But even then she had a terrible feeling that it was already too late.
She slipped through the opening the guards provided, but had gone only a few yards before she turned back.
She couldn’t leave fucking Cree Stark.
The bird would die.
“Cree,” she yelled. “Come with me.”
The girl broke through the fighters just as the legislators, prisoners, and guards clashed.
Her scarred face was so grateful Rune felt another twinge of pity for the broken girl. Everything she’d ever had or been had been taken from her in horrible ways, and it broke Rune’s heart.
“Stay close to me,” Rune told her. “I won’t leave you.”
Cree nodded.
She grabbed Rune’s hand and gripped it like the lifeline it was as they ran. Rune held her blade tightly with her free hand, ready for anything. One blade against a world of horror wasn’t a lot, but she was Shiv Crew.
She’d manage.
“I have to find the witch,” she told Cree. “I’ll find a safe place to hide you. I’ll be back for you. I swear.”
“Why?” Cree asked, quietly.
Rune shot her a quick glance. “Because that’s who I am.”
Cree held her pale, knotted hand to her chest and panted as she stumbled along at Rune’s side.
“Z,” Rune muttered. “Z, and kill the witch.”
Tracking the witch shouldn’t be hard. It was Skyll she walked upon, after all. It was Skyll inside her.
Skyll would know where the witch was.
But when she reached the top and glanced back over her shoulder, she sank to the ground, the witch forgotten.
“Oh,” she whispered, and pressed her hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God.”
Below her, in the midst of the valiantly fighting guards and newly released prisoners, Strad Matheson wielded his spear like the mad, raging berserker he was.
And Lex was right beside him.
Part Four
No One
Chapter Forty-Two
“Berserker,” she whispered. Then, louder, until she was screaming his name. Screaming the name of the one with whom she found the silence. “Berserker!”
She stood, somehow, but her legs were like water and her heart was in her throat.
He knocked people out of his way, his mind on nothing but getting to her. Getting to her. He ran, streaking through the fighters like lightning through a dark, cloudy sky, his big body moving faster than one would have believed possible.
And she knew why.
He was Other.
Her berserker was fucking Other.
Hadn’t she always known it, really?
Had he?
Cree Stark stepped up beside her.
Rune turned back to Strad. He would reach her in a few short minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. She wanted to run to meet him but she could not move.
Lex broke free of the fighters, yelling with joy, and chased after Strad.
Lex, healthy, fighting, and alive.
“Strad,” Cree whispered, her voice so full of heartache and regret Rune could not stand close to her.
So she stepped away, waiting, watching.
Her berserker.
When he was mere yards away and she opened her arms, ready for him.
He yanked her to him, wrapped his arms around her, and murmured her name.
Over and over.
Much as Z had done.
Had she been a weaker woman he would have crushed her, such was his embrace.
She closed her eyes and lay against him, inhaling his warm, familiar scent, something inside her easing.
Berserker.
“They hurt you,” he said, his voice at once rough and soft and overjoyed and dismayed.
“God,” she said. “Berserker.”
“Strad,” Cree whispered, holding out a tentative hand. “They hurt me, too.”
Then Lex barreled into Rune and Strad, sobbing and laughing at the same time. “We found you. Oh, God, we found you.”
Rune closed her eyes, wrapped up in the berserker and Lex, and let herself believe for a second that she was back in her world and her crew surrounded her.
They smelled of home.
She wept with joy, with pure, unadulterated joy, and dug her clawless fingers into their warm, real flesh.
She could easily have stood there all day.
But she got herself under control and pulled away from them. There was no time to fall apart in the warm circle of the berserker’s arms. “Damascus is still out there. I have to find her and end this now.”
“Let’s go,” Lex said. “Let’s end that bitch.”
The berserker nodded, his stare eating up her face.
“Lex,” Rune said suddenly. “You’re alive. You’re fucking alive. How?”
“We’ve been searching for you,” Lex said. “I was…” she glanced at Strad.
“She was pretty much dead,” he said. “I was sure she was gone.” His tone was expressionless. His eyes were not.
“When we were thrown off the path, I was cured. It took a little while because I was so very sick. But I could