by Laken Cane
“Fuck me,” she whispered.
“Oh yes,” he agreed. “Leon says he knows you won’t pay up your debt on account of Annie not succeeding, but the way he figures it, it was you who killed his lady. You’re responsible for that.”
She said nothing.
“You know how bad Leon is, don’t you, Alexander?”
“Yeah. I know.”
And the enemies just kept coming.
“Well, you don’t have to really worry about Leon hurting you, not right now. He’s not out. He’s not the one’s going to hurt you.”
She stiffened her spine. “Spit it out, you little fuck.”
“Leon’s not out of prison. Karin is out of prison. I guess you hadn’t heard yet. She broke out about an hour ago. Least that’s when they noticed her missing.”
Rune stuffed her phone back into her pocket with numb fingers.
The time of Karin Love was coming. She’d always known it would.
But fuck if that knowledge didn’t take her breath away.
Chapter Forty-Two
It was true.
Karin Love, with the help of at least three prison staff, six inmates, and unknown outsiders, had escaped prison.
Lex shuddered once, then she and the twins huddled in a sad group of inconsolable misery.
Ellie wrung his hands, his eyes wide. “This is the real battle. This has been coming since the beginning, hasn’t it?”
No one disagreed.
“We won’t see her for a while.” Denim’s voice was soft, but held absolutely no doubt. “She’ll wait. She’ll hide, and plan, and then…”
Then all hell would break loose.
Rune had never known another human to cause so much fear.
Or so much damage.
“When she shows herself,” Rune said, “I’ll tear the bitch apart.”
Lex jerked away from the twins. “I’ll kill her,” she screamed. “I’ll kill the fucking bitch.”
Rune held up her hands. “Okay, Lex.”
But Lex began to unravel as the memories of abuse, the rage, and the terror began to burst from the deep hole into which she’d buried them.
Wings burst from her back, ripping through her shirt, unfurling in the relatively small space of Rune’s kitchen. She rose into the air, then shot a stream of fire at the window.
It shattered, the force of the flame sending shards of glass out into the Moor.
“Lex,” Levi yelled.
But Ellie ran to Lex and grabbed her leg, pulling her back to the floor. “Come with me, hon. Let’s get some of that out of you.”
Lex followed him, her cries drifting back over her shoulder as she and Ellie raced to the front door.
Then there was only silence until Jack walked into the kitchen. He glanced at the broken window. “I’ll get someone over here to fix that,” he said, and walked back out of the room with his cell to his ear.
Rune poured herself a cup of coffee, then leaned against the table, watching the twins. “Karin Love will end soon. You know that.”
They looked at her, faces exactly alike, except for Denim’s scar. But she would have known Levi from Denim regardless. There was a difference in their eyes.
Levi finally smiled. “Rune, we’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”
She snorted. “Yeah. That’ll happen. I—”
Then Denim pulled a blade and threw it with smooth precision, so fast and hard Rune felt the air from it as it sailed half an inch past her cheek.
She dove to the floor, shooting out her claws as she rolled to face the window. She had a millisecond to see the assassin before he ducked out of sight.
Denim’s shiv must surely have taken some of the assassin’s mask with it as it hurtled through space—it was that close.
She got up and streaked toward the window, ignoring shards of glass slicing into her as she went after the assassin.
Levi and Denim had already left the kitchen, running for the front door. She knew Jack would be right behind them.
Fucking assassin.
But she was glad he’d appeared. She needed to chase someone. To cut someone. So did the twins.
The assassin, in his desperation, was becoming careless.
She sniffed the air for his scent but couldn’t separate it from the other scents of oil, gasoline, garbage, old blood, and human desperation.
But Jack cornered him. The Assassin had slithered under a broken car parked in someone’s overgrown yard, and within seconds, the assassin and Jack were fighting like two raging wolves.
The hired killer wasn’t getting away that time—the twins blocked him on one side, and Rune blocked the other.
They had him.
“Don’t kill him,” she called. She had some questions. Questions he might never answer but she was going to ask, anyway.
“Four against one,” one of the Moor’s residents yelled. “That’s not fair.”
Jack reeled from a deep cut to his shoulder and then slammed his big body into the assassin’s smaller one. He began punching him with so much anger Rune knew he’d forgotten she wanted the hired gun alive.
“Son of a bitch,” she said, and ran toward the two men. She heard the crackly crunch of bone as Jack punched the other man in the face. The assassin didn’t go down. Somehow, he stayed on his feet.
She punched him in the back of his head.
And that time, he went down.
“You okay, baby?” she asked Jack. She knelt beside the hitman but glanced up at Jack.
He wiped blood from his face, breathing hard, then adjusted his eye patch. “My depth perception isn’t what it once was,” he said, out of the blue. It was the first time he’d admitted the loss of his eye took anything away from his skills.
Levi and Denim gathered at his back, then turned to shoo away some nosy neighbors.
“Shit, Jack,” she said, but that was all. There were no words she could comfort him with. He’d lost his fucking eye.
He shrugged. “I’ll call and have the Annex send someone to take him in.”
