Rune Awakening

by Genevra Black

  Suddenly, Cal stood, aiming over the car and firing once before ducking back down. A canine howl greeted the explosive shot, followed by a second, cracking the air and making Edie’s ears ring.

  She barely had time to recover before a blast of something rocked the car and toppled her over. Ghost groaned; Edie’s head struck the gravel near the wheel well, and she felt Cal skid over to shield her.

  Blearily, she looked beyond the tire, trying to see what had attacked them. She saw two pairs of human feet clad in fur-trimmed leather boots. No dogs.

  Confused, she tried to raise her head, but Cal forced her back down as he staggered over her to round the bumper of the car, coming face to face with their attackers.

  “Cal!” she shouted, propping herself up on one elbow. She heard a pounding sound, like a blow connecting, and someone wheezing—then another booming shot.

  Edie dug her fingers into the gravel and managed to find purchase, dragging herself up from the roadside. Her palms were scraped, bloody. She wiped them down her jeans quickly before easing into a crouch, using the bumper for cover.

  There were more sounds of a struggle, grunts, then Cal’s shotgun skittered to a stop in front of her feet.

  Automatically, she reached for it. Pain raged up her arm as she touched the end of the barrel, and she let out a cry of surprise.

  Thu-dunk. Something had landed, hard, on the trunk just above her head. She didn’t have to look to know it wasn’t Cal; she could feel hot breath, smell the slaver of the beast, hear its ragged breath. She had no idea where it had come from, but when she raised her head, her eyes met the wolf’s blazing yellow ones.

  It bared its teeth.

  “Cal!” she shouted again, grabbing the shotgun by the grip and aiming it upward from her crouching position. What the hell was she doing? She didn’t know how to use a gun, and there wasn’t any ammo left in it, even if she did.

  The wolf showed more teeth in a sort of sinister grin.

  “Cal!”

  She couldn’t hear him. Had they killed him? Was that possible?

  Terrified, she did the first thing she could think of: Staggering back to a standing position, Edie raised her arm and swung the gun down as hard as she could, aiming for the wolf’s grin.

  It connected.

  The wolf whined and struggled to regain balance on the trunk of the car, its nails scratching Ghost’s white paint. As soon as Edie followed through on her swing, Cal was there to snatch the gun from her and finish the job, this time with the heel of his boot.

  “Witchwolves,” he muttered. “Fucking shifter assholes!”

  As the first wolf toppled off the trunk, Edie caught another streak of brown from the corner of her eye, heading toward Cal. “Watch out!”

  The second wolf tackled him, and Edie side-stepped them, rounding the bumper to where the first wolf should have been lying.

  Lying there instead was a pale man armored in tough brown leather, with the pelt of an enormous gray and tan wolf slung over one shoulder and across his chest. Edie’s gaze fell to his shoes: fur-trimmed leather boots.

  When her gaze flicked back to the man’s face, his eyes were open, wild, and blazing yellow. He looked as confused as she was for a moment, then he sprang up, driving his shoulder into her stomach as he tackled her.

  Edie landed on her back with the witchwolf above, crushing her against the pavement. She heard an unpleasant grinding and struggled to breathe as he held her down, straddling her. A huge hand covered her face, the palm pressed hard against her mouth, butting up against her nose threateningly. One wrong move, and he could cave her whole face in; she could feel the raw strength coiled behind his grip.

  One bullet, then another—these gunshots sounded different than the ones before—heated what little air there was between them. The man on top of her yelped. The round must have grazed him: even though his hold on her remained strong, she could feel his blood dripping into the hollow of her throat.

  And it felt … amazing.

  Her skin was suddenly alive. The blood, which she knew should have been warm, stung her like freezing rain; the pain in her burnt fingers and her shoulder suddenly seemed like nothing.

  Somehow, his blood was healing her.

  “Hey, asshole!”

