Strange Trouble (21 page)

Rune and the crew cut through the zombies in a way the
bullets couldn’t. They mowed them down, stepped on their decapitated bodies,
fought and hacked and sliced and didn’t quit until they stood unchallenged on
dark hill of dust and bones.

But she knew it was a temporary victory.

The zombies had been awakened, and there were worlds of dead
beneath the ground. Death, jealous and hungry, was coming to claim the living,
and who could be sure death wouldn’t win?

In the end, death always won.

“But this is not the end,” she muttered. Not yet.

The older cop she’d spoken with earlier picked his way over
the carnage until he stood beside her. His eyes gleamed with admiration. “You
people sure are something to watch.
Especially you,
Alexander.
I’ve never seen anything move that fast.”

“Any
one,
” Jack correctly, gently.

Red climbed the man’s face. “Well sure, of course. That’s
what I meant.” But he didn’t look at Rune. “Some are saying that little girl is
responsible. That’s why River County is the only place with the new zombies.”
He looked at her then. “You believe that?”

“No,” she answered. “I don’t.”

He shrugged. “I hope not.
For her sake.”

“What are you going to do?” Owen asked, as they walked back
to their cars.

She was silent until they reached the vehicles, then she
leaned against her car and stared at all of them. “I have to talk to Llodra.”

The berserker, his big arms splattered with bits of the
zombies, watched her. “Why?”

“I need to find out what he knows. What if I’m the one
making the new zombies because I drank the witch’s blood? Am I calling them? I
need to find out how to stop. And I don’t have a clue.”

“Why would he
know?”

“It’s just a thought. I don’t know who else to ask.” Llodra
had told her she could release the dead once she held them. Llodra always knew
more than he should have.

He fucking owed her that much. But the chances of finding
him to ask were slim. Llodra held the threat of Ellis over her head, sure, but
he wasn’t going to take a chance that she or the crew might change their minds.

She was his daughter, and they would always be connected.
She could call him, but he wouldn’t answer.

She climbed into her car and pulled her cell from the glove
box. As she was punching in Raze’s number, Owen started to walk around the hood
to get in the car with her.

“No,” Strad said. “You’ll ride with me. It’s time for that
talk.”

Rune hesitated. “Berserker—”

“We’ll meet you at the twins’ house,” Strad said, and turned
to stride toward his truck.

“Strad.”

He stopped, but didn’t turn back to face her. “What, Rune?”

“He’s one of us. Just remember that. He’s Shiv Crew.”

Owen tossed her a smile. “I really can take care of myself.”
And he joined the berserker.

She sighed and lifted her phone to her ear as Jack climbed
in beside her. He’d ridden over with Strad, but the berserker wasn’t going to
want company when he had his talk with Owen.

“Raze,” she said, and started her car. “Tell me.”

“They picked up the twins,” he said. His voice was careful.
“They picked them up and drove half a mile out of town before they spotted me.”

“And?”
She didn’t like the way he
was speaking, like he was hurting and each word he spoke made it worse.

“I had to let them go. One of them called me from Denim’s
cell. He told me to back the fuck off.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “What aren’t you telling
me?”

She heard a click as he swallowed. “I heard one of the boys
screaming,” he whispered. “And I backed the fuck off.”

It shouldn’t have been a shock, but it was. She began
sobbing, and dimly realized Jack was pulling her from the car. He carried her
to the passenger side, tucked her in, and climbed under the wheel. “Fucking
motherfuckers,” he muttered.
“Fucking motherfuckers.”

He hadn’t heard Raze’s words, but he knew. Just as they all
did.

“I’m lost,” she said. Then, “Take me to Wormwood.”

He didn’t question her, just turned them in the direction of
the big graveyard.

She had him make one stop so she could run inside a minimart
and pick up half a dozen Baby Ruth candy bars.

Surprisingly, no zombies were rising from the many, many
graves at Wormwood. She was
thankful,
because she
wasn’t sure she could have battled them. She was too…
dark.

Too fucking sad.

“Wormwood is protected, Your Highness.” Gunnar told her. “Those
buried here will stay buried.”

His eyes lit up when she handed him all six candy bars, and
she felt a slight easing to her depression. “I need to find Llodra,” she said.

He frowned. “Might I ask why?” He held a bar of candy to his
nose and inhaled gently.

“I think I’m creating the new zombies. I think I’ve awakened
them somehow, and I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to make them…” she
gestured, frustrated. “I don’t know how to make them go back to sleep.”

