New Regime (Rune Alexander Book 5) Read online

Not anymore.

  She gripped his upper arm, rose up on tiptoe, and kissed his cheek. “We’ll help you through this, Levi. Through all of it.”

  Then she went to get ready for Reverence. For the lab. It was all she could do.

  None of them had really had a moment to let all the bad shit sink in. Or maybe they were becoming hardened to it.

  Before she went to Reverence, she would find Epik. She’d decide for herself if she had to kill him. She wasn’t stupid enough to take the assassin’s word for anything. But Epik…he was a strange fuck, and that was the truth.

  At the very least she would lock him up in the Annex until she returned from Kentucky.

  Neither Owen nor Strad had returned by the time she finished her shower and was sitting down to eat.

  Ellis had tried to call them, but got no answer. He’d actually been on his way out the door to go find them when Rune pulled him back.

  “They’ll find us,” she said. Then she leaned closer to him. “Stay away from the panic room.”

  “You’re not going to release him?”

  “Not yet, Ellie.” Killing the assassin would give Gunnar some peace of mind. When she got back, she might decide to give the ghoul a nice dead assassin for a gift.

  Or she might not.

  So she, Raze, Jack, the twins, and Lex drove to Wormwood to look for Epik. And knowing what she knew—or what she thought she knew—Epik became a little creepier.

  Once at Wormwood, she grabbed the bag of Baby Ruth candy bars Ellis had handed her, then got out of her car to stand with the others. “Does anyone else miss just hunting and staking vampires?” she asked them.

  “We’ll always find vampires to stake,” Raze said. “But there will be times when we’re sidetracked.”

  Rune laughed. Sidetracked. Yeah.

  Then, with the crew at her back, she walked into Wormwood.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Gunnar ignored the crew and held his hand out for the bag she carried.

  “I have a question for you,” she told him, holding on to the candy. “But first…I heard you’ve been giving candy to Sean Colley’s…boy. Epik.”

  He flinched. “I give no one my candy, Your Preposterousness. I can hide from the boy, but must leave my candy behind. Sometimes he takes it.”

  “Gunnar,” she murmured. “Why didn’t you tell me you were afraid of Epik?”

  “He has yet to catch me. Caution is necessary when dealing with that one.”

  “How’d the assassin catch you?” Jack asked.

  Gunnar put his nose in the air. “That one is wily.” He would say no more, and she was pretty sure he was never going to explain that particular encounter.

  Rune remembered times when she’d seen the ghoul running from something. Or someone. She remembered his fear. Had Epik, even then, been tormenting the Wormwood Others?

  She sighed. “I need to get to the pike master, Gunnar.”

  He pointed in the direction of Poison Pond. “The hill behind the pond holds caverns. The entrance to one is similar to a big mouth holding two fangs.” He paused and eyed her. “Like yours. That is the Pikes’ backdoor.”

  She gave him the candy, surprised it had been that easy. “Enjoy, Gunnar. And don’t eat that all at once. At this rate, you’re going to need chocolate every day.”

  “Thank you, Highness. I will see you tomorrow, then.” He bowed, and turned to trot away with his candy.

  She shook her head as the crew laughed, then led them to Poison Pond. “Be watchful,” she told them. “Epik is a mean little snake.”

  But she could tell that not one of them was able to see Epik as scary. He looked too much like a victim. Pushing her into the well had been, they figured, the order of his master.

  She no longer really believed that.

  She was a little offended when she saw the cave entrance Gunnar had compared with her mouth. It was gaping and black, like the mouth of a toothless hag of fairytale books. She pushed her tongue into the spots where she was missing two of her teeth—the teeth she’d lost when Shop enemies had shot her down.

  They were growing back, but with excruciating slowness. She could knit a broken bone in seconds but her teeth were taking their fucking time.

  She shot out her claws and stepped into the cavern, the crew behind her.

  “Feels like we’re walking into a monster’s mouth,” Jack mumbled.

  Lex shuddered and stepped closer to Raze, perhaps inadvertently. He immediately puffed out his chest.

