Shiv Crew (4 page)

Jeremy, as usual, would blow a fuse.

She sighed and shoved her gun back
into its bed. “I know you did that on purpose, Berserker. And that just makes
you an asshole.”

She walked around him, because the
son of a bitch would have stood there all day. She had more important things to
deal with than Strad the Lackey.

She had to go find out whether she
could keep the twins, or if she’d have to kill them before the day was over.

Not a pleasant chore.

The front door was shut but not
locked, so she pushed it open and walked on in. If the twins arrived while she
and Raze were snooping it wouldn’t go well.

She unsnapped the strap on her
holster and thumbed off the safety on her gun. Just in case. “Raze?”

The apartment was neat and
uncluttered, and there were few signs of men as young as Levi and Denim living
there. No video games scattered on the floor, no pizza boxes on the coffee
table, no sixty-inch flat screen on the wall.

Just…quiet and all that neatness.
It made her nervous.

A wide, arched doorway on the other
side of the living room showed her the kitchen, which appeared empty. She put
her hand on her gun and inched her way toward an alcove she assumed led to the
bedrooms.

She stood in a short dark hall. A
white toilet and the corner of a pedestal sink were visible through the one open
door at the end of the hall. The other three doors were closed.

Flipping on the hall light switch
chased back the shadows enough for her to see that nothing hid in a corner or
clung to the ceiling. She’d had a spider the size of a potato fall on her head
once, and that experience had given her a slight phobia about dark ceilings.
And spiders.

“Raze?” Her voice was louder and
impatient, but shit, where the fuck was he?

Finally a door opened and he stuck
his head out. “In here. Hurry.”

Shit.
She strode into the
room without hesitation, but her heart was pounding hard enough to hurt.

Raze stepped aside. “I knew they
were keeping something from us. Look.”

The blood drained from her face.
“Fuck no, Raze. No way.”

He crossed his arms, his muscles
bunching. “Good thing I found her instead of Z.”

The bedroom held a dresser, a
rocking chair, and a bed. Tied to the bed was a small black girl, perhaps
twenty years old. Her hair was matted, and though the linens on the bed
appeared clean, they were as rumpled as the simple white dress she wore.

She had her face turned toward
them. She was very obviously blind. Her eyes were pure black, as though the
pupils had enlarged and completely covered the irises. Every few seconds they’d
shake crazily, darting back and forth with a speed nearly impossible to follow.

Then they’d stop, and the girl
would tilt her head, perhaps receiving information through her unusual eyes and
taking time to interpret it.

“Why didn’t you release her?” Rune
wasn’t sure why she whispered, but it seemed like she should.

Raze shook his head. “Every time
I’d get near her she’d…” He gestured helplessly. “Go on, see for yourself.”

“She’s lovely,” Rune said,
flinching in shame when she realized she was stalling.

He pointed to the bed. “Go on.”

Dammit.
She swallowed, then took
another step closer to the blind girl, her palms up as though the girl would
see and be calmed. “Hi, baby. We’re not going to hurt you. I just need to make
sure you’re okay.”

Before she’d taken two steps, the
girl in the bed began to…vibrate.

Rune stopped walking and glanced at
Raze, her mouth open. “What the hell?”

He shrugged. “Never seen anything
like it.”

“Did you go closer to see what
would happen?”

“Nope.”

“I guess I will, then.” When he
didn’t argue she took another step toward the girl, who began vibrating so hard
the entire bed shook. Two more steps and Rune was at her side.

The girl’s face was flushed, and
Rune reached out a hand to feel her forehead—the unthinking and natural check
for fever.

But before she lifted her hand, while
the thought was still in her head, the girl flinched away. She couldn’t see,
but somehow she’d known—even before Rune had moved—that Rune was going to touch
her.

Rune frowned, then noticed
something else. “She’s an Other.”

Raze stayed where he was but didn’t
sound surprised. “She’d pretty much have to be. I’ve never seen a human like
her.”

But that wasn’t why Rune realized
the girl was an Other. She’d seen some freaky humans in her lifetime and
sometimes it was difficult to differentiate. But the twins had bound her with
thin silver wire, which they’d threaded through the white strips of fabric to
either ease the sting or provide a padding if the girl struggled.

