Shiv Crew (23 page)

“Bluegrass, Ellie? Seriously?”

He just winked and kept on singing.

She drove onto the ridge and
straight through the little village. The wolf had been spotted on the edge of
the town in a huge abandoned pasture adjoined on two sides by woods.

The reporter didn’t seem to care
that she knew he was tailing her.

Fuck him. If he wanted to waste his
time, that was his business. But if he interfered with hers, she would hurt
him.

She parked at the edge of the
field, shielding her eyes as she studied the trees. The day was cold but sunny,
and the sun sent little needles of pain into her eyeballs.

For a moment she paused. Was it
getting more uncomfortable for her, the sun?

“Stay here, Ellie. I’ll be back in
a few.”

He snorted, reached behind her seat,
and pulled out a sword. “No way, lady.” And as though afraid she might really
force him to stay behind, he jumped out of the SUV and trotted away from the
car.

Afraid he’d accidentally cut his—or
her—head off, she pulled one of her smaller shivs and traded him.

“If anything happens here, Ellie,
promise me you’ll go back to the car.”

“I promise.”

She sighed, then concentrated on
finding the wolf. They’d walked through the meadow and were just inside the
woods without sighting anything. There were occasional trees dotting the field,
but no wolves were hanging from any of them.

Behind them the rise of the ridge
rose in a gentle reminder of how far they’d gone.

“Rune,” Ellis said.

She glanced at him. His expression
solemn, he pointed toward his right.

Half hidden by other trees, a dark
shape could just be made out between the branches. “Damn. You have some amazing
eyes.”

The wolf was half shifted, as
though he’d been hung as a human and was trying his hardest to call his shift
so he could save himself. If he’d been strung up with silver, even a half shift
would have been almost impossible—yet there he was.

She felt a chill of unease before
she actually saw the second wolf, in his human form, hanging in a different
tree behind the first.

Then she saw the third, and the
fourth.

“Fuck me,” she whispered.

Bad, bad things were about to
happen.

And she was not even close to being
ready.

“Rune?” Ellis’s whisper was filled
with terror and dread. “Are they all dead?”

Chills ran like lightning streaks
down her spine. “What the
fuck
?
”
Suddenly she wished she hadn’t
arrived without backup.

She dug into her jacket pocket for
her cell. Her men weren’t far, and if they hurried they could be here in half
an hour, forty-five minutes at the most.

Ellis’s voice was full of panic.
“Behind you.”

She dropped the cell as she spun,
pulling a wicked, nine-inch shiv with her left hand and bringing up the sword with
her right.

“
Run
, Ellis.”

Her cell rang, and she heard
Ellis’s agitation when he answered.

On the hill behind her they waited,
a huge band of Dark Others. Shifters of all types, even a couple of trolls.

The Dark Others had come to River
County with a plan.

The way she figured it, she was
dead.

She didn’t want Ellis to join her.
God
please no.

They were spread out on the hill
with the sun above them, and she made a quick guess that they numbered around
fifty. Her against fifty Others. She did not like those odds.

Was it just coincidence and bad
luck that she’d ended up facing them, and worse, facing them alone? She didn’t
think so.

As if on cue, Ellis pulled at her
sleeve. “That was Strad. He said don’t go near Hawthorne. Jeremy hired the
shifters to destroy the Others.
Mercenaries
.” His voice came out in a
squeaky, terrified whisper.

She could relate.

It all made sense now.

Jeremy would have known chances
were good she’d come check out the hanging wolves. He’d set her up. He’d
planned on destroying the Others, and she was one of them.

Did Jeremy have ties to COS?

Without a doubt.

“Don’t be naive, Rune. Not
everyone wants a world full of fucking monsters.”

“Fuck me,” she whispered.

“Strad’s coming,” Ellis whispered.
“The crew is coming.”

They’d better hurry the fuck up.

If she fell, so would the city.

And she was
going
to fall.

Dammit Rune, don’t forget who
you are.

Abruptly a man separated himself
from the line of supernaturals and walked forward just a little.

He pulled something from his pocket,
and she realized he had a cell phone when he held it to his ear.

Her phone began to ring.

“Fuck you,” she muttered, and took
her cell from Ellis.

“Hello, Rune,” Jeremy said. From
his place on the ridge he sent her a mocking wave.

“You piece of garbage.” Her throat
was so thick it was hard to push the words through. “Let Ellis go back to the
car.”

She felt a touch on her sleeve.
Ellis stood beside her, deathly pale, but his face was set in familiar lines.

“Ellis, go to the car. You
promised.”

