Shiv Crew (24 page)

It was the first blood she’d taken
from a body since she’d been a murderous little child. After that, she hadn’t
seemed to need the blood—until she’d gotten older. Then the need had nearly
killed her. She just hadn’t recognized it for what it was. Until Ellie…

She was her monster, and her
monster was her.

She cried, cried as he fed her, and
the heavy tears ran down her face.

They’d be scarlet.

Stop wasting the blood.

Oh God.

She forced his arm away and met his
eyes for one long second. “Fight,” she said.

His eyes might have softened just a
bit, and then he gave a sharp nod and
threw
her into what seemed like a
never-ending crowd of Dark Others.

There was no need to think. Just
fight.

And find Jeremy.

He was hers to kill.

The enormous bird used claws and
sheer size to fight the Others.

But still more came.

She didn’t know where they were
coming from. The sons of bitches must have been planning this day for a long
time.

Fucking Jeremy.

The lone helicopter had attracted a
mate and the two of them sat above the danger, and she realized they’d be
showing the horrific battle on live TV.

And finally, finally she saw her
crew. Had they caught this hell on the screen and thought she was dead? Dead
like—

Ellis.

Lex split off from Levi and Denim
and sprinted toward the restrained wolves, her blindness once again something
incomprehensible. Blind? No.

Then Rune had time for nothing more
than trying once again to cheat death. But she was full of his blood—yes, she
could see him, she could admit it—full of the berserker’s blood.

He’d saved her life again.

And somehow, he’d known how to save
her. He knew she was a vampire. A fucking mutated vampire.

She screamed in denial even as she
sank her fangs into the throat of a wolf and tore his jugular from his body.

She threw her head back and
screamed at the sky.

Then Z was there, his eyes swimming
with tears. Nice, clear tears, not the bloody tears of a monster. “Rune,” he
whispered, and tossed her a blade.

Maybe he thought she needed one.

She couldn’t reassure him, couldn’t
smile. All she could do was slash enemies into bits of nothing and wait for the
horror to end.

Raze threw her another blade, and
though she might not really need them, she was happy to have both hands full of
silver. It balanced her.

It was what she did. She was Shiv
Crew and Shiv Crew fought with fucking silver blades.

Lex pulled her around, but there
was no time for words, no time to take the blind girl to safety. But then…

Safety was something the Dark
Others should have sought.

Lexi and Rune fought together. Lex
mirrored her every movement, her vibrations hard enough to hear. Together, she
and Rune danced a killing dance, both of them using blades and fists and feet
to destroy the Dark Others.

And Lex was fighting with silver.

Rune wanted to stop and watch the
gory, incredibly beautiful picture the two of them must surely have made.

Catching sight of Strad was almost
enough to make her lose her concentration. The berserker roared his wildness to
the world as he cut down any Dark Other unlucky enough to come close to his
spear, to his fury.

She and her crew were unstoppable.

The twins fought back-to-back,
playing off each other to defeat their foes. Ponytails flying, they yelled with
excitement, and she realized that every single one of her crew enjoyed the
fight.

Lived for it.

Z fought almost like a gentleman,
his cuts neat and quick, silent and strong, dripping with finesse. Jack and
Raze, her giants, roared as they took off heads and slaughtered their attackers
with a rage that rivaled the berserker’s.

She caught everything in glances,
in bits and pieces. Blood lent the air a haze of scarlet and the scent of
death.

Death had already claimed too many
innocents. No more.

No more.

She screamed her rage and pain.

“Fuck,” Jack yelled, his hand over
his eye. He grinned when she glanced at him, but his face was covered with
blood, his clothes splattered with gore. He knelt on the ground as if his legs
would no longer support him.

She turned to help her crew as a
fresh wave of Dark Others topped the hill, and the unwelcome question flashed
into her mind. Could these Others be beaten by just her people and the silver
of their shivs?
Could
they?

There were so many of them. They
spilled over the hill like water from a hose, fast and thick and constant.

Then the moon chased the sun into
hiding and when that happened, the vampires came.

Vampires feared
no
fucking
one.

The vampire master fought beside her
and Lex for a while, and because of him and his children, the tides of the
fight turned even more against the Dark Others—though there were far fewer of
them since the Dark Others had shot them full of silver in Wormwood.

