New Regime
Authors: Laken Cane
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Horror, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Paranormal & Urban
New Regime
By Laken Cane
Copyright © 2014
Laken Cane
All rights reserved.
The author
acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products
referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission.
The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, association with, or
sponsored by the trademark owners.
This book is licensed
for your personal enjoyment. Ebook copies may not be resold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share with a friend, please buy an extra
copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
For more information
about the author, you can find her online at
www.facebook.com/laken.cane.3
,
www.amazon.com/author/lakencane
To my amazing street
team-- I’d be lost without you guys. To Dawn Anderson, a beautiful person we
lost too soon. To my awesome fans for their incomparable support. To:
Michele Guy-Alvarez
Sasha Lovell Anderson
Lindsey Armstrong
Ashley Balestrieri
Sara Brown
Cody Durham
Heather Emmons
Tina Finn
Jana Gundy
Melanie Patrick
Harrell
Lorraine Harvey
Raeven Hawkes
Drue Hoffman
Angela Lockhart
Sam McMullen
SB Morales
Carol Ray
Ken Relyea
Theresa Relyea
Heidi Ryan
Michael Secretan
Tammy Lawson Sullivan
Meigan Ziegler
Table of Contents
“Let me know,” Ellie said. ”I have transport and medical on
standby, half a mile from you.”
Rune probed the shadows with her narrowed, Other gaze as
Ellie’s quiet voice slid into her ear. He was safely ensconced in a control
room in the new Annex building miles away.
She’d finally gotten accustomed to wearing a headset but it
had taken a while. The techie guys had managed to create an earpiece she was
comfortable with, and if she was being honest it made communication a million
times easier.
Still, she rebelled against the changes the Annex kept
shoving at the crew. She didn’t like the new regime, or the secrecy, or the feeling
that Shiv Crew was somehow less significant than they’d been with RISC. And she
couldn’t shake her mistrust of the Annex.
Eugene Parish made her uncomfortable, and she wasn’t exactly
sure why. It was a gut feeling that wouldn’t go away, and she’d learned to
trust her gut.
The Annex had taken over, and not slowly. Once they’d
decided RISC was worth their notice, they’d taken control.
Had taken right the fuck over.
“I see movement,” Jack murmured. “At the back. One of them is
coming out for a bathroom break.”
She winced at his voice, which wasn’t as silky smooth as
Ellie’s. Jack wasn’t a whisperer and his deep, rumbling tone tunneled into her
brain like a jackhammer through rock.
“I’m on my way,” she said.
With Owen and Lex at her side she loped noiselessly toward
the back of the old slaughterhouse, the same building to which Lara Book had
been nailed by COS.
The crew had the slaughterhouse surrounded. The killers
weren’t getting away. Not this time.
“Go in soft,” she murmured. “Don’t spook them and give them
a chance to off the girl.”
At the corner of the building she slowed and crept in,
hugging the wall as she made her way closer to the men they’d been chasing for
two days.
Those men had hacked their way to Ohio after leaving piles
of murdered females in Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Not all the
bodies had been found.
Then they’d left at least three dead girls in two Ohio
counties before they’d made the fatal mistake of taking on Spiritgrove and Shiv
Crew.
The assholes were about to go down.
The
human
assholes.
One perk of belonging to the Annex was that human law
enforcement couldn’t force the crew off cases involving humans. They had to
share, at the very least.
Parish and his second in command, a withdrawn woman named
Iris, ruled the River County branch of the Annex calmly, but firmly. Iris had
only approached the members of Shiv Crew once, and Rune had a feeling that was
because Eugene Parish had insisted.
Still, unfriendly as she was, she wanted what they all
wanted—to get equality for Others and to take out the bad guys.
These particular bad guys had a nasty habit of picking up
female Other runaways and prostitutes and doing very bad things to them.
Rune shook her head, hard, to dislodge the sudden vivid
image that shot through her damaged mind. The memories of her rape were
sometimes hard to ignore, to push away, to hide.
“Stop,” she whispered.
“Rune?” Strad’s voice was low, but worried.
“Close in,” she said.
“We’re in position,” Raze said. He and the twins wouldn’t
let anyone escape through the front, if by some chance the slimy snakes managed
to slither past Rune.
