by Laken Cane
With the arrival of the crow, the people once again saw her, but that no longer mattered.
Her army of crows—those that had survived the hand—were waiting. Waiting to fight with her—for her.
She closed her eyes for a brief second, then strode with new purpose to the dim. Damascus would be coming, of course.
Rune was ready for her.
Those guarding the dim—three men and two women—met her halfway. They didn’t raise weapons or try to kill her, just lifted their hands and tried to hold her off.
“Wait,” one of them said.
“You can’t go in there,” said another, but none of them dared hurt her.
“I’m sorry,” Rune said, “that you have to live in this hellish place. I’m going to do what I can to get you free.” She shook her head, slowly, looking at each of them. “Don’t stand in my way. I will kill you.”
“Probably,” one of the men agreed, “but we’d rather have a quick death from you than to displease the witch. She’s…”
He didn’t finish, but he didn’t have to.
“I know what she is,” Rune told them. “But I’m your fabled redeemer. Are you really going to stand against me?”
She waited for them to consider her words.
Finally, they glanced at each other and backed away.
She gave them a nod of thanks. “I won’t forget you.”
The man’s smile was at once sad and proud. “There won’t be anything left of us to remember, Princess.”
And she was sorry for that.
“I’m looking for a man and three women who might have been brought in recently,” she said. “Are they here?”
“Yeah,” he said. “They’re here. At least, they were.”
Fuck me. “I need one of you to take me to the man.”
The guard stepped forward and nodded. “No sense in stopping now. Come with me. Hurry.”
They ran into the building, side by side.
Z was there.
She still couldn’t feel him.
She could only feel despair.
“What’s your name?” Rune asked, matching her pace to the man beside her.
“Bo. And there are guards around the next corner. You’ll have to kill them.”
She glanced at him. “They won’t surrender?”
“Given time, maybe they would. But you don’t have time.” He pointed toward the ceiling. “She’s coming.”
They could hear footsteps above them, running, stomping, tearing through the dim toward them.
Yeah, the witch was coming.
“I’ll take them out.” Rune rocketed down the hallway and around the corner, seeing the guards before they had a chance to identify the blurry form running toward them.
There were four of them and she left them lying broken and dead upon the cold floor and ran on toward her Z.
She no longer needed Bo.
Z was guiding her.
Finally.
Always, Z would guide her.
But his light was dim.
I’m coming…
No, Rune. Run.
Never.
He hadn’t wanted her to feel him, to find him. He was trying to protect her.
“Damn you, Z,” she whispered.
She heard Bo’s scream of agony and knew he had fallen beneath the fury of the witch’s men.
They were coming for her.
But she was faster than any of them, and she was desperate.
Z was waiting.
She destroyed everyone in her path.
Finally, as she descended into the darker, filthier levels of the dim, when he was close enough to touch, she screamed his name.
She could feel Z, but she could feel the witch as well.
At her back, close, so close.
“Z,” she screamed.
“No,” he yelled. His voice was hoarse and full of pain, but he was alive.
“God,” she whispered. She knew it was a trap.
She didn’t care. She’d walk into a million traps for Z.
She ran more slowly down the wide aisle between cages lining the hallway—small, filthy cages that would have forced adult prisoners to bend into horribly uncomfortable positions inside them.
Cold lights lining the ceiling flickered and buzzed, and the scent of blood was overpowering.
As were other, worse odors.
Rune gagged as she jogged. Prisoners stuck their fingers through the openings in the cages, pleading, crying, begging.
“Let us out. Let us out.”
When guards ran at her she dropped them, leaving them in piles on the floor between the cages. She didn’t stop to debate with them.
She had to get to Z.
She had to get to Z before Damascus did.
She found him, finally, in a row of cages that were much larger than the small ones she’d just passed.
He stood back, waiting for her. “Rune.”
The wire door cut into her flesh when she yanked it off the cage, but she barely noticed.
“Z,” she murmured, and flung herself into his arms. “Let’s get out of here.”
He squeezed her to him and sighed into her hair. “Sweet thing. You shouldn’t have come.”
“I would die before leaving you to the witch.”
“I told you,” Damascus said, her voice sending cold chills down Rune’s spine, “that you can’t die. Which is why I need to have control of you.”
Rune withdrew from Z and turned toward the witch.
Damascus stood alone, no guards at her back, no weapons in her hands. She was smiling, but sparks of longing and regret lit her blue eyes. “This is the way you want to play it, my daughter?”
“I have no choice.”
“Oh, but you do. You’ll always have a choice. Be my daughter, Rune. Please, be my daughter.”
Her plea was sincere.
But her denial of capturing Z had also been sincere.
“Let Z and his friends go,” Rune said. “Let all the prisoners go.”
Again, the witch smiled.
“No,” Z said. “That’s why she took me. She knew you’d trade yourself for my freedom.” He squeezed her arm, but she couldn’t look at him. “Rune…”
She closed her eyes for a long moment and then stepped away from him. “Let him go and I’m yours.”
