Strange Trouble

by Laken Cane

  Raze waved Strad around. “Take the lead. You know the area better than I do.”

  “I don’t have my speed,” she told Raze, just needing to say the words. “Or my strength. I can’t do much.”

  “Keep your confidence, Rune. That’s the one thing you can’t let yourself lose.”

  “I took out one fucking cop. You guys…”

  “You’re one of the best fighters I’ve ever known. Speed and claws or not.” He winked at her. “You just got spoiled by all that vampire shit.”

  She wanted to believe it. Wanted it badly. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know.”

  “None of the crew has those abilities. That doesn’t make us ordinary, does it?”

  She shook her head, smiling. “No.”

  Satisfied, he reached over to pat her leg. “Damn right.” He glanced at her face, her body. “You look almost healed from the blast. Is that because of the witch’s power, or all you?”

  She shrugged. “Either that or I’m…” She closed her mouth, unsure how to finish that sentence. Invincible?

  “Raze.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you ever tell Lex how you feel about her?”

  He cleared his throat. “Nah. Talk about beauty and the beast. I’m not right for her.”

  Rune lifted an eyebrow. “There’s no one more right for her. After we get her back, you should…” She gestured. “You know. Take her out.”

  Again, he cleared his throat. After a moment, he said, gruffly, “We’ll see.”

  She stared out the side window and smiled.

  But soon, her smile fell away and worry crowded her mind.

  Lex and the twins had been in the sadistic hands of COS for too long.

  The crew would bring them back.

  She just hoped they didn’t have to bring them back in pieces.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  They parked nearly half a mile from the house, hoping to sneak in take COS by surprise. Unlikely, as Bach would have been keeping close tabs, but worth a shot.

  If not for the fight that had scarred Ellie and cost Jack his eye, Hawthorne Forest would have held an attraction for Rune. She had a feeling the bad memories associated with it were about to get worse.

  They stayed off the paved road, walking instead through the deeply wooded areas, slipping from tree to tree.

  She had both guns out and ready, and tried not to think about the fact that she wasn’t as good. Ellie might think she was less human, but right now she was human weak and human slow.

  “You okay?” Owen asked, dropping into place beside her.

  “Yes.”

  She kept her eyes darting, her ears tuned for any sounds. If she got her crew killed because her fucking monster was pissed or hiding or dead, she would never be able to get past it.

  “Just be careful,” she said, said it to them all. “Please.”

  “There it is.” Strad’s voice was barely above a whisper. He pointed. “Beyond those trees.”

  Her heart thudded painfully against her ribs. It was time.

  As they began to walk closer, Rune heard the sound of a car engine start up. She peered around the trees and the house rose like a dream out of the forest floor, huge even from the distance, white and tall and somehow majestic.

  A long, shadowed porch extended across the front, partly hidden from her view by a truck that had stopped mere inches from the house.

  An unpaved lane led up to the house, stopping at a yard filled with automobiles. There were five trucks, three small cars, and two SUVs. A motorcycle lay on its side in the dirt, as though its driver had been in one hell of a hurry when he’d jumped off it.

  The house was huge, but it would have to have been, to hold all those humans. Three floors, a basement, an attic…

  She narrowed her eyes, sure she saw movement at one of the third floor windows. “I think he’s posted guards on the third floor. See the windows?”

  They nodded. “Probably rifles,” Jack murmured. “We should walk around. The back might not be as guarded.”

  “Jack, you and Owen go around, take the back.”

  The SUV that had started up made a sharp turn and sped down the lane to the main road.

  “Those men,” Strad said, “will see our trucks. They’ll alert the house.”

  She wished for darkness, but darkness wouldn’t come for another few hours. She nodded. “Let’s move.”

  Strad glanced down at her, his face softening. “You’re Rune Alexander. Don’t forget that.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, smiling. “You’re fucking amazing with silver. You’re not our captain because you’re weak, sweet thing.”

