by Laken Cane
He crouched upon the floor, his head tilted, watching her.
He was smiling. His eyes weren’t.
God. He’s so…mad.
“Lex?” Raze murmured, as confused as Rune. “I’m here. There’s no reason to be scared.”
But the blind Other pushed herself into his arms, sobbing quietly. She’d forgotten she was a demon, forgotten she was a warrior. She was, at that moment, a terrified little girl.
Epik had somehow done that to her.
And her mother would do that to her.
Chapter Forty-Eight
The dying woman was the one to let them know exactly why Epik could strike such fear into the heart of Lex
“Sometimes when you touch him,” she said, “or he touches you, he becomes the person, or thing, you fear most. You can’t tell the difference.” She paused, coughed, then spat out a mouthful of blood. He can make all of you blubber like babies.” She looked at Rune. “Except he can’t seem to get to you.”
Epik scooted closer to Levi, who wasted no time backing away. He pulled his gun and leveled it at the boy’s head. “A bullet will fix that.”
“Why didn’t you kill him?” Rune asked the pike master.
“His father owns me. As long as I keep this little son of a bitch happy, we’re left alone. If I go against his father…”
“What?” Rune pressed.
“He had some of us taken to his lab,” the dying woman said. “He sent one back three days later so he could tell us the kinds of things that would happen if we caused trouble.”
“We’re not strong, and we’re not scary,” Sean Colley said. “And we have no place to hide.” He glanced at the woman, and for a second, Rune thought he might go to her. But he fell back against the wall and didn’t look at her again. “Mostly what Epik wants is to be hurt and to have a couple of toys. I give him that, and he’s quiet.”
“Why did you tell him to shove me into the well?”
He laughed, but refused to answer.
The woman answered for him. “The freak did that for fun. He does a lot of that for fun.”
So maybe the story of the corpses in the well was explained.
But the crucifix covered in Owen’s blood was not.
Epik gazed at them, silent, his head tilted curiously. He still looked like an abused, helpless boy.
“So if we kill Epik, his father will come after you,” Rune said to Colley.
“Oh yes,” said Sean. “And you. But he won’t kill us. He’ll chain us away and let the mad boy hurt us until we’re gone.”
“Why didn’t you take your people and run?” Jack asked.
“We’re tethered to this pond,” the pike alpha said. “We can leave it for days—at least some of us can—but we have to eventually come back. This water is what keeps us alive. It holds magic.” He looked at Epik. “Just as he does.”
If he was telling the truth, then he and his people really were trapped.
Rune pulled a blade. Maybe Epic could become what she most feared, but probably he couldn’t. He’d had plenty of opportunities. Still, she wasn’t taking any chances.
That the boy had some strong magic inside him was no longer a question. She felt it. It was not a good feeling.
Strong magic, a black heart, and the desire to give pain. Eugene would be happy to get the psychotic freak.
She pointed her blade at the couple restrained and battered on the floor. “Why did you give him these two?” she asked Sean.
“They deserved their punishment. They broke our rules.”
The woman snorted, or tried to. The man continued staring at the floor, never making a sound. “I’m his wife,” she said. “I fucked Jon here. Sean decided we should be punished and gave us to that sadistic mutant. I’m dying,” she said suddenly, as though they weren’t aware. “And I’m happy as fuck to go.”
She released a sob, once, then stared at Sean Colley. “You’ll get what’s coming to you, Sean. You’re as bad as that boy.”
Rune agreed.
“Rune?” Levi asked.
“Don’t kill me,” Epik said, his voice low.
Rune had nearly forgotten the boy could speak.
“Don’t kill me and I’ll lead you to the lab. I know you want the lab. There are other things you’ll want, too.”
He didn’t seem particularly afraid.
Rune backed away when he started to walk toward her. “Stay the fuck over there, kid.”
“Why don’t you kill him?” the woman screamed. “Please kill him.”
“I’m taking him to the Annex,” she said. But first she wanted to ask him a question—why, she wasn’t sure, but she was curious about Will. The Blackthornes gave the term dysfunctional family a whole new meaning. “Why did your father torture Will?”
The blood drained from Epik’s face with a suddenness that left him swaying on his bare feet. And as though a switch had been flipped, he went from calm to raging mad.
“Shit,” Sean whispered.
The man—Jon—came suddenly to life, whimpering and moaning as he tried to push himself into the wall at his back.
Colley pulled his knees against his chest and covered his head with his bent arms. “Shit,” he cried.
Epik lifted his hands and raked his nails over his chest, leaving deep furrows that began to bleed immediately. Then, screaming in rage, he ran at Rune.
Levi shot him in the head.
Epik hit the floor, and Rune watched with the rest of them as a green mass leaked from his head along with the spreading pool of blood.
It took shape, that green mass, the shape of a human figure, and for a second, Rune shook with a fear so intense she would have run the hell out of there if she could have forced her frozen legs to move.
The mass separated from the blood and hovered in the air, became a round, thin shape the size of a dinner plate, then swooped down almost playfully.
Directly at Rune.
