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  Rune clenched her fists. She wasn’t patient with stupidity, and the girl was just plain rude. “I’m going to cuff you now. When we’ve finished cutting off a few heads, I’ll figure out what to do with you.” She would probably be transferred to a hospital where they’d tie her to the bed and try their best to wean her off the drug that was the vampire bite.

  The girl burst into tears. “How can you do that to them? How can you sneak in like this and kill them? You’re the monster. Satan’s spawn.” She cried like a little kid—mouth wide open, eyes screwed shut, bawling loudly and unashamedly.

  Rune pursed her lips and looked at Jack, who widened his eyes and stepped away from the emotional girl. Crying girls made Jack uncomfortable.

  “They’re abducting and killing humans,” Rune said, talking loudly to make herself heard over the girl’s weeping.

  She stopped crying and sniffed, then wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve. “No they’re not. But you and the other cops don’t care who is really doing it. They tell me things,” she finished, another note of pride in her voice.

  Rune folded her arms. “What things?”

  The girl glanced down the stairs. “Make them stop killing the vampires and I’ll tell you.”

  “No.”

  It was suddenly as though an old woman peeked through the girl’s eyes. “Please,” she whispered. “They’re my friends. They…” She paused, searching for the right words. “They’re people.”

  Dammit. Rune was a sucker for a person in pain. She was built to protect, not to torment. She nodded at Jack. “Call them off.”

  Shocked, he could only stare at her. “Rune—”

  “You heard her,” the girl snapped. “Call them the fuck off!”

  Rune almost smiled. The girl was a pain in the ass, but anybody who could shout orders at the huge, frightening Jack went up a notch in her estimation.

  Jack sighed, then went to do their bidding.

  “What’s your name?” Rune asked her.

  “Amy.”

  “Amy…”

  “Just Amy. And listen. I know who you are. You can help them.”

  “I don’t help monsters, kid. I kill them.”

  “You wouldn’t if you’d get to know them.” She stood and grabbed Rune’s hand. “I’ll tell you, because I think you will be the one to save them when you know the truth.”

  Rune gently extracted her hand and sat on the steps, motioning the girl to sit beside her. “Okay. So what’s the truth?”

  Amy sat down, her eyes wide and determined, but desperation and honesty were there as well. “The vampires aren’t the ones taking the humans. A human is.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What human?” Despite herself, Rune was intrigued by the girl’s sincerity. Even if she was full of shit about the vampires, she had something to tell.

  Amy bit her lip. “I don’t know who, exactly.”

  Rune sighed. Of course you don’t. But the girl’s next words set her heart pounding and her brain on full alert.

  “I just know what he’s called. Preston.”

  She flashed back to the injured girl she and her crew had saved. “It’s Preston. He’s killing the other—”

  Had she meant, simply, other? Had she been going to say Preston was killing the other humans? Or killing the Others?

  One thing was certain—the girl had her full attention. “Tell me everything, Amy.”

  Amy’s face brightened. “You believe me.”

  “Just talk. And I don’t have a lot of time, so talk fast. Everything you know, I want to know.”

  Amy nodded. “You got it.”

  The crew was climbing the stairs, and one look at Rune’s expression had them finding seats as well, all eyes on the bite junkie.

  Lex climbed to join the females, one hand trailing the wall.

  “Oh my God.” Amy had as much trouble whispering as Jack did. Her voice echoed off the cold walls of the stairwell. “Is she blind?”

  Rune made room for Lex and held out a hand to help her to sit. Before she’d gotten her hand up, almost before the thought had formed, Lex had her own hand out, waiting for it.

  Vibrating softly, Lex sat between Rune and Amy. “Continue.” She felt for Amy’s hand, holding it gently between hers.

  Amy looked startled for a second, then shrugged and began telling her story.

  “I’m telling you exactly what I’ve heard, guys. There is a man named Preston. His name alone is enough to scare the Others half to death. He’s in a high position of authority. Nicolas told me that himself.” Again with the proud smile.

