New Regime (Rune Alexander Book 5) Read online

  “We’re stronger than she is, Levi.” She ignored the gooseflesh that arose on her skin. “We love you more than she hated you. And we’re not letting her win.”

  “Feed me,” he said. “Before you go.”

  Rune hesitated. A monster peeked from those eyes, and she didn’t want him tasting her. Didn’t want his lips clamped over her flesh as he sucked the life from her.

  Jack took her arm and pulled her from the bed. “Not right now, buddy.”

  Rune might have fed him anyway, but Strad strode into the room at that second. “Let’s go, Rune.”

  She snapped her head around at his tone. “What happened?”

  “Rice just called. They found an abducted pregnant Other.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Rune stared through the glass at the terrified girl, clenching her fists so hard she broke the skin. When the wet heat of blood gathered in her palms, she clenched harder.

  “Let me in there,” she told Bill Rice.

  “I can’t.”

  “Open the door, Bill.”

  “Rune,” Elizabeth said, putting a hand on her arm. “He can’t. His prints won’t work on level three doors.”

  The girl screamed again, her voice dragging on and on. Her screams were muted, but Rune’s hearing was too sensitive for it to matter.

  And she could see her. She could see her pain.

  Hugely pregnant, her arms and legs restrained, the girl was in so much agony she was losing her mind.

  “Why isn’t she being given something for the pain?” Rune put her hands on the glass. “The birth is going to kill her.”

  “Everything is being done that can be done,” Elizabeth said. “The pain meds aren’t working.”

  “No shit. Do we know who she is?”

  “She was wearing a plastic bracelet with the word nine written on it,” Elizabeth answered.

  “Nine,” Rune whispered.

  “You’re bleeding,” Rice said, almost absently.

  Her palms had left smears of blood on the glass, but that wasn’t what Bill was talking about. Her stake wounds were seeping. A lot.

  “Shit.” She pushed her hand against the wound.

  “Rune?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I’m fine.” She looked at the laboring Other. “Who found her? And how?”

  “Eugene sent ops to collect her when one of his contacts in the police department called him. The contact said a couple of hikers stumbled across a very sick, very pregnant Other in the woods of Eastern Kentucky.” She paused. “Near Reverence.”

  As they watched, a nurse stepped to the girl’s side and hung another bag on the IV pole.

  Nine turned her face toward the nurse, opened, her mouth, and projectile vomited a heavy gush of blood.

  The nurse jumped back but gathered herself with admirable quickness. She wrung out a washcloth in the basin on the table and began cleaning the Other with a practiced efficiency. Her touch was gentle, and she ignored her blood-spattered uniform as she cleaned the agonized girl.

  Nine screamed again, and Rune shuddered. She hated the girl’s pain. Hated it. The Other was little more than a child. What hell the girl had been through might never be known, because Nine was too sick to talk.

  Rune and Elizabeth turned to watch as Eugene strode down the hall. He had four operatives at his back.

  “Do you want to go inside?” Eugene asked her.

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “Come on. We’ll talk in there.”

  He didn’t offer to allow Elizabeth and Rice inside, and they didn’t ask. He gave a terse order to the ops to wait in the hall, and then put his fingertips against the pad beside the door.

  It made a loud click and he pushed it open, motioning her ahead of him. “This is the work of the Shop, Rune.”

  “Tell me,” she said, and strode to Nine’s bedside.

  “Leave us,” Eugene ordered the nurse.

  “Wait,” Rune said, as the nurse tossed the washcloth in the basin and turned to leave. “What’s your name?”

  The nurse opened her mouth, then darted a quick look at Eugene. He nodded.

  “Jenna,” she said, her gaze curious.

  “You’re a fucking angel, Jenna,” Rune said.

  Jenna blushed, then smiled. “It’s what I do.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “Thank you, nurse. Leave us now,” Eugene said, but his voice was gentler.

  Jenna opened a door against the far wall and slipped into a room that Rune imagined contained medical supplies.

