Strange Trouble (15 page)

Still staring at Gunnar, she nodded, but didn’t comprehend
what he was saying. She heard a buzzing, like a bee had gotten trapped inside
her skull.
A dozen bees.

“Not now, Gunnar,” Strad said.

She whipped her head around to stare at him. “What did I do,
Strad? What did I do? I could have released him. He could have lived.”

“He was dead after the zombie bit him, Rune. Even if you’d
released him, it wouldn’t have mattered.” He squeezed her shoulder. “He didn’t
want to come back.”

Levi sprinted to the group, his face pale and covered with
a sheen
of sweat despite the cold. “What’s wrong?” he cried.
“Rune, I can’t read what you’re telling me.” He fell to his knees in front of
her and put his fingers to his temples. “My head is…I can’t…”

She forced herself to focus on his face.
“
Shhh
.
You’re not mine, Levi. You’re free. I didn’t
realize I could let you go.”

And she released him.

He got slowly to his feet.
“Holy shit.”
His voice was quiet. “Holy fucking shit.” He stared at her, then at the crew,
then
shook his head. “I feel it. I feel the…” He tapped his
head. “I’m alone in here again. I’m fucking…I’m me again.” He stared down at
her, his fists clenched, his eyes wild. “
Fuck
you, fucking monster
cunt!”

Lex reached him before any of the others could so much as
twitch. She slapped his face, hard,
then
began beating
him with her fists. “Don’t you dare,” she screamed. “Don’t you
dare,
Levi-fucking-
Montrosa.
”

He held his hands up to fend her off, backing away, his eyes
wide and horrified. “God, Rune. I didn’t mean it.”

Ellis, out of breath, a hand to his chest, ran into the clearing.
“Here,” he yelled. “What? What?”

Gunnar knelt beside Rune. “Give it to me. Let me take it all
away.”

“Back off, Gunnar,” Jack yelled.

Rune put her hands over her too sensitive ears. “Shut up.
Everybody just shut the fuck up.”

Into the sudden silence she climbed to her feet. “I want to
walk for a while.” She held up her hand when Strad stood. “Alone. I just need
to be alone for a little while. I’ll meet you all back at RISC in a couple
hours. We need to get back to work.”

Then she walked away. She let the thoughts come, the grief,
the worry. It wasn’t as good a purge as getting fucked up, but it was all she
had.

She was too exhausted to even hurt herself.

So she walked, deep into Wormwood, alone but for a few
watchful
Others
hiding in the shadows.

She didn’t care if there was danger. Her mind was numb and
she was full of confusion. The witch’s magic was inside her, and she didn’t
want it. She didn’t want to rule the dead.
God, no.

Did
she?

Gunnar might take it, but she couldn’t hand such power over to
a ghoul. That’d be like handing a loaded gun to a kid.

It was her responsibility.

Maybe she
did
want it, if she could be honest with
herself. She wanted to rule, to be queen, to put down the zombies and the
vampires and to learn how to harness her stolen power into something fucking
great.
Yeah. Maybe she wanted it.

She put the back of hand to her mouth to keep in a sob.
Or a laugh.
She wasn’t sure which. “Something is wrong with
me,” she muttered.

As if that was news.

When the attack came, it came with such force and suddenness
that her mind went blank and her body tried to curl into a tight knot of
protection.

She scrabbled at the hard earth as her claws managed to
fight their way a couple of inches from her fingers. She couldn’t breathe. She
couldn’t think.

Lying on her side she saw the end of a long, black blade
erupting from her chest.
Her heart.
She’d been stabbed
through the heart.

Staked.

Hadn’t someone asked her what her weakness was, once? She
hadn’t known what that weakness was.

She did now.

She fought to see in the darkness,
a
darkness
the moon did little to brighten. There were few lights that
deep in the cemetery.

Someone stood above her, and just as it occurred to her who
had attacked her, he drove his fangs into her neck.

Nicolas Llodra.

He sucked hard and fast, and she could feel the blood
leaving her body.
And something else.
He’s taking
the magic.

The thought of the witch’s magic in Llodra’s hands made her
struggle, but it was a pathetic struggle. He’d known what to do to incapacitate
her.