  The man above her snarled and turned his head toward Cal. The revenant stood, bloodied but victorious, holding another human by the scruff of the neck: a woman, dressed similarly to the man, with the head of her pelt fashioned into a hood. She was still breathing shallowly, but showed no signs of life beyond that.

  Cal shook her limp body and threw it at his feet, maintaining eye contact.

  He didn’t need to say anything else. The male witchwolf was already off Edie and at Cal’s throat with a dangerous resurgence of energy. Cal, sandwiched between the rear window of the car and the witch, was unable to shield himself as his attacker landed two powerful jabs between the eyes. One hand gripped the front of Cal’s shirt tight; the other reeled back, tongues of primal fire licking his fist, growing into a larger blaze as he held the revenant poised.

  Cal only managed a few choice words before he was struck. The sound of sizzling flesh filled the air, louder than Edie could have imagined, mingling with a groan of agony. The witchwolf snarled in delight.

  “Cal!” Edie sat up quickly and felt the blood trickle from the hollow of her neck, down her clavicle, before being soaked up by her black tank top. Cal’s face…. She hadn’t thought it could get any worse, but there it was.

  The witchwolf lined up another shot.

  “Fuck … ing … kill … it!” Cal rasped, clutching at the fist knotted in his shirt. He twisted and bucked his hips forward, managing to knee the witchwolf hard enough to make him stagger back half a foot.

  “Hang on!” Edie scrambled to the car and flung one of the doors open.

  Behind her, she could hear the witchwolf snarl and turn on her again. She only had a few seconds to get this right.

  Edie slid into the front seat and turned, grabbing the first thing her fingers brushed against: Astrid’s shield.

  The witchwolf had already abandoned a crispier Cal and was climbing into the car after her, smoldering fingers melting through the leather interior as he clawed his way in through the driver’s side door. Edie scooted away, working her legs in a panic as she tried to get to the other end of the car. She could practically feel his breath on her as the passenger door flew open for her and she tumbled out.

  The blood drying against her clavicle hummed, and as she glanced behind at the car, she noticed just how close the witchwolf was. With a squawk, she threw the entirety of her body weight against the door, slamming it in his face.

  She heard the door lock from the inside, and Ghost gave a loud honk. It would only buy them a second.

  Edie’s sneakers slid across the gravel. She was barely able to keep her balance as she hurried back around the bumper of the car, stepping over the witchwolf’s unconscious mate and Cal, who was slumped against the rear wheel well. The witchwolf had given up on the passenger door and was now backing out of the car toward her, pungent white smoke following him.

  Edie brought the rim of the shield down on the back of his neck before he could turn around.

  He shuddered, shocked by the blow.

  With a loud cry, she brought the shield down again. This time, the man collapsed for good, upper torso trapped in the footwell of Ghost’s driver’s side.

  The sizzling of the blood didn’t die; it hissed, almost sang to her. She could hear it in her head and feel her skin and bones siphoning energy from it. She shut her eyes tight and dropped the shield, lowering into a crouch with her head in her hands.

  Behind her, she heard shuffling.

  “Cal,” she groaned. “I did it … I knocked him out.” At least, she thought he was knocked out. If he was dead, well … she wouldn’t know quite how to feel about that. Killing fish by accident was one thing, but this….

  After a moment, Edie lifted her head and
looked at the shield before her. Runes that she hadn’t noticed were carved into the wooden face of it had blazed to life, glowing a strange mixture of ice blue and teal, like aurora borealis.

  “Dude, are you seeing this?” she asked Cal, leaning forward to pick the shield up. She propped it against the side of the car, watching as the light passed through the runes like a lantern behind frosted glass: glimmering, shifting, then passing away.

  No answer.

  “Cal?”

  Just as she was about to turn her head, she felt something cold and sharp against her throat.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Stupid young witch,” murmured a female voice, struggling to form each word around gasps and wheezes of pain. A pale hand with long, dirt-stained fingers reached around to grip Edie’s shoulder painfully. “You’ll pay for killing my mate. Your thrall is nothing but a roasted slab of meat now. I will feed him to my dogs.”

