Shiv Crew

Shiv Crew

By Laken Cane

Copyright © 2013 by
Laken Cane

Edited by A. Chance

This ebook is
licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or
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you for respecting the hard work of this author. The author acknowledges the
trademark status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this
work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use
of these trademarks is not authorized, association with, or sponsored by the
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For more information
about the author, you can find her online at
www.lakencane.com
,
www.facebook.com/laken.cane.3
and follow her at
www.twitter.com/lakencane

To Jennifer, for the
friendship and the support. Oh, and for the doctor.

To Tre, for thinking
I’m brilliant and for being just a
teensy
bit afraid of me.

To Georgia Woods, CEO
and Editor-in-Chief of Taliesin Publishing, for tirelessly answering questions,
beta reading, and never failing to believe in me and my books.

To Honor Grant, for
being in my corner since the beginning. I owe her much.

To Antonia Pearce, one
of the best friends I’ve never met.

WARNING

This book contains content meant for adult readers only.
This could mean
graphic violence
or sexual content, which may include
polyamory or menage relationships, anal play/intercourse, same sex sexual
contact, domination/submission situations, and/or BDSM play or practices.

Please store this file in a safe place away from children’s
access.

SIGNIFY

Rune Alexander commando crawled
closer to the fence. A sharp stick poked her ribs but a little pain was the
least of her worries. It was hard to slide over the frozen, uneven ground when
she had two guns holstered at her hips and a blade in each of the five sheaths
strapped to her body, but she had no choice.

She held up a hand and made a forward
motion, then waited for Jack and Z to move up beside her.

The moon gave enough light to see by—a
very good thing considering she couldn’t stand up and flash a light at the
small group in the middle of the cornfield.

RISC—Spiritgrove’s Regional Investigations
of Supernatural Crimes unit—would demand pictures, and she had to play by the
rules. She gave a quick nod to her left, and Z readied his telescopic camera to
get a couple of shots. There’d be no flash to give them away. The pictures
would be grainy, but they could be enhanced later if there was trouble from one
of the ever-present Other rights and protection groups.

“How many?” she whispered. “Six?”

“Eight,” Jack replied. He tried to
whisper, but it was as though he was just too big to whisper. His voice was a
low rumble.

Good enough.

Just then someone began to scream,
and she had to force herself to remain calm. She couldn’t afford to fuck up.

RISC’S captain, Jeremy Cross, had
pulled her into his office before she’d left to have a quick
talk
. Technically,
she answered to him. RISC trumped SCRU. Shiv Crew was just Spiritgrove’s
criminal recovery unit.

“You get something for me tonight,
Rune, or I’m pulling Shiv Crew off this case and sending someone else out.”

Yeah, he was getting heat from Bill
Rice, the police director, but she was doing everything she could. He knew she
always did.

The murderers could be any one of
the many supernatural groups populating the world, but she’d bet it was either rogue
vamps or wolves. They were the groups with the biggest balls.

“Z, check the fence.”

He pulled a tiny electric fence
indicator from his many-pocketed vest and tested the fence. “Nope.”

“Awesome.” Now they just had to get
past the fence without anyone noticing them. The same moon that worked for them
was working for the dirtbags on the other side as well.

She was leader of this little crew,
and she’d go first. Always. When she took on new members, she gave them one
chance to get that right. If the words,
But you’re a woman. Let me take
point,
were ever spoken, that person was history.

“Going through,” she murmured. “You
know what to do.” Of course they did. Neither man was a rookie.

They all stood, carefully, and the
men held the barbed wires apart so she could climb between them. She helped
when it was Z’s turn, but Jack was so big he got stuck on the barbs. They clung
to him like greedy lovers, and she sighed as she waited for him to quietly
extract himself.

Jack was a proud sort. He stared at
her with narrowed eyes as they crept closer to the group, waiting for her to smirk
or be a smartass.

