by Laken Cane
“There’s nothing to do.” Strad glanced over Owen’s head and met her stare. “You’re fine.”
“No. I’m not. I’m not.”
“You’re good, Rune,” Strad said, steel running through his voice. “We’ll be more careful. We’ll help you work it out.”
“It was an accident,” Owen agreed. “You’ll need to keep this from the Annex.”
She frowned. “Why do I get the feeling I’m in the dark about something?”
“The Annex,” Owen said, pausing as though each word hurt him, “will put an op down if he or she becomes a liability.” He shrugged, then grimaced. “Maybe not you, but you don’t want to show anyone your weakness. You can’t trust them. You know that.”
“What do you know?” she asked him. “How do you know shit about the Annex?”
“I’ve heard things.”
But it was more than that. Once again Sam Cruikshank’s words flittered across her mind. “What things?”
“The Annex will kill you if you become a liability,” he said, enunciating each word carefully. “You’ll just have to believe me.”
She looked at Strad. “Berserker?”
He nodded. “We’ll keep this to ourselves. You and Owen were fighting some Others in Wormwood. He got in the way of your claws during the fight.”
She took a deep breath. “Fuck it. Fine.”
She’d known she couldn’t trust the Annex leaders. She’d heard the gossip. But she’d never seen the Annex kill an operative who’d become trouble for them.
Of course, she hadn’t been working for them long enough to know the facts.
She looked at Owen. Neither had he. At least not as far as she knew. And why the fuck was Strad so sure she’d get trouble if the Annex thought she was losing it?
Because he was just that suspicious?
“They can’t kill me,” she said. “I’m not worried about it.”
“They can make your life hell,” Owen said. “Those you love can be hurt to control you.”
She laughed, but caressed her stake wounds. “You’re both paranoid. It’s the Annex—the good guys. They’re not COS.”
Neither Owen nor Strad replied to that.
But she wasn’t naïve. People—groups—did what they needed to do to further their agendas. They twisted the truth and the rights and wrongs of things to give credence to their beliefs.
Nothing was black and white. Not ever.
She had attacked Owen without even realizing she was doing it. She didn’t want to keep that from the Annex because she was afraid of them. She wanted to keep it from them because the attack made her seem fucked up.
Because she was showing a weakness. An extreme weakness.
And that was something she couldn’t afford to do. She was a monster—not a weak little brain damaged fuck who attacked her own.
She was captain of Shiv Crew. That couldn’t change.
Strad pulled Owen away from her and helped him into the car. “I’ll get him to the Annex. They’ll fix him up.” He looked at her, his stare intense. “Go home, Rune. You need sleep. I’ll be there as soon as I can get there.”
“Why?”
“Because you need to feed.”
He wasn’t wrong.
She glanced at Owen as he sat in the berserker’s passenger seat, his face pale. He didn’t look at her.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Tell Bill…”
Strad walked around to the driver’s side of his car. “They know you need sleep, sweetheart. I’ll be there soon.”
“But if—”
“Rune. Go home.”
He sped away from Wormwood, and she watched the car until it disappeared. She would go home and sleep for a while, because she needed to in order to function. But first, she had to report the well to the Annex and get someone the fuck out there.
And then she had to find Gunnar.
Because with every second that passed without a sign of the chocolate-loving ghoul, the greater the chances she’d never see him again.
Chapter Twelve
She pushed her cell back into her pocket, satisfied that Ellie would get the ball rolling and send out a team to investigate the well. She wanted to go home, wanted to take a moment to reboot, but the ghoul deserved her best.
He was in trouble because of her.
“Gunnar,” she muttered, “if you’re happily rotting somewhere in another graveyard, I’m kicking your skinny ass.”
She loped through the cemetery, her boots sending up clumps of graveyard dirt. She saw no one. “Gunnar,” she yelled, uncaring if either the assassin or pike alpha heard her.
She needed sleep, and she needed blood.
Being deprived of either of those things didn’t put her in a good mood.
If she ran into the treacherous Epik she might have some dinner. Little bastard owed her.
She ran with her claws out, slashing through any vines or other vegetation that got in her way. And the longer she ran, the heavier the darkness inside her.
Something inside her had softened over time—and she wasn’t sure when or why it had happened. Maybe since the berserker. Maybe since Amy, or the resurrection of her parents, or Z. Her Z.
Or maybe she’d been on the soft side all along. But there was a difference between caring and protecting the innocent and being soft and vulnerable and flinching.
She had to be strong.
So she ran, the entire time knowing something was going to happen. Something was going to change.
It was there, in the hot, heavy air. Something was coming.
She smiled when she heard the whirr of his weapon flying at her. She’d gone deep inside the dark of her mind, and she wasn’t afraid of the fucking assassin.
She was eager for him.
I am my monster.
And monsters didn’t have rules. Not really. So someone was going to get hurt. And it wasn’t going to be her.
She ducked and turned, sensing the weapon, and used her mutant vampire speed to streak toward the very spot from which it had been flung.
The assassin was a bad motherfucker, there was no doubt. But she was, when she left her humanity behind, full of pain and rage and the desire to kill. The desire for blood.