Her men fought on, but Raze broke
from the knot of fighters and sprinted right toward the new Dark Others.

“Raze,” she screamed, and her heart
froze in her chest. He was running toward certain death.

Desperation lent her even more
speed, and she ran toward him.

She realized with horror what he
was doing when he pulled something from one of his pockets and threw the object
with all his strength into the midst of the new Dark Others.

Grenade.

To be sure of getting them all,
he’d gotten too close before throwing the grenade.

He’d be blown to bits with them.

Raze.

Fuck no.

She wasn’t a monster for nothing.

Someone screamed her name but she
ignored it and ran on across the field, intent only on getting to Raze.

She reached him a couple of seconds
after he’d released the grenade, then had no idea what to do.

His eyes widened when he saw her
beside him, realization and regret showing in his striking gray eyes.

High above, the noisy helicopters
spotlighted the bloody, moon-bathed field, and for a second Rune the girl was
concerned the world would see the Dark Others victorious and she and her crew
defeated.

But her monster was more confident.
She
would
save Raze.

There was no way she could pick him
up. Raze was a mountain and she was small. Surely, it was not possible.

But fuck if she didn’t do it
anyway.

His grenade went off, but the hot
wind from the explosion only served to push her farther away. By then, she’d wrapped
her arms around as much of the big man as possible and she and Raze were out of
reach of the blast.

She ran so fast she couldn’t
breathe—pushing Raze along with her.

Fucking monster.

She was
amazing
.

Raze fell to the ground when she
stopped, but he would be okay. What had just happened would disorient anyone.

Except her.

She threw herself back into the
fight. She’d lost her blades again, but it didn’t matter. She fought with a
mindless rage, barely seeing the furry bodies that fell beneath her blows.

She straddled the body of a fallen
half-shifted bear and nearly decapitated him with a slash of her claws. They’d
grown even more with the arrival of the vampires and were now shivs in their
own right.

Shivs that were extensions of her
body, and God, did they feel right.

Maybe the proximity of the undead
had something to do with it, but that was a question for a quieter time.

“
Rune.”

She looked up at Z’s voice.

The ground was littered with dead
Others, and blood seemed to hang in the air.

The battle was over.

Her monster sighed with tired
satisfaction and slid into a dark nest to sleep, leaving her to face them
alone.

Always alone.

Her crew stared at her with varying
expressions. She was too bewildered to read their faces. At last Z stepped
forward and pulled her into his arms.

“
God
, Rune.”

She could almost hear the beads of
blood falling from her fingers and hitting the earth. There was a coldness
inside her she’d never noticed before. Not a calmness, not an indifference. Just
a coldness.

She was changed.

All of them had witnessed the
monster. Not just her crew but all of River County. Anyone who turned on a TV
would see.

Afraid she’d see disgust in her
crew’s eyes. She leaned limply against Z, the one man in her crew who couldn’t
bear to see a female suffer. No matter what she’d done.

Everyone would know now that she’d
turned her own parents. How long would it take them to put it together? Not
long.

An image flashed into her mind. She
sat in the middle of a floor slippery with blood, the lacerated bodies of her
parents around her. She licked her lips, wet and juicy with the exotic,
delightful taste of blood, her parents’ blood.

She never remembered how it
happened. Never remembered slaying them, just remembered the taste of them, and
how her nine-year-old monster mind had craved that taste, had wanted her to
lean over and sink her teeth into her father’s throat and pull out some more of
that blood.

She remembered climbing to her
feet, remembered the stickiness, remembered sliding in that blood and falling.
She’d hit her temple on the corner of a table going down, hit it hard.

Then blackness and shadows. Someone
was talking to her…

“Rune?” Z had his hands around her
upper arms and was shaking her, his eyes worried and scared.

She wanted to cry, to sink into the
dark, crumbly earth and never come to the surface again. “Ellis?” Her words
came out in a breathless half scream of shock, of fear.

“What would I do without you,
Ellie?”

“I don’t know, probably die.”

But Z smiled. “He’s okay, baby. He’s
wounded but alive.”

“Rice came in himself,” Levi said,
a little awe in his voice. “Came in and got him.”

Now the world would know Rice was
an Other, but he’d cared too much to hide in the shadows when he was needed.

