by Laken Cane
“What?” Roma shouted. “What Corpse Army?”
“But Bill gave you back the key,” Rune said.
Finally, reluctantly, Gavin lost his shift. His gargoyle form was extraordinary. His human form was perfection.
He was all bunching muscles and smooth skin, and though Rune was accustomed to seeing shifters naked, she took a second to admire Gavin Delaney’s magnificence.
“He returned it too late,” he said. “The key discharged, and the door has fallen beneath the weight of the Corpse Army. They are coming. There’s nothing we can do but stand and fight.”
“They want to find and unlock portals,” Roma said, a little breathlessly as she eyed Gavin, “just to kill gargoyles?”
“They hunt us, but that’s not all they want. They want power. They want to rule everywhere they go. And if we let them, they’ll become unstoppable as their numbers grow. No one will be able to stand against them.” He looked at each of them. “And if they unlock the portals, monsters like you’ve never seen will pour into this world.”
“How difficult are they to fight?” Rune asked. “Are you worried we can’t defeat them?”
He put his stare on her. “Our numbers have become depleted. We’re not as we once were.” He hesitated, as though it hurt him to admit it. “And they will destroy the gargoyles—first. But they’ll become a problem for the humans, too. And the Others.”
They said nothing, just watched him, waiting for more.
“They are not only the enemy of the gargoyles,” he said, finally. “They are death. They are the enemy of life. And we must defeat them.”
“But what are they?” Roma asked.
“Monsters,” Rune murmured.
“They are magic and bones,” Gavin said. “And they are death.”
“Then we’ll do what we always do,” Levi said. “We’ll fight.”
Gavin looked at Rune, a spark of hope lighting his usually emotionless voice. “You will help us?”
She nodded. “If they want our world, they’ll have to fight us to take it.”
The gargoyles’ relief was strong. They wouldn’t fight alone.
“What’s their weakness?” Denim asked.
“You must crush their skulls. Their skulls are like solid rock, so it won’t be easy.”
“We need to get to their brains?” Levi asked.
Gavin didn’t answer for a second, as he thought about his answer. Finally, he just said, “Sort of.”
“We can tear them apart,” Rune said. “They can’t fight if they’re missing their limbs, can they?”
“Yes,” he said, simply, “they can. You’ll see.”
Rune took a deep breath. “Okay then. To the portal. We’ll catch them before they leave Killing Land.”
Gavin frowned. “They are not coming through the portal. They will come through Wormwood. The ground is churning as we speak. Soon, it will begin to vomit up the army.”
Rune glanced at Strad, then Will. “You both felt them coming through the portal.”
“No,” Gavin said, before the berserker could open his mouth. “Something might be coming off the path, but it is not the Corpse Army. They’re coming through Wormwood.”
An icy wind danced over Rune’s skin, and for a brief second, she was touched by the gargoyles’ emotions.
Dread, terror, and bleakness.
The gargoyles would try, and they would fight, but they absolutely believed that in the end, they would lose.
Something, it seemed, was coming for everybody.
Chapter Four
Before she went to Wormwood, Rune took Kader and Autumn back to the most secure place in River County—the Annex. She called Bill on the way.
Jack went with her, not only to keep her company but so he could visit little Reign, the child he’d given his dead sister’s name and had unofficially adopted. Reign continued to be unresponsive, but she was receiving the best care possible and they all knew that someday, the kid was going to wake up.
For better or for worse, she was going to wake up.
“What do you need?” Bill asked, when she walked into the building.
“More people,” Jack said. “Everyone you can spare should head to Wormwood for the fight that’s coming.”
“I’ll send ops,” Bill said, “but you’ll need to tell them what they’re up against. Go settle Kader and I’ll call them all in. What of the gargoyles?”
“The bones are coming for the gargoyles,” Rune said. “They will fight—all three of them.”
“Do you know when this army will arrive?”
She shook her head. “I just know they’re close enough to feel.” She looked at him, curious. “Do you feel anything?”
He reflexively touched his midsection. “Yes. I just wasn’t sure what I was feeling.”
“We’ve got this,” Rune assured him.
Jack hurried away to look in on Reign, and Bill called someone to escort Rune, Kader, and the nurse to a secure room in a section of the Annex where no sunlight could penetrate once daylight arrived.
Rune put Kader down in the small apartment, then took a quick tour just to see for herself that everything was as it should be. “Call up for some toys to keep her busy,” she told Autumn. She was worried about booms and hunger and the changes in the child, and once again wished for Ellie.
“Call me if…” she hesitated. “For any reason. There’ll be guards posted in the hall, and if you need—”
“Rune,” Autumn said, smiling. “I work here. I know what to do. Go to your meeting. Kader and I will be absolutely fine.”
But the only person who could have made Rune secure in that belief was Ellis. He loved the baby as much as she did. Autumn was simply addicted.
She met Jack after she left the room, and they went together to speak with the Annex ops. They were good, those ops. Unfortunately, most of them were human.
All she could do was warn them about what they were going to face, even though she wasn’t exactly sure herself. “Get to their brains,” she told them. “The gargoyles say that’s the only way to hurt them.”
