The Witch's Daughter - Laken Cane Page 0,9
the walls—even the guards and fighters she’d stationed there.
He’d also told her that other guards were patrolling the roads and woods, searching for rebels and escapees, but Rune saw none of them.
But as she and her little crew crouched behind the cover of trees and piles of huge, dusty stones, eyeing the surrounding area, a group of perhaps ten people ran screaming through the open city gates.
Z blew out a hard breath. “They’re as good as dead.”
“But a good distraction.” Blue’s voice was emotionless. “Wait for the guards to give chase and then we’ll run for the gates.”
Blue reminded Rune of the people she’d fought when she first entered Skyll.
The fighters had been cold. Unemotional.
But she understood. It was the only way to survive—mentally as well as physically.
The guards came.
Rune was expecting tall, helmeted men on horseback.
But the guards were not on horseback.
They were not even men.
“Fuck me,” she whispered.
Blue might have laughed, but Rune was too caught up in the drama unfolding to pay her much attention.
She felt Z squeeze her shoulder, and she shuddered. “What are they?”
“Monsters,” he replied. “Legislators, they’re called, and they belong to the witch. Get ready to run.”
Rune could have outrun them all and entered the gates like a flash of lightning, but she wouldn’t leave them behind.
As she ran, she didn’t see the looming gate or the rough terrain or Z at her side. She saw the guards.
Legislators.
Monsters.
The guards ran the people down and laughed as they slaughtered them.
She caught glimpses, and it was enough for her.
Standing at least twelve feet tall, they looked reasonably similar to upright buffalo. Coarse, curly hair, hooves on their feet, sharp horns curling from their enormous heads.
Faces and fingers and voices of men.
Having a good old time as they stomped skulls and tore limb from limb the ragged bunch who’d sought to escape the captured city.
One of the huge apparitions bared his teeth and ripped a strip of flesh from the white leg of one of the victims.
Without even thinking about it, she veered off her path and went for the legislators.
She didn’t care that they needed to sneak into the city. She didn’t care that she was ruining their chances of leaving the city with the Army of Death and Darkness.
Didn’t even think about it.
There was only rage in her mind.
And she, too, was a monster.
A hungry, angry monster.
Chapter Six
She ran snarling into the fray, and after a moment of entirely human-looking shock, the guards stopped their frenzied feeding and ran to meet her.
“Don’t you kill our princess,” Nadaline screamed.
As if.
As fucking if.
She streaked across the ground and jumped, climbing the first legislator like a fur-covered ladder—his head was hanging by a thread and he hadn’t yet fallen to the ground before she was driving her claws through the second one’s eyes.
Fighting, she was free.
She didn’t have to think or worry or fear.
Just kill.
Something inside her eased.
Each legislator’s death released a puff of thick greenish gas that smelled like…evil. Damascus was attached to her creations.
Would she feel their deaths?
Rune hoped so.
She hoped it would hurt.
Savage in her lust for blood, Rune tore into the guards with dark delight—and when the doomed guards began to roar in pain, panic, and fear, those inside the city were alerted.
Z was suddenly beside her, wielding his silver like he’d always done, every cut counting, every blow bringing pain to the enemy.
He was hers.
He’d always been hers.
Maybe even more importantly, she was his.
She barely noticed that Blue and Nadaline had joined the fight until she saw Blue twirling her two fancy swords like an angry, deadly ninja. At her back Nadaline glowed green and tossed devastating fireballs that made Rune think of—and miss—Lex.
“Dude,” Rune murmured, admiring.
Those inside the city—Damascus’s minions and shimmer prisoners alike—began to spill from the gates to fight. As though the people had just needed a push to activate them, they were abruptly changed from cringing, fearful men and women to outraged warriors.
They had no real weapons, but they grabbed stones, sticks, hammers, whatever they could find, and their desperation made them challengers to the horrible legislators.
“Where is the fucking Army?” Rune yelled to Z.
He shook his head. “We’ll have to wait for the hand to force them from the ground.”
“Fuck me.” Rune was fed up with the useless dead army. She sliced off a legislator’s arm and then impaled another enemy who was inches away from caving in Z’s gorgeous head.
“Great distraction,” Blue shouted, appearing beside Rune. “Let’s go while we can.” Then she hesitated. “Smart thing