by Laken Cane
His people gasped and began to murmur in hushed tones, as though they’d been waiting for him to say the words before they could actually grasp what they were witnessing.
Rune knelt beside the laboring dog and despite the warning Nadaline had given her, placed her hand on Sorrow’s face.
“Careful,” the shimmer lord exclaimed. “She’ll relieve you of your fingers…”
But when Sorrow simply lay there and let Rune caress her, he knelt beside Rune, his face full of wonder. “As long as I have known her, she has never allowed a touch.”
“She’s not sick,” Rune told him. “She’s in labor.”
His smile was quizzical. “Pardon me?”
“She’s having puppies.”
He dropped his sharp stare to the dog. “Impossible.” His voice was a whisper but despite his denial, the belief was in his eyes.
Again, the crowd gasped, the sound moving through them like wind through a cornfield.
“The second miracle,” one of them murmured.
“What was the first miracle?” Rune asked.
“Why, your arrival, of course,” the shimmer lord said.
She looked at him. “You’re the Flesh Shimmer lord?”
“I am. My name is Brasque Dray.”
“I need the cure to the rotting disease.”
“You are cured. My doctor healed you.”
She raised an eyebrow at his referring to the old sorceress as a doctor. “I realize that. But I need to take it back to my people.”
He studied her, his gaze dark. “You don’t mean to leave, surely. If you leave, you will not return.”
“It doesn’t matter if I come back or not.” She ground her teeth. “I still need the antidote for my world. I was told your hand could help me.”
Sorrow whined and the sound of her pain twisted Rune’s heart. “We’ll talk about this later,” she told Brasque. “Right now, you need to call your doctors to help Sorrow.”
He drew back. “Indeed not.”
“Why not? She’s in pain.” It didn’t matter to her that he was a shimmer lord. It only mattered that Sorrow was in pain and he wasn’t doing a damn thing to help her.
“No one will touch her,” he said, his voice almost sympathetic. “She won’t allow it.”
Rune turned up her lip. “Useless.”
He merely watched her.
“Get your hand here,” she ordered. “I’ll want to talk to him when this is over.”
Sorrow screamed.
“Shit,” Rune said, forgetting about the lord, the hand, and the antidote.
Sorrow wasn’t having an easy birth, and Rune wasn’t exactly equipped to perform doggy cesarean sections, should Sorrow need one.
“It’s not natural,” Brasque Dray said, standing and moving away. “Sorrow should not be…pregnant.”
As though pregnancy itself were abhorrent.
Rune bent close to Sorrow’s face, close enough to feel the dog’s hot breath on her skin. “I don’t know how to help you, love.”
But Sorrow didn’t need her help, only her company.
Seconds later, she expelled a squirming, fat puppy so large Rune had no doubt that eventually he’d be as big as his mother. Or bigger.
And as Rune sat back on her heels, her hand to her chest, Sorrow jumped up. She licked Rune once on the cheek, then began licking and tending the newborn quickly and, it seemed to Rune, impatiently.
And when she was finished, she turned, her nails clicking on the floor, and sprinted away. Before Rune could understand what the dog was planning, Sorrow was gone.
“He’s yours now,” Brasque said.
“That’s wrong in so many ways, and I don’t have time to explain any of them. Bring me your hand, shimmer lord. Now.”
She noticed the way his people shrank back against the walls, their faces paling, as she gave orders to one of the most powerful leaders of Skyll.
But she wasn’t afraid of him. He didn’t give off an unkind or cruel vibe. And even if he had meant her harm…
She shot out her claws, her long, silver, deadly claws, and dropped her fangs.
“God,” she groaned, “that feels good.”
He smiled.
It was then it really sunk in.
She wasn’t rotting. She wasn’t sick.
And her monster was back.
Lex would be having a worse time than Rune had.
If she was still alive.
She pulled in her claws. “I have to hurry.”
He beckoned to a woman standing at the dais, her hands behind her back. She was dressed in a suit as well. “Request that he join us in the red room.”
“Another thing,” Rune said, as Brasque took her arm and led her from the hall. “I have a small group of people following me here. They should have already arrived.”
He frowned. “My dear. Did they not inform you that the Flesh Shimmer is protected from outsiders? I must keep Damascus and her army from my lands. No one can get in without my doctors dropping our walls.”
She pulled away from him but continued walking at his side. “Obviously there’s a weak spot in your defense. I got in. And the bird who flew me here got in.”
“Yes,” he said, to her surprise. “He’s one of mine. I don’t ask how my doctors do it, but certain people are tagged as exceptions to the lock out. And certainly you can get in. You’re the fate of Skyll.”
“My friends?”
“I will notify the doctors to watch for them and to allow them inside.”
“Thanks.”
“Come,” he said, and urged her into the red room. “I’ll have food and drink brought for you while we wait. Unless you’d rather I summon someone from whom you might feed?”
“Coffee. Just coffee.”
But then, the hand entered the room.
“Ah,” Brasque said. “Rune, allow me to introduce you to my incomparable hand.”
