Series Firsts Box Set Page 23

  She thought she heard Ellis scream.

  The shifters leaped at her, tearing her flesh, shredding her skin, but not doing damage enough to kill her all at once.

  Sharp teeth sank into her arm, biting to the bone.

  Swinging her left hand, she nearly decapitated the biter with her claws. But as soon as she killed him, another took his place. She lost count of how many Others she killed, but they weren’t slowing down.

  More Dark Others arrived.

  And they were systematically tearing her to pieces.

  She fell to her knees. Her vision was dimming, her blood draining from a thousand different claw and teeth marks.

  I’m dying. It was a thought tinged with wonder. Could she die? Could she?

  They backed off a little…as though wanting to watch her suffer through the last moments of her life. To watch her struggle.

  She would fight to the end. That was who she was.

  She climbed laboriously to her feet, unwilling to die before them on her knees.

  I should have cut my hair. It swung into her eyes and clung to the blood on her face. Should have cut it.

  Then, I’m dying.

  They might already have killed Ellie, but she couldn’t allow that thought to linger.

  Jeremy yelled, his voice splitting the air from his safe place on the ridge. “Kill her.”

  Above, the helicopter hung in the air, watching, recording.

  That was what Jeremy wanted. What COS wanted. To show the world what they could do.

  She was dying.

  But a long, slow minute later, the Others still had not moved—instead had their stares pinned on something behind her. Their eyes were filled with surprise and terror. Yes, there was terror.

  She turned to look, and her shattered legs gave out. She began to fall as if in slow motion and knew, just knew that if she touched the ground, if she lay on that cold, unforgiving ground, she was never getting back up. She could not allow herself to fall.

  She fell.

  There was only blackness, and thirst, and so very much pain. Grief, there was that as well. Plenty of it.

  Ellie…

  Her end shouldn’t have come yet. She wasn’t ready.

  She needed…she needed to do something.

  Slowly, she turned her face to her right hand, the hand closest to her, and touched her lips to it. I forgive you. I forgive you, little Rune.

  Now, she could die.

  But as she settled into the blackness, she was snatched off the ground and held securely against a hard chest. Bits of reality intruded upon her dying brain.

  Monsters shrieked.

  Through swollen eyelids she caught glimpses of images she didn’t understand. Maybe she was already dead and in the afterlife. Was there an afterlife for monsters?

  A huge bird screamed as it dive-bombed the Dark Others like a feathered torpedo.

  Seconds, minutes, or hours later she got another glimpse of Dark Others being flung through the air, of Jeremy running, and of the eyes of the man who held her.

  But I’m dying.

  She must have spoken the words aloud.

  “No. I won’t let you die.” His voice was a deep, low rumble.

  Images. Pain.

  He bit his own wrist, opening a vein.

  His eyes and something inside them she’d never seen before.

  Who are you?

  But she knew him. She knew him.

  Blood, human blood, at her mouth. She tightened her lips against it, but he was too strong. He forced the blood into her mouth, down her throat.

  Unable to resist the taste, she grabbed his wrist and held it to her mouth. And with every suck, she came back.

  She lived.

  No, she screamed. But her screams were silent.

  Strad’s was the first blood she’d taken from a person since she’d been a murderous little child. After that, she hadn’t seemed to need the blood—until she’d gotten older. Then the need had nearly killed her. She hadn’t recognized it for what it was. Until Ellie…

  I am my monster.

  My monster is me.

  She cried, cried as he fed her, and the heavy tears ran down her face.

  They’d be scarlet.

  Stop wasting the blood.

  Oh God.

  She forced his arm away and met his eyes for one long second. “Fight,” she said.

  His harsh stare might have softened a bit, and then he gave a sharp nod and threw her into what seemed like a never-ending crowd of Dark Others.

  There was no need to think—only to fight.

  And to find Jeremy.

  He was hers to kill.

  The enormous bird helped, using claws, its lethal, hooked beak, and its bulk to fight the Others.

  But still more arrived.

  She didn’t know where they were coming from. The sons of bitches must have been planning that day for a long time.

  The lone helicopter had attracted a mate and the two of them sat above the danger. They’d be broadcasting the horrific battle on live TV.

  And finally, finally she saw her crew. Had they caught the Hawthorne battle on TV and thought she was dead? Dead like Ellis was surely dead.

  Ellie.

  Lex split off from Levi and Denim and sprinted toward the restrained wolves, her blindness once again something incomprehensible. Blind? No.

  Not exactly.

  Then Rune had time for nothing more than trying once again to cheat death. But she was full of his blood—yes, she could see him, she could admit it—full of the berserker’s blood.

  He’d saved her life again.

  And somehow, he’d known how to save her. Had known she was a vampire. A fucking mutated vampire.

  She screamed in denial even as she sank her fangs into the throat of a wolf and tore his jugular vein from his body.

  She threw back her head and screamed at the sky.

  Then Z was there, his eyes swimming with tears. Nice, clear tears, not the bloody tears of a monster. “Rune,” he whispered, and tossed her a blade.

  Maybe he thought she needed one.

