Obsidian Wings (8 page)

Horner’s men were not gentle.

She hadn’t expected them to be, so she wasn’t disappointed
when they went out of their way to hurt her.

But she memorized their faces.

Soon after the men began kicking her most of the birds
melted away, throwing furtive, ashamed looks over their shoulders.

Or maybe she imagined those looks.

She dimly heard one of the birds shouting, demanding they
leave her alone. Demanding someone let him go…

And then the cruelty held all her attention.

Horner didn’t kick her—he watched with dark, distant eyes,
only once breaking his silence. “She’s used to pain, boys.
Likes
it.
Give her want she wants.”

In the end she lay in a daze, unable to so much as spit
blood-filled saliva at her torturers.

She didn’t cry.

Not then.

“What we wanted,” Horner said, his voice soft, “was to take
you out of commission. I’d say we’ve accomplished that goal.”

One of the birds ran toward them, and it wasn’t until he
started speaking that she realized who he was.

Her eyes were almost swollen shut, and her vision, what
little there was of it, was blurry and unfocused.

They’d kicked the hell out of her.

“She’s just a girl,” Fin yelled. “There is no need to
torture her.”

“Bleeding fucking heart,” one of the men muttered, and knelt
beside her to relieve her of her weapons. He tossed her shivs and her gun into
a small pile beside him, then ripped her badge and her cell from her jacket
pocket and tossed them into the pile with the weapons.

“Fin,” Cree said, her fuzzy form appearing briefly in Rune’s
peripheral vision. “Come on. She’s nothing to us.”

He shook her hand off his arm. “Leave me alone.”

He walked away, Cree at his heels.

Left her alone with COS.

“Do you think they’ll turn on us?” one of the men asked
Horner.

“They have no loyalty to us,” came his smooth reply.
“They’re greedy little chickens. Take her to her cage. I need to talk with our
tender Fin.”

“Boss,” the other asked. “Can we…?”

“Do what you want. She’s a piece of meat, boys. In the end,
when I’m finished with her, she’ll be dead.”

“Dead meat,” one of them said, and laughed.

Horner walked away. “Have fun.”

She wanted to pass out, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t dying,
either. She could feel her abused body trying to heal the damage, but knew it
would have trouble succeeding. The splinter made her weak, and it made her slow
to heal. Very slow.

She’s just a girl.

Fin’s words echoed in her damaged mind and for a moment, she
believed him. She was just a girl.

She was just a girl.

“Carry or drag?” one man asked the other.

“Drag. It won’t hurt her.”

They laughed.

She was Other. COS didn’t think of her as an actual person.
She was simply a focus for their hatred and their fear.

Her skin burned and shredded as they dragged her over sharp
stones and broken sticks, dirt mixing with blood spilling from her wounds.

Z, if you’re listening, don’t go far. I might join you
soon. I just might join you soon.

I’ll be waiting, sweet thing.

She knew he would be.

Someone had once argued with her that true evil didn’t
exist.

Maybe he’d never met the slayers.

At last, the men slung her into a large cage. Its floor was
covered with straw, and it smelled clean enough.

But a clean cage was the least of her worries.

She lay on her back, trying to move to her side so she could
curl into a ball…it would have at least been a semblance of protection.

“You want to go first?”

Still able only to make out fuzzy forms, she cried out when
her bleeding ears caught the sneaky, soft sound of fabric whispering over
flesh.

Ah. Ah, no.

They forced her to her belly, handling her like she was
garbage, like she was nothing. Or like she was everything—everything in the
world they hated.

They ripped off her boots, then her jeans, and threw them
against the bars.

As they brutalized her, she thought she heard someone
sobbing. It wasn’t her. She was beyond tears.

She’d grown up in a world of agony, of horror.

But right then, she was not a monster or an experienced
fighter or the leader of Shiv Crew. She was just a girl. Her shocked, agonized
mind tried to hide. She went dark, numb.

She focused on something it took a long time for her to
comprehend. As the men hurt her, she saw tortured, dirty hands reaching through
the bars.

Then a ragged whisper caressed her ears, and she realized
what she was seeing.

“Rune. Rune.”

She couldn’t move her own hands, couldn’t reach out to close
the distance between her fingers and those pleading hands reaching through the
bars of the attached cage.