She ignored him and pulled her guns—handguns
loaded with special silver bullets designed to take down the monsters. The
silver exploded within the body, doing horrendous damage as the melting
fragments raced through the bloodstream. Big or small, were or vampire or
shifter, silver kicked paranormal ass.

The screams came again, closer
together and more desperate, and she pushed everything from her mind but
getting those screams to stop.

Fucking Others.

Time was running out for the
tortured human. With the two men right beside her, Rune loped as silently as possible
through the shadows, holding tightly to the lethal guns.

Three people, six guns, and two dozen
shivs against eight Others. Those were not good odds for her crew, but they had
the element of surprise on their side.

They were spotted—or more likely
scented—seconds later, and the Others scattered. From the glimpses Rune got of
their clothing she assumed they were vampires. Black everywhere. Hair,
clothing, everything was black except for the telltale pale skin that gleamed
almost green in the moonlight.

Rune and Jack would just kill
anything living—or dead—that moved. They were the best shooters in the group
and rarely missed anything. Z was the best retriever Rune had ever used. He
would secure the victim while Rune and Jack covered him. No matter what else
was going on, if there was a victim, Z would get him or her out.

She only hired the best.

But these vampires weren’t
interested in fighting. They wanted only to run, which was strange for rogue
vampires. Surely they were rogue. The Spiritgrove vampires answered to master
vampire Nicolas Llodra—and only rogue vampires would dare attack a human.
Unless…

Unless they had his permission. Not
likely. Llodra had been known to deliver his vampires to Spiritgrove Law
Enforcement himself if they committed a crime. He, as well as most vampire
masters, wanted nothing more than to live in the shadows and avoid human
persecution.

One of the vampires was
uncharacteristically slow. Rune pulled an eight-inch shiv from a sheath on her
side and sent it flying through the air to find him.

He screamed as the silver pierced
his body, and fell to the ground. He must have been a new vampire. Older ones
were less vocal and much less clumsy.

A vampire wouldn’t die unless she
got him through the heart and then took his head, but she didn’t want to kill
him. She’d need at least one of them for questioning.

For good measure and because one
couldn’t be careful enough when it came to the vampires, she aimed her gun and shattered
one of his legs as well.

He’d heal, the son of a bitch, but
because he was shot up with silver he’d heal almost human slow.

She heard a scream as one of her
men managed to shoot a fleeing vampire, heard it with grim satisfaction.

Never panic
was the first
rule of Shiv Crew. That rule had saved their lives more than once.

Then suddenly, it was over.

For a long moment there were no
sounds.

Rune kicked a rock. All the
vampires had escaped but one. “Fuckers.” She glanced over to where Z tended the
human, a girl perhaps nineteen or twenty, who sobbed quietly into Z’s chest.

The one vampire she’d managed to
catch lay still as death on the ground, his arm and leg destroyed. “Silver the undead
fuck, Jack. I’ll call this in.”

Jack pulled heavy silver wire from
his pocket and wrapped it around the body of the vampire, though it wasn’t
really necessary. With silver drifting through his bloodstream, he wasn’t going
anywhere.

The skin hissed when the wire
touched it, and the scent of cooking vampire meat drifted through the air. She
could only imagine how the silver must be burning him on the inside.

She shrugged away the uneasiness
that plagued her whenever she had to subdue an Other in such a painful way.
Fucks brought it on themselves.

Paramedics would come get the girl,
and when she was able she’d be questioned by Spiritgrove law enforcement and by
RISC. Rune would sit in with RISC and if need be, ask a few questions of her
own…
if
Jeremy would allow it.

She had a feeling this wasn’t over.

“They were expecting us,” Jack
said.

But that doesn’t make sense.

Yeah, they could have just been
evil rogues out to stir up some trouble, but she wasn’t feeling it. Rogues
wouldn’t have run—they would have fought like the crazy desperadoes they were.

She called the station and the
paramedics, then strode toward Z and the girl. A shiver of unease ran down her
spine. It didn’t make sense, and she didn’t like it when things didn’t make
sense.

“Z.”

