Strange Trouble (12 page)

It was like drinking poison.

Damascus tasted of madness, depravity, and a killing rage
worse even than the berserker’s.

Those inside her tasted of deadly sorrow, and pain, and
overwhelming depression. Despair was so sharp it was smothering, and Rune
couldn’t stand it.

Nothing matters.
She remembered. Nothing mattered.
Life was a joke.

Feeding had been an impulse, and it had been a big fucking
mistake.

She could have handled the witch’s taste, but the broken,
grieving sadness of those trapped inside her was too much.

Their reality was too much.

And Rune could not handle it.

She gagged on tears and yanked her fangs from Damascus’s
thinned-skinned throat. She’d punctured the visible, pulsating artery, not even
thinking about it—it’d been the simple reflex action of a vampire.

The blood had squirted down her throat in strong splashes,
and it didn’t matter that she stopped feeding. She couldn’t get the taste from
her mind. The horror inside the witch was something she’d never known existed.
Something she’d never imagined.

She’d been through shit. She’d been hurt, and she’d
experienced horror.

But not like that.

Not even from Llodra. Not even living with the knowledge
that she’d slaughtered her adoptive parents was as unspeakable as what was
inside the witch.

And that changed her mind about everything. She wasn’t
leaving until Damascus was dead or gone.

She couldn’t.

Nicolas Llodra was right. That was why she existed.

She destroyed the monsters—true monsters.

Damascus pinched her artery and it sealed off with a hiss.
She stared at Rune with curiosity and satisfaction, which quickly turned to
shock, and then hatred.

“It’s not possible. You cannot live with my blood inside
you.”

Rune wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “It would
appear that I can.”

Her stomach heaved, trying to dislodge the revolting blood,
but she swallowed hard and forced herself not to vomit.

And for the first time, doubt showed in Damascus’s monstrous
eyes.

Rune backed away. Her sensitive ears caught the sounds of
engines. Ground troops were coming to kill Rock County.

Damascus smiled. “I came here to take back what belongs to
me. To call him into my presence and spirit him back to my world.
Back into my loving arms.”

“Believe me, lady, I regret not handing him over to you.”
Something had changed, and Rune was pretty sure she knew what it was. The witch
was giving up. She wanted to go back to her world.

But Rune didn’t want to let her go. Not alive.

“I cannot defeat you,” Damascus continued.
“Especially not with my blood inside you.
Do you know that
you are truly immortal?”

“I’ve had my suspicions.”

“My blood will not make you happy, my dear. But you have
your greedy self to blame for that.” She took one step back, away from Rune.
“You cannot defeat me, either. So to stand here and battle is a waste of time.

“And I am a woman in love.” She grimaced, and for one brief
second looked almost human. She
sounded
human. She tilted her head and
was silent for a long moment.
Calling Nicolas.

“He does not answer. He has escaped me.
Again.”
She started to turn away, but hesitated. “Marta had the child delivered to me.
So when you go on your hunt for Nicky, don’t neglect to punish Marta.” She
giggled. It sounded more like a sob.

Rune advanced on the witch, slowly, carefully. “I won’t let
you take Stefanie. If you want to leave, you have to release her first.”

The witch slid farther away, laughing as she went. “You
can’t stop me from going.”

But Rune, who had been inside the witch’s mind, knew
otherwise. She grinned and leaped at Damascus. Before the witch could move, she
forced her fingers through the sludge in her chest and grabbed her heart.
Her black, swollen heart.

And then she squeezed.

Damascus screamed.

“Your weak spot,” Rune said. “Release the child or I will
burst your fucking heart.”

She knew also if she killed the witch, Fie would die with
her—but she’d kill them both if she had to. Better Fie die than to exist inside
Damascus.

She squeezed harder.

“Oh,” the witch cried. “It hurts.”

“Yeah.
That’s
always
what
hurts the most—someone fucking with your heart. Release her and I’ll let you
go.”

