New Regime (5 page)

The Annex had become fully involved in the investigation of
Megan Smith, Elizabeth told Rune. The foxes were being interrogated, and the
pikes were next.

“I’m going to talk to the pike alpha,” Rune told her.

“The Annex has investigators, Rune. You don’t—”

“Send them as well, but I’m going to talk to the pikes. And
the pike alpha.”

“Sean Colley. Good luck finding him.”

“Yeah.” Rune clicked off and drove to Wormwood. She wanted
to do another search for Gunnar anyway.

The pikes spent most of their shifts inside Poison Pond. The
water was more of a lake than a pond, but the naming folks must have thought
Poison Lake didn’t sound as cool.

The berserker called before she reached the cemetery. “We
have a run. Where are you?”

“I got the message. Can you handle it?”

“Why?”

“I’m headed to Wormwood to talk to the pikes.”

She could almost hear him grinding his teeth. “The pike
alpha is—”

“A son of a bitch. I know. But I meet a lot of sons of
bitches. I can handle him.”

“Be careful and call me if you need me.” He clicked off.

She tossed her cell in the passenger seat. Sometimes Strad
was overbearing, overly protective, and a pain in the ass. But most of the
time…

She smiled.

When she arrived at Wormwood, Owen was waiting for her. She
climbed out of her car, not unhappy with the unexpected company. It wouldn’t be
easy to find the pike alpha.

And most likely if the pike didn’t want to be found, he
wasn’t going to be found. Maybe she’d get lucky and grab Epik again.

“How did you know I’d be here?” she asked Owen.

“Elizabeth called me. Remember how Eugene offered to protect
you against the assassin?” He grinned. “I’m it.”

She walked with him into the graveyard. “Our Eugene is
generous.”

He lifted an eyebrow at her sarcasm. “I’m confident the two
of us can handle one hired gun.”

“Maybe. But he’s a mean fuck.” She told him what Epik had
said about the assassin. “He gives me the creeps.”

“Must be the mask,” Owen said.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice dry. “That must be it.”

He didn’t flirt with her, didn’t send her any smoldering glances
from his bottomless eyes. He just walked along beside her, his fingers brushing
his holstered weapons.

She began to relax.

But then…

“I want you,” he said.

She groaned. “Dammit, Owen.”

“I’m not addicted to your blood. I’m not out to kill you. I
don’t need you to take a bite out of me.” He stared straight ahead, which made
it easier for her to shoot startled little looks at him. “I don’t want anything
from you.”

He hesitated, but when she said nothing, he continued.
“You’re hot, you’re a freak, and I dig you. That’s all.”

She cleared her throat and stepped with extra care around
tombstones and logs and bits of Other litter. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I said what I needed to, and we don’t have to talk about it.”

He wanted her to know he had no ulterior motives, that he
expected nothing from her, and that he was into her. She got it.

No matter how much the berserker called to her, no matter
how tightly he held her heart, he wasn’t the only man who tempted her.

Oh, no.

There was Owen Five.

And she wasn’t sure they both wouldn’t crush her, in the
end.

“I couldn’t find anything on Owen Five. It’s like he
never existed. Whoever he is, he’s not who you think. Don’t trust him.”

Sam Cruikshank’s words echoed in her mind, and she stared harder
at Owen. “Who
are
you?”

He grinned and brushed a long, floppy lock of hair out of
his face. “Maybe someday I’ll tell you my story.”

She started to tell him she knew he hadn’t taken Cruikshank
to the hospital, that Sam had hidden from him and called to warn her. But she
didn’t.

Because part of her didn’t trust Owen Five with that
information.

She trusted him to have her back, but she didn’t trust his
secrets. She didn’t trust that he wouldn’t shut Cruikshank up for good.

She was the one who’d end Cruikshank if it came to that. Not
Owen.

They were quiet the rest of the way to the lake. She stared
into the murky but tranquil depths of the water, wondering what dark secrets
the lake bottom held.

“The pond feels sly to me,” she said, more to herself than Owen.
“Almost alive.”

“Like it’ll grab you and drag you under if you get too
close,” Owen agreed.

“Wormwood is full of mystery. I don’t think anyone has ever
tried exploring Poison Pond.”

“If they did,” he replied, his voice grim, “I doubt the ones
who call Poison Pond home let the explorers escape.”

“Sometimes you have to leave things alone.” She looked at
him.

He smiled. “Sometimes you do.”

“I’m going in.”

“Don’t linger. Not sure I could come in after you.”

“You keep my assassin at bay. I’ll handle the pond scum.”

“You got it. And be careful. I heard the pike alpha is a—”

“Real son of a bitch. I know.”

“Can you can breathe under there?”

She shrugged. “I’ll know in a minute.”

