by Laken Cane
Rune took a drink of her coffee. “Where’s Jack?”
Roma dropped into a chair. “He and Belladonna went to have a cup of coffee—but Jack saying, ‘let’s go have a cup of coffee’ is the same thing as you saying, ‘let’s go have a talk.’” She scowled. “Won’t be anybody having coffee, and won’t be anybody talking.”
Rune felt bad for the girl, but there wasn’t a thing she could do to make her stop loving Jack. “Owen’s back,” she said. “And the path is dead.”
“Both good things.” But Roma’s mind wasn’t on either one of them.
“What can I do?” Rune asked her.
Roma brightened at once. “You can kill Belladonna. If I kill her, Jack won’t forgive me, but if you do it—”
“I’m not killing Raze’s sister,” Rune said drily, just as Raze walked into the kitchen.
He crossed his arms. “What?”
“Jack and Belladonna went to have a drink,” Rune told him.
“Ah,” he said. “And Roma’s heartbroken.”
Roma glared at him. “I am not. But she’s your sister. You need to run her back to the Next where she belongs.” She shook her head. “Why would Jack want to spend time with a Next op? How can he do that?”
“He’s just playing the game, baby,” Rune told her. “Jack won’t fall for an anti-Other Next racist piece of shit, no matter how hot she is.”
Roma brightened. “He won’t?”
“No way.” But she met Raze’s stare, and she could see in his eyes that he was no more certain than she was.
Jack needed someone. But he didn’t need someone like Belladonna Braden.
She lifted her coffee mug. “Just playing the game,” she murmured.
“Why did you leave, Raze?” Roma asked.
And maybe he thought she needed her mind taken off her broken heart, because he sat down at the table and answered her question. And his answer wasn’t anything they thought it’d be. “I was a kid,” he said. “For one reason. And I was an asshole. I left her there to deal with shit, and I ran away to find adventure. She won’t forgive me for that. I won’t forgive myself.”
“Deal with what shit?” Rune got up to pour him a cup of coffee and grabbed Roma a bottle of water. “Bad parents?”
Raze shook his head. “No. She was bullied at school from the moment she walked through the doors. She was an ugly kid, and—”
Roma hooted. “What? Not possible!”
Raze pulled his wallet from his pocket and carefully retrieved a small photo. “This was when she was ten. School photo.”
“Wow,” Roma said, staring down at the photo. “She was hideous.”
“Poor kid,” Rune said.
Raze nodded. “It took her a long time to grow into the woman you saw today. Back then, she was just big and…” He waved his hand at the picture. “That.”
“She looked like an ogre,” Roma said, fascinated.
Raze slid the photo back into his wallet. “She was tormented. Growing up, the kids told her she wasn’t human. She was Other. No matter what our parents said, there was a time when she believed those kids. She was Other. She hated herself.” He hesitated. “She has never had a good encounter with Others.”
“She blamed nonhumans because she was ugly?” Roma asked doubtfully.
He gazed at his clasped fingers. “There are other reasons. But they’re her secrets and I’m not sharing them.”
“You told us about the ugly,” Roma pointed out.
“I don’t want you to hate her.” He lifted his stare to Rune’s. “You know how childhood trauma can fuck up your mind.”
Yeah. She knew.
She’d once hated Others, as well. Had once hunted them, killed them. Had once hated, hurt, and punished herself for being one of them.
So yes, she knew.
She nodded, but kept her silence. She’d changed. Belladonna could change, too.
They all had their stories.
Whatever else had happened to Belladonna was horrifying—she saw it in Raze’s eyes. So she drank her coffee and said nothing.
“Are you going to let her know you’re here?” Roma asked. “If she doesn’t find Silas Jones and keeps hanging around, she’s going to see you.”
“If she sees me,” Raze murmured, “it’ll only hurt her. Better she keeps thinking I’m dead.” He shoved his chair back and stood. “Also, if she sees I’m alive, she’ll try to kill me. She’s a little fucking crazy. And I’m not hurting my sister to protect myself.”