That was strange. Why would they
hold an Other and then make sure she didn’t hurt herself on the silver they
used to restrain her?

“We should call this in,” she said.

“What about the twins?”

The twins. Little bastards. She
should have known she couldn’t trust ex-COS. She swallowed her disappointment.
“I’ll call them first.”

Raze grunted in agreement, which
surprised her. She should have had the twins picked up, called the paramedics
for the girl, and washed her hands of all of them. But she didn’t.

The girl calmed before Rune pulled
her cell from her pocket. “What’s your name, honey?” She didn’t expect an
answer and was therefore shocked out of her skull when the girl answered.

“Lex.”

Raze stepped closer to the bed.
Rune would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so terrible. He was afraid
of the little slip of Other on the bed. She’d never seen Raze afraid of
anything.

Completely unintentionally, she
repeated the girl’s name at the exact moment Denim answered his phone.

She could feel his shock through
the cell.

“What did you say?” His voice was
just a murmur. A horrified, guilty murmur.

“We’re at your house, dude. Imagine
our surprise. What the
fuck
, Denim?”

“I…just…we’ll be there in five
minutes. Please, don’t call anyone. I’ll explain.”

“You come in slow, do you
understand?”

“Yes.”

She and Raze were waiting on either
side of the front door when the boys arrived. Both Denim and Levi had their
hands up, their movements slow and unthreatening. They stopped on the porch.

“Can we come in?” Levi asked.

“Yeah,” she called. “Keep your
hands where we can see them. Don’t move suddenly, don’t do anything stupid. You
may be special with blades but we will take off your heads before you can clear
your sheaths. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Come on then.”

They filed past her and Raze, their
anxiety levels so high she could taste it, like metal on the back of her tongue.

“Lex,” Denim said. “Is she okay?”

The girl called from the bedroom,
her voice high and thin. “Denim!”

He moved toward the bedroom, but
Rune and Raze immediately pushed their guns to his head.

“Don’t even think about it,” Rune
told him. “You boys better start explaining.”

“Rune, she’s afraid. Can we talk in
her bedroom?”

“No, dude. If this goes bad, I
don’t want you anywhere near the Other.”

He flinched. “She’s not…”

“Not an Other?”

“She’s an Other, but she’s not a
monster.”

“Why do you have her tied up in there?
Who is she?”

“Her name is Alexis Love. Her
mother is…” He gestured helplessly, afraid to say the words.

It took Rune a second. “Karin
Love’s
daughter
? No. That woman hated Others. She wasn’t going to fuck
one.”

Again, he flinched. “She was raped.
Gang raped. Lex was the result.”

Denim looked at her, his eyes full
of hatred—not for her in particular but maybe for the world in general. “Karin
hated Lex but decided to use her instead of kill her. She tortured the girl. Karin
blinded her when she was six to make her power stronger. It worked. Now she
sees the world better than we do.”

Rune shuddered, and her heart bled
just a little more. So much horror in the world. So much pain. “Why is she tied
up in there?”

“She’s…sick,” Levi said. “She has
spells of some sort. She gets ill and goes a little insane. When no one is here
to watch her she has to be restrained. When she’s out of her head she tends to
get hurt.”

“I’ve never heard of an Other and
human conceiving, let alone the offspring actually surviving.”

Levi nodded. “It’s rare.”

Rune lowered her gun. Not only did
she believe the boys, but her arm felt like it was going to fall off from
holding the gun up for so long. She nodded at Raze to do the same.

“Put your hands down,” she told
them. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

Denim curled his lip. “We are aware
of how much you hate the monsters, Rune. We couldn’t take the chance that you’d
let us go if we told you about our attachment to one of them.”

“But this is
good
,” Levi
said, his smile as bright as his brother’s frown was dark. He took Rune’s hands
in his.

Her body stiffened, and she fought
not to pull away. No need to overreact to a little hand-holding. “What is?”

He looked into her eyes, his own as
earnest and serious as she’d ever seen them. His fingers tightened around hers.
“Take her on. Let her into Shiv Crew. She needs it so much. Even more than
Denim and I did.”

