by Laken Cane
“What about you?” Jack asked.
She nodded toward the moaning mass of undead and the men who were now streaming into the room, guns aloft.
“I’m going to take out the Shop ops. Find her.” She met Strad’s hard stare. “Find her.”
He didn’t want to go—didn’t want to leave her there with a room full of toothy monsters and dozens of bloodthirsty humans.
But he did.
He knew he could trust her. She wasn’t going to die on him.
She threw herself into the crowd.
The Shop’s men were more concerned, at that moment, with the zombies than with her. That would soon change.
A zombie fell into her as a bullet nearly took off his head. The next bullet found her, ripping through the soft flesh of her shoulder where it sat for a long, painful moment before her body expelled it.
She didn’t even pause. There was no time.
And at the back of her mind was the image of Thirteen’s black-haired baby lying on the filthy cot, waiting.
Waiting for her.
She fought like the mutant monster she was as desperation lent her a little something extra. She sliced into zombie bodies, so fast a human would have had trouble tracking her deadly claws.
She cut a path through the zombies, and blood was flung into the air in strings and splatters as she began annihilating the men.
Her monster shrieked with happiness as she was bathed in the blood of the enemy. And finally, lost in the battle and the blood, she forgot everything but killing.
And when the hurt, flinching pain in her mind and heart was gone and there was only the fight, only the blood, only the violence, it was good.
So fucking good.
That was where she found the silence, and she dove right the fuck in. Wallowed in it, drank it down, and laughed with the ecstasy of it.
If Lex hadn’t appeared at her side, mimicking her movements, killing as she killed, she could have lost herself in that darkness forever.
And it was with a tiny bit of regret that she refused her monster the chance to take completely over.
Someday.
But with Lex’s appearance came responsibility, and she and her monster were once again on even terms.
And that was good, because as she killed and maimed and became coated in blood, she saw something her monster might have ignored.
Sheriff Erin Wallace was sliding along the wall, her eyes wide with terror but also a resolute determination. She held two guns and shot at anything that came near her, but that wasn’t what made Rune shudder with fear.
Wallace made it to the door of the room holding the dead girls—and Thirteen’s baby—and with a single, quick look over her shoulder she ran into the room and slammed the door shut behind her.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Rune growled and flung a zombie into a group of shooters, her mind still on the baby as she charged the Shop’s humans.
She twirled and kicked and used her claws like the lethal blades they were, desperation making her even faster than usual.
But the Shop ops kept coming. She’d put down six of them, and eight more would appear.
And Wallace was in there with the baby.
She heard Lex scream once, “Too fast, Rune, stop…” but she couldn’t stop. Lex needed to get the hell out of her head, because she couldn’t fucking stop.
Lex screamed again, her voice somehow wrong, and upset, and horrible, but Rune had gone somewhere deep inside herself and if she didn’t fight like a mad woman, like a monster, that baby was dead.
It couldn’t die. She couldn’t let it.
Then she heard a flutter of wings, and a scorching wind caressed her sweaty cheek, burning hot and hard before sliding away with a whisper of heat.
She had called Lex’s demon.
There was no time to think about how pissed Lex would be. No time to feel guilty that she’d ripped Lex’s demon free much as Lorraine had forced out Cree’s bird.
No time to care that it was true.
Lex was hers to hold.
Really, hadn’t she known it all along?
The Shop ops could stand against Rune, but she was only one woman against a Shop army. Now, there was Rune, and there was the demon.
And no fucking one was standing against that.
Lex drifted toward the ceiling, and for one second, when Rune glanced up at her, she found the demon’s hate-filled stare burning into her.
The demon’s stare.
It dawned on her that the demon could see—maybe not the same way sighted people could see, but something was different in those eyes.
Then Lex sent a stream of fire at the Shop op humans.
When they saw their mates burning so hot they fell to the floor as black ash, the humans ran.
Too late, but they ran.
Lex began to systematically destroy every living and dead person in the room, and Rune left her to it. She had a baby to save.
And a sheriff to kill.
She raced to the door, flung it open, and plunged into the room. “Wallace,” she screamed.
But the sheriff was not in the room.
Rune ran to Thirteen, unable to take a breath. The baby was gone.
“Fuck,” she screamed, and shook with a fury and terror she couldn’t contain.
Erin Wallace had the newborn.
A little innocent Other, in the wicked hands of the Shop.
Wallace had somehow sneaked out of the room while Rune was occupied fighting, though she’d been sure she’d glanced toward the door every few seconds.
“Rune,” Owen said, running into the room. “You’re okay?”
“God,” she said, her heart still beating hard and fast. “I lost the baby, Owen. I lost the fucking baby.”
He walked to stand in front of her, his eyes narrow. “Baby?”
“One of the girls went into labor. She had a baby. I put it on the bed and went to fight, and the fucking sheriff stole the kid.” She retracted her claws and put her fingers to her temples. Unable to resist, no matter how stupid it was, she fell to her knees and peered under the cots.
