Blood and Bite (5 page)

“His voice still echoes from the walls. And this is what you
have to look forward to.”

She looked at the bit of old cloth she held too tightly.

I want to live, I want to die

I wish the sea to be the sky

It's all for nothing, do you see?

It's not the life, it's only me.

A child’s words.
Only
not really.

She turned and strode from the room, afraid her heart would
burst before she made it out the door. She met Z and Jack at the door and could
not speak.

Levi motioned them back out. “Don’t go in. Don’t.”

They gathered around her as she fell to her knees on the
hard, unforgiving ground and sat with her head hanging, too despairing to move.

Finally, they helped her stand and she walked, dazed, to her
car. She climbed into the passenger seat, letting Levi drive. She never once
looked back as she left the flayed man behind.

As she left the dogs behind.

As she let the mad vampire master live.

“There are choices to be made…beware you do not make the
wrong ones.”

Right or wrong, she’d made her choices.

Now she had to live with them.

Elizabeth was irate but the only sign was a tightening
around her eyes and mouth. Rune stood before her desk the next morning and told
her in a steady, quiet voice exactly what had happened at Nicolas Llodra’s
house.

“He will disappear underground,” Peel said. “The torture
will continue but we won’t be able to find him. You only succeeded in warning him.”

Rune said nothing. It was true.

But Levi wasn’t willing to let the boss blame Rune. “If we’d
have made a move on him, we wouldn’t be standing here this morning. You weren’t
there. Leaving was the only choice we had.”

Elizabeth sighed.
“Perhaps.
Do either
of you know where he might go, or have any idea how to find him? He’s already
killing humans—it’s what they do. Grab them, bleed them to death.”

Another truth.

Maybe I’m not immortal. There is a chance I’m not. There
is also a chance I won’t go insane.

“Rune?”

She looked up and found Elizabeth and Levi staring at her.
“What?”

“I said I would like to assign you and Shiv Crew to finding
Llodra. These hunts will occur during the daylight, of course, when they are
not dangerous. I’m afraid I’ll have to start a purge order on the River County
vampires.”

“Why all of them?”
Levi asked. “We
can look for Llodra and stake him if we find him, but kill all of them?” Ever
since Jeremy’s order, they were understandably a little hesitant at carrying
out another vampire purge.

“Déjà vu all over again,” Rune murmured.

Elizabeth shook her head. “I’m sorry. I know a purge is the
last resort, but this is it. Llodra’s insanity will pass through his nest like
wildfire. All his vampires will be affected.”

“It’s not a disease,” Levi argued. “It’s not been proven
that a master’s madness—”

“Levi,” Rune interrupted. “She’s right.” She looked at
Elizabeth. “We’ll start now.”

“Thank you. And Rune, about the new hire—”

“You’ll have to assign him to a different department.” Rune
stared at her boss, knowing her eyes were dead but uncaring that the woman see.
She wasn’t in the mood to play nice. “I hire for Shiv Crew and we don’t need
anyone new to train right now.”

“Rune—”

“Not right now.”

And Peel backed down.
“All right.
Just until we get this vampire purge behind us. While Shiv Crew—except for
Strad—I’ll put him with the new hire—concentrates on this latest threat, he and
Strad can cover your usual jobs.” She hesitated,
then
gave Rune a pointed look. “We
will
discuss it again another time.”

Good enough. Rune nodded. “Come on Levi. Let’s get to work.”

The berserker had enough to worry about. He didn’t need to
put himself in front of the vampires while his mind was on his son. He’d be
compromised whether he’d admit it or not. Let him babysit the new guy.

“Where are we going first?” Levi asked.

“First?
My office.
Get the rest of
the crew in here—except Strad.”
I don’t want to see him
.

COS, the mad vampire, Strad…

Compartmentalize, Rune
.

Blood and Fire.

The flayed man.

Fuck. Fuck me
. She shut the door to her office and
gave in to her need to moan, to give voice to all the bad stuff going on.

One quick moan.
Then she’d put the
emotions away and do her job.

Ellis was the first one into her office. He peered at her
with an anxious frown. At last he sighed and sat down. “You’re not okay. All
this, it’s too soon. Too soon after the clinic and…”

And Jeremy.
And even Mitch.

She should have listened to her gut about Mitch to begin
with. She’d known all along she couldn’t trust him.

