Shiv Crew (12 page)

Lex moaned and even though she’d
been expecting it, the sound sent shockwaves of pain through Rune’s entire
body. The moan was full of a darkness and horror that even Rune had trouble comprehending.

The twins were quick to kneel at
her side, taking her hands. “Lex, nothing will happen to you. We will protect
you,” Denim said.

“Always,” Levi added.

“Not just them,” Raze said. “But
Shiv Crew too. None of them are going to get close to you.”

Lex shaped her hands into claws and
raised them, batting senselessly at something none of them could see. “They’ll
get me,” she cried. “They’ll get me.”

Fuck you, Karin Love.
“Get
her out of here, boys.” Rune could barely draw a deep breath, more helpless
than she’d ever been in the face of the little Other’s torment.

Mitch put a fist to his mouth, his
eyes wide and horrified. “Jesus Christ.”

Rune glared at him. “If there is
more, Mitch, we can talk about it later.”

“Yes, yes.” He made a shooing
motion, eager for them to get Lex out of his office.

Quietly, with Lex’s haunted sobs
providing their exit music, they left the room.

Rune’s house was set back from the
street, had rooms large enough to support the hugeness of her friends, and the
big backyard was surrounded by a privacy fence.

The paint was peeling and faded,
its color a cross between an old lemon peel and a cyanotic toe. There were four
very tall, grim windows at the front, hiding inside the deep shadows of the
porch.

The screen door, a leftover from
another era, hung listlessly from one corner, swaying with precarious abandon
when a good breeze struck.

Neighbors had sworn they’d seen
pale, frightened faces in the high attic window and heard screams coming from
the ancient and rarely used basement. Perhaps they’d only caught sad echoes of
previous and long-dead inhabitants.

The house was hideous, but it was
hers.

The crew knew where she kept the
spare key, and when she arrived Jack and Z were already inside.

Denim was en route. Levi was
staying behind to care for an upset Lex. Ellis was going to swing by for the
rather impromptu meeting. He might not work the field or know how to wield a
blade, but he was as Shiv Crew as any of them.

 Rune couldn’t shake her worry over
Lex. She had a bad feeling, and her gut was right more times than it was wrong.

Z stood staring at the dust on her
bookshelf when she came in, his normally calm face dark, his eyes worried. She
wanted to wrap her arms around him and feel the warmth of his chest against her
cheek, but Rune wasn’t the hugging kind.

“You okay, Z?”

One of the men had spotted her MP3
player in its dock. It contained a diverse playlist since every single one of
the crew had added a song or ten to it. Right now it was in the middle of some
Metallica. Jack’s music.

“No. Not really.”

“You need to find someone to love.”

He stared down at her, serious. “I
have.”

She withdrew immediately. “Z—”

“Relax, sweet thing. We all love
you.” He grinned at her, but there was a spark of regret in his eyes.

“Don’t call me sweet thing.” She smiled,
then got away from the awkwardness by changing the subject. “I have a bad
feeling about…everything, I think. About every fucking thing.”

“Lex?”

“Definitely. And the Church of
Slayers. Who’s the new captain of that evil ship, I wonder?”

“Even from death row Karin can pull
some strings.”

“Yeah. She needs to die.”

“She’ll probably die of natural
causes before she’s executed,” Jack said from his place on the couch. “Slow
sons of bitches.”

She sat down on the couch beside
Jack. He leaned toward her, his big body dwarfing her furniture.

“Are you doing okay?” he asked her.

“Yes. Better than I’d expected.”

“You need to talk about your
father, I’m here.” He patted his shoulder. “I have a big one.”

She widened her eyes. “I’m happy
for you, but there’s no need to brag. You might give Z a complex.”

Z snorted. “Not likely. Mine’s as
big as his.”

She pursed her lips. “Are we still
talking about shoulders?”

Z frowned. “Were we ever?”

Jack laughed. “I was.”

She was almost sorry when the door
opened and Raze, followed by Ellis and Denim, walked in. Time to get serious.

“We need to talk,” she began.

Raze shut down the music. After a
doubtful look at the biggest chair in the room he leaned against the wall. She
really did need to get bigger furniture.

“First of all, we need to figure
out who is extorting money from the Others.”

“Preston,” Jack said. “At least we
have a name.”

“Yeah, the name is a clue, but it’s
not going to tell us much. What we need to do is find someone willing to talk.”

“Who?” asked Jack. “One of the
vampires?”

“Llodra. I meant to check out Club Kiss
tonight, but that didn’t work out.”

