Strange Trouble (25 page)

They parked nearly half a mile from the house, hoping to
sneak in take COS by surprise. Unlikely, as Bach would have been keeping close
tabs, but worth a shot.

If not for the fight that had scarred Ellie and cost Jack
his eye, Hawthorne Forest would have held an attraction for Rune. She had a
feeling the bad memories associated with it were about to get worse.

They stayed off the paved road, walking instead through the
deeply wooded areas, slipping from tree to tree.

She had both guns out and ready, and tried not to think about
the fact that she wasn’t as good. Ellie might think she was less human, but
right now she was human weak and human slow.

“You okay?” Owen asked, dropping into place beside her.

“Yes.”

She kept her eyes darting, her ears tuned for any sounds. If
she got her crew killed because her fucking monster was pissed or hiding or
dead,
she would never be able to get past it.

“Just be careful,” she said, said it to them all. “Please.”

“There it is.” Strad’s voice was barely above a whisper. He
pointed.
“Beyond those trees.”

Her heart thudded painfully against her ribs. It was time.

As they began to walk closer, Rune heard the sound of a car
engine start up. She peered around the trees and the house rose like a dream
out of the forest floor, huge even from the distance, white and tall and
somehow majestic.

A long, shadowed porch extended across the front, partly
hidden from her view by a truck that had stopped mere inches from the house.

An unpaved lane led up to the house, stopping at a yard
filled with automobiles. There were five trucks, three small cars, and two
SUVs. A motorcycle lay on its side in the dirt, as though its driver had been
in one hell of a hurry when he’d jumped off it.

The house was huge, but it would have to have been, to hold
all those humans. Three floors, a basement, an attic…

She narrowed her
eyes,
sure she saw
movement at one of the third floor windows. “I think he’s posted guards on the
third floor. See the windows?”

They nodded. “Probably rifles,” Jack murmured. “We should
walk around. The back might not be as guarded.”

“Jack, you and Owen go around, take the back.”

The SUV that had started up made a sharp turn and sped down
the lane to the main road.

“Those men,” Strad said, “will see our trucks. They’ll alert
the house.”

She wished for darkness, but darkness wouldn’t come for
another few hours. She nodded. “Let’s move.”

Strad glanced down at her, his face softening. “You’re Rune
Alexander. Don’t forget that.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, smiling. “You’re fucking amazing with
silver. You’re not our captain because you’re weak, sweet thing.”

For a second she couldn’t breathe, and they were all silent
as Z’s pet name for her echoed through their memories. She wanted to fall to
the ground and cry and puke
like
a fucking sissy, but
she let the pain of Z slip away and she stiffened her spine.

Yeah, she was afraid. She was terrified. But that came with
the job, and she wasn’t letting her monster throw a hissy and get her crew
killed. Fuck him.

She was good enough without the bastard.

But God, did she miss him.

Somewhere inside the house was Lex, blind and broken,
wondering if the crew was ever
coming.
Surely, she
wondered that.

And the twins.

Rune shuddered.
The beautiful twins.

“Go,” she told Jack.

He and Owen slipped away.

Just like that, they disappeared through the trees.

She turned her attention to the house.
“Ready,
guys?”

Strad and Raze nodded and started forward.

“Wait,” she said.

They stopped and turned back to look at her questioningly.

“I always take point,” she said.

It was hard for them to do—she saw it in their hesitation,
in the quick glance they shot each other, but then they stepped aside to let
her by.

She couldn’t get angry. Once she would have, but now, she
couldn’t very well blame them for doubting her. She doubted herself.

She was a chaotic mess of magic and mundane, human and
Other
, and she had no idea what the hell was going on inside
her.

But she figured she was still immortal, and she was still
captain of Shiv Crew. She would take point.

When they got closer, they stopped to take stock. The woods
were about to end, and in moments she and her crew would step out from the
cover of trees and be exposed to the enemy.
To COS.

The place was bustling with quiet activity. Men jogged from
the house to outbuildings. She heard the muted sound of voices, and a sudden,
discordant laugh. Someone coughed.

“They’re expecting us,” she said. She clenched her guns and
longed for the weight of her silver shivs—but these were humans. She’d need
guns, at least at first.

“We can’t sneak in,” Strad said. “We’re going to have to go
in making some noise.”

She froze in mid-nod when Raze pointed his gun and
whispered, “Twins.”

Four men with rifles strapped to their backs hurried the
twins down the porch steps. The boys’ hands were cuffed behind them but their
feet were unfettered.

Spots of dark red decorated their shirts, patterns of
obvious and almost identical violence, as though everything done to one was
immediately repeated on the other.

Hoods covered their heads.

But they were alive.

They were alive.

The men in charge of them weren’t overly large. Their
movements were jerky and nervous. They looked from side to side, yanking the
silent twins along with them.

