New Regime (Rune Alexander Book 5) Read online

  Lex shook her head. “I don’t know. But Elizabeth knows more than she’s saying, and so do Bill and Eugene.” Again, she shook her head, as though trying to clear the confusion her words caused her. “I don’t know.”

  It was something Rune needed desperately to make sense of, but it wouldn’t happen without a struggle and a hell of a lot of digging. Lex was right. Something was going on, and it had everything to do with the Annex and its two biggest rivals.

  “He’s on the right side,” Raze said. He stared at the far wall, his brow furrowed.

  “Who is?” Owen asked.

  “Parish. Getting Other equality is what we want.”

  “Yeah,” Rune said. “And to rid the world of COS.”

  “But I don’t trust him,” Raze said.

  “Shit never stops,” Lex murmured. “This stuff with the Next and the Shop, and Fie…”

  “And Gunnar,” Rune said.

  They looked at her. “What’s wrong with our ghoul?” Levi asked.

  She repeated everything she’d told Strad. “I don’t know where he is. He can’t leave Wormwood unless it’s to appear in another graveyard. I hope that’s what happened, but the abused Other I talked with saw the assassin dragging Gunnar through the cemetery.”

  “Shiv Crew report to Monitor One. You have a run. Shiv Crew, Monitor One.”

  Ellie’s voice blasted suddenly over the loudspeaker, and Rune noticed Levi stiffen as he listened.

  They walked to Ellis’s enormous new office—one he shared with Gustav Dahl, a hunky man of Norwegian descent who had a slight accent and hooded blue eyes. His hair was dark blond, his lips full, his chin strong.

  He was gorgeous.

  He was one of the original Annex brought over from another location. He refused to say where he’d been posted before River County.

  “Hi, baby,” Rune said. “What do you have for us?”

  “Hi, guys,” Ellis said, smiling at her from behind his desk.

  “You good?” she asked.

  He glanced at Levi. “Yes. Thank you. I’m very well.”

  She raised an eyebrow at his suddenly stilted speech. He and Levi were still having problems and there wasn’t a thing she could do to help them.

  Levi planted his hard stare on the smiling Gustav.

  Ellie’s face fell and Rune walked around his desk. She crouched in front of him and he swiveled toward her.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Ellie murmured, so the others couldn’t hear him. “He’s getting worse.”

  “I’m here if you need me,” she said. There was nothing else to say. Levi’s time on the mountain had destroyed a vital part of him, and she wasn’t sure he’d ever get it back. All the crew could do was watch, wait, and let him know they were there for him.

  Gustav cleared his throat. “We got a report of a fight at an Other’s private residence. Neighbors called it in. They reported screaming, glass breaking, calls for help.”

  Rune stood, then leaned over to give Ellis a quick hug, despite the burning pain of the fang he kept hidden beneath his shirt. “It’s going to be okay, Ellie.”

  “If only you could work your magic and make that happen soon,” he said.

  She eased away from him and got the address from Gustav, then she and the crew left the room to go to work.

  It took them twenty minutes to reach the address, a town in River County called Garden City. When they arrived, two cars from the Garden City PD were already there.

  The cops wasted no time in waving the crew over, tired disgust on their faces. “You’re welcome to them,” one of the cops said. “We have actual people to help.”

  Rune ignored the hateful words, something she was finding easier to do.

  It was no secret that some of the smaller towns were trying to run the Others to larger towns—such as Spiritgrove. They were unable to handle Others, or so they said, except by shooting them with silver, hoping they died, and letting the afterlife deal with their souls.

  Rune led the crew up to the front of the house. Their guns were out. Neighbors—human and Other—peered from shadowed porches and the occasional ripple of a curtain let her know more were watching from behind their windows.

  “Hello?” she called, walking cautiously up the few stairs to the porch. “We’re Shiv Crew. My name is Rune Alexander.”

  No one said a word, and nothing moved. It was quiet—too quiet. She hoped they weren’t all dead.

