Box Set: Rune Alexander- Vol. 1-3 (Rune Alexander Box Set)

by Laken Cane

  So she embraced it, enjoyed it, used it.

  Her fangs dropped. The tips of her fingers ached with the need to release the sharp claws, but she controlled it. Kept them in. That in itself was a victory.

  She stood in one fluid motion and with her eyes still closed, held on to the big ball of blackness inside her. She clenched her teeth and forced her arms apart.

  The cuffs cut into her flesh and the warm stickiness of blood covered her skin. She kept pulling, pulling, her body filling up with agony.

  She threw her head back and howled, but silently, and with a crack! loud enough to make the boy stir, the chain broke. She’d done it.

  Who cared that she’d cut her wrists to the bone? She would heal. And now she had her hands.

  She sank to the floor and rocked back and forth, humming in pain. Her hands were slippery with blood that leaked onto her legs as she cradled her injured arms in her lap.

  She kept her eyes closed for a long moment, almost afraid to look at her wrists. She might see that she’d cut her hands off. And seeing the injury always made it hurt more.

  Her reserves were low and her body would not heal quickly from the abuse it had been dealt. But that was okay. It would heal.

  She wiped her hands on the boy’s sleeping bag and at last was able to touch him. She smoothed back his baby-fine hair, gently, over and over.

  Her touch seemed to comfort him. It comforted her.

  Once, she stumbled to the door and tried to batter it down, but she couldn’t budge it. She was too weak. The silver and the shocks had weakened her, and she’d used up the last of her reserves getting out of the cuffs. She was going to need more time. And blood.

  She had no idea how much time passed. It seemed like many hours later when she finally heard footsteps approaching and the key turning in the lock. Emerson was returning. She wasn’t exactly ready for him, but her hands were free.

  Battered and bloody, she stood and faced the door.

  It was time to fight.

  Or die.

  Emerson wasn’t alone. He came in with ten people at his back, and every single one of them was packing a vaccinator.

  She stood in front of the boy, shielding him with her battered body. Her hair, lank and bloody, hung in her face. She imagined she looked like the monster they believed her to be.

  They fanned out, the wicked prods held out before them. “Where’s the fucking light switch?” one of the men asked.

  Someone else flipped a switch and the room was illuminated by a rather dim set of lights in the ceiling.

  “I expect you’ll want to fight me, but there are eleven of us and we have these.” Emerson hefted his vaccinator. “We will take you down. You’re too weak to defeat us. So what’s it to be? Will you help me, or will I force you?”

  Rune sniffed the air, trying to get a whiff of the sickness inside him. He must have been in the early stages of his disease, because the scent was very weak—almost buried beneath the scents of the slayers surrounding him. “What’s wrong with you? Cancer?”

  He didn’t look surprised that she knew. “Yes. Brain cancer. It’s inoperable.” He paused, as though waiting for some sign of sympathy from her.

  “I hope you die a terrible death,” she said.

  “Yes, well, I didn’t expect you’d wish otherwise.” He moved a little closer. “But how ironic is it, my dear monster, that you will be the one to save me?”

  She spread her feet and glanced around at the crowd of slayers. She could take out a few of them before they started shooting silver and shocks into her, but would it be worth it? The extra damage to her body was going to extreme. Did she want to fight something that was most likely going to happen anyway?

  Fuck yeah.

  She dropped her fangs, shot out her claws, and smiled. “Who wants to die first?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  She didn’t wait for an answer.

  Acknowledging the look of astonishment on Emerson’s face, she ran toward the small crowd of slayers. Screaming, she leaped into their midst, slashing as she went. They scattered like bowling pins, vaccinators, for one moment, forgotten.

  More than anything, she wanted to kill them. Wanted to feel flesh give beneath her claws, wanted to taste their blood as it splashed from fatal wounds. Blood would help her heal.

  She wanted to hear screams of agony.

