by Laken Cane
“Ellis, why? What made you do it?”
His face crumpled. “God, Rune,” he whispered, and hung his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
She got out of bed and pulled him to her. “I’m sorry, Ellie.”
“Everything has been so hard. And then Levi withdrew from me, and…” he squeezed her, his voice soft and full of sorrow. “Gustav was there. He made me forget, for a little while. I regretted it as soon as it was over.”
“I know, baby.”
He pulled away from her and rubbed his face so hard she was afraid he’d peel the skin off. “No sense in crying about it. I did it. Now all I can do is try to fix it. I love him. No matter what everyone thinks.”
“Of course you do. He knows that.”
“I’m really one of the crew,” he said, trying for a smile. “Every one of us is messed up when it comes to love, aren’t we?”
“Let me get a quick shower and you can tell me everything that’s going on.”
“Ten minutes. I already have your clothes ready for you.”
“Thanks, Ellie.”
He dropped his gaze.
“Ellis?” she asked.
He heaved a giant sigh. “Eugene and I had a talk. I don’t belong at the Annex.”
Her jaw dropped. “He fired you?”
“Not exactly.” He took her arm and urged her into the bathroom. “Shower, then we’ll talk about it. You’re in a hurry.”
“I am?” But Ellis had already closed the door gently on his way out and she was only talking to herself.
“About me,” he said, once she was sitting at the table, fully awake and shoveling in eggs and bacon. “He has suggested I get paid—by the Annex—to be your assistant. And only yours.”
She frowned. “So if you go back to being my assistant, you’re still at the Annex.”
“Not at the actual building. He suggested you would take me on as your personal assistant. You know.” He waved vaguely at the kitchen. “I could take care of you. Cook for you. Doctor you up. Keep the vultures at bay when they come to bother you.” He hesitated. “Move in and take care of you and Lex and…and the twins.”
She put her fork down carefully. “You mean be my housekeeper.” She was going to have a few words with fucking Eugene Parish.
“I would be your household manager and your personal assistant.” He pursed his lips and fiddled with the hidden fang beneath his shirt. “I’d handle everything. You may think that’s an easy job, Rune, but have you met you?”
“Baby. I’ll talk to him.”
He traced the table top with a finger. “It was my idea. I can’t handle it anymore. Being there…I feel so out of place. What I did mattered when I was your assistant at SCRU. I had a purpose and my life meant something. I want that again.”
When he looked up, finally, his eyes were swimming in tears. “Please, Rune. This is what I need.” He sniffed and sent her a watery smile. “Besides, Eugene has agreed to pay me more.”
She shook her head, unable to sense whether he was being sincere or Eugene had actually fired him. Ellie didn’t need money. He did need security and he needed to fit into the mold he’d created for himself.
“Ellie, are you sure?”
He took her hand. “I promise you, I would love nothing better than to walk out of that building and never look back. But I can’t do that if I’m not working with or for you and Shiv Crew. It’s where I belong. I have to matter, Rune.”
“Then you know what to do. Get yourself some furniture, your clothes, and move in.” She grinned. “You know I need a keeper. And Ellie, you are the crew’s touchstone. You matter.”
“Levi…”
“Will be fine. Now tell me about work.”
He took a deep breath, wiped his eyes, then nodded. “Finish your breakfast while I talk.”
She picked up her fork.
“First, you know our guys brought back two men from Reverence to question.”
She nodded.
“They know nothing. The Shop seems to be composed of cells and none of the operatives who belong to one cell are aware of anything that goes on in another. So that got us nowhere.”
Or maybe they were more afraid of the Shop than they were of death. “Annex kill them?”
His face dropped. “Yes.”
“Go on.”
“The crucifix you found in the well.”
His hesitation made her suddenly cold. She pushed her plate away. “Tell me.”
“They matched dried blood on it to Owen.”
She massaged her stake scars and said nothing. And the coldness grew.
“They took him into interrogation and I—”
She stood and shoved her chair back so hard it overturned. “Owen’s sick. What the fuck are they doing interrogating him?”
He smiled.
“I’ll handle it.” She leaned down to kiss his forehead. “I’m glad you’re here, my sweet spy.”
“I’ll follow you in to clean out my desk.” He hesitated. “I like Owen.”
“I do, too.” She wished there were no reasons why she shouldn’t, but knew there were many.
She thought about it all the way to the Annex building. Why would Owen’s blood be on a necklace at the bottom of a Wormwood well?
Eugene wasn’t around, but Bill told her he’d be back that night. “He’s going to be here a lot more with the Shop and the Next causing so much trouble,” he said.
“I want Owen out of interrogation.”
Bill ran a hand over the top of his head. “He’s one of yours, so I understand that. But Eugene has given the order, and Owen isn’t coming out of there until Eugene is satisfied he’s not a threat.”
“Why would he think that anyway? It’s a fucking crucifix. There could be a million reasons why it has Owen’s blood on it.”
Bill’s stare was steady, and the tiniest bit mocking. “Let’s hear some of those reasons, Rune.”