  “Well then,” Rune said, “let’s get to its belly.” She heard the welcome sound of her crew sliding silver blades from sheaths. The caves were cold and dark and smelled of things she was unfamiliar with and could not describe.

  “Fuck,” Rune whispered.

  “What is it?” Raze voice, too loud for the depths of the cave, made her flinch.

  “I hear screams,” she told him. She’d almost said, “I hear pain.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” Jack said. “Are you sure?”

  “She’s sure,” Lex said.

  And then the dim and distant sound came to all of them, floating to their reluctant ears. “Not good,” Jack murmured.

  Not that they’d expected it would be.

  They walked deeper into the caverns, room after room becoming colder, darker, and closer to the screams.

  Ten minutes later they switched on flashlights and began to descend.

  She dragged in a ragged breath. Stagnant, damp air lay like greasy hands upon her flesh, coating her lungs and clogging her nostrils.

  The screams grew louder with each step she took. Preceding each cry was the sharp slap of something—a whip, maybe—against flesh.

  At last the narrowness of the passage opened up into a huge cave, the shiny wet walls of which were fitted with cuffs, chains, and other things she had no name for.

  That room was for punishment. For torture.

  She stopped walking, wanting to breathe but unwilling to pull in the stench of open wounds and oozing, septic flesh.

  Four people were in the room—two of them were in ankle chains, sitting in hunched-over misery upon the wet floor. One of them had been cuffed by his wrists against the far wall, his bare, ravaged back exposed to the crew’s horrified stares.

  A man wielded the whip with practiced but tired efficiency, and even as they watched he sent the whip cracking once more against the restrained man’s bruised and bloody flesh.

  The person with the whip was Sean Colley.

  The one being beaten was Epik.

  Rune was on Colley in seconds. She wrenched the whip from his grip and threw it against the wall.

  “Wha…?” he asked, his eyes dazed, as though he were waking from a long, deep sleep.

  “This is what,” she said, and punched him in the face.

  He hit the wall with a solid thunk. She didn’t wait for him to slide to the floor before she flew to Epik. “It’s okay, kid. I got you.”

  He said nothing, and didn’t look at her.

  “Raze,” she said. “Help me get him out of these cuffs. Jack, watch Colley. The rest of you, free the other two from those fucking chains.”

  Raze strode to her side, then reached for the chains at Epik’s hands. He stopped, then frowned. “Rune,” he said, quietly. “He’s not locked in. He could have gotten free any time he wanted.”

  She looked up, then backed away from Epik’s ravaged body. Raze was right. Epik had his hands wrapped around the chains. He held on to them—they didn’t hold on to him.

  “He’s not a prisoner?” she asked. Then, “What the fuck is going on here?”

  Sean Colley’s laugh was bitter. “Unless you’re going to kill him as I watch, I won’t say a word. Except…” He hesitated, then continued quickly. “I’m not the torturer. I’m not.”

  Epik let go of the chains and lowered his arms. He had to have been in severe pain. Had to have been. But he didn’t show it on his face.

  “He asks you to hurt him?” Ru
ne shuddered as the memories of her own torment began to slide through her mind. And pity for the boy, despite the assassin’s warning.

  “He doesn’t ask,” one of the other prisoners said. This one was a woman who was so swollen and bruised she would have had no physical resemblance to the person she was before the torture. “He demands it. It’s his warped way of getting what his father withheld from him. When he’s bored, he plays with us.”

  Her voice was polite. Weak, but polite.

  She was dying—Rune could smell it on her.

  So she was beyond fear.

  Epik said nothing and kept his face averted. He had his damaged back to the wall and even as Rune watched, he swayed gently, rubbing his wounds against the rough, filthy wall.

  “Epik,” she said. “Look at me.”

  He glanced at her, his face bland and calm. Blank. But there was something sinister gleaming in his eyes. He darted his gaze away quickly, as though knowing she’d see it there.

  “They will lie,” he told her, “to protect the master.”