“We’ll hurt her for you,” Roma promised.
“No,” he said. “You won’t.”
Rune set her cup down and got to her feet. “We’re going to help her find Silas Jones so she can get out of River County. That’s what we’re going to do.”
“That’s the solution,” Roma yelled. “We’ll help the bitch!”
Raze didn’t seem convinced, but he nodded and said nothing.
They would try. If it worked and Belladonna put River County—and Raze—in her rearview, the problem would be solved.
If she attempted to kill Raze, Rune would put her down—traumatized sister or not.
She sighed. Belladonna wasn’t going anywhere.
She just had a feeling.
Chapter Sixteen
Levi called an hour later, and Rune was glad for an excuse to pull Jack away from Belladonna. The bones were back.
She called Strad, and then peeked in on Owen before rushing with Raze and Roma to Wormwood.
Owen was sleeping—he’d barely awakened since he’d returned, and that was good. It was in his sleep that his mind would begin to heal.
She wondered how he’d have handled the skeletons.
There was no doubt that the bones were worthy foes. Even though there were only two of them, they were deadly.
She needed to ask them what they wanted, but their communication skills were somewhat lacking. The only thing left to do was kill them.
When she arrived at Wormwood, the fight was already on. Gage, full of madness, and Gavin, full of rage, had been watching for the return of the skeletons. They kept their distance, leery of the lethal swords the bones held, and fought from the sky.
That made it difficult for Rune and her crew.
And apparently the gargoyles believed Rune and her crew would have a better shot than they would. As soon as Shiv Crew arrived, Gavin and Gage turned tail and ran.
“What the fuck,” Jack muttered, then there was only the fight.
Without the gargoyles to distract them, the bones turned to Rune and the crew, bony fingers and the tips of their swords glowing with blue-tinted magic.
They’d erected a shield around themselves, but in order to send magic out, they had to leave gaps in that shield. It gave the crew only narrow openings through which to shoot, but it also made it easier for them to dodge the skeletons’ magic.
The bones had come back stronger, as though they’d absorbed the strength and power of their dead sister.
They didn’t seem to have come back with a grudge against Rune, dividing their attentions equally among their attackers.
Their attempts were more defensive than offensive, as though they wanted to protect themselves against the crew whose world they’d invaded, but weren’t in a hurry to actually kill them.
With every blow, every shot, every spill of blue power, the bones edged a little closer to the gates of Wormwood.
They wanted outside. They wanted into the city.
“Oh no you don’t,” Rune muttered.
Jack sent a well-aimed shot into the crack of the magical wall and a section of the bones’ shimmering, almost invisible protection exploded, knocking out a huge chunk of the shield.
Roma followed up with a barrage of stones from her Skyllian slingshot, and that time she didn’t miss.
What was left of the shield went down, and the berserker’s spear streaked through the air. It pierced one of the bone lady’s eyes, slid into her strange brain, and dropped her like a stone
.
The one remaining skeleton threw back her head and silently screamed.
Her pain cut through Rune, monster to monster.
Rune recognized pain. And the bones were built from it.
The skeleton leaned over and jerked the spear from her sister’s eye, and rage began to swirl around her, as though it slid from the berserker’s sword and into her bones.
Rune hesitated, because there was that damn pain.
Jack lifted his shotgun and aimed it at the one remaining bones, but Rune caught the stock and pushed it gently away. The bones watched, her blue-tinged fingers clacking together almost nervously.
“Wait,” Rune said. “Let me try talking to her.”
Her crew remained silent, but they were ready to take out the skeleton if she made one wrong move.
Rune held up her hands, palm toward the bones, and took a couple of small steps forward. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. “I just need to know how to help you.”
The bones didn’t move, and though she had no flesh, the look in her eyes was one of careful suspicion. Rune couldn’t blame her for that.