“How the hell should I know? But to think he’s a spy or some shit because of blood on a crucifix is stupid.”
“I’m almost certain Eugene is afraid we’ve been infiltrated by some plants from the Next.”
“Why the Next?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.” He leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice. “I think Eugene has some sort of connections to both those agencies.”
She frowned. “Like family?”
“It’s just a feeling I get. And I overheard some things that made me think he knows more than he’s telling us.”
“So he doesn’t trust us.” She shrugged. “We don’t trust him, either. I don’t have time for this shit.” And she went to get Owen.
She wasn’t leaving one of hers in the hands of Annex interrogators.
No matter what they thought he’d done.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
But by the time she reached the correct interrogation room, Owen had already been released to the Annex’s medical department.
And no one could tell her a damn thing.
She stood over Owen’s cot in the small, austere, all white room, watching him as he slept. He’d been hooked up to a monitor and a tube snaked into a vein in his arm, filling him with fluids and antibiotics.
Her cell buzzed, but she ignored it.
“Can I trust you?” she finally whispered.
For a second all she saw was a young, slender man with unkempt hair and skin scarred by battle. A man who was briefly unrecognizable, unfamiliar.
Who the fuck was Owen Five?
She didn’t know exactly who he had been, or what he’d lived through. What he’d done. She only knew one thing for sure. He was Shiv Crew.
He was hers.
She let her fingers drift to his hand, and gently, she caressed his skin before gripping his hand with hers.
“I’ve got you,” she said.
He squeezed her hand, gently, and her gaze flew to his face.
He was watching her, his feverish eyes half open, something in them
she didn’t care to examine too closely.
For a long moment she didn’t move, or breathe, just kept her stare locked with his. But finally, she released his fingers and stepped back.
He closed his eyes.
She turned and strode from the room without another word.
Her cell buzzed again and she glanced at the display before answering. “Ellie?”
“Rune,” he almost screamed. “Levi is killing Gustav. Come quickly.”
“Where are you?” She was already running, dodging other employees, her heart racing. Levi, Levi.
She understood his level of pain. He would kill Gustav.
“Basement. Cafeteria. God, Rune. Run.”
She ran, clutching her phone with a grip nearly strong enough to break it, not really to save Gustav, but to save Levi.
To save Ellis.
“Shiv Crew, report to Monitor One. You have a run. Shiv Crew, Monitor One.” The voice booming over the loudspeaker was unfamiliar. Ellis had been replaced already, and obviously the new guy was unaware that right then, his coworker was being beaten to death by a man who might never climb out of the hole into which he’d been buried.
She flung herself into the echoing stairwell and leaped down the stairs, pretty sure she caught the dim sound of screams in the distance.
When she reached the cafeteria the doorways were full of knots of people, watching whatever was happening within. At nearly the same time she began shoving her way through the crowd, she spotted six Annex operatives coming from the opposite direction.
Unless they’d been ordered to put Levi down, they’d shoot him with a tranquilizer to neutralize him.
Then anything could happen. If they figured Levi was out of control…
And Eugene wasn’t there to run interference. Iris was.
That made Rune a little nervous.
So she swerved at the last minute, going instead for the operatives. She shot out her claws. “Stay back,” she said.
“We’re—” the man in the lead started to say.
“Stay the fuck back. He’s mine. I’ll handle the situation.”
“Then you’d better do it fast,” the op said. He brought his gun up. “You have thirty seconds.”
She didn’t waste any time. Levi had finished taking his rage out on Gustav and had begun methodically and calmly beating him to death.
He straddled the fallen man, his blows landing with solid thuds. Gustav didn’t move.
When Rune flew to Levi and looked into his face…
No one was there.
She grabbed his fist before he could land another punch on the mess that had been Gustav’s face. “Levi.”
There was no rage in his eyes. Only emptiness. He was a shell absently finishing a job.
He didn’t resist when she pulled him off Gustav. She led him away as the waiting operatives converged on the injured man. They’d take care of him.
And she’d take care of Levi.
She’d forgotten about Ellis, but when she started to walk back through the doorway, Levi beside her, she saw him.
He’d collapsed back against the wall, his face paper-white. He put a fist to his chest, as though to hold in his heart. She couldn’t hear him, but she saw the words form. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Levi stared straight ahead as they walked, acknowledging no one.
Broken.
She held out her hand to Ellie, silently, and waited for him to come to her before she left the nearly empty cafeteria.
He took her hand and glanced at Levi once, and in that glance was fear, sharp and hurt.
Maybe love was there, too, but it was covered with the other shit.
“Fuck me,” she whispered.
The berserker stood outside the doorway, waiting.
She wanted to back away from the truth in his eyes, from the finality. She wanted to shut it out and pretend everything was okay.
But she couldn’t.
“Give him to me,” Strad said.
She shook her head. “I’ve got him.”
Lex streaked suddenly toward them, her cry full of rage and sorrow. “Get away from him,” she screamed.
Denim was at her back.
“I wouldn’t hurt him, Lex,” Rune murmured.
Her cell buzzed, insistently and filled, somehow, with doom. She pulled it from her pocket and stared at the text.
