by Laken Cane
Rune put her hands on her hips. “I’m still strong enough to kick your ass.”
“Sorry,” Blue said. “But as Roma says, without you, we’re all lost. I just want to make sure you’re safe.”
Roma nodded and stepped forward, her chin up. “I will guard her with my life.”
Rune sighed.
Z grinned. “You’re not used to being taken care of.” Then he sobered. “I, too, will guard you with my life.”
“Why don’t we all go?” Rune asked.
“Blue and Naddy are slippery as ninjas,” Z said. “They can navigate the city without being noticed. You’d be noticed. And I’m not leaving you alone to go with them.”
“Get some rest,” Blue said. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
And she and Nadaline were gone.
When darkness fell it fell quickly. One minute it was dusky as the sun faded in a pink sky. Rune blinked, and it was full dark.
Night came, and brought with it a slice of bright moon, twinkling stars, and shadows that seemed somehow full, like pockets in a dark curtain.
Roma walked a few yards away and stood with her back to a tree, slingshot ready, her pockets bulging with ammo.
Z and Rune stared at each other for a long moment.
“Alone at last,” he said, his smile soft. “I still catch myself wondering if you’re real or if this place has finally driven me mad.”
She walked into his arms. “I know exactly how you feel.” She pushed her face into his shirt, inhaling his scent. “After you…”
“Died?” he asked, when she was unable to finish the sentence.
“Yeah. Afterwards, I’d catch a scent or hear a voice or see a certain smile and it would bring you back to me. It felt so good but hurt so fucking much.”
He tightened his arms around her but said nothing.
“Owen,” she said.
“I know him?”
“Yeah. Not well, though. He…” she took a deep breath.
Z stiffened. “What did he do?”
She cleared her throat. “He reminded me of you. Something about him was you.”
He swallowed. “Did you fuck him?”
“No.”
“Rune.”
“Yeah?”
“Strad Matheson.”
She peered up at him. “You remember the berserker?” Her heart ached when she said his name. Berserker.
“I do.” He shook his head. “He’s more vivid in my mind than the others, for some reason. “Maybe because you had a thing for him.” His smile was slightly crooked. And held more than a little pain.
She buried her face once more in his chest. Don’t ask me. Don’t ask me.
“Did you and he…”
“Dammit, Z.”
“Never mind,” he said, quickly. “I’d rather not know.”
But he did know.
That was just one thing he’d forgotten. Maybe on purpose, but there it was. Some things were too painful to remember.
“Z.” She looked up at him once more, her stare eating up his face, his beautiful, shadowed face. “There is no one I’ll ever love more than you. If I love someone else, if I fuck someone…” she shook her head, hard. “It doesn’t matter. I will love you forever. And I will always love you more. That’s just the way it is.”
“Oh, I know that, sweet thing,” he told her. “I know that.”
“I need you, Z.”
“And I need to be inside you.” He took her hand and led her a little farther away from Roma. “Let me make love to you.”
While I still can.
He didn’t say it, but it was there in the softness of his voice and the sadness in his eyes. It was inevitable, and they both knew it.
And that broke her heart all over again.
Chapter Eleven
“I’ll come back to you, Z,” she said, fiercely. “If I’m forced to leave, I’ll come the fuck back.”
He stroked her hair. “We’ll deal with it when we must.”
He didn’t believe her.
But she would come back. What was to keep her from going back and forth? What was to keep her from taking the cure to the Others, then flying back to her Z?
Not a thing.
Not one damn thing.
Her heart pulsed with happiness. “Z. I’ll come back to you.”
He smiled, finally, his eyes darker green in the stingy moonlight. “You’ll come back.”
Then his face, worn and weary but still the most beautiful human face she’d ever seen, blocked out everything else as he lowered his lips to hers.
He kissed her, his mouth opening over hers, his breath sweet and hot. He drifted lower to kiss her neck, and she glimpsed the tree under which they lay, high and dark, watching over them. The breeze, full of flowery scents and honey and a hint of rain, whispered through the branches.
She was in the arms of her love.
Pure love, true love.
Forever love.
Because of that, Skyll was a perfect place.
She urged him back to her lips, greedy for the taste of him.
He lifted his face, just a little, just enough to speak. His lips tickled hers when he spoke. “If I could go back, I’d be a zombie for you, sweet thing. I’d be your dead to command. I’d be anything just to…”
He put his forehead against hers, unable to continue.
She closed her eyes, for a second. Steeling herself against the regret and the sorrow and the pain, she reached up to cup his cheeks. She looked at him.
“We did exactly what we could do at the time, baby. We can’t afford regrets. It was all we knew how to do. It was who we were.”
“Yeah,” he murmured. “I didn’t know. I just didn’t know.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re together now.”
He turned onto his back and pulled her on top of him. “And that’s pretty fucking amazing.”
He kissed her then, kissed her with all the passion she’d denied him before. Kissed her hard and hot and deeply, as though that kiss might be their last.