“I’m sorry for your friends,” Rune continued, and took another step forward.
“Rune,” Strad said. “That’s far enough.”
But the bones didn’t attack—she didn’t sink into the ground, didn’t sling magic at them, just stood there waiting.
And that told Rune everything she needed to know about the skeleton’s intentions.
“She wants us to know,” Roma said.
“Yeah.” Rune put her hands on her hips, thinking. “But she can’t tell us.”
“We need a clairvoyant,” Roma said. “Anyone know a mind reader?”
“Will Blackthorn does. Berserker?”
“I called him earlier,” he said, his voice a deep rumble. “I got his voicemail.”
“Try again.”
“No.”
He’d have to leave Wormwood to get a signal on his phone, and he wasn’t leaving her to face down the bones without him.
She sighed. “Levi.”
Levi didn’t argue, just turned and jogged away, already pulling his phone from his pocket.
She frowned at Strad, but he stared down at her, silent and unapologetic.
“Rune,” Raze said. “It’s moving.”
She whipped her head around to look at the skeleton, who was indeed moving. The bones lifted the berserker’s spear, wiped it on the grass, as though trying to erase her sister’s nonexistent blood, and then she tossed it back to Strad.
It pierced the ground at his feet.
And then she began to sink into the ground.
“Wait,” Rune told her. “We’re getting a telepath.”
The skeleton shook her head, then held up a finger. Wait. Or I’ll be back. Then she grasped her unmoving sister in her bony fist and went home.
“I need to talk to Gavin,” Rune muttered.
“He won’t tell you the truth,” Denim said, turning to follow his brother from the graveyard.
“He needs an ass-kicking for taking off,” Raze growled.
“Your Highness.”
The crew stopped walking when Gunnar appeared, his clothing a little extra raggedy, his pale face covered with scratches.
“What happened to you?” Rune asked.
“I have gone to where the corpse flowers grow,” he said, with a dramatic flourish.
“You went to the skeleton’s world,” Rune said.
“Yes.”
“How did you know that?” Roma asked, her eyes wide.
Rune grinned. “I learned to speak Gunnar long ago.” She turned back to the ghoul. “What’d you learn, sugar?”
“The bones don’t want to kill you.”
“I figured that out,” she said, drily. “What else you got?”
“They are…”
“Sad,” she said, when he hesitated. “They’re fucking sad.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “You have gone soft like a chocolate bar left too long in the sun. I was going to say they are in need of two things. Despite what Gavin Delaney tells you, the bones are not here to bring death to humans or rule this world.”
“What do they want?” Gunnar was better than any telepath. She and the crew gathered around him, eager to learn everything they could about the strange and monstrous bones. “To kill gargoyles?”
He leaned in, happy to have an audience. “Not all gargoyles. Two things must happen before the bones achieve satisfaction.”
“Well?” she demanded, impatient when he paused.
“She wants the remaining two Delaneys, and the key must be returned to her body. And this one will not be so easy to kill as her attendants. Give her what she wants, or the corpse army will grow impatient, and they will rise into our world to fight.”
“Why are they bones?” Roma asked. “Is it a curse?”
He looked pleased with her question. “They are not bones—they are corpses. The Delaneys made them bones, and that is why they must die or...” He shrugged. “Worse.”
“And the key?” Rune asked. “It allows them to walk all the worlds?”
“Perhaps, but that was not their wish. The key was hidden from them, as long as it was maintained by the gargoyles, and they could not track it. The key is their flesh. Their flesh was stolen, and they want it back.”
The berserker tightened his grip on his spear. “Why would the Delaneys take the key, Gunnar?”
Gunnar pursed his lips, and Rune thought he might not answer. But finally, he did. “Mother Delaney was a prisoner of the Corpse Army underworld. Father Delaney rescued her, but not before she discovered the key. Stealing it was her revenge for…” Again, he paused. “For the life they forced upon her. When she took it, the flesh fell from the corpses’ bones. When the key is returned, Gavin and Gage will not be as they are now. It is why Bellamy threw herself upon her own sword.”