Gustav is dead.
Levi had murdered an innocent man.
Lex knew. She straightened her shoulders and took a breath, then reached for her Levi.
He stood in the circle of her arms, unmoving, uncaring.
“What the fuck has happened?” Denim’s voice was angry, but beneath that anger was a confused, trembling tone that meant he had no idea what to do to help his brother.
And he was terrified.
That time when trained, armed operatives marched down the hall, they walked behind Iris.
She stopped when she was fifteen feet away. “We’ll take him, Rune.”
Rune glimpsed movement from her peripheral vision and saw Jack and Raze striding toward them.
All of Shiv Crew, except for Owen and Z.
Unspeaking, not even glancing at each other, they formed a line in front of Lex and Levi.
“He’s ours,” Rune told Iris. “We won’t hand him over.”
“That’s fine. We came prepared to take him.”
“We’ll handle it,” Raze said. “You don’t want to fight us on this.”
Iris ignored him. She slipped to the side, motioning to her ops. “Do it.”
She had to have known that no Annex ops were going to take Shiv Crew.
Which meant her judgment was clouded and she was not thinking clearly. Not even a little bit.
“Ellie,” Rune said. “Take Levi and run. We’ll find you.”
The chances of Ellie getting Levi out of the building were slim, but it was worth a try.
Before she had time to say anything else, the operatives charged, and then there was only the fight.
The violence.
And the crew threw themselves into it with a bloodthirsty eagerness that left room for nothing but blood, pain, and darkness. They had to take down the enemy.
They were Shiv Crew.
It was what they did.
Part Two
Mayhem
Chapter Thirty
It wasn’t always easy to tell enemies from allies. But when the choice was kill or be killed, everyone not fighting with them fought against them. Annex or not, the ops were trying to take out the crew, and that made them the enemy.
The hall was wide but in no way a proper battlefield. The crew blocked the Annex operatives from slipping by them to grab Levi, who, even as Ellie coaxed and prodded, refused to run.
He didn’t fight, either. He stood against the wall and watched the fight with an apathetic face and dead eyes.
Ellie ran.
After that, Rune concentrated on fighting and making sure her crew didn’t end up trampled and bloody upon the floor.
She swung her silver claws with a practiced ease, barely noticing as they plunged in and slid through flesh and became coated with the sticky heat of blood.
After her crew was safe, she’d have to feed. She was hungry.
Jack flung a man against the wall, leaving a messy splotch of blood when the dead op slid to the floor, then he turned to Rune.
“Mom and dad are coming,” he shouted, gutting a particularly stubborn op, “and they look pissed.”
Iris had backed away but as the men thinned out, Rune could see her watching with narrowed, angry eyes. And something else.
Sorrow?
Her operatives kept fighting. And Shiv Crew kept putting them down.
But Elizabeth, stiff and firm and unflappable, marched into the middle of the two groups of battling ops, and if the berserker and Rune hadn’t leaped to surround her, she might have not have survived the next second.
She’d known the crew would protect her.
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br /> “Stop it.” Her voice rang with a command that sounded over the clash of blade against blade and fist against flesh. “Stop.”
The Annex ops, as though waiting—hoping—for someone else to tell them what to do, threw down their blades and backed away.
“You can’t command them,” Iris said, pushing her way forward.
“I believe I just did,” Elizabeth answered.
Rice pushed his way through the ops and shiv crew to stand at her side. “What is this about, Iris? You killed your own men.”
“Alexander and her crew killed these men after he killed my son.” Her voice broke and she pointed at Levi. “He beat Gustav to death, and I will make sure he is punished.”
“Iris,” Bill murmured, and in his eyes was something soft and horrified.
Rune stomach tightened, and she pushed her fist against it to try and loosen the knots. She’d had no idea Gustav was Iris’s son. It wouldn’t have made a difference, though, since she’d not reached Levi in time to stop him from killing the boy.
But that wasn’t something Iris would ever be able to get past. She was going to demand Levi’s head, and Rune couldn’t see a way out of that.
Rice looked at Rune. “Truth?”
She glanced at Levi, then back to Rice. “Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t care what happened,” Iris said. “I want the ones responsible for killing Gustav. Stand in my way and I’ll see to it that Eugene terminates every single one of you.”
“Iris,” Rice said, gently. “Go to your office. We’ll figure it out.” He looked around. “Ellis? Call housekeeping and get this mess cleaned up.”
Rune finally noticed Ellis standing alone halfway down the hall, and realized he’d been the one to summon Rice and Elizabeth.
But Iris wasn’t leaving. “I am head of Annex with Eugene not here. I say what happens and what does not happen.” She pointed at Levi. “You killed my son. Are you afraid to face his mother?”
Levi said nothing, but finally, a dim spark lit his eyes as he watched her.
She turned up her lip. “You’re no warrior,” she spat. “You’re not even a man. Go on, then. Hide behind your mistress and her claws.”
“Shut up,” Rune said. Her heart hurt, not only for Levi and the darkness that had been growing inside him, fostered pretty much since birth, but for Iris and her pain.