“If you—”

“Owen,” she said, gently. “I’ll be fine.”

People worried about her. She understood that. But their
worry sometimes made her doubt herself, and that wasn’t good.

She was going into that lake. Not just to question the pike
about Megan Smith, but to find out what the hell was going on with Epik. She
wasn’t one to let Others do as they would to each other. The humans believed
that was a good idea. She didn’t.

She stripped to her underwear, ignoring Owen’s stare. “Don’t
let anything happen to my blades and guns.”

Then she took a deep breath and waded into Poison Pond.

Rice hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said there was too
much going on. But right then, Rune had to focus on the pike alpha and shove
the rest away. Lack of concentration could get a person killed.

Or worse, captured.

She got a sudden, intense longing for the berserker.

Shit.

As she walked deeper into the cold, murky water, she thought
she saw a glimmer of a face in the black depths. She had no doubt there were
many faces down there.

She didn’t want hers to be covered by the menacing wetness,
but she had to keep going. The water lapped at her thighs, then her stomach,
and finally, her chest.

She stopped walking for a long minute to adjust to the
crushing weight of the strange water. The pressure was like a giant hand
squeezing her chest, constricting her lungs.

“Shit,” she muttered. She couldn’t draw a deep breath,
couldn’t force her lungs to expand, couldn’t possibly take one more step into
the smothering wet hell surrounding her.

“Rune?” Owen called. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Shit,” she said again, and took another step.

Then there was nothing—no rocky bottom on which her feet
could gain purchase, no sweet air, no sounds other than the roaring in her ears
from either her panic or the water attacking her eardrums.

And just that quickly, she was inside the pikes’ world.

Invisible hands pulled her greedily down, down into the
shadowy depths of the lake, and suddenly the roaring silence was replaced by
whispery voices. She could see nothing—blind and panicked, she struggled
against her watery prison. She opened her mouth to scream, then choked as the
vile liquid ran eagerly into her throat.

She pushed with her legs, trying to find the surface, but
her head hit a hard, unforgiving ceiling and she was trapped.

Drowning.

And she was sure she heard mocking laughter.

It was that sound that freed her from her terror.

Inborn rage and pride and plain common sense came to her
rescue, and she forced herself quiet.

Calm.

And in that calm she found Z’s face. Just for an instant,
but it was there, smiling at her, believing in her.
With
her.

He was always with her.

“God, Z,” she whispered.

But then he was gone, and she was alone in a pond she
couldn’t escape. Not yet. She had things to do there.

She swam, hands cutting through the dark water, and she let
the water become a refuge.

The deeper she went, the clearer she could see. Vague shapes
became fish and snakes and shifters. One of them, a smallish pike with vivid
green markings, brushed her arm playfully before darting away.

Inside Poison Pond was a whole new world, one she’d only
marginally been aware existed.

She caught sight of an iridescent light moving ahead of her
and followed it, going deeper and deeper, until she was blocked from going
farther by a rock wall.

But the swimmer ahead of her had disappeared into that wall.
She swam the rock slowly, sliding along until her fingers found a crevice
through which she was sure the being had exited.

Slight as she was, the crack in the wall was too skinny for
her to fit through. But she had to get through—there was light coming from the
other side, and she had no doubt that’s where she needed to be.

Dammit.

She pushed herself along, hoping…

And yes. There it was. The fissure widened, and she slipped
through it easily.

The water on that side of the crevice had a different feel
to it. It caressed her skin with a languid, silky touch and tasted something
like green tea.

She pressed her lips together quickly.

The farther she swam, the lighter the water became. And
finally, she saw a hint of daylight.

She broke the surface, her relief tinged with disappointment
that she hadn’t found the pike alpha. The Annex would send crews, though, and they
would—

“What the fuck?”

She was no longer in Poison Pond. She had no idea where she
was, but hoped it was
some
part of Wormwood. She waded to the grassy
bank and climbed out of the water, shivering as gooseflesh erupted on her wet
skin.

Behind her was the small pool of water from which she’d
escaped, and surrounding her were hills, grassy and large.

She started climbing the hill directly in front of her. The
top of the hill would at least give her a high vantage point and maybe help her
figure out where she was.

She jogged up the hill, taking a couple of minutes to reach
the top. And when she looked down, there was Owen, a tiny man guarding the lake
into which she’d gone earlier.

She raised a hand and started to yell at him, but a whisper
of sound at her back caused her to whirl around, her fangs dropping as she
turned.

Epik stood behind her, half crouching. “Come with me.”

She hesitated. “Where?”

But he wasn’t saying. He turned and loped away, his naked,
dirty body torn and battered.

Unable not to, she followed him, releasing her claws as she
ran. It would be autumn soon, and she couldn’t help glancing at all the green
that would, in a few short weeks, change colors and die.

