Magic and Bones

by Laken Cane

  “No,” she said. “He will not.”

  The day was bright and quiet, calm even for Killing Land, which was always chaotic in one way or another. They did a quick search of the area, searching for bloodstains, clothing, tracks—any sign that Owen had been there. Any sign that he’d escaped the path, despite Will, and had maybe holed up somewhere to heal.

  There was nothing. No signs.

  Just that boot in the road.

  “Raze,” she said, at last. “The rope.”

  He hesitated. “You have Kader. I’ll go in. If he’s there—”

  “No. I can take the damage. You can’t. You’ll be here to pull us out.” Raze was human. She was not going to put him inside the portal.

  The path had gotten worse. Meaner. More vicious. It needed to die.

  After she got Owen out.

  Raze argued, but she ignored him until finally, he tied the rope around her waist. He pulled her into his arms, holding her a little too tightly, and she could hear his heart hammering against her ear.

  He was afraid he’d lose her to the portal. “It’s stronger than I am,” he said, reluctantly. “If anything happens to you, Rune, if we lose you because the path is too strong…that’s not something any of us will get over. You know that.”

  She pulled back and smiled up at him. “You’ve met my monster. I will kick the fuck out of that path.”

  But there was a look in his eyes. “I can’t,” he said, finally. “I can’t let you go. If that path grabs hold of you, I might not be strong enough to pull you back out. I can’t do this alone.”

  “I am strong enough,” the berserker said. “And you are not alone.”

  Rune whirled around at his voice, then launched herself into his arms. “Strad,” she whispered. “Fuck you.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, so hard she might have hurt him, but he only rubbed his lips against her throat and held her closer.

  He would hold her forever.

  “I’m fucked up,” he told her, “but I’m not that fucked up.”

  She closed her eyes for a few seconds, inhaling his scent, concentrating on his warmth, swimming in his love. “You know I—”

  “Yes,” he interrupted, his voice gentle, firm. “I do.”

  She felt his rage, the rage that would always swirl around him, and she felt his darkness. His twistedness.

  But beneath it all, he was still her berserker. He was still Strad Matheson. He was still Shiv Crew.

  That would never change, no matter what happened to him.

  “Go get Owen,” he told her, and before she could say another word, he grabbed the trailing end of the rope, and he tossed her into the portal.

  He knew she was stronger than the path. He knew they both were.

  And he knew she would always come back to him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  For a second, she couldn’t think.

  She went numb and dark, and that was a blessing, really, because it gave her a split second to adjust to her body smashing against the horror that waited inside that doorway to hell.

  She’d been on the path twice—but the path she’d walked before, though harsh and unkind, was not the path she now faced. It was not the same.

  She flashed to the memory of punching the assassin and sending him reeling through the portal. He’d never said a word to her about what he’d found inside. What he’d seen.

  And the berserker, lost on that path, deformed on that path, twisted on that path, could not tell her what it’d been like.

  He no longer needed to. She wasn’t walking it, and she was damn thankful for that, but she was on it. And that was too much.

  When she left it, when she was yanked back out by the two huge men who waited for her, she would not explain it either.

  Because there were no words.

  It was simply…

  Horror.

  She had the assurance that she would be pulled off the path.

  Strad, Will, and Owen had none of that.

  Her mind would have broken.

  No wonder the berserker was afraid of losing her.

  She fixed his face in her mind and kept it there, and it was the one thing that made her feel almost okay. He was hers when there was nothing else. If she lost him…

  She could not lose him.

  “Fuck me,” she cried.

  The path changed people. It was bad, and it changed people. It was changing her, hurting her, and she had to get the fuck off it.

  The portal sucked at her, trying to pull her deeper into its gaping black maw. Hard, hot wind swirled around her, full of nightmares and screams and blood and the deepest despair she’d ever even imagined, and the grasping path slid around her ankles, like quicksand, like death.

  She kept moving because if she stood still, it would get a grip she would not be able to break.

  She screamed, once.

  Owen be damned. She had to save herself.

  And she might have yanked on the rope, might have silently begged Strad to pull her out, if she hadn’t caught sight of Owen at that exact second.

  She didn’t know how she got the strength to care.

  But she did care.

  He’d fallen.

  Half covered by the grasping, sucking wet wretchedness of the path, he lay still and silent as he sank with torturous slowness into the ground. The path was not only taking him, it was absorbing him. Taking, maybe, the best parts of him. Or the worst.

  “Owen,” she screamed, and began to push against the horrible wind as she fought her way to his side. She was strong. So very strong.

  But the portal was like a tornado, and there was nothing for her to hit or hold. She was small in the cold, vast darkness. Slimy evil slid into her brain, invisible teeth ripped her skin, and screams, terrible screams, tore open her heart. She knew those screams, she thought. She’d heard them before.

  But the worst of it couldn’t be described. She could barely grasp it. She could only hope to escape before it did something to her that she could not survive.

  “Owen,” she screamed, again.

  She couldn’t reach him. The rope wasn’t nearly long enough.