It wasn’t safe, but neither of them cared.
They had their moment, and they were taking it.
Z was with her.
Z.
“God,” she moaned. “So good.”
“I can make it better,” he promised, and he did.
There was magic in their mating, and neither of them would have denied it. In her world, if they’d given in—if she’d given in—it would not have been the same.
And she found some consolation in that sudden knowledge.
She devoured him with her stare, her lips, her hands, and refused to let any other thoughts interfere with Z and what he was doing to her, with her.
Every sensation was heightened, every scent more potent, every nerve ending raw and sensitive.
He trailed his fingertips over her skin and gooseflesh erupted. The stubble on his chin rasped across her chest, leaving a burning trail that seemed to spread over her entire body.
His tongue was at once soft and rough as he probed and explored and tasted.
She wrapped her fingers around his erection and his groans were like physical touches, sinking into her brain, her heart, her body.
And when he slid inside her, she could feel every inch of his hardness as he pushed himself in with excruciating slowness.
Once again, she was overcome with something so much more than an orgasm. She felt his seed as he released it inside her, felt it coating her insides, felt it moving throughout her entire body.
Her orgasm had no ending. It went on and on, painful in its forceful pleasure. Wave after wave of something she’d never known and couldn’t comprehend attacked her, ripped her apart, and then put her back together.
And it felt so very fucking good.
No. Not good.
It was everything.
She couldn’t speak, or see.
She could only feel.
When the throbbing, overwhelming orgasms finally eased up and s
he could speak, the first thing she blurted was, “What have we done?”
She had no idea why.
But she knew.
They’d done something big. Something…
Huge.
Fate was a manipulative bitch, and she and Z were its puppets.
She had no doubt.
She could only hope that whatever they’d done was, for once in her fucking life, something good. Something pure.
And maybe it was.
Exhausted, she fell into a sleep that was as deep and dreamless as death.
When she woke up, Z was standing over her, shaking her shoulder, his face a white mask of doom.
Something was wrong.
Something was always wrong.
Chapter Twelve
She leapt up, ignoring the stiff soreness of her body.
“What is it?” she said, looking wildly around for Roma. For Blue and Nadaline.
But no one was there.
“Where’s Roma?”
“I sent her to Carnage to check on Blue and Nadaline. They should’ve been back by now.”
Somehow, morning had crept up on her as she’d slept, and an already hot sun baked the ground.
“We’ll have to—”
“Quiet,” Z hissed, holding up a finger. “Don’t move.”
“The fuck is it?” Despite herself, a thrill of fear ran through her body. She wiped cold sweat from her forehead, breathing shallowly. It hurt her lungs when she took a deep breath. “The fuck?”
Not the crawlers. Please God, not the crawlers.
“You still have your monster?”
She shot out her claws and dropped her fangs. “Yeah.”
“You’re going to need it.”
“Z. What is it?”
He turned to look at her, but his eyes were distant.
She didn’t like that distance even a little bit.
“Crawlers,” he murmured. “They’re near. They’ve already scented us.” He paused, frowning. “What do they want?”
She had a bad, bad feeling they wanted her.
“Dammit.” She started trembling. Hard. She hated being scared more than she hated anything.
But she was.
She was so damn scared.
And she was sick. Sick made her weaker.
Vulnerable to the motherfucking crawlers.
“If I’m killed and you’re taken,” Z said, “slice into your throat with those claws as deeply as you can before you lose consciousness. They’ll leave you be if they think you’re dead.” His gaze softened. “Do what you have to do, sweet thing.”
“I always do, baby.” But her voice shook.
She heard them.
There was no worse horror than the sounds the crawlers made.
She and Z were already surrounded. The crawlers swarmed over the hard, sunbaked earth like giant, lethal, noxious crabs, clicking and screaming and hungry.
Those monsters were extremely skinny, pale, and hairless, only five feet tall when they stood, with wide spaced, glassy eyes that protruded from bumpy, oozing faces.
They could tear and strip flesh easily with their sharp teeth, teeth discolored with the stains of old blood and encased in wet, cavernous mouths.
They ran on all fours and slightly sideways, clicking hard, milky claws that were short but razor-edged.
Releasing terror from their pores, sending it wafting into the air to attach to their prey, they were enough to cause most people to freeze in fear and simply wait for the pain to begin.
Rune moaned.
“Steady, Rune,” Z said, his voice calm. “They crave your fear. We’ve got this.”
I have to protect Z.
Help me, monster. Help me out, you little bastard.
She threw back her head and screamed, then sliced the first crawler who reached her into ribbons of bloody meat.
After that, there was only killing.
Her monster was helping her the fuck out.
The crawlers—part monster, part magic—fought with the single-mindedness with which they’d been created.
They slung slime at her face—burning, acidic slime—and long strings of bloody saliva dripped from their open jaws. They were faster than Rune in her compromised condition, and deadlier than her monster.