And that wasn’t going to happen.
“Let’s get the fuckers,” she muttered. “Alive, if possible.”
Not that she cared if her crew killed the bastards, but
Eugene frowned upon executions that might bring his organization under scrutiny.
The Annex didn’t want publicity—good or bad.
She ran, but didn’t release her claws until she spotted the
guy pissing into the bushes.
She growled.
“Rune,” Ellis reminded, his voice louder,
“alive.”
“I got it,” she said.
The man turned toward her, likely spotting the blur of
motion from his peripheral vision as she ran at him. His dick was still in his
hand. “Wha—”
Her entire body shuddered as she sliced through his neck
with her lethal claws.
He fell, blood spraying.
“Shit,” Jack said, running up behind her.
“Rune,” Ellis wailed.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Sorry. Let’s go in and get the rest
of them.”
“Alive?” Owen grinned.
“Yeah.” Then she shrugged. “At least one of them. We need
the locations of the unrecovered bodies.”
They followed her through the doorway at the back of the
slaughterhouse—Owen, Jack, Lex, and the berserker.
“We’re coming in through the front as soon as you have them
cornered,” Raze said.
The men in the large, echoing room jumped from the floor—she
counted seven of them in the flickering, dim lights they’d set around the
place.
She didn’t spot the victim.
The fugitives had guns, of course, and the crew had gone in
prepared. Another perk of the Annex—they had an entire lab staffed with
carefully chosen people who created weapons and protection from weapons.
And those people loved their jobs.
Rune and the crew had been given multi-threat vests created
especially for Annex ops. Completely bulletproof? No. But they were resistant
to bullets, blades, fangs, and claws.
Rune didn’t have to worry about a mere bullet killing her,
but enough bullets could certainly cause her a lot of pain and slow her down.
Slow her down enough for capture, even. And there was nothing worse than
capture.
The fugitives dove for cover and opened fire.
Raze and the twins entered the room but Rune was almost
immediately distracted as a man arose from behind one of the piles of metal.
He held a girl in front of him, one arm around her neck, the
other holding a gun to her head.
“Stop shooting,” Rune ordered the crew.
The man with the hostage spoke into the sudden silence. “We
were ready to move on anyway.” He pushed his gun into the girl’s head, causing
her to cry out. “Toss your weapons over, all of you.”
“Rune?” Jack asked.
She held up her palms, hoping she’d retracted her claws
before the guy had seen them. “Take me, dude,” she told him. “Let’s trade. Me
for the girl.”
“Why would I want to do that?” But even in the dim light she
could see his stare raking her body.
“I’m valuable. It doesn’t matter if you’re holding the
girl—my crew will cut you down. Even if they have to kill her, too.”
The girl cried out again, but Rune continued. “They won’t
take a chance on killing me.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“I don’t like seeing innocent girls hurt.”
“Now that’s sweet. But she’s not innocent anymore.” He
gestured with his head. “Drop your weapons and get over here, then.”
“I’m not stupid,” she said. “Let the girl go.”
“I’m not stupid either. Johnny,” he called. “You’re going to
let old Johnny handcuff you and bring you behind our little wall, here. Once I
have you, I’ll let the girl go. And then, if your men don’t walk away, you’re
the first one who’s going to die.”
She smiled. “Deal.”
Johnny, a bulky man with short hair and two black eyes
walked toward her. He didn’t seem concerned about Rune—he kept darting glances
at her men.
The girl moaned, then began sobbing weakly.
Her captor tightened his arm around her neck. “Hush,
sweetheart. You ain’t hurt.”
Rune clenched her fists. “Bastard.”
He grinned at her. “You sure are brave, taking me on, honey.
I like a brave girl.”
Johnny pulled her hands behind her back, not handling her
especially roughly as he restrained her.
“What do you get out of hurting women?” she asked.
Johnny didn’t answer but the man holding the girl did. “We
only get one life. Might as well have fun.”
“Fun,” she said. But really, she wasn’t surprised. She’d
been up against her share of monsters. They no longer shocked her. “Johnny has
me. Let my crew take the girl out of here.”
The man shrugged, then holstered his gun before lifting the
girl into his arms. “Catch,” he said, and tossed her over the pile of junk
protecting him from bullets.
