by Laken Cane
“How are you feeling?” Jack asked Owen.
“Like I’m covered with magic,” Owen said. “I’m feeling no pain. It’s just heavy in here.”
Yeah. Heavy and grim and red.
“You still look rough,” Raze said, then glanced at Strad. “Both of you do.”
“I’m sure when we go back home,” Rune said, “things will go back to normal.”
Owen gave Rune a long look. “Count on it,” he said.
They walked down the path between the tables, and the farther they walked, the louder the monsters became.
The tables were empty except for the occasional rusty smear of blood.
“What about the monsters?” Lex asked. “We can’t leave them here.”
“We’ll release them if we can,” Rune answered.
As they walked single file past the glass encased monsters, one of them, a tall, thin, armless male began to beat his forehead against the glass of his prison.
After only three thumps, his head exploded. Blood and green fog hit the glass like he’d been shot from behind, and he leaned against his wall, dead.
His death was surely a blessing.
“God,” Rune whispered. “Why? Why would he do this?”
“To raise an army,” Owen suggested, but he didn’t sound convinced.
“He did this because he could,” Strad said.
“This is his…fun. What he lives for.” Lex shuddered. “I can feel it, the desolation. We have to free them.”
“Free them to what?” Jack asked. “The best thing we can do for them is to kill the poor bastards.”
As they walked, the light went out in another one of the pitiful beings, and from his mouth floated a small green puff of magic.
Rune pushed her palm against her chest. “I can’t get any air in here.”
Lex nodded. “I know.”
“He only wants the monsters,” Levi said. “What does he do with the ones who aren’t monsters?”
None of them had the answer to that, and Rune didn’t want to think about it. It was too grim.
Thoughts of the baby haunted her.
She walked to one of the beings and pressed her palm against the glass.
He had no arms, no legs, no ears. He could see, though.
He watched her, tracking her movements, but there was no comprehension in his eyes. His expression didn’t change.
“Where the hell is Megan Smith?” Rune tried to take a deep breath but couldn’t. The room would not allow it. “And where is Blackthorne?”
Lex turned suddenly in a small circle, her hands to her throat. “He’s here. He’s going to hurt her.”
Rune flew to her. “Where, Lex?”
“Up there,” Levi said, and pointed.
Orson Blackthorne watched them from a room about twenty feet above them. He sat in a wheelchair, and at his feet was the werefox, Megan Smith.
The girl cried out in pain and clutched her huge belly, but didn’t look down at the crew. Rune wasn’t sure the girl was aware of anything other than her agony.
“What the fuck?” Rune whispered. The girl had been kidnapped three months earlier, yet she looked ready to deliver.
Eugene had been right. The fetuses’ growths were accelerated.
Orson Blackthorne patted her head. “This one is special.” He didn’t speak especially loudly, but his voice carried to them anyway. “What’s inside her,” he continued, lest they misunderstand him, “not the host.”
“I can be up there in five seconds,” Rune said. And she tensed to run.
“Wait,” Lex whispered.
And then, Karin Love stepped out from behind Orson Blackthorne’s chair.
“Mommy’s home,” she said.
Chapter Fifty-Three
And even though Lex had warned them that she was there—the presence of the evil COS founder shocked them all.
“Alexis,” she cooed. “Did you miss me?”
Lex’s legs gave out and she started to fall, but the berserker grabbed one arm and Raze took the other, and they held her up.
“Fuck you, bitch,” Rune snarled, and suddenly she was filled with a black hatred so sharp and thick she could taste it. She wanted to hurt Karin Love more than she’d ever wanted anything.
The twins leaned against each other, their faces drained of color.
Levi and Denim, warriors, fighters, Shiv Crew, brought to their knees by one human woman.
“Mother, don’t,” Lex begged.
Karin smiled. “I’ll deal with you later.” She looked at the twins. “Hello, Denim.”
He shuddered.
She walked closer, until she stood at the very edge of the floor.
Fall to me, bitch. Rune clenched her fists.
The werefox screamed again, then dug her nails into her belly, trying to dig out the pain.
Orson leaned forward in his chair and slapped at her shoulder. “Stop that, child.”
“What are we doing, Rune?” Jack asked, his voice quiet.
The others couldn’t get to the werefox, but Rune could. The twins and Lex were paralyzed by their terror of Karin Love, but Rune carried no such fear.
“You’re never getting out of here, you know,” Karin said. “None of you.”
“Lady,” Rune said, unable to remain silent another minute, “you’re a fucking useless human cunt. I’m not scared of any part of you.”
And finally, Karin turned her black eyes on Rune. “Rune Alexander.” She drew the words out, hissing them, making them seem almost alive in her mouth. “You should fear me.” She leaned forward. “I know your secrets.”
Orson laughed.
Rune’s monster came bursting out of her, and there was no caution, no worry, no more thoughts about the pregnant werefox.
She wanted to tear Karin Love into bloody bits, wanted it with a fierceness that startled even her.
