Killing Land (Rune Alexander Book 8) (16 page)

“We’re here,” Luciana said. “The caves are up there.”

Rune nodded and stared up with the others at the looming,
black cave mouth set high into the hillside ahead. “Take Jill back to camp.
We’ll take it from here.”

“Will do.”

“There are two more men coming,” Rune told Luciana and Jill.
“They’re mine. Send them this way when they arrive.”

“I’ll watch for them,” Jill said. “Be careful, Rune.”

“Let’s go,” Luciana said.

“You’re a fighter.” Roma frowned at Luciana. “Why aren’t you
coming with us?”

Luciana grinned, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I
fight men, not monsters. And I really don’t want to die today.”

She began to walk away, then turned back, strangely
hesitant. “You’re going to be up against more than a monster. Be ready. See you
later, Shiv Crew.”

But to Rune’s ears, it sounded like the girl was giving them
a final goodbye.

“We can’t split up.” Rune stood, hands on hips, trying to
decide which way to go. There were many rooms, and they split off like dozens
of cells in a honeycomb.

The cave was made up of twisting passages, nooks, hidden
crannies.
Holes too small for them to fit through, but who
knew
what the monster could squeeze through?

“It could take weeks to find him if he’s hiding out in
here,” Jack said. “There’s not even a fucking trail to follow.”

The cave appeared to go endlessly through the earth, dark
and echoing and damp.

And something else.

“He’s here,” Rune said.

“Rune.”
Jack stiffened. “You’re
sure?”

He didn’t ask her how she knew. All the crew understood that
Rune felt things. It was who she was.

She nodded.
“Somewhere.
But there’s
something else here with him.”

Roma took a step closer.
“The thing that
came off the path?”

Obviously that little nugget of information hadn’t been on
only Rune’s mind.

“Will could have been lying about that,” Rune told her. “But
something is here.” Her insides trembled, and she wished for a second that she
was somewhere cozy, bright, and warm.
“Maybe the fucking
gargoyles.”

“
You’re
scared?” Roma drew closer still, her eyes a
little too wide.

“I’m cautious. We need to be ready for anything.”

The insidious cold dampness of the cave seeped into her
bones as the mean darkness seeped into her brain.

“We’re ready,” Roma said.

But Rune and Jack continued to look at each other, passing
unspoken messages the girl would not yet be able to interpret.

Their years together and the things they’d faced had given
them a unique ability to communicate and they didn’t question it. It just was.

And they both knew they were walking into something neither
one of them wanted to face. And they didn’t want Roma there when they did.

Yes, she had a killer slingshot, but she was so new and so
earnest and Rune would crumble if the girl…

If she died.

Both of them also knew she wouldn’t leave Rune’s side.

“Stay close to me, Roma,” she said.

“Don’t worry about that, Princess. I’m right here.” She gave
Jack a nod. “Between the two of us, no one will get to you.”

Rune sighed. “Roma, do you understand what I am?”

“I understand you think you’re invincible. You’re not.”

Rune opened her mouth, torn between exasperation and
amusement, but Roma wasn’t done.

“You think—despite the many times you’ve been hurt and taken
and…and
hurt
—that you’re always going to be okay.

“And maybe you will be. But I’ll do my very best to make
sure you’re not hurt. If I can keep you from more pain, then I’m doing my job.”
She straightened and lifted her chin. “I will keep you alive. I will keep you
out of enemy hands. I will protect you with my life. That is my purpose and I
am grateful to have it. You gave me my life back, Rune. Now it belongs to you.”

Rune and Jack remained silent for so long that Roma spoke
again, maybe to fill the silence, maybe just to share a little bit of herself
with them.

“Wasn’t long ago that I had no purpose. No real reason to
want to keep living. You gave me a reason.” She darted a glance at Rune, then
Jack, then the floor. “You kept me alive, and you continue to do so. So don’t
think of trying to protect me, and don’t worry that I can’t handle myself.” She
gripped her slingshot tightly and suddenly there was something dark in her eyes.
“I’ve
got
this.”

When Jack and Rune exchanged looks again, their faces held
new respect for the slingshot girl.

At last, Rune started walking and didn’t try to stop and
figure out which way to go. She let her gut lead her. She no longer hesitated,
just took a path or a passage or a turn, and knew it would be the right one.
Eventually, they’d get to where they needed to be.

