Killing Land (Rune Alexander Book 8) (19 page)

She drew in a deep breath and sorted through the dozens of
useless scents that wafted into her brain.

There was one she recognized, and she latched on to it. She
ignored the other scents, and like a bloodhound following a trail, she tracked
the fragrance of Skyll.

Raze walked behind her, alert and ready for anything.
Even gargoyles.
There were no guarantees they wouldn’t
attack, even though Rune had surely made them cautious.

“Rune.”
Raze’s voice was quiet and
held something close to shame. “Who do you think it is?”

She knew what he wanted to hear, but she wasn’t going to
lie. “I don’t know.”

He cleared his throat, staying close behind her as they
walked down a narrow passageway. “If it was someone close to you, you’d have
picked up her—or his—scent, wouldn’t you?”

“Most likely.
The only scent I
recognize is…Skyll. I couldn’t tell you what that scent is, but
it’s
Skyll
.”

They fell silent as they walked. The caves seemed unending,
twisting and dark and cold—the farther they went, the colder it got. Just like
before when she and Roma were hunting the cannibalistic gargoyle.

“There’s something strange about these caves,” Raze said,
breaking the heavy silence.

“Yeah.
If someone from Skyll
appeared here…”

“Then somewhere in these caves is a portal to Skyll.”

She pressed her hand against the scars over her heart.
“Maybe.”

“Can you forgive him?”

She didn’t have to ask who he meant. “There’s nothing to
forgive.”

“He left you.”

“I left him.”

“Rune.”

“Leave it alone, Raze.”

After a few minutes, he spoke again, his deep voice sliding
into the cold, dark shadows. “She didn’t tell me goodbye. She didn’t even look
at me when she stood with Strad in Wormwood and got ready to walk the path.”

“She was nearly dead, baby, and possessed by Karin Love.”

He was silent for a beat. “That’s right.” Again, he cleared
his throat. “Did she…I was wondering if she…”

Rune closed her eyes, pain for the big man squeezing her
heart. “She said to tell you she’d find her way back someday.” The lie tasted
bitter on her tongue but he was in pain and she
hated
it, hated his pain
so fucking much.

“She did, huh?” he said, his voice lighter.

“There’s always hope.”

“There is that,” he agreed.

“Listen.” She stopped suddenly and clicked off her light.
“Do you hear that?”

“No,” he murmured. “What?”

She shook her head, her breath held. Fear rose up like a
nightmare beast and swallowed her whole.

The fear of what she’d find.

The fear of finding nothing.

She pushed a shaky hand against her abdomen. “Get ready,
Raze.”

“I’m ready.”

Then in the next second she could almost hear his blades
slicing the air as he whirled toward whatever threat he’d sensed.

She swung around, the sounds she’d heard—or thought she’d
heard—forgotten.

“It’s Will,” the assassin said. “I’ve come to lend my
assistance.”

Rune and Raze held their lights on the new arrival,
who
stood against the wall, his hands up. His clothing was
so black he stood out even in the darkness of the cave.

“Why sneak up on us?” Rune snarled.
“I
should fucking kill you right now.”

Raze shot her a glance.
“Rune?”

She swallowed and shook her head, hard.

If she wasn’t careful, her rage was going to own her.

“The passages are winding,” Will said, calmly. “I wanted to
wait until I was closer before I made myself known. We aren’t the only ones in
this darkness.”

“Where the
fuck have
you been?”
Raze asked. “You’re no use to her if you hide when the fighting gets rough.”

“I wasn’t hiding. Where were you
when she was
fighting?”

“You lied about the gargoyles,” Rune said. “Want to explain
that?”

“I did not lie.”

“You told me they were feeding the cannibal outsiders,
asshole. You didn’t say the outsiders were volunteering.”

He didn’t try to explain himself. “I’ve come to help you
with what you now face.”

“Why didn’t you tell us the Delaneys were the gargoyles?”

“I didn’t know, Rune. I know a lot, but I didn’t know that.
I discovered their secret when I watched you talking with Bellamy outside the
caves.”

“And you didn’t show yourself,” Raze said.
“Just skulked and spied and listened.”

“It’s how I learn things,” Will said, no shame in his voice.

“You didn’t know they were the gargoyles because you didn’t
care,” Rune said. “Otherwise, you would have made it your business to find out.
Why did you want me here, Assassin?
Really?”

“I’ve told you.”

Rune stared at him. “I can’t believe a single word you say.”