  But in the back of her mind the entire time was the boy, and how she needed, despite the bloodlust that made her very nearly an unthinking killing machine, to protect him.

  She navigated her way to the open door and they turned from Matthew’s direction to face her. And then with desperation and rage guiding her, she fought the men.

  Her claws were deadly, sharp blades and she ducked, slashed, and decapitated with venomous joy. She ceased to believe that even in her weakened condition they could take her.

  She drank quickly of slayer blood, and even the small amounts she managed to get inside her made her almost immediately stronger.

  That was what she’d been born to do.

  Emerson backed away and she raked her claws across one of his men, turning to stab another, desperate to get to the one man who really mattered. Emerson.

  And she may have. His men littered the floor. The three remaining stood with fear in their eyes, prods held like baseball bats.

  But Emerson knew how to stop her. “Alexander,” he screamed.

  She looked toward him, knowing immediately what was going to happen.

  He crouched over Matthew, vaccinator pushed against the boy’s head. “Stop or I will kill him.”

  Immediately she retracted her claws and fangs and dropped her hands to her sides. She was breathing hard, her body still too hurt to be in top shape. “Okay.”

  The three men who yet lived converged upon her, beating her with their fists, their boots, and finally, their vaccinators.

  “No silver,” Emerson yelled. “She has to feed me.”

  She fell to her knees and one of them swung his prod at her face. She hit the floor, her cheekbone shattered, her entire body one soft ball of misery. Her claws slid out again, but slowly.

  She heard buzzing inside her head as the room began to spin, her fingers scrabbling at the hard floor.

  And as she lay dazed, one of the men lifted a vaccinator and slammed it against one of her claws. It shattered and seemed to scream, as though it’d been an actual living thing. Or maybe the screams were hers.

  “Enough,” Emerson roared. He waded into their midst and shoved the men away from her. “Sean, hold your prod to the boy’s head. If she refuses to feed me, kill him.”

  He buried his fingers into her hair and jerked her to her knees. She hung from his grip, her battered body unable, for a moment, to function.

  He knelt and grabbed her right arm. When she listed to the side he yelled at another of his men to hold her up, and he stared into her eyes. “Is there anything special you have to do to heal me? Or do I just…” he hesitated, shuddering with disgust. “Or do I just drink your blood?”

  She didn’t fucking know. “Drink,” she managed.

  He nodded. “Good.” He pulled a small folding knife from his pocket and handed it to the one man left who had nothing to do. “Cut her wrist.”

  “Fucking coward,” she murmured. “Can’t even use a knife.” But her mouth didn’t move the way she meant it to and her voice was too thick for him to understand her.

  The man bent down, grabbed her arm, and sliced her wrist with Emerson’s knife. Too deeply.

  Emerson took a deep breath and pulling her bleeding wrist to his mouth, began to drink.

  She had little to give.

  If I can die, it’ll be now.

  He was draining her.

  The agony was immediate, just as it had been with Lex. Pain like nothing she’d ever imagined grew inside her when she fed a dying person. The world went dark and silent, and the pain ruled her.

  Seconds or hours later—she had no concept of time—he fi
nally pulled his sucking mouth from her wrist and released her.

  She lay on the floor, unable to move.

  “Is she dead?” someone asked.

  “I don’t know,” Emerson replied, “but oh my, I feel so…so good.” He was crying. She heard the tears in his voice. “Oh, so good. So good.”

  “What do you want us to do with her and the kid?”

  “You go push the magic button. The case is in the hall. You’ll have ten minutes to get out before the church explodes. Everything is in place.” He giggled, giddy with the ecstasy her blood gave him. “I’m not even here. Burn it down!”

  One of the remaining men held his vaccinator to her hip and sent silver into her body. One last act of hatred. “Just in case,” he murmured.

  They left the room, running, in a hurry to torch the church and escape before the blast either trapped them inside or brought the authorities too close.

  Finally, all was quiet.

