Blood and Bite (Rune Alexander) Read online

  “I’m not the soulless one here, dude.”

  He gestured impatiently. “I’m tired of your mouth, so shut it. Corbin, search her. She’s not going to hurt you.”

  Corbin started at her back, his hands wandering to places no weapon could hide. She bore it stoically, knowing to do otherwise might get the kid hurt. But when he finally walked to the front of her to finish his search, she caught his cruel stare with hers.

  “Before this is over, I’m going to kill you, Corbin. And I’m going to make it hurt.” She knew her face was calm and her eyes empty except for the truth of her words.

  He faltered. “Shut up.” But his voice was hoarse and the scent of his fear filled her nostrils.

  She smiled.

  They didn’t know her, not really, or they’d have taken a lot more precautions than fucking cuffs. She’d break the chain that connected the restraints when she was ready, and these men would witness just what her monster could do.

  She almost felt sorry for them. Almost.

  Corbin released the straps that held her protective vest closed and pushed it off her shoulders. Slowly, while the redhead and Emerson watched, he slid his fingers under the hem of her shirt.

  He groped her breasts, squeezing and pinching, his touch angrier because of his fear. “Should I strip her?” he asked Emerson, his voice breathless.

  Emerson pursed his lips. “She should be humiliated. Do it.”

  Only the thought of Matthew kept her still. Her body vibrated with fury, and despite her control she was unable to keep her fangs from dropping as she submitted to Corbin’s eager fingers.

  But when she stood before them naked, shuddering with rage, and Corbin ran his meaty fingers over her belly and lower, not even her fear for the boy could keep her controlled.

  She struck like a snake, her fangs raking furrows in Corbin’s neck. The taste of blood stoked the fury and before he could react, she took out half his throat.

  He fell to the floor, clamping his fingers to his wounds, unable to scream. He writhed in agony, his mouth wide, his eyes bulging.

  “I told you I’d fucking kill you,” she said. “And I told you I’d make it hurt.” She leaned over him, her voice soft. “Does it hurt?”

  But Emerson wasn’t stupid and had come prepared. She looked up from the downed man, but she was too late to do anything as Emerson rammed a long metal object into her side.

  She had no idea where it had come from, and seconds later, didn’t care.

  The shock went through her, short circuiting her brain, sending a terrible, confusing pain into her system.

  And worse than the dose of electricity she’d been hit with were the long strands of silver the object shot into her bloodstream. She recognized them immediately. Silver, to an Other, was an unmistakable agony.

  She could fight with silver. She could wear silver. But when the deadly stuff got inside her, she was fucked.

  For a second she forgot where she was. She was back in her house with Jeremy Cross shooting her full of silver, his familiar face lined with rage and what he thought of as love.

  But no, this wasn’t Jeremy.

  And she wasn’t home.

  She wasn’t familiar with the object Emerson held—had never seen anything like it. It looked like a cattle prod and delivered a hell of a shock, but the business end seemed full of tiny needles, each one driving liquid silver into her body when he hit her with it.

  “Rune, meet the vaccinator,” Emerson said, breathing hard. “Say howdy.”

  He drew back the vaccinator, holding it like a fat spear. “It has various settings. I have it set to deliver tiny little drips of silver into you, but those shocks are set on motherfucking high.” He rammed it into her chest.

  She lost her breath, her words, her ability to even think. There was nothing but pain and hot, suffocating terror.

  “Look,” the woman screamed. “She’s pissed herself!”

  Rune’s body curled into a tight knot and began to spasm. Hate, hate, hate.

  But finally her brain started working again, slowly, sluggishly, and she pushed her mind into the darkness so she could think. There was nothing else. No sensation, no body, no people.

  In the dark, there was only Rune.

  And her monster.

  But her monster was as hurt as she was, and could not help.

  She slid inexorably into death’s open arms, ready for the sweet peace the reaper could give her.

  Emerson wrenched her out of the darkness. “Don’t die on me, you fucking beast. I’m not finished with you yet.”