She threw her arms over her head, ducked, and screamed. God, she didn’t want that inside her. Didn’t want Epik inside her.
“Rune,” Jack yelled. He grabbed her arm and shook her. “What’s wrong?”
She turned in circles, searching the shadows with a frantic gaze, her heart beating so fast it made her dizzy. The mass was gone. “Didn’t you see it?” she asked them. “Didn’t any of you see it?”
But they stared at her with concerned frowns and shook their heads. “We saw Levi kill Epik,” Raze said. “What did you see?”
She looked at Lex. Lex had pulled away from Raze’s body and stood staring up at the ceiling. “It’s gone now,” she said.
Rune swallowed past the dryness in her throat, curiously near tears. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Lex said. “It’s gone from here.”
“Forever?” Rune asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“I don’t know,” was all Lex could offer.
“What the fuck was it?” Denim asked. “What did you two see?”
“Magic,” Rune said. “I think we saw magic.”
Colley stood, his eyes wide, his hands shaky. There was no relief in his face. “If you don’t find his father and kill him as well, we’re worse off now. You’ve fucked things up, Rune Alexander. Things that were none of your business.”
“Shut up,” Rune said, almost absently. Jack and Raze were assisting Sean’s wife and her lover, but she was beyond saving and the man had long since lost his mind.
“Do you want me to kill him?” Denim asked, his stare on the pike alpha.
“Not you,” she said, then pulled her gun and strode to the woman. She held the gun out. “We’re leaving now. Do whatever you need to do.”
She could kill her lover and herself and end their suffering, or she could kill fucking Sean Colley.
And as Rune and her crew strode out of the room, their minds already on capturing the man who’d fathered a couple of insanely damaged sons, two shots rang out behind them.
They didn’t go back to see who
’d died, and who’d lived.
It really didn’t matter.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Strad and Owen had still not appeared.
Ellie promised to send them to Reverence as soon as he saw them, but Rune was pretty sure they’d be in the hospital for a week after they got done pummeling each other. They weren’t going to be worth much until they healed.
So all she could do was try to put them from her mind.
On the way to Kentucky, she called Eugene.
“I need to catch you up on some things,” she told him, when he answered.
“I’m listening,” he said.
She told him about the assassin, the pikes, and the death of Epik.
“Where is the assassin?” was his first question.
“I let him go,” she lied.
“You let him go,” he repeated.
“I made a decision. He’s not going to do anything that might stop him from getting his fix. And we can use him.”
“Where are you now?” he sounded tired and discouraged.
“On my way to Tick Ridge in Reverence. I have the location of the Kentucky Shop head, and he has a lab in his house. Killing Epik might stop them from creating more lab monsters, but Orson Blackthorne is not someone I want to leave alive. Megan is there.” She paused. “And there might be more tank babies.”
“Rune…”
“Yeah?”
He sighed. “Try to stay alive. I’ll be there soon.”
“I’m not planning on dying, Eugene.”
His voice strengthened. “And this time, if there are tank babies, guard them yourself. Don’t leave them to Owen.”
Her heart, for one long moment, stopped beating. “Owen did not kill those babies.”
“Guard them yourself, Rune, that’s all I’m saying.”
But it wasn’t all he was saying, damn him.
She wasn’t going to let him make her suspicious of her own men.
“I’ll talk with you when you get there,” she said, and started to hang up.
“One more thing, Rune.”
“What?”
“When all this is over, I want to assign you to one of my men. I think he’s having problems with some people, but he refuses to say. I need you to shadow him for a couple days.”
“You want me to guard a man who doesn’t want to be guarded?”
“I don’t want him to know you’re tailing him. If you see him being…harassed, I’d like you to report back to me. Tell me who is troubling him.”
“Yeah, fine. I’ll spy on your man. Who is he?”
He cleared his throat. “It’s Bill Rice.”
Fuck me.
“Dude,” she said. “No. I’m not spying on Bill Rice.”
From the passenger seat, Lex vibrated gently, her face turned toward the window. But Rune knew the little Other was interested. And worried.
Raze leaned up from the backseat. “What is it?”
“He’s being hurt, Rune. Haven’t you noticed a difference in him over the last few months?”
Yeah. Yeah, she had. “Maybe.”
“You know Rice. He’s too proud to come to any of us for help. But something, or someone, has him terribly upset. He’s in trouble. I want to help him.
“Listen,” he went on, when she remained silent. “Just follow him. If you see something and want to take care of it yourself, that’s great. You don’t have to say a word to me. Handle it.”
So she relented. “I’ll make sure he’s okay when I get back.”
“Thank you, Rune.”
“Yeah.” She hung up.
But the call had left a bad taste in her mouth. She’d known something was going on with Bill.
“What’s wrong with Rice?” Raze asked.
“I don’t know. Eugene wants me to trail him when we get back.”
“Any news of Karin?” he asked, throwing a concerned glance at Lex when she growled.
“No. She’s in hiding. Regrouping.”
“We’ll know when she starts her shit,” Lex said. “But she’ll start small.”