“They’re not professionals,” Rune noted. “And they’re
scared.”

“They should be,” Raze said, and there was death in his
voice.
Death and promise.

“The boys are drugged,” Strad murmured.

One of the twins slumped and was dragged along impatiently
by his guards, their hands under his arms keeping him semi-upright. His feet
cut a path through the dead leaves as they hauled him into the yard and toward
one of the cars parked there.

“They’re taking them away,” Rune said. “Maybe they got word
that their cop lackeys were unable to stop us.”

“I don’t think they wanted us stopped,” Strad said.
“Only delayed.”

“We can’t let them go. Let’s move.” Rune led them across the
side yard, running in a zigzag pattern until they finally stopped against the
side of the house.

She leaned against the house, hoping the guys didn’t notice
she was trying to catch her breath. Fucking blast had kicked her ass.

Sweat covered her face, though the day wasn’t going to get
warmer than forty degrees. It was the sweat of a weak, sick person.

“Rune?”

She took a deep breath and nodded at Strad. “I’m good.
Ready?”

“Ready,” he said.

They blasted from the side of the house like raging
torpedoes, Raze and Rune charging toward the twins while Strad covered them.

She heard shots behind her but didn’t stop to look. Strad
was taking care of business.

The two men holding the twins released them, trampling them
as the boys fell to the ground in boneless heaps and the guards took on the
threat of Rune and Raze.

They didn’t try to jerk their rifles free but grabbed
instead for the handguns holstered at their sides.

Rune shot three of them almost before she realized she’d
fired. Raze took out the last one.

A bullet had skimmed her upper left bicep, leaving a trail
of burning pain, but it was a scratch compared with the other wounds she’d
sustained.

She glanced at Raze, who appeared unhurt. They turned back
to help Strad.

Everything happened in seconds. Adrenaline hit her like a
bus, but still, it wasn’t her monster. She needed her fucking monster.

Two men on the porch fell, one tumbling
over the side and landing on the ground below.
Glass shattered as the
third floor windows she’d pointed out earlier were broken.

She didn’t have to warn her men—they noticed the threat when
she did and all three dove behind whatever cover they could find—she and Raze
behind a truck. She lost sight of Strad but because he was closer to the house,
she figured he’d taken shelter against it.

Two men ran from the other side of the house, but not toward
the crew. They ran to a large building sitting a short distance from the house.
A shed with high windows.

They were trying to surround the crew, and it occurred to
her that COS wanted her and her men alive.

Bastards would love that—not just this branch, not just
Horner, but Karin Love. They would have been ordered, these men who were haters
and torturers, to try to take Shiv Crew alive. But she also knew they’d rather
kill the crew than let them escape.

Bullets rained down on the truck, keeping her and Raze
pinned. She pushed her back against the vehicle and ground her teeth.
Fucking COS. “The twins are exposed.
We have to get them out
of the yard before they’re shot.”

“I’m going to get the twins. Cover me.”

“No. You try to get inside the house. I’ll get the twins. If
I’m hit, it won’t kill me.”

“Can you drag two unconscious men to safety before you’re
hit? Before they are?” His eyes were dark, dark and cold. That coldness wasn’t
directed at her. Raze was simply in the zone.

Could she? Her strength had melted away with her speed.
Going for the twins might only get them killed.

“Cover me, and then get to Strad,” he told her.

And before she could order him to stay the hell put, he was
gone.

When Raze ran for the twins, drawing gunfire away from her
and onto him, she leaped up and started shooting. She heard a scream with grim
satisfaction but didn’t stop shooting.

Seeing his chance, Strad snaked his way to her. They both
covered Raze, who grabbed the boys and began to drag them across the yard.

Let them be okay.

Occupied with Rune and Strad, the two men in the shed ignored
Raze as he rescued the twins.

It was a full thirty seconds before Rune realized there were
no shots coming from inside the house.

She hoped it was because Jack and Owen had killed the
bastards inside.

“Something’s off,” Strad said. “Horner knew we’d be coming.”

Rune nodded. “Why doesn’t he have more men? Why didn’t he
take Lex and the twins and run for it?”

“Maybe he’s just that arrogant.”

But neither of them believed it.

“The house is—”

Quiet, she’d started to say, but before she could finish her
words, gunfire broke out once more.
And shouts, screams,
thumps.

“Jack and Owen are in there,” she said instead.

“I’m going for the shed,” Strad said. “I’ll shut down the
shooters inside.”

“I’ll cover you.”

He nodded once, then shot to his feet and ran full out
toward the shed. Rune started shooting as soon as he took off, keeping the men
away from the windows. She had no idea how many were in the building, but was
pretty sure at least one of them had been hit.
Maybe more.

It was a little too easy. Sure, they’d been shot at. But
Horner should have fortified the place. He should have had it crawling with
armed men, and he should have made the crew work a little harder.