  “The fetus inside her appears to be around twelve weeks.”

  “That’s impossible. She’s huge and ready to deliver.”

  Nine groaned, then screamed, her agony like hot nails piercing Rune’s brain. Eugene waited patiently for her to quieten before he spoke.

  “The growth of the baby is accelerated somehow. She’s been pregnant for a few weeks, yet the child is full formed and ready to live outside the womb. I wanted you to see her, Rune, so you’ll know some of the things we’re up against.”

  Rune scowled. “I have always known what we’re up against. It’s why I lead Shiv Crew.”

  “I mean with the Shop and the Next. When they figure out they can’t kill or capture you, they’re going to try to recruit you.” His stare was sharp and probing. “You have to be on guard.”

  She looked away.

  “They will try hard,” he continued. “They will lie. They will use your friends, and innocents, and deceit to get what they want. What they will want is you.”

  She inhaled deeply, regretting doing so when Eugene’s expensive scent mingled with Nine’s sick one. “I’m not likely to join the enemy.” She tried to make her voice dry, slightly amused. She was pretty sure she didn’t succeed.

  “You’re not always going to be clear on who the enemy is.”

  Nine screamed again, her voice one long howl of agony, and Rune flinched. “You have to do something for her.”

  “We’re nearly finished with our tests.”

  She frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”

  It was his turn to avoid her stare. “When we’ve figured out exactly what that is inside her, our surgeons will take the child if it doesn’t come on its own.”

  She rubbed her arms, suddenly cold. “What’s inside her?”

  “It doesn’t appear to be…normal, whatever it is. It won’t allow her to shift. I’ll tell you everything we discover as soon as I can.” He looked at the Other. “Let’s let her rest.”

  “She’ll get no rest.” But standing there wasn’t helping the girl.

  She patted Nine’s skinny arm, but had no idea what to say. She doubted the girl would have heard her anyway. She was lost inside the red pain of her mind.

  “Let me know as soon as you can,” she told Eugene, and almost panting, she stood at the door waiting for him to let her out.

  The room was enormous and mostly empty. Cold, stone floors with a huge drain in the center, plain white brick walls. The room was too huge and too empty for her to be claustrophobic, yet she was.

  Something bad was happening inside the Other. Something horrifying. She hadn’t really needed Eugene to tell her that. It lay like a wicked heaviness in the back of her mind.

  She fled the room, the girl’s screams chasing her all the way down the hall.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The days and nights always blended together. Sometimes she lost track of when to eat, when to sleep, when to do anything other than wait for her cell to ring so she could put it to her ear and listen as a voice told her who next to kill.

  Ellie fixed that.

  As soon as he got the green light, he took over her household. Over her health. When she walked in the door that night, he was waiting with dinner, coffee, and a list of things he wanted to get for the house.

  “You keep me sane, Ellie,” she told him.

  And she was fucking ecstatic.

  Still, the peace was short-lived.


  She sat at the table, watching the berserker as Ellis bustled around humming one tune or another, and she thought for a second she could get used to that.

  If only she could heal Levi’s brokenness, make Owen better, wean everyone she’d touched off the drug that was her blood…

  When her cell buzzed, she didn’t, for one long moment, want to answer it. The crew watched her, waiting.

  Finally, she snatched her phone off the table. “Yeah?”

  It was Bill Rice. “Rune. Zombies are attacking the town of Reverence, Kentucky.”

  There was something strange in his tone. “Fuck.” She jumped to her feet. “It’ll take us too long to get there if we drive. Have Eugene send us in helicopters.”

  He hesitated. “Eugene ordered me not to call you in on this.”

  “What is it?” Lex asked. Denim was at the clinic with Levi, but Lex had needed to come home. “Levi?”

  “No, Lex,” Rune said, and held up a finger. “Why not?”

  She could almost hear Bill shrug. “He wouldn’t mind if zombies helped the crew wipe out some of his competition.”