“Rune,” Z bellowed. Then he flinched and pressed his palm against his chest. “I won’t leave you here.”
Unable to bear his agony, Rune strode back to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I fucking love you. Don’t forget that. No matter what.”
Love like no other.
“I won’t leave you,” he whispered.
“She’ll kill you and take me anyway,” she told him gently. “Go. At least give me that. I’ll find a way out. Don’t give up on me.”
Because into whatever darkness would come, the knowledge that Z had survived would always offer her a little light.
“I’ll be fine,” she promised.
But even she didn’t believe her words.
She’d noticed something when she’d felt the witch behind her.
Her monster was gone.
Damascus had stolen it—Rune’s monster would join the hundreds of souls screaming inside the witch.
Damascus must have seen the knowledge in Rune’s eyes.
She shrugged, and a small smile played around her lips. “You let me in. You let me in and whatever is inside you is mine to take.” Then she shot out long, silver claws, claws that had once belonged to Rune. “And by force if not by compliance, you will belong to me.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The witch withdrew the claws and held her hand out to Rune. “Join me. Rule with me. Last chance.”
Rune hesitated, then nodded. “I will.”
Damascus narrowed her eyes. She clenched her fists and growled like a rabid dog. “You lie. Do you think I can’t read you?”
Rune shuddered and dove deep into her mind, trying to h
ide her thoughts.
But there was no hiding from the witch.
So she tried bravado. “Give me a fucking minute. I can’t just run over to the dark side on command. Give me a minute.”
Damascus studied her, silent and calm. Finally, she shook her head. “You have hatred in your heart for me. You will kill me, just as the legends say, if I give you the chance.” She shrugged. “I will never trust you, and you will never trust me. That’s too bad, really.”
She dropped the façade she’d been wearing, and every prisoner who could see her screamed in terror.
Even Rune shrank away.
Damascus was hideous.
Her beautiful exterior had merely been a cover. Rune had nearly forgotten the witch’s true appearance. The memory had faded.
But there she stood once again with the screaming souls and the translucent skin, her black heart beating against bony ribs.
Only worse—because in her own world, she wasn’t dim and weak as she’d been in Rune’s world.
And she was pissed.
Damascus wasn’t accustomed to being disappointed. She didn’t like it.
“I don’t have to release any of my prisoners,” she said. “You reject me. You reject all that I would give you.” She spat onto the floor. “That makes you stupid, and I do not want another stupid daughter.”
She was in front of Rune before Rune was aware she’d moved.
She gripped Rune by the throat and flung her from the cage and into the aisle, then shoved Z back so hard he bounced off the cage wall and hit the floor.
“Fuck,” Z said, pain in his breathless voice. “Leave her the fuck alone.”
“Get him into a secure cage,” the witch said, pointing at Z, and her men leapt from the shadows to do her bidding.
Rune had no weapons, and she had no monster.
But she had her rage.
She clenched her teeth and picked herself up off the floor. “I won’t be your daughter, but I will be the force that puts you the fuck down. I swear it.”
For an instant, there and gone so fast Rune might have imagined it, a spark of terror and dread lit the witch’s eyes.
Then Damascus balled her fists. “I will teach you to fear me.”
Rune felt her face explode when the witch hit her.
So that’s what it feels like.
Damascus hit her again, and again, and again, beating Rune with her own monster.
And Rune was just a woman, a woman being smashed by a fucking truck.
She heard Z’s voice, begging, horrified, fading, fading…
She didn’t know she’d blacked out until she awakened.
The witch was kicking her, breaking ribs and doing damage she had no monster to heal.
“Please,” she tried to say. “Stop.”
Could she die without her monster inside her?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
She didn’t know anything. What she could do, what she could take, what she could survive.
The pain was unlike anything she’d ever imagined.
Even when the crawlers were swarming over her, biting, ripping long strips of flesh from her body, clawing her…some of that pain had been absorbed by her monster.
She just hadn’t realized it.
That was no longer true.
“Please,” she begged.
She couldn’t end the witch of Skyll.
The tales were wishful, childish fables.
She curled into a ball and put her arms over her head as her body shattered.
An image of his face, stern and strong and calm, his raging eyes set like fires in darkness, wafted into her mind.
Berserker.
How did one defeat a force full of magic and power and centuries of life?
One didn’t.
It would take the world to defeat Damascus.
The whole world.
When Rune next floated to consciousness, she was immersed in darkness so complete she was afraid she’d been blinded.
But finally, her eyes adjusted and she saw a darker shadow disengage from the nothingness around it and drift toward her.
She still lived.
Monster or no monster, she was still something more than human, something stronger than a mere woman.
She could not die. The witch hadn’t lied about that.
She was immortal, and she was…
She was Damascus’ prisoner.