She began shaking her head before
he’d finished speaking. “No, dude. I can’t have Others in the Crew.” She looked
at Raze for backup. He looked away.

“One chance,” Levi begged, refusing
to release her hands. “One chance. See what she can do, Rune. She’s had the
fucking worst life of anyone I’ve ever known. And that’s saying a lot. Please.
Please.
”

Damn, but it was hard to resist
him. “I can’t take on an Other, Levi. And not only is she an Other, but she’s
too damaged to work.”

“Just right now,” Denim said. “She
gets sick, but it doesn’t last over a few days. She’s getting better.”

Expose that little Other to
Jeremy?

“It isn’t possible. If RISC discovered
her—”

“Times are changing, Rune. Not all
the Others are monsters. Let her in. You can help change things for them.” It
was obvious Denim didn’t want to beg. He stared somewhere over her head as he
made a case for the little Other.

She hesitated. He sounded so much
like Ellis. But they didn’t understand. SCRU and RISC were created to keep the
monsters in line and to bring the lawbreakers in. They didn’t
hire
them.
And why would she want to change things for the fucking monsters, anyway?

“We’re the branch of law
enforcement that hunts the mo…the Others. We can’t have an Other working with
us. Besides, that’d be wrong. Would you really want her to be in on collecting
her own people?”

Denim’s laugh was harsh. “Her
people?
Her
people?”

Rune tensed and fingered her gun.

Levi squeezed his twin’s arm. “Denim.”
Just that one word and Denim blinked, forcing himself to quiet.

Levi took up the pleading. “Her
people
were an auditorium full of Others, captives of Karin’s just like Lex was.
Others she grew up with and considered family. Those Others in the world out
there doing crimes they have to answer for, those aren’t her people. No more
than the human shooting up a school full of children or men who rape women are yours.”

And every man in the house stared
her down. Including Raze.

Confused, she looked away from them
and tried to think. He was right. If she had any family, it was Shiv Crew. “But
that’s the way it is. Jeremy—”

“Shiv Crew is yours, Rune,” Raze
said, finally entering the conversation. “If you want to hire that little girl
in there, do it. If Cross gives you trouble…”

He didn’t have to finish his sentence.
The threat, the
promise
,
was there in his eyes. Funny how none of
her men liked Jeremy Cross.

Hire an Other? That she was even
considering it was outrageous. What was happening to her? One minute everything
was black-and-white and the next…it just wasn’t.

But if SLE discovered she’d added
an Other to her team, they would trump up a reason to fire Lex
and
Rune.
Others didn’t become teachers, doctors, or law enforcement. Not unless they
could hide what they were, like the shifters.

And me.

“I’ll think about it. Now shut the
fuck up before you piss me off.” She herded them all into the bedroom to free
Lexi Love.

Rune only had to watch them
together for about two seconds before all doubt was erased. Their devotion was
obvious. They moved in tandem, releasing her tenderly from the silver,
smoothing back her hair, murmuring words of comfort.

And the Other smiled like she’d
just been given back her sight.

Raze’s swallow was audible, and she
wondered if he had a lump in his throat anywhere near as big as hers.

“What can we do to help her?”

Levi glanced over his shoulder.
“Nothing helps. We’ve tried everything. We’ve had an Other doctor look at her,
and she could find no reason for the episodes and no way to stop them short of
shooting Lex full of drugs.”

“The drugs stopped helping?”

“We stopped using the drugs. They
made her a different person. They made her…still. And Lexi can’t be still and
be alive.”

“She’s had these spells all her
life?”

Levi hesitated. “No. They started
about five years ago.”

Rune frowned. Around the time COS
was shut down. “So she started when her—”

“Yeah,” Denim interrupted.

Rune could understand the boys not
wanting her to mention the hated mother in front of Lex. “What exactly can she
do?”

Denim and Levi looked at each
other, and some silent communication passed between them. It must have been a
twin thing.

“When she’s better,” Denim said,
“we’ll bring her in and show you.”

She shrugged. “Fair enough. Come
on, Raze, let’s grab some coffee and get back to work.”

Some days it seemed like she had
not one single moment free of drama, and this was one of those days. Before
she’d climbed into her car, her cell rang.

This time she looked at the display.