She was never ready for winter, but winter would come
anyway, with its freezing, relentless beauty and its dark despair.

Epik’s ribs were even more prominent than they’d been the last
time she’d seen him. His shoulder blades parenthesized his long, knobby spine,
which was almost visible through the paper-thinness of his lightly veined, greenish
skin.

After about ten minutes he stopped and pointed to a line of
caves above them and to the right. “Up there.”

She frowned. “What’s up there, Epik?”

“Go on,” he said. “Go.” He twisted his fingers together, his
eyes too wide. “Please go on, now.”

The boy was in bad shape, and she wasn’t going to argue with
him. Obviously he wanted her to see something. “Are you coming?”

“I’ll stay behind you.”

Something up there was scaring the fuck out of him. She
nodded. “I won’t let anything happen to you, kid. Let’s go.”

She walked up the hill and toward the caves, slowly, so her
speed wouldn’t tax the already exhausted boy. Once, he took her elbow, yanking
it gently like a kid pulling at his mother’s skirt for attention.

“What is it?” she asked him.

He pointed to the cave directly to their left. Its large
entrance gaped with sinister blackness.

For a long moment, they both stood staring at it. “There’s
something terrible in there,” she said.

He nodded.

“Your alpha?”

Again, he nodded, then reached out to give her an
encouraging shove. “We have to go in.”

“I get that. I’m nearly certain we shouldn’t, though.”

“If you don’t,” he said, “I’ll die.”

Fucking alpha. “He sent you after me?”

He didn’t reply, just stared at her. Waiting.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

He followed her to the cave, his fingers light upon her
back. His breathing picked up, and when she glanced at him, he looked
almost…eager.

The voices were there, preaching caution. But as usual,
caution wasn’t enough.

“Good,” Epik whispered, and then he shoved her. Hard.

Caught off guard, she stumbled into a hidden chasm and began
to plummet down a seemingly bottomless shaft.

She crashed to the ground, finally. The impact scrambled her
thoughts and shattered her body, which began to knit immediately.

Still, the shock left her breathless and blind and unable,
at first, to move. Pain was blessedly dulled by overwhelming numbness, but
unfortunately the numbness began to ebb with alarming quickness.

She ran her fingers over her face, realizing only then that
she wasn’t blind. She simply hadn’t opened her eyes.

They bulged from their sockets and pulsated like angry hearts,
but at last, she opened them.

Her small world spun, and with a suddenness that left her
stunned, pain roared over her.

She turned weakly to the side and heaved up the little she
had in her stomach, groaning as an excruciating headache added its screams to
the other pains begging for attention.

She remembered banging off the sides of the crevice, but the
actual impact with the bottom was already forgotten. Maybe she’d passed out by
the time she hit—she just couldn’t remember.

She had no idea of the distance she’d fallen, but when she finally
managed to peer up at the opening, it appeared at least forty or fifty feet
away.

“What the fuck?” she murmured. Her voice slid into the shadowed
crevices, dancing eerily and echoing from the rock walls. It seemed, for an
instant, as though other whispers were mocking her.

Areas of her skin were dark blue and purple, seeping and
splattered with her own blood. The fall wouldn’t have hurt her so badly had she
been able to control it, but she’d thumped and smashed and banged against the
walls her entire way to the bottom.

It was cold at the bottom of the well, or whatever she’d
fallen into, and it didn’t help that her hair and underclothes were still wet.
Shivering, she sat up and glanced at her body.

Fucking Epik. It didn’t matter that he’d likely been ordered
to push her into the well, not right then. She was too pissed for it to matter.

She’d been warned about the pike alpha, and she hadn’t been
careful enough. She groaned when she tried to stand, and decided to give it a
couple more minutes.

Broken bones and smashed organs took a little while to heal.

She put a hand to her chest and took a deep breath. It was
not a good time for her claustrophobia to kick in.

But then the smell hit her, clogging her nostrils and
attacking her brain. Her impending, panicky claustrophobia inexplicably
lessened beneath the odor of rotting death.

The floor of the well was littered with debris. Piles of it.
It was then she realized that most of the piles were bones, some still with
meat clinging stubbornly.

Finally able to stand, she got to her feet and walked
gingerly to one of the skulls, staring at the long strings of bloodstained
blonde hair clinging to it.

Then she studied the hole at the top of the well, not really
seeing the bright block of sky above. Someone had been using the ominous hole
in the ground to dispose of people for a long time.

It was unlikely anyone other than a vampire could have
escaped the hole, and even a vampire would have to be pretty damn old to climb,
jump, or walk the very tall walls.

It was even more unlikely that anyone could have survived
such a fall. A shifter would have been destroyed on impact.

She counted six skulls, and when she used a stick to dig
deeper into the rubble, she was unsurprised to find more.