Twins.

“Rune,” Levi begged.

“Hi baby,” she murmured.

And finally, she cried.

The Mighty Have
Fallen

After a time, she was able to push herself far enough for
the twins to grab her arms. They dragged her to the bars separating them, and
for hours, they lay staring and silent.

Denim held her left hand, Levi her right.

“Where is Lex?” Levi asked.

“She’s safe,” Rune managed to say. “We found her.”

And they fell back into silence, broken only by Denim’s
occasional question.

“Rune?” he would ask.

She squeezed his hand—a weak, tiny squeeze but a squeeze
nonetheless—to let him know that yes, she was still there.

She tried to find some gladness inside her. The twins were
alive and they were right there with her.

But she couldn’t save them. She couldn’t even save herself.
She’d allowed herself to be taken by a bird. By COS.

She’d been…they’d…

No. She wouldn’t think about that.

Fin came to the cages, sometime during that long, cold
night.

He wrapped his fingers around the bars and tried to explain
himself. “If I release you, Cree will be banished. They’ll rip off her wings
and send her away. You can’t understand…”

“We are birds. The birds are different. God, I’m so sorry…”

And finally, “I can kill you, to save you.”

Levi, his voice a dull monotone, spoke. “Get away from us.”

So Fin crept away, his guilt unassuaged.

Daylight came.

“Rune?” Denim asked.

And she squeezed his hand.

She couldn’t speak. Not then.

The night’s horror was fuzzy to her. A dream. She had
trouble remembering, and she didn’t try to. She wanted to forget. To bury it.

How else would she ever be able to function?

“Rune?” Denim whispered.

“Z’s dead,” she blurted, and then began to sob. “Oh God, Z’s
dead.”

“Z’s dead,” Levi echoed. “Z’s dead.”

And the three of them cried together.

It was a sort of cleansing cry, washing away something too
terrible to contemplate and leaving something precious in its place.

The will to survive.

The need for revenge.

Rage, rage, rage.

Rune breathed it in, bathed in it, became it.

They would never be the same, Rune and the twins.

“What happened to you?” Levi asked.

“Cree staked me with an obsidian splinter. It makes me so fucking
weak.” She had to pause to regain the strength to continue speaking. “Slow to
heal. I need it out.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” There were no ends sticking out, no way to
grab the black needle and rip it free. “I don’t know.”

They would kill her as that splinter stayed lodged inside
her heart. They’d take her head and burn her body and go on tormenting the
world of Others.

But first, they’d make her watch as they killed the
beautiful twins.

She had to get it out. Had to.

“If I could release my claws, I could dig it out.”

But she couldn’t release her claws.

“Strad was here,” she murmured. “How could he not have found
some clues? Or seen you?”

“He didn’t search,” Denim said. He was angry. So very angry.
It swirled around him, hard particles of that rage stinging her skin as he held
her hand. “Fin said he simply got an appointment with the scepters, and then he
left. He believed them.”

She closed her eyes. “Fuck him.”

“Rune…” Levi’s voice was hesitant, flinching.

“I’m okay, Levi.”

He smiled, a tiny, tired, smile. “No. But you’re alive.”

“Do you know COS is planning to sacrifice you?” she asked,
and then, she forced herself to really look at them.

It wasn’t easy.

She’d spent one night in hell. They’d been there for many
long, horrifying nights.

It showed. They’d lost weight, and with that weight, muscle.
Gaunt and pale and flinching, they stared back at her with eyes too large and
dark in cavernous faces.

Levi still showed signs of his infection. His hair was
trying to regrow, sprouting uneven and lank against his dirty skull.

They both bore scars. Fresh wounds competed with older ones
for space on their naked bodies. Levi cradled his right hand against his chest.

“Broken fingers,” he said, when he noticed her looking.

She swallowed. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Rune,” Denim said, “feed from me.” He slid his free arm
farther into the cage, offering her his wrist. “Maybe feeding will push the
splinter out.” His feverish eyes held a desperate hope.

“I can’t drop my fangs. I may be too weak to even bite you.”

Feeding would help her, but it wouldn’t dislodge the
splinter. It wouldn’t even make her strong enough to fight. But if she fed, she
could feed the twins.

