by Laken Cane
She stopped to stare around her, shocked that something in the eerie, silent land of bones and black trees called to her. The red sky sheltered the strange boneyard like a tent, and the torturous yellow sun watched—and baked—them all.
She had no idea where the bones had come from, or what had happened to the people who’d rotted away and left them there.
Or perhaps the bones had been picked clean…
And it got worse. The farther she went, the harsher the land became.
The air smelled of burnt blood, scorched flesh, and dead, dusty things. It shrouded her in secrecy and oppressiveness, so heavy and thick it was like walking through quicksand.
It was no longer beautiful. It no longer called to her.
It made her afraid and filled her with dread.
The bones crunched beneath her boots as she walked, and it was unavoidable. The ground was carpeted with them. Piles of them.
“This is not a good place,” she muttered. “Not a good place at all.”
“Shhhh…”
Her heart stopped.
“Shhhh…”
And suddenly she realized exactly where she was.
She was in the territory of the crawlers.
The sound they made as they crept over the dry bones was like a rush of wind through dead leaves. And she couldn’t remember any other sound striking such terror into her heart.
“Shhhh…”
She caught a glimpse of some of them as they scuttled behind the trees, edging closer to her.
She and Z had been attacked by some bad sons of bitches.
These were different.
Worse.
She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew.
Cousins, perhaps, to those crawlers.
She turned to run.
They swarmed over the bone hills, bringing her down before she was even aware she hadn’t managed to take off.
They had her.
The crawlers had her, and she was alone.
They couldn’t kill her, but she knew a very deep truth.
There were many, many things worse than death.
Chapter Thirty-Two
They forced her down into the earth, deeper and deeper, and she had no choice but to go. Kicking, screaming, shredding them with her claws, she went.
They rode her down, their voices assaulting her ears and shocking her mind, numbing her to everything but her terror.
She fought in the blackness, blackness so thick she could feel it like spider webs on her face. She could see nothing, and she could not fight her way free.
They took her to their nest.
Their hidden, impregnable lair.
Slowly, gradually, she could see.
The room was enormous, with high ceilings, gray rock walls, and smooth, wet floors. A grim underground cavern of horrors.
She shuddered and backed slowly away until the cold, hard wall pressed against her back.
They had her.
She couldn’t kill them.
They couldn’t kill her.
But they outnumbered her and they could torture her.
They would torture her.
She could see eagerness in the wide-eyed faces—pale faces with tongues hanging wet and limp, sharp, crowded teeth dull with the stain of old blood, cracked and broken from the habit of devouring bones.
Get ready for it, Rune. You’ll survive. You’ll be okay.
You will.
She moaned.
Being at the mercy of the sadistic monsters was a terror unlike any other.
She didn’t want them to see her fear, but as they lifted their round faces, sniffing and biting at the air, she realized they already did.
They tasted it, and they wanted more. They craved her fear like the berserker craved her blood.
Her fear fed them.
“Shhh,” they said, because they couldn’t say anything else. “Shhh…”
“Fuck me,” she whispered. “I’m fucked.”
If it would have done any good, she’d have begged them not to hurt her. She would have tossed aside any pride she might have had and begged them to leave her alone.
She could only scream.
They bore her to the ground, so many of them, piling on top of her, under her, around her, biting, licking, smothering, crushing.
She fought hard.
It did not matter.
They couldn’t be touched. They melted away from her claws and her fangs and her desperation, only to appear again like impossible ghosts.
“Shhhh…”
She couldn’t take Z’s advice and cut her head off. Her deep, deep terror of being a brain in a jar was too strong.
Stronger, even, than the crawlers.
She tried to concentrate, to listen for the echoes—if she’d found them she would not have hesitated. She would have left the worlds to the witch and she would have escaped the crawlers.
But she couldn’t hear the echoes. She couldn’t escape.
“Oh, God,” she begged. “Take me or save me.”
On Skyll, she was not Rune Alexander, super monster. She was Rune Alexander. Period.
She begged for death long before they tired of playing with her. Long before they grew bored watching how far they could push her, how severely they could hurt her, how easily they could terrify her.
They dominated her. They infiltrated her mind, shredded her heart, and violated her body.
Over and over and over.
Until she could no longer remember what pain was, and her fear was hidden beneath the weight of too much horror.
When she was numb and they could neither taste her fear nor kill her, they withdrew.
And when her body and mind began to heal and she stirred, weeping, they came back again.
Over.
And over.
And over.
No one came to save her.
No one.
In her despair, she damned them all.
“Shhh…”
Finally, bored, the crawlers scuttled away and left her paralyzed and abandoned on the stone floor. Left her lying in thick pools of blood and gore and loss, and another person slipped into the room to kneel beside her.
“My sweet child. My sweet baby.”
Damascus’s sorrow hung like a cloud in the freezing room, bathing Rune’s destroyed body in warmth and life and a hope that there might be an end to the suffering.
