by Laken Cane
Eugene wasn’t anyone who’d stand out in a crowd. He was medium height, slim, and calm. His salt and pepper hair was short and neat. He wore a dark gray, beautifully tailored suit.
He appeared perfectly bland until you saw his eyes. They were cold, gray, and completely emotionless.
“There are two groups that concern us.” He glanced around the large room, his flinty gaze landing briefly on Rune. “One is known as the Shop, headed by a madman named Orson Blackthorne. The other is called the Next. It was started by a woman named Lee Crane.”
The room remained silent, all eyes forward, completely absorbed. Eugene had that effect on people. He commanded attention like no one she’d ever met.
“They are scheming, unscrupulous killer bees,” he continued. “They are the enemy. Not only are they lethal barricades of Other equality, they are traitors to their own kind.” He pinned Rune with his cold stare and made her believe, for one moment, that his next words were only for her. “You think the slayers are serious adversaries? COS is nothing compared with the Next and the Shop.”
Her breath stuck in her throat as he held her captive to his penetrating regard. It wasn’t fear, exactly. It was a strange sort of recognition.
Knowledge that he was, in some way she couldn’t entirely grasp, similar to her. “That’s it.” And suddenly could breathe again. Jack looked at her with raised eyebrows, but she gave a slight shake of her head and put her attention back on the superintendent.
“The Next is composed of Others.” He paused to allow his words to sink in. “Others who do not believe they, or their kind, should be equal to humans. How do you like that?” His jovial words and lighthearted grin fell flat.
Rune stood. “Why would Others fight against Other equality? That doesn’t make sense.”
He stared at her for a long, tense moment. “You can’t think in logical terms, Alexander. Not when it comes to the Next. You cannot ascribe your own beliefs to them.”
She crossed her arms. “Why, if they’re so powerful, weren’t they helping COS in their attempts to destroy Others?”
He smiled. “Who says they weren’t?”
He was a slippery bastard, not really answering her questions, but batting them away like annoying mosquitoes.
“What is your opinion? Why is the Next trying to deny their own kind a right to be equal in this world? And why should we believe you?” She clenched her fists as her anger grew. The crews of RISC weren’t a bunch of mindless drones to do as the Annex commanded with no questions and no answers.
Rice, from his seat at the back of the wall behind Eugene, stood quickly. “Rune—”
“No, no,” Eugene said, holding his palm up. “Sit down, Bill. I expect questions.” He looked at Rune. “But I will not tolerate disrespect.”
“Neither,” Rune replied, “will I.”
Finally, a spark of emotion showed as his pale skin flushed. “Ms. Alexander. I’ve been told you have an assassin attempting to take your head.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Yeah?”
He smiled. “Who do you think is behind your assassin?” He leaned forward. “I can promise you it’s either Crane or Blackthorne. You’re on their radar now that you’ve joined their greatest opponent. This agency will do what it can to protect you but you are not safe. No matter how immortal you may believe yourself.”
She swallowed. She wasn’t worried about herself—she was worried about the ones she loved. “Do you have more information on the Shop? What’s their agenda?”
“Oh, the Shop,” he said, his voice dark. “As you know, the Annex has the desire to create Other equality. The Next believes that should never happen. And the Shop…”
He hesitated, spearing the audience with his sharp, somehow empty stare. “The Shop…they don’t care who wins this war—Others or humans. They just want to build monsters.”
His words made Rune shudder and clutch her stomach as some secret, lost thought flittered through her mind.
Build monsters.
She shook off her sudden fear, suddenly furious. “They’d better worry about this monster,” she snarled.
“Be careful, Alexander,” Parish said. “And don’t ever believe you’re safe. Death would be a blessing compared with what either of those agencies would force upon you if they captured you.”
Chapter Five
The berserker stood and padded to her side, his fingers close to his blades. “Her crew will protect her.” He ignored her sigh and continued. “If those agencies are behind the assassin, we’ll shut them down and neutralize the threat.”
“Where are they?” Jack asked, standing as well.
Eugene’s stare lingered on Strad’s scarred face. “Their locations are unknown. They would have been shut down long ago if that were a possibility. They are as covert as the Annex headquarters. More so, even, in Orson Blackthorne’s case. He has disappeared.” He hesitated. “The Shop is our main concern because they have something we don’t have.”
“What?” Rune asked, when he paused.
“They have some sort of…magic.”
Magic? An image of Damascus flashed suddenly in her mind.
“But we have you, Rune Alexander. And I think that levels the playing field. I’d really like you to try to stay alive. ”
“Why would they want me dead?”
“Because you are a powerful Other. Worse, you are a powerful Other working for a group that seeks the very thing the Next wants to hinder. As for the Shop…” He shrugged. “Perhaps because they fear you. Or maybe they want to capture and use you.” He paused, and once again his cold stare raked her face. “Most likely both.”
“They’re trying to kill Rune because of you,” Jack said. “You made them aware of her by taking control of RISC.”
Eugene inclined his head. “Maybe, but it doesn’t matter. If they weren’t already on her trail, they soon would have been. Annex or not.”
No one said anything as they thought Eugene’s words through.