  Could she die?

  Her lips, her eyes…they sat heavily and almost numbly upon her face, and she couldn’t make her fingers work. She wanted to touch her face, to see if it was still there, but she couldn’t lift her arms.

  Then she remembered why. They were cuffed behind her back.

  You’re okay, Rune. You’re okay.

  “I thought for a moment I’d lost you,” Emerson said, leaning over her. “I thought for a moment you weren’t immortal after all.” He laughed soundlessly, sending out little puffs of air that covered her skin like moist, repulsive plastic wrap. He wiped a finger through the sweat on his forehead. “Whew!”

  He handed the vaccinator to the redhead. Her name was gone from Rune’s memory as though it’d never even been there. Perhaps it never had been.

  “Can I shock her?” the redhead asked. “Just once?”

  Emerson glared at her. “Are you fucking stupid? Didn’t you see I almost killed her?”

  “Yes, but she’s okay now. You hit her too many times.” Her knuckles whitened from her tight grip. “Let me, one time.”

  Emerson snatched it out of her hands. “I told you to hide her fucking car. Go, now, before I hit you with it.”

  The hatred, the cruelty. It was as familiar to Rune as breathing, but she never ceased to be surprised by it.

  She thought maybe mankind was doomed.

  And in the end, there would only be the monsters.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  He jerked her to her feet, cursing when her legs wouldn’t support her and she fell to her knees. “Get up, Rune. Get the fuck up!”

  She closed her eyes and gathered her strength. She was Rune Alexander. She was fucking super Other. Emerson and his torture devices weren’t going to keep her down.

  Not ever.

  She got to her feet, but the effort that cost her weakened body was nearly all she had. She shivered as coldness seeped into her bones.

  “The silver will kick your tail for a while,” Tim said, “but if you’ll stop being such a pussy I’m sure you’ll find it in you to walk the fuck out of this room.” He pushed her, sighing when she swayed drunkenly. Like it was her fault and she was sorely testing his patience.

  When he lifted the vaccinator and pointed it at her, she forced herself to take a step. Where the hell am I walking? She tried to say the words, but her mouth wasn’t working. Not yet.

  “Keep going,” he urged, poking her spine with his evil, silver-filled stick. “There’s a door in the back. I want you to go through it.”

  His stare was an icy assault on her body, heavy and invasive. She was nearly certain he wouldn’t try to touch her, as the now dead Corbin had done. Something inside his eyes made her believe he would allow others to degrade her in that way, but that he would not.

  Maybe he couldn’t. Whatever his reasons, she was thankful.

  She stepped carefully through the doorway, stopping when she saw stairs leading down. No way would she be able to navigate stairs without falling.

  But he grasped her upper arm and guided her away from the stairs, to her right, and down a long, skinny hallway with doors on either side.

  After a quiet walk down the hallway that seemed to take forever, he took a ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door at the end.

  “Matthew?” she managed to ask. Her lips felt oversized and alien, but the feeling was coming back into them. It was hard to for
ce the word past the dryness in her throat. She’d have killed for a drink of water.

  He shoved her inside.

  The windowless room was illuminated only by the light coming in from the hallway. It would be filled with shadows when he shut the door, but she’d be able to see better in that dimness than Emerson, or any human, could. But there was nothing to see.

  The room was empty.

  “Matthew,” she said again.

  Emerson stood in the doorway. “He’s in that corner.” He pointed to the far side of the room. “I’ll be back as soon as I get things squared away. You’re here because…” He paused before continuing, his voice stronger. “Because I need a favor from you. Of course you’ll do what I need in order to save that child, won’t you? Anything I want.”

  The bastard had her right where he wanted her.

  She didn’t wait for him to shut the door but walked toward the corner, sniffing the air for the elusive scent she finally caught. It was the odor of sickness, but it was weak, even to her hypersensitive nose.

