by Laken Cane
But then, she dragged herself back up, swaying unsteadily on her knees, peering into the shadowed world of Reverence.
Ah, sweet thing. No…
“What—”
They shot her again, cutting her nearly in half as the bullets shattered her ribs and perforated her flesh, throwing her around like a straw-filled target dummy.
Someone screamed, and the sound pierced her eardrums, stabbing at her delicate brain.
She needed to get up. She needed to find her men.
Bastards were kicking her ass, though.
It occurred to her that there were no sounds. The crowd had quieted as they watched her. The berserker did not roar. Guns did not sound.
She began to push herself to her knees.
Someone groaned, and the sound comforted her. She couldn’t see anything and with the silence, it was like…like nothingness.
But there was pain. That was real.
She was okay with that.
“The big one,” a man murmured, his voice almost soothing in the quiet night. “He’s coming around.”
“He’s not going anywhere. She killed my man. Let her watch while I kill hers.”
Kill the berserker?
It was time to get up and show them why she was dangerous. She wasn’t just a monster. She was made of blood and magic. She was born for battles.
Someone had said that to her, hadn’t they?
Cold chills raced over her skin, raising gooseflesh, freezing her. She began to shiver.
She began to heal. Fast.
“Rune,” the berserker whispered, and somehow, she heard him.
“I’m here baby,” she said, and once more, she climbed to her feet.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The berserker lay on the ground. He’d been knocked out, his wrists and ankles restrained with zip ties.
He’d visited hell while she’d been otherwise occupied. Blood was so thick upon his face she couldn’t, for a moment, see whether his eyes were open or closed.
If not for his hair and his unmistakable body, she wouldn’t have known him.
Then she silently corrected herself.
She would have known him.
Jack and Owen were shoved through the crowd, then forced to their knees beside Strad.
Alive. They’re all alive.
“You see,” Wallace said, “we have our own Annex. Your boss calls us the Shop.”
The Shop.
Of course.
The Shop wasn’t in the town. The Shop was the town.
And Epik had sent them right into the thick of it.
“Boys.” The sheriff pointed at the berserker. “Shoot him.”
“Sheriff,” someone screamed. “Company!”
Then they all smelled it.
The town was burning. At least, part of it was.
Smoke rose in sudden, billowing columns, and a blast followed that shook the ground.
Wallace turned, and even through the haze of pain Rune could see her face pale. “Shit. Everybody, code thirteen! Send the fucking messenger.”
Rune didn’t care what suddenly had the townspeople in a panic—her mind was on her men. She gathered her returning strength and flew to them.
She broke Strad’s cuffs, then did the same for Jack and Owen. Jack, in little better shape than the berserker, put a hand under Owen’s arm and hauled him to his feet.
Finally, leaning on each other, the crew turned to look past the running, yelling people, past the guns that had turned away from the crew and toward a new threat, past the sheriff who stood with her feet apart and a rifle in her hand.
The rest of Shiv Crew—Raze, the twins, and Lex—strode down the shadowy, moonlit street, their own guns in their fists.
“Fuck,” Rune whispered. “Fuck no.”
“Rune,” Jack said. “Look behind them.”
She did, dragging her horrified gaze from the three crew members to…
A little Annex army.
“The Annex sent backup,” Owen murmured, a strange look in his eyes. But there was no time to decode the mystery of Owen. Not then.
“Let’s get on the right side,” Rune said, “so they can send these bastards to hell.”
Another explosion sounded, and the Shop began shooting at their enemy.
And then, more men began streaming into the town—around corners, down streets, on motorcycles. The Shop had an army of their own.
Owen was in bad shape. The others could run to meet the crew and the Annex ops, but Owen…
He dropped once more to his knees, his head hanging, his hair hiding his bloody face.
She looked at Jack and Strad. “Can you make it? Can you run?”
“Yeah,” they both said.
“I’ve got Owen. Get in front of me and fly, boys. I’ll cover you from behind and our guys will do the rest.”
She hoped.
She dragged Owen to his feet. “You have to run, baby. You can rest later.”
