Obsidian Wings (11 page)

Jack reached back and grabbed the shifter by the shoulder of
his jumpsuit. “What girl? Lex?”

“I don’t know,” the shifter whispered. “But I have been
repeating that phrase ever since I came out of the fog. They want the girl.”

Jack shook him. “You have to know
something
. Tell me
everything.”

“That’s all I know.” The shifter met Rune’s gaze in the
mirror, his own dark and full of shadows. “That’s all I remember.”

“Jack,” Rune said. “Let go of him.”

The shifter sat back in his seat, staring once more at his
hands.

“What’s your name?” Rune asked.

“I don’t know.”

“When I stood in the cell with you, something I said upset
you all. Why?”

He shook his head. “I don’t remember.” He looked up then,
his face paler than normal. “I barely remember being in the cell. What did you
say?”

But she didn’t want to repeat it until they were safely
behind glass in a RISC holding room, where they couldn’t hurt anyone.

Their long term memory seemed pretty much gone, and their
short term memory was getting worse.

Except somehow, the shifter had held on to one phrase. “
They
want the girl.”

What girl? And who the hell were
they?

“Is there anything else you can tell us? Scents,
impressions, anything?”

His voice was hollow. “Nothing.”

They were all silent the rest of the way to RISC. The
shifters, she was pretty sure, were lost in the vast emptiness of their minds.

When they arrived at RISC, she opened the car door and urged
them out. “You’ll be safe here,” she told them. “We’re the good guys.”

Kinda
.

“Rune,” Jack said, standing beside her.

“What?”

“You’re bleeding.”

“What the fuck?” She glanced down at the blood blossoming in
a bright, splotchy pattern on her shirt. “Well that’s weird.”

“How are you feeling?” He didn’t take her arm or fuss over
her, just waited to see what she needed.

“I’m fine.” The stake wounds always ached and plagued her
like a throbbing toothache might, but she’d thought she was past the bleeding
stage. “I’ll bandage it when I get time.”

He nodded. “Let’s get these three inside to Elizabeth.” But
he eyed her gravely, his tone solemn.

She tossed him a grin. “I’m good, Jack.”

They urged the three shifters inside the building and to a
holding room. “Elizabeth Peel and Bill Rice run this place,” Rune told them.
“You can trust them.”

“You can trust no one,” the male shifter said.

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you remembering something?”

“No.” His smile was slight, and sad. “I suppose it’s a
nugget of truth I picked up along the way.” He tapped his chest. “I feel
something in here. I…I miss something.” Then he once again dropped his gaze and
went silent.

“Maybe if they shift, they’ll heal?” Jack asked.

“Maybe.” But she wasn’t hopeful.

Jack took the shifters to a holding room while Rune went to
give Elizabeth the meager bit of information she had.

“Their memories are wiped,” she said, as she walked with
Elizabeth back to the shifters. “They can’t remember their names or where they
came from. One of the men somehow kept a phrase inside his head, and he
repeated it to me on the ride over.”

“What phrase?” Elizabeth was still too pale, and dark
circles, though less prominent, lay like bruises under her eyes.

“They want the girl.”

“They? And what girl?”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Rice was waiting outside the holding room, talking with
Jack. Raze and Owen stood there as well, staring through the window at the
shifters.

“Anyone else think this has something to do with COS?” Raze
asked.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” Elizabeth answered.

None of them would have been surprised. When bad shit
happened in River County, COS always managed to be part of it. Or the cause of
it.

Rune’s cell rang. She pulled it from her pocket, then blew
out a shaky breath. “Berserker,” she said. And though she tried to sound
normal, she knew her voice was cold.

“I need you to come back to the nest, Rune.”

She pressed her hand against the seeping stake wound. “Why?”

“The scepters are taking Cree’s wings and banishing her for
bringing you to the mountain. They’re still interrogating her, but so far she
refuses to say why she took you for COS.”

“All the fucking birds knew I was there, Strad. They knew
the twins were there.”

“The scepters didn’t know about you until you were already
there. They were discussing what to do about you when you escaped.”

“They ran when I escaped,” she said. “If they’re so fucking
bad, why’d they run away?”

“They went to a secondary nest. They didn’t want to lend a
hand to COS or fight you. They wanted to be gone in case human law enforcement
came up the mountain.” He sounded calm, patiently explaining the birds’
motives.

“And for hiding the twins?”