  “Then why are you calling me?”

  “For Elizabeth.” He cleared his throat. “I think we’ve discovered where they’re holding Fie.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? You guys don’t know who has that kid?”

  “Annex ops took her. She was going to be protected, and trained. But…something went wrong. Halfway to headquarters Annex ops were stopped by the Shop or the Next—we’re unclear. Fie was taken.”

  “Fuck you,” Rune whispered. “Why didn’t either of you tell me?”

  He sighed. “No one thought it was a good idea.”

  “You mean Eugene and Iris didn’t think it was a good idea.”

  “Yeah. But Rune,” he said, his voice impatient, “We think we know where she is now.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Holy shit. She’s in Reverence and she’s calling the zombies to help her.”

  “If Fie is in Reverence, then it’s the Shop that has her. Bring her back, Rune.”

  “I’ll update you as soon as I can.”

  “And Rune…”

  “You never called me,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “What is it?” Lex asked again. She was vibrating slightly, her cheeks flushed. Her crazy blind eyes were sluggish in their dance.

  “Zombies are attacking our favorite town in Kentucky, and Rice thinks that’s Fie’s doing. Let’s go get our baby necromancer.”

  Strad strode from the kitchen. “Weapon up,” he called back over his shoulder. “Be ready to go in five minutes.”

  “Ellie—” Rune started.

  He held up his cell. “I’m calling Raze and Jack now. I’ll have them meet you in Reverence.”

  She pressed her lips together when they felt a little trembly. “Thanks, Ellie.”

  He winked and began muttering into the phone as she raced from the kitchen to get ready.

  They left their crew cars at home and drove their personal cars. “Ride with me, Lex,” Rune said, and Lex jumped into the passenger seat almost before Rune had finished her sentence.

  Raze called as Rune was leaving her driveway. “Lex with you?”

  “Yeah, baby. We’ll see you over there.”

  “Was that Raze?” Lex asked, after Rune hung up.

  “It was.” Rune gave her a sidelong glance. “What’s up with you two?”

  “Nobody knows.”

  “Sounds about normal.”

  “Our normal,” Lex replied, “is pretty fucked up.” Abruptly, she changed the subject. “Annex lost Fie?”

  “They didn’t lose her, she was stolen. And Eugene wasn’t having any luck getting her back.”

  “Why didn’t he want to send us to pick her up?”

  “He’s willing to sacrifice her to get rid of his enemy.”

  Neither of them was surprised.

  “She’ll be okay,” Lex said. “Everyone will be okay.”

  “Yeah.” Even with everything going on, she should have dug more deeply into Fie’s circumstances. “We’ll get her back.”

  “It’s starting to feel like we’re fighting the side we’re on, Rune.”

  Rune smiled. “Starting? It’s been feeling that way to me since…” Since forever. Since she’d been born, maybe. What the fuck was a right side, anyway? You did what you had to do, and most of the time, that wasn’t what everyone else wanted you to do.

  Fuck them.

  “We’re the side we’re on,” she finished. “And that’s all we know for sure.”

  It seemed to take her a million years to drive to Reverence. Straggling zombies began appearing half an hour before they reached the actual town.

  Slowly lurching with dogged determination along the abandoned white road, they ignored Rune’s car as she drove by them. She ran some of them over as they were disinclined to the move the hell out of the way.

  She was in a hurry.

  Her cell buzzed. “Berserker,” she said. “Do you see them?”

  “Yes. I’m in town. They’re all walking in a long line, quietly. They don’t seem hungry.”

  “She’s in their heads,” Rune told him. “Their only purpose is to reach her.”

  “Can you control them?”

  “I don’t know. My control over them isn’t as strong as it once was. Fie is much stronger.”

  She could almost hear him shrug. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I can’t drive into the woods, which is where they’re headed. I’m on foot.”

  “Lex and I are right behind you.”