And that might make them strong enough to fight.

“If I can get down some of your blood,” she told him, “I
will feed both of you if you’ll let me. It may heal you. It may make you better
than you’ve ever been.” She hesitated, then continued, her voice a little
stronger. “But it will addict you. Will you have it?”

“Why didn’t it addict me when you healed me?” Levi asked.

“Maybe because of the infection.”

“I was fast becoming a zombie.”

“I think so. Maybe. I don’t know much about it. Every time
is a risk.”

The twins looked at each other.

“Feed us,” they said at the same time.

“In the beginning, they told us stories about Lex,” Denim
said. “They told us if we got out of line, they’d…” He swallowed, hard. “They’d
do unmentionable things to her.”

“And then,” Levi said, picking up the story, “we were too
damaged, too starved, too weak to fight. We…”

“They messed up our minds,” Denim whispered.

She gave a long, slow blink.
Fuck me.

“So feed from me,” Denim said, “and we will hope to God it
makes you strong enough to feed us. Because that’s the only fucking way we’re
going to get out of here.”

That was the truth.

She’d have to feed from Denim to be able to withstand the
consuming pain feeding the boys would bring her. Feeding one would be hard.
Feeding both of them would be horrendous.

But she would do it.

She had to.

If the slayers came back to torture her, or forced her to
watch as they tortured the twins, she’d lose her fucking mind.

And that time, she wouldn’t be able to find it.

Denim grabbed the collar of her jacket and hauled her closer
to the bars. He’d need to make sure his blood ran into her mouth if she was too
weak to take it herself.

“If his isn’t enough,” Levi said, “I can donate.”

“Hurry,” she whispered. “Before they come back.”

Levi took Denim’s wrist. “I’ll open your vein.”

It hurt a whole fucking lot to bite open one’s own flesh. It
hurt when someone else did it, too, but somehow it was better.

“
Ow
,” Denim muttered, as Levi bit
his wrist.

But then there was blood.

And she was starving.

She moaned as the stream of blood hit her tongue, and then,
she clamped her lips around the wound and began to suck.

Weakly at first, but stronger as the seconds ticked by and
the precious, healing blood spread through her system.

Her heartbeat was weak and sluggish, each pulse creating
fresh waves of pain as it struggled against the splinter.

At last, she took her mouth from Denim’s arm. “I feel
better.”

“Strong enough to release your claws?” Levi asked. His voice
was at once so hopeful and so hopeless it broke her heart.

She tried, though she knew she was not strong enough. The
claws stayed put. “No,” she said. “I’m not.”

“It’ll be up to you and me, brother,” Denim said.

“Swear to me right now,” she said, her voice stronger, at
least, “that when you’re free, the first thing one of you will do is cut this
splinter out of me.”

“We swear,” they said, again in unison.

She nodded. She pushed her arm through the bars, gratified
that she didn’t need a lot of help moving it. The splinter was much less
powerful than the entire blade had been. Add in the feeding, and she was no
longer an unmoving lump on the ground.

Teeth cut into her wrist, and without hesitating, one of the
twins started to feed. The pain, that sinister, dreadful pain, was immediate.

Because of the splinter and because of the abuse she’d
already been forced to endure, the pain went beyond the agony she’d known
before.

It took her to hell. Took her to hell, and she was too weak
to pull herself out.

As the boys fed, they overshadowed the pain of the beating
she’d taken. She no longer shrank from the ache between her thighs, and she was
no longer afraid of COS.

There was just
that
pain.

“
The pain is so red,”
Lex had said.

And Rune knew exactly what that meant.

She swam in red rivers of torment. Thin, bloody water
surrounded by darkness too thick for light to penetrate. There was nothing
beyond that drowning pain.

It was unending.
Unsurvivable
.

And yet, it did end, and she did survive.

When she came out of the darkness, the slayers were beating
the twins. They pistol-whipped them, their lips pulled back over their teeth,
their grunts of effort loud.

“Please, please stop,” she begged.

But while her murmured pleadings did nothing to stop them,
Bach Horner’s command came with a sudden harshness, and to him, they listened.

The twins lay with a deathly stillness upon the bloody floor
of their cage.