The farther they went, the deeper the darkness, the
dampness, and the oily feeling of danger. The coldness became something alive,
assaulting them with icy blades as cold and sharp as icicles.

“It’s like we’re somewhere else,” Roma said, her teeth
clacking. “Do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” Rune answered. “I do.”

Jack said nothing.

Rune began to worry the coldness might be too much for them
but somehow, they kept walking.

And none of them believed they’d ever be warm again.

“Might have to thaw out before we can fight,” Jack grumbled.
“I can barely walk I’m so stiff.”

“Oh, my,” Roma murmured.

Rune laughed. And for whatever reason, the air seemed to
grow a little warmer.

“Jack,” Rune said.
“The call that kept you
from meeting me at Simon’s house.
Tell me.”

He was silent for so long she thought he wasn’t going to
answer. But finally, his voice low and angry, he did. “He said he had
Elizabeth.”

“Shit.” Rune clenched her fists, furious. Not at him, but
for him. He’d taken Elizabeth’s death hard. “Jack. Elizabeth is—”

“I
know,
Rune. I know.”

“We have to be more careful.”

He didn’t answer.

“It’s coming,” she said, needing him to understand. “
They’re
coming. We can’t be such easy targets again.”

“We won’t be,” he said, finally.

If they caught her off guard again, and decided to keep her
suspended in the water, in the dark, in the silence…

She shuddered.

No. It couldn’t happen.

She couldn’t let it.

They left the small, claustrophobic passageway and into a
larger, lighter area.

“Rune,” Jack said, and she sobered immediately.

“I see it,” she whispered, and as one, they clicked off
their lights.

The next minute they stepped into the monster’s den.

Rune hoped with everything inside her that it wasn’t too
late. That the thing against the opposite wall hadn’t seen, heard, or felt
their arrival.

A gray evening light poured through an opening in the
ceiling, illuminating slightly the grisly room, the bone and skull covered
floor, and the beast standing with his back to them.

The echoing
plop, plop
of water was all she heard at
first, and then other, more subtle sounds drifted to her ears from the deep
darkness of other rooms further into the cave.

Dread, as insidious as the bone chilling cold, began to
build like a house of ice blocks in her stomach, rising quickly to her chest.

She moaned, but only in her mind.

She released a hitching breath and concentrated on the
broken sound and cold feel of it—if she hadn’t forced her thoughts on one
single unimportant thing, she might have run screaming from the caves.

She didn’t know why she was so afraid. What or who she was
so afraid for. Not her.

All she knew was at that
moment,
she was as terrified as she’d ever been.

Jack slowly turned his shadowed face toward her, a question
in his eyes.

Get a fucking grip, Rune
.

Shhhh…

“Fuck you.” The softly spoken words floated from her lips,
barely there.

Crawlers didn’t exist in that world, and she wasn’t about to
let the memory of them turn her into a shrinking, hesitant,
scared
woman.

No fucking way.

She was Rune Alexander. What the hell was there to be afraid
of?

The cannibal should fear
her.

She forced herself to stand unmoving and silent and scan the
room.

The floor was carpeted by messy nests of hair and small
bones, their ends dully discolored by smeared blood, as though he’d sucked them
as clean as he could get them before he’d thrown them to the floor.

And only after she’d examined the floor, the
ceiling—entrance and exit for the gargoyles and their hideous charge—did she
finally
allow
herself to acknowledge the monster.

And even worse, the monster’s scent.

He was a gray-green and black mountain of stone and blood,
his body
bare
in places and covered in others by
horrific, matted fur.

He unfurled enormous, tattered wings, and as he shook them
out, large drops of green scum sloughed off and plopped upon the ground of
bones, bursting open when they hit.

The scent was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. She
was thankful then for the cold. It would have been infinitely worse in the
summer heat. They would have been unable to bear it.

She pushed a fist against the bile rising in her throat.

He smelled like vomit wrapped in shit and covered with
rotting animal remains, set to simmer in a pot of spoiled food, and then served
with a side of raw, rotten potatoes.

It was
bad
.

The smell alone would have been the gargoyle’s defense
against enemies, but he wouldn’t have needed the help.

He was a solid boulder of muscle and bulk and height.

“Fuck me,” she whispered.

Who could kill a stone?

Who could slice into the side of a mountain and make it
bleed?

The gargoyle opened its mouth and…spoke, or something close
to it. His voice sounded like a thousand rusty water pipes gurgling, and froze
the blood in her veins to red ice.