  She drove as far as she could before the trees became too thick to manage, then she and Lex jumped from the SUV and began running, following the line of zombies through the woods.

  She didn’t try to kill them. She had her claws out, but that was only to cut a path for her and Lex.

  Chances were Fie’s handlers had already moved her, but maybe they’d been stopped by the zombies.

  That was the hope Rune held on to.

  Some of the zombies crumbled, losing body parts, but dug their bony fingers into the dirt and crawled on. They clacked their teeth, but their voices were silent.

  Then Raze was there, giving Lex and Rune a sharp once over before punching a slow moving zombie out of his way. “Go, Rune. I’ll keep Lex company.”

  Lex ignored both of them and kept pushing onward. Eventually, she’d get through the crowd, but Rune could get there a lot faster.

  “Don’t get bitten,” Rune whispered.

  “I’ll take care of her,” Raze said. “Go.”

  She nodded at Raze and took off, the monster she’d been born with lending her his speed.

  Shortly, she arrived where the earlier zombies had congregated, and for a moment she just watched them.

  A huge hill stood before them, covered in trees and green, but the zombies weren’t attempting to climb it. Maybe they had no idea how to.

  There were no buildings, no cars, no signs of humans.

  But then she saw the zombies in the front ramming their fragile bodies over and over against the hard wall of the embankment, and she understood exactly where Fie was.

  The Shop had built themselves a bunker inside the hill.

  She had no idea how to infiltrate it.

  But somewhere inside that impenetrable, rocky mound waited little Fie, and if Rune had to dig her way in with her claws, she would get the kid out.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Rune shoved a zombie out of her way and strode to the hillside. It would have been difficult finding the entrance in the best of circumstances, but with mounds of zombies trying to push themselves into the hill, it was next to impossible.

  She looked up to see the berserker charging toward her, slinging zombies away as he came.

  She went to meet him. “You found the entrance?”

  “No. It’s not here. Fie is on the other side of this wall, but the en
trance…” He turned, narrowing his eyes, staring at the top of the moon-bathed hill. “Follow me.”

  She didn’t hesitate but ran with him up the side of the hill. The hill leveled out, then rose again, and it was on that second rise that he stopped her.

  “There,” he said.

  “Bastards,” she muttered. Keeping Fie inside the cold, dark earth, with no sunshine or friendly people…the child would be desperate.

  Steel doors were placed into a wide swath of concrete wall. She wasn’t sure even she could kick her way through them.

  “They’re following us,” Strad said, nodding at something behind her.

  She turned to look. The zombies had begun to climb up the hill, making their slow, inexorable way to the entrance.

  She put her palm against the cool metal of the door. “Anything could be in there.”

  “I’m here,” said Jack, jogging toward them. “What do we have?” Then he took a long look at the gleaming doors. “Well that might make things more complicated.”

  “No kidding.” She took a deep breath, then gave the door an experimental punch.

  The door didn’t give, but she had to hold back a whimper of pain as the impact broke the bones in her hand and shook her entire body.

  Strad took her hand and ran his thumb over her skin as the zombies began to gather at their backs. One of them stumbled to Jack and would have taken a bite from his arm if he hadn’t moved.

  “Shit,” Rune said. “She’s losing control.” And if that happened, the crew was in trouble.

  Raze and Lex forced their way through the crowd.

  “I found the entrance,” Lex said, her voice strained.

  “This is the entrance,” Rune said. “But I can’t break it.”

  “That’s a dummy door,” Lex told her. “Don’t forget where I come from. I recognize the decoy. Come with me.”

  She turned back when they all stood staring uncertainly. “Come on. We don’t have all night.”

  Raze shrugged. “She…felt the entrance. We went there before we found you.”

  Rune nodded, then broke into a run to catch up with Lex. The zombies were beginning to sound their eerie moans, and the little blind Other was right. They didn’t have all night.

  They likely would not have found the real entrance had it not been for Lex and her ability to see things they could not.