“She let them kill her,” Rune murmured. “Because she didn’t think the gargoyles would win this fight.” She raised her gaze to his. “What happens to the gargoyles when the key is returned to the corpses?”
“They will not be the same,” he said. “They can die, or they can allow the Corpse Army to enslave them, as their mother was enslaved. Or they can walk the Earth as monsters.”
“They’re already monsters,” Roma said.
“No.” Gunnar shook his head and didn’t look at any of them. “Not like they will be.”
“So now we have to feel sorry for fucking everybody,” Roma muttered. “I must be going soft as well.”
“What do we do, Rune?” Jack asked.
Gunnar answered before Rune, but his answer was exactly the same as hers would have been. “Find the key and return it to its rightful owners.”
“Even if it’ll kill the gargoyles?” Jack asked.
“Kill two gargoyles to keep the Corpse Army from coming to take it?” she asked. “Yeah. We’ll do that, even if it kills the gargoyles. We just need to let the bones know.”
Maybe she wasn’t quite as soft as Gunnar believed, because the thought of two dead gargoyles didn’t seem to hurt her at all.
Chapter Seventeen
She had a plan, but no way of executing it.
“How can we find that key?” Rune paced Bill’s office, and he sat behind his desk watching her.
The berserker stood at the bank of windows, staring out into the city. “We capture Gage or Gavin and make them talk.”
“We’re not Eugene,” Bill said drily. “We need to remember that.”
“The Corpse Army will pour into the city, Bill,” Rune told him. “If the gargoyles hadn’t stolen that key, we wouldn’t be having this problem.”
“And,” Strad said, “if they agree to return it, we can protect them.”
“Gunnar said they’d change if the bones got control of key,” Rune said. “Might not be possible to protect them.”
The berserker shrugged.
“First step,” Bill said, “i
s simply talking to Gavin. Maybe he’ll be reasonable.”
“He’s not willing to talk,” Rune told him. “He’s hiding with that fucking key.”
“What does he think? That the corpses will give up and go back to ground?” Bill asked her, as though she might know.
“He thinks he can hide forever, maybe,” she said. “That if the corpses destroy the humans, the world will still be here for the gargoyles. Hell, I don’t know what he’s thinking, Bill.”
“We don’t know for sure what will happen in the army comes, either,” Bill said.
“We don’t want to find out.” Rune sighed and headed for the door. “Call me if you hear from Gavin.”
“Where are you two going?” Bill asked.
“Home,” Rune said. “Kader will be waking soon, and Ellie…”
“Did you post someone in Wormwood?”
She hesitated in the doorway. “Yeah. I put Jack on bones watch.”
“Ms. Braden is hoping he’ll help her retrieve her target from Flynn.”
“He went with her once. If she goes back in on her own, it’s her ass. Nothing we can do.”
“But—”
“No, Bill. If she wants an escort into Flynn, send one of your guys. Mine are done helping.”
“Rune,” he called, as she walked through the outer office, “what are you worried about?”
She went back to peer through the doorway. “There’s something about her that makes me nervous. I don’t want her fucking with my men.”
He frowned. “They’re grown men. Let Jack decide. Stop putting him on silly jobs to keep him away from her.” Finally, he softened. “Keeping peace with the Next is important right now.”
But she shook her head. “I don’t trust her. I don’t trust Julian Briderbeck, either. And neither should you. He’s only going to keep the peace if gives him an advantage. Use your own men for pawns. Mine are off limits—especially to the Next.”
Then she turned and strode away, and that time, he didn’t try to stop her. Jack was going to stay in Wormwood, and if she had anything to say about it, he was going to stay far away from Raze’s sister.
Eager to see Kader and Ellie, she drove toward the Moor. Strad turned his face to the window, quiet and unsettled. But his worry had nothing to do with Belladonna Braden.
