New Regime (23 page)

Inside, the house was a chaotic mess. She spotted two dead
bodies almost before she’d crossed the threshold.

“No one is up here,” Lex said. “I don’t feel any heat other
than ours.” Then she pointed at the floor. “But there, they’re waiting.”

“Enemies?” Rune asked. “Or…”

“I don’t know.”

They also didn’t know how to get to the basement lab. There
were no steps leading down and no hidden doorways they could find.

“Outside,” Rune said. “These fucks always have entrances in
the ground or the hillsides.”

She was right.

The houses were little more than props to hide the real
world the Shop boss had created underground.

And they would never have found it if not for Lex.

Blackthorne had likely believed he and his lab were safe. No
one knew how to get inside the lab, and that would be where Orson and maybe his
closest henchmen hid out.

But Blackthorne wasn’t aware the crew had someone like Lex,
the bloodhound of demons.

And that was just too bad for him.

In the backyard, there was nothing. No patio furniture, no
deck, no plants. It was, however, surrounded by a tall fence that Rune was
pretty sure would be electrified. Not that it mattered. She didn’t want out.

“Where the fuck is it?” she muttered. “Lex, are you sure you
feel people under the ground?
Living
people?”

Lex walked across the yard, then walked back, ignoring the
crew’s impatience. Five minutes later, she fell to her knees in the middle of
the yard. “Here,” she said.

They gathered around her. “What is it?” Rune asked.

Lex looked up, her blind eyes dancing crazily, her palms on
the ground before her. “Magic, Rune. We can’t get into the lab. It’s…” she
gestured angrily. “It’s hidden by magic. They’re not under the house. They’re
inside
the ground.” Then she shook her head and pressed the heels of her hands into
her eyes. “No, not really inside the ground. It’s like they’re on a different
plane. Or in a different
world.
”

No wonder Orson Blackthorne was unafraid.

And no wonder his lab was never found.

Rune turned in circles, trying to find something, anything,
that would say Lex was wrong, and that they could get inside that lab.

But there was nothing.

“In hell,” she said, remembering the assassin’s words. “The
lab is in hell. And how the
fuck
do we get into hell?”

“Kill people and shit?” Lex suggested.

Jack snorted. “Yeah, but we can’t be waiting that long.” He
slammed his blades back into their sheaths.

“I think I know a way,” the berserker said from the back
doorway. Then he opened his arms.

It was the first time in her life Rune could ever remember
making a sound that resembled anything close to a squeal. She ran, too fast,
and leaped at Strad.

He was ready for her—else he’d have been knocked over by the
sheer force and speed of her body.

“Damn you, Berserker.” Her whisper was lost as she pressed
her lips to his warm throat, but it didn’t matter. He heard her.

He squeezed her, hard, and released a long, tired, contented
breath. “Hi, sweetheart.”

She pushed herself out of his arms and cleared her throat,
almost afraid to look at her crew. They’d be watching her with grins and
smirks, the bastards.

Strad looked like he’d been run over by a truck. Several
times. He was a huge, battered, bloody mess. He hadn’t taken time to clean up,
and there were no signs that he’d seen a doctor.

She glared at him. “Are you okay?”

He grinned.

She put her hands on her hips. “Where’s Owen?”

“No idea. He was alive when I left him. I checked my phone
and heard where you were heading.” He lost his grin. “I wasn’t going to let you
walk into this alone, Rune.”

“And you and Owen kicking the shit out of each other. That
solve anything?”

He shrugged, but a smile played at the corners of his
swollen lips. “I feel better.” Then he studied her, his expression serious. “I
did what I needed to do. When you do what
you
need to do…”

“What, Berserker?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

His smile was rueful. “We’ll see.”

“Men are idiots,” Lex said, then wrapped her arms around
Strad’s middle, giving him a hard hug before pulling him further into the yard.
It no longer made her cry to touch the berserker. “Now tell us how we get into
the lab.”

“Remember,” he said, “When you were in the clinic, and—”

“Of course,” she yelled. “The circle!”

And then they all understood.

“Yes,” Rune said. “That power circle. It will get us where we
need to go.”

How any of them knew that, she couldn’t have said. But it
was a deep, unquestionable fact.

It was as though when the circle had happened, it had given
them that knowledge, and they’d somehow forgotten it.

