Magic and Bones

by Laken Cane

  She’d never really been affected by heights before. “Must be getting old,” she muttered.

  But then there was no more time to wait.

  “Rune,” Strad yelled.

  She looked up at the warning in his voice, and spotted a huge, dark gargoyle running toward them—he wasn’t flying, because the bones had brought him to the ground with her breath, but he was fast. Very fast.

  She wasn’t surprised to see him—she’d figured Gavin would notice her absence and rush to protect his key. She didn’t see Gage, but for Gavin to leave him, he was probably dead. Or captured.

  And Gavin was desperate.

  He’d lost his ability to fly, but he could climb, and much better than she could. He’d reach her in seconds.

  “Shit,” she muttered, then without another hesitation, she stood up, kept her stare on the key, and ran. Before she reached the skinny end and just as the gargoyle roared, distracting her with his awful, agonizing voice, she jumped and came down hard on the limb. She straddled it like a broomstick, grabbing it with both hands as both she and the broken limb began to plummet to the ground.

  On the way down she was beaten half to death by what felt like every single limb the tree possessed, but she never eased her hold on the prize.

  She didn’t have to see him to know the berserker would be crouching at the base of the tree, his hands over his ears as he tried to protect himself from the attack of Gavin’s voice. She could only hope he wouldn’t be in the way of her battered body when she landed. She would flatten him like a soda can.

  But her momentum was slowed by the vicious branches, and by the time she cleared the tree and dropped the last few yards to the ground, it wasn’t with enough force to hurt anyone—still, Strad made sure he was there to soften her landing.

  And he was pissed.

  The gargoyle continued screaming, and when she managed to open her eyes she saw blood dripping from Strad’s ears as Gavin’s voice ruptured his eardrums.

  It was as though by losing his wings all his power was concentrated in his voice, and it was stronger than it had ever been.

  She heard nothing but the gargoyle’s voice, and realized she hadn’t for some time. It smashed her brain, burst her ears, made her eyeballs bulge from their sockets.

  She would heal, but the berserker would not.

  She’d begun to mend immediately—even before she’d dropped from the tree her body was in heal mode—and her rage rose up to rival the berserker’s.

  The gargoyle needed to shut his fucking mouth.

  She shoved the key-holding limb at Strad and then leaped to her feet, still broken and battered and bloody but her monster didn’t give a fuck, her monster wanted only to kill the gargoyle, and she carried her rage to the enemy.

  But Strad wasn’t content to sit there holding the key, and when she rushed the flightless gargoyle, he was at her back.

  Gavin was ready for them both. He amped up his terrible voice, and though she thought it couldn’t get any worse, dead birds began dropping from the sky.

  Strad’s brain would explode if she didn’t gag the gargoyle. Terrified, she jumped, kicked off the gargoyle’s solid, rocky body, and punched him in the mouth.

  Every fear she’d ever felt was behind that punch. Every rage, every drop of shame, every bit of frustration. His teeth shattered, but still he did not shut up.

  He grabbed the back of her neck and squeezed and she felt the agony of her neck breaking even as she shot out her claws, with her fist still inside his mouth, and drove her built-in silver blades through his unprotected flesh.

  And finally, the gargoyle shut up.

  She didn’t want to make him suffer. She only wanted to take his voice.

  So she did that, and maybe he didn’t fight too hard because he knew he wouldn’t get the key back. He knew the bones were waiting, and whatever they would do to him would be worse than a quick death at Rune’s hands.

  He fell with a force that seemed to shake the earth and lay among the birds his voice had killed. She finished removing his head as the berserker cut out his heart, and when it was done they stood over his body like two primitive, savage warriors, proud, triumphant, and a little fucking mad.

  The berserker was injured, though, severely and irreversibly. His eyes darted and shook, his ears gushed blood, and his huge body swayed until finally, unable to remain upright, he fell to his knees.

  But she knew what to do.

  Do you take this man to love and cherish and fucking feed until death do you part?

  “I do,” she whispered.

  She took his face between her palms. “Do you take me, Berserker?”

  It didn’t matter that he couldn’t hear her. He saw her. He knew what she was asking. “I do,” he said, his voice thick and low and agonized.

  She pressed her fingers to the back of his head and shoved his mouth to her throat.

  And there on Spikemoss Mountain, surrounded by death and love and life and good and evil, she re-addicted Strad Matheson to her blood and her bite. She healed him, loved him, bound herself to him happily and for eternity.

  Rune Alexander married her berserker.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It was as though no time had passed.

  When she and Strad returned to the graveyard, the fight continued, and the ground of Wormwood was littered with inches of white sandy bone and thick blood and bits of bone and fur and flesh.

  Her crew stood guarding the perimeter with the Annex ops—she spotted the twins, then Jack and Roma, and finally, Will, standing off a little to himself, as always.

  Dusk had fallen. Nikolai had arrived and stood behind them all, he and his few vampires a single line of offense should the fighters spill through the battered gates of Wormwood.

  The vampire master looked at her, and after a pause, she gave him a curt nod.

  We’re good, dude.

  He returned her nod, his dark gaze lighting with relief. It would have been uncomfortable for the master and the monster of River County to hate each other.