She changed the subject. “Are things better with you and
your guy?”

He smiled.
“Since yesterday?
No.
Not really.”

“I’m sorry, Ellie. Want me to kick his ass?”

He laughed. “You wouldn’t even try.”

“For you?
I’d kill the world for
you.”

He dashed away quick tears that sprang to his eyes. “We’re
all a little overly emotional right now, aren’t we?”

She nodded. “We went through a lot.”

“I sometimes wonder if it’ll ever end.”

She clenched her fists. “Ellie…”

“I’m just tired. Sleepless nights from…” He motioned helplessly.
“You know.”

“Yeah.”
Fuck love, anyway.

Levi came into her office with Denim and Lex. Lex looked
better, but then, she never let shit keep her down for long.

Mitch had refused to allow Lex to remain Shiv Crew after
Rune had hired her, but even before she’d left for the clinic Rune had rehired
her. In a battle, Lex was…spectacular.

Jack came in, followed by Z. She looked at them all for a
moment. “I wish Raze was here.”

“Tomorrow,” Z said. He looked around. “Did someone call in
Strad?”

“No,” Rune told him. “Peel is sticking him with the new
guy.” That wasn’t a reason not to have called him in, but her crew understood.

Jack sat down and stretched his long legs out in front of
him. “Elizabeth is putting us on Llodra?”

“Yes. We have a purge order. Llodra isn’t going to be an
easy catch.”

“Open vampire season,” Levi said.
“Once
again.”

Rune didn’t want to kill all the Spiritgrove vampires any
more than Levi did but they didn’t have a choice. “She’s right, baby. The
madness seems to affect them all. I don’t know why it happens that way, but
I’ve seen it too many times to shrug it off.”

If she was somehow connected to his line, she was doomed.
Maybe she was anyway. She didn’t know who she was from.
Or
what.

Growing inside her mind was a seed of an idea. If she killed
off the River County vampires, the madness would be halted in its tracks. It
wouldn’t reach her.

All she had to do was kill Llodra and his children. Cut out
the contagious cancer and bury it in the darkness.

It doesn’t make sense.

No. But her fear of madness understood no logic.

“We’ll tear River County apart looking for them. There are
nests all over and we’ll clear the old ones while looking for new ones. This
morning we’ll go to his house in Willowburg. That fucking place needs burned to
the ground.

“But there are things I want you all to look for.” She
hesitated. “First, the two…hybrid dogs, or whatever they are, that Llodra has
captured.”

“Fire and Blood,” Levi murmured. “I think they’re spirits,
or ghosts…something like that. They were the strangest things I’ve ever seen,
and I’ve seen some strange things.”

Rune took a deep breath. Just talking about them made her
anxious. “We have to save them.”

“Noted,” Jack said. “What else?”

“Human bite junkies.
Levi and I
spotted a few of them.”

“Tools and dogs,” Jack said. “Speaking of tools, has anyone
heard from Amy?”

Rune sighed. “My inbox was full of emails from her. I didn’t
go online until I came home, so…” She spread her hands. “I still haven’t had a
chance to read them. She’s probably pissed.”

The crew had discovered Amy when they’d gone to purge a nest
from an abandoned high school. Amy had helped save the vampires and had given
them a lot of information they might not otherwise have gotten.
At least not that quickly.

“Anything else?”
Z asked.

“Yes. Llodra has been torturing his people. I want to end
their suffering as quickly as possible. When you enter a room, check for
tortured vampires.
Nailed to the wall, hanging from irons,
whatever.
If you can, kill him or her first.”

“Are we taking different locations?” Levi asked. “If we are,
I want to go back to that house with you.”

“The house is huge,” she replied. “We’ll all search it.
After it’s cleared, we’ll spread out to different nests.
Everyone
ready?
Kill kits stocked?”

Everyone nodded affirmative and they filed out the door,
loaded down with silver.

“Call me if you need anything,” Ellis said, heading back to
his office. “And please, be careful.”

The house was dark and quiet when they finally reached it.
No one was there sleeping, but she hadn’t really expected Llodra to be there.
No, he’d have grabbed his people and gone into hiding.

Maybe the excitement of being hunted was what he needed. If
she caught him, she could give him what he most wanted. Peace.