I know you. How did I forget?

The berserker reached out for Rune’s hand, and then for
Lex’s. The other four were quick to join, and there was absolutely no doubt in
any of their minds that they were doing the right thing.

And that with more of them in the circle, something big was
going to happen. Something always did.

Strad let go of her hand long enough to wipe away a trickle
of blood that slid from his ear and down his neck, causing Rune to frown. “Berserker?”

“I’m good.” He smiled, and she thought he seemed much too
happy for someone who’d taken a beating.

But he’d be okay. He was the berserker.

“What now?” Jack asked.

“I think that’s up to Lex,” Denim said.

“Not just me,” Lex said. She motioned at Rune. “To you, as
well.”

Rune nodded. She wasn’t sure what to do, or what she’d done
last time, but she and Lex were the sparks that would start that particular
fire.

She started to close her eyes, but right before she did, she
saw Owen.

He limped out from the back doorway and leaned weakly
against the house. He looked like he’d already been to hell and had somehow
managed to find his way back.

He watched them with longing on his broken face, but he made
no attempt to join them.

As though he knew he wasn’t one of them.

Not really.

She wouldn’t have recognized him if she hadn’t been so
familiar with his hair and his particular way of holding his body.

“Shit,” she murmured, near tears.

The berserker had nearly killed him.

She squeezed Strad’s hand, getting his attention, and he
followed her gaze across the yard and to the injured cowboy.

The berserker sighed. The others stiffened, unsure if Strad
was going to finish Owen off or ignore him.

He did neither.

“Owen,” he roared. “Are you waiting for one of us to carry
you over here?”

Owen straightened, or tried to, then hobbled to them as fast
as he could. The twins broke apart to allow him between them, and then, with
the last of their crew in his place, the circle was complete.

“Strad.”

He looked down at her, then frowned. “What’s wrong?”

She smiled and shook her head.

He waited.

“I…”

But he squeezed her hand. He knew.

She didn’t have to say the words.

He knew.

And across from her, Owen peered at her from his swollen,
battered face, then limped toward her. There was determination in that limp.

Ignoring Strad, he grabbed her upper arms and leaned down to
whisper something to her that left her breathless.

And a little horrified.

Then he went back to his place like nothing had happened.

The berserker stared at her, the look in his eyes angry and
the tiniest bit exasperated.

“See?” Lex called. “Your fight solved nothing.”

But it had. The berserker had done what needed doing, and
there was nothing else to do—because he wasn’t ready to kill Owen.

Not yet.

The rest was up to her. Exactly as it should have been.

Yeah, she’d settled on the berserker.

But something about Owen got to her.

She shivered, and threw him a quick look.

 
“I know you want me, too. That won’t stop. I won’t
fucking let it.”

“Fuck you,” she mouthed.

But he just smiled.

Because Owen, he knew as well.

The power hit her as it had before, encompassing her,
devouring her. Zings of electricity shot through her body, and unlike before,
this time it was complete.

The circle.

Someone cried out.

The energy grew and thrived, created by and from the monster
and the demon, then forced itself through every one of them.

It was something incomprehensible and went beyond anything
any of them had ever imagined existed.

It was…life.

Magic.
Their
magic.

Power, raw and real.

The exquisiteness of that power hurt. Hurt, because it was
too right, too good. Too much.

Just…too much.

And when she thought she would explode from it, it flung her
away from her people. She landed against the fence, hard, but it didn’t hurt
her.

She couldn’t have been hurt right then. Not by anything.

At last, she opened her eyes, expecting to be underground.
But she wasn’t—she was still in the backyard, against the fence the power had
tossed her into.

Her crew lay scattered about the yard. They slowly began
picking themselves up, their movements slow. Dazed and befuddled, they walked
toward her.

“Wow,” Levi said. Then he began to cry. Loud, ugly sobs.

Denim and Lex grabbed him and the two of them embraced him,
holding him as he cleansed himself of the black. The evil.

He washed it away.

Rune could feel it, as surely as Lex felt her when they
fought, or when she read one of them.

So that’s what it’s like.

The berserker and Owen were still battered, still bloody,
but they stood without wobbling, and she knew they could fight.

While the effects of that power rushed through them, they
were beyond the reaches of their human frailty.

“It might not last long,” she told them. “Let’s do this.”

