New Regime (15 page)

Rune stared through the glass at the terrified girl,
clenching her fists so hard she broke the skin. When the wet heat of blood
gathered in her palms, she clenched harder.

“Let me in there,” she told Bill Rice.

“I can’t.”

“Open the door, Bill.”

“Rune,” Elizabeth said, putting a hand on her arm. “He
can’t.
His prints won’t work on level three doors.”

The girl screamed again, her voice dragging on and on. Her
screams were muted, but Rune’s hearing was too sensitive for it to matter.

And she could see her. She could see her pain.

Hugely pregnant, her arms and legs restrained, the girl was
in so much agony she was losing her mind.

“Why isn’t she being given something for the pain?” Rune put
her hands on the glass. “The birth is going to kill her.”

“Everything is being done that can be done,” Elizabeth said.
“The pain meds aren’t working.”

“No shit. Do we know who she is?”

“She was wearing a plastic bracelet with the word nine
written on it,” Elizabeth answered.

“Nine,” Rune whispered.

“You’re bleeding,” Rice said, almost absently.

Her palms had left smears of blood on the glass, but that
wasn’t what Bill was talking about. Her stake wounds were seeping. A lot.

“Shit.” She pushed her hand against the wound.

“Rune?” Elizabeth asked.

“I’m fine.” She looked at the laboring Other. “Who found
her? And how?”

“Eugene sent ops to collect her when one of his contacts in
the police department called him. The contact said a couple of hikers stumbled
across a very sick, very pregnant Other in the woods of Eastern Kentucky.” She
paused. “Near Reverence.”

As they watched, a nurse stepped to the girl’s side and hung
another bag on the IV pole.

Nine turned her face toward the nurse, opened, her mouth,
and projectile vomited a heavy gush of blood.

The nurse jumped back but gathered herself with admirable
quickness. She wrung out a washcloth in the basin on the table and began
cleaning the Other with a practiced efficiency. Her touch was gentle, and she
ignored her blood-spattered uniform as she cleaned the agonized girl.

Nine screamed again, and Rune shuddered. She hated the girl’s
pain. Hated it. The Other was little more than a child. What hell the girl had
been through might never be known, because Nine was too sick to talk.

Rune and Elizabeth turned to watch as Eugene strode down the
hall. He had four operatives at his back.

“Do you want to go inside?” Eugene asked her.

“Yeah. I do.”

“Come on. We’ll talk in there.”

He didn’t offer to allow Elizabeth and Rice inside, and they
didn’t ask. He gave a terse order to the ops to wait in the hall, and then put
his fingertips against the pad beside the door.

It made a loud click and he pushed it open, motioning her ahead
of him. “This is the work of the Shop, Rune.”

“Tell me,” she said, and strode to Nine’s bedside.

“Leave us,” Eugene ordered the nurse.

“Wait,” Rune said, as the nurse tossed the washcloth in the
basin and turned to leave. “What’s your name?”

The nurse opened her mouth, then darted a quick look at
Eugene. He nodded.

“Jenna,” she said, her gaze curious.

“You’re a fucking angel, Jenna,” Rune said.

Jenna blushed, then smiled. “It’s what I do.”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

“Thank you, nurse. Leave us now,” Eugene said, but his voice
was gentler.

Jenna opened a door against the far wall and slipped into a
room that Rune imagined contained medical supplies.

“The fetus inside her appears to be around twelve weeks.”

“That’s impossible. She’s huge and ready to deliver.”

Nine groaned, then screamed, her agony like hot nails
piercing Rune’s brain. Eugene waited patiently for her to quieten before he
spoke.

“The growth of the baby is accelerated somehow. She’s been
pregnant for a few weeks, yet the child is full formed and ready to live
outside the womb. I wanted you to see her, Rune, so you’ll know some of the
things we’re up against.”

Rune scowled. “I have always known what we’re up against.
It’s why I lead Shiv Crew.”

“I mean with the Shop and the Next. When they figure out
they can’t kill or capture you, they’re going to try to recruit you.” His stare
was sharp and probing. “You have to be on guard.”

She looked away.

“They will try hard,” he continued. “They will lie. They
will use your friends, and innocents, and deceit to get what they want. What
they will want is you.”