“It was Jeremy,” she said. “And…”

“Mitch.” Z said it for her. “Fuck
him. Mitch is dead.” He pointed his shiv toward the ridge, but she didn’t look.

“Jeremy?”

He shook his head. “We lost him.”

She covered her mouth as a sob
escaped. “Oh God. Oh God.”

Overhead the news helicopters
lingered, wanting to get every bit of the gruesome scene. The moon was full and
bright, but now that the Other inside her was sleeping, the night was a much
darker place.

She finally gathered her courage
and stepped away from Z, forcing herself to meet the eyes of her crew.

The berserker stood a distance away
with his back to them, as though he didn’t want to intrude upon their circle.
But she’d taken blood from his veins.

He’d saved her life.

And she couldn’t help but cry,
right there in front of them all. She put a hand to her cheek and it came away
with fresh blood. The berserker’s blood.

She could only stare at them,
helpless, full of sorrow and shame.

Z stepped toward her, and before
she understood what he was going to do, he ran his fingertip through a track of
her red tears. He stared at her, lifting her chin when she dropped her gaze to
the ground. As she watched, he drew his blade in a small, quick line under his
eye. A drop of rich, red blood beaded there, spilled over, and ran down his
cheek like the scarlet pain of her tears.

“Z,” she cried. “Z.”

Lex finally broke the frozen
silence. “So broken.” She moved forward, her unseeing yet all-seeing eyes wet
with tears, and pulled Rune into her arms.

Then the men lined up and one by
one they hugged her, each one kissing her cheek or whispering words of comfort
into her ear, squeezing her gently.

Not once did she try to pull away.

It was at that moment she realized
they truly loved her. All of them. They thought she was worthy of love.

Despite the fact that she was an
Other.

Jack had tied a long shred of cloth
over his eye. As she watched, it blossomed with blood, the spot growing larger
with each passing second.

“Jack?”

“Paramedics are coming in now,”
Denim said. He touched Jack’s shoulder. “Hang on, man.”

Everyone had their injuries and would
need to be checked out, but she had a bad feeling about Jack’s eye.

He swayed on his feet, and Raze
shot out an arm to steady him.

She didn’t know what would come.
Right now, all that mattered were her men, her city, and her responsibility to
them all.

She stepped back and tapped her
chest with her crossed fingers, then raised her hand to the sky.

“For the city,” she whispered. “And
all those inside, human and Other. For Shiv Crew. And most especially, for
Ellis.”

Her crew, wounded and tired, raised
their crossed fingers as well.

“Human and Other,” they echoed. “Shiv
Crew. And Ellis.”

They had stopped this batch of Dark
Others, but there would be more. There would always be more. She had no way of
knowing where Jeremy was. Not that it mattered. She would find him.

Sooner or later she would find him,
and she would cut out his fucking black heart.

High above, the helicopters began
to move away, their occupants having seen all they needed to see.

Rune sat on the hospital bed beside
Ellis, watching the television replay the toughest battle of her life. She
squeezed his left hand gently, looking at him every few moments.

She’d almost lost him.

His right arm had been broken in
three places and she’d signed his cast three times. One for each break.

Her entire crew had managed to
stuff themselves into the room as well, making it seem about the size of a
closet.

“Turn it off,” Z said, when the
video began to play.

But she wanted to watch. “No. Leave
it.”

“I heard some guys on YouTube have
edited it and have it set to music,” Ellis said, his voice weak but his smile
strong.

“Crazy,” Rune replied, her
attention on the TV.

“It’s been a week,” Jack rumbled,
rubbing a fingertip over the patch that covered the spot where his left eye
once resided.

He stopped when he noticed her
watching him.

She looked away, her heart heavy.
His beautiful eye, gone.

Fucking Jeremy. Fucking Church of
Slayers.

They’d refused to take credit for
the Hawthorne Ridge battle. No one believed them. And Karin Love still sat in
her cell, more protected than ever. The world was fucked-up when someone that
evil was given more rights than her victims.

There were still unanswered
questions, and most of them centered around the Church of Slayers.

Rune believed COS was going to
concentrate on Spiritgrove for three reasons.

Levi, Denim, and Lex.

Let them come. They’d had an ass
kicking once and if—
when
—more killers came, Shiv Crew would annihilate
them too.