  “Nick Llodra?” Rune asked. “The master is talking to you?”

  Amy lifted her chin, scowling. “Well I was there, in the room. He said Preston is in a high position of authority and that’s how he terrorizes the groups.” She glanced around at the faces watching her. “You know, the Others.”

  “We know,” Rune said, gently. “Go on.”

  “The groups have to pay him for protection. But it’s not really protection. They pay him because if they don’t he makes bad things happen to them.” Again she looked at the attentive crew. “Real bad things.”

  “Like what?” Z asked.

  She blew him a kiss. “You sure are sexy.”

  “Amy.”

  Amy frowned at Rune, then continued, scratching at her scalp with ragged nails. “He does things like hurt the leaders’ people. A few months ago he had one of the shifters picked up because they refused to pay him. They didn’t have the money. Preston is greedy. Nicolas said so.”

  Rune glanced at her crew, trying to wrap her mind around Amy’s words. She met Raze’s eyes, and waited.

  He nodded. She’s telling the truth.

  “What happened to him, the shifter?”

  “He came back missing a leg,” Amy said, loud and defensive. As though it was Shiv Crew’s fault.

  Maybe it was.

  “It grew back,” Amy continued. “Because shifters are special. Just like all the Others.” She narrowed her eyes at Rune, waiting for her to argue.

  “When did the extortion begin, Amy?”

  The girl wrinkled her nose, thinking. “About a year and a half ago, I think.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “I can’t believe none of you have a clue about the shit that goes on around here. Or maybe you do, but you don’t care. For all I know, you’re in on it.” She sneered. “The amazing humans against the lowly monsters. You’re all—”

  Rune reeled her back in. “Amy. Shiv Crew is not your enemy. Tell us your story.”

  Amy took a deep breath. “Anyway. The Others pay Preston so basically he’ll allow them to live in the city. He uses them against each other. He had the bears bring in the shifter. Now they all hate each other.” Again she paused, lost in some memory. “It’s totally sad.”

  “What about the vampires?”

  Amy snapped back to the present. “Yes! Nicolas refuses to pay Preston for this…protection. Preston is going to destroy them.” She gestured at all of them, her eyes sad. “Look. It’s already begun.”

  “How much does he take?” Rune asked, fighting the heat of shame that wanted to wash over her.

  “Five thousand a month,” Amy said. “From each group. Some of the Others have been—” As though realizing she’d almost said something she hadn’t meant to say, she blanched, and stopped talking.

  Stealing? Robbing banks? Prostituting themselves?

  “Amy, how…” Her words trailed off as she remembered something. Sherry. Sherry begging for money. For five thousand dollars.

  Oh fuck me.

  Was Sherry Other? Or was she secretly fraternizing with a certain group of Others?

  “Rune?” Jack asked. “What is it?”

  She shook her head. “Remind me later. It’s about Sherry and something that happened while I was on vacation.”

  “Sherry!” Amy said. “I know a Sherry.” Once again she realized she might have said more than she should hav
e, and she stared at her and Lex’s clasped hands, swallowing hard.

  “Why didn’t you come to us, Amy? Or any of the SLE?”

  Amy looked up, her eyes hard. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Rune shrugged. “You’re talking to us now.”

  “They’re dead anyway. I had no choice. Maybe…maybe I can help save the last few Spiritgrove vampires. And Nicolas.”

  “You like him.”

  Amy lifted her chin. “I love him.”

  “He’s an asshole to his people,” Jack said.

  “He’s strict. He’s only punishing the ones who went behind his back to gather money for Preston. The wolf alpha is the asshole.”

  Preston, Preston. Who the fuck are you?

  “So you’re saying the vampires are being set up. They’re not really abducting and killing humans.” Rune leaned back, suddenly tired. What a mess.

  “Yup.”

  “What good would that do Preston? He’s not going to get cash out of dead vampires.”

  “I don’t know everything. I just know it’s true.” She pounded her knee with her fist. “Please, please, stop killing them. If you only knew them…” She began crying again, the changes in her mood as melodramatic and fast as only a teen’s could be. “Please.”