  For a second she couldn’t breathe, and they were all silent as Z’s pet name for her echoed through their memories. She wanted to fall to the ground and cry and puke like a fucking sissy, but she let the pain of Z slip away and she stiffened her spine.

  Yeah, she was afraid. She was terrified. But that came with the job, and she wasn’t letting her monster throw a hissy and get her crew killed. Fuck him.

  She was good enough without the bastard.

  But God, did she miss him.

  Somewhere inside the house was Lex, blind and broken, wondering if the crew was ever coming. Surely, she wondered that.

  And the twins.

  Rune shuddered. The beautiful twins.

  “Go,” she told Jack.

  He and Owen slipped away.

  Just like that, they disappeared through the trees.

  She turned her attention to the house. “Ready, guys?”

  Strad and Raze nodded and started forward.

  “Wait,” she said.

  They stopped and turned back to look at her questioningly.

  “I always take point,” she said.

  It was hard for them to do—she saw it in their hesitation, in the quick glance they shot each other, but then they stepped aside to let her by.

  She couldn’t get angry. Once she would have, but now, she couldn’t very well blame them for doubting her. She doubted herself.

  She was a chaotic mess of magic and mundane, human and Other, and she had no idea what the hell was going on inside her.

  But she figured she was still immortal, and she was still captain of Shiv Crew. She would take point.

  When they got closer, they stopped to take stock. The woods were about to end, and in moments she and her crew would step out from the cover of trees and be exposed to the enemy. To COS.

  The place was bustling with quiet activity. Men jogged from the house to outbuildings. She heard the muted sound of voices, and a sudden, discordant laugh. Someone coughed.

  “They’re expecting us,” she said. She clenched her guns and longed for the weight of her silver shivs—but these were humans. She’d need guns, at least at first.

  “We can’t sneak in,” Strad said. “We’re going to have to go in making some noise.”

  She froze in mid-nod when Raze pointed his gun and whispered, “Twins.”

  Four men with rifles strapped to their backs hurried the twins down the porch steps. The boys’ hands were cuffed behind them but their feet were unfettered.

  Spots of dark red decorated their shirts, patterns of obvious and almost identical violence, as though everything done to one was immediately repeated on the other.

  Hoods covered their heads.

  But they were alive.

  They were alive.

  The men in charge of them weren’t overly large. Their movements were jerky and nervous. They looked from side to side, yanking the silent twins along with them.

  “They’re not professionals,” Rune noted. “And they’re scared.”

  “They should be,” Raze said, and there was death in his voice. Death and promise.

  “The boys are drugged,” Strad murmured.

  One of the twins slumped and was dragged along impatiently by his guards, their hands under his arms keeping him semi-upright. His feet cut a path through the dead leaves as
they hauled him into the yard and toward one of the cars parked there.

  “They’re taking them away,” Rune said. “Maybe they got word that their cop lackeys were unable to stop us.”

  “I don’t think they wanted us stopped,” Strad said. “Only delayed.”

  “We can’t let them go. Let’s move.” Rune led them across the side yard, running in a zigzag pattern until they finally stopped against the side of the house.

  She leaned against the house, hoping the guys didn’t notice she was trying to catch her breath. Fucking blast had kicked her ass.

  Sweat covered her face, though the day wasn’t going to get warmer than forty degrees. It was the sweat of a weak, sick person.

  “Rune?”

  She took a deep breath and nodded at Strad. “I’m good. Ready?”

  “Ready,” he said.

  They blasted from the side of the house like raging torpedoes, Raze and Rune charging toward the twins while Strad covered them.

  She heard shots behind her but didn’t stop to look. Strad was taking care of business.

  The two men holding the twins released them, trampling them as the boys fell to the ground in boneless heaps and the guards took on the threat of Rune and Raze.

  They didn’t try to jerk their rifles free but grabbed instead for the handguns holstered at their sides.