“I will make them pay for everything they were part of.” His
voice hardened. “They will get away with nothing. But you need to let me handle
it.”

She disagreed. Strad might think he needed to take the birds
out slowly and sneakily for fear they’d kill the crew, but Rune wasn’t that
patient. Or that forgiving.

And she wasn’t scared of the fucking birds.

She’d go to that mountain, and she was kicking scepter ass.

“I’m bringing the crew. I’ll need someone to have my back.”
Her voice dripped with angry sarcasm, but she didn’t care.

“Rune—”

She clicked off. “Let’s go, boys. We have to visit the
birds.”

“Lex?” Raze asked.

Rune hesitated, then nodded. “Call her and give her the
choice. If she wants to come, pick her up and meet us there. I’ll ride with
Jack.” She looked at Owen. “Ride with us?”

“Yes.”

Her hand shook as she pushed her cell back into her pocket.
Then, surrounded by her crew, she strode from the building.

She might not be able to annihilate COS just yet, but the
scepters were the next best thing.

With or without Strad Matheson, she and the crew would make
sure the birds paid for what they’d helped COS do to her and twins.

Jack and Owen talked all the way up the mountain, but Rune
stayed silent. She stared out her window and watched the scenery flash by.

Too many emotions vied for attention inside her mind, so she
shut them all out. Except for the anger. She let that stay.

Her stomach was in knots and she noticed suddenly that she
was chewing the inside of her mouth. She stopped.

She was acting like an old lady. A human one.

And she was a monster. “It’s all about attitude,” she
murmured.

“What, Rune?” Jack asked.

“Somewhere along the way, I lost myself.”

“Lost your humanity?”

“No. I think I lost part of my monster.”

Owen leaned closer to the front seat. “Then get him the fuck
back.”

She grinned. “Count on it, baby.”

When they pulled into the nest, there were two male birds
waiting for them. Jack stopped the truck and let down his window, and the birds
leaned down to look inside.

Rune’s body stiffened and she dug her nails into her thighs.

The two birds glanced into the backseat at Owen, peered at
Rune, then did a double take and backed away from the truck. “You’re to go two
miles down this road,” one of them told Jack. “Take the left at Ruined Oaks and
go a quarter mile. You’ll know when you’ve reached your destination.”

“Another truck will be coming this way,” Jack said. “Wait
for it.”

“All right.” Then he and his friend turned and melted back
into the trees lining the road.

“You okay?” Jack asked her, as he drove on.

“Yeah.” She wished people would stop asking her that
question.

The male had been right. They knew when they reached their
destination. Every bird in the nest was gathered in a clearing off the side of
the road.

The birds were noisy, and the atmosphere was similar to that
of a county fair. Lawn chairs and blankets dotted the ground, occupied by
laughing, chatting people. Birds.

“Freaks,” Jack growled.

The crew climbed from the truck and watched for a moment.
They were loaded down with weapons, and not one of them expected the encounter
to end well. Not for the birds, anyway.

“Look at that,” Owen said.

Rune shaded her eyes. “What the hell is it?”

A large platform stood around twelve feet off the ground. It
held a large, thick pole, from which thin bits of silver gleamed in the
sunlight.

“I don’t know,” Owen said.

“Here comes Strad.” Jack glanced at Rune but said nothing
more.

The berserker stopped when he was six feet from the truck.
He didn’t look at Jack or Owen. His stare was all for Rune.

“They’re waiting for you,” he told her.

“Why?”

“They want to redeem themselves by allowing you to take
Cree’s wings.” His eyes were dark but noncommittal, his voice without
inflection. His gaze did not waver from hers.

Yet she knew what it cost him.

“They think,” she said, “if they offer me Cree, I’ll let it
go.”

“Yes. That’s what they think.” Then he lowered his voice
further. “Today is not the day to take them on, Rune.”

He was afraid the birds would kill her. Her. A
monster.
But the berserker would never think of her that way. To him, she was always
going to be the woman he was afraid of losing. The woman he wanted to protect.

He needed her to feed his addiction.

She saw it in the slight tremor of his fingers when he
brushed the hilt of a blade, in the knot that bulged in his jaw when he
clenched his teeth. A thin sheen of sweat covered his face, and there was a
weary shine to his eyes.

“Take me to them,” she said.

She, Jack, and Owen followed the berserker as he walked them
through the midst of the abruptly silent birds.