Jack rushed forward, snatched the girl off the floor, then
backed away.
“Rune,” Strad murmured, his voice barely coming through her
earpiece. “See you outside.”
“Let’s get this show on the road,” the leader said. “Before
they decide to do something stupid and get you killed.” He winked at her.
The men followed his lead, coming out from behind their
cover, and waited for him to tell them what to do.
He wasn’t afraid. He knew he was living on borrowed time.
“Get the van,” he told one of them. Then he looked at
Johnny. “Bring her.”
“Wait,” Rune said. “I have a question.”
“You do?” The man bowed. “Then by all means, Princess. Ask.”
“Did you leave any of your victims alive? Stash them away
somewhere and forget to go back?”
“Nope. When we leave our women, we leave ‘em dead.” He spat
on the floor. “But first we leave ‘em satisfied.”
“Rune,” Ellis said, breathless and afraid. “Please be
careful.”
“Always,” she told him.
“Yeah,” the leader said. “Always. Except for the little lady
you traded yourself for, and she’ll be dead before morning.”
“All your men know where the bodies are?”
He gestured impatiently, turning away as he spoke. “Shut
your mouth. Bring her, Johnny. If anybody is waiting out there, make her
scream. If they open fire, shoot her.” He turned to stride from the room.
She’d keep Johnny alive and hope he could give them the
locations of the bodies. The rest were dead. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”
she asked Johnny, her voice bland, unemotional. Those who knew her would have
heard the dark, eager promise in it.
He didn’t answer but pushed the gun into her temple with a
little more force. Johnny wasn’t a talker.
With an almost gentle tug, she broke the chain connecting
the cuffs. Before Johnny—or any of the men—understood what was happening,
Johnny’s gun was across the room, he was unconscious on the floor, and Rune
stood blocking the exit door toward which the men were headed.
“The fuck,” the leader said, his disbelieving gaze going
from Johnny’s prone form to her. “You’re not fucking human!”
“You’re right,” she agreed. “My name is Rune Alexander. Allow
me to introduce you to my monster.”
She shot out her claws and dropped her fangs.
Almost as one the men lifted their guns, but she was on them
before they could cause any real damage. One of them managed to shoot the wall,
then gave her a terrified look, threw his gun, and ran.
She dropped him before he got three steps.
The leader lay on the floor bleeding out, his body twitching
as he fought the darkness that had come to claim him.
She stood over him, her rage black and heavy. The other men
were dead or dying, except for Johnny.
“Are you Death?” the leader asked, his voice weak. “Are you
the Reaper? Finally?”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “I’m Reaper Rune.”
And maybe he wasn’t quite as ready for death as he’d
thought, now that it stared him in the face.
“Hey now,” he begged. “Come on. Come on now. Don’t…”
She’d retracted her claws without even realizing it. She
leaned over, put the tips of her fingers against the man’s forehead, then sent
her claws out with all the rage inside her.
And even when he was good and dead she continued to stab
him, over and over and over, blind and deaf to everything but her rage.
Her fear.
Her shame, even.
She became aware of Ellie’s voice through the earpiece as he
tried to talk her down. Tried to calm her.
Someone put a hand on her shoulder. “Rune. Rune, enough.”
She looked around, dazed.
Raze was hauling Johnny away. Strad was behind her,
squeezing her shoulder. He squeezed harder when she stared up at him. She
concentrated on the pain of his grip.
“All right?” he asked.
She nodded, and took a deep breath. “Where’s the girl?”
“Jack and Lex have her outside, waiting for medical.”
Again, she nodded. “Okay. Okay.” She looked at the man she’d
destroyed as though seeing him for the first time. “I lost it for a minute.”
“Yes.” He said nothing more, just watched her.
“We’re sending one of them in,” she told Ellis. “The rest
are dead.”
“We’ll get a room ready,” he replied. “Transport is on the
way. Are you sure you’re okay?”
She rolled her shoulders, trying to loosen the knots. “I’m
fine, baby. See you in a little while.”
She walked out of the slaughterhouse with Strad beside her,
the beautiful twins at her back.
The hideous gang would never hurt another girl. She was sure
when Eugene was finished with Johnny, he’d be put down as well. Hell, she’d do
it for him if he’d give her the chance.
The night, for Shiv Crew, had been a success.