  Rune shot three of them almost before she realized she’d fired. Raze took out the last one.

  A bullet had skimmed her upper left bicep, leaving a trail of burning pain, but it was a scratch compared with the other wounds she’d sustained.

  She glanced at Raze, who appeared unhurt. They turned back to help Strad.

  Everything happened in seconds. Adrenaline hit her like a bus, but still, it wasn’t her monster. She needed her fucking monster.

  Two men on the porch fell, one tumbling over the side and landing on the ground below. Glass shattered as the third floor windows she’d pointed out earlier were broken.

  She didn’t have to warn her men—they noticed the threat when she did and all three dove behind whatever cover they could find—she and Raze behind a truck. She lost sight of Strad but because he was closer to the house, she figured he’d taken shelter against it.

  Two men ran from the other side of the house, but not toward the crew. They ran to a large building sitting a short distance from the house. A shed with high windows.

  They were trying to surround the crew, and it occurred to her that COS wanted her and her men alive.

  Bastards would love that—not just this branch, not just Horner, but Karin Love. They would have been ordered, these men who were haters and torturers, to try to take Shiv Crew alive. But she also knew they’d rather kill the crew than let them escape.

  Bullets rained down on the truck, keeping her and Raze pinned. She pushed her back against the vehicle and ground her teeth. Fucking COS. “The twins are exposed. We have to get them out of the yard before they’re shot.”

  “I’m going to get the twins. Cover me.”

  “No. You try to get inside the house. I’ll get the twins. If I’m hit, it won’t kill me.”

  “Can you drag two unconscious men to safety before you’re hit? Before they are?” His eyes were dark, dark and cold. That coldness wasn’t directed at her. Raze was simply in the zone.

  Could she? Her strength had melted away with her speed. Going for the twins might only get them killed.

  “Cover me, and then get to Strad,” he told her.

  And before she could order him to stay the hell put, he was gone.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  When Raze ran for the twins, drawing gunfire away from her and onto him, she leaped up and started shooting. She heard a scream with grim satisfaction but didn’t stop shooting.

  Seeing his chance, Strad snaked his way to her. They both covered Raze, who grabbed the boys and began to drag them across the yard.

  Let them be okay.

  Occupied with Rune and Strad, the two men in the shed ignored Raze as he rescued the twins.

  It was a full thirty seconds before Rune realized there were no shots coming from inside the house.

  She hoped it was because Jack and Owen had killed the bastards inside.

  “Something’s off,” Strad said. “Horner knew we’d be coming.”

  Rune nodded. “Why doesn’t he have more men? Why didn’t he take Lex and the twins and run for it?”

  “Maybe he’s just that arrogant.”

  But neither of them believed it.

  “The house is—”

  Quiet, she’d started to say, but before she could finish her words, gunfire broke out once more. And shouts, screams, thumps.

  “Jack and Owen are in there,” she said instead.

  “I’m going for the shed,” Strad said. “I’ll shut down the shooters inside.”

  “I’ll cover you.”

  He nodded once, then shot to his feet and ran full out toward the shed. Rune started shooting as soon as he took off, keeping the men away from the windows. She had no idea how many were in the building, but was pretty sure at least one of them had been hit. Maybe more.

  It was a little too easy. Sure, they’d been shot at. But Horner should have fortified the place. He should have had it crawling with armed men, and he should have made the crew work a little harder.

  So until she had the twins and Lex heading back down the highway and out of Hawthorne, she wasn’t going to relax.

  Something wasn’t right.

  And she didn’t want to think about what that something might be.

  As soon as the berserker hit the shed door, she ran to the house. No one shot at her.

  She jumped onto the porch and threw herself against the wall, guns up and ready. But no one was there.

  Raze strode across the yard toward the porch, his head swiveling from side to side.

  “Rune,” he called. “Wait.”

  “Twins?” she asked, as he climbed the steps.