She didn’t want to, but she would.

Damascus opened her mouth, her teeth parting as she dropped
her lower jaw. And from the opening, a light started to shine.

The witch’s body began to heave, as though she were going to
vomit. And then she
did
—she vomited up the spirit of the child.

Rune thought she might pass out. Dark spots grew and danced
in her field of vision as she strained to follow the light, the light that was
Stefanie Arco.

She couldn’t breathe as the power grew, dimmed,
then
grew again.

“Go,” she cried, and pulled her fingers away from the
witch’s chest. “Go!”
Please.

“I
know
you,” Damascus whispered suddenly, her face
filled with shock. “How did I forget?”

Then the witch was gone.

She did pass out then, and when she came to seconds or hours
or decades later, the witch was gone and the world was full of sounds she
didn’t at first understand.

Motors and staccato gunfire, shouts and
cries.

Finally, she remembered where she was.

Fie. She had to find Fie.

She climbed groggily to her feet and looked around, but the
light was no longer there. Maybe Damascus had lied, but she didn’t think so.
She’d seen the light leaving her mouth.

She’d seen the fear in the witch’s eyes.

Maybe Fie had gone to find her body.
Her
broken body.

Rune stumbled down the stairs, each stumbling, lurching step
seeming to take an eternity.

She flung open the doors and ran with a bit more strength to
the side of the building where Fie had lain.

But when she got there, Fie’s body was gone.

There was only one small shoe, lying with sad abandon in the
dirt, surrounded by the prone bodies of five motionless, rotting zombies.

She had to accept the fact that Fie was gone. But her
spirit, that lived on.
Somewhere.

The sounds of screaming hit her brain, and she realized it
was a sound she’d been hearing for a while—she just hadn’t processed it.

She forced herself into a jog, her body groaning with pain,
and headed toward the screams.

Fucking Llodra.

She
would
find him.

It was just a matter of time.

The screams faded and she ran faster, finally bursting
through an open door in one of the squat, mustard-colored buildings to the left
of the tower.

Inside, the floor was littered with rotting bodies of
zombies. Marta hadn’t lied about that—when the witch had gone, the zombies had
crumbled to the ground and…died.
The
new
zombies.

The old zombies were still very much animated, and were
eating cheerfully of the
Others
chained with silver to
the walls.

Stunned, Rune stood still for the second it took her to
understand what she was seeing.

Others.

Chained to the walls.

The
Others
who still lived seemed
too weak to put up much resistance, but there were some who fought to shift
even as they were being bitten.

But the silver kept the
Others
from
shifting, melting into flesh as they struggled.

She didn’t see one wolf among them. Elliot was just like
Marta. They couldn’t be bothered to help anyone who wasn’t pack or coven.

Rune shot her claws
out,
destroying
zombie brains before anyone even realized she was in the room.

She started to kill the bitten
Others
before she realized that with the witch and her strange magic gone, the Others
would not be infected. They’d heal.

Except for the ones the zombies had injured beyond repair.
Those she could not help except by finishing off.

With the arrival of help, of hope, the
Others
who weren’t too far gone began to scream once more. The room became a thick,
muddy mix of screams, pleas, and cries, and worst of all, the clacking teeth
and sorrowful moans of the zombies.

“Please,” a man begged. That was all. Just
please.

She pulled apart the blood-spattered chains, freeing the
Others
even as she continued to decapitate the few zombies
that remained.

“Is there a back door?” she asked, calmly.

One of the
Others
, a woman with
rusty red hair and half her face missing, nodded. She wasn’t capable of opening
her mouth to talk, but pointed to the left.

“Run,” Rune said. She raised her voice. “As soon as I free
you, go out the back and don’t stop for anything. The military is here, and
they’ll destroy you faster than the zombies will.”

She drove her claws through a zombie’s brain and with her
other hand, freed the last prisoner. Then the room was empty but for blood and
rot and Rune.