She got that from her father, and from her fucking mother. Whoever the hell she was.
He was fast, the hitman, but she was so much faster. For a second, she lost him, amazed by his quickness even as she caught a glint from something shiny on his mask and found him again.
An ordinary human would have hit the dirt and begged for his life, but her assassin, when he understood he’d become the prey, pulled his gun, spread his feet, and aimed for her head.
He missed—she was simply too fast.
Seconds before she reached him, he slipped away again.
He was like smoke. Like a fucking fog.
She smiled. His attempt to flee had awakened something primal inside her, along with the darkness. She gave chase, almost psychotic in her grim playfulness, enjoying the fact that he was somewhat challenging.
She needed to regain herself, needed to be in control, needed to prove to herself the slayer attack wasn’t going to own her.
It didn’t matter.
Whatever it was, it was good.
And she was no longer tired.
“Where are you, baby?” she murmured, slipping quietly and slowly over the ground, through tall grasses and densely-packed trees, her ears tuned for the slightest sound.
But she didn’t hear him—she scented him.
The day was warm in the early evening sun, and the slightest of breezes carried his familiar scent right to her.
She turned to her right and stared into the line of trees. “I smell you, my scary masked one. Are you ready to die?”
She dropped her fangs.
Then she was too shocked to move when he stepped out from the trees, his hands in the air.
“Wait,” he said, his voice raspy and quiet.
“Wait,” she par
roted, still surprised. “Wait for what?”
“I want to make a deal with you.”
“You’ll give me the salt to season you with if I make my meal quick? Because that’s the only deal I’m willing to make with you, dude.”
“If I hadn’t wanted to be found, you wouldn’t have found me. And I didn’t want to kill you today—I just needed to slow you down. You don’t ever want to underestimate me.”
She lifted an eyebrow at his pride. “I’m going to kill you, but first I’ll hurt you until you tell me where the ghoul is. Then I promise to end your pain.”
He wasn’t a bulky man, but he wasn’t small, either. The black mask covered his face, and she wondered how he stood it on hot days. His clothes were black as well—pants, pullover shirt, boots—and he had a couple of weapons strapped to his body.
Surprisingly few weapons for a man who’d been sent to kill a monster.
She tensed, ready to take him, but hesitated when he peeled off his shirt. “What the fuck are you doing?”
It was not the way she’d imagined her encounter with the assassin going.
But then she understood exactly what he was doing when he stood a few feet from her, his shirt held carelessly in his fist. “I want you to see why your threats don’t scare me. Why nothing you could do to me would make me talk if I didn’t want to talk.”
“Holy hell,” she whispered.
The man’s body—every inch that she could see—was scarred. Terrible scars. Disfiguring scars. He’d been tortured in ways she couldn’t even imagine, and for, it appeared, most of his life.
“Holy hell,” she said, again.
He might have smiled. The mask moved a tiny bit where his smile would have been. There was a thin slit over his mouth—not even enough to show his lips. Most likely, they were scarred as well.
His face would surely have been the face of nightmares.
Heat wouldn’t have bothered him. He’d lived in hell. He would have become accustomed to heat.
“Who…” she swallowed, trying, with that brief swallow, to force herself not to question him. Not to care. Eat him. Just eat him and be done with it. “What happened to you?” she asked.
Shit.
He took a step closer. “I can bear unimaginable agony, Alexander. I laugh at pain. But…” He hesitated.
“Ah.” Sudden understanding flooded her like a bucket of cold water. “The addiction. That’s not something you’ve been taught to deal with.”
“No,” he said, and his voice was hoarse. Hoarse and despairing. “Imagine going through a lifetime of torture only to end up beaten by a fucking addiction. There’s nothing else in my brain. Nothing but you.”
“You deserved the bite I gave you. You tried to stake me.” She smiled, knowing he would see the cold satisfaction in her smile. “And now you can’t kill me because you can’t bear to be without me.”
His eyes were like glinting pieces of steel beneath the holes in his mask. “It would almost be worth it.”
“No,” she said. “It wouldn’t.”
“The deal.” He was once more unemotional. He’d given her a glimpse of the real man who lay beneath the mask, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t an ordinary occurrence with him.
“You’ll give me back my ghoul if I feed your addiction.”
He didn’t even hesitate. “I will.”
She’d have to kill him. He’d never stop chasing her. He’d never stop taking or threatening those she loved because he’d need them to use as barter.
She would kill him.
He needed put out of his misery anyway.
But first…
“You have a deal, assassin. Now take me to Gunnar.”
Chapter Thirteen
He had no way of knowing if she’d keep her word and bite him, so he refused to give up Gunnar until he had what he needed from her.
And she refused to bite him until she had the ghoul. “Take me to him, assassin. I won’t feed your addiction until I have him.”
“You have no choice—the ghoul has another forty-five minutes before he’s gone for good. I swear that to you.”
Shit. She balled her hands into fists. Gunnar might already be gone. The assassin would say and do whatever he had to in order to get his drug.