“Kill me,” Rune begged, forgetting that for her, death was not possible.
Damascus caressed Rune’s face, softly, sweetly. “Hush, baby.”
“Kill me.”
Rune wasn’t sure of anything other than the fact that for the thousandth time in her life she wanted to die more than she’d ever wanted anything.
And she couldn’t.
The witch lifted her from the floor and cradled her against her chest, her eyes pure and loving in light that was kind and forgiving, like the dewy light of dawn.
“The crawlers will die,” she promised, gently rocking. “I will kill them in most awful ways for what they’ve done to you. But you, child, will not die. You cannot, you know. Were you to be parted from your head and heart, you would still live on.”
Rune whimpered, and unable to help herself, pushed her face more closely against the witch’s warm skin.
“Yes,” Damascus crooned. “We will kill them all, you and I, and you shall rule by my side. Just as you should, my child. All you have to do is accept me. Ask me to, and I shall destroy everyone who ever caused you pain.”
Damascus is the enemy.
Isn’t she?
“I, too, have been betrayed,” Damascus went on. “I, too, have been deceived. Deceived by those who wish my demise. But I’ve found you. I’ve saved you. You’re mine, dearest, and I shall take care of you from now on. Ask.”
“Kill…”
“Hush, child.” She stared down at Rune and in her eyes was succor. Relief. Joy. Love.
Rune floated as the pain left her. Fear
left her.
She was overtaken by a feeling unlike any she’d ever felt in her life. Not even the aftereffects of Jeremy’s punishments made her feel what she felt right then, staring into the witch’s eyes.
It was good.
So, so fucking good.
She floated, high.
Drugged.
Oh, so good. So good.
“This is where you belong,” Damascus said. “Right here with me.”
“I…”
“Yes. Say it. Say it, child.”
But in her relief she found her will. “No.”
Damascus smiled. “You will. Soon.”
Rune lay there, cocooned in safety, rocked gently by the witch, her enemy, her savior.
Held securely by the most powerful woman in any world.
Her mother.
At that moment, there was no place she would rather have been.
Sometime later she awakened, still hurting, still healing, and still broken upon the floor.
Alone.
She’d dreamed the witch.
And she wasn’t really sure why that knowledge disappointed her so.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The crawlers didn’t appear again until the gray light was gone and Rune was once more in the nearly impenetrable dark.
She was ready for them.
No, not ready, but waiting.
Waiting.
She had nothing but her claws and her fangs and her strength. They’d taken everything else.
And her strength was ebbing.
Her body would heal—slowly, because they’d torn her apart—but it would heal. Her mind…that was a different matter, and she knew it.
She had no idea how to stop them, or how to free herself.
Except to call out to Damascus.
To beg Damascus.
To give herself to the witch.
And she wasn’t doing that.
She’d searched the room for a weak spot, a door, a hint of an escape route.
There was nothing.
But she discovered the walls and floors were made mostly of obsidian.
The obsidian walls did not render her helpless, as a stake would have done, but they weakened her.
It didn’t matter. She could have had all her strength and the weapons of a thousand people, and still the crawlers would not have been affected.
But nothing was created that didn’t have a weak spot, a vulnerability, somewhere. She just had to find theirs.
She had to.
Fire, she thought, would destroy them.
But she had no fire.
She had nothing.
So the crawlers came.
She dropped her fangs automatically and the crawlers snapped them from her gums. She shot out her claws and they ripped them from her hands, breaking them, splintering them.
She fought them with bloody fists and bare feet, and they cried “Shhh!” as they broke her bones and dined upon the marrow.
Finally, she curled on the floor so they could do as they would, and she retreated into her memories.
Nicolas Llodra, the man she’d killed—one of the fathers she’d killed—was in the darkness of her mind nodding his head wisely and telling her that at last she understood why he was mad and why he’d done everything he could to stay free of Skyll and Damascus.
Oh yes, she understood.
The despair, terror, and agony were unimaginable.
Unbearable.
Then do what you must, little one.
I don’t know what to do.
Yes, you do.
I can’t.
You must.
Forever?
For now.
Maybe she remained in the room for weeks, for months. She didn’t know. She lost track of the mysterious gray light that may have signaled the arrival of another day.
Maybe it didn’t.
She knew nothing for sure.
After every vicious encounter, the crawlers left her for a while so she could heal.
And then they came back.
The pain and fear never left her.
She healed, and the crawlers came back.
Over and over and over.
They thought of new ways to torture her. New ways to bring out her fear so they might feast on it.
Sometimes she dreamed.
Sometimes she begged Mother Skyll to help her.
Sometimes she thought she heard the berserker roaring her name.
At last, at last…
She gave up.
“Help me,” she cried. “Damascus, help me.”
Was there any doubt that the witch would get what she wanted?