Rune’s sobs, for a long moment, were the only sounds in the
world.

“If you’ve killed either of them, I will cut your stupid
hearts out,” Horner said. “Check them.”

His men didn’t move.

“
Check
them,” he screamed. “Check them!”

But then, without giving them a chance to obey, he wrenched
a gun from one of the men and shot him, then shot him again when he fell. He
kept shooting, emptying the gun into the newly dead body in an insane frenzy of
rage.

The two men still inside the cage backed away and stood
against the bars, their hands in the air, their faces pale.

At last, when the gun was empty, Horner threw the weapon at
one of the cowering men. “You fucking bastard fucks. Check the fucking twins,”
he ordered, his breathing hard, his face suffused with color.

The men leaped forward and fell to the ground beside the
twins.

And finally, finally, one of them spoke the words Rune
waited to hear. “They’re alive.”

Horner’s grin was huge, stretching across his face, showing
large, white teeth. “Oh, they’d better be. They’d better be.”

One of his men turned aside to vomit upon the ground.

Horner found that hilarious and his pleased guffaws lingered
inside her brain.

She huddled on the ground, turning her face into the straw,
hoping they’d ignore her and go away. She was thankful the twins were alive.
Ashamed she hadn’t been able to help them. Even her blood hadn’t been able to
help them.

But then she came back, slowly, to herself. She wasn’t a
coward. If they were going to hurt her, she’d feel it, she’d get over it, and
eventually, she’d rip their fucking heads off.

She had to believe that.

She was a monster.

“I am my monster and my monster is me,” she whispered. “I am
my monster.” And suddenly she was screaming it. Over and over and over. “I am
my monster!”

“She’s gone fucking crazy,” one of them said, his voice
awed.

She’d always been so terrified of inheriting her father’s
madness. But she realized she already had it. She was mad, yes. A little mad.
She just didn’t give much of a fuck anymore.

“Get Johnson up here to patch these boys up,” Horner said,
when at last Rune was quiet. “And one of you drag Boggs out of there. Bastard
shouldn’t have made me so angry. Should he?”

“No, boss,” one of them hastened to answer. “No way.”

Then she discovered part of the reason for Horner’s insane
rage. He grabbed the bars separating her cage from the twins’ and glared down
at her. “Karin’s hearing was a fucking waste,” he said. “The judge didn’t agree
that she should be released.” He put a finger to his temple. “I wonder if that
dusty old bastard is still alive. Somehow, I doubt it.”

He walked away from the bars, laughing. “I blame you for the
denial, and those like you.” He pointed at the twins. “And I blame them.” He
put his hands on his hips. “But all is not lost. You’ll soon find that out.”
Then he turned to his men.

“Two of you stay here and wait for the doctor,” he ordered,
and marched away.

More slayers, attracted by the gunfire, hastened to scramble
out of his way and follow him from the area.

Rune lay on her side, her unblinking stare fixed on the
twins. She didn’t move when Denim opened his eyes and glued his gaze to hers.

When he winked, she smiled. Smiled even as bright blood
leaked from Levi’s mouth, even as a slayer dragged the bullet riddled body of
one of their own from the cage.

She wasn’t done yet. And neither were the twins.

If not for her blood, they’d have died from the beating.

Could they have taken out the slayers who’d crowded the cage
to rip them from Rune’s wrist?

Not with that many guns trained on them.

But they had the blood, they would heal, and COS would fuck
up. It was just a matter of time.

And Karin Love was still in prison.

Rune groaned as a sudden wave of hunger, thirst, and need
rushed over her. It was a craving so intense she would have begged a slayer for
blood if she’d have thought it’d do any good.

She had to feed.

And even though she’d never admit it aloud, she could almost
understand Llodra’s massacre at RISC. Starve a vampire and he’d go crazy when
the feast was eventually available to him.

Right then, had she been able, she’d have torn them all
apart to get their blood.

So hungry. So hungry.

It consumed her, that hunger, driving out everything else.

And all she could do was wait.

Wait for the doctor. Wait for the twins to bring down their
wrath upon the jailors.

Wait for the reckoning that was coming.

And hope, with everything raging inside her, that she could
get strong enough to be part of it.