She inhaled deeply, regretting doing so when Eugene’s
expensive scent mingled with Nine’s sick one. “I’m not likely to join the
enemy.” She tried to make her voice dry, slightly amused. She was pretty sure
she didn’t succeed.

“You’re not always going to be clear on who the enemy is.”

Nine screamed again, her voice one long howl of agony, and
Rune flinched. “You have to do something for her.”

“We’re nearly finished with our tests.”

She frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”

It was his turn to avoid her stare. “When we’ve figured out
exactly what that is inside her, our surgeons will take the child if it doesn’t
come on its own.”

She rubbed her arms, suddenly cold. “What’s inside her?”

“It doesn’t appear to be…normal, whatever it is. It won’t
allow her to shift. I’ll tell you everything we discover as soon as I can.” He
looked at the Other. “Let’s let her rest.”

“She’ll get no rest.” But standing there wasn’t helping the
girl.

She patted Nine’s skinny arm, but had no idea what to say.
She doubted the girl would have heard her anyway. She was lost inside the red
pain of her mind.

“Let me know as soon as you can,” she told Eugene, and
almost panting, she stood at the door waiting for him to let her out.

The room was enormous and mostly empty. Cold, stone floors
with a huge drain in the center, plain white brick walls. The room was too huge
and too empty for her to be claustrophobic, yet she was.

Something bad was happening inside the Other. Something
horrifying. She hadn’t really needed Eugene to tell her that. It lay like a
wicked heaviness in the back of her mind.

She fled the room, the girl’s screams chasing her all the
way down the hall.

The days and nights always blended together. Sometimes she
lost track of when to eat, when to sleep, when to do anything other than wait
for her cell to ring so she could put it to her ear and listen as a voice told
her who next to kill.

Ellie fixed that.

As soon as he got the green light, he took over her
household. Over her health. When she walked in the door that night, he was
waiting with dinner, coffee, and a list of things he wanted to get for the
house.

“You keep me sane, Ellie,” she told him.

And she was fucking ecstatic.

Still, the peace was short-lived.

She sat at the table, watching the berserker as Ellis
bustled around humming one tune or another, and she thought for a second she
could get used to that.

If only she could heal Levi’s brokenness, make Owen better,
wean everyone she’d touched off the drug that was her blood…

When her cell buzzed, she didn’t, for one long moment, want
to answer it. The crew watched her, waiting.

Finally, she snatched her phone off the table. “Yeah?”

It was Bill Rice. “Rune. Zombies are attacking the town of
Reverence, Kentucky.”

There was something strange in his tone. “Fuck.” She jumped
to her feet. “It’ll take us too long to get there if we drive. Have Eugene send
us in helicopters.”

He hesitated. “Eugene ordered me not to call you in on
this.”

“What is it?” Lex asked. Denim was at the clinic with Levi,
but Lex had needed to come home. “Levi?”

“No, Lex,” Rune said, and held up a finger. “Why not?”

She could almost hear Bill shrug. “He wouldn’t mind if
zombies helped the crew wipe out some of his competition.”

“Then why are you calling me?”

“For Elizabeth.” He cleared his throat. “I think we’ve
discovered where they’re holding Fie.”

“What the hell are you talking about? You guys don’t know
who has that kid?”

“Annex ops took her. She was going to be protected, and
trained. But…something went wrong. Halfway to headquarters Annex ops were
stopped by the Shop or the Next—we’re unclear. Fie was taken.”

“Fuck you,” Rune whispered. “Why didn’t either of you tell
me?”

He sighed. “No one thought it was a good idea.”

“You mean Eugene and Iris didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“Yeah. But Rune,” he said, his voice impatient, “We think we
know where she is
now.
”

Her jaw dropped. “Holy shit. She’s in Reverence and she’s calling
the zombies to help her.”

“If Fie is in Reverence, then it’s the Shop that has her. Bring
her back, Rune.”

“I’ll update you as soon as I can.”

“And Rune…”

“You never called me,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“What is it?” Lex asked again. She was vibrating slightly,
her cheeks flushed. Her crazy blind eyes were sluggish in their dance.

“Zombies are attacking our favorite town in Kentucky, and
Rice thinks that’s Fie’s doing. Let’s go get our baby necromancer.”