No. Not really.
“Mother,” she screamed. “Mother!”
And the witch answered.
She appeared suddenly, not through a doorway or a window or a wall, but materialized right in front of Rune as though she’d been there all along.
Perhaps she had been.
Perhaps she’d sunk through the ground the way the crawlers had.
Rune didn’t know, and she didn’t care.
She reached up with her torn hands and shattered claws and grabbed the witch’s clothes. She said nothing. There was nothing more to say.
But Damascus seemed to believe otherwise. “You’re mine now, little girl. Say it.”
Fear, strong and heavy, shook Rune’s body.
The crawlers seeped through the walls, sniffing, biting the air, tasting Rune’s terror.
Rune’s voice was hoarse and as broken as her body. “Yours. I’m yours.” And she shuddered as something, some unassailable truth, hit her brain and her soul and changed who she was.
The witch’s daughter.
She was whatever the witch wanted her to be.
Damascus leaned forward, the ends of her long, black hair caressing Rune’s bloody face. She smiled. Her smile was as beatific and sweet as anything Rune had ever seen.
Her blue eyes were so bright they beat back the darkness. “I can do nothing for Shame. She is my traitor child. But you, with you I can start anew. You didn’t leave on purpose. You didn’t abandon me. Give your mother a kiss.”
Rune couldn’t breathe. Air caught like a block of ice in her throat, choking her. Gasping, she placed her lips against the witch’s cheek.
Satisfied, Damascus straightened. “Let me in. Let me make the crawlers fear you as they fear me.”
Rune wanted to resist. She tried to resist. But she was broken, and the witch was strong. She nodded, and without another hesitation, she dropped her walls and let the witch in.
Walls she hadn’t even been aware, until that moment, that she had. Walls that kept the witch out.
She let the witch in.
“Watch what I can do, baby,” Damascus murmured.
She clasped Rune’s hand and brought her gently to her feet.
Rune closed her eyes.
Magic—there was no other word for it—entered her body.
The warmth of it filled her, pierced her heart and radiated to the rest of her body until she was vibrating, strong, and so full of energy she couldn’t stand still.
It was power like she’d never known, never imagined.
She was invincible.
She was safe.
There was no pain, no fear.
But oh God, was there rage.
“Open your eyes,” the witch ordered. “Open your eyes and make things right, baby.”
The crawlers—dozens and dozens of them, cowered against the walls, circling Rune and Damascus with a fence of terror.
Rune smiled.
The crawlers shrieked.
She didn’t have to be told what to do. She could do anything.
Anything.
She was…she was the witch.
She held up a hand and waved it gently, and the crawlers across from her burst into flames. Not flames that would kill them quickly, either.
Oh, no.
Flames of magic, an inferno of agony that would mak
e them scream in pain for a long, long time.
For eternity.
“Burn in hell,” Rune whispered, and it was so.
All the crawlers began to burn, and the stench was nearly unbearable.
The scent of burning flesh drifted throughout the room on a hot, hot wind that scorched Rune’s gently waving hair and fanned her cheeks.
“Burn,” she murmured.
Her mother watched with a fierce, mad pride.
“My daughter,” she said. “Mine.”
But Rune could have told her that she belonged to no one.
Not to Owen, or the berserker, or even Z.
No.
She was not Skyll’s daughter, or the cowboy’s love, or Z’s fate. She was not the berserker’s addiction.
She was one thing, and had been since the day of her conception.
Her monster.
I am my monster.
My monster is me.
It was enough.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“I forgot you,” the witch said, tenderly. “But the spell was broken the moment you entered my world. Now, now I remember everything.”
She shuddered, and for a second looked almost human.
Almost…afraid.
Rune lay still and silent beneath her warm regard. The witch touched her face, her fingers so gentle Rune almost couldn’t feel them.
Damascus had embraced her and lifted her from the horror of the burning lair, and once they reached the top and her feet were once again on solid ground, a carriage had been waiting.
The carriage was huge and black, matching the four horses that drew it.
Inside the carriage waited a creature unlike any Rune had ever seen.
“This is my imp, Rune,” Damascus said, leaning forward to pat the creature on the knee. “She’s my…well, my friend, aren’t you, darling? Say hello to my daughter. Rune, I will share Imp with you. She is really quite resourceful and I expect her to be around long after this world ends.”
Like a cockroach.
Imp grinned, baring small, pearly teeth behind flesh-colored lips. She was around four feet tall with long, curly blonde hair, light brown skin, and wore a frilly pink party dress.
She was the most ridiculous thing Rune had ever seen—but looking at her caused Rune’s stomach to tighten painfully.
Imp was a scary little bitch.
“I know why my obsession with my Nicolas became so profound. Some part of me understood that he’d taken you—even though I didn’t know who you were. Or even that you existed.” Damascus took a deep breath, then let it out, smiling.