Magic and bones.
It wasn’t easy to fight magic, and bones didn’t bleed.
Still, they’d faced down bad motherfuckers before.
They could handle an army of skeletal wizards, or whatever they were.
She and Jack headed to Wormwood to meet her crew.
The dead soldiers might not appear that night, but Shiv Crew would stay there until they did. And they would be ready.
Roma had her slingshot, which she’d affectionately dubbed “Jaclyn,” Strad had a new spear—he hadn’t told anyone where he’d gotten it from, but when Rune had touched it, she’d snatched her hand away and wiped her fingers on her jeans. She’d felt the path on that spear. Perhaps he’d made it from parts of himself, as the path was inside him.
“He’s the twisted berserker now…”
Jack had the Skyllian shotgun, the assassin had…well, the assassin had everything. If anyone could fight magic with magic, that masked killer could.
The twins had lived with the Church of Slayers.
Raze was a mountain of menace.
They could surely handle some bony soldiers.
But humans couldn’t do what Others could do. She silently berated herself for not hiring more nonhumans for her crew, and made a promise right then that when the Corpse Army had been dealt with, she was going to search for nonhuman fighters to join her team.
An unbidden image of Owen hit her between the eyes and for a second, she couldn’t breathe as pain clutched her heart.
And Lex…God, how she would have liked the little blind Other at her side.
But both of them had chosen to stay in Skyll.
So fuck them.
Miss you, Z.
You’ve got this, sweet thing.
She shook off the strange melancholia and hoped it wasn’t a creepy, sad portent of what was to come.
But in her heart, she knew it was.
“Fuck me,” she murmured.
Her crew stood at the gates of Wormwood, watching her. Waiting.
“Will,” she said, “Denim, Levi. I can help. My bite will make you stronger, at least for a while. Your blood will make me stronger. So before we go inside those gates to face whatever the hell assholes are coming, I’m going to eat.” She looked at Levi. “Are we clear on that?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely.”
Strad wouldn’t care if she re-addicted him, but she wasn’t going to do that. She wondered what he’d taste like now, after he’d…changed, but she wouldn’t find out. Part of her was glad. She had a feeling his blood would be full of sickening chunks of dark horror that would be too gruesome even for her.
The assassin knelt before, as he always did, eager for her bite, as he always would be. Gunnar had told her she should fuck the assassin. That union would give her something special.
And that thought was on her mind when he looked up at her, ready for her to take his blood. He knew it, too. Somehow, he knew.
The look in his eyes went from dark and blank to glittering and full of heat, but beneath that, there was sorrow and despair. He knew he would never take his mask off for her. He knew she would never take her clothes off for him.
They were both almost certain of those things.
“Almost,” she whispered, as she rolled up the edge of his mask, and just before she struck, she saw his lips lift in what might have passed as a smile.
His blood recharged her. Energized her. Brought her monster thundering eagerly to the surface, ready to fight, ready to kill.
Adding the twins’ blood to the assassin’s intensified the effects, and when she was done feeding on the three of them, she was flying high. She was invincible.
“How long?” she asked Gavin, when she stepped away from Levi and saw that the gargoyles had arrived. “How long before they’re here?”
“Soon. I feel them.”
She grinned. “Soon, I feel them, too.” She shot out her claws, ready for an army of bones. Eager for them.
The blood made her think she was ready for anything.
The blood was wrong.
Chapter Five
Nikolai arrived—three other vampires at his back. She didn’t recognize them, thought maybe he’d lifted them from another territory, but times were tough. A master would build a coven however he could.
She started to ask him where he’d been, started to be happy that he’d arrived to help with the coming bones, started to smile.
But then, maybe because she’d just filled herself with blood from not one special man but three of them, her vampire nose caught a scent on Nikolai, a scent so familiar, so sweet, so huge, that she stumbled back a step, her mind going blank.
“Rune?” Strad asked. “What—”
Nikolai looked at her, his eyes widened, and he knew.
He held up a hand. “Let me explain.”
But Rune had gone dark, and there was nothing in her heart but a horrified realization.
Someone must die.
Someone must die.
“Ellie died,” she screamed. “You killed Ellie.”
And she went for the vampire, her vision so obscured by bloody tears that she could not see. But she didn’t need to see.
She could smell.
A raging, agonized mass of shock and despair, she followed her beloved Ellie’s scent to the vampire.
Nikolai didn’t run. Maybe he’d thought she cared enough about him to let him live. He was mistaken.
Nothing scared Ellie more than vampires, and she’d brought one to him. He was dead. Her Ellie was dead.
“Why don’t you sing anymore, Ellie?”
“Sometimes it just feels like there’s no more music in my heart.”
But when she reached the vampire, she peered at him, broken and desperate, and whispered. “Ellie’s dead?” She knew, though. She knew he was dead. She smelled his death. She smelled his blood inside Nikolai. “Ellie’s dead?”
Nikolai did not move.
And as she saw Ellie’s death in his eyes, he saw his death in hers.
“Yes,” he said. “He’s one of us now.”
