by Laken Cane
“A couple of strong men wouldn’t have had much trouble.”
“She’s a bird shifter.”
“Birds are scarce around here.”
“Scarcer, now,” he said.
She nodded a hello to the other two standing guard. They were RISC cops named Shelly and Aaron.
“It’s bad,” Shelly said. “Whoever did this enjoyed the hell out of it.”
Rune heard a vehicle arriving and watched with something close to relief when Jack got out of his truck.
“Wow,” Shelly murmured, a gleam of admiration in her eyes. It was understandable. Jack’s big, muscled body was crisscrossed with belts holding his weapons, and the patch over his destroyed eye lent him an extra air of danger.
His sexiness wasn’t subtle—it beat a woman over the head until she could only gawk and, in Shelly’s case, forget to close her mouth.
Rune grinned, despite the horror awaiting her.
She waited until he was beside her before she went to examine the body. The other three stayed put—they’d seen more than they’d ever wanted to see already.
Rune stared up at the victim, clenching her fists so hard her nails bloodied her palms. “God, Jack.”
“Somebody hates the Others,” he said, his voice hard and disgusted.
“Somebody hates…” She gestured helplessly. “Somebody hates.” If anyone understood hate, it was Rune.
The woman—the bird—hung messily from the wall. Her size was intimidating, even in death. She was over six feet tall, and her long limbs were muscled and thick. She’d have been a frightening adversary in life.
She’d been nailed to the building through several places, including her wrists, her legs, and her feet. One of her enormous wings had been ripped from her body when she’d been in her shifted form. It was nailed to the wall beside her.
She’d been stabbed so many times her entire chest was one raw, choppy wound.
Bloody bones and tendons, stripped of the meat that had once clung to them, littered the ground below her.
Her eyes were open. Flat, staring eyes, missing the spark of life. Despite that, the horror imprinted on her face was as stark and recognizable as the smears of blood on her legs.
“Matheson used to—” Then Jack shut his mouth, avoiding her stare.
“Strad used to what?”
He gestured at the woman. “He knows the birds. One of us should call him.”
She remembered the fight at Hawthorne, when the berserker had flown in on an enormous bird. Maybe this one.
Shit. “I’ll do it.”
He nodded. “Should I take her down?”
She pulled her cell from her pocket. “No. RISC is coming. They’ll have to catalogue everything.”
He wasn’t going to argue.
“Strad,” she said, once the berserker answered. “I’m at a crime scene on Timber Road. The old slaughterhouse.”
“You need me?”
She closed her eyes at his dark, smooth voice. “Yes.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
RISC beat Strad there by five minutes. Rune watched as they began to photograph the scene and the body, then went to meet the berserker at his truck.
He climbed out, automatically reaching for the long, silver spear resting in its bed in the back of his truck. “What is it?” His gaze swept her face.
She nodded at the slaughterhouse. “A woman was tortured and murdered. I called you because Jack said you knew the birds.”
“The victim is a bird.”
“Yeah.”
He ran a hand over his face. “Fuck.”
She studied the ground, giving him a moment.
“What color is her hair?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
She looked up at him. “Light brown. Brown eyes. She’s over six feet tall.”
He nodded, and there was a quick gleam of relief in his eyes. He said nothing as they walked side by side to the building.
He stared up at the tortured woman, his face blank. The berserker gave nothing away.
But she knew him.
She could feel the rage radiating from his huge body.
“Was she a friend?” she asked.
“No. Not really.” He took his cell from his pocket and stepped away to make a phone call.
She heard him anyway.
“Cree,” he said. “Tell the scepters we found Lara. She’s been murdered.” He gave her directions and then clicked off, pushing his phone back into his pocket. He didn’t look at Rune.
And she had a bad feeling.
She put a hand to her stomach and watched him as he examined the body. When she could stand the silence no longer, she spoke. “Berserker?”
But then an enormous form sped toward them, blocking out the lightening sky.
Rune couldn’t help but gasp and step back at the sight. The bird was huge and dark and scary as fuck, and she wasn’t sure it could halt its insane speed before it crashed into the building.
Another bird, smaller but still huge, was behind it.
The world was suddenly full of the whoosh whooshing of wings as more birds arrived.
Rune hadn’t been aware River County held so many of them, but there they were.
Strad stood with his arms crossed and his feet apart, watching them come. Something in his eyes made her stomach hurt a little more, but she couldn’t figure out why.
What was freakier than the tortured, destroyed body nailed to the wall?
Something was. Something sure as hell was.
The arriving shifters weren’t just birds—they were eagles. Golden eagles. At once majestic and intimidating, they glided and then flapped their lethal wings, and every person in the town was surely staring into the heavens with astonishment and wonder.
In the end, six of them dropped to the ground. Almost immediately she had trouble drawing breath as the birds sucked all the oxygen from the air.
It was as surreal an encounter as Rune had ever experienced—not even with Damascus had she felt such awe.
As soon as they landed, they shifted to human form. Huge and naked, all six were very nearly as intimidating in human form as they’d been in bird form.