“The kid was alive?” Owen asked. “You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she snapped, climbing to her feet. “We have to find her. I don’t know what these people are doing with babies, but I’m not about to let them have mine.”
“Yours,” he said. “Yours.”
She closed her eyes. “Fuck you. I delivered it. We have to find the sheriff.”
“The baby,” he asked. “Was it a monster?”
“It seemed to be a normal Other newborn. Whatever that is.”
It dawned on her that there were no sounds coming from the other room, and when she went to the doorway and looked out, she saw no sign of Lex. The room was a mess of charred zombies and piles of ash and stank of burnt meat and hair.
“It’s not your baby, Rune. You—”
“Shut the fuck up, Owen.” Furious, she strode toward him. “Shut your fucking mouth.”
He held up his hands. “You can’t take on another burden, that’s all.”
Before he could say something that made her lose control and punch him, she turned and left the room.
The sheriff was either still in the building or she’d escaped through some other exit. No way had she gone out the same way she’d come in.
When she was halfway across the circle room, stomping over piles of crispy zombies and lost silver weapons, she remembered she needed to ask Owen if they’d found any sign of Fie.
Perhaps that was where Strad, Jack, and Raze were—carrying their necromancer to safety. And where the hell was Lex?
As she was walking back to the room, Owen stuck his head out the doorway.
“I found a passage, Rune. Hurry.” Then he was gone.
She ran to the room, then stood still, confused. The room was empty.
Owen wasn’t there.
She put a hand to her stomach. “Owen?”
But then
she saw how he’d exited the room—the same way Erin Wallace had left the room with the baby.
The door was indistinguishable from the wall when shut, but Owen had left it ajar. How did he find that fucking door?
Urgency held her heart in a cruel fist, and she felt as though there was no one else left in the world but her, the dead girls, and the piles of burnt bodies in the next room.
Rushing into the passage, she noted the dim lights spaced in high intervals upon the wall, shining upon a rather narrow hallway lost in darkness. As she ran, lights above her came on, and the ones behind her went off.
Reverence was full of secrets. Terrible, dark secrets.
Just as the cowboy was.
She rammed a door at the end of the passageway and it spit her out into a room so brightly lit and strange she couldn’t, for one moment, process it.
Edward, the memory-wiped shifter, had been there, or someplace exactly like it. His horrified voice echoed inside her mind. “Jars,” he’d screamed. “Jars and jars and jars!”
She stumbled back, hitting the wall with such force it knocked her to her knees. She crouched on the cold concrete, staring up at the horrors before her.
Gleaming glass containers stood with uniform neatness upon high tables. The room was full of jars and tubes and silver industrial sized sinks, strange, unrecognizable smells, and racks of more jars hanging on the walls. Rows of jars.
Jars and jars and jars.
And every single one of them contained a clear fluid, in which a fetus floated.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Mutated, Other fetuses. Some had tiny, extra limbs. Some of them had bony protrusions—claws—instead of fingers. One of the…babies had its swollen, oversized face pressed against the glass, and Rune saw two long, sharp fangs covering its bottom lip.
Monsters.
The shop was growing monsters in labs.
She hadn’t really believed Eugene. Couldn’t, maybe, conceive of it.
That was no longer true.
She believed.
“Fuck me,” she whispered, going from one jar to the other, forcing down bile that rose into her throat. “Monsters. Growing monsters.”
None of them had lived. They appeared to be the experiments of someone who’d been trying, and failing, for a very long time to do something no one should ever do.
She rubbed at the pain in her chest, only realizing when her hand came away sticky and wet that her wounds were seeping. A lot.
A shriek, dim but unmistakable, rose distantly and fell into an almost silent moan. Then a cry. An infant’s cry.
She spotted a doorway, wide and gaping, and ran toward it. She was almost out of the room when she saw the other horrors.
Three fetuses, protected behind the thick glass of a huge silver tank, stopped her in her tracks.
The liquid in the tank bobbed as the infant Others inside kicked tiny feet and energetically waved fat little arms.
“God,” Rune said, her voice coming out in a whispered shriek. “Oh, God.”
She put her palms on the tank, pressing her forehead against the surprisingly warm glass. She couldn’t break their false womb—the encased Other babies would pour from the tank and splat upon the floor like helpless fish.
The triplets’ heads were overly large, the thin, delicate skin blue with the sprawling roadmap of tiny veins. There were no umbilical cords trailing from their little bellies, but as she watched, something silver and glowing swam between and around the bodies.
“What the fuck?” She was barely able to pick up the translucent swimmers. The infants—girls, all three of them—weren’t born of or created by natural means. They were being grown and kept alive by magic. Or with the help of magic.
Bad fucking magic.
One of the silver swimmers latched on to the middle child’s chest, its thin tail waving much as the infants’ arms had.
It was feeding the Other.
The middle child’s eyes flipped open at that moment, and it caught Rune’s stare with its own.
She stopped breathing.