  She knocked on the door, a huge, heavy door that even Strad might have had trouble kicking in. The windows were protected, she noticed, with iron bars.

  “Someone lives with fear,” she murmured, then louder, “Open the door. We just want to talk and help your injured.”

  Nothing.

  Lex put her palm against the rough exterior wall and vibrated gently. “I feel them in there. I see them like red blobs in blackness. Six of them.” She leaned her forehead against the wall. “Two are hurt.”

  Rune stared at her, amazed. Lex’s abilities had grown enormously since she’d discovered her demon. That Lex could almost certainly read the crew without a touch wasn’t reassuring.

  “Any humans?” Rune didn’t really expect her to know, but she did.

  “The two injured are human.”

  “Fuck me,” Rune muttered. That was always the way of it. One step forward and two back as the Others fucked themselves over every single day.

  The cops couldn’t have known humans were inside the house, or they wouldn’t have stood around waiting for Shiv Crew to arrive. “We’re going in.” She patted the door. “Door, meet Raze.”

  Raze moved up beside her, and the others covered him as he smashed through the heavy door. He proved once again how suitably he was named when the door was unable to put up much of a fight.

  The entryway was small and mostly bare. Straight ahead were stairs leading to the second floor, but the crew followed Rune through an arched doorway to the living room.

  They entered the room noisily, guns drawn, but none of the people in the living room moved.

  It only took a second for Rune to understand why.

  Of the six people inside, four were Others. They’d messed up the two humans—a man and a woman—badly.

  Scents of seared flesh and scorched blood hung in the air.

  “Good,” said one of the Others, a forty-something woman with hard, haunted eyes and long red fingernails. “Rune Alexander?”

  Rune frowned and kept her gun trained on the woman. “Yeah?”

  “About time you showed up.”

  Chapter Six

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Rune asked the woman, who appeared to be the leader of the group of Others. “You’ve abducted and tortured two humans. You have to know you’re dead.”

  The woman turned up her lip. “I don’t give a fuck about these two pieces of human shit. I don’t care about being executed by human law.”

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Three months ago, my fourteen year old daughter disappeared. I begged the humans for help. I begged RISC for help.” She glared at the crew, her hatred so intense it was tangible. “No one bothered to care. What was one more runaway Other, right?”

  Other children weren’t exactly numerous, but each year they became more common. A few years earlier a runaway Other child might have drawn more attention.

  But now…

  “If your child ran away—”

  “She didn’t run away,” the woman said, her voice breaking. She composed herself and shielded her emotions behind the cold mask she must have worn like armor. “She was taken.”

  She grabbed a handful of the man’s hair, jerking his head backward. “He took my girl.” She nodded at the woman beside him. “And she took my girl. But no one did a fucking thing. No one investigated, no one asked questions, no one cared.”

  Rune holstered her gun and held her hand out, palm up, to the woman. “I care.”

  The Other laughed, a harsh, hurt sound that Rune had heard be
fore. It was the sound of an almost total absence of hope. A tiny, tiny spark remained, but it was tempered by the knowledge that no matter what they needed or wanted, they were going to be disappointed.

  Her laugh told Rune the woman was so desperate and agonized she would have ended her own life had it not been for that one miniscule spark of hope.

  Hope for her child.

  “You don’t have children,” the Other said. “So you can’t know what it feels like to lose one. I don’t even have the comfort of her death. I have the constant torment of my daughter being terrified, confused, and brutalized.” She shook her head. “I have to either save her, or know she has left this world. Those are my two choices.”

  “You should have come to me,” Rune said, her stomach tightening with pity.

  The Other smiled. “I did come to you, Rune Alexander. You sent me to someone else, who sent me to someone else. None of you did anything.” She looked at Rune. “You don’t even remember.”

  “We fight, ma’am,” Jack said. “We kill. We don’t—”

  “Shut up,” the woman said, tiredly. “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to devote every second to finding my daughter. Start with these fucks, because they know what happened. They caused it to happen. When you’ve found her breathing or found her dead, I’ll turn these two loose and deliver myself for execution.”