“Holy shit,” one of the RISC workers whispered.
The four males were all somewhat smaller than the two females. Even the dead female on the side of the slaughterhouse was larger than any of the male birds who’d gathered in a semicircle around the two females.
Muscles bunching over luminous, golden skin, the Others walked to the berserker. The bird in the lead was a woman with long hair that flashed golden one second and dark red the next.
“What color is her hair?”
She was nearly as tall as Strad and every part of her was carved and defined. She faced him with an obvious familiarity in her eyes—eyes that matched her hair. Golden, then flashing a strange reddish-brown.
After staring at him silently, she put her hands on his shoulders and stood on her toes to kiss him, a quick, soft kiss that was almost over before it had even started.
Rune dropped her fangs and shot out her claws, the sound loud in the sudden, complete silence.
The berserker and the bird snapped their heads around to look at her.
She had to forcefully rein in the black anger growing inside her. She wanted to kill the bird. Kill it, cook it, and eat its fucking guts.
But more than that, she wanted to hurt the berserker.
Jack’s words and his hesitation were making more sense.
“Who the fuck are you?” she asked.
The bird put her hands on her bare hips and stared Rune down. “I am Cree Stark. Who the fuck are you?”
Rune smiled, and her monster broke free. She forgot the dead bird, forgot the watching RISC workers, forgot everything.
Her only thought was showing the bird just who the fuck she was.
Chapter Four
“Whoa, whoa,” Jack said, and planted himself between the two females. “Back away, Rune. There’s a d
eath here.” He glanced pointedly at Cree Stark. “One of hers was murdered.”
Rune gave her head a hard shake. He was right. She could feel heat climbing her cheeks and cursed herself silently for her stupid show of…
Jealousy.
She retracted her claws and fangs.
It was the addiction that linked her to the berserker and made her possessive. The blood and the bite made her crazy.
Yeah. Sure.
She stomped her monster back into hiding and took a deep breath. Strad had stepped forward as Jack calmed her down.
The look on his face was both alarmed and proud.
Fucking berserker.
He wrapped his fingers around her arm but she avoided his gaze and shook off his hand.
She knew one thing for sure. She did not like Cree Stark. Her gut was telling her the stranger couldn’t be trusted, and Rune’s gut rarely let her down.
Cree had begun to shift as soon as Rune went after her, but she let the shift lapse and stood once again as a human. The other birds waited at her back, not trying to calm her or interfere at all.
They were silent and unmoving, their flat, black eyes darting with glossy impatience.
“You’ll have to go to RISC,” she told the bird. “My boss will have some questions for you.”
“The birds handle bird business,” Cree said. “We don’t want RISC involved.”
Rune shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what you want. We investigate Other crime in River County. Go talk to Bill Rice.”
“And if I don’t?” Cree’s voice was cold and eager. She wanted to fight—maybe as much as Rune did.
But Rune had been about to kill the bitch, so she really couldn’t blame her for being unfriendly. “I’ll come find you. I’ll arrest you and take you in by force.”
Cree’s lips parted in a smile. And from the sparkle in her eyes, she was genuinely amused. “You don’t know a lot about the birds, do you?”
“Stop,” Strad said, quietly. He pointed at the sad, hanging body. “Say your goodbyes to Lara. RISC will expect you before the day is out. Bring Fin in with you.” He wasn’t asking.
Cree narrowed her eyes at him, but the berserker won the ensuing staring contest and finally, she nodded. Then, with one last glare at Rune, she strode to the murdered bird. The other birds swept along behind her like silent shadows.
Two more cars pulled up. Rice had sent his own investigators. Now that he’d taken total control of RISC, he was putting everything he had into it.
And if they discovered who’d tortured the bird to death, Rune and her crew would be sent after the son of a bitch.
“I’m not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed that the birds don’t make an appearance more often,” Jack said, staring after the departing birds.
“Rice has this covered,” Rune said. “Let’s go find the twins.” She didn’t look at Strad.
She felt him though, walking like a big silent cat behind her. She walked faster.
Once in her car she slammed the door shut and pulled out her phone to report to Rice. Not that she had much to report.
As she talked, she watched the berserker in her rearview mirror. He took his spear from its sheath on his back, then placed it carefully into his truck.
With long, unhurried steps, he walked relentlessly toward her.
“Fuck,” she said.
“Rune?” asked Rice. “What is it?”
“Nothing, Bill. If I get anything else, I’ll call.” She clicked off and started her car. Before she could pull away, Strad opened the passenger side door and climbed in.
“Fuck,” she said again.
Strad looked at her, one side of his mouth lifting in a half-smile. “We should talk.”
“No. We really shouldn’t.”
“Rune—” His cell interrupted him. He cursed, then held it to his ear. “Yeah.”
She stared through her windshield at the slaughterhouse but didn’t actually see it. She was jealous of the berserker—not just jealous, but territorial.
She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.
He clicked off, opening his door as he stuffed the cell back into his pocket. “Follow me.” He climbed from the SUV.