So until she had the twins and Lex heading back down the
highway and out of Hawthorne, she wasn’t going to relax.

Something wasn’t right.

And she didn’t want to think about what that something might
be.

As soon as the berserker hit the shed door, she ran to the
house. No one shot at her.

She jumped onto the porch and threw herself against the wall,
guns up and ready. But no one was there.

Raze strode across the yard toward the porch, his head
swiveling from side to side.

“Rune,” he called. “Wait.”

“Twins?” she asked, as he climbed the steps.

The look in his eyes let her know he had bad news.
Very bad news.

Strad left the shed and jogged toward them, and Raze waited
until the berserker had joined them before he continued speaking.

“That wasn’t the twins,” he said.

“What?” She shook her head, as though by denying it, she
could make it untrue.

“The men I hauled from the yard. I took off their hoods.
Two strangers.”
He ran a hand over his face. “They’d been
drugged and cut up a little. They couldn’t answer my questions.”

“Maybe the twins are inside,” she said.

More screams, loud and long, came from somewhere deep inside
the house. Strad kicked open the door and they strode cautiously but quickly
through the living room, furnished only with a couch, a coffee table, a large
desk, and a pile of sleeping bags.

A dead man lay sprawled and bloody before one of the
shattered windows.

The hoarse screams stuttered to a stop.

Rune’s stomach was a tight, roiling mess, and there was a
single phrase repeating over and over inside her mind.
Don’t let it be one
of mine.

They found Jack and Owen in the large kitchen. Jack was
kneeling beside a COS member who was either dead or dying, and Owen stood above
them. He motioned them inside.

“Place is secure,” he said. “But Lex and the twins aren’t
here.”

Jack cleaned his blade on the stranger’s clothes before
standing and sliding it back into its sheath.
“Bad fucking
news.”

Rune let out a breath. “Tell me.”

“Otherfights.”

“Son of a bitch.
They’re fighting
Lex and the twins.”

Jack nudged the prone man with his boot.
“Only
Lex, according to this piece of shit.
The fights are one way they fund
the church. Lex will be a big fucking draw.”

Raze turned his back and punched the wall, his fury enough
to rival the berserker’s.

“Do we know where they have her?” Rune shuddered as
gooseflesh erupted on her newly healed skin. She didn’t object when Strad
wrapped his fingers around her arm and squeezed gently, trying to comfort her,
to ground her.
To calm her.

“Rock County,” Jack
said,
his voice
dull.

“Shit.” Her body shook with reaction as she realized Jack
believed Lex was already dead. “What else?”

“He told me they’d forced sharp silver plugs into her ears
so not only is she blind, but deaf, as well. They’re making her fight that way
because when they trialed her, she killed everyone in the fucking room.”

For a long moment, no one could speak.

“There’s more?” Strad asked, finally.

He nodded, but wouldn’t look at her. Not a good sign.

“She’s in deep withdrawal from her addiction to you. She’s
not…well.” He stared, instead of at her, at the man on the floor. “He said
she’d lost her mind.”

The slayer had begun to stir. He was bloody and broken from
Jack’s torture, but when he opened his eyes, they were still full of hate.

When he spotted Rune, his swollen lips curled in disgust.
“Animal,” he said.

“He laughed,” Jack said, his voice quiet, almost reflective.
“When I forced him to talk about little Lex, he laughed.” Finally he lifted his
gaze to her. “There was joy in his eyes and so much conviction. I knew COS was
full of some bad fucking people, but…” He shook his head. “What kind of people
are they?”

Raze pulled a long, sharp shiv and knelt beside the man. He
didn’t say a word, just cut the slayer’s throat. Then he cleaned the blade on
the slayer’s pants, got to his feet, and looked at Rune.

“Rock County is too far,” Rune whispered. “We’ll never make
it in time to save them.”

Raze grabbed her arm and pulled her to face him. “You can
get there fast if you fucking run.”

“I can’t. My monster is gone. I’m just like you.”

He shook her. “You can.”

“Easy, buddy,” Jack said.

“I can’t,” she said, her eyes overflowing. “Fuck you. I
can’t!”

“So you want Lex to die,” Raze said, and released her.
“You’re just going to leave her and the twins there to die.”

She shuddered, wanting to hit him, to scream at him, but she
couldn’t. “You know that’s not true.”

He curled his lip, his stare flat, accusing. “Look at you,”
he said. “Who the
fuck
are
you?”

Strad stepped toward Raze. “That’s enough.”

“This is not Rune,” Raze roared, and shoved the berserker.

Oh fuck. Fuck me.

They’d kill each other.

The berserker and Raze, right then, went a little fucking crazy.
Not using weapons, but fists, and surrounded in a swirling, almost visible aura
of rage, they began to fight.

“Fuck you,” she screamed, and finally,
finally,
she
got mad.

And she went after her monster.