So she shot out her claws and ran at the wall.
“No,” Lex screamed, her cry long and agonized. She knew something they did not.
She knew her mother.
Rune was beyond listening.
She heard a sort of electronic humming and then a strange snapping sound that echoed through the room, the world, as Orson Blackthorne freed his monsters.
That explained why he and Karin had stationed themselves high up the wall—the monsters couldn’t get to them.
But they could get to the crew.
“Got popcorn?” Karin asked Orson, and they both laughed. They sounded almost…normal.
The wall was straight up and had no opposing wall from which she might push herself. It didn’t matter.
She shimmied up the wall like a spider, and she did it fast.
That room—that world—made her something more. The magic hurt her, made it hard for her to breathe, and filled her with dread. But somehow, it made her more.
Below was madness.
She heard screams and roars and cries as she went after Karin Love, whose eyes were too calm for someone about to get shredded by a fucking monster, but Rune wasn’t thinking.
She was reacting.
She was feeling.
Orson pushed himself back a little, dragging Megan with him, but Rune barely noticed. She lifted her hands and streaked toward Karin.
For one tiny second, Karin’s eyes lit with doubt.
With fear.
And that fed Rune’s monster.
Karin would die, and she’d die hard.
But then she glimpsed men gathered around the perimeter of the high room—not just men, but slayers.
As she aimed for Karin’s throat with her long, silver claws, those slayers converged upon her, and every single one of them held obsidian in his hand.
“I know your secrets.”
They didn’t just stake Rune. They decimated her.
One obsidian blade in her heart would have been enough—they stuck her with at least a dozen.
She wasn’t aware of falling, or screaming, or losing the ability to move—bu
t suddenly she was once more on the floor, and at the slayers’ mercy.
God. No. Not again.
She couldn’t do it again.
The rest of her mind would go.
And her entire crew would watch it happen.
They’d be distracted by her attack, distracted enough to be torn to bits by the sad, uncontrollable monsters Orson Blackthorne had created.
And she couldn’t stop it.
Couldn’t fight.
Could only lie there as Karin Love strode back to the edge to watch the monsters kill her child.
She couldn’t even close her eyes to shut out the intolerable faces of COS. Karin’s slayers attacked her with rabid fear and malicious hatred. They crowded around her and grabbed her, bloodied her, and bruised her.
They shredded her pants, cutting her in the process, but what did they care?
They would never care.
Someone would have to help her. Her entire fucking crew was below.
They were there.
She could hear them, hear their roars of horror at what was taking place above, unable to do a fucking thing to—
But then someone did come to help her.
To save her.
Because she could not always save herself.
Lex, her black wings beating with enough force to fan Rune’s hair, flew screaming through the air.
She went for the slayers.
For Rune.
“Alexis,” Karin screamed, her voice full of horror, disbelief, and maybe…was that pride?
Yeah, bitch, see what your daughter has become.
Lex sent fire at the scattering slayers, burning Rune as well, but that didn’t matter. Slayers hadn’t raped her. Not that time.
And she was still raging. She still had her fucking rage.
Lex yanked the blades from Rune’s body. She didn’t look like Lex.
Lex was the demon, and Rune had been wrong.
She could stand against her mother.
She could kill her mother.
But she didn’t, because she was saving Rune.
“Get Megan,” Rune said, weakly.
But Lex went grimly on until she’d pulled every blade from Rune’s frozen body. As soon as the blades were lying upon the floor in a bloody pile, Lex stood, kicked Rune off the edge, and turned away.
Rune fell, unable to do anything because the obsidian wounds, so many of them, would take at least a fucking minute to heal.
So she fell, but the berserker was waiting for her.
“You caught me,” she murmured, as he held her against his chest.
He turned, holding her with one arm, and sent his spear into the head of an attacking monster. “I will always fucking catch you.”
Lex tumbled through the air to fall beside them, her body cushioning the little werefox she held in her arms.
“Lex,” Rune said. “Lex.” There was nothing else she could say.
Lex had saved her, and she’d saved the werefox.
Lex had.
“Run,” Raze yelled.
Orson Blackthorne and Karin Love would go into hiding, but they would be back to torment the world and the crew.
And that was okay.
Because Lex had stood against her mother, and now she knew she could.
They’d get the bitch, eventually.
Jack snatched Megan into his arms. “Let’s get the fuck back home.”
And that was all the mattered right then. Not stopping Orson Blackthorne.
Not killing Karin Love.
Just getting the fuck back home.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The assassin was gone when she got home. She wasn’t really surprised.
All that remained of him were spots of blood on the walls, the glass—broken and sharp upon the floor—from the water Denim had brought him, and a note.
I’ll be back.
As though she wouldn’t kill him.
And maybe she wouldn’t. Because if she’d really meant to kill him, she would have already.
The shameful thing was, despite Gunnar’s fear and his torture at the hands of Will the Assassin, she could use Orson Blackthorne’s scarred son.