  Rune forgot to reply when she noticed that Lex’s face was wet. Her face, at that moment, was the saddest face Rune had ever seen. “Lex,” she whispered, and took the blind Other’s free hand.

  Levi and Denim bounded up the steps and snatched her up, their eyes dark and accusing.

  “I’m sorry,” Rune said, but wasn’t quite sure what she was sorry for. “Take her to my car. We won’t be staying.”

  Amy gasped and put a hand over her heart. “Really? Really?”

  Rune smiled and stood. “Really. And thank you, Amy.” She hesitated, unsure what to do with the girl. She could force her out of the nest, but… “How old are you, kid?” she asked.

  “Twenty-two,” Amy said, earnestly.

  Rune sighed. “I’m doubting that pretty intensely.”

  “My mother is dead. My father is a drunk who cares only that I cook and buy him whiskey.” Again the old woman peeked from her eyes. “Leave me alone, Rune.”

  But still, Rune hesitated. “Look at you. It’s wintertime and you’re dressed in next to nothing.”

  “I have a coat and shoes downstairs, dude. I don’t sleep in them.”

  Rune pulled a card from one of her pockets and a pen from another. “This is my card. My office number is on the front…” She scribbled another number on the back. “And this is my cell. If you think of anything, if you hear anything, call that number. I don’t care what time it is. Got it?”

  Amy glanced at the card. “Yes. Thanks. Thanks, guys.”

  Shiv Crew walked away, leaving behind a small human girl and a nest of vampires—many of whom were missing their heads.

  But there was nothing to be done for it.

  “Let’s go talk, boys. We have to figure this shit out.”

  “Couldn’t agree more,” Z said.

  They had a hell of a lot to think about. “We can’t trust anyone,” she said, as they walked soberly to their cars. “Not anyone.”

  “No,” Jack agreed. “But we can’t stop this on our own.”

  “Maybe you should talk to Jeremy,” Z said. “He’s higher on the food chain than we are.”

  “Not yet.” Hell no. She couldn’t trust Jeremy.

  “So we’re going to fix this ourselves? Shiv Crew?” Jack’s voice was a little too skeptical.

  “We’re sure as hell going to dig a little deeper,” she said, her tone even. “And then we’ll see.”

  “I recommend handing this over to RISC and letting them sort things out,” Jack said.

  She reached her car. Lex sat inside with the twins, her body slumped, her head hanging. Shit. She opened her door. “Noted.”

  He inclined his head. “Okay then.”

  Raze spoke, finally. Sometimes he was so quiet that if he wasn’t so damn big he would be forgotten. “Lunch and then the next item?”

  She rubbed her temples. “The fucking schedule. I miss the good old days when we sat in our offices drinking coffee and waiting for emergencies to happen.”

  Her men grinned in agreement.

  “We’re supposed to go to Willowburg and run off some rogue rooks. According to Mitch they’ve half shifted and can’t change back to human form. Those living in Willowburg are terrified of them.” She shuddered. “Stuck between forms. That’d be a bad way to live, boys.”

  They stood for a moment in silence, contemplating the condition of the rooks. In the grand scheme of things, they were all pretty damn lucky.

  Even her.

  “I’ll take the twins to oust the rooks, you guys go get lunch and head back to the office.” It wouldn’t take the whole damn crew to get rid of a couple of unfortunate rooks.

  Unless Mitch decided he needed to send them to exterminate a houseful of termites or something equally irritating.

  She glanced at Lex, unsure how to make the girl feel better. She didn’t want to pry into something that was none of her business. Lex would tell her what was wrong if she wanted her to know.

  “Where do you want to have lunch, Lexi?” She realized she rather enjoyed having the other woman for company.

  Lex kept her face turned toward her window, though there was nothing she could see. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I know a little place we can get a couple of good sandwiches and sit out on benches to eat. It’s not that cold today. The sun is shining.”

