by Laken Cane
She thought gargoyle acid was worse than any weapon in existence.
She was wrong.
Mo Shannon braced herself, spread her arms, and opened her jaws.
She began to exhale, and air, loud and smooth and strong, whooshed from her like a cyclone.
Then Gunnar barreled into Rune hard enough to nearly knock her over, shoving her away from the wafting breath.
“Do not breathe it,” he yelled. “For even you will die if you do.”
Rune screamed at her crew to cover their faces and get the hell out of there, because Gunnar was right. She could feel it, smell it.
The bones’ breath was death.
And there were dozens of the skeletons climbing from the ground to blow upon Wormwood.
“Why didn’t she use that weapon before now?” she asked Gunnar, as she and the crew dodged blue flames, lethal breath, and deadly, falling acid.
He didn’t answer her until she stood on the other side of the gates. He couldn’t follow her out, but he could leave Wormwood for another graveyard, should he need to. And she was pretty sure he’d need to. Even Gunnar could be hurt by the two factions fighting inside his cemetery. “It drains them quickly and is a last resort. She wouldn’t want to risk it until…”
“Until she had no other choice,” Strad said.
Jack’s truck roared up to the wall of Wormwood. He and Roma jumped out, ready to fight. They peered in through the gates, shocked. “What the fuck do we do?” Jack asked.
“Kill the gargoyles,” Denim said. “They brought this shit here.”
Levi nodded. “Gavin and Gage are out of control.”
“Gage has just returned after months of torture,” Roma said. “I almost feel sorry for him.”
Rune wasn’t the only one going a little soft.
“He’s not returned,” the assassin said. “He’s just a shell of mad pretense, animated by his brother. He’s already dead.”
Raze agreed. “Someone just needs to make him lie down.”
And that was the truth.
“The skeletons won’t have a chance if they can’t reach the gargoyles,” Levi said. “The bones can’t fly.”
“They can’t keep breathing for long,” Rune said. “We can go in and fight the gargoyles when—”
Then a gargoyle fell from the sky, his huge body slamming into the rock wall, breaking off big chunks of it with the force of the crash.
And then another fell, and another.
Shiv Crew scattered as a huge, winged body slammed into the tall metal gates, crushing them like paper.
The bones’ breath was the gargoyles’ ultimate weakness. The exhaled air drifted up, touched the gargoyles, and dropped them like enormous flies.
That leveled the playing field a tad.
“We have two jobs,” Rune said, as her crew regrouped. “Keep both sides inside the graveyard, and don’t get crushed by falling assholes.”
Roma scooped a stone from the ground, loaded her slingshot, and sent the missile at a rapidly falling gargoyle.
She didn’t miss.
The gargoyle shattered into a few dozen huge fragments before it hit the ground.
“That’s harsh,” someone said.
Rune looked around to see the witch standing beside the assassin, her hands at her sides, but her fingertips glowing with a soft, white light.
The witch wanted to fight.
Or kill.
“If someone tries to walk, crawl, or fly out of this graveyard,” Rune said, “you can do whatever you want to stop them.”
“Must protect the humans,” Roma said.
Then Annex vans began arriving, and fully armored and armed ops jumped out. They rushed toward the wall holding shields over their heads, and some of them were carrying extras.
“Bill said your crew should use these,” their captain told Rune.
Her crew took the extra shields. Maybe they’d divert skeleton breath, and they’d be helpful against acid and flames, at least for a couple of hits.
“Where do you need us, Alexander?” the captain asked her.
“Spread out,” she said. “We need to keep the fighters inside the walls until they kill each other. Don’t let the bones breathe on you or the gargoyles spit on you. You won’t survive either of those things.”
He nodded and turned to give his team their orders.
A skeleton ran toward them, its eyes bulging, as green acid ate away its skull.
“Poor thing,” Jack said, then lifted his Skyllian shotgun and took aim.
“Its head, Jack,” Rune told him. “Get to the brain.”
His aim was true, and he put the bones out of its misery.
“Gargoyles are nasty creatures, aren’t they?” the witch asked, trembling with eagerness. Then she tilted her head and her gaze grew distant. “My sister needs me,” she murmured.
Roma yelled and lifted her slingshot as another gargoyle hurled through the air a little too close to the gates, and by the time Rune glanced back at the witch, the girl was gone.
Rune wasn’t sorry to see her go.
A couple of Annex ops edged closer to Rune, their guns ready. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” one said. “It’s like something from a movie. Skeletons doing…” He shook his head. “That.”
Rune understood his awe. “It’s like the Army of Death and Darkness.” She thought of little Fie, and wondered how the child was doing, riding grimly along with that particular death squad.
Roma nodded. “Sights like this are common in Skyll.”
“Things are calming down a little in there,” Jack said, then blasted another trailing skeleton into sharp shards and dusty fragments.
Wormwood was swirling with magic.
It spun around the bones like a heavy, not quite invisible wind. Skeletons were walking. Running. Fighting. Expelling spurts of blue power through their fingertips.
Yeah, there was magic.