  “You’ve deprived your daughter of her mother,” Lex said. “You should have found another way.”

  “Just find her,” the woman said. “Then you can judge my choices.”

  “What’s your name?” Rune asked.

  “Louisa Smith. My daughter’s name is Megan Smith. Ring a bell?”

  Rune nodded. Yeah, she remembered. But the memory was as vague and unfinished as the search for Megan Smith had been. “I’m sorry. My crew and I will use every resource we have to find your daughter.” She pointed her chin at the two humans. “You don’t have to hold them. We’ll make Megan’s case a priority.”

  “I’ll hold these two anyway,” Louisa said. “You’ll need to question them, and I’ll need to make sure they hold nothing back. They’re tough motherfuckers, though. I’d not managed to get much out of them before you arrived. But together, we’ll rip every truth from them piece by piece, until we know where my daughter is.”

  And as though afraid they might think she was bluffing, she cut off a piece of the male human’s ear with two quick swipes of her blade, then dropped the flesh on his already bloody lap.

  “Stop, Louisa. No more cutting.” Rune had to speak loudly to cover the human’s screams. “What led you to these two?”

  She knew that no matter what Louisa promised, she wasn’t letting the two humans live. As soon as she got what she wanted from them, they were dead.

  The crew began to spread out, surreptitiously, slowly. If at any time one of them got a clean shot, he’d take it—after she let them know it was okay.

  But it wasn’t okay.

  The Others were using the humans as shields, blades to their throats, but that wasn’t the only reason Rune hesitated.

  She wanted to help Louisa find the girl, and she did need to question the humans. There was a story behind the disappearance, and she wanted to know what it was.

  “It’s not only my daughter,” Louisa said. “Other people have disappeared. Young girls. Others.”

  “What?”

  Louisa spread her lips in an unamused smile at Rune’s surprise. “Ask your superiors, Alexander. They know.”

  Rune glanced at her crew, but they were clueless. Sure, there were reported Other disappearances. Just as there were human disappearances. RISC had done what they could to investigate.

  Hadn’t they?

  “Tell me about these two,” Rune said, nodding at the humans.

  “Two months before Meg’s disappearance, Mrs. Dunbar here became her music teacher. Meg loved music. She wanted to learn the piano. I couldn’t afford lessons, but guess what? Our generous human offered to teach Megan for free.” She paused. “I knew better. I knew better. The humans give us nothing. But Megan wanted it so badly…”

  None of the Others with her made a sound. They watched with blank faces and let Louisa speak for all of them.

  They were werefoxes—it’d taken Rune a few minutes to recognize them, but they all had telltale reddish brown hair with prominent widow’s peaks and long, narrow, brown eyes. Their features were as sharp as their crowded rows of teeth.

  They also had a scent particular to foxes—it was musky and somehow darting—there one moment and gone the next.

  Foxes weren’t the bravest, or the strongest, or the scariest. But they were born with the ability to bullshit. Cunning and quickness were their strengths.

  The Dunbars remained silent, probably afraid to speak and draw swift retribution from one of the foxes.

  But Mrs. Dunbar stared at Rune, begging her silently to help them.

  “Megan became withdrawn after she’d been with the Dunbars for only a couple of weeks. When I pressed, she grew angry and…” Louisa pressed her lips together, gathering herself before continuing. “We had words. The last thing I said to her,” she whispered, “was what a fucking spoiled brat she was.”

  “She became withdrawn,” Mrs. Dunbar said, her anger giving her courage, “because I let her know that your abuse was wrong.”

  “I didn’t abuse my daughter,” Louisa screamed, and both the Dunbars flinched.

  Rune glanced at the female Dunbar. The human was strong and calm, and nothing in her face made her seem like the type of person who’d harm a kid. No wonder Megan gravitated to her, if her parents were indeed abusive.

  “Did you hit your kid?” Rune asked Louisa.