  She grabbed at the slippery floor and dragged herself to Matthew. He hadn’t moved, as far as she knew, the entire time. If he still lived, she’d be surprised.

  The finger with the destroyed claw was shrieking with red-hot, excruciating agony and the strands of silver exploded inside her, but after the feeding, any pain would have seemed tolerable. Why had she been given the ability to heal people when doing so was unbearable?

  “Matthew,” she tried to say. She had to get him out of there. They were going to blast the church and according to Emerson, there was only a ten minute window to get out.

  Ten minutes for her to heal enough to carry a small boy from the building. She gave herself a few short moments to simply lie on the floor and do nothing. She had not the energy to even close her mouth.

  Those moments would not be enough, but it was all she had.

  God, she hurt.

  “Matthew.” Her voice was a raspy whisper, barely loud enough for her to hear, let alone the boy. She slid her hand across the bag to shake his shoulder. “Wake up, baby. We’re going home now.”

  He looked worse in the light than he had in the shadows. His little chest barely moved with shallow breaths. Otherwise he was still as death.

  She forced herself to her knees, allowing groans to escape between clenched teeth. She deserved to fucking groan.

  She had to get Matthew up. Letting him die was not an option. Hands trembling, she unzipped the bag. It seemed to take hours. Inside her head, the clock was ticking the short minutes away. Ticks of doom.

  When he was free of the bag she climbed to her feet, her screaming body resisting every move. Adrenaline fueled her, helped her shove through the agony. Part of her would have liked nothing better than to lie down beside him and give in.

  She leaned over him and slipped her broken hands beneath him, ignoring the pain. She pulled, trying to lift the small child from the floor, but only managed to fall on top of him.

  “Shit,” she cried, and tried again. She could feel him fading, almost see his life force dimming, leaving her staring at only a shell of flesh and bones.

  And somehow, she stood, cradling him against her chest. She swayed on her feet and cackled, for a moment nothing more than a deranged, half dead girl.

  “I got him. By God, I got him.”

  The door was a million miles away. She slid one foot forward, then the other. She wasn’t walking, exactly, but she was moving.

  He was only a tiny, thin child, but to her tortured body, she might well have been carrying a car. Her arms shook with the effort of holding him and her legs buckled.

  But on she went, nearly crying when she stepped out the door and into the hallway. How long had it been since Emerson had left her there? Three minutes? Eight minutes?

  She had no way of knowing, but the urgency inside her pushed her on and she carried her treasure down the hall.

  The hall was carpeted, unlike the room she’d just left. That floor had been tiled and slippery with blood, which had made it easier for her to slide her feet across.

  The carpeting in the hall seemed to grasp at her soles with fingers of harsh wool, trying to make her fall.

  Careful, Rune. Walk the fuck out of here.

  Matthew’s little face was the face of an angel. She kept glancing down at him, maybe to reassure herself that she truly held him, maybe to remind herself why she must keep going.

  The hall stretched out before her, seemingly endless, but she saw the doorway at the end. Through that doorway was the room she’d first entered, and then freedom.

  She kept her stare on the doorway, that distant doorway, and put one foot in front of the other. One slow, tortured step at a time, she neared the end of the hall.

  But then the world exploded.

  She fell to the floor, her precious bundle spilling from her arms, and was plunged suddenly into total darkness. Another blast shook the building, and she smelled the sharp, acrid scent of smoke.

  “Matthew,” she screamed hoarsely, crawling on the floor, her hands out before her.

  A sudden whoosh! and the room lit up, scorching the skin from her naked, bloody body.

  But she saw the child in the sudden light and snatched him to her once more. She struggled to get her feet beneath her, wondering for a moment why she even tried.

  Flames surrounded them.

  Disoriented she walked aimlessly on, unsure. Was she headed back, or was she going to the doorway?

  She had nothing with which to cover the child’s face, but bent over him as best she could, trying to see through the smoke and fire. Trying to see something that would let her know where she was.