When one of them died, another would grab it, sink into the earth, and take it…where? Home to be buried, or reanimated?
The gargoyles were as breathtaking as the bones.
They continued to battle, huge, rock-hard creatures releasing collective roars of hatred so strong Rune could taste it, determined to fight to victory over their deadly foes.
The flagging gusts of skeleton breath brought them to ground, but didn’t kill them all. It effectively weakened them, though, and made it impossible for them to fly. More gargoyles were on the ground than clinging to treetops or darkening the sky with their huge bodies.
“They’ve depleted their stores of acid,” Strad said, “and the bones aren’t breathing.”
“Then it’s a good time for us to go in and end this,” Rune said. She tossed away her shield. “Ready?”
“Always,” Strad said.
With the Annex ops looking on, Shiv Crew stormed the gates of Wormwood. They went to end the battle before the bones or gargoyles could begin to fill once more with weapons they could not fight.
The scent of the bones’ breath lingered in the air, but was not concentrated enough to hurt anyone. But it stank.
It stank of death and poison.
It was the rancid breath of a thousand dead soldiers and a lifetime of torment and repression.
Shiv Crew was used to fighting powerful enemies. They could take care of themselves. That was what she told herself as she used her fists like hammers to destroy the enemy—bone or gargoyle, if it came at her, it died.
She heard the heart-lifting caws of crows in the distant sky and new energy flooded her body. They were her crows, as much a part of her crew as the people who fought at her side. They circled above but did not dive into the battle. Rune wasn’t sure what they could have done anyway.
In the next second, she found out.
A gargoyle backhanded Raze and sent him flying, and it seemed to take five minutes for his body to finally slam into the ground halfway across Wormwood. He landed with a heavy, bone-crunching thump, and he didn’t mov
e again.
His body was in danger of being trampled by fighting creatures who gave him no thought at all. They were trying to kill each other and stay alive. One puny human casualty meant less than nothing to them.
But it meant everything to Rune.
What she did next was pure instinct. She called her crows.
They rushed from the sky like black torpedoes, almost too fast for the eye to follow, and landed on the fallen Raze.
They covered him like a living, impenetrable shield, and he was as safe as he could be at that moment.
The bones concentrated on the gargoyles. They had no desire to fight or kill Shiv Crew—but Shiv Crew needed them to go the fuck home. The enemy was the enemy, and the crew did not discriminate.
They killed anyone who wasn’t them.
Rune hurtled through the throng, kicking and smashing and yelling, her heart beating with the joy of the fight, even as it stuttered with fear for her crew.
For Raze.
And still, the battle went on. It was a fight to the death, and neither side was willing to quit. They would fight until they could do no more.
It might have gone on for days, if not for Gunnar the Ghoul.
“I have found the key,” he said, grabbing Rune’s arm and holding her still while he spoke into her ear. He was covered with white bone dust and painted with vividly contrasting splotches of red blood.
He reached out almost casually, wrapped his long fingers around the skull of a skeleton that came too close, and squeezed.
Its skull shattered, and fragments of bone tinkled like glass as they dropped to the ground.
“Where is it?” she asked him.
“It is hidden where the bones cannot follow. They would have been unable to track it.”
“Gunnar. Where is it?”
“Hidden in the golden eagle’s old nest,” he said, almost reluctantly. “On Spikemoss Mountain.”
For a second, she couldn’t speak. Then, “Where?”
“Behind the cages,” he told her. “In the tallest tree. Go now.”
Was she too tough for nightmarish flashbacks? Had she been through too much bad stuff for one moment, one encounter, one horror to nearly shatter her?
No.
But she didn’t let herself hesitate.
She had to get to the key before Gavin noticed she was gone. She had to get to it before he did.
But first, she had to get Raze to the Annex.
She fought her way to him, vicious in her hurry, then softly urged the birds away. He was not conscious, which was a blessing. He’d have gone nuts with a bunch of crows sitting on top of him.
When the last bird took flight, she slapped his cheeks, gently, until he stirred.
“Are you okay?”
He was bloody and battered, but he nodded. “They’re too strong, Rune. I felt their power. This is not an enemy we can kill.”
“Fuck, Raze. You were hit by the bones’ magic?”
“Touched by it. I saw it, Rune. It barely grazed me. And it kicked my ass.” And that was why he’d been unable to dodge a gargoyle’s blow.
His eyes were too wide, his face too pale. Something lurked in his stare that she’d never seen before. Not in Raze.
Panic bordering on hysteria. Shock brought on by the mere touch of a skeleton’s magic.
“I’ll get you some help,” she murmured, wiping blood from his face. “I know where the key is. I just have to get to it.”
He lifted his hand from his chest and a wound began immediately to seep. “If we don’t figure this out, it won’t matter. They’ll destroy us all.”
Denim jogged toward her. “Paramedics are outside the gates.”
“Can you stand, Raze?” Rune asked.
He nodded, and he tried, but he could not stand.
Strad, locked in a fight with a flagging gargoyle, finally sent his spear into the gargoyle’s head. He jumped out of the way when the gargoyle crashed to the ground, then wrenched the spear free and jogged to her.
