh was sharp enough to cut glass. “Not while that motherfucker has Roma.”
He didn’t speak again, didn’t try to convince her. He took her arm and pulled her to her bedroom, then pushed her onto her bed. He climbed in beside her, then wrapped her up in his familiar, yet somehow foreign embrace.
His arms tightened around her when she began to shudder, and he pressed her head against his chest. His heart beat steadily and calmly and she latched on to that sound with everything she had.
Neither of them spoke a word.
The berserker had always helped her find the silence.
Slowly, her muscles, cramping and stiff, relaxed. Her mind cleared.
“I’ll tell Eugene to figure out a way to contact Angel French,” she said. “He’ll be happy to trade the assassin.”
“You won’t be.”
“No,” she murmured. “I won’t be happy. But if that’s the only way I can get her out of there, then I’ll do it. I can’t let her die, Berserker.”
“No.”
She closed her eyes and slipped her fingers under Strad’s shirt, craving the feel of his warm flesh. And as his steady heartbeat lulled her, Roma’s words from their brief telephone conversation played like a quiet but insistent soundtrack in the back of her mind.
She ran her lips over her berserker’s skin. The smoothness was intermittently interrupted by scars, and she found herself unintentionally comparing them to the assassin’s destroyed flesh.
Before she traded him—before she sent him to be tortured by a horrific demon—she’d spend some time with him. She’d bite him, she’d feed him, she’d give him all the protection she had. It’d help him.
At least for a while.
And the berserker…he was home. That fact alone would help her deal with everything the future held.
Because lying in the berserker’s arms, she found some peace.
An image of the thing they’d watched over in the Killing Land caves jumped into her mind, causing her to flinch.
“What?” he asked.
“There are things we need to talk about.” Not just on his end. She still hadn’t faced some of the things that had happened to her.
The crow, for one. A crow had torn its way from her body. She was a monster, and there appeared to be no limits to what monstrous things she might do. But she hadn’t really…faced some of them.
And Kader. They needed to talk about Kader.
And the fact that—
“It’s a grim place…”
“Fuck me,” Rune screamed, and leapt to her feet.
The berserker rolled from the bed and reached for a spear that wasn’t there. “Rune!”
She strode for the door, her heart thumping so loudly she could barely hear him.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I’m going after Roma,” she said. “I know where she is.”
Chapter Sixteen
Rune commando crawled through the weeds, acknowledging and then forgetting the pain from a shard of glass that lodged into her palm.
Her body spat the glass out, and her wound sewed itself shut before a single drop of her blood wet the ground.
Her skin itched inside the sweltering layers of protective clothing and vests she wore, but a little sweat was better than an obsidian splinter piercing her heart. The bastards weren’t going to get her that way.
No. If they got her at all, it’d be because she handed herself over to them. And she had no immediate plans of giving them such a gift.
“How did you find her, Rune?” Eugene had asked.
“We had a conversation when we left Killing Land. I told her the mountain was a grim place. When Ben let her speak to me, she told me…”
“Hurry. It’s a grim place, Rune.”
“She told me where she was. And it took me too fucking long to hear her.”
The berserker had helped her clear her mind, and that’s all she’d needed to sift through the chaos and pluck that one precious shard of information from the mess.
“It’s a grim place.”
And indeed it was.
It had taken Shiv Crew hours to creep up the mountain and settle on the rim of the birds’ old nest. They couldn’t drive up. They couldn’t let Ben and his cronies know they were coming.
They might have killed Roma.
And Rune wasn’t willing to risk it.
They had no real plan—climb the mountain, see what was waiting for them. Kill the enemy, and free Roma.
That was the only plan they had.
The demon might scent them, Will had warned, but he couldn’t be sure.
It wasn’t Angel French’s nose Rune was worried about.
And even as she thought it, the dogs tethered around the camp began to bark.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
“Ignore them,” Jack said, keeping his voice low. “Their handlers have to be used to them barking at every squirrel that runs by.”
“Do you see anything?”
“Someone’s smoking a cigarette. I saw the tip glow. He’s near the dogs in the front of the bigger…house. Not a normal house.”
“We’re in the birds’ old nest,” she said. “Nothing is normal here.”
She stared up at the round, fat moon. It looked almost close enough to touch, silver and ancient and somehow wicked, and she shivered. Usually the moon comforted her, but not that night. That night it belonged to the mountain. That night the moon would show her terrible things.
“Shiv crew,” Leon said. “I don’t know if I like this life.”
“Second thoughts, Leon?” Rune asked.
He didn’t even hesitate. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“What about you, Luc?” she asked.
“Not yet.” But she sounded angry.
Rune wanted to ask the twins if they were okay, but she didn’t. It was a stupid question. Of course they weren’t okay.
“Are you okay, Rune?” Denim asked, his voice soft and small and reluctant, as though someone had to ask the question.
“Fuck them, Denim.”
“Yeah,” he said.
She ached for the twins.
“Talk to me,” Eugene said. His quiet voice slid into her ear like he was right there beside her and not miles away inside the safe brightness of the Annex.
She pushed the small receiver a little more deeply into her ear. “We found the camp but we haven’t made contact.”
“I’ll be listening. I have crews ready to go and a helicopter waiting nearby. Let me know if you need them.”
“I will,” she said.
“Rune,” Levi murmured.
She closed her
eyes in a long, slow blink, then reached across the ground to squeeze his arm. “I’m here.”
Being caged in the birds’ nest on Spikemoss was not something they’d ever forget. Not enough time has passed to soften the memory, but it wasn’t like they had a choice. They had to be there.
And she’d protect them.
She gave her head a quick, hard shake, like that might somehow dislodge the memories. The images.
“Rune.” The berserker’s voice drifted out into the darkness. “I’m here.”
“I know,” she whispered. He was there for her as she was there for the twins.
“Shhh,” Raze said, a little too loudly. “Listen.”
It took a moment, but over the barking dogs came another sound. It danced through the air like a breeze, gutting them like a weapon when they realized what it was.
“Roma,” Rune whispered. “Roma’s crying.”
“Son of a bitch,” Jack said.
Rune nodded. Roma’s pain hurt them all.
“Where is she?” She got to her knees, slowly, and peered through the night at the camp sprawled out below the hill. The moon glinted off structures that remained even though the birds had abandoned the nest.
Roma was close, or they wouldn’t have heard her. Her voice was small and dim and soft, but she wasn’t far. Somewhere below them, maybe tied to a tree, she waited.
The small homes and other buildings spread out in a quiet order, and though she couldn’t see them, Rune knew the strong cages would still be waiting farther on behind the dwellings.
The birds kept the cages far enough away so the prisoners’ screams wouldn’t disturb them overly much.
“God,” she murmured.
The berserker’s rage about the abduction, the betrayal, the fucking rape came off him in black waves.
But more than the rage was his guilt. His worry.
“I’m fine,” she muttered. “I just need to kill someone and get Roma out of there.”
She wasn’t sure what the order of her words said about her.
She didn’t have to ask the twins to know their insides were twisted into painful knots. Their stomachs tossed and their hearts beat a little too fast as they tried to escape painful memories that refused to budge.
They wanted to pretend like it could never happen to them again. She knew, because that was how she felt.