He tilted his head, the look in his eyes soft. “It is not
you, Rune. It is the mad master. Surely you knew this?”

“Llodra?”
But then suddenly she did
know. “Oh, fuck me.
Fuck
me.”

Jack leaned toward her. “What? How is Llodra waking them?”

“He took the power of Damascus from me. He’s calling them on
purpose.” She laughed and shoved her knuckles against her mouth, cutting her
lips as she smashed them against her teeth. “He’s calling them with the witch’s
power.
With my power.
He wants a zombie apocalypse,
and why wouldn’t he?”

Jack nodded. “That makes sense. Now we just have to hunt the
fucker down, kill him, and this will be over.” He nodded at Gunnar. “Thanks,
dude. Come on, Rune.”

But she shook her head. “We can’t. We can’t hunt him.”

He adjusted his eye patch.
“Why the fuck
not?”

She blew out a tired breath. “You know why. The same reason
we let him go to begin with. Because he’ll turn Ellis if he even suspects a
threat.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jack said, shrugging off her concern.

“It doesn’t matter if Llodra turns Ellie, Jack?
Really?”

“It doesn’t matter that Llodra has the power to call one of
his vampires to deliver the last bite. We’ll put Ellis somewhere safe,
somewhere silver, at night.
Just until Llodra is dead.”

He started to stride away,
then
turned back. “We know what we’re up against now, Rune, and we’ll handle it. We
can’t let the evil win just because it holds shit over our heads. You’re just…”
He ran his hand through his hair, his entire body stiff. “You’re afraid. But
you’ll fight past the fear, and we’ll hunt the fucker down.”

He walked to her, leaned down, and put his forehead against
hers. “We will win, sweetheart. We will win for one simple reason.”

“Why?” She grabbed with both hands on to his hope.
His belief.
“What reason?”

“Because we can’t let
them
win.”

But she wasn’t convinced.
“No matter what?
No matter that Lex, the twins, and Ellie might be casualties of this war?”

He straightened and stared down at her, his eye glittering.
“No matter that we
all
might be. This is what we do.”

He was right. People would die. People they loved.

But they would keep fighting.

Gunnar backed away with his candy. “You’ll fight the evil no
matter the cost to you, because it’s what you were born to do.”

She got it.

Everything she’d realized while fighting the zombies,
looking at Owen…she got it. It solidified in her mind, and at last, she got it.

She looked at Jack, and parted her split lips in a smile.
“Then let’s get to it. It’s time to make things right.”

Past time.

“This room is safe,” she told Ellis.

“Oh,” he
whispered,
his hand over
his heart. “I can’t—”

“Only for a little while.
I won’t
leave him alive, baby.”

“You won’t be able to find him,” Ellis said. “And I’ll have
to live in fear for the rest of my life.”

“This will not last forever.”

“Even if you get him, there are vampires everywhere. I might
get bitten. Someday, I might get bitten.”

She put her fingers over his lips. “Someday you could wreck
your car or have a stroke.”

They stared at each other, and finally, the calm sureness in
her face must have soothed him. He nodded, catching her fingers with his as she
moved them from his lips. “Something is different.”

She smiled. “I am different.”

“Why?”

“Because there is less doubt.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

She kissed his cheek,
then
nodded
toward the door to the silver-laced holding room. In the last few hours she’d
had it rigged so no one could use the keypad to get inside. Ellis could come
out once it was daylight and she didn’t have to worry that Llodra’s vampires
might force a RISC employee to drag Ellis out.

She’d told Rice what she needed and why, and he’d had the
room stocked with a cot, water, and a TV, among other things.

“If you need me,” she said, “if you just need to hear my
voice, you call me.”

“And if…”

She nodded. “
When
I have the twins and Lex, I’ll let
you know.”

“I’ll be out as soon as it’s dawn,” he told her.

“And unless I call to tell you Llodra is dead, you get into
this room at least half an hour before dark. Promise me.” She ushered him into
the room.

Somehow, somewhere, Llodra would know she was coming for
him. He’d feel it. They were connected.

And he’d come sneaking in.

Ellie must be kept safe. No matter how long it took, she
wasn’t letting Llodra get to her boy.

She’d called Strad three hours earlier, as soon as she and
Jack had left the graveyard, and told him to get a couple hours of sleep. He
was going to need them. She told him to pass the request on to Owen, and hadn’t
even thought to ask how their talk had gone.

He hadn’t offered the information.

It hadn’t really mattered.

She needed to feed. That was what mattered.

In her car, she headed to Strad’s apartment, ridding herself
of silver blades as she drove. Five minutes from his place, she called his
cell.