Raze patted Lex’s shoulder, his well-meaning pats a little too hard. He said nothing.
“I have my demon,” Lex murmured, but she knew as well as they did that her demon wasn’t going to make up for a frozen, broken mind. She’d had a mini taste of that when Epik had become her mother.
“And us,” Rune said.
“Don’t worry about the berserker and Owen,” Lex told her, suddenly. “They’ll be fine.”
“I’m not worried, baby.”
Lex smiled. “They’ll be fine.”
“I know, Lex. I’m not worried.”
“They will be fine.”
Rune tightened her fingers on the steering wheel. “How do you know?”
“The berserker is giving Owen a spanking. They love you. They’re not going to kill each other.”
Rune said nothing.
“They won’t be of any use to us in the hospital,” Raze muttered. “You can’t use a shiv if your fingers are broken. Matheson could’ve waited for a quiet moment.”
Rune laughed. “We don’t have quiet moments.”
They lapsed into silence, each of them thinking about the time ahead. About Reverence, and the Shop head none of them really wanted to meet.
It was as though Reverence knew they were coming.
The town was grim and sinister, quietly watchful with its empty streets and burnt buildings.
Rune’s stomach tightened as she drove, her gaze going constantly to the rearview mirror to make sure Jack was still behind her.
She felt the berserker’s absence and cursed him for it. She grabbed her phone and punched in his number, furious when it went to voicemail.
“You’re fired, Berserker,” she bellowed.
Lex and Raze laughed, making her grin even through her anger. Immediately, the mood lightened and the town seemed a little less ominous.
They saw no one all the way to Tick Ridge. The only movement came from a couple of deer as they leaped away to the safety of the woods at the sound of the two cars.
“Spooky quiet,” Lex murmured. “Where are all the people?”
“We killed a hell of a lot of them,” Raze said.
“Third hill coming up.” Rune blew out a hard breath. “You guys ready?”
And just that suddenly, they were. The excitement of the fight overrode the eeriness of the strange town, and they looked eagerly ahead for the village.
“And there it is,” Rune said.
She parked on the street right in front of Blackthorne’s house—he’d have known they were there no matter where she put the car.
The assassin was right. The village was full of nondescript houses and nothing about Orson Blackthorne’s gave any hint to the horror that would surely be found inside it.
The house was a blue two-story. The yard was well kept and lush with plants, flowers, shrubbery. There was even a child’s bicycle lying on its side against a sandbox.
The other houses on the block were pretty much identical, varying only in color and types of toys or plants in the yards.
Very bland, very innocent looking.
Yet gooseflesh arose on her skin, and she rubbed her arms, shivering.
“Yeah,” Lex said, standing between her and Raze, staring up at a house she couldn’t see. “That’s some scary shit.”
Jack and the twins joined them, their steps quiet and careful. Lex and Levi clasped hands.
“Let’s go kill some monsters,” Rune said, and shot out her claws.
They wouldn’t be afraid, not of the fight.
We’re Shiv Crew.
“It’s what we do,” Lex finished, as though Rune had said the words aloud.
And they strode to the house, Rune in the lead, her crew at her back.
Ready for anything.
They thought.
Chapter Fifty
Inside, the house was a chaotic mess. She spotted two dead bodies almost before she’
d crossed the threshold.
“No one is up here,” Lex said. “I don’t feel any heat other than ours.” Then she pointed at the floor. “But there, they’re waiting.”
“Enemies?” Rune asked. “Or…”
“I don’t know.”
They also didn’t know how to get to the basement lab. There were no steps leading down and no hidden doorways they could find.
“Outside,” Rune said. “These fucks always have entrances in the ground or the hillsides.”
She was right.
The houses were little more than props to hide the real world the Shop boss had created underground.
And they would never have found it if not for Lex.
Blackthorne had likely believed he and his lab were safe. No one knew how to get inside the lab, and that would be where Orson and maybe his closest henchmen hid out.
But Blackthorne wasn’t aware the crew had someone like Lex, the bloodhound of demons.
And that was just too bad for him.
In the backyard, there was nothing. No patio furniture, no deck, no plants. It was, however, surrounded by a tall fence that Rune was pretty sure would be electrified. Not that it mattered. She didn’t want out.
“Where the fuck is it?” she muttered. “Lex, are you sure you feel people under the ground? Living people?”
Lex walked across the yard, then walked back, ignoring the crew’s impatience. Five minutes later, she fell to her knees in the middle of the yard. “Here,” she said.
They gathered around her. “What is it?” Rune asked.
Lex looked up, her blind eyes dancing crazily, her palms on the ground before her. “Magic, Rune. We can’t get into the lab. It’s…” she gestured angrily. “It’s hidden by magic. They’re not under the house. They’re inside the ground.” Then she shook her head and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “No, not really inside the ground. It’s like they’re on a different plane. Or in a different world.”
No wonder Orson Blackthorne was unafraid.
And no wonder his lab was never found.
Rune turned in circles, trying to find something, anything, that would say Lex was wrong, and that they could get inside that lab.
But there was nothing.