He’d known everything.

Had he counted on her feeding from the witch? Had he been
planning this even before he’d taken Ellis?

Nicolas Llodra was mad, but he’d been incredibly smart.

And he was draining her. She could die with a blade in her
heart and a bloodless body. She could.

Peace? Peace for me?

She stopped struggling.

Peace.

Really, that was all anybody ever wanted.

But Gunnar wasn’t ready to let her go.

She heard him calling, his voice high and terrified, as he
ran into the dark to save her.

Leave me alone, Gunnar.

Llodra pulled his fangs from her neck, his chin glistening
with fresh blood, and stared down at her. “Your blood is spectacular,” he
whispered.
“Not just hers, but yours.
Not even
Damascus can rule me. I’m going to find her, and kill her, and it’s all because
of you. No one else could have done it.” And gently, he kissed her cheek.

“Rune,” Gunnar called, and like a skinny torpedo, he flew at
Llodra, a silver blade flashing in the scanty moonlight.

“Ah,” Nicolas said. “Your knight comes. But he is too late,
isn’t he?” There was no fear in his eyes.
Absolutely no fear.

Gunnar rammed the vampire, his fury and fear tangible and
thick.

“Stop,” Llodra said, casually.

But Gunnar the Ghoul did not stop. “I cannot be ruled by
such as
you,
” he said, his voice full of contempt.

Rune lay unmoving, drained and dying. The blade in her heart
sat solidly, a block of ice she could not budge.

Llodra leaped off her, deflecting Gunnar’s blade with his
arm. He screamed with shock when the blade sliced through his flesh.

“I have the magic of Damascus,” he screeched. “I rule the
dead.”

“Not this dead, you mad fool,” Gunnar said calmly. “Not
this
dead.”

He threw the blade with force and precision, and Rune
watched from her bed on the ground as it buried to the hilt into Llodra’s face.

Damascus’s magic might have given him power over the dead,
just as it had her, but it did not make him immune to pain.

And it would not make him immune from staking.

Rune wondered vaguely how Gunnar could handle silver. He was
carrying it—had thrown it at Llodra, whose face was even now smoking and
melting before he finally pulled the blade free and flung it away in disgust.

Silver did not seem to affect Gunnar, just as it did not
affect her.
Or her monster.

The vampire had not staked her with silver, but a black
blade.
Maybe obsidian.

Llodra slammed Gunnar into a crumbling old tombstone and
Gunnar rolled away immediately, barely avoiding Llodra’s stiffened fingers as
they attempted to pierce his chest.

Rune felt like she moved through thick, sticky tar as she
turned to her head to watch the two battling
Others
.

She caught misty glimpses of other vampires—Marta’s
children. They now belonged to Llodra.

They would die with Llodra.

Tottering precariously on the thin edge between life and
death, between chaos and peace, she let herself wish for darkness to come claim
her.

But only for a moment.

Llodra might have sucked most of the life out of her, but
there was something left that he couldn’t touch. That something, that
spark
,
wasn’t in her blood, wasn’t in the
magic.

It was her.
Rune Alexander.

And she would never give up.

Not really.

Gunnar was giving her all the help he could by keeping the
bastard vampire away from her.

She would save herself.

The men struggled on, the sounds of their battle continuing
to rage through the night. Wormwood watched balefully, and she could feel
Others
creeping closer, like buzzards awaiting their turn at
the spoils.

The blade in her heart held her paralyzed and frozen.

Llodra has staked me.

But she was not dead, likely because she wasn’t a vampire.
Not
only
a vampire, anyway.

But Llodra had staked her.

Yes, that was the only way he could control her, could get
at the magic that would free him forever from those such as Damascus and even
Rune.

But…

And she let herself think it once. Just once, she let the
child inside her, the needy little kid who cried and begged for someone,
anyone,
murmur the word…

Daddy.

Her daddy had staked her.

Then she stomped it into the ground, beat it ferociously,
and left it there in the graveyard of her mind.

She was not a child. She was Rune Alexander, super monster,
and she needed no one.