Will would know a lot about his father, about the Shop, about COS. About Karin. Even if he pretended otherwise.
He could help her find the baby.
And if she’d have told Gunnar that, he’d have understood.
When she and the crew arrived back in River County, they went their separate ways to recover from their time in the lab.
It’d affected them all.
After she’d showered, Strad pulled her into her bedroom and put her to bed. He’d gone to the kitchen, come back with food, and watched from a chair in the corner of her room until she’d finished every bite.
She’d been right.
When they returned home, things went back to normal.
The damages from the fight hadn’t gone away—they’d just been covered up by the power from the circle.
Owen disappeared, and she figured he was in a hospital somewhere recovering from his injuries.
Strad shrugged his away and ignored them, but then, he was the berserker.
Owen wasn’t.
For three days the crew stayed in their homes and did nothing, as far as she knew, but eat, sleep, and, in Jack’s case, drink.
But then…
“Rune.”
“Eugene? Megan still alive?” She squeezed her cell, afraid of what he was calling to tell her.
“Yes. I’m going to take the baby.”
“I’m coming.”
An hour later she was walking into the Annex, and strangely enough, she was happy to be there.
Maybe the Annex was growing on her.
But Megan still hadn’t delivered.
“You said you were taking the kid.” Rune stared through the glass at Megan’s still form, then turned to Eugene. “Get it the fuck out.”
The werefox opened her mouth, started to cry out, then fell back into her exhausted fog without making a sound. She was too far gone to even scream.
In the three days since they’d rescued her from the lab, Megan had screamed, but hadn’t spoken a word.
“Get it the fuck out,” Rune said again.
Eugene sighed. He wasn’t surrounded by ops, perhaps having trouble finding bodyguards after they’d watched him shiv one of their own. “Soon as the baby is out, the werefox dies.”
Rune whipped her head around to stare at him. “What?”
Finally, he looked at her. “All the Others died when they delivered.”
He was right. “Shit.”
“It’s as though the infants are feeding on them, and they’re alive only until the babies no longer need them.” He shook his head and turned back to the window. “These girls are hosts and the infants are parasites. How it came to be, what’s making it possible…we don’t know.”
“I know,” Rune said. “It’s magic. Dark fucking magic.”
“Yes, but…” he shook his head. “What magic? Whose? How?”
She took a deep breath. They knew Epik was part of it. Nothing more. “I don’t have the answers.”
“Then there’s nothing we can do.”
After they’d fled down the path and had tumbled out of the swirling green mass and back to their world, their perfect, beautiful world, Lex had blasted fire at the portal for two minutes straight.
And it had disappeared.
When they’d left, the yard, the fence, and the house were all burning, and they’d regretted only that she couldn’t take time to burn the entire fucking town.
But her mother and Blackthorne and his lab of horrors were without an exit from the lab. They couldn’t get out.
For now.
“The Shop head is gone,” she told him. “Karin Love is gone. That’s something.”
“They’re not going away.” He ran a hand over his face, then pointed. “At last. The child is coming on its own.”
She clutched her
stomach as fear streaked through her. And dread. Megan would die, and the child…
The child could be anything.
She started for the door. “I’m going in.”
“Rune.”
Something in his voice stopped her. She glanced at him, frowning. “Yeah?”
“I can’t let you in there.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Wait out here. The medical staff will take care of her.”
Even as he spoke, a door inside the room opened and four people rushed to Megan’s bedside. They were dressed in white protective suits and something a little too close to gasmasks for her comfort.
“What the fuck is going on here?” She hit the door, but gently. She could have broken it down, most likely, but she didn’t want to traumatize the laboring Other further. And…
She was afraid of what was in that room.
“Open the fucking door, Eugene,” she said, but she was less sure.
“It’s not safe. I can’t let you go in there. Rune. Rune.” He held out his hand. “Come here. Watch.”
“You’re keeping something from me, and I want to know what that is,” she said, but she strode back to the window to watch.
And once again she had trouble breathing. It was as though a thick cloud of poison had drifted inside her lungs, swirling around in a foggy, lethal mass.
She put her hand to her mouth and coughed. “God,” she wheezed.
His gaze sharpened. “You’re affected even through the glass?”
“Affected by what?” She backed away as panic began to cloud her mind. “The magic is inside her?”
He motioned to someone behind her and his ops materialized. “Take her outside the building,” Eugene ordered.
But as they walked toward her, she shot out her claws. “Keep coming if you want to die.” Her voice was less wheezy, but probably too soft for them to hear.
They didn’t need to hear her, however. They darted a glance at Eugene, then raised their hands and backed away.
Eugene cursed, but didn’t order them to return. He knew she’d kill them.
She forced herself back to the window. If Megan had to endure the shit being forced upon her, Rune would be strong enough to stay there with her. Even though walls and glass stood between them, maybe it was better than nothing.