She stood. “Not yet. I want to have some time with him first.”
“Eugene won’t try to stop you from questioning him.”
“No, but he will complicate things. I’m taking him to my house.”
Jack nodded and once more adjusted his eye patch. “I’ll carry him over.”
“I got him.” She bent forward and flipped him to his back, then grabbed a fistful of his shirt and began to drag him down the street.
“Rune,” Jack said, frowning. “Your chest is bleeding pretty badly.”
“I’m fine, Jack.”
The assassin regained consciousness before they were halfway home and even in his groggy, weakened state, managed to slice her Achilles tendon completely through before Levi wrestled the blade from him.
“Son of a bitch,” she said, sitting on the street, her fingers wrapped around her ankle. “Take him on in, guys. Restrain him and put him in the panic room. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
He was either thinking she’d get angry enough to bite him, or angry enough to kill him. He was frantic for the first and the second would have been a relief.
Jack, with the twins beside him, hustled the assassin into her house.
She waited, so accustomed to physical pain that she didn’t even whimper. She’d heal a severed Achilles in five minutes. Ten, tops.
She heard a yell in the distance and thought it might have been Lex. She sighed, then scooted off the street when a truck sped around the corner.
Lex worried her.
Lex’s demon could destroy Karin Love, but Lex could not.
She didn’t know that, the little blind Other. She believed her rage would aid her, but Rune knew the girl’s fear scurried around in her mind, waiting for a chance to smother her. Lex would not be able to kill her tormenting mother. When the time came, the girl would freeze. Or her mind would go.
But Rune could kill Karin Love. And would.
She looked f
orward to it. All Karin had to do was show herself, and she was a dead woman.
She was aware someone was slipping from the shadows toward her, and she tensed even as her nose told her it was one of hers.
Owen.
He knelt beside her, his eyes the brightest things in the stormy darkness of the day. Thunderclouds hung with heaviness and the air was electric. He wasn’t healed from his run-in with her claws or from his time in Reverence, but he wouldn’t complain.
“Are you okay?” His hair streaked over his shoulders, thin strands she wanted to wrap around her fingers.
“Yeah, I’m fine. We got the assassin.”
His gaze sharpened. “Where is he?”
“In my panic room, restrained. Jack and the twins are watching him.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her house.
“Don’t worry. He’s not getting free again,” she said.
“How’s Levi?”
“Doing better.” She shrugged. “Doing as well as he can.”
He stood, then held out a hand to help her up. Blood pooled in her boot, not the most comfortable feeling in the world, and she put a hand on his shoulder to balance herself as she gave her foot a shake.
“Ruined a good pair of boots,” she said, staring dolefully at her foot. “The bastard ruined my boots.”
Owen was silent, so she glanced up at him.
The look in his eyes made it hard for her to breathe.
“Fuck, Rune,” he murmured.
“Owen, you can’t—”
But before she could finish, he took her by her shoulders and leaned in to kiss her. Not hard, not fast. But buried beneath the unintended kiss was urgency. Urgency rising from a lack of hope and the quiet despair she’d seen in him the first time she’d picked him up in a bar.
Maybe he thought she could make him forget whatever tortured him. Maybe he thought she could save him.
So she wrapped her hands around his arms and pulled him closer.
Because for one long, hot minute, she really wanted to try.
Chapter Forty-Three
Owen’s lips were warm, his grip hard. He probably didn’t realize he was hurting her as he squeezed her arms. Or maybe he did.
His kiss was consuming.
Not in the way the berserker’s was. The berserker was full of power and pain and rage. His kiss was deep, hot. His emotions were intense. His kiss made her immediately lose track of her thoughts. It made her want to wrap her legs around him, sink her teeth into him, devour him.
In Owen’s kiss was something she couldn’t decipher. Didn’t want to. It would hurt too much.
It hurt him, whatever it was.
She didn’t question her weakness concerning Owen.
It just was.
But for one heart stopping moment, an image of Z flashed through her mind.
She shuddered against him and moaned gently into his mouth. His grip on her arms tightened further.
She let him deepen the kiss. She was going to a place where trouble waited, but trouble was an old, old friend, and it welcomed her with open arms.
A force like a truck going full speed hit them. It knocked her on her ass and sent Owen slamming into the house across the street.
“Berserker,” she screamed. “No!”
He pointed a finger at her, stunning her enough to make her hesitate. “Go home.”
She dropped her fangs without meaning to. “You—”
“Rune,” Owen said, somewhat breathlessly. He knelt on the ground, his hair over his face, then grimaced as he stood. “Stay out of this. It’s been a long time coming.”
The berserker stood with his feet apart, his fists clenched. Once more, he looked at her. “Go home.” His voice was not gentle.
She heard a sound behind her and whirled around, her anxiety levels high. Lex and Ellie stood there. Ellis had his fist to his mouth, and Lex vibrated a little too fast.
“Get her out of here,” Owen told them.
Lex took her arm. “Come on, Rune. You can’t control everything. Let them do what they need to do.”
“Fuck you,” Rune said, but her words came out in a whisper.