“Let’s get on with it,” Raze told her. “When we’re done
here, kick him out.”

Will the Assassin stood in his darkness and waited.

She turned without a word and continued toward the thing
that waited.

It was difficult to care about Will the Assassin when the
scent of Skyll teased her brain.

When thoughts of those she’d left behind made her so fucking
hopeful she could barely breathe.

Worse, when fear that she’d find nothing—maybe a rat or a
stone or an article of clothing had fallen off the path—and would be devastated
all over again when she realized how hopeless it all was.

Her heart beat like a hummingbird’s wings against her chest
wall and her stomach muscles tightened so much they hurt.

And as she jogged, she whispered one word over and over.

Please
.

The passageway ended with a suddenness that shook her, and
just that suddenly she was standing in a large, cold room that held the thing
she was tracking.

Ready or not.

She shot out her claws and dropped her fangs without meaning
to, and turned in a circle, searching for it.

She could feel it—it lay upon her skin like a layer of slick
sweat. Its scent was magnified a hundred times from passageway to room, as
though an invisible glass had contained it in the cave room.

She could taste it. The taste of Damascus and bitter magic
and sweet power vied for attention upon her eager tongue,
then
the scent of crawlers and blood and darkness seeped into her mouth and plunged
down her throat.

She gagged and jumped back, nearly tripping in her hurry,
but Raze was waiting to steady her.

“What is it?” the assassin
asked,
his voice quiet.

“
Where
is it?” Raze squeezed her shoulders and moved
away, filling his hands with blades.

“I don’t know.” She had to force the words past clenched
teeth. “But it’s here.”

“I feel it,” Will
said
.

They turned so they were back to back, weapons ready.

But there was nothing to guard against.
Nothing
to fight.

But she saw a streak of movement from her peripheral vision,
high upon the cold, slimy cave wall, and turned so quickly she felt the
assassin’s black shirt rip beneath her claws.

“Where?”
Raze asked, turning with
her.

She pointed her claws and without hesitating, Raze dragged
his light from his pocket and flicked it on.

“What?” she whispered, or thought she did.
“God.”

The three of them stood frozen, stunned.
Horrified.

“What is that?” Raze asked. “What the fuck is that?”

She had to try twice before she could speak.

“I know what it is,” she said, her voice cutting her throat
with its sharpness. “Or what it once was. That thing used to be Brasque Dray,
the lord of Skyll’s Flesh Shimmer.”

The image of the thing on the wall would never leave her.

No matter what other horrors she visited.

Brasque Dray had been changed.

Transformed.

Maybe the path had altered him. Maybe he’d been hit by a
horrific magic before he’d left Skyll.

Maybe he’d nearly missed the closing portal and had been
caught somewhere between before being thrown into the massive caves of Killing
Land.

He was no longer a man. Not really.

She knew it was the shimmer lord not only because remnants
of his blue suit clung to parts of his body, but because she was, in a
reluctant, terrible way, connected to him.

She
knew
it was Brasque Dray.

And perhaps a resemblance to the man he’d once been was
still there, in his…face.

“It’s not just a man,” Will
said
.

“What do you mean?” she asked, unable to look away from the
hideous creature.

“Something has attached to him. Can’t you see it?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe he’s just been changed into
that.”

“I think he’s in there with something else. Aware.”

She shuddered. “What a fucking nightmare.”

“What do you think it eats?” Raze asked, his voice hoarse.
“How can it find food?”

The creature’s back was against the wall but he somehow
shimmied up and across it as though carried by thousands of unseen hands. His
head, swollen to twice its normal size, lolled on a boneless neck and drooped
over his chest.

His entire body was swollen, his belly distended and lying
over his upper thighs. His skin—if that’s what it could be called, was purplish
and mottled. It was covered with gaping wounds that appeared black and yellow
in the beam of yellow light.

As she watched, he tried to lift his head. It flopped from
side to side and she thought she saw rows of shiny, sharp teeth on his face.

“It
is
two…beings,” Rune said.
“Or
more.”

At that exact moment something that looked like a skinny,
hairy limb shot out from somewhere behind or within or under the monster. At
the very end of the arm a set of red pincers opened and closed.

“What the fuck,” Rune whispered, “is that?”

The pincers dug into the creature’s bulbous belly and even
as it—whatever
it
was—shrieked in agony, the pincers emerged with a plug
of jellied flesh and shoved it into one of its mouths.

It was as though two living beings had been melded together
and then turned inside out.