“I don’t think you’ll find him at
the club,” Denim said. “He’s not going to take a chance we’ll be waiting for
him.”

She nodded. “You’re probably right.
The club is a long shot with a kill order nailed to his forehead.”

“Amy will tell him,” Raze said.

“Maybe,” Jack said, “but she might
be too afraid of Llodra’s wrath when he finds out she talked to humans.”

“Worse, that she talked to law
enforcement,” Z added.

“I think I know someone who can
help us.” Rune hesitated. “Sherry.”

“Sherry the floater?” Jack’s look
of skepticism was totally warranted.

She gave them a condensed version
of Sherry’s unannounced visit. “The five thousand she asked for is what made me
think that she’s involved.”

Raze pushed away from the wall.
“I’ll go pick her up.”

Her crew was not the type to waste
time. She nodded. “Thanks. Be careful. She was messed up when she was here
demanding money.”

“Did she think you were just going
to hand over five thousand dollars for no reason?” Jack frowned. “Did that bald
freak threaten you?”

Rune shrugged. “She threatened to
spread the word about my father. And that I was a vampire as well.” She
laughed, hoping no one noticed the thread of uneasiness in her voice.

Ellis frowned, and Rune looked
away, unable to meet his stare.

“I’ll be back,” Raze said.

“Raze, take one of the guys with
you. I don’t want you facing that sneaky floater alone. She’s not going to want
to come.”

“I don’t—”

“Please. I’d feel better if you
did.”

He thought for a second and then
motioned to Denim. “Come on, kid.”

Denim looked surprised before
climbing to his feet and following Raze out the door.

“While we’re waiting for Sherry,”
Rune said, “you guys want to talk about COS, the Dark Others, or the fact that
Percell wants to dress us up and trot us out to the public?”

“You know,” Ellis said, nibbling a cracker
he’d found in Rune’s woefully bare cupboard, “that idea does not suck.”

They all just looked at him.

“I’m
serious
,” he went on.
“It could be good for Shiv Crew and good for River County. The world needs
heroes. It needs superheroes.
You
guys.” He shrugged. “These days the
people seem either ready to fight or to cry. They hide, they’re suspicious and
afraid, and there is so much hate…” He trailed off for a second and then picked
up the dropped thread of his thought. “We could change everything. We could
change how we see the Others and how the Others see us.”

Ellis, the eternal optimist. He would
never give up trying.

“If anyone could do that, Ellis,
you could,” Rune said.

He leaned toward her and squeezed
her hand. “No dearest, no one cares what I have to say. I mean, I know you guys
do,” he corrected hastily, before they all jumped on his words, “but the
county, Spiritgrove, they wouldn’t care. You guys are bigger than life. They’d
want to know you.”

“Ellie—”

“Rune, you all need to give Mitch’s
idea a chance. It can’t hurt, but it could certainly help.”

Dammit, Ellie.
She never
could deny him anything. She sighed, and her men knew what she was going to say
before she said it. Maybe Lex was rubbing off on them.

“She’s going to say yes,” Z said,
and laughed. “Movie stars!” He bumped his fist against Jack’s.

“Fucking movie stars,” she agreed.

“Raze is not going to be agreeable
to this notion,” Jack said, smiling.

“No,” Rune said. “No, he is not.”

She lapsed into thought, dreading
Sherry, but looking forward to the light she might shed on the mysterious
Preston. She was pretty sure her men would ignore Sherry’s accusations about
her being an Other now that she’d diluted the allegation.

But she was uneasy.

Raze and Denim were back in forty-five
minutes, an irate and cuffed Sherry between them. Denim’s glare was almost as
strong as Raze’s. Rune knew from experience Sherry could make a person crazy.

Raze strong-armed the floater
toward the one big armchair. When she struggled to rise he pushed her down and
held her there with a hand on her smooth head. “Sit.” He pointed at her with
his free hand. “Stay.”

“I’m not a dog, you fucking ogre.”
Sherry hadn’t lost her feisty attitude. Nor, apparently, her anger. She spotted
Rune and her lip curled in contempt. “Well, hello, Alexander. I see you’ve
recovered nicely.”

Shit.
Rune hastened to shut
her up. “We need to ask you some questions, Sherry.”

“Questions about what? About the
fangs you grew when I staked your vampire mother? About who beat the shit out
of you? About—”

“About,” Rune interrupted, ignoring
the thoughtful looks her men were giving her, “a man named Preston.”

The change in Sherry was immediate
and dramatic. She gasped, her mouth opening and closing like a suffocating fish.
Her face paled, contrasting sharply with the weathered skin of her head.