Other prisoners surrounded her—she heard them scurrying through the darkness like rats, and slowly she began to take in her surroundings.
There was a bank of long, tiny lights high on the wall, and it finally dawned on her that the lights were actually windows. Windows too high for most of them to reach and much too small for even the most emaciated prisoner to fit through, but they allowed in a small amount of daylight.
She lay on something hard and damp, most likely a concrete floor, and the wall at her back was oozing a slimy coldness she could feel through her clothes.
And the smell…
Oh, the smell.
“Z?” Her voice was too weak, too hoarse. She swallowed past painful dryness and tried again. “Z?”
He didn’t answer, but someone else did.
“There are no Z’s here. May I ask your name?”
“How long have I been here?” she asked. “I need water.”
A less friendly voice entered the conversation. “Haven’t you felt how wet the floor is? That’s how we’re given water. Lick it off the floor, girlie.”
Damascus had given her a beating that would have killed a dozen men, and even though Rune wasn’t going to be able to heal fast, she would heal.
She moved in and out of consciousness, snatches of images and voices and agonizing pain clinging with hazy stubbornness on the edge of her mind.
Finally, she awakened feeling a little better, a little clearer. The light in the dungeon seemed brighter—but her eyes were less swollen and she could see.
The light from the high windows poured in and stopped halfway down the tall brick walls, leaving the prisoners swimming in fog and mist and shadows.
It was better than total darkness, even if what she saw was despair and filth. Moldy green walls splattered with things she didn’t care to look at too closely. Wet, slimy floors that stank of waste, blood, death.
Drink from that?
No.
One of the prisoners sat near her, his back against the wall, forearms across his bent knees.
He watched her silently.
She struggled to sit up, but gave up when it proved too difficult a task. “Water?” she asked.
The man watching her spoke, at last. “You’re almost unrecognizable as a person. Who beat you?”
“The fucking witch,” she croaked, and all around her were gasps.
He smiled, slightly, his lips turning up in the shadowy darkness. “You mean she had you beaten.”
She cleared her throat, grimacing. “No. I mean the witch kicked my ass.”
“If Damascus used such magic on you, you’d be dead.” His voice was flat.
“She stole my…my strength, and she beat the fuck out of me with it.”
He lifted dark eyebrows. “I’ve lived here for an eternity, and I’ve never known the witch to dirty her hands that way.”
“What’s your name?”
He shrugged. “That doesn’t really matter, does it?”
She curled her lip, and even that expression of contempt hurt her. “You’ve given up.”
He snorted. “Given up? Oh yes, I’ve given up. There is no hope for any of us. If I were a braver soul I’d beg a friend to grab a sharpened stick and end this very trying existence.”
Rune narrowed her eyes. “Hmmm.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I was wrong. You haven’t given up.”
He sighed. “Go back to sleep, child. If you’re one of the lucky ones you won’t wake up again.”
“What’s your name?” she pers
isted.
“You’re a stubborn girl.” But there was a hint of admiration in his tone. “I am the Death Shimmer lord. My name is—”
“Nikolai Czar,” she murmured. “Fie’s bad man.”
Slowly, he stood and walked to her. “How do you know Fie?”
Rune tried to laugh but the sound that emerged was closer to a sob. “I’m the one who brought her here.”
Even in the darkness she could see his face pale. “You’re…Rune?”
“Yeah. I’m Rune.”
“Princess,” he whispered, and the word slid through the dungeons like a snake through tall grass.
The prisoners began to stir, and a gentle breeze seemed to caress her hair. The dungeon woke up.
And something else seemed to suddenly move and stir and hum.
It wasn’t a sound, though.
It was something that should have fled long ago from the bowels of hell in which the witch had stashed them.
It was bright and shiny and belonged in the sun.
It was hope.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Nikolai studied her with eyes so deeply blue they looked black, and so full of emotion it hurt her to look into them.
Rune was accustomed to men who shielded their emotions and blanked their faces. She didn’t know quite how to take Nikolai.
The bad man.
Fie wasn’t wrong.
He wore his badness as blatantly as he wore his emotions. Nikolai would not hide who he was from anyone.
“Did you know Nicolas Llodra?” She was as surprised as he was by the question. She hadn’t meant to ask it, but something about him made her think of Nicolas, and the question came out.
Once asked, she didn’t try to retract it. She wanted to know, after all.
“One of your…fathers. I knew him.” His gaze picked her apart. “How does he fare in the world of the great Rune Alexander?”
She looked away from his stare, which appeared at once both knowing and innocent. “He’s dead.”
“Perhaps he is the lucky one, then. You are not as I’d imagined you.” He sat down beside her, then shifted slightly from one hip to the other. And though he didn’t grimace, his discomfort was obvious. “You’ve lived with pain.”
She laughed, but the sound was not one of amusement. “Yeah.”
“And discord,” he continued. “Most of all, you are a child of indecision, and that causes you trouble.”
