by Laken Cane
When she passed Gunnar, a lone tear traced a track down his dirty cheek. He bowed, just the slightest, and backed away.
She couldn’t breathe, but that didn’t really seem to matter. She still lived. She still walked hand in hand with her Z, walked to where she’d give him his death.
It was the right thing to do.
And finally, in the fresh snow beneath a small tree, its limbs reaching beseechingly toward the sun, she let him lie down.
Her tears flowed with his blood, scarlet upon the pristine snow.
“I’ll never stop crying for you, Z.”
But Z was gone.
Her crew found her there later, sitting in the snow. Z lay on the ground, his head in her lap and a smile frozen on his lips.
Z had found his peace.
Rune never would.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Elizabeth is good,” Owen said, putting away his phone. “She’s going to make it.”
Rune nodded. “I’m glad.” But she wasn’t sure she’d ever really be glad again.
The crew curled in on themselves, each grieving in his own way for Z.
Levi had gone to find Ellie. “He’s the only person who can make me believe I’m still alive.”
Raze walked toward them, returning from an errand Rune had sent him on.
“Did you get them?” she asked.
He held up dozens of thin, long chains of silver. “I did.”
Strad stood at her back. “You need to fight, Rune. Try to call Llodra. Let’s get this over with so you can go fight.”
The daylight had been chased away and they hadn’t left the graveyard. Jack had called to have Z’s body taken out. The crew was his family, and they’d give him a proper burial.
So much death.
So much loss, and pain, and fucking death.
Strad was right. She needed to fight. She needed to give the pain a release before she drove her claws through her own brain.
They walked deep into Wormwood, away from any humans who might be close enough to get decimated by a mad vampire.
Strad took her shaking hand and the crew circled around her.
“We’re right here,” Raze said. “Let the fuckers make one wrong move, and they’re dead.”
“I want to take him alive,” Rune said. “If he comes, don’t kill him.” This time, Nicolas Llodra was hers—and in the end, forcing him to live was the worst punishment he could get.
Denim looked at Lex. “I’m sorry I let you down, Lexi.”
Lex nodded.
“I’m going to try to call him,” Rune said, and closed her eyes.
She pictured his face, and silently called his name.
Nothing happened.
She had to mean it.
An image of Stefanie’s little face floated into her mind. An image of the bloody walls of RISC, of Elizabeth going to answer an order that Rune hadn’t even had the right or authority to give.
Of Amy, chained in the darkness where no one could hear her crying.
And of Ellie, blind and deaf and terrified, stuffed under a table in her ruined basement.
She breathed out, the sound too loud in her ears, like a waterfall rushing over a cliff. She opened her eyes but saw none of her crew.
She saw him. Saw his face, his haunted, crazed eyes.
Come to me, Nicolas.
She felt him running through the night to reach her, felt his torment, his fear, and his dread. His knowledge.
He’d saved himself from the witch, but he could not save himself from Rune. And before it was over, he was going to wonder if he wouldn’t have been better off with Damascus.
Marta and her children were at his back.
The female vampire quaked behind Llodra, her face buried in his shirt.
“For what you did to the girl,” Rune told her, “you’ll die.” She was cold and hot at once. She felt them, the vampires, fighting her command but eager to please her.
She did not want to be queen of the dead.
When she was finished with Llodra she was going to find a way to scrape the power out of herself like the fucking tumor it was.
But then, much like her monster did, it woke up inside her and rubbed sensuously against her body.
It seduced her, that power, that dark, heady magic.
It grew stronger.
“On your knees,” she told the vampire.
She felt the power, but still, she was shocked when Marta fell to her knees. Even though she held the power to command those she’d brought back, she was shocked.
“Please,” the beautiful vampire begged. “I had to save Nicolas.”
“You can’t trade an innocent for evil.” Rune walked to her and without hesitating, shot her claws into Marta’s heart. When she fell, Rune took her head.
“See what you’ve become,” Llodra accused. “Kill me, then. You’re a mad, coldblooded killer just like me.” He smiled. “Just like your—”
“Shut up. I don’t mean to kill you. That would be rewarding you for everything you’ve done. You’re going to exist, Llodra. But you will never be free.” She stood in front of him, Marta’s blood dripping from her claws onto the frozen ground. “You will never have peace.”
He shuddered, his black eyes sparkling in the moonlight. “You will want to reconsider. You will want to release me.”
She smiled. “I’m going to put you in a silver wrapped box and let you lie forever in the dark where you can’t hurt anyone else. But you will have plenty of time to think.”
“I have a trade to make with you.”
“On your knees before me, Llodra.”
He tried to disobey her. His face tightened, his lip curled over his teeth. He stiffened and tried to command his own body, but it was no longer his. He fell to his knees.
“Good,” she said. She glanced at his face and then looked away. “Raze, give me the silver.”
Her crew stood ready with silver shivs in one hand and guns loaded with silver bullets in the other.
Marta’s vampires moved with restless terror. They had no master now, but that wasn’t Rune’s problem.
“Go,” she told them.
They stared, their eyes wide and disbelieving.
“Go,” she screamed.
They went. One minute they were standing in a tight knot of fear and the next they had fled.
