Authors: Laken Cane
“If it’s hostile or sick,” she said, “kill it.”
The corners of the cowboy’s eyes crinkled as he grinned down at her. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks for helping me out of the black,” she replied, but she didn’t return his smile.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You reminded me. Now shut the fuck up. We don’t have time for a powwow.”
He nodded, but his smile lingered. “I’ll protect every part of you, Rune. I’ll always have your back.” Then he shrugged. “For as long as it’s possible.”
“That comes with being on this team,” Levi said. “We’ll all protect her.”
“And each other,” Lex added.
“Hugs and kisses and goddamn happy faces,” Jack growled. “Can we just get a move on?” He yanked a silver blade the size of his forearm from its sheath. “Those heads aren’t going to decapitate themselves.”
Raze almost smiled. “Let’s move.”
Soon it would be dark. They’d already slain so many hostiles they were wearing blood like a layer of skin, and they hadn’t even made it into Wormwood.
The cemetery was full of sick Others, and word had reached her that traffickers were also hiding inside the magical gates.
And the vampires would be rising.
Dying.
Now that she’d made up her mind, had hardened her heart to what she had to do, she was eager to get it done.
Simon would know she was coming, and he would know she had no choice.
He’d been sending his children after the ‘pure’ humans—infants. And he’d been slaughtering pregnant women. He was buying from traffickers.
They all were.
Yeah. He knew she was coming.
He wouldn’t know that she’d find him, though.
Or maybe he was too sick to care.
Ellie had tried to convince Levi to wear his fang necklace. Levi had just snorted and refused to entertain the notion, and eventually Ellis had dropped the vampire repellent back under his shirt.
She had some moments of bittersweet nostalgia as she led her crew, blades and vguns ready, through Wormwood.
Suddenly Raze, as they loped through the graveyard, pulled a small silver axe and sent it whirling through the air. It buried itself in the back of a wolf’s head.
No warning, no hesitation.
“Raze,” Rune said, stopping at the side of the dead wolf. “He doesn’t look sick and he didn’t approach us. Why’d you kill him?”
“If it’s Other, it’s dying,” Raze said, yanking free his axe. “He would soon be sick, if he wasn’t yet.”
Lex made a sound, drawing their gazes.
She looked toward Raze, her eyes jerking, horrified. “What’s
wrong
with you?”
He closed his eyes for a long second, drawing in a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Rune and I are Others,” she said, furious. “Will you kill us as well?” She strode to him, then bared her neck. “Go on. Cut off my head.”
“Lex,” he started, and reached out to touch her shoulder.
She jerked away from him. “Fuck you, asshole.”
“Lex,” Levi said. “Calm down. We have orders. The Others are spreading the rotting sickness. They’re killing humans. We have no choice.”
“It’s them or us,” Denim agreed.
“
I’m
a them,” she said.
Raze looked at Rune. “What are we doing?”
She repeated her earlier words. “If it’s hostile or sick, kill it.”
“Kind of hard to figure that out from a distance,” Jack said.
Lex put her hands to her head. “It’s so confusing.”
“I know,” Rune answered. It
was
confusing. Did they kill indiscriminately? Or did they give those few Others who weren’t sick a chance?
“Rune?” Levi asked.
“Okay, here’s the deal. Kill if you know the Other is sick or hostile. If you don’t know and aren’t attacked, leave it alone. Good enough?”
Because in the end, the Others were going to be wiped out anyway. Lex could have her moment to think otherwise if she needed it.
Jack nodded. “Okay then.”
“Gunnar,” Owen said.
The ghoul had been standing in the shadows of the trees long enough to know exactly what they were discussing. “Do not attack,” he called. “I would speak with you, Your Slaughterousness.”
“I’ll be right back,” she told her crew, and jogged to him.
“You have fed?” he asked, when she stood in front of him.
She frowned. “Not for a while.”
Not since the fucking berserker.
“It is good that you have your crew to keep you alive. They will feed you.”
“Yeah. What’s up, sexy?”
“Will you slay me if I take the sickness?” he asked, his dark eyes worried.
“You’re not killing humans, are you?”
He put his nose into the air. “Most certainly not.”
“Then I’m not killing you.” She paused, studying his worn face carefully. “You okay?”