“Fuck you,” she said. “This is the last chance I’m going to give you. Take me to Gunnar, or I swear I’ll leave you here to suffer.”
“Fuck.” He ground out the words and pressed his fingers into his temples.
He was strung out and desperate, and wouldn’t be able to think past the horrific clamoring in his brain. All he wanted was her. Her bite.
And he knew he had no choice.
“He’s in the crabapple tree grove. I buried him beneath the thirteenth tree and marked the bark with a cross.”
“Show me.”
He put his shirt back on, then turned without another word and loped away.
Eventually, maybe after he’d been bitten and the raging demons inside him slept, he’d try to come up with a plan of action.
But there was nothing, really, that he could do.
He could only hope that she’d continue to munch on his twisted, gruesome flesh.
She smiled grimly as she followed him.
The assassin was hers.
“Here,” he said, and pointed to the thirteenth tree. “He’s a few feet under the ground.”
She strode forward, her heart beating hard and fast against the recently healed stake wounds.
Gunnar.
Dammit, she should have brought his Baby Ruth candy bars.
The assassin whirled and grabbed her arm. “My bite. Do it.”
She snarled and shook him loose. “When I see Gunnar.”
It would be a simple thing to bite him and leave him drained and dead in the grass. If she decided to kill him, he’d go happily into death once she pierced his flesh with her fangs.
“Who sent you?”
“You know better than that.” His rough voice was somehow soft, silky. He crossed his arms, then shifted from one foot to the other. His hand was shaky when he uncrossed his arms and wiped at the leather of his mask.
Yeah, she’d known better, but it’d been worth a shot. She’d get Gunnar and be grateful to have him.
She shot out her claws. “Stand over there while I dig him up.”
“I’m fucked,” he muttered, and backed up a step.
A brief flare of pity sparked inside her, but she stomped it out. She could have no softness for him. That would get her into a shitload of trouble.
She turned her back on him and put her mind to getting the ghoul out of the ground. Be alive, baby. Be alive.
She heard a rustle a second before he pushed his gun to the back of her head.
“Now,” he told her. “You’re going to bite me.”
She laughed and pushed her head back against the gun. “No. I’m not.”
She knew he wouldn’t kill her.
But Jack didn’t.
He exploded from the tree line like an avenging, raging warrior, one hand holding a long blade and the other holding his gun.
“Oh shit,” she said. She shoved the assassin, hard. He flew into the hard bark of a tree and slid to the ground.
“Jack,” was all she had time to say before he dragged the assassin from the ground and began to beat the hell out of him.
The assassin, even as battered and full of mindless craving hunger as he was, fought back. And he wasn’t an easy adversary.
Rune wasn’t surprised.
“Jack,” she yelled, as the masked man knifed Jack. The blade stuck in Jack’s shoulder when he growled and punched the assassin, sending him sprawling six feet away.
“Fuck,” Rune screamed, and grabbed Jack’s wounded shoulder to get his attention.
He roared and pulled back his fist to hit her, then seemed to recognize her through the rage clouding his vision. He dropped his fist and gave his head a hard shake.
“It’s okay, baby.
He’s not going to kill me. We have to get to Gunnar. Now.”
“He had a gun to your head, Rune.” Jack clenched his fists, his stare on the assassin, who had picked himself up and stood watching them.
“He’s bluffing. He’s addicted to me. All he wants is to be bitten. He’s not going to kill me.”
“Maybe not.” Jack grasped the handle of the protruding blade and pulled it from his flesh, absently wiping the blade on his pants. “But a bullet to the head would sure as hell hurt you.”
She patted his arm. “You good?”
He glared at the assassin. “Yeah. What’s the deal?”
“She will bite me for the ghoul,” the assassin said. He leaned against a slender tree trunk and crossed his ankles.
The move was so overly casual that Rune gave him a lingering look. If he’d have been anyone else, she’d have sympathized.
“Stay the fuck over there,” Jack told him. He nodded at Rune. “Let’s get Gunnar.”
“First, I’m going to disarm him. I don’t want him coming after you with a blade while I’m occupied.”
Jack snorted.
She walked to the assassin. “I’ll need your gun, and then I’m going to search you for more weapons. You okay with that?”
“You say that like I have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice. You can walk away.”
“No. I can’t.” He tossed his gun a few feet away, then held his arms out. “Search away.”
His scars were bumpy, raised ridges beneath her palms, and she caught herself before she shuddered with horror. He didn’t just have scars—he was a scar.
He was hideous, and he knew it.
Poor fuck.
Shit.
He glared at something in the distance, his eyes unfathomable beneath the holes of his mask.
She swallowed hard, her stare on the knot of scars covering his neck. Could she ever sink her fangs into that? No.
The assassin stiffened. “Try not to faint, Alexander.”
She forced out the images of what had been done to him, of what he’d suffered, and what he looked like.
“Shit,” she whispered, and patted him down. So many scars.
“Fuck you,” he said, his voice as rusty as old metal hinges.
She had him flat on his back almost before he could finish his sentence. She pushed her fingers against the eyeholes of his mask.