by Laken Cane
But as they ran through the rubble, she caught sight of other things.
People missing limbs and faces and, in some cases, heads, hung from tall poles. She saw the heads later, impaled on long, sharp stakes decorating the sides of roads.
Clouds of despair and dread floated in the air, sapping her strength, muddying her thinking, and squeezing her brain with a sort of depression she’d never felt before.
“Fight through it,” Blue said, as they jogged through the horror. “It’s a spell to control the people. It’ll get better.”
“Fuck you,” Rune managed, barely able to breathe. “I know that’s a lie.”
As long as Damascus the Witch lived, nothing would ever get better.
The scenery didn’t improve. If anything, it got worse. The entire city was bloody and reeked of rotting flesh.
“Rebels,” a woman yelled, and jumped a ditch full of sewage to run at the crew.
“She’s insane,” Blue murmured.
Rune stopped to watch, unsure how Blue would deal with one of her own.
Blue drove her sword through the woman’s heart, not even hesitating. Then she turned and jogged back to Rune and Z, wiping her blade on her pants. “All clear.”
“Why’d you kill her?” Rune asked, when Blue fell into step beside her. “She could have fought with us. We need all the fighters we can get.”
“She was insane,” Blue said, her voice flat. “She wasn’t going to turn against Damascus and the legislators anyway.”
“You knew her.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yup.” Blue didn’t elaborate, and Rune didn’t press her.
It was a strange world.
A terrible world.
She glanced at Z and thought that maybe she could learn to live in such a world. If Damascus died, it’d be just another world.
A world lacking her crew. Lacking Ellie, Gunnar, Bill, Eugene…
What were they doing right then? Were they in trouble?
Yeah. Likely, they were.
But Skyll held Z.
She blew out a hard breath. “Where the fuck are we going?” She didn’t care that she sounded angry. She was angry. “Is the plan to just run through the city until the hand jumps out in front of us?”
A small knot of men, battered and filthy, limped away as quickly as they could when they spotted Rune and the others.
The people who were actually able to fight streamed in chaotic groups toward the city gates as word spread. Maybe they wanted to fight, or maybe they just wanted to escape.
They left scores of crippled, sick, and dead.
“There’s a cemetery,” Z told her.
“Where the dead stirred,” Blue said. “Naddy will be there already.”
“She shouldn’t have gone alone,” Z said.
Rune slowed her pace, just a little, hoping no one noticed. Her monster was getting its ass kicked by the rotting disease and she was unsure how much longer she could function at a high enough level to make a difference.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the disease was overpowering her.
Some redeemer she was turning out to be.
“She’ll be all right.” Blue tossed a quick look over her shoulder at Rune, then slowed a little until she was once again beside her.
Z did the same, but he frowned. “Rune?”
She gave him a careless wave. Fuck them for noticing everything. “Just taking in the sights, baby.”
He nodded, but said nothing.
“Look,” Blue said. “Up there.” She pointed to the left and slightly in front of them, where a row of sharpened poles had been planted in a destroyed, scorched field. Tiny fires continued to halfheartedly burn, and the scent of ash and smoke hung heavy in the air.
Birds feasted upon the people who’d been beaten and lashed to the poles. People who’d likely still been alive when the birds had found them.
“What it is?” Z asked, still watching Rune.
“There’s one of them alive,” Rune answered, catching sight of movement on one of the tall poles.
Blue gave a nod. “I’ll put her out of her misery.”
“Wait,” Rune said, her voice sharp. “Give her a fucking chance.”
“She’s beyond help,” Blue said.
“She’s suffering, Rune.” Z’s stare softened. “Let’s check the rest of them. We’ll put any still alive out of their misery.” He motioned for Blue to continue to the woman languishing on the pole.
“I said to fucking wait.” Rune’s voice was hard. “We’re not killing people who have a chance. If she’s beyond help, I’ll kill her myself. But we’re going to check first.”
Maybe her voice was accusing, but that was okay. She didn’t like that Z had changed so much he was willing to put down a suffering woman as though she were a rabid dog. She didn’t like it at all.
Because Z…
Z loved women.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll check.”
There was a little shame in his voice.
Rune took a deep breath, regretting it when she inhaled the horrible scent of incomprehensible suffering and tortured death, then walked with the other two toward the fidgety woman on the pole.
The poles marched in an almost straight line into the horizon, getting smaller and smaller until they disappeared from view.
Dead. So many dead.
The woman Blue had been eager to kill was not ready to go.
She began to scream when she saw the three of them, and it was not a scream of pain. It was a scream of rage.
She jerked her head forward and then back, cracking it against the pole to which she was lashed. “Get away from me,” she demanded, but her voice was hoarse and raw.
“Does that sound like a woman who’s near death?” Rune asked, then sprinted ahead of them to the victim.
The woman was too bloody and cut up for Rune to assess her damage, but her voice, though hoarse, was strong.
“I’m going to get you down,” Rune told her. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
The woman stopped her thrashing, staring down at Rune with eyes nearly swollen shut. Her face was covered with blood. “Princess.”
