by Laken Cane
But she hadn’t heard the echoes.
She would never hear the echoes again if she didn’t kill the witch.
“Fuck me,” she whispered.
There was nothing else to say.
Chapter Forty-Nine
After Fie’s time in the strange net, when she’d lost her face and visited Skyll, the little girl had seemed to regress mentally. Her speech had become more childlike—though that could have been due to the fact that she barely had lips.
But when the Army of Death and Darkness appeared suddenly before Rune and the others early that morning, Fie was no longer a child.
Not really.
Strad reached for her, pulling her off the shoulders of one of her men, and instead of winding her small arms around his neck and crying, “Uncle B’serk!” as she had in the past, she simply waited for him to get his fill of snuggles and hugs and put her back on the capable shoulders of her captain.
The look of loss in his face was unmistakable. His little Fie was gone. He would have to accept it, grieve, and move on.
“Follow us,” the captain said, once Fie was settled once more. “We have scoured the country and have defeated much of the enemy.”
Rune frowned.
“Have you not noticed the piles of dead and the lessening attacks on your group?” he asked. “That is our work. We have made it so you can face her on more even terms.”
“I’ll be happy to do that,” Rune said, “as soon as I can find her.”
He managed a scornful look, despite his major lack of skin. “We will take you to her. No one can hide from the Army.”
“Not even the witch,” Fie said solemnly.
“Especially not the witch,” he said.
“Why not?” Rune asked.
“Because we are dead, and the dead can see anyone they want to see.” Maybe he smiled.
Rune got in his face. “Z. I need to know where he is.”
“It doesn’t work that way.” The captain drew back. “I don’t know this Z.”
“Dammit,” Rune muttered. She’d known it was a long shot. “Let’s do this. Lead the way.”
Four of the dead stepped forward.
“Choose a ride,” the captain said.
“You have to be kidding me,” Rune said. “You can carry Fie. Lex, Snow, and I would be a stretch. The berserker? None of you people are carrying him.”
Definite smile. “We are forged in steel and magic, Princess. We can support your berserker.”
Rune glanced at Snow, who was nodding. “They can carry mountains on their backs. A mountain such as your friend is a small burden to them.” And she ran at one of the men, shimmied up him as though she were climbing a tree, and wrapped her arms around his neck. He hooked his long, apparently super strong arms under her legs and backed up.
“Next,” the captain said. “We do not have the luxury of time. You must hurry.”
Rune gave Strad a nod. “Go on. I have to see this.”
A tall man, strands of copper hair clinging to his skull, stepped forward. “I will attach this one.”
“Attach?” Rune asked.
Strad shifted from foot to foot, brow furrowed and face slightly flushed.
Rune grinned at his embarrassment but could understand it. Strad on the back of another man, even one of the dead? She would have given anything for a camera at that moment.
“Attach,” the captain says, “is what we do with our cargo, and in whichever way it is suitable. I carry our hand on my shoulders because she fits. Were I to lean forward or backward she could not tumble off. She is attached to me until which time I release her.”
“Dude,” Rune said. “That is badass.”
“Yes.”
“Turn around,” Strad’s carrier ordered.
The berserker hesitated.
“Please, Strad,” Rune said.
“Fuck,” he ground out. But he turned around.
The skeletal warrior rammed himself against Strad—and there he remained, a skeleton half buried, or so it seemed, into the berserker’s back.
Strad lifted an arm, and the skeleton’s arm lifted as well.
“What the hell?” Rune wondered.
The berserker grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “Badass.”
“Wow,” Rune said. “That’s the type of attachment I want.”
“Rune,” Snow said. “Take my advice and jump on a back. You can hide your face and not eat a pound of bugs. All that wind is bad for your skin, as well.”
Rune curled her lip. “Before the witch stole my monster, I ran like the wind. I’m used to picking a few bugs out of my teeth.” And she turned around. “One of you slide on in here.”
“I’m just going to listen to Snow,” Lex said, and jumped on her ride’s back.
“Rune,” Snow said. “Sure you won’t change your mind?”
“I’m sure.”
Snow sighed loudly, but Rune ignored her.
And five minutes later, she was kicking herself for being so stubborn.
The dead…
The dead could run.
They would have left her and her monster in the dust, as much as it pained her to admit it.
She kept her mouth firmly closed, but bugs and other small things got in anyway. Her nostrils were clogged, her face stung, and the wind burned her watering eyes. She figured she’d have to shave her head—there’d be no untangling the mess her hair was in.
She imagined the berserker was faring worse—at least she was used to running at speeds that were incredibly fast. Strad had nothing at all to compare it to.
Finally, they stopped. Rune couldn’t have guessed how long they’d run, because their running was like…shoving through time.
And it was incalculable.
Her carrier released her and she stumbled forward on shaky legs, almost unable to keep her feet beneath her.
“How was it?” Snow was grinning.