  But there was nothing. Nothing but smoke and fire. She was trapped.

  She threw back her head and howled, rage overflowing.

  And terror. There was that.

  She had failed a child.

  Even over the roar of flames and her screams of fury, she heard sirens. But they were too late, the sons of bitches. Too late.

  She stood with the child in her arms, lost, surrounded by scorching fire, and finally, she gave up.

  She dropped to her knees, whispering nonsense to the boy. Thankful that at least he slept, unaware.

  The smoke would kill him before the fire did.

  But then, two shapes rushed out of the flames, mouths open, roaring, and as though they were made of smoke themselves, impenetrable smoke, they wrapped her and the boy in a circle of space. Cool space. There was no heat, no singeing flesh in that space.

  Blood and Fire.

  She sobbed as she was lifted on invisible wings and set on her feet, the now formless shapes pushing her onward.

  Inside the silence of Blood and Fire she stumbled on, sure they would lead her in the right direction. There was nothing to see but the slow motion dancing of yellow and red flames and the thick waving wall of gray smoke.

  Her earlier dejection was forgotten. She and the wild, beautiful spirit beasts would save the boy. And she knew—that moment right there was why the dogs had come to Spiritgrove.

  The smoke cleared enough for her to see the great gaping exit doors of the church, beckoning her into the cold, soothing dark of the outside.

  Through the flicker of flames she saw the outside as if it were a different world and she was about to step through a portal, spat out into that dark, icy beauty.

  It was a chaotic world. Men running, sirens blasting, lights turning. Screams, yells, desperation.

  She saw her Shiv Crew among them, her vision as clear and bright as though there was no smoke, no fire. The night was tinged red from the burning building, confusing her for a second. She’d expected to see daylight.

  “We’re coming,” she said, and squeezed Matthew tightly against her.

  And wrapped securely in the mysterious arms of the invisible dogs, she strode through the doorway.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  She walked out of the fire with Matthew in her arms, and everyone outside the burning building was stunned into silence.

  At first no one moved, no o
ne spoke, no one so much as blinked.

  Blood and Fire withdrew. Just melted away. One minute they were there, and the next, they were gone.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and then every injury, every pain she’d lived through came roaring back. She began to fall as her legs gave out, and her arms bent beneath the weight of the child. “Take him,” she begged. “Take him.”

  The berserker was there, his arms around her, supporting both her and Matthew. His eyes were wet and filled with disbelief. “Rune. Rune.”

  “He’s alive,” she whispered, smiling. “He’s alive, Strad.”

  He took Matthew from her, stepping back to allow her crew to take his place. They surrounded her, protecting her beaten, bloody body from the flashing cameras.

  “Get the fucking EMTs over here,” Z screamed.

  She was dizzy. The sounds and sights became blurred and confusing, melding together in a frenzied mess that made no sense. Nothing was clear.

  Raze picked her up and cradled her in his arms, and Jack shrugged off his coat to cover her.

  “What’d they do to you,” Lex murmured. “Oh, evil fucking COS.”

  Owen and the twins ran up to the small group, closely followed by EMTs hurrying along with a gurney.

  Levi’s eyes widened when he got a look at her. “God, Rune.”

  Denim turned away, but not before she saw the look of murderous rage in his eyes.

  Owen just grinned. “I’ll let you off the hook for dinner, Alexander.”

  She couldn’t help but smile back, at least inside. Fading in and out of consciousness, she caught snatches of their conversations, heard them discussing where to take her. Levi convinced them to drive her to the Other clinic to be with Ellis. It was the right thing to do.

  Raze lowered her to the cot. It was cold. She began to shiver as the EMTs belted her into the small bed.

  I need to feed.

  If she could manage to get some blood into her, she’d feel better and would heal a hundred times faster.

  But her eyelids were so heavy, her brain so tired. She couldn’t make herself form the words.

  I need to feed.