But he looked at her, his brown
eyes too wide and too calm, and shook his head. “I won’t leave you.”

“Your little gay buddy is a monster
lover, Rune. He’s going to share your fate. Sorry.”

“Why, Jeremy?” As if she didn’t
know.

“I told you not everyone wants to
live with monsters. They don’t belong here.
You
don’t belong here.”

He sounded so calm, so reasonable.

“Please let Ellis go.”

“I don’t think so.” He was enjoying
himself.

“Backup is coming. You’re not
getting away with this, Jeremy. Mitch will—”

His laughter rang loudly enough for
her to have heard it without the phone. He turned and motioned to someone
behind him. “Mitch will what?”

“No,” she said.
“No.”

Jeremy handed him the phone. “Say
hello.”

Mitch walked up to stand beside
Jeremy. She couldn’t see his eyes but could tell he was staring at the ground.
How
the fuck did you fool me, Mitch?

But she knew. He’d fooled her
because he wasn’t really an evil man. In his mind what he was doing was right.
Best for mankind.

He cleared his throat. “Rune. I’m
really sorry about this, but Jeremy is right. The monsters don’t belong in our
world. Sacrifices have to be made. I’m so sorry.”

Thing was, he
sounded
sorry.

“No fucking way,” Ellis murmured.
“No fucking
way
.”

One of the hanging wolves howled.
The
wolves
. Obviously some of them were still alive. If she could cut
them down, they’d help her. She hoped.

She turned and ran for the wolves.

With screams, howls, and voices
filled with bloodlust, the Dark Others went for her. She could feel their rotten
breath on her neck. Her skin crawled and her flesh shrank away as they reached
for her. She could feel them
right there
.

She glanced over her shoulder. The
Others had not moved.

She raised her sword and brought it
down on the rope dangling a wolf from the tree. When he fell she sliced through
the silver around his neck and in seconds, he had shifted.

He rose unsteadily and with a quick
look toward the Dark Others, ran the fuck out of there.

“Wait!” But her cries went
unheeded. The wolf was terrified and wasn’t going to stick around for certain
death.

From the ridge behind her came
laughter, boisterous and wicked. They’d known the hanging wolves would be too
traumatized to help her.

The second wolf she cut down was
dead, and the third ran after the first.

“Fuck,” she yelled. “Fucking
wolves.”

“They’re moving, Rune,” Ellis
called.

There was no more time to seek help
from the wolves. She stood beside Ellis, her blades ready. He shook with fear,
but his face was determined. He wasn’t going anywhere. Even if he decided to
run for the car now, it was too late.

The Dark Others came down the hill
slowly, inexorably, deliberately. Her only hope was that they’d ignore Ellis
and go after her. But she knew better.

They’d destroy Ellis
and
her, and then they’d go after the town.

And finally, in her desperation,
her monster came.

Ellis stumbled backward and hit the
ground hard, his eyes wide and filled with terrified disbelief as he stared up at
her.

“Ellie?” she frowned. “It’s me.”

“God. Rune?”

As though it wasn’t really her at
all.

Shit.

Her heart broke. “Ellie?”

Shame clouded his eyes as he
climbed to his feet. “I didn’t mean it.” His gaze went to the killers behind
her.

His face was pale, full of a
resignation she’d never before seen in him. Ellis was the ultimate optimist.

But it was as if he knew they were going
to die and had accepted it.

He held his little blade out before
him.

The image of him resolute before
the oncoming Dark Others with his blade out, that image would never leave her.

She would protect him.

Her monster would protect them
both.

Rage covered her brain, spreading
to her very soul, and she turned away from Ellis eagerly. To fight. To kill.
That was the Other in her.

He’d been suppressed for such a
very, very long time.

She smiled. Not he. Referring to
her monster as “he” had been only another subconscious attempt to distance
herself from it, to separate the girl Rune from the monster…Rune.

Her.

I am my monster and my monster
is me.

She turned to face the Dark Others
and didn’t wait for them to reach her—she ran to meet them.

She was bursting out of her skin
with energy and eagerness. One of her fangs ripped into her bottom lip, and she
licked the blood away, unable to stop the smile of…

The smile of death.

Hello, baby.

Delight filled her as the Dark
Others slowed, bloodlust changing to hesitation, to fear. They were afraid of
her.

They fucking should be.

“Not in
my
city,” she
screamed, and with speeds she’d only ever seen in vampires, she ran.

And in the midst of a few dozen
Dark Others, she fought the way she’d been born to fight.

Flesh and bone gave beneath the
lethal strength of her claws, teeth, and fists, and she realized vaguely that
her shivs were gone. That was okay. She didn’t need them.

