New Regime (Rune Alexander Book 5) Read online

  And she couldn’t stop it.

  Couldn’t fight.

  Could only lie there as Karin Love strode back to the edge to watch the monsters kill her child.

  She couldn’t even close her eyes to shut out the intolerable faces of COS. Karin’s slayers attacked her with rabid fear and malicious hatred. They crowded around her and grabbed her, bloodied her, and bruised her.

  They shredded her pants, cutting her in the process, but what did they care?

  They would never care.

  Someone would have to help her. Her entire fucking crew was below.

  They were there.

  She could hear them, hear their roars of horror at what was taking place above, unable to do a fucking thing to—

  But then someone did come to help her.

  To save her.

  Because she could not always save herself.

  Lex, her black wings beating with enough force to fan Rune’s hair, flew screaming through the air.

  She went for the slayers.

  For Rune.

  “Alexis,” Karin screamed, her voice full of horror, disbelief, and maybe…was that pride?

  Yeah, bitch, see what your daughter has become.

  Lex sent fire at the scattering slayers, burning Rune as well, but that didn’t matter. Slayers hadn’t raped her. Not that time.

  And she was still raging. She still had her fucking rage.

  Lex yanked the blades from Rune’s body. She didn’t look like Lex.

  Lex was the demon, and Rune had been wrong.

  She could stand against her mother.

  She could kill her mother.

  But she didn’t, because she was saving Rune.

  “Get Megan,” Rune said, weakly.

  But Lex went grimly on until she’d pulled every blade from Rune’s frozen body. As soon as the blades were lying upon the floor in a bloody pile, Lex stood, kicked Rune off the edge, and turned away.

  Rune fell, unable to do anything because the obsidian wounds, so many of them, would take at least a fucking minute to heal.

  So she fell, but the berserker was waiting for her.

  “You caught me,” she murmured, as he held her against his chest.

  He turned, holding her with one arm, and sent his spear into the head of an attacking monster. “I will always fucking catch you.”

  Lex tumbled through the air to fall beside them, her body cushioning the little werefox she held in her arms.

  “Lex,” Rune said. “Lex.” There was nothing else she could say.

  Lex had saved her, and she’d saved the werefox.

  Lex had.

  “Run,” Raze yelled.

  Orson Blackthorne and Karin Love would go into hiding, but they would be back to torment the world and the crew.

  And that was okay.

  Because Lex had stood against her mother, and now she knew she could.

  They’d get the bitch, eventually.

  Jack snatched Megan into his arms. “Let’s get the fuck back home.”

  And that was all the mattered right then. Not stopping Orson Blackthorne.

  Not killing Karin Love.

  Just getting the fuck back home.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  The assassin was gone when she got home. She wasn’t really surprised.

  All that remained of him were spots of blood on the walls, the glass—broken and sharp upon the floor—from the water Denim had brought him, and a note.

  I’ll be back.

  As though she wouldn’t kill him.

  And maybe she wouldn’t. Because if she’d really meant to kill him, she would have already.

  The shameful thing was, despite Gunnar’s fear and his torture at the hands of Will the Assassin, she could use Orson Blackthorne’s scarred son.

  Will would know a lot about his father, about the Shop, about COS. About Karin. Even if he pretended otherwise.

  He could help her find the baby.

  And if she’d have told Gunnar that, he’d have understood.

  When she and the crew arrived back in River County, they went their separate ways to recover from their time in the lab.

  It’d affected them all.

  After she’d showered, Strad pulled her into her bedroom and put her to bed. He’d gone to the kitchen, come back with food, and watched from a chair in the corner of her room until she’d finished every bite.

  She’d been right.

  When they returned home, things went back to normal.

  The damages from the fight hadn’t gone away—they’d just been covered up by the power from the circle.

  Owen disappeared, and she figured he was in a hospital somewhere recovering from his injuries.

  Strad shrugged his away and ignored them, but then, he was the berserker.

  Owen wasn’t.

  For three days the crew stayed in their homes and did nothing, as far as she knew, but eat, sleep, and, in Jack’s case, drink.

  But then…

  “Rune.”

  “Eugene? Megan still alive?” She squeezed her cell, afraid of what he was calling to tell her.

  “Yes. I’m going to take the baby.”

  “I’m coming.”

  An hour later she was walking into the Annex, and strangely enough, she was happy to be there.

  Maybe the Annex was growing on her.

  But Megan still hadn’t delivered.

  “You said you were taking the kid.” Rune stared through the glass at Megan’s still form, then turned to Eugene. “Get it the fuck out.”

  The werefox opened her mouth, started to cry out, then fell back into her exhausted fog without making a sound. She was too far gone to even scream.

  In the three days since they’d rescued her from the lab, Megan had screamed, but hadn’t spoken a word.

  “Get it the fuck out,” Rune said again.

  Eugene sighed. He wasn’t surrounded by ops, perhaps having trouble finding bodyguards after they’d watched him shiv one of their own. “Soon as the baby is out, the werefox dies.”

  Rune whipped her head around to stare at him. “What?”