“Smug bitch,” Rune said, after coughing up a lungful of winged creatures and blowing God only knew what from her nose. “It was great fun. I’d like to do it again sometime.”
She slapped bugs from her hair as she surveyed the area. The Army of Death and Darkness had brought them to…
“Oh,” Rune said. “No.”
“What is it?” Strad pushed his way to her. He looked only a little worse than she felt after the run with the Army.
“The crawlers’ boneyard,” she whispered.
“There,” the captain said, pointing to the ground. “There is the witch. This is the moment the true battle begins. The last battle. Open yourself to it. Do it now.”
Rune nodded and tried to speak, but her heart was knocking against her ribs and her lungs didn’t want to inflate. Her stomach tossed so violently she was sure she would disgrace herself by throwing up.
“Rune,” Fie insisted, “do it now.”
She felt something—a familiarity, a longing, a need. All inside her. Skyll was her world. Hers.
Magic swirled around her, inside her, lay heavy in the air.
She parted her lips and the magic—she had no other word for it—slid into her mouth.
Began to take her over. And she let it.
It had all come down to that moment.
“We all have a job to do,” the captain continued. “Those who should will find their way here. The witch will not run again, as her time is also up.” He made a sweeping gesture at the surrounding area. “This is your arena.”
“This is the beginning,” Snow said.
“And,” Rune murmured, “this is the end.”
One way or another.
The berserker drew his spear. “You’re not alone.”
“She will fight magic with magic,” Fie said, her sweet voice slicing through the cold morning. “And you, Berserker, are not magic. The witch will kill you in seconds and Rune will be too grief-stricken to fight. Back away and let the princess go to her destiny. There will be more than enough combat to keep you occupied.”
Sh
e paused, then spoke directly to Rune. “Do not walk slowly to your destiny. Embrace it. Grab it. Satisfy it. Then the worlds will be right and you will be free.”
What if I don’t? What if I can’t?
“Damascus,” Rune muttered. “Fuck you.”
Lex grabbed her hand. “Make her your bitch.”
Yeah.
“The crows,” Snow said. “Look at all the crows.”
They came suddenly, a black mass that grew larger and larger until it blocked out the sun and made the sky a dark, undulating, living thing above them.
“It all comes down to this.” Rune rubbed her arms and shivered at the cold heat of the magic. The magic joined her blood and circulated through her. “Just this.”
It invigorated her.
It scared the fuck out of her.
“No fear,” Strad said. “You’re not meant to lose.” And his voice, deep and hard and dark, brought her close to tears. She didn’t know why and there was no time to wonder.
The witch was coming.
And she realized something. The realization grabbed her by the throat and if she hadn’t listened, it would have choked the life out of her.
“Something isn’t right,” Rune said, grabbing Strad’s arm.
“What? What isn’t?”
“Z should be here. He needs…I need him to be here, Berserker.”
“Rune. I am here.”
“I need Z,” she cried. “He has to be here.”
“How do you know?” Snow asked, urgently. “How do you know that?”
Rune shook her head. “The same way I know the witch is rising through the ground right this fucking second. I just do.”
“Z’s down there, then,” Snow said. “She’ll have left him in the least accessible place and will try to use him to bargain with you later.”
“I know that,” Rune said. “Everyone quiet.”
The earth rumbled.
The fighters were coming, answering the call they all heard. The call of the princess.
That was their destiny.
“Why?” Lex whispered.
“Because I need to become something I’m not and I need to do it now.”
No one moved.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the power inside her, the latent power she’d felt before, the power that was waiting for her to use it, to command it, to own it.
The power had been hiding there, waiting for Skyll—Mother Skyll—to activate it. It was time.
Magic had no logic. It needed none.
So she closed her eyes and gave herself over to the power. She became darkness and light and hatred and hunger. She lost herself in that stew of magic, of power, and only for one tiny spark of a second did some part of her wonder if she’d ever get herself back.
She didn’t wait for Damascus to rise from the bowels of crawler hell. She understood that the witch might kill those waiting on the surface before she returned.
She couldn’t care about that.
Not then.
She went after Z.
Chapter Fifty
She didn’t go to save him because of love. She went to save him because the mother—the world—told her he was necessary for that world’s survival.
Her world’s survival.
It was not a coincidence that he was in Skyll.
Of course it wasn’t.
The crawlers had taken her to hell before. She didn’t need them to take her beneath the ground any longer.
The soil was like cake to her.
Layers and layers of something delicious and dark and creamy.
She sank into it, coiled and weaved within it, opened her mind to taste it.
Z was standing against the wall as the crawlers advanced on him, but he didn’t cower or beg or scream.
He hadn’t been there long enough to lose his mind or his pride or his will. He stood with his fists curled, his eyes so hot and blazing they seemed like the only color in the room.
The crawlers inched closer to him, beginning to draw out his fear, playing with him.
But then Rune was there, and they had no chance to do anything but die.