  She couldn’t reassure him, couldn’t smile. All she could do was slash enemies into bits of nothing and wait for the horror to end.

  Raze threw her another blade, and though she might not really need them, she was happy to have both hands full of silver. It balanced her.

  It was what she did. She was Shiv Crew and Shiv Crew fought with fucking silver blades.

  Lex pulled her around, but there was no time for words, no time to take the blind girl to safety. But then…

  Safety was something the Dark Others should have sought.

  Lex and Rune fought together. Lex mirrored her every movement, her vibrations hard enough to hear. Together, she and Rune danced a killing dance, both of them using blades and fists and feet to destroy the Dark Others.

  And Lex was fighting with silver.

  Rune wanted to stop and watch the gory, incredibly beautiful picture the two of them must surely have made.

  Catching sight of Strad was almost enough to make her lose her concentration. The berserker roared his wildness to the world as he cut down any Dark Other unlucky enough to come close to his spear, to his fury.

  The twins fought back-to-back, playing off each other to defeat their foes. Ponytails flying, they yelled with excitement, and she realized that every single one of her crew enjoyed the fight.

  Lived for it.

  Z fought almost like a gentleman, his cuts neat and quick, silent and strong, dripping with finesse. Jack and Raze, her giants, roared as they took off heads and slaughtered their attackers with a rage that rivaled the berserker’s.

  She caught everything in glances, in bits and pieces. Blood lent the air a haze of scarlet and the scent of death.

  Death had already claimed too many innocents. No more.

  No more.

  She screamed her rage and pain.

  “Fuck,” Jack yelled, his hand over his eye. He grinned w
hen she looked at him, but his face was covered with blood, his clothes splattered with gore. He knelt on the ground as though his legs would no longer support him.

  She turned to help her crew as a fresh wave of enemy Others topped the hill and the unwelcome question flashed into her mind. Could the Dark Others be beaten by just her people and the silver of their shivs? Could they?

  There were so many of them. They spilled over the hill like water from a hose, fast and thick and constant.

  Then the moon chased the sun into hiding and when that happened, the vampires came.

  And vampires feared no fucking one.

  The vampire master fought beside her and Lex for a while, and because of him and his children, the tides of the fight turned even more against the Dark Others.

  There were far fewer vampires since the Dark Others had ambushed them in Wormwood, but because of that, their rage was huge. They would avenge themselves that night.

  Her men fought on, but Raze broke from the knot of fighters and sprinted right toward the new Dark Others.

  “Raze,” she screamed, and her heart froze in her chest. He was running toward certain death.

  Desperation lent her even more speed, and she raced after him.

  She realized with horror what he was doing when he pulled something from one of his pockets and threw the object with all his strength into the midst of the new arrivals.

  Grenade.

  So the explosive would have the greatest impact, he’d gotten too close to the enemy before throwing his bomb.

  He’d be blown to bits with them.

  Raze.

  Fuck no.

  She wasn’t a monster for nothing.

  Someone screamed her name but she ignored it and ran on across the field, intent only on getting to Raze.

  She reached him a couple of seconds after he’d released the grenade, then had no idea what to do.

  His eyes widened when he saw her beside him, realization and regret showing in his striking gray eyes.

  High above, the noisy helicopters spotlighted the bloody, moon-bathed field, and for a second Rune was sure the world would see the Dark Others victorious and she and her crew defeated.

  But her monster was more confident.

  She would save Raze.

  There was no way she could pick him up. Raze was a mountain and she was small. Surely, it was not possible.

  But fuck if she didn’t do it anyway.

  His grenade went off, but the hot wind from the explosion only served to push her farther away. By then, she’d wrapped her arms around as much of the big man as possible and she and Raze were out of reach of the blast.

  She ran so fast she couldn’t breathe—pushing Raze along with her.

  Raze fell to the ground when she stopped, but he would be okay. What had happened would disorient anyone.

  Except her.

  She threw herself back into the fight. She’d lost her blades again, but it didn’t matter. She fought with a mindless rage, barely seeing the furry bodies that fell beneath her blows.

  She straddled the body of a fallen half-shifted bear and nearly decapitated him with a slash of her claws. They’d grown even more with the arrival of the vampires and had become shivs in their own right.

  Shivs that were extensions of her body, and God, did they feel right.

  Maybe the proximity of the undead had something to do with it, but that was a question for a quieter time.

  “Rune.”

  She looked up at Z’s voice.

  The ground was littered with dead Others, and blood seemed to hang in the air.

  The battle was over.

  Her monster sighed with tired satisfaction and slid into a dark place deep inside her to sleep, leaving her to face them alone.

  Always alone.

  Her crew stared at her with varying expressions. She was too bewildered to read their faces. At last Z stepped forward and pulled her into his arms.

  “God, Rune.”

  She could almost hear the beads of blood run down her fingers to splash upon the earth. There was a coldness inside her she’d never noticed before. Not a calmness, not an indifference. Just a coldness.

  She was changed.

  Everyone had witnessed the monster. Not only her crew but all of River County. Anyone who turned on a TV would see.