And there were dozens of them.
Dozens of them against her and Z.
Z’s fight was more lethal than it’d ever been. He fought stronger, faster, smarter. He anticipated where each blow would land, where each claw would slice, where each sharp fang would bite.
He danced away, escaping narrowly each lethal strike, and returned the near misses with exacting killing blows of his own.
The numbers of crawlers dwindled.
But only for a moment.
She and Z fought back to back, protecting each other as they put down the enemy.
The crawlers seemed to have no sense of fear or mortality or fight to survive. Blood and fear fed them, and they were hungry.
Just hungry.
Like the zombies of Rune’s world only a thousand times stronger, a thousand times more deadly.
So hungry.
She moaned again, even as adrenaline flooded her sick body, lending her monster a little extra energy.
It wasn’t enough.
“Z,” she cried. “I’m not enough.”
He was going to die. Again.
She couldn’t save him.
They’d make her watch as they ate him, as, perhaps, they turned him. Then he’d eat her.
Stop it, Rune. Get a grip and fight for him.
But she’d need to be something more. Something better. Something fucking bigger.
The sickness wouldn’t even let her be her.
But somehow, she did become more.
She had no other choice.
The crawlers swarmed, squealing like frenzied pigs about to be slaughtered, climbing over the dead bodies of their brethren as they struggled to get closer to Rune and Z.
Rune and Z kept cutting them down.
Cut, spin, cut, spin.
Kill, kill, kill.
She couldn’t let them take Z.
Would not let them take her.
“I am my monster,” she muttered, and decapitated another crawler.
Stinking, depraved, wicked minions of Skyll.
God, how she hated them.
How she feared them.
Blood hung in the air. Long strings of it flew like thin ropes to splatter against trees, the ground, the fighters. Crunching bones, screams, and slicing blades created an orchestra of horror she was accustomed to—but she was not herself, and that was different.
She was less.
She had a second to glance at Z, noting in that second the emptiness in his eyes, even as he fought like the devil.
Z…
He was no longer all there.
Part of him had been left behind on the snowy ground of Wormwood.
She sobbed as she fended off the crawlers, thinking maybe it was worse for both of them that she’d come to Skyll.
Yes, it was worse.
“Remember,” he shouted, suddenly, his voice rising over the cacophony of death and destruction. “Do what you have to do.”
A crawler lunged and drove a claw through Z’s shoulder, leaving his left arm hanging limp and useless.
A one-armed, damaged man and a rotting monster.
Yeah. We’ve got this.
She might have laughed, then, but wasn’t sure. The sound and the feeling were the same as her sobs.
Agony. Oh, agony, my friend. You never leave me for long.
He fell to his knees, her Z, then struggled to his feet as she managed to fight the crawlers away.
“Z,” she screamed.
He wiped blood from his eyes with the back of his hand, still holding his blade. He said nothing, but she saw his grin flash.
And they were overwhelmed.
The vicious crawlers were too many.
“Shhh,” one of
them hissed, laughing. “Shhhh.”
She sent him to hell.
She was the fucking princess. The one foretold to destroy the witch. She was stronger than her rot. Else what the fuck was her purpose?
She was not powerless.
Was not.
Once more she gathered herself and fought, protecting herself, protecting Z. She was meant for that, and she’d only fail if she allowed herself to fail.
She was a monster.
The monster.
No matter what.
But even monsters needed help, and in that world, help was hers for the taking.
If they expected her to defeat the evil that ruled them, they’d better fucking be prepared to help her do it.
She wasn’t too proud to ask.
To demand.
She fought on with mindless habit as she gathered up the splinters of untried power inside her—gathered them up, forced them into powerful spheres of unrelenting commands, and flung them out into the world of Skyll.
When they left her, it was not just a spiritual call for help—it was a physical endeavor.
She had no choice but to fight on even as the call ripped its way bloody and vicious from the old stake wounds in her chest. It tore them open, causing her such pain her body had to fight from habit and muscle memory even as her mind attempted to find a safe, dark place in which to hide.
It was as though obsidian had become trapped in her heart and an enormous external magnet pulled, forced, sucked it from the quicksand of her flesh.
She screamed as it gouged raw, tender flesh with talons as sharp as needles, as it ripped and chopped at her insides with what were surely sharp hooks and lethal sickles.
And even the crawlers stopped in puzzled curiosity to watch it happen. Perhaps they, too, would feel the call, her call.
Perhaps they would find it stronger than fear’s call.
Perhaps they would not.
Either way, if they refused to run, Rune would kill them all.
At last, the crawlers backed away, a few of them trampling others in their hurry, as something broke free of Rune’s chest.
Z stumbled backward as well, his eyes finally showing emotion—not of fear, but of wonder. He fell to his knees, not to bow before her, but simply because his legs had given out.
Rune screamed again, then grabbed whatever it was birthing its way from her chest and jerked it free. She flung in to the ground and stepped back in horror.