But she and her crew lived, and for
the first time she watched the battle as it’d looked from above, the quality
grainy but clear enough.

Clear enough to see her facing down
the Others, to see the dark splotches of blood as she ripped them to shreds.
Clear enough to watch as she fell beneath their numbers.

“That’s what we saw,” Z whispered. “That’s
what we saw before we got to you. We thought…”

But he didn’t have to finish.

They’d thought she was dead.

Hell,
she’d
thought she was
dead.

Ellis had made the crew promise
that as soon as he was released from the hospital they’d take him to Wormwood.
He wanted to talk to the residents, wanted the crew to talk to them, to wrap
things up, he’d said.

To start the changes.

He was desperate to make sure the
city—Other and human—accepted Rune. Rune the Other.

“They weren’t invited to the River
Run Hall meeting,” he’d said. “This is one just for them. We’ll make sure they
know us, make sure they feel they’re part of this city.” He’d looked at Rune
with hopeful eyes, and she’d agreed.

“It’s only fair,” she’d said,
smiling when his eyes lit up.

His doctor said he would release
him on Christmas Eve, and that’s when Ellis scheduled the Wormwood meeting.

Rune was not looking forward to it.

Christmas Eve morning dawned cold
and gray, matching her mood perfectly. The skies had been spewing fluffy snow
for the last two days, and though she loved the fresh beauty, even new snow
couldn’t lift her spirits that morning.

They’d decided to enter Wormwood in
the evening so the vampires could make an appearance after the sun went down.
So she had all day long to wait and worry.

She wasn’t ready to face them
yet—not the humans
or
the Others—but she’d be damned if she’d hide in a
corner because the world might look down on her.

She armed herself with special
care, weighing her body down with perhaps too many shivs as well as her deadly
guns. She’d breathed a sigh of relief at getting them back. Her badge she’d
pinned to her vest where everyone would see.

She was Other, but she was still
Shiv Crew.

And she was not taking Ellis into
Wormwood unprepared.

There was the little matter of all
the people who would look at this as a perfect opportunity to cause some
trouble. Both sides were going to protest this meeting. The humans because
Ellis was human, and because of Mitch, they now believed Shiv Crew was theirs
to command. The Others because they’d been persecuted by law enforcement for
decades. And they didn’t want the humans infiltrating the one place that
belonged only to them.

Finally, it was time to go.

She drove alone. The twins and Lex
were picking up Ellis, and Rune would meet them all at the graveyard. When she
arrived, she stared in shock at all the vehicles already there. Dozens of them.

She’d figured she and her men would
be yelled at by a few angry people and that the usual residents of Wormwood
would come see them out of sheer curiosity.

But it looked like half of River
County was attending.

Ellis was still not in the best
shape and walked slowly between the supportive arms of Levi and Denim. He
smiled and waved when he saw her.

“So many people,” he said, but
missed the worried looks the twins and Rune exchanged.

The path leading to the graveyard
was nothing but hard, frozen earth, rubbed bare by hundreds of feet. She led
her quiet crew to the gates and could sense those inside waiting. Waiting for
them.

“Rune.”

She stopped walking at Jack’s tone,
the fine hairs on the back of her neck rising. Dammit, not trouble already.

She turned to look.

The berserker strode toward them,
his shiny hair and huge body lending him an especially terrifying air this
close to the cemetery.

“Fuck,” she whispered.

She had seen nothing of Strad since
the battle. He’d simply disappeared, and she couldn’t bring herself to ask
about him. She didn’t care where he was.

She
didn’t
.

Lex’s movements picked up speed,
her crazy blind eyes dancing in time with her body. The men looked at Rune.
Should they go to meet the berserker or wait?

“Wait,” she said.

She’d avoid a confrontation at all
costs. Her men were still recovering from the last encounter. Not that Strad
had ever done anything but help them.

Still, he
was
the berserker
and he’d once worked for Jeremy. And Mitch’s betrayal had made all of them just
a little more careful about whom they trusted.

Strad’s boots kicked up a trail of
new snow as he neared, his steely cold gaze on hers. She didn’t look away but
rested her hands on her shivs, waiting.

He strode right up to her, into her
space.

And then he dropped to his knees
before her.