  Especially since one they both loved, Ellie, stood firmly between them.

  The crew fell in behind Rune and Strad as they strode into Wormwood, and the very second the key was carried into the graveyard, the bones knew.

  That knowledge spread through them like fire, and Mo Shannon raced toward Rune like a bony vampire, a blur of movement, her mouth wide, her excitement an actual physical thing. It swirled around her, a cold, smoky wind carrying emotions that the bones seemed unable to hold.

  Her people followed her, their own excitement pushing her along, and when that excitement slid through the air it hit Rune like a solid wall of emotion, and gave her, for an almost unbearable second, insight into the bones and their decades of torment.

  When she fought her way free of their overspill, she wanted nothing more in the world than to give them back their key, their hope, their bodies.

  First, there were more gargoyles to deal with. Rune looked over the bones’ heads at the approaching gargoyles and shot her claws out. “Behind you,” she said.

  Their leader shook her head, then pointed at Rune. The urgency was too huge to ignore. It was bigger than the enemy.

  So Rune slipped the twisty key from her belt and held it out to the bones like a precious offering. “Your key,” she said. “Take it, Mo Shannon.”

  The advancing gargoyles froze.

  Rune knew the key was a big fucking deal, obviously it was.

  But really, she had no idea.

  Mo Shannon was crying even before she touched the object, and the air became heavy with her sorrow and her joy.

  And when she did touch it, when she took it, when she saw it in her hands and realized she was free, that her people were free…

  It was like nothing Rune had ever felt or would ever feel again.

  In the bones’ grip, the key was transformed. It welded itself to her hands, and Mo Shannon’s face, skeletal though it was, crumbled into either a mask of a
gony or ecstasy. Maybe both.

  The gargoyles felt whatever was coming before Rune and her crew did, and with a roar of terror, they turned to run.

  But they were too late.

  Mo Shannon had her key, and her power was too strong to fight—even for the gargoyles. She held them in an invisible corral, and they could not run.

  They opened their mouths to scream, but what started as a crippling, eardrum-bursting attack dwindled to a gargling, choking moan. And when they tried to shoot fire at the skeletons, only ineffective puffs of gray smoke emerged. They could not fly, fight, escape, or sing.

  And then, they began to lose their shifts.

  Mo Shannon lifted her face, her eyes shining, and she smiled.

  And she could smile because her flesh was returning to her.

  It was…horrifying. The bones were horrifying.

  But there was magic in those bones.

  Rune lifted her hand and stared incomprehensibly at her fingers, which glowed with a silver shine, and she felt the sharp blades of her claws growing beneath the surface of her flesh. Growing from her bones.

  “Magic and bones,” she whispered. For some reason, at that moment it seemed like one of the most important discoveries she would ever make. She didn’t know why.

  Maybe she would someday, when she had a moment to think about it.

  Flesh began building upon the bones of the skeletons, rippling faster than the eye could follow or comprehend, and in the end they stood with their full bodies, their smiles, and their hearts, an army of magnificent female warriors.

  “Rune Alexander,” Mo Shannon murmured. Her voice was gruff and rusty and dark and it scraped Rune’s abused eardrums, slid into her brain, and filled her with ice and fire. “I can never repay you for this gift, but I will start trying now. Run. Take your crew, and run. I cannot contain what is about to happen and though I would welcome you there, you do not want to be pulled into my world. Return when…” She stopped, sighed, and once again, she smiled. “Return when there is silence. Wormwood belongs to the dead now, and you are not dead.” She cocked her head. “Run.”

  Rune didn’t hesitate. She turned to her crew. “Out,” she screamed. “Run.”

  She was faster than all of them, and she could have been through the gates in less than a second. But they ran as fast as their human adrenaline allowed them, and she ran at their backs.

  Gunnar would be okay. He could hop from cemetery to cemetery, and likely, he was already gone.

  She was not worried for Gunnar.

  But the gargoyles…

  Maybe she should have begged Mo Shannon to leave them. Gavin was dead, Bellamy was dead, and Gage had been warped and twisted into something that in no way resembled the man he used to be.

  But when she stood outside Wormwood, she turned back for a look, and she watched as the flesh was stripped from the gargoyles’ bones and one by one, they were dragged screaming into the earth.

  Even that close to the gates the power was overwhelming, and it was dangerous. At last, she turned away. She couldn’t help the gargoyles.

  She couldn’t stop the Corpse Army.

  Had she wanted to, Mo Shannon could have led her army from the graveyard, and with her flesh returned, she could have ruled any world she wanted to rule.

  Gavin hadn’t lied about that part.

  Good thing she hadn’t wanted to.

  The crew waited a little distance away, unable to stand the force of the power spilling from Wormwood.

  “Rune,” Strad called. He held out his hand.

  She went to him, her legs weak, zings like little electric shocks hitting her body and her brain, and she took his hand. His fingers were almost too hot against her icy skin and she continued to shake, freezing, her mind going foggy, her body weak.

  Jack frowned and ran his thumb over her cheek. “You’re pale, even for you, and clammy.”