  Finally, he looked at her. “All the Others died when they delivered.”

  He was right. “Shit.”

  “It’s as though the infants are feeding on them, and they’re alive only until the babies no longer need them.” He shook his head and turned back to the window. “These girls are hosts and the infants are parasites. How it came to be, what’s making it possible…we don’t know.”

  “I know,” Rune said. “It’s magic. Dark fucking magic.”

  “Yes, but…” he shook his head. “What magic? Whose? How?”

  She took a deep breath. They knew Epik was part of it. Nothing more. “I don’t have the answers.”

  “Then there’s nothing we can do.”

  After they’d fled down the path and had tumbled out of the swirling green mass and back to their world, their perfect, beautiful world, Lex had blasted fire at the portal for two minutes straight.

  And it had disappeared.

  When they’d left, the yard, the fence, and the house were all burning, and they’d regretted only that she couldn’t take time to burn the entire fucking town.

  But her mother and Blackthorne and his lab of horrors were without an exit from the lab. They couldn’t get out.

  For now.

  “The Shop head is gone,” she told him. “Karin Love is gone. That’s something.”

  “They’re not going away.” He ran a hand over his face, then pointed. “At last. The child is coming on its own.”

  She clutched her stomach as fear streaked through her. And dread. Megan would die, and the child…

  The child could be anything.

  She started for the door. “I’m going in.”

  “Rune.”

  Something in his voice stopped her. She glanced at him, frowning. “Yeah?”

  “I can’t let you in there.”

  “Why the fuck not?”
r />   “Wait out here. The medical staff will take care of her.”

  Even as he spoke, a door inside the room opened and four people rushed to Megan’s bedside. They were dressed in white protective suits and something a little too close to gasmasks for her comfort.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” She hit the door, but gently. She could have broken it down, most likely, but she didn’t want to traumatize the laboring Other further. And…

  She was afraid of what was in that room.

  “Open the fucking door, Eugene,” she said, but she was less sure.

  “It’s not safe. I can’t let you go in there. Rune. Rune.” He held out his hand. “Come here. Watch.”

  “You’re keeping something from me, and I want to know what that is,” she said, but she strode back to the window to watch.

  And once again she had trouble breathing. It was as though a thick cloud of poison had drifted inside her lungs, swirling around in a foggy, lethal mass.

  She put her hand to her mouth and coughed. “God,” she wheezed.

  His gaze sharpened. “You’re affected even through the glass?”

  “Affected by what?” She backed away as panic began to cloud her mind. “The magic is inside her?”

  He motioned to someone behind her and his ops materialized. “Take her outside the building,” Eugene ordered.

  But as they walked toward her, she shot out her claws. “Keep coming if you want to die.” Her voice was less wheezy, but probably too soft for them to hear.

  They didn’t need to hear her, however. They darted a glance at Eugene, then raised their hands and backed away.

  Eugene cursed, but didn’t order them to return. He knew she’d kill them.

  She forced herself back to the window. If Megan had to endure the shit being forced upon her, Rune would be strong enough to stay there with her. Even though walls and glass stood between them, maybe it was better than nothing.

  She leaned her forehead against the warm, thick window. Eagerness warred with terror as she waited, waited for something unfamiliar and horrifying.

  And at that moment, Megan slowly turned her face toward Rune and opened her eyes.

  Caught with that stare, Rune trembled, realizing she was digging her fingers into the brick wall only when one of her nails snapped.

  She’d never been so afraid.

  Every time she thought she’d reached the limits of fear, had experienced the height of horror, something new came up to show her how wrong she’d been.

  This was worse.

  Worse than anything.

  And she didn’t know why.

  Suddenly she stiffened. “They’re wearing silver. That’ll kill the baby.” She had her claws to Eugene’s throat before he was aware she’d even moved. “What the fuck?”

  She grabbed onto her outrage eagerly, so glad to have something to concentrate on besides the insidious fear that she got a little vicious.

  The ops came at her then, as she unintentionally cut through Eugene’s skin.

  “No,” he told them, his hands up. “Stay back.” His eyes were calm as he looked at her. “Rune. There’s a reason. Just watch. If I’m right…” Carefully, he wrapped his fingers around one of her wrists, making her think, for one brief second, of Lex.

  “Trust me. Rune. Trust me.”

  “I don’t trust anybody,” she said, her voice hard.

  But then there was a sound, the sound of an infant crying, and she forgot about Eugene as she turned back to the thick plate of glass.

  Even before the child was all the way out Rune could see that Megan had breathed her last. But the child…

  The baby slid from its host’s body and lay across the bed, its screams changing to growls. The baby grew—it changed from a seven pound infant to a twenty-five pound toddler in seconds.

  Another infant burst from the mother.

  Identical twin girls, both with black hair, both with startling blue eyes and long, silver claws.

  They’d gotten those from Rune.

  But their beautiful, identical features, those belonged to Levi and Denim.

  “Oh God,” Rune cried. “No!”

  At the sound of running footsteps, she turned her horrified gaze to watch as Levi and Denim came toward her, confused. Terrified.

