Free New Regime by Laken Cane Page B

worth a shot. She’d
get Gunnar and be grateful to have him.
    She shot out her claws. “Stand over there while I dig him
up.”
    “I’m fucked,” he muttered, and backed up a step.
    A brief flare of pity sparked inside her, but she stomped it
out. She could have no softness for him. That would get her into a shitload of
trouble.
    She turned her back on him and put her mind to getting the
ghoul out of the ground. Be alive, baby. Be alive.
    She heard a rustle a second before he pushed his gun to the
back of her head.
    “Now,” he told her. “You’re going to bite me.”
    She laughed and pushed her head back against the gun. “No.
I’m not.”
    She knew he wouldn’t kill her.
    But Jack didn’t.
    He exploded from the tree line like an avenging, raging
warrior, one hand holding a long blade and the other holding his gun.
    “Oh shit,” she said. She shoved the assassin, hard. He flew
into the hard bark of a tree and slid to the ground.
    “Jack,” was all she had time to say before he dragged the
assassin from the ground and began to beat the hell out of him.
    The assassin, even as battered and full of mindless craving hunger
as he was, fought back. And he wasn’t an easy adversary.
    Rune wasn’t surprised.
    “Jack,” she yelled, as the masked man knifed Jack. The blade
stuck in Jack’s shoulder when he growled and punched the assassin, sending him
sprawling six feet away.
    “Fuck,” Rune screamed, and grabbed Jack’s wounded shoulder
to get his attention.
    He roared and pulled back his fist to hit her, then seemed
to recognize her through the rage clouding his vision. He dropped his fist and
gave his head a hard shake.
    “It’s okay, baby. He’s not going to kill me. We have to get
to Gunnar. Now.”
    “He had a gun to your head, Rune.” Jack clenched his fists,
his stare on the assassin, who had picked himself up and stood watching them.
    “He’s bluffing. He’s addicted to me. All he wants is to be
bitten. He’s not going to kill me.”
    “Maybe not.” Jack grasped the handle of the protruding blade
and pulled it from his flesh, absently wiping the blade on his pants. “But a
bullet to the head would sure as hell hurt you.”
    She patted his arm. “You good?”
    He glared at the assassin. “Yeah. What’s the deal?”
    “She will bite me for the ghoul,” the assassin said. He
leaned against a slender tree trunk and crossed his ankles.
    The move was so overly casual that Rune gave him a lingering
look. If he’d have been anyone else, she’d have sympathized.
    “Stay the fuck over there,” Jack told him. He nodded at
Rune. “Let’s get Gunnar.”
    “First, I’m going to disarm him. I don’t want him coming
after you with a blade while I’m occupied.”
    Jack snorted.
    She walked to the assassin. “I’ll need your gun, and then
I’m going to search you for more weapons. You okay with that?”
    “You say that like I have a choice.”
    “There’s always a choice. You can walk away.”
    “No. I can’t.” He tossed his gun a few feet away, then held
his arms out. “Search away.”
    His scars were bumpy, raised ridges beneath her palms, and
she caught herself before she shuddered with horror. He didn’t just have
scars—he was a scar.
    He was hideous, and he knew it.
    Poor fuck.
    Shit.
    He glared at something in the distance, his eyes
unfathomable beneath the holes of his mask.
    She swallowed hard, her stare on the knot of scars covering
his neck. Could she ever sink her fangs into that? No.
    The assassin stiffened. “Try not to faint, Alexander.”
    She forced out the images of what had been done to him, of
what he’d suffered, and what he looked like.
    “Shit,” she whispered, and patted him down. So many scars.
     “Fuck you,” he said, his voice as rusty as old metal hinges.
    She had him flat on his back almost before he could finish
his sentence. She pushed her fingers against the eyeholes of his mask.
    He didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t