Strange Trouble (17 page)

When she left her room at the inn, the humans who had
gathered quietly in the parking lot erupted.

“Monster!
Leader of the monster
squad,” someone yelled.

A few eggs splatted as they hit her, but
most of the delicate torpedoes fell to the pavement around her.
The eggs
were harmless. The humiliation was not. The humans were pushing her when she
should not be pushed, but she grabbed her anger with a desperate fist and
refused to let it loose.

If she lost control, the humans were dead.

And she wanted to think she wasn’t there yet. She wasn’t
that much of a monster.

Not yet.

For a second she was frozen, but when an egg hit her injured
chest with particular viciousness, she cried out in pain and rage and started
toward the small crowd.

Some of them screamed and backed away. A few held their
phones high as they concentrated on recording her, and still others continued
to launch eggs with self-righteous anger.

She couldn’t hurt the ignorant sons of bitches, but she
could scare the fuck out of them. She shot her silver claws out and dropped her
fangs.

One of the people recording her was a boy who couldn’t have
been much older than fifteen. She sped toward him and knocked his phone from
his hand before he was aware she’d moved.

More screams as the humans witnessed her crazy fast speed,
but as though aware she wouldn’t really hurt them, they mostly held their
ground.

But then she spotted a big dude in a black leather vest hurl
a short silver blade.

That
, she’d hurt them over.

From her peripheral vision, she caught a glimpse of someone
running toward her.

“Rune,” Lex called.

And she snatched the blade out of the air.

Lex was covered with weapons, her usually emotionless face
held in tight lines of rage. “Fuck you,” she screamed to the small mob. “Get
the fuck out of here.”

She was terrified.

She tried to disguise it, to hide it beneath her anger—but
Rune felt it. She tasted it, smelled it.

Lex was terrified.

COS.

Rune groaned. COS was in the city to
help the humans with
the monsters. If she hadn’t been so exhausted she’d have realized what that
meant to Lex and the twins.

Especially Lex.
She’d been
conditioned from the day she was born to fear COS, to fear her mother. The
Other
was a badass, but the slayers turned her into a pile
of trembling sludge. They shut her brain right the fuck down.

“Shit, Lex,” she murmured.

Levi and Denim scattered the humans as they went for the
knife-thrower. He saw them coming, started to run,
then
changed his mind.

He pulled a gun.

“Fuck,” Rune screamed. She retracted her claws and was at
his back in seconds, but still, he’d managed to fire the weapon. And though
he’d fired at the twins, he hit one of his fellow protesters.

She flew into him and knocked him to the ground, but the
damage had been done.

Rune let Levi and Denim handle him as she knelt beside the
shot human. The crowd grew quiet and watched with wide eyes and pale faces. Two
women murmured into phones, calling, Rune
assumed,
911.

But it was too late for the human, a fifty-something man
with a furry hat and a sticker pasted to his overcoat:
Death to the
monsters!

Indeed.

She climbed to her feet and walked toward the twins, who
were keeping the shooter down.

Lex joined her, her body vibrating. “We took a room close to
yours so we’d be here when you woke up. Didn’t turn out the way we’d hoped.”

“It rarely does.” Rune sighed. “The man he shot is dead. I
don’t want to be here when the cops show up. Pile into my car and let’s get the
fuck out of here.” The berserker was right. They needed to stick together.

The shooter lay on his belly. One of the twins had
restrained his hands behind his back with nylon cuffs. “Just leave him?” Levi
asked.

Rune nodded. “He’s not going anywhere.” She pointed at the
little knot of humans, now huddled together in shock and silence. “They won’t
let him.” The humans might have hated her and the
Others
,
but they hadn’t come prepared to watch one of their own die.

They still stared at Rune with hatred and fear, but they
stared at the shooter the same way—minus the fear.

Even as she watched, a tall, dark-haired woman separated
from the crowd and strode toward the shooter, her face shuttered and dark.

When she began kicking him in the head, Rune looked at her
crew. “Let’s go.” The sound of sirens filled the air. They’d get there in time
to save the shooter from a concussion.
Maybe.

She handed her keys to Levi. His fingers brushed hers as he
took the keys, and then he reached out to grab her wrist with his free hand.