It would give him something to look forward to in his
madness, his desolation. And she felt for him—the sort of empathy only another
like him could feel. She could stumble into the wasteland of that dark
existence all too easily.

“Ready to go in, Rune?” Z asked, and they all watched her, uncertain.

She shook off her thoughts. “Yes. But…”

Levi frowned. “What’s wrong? Do you feel something?”

God yes
.
“I need to say
this. If I end up mad, one of you has to end me. Swear it to me now.”

They stared at her, silent.

“You have to,” she told them. “I won’t be capable of doing
it any more than Llodra is.”

“Rune,” Denim said. He looked at her, then away. “Llodra
is…old. If you were to go mad, we’d be long gone by then.”

None of them could look at her. She felt the blood drain
from her face. He was right. Most likely she was fucking immortal—whether she
wanted to be or not. She hefted her vgun. “Let’s go in.”

Jack kicked in the locked door and then stood aside so she
could go in first. If the berserker had been invited to this little event, he’d
have gone in first no matter what she’d said. He seemed to think it was his
duty.
His right.

But she didn’t need a guard or a man to shield her from the
evil. Most of her crew knew better than to try.

They went carefully through the long hallway, vguns ready.
It was too dark, the shadows too ominous. “Lights,” she said, and as one they
flipped on the long, thin flashlights they’d attached to the barrels of the
vguns.

They entered the large room where Llodra had sat on his
throne, then spread out. There was a lot of house to clear.

She went first to the throne. She wanted to be sure Llodra
hadn’t left Blood and Fire. He wouldn’t have—but she had to check.

The spot where the tortured vampire had been nailed to the
wall was empty except for dark stains.
Blood.
“Fuck you,
Llodra, you crazy son of a bitch.”

She’d destroy him, but the bastard would do more damage
before she could find him. It was true that hurt people hurt other people, and
Llodra was in fucking agony.

She knelt down to peer under his throne but found nothing
more than spider webs and something that looked like old pizza crust.

Food for the tools, most likely.

The vampire bite was addictive, true, but she couldn’t
imagine any human willingly living in the cesspool of Llodra’s household. Maybe
before he’d gone insane…

But not now.

She stood and started to head up the narrow stairs when
Jack’s familiar roar of rage shook the house.

Fuck me. This isn’t going to be good.

“Jack,” she yelled. “Where are you?”

Levi ran into the room, his vgun up and ready. “He’s in the
basement, Rune. Come on. I’ll take you.”

Z met them at the bottom of the old wooden stairs.
“Rune.”

Shit.
She closed her eyes for a long moment. “What is
it?” She didn’t want to know. She really, really didn’t.

It was so bad he couldn’t even say the words. He gestured
helplessly,
his pale face and wide eyes making her stomach
roll with fear. Yeah, it was bad.

“Show me,” she whispered.

Z simply nodded and turned
around,
leading them back through a maze of small rooms with what seemed like packed
dirt floors. The ceiling was so low the men had to duck to walk through.

Their lights weren’t enough to chase all the shadows back
but were enough to see by. It would have to do. Rune wasn’t sure she wanted to
see better, anyway.

“He used these rooms for cells,” Z said, his voice so choked
she could barely understand him.

Her stomach knotted and she clenched her vgun tight enough
to hurt her fingers. “Z. Tell me.”

But he entered another small room and stood to the side to
let her and Levi pass. Jack stood staring at something on the floor, and for a
moment she thought it was the tormented man she’d seen the night before.

Jack turned to look at her. “God, Rune. I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” But she knew. He was sorry for
having to show her what he’d discovered in the horror of a basement.

She began to shake as her brain screamed at her to get
out
,
get out while she could. But she was Shiv Crew captain and she did not flinch
away from the bad stuff.

At first she didn’t understand what she was looking at, but
slowly, her brain made sense of what her eyes were seeing.

A person.
A female chained to the
wall. A girl so skeletal and filthy she barely resembled a human. For human it
was—the stench alone was enough to tell her this person had soiled herself
before finally succumbing to what was surely a merciful death.

“My God,” she murmured. “What a horrible way to die.”

“Rune,” Jack
said,
his voice
hoarse.

And suddenly she understood.
“Oh, no.
Oh please, no.”

Llodra had left them a present.

The tortured female.

It was Amy.