And though she’d seen nearly every monster created, Rune was
horrified by it.

“His
eyes,”
she said.

They glistened like wet globs of jellied blood, and the only
reason she believed they were—or had once been—eyes was because they bulged
from his eye sockets.

“
Guh
,” he cried.
“
Guh
.”

Though it seemed they stood in frozen, horrified silence for
an eternity, in reality it was only a couple of minutes.

“
Guh
,” Brasque cried, and before
any of them could think to duck or run or
blink
, it—
he
—shot
strings of what appeared to be blood and ligaments and veins from his bulging,
bloody eyes.

Raze was hit hard as most of the stringy mess splattered his
face. He went down like an axed tree, his blade and light flying from his
hands.

Rune’s limbs grew immediately heavy and slow as she cut
through the strings of gore wrapping around her leg.

“Raze,” she yelled. “Raze!”

The bloody filaments snaked around him, and before she could
reach him, they’d encased his head and upper body in a strong, messy net.

She grabbed the hem of his shirt and dragged him to the
other side of the room, out of reach, she hoped, from Dray’s attack.

She clenched her teeth hard enough to nearly dislocate her
jaw as she hacked through the wet, fibrous strands around him.

And she finally understood something she should have noticed
the minute she saw the net.

Fie had once been encased in a net.

When she’d emerged, her face had been gone.

Only when one of her claws skidded off the ropy net and
sliced into Raze’s unguarded flesh did Rune retract the long claws.

She began to pull and tear desperately at the net, knowing
if it set, if it hardened, Raze was gone.

The assassin fell to his knees beside her, cutting away
strands with a blade barely longer than his index finger.

 While she ripped away one strand, he cut another.

When she finally released him from the last strand, Raze
exploded to his feet, his eyes wild. He roared and grabbed for his gun.

“Your face is still there,” she said, so relieved she could
barely speak. She’d truly expected it to be gone.

“I couldn’t
do anything,” he shouted, staring toward
the thing on the wall. “I couldn’t
do
anything.”

The net was deadly, and it was powerful.

The gargoyle had been a baby compared with the monster from
Skyll.

It needed to die.

But as Raze lifted the gun and took aim, and she threw
herself
at him and wrested the weapon from his grip.

“We can’t kill him,” she yelled, when he fought her over the
weapon.

“I let Grim live,” he said.
“But not this
thing.”

She reached up to cup his face. “We have to.”

“Why the fuck would you want it to live? Because you think
it’s one of your parents?” His eyes were still full of panic from his brush
with the bloody net.
“Why?”

Will had quietly retrieved Raze’s flashlight and had turned
his own on as well. The room was not well lit, but the lights managed to push
the shadows back enough for them to see.

She looked at the mutation on the wall. He was unmoving,
plastered against the cave wall like a giant glob of jelly, his huge gut rising
and falling, his head hanging so low she couldn’t see his face.

She shuddered.

“Rune,” Raze
prompted,
his body
tensing. “Why?”

“He’s the way back to Skyll.”

His voice was tight, hard, and angry. “What?”

“He didn’t come off the path with me. Brasque Dray had no
intention of leaving his world. Maybe he was forced to come here. Maybe it was
his choice.”

She tore her stare from the abomination on the wall and met
Raze’s eyes. “I don’t care why he’s here, only that he is. He knows of another
portal, Raze. He’s the way back.”

His gaze softened.
“Rune.
Look at
him. Something happened to the man you knew. He’s not capable of telling us
anything.”

She looked at Brasque, stubbornly silent.

Raze took her shoulders, shaking her lightly. “Rune, he
can’t
tell
us anything. He can only kill us. When I was trapped in that
thing he threw at us—”

“Net,” she whispered. “It was a net.”

“It was bad in there. It was bad.”

Later.
Later she’d ask him to
explain to her later what it was like inside the net. Right then, she had a
choice to make.

To save Brasque Dray, or to kill him.

To save Skyll, or to kill it.

But truthfully, she’d made her decision the second she’d
been told something might have traveled from Skyll.

“Trust me,” she begged. “You have to trust me.”

He stared over her head. “Rune…”

So she said the one thing she knew would sway him. “Lex
needs a way back to us. Right now, she has none.”

He lowered his stare to hers.

“She’s stuck there, Raze.”

Still, he said nothing.

“I have to bring them home.” She pointed at the monster on
the wall. “And one way or another, he’s going to tell me how to do that.”