At her voice, he took his arms from
around the girl and stood, flinching when the girl gave a little scream and
launched herself at him. She hugged his legs and trembled, her breathing harsh.

“She’s in shock, Rune. Did you call
it in?”

“Yeah.”

“ETA?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

He shot a worried look down at the
girl. “She’s in a bad way. Fifteen minutes is fucking eternity. Maybe we should
drive her to town.”

She knelt down to look at the girl.
Women were Z’s biggest weakness. He’d been known to lose his easygoing attitude
and go ape shit when a female was hurt. It was one of his best qualities and one
of his biggest flaws.

“I’m going to check her and ask her
a couple questions. See what you can find in the clothes of the vamp and search
the ground before RISC gets here.” It was something Shiv Crew always did. She
wasn’t guaranteed any information from the law enforcement agencies that had
her beneath their thumbs, so she did as much of her own investigation as
possible before they took it out of her hands. Bastards.

“She’s too hurt. You shouldn’t—”

She looked at him. That was all,
just looked at him.

He ran his hands through his
gorgeous dirty-blond hair. “
Fuck
, Rune.” But he went without another
word.

The girl huddled on the ground. Her
sobs had dwindled and finally stopped. A long fall of dark hair hid her face, and
she didn’t even flinch when Rune knelt down before her.

Rune pushed her hair over her
shoulder. “I’m going to shine a light so I can see you. I want to see how
you’re doing. Okay?”

She fished a small flashlight from
her pocket and gave an experimental flash to the ground before shining it over
the victim. “Shit.”

“Thirsty,” the girl said.

“I know, baby. The paramedics will
be here soon and they’ll take care of you.” The girl had been beaten savagely.
Her face was swollen and seeping blood. Her throat was torn from careless fangs,
her chest covered with cuts and bruises. “Can you tell me your name?”

The girl looked around, her eyes
dazed. “I’m thirsty.”

Jack walked up to stand behind her.
“Anything?”

Rune shrugged off her coat and
after taking a couple of knives from the pockets and slipping them
surreptitiously to him, put the jacket around the girl’s bare shoulders. It was
November, and the girl’s attackers had stripped her naked.

The victim’s skin was cold and
clammy, and the few unmarked parts of her were too pale. She listed suddenly to
the side and vomited.

“Fucking monsters,” Rune muttered.

“She able to give you a name?”

“No.” She tilted her head at the
distant sound of sirens. “See if Z needs help. They’ll be here in a couple
minutes.”

He nodded and walked away, leaving
her alone with the abused girl. She’d stopped heaving but was swaying
precariously on the hard ground, her eyes unfocused.

Too bad my own abuse doesn’t
outrage me as much as a stranger’s does.

But that was totally different.

“Sweetheart, I’m going to help you
lie down.” The girl was unresisting as Rune pushed her to her back on the
ground. Rune lifted the girl’s battered legs and placed them in her lap.
Getting the feet up and head down was about all she could do. She had enough
trouble packing around two guns and her shivs. There was no room for a first
aid kit.

The girl lay with her eyes closed,
her breathing fast and shallow. Her life was never going to be the same because
the monsters had decided it was a good idea to fuck with her.

Z and Jack gathered at her back.

“Nothing,” Jack said.

She nodded, and silently, they
waited. The sirens stopped, and she handed Z her flashlight.

He waved it in the air to show the
arrivals where they waited, and the sounds of slamming doors, softly humming
engines, and low voices reached them.

Suddenly the girl spoke, her words
thick. “It’s Preston. He’s killing the other…” She quieted, taking on the
stillness of an unconscious person.

“Did she say Preston?”

Rune nodded. “That’s what she said,
Z. We have a name.”

“But who the fuck is Preston?” Jack
asked.

“I don’t know any. We’ll check the
listings.”

“Are we telling RISC?”

She shrugged and started to speak,
but a smooth voice she knew very well interrupted her.

“Are we telling RISC what,” Jeremy
asked, “and does that question mean you’re in the habit of keeping things from
me?”

The fucking cavalry had arrived.