Ellis took her other arm, like she was either a delicate old lady or an innocent child. And she was neither.
She growled. “I won’t let—”
“Leave them be,” Lex interrupted. “It’s not your choice. Let’s go.”
But she didn’t want to leave them be. Didn’t want to leave them to hurt each other for something that was hers to give—not theirs to take or fight for.
“Rune,” Strad roared, “get the fuck out of here.”
“He doesn’t want you to see it,” Ellis said, tugging her arm. “Please, please, Rune. Come home.”
She had to either go, or she had to watch.
She couldn’t stop them.
And she didn’t want to watch.
So finally, she turned and ran the fuck out of there.
She didn’t go home. She couldn’t have handled pacing the floors waiting for one of them to walk in the door and tell her other was dead.
Even questioning the waiting assassin wasn’t something she really cared about right then.
So she ran to Wormwood.
“Gunnar,” she yelled, running through the gates.
He slipped from the shadows, ready, as he nearly always was, for her arrival into the place that had once been his sanctuary.
“Your Inconsolableness,” he said, and flew to her.
It was the first time he’d touched her with any sort of comfort or affection in mind. He wrapped his long, skinny arms around her and pulled her to him, against the thin hardness of his chest. “There, there.” He thumped her on back. “There, there.”
She regained her composure and withdrew, wiping her face.
“Who has died, Your Horror?”
“Nobody died, Gunnar.”
“Then why are you here, wild emotions flying about you as though someone had?”
“The berserker and Owen are fighting.”
“Go on.”
“The berserker and Owen,” she repeated, “are fighting.”
“And this displeases you?”
She stared at him. “I don’t like to see people I care about hurting each other.”
He tilted his head, his fluffy black hair drifting lazily around his shoulders. “It is what people do.”
She blew out a hard breath and looked away from his sharp gaze. “They’re fighting because of me.”
His smile was soft. “They are men. They will always fight.”
She shook her head. “These men don’t just fight. These men…destroy.”
“Why are you here?”
“I didn’t want to watch them.”
“Why not?” He was genuinely curious. “If they will, as you fear, kill each other, would you not want to be there to congratulate the victor?”
She snorted. “Gunnar, sometimes you are a little fucking crazy.” But she grinned.
“And now you are calm.” He took her by her shoulders and turned her toward the gates. “Go back to your men, dear.” He gave her a small shove. “And do not forget what you are.”
She was outside the gates when she turned back to face him. “How are you, Gunnar?”
“I, Your Highness, am lamentably candyless.”
“I’ll bring you some.” She hesitated. “Gunnar…I have the assassin.”
He shuddered and took a step back. “And that is another man you should watch. He will get what he needs, in the end.” The he walked closer, and wrapped his fingers around the metal bars of the gate. “But if you are very careful, so will you. Use him, Rune.”
“Oh, I plan on it.” Then she stiffened her spine and began the run back to the Moor. She was a monster, and if two men were going to beat each other senseless over her, she was going to fucking be there to see it.
Chapter Forty-Four
The berserker was big, and he was bad.
But Owen was Shiv Crew fo
r a reason, and he would be a challenge, even for Strad.
Rune slipped down an alley, glancing at the sky once as it began to drizzle. The day was overcast and cool, and the scent of the oncoming Fall mingled with the other scents of the Moor.
The closer she got to the fight, the stronger the scent of blood.
A crowd had gathered in an empty lot beside Grady’s Bar and Grill, and even as she watched a few more people ran out of the bar, swigging beer and yelling cheerfully.
She cursed when her cell vibrated, and dragged it out to check the display. The Annex was calling. “Yeah?”
A pause, then, “Rune? Everything okay?”
“Not a good time, Eugene.” And then, she heard the fight. The thud of flesh against flesh, a crash, and a roar of anger so loud that even the shouts of a gleeful crowd could not drown it out.
“We’ve found another body, Rune.”
“Body?” A car whizzed by, going much too fast, and a sound like a gunshot made her jump. The idiots had thrown a bottle at the stop sign.
“Rune?”
“Yeah, I’m here. What is it?”
“Another hanging body was found. In the Moor. I thought you might want to check into it.”
“Fuck. Where in the Moor?” Then it dawned on her that he was asking her to check into it. “Why do you want Shiv Crew to check it out?”
“Not Shiv Crew. You.”
She frowned. “You were letting Bill head this case. Is there something I need to know?”
“Oh, he’s still heading it. I wanted to involve you since you’ve been in on the killings from the beginning.” His voice was smooth, and she could practically taste the lie. “The victim is nailed to the coffee shop on Green. What are you doing right now?”
“I’m…getting ready to break up a fight.”
“All right. Take care of business and I’ll call you later with updates.”
“Thanks.” She hung up. The conversation had unsettled her. Something was up, but she didn’t have time to think about it right then.
The crowd parted for her as soon as they saw who she was, and heavy, eager hands pushed at her back, urging her on.
“Are you going stop them?” a woman asked. “Don’t stop them.”
“Shut up,” Rune growled.
It was bad. She could feel it. She could smell it.