The look in those eyes was clear, knowing.
Trapped.
Then the child opened its toothless mouth and began to cry. It didn’t make a sound, really, but the baby gazed at her, its mouth open, and she knew it was crying.
Calling out for help.
“No,” Rune murmured. “Oh, no.”
It took her a moment to notice that Owen had appeared and stood beside her.
He didn’t touch her, surely knowing better. “Rune.”
She shuddered. “What can we do?”
“You have to come with me. I’ve found Fie but can’t release her.”
Finally, she looked at him, and tried to blink away the image of the infants. “What?”
“Stefanie,” he said, his voice careful. “She’s down the hall, third door on the right. She’s caught in some sort of silver trap and I can’t cut it loose. Rune,” he said, when she glanced back at the babies. “We have to get Fie. Now.”
“I’ll go,” she said, running her gaze over his pale, worn face. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“I had to.”
“Find a cell signal and call Eugene. Get our lab guys here.” She headed for the door, then turned back. “The other baby?”
He shook his head. “No sign of it or the sheriff.”
“Okay. Go.”
He nodded, then jogged from the room.
But in a few seconds, he was back.
“Rune,” he said, and there was something in his voice that made her heart drop to her stomach.
“God,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, then walked toward her, a walk that was completely Owen—deceptively nonchalant and even a little lazy—and when he reached her, he just stood there looking at her.
“Owen, you’re scaring the fuck out of me. What is it?”
His eyes were clear and calm. “I got a bad feeling. What if I walked out of this room and never saw you again?”
“What?”
He sighed, lightly, and put his arms around her. “I don’t…” He said nothing more.
For one second she let herself relax into him, let herself inhale his scent, and let herself imagine how she’d feel if Owen disappeared.
Then she pushed away from him. “Don’t,” she said.
“Don’t what?”
Her chest was tight. “Don’t say shit. Don’t waste time.”
He nodded, and turned away.
“Owen.”
He looked at her, silent, waiting.
“Don’t fucking disappear,” she whispered.
And with one last glance at the infants in the tank, she went through the doorway to find Fie.
The magic in the room was powerful. It clung to her skin, to her brain. To her mind.
Once she was out of the room of horrors, she was able to clear her mind and breathe a sigh of relief that the powerful little necromancer was alive.
The well-lit hallway was lined with doors on both sides, but she didn’t take time to investigate. She went through the third doorway with her claws out, fully expecting enemies to jump her.
But no enemy waited.
Instead she found Fie, wound tightly in a silver netting, suspended from the ceiling. “Get me down,” Fie yelled, her high-pitched, childish voice holding not one shred of fear.
The room was empty except for the girl and the silver contraption that held her. There wasn’t so much as a chair or a table in the room. There were also no lights. The only illumination came from the hallway and through the open doorway.
“I’ll get you down, baby,” Rune said. “Turn your face away.”
Fie obeyed immediately. Her cheeks were red, her eyes slightly swollen, her hair hanging in limp, sweaty strands. “Get me down,” she said again.
Rune studied the long, silver net holding the child, then stepped closer and slid the tip of a claw between one of silver strings of the net and Fie’s
body, carefully slicing upward.
The silver netting didn’t break.
“Rune,” Fie said. “Ow.”
“Hold still, Fie. I’ll get you.”
But she wasn’t so sure she would.
Because as she’d tried to cut through the net, it had moved in response. Had begun to tighten.
As though it were alive.
“Shit,” she said. “Shit.”
“That’s the way trash talks,” Fie grouched, sounding suddenly like a snippy old lady.
Rune raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you supposed to respect your elders?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be a monster? Get me down!”
Rune took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. “When I try to cut through, the net tightens.” She forgot Fie was a child, wrapped as she was with her old lady manner. “It’ll squeeze the life from you.”
“I want my mommy,” Fie screamed. She scrunched up her face and began to howl.
Rune jumped back. “Holy hell.” She put a hand to her chest and looked around, frantically hoping for someone to come help her with the screaming kid. “Shit, Fie.”
“Mommy,” Fie screamed.
The berserker barreled through the door, Raze and Jack at his back. He raked Rune with his glance, quick but intense, and then he went straight to Fie.
“The fuck?” Jack asked.
“Careful, Strad,” Rune said. “The net is alive. Mess with it and it tightens.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Raze, scraping his messy hair out of his face.
“I’m going to get her down,” the berserker answered.
He yanked his spear from its sheath and stabbed into the top of the netting, transferring it from the ring to which it was attached to his spear.
He got Fie down. In seconds.
But though she was held securely in Strad’s arms, she was still confined by the net.
“I tried to cut through it,” Rune told him. “Couldn’t do it.” She held up one hand and shot out her claws. “And these will cut through any fucking thing.”
“Shit,” Jack muttered.
“That’s what I said.” Rune glanced at the blessedly quiet child and retracted her claws.
“Where’s Lex?” Raze asked the question Rune knew he’d wanted to ask since he’d strode through the doorway.