  Sickness was easy to trace for an Other. It stank of dark, slithery things. Of shiny green goo and thick, slimy pools atop which stirred bloated insect bodies. Of steaming piles of bloody rot.

  All that was there, in the air, becoming stronger the closer she got to him.

  The kid was dying.

  Tim gently closed the door and she heard the click as he locked it. The room was dark but in seconds her eyes had adjusted and she could see clearly enough to pick out the tiny, unmoving bundle in the corner.

  She dropped to her knees beside him. “Matthew? Can you hear me?” She pulled experimentally at the cuffs but realized quickly she was too weak to break the chain connecting them.

  Emerson had known what to do. If she got her strength back without feeding, she’d be surprised. Right then she was almost human weak.

  The boy was unconscious and zipped up into a sleeping bag. He was turned to the wall and she couldn’t see his face, but when she concentrated, she could hear his breathing. Barely.

  “Kid?”

  He groaned.

  Her heart fluttered and for a second, she forgot to breathe. I’ll take care of him, Berserker. He’s alive. He’s alive. “Matthew. Come on, baby. Wake up.”

  His sluggish turn toward her was agonizing to watch and once again she gave a tug at the cuffs.

  In the dimness of the room his face was a pale moon, full of sunken craters, and he stared out at her from huge, fevered eyes.

  Her stomach knotting with anxiety, she leaned closer. “Hi, baby. Do you remember me?”

  “Want to go home now,” he whispered.

  “Soon, Matthew. I promise.”

  “I want my mother.”

  “I know, baby.”

  Already tiny, the child had become gaunt and wasted during his time with Emerson. His lips were dry and cracked, his skin paper thin. Even in the darkness she could see the branching blue veins beneath his skin.

  If she didn’t get him out soon…

  “What did they do to you?” she asked him.

  He pushed his tongue out to wet his lips and for a second it hung there, as though he was too weak to withdraw it. He whimpered, then closed his eyes.

  Her heart was breaking. “They made you read, didn’t they?”

  “Promised to take me home,” he replied. “He lied.”

  Emerson had dangled promises before the boy and had drained him dry. “What reading did he want from you?”

  Matthew sighed. “When would he die.”

  Rune frowned. “Did you tell him you couldn’t do that?” The kid could find lost people, not predict the fucking future.

  “He’s going to die.”

  “You can tell that?”

  “I told him you can save him. Like you did that girl.”

  Oh shit. “What girl?” she whispered. “Lex?”

  “I saw it in my head when my dad came to get me.” He closed his eyes, and this time didn’t open them. “I want my dad.”

  “Rest, baby. I’ll get you home.” It wasn’t a promise she was going to go back on.

  Matthew wasn’t Other, but he was as enigmatic a human as Rune was an Other. The boy had some impressive power. That power, given a chance, would only grow.

  But now she knew why Tim Emerson wanted her. He wanted to feed from her, wanted her to heal whatever sickness was growing inside him.

  When she’d fed Lex she’d healed her, but had no idea if her blood would affect everyone the way it had the Other.

  Probably not. But her blood would make him an addict.

  The man had no idea what he was asking for. Regardless, she wasn’t planning on letting him live long whether he forced her to feed him or not.

  She was getting stronger by the minute. She wouldn’t be monster strong, but she was still Shiv Crew. She wasn’t helpless. But she had to get the cuffs off.

  She crouched beside the fading child. She closed her eyes, ignoring the lingering effects of the silver still floating through her bloodstream. The weakness and pain from not only the silver but the jolts of electricity continued to make her brain stutter and her hands tremble. Spasms of pain poked at her, almost teasingly. The bastard had scrambled her thoughts and devastated her body, but she was no stranger to violence. Definitely no stranger to pain.

  So she knelt beside Matthew and closed her eyes, gathering that agony to her. Eagerly. It would make her strong.

  She hadn’t forgotten how to use pain. Hadn’t lost that part of herself despite the doctors’ best attempts at making her better.

  So she embraced it, enjoyed it, used it.