  He sank a little lower, and bubbles burst around him in the black, reeking path, and even as she watched, things came out of the shadows and slinked toward him.

  They would devour him. They would strip the meat from his bones and he would live on, part of the path, forever dying, never dead.

  Her mind began to crack.

  She thought she saw Z there in the bubbling quagmire, but he disappeared and she had to believe it was only a hallucination.

  Then Owen began to scream.

  Things were on him, crawling on him, and the path held him, and he screamed.

  She might have flung herself back through the portal then. She wanted to. She needed out of the muck. But she saw something that snapped her from terrified woman to raging monster.

  Owen opened his eyes, and he saw her.

  He didn’t think she was real, but he saw her.

  And she was going to save him.

  She broke the rope and tossed it to the ground, and then, she burst into her shift. She became her crow.

  The world inside the portal seemed to expand as she shifted, growing larger as she grew larger. She screamed her rage into its dark sky, beat its reeking air with her powerful wings, and sliced its muddy, absorbent flesh with her talons.

  The path resisted. It fought her.

  It threw up obstructions and opened great chasms at her feet. It sent monsters, both phantom and real, to attack her as she advanced.

  The entire time, she battled the indescribable soul-sucking, mind-twisting, heartbreaking horror.

  But the crow couldn’t be twisted.

  And she was taking Owen home.

  He was hers.

  She swooped down and grabbed him. She pulled, and the path pulled, and probably Owen felt like they would pull him apart before one of them released him.

  It wouldn’t be Rune
.

  She heard something rip, and finally, Owen was secure in her huge talons, and she was flying back to where she’d dropped the rope. That way lay the road home.

  She couldn’t find the way out by herself, though, no matter that she found the rope. So she took the end of it in her mouth, then gave it a hard tug.

  I got him. Bring us home.

  The world inside the portal shrank around her and seemed to inhale. It wanted to keep her there. Perhaps the path, the living, breathing, horrifying path, understood that Rune could make it even stronger.

  But she shot through the exit, the cowboy in her grip, and in the second after she left it, she did exactly what her daughter would have done.

  Did it, because she could. Kader had shown her how.

  She shifted back to her human form, turned in midair, and killed the path, once and for all.

  “Boom, motherfucker,” she screamed.

  And that horrifying world imploded. The path shattered. The portal closed.

  Forever.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Strad wrapped his jacket around her cold body as they crouched on the ground beside the cowboy. Owen’s eyes were open, but they were not calm.

  “We’ve got you, Cowboy,” she told him. “You’re going to be okay.”

  But he couldn’t believe her. Not yet. The only reality inside his head was the horror of the path. It was too disturbing and too consuming to disappear from his mind the way the path had disappeared from their world.

  That was going to take some time.

  He had believed he’d escaped it once, only to be beaten and pushed back in by the assassin. No matter that Rune had gone in after him, had brought him out, the biggest part of him would believe that it wasn’t real. That he wasn’t safe.

  That they were going to hit him, hurt him, and shove him back into the nightmare world of the portal.

  For a second, she hated Will Blackthorn with an intensity so fierce she might have killed him had he appeared in front of her. But she knew it would fade. Will did what he thought he needed to do for her and for the berserker.

  Owen made a sound halfway between a sob and a moan, his body tight, trembling so violently Rune was afraid his heart would explode.

  She stretched out on top of him, murmuring in his ear, letting him feel her warmth. “Owen,” she told him. “You’re safe. You’re safe now. It’s gone. I’ve got you.”

  It didn’t sink in. Or maybe he just didn’t believe her.

  The berserker took over, because he understood. He’d been there. His empathy was real and undeniable. He might have been twisted, but he would not be twisted with those he loved.

  He dragged both Rune and Owen into his arms, sat with his back against a tree, and looked at Raze. “Bring the truck as close as you can get it. Crank up the heat, put on some music. It’ll calm him. We need to get him home.”

  Raze nodded and jogged away. “I’ll bring his boot,” he called over his shoulder, and Rune couldn’t help but smile.

  Raze cared about the cowboy too.

  Owen stared into her eyes as though they were his lifeline. She tightened her grip on him, and the berserker tightened his grip on them both.

  “Is this real?” he asked, once. His voice was raw and rough and so full of pain that Rune flinched.

  “Look at me,” she told him. “Feel me. You know it’s real. We’ve got you.” She pressed her lips to his forehead, then continued. “I killed the path, Owen. It’s gone.”

  “It’s gone,” he whispered. Then, “I dreamed you were a crow.”

  She smiled. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “But I died,” he said. “I died a thousand times.”

  She lowered her mouth to his ear. “Not even death could take you away from me.”

  And maybe the wild fear in his eyes lessened just a little, but his body continued to shudder.

  Strad stood, lifting them with him as they heard the approaching rumble of a car engine. He strode toward the sound, carrying them both because Rune could not have separated herself from Owen without sending him over the edge. He clung to her with a punishing grip, a desperate grip, and she would not make him let go.

  The interior of the truck was warming up, and music, soft and constant, seemed to affect Owen almost immediately.