  “You will lie,” she said, “to protect yourself.”

  Lex walked to the boy and wrapped her fingers around his wrist.

  He moaned, and as his body began to jerk, he pressed his groin against her.

  Lex cried out but before she could say a word or pull herself away from Epik, Raze grabbed him by the back of his neck and flung him away from her.

  The boy scuttled like a crab toward the exit, but Levi and Denim were there to halt him.

  Lex held shaking hands to her mouth, her breath coming out in little gasps.

  “Lex,” Rune said. “What’d you see?”

  “I didn’t see anything,” Lex said, finally.

  She lowered her hands and reached out beseechingly, and Raze was quick to take her fingers in his. “I didn’t see anything.”

  Rune could feel Epik’s stare eating into her back. She turned to look at him, unable to understand Lex’s fear.

  He crouched upon the floor, his head tilted, watching her.

  He was smiling. His eyes weren’t.

  God. He’s so…mad.

  “Lex?” Raze murmured, as confused as Rune. “I’m here. There’s no reason to be scared.”

  But the blind Other pushed herself into his arms, sobbing quietly. She’d forgotten she was a demon, forgotten she was a warrior. She was, at that moment, a terrified little girl.

  Epik had somehow done that to her.

  And her mother would do that to her.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  The dying woman was the one to let them know exactly why Epik could strike such fear into the heart of Lex

  “Sometimes when you touch him,” she said, “or he touches you, he becomes the person, or thing, you fear most. You can’t tell the difference.” She paused, coughed, then spat out a mouthful of blood. He can make all of you blubber like babies.” She looked at Rune. “Except he can’t seem to get to you.”

  Epik scooted closer to Levi, who wasted no time backing away. He pulled his gun and leveled it at the boy’s head. “A bullet will fix that.”

  “Why didn’t you kill him?” Rune asked the pike master.

  “His father owns me. As long as I keep this little son of a bitch happy, we’re left alone. If I go against his father…”

  “What?” Rune pressed.

  “He had some of us taken to his lab,” the dying woman said. “He sent one back three days later so he could tell us the kinds of things that would happen if we caused trouble.”

  “We’re not strong, and we’re not scary,” Sean Colley said. “And we have no place to hide.” He glanced at the woman, and for a second, Rune thought he might go to her. But he fell back against the wall and didn’t look at her again. “Mostly what Epik wants is to be hurt and to have a couple of toys. I give him that, and he’s quiet.”

  “Why did you tell him to shove me into the well?”

  He laughed, but refused to answer.

  The woman answered for him. “The freak did that for fun. He does a lot of that for fun.”

  So maybe the story of the corpses in the well was explained.

  But the crucifix covered in Owen’s blood was not.

  Epik gazed at them, silent, his head tilted curiously. He still looked like an abused, helpless boy.

  “So if we kill Epik, his father will come after you,” Rune said to Colley.

  “Oh yes,” said Sean. “And you. But he won’t kill us. He’ll chain us away and let the mad boy hurt us until we’re gone.”

  “Why didn’t you take your people and run?” Jack asked.

  “We’re tethered to this pond,” the pike alpha said. “We can leave it for days—at least some of us can—but we have to eventually come back. This water is what keeps us alive. It holds magic.” He looked at Epik. “Just as he does.”

  If he was telling the truth, then he and his people really were trapped.

  Rune pulled a blade. Maybe Epic could become what she most feared, but probably he couldn’t. He’d had plenty of opportunities. Still, she wasn’t taking any chances.

  That the boy had some strong magic inside him was no longer a question. She felt it. It was not a good feeling.

  Strong magic, a black heart, and the desire to give pain. Eugene would be happy to get the psychotic freak.

  She pointed her blade at the couple restrained and battered on the floor. “Why did you give him these two?” she asked Sean.

  “They deserved their punishment. They broke our rules.”

  The woman snorted, or tried to. The man continued staring at the floor, never making a sound. “I’m his wife,” she said. “I fucked Jon here. Sean decided we should be punished and gave us to that sadistic mutant. I’m dying,” she said suddenly, as though they weren’t aware. “And I’m happy as fuck to go.”