  The look in his eyes let her know he had bad news. Very bad news.

  Strad left the shed and jogged toward them, and Raze waited until the berserker had joined them before he continued speaking.

  “That wasn’t the twins,” he said.

  “What?” She shook her head, as though by denying it, she could make it untrue.

  “The men I hauled from the yard. I took off their hoods. Two strangers.” He ran a hand over his face. “They’d been drugged and cut up a little. They couldn’t answer my questions.”

  “Maybe the twins are inside,” she said.

  More screams, loud and long, came from somewhere deep inside the house. Strad kicked open the door and they strode cautiously but quickly through the living room, furnished only with a couch, a coffee table, a large desk, and a pile of sleeping bags.

  A dead man lay sprawled and bloody before one of the shattered windows.

  The hoarse screams stuttered to a stop.

  Rune’s stomach was a tight, roiling mess, and there was a single phrase repeating over and over inside her mind. Don’t let it be one of mine.

  They found Jack and Owen in the large kitchen. Jack was kneeling beside a COS member who was either dead or dying, and Owen stood above them. He motioned them inside.

  “Place is secure,” he said. “But Lex and the twins aren’t here.”

  Jack cleaned his blade on the stranger’s clothes before standing and sliding it back into its sheath. “Bad fucking news.”

  Rune let out a breath. “Tell me.”

  “Otherfights.”

  “Son of a bitch. They’re fighting Lex and the twins.”

  Jack nudged the prone man with his boot. “Only Lex, according to this piece of shit. The fights are one way they fund the church. Lex will be a big fucking draw.”

  Raze turned his back and punched the wall, his fury enough to rival the berserker’s.

  “Do we know where they have her?” Rune shuddered as gooseflesh erupted on her newly healed skin. She didn’t object
when Strad wrapped his fingers around her arm and squeezed gently, trying to comfort her, to ground her. To calm her.

  “Rock County,” Jack said, his voice dull.

  “Shit.” Her body shook with reaction as she realized Jack believed Lex was already dead. “What else?”

  “He told me they’d forced sharp silver plugs into her ears so not only is she blind, but deaf, as well. They’re making her fight that way because when they trialed her, she killed everyone in the fucking room.”

  For a long moment, no one could speak.

  “There’s more?” Strad asked, finally.

  He nodded, but wouldn’t look at her. Not a good sign.

  “She’s in deep withdrawal from her addiction to you. She’s not…well.” He stared, instead of at her, at the man on the floor. “He said she’d lost her mind.”

  The slayer had begun to stir. He was bloody and broken from Jack’s torture, but when he opened his eyes, they were still full of hate.

  When he spotted Rune, his swollen lips curled in disgust. “Animal,” he said.

  “He laughed,” Jack said, his voice quiet, almost reflective. “When I forced him to talk about little Lex, he laughed.” Finally he lifted his gaze to her. “There was joy in his eyes and so much conviction. I knew COS was full of some bad fucking people, but…” He shook his head. “What kind of people are they?”

  Raze pulled a long, sharp shiv and knelt beside the man. He didn’t say a word, just cut the slayer’s throat. Then he cleaned the blade on the slayer’s pants, got to his feet, and looked at Rune.

  “Rock County is too far,” Rune whispered. “We’ll never make it in time to save them.”

  Raze grabbed her arm and pulled her to face him. “You can get there fast if you fucking run.”

  “I can’t. My monster is gone. I’m just like you.”

  He shook her. “You can.”

  “Easy, buddy,” Jack said.

  “I can’t,” she said, her eyes overflowing. “Fuck you. I can’t!”

  “So you want Lex to die,” Raze said, and released her. “You’re just going to leave her and the twins there to die.”

  She shuddered, wanting to hit him, to scream at him, but she couldn’t. “You know that’s not true.”

  He curled his lip, his stare flat, accusing. “Look at you,” he said. “Who the fuck are you?”