  Her fangs dropped. The tips of her fingers ached with the need to release the sharp claws, but she controlled it. Kept them in. That in itself was a victory.

  She stood in one fluid motion and with her eyes still closed, held on to the big ball of blackness inside her. She clenched her teeth and forced her arms apart.

  The cuffs cut into her flesh and the warm stickiness of blood covered her skin. She kept pulling, pulling, her body filling up with agony.

  She threw her head back and howled, but silently, and with a crack! loud enough to make the boy stir, the chain broke. She’d done it.

  Who cared that she’d cut her wrists to the bone? She would heal. And now she had her hands.

  She sank to the floor and rocked back and forth, humming in pain. Her hands were slippery with blood that leaked onto her legs as she cradled her injured arms in her lap.

  She kept her eyes closed for a long moment, almost afraid to look at her wrists. She might see that she’d cut her hands off. And seeing the injury always made it hurt more.

  Her reserves were low and her body would not heal quickly from the abuse it had been dealt. But that was okay. It would heal.

  She wiped her hands on the boy’s sleeping bag and at last was able to touch him. She smoothed back his baby-fine hair, gently, over and over.

  Her touch seemed to comfort him. It comforted her.

  Once, she stumbled to the door and tried to batter it down, but she couldn’t budge it. She was too weak. The silver and the shocks had weakened her, and she’d used up the last of her reserves getting out of the cuffs. She was going to need more time. And blood.

  She had no idea how much time passed. It seemed like many hours later when she finally heard footsteps approaching and the key turning in the lock. Emerson was returning. She wasn’t exactly ready for him, but her hands were free.

  Battered and bloody, she stood and faced the door.

  It was time to fight.

  Or die.

  Emerson wasn’t alone. He came in with ten people at his back, and every single one of them was packing a vaccinator.

  She stood in front of the boy, shielding him with her battered body. Her hair, lank and bloody, hung in her face. She imagined she looked like the monster they believed her to be.

  They fanned out, the wicked prods held out before them. “Where’s the fucking light switch?” one
of the men asked.

  Someone else flipped a switch and the room was illuminated by a rather dim set of lights in the ceiling.

  “I expect you’ll want to fight me, but there are eleven of us and we have these.” Emerson hefted his vaccinator. “We will take you down. You’re too weak to defeat us. So what’s it to be? Will you help me, or will I force you?”

  Rune sniffed the air, trying to get a whiff of the sickness inside him. He must have been in the early stages of his disease, because the scent was very weak—almost buried beneath the scents of the slayers surrounding him. “What’s wrong with you? Cancer?”

  He didn’t look surprised that she knew. “Yes. Brain cancer. It’s inoperable.” He paused, as though waiting for some sign of sympathy from her.

  “I hope you die a terrible death,” she said.

  “Yes, well, I didn’t expect you’d wish otherwise.” He moved a little closer. “But how ironic is it, my dear monster, that you will be the one to save me?”

  She spread her feet and glanced around at the crowd of slayers. She could take out a few of them before they started shooting silver and shocks into her, but would it be worth it? The extra damage to her body was going to extreme. Did she want to fight something that was most likely going to happen anyway?

  Fuck yeah.

  She dropped her fangs, shot out her claws, and smiled. “Who wants to die first?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  She didn’t wait for an answer.

  Acknowledging the look of astonishment on Emerson’s face, she ran toward the small crowd of slayers. Screaming, she leaped into their midst, slashing as she went. They scattered like bowling pins, vaccinators, for one moment, forgotten.

  More than anything, she wanted to kill them. Wanted to feel flesh give beneath her claws, wanted to taste their blood as it splashed from fatal wounds. Blood would help her heal.

  She wanted to hear screams of agony.

  But in the back of her mind the entire time was the boy, and how she needed, despite the bloodlust that made her very nearly an unthinking killing machine, to protect him.

  She navigated her way to the open door and they turned from Matthew’s direction to face her. And then with desperation and rage guiding her, she fought the men.