  She released a sob, once, then stared at Sean Colley. “You’ll get what’s coming to you, Sean. You’re as bad as that boy.”

  Rune agreed.

  “Rune?” Levi asked.

  “Don’t kill me,” Epik said, his voice low.

  Rune had nearly forgotten the boy could speak.

  “Don’t kill me and I’ll lead you to the lab. I know you want the lab. There are other things you’ll want, too.”

  He didn’t seem particularly afraid.

  Rune backed away when he started to walk toward her. “Stay the fuck over there, kid.”

  “Why don’t you kill him?” the woman screamed. “Please kill him.”

  “I’m taking him to the Annex,” she said. But first she wanted to ask him a question—why, she wasn’t sure, but she was curious about Will. The Blackthornes gave the term dysfunctional family a whole new meaning. “Why did your father torture Will?”

  The blood drained from Epik’s face with a suddenness that left him swaying on his bare feet. And as though a switch had been flipped, he went from calm to raging mad.

  “Shit,” Sean whispered.

  The man—Jon—came suddenly to life, whimpering and moaning as he tried to push himself into the wall at his back.

  Colley pulled his knees against his chest and covered his head with his bent arms. “Shit,” he cried.

  Epik lifted his hands and raked his nails over his chest, leaving deep furrows that began to bleed immediately. Then, screaming in rage, he ran at Rune.

  Levi shot him in the head.

  Epik hit the floor, and Rune watched with the rest of them as a green mass leaked from his head along with the spreading pool of blood.

  It took shape, that green mass, the shape of a human figure, and for a second, Rune shook with a fear so intense she would have run the hell out of there if she could have forced her frozen legs to move.

  The mass separated from the blood and hovered in the air, became a round, thin shape the size of a dinner plate, then swooped down almost playfully.

  Directly at Rune.

  She threw her arms over her head, ducked, and screamed. God, she didn’t want that inside her.
Didn’t want Epik inside her.

  “Rune,” Jack yelled. He grabbed her arm and shook her. “What’s wrong?”

  She turned in circles, searching the shadows with a frantic gaze, her heart beating so fast it made her dizzy. The mass was gone. “Didn’t you see it?” she asked them. “Didn’t any of you see it?”

  But they stared at her with concerned frowns and shook their heads. “We saw Levi kill Epik,” Raze said. “What did you see?”

  She looked at Lex. Lex had pulled away from Raze’s body and stood staring up at the ceiling. “It’s gone now,” she said.

  Rune swallowed past the dryness in her throat, curiously near tears. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes,” Lex said. “It’s gone from here.”

  “Forever?” Rune asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “I don’t know,” was all Lex could offer.

  “What the fuck was it?” Denim asked. “What did you two see?”

  “Magic,” Rune said. “I think we saw magic.”

  Colley stood, his eyes wide, his hands shaky. There was no relief in his face. “If you don’t find his father and kill him as well, we’re worse off now. You’ve fucked things up, Rune Alexander. Things that were none of your business.”

  “Shut up,” Rune said, almost absently. Jack and Raze were assisting Sean’s wife and her lover, but she was beyond saving and the man had long since lost his mind.

  “Do you want me to kill him?” Denim asked, his stare on the pike alpha.

  “Not you,” she said, then pulled her gun and strode to the woman. She held the gun out. “We’re leaving now. Do whatever you need to do.”

  She could kill her lover and herself and end their suffering, or she could kill fucking Sean Colley.

  And as Rune and her crew strode out of the room, their minds already on capturing the man who’d fathered a couple of insanely damaged sons, two shots rang out behind them.

  They didn’t go back to see who’d died, and who’d lived.

  It really didn’t matter.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Strad and Owen had still not appeared.

  Ellie promised to send them to Reverence as soon as he saw them, but Rune was pretty sure they’d be in the hospital for a week after they got done pummeling each other. They weren’t going to be worth much until they healed.