And Llodra was alone with the humans.
Alone with her.
He stared up at her with bottomless dark eyes. “Answer me this, Rune. When the choice is the life of your Ellis or my freedom, which will you choose?”
She shuddered as a cold chill snaked down her spine. “What the fuck are you talking about?” She’d known it wasn’t going to be easy. She’d known.
“I knew this day would come, and I have taken steps to protect myself.”
She didn’t want to know what steps. Did not want to hear. “Tell me.”
“One more bite will make him turn. One more bite and he will become the thing he most fears.” His eyes glittered. “You did not know he was horrified with the thought of becoming like you, did you?”
His smile froze her soul. She couldn’t speak.
“I have vampires waiting. Ellis is my insurance. Will you let him turn so you might punish me, Rune?”
Strad roared and grabbed the vampire by his throat. A long silver blade flashed as he twisted it into Llodra’s chest.
“Strad, no,” Rune yelled.
“We can’t let him live, Rune.”
“Not even for Ellis? Let him go, Berserker.”
The effort it cost him to drop the vampire and back away was extreme, but he did it. And Llodra never once lost his smile.
“That’s why you took him,” Rune said, trying not to whimper. And now, for the rest of his life, Ellis would be one bite away from turning. “I can order you not to call your vampire.” But she knew even as she said it that Llodra would have been smarter than that.
“Rune,” he said, the look on his face a
lmost pitying. “You might kill me now, but one day, Ellis will be turned because of it.”
Llodra would not suffer for his crimes. “But you will—”
“No,” he snapped. “You will no longer command me. Release me. Release me now or Ellis will become one of the undead before the sound of my voice fades from your nightmares. I swear that to you. Release me.”
She could not even cry. “I don’t know how,” she whispered.
“Say the words, if that will make it real to you. Say the words and set me free.”
She gave up.
Llodra was not hers to command.
No more than Z had been. No more than Levi was.
And just like that, Llodra was free.
He stood, no longer smiling. “I am free,” he muttered. “Only not really. Oh, if only you’d killed me, Rune. Then I would truly be free. Do not hunt me again. Ever.”
She shook her head, unable to speak. But then, a terrible thought, a horrifying realization leaped into her mind. “I could have released Z? I could have saved him?”
Llodra sighed, and then, he was gone. But his words floated back, hung in the air, and choked the life out of her. “You have the power of Damascus. You may release anyone you do not wish to hold.”
Her legs gave out and she fell to the ground, her horrified stare pinned to her crew. She could simply have released Z and he would not have been hers to command. He could have lived.
She had killed him when she could have released him.
She moaned. There was no energy for anything else.
The crew knelt beside her. They said nothing. There was nothing they could say.
“I don’t want it,” she said. “I don’t want it.”
She didn’t want anything. Not the power, not the grief, not the knowledge that it was too late.
She felt a touch on her shoulder and glanced around to find Gunnar the Ghoul staring back at her with wide eyes and frozen features.
“Your Highness.” He stepped away and held his hand up, palm toward her, as if to ward off a killing blow. “I can take the power.”
“Gunnar?” She couldn’t think. Couldn’t imagine what he was saying to her. “What, Gunnar?”
She’d killed Z, right there in the snow. Killed him. All she wanted was to go back to that moment. He hadn’t needed to die.
She hadn’t needed to kill him.
Gunnar twisted his fingers. “It is what I do. I cannot leave the graveyards, but I can absorb power. All you have to do is give it to me.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Still staring at Gunnar, she nodded, but didn’t comprehend what he was saying. She heard a buzzing, like a bee had gotten trapped inside her skull. A dozen bees.
“Not now, Gunnar,” Strad said.
She whipped her head around to stare at him. “What did I do, Strad? What did I do? I could have released him. He could have lived.”
“He was dead after the zombie bit him, Rune. Even if you’d released him, it wouldn’t have mattered.” He squeezed her shoulder. “He didn’t want to come back.”
Levi sprinted to the group, his face pale and covered with a sheen of sweat despite the cold. “What’s wrong?” he cried. “Rune, I can’t read what you’re telling me.” He fell to his knees in front of her and put his fingers to his temples. “My head is…I can’t…”
She forced herself to focus on his face. “Shhh. You’re not mine, Levi. You’re free. I didn’t realize I could let you go.”
And she released him.
He got slowly to his feet. “Holy shit.” His voice was quiet. “Holy fucking shit.” He stared at her, then at the crew, then shook his head. “I feel it. I feel the…” He tapped his head. “I’m alone in here again. I’m fucking…I’m me again.” He stared down at her, his fists clenched, his eyes wild. “Fuck you, fucking monster cunt!”
Lex reached him before any of the others could so much as twitch. She slapped his face, hard, then began beating him with her fists. “Don’t you dare,” she screamed. “Don’t you dare, Levi-fucking-Montrosa.”
He held his hands up to fend her off, backing away, his eyes wide and horrified. “God, Rune. I didn’t mean it.”
Ellis, out of breath, a hand to his chest, ran into the clearing. “Here,” he yelled. “What? What?”
Gunnar knelt beside Rune. “Give it to me. Let me take it all away.”