Rune turned to find the boy standing just inside the wide doorway, the suited woman at his back.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
The hand of the Flesh Shimmer was Matthew Matheson.
The berserker’s son.
Chapter Eighteen
Matthew wasn’t Strad’s son by blood, but the berserker had raised him. He had loved him. He was the boy’s dad.
“We meet again,” Matthew said, smiling.
He hadn’t grown physically, at least not much, but his face was older and the look in his eyes was ancient.
“Matthew,” she said. “I…are you okay?”
He smiled. “I am as I should be, Princess. Thank you.”
She stared for another moment, almost unable to believe he was standing there talking to her. That he was the Flesh hand. Despite the fact that she had seen Blood and Fire take his…spirit, or whatever it was, away from the hospital. “Your mother?”
His lip trembled, and for a moment he almost looked like a child again. “My mother did not come to Skyll.”
And that was just too bad. Matthew’s death had killed her.
She stepped closer to him, but didn’t touch him. “Matthew, I need to know where I can find the antidote to the rotting sickness. Can you help me?”
He blinked, glanced at Brasque, then frowned. “Are you not cured?”
“I am. Your lord’s sorcerers healed me.”
He tilted his head, then gave her look made up of equal parts disdain and disapproval. “Princess,” he scolded.
She frowned. “It feels like you’re telling me the rotting sickness was created here, in the Flesh Shimmer.” She looked at Brasque. “By your shimmer lord. And if that’s true, I’m going to be very, very angry.”
He spread his hands. “We have our reasons for everything we do. You are but part of a plan which—”
“Matthew,” Brasque said, interrupting the boy. “She is the plan.”
He inclined his head, the child who was not a child. “Perhaps. But she would like to possess all the pieces to her particular puzzle.” H
e looked at her. “Correct?”
“Of course,” she said. God, no. “But more than anything, I want the cure to the rotting disease. My people are dying. Give me the fucking cure. No more delays.”
He laughed, and the sound was like sunshine appearing suddenly on a dark, cold winter day. “There will be many delays, and there is nothing any of us can do about that.”
She pressed her fingers into her temples. “Where is it? Where is the antidote?”
“It’s inside you. You have only to return to your world and the antidote will spread through the very air.” He waved his small hand. “Just as you will spread it here. Your Others will be cured.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “Those who remain.”
Shit. She closed her eyes, then opened them to look at Brasque. She was pretty sure he could read the hatred in her stare. “You murdered so many people. And if Lex dies because of you—”
His face became expressionless. “Alexis will not die.”
She shuddered. “You know her? She’s still alive? How do you know?”
“She…” But he pressed his lips together and would say no more about Lex. “You only need to know that I did what I had to do for the sake of the worlds, Princess. All of them. Sacrifices had to be made.”
“You created a disease to force me here,” she said. “You’re the fucking devil.”
“Damascus wants to destroy everything we know and rule unchallenged forever.” He pressed his lips together and held up his hand. “I’m not interested in trying to convince you, and I’m not interested in arguing about it further.”
She put her fists on her hips, though every part of her wanted nothing more than to slam him into a wall. “You got what you wanted. I’m here. Now I’m going to go kick the witch’s ass and get back to my world where I belong.”
But a vivid image of Z appeared so suddenly and sharply in her mind that she gasped.
I can’t go back. I don’t want to go back.
He frowned. “Are you well?”
“Let down your walls, Dray. Order your army to follow me to Magic Shimmer. I’m not taking her on alone. Now you’re going to have to sacrifice some of your people.”
A glint of anger appeared in his dark eyes. “You know nothing of my sacrifices, Princess. You are the one created to destroy the witch, and so you shall—but I’m already tired of your insolence. Of course my people will help you do as fate bids you.”
She said nothing, but neither did she look away from him.
He nodded at Matthew. “You can go.”
“Wait,” Rune said, as Matthew turned to leave the room. “You know things.”
He stared at her for a long, long moment. Finally, he smiled. “My father loves you, Rune Alexander. Not your blood.”
Her legs turned to water. She pushed her fist into her abdomen hard enough to hurt, hard enough to force back the tears she so badly wanted to release.
Berserker.
And then little Matthew, the boy who saw things, turned and left the room with the woman in the suit.
“Come,” Brasque said. “My soldiers await the order. You have only to relax until your friends arrive.” Something glowed red in the dark coals of his eyes.
For a short moment, she thought he might burn her with his stare. “If they’re not here in the next hour, I’m going out to look for them.”
“It’s not safe for you, Princess. I understand the crawlers have your scent.”
She frowned. “How did you hear that?”
“I’m kept informed.”
As she walked with him from the room, a man met them carrying a lidded container. “Coffee?” she asked, and everything else dimmed in importance.
He smiled and handed her the container. “Very rich and very hot.”
She drank half the coffee before she could make herself stop. It seemed to run through her veins, fixing her in a way even Brasque Dray’s doctors could not. She twisted the lid back on as she strode through the castle.