But do what?

Lex pulled away from Levi, who had quieted. “Rune. Look.”

She saw it then. It swirled and danced above the ground on
the other side of the yard.

The same green magic that had left Epik’s dead body.

“There you are,” Rune whispered.

“What?” asked the berserker, frowning. “What do you see?”

They still couldn’t see it.

But that was okay. She and Lex would show them the way.

So she led them to the green mass, and Lex followed behind.

“Do exactly as I do,” Rune told them. “Step where I step.
Lex will guide you from behind. You won’t lose your way between us.”

She could taste their awe, their fear.

It tasted like icing, and she wanted to turn to them and
lick it from their bodies. Could the others see what waited in that hellish
passage as they made their way to the lab?

She couldn’t be sure. There was nothing in her ears but the
sounds of wind. Sometimes hot, sometimes freezing. It roared like the harshest
blizzard, the strongest of tornadoes.

There was nothing to see before her, but in her peripheral
vision she kept seeing flickers of images. Once, she saw a mist-covered
mountain, on the peak of which sat a black mansion. Lightning flashed in brief,
blue streaks, lighting up a midnight sky.

Then to her left, a hot, arid wasteland. The ground was cracked
and thirsty, and unfamiliar trees grew in straight lines toward a red sky. She
heard the harsh cry of crows and the echoing screams of some distant, tortured
soul.

She thought she saw Cree Stark, a wide collar around her
neck, chained to a castle wall.

She forced herself to take another step, the temptation to
turn and run back to her world nearly overwhelming. But then, right in front of
her, Damascus came rushing from the blackness.

“Where is my Nicolas?” she screamed.

And then, confused, “I know you. How did I forget?”

Rune fell to the path, to whatever it was she walked upon,
and for one second she lost the will to continue.

There were things she did not want to know. Did not want to
see.

But she was grabbed from behind and hauled to her feet. “I’m
here,” the berserker murmured.

That was all.

And that was enough.

She wasn’t alone in her world or any other.

Was that, then, her biggest fear?

That she would be alone?

Maybe.

Maybe now that Nicolas was gone she no longer feared the
threat of madness as violently as she once had.

Maybe she’d forgotten how to.

Whatever, when the berserker spoke to her, she stiffened her
spine and walked on.

Strad had her back. The entire crew had her back.

And later when there was time and she was not afraid of
falling off the path into the darkness beyond, then she would allow herself to
think of Damascus.

The witch was not finished with her yet.

“Fuck you,” Rune muttered. “I’m ready when you are.”

Ahead and off to the right she saw a brightly lit room, full
of tables and cabinets and stainless steel.

The path continued, but she didn’t want to walk into whatever
lay beyond.

“This is our stop,” she said.

She stepped into the building and stood staring silently,
trying to get her bearings.

They were no longer between worlds—they were in the lab.

The crew walked out of the green swirl of magic and stood
beside her, big-eyed and pale-faced.

“Did that really happen?” Denim touched the scar on his
face, panting slightly.

Beside him, Levi shuddered. “Was I the only one who saw the
witch?”

Rune blinked. “You saw Damascus? And the castle on the
hill?”

Raze nodded. “I did. And the wasteland.”

Strad squeezed her shoulder. “You weren’t in there alone,
Rune.”

“No.” And she was relieved. The world—or worlds—they’d
passed through hadn’t been just for her. Hadn’t been her imagination. Her crew
had witnessed them as well.

Owen came through, followed by Lex.

Owen said nothing, but Lex was full of words. “The
wasteland. It was familiar. I think my father came from there.” She rubbed her
eyes, hard. “I could see. In the…tunnel, or whatever it was—the path. I could
see in there.”

“Your demon sees, doesn’t it, Lex?”

Lex nodded a little too fast. “But my demon sees shapes and
red and black. I saw. Like you see. With normal vision. Oh God.” The she bent
forward and began to cry.

There was fear in her sobs, and that was normal.

But there was also joy in it. Yearning.

Exhilaration.

Rune knew right then something that even Lex probably did
not. Lex would need, someday, to go to that world. It called to her.

It let her see.

And she would believe she belonged there.

Someday.

“But this is not that day,” Rune murmured. When her crew
looked at her questioningly, she shrugged. “Let’s do what we came here to do,
and get the fuck back home.”