He answered immediately, his voice as clear as if he hadn’t
been asleep.
“Yeah?”

“Open your door for me.”

He clicked off.

She pulled into his driveway and jumped out of the car. She
slammed her door shut and when she turned around he was there, barefoot and
shirtless in the cold predawn, his hair flowing messily over his massive
shoulders.

They stared at each other across the few feet separating
them, and her hunger, her need for not only his blood but for
him
, rose
up and took over.

“Don’t put a claim on me,” she said. “That will only get you
hurt.”

“Shut up, Rune,” he said, softly, tenderly, and in the next
second, he lifted her into his arms and carried her into his house.

Just like a fucking caveman.

She lay against the solid smoothness of his chest, her
fingers entwined in his long hair, staring up into his carved, wild face.

He let her down once they reached his bedroom, but pulled
her against his body and held her, for five long minutes, without saying a
word.
Without moving.

Letting the hunger build.

Finally, she lifted her hands to his back and held him to
her. She ran her tongue over his chest, her body tightening when he shivered.

“Strad,” she murmured.
“Just for a
minute.”

But it would be longer than that.

The world outside didn’t exist right then, didn’t exist as they
took time to refuel, recharge.

She pushed his jeans over his hips, impatient to feel him,
all of him, against her.

He stood quietly as she slid her hands over his taut
stomach, and lower.

She wrapped her fingers around his hardness, closing her
eyes at his indrawn breath. Then she stepped back, leaned over, and took him
into her mouth.

He tasted like life.

She pulled that life into herself eagerly, and felt his
fingers in her short hair as she sucked him.

His fingers tightened against her scalp when she moaned,
tightened hard enough to hurt. That was all it took—she lost her patience.

He was ready for her. He caught her when she tore her mouth
from his cock and jumped into his arms, ready when she dropped her fangs and
drove them into his throat.

She sucked in his blood a different way than she’d sucked
his dick—that she’d done with deep, slow strokes, enjoying the moment, savoring
the feeling.

His blood she took with eagerness and overpowering hunger.

To him there might have been little difference.

He lowered her to the bed while she clung to him, her fangs
buried in the side of his neck, and with hurried desperation, he managed to
push her pants to her ankles.

Neither one of them cared that it was rough and barbaric,
that the coupling was an animalistic, rushed act. He squeezed himself inside
her, fucked her as she fed, and that was all they needed.

For a while.

Llodra could have been anywhere, but she believed he’d gone
to regroup in the destroyed, human-free Rock County.

She knew him. She
felt
him. And Rock County would
have been a perfect place for the vampires to start over, if not for one thing.

Rune.

Finding an empty city would have taken time. Even traveling
through strange cities to find one that would accommodate him would have been
risky. Nicolas Llodra was strong, but there were other masters as strong—even
stronger—than he was.

With Rune’s promise not to hunt him, he might have settled
into the newly emptied city. It was, after all, closest to the curtain behind
which his maker had disappeared, and if she came again, he’d be ready for her.
He had her magic, her power, inside him.

At least, that’s what Rune believed.

It would take everything she had to fight COS and rescue Lex
and the twins. She couldn’t have Llodra hanging over her head. She couldn’t
worry about Ellis while she fought the church.

“One day,” she told what was left of her crew. “Let’s find
him in one day, because that’s all the time we can spare. Then we’ll take on
COS.”

Was it the right thing to do?

It felt right to her and the crew didn’t argue, so that was
the plan.

And she was not going to second guess herself.

She called Ellis. “If I don’t contact you with news of
Llodra’s death by dusk, don’t delay. Get back into the room.”

“I will.” He was subdued, but that wasn’t surprising. The
man he loved was in the hands of a sadistic enemy. He was forced to hide from
the dark to be sure the mad master wouldn’t take revenge and turn him.

He was going through shit. Being subdued was understandable.

It didn’t stop her from trying to coax him out of it,
though. “It’ll be okay, Ellie. We’ll find Llodra, and we’ll find Levi.”

“Just please don’t die on me, Rune,” he said. “Don’t leave
me here alone.”

“Oh, baby. No. I would never.”

“Promise me,” he said, insistently. “Give me your word right
now. It’ll mean more if you ever…when you’re in the dark place and want to go.”

“I swear. I will never leave you. God, Ellie.
Especially not on purpose.”
She was a little ashamed she had
the balls for such a boldfaced lie.
Because she
had
wanted to die.
Had wanted it badly.