She made them explode. She made them aware as chunks of guts and flesh and thick, dark blood splattered and thumped against the floor and walls.
She made them suffer.
She forced every fear they’d ever triggered or produced back on them, much as Snow had sent Ian’s attack back at him.
When she was finished, Z stared at her, something in his eyes she didn’t like.
“Z,” she murmured. She walked to him and wrapped her bloody arms around his waist. “You can’t forget me. You can’t.”
“I haven’t,” he said, at last. But there was anxiety in his voice.
“There is nothing here for you to fear,” she told him.
“Oh, there is, Rune. There is.”
She drew slightly away but kept her arms around him—not to hug him but to hold on to him as she lifted him out of the darkness.
“My sweet thing,” she thought he whispered.
They shot through the ground and it expelled them forcefully from its warm depths. Up top she found exactly what she knew she would find.
Damascus killed with unchecked magic, her rage boundless as her enemies and allies clashed in one last, vicious battle on the crawlers’ boneyard.
People streamed in, stomping out onto the battleground with a single-minded rage they’d been unable to unleash through years and years of abuse.
The witch sat on the back of a kelper, but hers was three times bigger than the one Rune had ridden. They surveyed the battle from a steep, grotesque hill of bones.
Even as Rune watched, Damascus sent a ball of fire into the midst of the battle, hitting a dozen fighters who fell to the ground, white bone and gray ash.
The kelper squealed and reared up, his paws clawing at the air, and Damascus’s laugh raced down the hill to spear those fighting below.
Some of the fighters fell right then.
Just fell to the ground, covered their heads, and refused to move again.
Damascus shot out the claws Rune had once possessed—long, deadly claws that shot silver sparks as she waved them through the air. “Brain in a jar,” she screamed, her voice heavy with malice. “That’s your fear. Worse than the crawlers, isn’t it? That’s your only fate, dear heart. Brain in a jar. I’m about to make that happen.”
Rune stumbled and fell to one knee, her entire body shuddering. Damascus had plucked that particularly nasty fear right out of her head, and there was no doubt that if the witch defeated her that day, it was over for Rune.
Brain in a jar.
God, no.
“Get up,” a man commanded, and she looked up, dazed, to see the lord of Death Shimmer, Nikolai Czar. “Get up and fight her. You must win. You must.”
Yes, she must.
She had power.
She had so fucking much power. She just had to use it.
Then the witch stilled, her narrowed eyes on something to the left of Rune.
Rune followed her gaze and saw a small figure running through the crowd, standing out like a lone flower in a field of grass with her wild white hair.
Snow.
Shame.
And she had the witch’s attention.
In that instant, as she watched Snow lope toward her, it hit Rune like a sucker punch in the gut. She really had a sister.
A sister.
A maddened legislator charged Snow, roaring as he stomped toward her.
“No,” Rune screamed.
In the back of her mind was the fact that she’d just given the witch someone else to torture and use against her.
But it was too late to worry about that.
She was a protector, and Snow was about to be crushed beneath the monstrosity heading straight for her.
Chaos. The world was simply chaos.
More of the witch’s legislators fought, kicking up great clods of charred earth with their enormous
hooves. They roared and beat at their chests, and Rune saw it as if in slow motion as she ran.
Not the run of a vampire.
She was more than a vampire. More than a monster.
She was death.
She reached Snow seconds before the legislator did. Snow grabbed her hand and held up her free one, sending fire at the beast.
Rune did the same thing, at the same time.
Together, they sent the legislator to hell.
Then they turned to look at each other for a startled moment.
“Thank you,” Snow said.
Rune smiled. “Are you ready for this?”
“I’ve been ready for this my whole life. Now that you’re here, we have a chance.”
And that time, there was no bitterness in her voice.
“Then let’s blast our way to the witch,” Rune told her. “She has to end today.”
“Are you…” Snow hesitated, though the witch roared her order and more legislators began to streak toward the sisters. “Are you okay? You look like death.”
Rune had no idea what she looked like, but she knew what she was. “I am death.”
“Keep hold of my hand,” Snow said, as the beasts ran them down. “We can combine our powers and create a wall around the boneyard. The witch won’t be able to get through it. Not before you kill her.” Her voice was grim, and a little something more.
Sadness?
Maybe.
It didn’t matter. They’d both do what they had to do.
“Please Rune,” she said. “Kill her.”
“I swear it.”
And still more screaming, armed people poured into the area. They were weak, sick, skinny, and tortured. But they were full of something Damascus couldn’t take from them.
Faith.
The princess was there, the time had come, and every single person in Skyll believed.
They believed.
Even some of the witch’s army of guards turned mid-battle to fight against the witch.
Rune and Snow sent flame after flame into the legislators, barely waiting for one to fall, a skeleton of brittle bone and putrid ash, before they shot another one.
But the legislators were big, fast, and mean.
And they were many.
Damascus watched from her hill, watching as Rune and Snow fought their way ever closer to her.