Finally, the boss spread his fingers and gave them a little smile. “I am not the enemy. You’re my people now. I and my colleagues will do everything in our power to make sure the injustice done to Others is not only stopped, but that those responsible for past horrors are held accountable.” He looked at Bill and something heavy and secret passed between them. “We want a world where Others no longer have to live in fear. Where their murders and torments are no longer overlooked by humans in command.”
He jaws knotted as he clenched his teeth. “We are not there yet and must continue to tread carefully. But we will have equality for Others. I swear that to you. Nothing will stop us. Not magic, or assassins, or rival groups.”
Despite her distrust of Eugene Parish, a thrill of hope and belief sparked inside Rune’s mind. It could happen. Parish made her believe it could happen.
He was unwavering in his conviction.
But his desires were suspect for one reason. Eugene Parish was human. Why was his biggest wish to see Other equality?
She asked him.
“It pains me that you have to ask that question. No, I am not Other, but that doesn’t matter. I want it because it’s right. Simple as that.”
She wasn’t so sure.
A door at the back of the platform opened and Elizabeth stepped through. Her face was pale, her eyes overly large and dark. She glanced at Rice, then Eugene.
“That’s all,” Eugene said, almost hastily. “Now you know more about what we are up against. Be careful, people, and never forget what we’re working for.”
He strode to Elizabeth and Rice, and the three of them disappeared through the doorway Elizabeth had just entered.
“What the fuck,” Jack murmured, “is going on?”
“You heard about Fie and George?” Rune asked the crew.
“Yeah,” Lex replied, as the others nodded. “And I don’t believe a word of it.”
Rune pressed her fist into her stomach. “What do you mean?”
The other
crews filed past them, and Lex waited until the room was empty of all but Shiv Crew before she answered. “Everything that’s happening right now has something to do with the Annex and the other two groups. I feel it. I don’t think little Fie tried to murder her brother.”
“What do you think?” the berserker asked.
Lex shook her head. “I don’t know. But Elizabeth knows more than she’s saying, and so do Bill and Eugene.” Again, she shook her head, as though trying to clear the confusion her words caused her. “I don’t know.”
It was something Rune needed desperately to make sense of, but it wouldn’t happen without a struggle and a hell of a lot of digging. Lex was right. Something was going on, and it had everything to do with the Annex and its two biggest rivals.
“He’s on the right side,” Raze said. He stared at the far wall, his brow furrowed.
“Who is?” Owen asked.
“Parish. Getting Other equality is what we want.”
“Yeah,” Rune said. “And to rid the world of COS.”
“But I don’t trust him,” Raze said.
“Shit never stops,” Lex murmured. “This stuff with the Next and the Shop, and Fie…”
“And Gunnar,” Rune said.
They looked at her. “What’s wrong with our ghoul?” Levi asked.
She repeated everything she’d told Strad. “I don’t know where he is. He can’t leave Wormwood unless it’s to appear in another graveyard. I hope that’s what happened, but the abused Other I talked with saw the assassin dragging Gunnar through the cemetery.”
“Shiv Crew report to Monitor One. You have a run. Shiv Crew, Monitor One.”
Ellie’s voice blasted suddenly over the loudspeaker, and Rune noticed Levi stiffen as he listened.
They walked to Ellis’s enormous new office—one he shared with Gustav Dahl, a hunky man of Norwegian descent who had a slight accent and hooded blue eyes. His hair was dark blond, his lips full, his chin strong.
He was gorgeous.
He was one of the original Annex brought over from another location. He refused to say where he’d been posted before River County.
“Hi, baby,” Rune said. “What do you have for us?”
“Hi, guys,” Ellis said, smiling at her from behind his desk.
“You good?” she asked.
He glanced at Levi. “Yes. Thank you. I’m very well.”
She raised an eyebrow at his suddenly stilted speech. He and Levi were still having problems and there wasn’t a thing she could do to help them.
Levi planted his hard stare on the smiling Gustav.
Ellie’s face fell and Rune walked around his desk. She crouched in front of him and he swiveled toward her.
“I don’t know what to do,” Ellie murmured, so the others couldn’t hear him. “He’s getting worse.”
“I’m here if you need me,” she said. There was nothing else to say. Levi’s time on the mountain had destroyed a vital part of him, and she wasn’t sure he’d ever get it back. All the crew could do was watch, wait, and let him know they were there for him.
Gustav cleared his throat. “We got a report of a fight at an Other’s private residence. Neighbors called it in. They reported screaming, glass breaking, calls for help.”
Rune stood, then leaned over to give Ellis a quick hug, despite the burning pain of the fang he kept hidden beneath his shirt. “It’s going to be okay, Ellie.”
“If only you could work your magic and make that happen soon,” he said.
She eased away from him and got the address from Gustav, then she and the crew left the room to go to work.
It took them twenty minutes to reach the address, a town in River County called Garden City. When they arrived, two cars from the Garden City PD were already there.
The cops wasted no time in waving the crew over, tired disgust on their faces. “You’re welcome to them,” one of the cops said. “We have actual people to help.”
Rune ignored the hateful words, something she was finding easier to do.