  “She’s in shock,” Roma said. “I saw that look a hundred times in Skyll.”

  Strad lifted Rune into his arms. “I’ll get her home and feed her. She’ll be all right.”

  “Feed her?” Will asked. “I will feed her.”

  Rune snuggled against the berserker’s warmth, but her shivering only increased. God, she was cold.

  “No,” Strad told the assassin. Nothing more.

  Will didn’t argue.

  The world faded and she closed her eyes.

  Sometime later she awakened in her bed, on her side, the berserker cradling her, his heat curling around her. He’d fed her, and though she had no memory of that feeding, his taste lingered on her tongue.

  She drifted back to sleep, secure in his arms.

  Warm, safe, and home.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  When she woke up, she was back to normal, mostly. Her brain still stuttered a little, but she knew she’d be okay. She was always going to be okay. There wasn’t a thing on earth that could do more to her than had already been done, and she’d survived. Every single time.

  Strad was asleep, facing her, and she lay in his arms studying his familiar face, her heart full.

  No matter what they’d gone through or how many times they’d been separated, her feelings for him hadn’t ever dimmed.

  “Will he lose you?”

  Never.

  “Berserker,” she murmured.

  His eyes flipped opened immediately. He didn’t move any other part of himself, just opened his eyes. One second he was asleep, and the next he was watching her.

  She closed the few inches between their mouths and slid her lips over his, just a whisper of a kiss. With her lips still touching his, she murmured, “I love you with every part of me. Do you know that?”

  “Yeah,” he said, smiling, echoing her answer as she’d echoed his question. “I do.”

  He skimmed her bare arm with his fingertips, raising goosebumps over her entire body. She would never get enough of him, of his touches.

  He kissed her then, a deep, slow kiss that lasted forever, but still wasn’t long enough. She felt that kiss in her soul, healing hurtful things that had gotten twisted up inside her, past things, unimportant things.

  There was only room for Strad Matheson and his kiss, his love. His complete and utter love. It was a strange thing, love.

  His love sheltered her. Sheltered her from the world.

  He loved her.

  He would always catch her.

  Even when he slid inside her, he didn’t break that kiss.

  It was the most perfect, pure moment she’d ever known.

  And later, when she slipped back into sleep, she realized that in his arms, she wasn’t afraid of anything.

  Not even herself.

  She woke up again maybe an hour later, and Ellie stood by the door, watching her and Strad sleep, his face blank, but his eyes…his eyes were full of uncertainty.

  The berserker left the bed, pulled on his discarded pants, then picked his T-shirt off the floor and dressed her in it. “I’ll bring you some coffee and food in an hour.”

  He strode to the door, but as he passed Ellis, he leaned forward and dropped a kiss on the new vampire’s head. “No one loves you more than she does,” he said. “In her eyes, you are the same as you’ve always been.”

  Ellis burst into tears then, heartrending, deep, hurtful tears, and Rune wanted only to help change them to cleansing tears.

  She held out her arms to him.

  He slid under the covers and for the next ten minutes they never spoke a word, just held each other.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, finally.

  He pulled back, the look in his eyes still tired, still flinching, still sad. “For what?”

  “For being the one person who would never leave me, not even to fucking die. There aren’t words for that, Ellie. All I can say is thank you.”

  He shook his head, and his eyes filled with more bloody tears. “I don’t know how to be anymore.”

  “You be, baby. That’s all. You just be.”

&nb
sp; “I understand now,” he told her. “I never really understood what could have been inside your head, how you must’ve felt, being…different.”

  “It took me a long, long time to accept myself.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll never accept myself.”

  She nodded. “Ellie, remember when I was hurting myself because of all that shame, all that hate?”

  His eyes widened. “Yes. I do remember. It broke my heart. If you could only have seen yourself the way I saw you…” His voice trailed off as his changed brain began to make sense of it all. As he began, finally, to understand. “If you could only have seen yourself the way I saw you,” he repeated, a little overcome.

  She smiled. “You’re fucking perfect.”

  He was silent for a few minutes, thinking about it.

  “Doesn’t matter what I said,” he said, finally. “When I told you I’d come to terms with it, I was lying.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll just be,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You love me, Rune? Just like always?”

  “Forever, Ellie.”

  “Can I tell you about it?”

  “You can tell me anything.”

  She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close, and he pressed his cheek to her breast and began talking, and healing, and with every word, he let himself accept that he was and always would be the Ellie he’d always been. Indomitable spirit, pure of heart, good to his bones.

  He was still talking when Strad walked in with a tray of food and coffee, and he only stopped once to say how utterly unfair it was that he couldn’t eat. Then they sat up and he told her how it’d felt the first time he’d tasted his vampire master’s blood, how it’d been like drinking life, pure life, and how the entire time, he hated himself a little because he’d liked it so much.

  “I was afraid I’d become an actual monster,” he said. “It was the most terrified I’ve ever been.”

  And later, “I died, Rune. Nikolai killed me, and then he brought me back. But my brain was scrambled and I didn’t know…I didn’t remember…”

  He had to stop because he was crying again, and she cried with him, but in the end, both their tears were cleansing tears.