by Laken Cane
Angel’s own wings ripped from his back and unfurled into the air, red and huge like sails in the vastness of the blue-gray sky.
The crow knew the demon’s flesh would taste like crunchy, crackling power, and she craved it.
Craved it like blood.
For her, there was no one else. No distractions, no cares.
But the demon was distracted by an obsession that had eluded him for years.
Will Blackthorn.
She flew toward the demon and they crashed into each other, their need to fight and dominate older than either one of them. Older, almost, than time.
They fought, both of them wrapped in a bubble of elation. Their appreciation of the fight was equal. Their viciousness was equal.
Their monsters, however, were not.
And both of them knew it.
Rune screamed at the sky, her claws buried in the demon’s flesh, then struck with her beak, pointed and strong and wicked.
He tasted as good as she’d known he would.
He screamed as she pierced his eye, and as she swallowed the orb, part of Rune the woman crept into the shadows of her soul and died.
Someday, the monster would overpower so much of her that it would be all that remained.
Maybe Gunnar would have comforted her. He’d have told her that she was all things. She was what she needed to be when she needed to be it.
That she was not only her monster, just as she was not only the woman.
But Gunnar was not there.
And she continued to fight her monster.
It wasn’t that she didn’t accept it. She did.
She just couldn’t let it win. Couldn’t let it be the biggest part of her.
For that one, tiny second, Rune was not chasing darkness. She and her monster were trapped inside, fighting each other.
And that was all Angel needed.
Half blind, in agony, and desperate to defeat the enemy, the demon ripped himself free of her talons, whirled, and rolled her inside a pair of red wings so strong, so destabilizing, that she couldn’t move.
She lost her shift in the swirling roll of the demon’s wings, and stupefied and dizzy, she could not find it again.
Or her claws.
Encased in his wings, only her face free, she was whirled like a moth in a spider’s silk, and as effectively caught.
In swift retribution for the loss of his eye, the enormous demon, no longer even remotely resembling Angel French, rolled out a long, forked tongue, and plucked her eye from its socket.
“An eye for an eye,” he hissed, but he didn’t swallow the blue orb. He flicked it into his empty eye socket, from where it glared, blue and angry, at its previous master.
“Angel,” the assassin screamed. “I am here.”
Had she ever heard so much passion in his voice?
No.
The demon turned his head without moving his body, and gently descended closer to the ground.
“You’re here,” he whispered.
“Give her to her people,” Will said. “And I will give myself to you.”
He stood strong and still against the stare of the demon, his hands at his sides. Resolute and unflinching, he offered himself to his abuser, his nightmare, his terror, for her.
For her.
Her crew spread out beside him.
“Take me,” Strad said, standing with the assassin. He threw down the shotgun.
“And me,” Jack said, his only eye gleaming with purpose.
The twins, their long hair waving in the hot air of the demon’s breath, dropped their blades. “And me,” they said, in unison.
“And me,” Raze roared, waving his fist. “Take us all, motherfucker.”
And in Rune’s imagination, she saw Roma, limping and pale and still bloody, still missing precious parts of her body, rushing to join them. “Take me,” she cried, fiercely.
She looked up at Rune, her voice wet and thick with tears and love. “No fear, Princess.”
Because that’s what she would have done. And Rune couldn’t bear the thought of the girl not being part of the demon’s end.
Roma deserved to be there.
The ground was littered with mountains of demon bodies, rivers of blood, and the occasional black crow.
Grim sat on his haunches, his tongue lolling, covered in the blood of the demon’s hounds. He didn’t look afraid. Or worried.
He knew something his crew did not.
Rune was far from finished.
Shiv Crow cawed from the sky, her voice mocking and strident, and then, she began to speed toward Rune.
And Rune was ready for her.
The crow burrowed through layers of red demon wings to go home, and she returned to Rune that tiny broken part that had broken free in Skyll.
“No,” Rune called to those below. To her people. Her crew.
Always, her crew.
The demon swiveled his head to look at her. “That is love.” His eyes, even the one not belonging to him, were dazed. His voice was soft with confusion. “How did you get it?”
She couldn’t have said.
“I will give her to you,” the demon roared, looking away from Rune. “I only want him. Bow to me, Will Blackthorn. And swear your oath.”
If Will swore his oath, he would be bound to the demon forever.
They all knew that.
But none of them stopped him when unhesitatingly, he dropped to his knees. He bowed his head. “I—”
“Will,” Rune chided, gently.
He looked up.
“Get up. You don’t bow to a soulless demon.”
He simply stared.
“Up,” she urged. “And you can help me kill him.”
Strad took one of his arms, and Jack the other, and they hauled him to his feet.
“She’s not taken,” Raze breathed.
“No,” Rune agreed. “I was just catching my breath.” She lost her smile when she looked at the demon. “Give me back my eye, you fuck.”
And she burst from his wings with such ferocity that the small bones in his wings shattered and the wings themselves, tattered and torn from their moorings, drifted into the breeze and were lost to the demon forever.