  “Why are you here?” she asked them.

  Levi shook his head, hard. “We had to come. What is this?”

  But as soon as they looked through the glass, they understood.

  Spikemoss Mountain.

  The Shop had used COS to steal the blood and magic from the twins and Rune to create…

  Monsters.

  Horrible, horrible monsters.

  The twin girls began to cry, opening their jaws wide to show sharp, growing fangs. Elongating their claws, they reached for the four Annex men who stood there in their silver-laced suits.

  “Run,” Rune whispered. Then she beat her fists upon the wall of thick glass and screamed it. “Run!”

  She knew what the mutated offspring were going to do. So did the twins at her back. Levi clutched at her upper arm, too shocked to give voice to the horror inside him.

  “Oh, no,” Denim said. “Don’t hurt the…”

  Don’t hurt the babies.

  Because even though Rune and the twins were disgusted and horrified and hurt, they recognized their own fucking children.

  That. That was what COS had stolen and raped and milked from them. Magic and semen and blood.

  Fucking blood.

  They were growing the strongest, most invincible monsters the world would ever see.

  Rune grabbed Eugene by the throat. “You knew,” she said. “You fucking knew.”

  “No, I did not. I did not.”

  She flung him away. The baby Others screamed as the men in the room slung silver nets over their little heads and dragged them to the floor.

  The first mistake they made was not being careful enough. The second was not really understanding, despite their silver-laced suits and masks, how dangerous the newborn Others would be.

  And Rune had to get inside that room. Not only to save the Annex from the children, but to save the children from the Annex.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  “Eugene,” she said, her voice calm even with the fear and dread beating at her brain. “Open the door.”

  Her reluctance to try to break the thick glass or kick in the door had nothing to do with traumatizing Megan that time. She was more worried that the magic inside the room, inside the infants, would weave its way through the building and hurt the people inside.

  She couldn’t know what it would do, and she wasn’t willing to risk it. Not when Eugene, even if he didn’t know it yet, was going to let her inside the room.

  He narrowed his eyes, his fingers to his throat. “No, Rune. I can’t.”

  “Before you argue, consider that your words might be your last if you make the wrong choice. With or without you we will get into that room. Decide.” She didn’t even bother turning when the medical ops inside the room began screaming.

  Eugene did, and the blood drained from his face so fast she was sure he’d collapse, but he merely nodded and strode to the door. “We can—”

  “Rune,” the berserker yelled.

  She glanced down the hall before she slipped into the room, to see Strad and Jack striding toward her. “Dammit,” she said, then yanked Eugene into the room with her and the twins.

  Without Eugene, the berserker and Jack couldn’t get inside. She couldn’t take a chance they’d be slaughtered.

  Or that they’d slaughter the children.

  “Hide,” she told Eugene, and shoved him to one of the doors inside the room.

  “Do not kill them,” he ordered, and then he ran.

  She glanced once at the window cut into the wall and met the berserker’s despairing gaze. He put his palm on the glass and mouthed her name.

  “Rune,” Levi called, yanking her away from her berserker. “Hurry.”

/>   The children had chewed through the silver netting as though it were sugar, and their mouths smoked and bled from the taste.

  It hadn’t stopped them.

  They were…inhuman.

  Denim pulled one man from the clutches of girl number one, but the man was suffering and beyond help. His eyes rolled wildly as blood sprayed from wounds in his thigh.

  The child who’d bitten him screamed in hungry rage as Denim dragged the worker away, and she tried to stand and follow them. She failed.

  The babies couldn’t walk, not then.

  Two of the workers were already dead, but the last one was still alive. Baby number two had grabbed his leg and was busy munching, and Levi…

  Levi crouched beside her, his eyes full of pleased wonder as he watched her.

  “Levi,” Rune screamed. “Fuck you!”

  She jerked the unconscious worker away from the hungry baby and carried him to the room into which Eugene had fled.

  When she kicked open the door and ran inside to dump him on the floor, she was almost shocked to find Eugene gone.

  Almost.

  She left the worker inside, hoping he’d survive, and then ran back to the children. Levi and Denim knelt on a floor slick with blood, and the girls sat across from them, silent. Watching.

  “Hey there,” Levi whispered.

  And Rune knew right then that the children would either save him or send him forever into the dark abyss toward which he’d been heading.

  “Hey there,” one of the children mimicked, her voice soft and sweet.

  “Holy shit.” Rune knelt beside Levi, unable not to smile when one of the little girls threw the phrase back at her.

  “They’re ours, aren’t they?” Levi didn’t take his gaze off the children.

  “Yes,” Rune answered.

  “This is what came of our time on the mountain. Everything we went through, these children are the result.”

  She nodded.

  Denim watched Levi, the hope on his face so bright it hurt her to look at it. “Our children,” he agreed.

  Levi smiled. The old Levi. “Then it was all worth it, wasn’t it?”

  He made sense of it. He made it okay. He won.

  “I have made children,” he murmured. “What’s better than that?”

  Rune blinked at sudden tears, gaining the interest of the infants. They tilted their heads, as one, and reached for her.