Strad strode from the kitchen. “Weapon up,” he called back
over his shoulder. “Be ready to go in five minutes.”

“Ellie—” Rune started.

He held up his cell. “I’m calling Raze and Jack now. I’ll
have them meet you in Reverence.”

She pressed her lips together when they felt a little
trembly. “Thanks, Ellie.”

He winked and began muttering into the phone as she raced
from the kitchen to get ready.

They left their crew cars at home and drove their personal
cars. “Ride with me, Lex,” Rune said, and Lex jumped into the passenger seat
almost before Rune had finished her sentence.

Raze called as Rune was leaving her driveway. “Lex with
you?”

“Yeah, baby. We’ll see you over there.”

“Was that Raze?” Lex asked, after Rune hung up.

“It was.” Rune gave her a sidelong glance. “What’s up with
you two?”

“Nobody knows.”

“Sounds about normal.”

“Our normal,” Lex replied, “is pretty fucked up.” Abruptly,
she changed the subject. “Annex lost Fie?”

“They didn’t lose her, she was stolen. And Eugene wasn’t
having any luck getting her back.”

“Why didn’t he want to send us to pick her up?”

“He’s willing to sacrifice her to get rid of his enemy.”

Neither of them was surprised.

“She’ll be okay,” Lex said. “Everyone will be okay.”

“Yeah.” Even with everything going on, she should have dug
more deeply into Fie’s circumstances. “We’ll get her back.”

“It’s starting to feel like we’re fighting the side we’re
on, Rune.”

Rune smiled. “Starting? It’s been feeling that way to me
since…” Since forever. Since she’d been born, maybe. What the fuck was a right
side, anyway? You did what you had to do, and most of the time, that wasn’t
what everyone else wanted you to do.

Fuck them.

“
We’re
the side we’re on,” she finished. “And that’s
all we know for sure.”

It seemed to take her a million years to drive to Reverence.
Straggling zombies began appearing half an hour before they reached the actual
town.

Slowly lurching with dogged determination along the
abandoned white road, they ignored Rune’s car as she drove by them. She ran
some of them over as they were disinclined to the move the hell out of the way.

She was in a hurry.

Her cell buzzed. “Berserker,” she said. “Do you see them?”

“Yes. I’m in town. They’re all walking in a long line, quietly.
They don’t seem hungry.”

“She’s in their heads,” Rune told him. “Their only purpose
is to reach her.”

“Can you control them?”

“I don’t know. My control over them isn’t as strong as it
once was. Fie is much stronger.”

She could almost hear him shrug. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Where are you?”

“I can’t drive into the woods, which is where they’re
headed. I’m on foot.”

“Lex and I are right behind you.”

She drove as far as she could before the trees became too
thick to manage, then she and Lex jumped from the SUV and began running, following
the line of zombies through the woods.

She didn’t try to kill them. She had her claws out, but that
was only to cut a path for her and Lex.

Chances were Fie’s handlers had already moved her, but maybe
they’d been stopped by the zombies.

That was the hope Rune held on to.

Some of the zombies crumbled, losing body parts, but dug
their bony fingers into the dirt and crawled on. They clacked their teeth, but
their voices were silent.

Then Raze was there, giving Lex and Rune a sharp once over
before punching a slow moving zombie out of his way. “Go, Rune. I’ll keep Lex
company.”

Lex ignored both of them and kept pushing onward.
Eventually, she’d get through the crowd, but Rune could get there a lot faster.

“Don’t get bitten,” Rune whispered.

“I’ll take care of her,” Raze said. “Go.”

She nodded at Raze and took off, the monster she’d been born
with lending her his speed.

Shortly, she arrived where the earlier zombies had
congregated, and for a moment she just watched them.

A huge hill stood before them, covered in trees and green,
but the zombies weren’t attempting to climb it. Maybe they had no idea how to.

There were no buildings, no cars, no signs of humans.

But then she saw the zombies in the front ramming their
fragile bodies over and over against the hard wall of the embankment, and she understood
exactly where Fie was.

The Shop had built themselves a bunker inside the hill.

She had no idea how to infiltrate it.

But somewhere inside that impenetrable, rocky mound waited
little Fie, and if Rune had to dig her way in with her claws, she
would
get the kid out.