She heard the soldiers converging upon the building as she
ran down the long hall and out the back, following the
Others
she’d freed.

There were more buildings, and maybe there were more captive
Others
inside them. But she couldn’t allow herself to
get caught by the military.

That wouldn’t help anybody.

She passed a huge, crudely built cage, set on a platform and
wrapped in silver-laced screen. She knew immediately it’d been used for
Otherfights.

Fucking Camp.
Fucking
humans.

She ran to the woods at the back of the compound, pacing
herself to stay behind the
Others
. She herded them
into the deep woods, where everyone split up at once. There were no words, just
terrorized, injured people hoping like hell they could find a safe place to
exist.

It was there in the woods, as she closed her eyes and hid
her face against the rough bark of a tree, that she remembered her cell.

She ripped it from her tattered pocket, staring in disbelief
when she realized it was dead. “Fuck!”

The crew might have gotten out before the military came in,
but where was Denim?

She slid the useless phone back into her pocket and wrapped
her arms around herself. She was cold. Her mind wanted to shut down and take a
break from all it had witnessed.

But she didn’t remember a time when she wasn’t cold. Or
hurt. Or so alone she wanted to burst into tears like a fucking
girl.

With dry leaves and forest floor debris crunching under her
boots, she began to walk. She was going home.

Overhead, helicopters swooped, and she flinched each time
one’s light grazed the area near her.

But finally, the sounds of engines and machine gunfire and
curses began to fade as she left the zombies to the military.

The woods were vast and empty, filled with nothing but bare,
shivering trees. The moon shone brightly down on the chaotic night, lighting
her way.

Her right arm continued to drip blood, slow to heal from the
witch’s desperate scratches. The scent would most likely attract any zombies in
the area.

She almost hoped it would. The woods were too dead.

She came upon a small, old graveyard. Even here, the earth
was churned and disturbed where ancient dead had climbed free.

George…she’d have to explain to Fie’s big brother that she’d
lost the girl—if he came out of his stupor, or whatever it was.

He’d be devastated.
And alone.

And that just sucked.

“
Your
Highness.”

She walked right by him before she realized he wasn’t a
mirage. He was as real as she was, and he was standing in the middle of the
woods talking to her.

Gunnar the Ghoul.

She stopped and stared, finally, still disbelieving. “You
can’t leave Wormwood.”

He gestured at the ground. “I can appear in any graveyard.”

“You never told me,” she murmured. She reached out, ignoring
the way he cringed as she touched him.

She understood. She did the same thing when someone wanted
to touch her—unless it was done in anger or with the intent to hurt her.
That, she didn’t recoil from.

He was real. Gunnar the Ghoul was there in those strange,
too quiet woods, and he was as familiar to her as her own face.

“I do not volunteer information about myself,” he said.

They stared at each other for a long moment. She kept her
hand on his arm, afraid he would disappear if she let go of him. “I was alone,”
she said, for no reason.

His sharp-featured face softened. Or maybe it was only a
trick of the moonlight. “You are never alone, Your Desolateness.”

“How did you do this?” At last, she let go of him. He didn’t
disappear.

“As I said.
I can…materialize in
any graveyard.”

She sighed. “It’s good to see you, baby. You have something
to tell me?”

He nodded, and his long black hair slid over his bony
shoulder. “But you will not like it.”

Yeah. She hadn’t really figured she would. “I have no Baby
Ruth candy bars. You’re not going to like that. But we deal with our little
disappointments and move on, don’t we?” Maybe if she kept talking, she’d never
find out what Gunnar had to tell her.

“It’s about Llodra,” he said, his face carefully blank. “As
you know, RISC freed him.”

“No.” Her voice was hoarse. “
I
freed him. What did he
do, Gunnar?”

“He fed in a frenzy of madness before he left the—”

“No.
No.
”

“—building.
I’m sorry,
Your
Horror. He slaughtered your people.”