“You mustn’t worry about me—we shall worry about you. It is my hope that with the magic inside you, you will defeat any harm that may come to you.”
She put a hand to her chest. “There’s a chance I won’t get sick?”
He widened his eyes. “Rune, there is always hope. That is what I want you to remember. There is always hope. No matter how dire things may seem.”
She let the hope sink in. She might not get sick. She might not.
“What do you know, Gunnar? You’re warning me about something specific.”
“You’re going to see Damascus. You are in need of a warning.”
She shook her head. “No. If she doesn’t somehow suck me in, I’m not going anywhere. If she makes it here again, I’ll run to meet the bitch and do everything I can to slaughter her. But I’m not leaving.”
He let her talk, patient, quietly watching her.
It was not reassuring. “I’m
not
going there, Gunnar.”
“Your Highness,” he said, gently. “You will go.”
She shuddered. “Fuck,” she whispered. “When?”
He shrugged. “How would
I
know?”
“Damn you, ghoul. What do you want?”
He still wasn’t back to his old self. His hair was stringier than usual, his eyes were more sunken, and he was skinnier. Everything he was, only exaggerated.
He pushed his hair out of his face. “There is a cure for the rotting sickness, Your Highness.”
She opened her mouth, but only a squeak escaped.
He waited patiently for her to find her voice.
“A cure? A fucking cure?” She grabbed the front of his tattered shirt to drag him to her, and Dawn slunk from the darkness of the thick trees, her fingers curled into talons.
Rune didn’t care about the female ghoul. “
Where,
Gunnar? Where is the cure?”
“Take your hands off him,” Dawn said. “Or you won’t have a chance to find out.”
Gunnar waved her away. “Rune. You know where the cure is.”
“The Next didn’t create this infection?”
“No human group is that powerful or full of magic.” He bowed his head. “I am sorry.”
She let go of him. “Fuck me.”
He nodded. “This is why you will go there, Your Horror.”
But she shook her head. “No.”
“It is fearsome, that world,” he said. “But you will not falter. It is what you must do.”
“I can’t, Gunnar.”
“You will come back.”
“I
can’t.”
“You will come back.”
“But what if I don’t?”
He was quiet for a long moment, his black eyes studying her with too much knowledge. “If you don’t, then this world will fall into chaos and all Others will die—and you will live forever in the world of Damascus.”
She said nothing. Nothing, until Dawn slipped up beside her, leaned down to peer into her face, and whispered, “Your demon is sick.”
It took a full minute for Rune to understand what she meant, and when she finally did, she stumbled back, crying out in disbelief.
The crew came to her then. Including Lex.
“What happened?” Raze asked.
Rune could barely make her body work. In slow motion, she turned her head to look at Lex.
“No,” Raze said. “Don’t say that, Rune.”
Lex began shivering. “I…oh,” she said.
Lex had been exposed. She was sick.
Oh, God.
She was sick.
They went to work that evening with desperation, horror, and fury. The Others of Wormwood watched the crew coming, and from shadows and sickness, they went to meet them.
Wormwood seemed to watch them all with contempt and its own share of ferocious wrath. The trees awakened, seizing people and Others alike, lifting roots to trip them, snaking out impenetrable vines to snag ankles and necks.
Wormwood came alive, and it was angry.
Sounds of battles spread throughout the vast graveyard. Blood sprayed and hung heavy in the air along with the screams and cries of injured and desperate fighters. The cold ground became muddy and messy with gallons of blood and steaming hot organs.
“Do not split up,” Rune yelled to her crew, once, when they were nearly overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of sick and terrified Others.
Occupied as they were, purging the vampires was the last thing on their minds—until the vampires decided to play.
The day had fled beneath the onslaught of violence and night came eagerly, waking the bloodsuckers.
The starving, sick bloodsuckers.
The moon sagged with grief, looming large and pale above the horror of the killing ground.
“I can’t bring my demon,” Lex screamed, but she fought alongside Rune as she had before her demon had clawed its way into existence.
Mirrored, mimicked, and killed.
And grew sicker by the second, at least it seemed so to Rune’s worried mind.
Rune wasn’t rotting.
Lex
was rotting.
Dozens of Others fell beneath the blades of the crew, but some simply curled up and died. Some of the very sick ones still tried to fight, and Rune got an up-close and personal look at what it would be like to get the sickness.