“What is it?”
He leaned down to peer at her through the open door. “One of my sources. He saw Horner. Some members of COS are having a meeting right now.”
She almost couldn’t grasp what he was telling her. “Where?”
He smiled, and it sent chills down her spine. Chills of fear. “In the Moor, sweetheart.”
Right where Lex had said. She hadn’t been talking about the twins. She’d been talking about their abductors.
He slammed the door shut and jogged back to his truck.
Her heart beat almost impossibly fast, hard enough to hurt the barely healed stake wound. She put a hand to her chest as she sped away from the slaughterhouse, tailing the berserker.
Bach Horner was in their sights—and if they found Horner, they’d find Levi and Denim.
Chapter Five
Strad turned left at Hook Road and then made a sharp right into a part of the Moor Rune wasn’t very familiar with. The road she followed him down was rutted and unused, surrounded by bare trees and dry ditches full of rubble.
The land was dotted with a few abandoned, rundown houses, and she could see how COS might find the area an attractive hiding place.
Strad led her through half a mile of swampland that could have been a scene from a horror movie, even with the sun shining.
Somewhere, maybe somewhere close, were the twins.
But if they were—if COS had stashed the guys somewhere in the godforsaken Moor—then they’d made huge error.
Surely they’d known that eventually, Rune and the crew would find them.
Which scared her a little.
They had a reason for staying in River County. That reason, though, was a big fucking mystery.
She nearly rear-ended Strad when he abruptly stopped his truck. He got out and motioned for her to do the same.
She left her SUV and eased a gun from its holster. “Where are they?” She sniffed, catching a whiff of acrid smoke.
And something else.
“Blood,” she muttered.
“This way.” He unholstered both his guns. With COS, a person couldn’t take chances.
In seconds she saw a thin, lazy line of smoke rising into the air. “They’re meeting outdoors around a fucking bonfire?”
But no one was there.
Evidence of their grim party remained in the recently smothered fire, fresh footprints, and litter.
A crudely constructed, bloody altar straddled the embers. “Oh hell,” she whispered. Singed ropes lay in the ashes, and as she bent forward to retrieve them, her fingers brushed the hardness of something lying beneath them.
She scooped it up, showing it to Strad even as she fought not to let it drop back to the ground in disgust. “An obsidian blade.”
He frowned. “What the hell were they doing?”
“Sacrifices? Maybe they’re trying to placate a spirit or a demon.”
“Or trying to call one.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. “COS is fucking with black magic,” she said. “Just what we need.”
He holstered his guns and crossed his arms. “Spiritgrove is suitably named. This city arose from magic and death.”
“That explains why they’re hanging around here. Why they—” She cut her words off as a horrifying thought occurred to her. “The twins. Holy shit. They’re going to sacrifice the twins to…” She gestured at the dying fire. “To call whatever the fuck entity they want control over.” Sacrifices and demons were embroiled in their city’s origins.
He looked around the area with narrowed eyes. “We don’t know what they were doing.”
“I need to talk to Gunnar.”
“Maybe he knows something,” he agreed.
“We found Lex easily, but twins are special.
Twins are magical. That would explain why they’re taking extra trouble to make sure we don’t find them.” She clasped her trembling hands together. “And why they only tried to make some cash off Lex. Lex wasn’t the one they really wanted. It was the twins all along.”
“We need to get her to talk,” he said.
Rune nodded. “It’d be horrible, watching them, unable to help them…” She shuddered.
“If she’s with them then she knows how we can find them. Why isn’t she telling us?”
“She can’t. I don’t know why.”
He blew out a hard breath. “At least now we know why COS isn’t leaving River County.”
“Why can’t we find them, Berserker?”
“We will.”
“The twins think COS still has Lex.”
“Yeah.”
As long as the twins believed Lex was in the hands of the church, they’d be easier to control. She took a deep breath, then frowned.
“What is it?” Strad asked.
“I smell something.”
“What?”
She held up a hand. “Wait.” She closed her eyes, cleared her mind, and inhaled. It was there, an elusive, barely familiar scent she couldn’t quite grasp. But then, she recognized it. “Birds. I smell the birds.”
His stare sharpened. “The shifters?”
“Yes.”
They looked at each other across the altar. “The birds would have nothing to do with COS,” he said, and there was no doubt in his voice.
But there was plenty of doubt in hers. “They were here. Right here.” At least one of them had been.
“Just because you picked up their scent doesn’t mean—”
“You think I’m making it up because of your fucking friend?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “No.”
She crossed her arms, then turned away from him. “They were here. And I’m going to find out why.”
“Rune.”
“What?”
He hesitated. “Don’t fuck with the birds.”
She turned on him, incredulous. “What did you say to me?”
He didn’t back down. “Don’t fuck with them.”
Her laugh was mocking. She hoped he couldn’t hear the tiny thread of pain running through it. “I promise not to hurt them too badly, Berserker. Unless I find out they’ve been keeping shit about the twins from me. Then I’ll hurt them.”