The ground seemed to shake when he
fell, fluffy snow flying up as his huge body displaced it.

Stunned, she looked up at her crew,
her mouth open in shock.
What the fuck?

He kept his head bowed and stayed
silent on his knees, his long hair hanging loosely over his big shoulders. Even
kneeling he was almost as tall as she was.

He was throwing in his lot with
Shiv Crew. He was giving her his loyalty.

She touched his shoulder and at
last, he lifted his face and looked at her. There was only calm acceptance in
his eyes. No hint at anything other than a late-in-coming realization that he’d
been with the wrong people all along.

He’d opened a vein for her.

She gave him a nod. “Okay.” She
paused, forcing the word through the dry cotton in her mouth. “Thank you.”

Jack and Z looked at her, patiently
waiting for her signal. They could wait all day.

Levi and Denim crowded around
Ellis, making sure that if there was trouble, he was protected.

Their faces were closed off, almost
as closed off as they’d been when she’d first met them. They blamed themselves.
She wasn’t the only one who believed Karin Love was behind Jeremy and the Dark
Others. She was evil, and she was also a bitch with a grudge. Her daughter and
two of her former men, men who’d grown up in her church, were now fighting
against her and her plans for a monster-less future.

Strad nodded back, his face
expressionless. When he stood, he automatically took the position in front of
her, his body her shield.

Rune shrugged and let him take
point.

Z’s jaw dropped in amazement.

The berserker pushed open the gates
and they filed into Wormwood. First Strad, followed by Rune, then Jack, Z, Levi
and Denim with Ellis between them, the unassailable Lexi behind them, and Raze
bringing up the rear.

The graveyard overflowed with
people. Humans on one side, nonhumans on the other. They’d left a twelve-foot-wide
path right down the middle, at the end of which stood the little podium Ellis
had requested.

Would they make it there without
mishap? Not a chance.

Fuck them.

She pulled her shivs and walked in,
the blades ready.
Don’t fuck with me on this day. Just don’t.

If they caused Ellis one second of
pain, she’d cut every last one of them. All he wanted—all he’d ever wanted—was
for the Others and the humans of Spiritgrove to pull together. To accept each
other. To be equals.

The visitors were eerily silent,
but Wormwood screamed with expectation.

Something was going to happen. Anticipation
rippled across her skin, raising gooseflesh and cold chills even as sweat
trickled down her spine.

Every step seemed to take forever,
like when she tried to run from something in her nightmares. In front of her,
Strad swiveled his head from left to right. He didn’t pull his weapons, but he
had his hands on the grips.

Lex’s vibrations, buzzing like the
bees from a thousand hornets’ nests, hummed loudly enough to assault Rune’s
sensitive ears.

It pissed her off that these people
would have so little respect for the ones charged with protecting them.

But then…

At very nearly the same time, every
person in the graveyard thumped his chest and raised crossed fingers of
acceptance and honor. Every person in Wormwood raised a hand.

Every single fucking one of them.

“Oh,” Ellis cried. “Oh
my
.”

Her heart burst with undiluted joy,
and her eyes filled with bloody tears.

Her crew watched her. Waited to see
if she would return the sign.

She gave it, thumping her own chest
and raising her crossed fingers to the silent crowd.

As one, her crew did the same.

It was so perfect it hurt her.

She sobbed. She hadn’t until that
very moment realized how tormented she’d been by the hatred and contempt, both
imagined and real. Something the Others lived with every day of their lives.

And now those same people were
honoring Ellis and acknowledging Shiv Crew.

Gunnar the Ghoul stood with his
people, his long fingers in the air. When he caught her gaze he bowed, and
mouthed,
Your Highness.

“Rune, Rune,” Amy called, and when
Rune glanced at her the girl waved frantically from her place beside her
father.

Suddenly, the world seemed a little
less dark.

“For you, Ellis,” she whispered.

Finally. Fucking finally.

She let the cleansing tears flow
and walked with her head high beside the best friend she’d ever had, and the
greatest man she’d ever known.

Every person in Spiritgrove honored
him right along with her.

In one week she would say a
temporary good-bye to her crew and do one more thing Ellis had asked her to do—but
she’d be doing it for herself.

She was going away to get some
fucking help.

Help for her.

Help for her monster.