She went after one of them with her claws inches away from taking his head, when she stopped and drew back, fighting not to cover Lex’s sightless eyes.
The sick shifter put his hands to his face. His features melted and ran between his fingers. He fell to the ground, trying to shift, but was unsuccessful.
When they got to a certain point, they couldn’t shift.
“I can’t bring my demon…”
Too bad most of the Others weren’t yet to that point—they shifted and fought the way no human could fight.
Except for Shiv Crew.
Rune lost herself in the battle, in the fight to help her people stay alive. In killing the Others.
It was a losing battle.
There were simply too many of them. She realized nearly every Other in the county had fled to Wormwood. They’d thought to find a haven there, perhaps, and the graveyard, huge as it was, easily contained them all.
Wormwood was their territory, and they were determined to defend themselves against law enforcement, humans, and Rune.
Lex screamed suddenly, and Rune glanced away from a bloody vampire to find the girl on her knees, a shaggy werewolf at her back.
She was throwing up, too sick to continue fighting.
Before Rune could help her, Raze was there, driving a blade through the were’s neck and plucking Lex from the ground.
He looked at Rune and waited for her sharp nod before he trotted away, carrying Lex to safety.
Leaving the rest of the crew to fight without him.
He’d be back when he could get back.
From the corner of her eye she saw a werewolf attack a shifter who’d pissed him off—and then it was a matter of seconds before the Others were fighting each other.
Unintentionally helping the crew.
She fought like a killing machine—cold and capable and so very deadly—as the worries about everything else dimmed to a faded whisper on the edge of her mind.
She killed her own, the vampires she’d been sent to purge, and the Others who clung to their lives with a senseless desperation.
But right then she wasn’t Other, she wasn’t vampire, and she wasn’t human.
She was simply the monster.
And she was nearly unstoppable.
Her crew though, they were not.
Levi danced backward, blade in one hand and gun in the other, and tripped over a half-shifted Other who’d crawled through the cold, bloody mud, leaving body parts behind as he moved.
When Levi stumbled and fell, he was done. It was a hesitation he couldn’t afford, and every Other close enough to see and unoccupied enough to take him closed in.
When Levi fell, Denim, as though tied to his twin by an invisible rope, fell with him. He was back up in a millisecond, hacking and slicing through the Others who were trying to kill his brother.
But there were simply too fucking many of the sons of bitches.
Rune ran to help, her speed rivaled only by her strength, and ran her claws through every enemy body between her and the twins.
Jack bellowed, and she recognized his injured tone—pain and indignation in equal parts—and for the first time that night it really hit her that they might lose. That she might lose her crew.
She screamed.
And a voice answered, a voice so filled with rage there was no other word for it but death. Death answered her.
Gooseflesh covered her skin, and she trembled even as she ran, as the roar came again, closer, closer…
Owen fought free of the Others surrounding him and sprinted to her side, helping her cut through the tangled mass of Others who had the twins cornered.
“What the fuck,” he yelled, his voice strained and panting, “was
that?”
“That was rage,” she answered. “And it’s coming to help.”
At last.
She saw him then, in the moonlight, surrounded by shadows misty with droplets of blood, coming for her.
To her.
Others fell beneath his rage and his spear—those who didn’t fall ran—and she had a moment to realize they were more afraid of him, perhaps, than they were of her.
Berserker.
She felt the sting of Other claws slicing through her shoulder, her neck, her stomach, because she’d been distracted by her berserker.
But it didn’t matter.
She’d survive.
“Berserker,” she screamed.
“Berserker!”
He was shirtless, weaponless but for his spear, his big body crisscrossed with wounds and bruises and blood, and she knew they were from more than the Others he was fighting then.
Something had happened to Strad Matheson.
And finally, he reached her.
There was no time to talk, but he looked at her.
Once, before he battered away the Others who dared attack what was his—his woman, his crew—
In his eyes was the truth.
They were
his.
And he would never have left them.
Not if he’d had the choice.
It took her breath, that look.
Just a second, a moment, a slow motion lifetime of truth.
“
I’ll never leave you, Rune.”
And he wouldn’t.
She turned away, fighting with an intensity tempered by the words running through her mind…
He hadn’t left.
He’d been taken.