Obsidian Wings Read Free

used to what?”
    He gestured at the woman. “He knows the birds. One of us
should call him.”
    She remembered the fight at Hawthorne, when the berserker
had flown in on an enormous bird. Maybe this one.
    Shit. “I’ll do it.”
    He nodded. “Should I take her down?”
    She pulled her cell from her pocket. “No. RISC is coming.
They’ll have to catalogue everything.”
    He wasn’t going to argue.
    “Strad,” she said, once the berserker answered. “I’m at a
crime scene on Timber Road. The old slaughterhouse.”
    “You need me?”
    She closed her eyes at his dark, smooth voice. “Yes.”
    “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
    RISC beat Strad there by five minutes. Rune watched as they
began to photograph the scene and the body, then went to meet the berserker at
his truck.
    He climbed out, automatically reaching for the long, silver
spear resting in its bed in the back of his truck. “What is it?” His gaze swept
her face.
    She nodded at the slaughterhouse. “A woman was tortured and
murdered. I called you because Jack said you knew the birds.”
    “The victim is a bird.”
    “Yeah.”
    He ran a hand over his face. “Fuck.”
    She studied the ground, giving him a moment.
    “What color is her hair?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
    She looked up at him. “Light brown. Brown eyes. She’s over
six feet tall.”
    He nodded, and there was a quick gleam of relief in his
eyes. He said nothing as they walked side by side to the building.
    He stared up at the tortured woman, his face blank. The
berserker gave nothing away.
    But she knew him.
    She could feel the rage radiating from his huge body.
    “Was she a friend?” she asked.
    “No. Not really.” He took his cell from his pocket and
stepped away to make a phone call.
    She heard him anyway.
    “Cree,” he said. “Tell the scepters we found Lara. She’s
been murdered.” He gave her directions and then clicked off, pushing his phone
back into his pocket. He didn’t look at Rune.
    And she had a bad feeling.
    She put a hand to her stomach and watched him as he examined
the body. When she could stand the silence no longer, she spoke. “Berserker?”
    But then an enormous form sped toward them, blocking out the
lightening sky.
    Rune couldn’t help but gasp and step back at the sight. The
bird was huge and dark and scary as fuck, and she wasn’t sure it could halt its
insane speed before it crashed into the building.
    Another bird, smaller but still huge, was behind it.
    The world was suddenly full of the whoosh whooshing of
wings as more birds arrived.
    Rune hadn’t been aware River County held so many of them,
but there they were.
    Strad stood with his arms crossed and his feet apart,
watching them come. Something in his eyes made her stomach hurt a little more,
but she couldn’t figure out why.
    What was freakier than the tortured, destroyed body nailed
to the wall?
    Something was. Something sure as hell was.
    The arriving shifters weren’t just birds—they were eagles.
Golden eagles. At once majestic and intimidating, they glided and then flapped
their lethal wings, and every person in the town was surely staring into the
heavens with astonishment and wonder.
    In the end, six of them dropped to the ground. Almost
immediately she had trouble drawing breath as the birds sucked all the oxygen
from the air.
    It was as surreal an encounter as Rune had ever
experienced—not even with Damascus had she felt such awe.
    As soon as they landed, they shifted to human form. Huge and
naked, all six were very nearly as intimidating in human form as they’d been in
bird form.
    “Holy shit,” one of the RISC workers whispered.
    The four males were all somewhat smaller than the two
females. Even the dead female on the side of the slaughterhouse was larger than
any of the male birds who’d gathered in a semicircle around the two females.
    Muscles bunching over luminous, golden skin, the Others
walked to the berserker. The bird in the lead was a woman with long