  There’d been no music on the path. There’d been no music—not like that—in Skyll. He would associate it only with their world. With Shiv Crew, and with Rune.

  It would, as Strad had said, calm him.

  And maybe no one had touched him for a very long time. Maybe no one had held him, cared about him. That would help, as well.

  Strad deposited them on the seat and then jogged around to the driver’s side to climb in under the steering wheel.

  “She did it,” Owen murmured. “She sent me home.”

  Raze stood in the open doorway of the truck, Owen’s battered boot in his hand. “Got your boot,” he said, gruffly, then slid it onto Owen’s foot.

  And finally, Owen began to believe.

  He was off the unkind path, and he wasn’t going back.

  She looked him over, flinching at the terrible state of his body. He was cut, bruised, swollen, and broken, but he would heal. He would live.

  His dirty hair was dull and lifeless, but it hung with the same long straightness she remembered, and though his eyes remained full of the horror of his journey, not even the echoes of the path could hide his strength. His character.

  Strad drove them out of there, Raze following close behind, and as she kept her arms around Owen, she kept her stare on Strad.

  “Something about you is different,” she said quietly.

  He glanced at her, and there was a fierce truth in his voice when he spoke. “I came back with bad things inside me. You should know that.”

  She nodded. “I do.”

  “If I’d…” He glanced at Owen, then put his attention back on the road and continued. “If I’d made the wrong choice, the path would have won. And I wouldn’t have been entirely me. I beat that shit, because of you and because of my little girl.”

  “No,” she said. “Not entirely. You beat it because you’re a good man. You’ve always been. And no matter what happens, you’re always going to be the fucking hero. And mine,” she added, as if he might not know that.

  He grinned.

  And when she glanced at Owen, he was smiling, too. Just barely, but it was there.

  The berserker had made a conscious choice to do the right thing. To choose good over evil. To be the hero.

  The assassin…

  He hadn’t.

  But Will’s twisted badness was tempered by his pure goodness, as it had always been. The path hadn’t changed the assassin as it had the berserker. He’d always been exactly who he was when he’d saved Strad from the path and when he’d shoved Owen back in. He hadn’t changed.

  She blew out a soft breath, accepting Will for who he was. Still, they were going to have a talk.

  When he returned to normal, Owen would likely have his own talk with the assassin. She couldn’t blame him for that.

  “Tell me everything,” Owen said. His voice was still rough, but stronger. “I need to hear you.”

  The berserker lowered the volume of the music. “Rune and I have a baby,” he said, then added, “Rune, Z, and I have a baby.”

  Rune smiled. “Her name is Kader, and she’s…everything.” She swallowed her dread. “When you left, was Z…”

  He waited until she looked at him. “He’s not Z,” he said. “Not your Z. Your Z will live on in your daughter. But Z is dead.”

  “I know,” she whispered. She slid her fingers to her chest and pressed lightly against the old stake scars that lay over her heart.

  Z was there.

  I’ll always be here, sweet thing.

  She took a deep breath. “The berserker and I are getting married.”

  Strad put his arm on the back of the seat and squeezed her shoulder. He didn’t
look at her, but she could feel his joy. It was brighter than his rage.

  Owen shook his head, content. “A mother and a wife. That’s fucked up, Rune.” Then his voice softened as he repeated her name, allowing it to sink in, “Rune…”

  She laughed and took his hand. “Yeah, it kinda is.”

  “I had to come back.” He glanced at Strad. “You know why.”

  Strad only nodded.

  “Tell me,” Owen said. “Tell me everything.”

  “All right,” Rune agreed. “So Ellie became a vampire…”

  And all the way home, she and the berserker told the cowboy everything that had happened, and they talked until they could see in his eyes that he finally believed.

  He was home.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Owen wanted to be surrounded by people. He couldn’t bear being stuck in a back bedroom alone, so she made up the couch for him. He could recuperate while watching the nearly constant stream of traffic that marched through Rune’s house, and even though the crew ended up in the kitchen more often than not, she knew he would hear them there and would join them if he wished.

  Bill asked her to bring Owen there to recover, but Owen refused, so Bill brought a doctor to him. He also agreed to post two Annex guards with Owen, and Rune called Kader’s old nurse, Aly, who was happy to sit with him during the day. During the night, when Kader was up, she’d bring in a couple of Others for Owen duty.

  The twins had been called to Wormwood to run out some foolish teenagers who had video cameras and a YouTube channel.

  When he’d stepped outside the graveyard to call her, Levi had said Gunnar was nervous.

  “We’ll hang out here to keep an eye on things,” he’d told her. “I saw Gavin flying over Wormwood ten minutes ago. He’s watching for them as well. I’ll call you if they come through.”

  Rune left Bill and Owen talking quietly. As she walked into the kitchen, her mind on a cup of coffee, Roma shoved open the door and stomped into the room.

  Rune frowned. “Everything go okay with Flynn?”

  “It was fine, Princess,” Roma said, her voice as expressionless as her face. “It was just fine.” And for a moment she was the Roma of Skyll, not the funny, fierce girl they’d all come to know and love.