“I have to get the key,” she said, talking fast. “Gunnar told me where it is. And Raze needs—”
“We’ve got him,” the berserker said. “Where’s the key?”
“Eagles’ nest,” she whispered.
He only looked at her.
“Denim,” she said. “Get the crew out. Let the gargoyles and bones kill each other. Just don’t let them leave the graveyard.”
“Got it,” he said. “Go get the key.”
Rune stepped back to let them tend to Raze, taking a moment to look around for the other crew members.
She didn’t see them, and there was no time to search.
She had to trust that Denim and Strad would get them out. She didn’t want them fighting there without her.
But if she didn’t get that key, the bones would spill from the graveyard, and life was going to change in a big fucking hurry and in a bad fucking way.
She ran with the crazy speed her monster gave her, all the way to Spikemoss Mountain.
All the way to her own personal hell.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The cages were gone, mostly. Sad remnants remained—rusted, half-buried chains, broken bars, a few impressions in the ground where once she and the twins had been held prisoner.
It was during her time in those cages that the little black-haired baby—Reign—had been created. It was during their time in those cages that the twins had changed.
Not even their time with Karin Love had affected them as much as those cages.
Hateful images of her attacks flashed through her mind, taking her breath even as her stomach tightened with rage. Memories of Levi’s pain, of Denim’s pain, rushed into her mind. Fingers of hopeless, agonized rage tightened around her throat, choking the life from her.
She stood frozen for a few minutes, letting the memories come, once and for all. Letting them batter her, whip her, and remind her of a time when she hadn’t been strong enough to save the twins before they’d been tortured. Hadn’t been strong enough to save herself before she’d been so brutally assaulted.
A time before the berserker caught her.
“A long time ago,” she whispered, finally. “It’s gone now.”
She wiped her face, then stiffened at the sound of a roaring engine, and stood watching as Strad Matheson’s truck sped up the mountain. He topped the hill and rolled to a stop beside her, then leaped out and strode toward her.
“Strad,” she said, hoarsely. “Why are you here?”
“I’m not letting you face them alone again.”
“Raze?”
“I got him to the paramedics. They took him to Eugene.”
“The bones and the gargoyles—”
“Rune.” He pulled her into his arms. “This is the only place I need to be.”
For a too-brief few minutes, she let herself relax against him. She let the bad memories go. There was no room for them. She let the guilt go. There was no reason for it. Certainly it served no good purpose.
And she let herself trust the berserker. Completely. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding back until she no longer was.
“Let’s go find the key,” she said, finally, and when she pulled away from him, she felt a hundred pounds lighter.
But he lingered for a second. “Rune.”
“Yeah?”
He held her gaze. “I love you with every part of me. Do you know that?”
She took his face between her palms. “Yeah. I do.”
“It’s been a long road.”
“And now we’re here.”
“I want to take you and Kader away from here. Take you where no one knows who you are, who we are. I want to build you a paradise and live there with you for as long as possible.”
She squinted up at him. “Leave Shiv Crew? Leave Bill? Leave these helpless humans?”
He grinned. “It’d be good.”
She snorted. “For about five minutes—then we’d be bored stiff and fighting with each other for
something fun to do.”
He turned serious. “What do you want?”
“I want…” She shook her head. “I want this. I want what we have, what we are, what we do. This is us. And I don’t think it could be any more perfect. I love this life. And I love you.”
He ran his thumb over her bottom lip. “You don’t want something normal?”
“Our normal, Strad. That’s what I want. It’s all I want.” She shrugged and pulled away, then strode toward the back trees, her berserker at her side. “I’m afraid I’m addicted to stress. Peace and quiet would make me miserable.”
Do you ever get tired of fighting the monsters?
She guessed she knew the answer to that particular question.
Strad laughed, and it was so pure, so real, that she stumbled. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d ever heard the berserker give a real laugh.
The berserker had changed, as they all had.
“When this is over,” she told him, “I’m going to need some alone time with you.” Then she pointed. “That’s the tree.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know. I’ll be right back.”
Before he could answer, she ran, leaped, then began to shimmy up the tall tree. Her urgency had fled when she’d stood with her memories, and then when Strad had arrived, but it was back and it was stronger than ever.
The key was in the tree. “But where in the fucking tree?” she muttered, and she kept climbing. She’d know when she saw it.
She hoped.
She’d climbed nearly to the very top before she spotted where Gavin had secured the bones’ key.
It would take some more climbing, and she’d have to go out on a limb—literally—to grab it, but the damn corpse key was almost within her grasp.
Gavin hadn’t done anything fancy—he’d simply duct-taped the twisty key weapon to the end of a long, skinny branch as high up in the tree as possible.
Not fancy, but pretty damn effective.
She straddled the branch and gave a little bounce. If she crawled to the end of the branch, it was probably going to break.
She glanced down to where the berserker waited, far below her, and realized her mistake immediately. She tightened her grip on the branch so hard it creaked in protest and snapped her gaze up, concentrating on a single mottled leaf until the world stopped spinning and her nausea lessened.
