Strange Trouble by Laken Cane Page A

feel
only horror and pity.”
    Rune’s body began to shake with cold reaction. Fear,
insidious and strong, streaked through her.
    She remembered when fear for herself rarely touched her—back
when she wanted so badly to die.
    Where was that girl now?
    Maybe she was hidden beneath the crew’s devotion, Jeremy’s
absence, and the berserker’s regard.
    Maybe. But if she tried, she was
pretty sure she could bring her back.
    She needed her anger and her hatred. She needed her monster.
    Ignoring the vampire, she wrapped her fingers around the
electric fence.
    “No,” Marta cried.
    The shock sat Rune on fire. It started in her hands and shot
through her arms to her body and into her mind that, for one second, ceased to
exist.
    For a second, there was just…nothing.
    Then there was pain.
    She accepted the pain, embraced it, and gathered it into a
ball of power. And then, she shot it back out.
    Sparks flew.
    Marta screamed, shielded her face, and backed away.
    The silver fence melted beneath Rune’s hands and ran in hot
rivulets over her skin, up her arms, burning, burning.
    Silver and electricity.
    The Spiritgrove COS leader had attacked her with silver and
electricity once, and it had incapacitated her.
    No more.
    The silver coated her fingers, melting into the delicate
skin as it slid up over her hands, her wrists, her forearms.
    It sank with a sizzle into her skin and she could feel it
there, a thin, greasy layer of molten silver.
    “You continue to amaze.”
    The voice was male, slightly mocking, but also tinged with
admiration.
    Llodra had arrived.
     
     

  Chapter
Eighteen
    She pulled the fence apart as though it were melted taffy,
and without looking back, stepped inside the Camp.
    When she turned around, Llodra, ravaged and ill, watched
her.
    He quivered—not small shivers but strong
tremors that jerked his entire body. Despite his cool voice, terror lit
his face. He had one hand glued to the dead fence and one hand wrapped around
Marta’s arm.
    He was fighting with everything he had not to go to the
witch.
    Even Rune could feel her call. And if she could feel it,
what must that pull be like for Nick Llodra?
    Marta stood quietly, her raw gaze eating up the master’s
face.
    She loves him.
    That made her think of Amy, which
was good. She needed pain, she needed guilt. She needed black.
    It would make her strong enough to handle what was to come.
    She and Llodra stared at each other.
    He was a ghost of the Llodra she’d known before his madness,
before his capture. His face was all sharp angles and hollows filled with
shadows. Pale, dry skin stretched tightly over the prominent bones beneath it.
    His black eyes were so bright with pain she found it
difficult to look at them. He was thin and scarred, bruised and broken.
    But she could not care. He’d killed Amy. He’d tortured the
little bite junkie who had loved him. He’d taken her Ellis.
    He’d fucked with her.
    Llodra was mad, and he was evil.
    And now he stood before her, shattered and damaged.
    But he would heal. He was a vampire.
    He was covered with blood. “You fed.”
    “Oh, yes. I fed.”
    “You’re a messy eater, Llodra.” She could only imagine how
horrific had been his damage before he’d fed. He looked like death.
    He is death.
    “Why are you here? If you’re so terrified of Damascus,
aren’t you afraid she’s going to come out and get you?”
    He shivered harder. “If I did not give in to the call, just
for an instant, my heart would have exploded.” He glanced down at his bloody
shirt. “Some of this is from me.”
    “Tell me what to do.”
    He smiled, a little. “I do not know. I know only that you
are as strong as she is. There is magic inside you. Send her away, Rune. Save
me.”
    “I am not doing this for you.” She was suddenly furious.
Furious that he could believe she cared about him after everything he’d done.
“You are not worth saving.”
    “Then do it to stop the monsters.”
    “I’m not sure…”
    “You do