“You mean it until you’re
there,
” he murmured. Then
he hung up.

And there’d been absolutely no belief in his voice.

She sighed and looked at her crew. “Ready?”

They all nodded, except for Owen. His gaze lingered on the
scratch that marred the berserker’s face, and on the puncture marks revealed
when Strad clubbed his hair back in a careless ponytail.

The berserker didn’t care that the marks were visible.

“Then let’s go. We need to find him today.”

“If he’s in Rock County,” Raze said, “we’ll find him.” Raze
wanted to find Llodra as badly and as quickly as Rune did. Little else was as
important to him as saving Lex.

But of them all, Ellis was the innocent. He was the one
who’d been forced into a dark, silver wrapped cave while his tormentor walked
free.

Without the crew killing Llodra, he hadn’t a chance. Lex and
the twins, they had a chance.

She opened her car door, but as she started to climb in, her
cell rang. “This is Rune.”

“I’m a friend of Gunnar’s,” a soft voice said. “He said to
tell you it is of the utmost importance that you come to see him immediately.”

“Tell him I’ll see him as soon as I get a free minute. I
can’t right now.”

Before she could hang up, Gunnar’s friend spoke again. And
this time, she sounded furtive.
Afraid.
“He said to
tell you he knows where the mad master is, and that you are to come to him.
Now.”
Then there was only silence.

“Shit,” Rune said. “Gunnar says he knows where Llodra is.
Let’s head to Wormwood and check it out.” Gunnar had never let her down before.

She pressed a hand to her stomach,
then
got into her car.
Please. Please.

Still, a sinister voice inside her mind asked quietly,
“Can
you kill him? Can you kill your own father?”

“Shut up,” she muttered, and drove too fast through town.
There were no zombies, at least not that she could see, but she could feel
them. They were there, somewhere.

People who were out dashed from cars into
buildings as fast as they could, throwing fearful glances over their shoulders
as they went.

River County was not safe for the humans.

It wasn’t safe for the
Others
,
either.

“Not yet,” she whispered. But it would be, once she killed
Llodra and ran COS the fuck out of town.

And she would do both those things. She would.

But just in case she faltered…

“Make sure he’s dead,” she told the crew, once they gathered
at the gates of Wormwood. “If I can’t end the bastard, one of you
do
it.
No matter what I say.”

Strad frowned. “He slaughtered RISC and threatened Ellis. We
will
end him. Why would you say otherwise?”

Because he’s my father.

When he’d given her the excuse not to kill him, when he’d
blatantly forced her to make the choice between his death and Ellie’s life,
hadn’t there been a spark of relief? If she was being honest,
hadn’t
there?

She shook her head and looked away. “I don’t know.”

But no one believed her. They understood she was keeping
something from them. None of them would have guessed what that secret was,
though. Hell, they might not have believed her had she told them.

Uncomfortable beneath Owen’s considering regard, she pushed
through the gates of the graveyard, behind which Gunnar the Ghoul waited.

“
Your
Horror,” he said, bowing
slightly.

“The mad master,” she said, fingers lightly touching her
shivs. “Where is he?”

He motioned her closer. “He is here. I discovered he cannot
leave Wormwood once he stole his maker’s power from you.”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“Yes,” he said, nodding solemnly. “The master did not
foresee every possibility.” He leaned over her, his fuzzy hair drifting in a
wind she couldn’t feel. “He cannot be permitted to take over Wormwood. We wish
him out.”

“And we wish to
take
him out,” she said. He was
there.
Right there.

“Then make haste,” he said, and pointed to his left. “The
vampires are sleeping in the ground behind the old caretaker’s cottage.”

“In the ground?
How can we find—”

“I have placed a marker. The master lies with the black
blade at his head. Find his heart with it.”

She shivered, remembering the black blade he’d staked her
with. Gunnar had found that same knife. The daughter would now return the favor
and stake the father.

She hoped.

“Take us there.”

But he stepped farther back, shaking his head. “I cannot.”

“Why can’t you?” She frowned. Gunnar wasn’t one to shrink
from danger. He’d fought Llodra to protect her.

“When he is dead, the power might release. I do not want it
to find a home inside me.”

“Gunnar, you offered to take it when I held it.”

“For you,
Your
Loveliness. For you,
I would absorb the power.”

That was too fucking sweet. She pursed her lips, unsure of
what to say. Finally, she nodded. “Stay away, then, baby.”

And with the crew at her side, she ran toward the cottage,
where the mad master, the vampire, the father, lay sleeping.

The time of Nicolas Llodra would soon be over.