But he wouldn’t need them.
As he fell, Rune fell with him, and she took back her eye. Maybe it mattered, maybe it didn’t.
She wanted to kill the demon, wanted to tear his body apart as he scream and devour what remained.
But she did not.
Not because she was afraid of her darkness, but because her crew deserved a piece of him.
She bore him to the ground and her crew converged, taking what they needed from the monster who’d hurt two of theirs—Will and Roma.
Then they stood back, giving the kill to the one who needed it the most.
In the end, she thought the demon was defeated more by her crew’s loyalty, bravery, and absolute, unconditional love than he was by his wounds.
And by his broken heart. His obsession for Will had consumed him.
But whatever. In the end, he was just dead—killed by the hand of the one he’d loved, as much as he could love.
They left Spikemoss Mountain behind once more, glad to see the last of it. For Rune and the twins, the horror it’d once stood for was covered by, surprisingly, more manageable memories.
Beaten, bloody, and battered, they went home. Alive, but different.
Transformed, every single one of them.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Rune, look at yourself! It’s you, the monster, the woman, the mother, the protector. The friend. You’re all of that and there’s nothing to fight. Once and for all, accept it. Accept you. If you don’t, you’re right. The darkness will win. The monster will win.” Ellie poked her in the chest. “And the woman who confronts the enemy while her people stand behind her, she will be no more. Because she will not care.” He took a deep breath, then continued, tenderly. “That’s how you let the darkness win.”
Sh
e and Ellie stood at Roma’s bedside. As Roma slept, Rune had told Ellie her doubts. Just as she always did.
And he set her right—just as he always did.
“I shoved my own eyeball back into my head, Ellie. And it…” She pressed her fingertips against her eye. “It healed. It’s like it never happened and it’s only been a couple of days. What kind of monster does that?”
“An excellent one,” he said, crisply. “You are an excellent monster.”
She burst into surprised laughter, waking Roma.
“Huh?” Roma said.
“Sorry, baby,” Rune told her. “Ellis is a funny, funny man.”
“Dude,” Roma said, her eyes rolling back in her head. Then she was out again.
Rune snorted. “They must have her on some really good drugs.”
“She deserves them,” he murmured. He took Rune’s hand and they stared down at the injured girl, silent and still.
“What would I do without you?” Rune asked him, finally.
“You’d do okay,” he whispered.
She said nothing. She wouldn’t be okay without Ellis, not in any way, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.
“I’m a crow shifter,” she said, instead. “Can you believe that shit?”
He smiled. “Nothing you do surprises me. And I doubt you’re done yet.”
“God,” she said. “I hope I’m done.”
“Nikolai came home before dawn,” Ellis said. “I let him into the panic room. He didn’t look well, Rune.”
“Shit,” she murmured.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Someone has to die,” she said, remembering. Though it wasn’t like she’d forgotten.
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Death was cheated when Nikolai was brought back. Now Death wants someone else.” She shrugged when Ellis said nothing. “I know how it sounds. But…someone has to die, Ellie.”
“Who?” He squeezed her hand and shivered, his eyes a little too wide. “Who does, Rune?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe I should give Nikolai back. Kill him.”
“No! No. You can’t do that.”
“I know. That’d be... Yeah. I can’t do that.”
She leaned over to kiss Roma’s forehead. “Get better, baby.”
Ellis glanced at his watch. “I need to get back home to Kader. She’ll be waking up from her nap, and though she adores Aly, Aly is not her Ellie.” He beamed.
“I’m going to check on Reign.” She crossed her arms and stared down at Roma. “Then I’m going to have a talk with Eugene.”
“That means kick his ass,” Roma mumbled, then turned over and went back into her drug induced haze. She wasn’t feeling any pain, and that was all that mattered.
Eugene had gotten his best doctors to reattach her fingers, though he’d said she would never regain full use of them. One of them was a prosthetic that looked surprisingly real.
But Roma was…she was Roma. And she wasn’t going to stop until her fingers were as good as they’d always been.
Rune was no longer really worried about Roma.
She was worried about the nagging feeling that made her stomach ache and her head throb. It made her heart beat too fast and wouldn’t allow her to sleep.
Some-fucking-body had to die.
And she could not allow that somebody to be one of hers.
She pulled out her cell on her way to see Reign, and called Bill. It went immediately to his voicemail so she left him a quick message. “I need to talk to you, Bill. I’ll be in your office in fifteen minutes.”
Jack was visiting Reign. He sat in the chair beside her bed, his legs stretched out, staring sightlessly into space.
The kid didn’t move or respond to sound. When she opened her eyes, there was nothing behind them. She was a shell, and the doctor seemed to think she might never be anything more.
But she would.
It wasn’t her destiny to lie in a hospital bed for the rest of her life.
Jack grinned at her, his stare lingering on her healthy eyes. If only he’d have been a monster.
“Contractor is starting work in the morning,” she told him. “We’ll have a hell of a house when they’re done.”