“Now I feel better,” she said. “Where is my army?”
He guided her through the immense castle, ignoring people who stopped to stare, and, at times, point.
“I’ll show you. They are in holding, waiting for their day.”
“And training, I hope.”
“This army does not need to train, child.”
“Everyone needs to train.”
He nodded for the guards to push open the heavy double doors leading outside the castle. They walked in silence across beautifully well-kept grounds, full of statues and gardens and fountains.
People walked, ran, and rode horses over wide paths, and all of them paused to watch Rune and the shimmer lord walking side by side across the courtyard.
Most of them bowed their heads as the shimmer lord passed by, a few of them actually falling to their knees.
He ignored them all.
“It’s beautiful here,” Rune murmured, but the words were barely formed before she saw something distinctly unbeautiful.
“What’s in that building?” She pointed at a squat brick building unattached to the castle. Guards stood silently at the front, on either side of a recessed door.
A flagstone path led to it, and even the path was dismal. No attempts had been made to beautify that area and it stuck out in its grimness.
She knew before the shimmer lord answered her that it was a bad place.
Something atrocious and sad. Just really fucking sad.
“My prison house is on the bottom level,” he said, “and the asylum is on the top level.”
She swallowed. “It’s bleak.”
“I don’t want to make such a place inviting, Princess. My people follow the rules and laws of this shimmer, for they know any crime will not be tolerated.” He nodded toward the grim building. “They don’t want to live out their lives inside a dim.”
She pressed her palm to her chest. “Dim?”
He shrugged. “Skyll’s prisons and asylums are collectively known as dims.”
She shuddered as a sudden wave of claustrophobia covered her. “Have my people arrived yet? I need to get out of here.” But her voice was weak and she couldn’t tear her stare away from the dim.
Brasque turned to the guards at their backs. “Has there been any sign of them?”
“No. A runner will announce their arrival.”
The shimmer lord nodded, then looked at Rune apologetically. “I have sent men after them. I’m sure they’ll show themselves soon.”
She glanced back at the guards, and noticed something she hadn’t seen earlier.
They had guns.
Guns.
A young woman, dressed in a green leotard and a knee-high pair of boots, jogged toward them.
“Here is a runner now,” Brasque said. “Perhaps she has news of your people.”
But the woman whispered something to him, and he turned to Rune with a disappointed look on his face. “I’m sorry, my dear. There is business I must attend to. I will leave you in the hands of one of my deputies. She will be happy to entertain you until I am free of my duties.”
Before she could agree or disagree, he lifted his hand and immediately, a woman Rune hadn’t noticed slid from the shadows of the buildings to join them.
“This is Joy,” Brasque said. “Escort her to holding to view the army.” He smiled at Rune, but a line of worry showed between his eyebrows. “I will visit with you this evening. Anything you want, you have only to ask.” He bowed, turned, and then walked swiftly away.
Rune frowned as she watched him walk away, his guards at his back. “You’ll notify me when my friends arrive,” she called.
“Of course, of course.” And then he was gone.
Joy was only slightly taller than Rune, with cropped brown hair, brown eyes, brown clothes. Her face was expressionless. “Princess.”
Rune unscrewed the lid of her container and took a drink of the surprisingly hot coffee. “Joy. Let’s go see my army.�
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Joy threw a quick look over her shoulder. “Of course. Anything you wish.”
But she took Rune’s arm and with casual nonchalance, led her a little closer to the dim.
Rune looked at her. “Something in there I need to see?”
Joy shrugged. “Whatever you command, I must obey.”
Rune sighed and took another step closer to the ugly building. “I want to go inside.”
Joy averted her eyes. “You would like a tour of the dim.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I would.” No. Hell no.
But no matter what world she was in, she was Rune Alexander, and she could not walk away from the silent plea in Joy’s face.
Dread made her drag her feet, but responsibility pushed her onward.
She had to make sure no innocents were suffering. Monster or not, that’s who she was. She didn’t trust the shimmer lord to be fair.
She didn’t trust much of anyone.
And she had a bad, bad feeling.
The guards stood straighter when Rune and Joy approached the door to the dim, then moved together to block the door. “No one may enter without the lord’s permission,” one of them said.
Joy curled her lip. “I am the lord’s permission, idiot. And this is the princess. Move your worthless carcass out of her way before I have you arrested.”
He stared at her for a long, tense moment, and Rune was sure he was going to refuse her. Almost wished he would.
But he didn’t.
He tightened his lips, then finally, he nodded. “As you order.”
She started to follow Joy into the building but he stopped her.
“Are you really the princess?”
All the guards stilled, listening for her answer.
She smiled at them. “Yeah. I guess I really am.”
The one who’d asked the question leaned toward her. “Then be careful, Princess.”
“Shut up,” Joy told him, but her voice was more a caution than an angry command. Then, she lowered her voice. “Give me warning if…if the need arises.”
He nodded, then went back to his post beside the door.
And maybe, just maybe, Brasque Dray wasn’t exactly the good guy.