She was shocked by the number of children present, and when
she finally stood before the row of seated scepters, she had one non-negotiable
request.

“Send the children away.”

The scepters sat on a carved, wooden bench, hands folded,
faces serene. Seven of them, all huge and somehow alien.

One of the women in the middle leaned forward a tiny bit.
“Don’t worry after our children, Rune Alexander. They are accustomed to brutal
sights.”

“Send them away.”

“Or what?” one of the male scepters asked. “You will decline
to rip the wings from one of our people?”

“I’d rather they didn’t get hurt.”

The female in the middle smiled. It wasn’t even close to
being a real smile. “They won’t.”

“They need to see the punishment of the traitor,” the male
said.

Rune snarled at him, shaking the berserker’s fingers from
her arm. “You’re all a bunch of traitorous fucks and life is about to get real
dangerous for your kind.” She bent forward until she was nose to nose with the
male. “So get those kids the fuck out of here.”

The birds behind her, spread across the grounds and ready
for a good show, didn’t wait for their scepters to make up their minds. Mothers
gathered up children and fled.

And that evened the odds just a little more.

The male stared up at her, his face pale. “We offer you Cree
Stark. After you’ve taken her wings we’ll exile her.”

One of the other scepters, an older but very large woman
with sharp features and a wide mouth, stood. “Do you know what banishment means
to our kind?” She didn’t wait for Rune to answer. “Of course you don’t. We
would rather face death than to lose our wings and be ostracized from our
group. Unless Cree eventually kills herself, which she will most likely do, her
life from this day forth will be an unimaginable horror.”

Rune crossed her arms. “Yet you seem to have no problem
sending her into that horror.”

The bird shrugged. “It’s our way.”

And finally she understood why the berserker was so careful.
Why Rice was so afraid. The birds were like automatons. They had no conscience.
No guilt, no apathy, no remorse.

Along with their talons, size, and ability to fly, they were
sociopathic monsters. They were dangerous.

The other scepters rose to stand behind the one who’d spoken.

“Bring her out,” the scepter said to Strad.

He hesitated. “Loraine. You shouldn’t be here.”

“Bring the traitor out,” the bird said. She didn’t shout,
didn’t change her facial expression. But her voice was steel. “You agreed.”

Strad blew out a hard breath and walked away.

Loraine gave Rune a curt nod. “Come with me.”

They walked to the platform, the other scepters and Rune’s
crew at their backs. Once they reached the strange wooden contraption, Loraine
pointed. “We’ve placed a ladder for you.”

Rune realized the platform was so all the birds could
witness the punished one’s torment.

“Climb up,” Loraine said. “She’s coming.”

Cree was shackled and dirty, her clothes bloody and torn.
She was flanked by the berserker and two female birds. Fin walked behind the
sad procession, his head down.

When they reached the stand, one of the birds shifted, sank
her claws into Cree’s flesh, and flew her to the platform.

“Loraine,” Fin begged. “Please reconsider.”

Loraine glowered at him. “If you wish, you may join her.”

But he wasn’t finished pleading Cree’s case. “Punish her,
but don’t take her wings. She’ll die out there without them.” He turned to
Rune, his long hair covering the ruined half of his face. “Please, please.
Punish her. Don’t take her wings.” He fell to the ground at Rune’s feet. “I beg
you.”

So maybe not all the birds were such coldhearted sons of
bitches. Maybe that was a requirement of being a scepter.

Another bird shifted and flew to the dais to help bind Cree.
When they were finished, Cree was attached to the post by her silver-wrapped
arms, ankles, and throat.

The two birds dropped to the ground, leaving Cree alone.

“When she shifts,” Loraine said, “the silver ropes will
tighten as she struggles. She’ll be unable to escape.”

“She can shift even though she’s covered with silver?” Jack
asked, his voice harsh. He didn’t look at Rune when she glanced at him.

Loraine smiled, and there was something dark and proud in
her eyes. “Not alone, but I can force the shift.”

Rune cleared her throat. “How?”

“All birds can force the shift of their offspring.”

“Cree is your
daughter?
”

But Loraine didn’t have to answer. Cree did it for her.

“Mother,” she screamed. “Mother, don’t.”

Loraine looked at Rune. “I’m going to force her shift now.
Go stand beside her and prepare to take your revenge. Then the debt will be
paid and you will leave us to our lives.”

And without another word, she turned, stared up at her
child, and began to rip Cree’s bird into existence.