“That answers our question about
whether or not she knows him,” Z said.

Sherry put a hand to her chest.
“Shut up.” But her voice had lost its anger and now held only fear.

Yes, Sherry knew.

Getting her to share her
information might be a problem, though.

“Sherry.” Rune sat on the edge of
the coffee table near the floater and leaned forward. “Why don’t you tell us
about the man who is fucking with the Others?”

“Take off the cuffs,” Sherry
demanded, but her eyes were resigned.

Rune nodded for Raze to release the
floater. “Now talk.”

“You’re all evil,” Sherry said.
“But I guess Shiv Crew is the lesser one.” She stared over Rune’s head,
refusing to meet her eyes. “The fucking wolves made my sister six years ago. No
one knows.” She glared around at each of them. “And no one better find out, or
I’m going to come after you fucks.”

“We all have our secrets,” Jack
said. “No one here will tell yours.”

She ignored him. “A man known as
Preston is taking money from the Others and hurting them if they can’t get the
cash to him. Piece of shit.”

“Is it true that Preston is setting
up the vampires because Llodra won’t pay him?”

Sherry shrugged. “I’d imagine so.
He’s going to make sure the groups understand what’ll happen if they disobey
him, but more than that, he’s a man who wants to rid the world of Others.”
Finally, she looked at Rune. “I heard something else.”

Rune held her breath, knowing it
was going to be something she so didn’t want to hear. “What?”

“I heard he’s using the money to
fund the Church of Slayers—to help do such nice things as hire mercenaries to
annihilate the Others.” In their shocked silence she continued. “It may not be
true. Maybe he just found an easy way to make a ton of cash.”

Jack slapped his leg. “We have to
find this motherfucker.”

Rune nodded, slowly. “He’s making
the Others pay for their own future executions.”

Denim walked into the kitchen, and
she let him go. She could understand his need to be alone to gather himself.

Z wasn’t convinced. “Why would he
spend all that money to get rid of Others in the county? More will come.” He
looked at Rune. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Why did COS and Karin Love attempt
the very same thing?” Rune shrugged, glad Denim had walked away. “They want a
world without Others.”

Fucking COS. Fucking Karin Love.

“I personally know of two people
who send Karin Love fan mail,” Sherry said. “A lot of people are into that
whole human-supremacy thing. Not that I give a fuck. There’s only one Other I
care about.”

She looked at her crew. “We have to
find and stop Preston.”

“And we have to stop the purges.
The vampires are innocent,” Z said.

“Innocent,” Sherry said, snorting.
“That’s almost funny.”

Z stood, glancing at an old Darth
Vader clock on the bookshelf. “You’re going to have to go to Mitch, Rune. And
Cross.”

“He’ll just order me to stay the
hell out of it and to go on killing vampires. He won’t believe me without
names, and—”

Sherry tensed immediately. “You
swore
not to give my sister or me up.”

“Calm down. I’m not giving him any
names.”

“Talk to the wolves’ alpha,” Sherry
said. “Just don’t tell him you spoke to me. I don’t want that scary fuck on my
sister’s ass.”

Rune nodded. “I’ll talk to him. If
he’ll trust us, we can end this. Get all the Others to stand together—”

“Ha.” Sherry ran a hand over her
bare scalp. “That’ll never happen.”

“Something has to happen.” Rune
sighed, then stood and stretched out her back. “I just realized that my
feelings toward the Others are not as black-and-white as I’d imagined.”

Ellis grinned. “We always realized
it.”

She gave him a mock glare. “Sherry,
you could pass the word to your sister that you overheard us talking about
visiting her alpha. Beldane needs to know we’re coming. I don’t want to freak
him out when we show up at his door.”

Sherry looked surprised that Rune
might care about freaking out the pack leader. “Yeah. I’ll pass it along. But
Marc isn’t going to freak. More likely he’ll try to take your head off. Go in
prepared for some attitude. And take backup.”

“I always do. But if he’s so bad,
why don’t you get your sister away from him?”

Sherry clenched her fists. “You
don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I have problems you can’t
imagine, so don’t judge me, bitch.”

In spite of herself, Rune was just
a little ashamed. “Raze, take her home. Thanks for your help,” she added to
Sherry.

Sherry studied Rune for a long
moment. “You know, Alexander, I’ve seen you like this before, all nice and
shit. But in a few weeks you’ll be back to your rude, world-hating self. What
gets into you?”

Rune refused to meet Ellis’s stare.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jack shrugged. “She’s not wrong.”