“Back off, Gunnar,” Jack yelled.
Rune put her hands over her too sensitive ears. “Shut up. Everybody just shut the fuck up.”
Into the sudden silence she climbed to her feet. “I want to walk for a while.” She held up her hand when Strad stood. “Alone. I just need to be alone for a little while. I’ll meet you all back at RISC in a couple hours. We need to get back to work.”
Then she walked away. She let the thoughts come, the grief, the worry. It wasn’t as good a purge as getting fucked up, but it was all she had.
She was too exhausted to even hurt herself.
So she walked, deep into Wormwood, alone but for a few watchful Others hiding in the shadows.
She didn’t care if there was danger. Her mind was numb and she was full of confusion. The witch’s magic was inside her, and she didn’t want it. She didn’t want to rule the dead. God, no.
Did she?
Gunnar might take it, but she couldn’t hand such power over to a ghoul. That’d be like handing a loaded gun to a kid.
It was her responsibility.
Maybe she did want it, if she could be honest with herself. She wanted to rule, to be queen, to put down the zombies and the vampires and to learn how to harness her stolen power into something fucking great. Yeah. Maybe she wanted it.
She put the back of hand to her mouth to keep in a sob. Or a laugh. She wasn’t sure which. “Something is wrong with me,” she muttered.
As if that was news.
When the attack came, it came with such force and suddenness that her mind went blank and her body tried to curl into a tight knot of protection.
She scrabbled at the hard earth as her claws managed to fight their way a couple of inches from her fingers. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think.
Lying on her side she saw the end of a long, black blade erupting from her chest. Her heart. She’d been stabbed through the heart.
Staked.
Hadn’t someone asked her what her weakness was, once? She hadn’t known what that weakness was.
She did now.
She fought to see in the darkness, a darkness the moon did little to brighten. There were few lights that deep in the cemetery.
Someone stood above her, and just as it occurred to her who had attacked her, he drove his fangs into her neck.
Nicolas Llodra.
He sucked hard and fast, and she could feel the blood leaving her body. And something else. He’s taking the magic.
The thought of the witch’s magic in Llodra’s hands made her struggle, but it was a pathetic struggle. He’d known what to do to incapacitate her.
He’d known everything.
Had he counted on her feeding from the witch? Had he been planning this even before he’d taken Ellis?
Nicolas Llodra was mad, but he’d been incredibly smart.
And he was draining her. She could die with a blade in her heart and a bloodless body. She could.
Peace? Peace for me?
She stopped struggling.
Peace.
Really, that was all anybody ever wanted.
But Gunnar wasn’t ready to let her go.
She heard him calling, his voice high and terrified, as he ran into the dark to save her.
Leave me alone, Gunnar.
Llodra pulled his fangs from her neck, his chin glistening with fresh blood, and stared down at her. “Your blood is spectacular,” he whispered. “Not just hers, but yours. Not even Damascus can rule me. I’m going to find her, and kill her, and it’s all because of you. No one else could have done it.” And gently, he kissed her cheek.
/> “Rune,” Gunnar called, and like a skinny torpedo, he flew at Llodra, a silver blade flashing in the scanty moonlight.
“Ah,” Nicolas said. “Your knight comes. But he is too late, isn’t he?” There was no fear in his eyes. Absolutely no fear.
Gunnar rammed the vampire, his fury and fear tangible and thick.
“Stop,” Llodra said, casually.
But Gunnar the Ghoul did not stop. “I cannot be ruled by such as you,” he said, his voice full of contempt.
Rune lay unmoving, drained and dying. The blade in her heart sat solidly, a block of ice she could not budge.
Llodra leaped off her, deflecting Gunnar’s blade with his arm. He screamed with shock when the blade sliced through his flesh.
“I have the magic of Damascus,” he screeched. “I rule the dead.”
“Not this dead, you mad fool,” Gunnar said calmly. “Not this dead.”
He threw the blade with force and precision, and Rune watched from her bed on the ground as it buried to the hilt into Llodra’s face.
Damascus’s magic might have given him power over the dead, just as it had her, but it did not make him immune to pain.
And it would not make him immune from staking.
Rune wondered vaguely how Gunnar could handle silver. He was carrying it—had thrown it at Llodra, whose face was even now smoking and melting before he finally pulled the blade free and flung it away in disgust.
Silver did not seem to affect Gunnar, just as it did not affect her. Or her monster.
The vampire had not staked her with silver, but a black blade. Maybe obsidian.
Llodra slammed Gunnar into a crumbling old tombstone and Gunnar rolled away immediately, barely avoiding Llodra’s stiffened fingers as they attempted to pierce his chest.
Rune felt like she moved through thick, sticky tar as she turned to her head to watch the two battling Others.
She caught misty glimpses of other vampires—Marta’s children. They now belonged to Llodra.
They would die with Llodra.
Tottering precariously on the thin edge between life and death, between chaos and peace, she let herself wish for darkness to come claim her.
But only for a moment.
Llodra might have sucked most of the life out of her, but there was something left that he couldn’t touch. That something, that spark, wasn’t in her blood, wasn’t in the magic.