He grunted. “Might want to teach Kader not to boom it so hard next time.”
“Won’t be a next time.” She crossed her arms. “I’m starting her training next week.”
“Oh yeah? Who’d you get?”
She stared at Reign and didn’t answer.
“Rune?”
She sighed. “Gannon and Beau Fletcher and their people.”
He straightened. “Gannon and Beau. You’re serious.”
“Yeah, Jack.”
“You’re putting baby Kader with that savage group?”
“Yeah.”
“Who’d they assign to her?”
“Jia Lee and Kim Roth.”
“Shit.” He ran his hands over his face. “Best of the batch. Does Ellis know?”
“No,” she murmured. “Not yet.”
“Are you sure about this, Rune? They’ll change her. She’s just a baby. Maybe wait until she’s—”
“Dammit, Jack. She’s not just a fucking baby.”
He stood, then stood beside her, looking down at baby Reign. “I know.”
“It’s for the best. They’ll teach her everything she’ll need to know.”
“Eugene would’ve…”
“Eugene kill-switched the gargoyles. He lied about the ashes instead of giving up Lee to save Roma. He is not a man I’ll trust with my daughter. Not anymore.”
“What are you going to do?”
“See Bill. Then I’m going to have a talk with Eugene.”
“Let me know you want backup.”
“Always.”
“Rune. You know I, uh…”
“Oh, God, Jack. Of course I know. God.”
They stared at each other for two minutes, both of them remembering the scene on the mountain.
“And I’m your favorite,” he said. “You don’t have to admit it. We both know it’s the truth.”
Finally, they began to smile, and she leaned forward to hug him, closing her eyes when his arms closed around her. Jack was never going to betray her, and he would always have her back. No matter what.
“Where’s the berserker?” he asked.
She pulled away, almost reluctantly. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since we came off that mountain.” She didn’t want to tell him that the berserker had been horrified at her transformation, her shift.
Maybe it reminded him of something back in Skyll, or maybe he wasn’t able to accept that she was not the same.
And she wondered where he was.
“He’s a strange one,” Jack said.
She laughed. “So fucking strange.”
He blew out a short breath. “I wouldn’t mind having someone strange.”
Yeah. Jack needed someone. Strings of one night stands and drinking himself into a stupor weren’t working. “Better run her by me first,” she said, smiling. “I’ll have to make sure she’s good enough for you.”
She left him there with Reign and walked down the long, echoing halls of the Annex, a place at once familiar and alien. It always had been.
Sort of like the berserker.
Gavin Delaney strode toward her, and she met his questioning stare. She shook her head, just the tiniest bit.
Not yet, Gargoyle.
He gave her curt nod and strode on by.
She had no idea how she was going to fix something as huge as kill switches in the gargoyles’ brains. More than that, how would she convince Eugene to drop the dangerous, reprehensible technology? It was the technology of slavery, and it could not be allowed. Eugene knew that.
And yet he was trying to perfect it. Was using it on his own people.
His own people.
Bill called her before she made it to his office. “Rune, meet me out
side the cafeteria.” He hesitated. “I have something to show you.”
She rushed down the stairs, feeling the urgency despite the calmness of Bill’s voice. She knew him.
And she knew that whatever he had to show her was not going to be good.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“There’s a part of the Annex you’ve never seen,” Bill said, as soon as he saw her. “It’s below the basement. Walk with me.”
“The Annex Arcade,” she murmured.
He glanced at her as they navigated the busy basement hallways. “What?”
“That’s what the ops call it. We know there’s something worse than the holding cells, Bill,” she said, dryly. Still, her chest hurt.
“We call it ACI,” he said. “Annex Correctional Institution. It’s a tiny prison for those we can’t allow to be found or seen, for various reasons. It’s where dangerous people are sent when we want to control them but can’t kill them.” He led her to a small, unmarked elevator with a keypad and palm reader beside the door. “Not even I have had access to ACI before now.”
He punched in a code, rested his palm on the reader, and the doors slid open.
“Why are you admitted now?” she asked, stepping inside the small room.
Noiselessly, the elevator began to descend. Her stomach rolled and she put a hand to it, then swallowed her nausea.
“I’ve been in contact with Annex Oversight, Rune.” He smiled at her surprise. “I’m not totally beneath Eugene’s thumb. I contacted them when Eugene took the gargoyles. I knew what he would do with the kill switch technology.”
“How?” she whispered. “How did you know?”
His face softened. “My dear, you might think you’re a hard, cold killing machine, but you have a heart of gold, and you want so badly to trust those you care about that you…” He shrugged. “You will trust them.”
“Until I can’t anymore,” she said.
He nodded. “I don’t trust quite as easily. I’ve been watching Eugene for a while now. Gathering evidence to take to Oversight, and things are about to change. Today, Rune. Eugene belongs to Oversight now. And the Annex belongs to me.”
“You?” It was too much, too fast, and she could barely comprehend what he was trying to tell her.