She was not afraid.

Each kick didn’t just send an Other
flying—her kick
exploded
the Other as it connected. She was strong, she
was incredible, she was invincible.

She wasn’t just Other. She was
Other supercharged.

She
could
save everyone.

And she wanted Jeremy. He was hers
to kill.

Pain registered, but she was too
deep into the fight to care. They outnumbered her. There was going to be some
damage.

Sounds intruded from above and she
glanced up, her eyes unblinking against the harshness of the sun. There was a
monster in the sky.

Not a monster.

A helicopter.

Then there was nothing else. No
sound, no pain, no thought. Just the slashing and cutting and the scent of
blood in the air.

“You get the silence through
violence and sex, Rune…”

She fought like she’d never fought,
with speed and skill and pure unadulterated enjoyment. But she was still
laughably outnumbered.

They fell beneath her power. She
ducked and twirled and leaped, devouring the softness of Dark Other flesh.

She may have laughed. Someone did.
It must have been her, for surely no one else could have held so much elation.

The world was crimson and stank of
supernatural blood. She was coated with it. The heavy stickiness covered her
face, sank into her pores, lingered bitterly on the back of her tongue.

It is not
Other
blood I
want.

That thought was enough to cause
her, for one millisecond, to stumble.

To pause. To doubt.

And that was all they needed.

She fought on, but they overwhelmed
her with sheer crushing numbers.

She thought she heard Ellis scream.

The shifters leaped at her, tearing
her flesh, shredding her skin, but not doing damage enough to kill her all at
once.

Sharp teeth sank into her arm,
biting to the bone.

Swinging her left hand, she decapitated
him with her claws. But as soon as she killed one, another took his place. She
lost count of how many Others she killed, but they weren’t slowing down.

More Dark Others arrived.

And they were systematically
tearing her to pieces.

She fell to her knees. Her vision
was dimming, her blood draining from a thousand different claw and teeth marks.

I’m dying.
It was a thought
tinged with wonder. Could she die?
Could
she?

They backed off, backed off just a
little…as though wanting to watch her suffer through the last moments of her
life. To watch her struggle.

She would fight to the end. That’s
who she was.

She climbed laboriously to her
feet, unwilling to die before them on her knees.

I should have cut my hair.
It swung into her eyes and clung to the blood on her face.
Should have cut
it.

Then,
I’m dying.

They might have already killed
Ellie, but she couldn’t allow that thought to linger.

Jeremy yelled, his voice splitting
the air from his safe place on the ridge. “
Kill
her.”

Above, the helicopter hung in the
air, watching, recording.

That was what Jeremy wanted. What
COS wanted. To show the world what they could do.

She was dying.

But a long, slow moment later, the
Others still had not moved—instead had their stares pinned on something behind
her. Their eyes were filled with surprise and terror. Yes, there was terror.

She turned to look, and her
shattered legs gave out. She began to fall as if in slow motion and knew, just
knew
that if she touched the ground, if she lay on that cold, unforgiving ground,
she was never getting back up.

She fell.

There was only blackness, and
thirst, and so very much pain. Grief, there was that as well. Plenty of it.

Ellie…

Her end shouldn’t have come yet.
She wasn’t ready.

She needed…she needed to do
something.

Slowly, she turned her face to her
right hand, the hand closest to her, and kissed it.
I forgive you. I forgive
you, little Rune.

Now, she could die.

But as she settled into the
blackness, she was snatched off the ground and against a hard chest. Bits of
reality intruded upon her dying brain, her barely conscious brain.

Monsters shrieked.

Through swollen eyelids she caught
glimpses of images she didn’t understand. Maybe she was already gone and this
was the afterlife. Was there an afterlife for monsters?

A huge black bird screamed as it
dive-bombed the Others like a fucking torpedo.

Seconds, minutes, or hours later
she got another glimpse of Dark Others being flung through the air, of Jeremy
running, and of the eyes of the man who held her.

But I’m dying.

She must have spoken the words
aloud.

“No. I won’t let you die, Rune.”
His voice was a deep, low rumble.

Images. Pain.

He bit his own wrist, opening a
vein.

His eyes and something inside them
she’d never seen before.

Who are you?

But she knew him. She
knew
him.

Blood, human blood, at her mouth.
She tightened her lips against it, but he was too strong. He forced the blood
into her mouth, down her throat.

Suddenly she grabbed his wrist and
held it to her mouth, and with every suck, she came back.

She lived.

Oh fuck, she lived.

No
, she screamed. But her
screams were silent.