It was no secret that some of the smaller towns were trying to run the Others to larger towns—such as Spiritgrove. They were unable to handle Others, or so they said, except by shooting them with silver, hoping they died, and letting the afterlife deal with their souls.
Rune led the crew up to the front of the house. Their guns were out. Neighbors—human and Other—peered from shadowed porches and the occasional ripple of a curtain let her know more were watching from behind their windows.
“Hello?” she called, walking cautiously up the few stairs to the porch. “We’re Shiv Crew. My name is Rune Alexander.”
No one said a word, and nothing moved. It was quiet—too quiet. She hoped they weren’t all dead.
She knocked on the door, a huge, heavy door that even Strad might have had trouble kicking in. The windows were protected, she noticed, with iron bars.
“Someone lives with fear,” she murmured, then louder, “Open the door. We just want to talk and help your injured.”
Nothing.
Lex put her palm against the rough exterior wall and vibrated gently. “I feel them in there. I see them like red blobs in blackness. Six of them.” She leaned her forehead against the wall. “Two are hurt.”
Rune stared at her, amazed. Lex’s abilities had grown enormously since she’d discovered her demon. That Lex could almost certainly read the crew without a touch wasn’t reassuring.
“Any humans?” Rune didn’t really expect her to know, but she did.
“The two injured are human.”
“Fuck me,” Rune muttered. That was always the way of it. One step forward and two back as the Others fucked themselves over every single day.
The cops couldn’t have known humans were inside the house, or they wouldn’t have stood around waiting for Shiv Crew to arrive. “We’re going in.” She patted the door. “Door, meet Raze.”
Raze moved up beside her, and the others covered him as he smashed through the heavy door. He proved once again how suitably he was named when the door was unable to put up much of a fight.
The entryway was small and mostly bare. Straight ahead were stairs leading to the second floor, but the crew followed Rune through an arched doorway to the living room.
They entered the room noisily, guns drawn, but none of the people in the living room moved.
It only took a second for Rune to understand why.
Of the six people inside, four were Others. They’d messed up the two humans—a man and a woman—badly.
Scents of seared flesh and scorched blood hung in the air.
“Good,” said one of the Others, a forty-something woman with hard, haunted eyes and long red fingernails. “Rune Alexander?”
Rune frowned and kept her gun trained on the woman. “Yeah?”
“About time you showed up.”
Chapter Six
“What the fuck are you doing?” Rune asked the woman, who appeared to be the leader of the group of Others. “You’ve abducted and tortured two humans. You have to know you’re dead.”
The woman turned up her lip. “I don’t give a fuck about these two pieces of human shit. I don’t care about being executed by human law.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“Three months ago, my fourteen year old daughter disappeared. I begged the humans for help. I begged RISC for help.” She glared at the crew, her hatred so intense it was tangible. “No one bothered to care. What was one more runaway Other, right?”
Other children weren’t exactly numerous, but each year they became more common. A few years earlier a runaway Other child might have drawn more attention.
But now…
“If your child ran away—”
“She didn’t run away,” the woman said, her voice breaking. She composed herself and shielded her emotions behind the cold mask she must have worn like armor. “She was taken.”
She grabbed a handful of the man’s hair, jerking his head backward. “He took my gir
l.” She nodded at the woman beside him. “And she took my girl. But no one did a fucking thing. No one investigated, no one asked questions, no one cared.”
Rune holstered her gun and held her hand out, palm up, to the woman. “I care.”
The Other laughed, a harsh, hurt sound that Rune had heard before. It was the sound of an almost total absence of hope. A tiny, tiny spark remained, but it was tempered by the knowledge that no matter what they needed or wanted, they were going to be disappointed.
Her laugh told Rune the woman was so desperate and agonized she would have ended her own life had it not been for that one miniscule spark of hope.
Hope for her child.
“You don’t have children,” the Other said. “So you can’t know what it feels like to lose one. I don’t even have the comfort of her death. I have the constant torment of my daughter being terrified, confused, and brutalized.” She shook her head. “I have to either save her, or know she has left this world. Those are my two choices.”
“You should have come to me,” Rune said, her stomach tightening with pity.
The Other smiled. “I did come to you, Rune Alexander. You sent me to someone else, who sent me to someone else. None of you did anything.” She looked at Rune. “You don’t even remember.”
“We fight, ma’am,” Jack said. “We kill. We don’t—”
“Shut up,” the woman said, tiredly. “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to devote every second to finding my daughter. Start with these fucks, because they know what happened. They caused it to happen. When you’ve found her breathing or found her dead, I’ll turn these two loose and deliver myself for execution.”
“You’ve deprived your daughter of her mother,” Lex said. “You should have found another way.”
“Just find her,” the woman said. “Then you can judge my choices.”
“What’s your name?” Rune asked.
“Louisa Smith. My daughter’s name is Megan Smith. Ring a bell?”
Rune nodded. Yeah, she remembered. But the memory was as vague and unfinished as the search for Megan Smith had been. “I’m sorry. My crew and I will use every resource we have to find your daughter.” She pointed her chin at the two humans. “You don’t have to hold them. We’ll make Megan’s case a priority.”