Her utter shock was what saved him. The vastness of it rendered her, for one brief second, incapable of anything but standing still for the wave of agony that hit her, rushed over her, killed her.
The reality of it was too, too much.
And then as she lifted her arm to plunge her silver pain into his heart, Levi wrapped his arms around her, pulled her against him, and told her the truth.
“He did it for you. Fuck you, fuck you. He did it for you. And he needs his master now.”
He was crying as well, lost in a hell of his own, as he begged for Nikolai’s life.
She grabbed onto his voice, though his words didn’t really sink in. Not then. But she was losing herself to the dark despair of her endless mind, and she needed something to hold on to.
She needed help.
Because deep inside, she wanted to burst into her shift. She wanted to become her crow. But she hadn’t shifted since she’d discovered that she could, and she was strangely hesitant to do so now.
Her gut told her she shouldn’t shift unless she had no other choice. Like she’d…use them up, or become stuck as a monstrous bird. She didn’t know why she felt reluctant. It was enough that she did.
“He did it for you,” Levi said, again, his arms around her, his tears wetting her neck, his fingers biting into her flesh. “For you. For Kader.”
She should have known, and she understood that she should have known. But Ellie’s biggest fear was being bitten.
Could he really have deliberately turned so she and Kader would never be without him?
Yeah.
Yeah, he could.
Levi’s voice softened but his grip didn’t. “You can’t kill the master without killing Ellis.”
She pulled back, just a little. Strad held Nikolai around the throat, his spear ready. At a single glance from her, he would have ended the vampire.
“Get out of my sight,” she told Nikolai. But she only glanced at him—if she’d looked at him for longer, she’d have killed him.
Everyone there was pale, their eyes wide in shock.
Everyone but Levi.
And finally, something else broke through the haze of grief. “You knew,” she murmured.
“So did you,” he snarled.
She shuddered. Had she?
Had she, in some tiny corner of her brain, understood why Ellie was sad, why he was worried, why he had to go away?
She broke Levi’s hold and stepped away. The berserker was there, at her back, his big body warm and steady. “No,” she said. “I would have stopped him.”
He didn’t look away from her judgment. “I wasn’t sure where he’d gone.” His smile was dark. “For a while I thought he’d…” He put his fist to his mouth and was too overcome, for a second, to speak. “I thought he’d found someone else.” He laughed, his voice so rusty with pain that she flinched. “I thought Ellie, the most loyal fuck in the universe, was cheating on me.”
She closed her eyes, then pulled him into her arms. “Levi. God, Levi.”
And he was right to blame her. Ellis wouldn’t have died for anyone else.
Only her.
Only Kader.
“I always knew he loved you more than he loved me,” he said, quietly. “And it was okay, because I loved you, too. But…”
“I know,” she said. “I know, baby.” Then, “Where is he? I need to go to him.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think Nikolai will let us anywhere near him. Not yet.”
She released him, but neither of them moved. “I’ll find him.”
And finally, Levi’s stare softened. “I want to be there when you do.” He reached out to touch her arm. “I know it’s not your fault. I just needed to be mad at somebody besides myself.”
Gunnar the ghoul stepped to the gates o
f Wormwood. “Your Ferociousness,” he said, “we have visitors. The bones have arrived.”
Some of her blood-given energy had been used up by the traumatic emotional hammer with which she’d just been battered, but there was still enough for fighting. Always, there would be enough for fighting.
Relieved that she could put the horror of Ellie away for a little while, she went to face the gargoyles’ dreaded Corpse Army.
They’d be an easier problem to deal with than Ellie becoming a vampire.
Chapter Six
Gunnar slid hurriedly out of their way as they pounded through the gates of the cemetery, but he didn’t seem overly concerned that an army of killers was coming through the ground of Wormwood.
She understood why he was so smugly calm a few seconds later.
There was no army of bones—there were only three of them.
Shiv Crew skidded to a halt, confused, weapons up as they searched the shadows for lurking enemies.
One of the skeletons stood just slightly in front of the other two, her left hand up, her white bone clean and gleaming beneath the moonlight, tufts of her long hair lifting in the slight breeze. She reminded Rune slightly of Gunnar.
She held a long sword in her right hand.
Her lower jaw dropped and she began clacking her teeth together, as though she were trying to talk but found it impossible as she had no larynx, no air, no lips.
“What is this?” Raze growled. “This is your fucking army, Gargoyle? Three lady bones?”
The gargoyles sneaked closer, and the skeletons’ attention snapped to them.
They lifted their swords, their eyes glowing red, hair flowing, bones clattering, and they fearlessly charged the huge, powerful gargoyles.
“Rune?” Jack asked.
Rune shook her head. “Three against three. If the bones want to fight the gargoyles, let’s stand back and let them.”
“Army,” Roma said, sneering. “The gargoyles really are liars.”
So the crew went to stand by the gates, but they didn’t leave the graveyard. No way in hell was Rune walking away from that shit. It was one of the strangest sights she’d ever witnessed, and she was curious. How were three skeletons with swords going to fight three gargoyles?