Gunnar was holding his own against the master vampire,
somehow, but if she didn’t help him Llodra would surely destroy him.

She could no longer see them as they tumbled and streaked
through the graveyard, locked in a battle they couldn’t win, should only run
away from.

But neither one of them seemed willing to
do that.

From the darkness something crept closer to her—she could
feel its heat and hear its quiet panting.
A dog, then, or a
wolf.

Well, fuck.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on her hand, trying to
will the frozen flesh to move. A finger might have twitched. She thought it
did.

But she opened her eyes when she felt the wolf’s warm breath
upon her skin. The beast licked carefully around the wound in her chest, then
drew back to stare at her with glowing eyes.

She couldn’t talk, couldn’t make her mouth move to form the
words.
Don’t fucking eat me, you son of a bitch.

But then, she recognized it.

This wolf had once belonged to her.

Sherry’s sister.
Sherry the murderer, the
betrayer, the dead bald girl who had allowed COS to steal Strad’s son.

Amanda. The wolf’s name was Amanda.

Rune hadn’t checked on the wolf pack since she’d handed them
over to a man better suited to lead them, a man she’d fought in the woods of
Hawthorne.

A million years ago.

Amanda once more began licking, loosening up dried blood and
gore around the knife blade, before finally grasping the hilt with her teeth.

Rune would have screamed if she could have, but it wasn’t
Amanda’s fault. If she was going to get the stake out, there was nothing else
she could do.

So the wolf took the hilt into her mouth, and began to pull.

Because she healed quickly, her flesh had begun to knit
around the blade, trying to mend the damage. It held on to the knife, and with
each pull, Rune screamed in silent agony.

The wolf couldn’t pull it free, not without doing damage
that may have been irreparable, even for Rune.

Amanda wasn’t a big girl, but she was a big wolf.
And strong.
She did the only thing left to her—she sank her
teeth into the back of Rune’s pants and began to drag her through Wormwood.

Rune lost consciousness after the third time her chest
scraped over the ground. When she came to, she had no idea how close to the
gates Amanda had managed to drag her.

But she heard something, something so sweet and familiar she
knew she was going to survive the night.

Ellis singing.

He’d waited for her. For whatever reason, her crew had gone
but Ellis had stayed.
Stayed there to wait for her.

His voice rose into the darkness, guiding the wolf and
giving Rune comfort. She didn’t need a father, she didn’t need a mother, and
she didn’t need to know why they’d abandoned her

It no longer mattered.

She had Ellie and her crew, and that was more than enough.

And she had this wolf, this girl Amanda who risked herself
to get Rune away from the vampire.

She couldn’t see him, but she knew the exact moment Ellis
saw the wolf bringing her to him.

His song faltered, then stopped, and then he screamed.

Inside, she smiled.

He gently pulled her around when the wolf released her, his
face pale in the cold lights of the graveyard. “Oh Rune, oh, Rune,” he kept
repeating.

Amanda shifted. “Get her out of here. The vampire is still
fighting the ghoul, but…” She shook her head. “Get her out of here.”

“Vampire,” Ellis said. “A vampire did this?”

“The mad master.
Maybe
for her blood.
He staked her,
then
nearly
drained her. I got a taste. It’s like…it’s like nothing else. I have to go
before he comes.” And without waiting for Ellis to say another word, she
shifted and fled so quickly it was almost as though she’d never been there.

Ellis tried to lift her into his arms, but he wasn’t much
bigger than she was and nowhere near as strong. “I’m not going to drag you.”
Then, “Hang on, Rune. Hang on, honey.” He ran to the gates, slipped outside,
and punched in a number on his cell.

“Hurry,” she heard him say. “She’s been staked.” Then he
sprinted back to her and gently eased his legs under her head. As they sat
there, he pulled her gun from its holster. “He’s coming, Rune. It’ll just be
few minutes.” His voice was thick with tears.

She wanted to reassure him, to let him know that she was
going to be fine. That she was better than ever. That she no longer had the
poisonous magic inside her.

That she loved him.

But she couldn’t speak and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
In the next second Llodra was there, and he was ready for dessert.