Word had definitely spread.
Rune shot out her claws. “Whatever.” She cut through the ropes around the girl’s legs, then shimmied up the pole to cut the rest of the ropes binding her to the wood. “Hold on to me.”
But when she was released, the best the woman could do was wilt over Rune’s shoulder like a cut flower left too long without water.
Rune jumped down and gently placed the girl upon the ground.
The tortured woman had fainted.
Rune stared down at her, frowning. “She’s familiar to me. I think I know her.”
And then she realized who the captured woman was, but not because she was able to recognize her face through all the swelling and blood.
There was a broken slingshot twisted tightly around the girl’s neck, as though her captors had contemptuously decorated her with the remains of a weapon so lethal in her hands.
It was the slingshot girl.
Roma.
Chapter Seven
Roma had been using her slingshot—and only her slingshot—to put down enemies when Rune had jumped into her first battle in Skyll. The girl was good with it. Incredibly good.
Blue nudged the injured girl with the toe of her boot. “Roma Narez. Too bad.”
“She’s something of a legend here.” Z knelt down beside the tortured girl and brushed her hair out of her face. “We’ll take care of you, sweetheart.”
Rune blinked back tears. There was the Z she knew. “Fucking legislators.”
“They do enjoy their work,” Blue said. She stared off into the distance, impatience in every line of her body. “We should go.”
“We’re not leaving her here,” Rune said.
“Can you carry her?” Blue asked. She held up a hand. “I’m not being a smartass, but that’s the only way we can take her with us.”
Z stood and glanced back the way they’d come. “Do you hear them?”
Rune nodded. “They’re coming in after us.”
Blue paled. “The legislators?” she asked. Something about the look she shot Z made Rune stiffen. “Or the crawlers?”
“What are crawlers?” Rune’s stomach started to cramp with an uneasiness she couldn’t press away. Crawlers…
She shuddered and stumbled back as a half-chewed memory dropped into her mind.
Crawlers…
Z took her hand. “Steady, sweet thing.”
Roma woke up. “Where…what’s going on?”
“She saved you,” Blue said. “Can you walk? We’re in a hurry.”
Roma’s chocolate eyes seemed to float in the sea of blood on her face. “Princess?”
Rune shuddered again as fear awakened her hunger. It was an automatic response to terror—if she fed, she could fight.
She struggled against the urge to drop to her knees and lick the blood off Roma’s ravaged face.
“What—” She cleared her throat and tried again. “What the fuck are crawlers?”
The stinking city closed around her and the sounds of stomping feet and yelling warriors drew closer.
Without thinking about it, she leaned over, plucked Roma off the ground, and slung the injured girl over her shoulder.
And Blue answered her. “The crawlers are indescribable horrors. They belong to no one and are…unending.” She shrugged, glanced once at Z, then started walking a fast pace away from the field of poles. “Some types are worse than others. Some of them you can almost have a chance at defeating. But the others...let’s hope you never have to meet them.”
Rune trotted after Blue, Z at her side.
“Yeah,” she muttered. “Let’s hope.”
“Drink from me,” Roma offered, her voice as broken as her body. “I would be honored.”
It was tempting. Not only would the blood give her waning strength a much needed boost, but it could also go a long way toward healing Roma. And they could use her in the battles to come.
“Shit,” Rune said. Then, “As soon as we reach the cemetery. There’s no time right now.”
As they jogged, Z reached over every once in a while to touch the small of her back. “Rune,” he said, finally. “Give her to me.”
She ground her teeth. “I can carry a puny girl, baby. Don’t worry about me.”
“I missed that.” He threw a quick look back over his shoulder.
“You missed what?”
“Baby. I missed you calling me baby.” He grinned when she glanced at him. “It made me feel like I was special to you. Never mattered that you call everybody baby.”
For some reason, his words made her heart lighter. She returned his smile. “It’s good you don’t call everybody sweet thing. I’d be seriously pissed.”
“I hate to ruin this moment,” Blue said, “but—”
“I can hear them,” Rune told her. “The legislators are at our backs.”
“Dozens of them,” Z admitted. “Which means they already wiped out the ones who went to battle them.”
“Or the people ran,” Blue said. “I’m sure they ran. Soon as they saw they weren’t going to have a chance.” She sounded, for one heartbreaking second, like a hopeful child.
Probably she’d known a lot of the people who’d poured from the city to fight the witch’s evil slaves. Maybe she’d even loved some of them.
“They’re dead,” Roma said. “Lucky bastards are all dead.”
Rune agreed, but silently.
“How much farther to the graveyard?” she asked.
“A couple of miles,” Z said. “Can you make it?”
“We’ll have to split up and hope for the best,” Blue said. “There is a group of them right behind us.”
With their long, strong legs eating up the ground, the legislators were going to catch them. They just had to find them. And they would—Rune and her little crew had no time to cover their tracks.
Roma groaned. “Let me down, princess. You must survive.”
“Dammit,” Rune said. “Z. You and Blue find a place to hide until I feed. Then we’ll handle the fucking legislators.”