Wormwood had graveyards inside the graveyard. And the one in
which she stood…that one was bad.

Real bad.

Obviously Epik and his alpha had no idea what she was. She
looked up at the hole again, and curled her lip.

Fucking pushed into a fucking well…

Shit. It was almost insulting.

She’d have no trouble getting out.

She gave a last glance around, and her attention was caught
by something shiny in the rubble. She leaned over to snag it, and her breath
caught when she held it up to see what she’d found.

A small, silver crucifix.

There were several reasons a silver crucifix might have been
found amidst all the bones, and none of them were good.

Others didn’t wear silver crucifixes.

A thin chain was attached to the cross, part of it showing
the rusty red stain of old blood. Part of the cross was also bloodstained.

The scent of despair, held in the air by rotting flesh and
maggot-filled entrails, became too much for her.

Grimacing at not only the smell but the lingering pain in
her head, she and her monster prepared to get the hell out of the horror that
lived at the bottom of that well. She dropped the chain over her head.

She ran, then leaped at the walls she’d banged off of when
she’d made her hasty descent. She was fast and strong—her monster was
unbelievable. She had absolutely no doubt that she’d be able to climb the
walls. She scaled them, pushing herself from one wall to the other as she
scrambled to the top.

Her feet gained purchase on the slippery, slimy walls, but
only for a brief second—then she was pushing off and digging her toes into the
wall a little higher up.

Slime and goo competed with vegetation for space on the well
walls, and by the time she burst free of the hole in the ground she stank
almost as much as the rot at the bottom of the grisly prison.

She shuddered and ran her palms over her body, trying
unsuccessfully to rid herself of the sticky grime as she strode away from the
treacherous hole.

The sun was hot, the air so fresh she couldn’t stop drawing
it deeply into her lungs. It helped clear the lingering memory of the stench
from her brain.

She picked up her speed, running back to the hill on which
she’d stood when Epik had approached her. When she stood on the hill looking
once more at Poison Pond, Owen wasn’t the only one standing there.

The berserker stood beside him.

He and Owen peered into the lake, and as she watched, Strad
began yanking off his weapons, then peeled off his shirt.

She grinned. He was going in after her.

“Hey,” she screamed and waved.

The two men glanced up at her and Strad’s hands froze on the
waistband of his jeans. “Rune,” he roared. He didn’t sound happy to see her.

She lifted an eyebrow. “I’m coming,” she yelled, and without
waiting, charged down the hill.

She ran through the trees at the bottom of the hill, her
bare feet skimming the ground. Most times her monster wasn’t entirely engaged
unless she was in danger, fighting, or otherwise extremely emotionally
involved, and running toward Poison Pond seemed to take forever.

She needed to get to the berserker.

She wanted to wrap her arms around his hardness and taste
the skin of his chest before he covered it back up. She wanted to inhale his
scent, to put her lips to his smooth neck and sink her teeth into his flesh.

She wanted his blood. The need for him was so sudden and
overwhelming she slowed her run.

Nothing good could come of wanting another person so much.
Nothing.

He was addicted to her. Addicted to her blood.

What if, for him, that’s all it was?

What if he made her weak?

She forced herself to jog, slowly and methodically, across
the forest floor.

When she finally reached the two men, Strad was once again
fully dressed, frowning impatiently.

“What—” he began.

“
Fuck
you,” she said, and began to pull on her
clothes.

Owen pursed his lips and stared into the distance.

Strad raised an eyebrow, then folded his arms across his
massive chest. “What the hell happened up there?”

She jerked on her vest so forcefully she nearly ripped off
her fingernails, aware the men thought she’d lost her mind but what was new
about that?

If the berserker turned on her…

But how could she love someone she was afraid would hurt
her? More importantly, how could she almost actually believe that someone might
not
hurt her? If she let him, he’d hurt her. That was the way it was.

And it’d be her own damn fault.

She bent over to pull on her boots.

One second she was furious and frustrated and fucking
scared
—and
the next, she felt a touch on her back.

“Rune,” Owen said. That was all. Just that touch and her
name.

She went from anger to horror in a millisecond.

She fell to the ground and curled into a ball, her breath
wheezing from her constricted throat as slayers grabbed her—

“Rune! Rune, no, no…”

There were no slayers. She was not splintered, and there
were no slayers. Her clothes were on. She was not being violated. She was not
on the ground.

She was not.

She was instead face to face with Owen, her long, silver
claws buried in his belly. His face had lost its color, his thin hair lying
flatly against his cheeks. His breathing was harsh, his eyes too wide.

The berserker had his fingers wrapped around her wrists,
maybe trying to pull her claws from Owen, maybe trying to hold them there.

She was sure of only two things—one, she’d lost her mind.

And two, she’d killed Owen.