They stared at each other for a long, quiet moment.

“We okay?” she asked.

“Yes.” He smiled, and there were no lingering grudges or
regrets in his eyes. “We are good.”

She nodded. “Then let’s get out of here.”

“Raze, Jack, and Owen went to help some
Others
a couple hours ago,” Lex told her, once they were headed down the highway. “The
shifters were shot up with silver and buried alive by a mob of fucking humans.”

“Scared humans,” Denim said. He was sitting in the front
with Levi, and glanced back at Lex as he spoke.

“Doesn’t excuse them,” she snapped.

“No, it doesn’t. Lex—”

“Not right now,” she said.

The blind
Other
was still hurt over
the twins abandoning her, but Rune doubted she’d stay angry for much longer.
With the appearance of COS, she and the twins would soon close ranks.

“Where’s Strad?” Rune asked.

Before any of them could answer, her cell buzzed. It was the
berserker.

“Rune.
I’m at Toad’s and Butter’s
in the Moor. I need you here.”

“I’m with the twins and Lex. We’ll be there in fifteen
minutes. Need
me
to call the others?”

“I’ll do it.” He clicked off.

“What’s up?” Levi asked.

“Something at Toad’s and Butter’s.
He didn’t specify.”

“I can feed you,” Lex offered.

“I’m okay for now.”

But as they hurtled down the highway toward the Moor, she
knew she was lying.

She’d never really been okay, and she wasn’t going to start
now.

The few customers and employees at Toad’s and
Butter’s
were busy taking pictures of a dead, bloody bear
sprawled out on the dirty wood floor.

There would soon be pictures and videos all over YouTube and
Facebook of the crew examining the half-shifted bear.

Jack and Raze were already there, standing with Strad over
the body. Owen walked in just seconds after Rune.

Rune knelt to examine the bear. “Jack, you and Raze move
these people back. Owen, help me look over the body. Lex, if you get a reading
let me know. Denim and Levi, one of you question the customers and the other
talk to the wait staff.”

“Rune,” Lex said, “I’m getting a strange feeling.”

“What?” Rune asked.

The
Other
vibrated gently, her
sightless eyes dancing.
“Just strange.”

Rune frowned and studied the shifter. The bear was naked and
grotesque in death, more so because he wasn’t completely shifted than because
of the deep wounds on his body.

Patches of fur competed for space with the bloody, jagged
wounds. His mouth was open, showing long, sharp teeth crowding a mostly human
face. His torso was bear, his arms and legs human. He looked like a mutant
spider.

She leaned over him.
“Guys.
These
wounds aren’t from a blade.”

Strad knelt down, ignoring Owen but nodding a hello to the
others. He studied the wounds. “You’re right.” He leaned closer, his eyes
narrowed. “These are from teeth.”

“Holy fuck,” someone yelled. “They just said those are teeth
marks. Someone tried to
eat
the fucking bear!”

“I heard bear meat is tasty,” someone else said, causing
those near him to break out into laughter.

As though a man had not just been killed.

Rune growled. “Jack.”

“On it.”
He pushed the humans back
farther, ignoring their complaints. “Go sit the fuck down or I’m going to clear
this room.”

No one argued with him and at last, the customers drifted
back to their tables and to the long bar, leaving the crew to their
investigation.

“What the hell are people doing at a bar this early in the
morning?” Rune muttered. But this place was in the Moor—her new home. Nothing
was normal in the Moor.

Lex put her hand on Rune’s shoulder and leaned down to
whisper in her ear. She said only one word, and that one word filled Rune with
dread.

“Zombies.”

Strad and Owen looked at her quizzically.

“What is it?” Owen asked, kneeling on her other side.

She swallowed. “Rock County shit has found us.”

It only took them a second.

“Fuck,” Strad said.

A vivid image of Z hit her mind’s eye like a bomb. She
grabbed her head and groaned.

“Rune,” Strad said. “What?”

“Sadness,” Lex murmured.
“Part zillion.”

Rune lowered her hands and shook her head, hard, forcing out
thoughts of Z. “I’m okay.” She took a deep breath, got her emotions under
control,
then
motioned Strad closer. “I doubt the bear
came far with injuries like these.”