“Rune—”
“Do it, Z. Go.” She swerved away and ran with all the speed she still possessed—and even with black rot eating at her insides she was faster than any of the legislators—until she had put enough distance between them to give her time to feed.
She had to hurry. If they caught Z and Blue…
But they wouldn’t. She wouldn’t let them.
She dumped Roma unceremoniously onto the hard, hot ground and dropped her fangs. “Ready?”
Roma’s eyes widened. “Yes.”
Rune struck like a maddened snake, ignoring Roma’s gasp as she speared the abused girl’s torn throat.
Then there was only the blood.
God, the blood.
Rune drank and drank, and then drank some more. The blood was hot and full of power, full of strength and hope and life. She wallowed in the spurting, delicious liquid and moaned as it gushed down her throat and coated her insides.
Finally, she heeded the tiny, insistent voice in the back of her mind warning her that she was going too far. She was killing the girl she’d saved.
She took her mouth from Roma’s flesh and sat back on her heels, replete. High.
Even beneath the blood covering Roma’s face her paleness shone like a vivid light in a night sky.
“Shit,” Rune said. She grabbed Roma’s shoulders and jerked her upright, then shook her.
Roma was limp.
“Shit,” she cried, again. In the distance she heard the sounds of battle.
The legislators had found Z and Blue.
Once again Rune dropped her fangs. She bit into her wrist and held it to Roma’s mouth. “Drink, you little bitch. Drink.”
She smeared the blood on the cold, parted lips, pushing hard until the blood flowed into the girl’s mouth.
“Drink,” she demanded.
And Roma began to drink. She swallowed, choked, then sucked at Rune’s wrist like a leech.
There wasn’t enough time to let her drink her fill. Rune took her wrist away after a few seconds, catching Roma when she started to topple over.
“That’s all I can do for now,” she told the girl. “Stay here. We’ll be back for you.”
And she ran like there was not even a hint of sickness within her.
She ran for Z.
She wasn’t losing him again.
Not to the fucking witch.
She found them in seconds—Blue and Z stood back to back, battling a dozen hideous legislators.
She dove into the skirmish and fought like the monster she was, but even then she could feel the weakness slowly returning and her strength running out of her like sand through a funnel.
Her monster would be enough to defeat the group of Legislators, and that’s all she needed at that moment.
As she killed, she drank. Constant streams of blood kept refilling her power meter until at last, she stood with Z and Blue over their dead enemies.
Bloodied and triumphant, they shivered in the hot sun and silently catalogued their injuries until a distant voice brought them out of their battle haze.
“It’s Roma,” Blue said, her eyebrows high. “She’s alive.”
Rune turned to watch as Roma trotted toward them. She was still bloody, still slow with injury, but she was better, and she was alive.
Rune smiled and took Z’s hand. “We won.”
“Yes,” he said, quietly. “For now.”
“One fight at a time,” she replied.
“Legislators. More of them are coming.” Blue hesitated and glanced at Rune. “And they’ve brought friends.”
“Let’s go,” Z said, and with Roma beside them, they continued on toward the cemetery.
There was a hand to find and a dead army to raise.
And if they didn’t manag
e to complete either of those tasks, they would have to face worse things than the legislators.
“They’ve brought friends.”
Rune didn’t have to ask Blue what she meant.
She knew.
The crawlers were coming.
Chapter Eight
The farther they went into the city, the thicker the crowds became until eventually, they had to shove their way through knots of people who were sick, injured, or unresponsive.
The stench was nearly unbearable—she wasn’t accustomed to such a thick, ripe smell concentrated in one place, and her sensitive nose picked up every single odor.
Her throat thickened with the need to vomit. She didn’t dare to so much as gag. If she gagged, she’d throw up, and then she’d lose some of Roma’s blood.
“On the plus side,” Blue said, “the enemy will have trouble scenting us in this mess.”
Yeah. There was that.
Fucking rotting disease. If she hadn’t been sick, the legislators wouldn’t have had a chance.
Maybe they still didn’t, but the crawlers…
The crawlers would.
The small crew of four was halted three times by desperate people. Not people who wanted to hurt them, but people who needed help.
“Please,” they cried. “Save us.”
“Working on it,” Rune answered, and went on.
It was all she could do.
Screams and thumps and cries of pain sounded from all different directions, but Rune couldn’t save all the people the legislators were destroying.
Later. Later, she would kill the legislators.
“Almost there,” Blue panted, at last. “A couple more minutes.”
And finally, they reached the gates of the cemetery and rushed inside.
“My God,” Rune whispered. “This is Wormwood.”
“Yes,” Z replied. His voice was soft. “Wormwood is everywhere.”
It made sense.
Wormwood was full of magic. It was the thread that connected them all.
“Wormwood,” she breathed. It felt like home.
Gunnar?
Her silent call went unanswered, though she wouldn’t have been surprised had the ghoul stepped out into her path.
If she could just round a tree and see her crew standing there, smiling, waiting…
“Fuck,” she murmured.