  “Her father and I kept her in line,” Louisa said. “We didn’t beat her, we disciplined her.” She shook her head, her eyes wild. “And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  She slid the tip of her knife a little farther into the soft flesh beneath the male’s jaw. “Tell me who has my baby,” she said. “Tell me or I swear to God I’ll cut your fucking throat.”

  “I don’t know,” he cried. “I told you! I don’t know any names. Please, oh please…”

  “There’s a broker,” Mrs. Dunbar said.

  “You sold Megan Smith?” Rune was shocked. She hadn’t believed the Dunbars were guilty. She wasn’t sure why.

  “No, no,” Mrs. Dunbar said. “But we’ve heard talk and we thought—”

  “Shut up, Lorna,” Mr. Dunbar demanded. “Shut up.”

  But she’d opened her mouth and there was no going back. The female Dunbar was giving up. “See the pikes.” She looked at Rune. “The ones that live in Wormwood. The master is a man named Sean Colley. That’s the only name we have.”

  “Why wouldn’t you just tell?” Louisa asked. “You might have saved my girl.”

  “No,” Mr. Dunbar said. “They don’t come back once the broker takes them. Never. It would have gotten us killed for nothing.” He managed to glare at his wife, though one of his eyes was swollen shut. “But we’re dead now anyway. Your mouth has gotten us killed.”

  Louisa shook with the effort to restrain herself, but in the end she lost that battle as her rage and fear got the best of her.

  Her face screwed into a grimace, Louisa pulled the knife tip free and went for the killing blow.

  Chapter Seven

  Rune shot her in the head.

  The crew went to work controlling the other foxes, while trying to keep the humans alive.

  If both of them died, the chances of finding Megan got a little bit slimmer.

  Rune knew how Louisa felt, but it wasn’t her job to sympathize. As the woman lay bleeding on the floor, her body trying to fight off the silver streaking through her system, Rune dragged the man into a corner and out of the way.

  “Stay down,” she ordered, but needn’t have bothered. He curled into a fetal position and didn’t move.

  Denim tossed Mrs. Dunbar behind a sofa.

  The f
oxes shifted, and the fight was on. One of the foxes tried to run, aware it was his only chance to live.

  If the crew didn’t kill him, the state would.

  The crew ended up killing only one of the foxes—a female who threw herself at Levi, buried her teeth in his neck, and tried to shake the life from him.

  Rune nearly decapitated her with her silver claws. The fox wasn’t going to heal from that.

  It took the crew only a few minutes to neutralize and silver the Others. They called paramedics to take the humans to the hospital, and Annex sent transport for the werefoxes.

  It had been an unsatisfying encounter, but Louisa Smith had gotten what she wanted, even if she had failed in her attempt to kill Mr. Dunbar.

  She’d gotten attention where she needed it—on her daughter.

  Later, as she strode to Rice’s office, Rune thought the boy, Epik, must have been one of the pikes. But something was off about him. She didn’t know what it was, but something wasn’t right.

  Bill motioned her into a chair, his brow furrowed, his hair standing on end. “Sit, Rune. Sit.”

  She sat. “What’s wrong?”

  He drew in a deep breath and visibly relaxed. “Too many things going on at once. But that’s nothing new, is it?” He took a noisy slurp of his coffee, grimaced, and clicked a button. “Alan, could I have a refill, please? And bring one for Rune.”

  “Thanks,” she said. She’d never refuse a coffee. “Did you see the foxes yet?”

  “No, but Elizabeth did.”

  “Elizabeth is working?”

  “Of course. It’s a tragedy about little Stefanie, but Elizabeth would rather keep busy than dwell on it.”

  “What’s going to happen to George?”

  Rice shrugged, his gaze darting to the door. “He woke up once, but went right back into his…coma, and hasn’t been conscious since.”

  That didn’t answer her question. “Will Elizabeth take him if he recovers?”

  “Certainly. But…” He spread his fingers. “It doesn’t look good for the boy.”

  “Who took Fie?”

  He took another drink of his coffee, then shoved it away. “Alan,” he bellowed, then grumbled, “I miss Ellis. He made a good assistant.”