He nodded. “Before I called you, I called for the RISC bus
to take him to the lab. We’ll need to get him away from these people.”

“Do we know if we can be infected by a body?”

“There have been some cases.”

She wiped her hands on her jeans and stood. “Let’s not take
any chances. Just keep the people away from him until RISC arrives.”

Owen stood as well, his arm brushing Rune’s shoulder. Strad
stared at him with narrowed eyes.

“Owen,” Rune said.
“Call Bill Rice.”

He nodded and pulled his cell phone from his pocket, walking
a few steps away to make the call.

Denim and Levi joined them. “I got nothing,” Denim said.
“The bear apparently walked in, fell to the floor, and died.” He shrugged. “There
was nothing else.”

Levi nodded.
“Same here.
He never
said anything at all, just…died.”

Rune motioned them to her. “Zombies,” she said, quietly.

“That is not good,” Jack said, trying to whisper. His voice
rumbled with a low, gritty darkness that echoed throughout the room. “Fucking
zombies?”

“Jack,” Rune said. She shook her head, frowning.

“Sorry.”

But he was right. It was not good.

Not good at all.

She glanced toward the door and rested her fingers on her
sheathed silver blades, willing RISC to appear and cart off the bear.

“Oh no.”
Lex pointed. “Look.”

The bear had begun to twitch. And change. His eyes opened.

Empty eyes.

The crew stared, disbelief on their faces.

“How is this happening?” Rune asked. “Damascus is gone. The
Other zombies went with her. I saw them lying in piles upon the ground. How is
this possible?”

“Maybe she’s back,” Lex said.

“I don’t think so,” Rune said. She didn’t feel the witch.
But how the hell else were the
Others
being infected?

“What should we do?” Levi asked.

Rune slid two silver shivs from their sheaths. “Gather
around me, guys.”

They shielded her body immediately.

She knelt. Without hesitation, she plunged her blades into
the bear’s eyes and with little effort, into the brain.

“There,” she said, and left the knives where they were. She
didn’t want the diseased pieces of metal back. She dusted her hands as she
arose. It amused her that in the heat of battle, she got zombie bits all over
her—yet there she was, wiping her hands like a fussy old lady.

“Uh,” said Denim.
“Rune?”

“Yeah?”
She looked at her palms.
“What?”

“Oops,” Lex murmured.
“Zombie movement at
floor o’clock.”

“The fuck?”
Rune whipped around to
stare at the zombie, and sure enough, the bastard was still twitching. It
didn’t seem to notice that it had two blades protruding from its eye sockets.

“It doesn’t want to stay dead,” Lex said.

“Customer alert.” Levi pointed. “They’re heading this way.”

“Shit,” Rune said. “One of you
head
them off.” She pulled another blade, a long one. “I’ll—”

“Never mind,” Raze said, and yanked a mini scythe from a
holster at his hip. “I’ll get it.” Before anyone could move, he lifted the
curved blade and cut through the bear zombie’s thick neck. The head and the
body parted company without much trouble. “Twitch now, motherfucker.”

There was surprisingly little mess. Rune glared at the RISC
workers as they hurried into the bar with a stretcher. “Take him to RISC. And
this time, hurry the fuck up.”

The zombie was deprived of its head and had two silver blades
in its brain, but the bastard hadn’t wanted to stay down. “Wait,” Rune said, as
the transporters approached.

She took off her jacket and spread it out on the floor, then
rolled the bear’s head into it. Strad helped her tie it into a neat bundle for
the puzzled RISC workers. “Take it to the lab,” she said. “And don’t touch it
with your bare skin.”

“What’s it contaminated with?” one of them asked.

She hesitated. “Something you don’t want touching you.”
Or biting you.

He shrugged, and then they loaded the bear onto the
stretcher. And necessary or not, they covered the body with a silver-lined
sheet.

Rune put a hand to her stomach, massaging away the dread
that had gathered there to keep the anxiety company.

Fucking zombies were in River County, and if Shiv Crew
didn’t contain the threat quickly and quietly, the military would come to make
life even more of a hell than it usually was.

But worse than that, the new zombies were back. And if she
didn’t figure out how to make them disappear for good, the world wasn’t going
to have a chance.