She hated gargoyles, true. They were different from the
Others
she felt a kinship toward. Gargoyles were different.

They also made her fear her own darkness, her own evil.
Doubt
her own
worth.

It was her fault that she let them, she knew that.

But what she faced at that moment wasn’t a gargoyle who
believed she was evil.

The cannibal was the king of fucking gargoyles.

“Say when.” Roma had her slingshot up and pointed at the
beast, and Rune wished she’d kept her shotgun. It might at least have damaged
the gargoyle.

She drew in a deep, deep breath,
then
let it out in one long rush. She opened her mouth, shut it,
then
opened it again.

Finally, she nodded.

“When,” she murmured.
“Fucking
when
.”

The mountain moved.

He was slow, so there was that to be thankful for.

Before he’d gotten halfway turned toward them, Roma shot
him.

He bellowed in either pain or anger as a chunk of his
shoulder broke off and fell to the ground. He didn’t bleed, not at first, but
in seconds a red bubble squeezed from the wound and burst, releasing a geyser
of hot blood and yellowish pus.

Thick, gelatinous fluid dripped from the hole in his
shoulder and finally, he managed to lift a heavy hand to clamp over the wound.

With a sound like boulders crashing and colliding, he faced
them.

He roared, and Rune could have sworn she felt his hot, fetid
breath blow against her cheek.

She flinched and ducked to the side, and Roma shot him
again.

Jack began pulling the trigger on his gun, barely waiting
for the bullet to hit its mark before he loosed another one.

She had her claws, her fangs, and her speed. She had the
strength to crush nearly anything.

But she hung back, waiting to see what
Jack’s
gun and Roma’s slingshot would do
before she had to get close to the
stony beast.
Before she had to touch it.

She did not want to get close enough to be covered in shit
and puke and rot and disease.
Did
not.

That was a smell a person wouldn’t be able to bathe away for
a while.

So she watched.

“Try between the eyes, Roma,” she told the slingshot girl.
“It has to have a soft spot somewhere.”

Roma nodded,
then
ran along the
wall toward the huge gargoyle. It kept its face turned mostly away from them,
shielding itself from the bullets and the ammo from Roma’s weapon.

That was what made Rune think—hope—its face was vulnerable.

“We keeping it alive for Eugene, or killing it here, Rune?”
Jack
asked,
a calm but slightly confused look in his
eye.

She understood. Why wasn’t the gargoyle fighting back? Why
wasn’t it attacking?

Roma stood with her feet apart, her face blank. She lifted
the slingshot and aimed at the beast’s face, waiting for her moment.

Jack blasted a chunk from its hip, and once again, the
gargoyle roared and recoiled.

And Roma had her opening.

She gave a yell as she released her weapon, and in the next
second, half the gargoyle’s monstrous head exploded.

He cried out, his big hands going to his head, and dropped
to his knees.

“Rune, what the hell?”
Jack asked,
frowning.

The gargoyle’s rusty voice was all she heard.

“Oh,” he cried. “Oh.”

“Shit,” she murmured. “He’s not dangerous.
Just gross, the poor bastard.”

“Um,” Roma said.

Jack lifted his gun. “I knew it was too easy.”

The gargoyle was changing.

His wounds were closing as he slowly climbed to his feet.
Growls had replaced his cries, and he curled his hands into fists as he turned
toward his tormentors.

He flapped his wings, and Rune gagged at the stench that
wafted from their folds.

“We can’t kill him,” Jack said. “All we’re doing is pissing
him off.”

She swallowed. “We’ll have to try.”

“If he’s a gargoyle,” Roma said, “what happened to him? Why
is he…disgusting?”

“You know everything I know, Roma.”

“I think we woke him up,” Roma said. “That’s why he stays
put. He’s busy sleeping and stinking. Maybe he wakes up for dinner and then
goes back to sleep. His handlers couldn’t control him if he decided to break
out.”

“He
did
break out once,” Rune said. “They controlled
him pretty damn fast.”

“Maybe because he’s pretty damn slow,” Roma said.

She wasn’t wrong. They could have had five minutes of
conversation in the time it took the beast to get to his feet and turn on them.

“What are we doing?” Jack asked. “Do we run or do we fight?
He’s—”

The gargoyle opened his mouth and spewed a reeking mess of
bile at them. The vomit splashed Rune and Jack, but missed Roma.

Immediately, it burnt holes Rune’s clothes and began to eat
through her skin.