  She leaned limply against Z, the one man in her crew who couldn’t bear to see a female suffer. No matter what she’d done.

  Everyone would know now that she’d turned her own parents. How long would it take them to put it together? Not long.

  An image flashed into her mind. She sat in the middle of a floor slippery with blood, the lacerated bodies of her parents around her. She licked her lips, wet and juicy with the exotic, delightful taste of blood. Her parents’ blood.

  She never remembered how it happened. Never remembered slaying them. But she remembered the taste of them, and how her nine-year-old monster mind had craved that taste, had wanted her to lean over and sink her teeth into her father’s throat and pull out some more of that blood.

  She remembered climbing to her feet, remembered the stickiness, remembered sliding in that blood and falling. She’d hit her temple on the corner of a table going down, hit it hard.

  Then blackness and shadows. Someone was talking to her…

  “Rune?” Z had his hands around her upper arms and was shaking her, his eyes worried and scared.

  She wanted to cry, to sink into the dark, crumbly earth and never come to the surface again. “Ellis?” Her words came out in a breathless half scream of shock, of fear.

  “What would I do without you, Ellie?”

  “I don’t know. Probably die.”

  But Z smiled. “He’s okay, baby. He’s wounded but alive.”

  “Rice came in himself,” Levi said, a little awe in his voice. “Came in and got him.”

  Bill Rice had risked the world discovering he was Other, but he’d cared too much to hide in the shadows when he was needed.

  They owed him for that.

  “It was Jeremy,” she said. “And…”

  “Mitch.” Z said it for her. “Fuck him. Mitch is dead.” He pointed his shiv toward the ridge, but she didn’t look.

  “Jeremy?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “We lost him.”

  She covered her mouth as a sob escaped. “Oh God.”

  Overhead the news helicopters lingered, wanting to get every bit of the gruesome scene. The moon was full and bright, but now that the Other inside her was sleeping, the night was a much darker place.

  She finally gathered her courage and stepped away from Z, forcing herself to meet the eyes of her crew.

  The berserker stood a short distance away, his back to them, as though he didn’t want to intrude upon their circle. But she’d taken blood from his veins.

  He’d saved her life.

  And she couldn’t help but cry, right there in front of them all. She put a hand to her cheek and it came away with fresh blood. The berserker’s blood.

  She could only stare at them, helpless, full of sorrow and shame.

  Z stepped toward her, and before she understood what he was going to do, he ran his fingertip through a track of her red tears. He stared at her, lifting her chin when she dropped her gaze to the ground. As she watched, he drew his blade in a small, quick line under his eye. A drop of rich, red blood beaded there, spilled over, and ran down his cheek like the scarlet pain of her tears.

  “Z,” she cried. “Z.”

  Lex finally ended the heavy silence. “So broken.” She moved forward, her unseeing yet all-seeing eyes wet with tears, and pulled Rune into her arms.

  Then the men lined up and one by one they hugged her, each one kissing her cheek or whispering words of comfort into her ear, squeezing her gently.

  Not once did she try to pull away.

  It was at that moment she realized they truly loved her. All of them. They thought she was worthy of love.

  Despite the f
act that she was a monster.

  Jack had tied a long strip of cloth over his eye. As she watched, it blossomed with blood, the spot growing larger with each passing second.

  “Jack?”

  “Paramedics are coming in now,” Denim said. He touched Jack’s shoulder. “Hang on, man.”

  Everyone had their injuries and would need to be checked out, but she had a bad feeling about Jack’s eye.

  He swayed on his feet, and Raze shot out an arm to steady him.

  She didn’t know what would come. Right then, all that mattered was her crew, her city, and her responsibility to them all.

  She stepped back and tapped her chest with her crossed fingers, then raised her hand to the sky.

  “For the city,” she whispered. “And all those inside, human and Other. For Shiv Crew. And most especially, for Ellis.”

  Because Ellie would see, and he would smile.

  Her crew, wounded and tired, raised their crossed fingers as well.

  “Human and Other,” they echoed. “Shiv Crew. And Ellis.”

  They had stopped that batch of Dark Others, but there would be more. There would always be more. She had no way of knowing where Jeremy was. Not that it mattered. She would find him.

  Sooner or later she would find him, and she would cut out his fucking black heart.

  High above, the helicopters began to move away, their occupants having seen all they needed to see.

  Chapter Thirty

  Rune sat on the hospital bed beside Ellis, watching the television replay the toughest battle of her life. She squeezed his left hand gently, looking at him every few moments.

  She’d almost lost him.

  His right arm had been broken in three places and she’d signed his cast three times. One for each break.

  Her entire crew had managed to stuff themselves into the room as well, making it seem about the size of a closet.

  “Turn it off,” Z said, when the video began to play.

  But she wanted to watch. “No. Leave it.”

  “I heard some guys on YouTube have edited it and have it set to music,” Ellis said, his voice weak but his smile strong.

  “Crazy,” Rune replied, her attention on the TV.

  “It’s been a crazy week,” Jack rumbled, rubbing the patch that covered the spot where his left eye had once resided.

  He stopped when he noticed her watching him.