  “I feel it.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Yes.”

  So much for small talk.

  They didn’t speak again until Rune pulled into the parking lot of the diner. It wasn’t busy yet, but she knew from experience that in a half hour or so the place would be crawling with the lunch crowd. “What do you want to eat?”

  “Anything. I’m not picky. Or hungry.”

  Rune sighed. “Fine. I’ll choose something.”

  When the food was done she carried the bag out to the picnic tables and then went to fetch Lexi from the car. “I got us a table in the sun.”

  Lex said nothing but sat down, her face lifted to the sun. She ate her lunch quietly, her thoughts turned inward.

  “Lex.” Rune had finished her sandwich and her drink and sat idly watching the parking lot begin to fill up. For the first time in a while she wasn’t bouncing off the walls, eager to go. It was good to sit and relax.

  Maybe because she hadn’t had her usual amount of coffee.

  “Yes?”

  “What are you thinking? What’s inside that gorgeous head of yours?”

  “You don’t like my silence, my…”

  “Sadness,” Rune finished. “I don’t like your sadness.”

  Lex smiled, kind of. “You can’t fix everyone.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  Lex took pity on her. “Sometimes memories can be overwhelming.” She turned her face toward Rune. “You understand that.”

  Rune swallowed and looked away, even though Lex couldn’t see her. “Yeah.”

  “Sometimes the voices of the past refuse to be silenced. Then all one can do is sit and listen.”

  “I know.”

  “Yes. You do know.”

  Rune sipped melted ice through her straw, saying nothing. Did she regret urging Lex to talk? A little bit, yeah.

  “It’s almost always noisy in my head, Rune.”

  Rune nodded.

  “The silence. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it comes…it’s like white ash raining down in the dark of my mind…and that’s all I see, that white ash falling.

  “It doesn’t make a sound, not really. Maybe just a whisper. But then I’ve got to wonder. What burned up in there? It wasn’t the bad memories—they’re still there.

  “So what burned up? What sends down that ash?”

  Words wouldn
’t form. Rune started shaking her head and couldn’t stop.

  “Maybe it’s the burning bodies of my people,” Lex continued. She stared into the distance, seeing things Rune could only imagine. “Maybe they’re sending down the ash.”

  Rune swallowed hard, her mouth dry, her head aching. Burning bodies…

  “You find the silence through violence and sex, Rune. When your body feels pain, it takes pressure from your heart, doesn’t it? Know how I get the silence?”

  “No,” Rune whispered.

  Lex stood, staring for a long moment toward the wall. “Neither do I.”

  Rune was quiet all the way to Willowburg. It would have been too hard to push words past the huge, horrified lump in her throat.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It took her all of five minutes to get rid of the troubled rooks. They waddled away with ruffled feathers, beaks jagged and sad under human eyes.

  A few offended humans came out to jeer the birds now that Shiv Crew was there to protect them should the rooks get angry.

  “You might find a home in Blackfire village,” Rune told them. “Or even Wormwood.”

  She’d left Levi to sit with Lex and had taken Denim with her. “I warned you we got the dirty jobs,” she told him.

  He shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

  She called the crew. “Go to my place. I’m having second thoughts about talking in the office.”

  She and Lex were on their way to Rune’s house when Mitch called.

  “Great,” she muttered.

  “What’s wrong?” Lex seemed to have cheered up a little, for which Rune was extremely grateful.

  “Percell,” she told Lex. She answered, although she’d rather have let him go to voicemail. “Yeah?”

  “Rune! Mitch Percell here. As soon as you’re finished with Willowburg, come back to the office. I need to meet with you and your crew.”

  She groaned. “What’s going on?”

  He ignored her groan. “I’ll explain when you get here. See you in a few!” He clicked off, so jolly she wanted to reach through the cell and poke him in the eye just to make him chill the fuck out. Whatever was making him so happy was pretty much guaranteed to make her mad.

  She didn’t bother calling the crew to tell them the change of plans. Percell would, she was sure, take great delight in doing that himself.