He grinned at her, she thought. His bruised, swollen, broken face made it hard to tell.
But the berserker took him from her and tossed him over his shoulder. “I got him.”
“Run,” she said. “I’ve got your backs.”
“Rune—”
“Go,” she said.
Without another word, they sprinted toward their people.
But the sheriff understood, maybe a moment too late, that they were something she could bargain with. “Stop them,” she screamed.
Rune felt as though she ran in slow motion, knowing she could go so much faster. But she had to stay behind her men. She’d survive being shot.
“There they are,” Levi yelled.
She saw him turn and motion to someone behind him, and headlights nearly blinded her as a truck roared past him, heading for her and the men.
Her body jerked as some of the Shop bullets hit her, but the Annex ops, body armor hiding most of their bodies, had converged upon the crowd and the sheriff’s men were too occupied with staying alive to concentrate on stopping Rune.
The truck skidded to a halt, and the driver leaned over to fling open the passenger door. “Get in.”
She helped Strad put Owen into the front seat, and Jack climbed into the back of the pickup. There was no time to feed from the berserker, though that would have helped them both.
Strad urged her toward the back of the truck. “Get in.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “I’m going to kill some bad guys.” She slapped the side of the truck. “Get my men out of here.”
“Ma’am,” he said. “You don’t look—”
She turned, murder in her heart, and streaked like the monster she was back into the battle.
They couldn’t use her men to control her now.
She set her monster free.
Her monster with its anger and need and hatred.
Its taste for blood and love of pain.
She loosed it upon the town of Reverence, uncaring who fell beneath her claws and teeth and rage. She killed.
And the berserker was safe.
But then, she turned to drive her claws through the throat of a frizzy hair woman wearing a blood-spattered blouse and saw him, the fucking berserker, not two feet away from her.
“What the fuck,” she screamed. “Berserker!”
But dammit, hadn’t she known? He was the fucking berserker, and he wasn’t going to watch from behind Annex ops while she fought. No matter how wounded he was.
He’d gone back inside for his spear—it flashed like lightning as he wielded it.
“Berserker,” she yelled again, but her voice was just one more scream in a world of screams.
He was too busy to reassure her anyway.
It was time to take advantage of the thinning Shop fighters and get the hell out of Reverence.
The Annex ops began pulling back, and the Shop ops were not going to try to stop them. Too many of their people were dead.
Sirens screamed as medical and fire came to do what they
could for their town.
Rune never saw the assassin after that first glimpse of him with Johnson. But they’d meet again. He wouldn’t be able to stay away from her.
And the Shop wouldn’t give up a chance, no matter how slim, to take her, or to kill her.
She had no real idea why.
All she could do was fight the fight and make sure the bastards didn’t succeed.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rune and her men were too tired to sort anything out. They were assured by Eugene that they needn’t do anything other than sleep. The Annex would take care of everything. Operatives had been sent to fetch the crew’s cars and drive them back to Ohio.
Rune didn’t argue.
Her men were patched up in the Annex clinic, but she went home. She might not need doctors, but she needed sleep.
One of the ops had provided her a thermos of coffee on the copter ride out of Reverence, and she’d downed every drop within ten minutes.
When she arrived home she stumbled to her bed and fell asleep.
She was more worn out mentally than physically. Night after night of terrible dreams and sleeplessness had finally caught up with her.
For the first time since the two slayers had attacked her, she really slept.
The world let her sleep for five hours before pulling her back to reality. Splinters of light jabbed her dry eyes when she opened them a crack, and Ellie’s insistent voice assaulted her eardrums.
“I’m sorry, Rune,” he said, patting and rubbing her arms as though she were a dangerous wolf he needed to calm. “Wake up.”
“Shit, baby,” she muttered. Then she sat up and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Got coffee?”
“In the kitchen, waiting with breakfast.” He beamed. Even with the trouble between him and Levi, there was no keeping Ellie down for long.
And in a way, that pissed her off. She didn’t want to judge him, didn’t want him to hear the anger in her tone, but suddenly, she couldn’t help it.
“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 so
me 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?”