She wasn’t worried about herself. She could heal from
anything the gargoyle threw at her.

Jack couldn’t.

“Fuck,” Jack said, his voice strained. “That stings.”

For Jack, that admission was the same as screaming in agony.

Rune didn’t wait. “Roma, shoot the fucking gargoyle, and for
God’s sake, don’t let it puke on you.”

Roma gave a terse nod, her worried gaze on Jack,
then
she turned back to the job at hand.

Rune glanced up to the exit above them. “I’m getting you out
of here, Jack.”

“The fuck you are.” He lifted his gun and fired off a round
at the gargoyle. “I’ll stand and fight. Jack Slaughter doesn’t run from
anything.”

Then he looked at her, shock in his eye, and passed out.

He hit the cave floor hard, and the resounding crash made
her wonder if he’d cracked his skull.

“I’ll be back for you as soon as I get him outside,” Rune
told Roma. “Shoot him in the fucking head and then run back the way we came.
I’ll find you.” Then she and her monster picked Jack up, held him like a baby, and
ran toward the cave wall.

She didn’t need to wonder if she could either climb the wall
or jump high enough to exit the opening high above them.

Jack was in her arms, and she would save him.

She was surprisingly calm—there’d be time for panic later.

Jack came to consciousness as she leapt through the ceiling
opening and only part of her mind grasped the fact that the exit—or
entrance—had been bolstered by more than nature. Boards and stone braced the
opening and made a perfectly smooth, round opening through which gargoyles
might drop.

But Jack was waking up, and he did not come to consciousness
gently. He fought and lurched and raged so violently she nearly dropped him.
And that would have killed him.

“Jack,” she screamed. “Hold the fuck still, motherfucker!”

Thankfully, once through the hole, there was ground—steep,
hilly, and barren, but ground. She dropped him gently,
then
began pulling at his clothes, trying to get to his wounds.

He shoved her away and staggered to his feet.
“The fuck?”

“You hit your head when you fell.” She grabbed his arm.
“Hold still so I can get your clothes off.”

“Rune.”
His voice was thick and his
eye held something close to incomprehension, but he focused, finally, on her
face and her words. “If you wanted me naked all you had to do was ask.”

She snorted. “Help me, baby. Roma is still down there with
the monster.”

He shook his head, once, hard. “I’ll tend myself. Go get
her.”

“Shit,” she muttered. He was right. “I’ll be right back.”

She turned to glance back at him before she dropped back
through the entrance. Jack was flat out on the ground, unconscious, his legs
splayed.

“Shit,” she muttered again, but forced herself back through
the opening. She’d get Roma to safety and then get Jack some help.

Then she was coming back for the fucking mutant gargoyle.

She dropped to the cave floor, the shock of it giving her,
for one brief second, a headache severe enough to make her groan. But she shook
it off.

Roma was gone—as was the gargoyle. She must’ve run, and the
monster had decided to give chase. His roars echoed back to Rune’s sensitive
ears.

They hadn’t gotten far.

Still, he was between Roma and Rune, and Jack lay on the
hill outside with the flesh-eating vomit eating holes through his body.

“Shit,” Rune screamed, and after wavering for what felt like
an eternity, she finally went after Roma. “Hang on, Jack.”

But before she got to the passageway down which Roma had
fled, she heard a flurry of wings—dozens of wings, it sounded like—each one
slapping the air with explosive rage and dark promise.

The gargoyles had arrived.

They’d come directly by Jack.

She flew down the passageway toward Roma and the
beast,
her heart pounding so hard it hurt her chest. It hurt
her to breathe. It hurt her to
think
.

Jack.

Roma.

Jack.

The beast roared again, louder, and suddenly she was right
behind it and more urgent than any other thought in her mind was how she could
kill it.

Kill the beast.

Save my friends.

But surely as urgent as her desire to kill it was the
gargoyles’ desire to protect it.

She felt them at her back, no longer flying but still
flapping their fucking awful wings, the hot dusty air fanning her hair and
pushing her even faster toward the beast.

She stopped running, her stare darting as she searched for
Roma hidden somewhere in the shadow of the hulking monster.

And finally, she saw the brave little Other with her
slingshot up, her face pale, and as the monster drew back his head, inhaled,
and made ready to vomit the lethal acid onto the girl, three things happened.

The gargoyles at Rune’s back converged upon her.

The beast shot yards of filthy green bile into the air.

And Roma began to shift.