  “Feed ’em this,” came a gravelly voice from behind them. Gunfire rang out.

  Edie couldn’t see the bullet hit home, but she could hear the wet impact of it as it buried itself in the witchwolf’s arm. She shrieked, and Edie saw the stone knife she’d been holding clatter to the ground beside them.

  She rolled out of the woman’s grip easily and turned in time to see Cal gripping Ghost’s rear tire, hoisting himself up. His eyes were squeezed tight, and he used the side of the car to feel his way over to the writhing witchwolf, nudging her with the toe of his boot.

  Breathing raggedly, he waved the revolver in Edie’s direction. “Get in the car.”

  The sooner they could leave, the better, as far as she was concerned. Edie grabbed the now-dormant wooden shield and circled around the front of the car, waiting for the passenger door to unlock before she slid in. The smell of burnt plastic and rubber greeted her. The leather of the driver’s side seat was melted through to the cushion, fused to the upholstery; the dash was misshapen, too, where the male witchwolf had touched it.

  Edie groaned, tucking the shield in the back again. If Cal had been pissed before, he was going to be ten times as pissed now.

  She glanced over in time to see him lift his knee and stomp down hard. There was a wet crunch and a wheeze, and then nothing.

  He jerked the male witchwolf out of the footwell and threw him on the pavement, then joined her in the car a moment later, slamming the door and throwing his shotgun in the back. He said nothing about the scorched interior as he dragged the car into gear and inched back onto the road, toward the highway again.

  Edie was silent as she tried to catch her breath, unsure of what to say. They wobbled down the shoulder of the road at a snail’s pace compared to Cal’s usual speed. He was leaning forward over the steering wheel, squinting ahead. Without his help, Ghost shifted into a higher gear and sped forward.

  “They really hurt you,” Edie breathed finally.

  “Kicked my ass, the fleabags. They were prepared for everything I threw at them. They knew I’d be with”—he coughed gruffly and gasped—“you. Whoever sent them ain’t fucking around.”

  “Are you gonna be okay?” she asked as a visitors’ center came up on their right.

  He groaned as if he’d been waiting for her to ask and cut sharply into the parking lot, pulling to a rattling stop.

  Edie picked her bag up from under her seat and rummaged through it, hoping she might find something that could help. Chapstick probably wouldn’t cure a fried face, but she recalled seeing some eye drops in there recently. Maybe they were still there.

  “You need to heal me,” he said, throwing the car in park and rolling up his window. He sounded miserable, and not just from the injuries to his face.

  “What? How?” That was a puzzling request, to say the least. She’d been under the impression that her powers only involved bringing things back from the dead. How could she heal anything?

  Hellerune. The word echoed in her head. Like the blood, it sang to her; she’d never heard it before Marius had said it, but it spoke of an ancient time and place of great power, something so profound that the lines of her hands and the roots of her teeth and the marrow of her bones remembered it.

  “I thought I could only bring things back to life,” she said, watching him as he checked his face in the rearview mirror.

  “How many times does someone have to say it before you get it through your thick fucking skull: you’re not just a necromancer.”

  “I know, I get that, but I don’t know how to do any of that other stuff.” She spread her hands, frowning at him. She barely knew how to do the necromancy, if she was being honest. “What can I even do that would help you? I’m not a healer.”

  “What d’you want, a pamphlet? You can use death magic to manipulate dead flesh, make it regenerate. Your dad could, anyway. It’s called necrohealing, and I’d, uh, really appreciate some,” he rasped, laughing with frustration.

  “Okay.” She spat out a breath. “But you’ll have to show me how.”

  Cal wrinkled what was left of his nose and took her hands.

  She’d assumed that touching his skin would be unpleasant—that he would feel sticky and broken and wrong—but she found, instead, that it wasn’t much different than touching another human. Just leathery and pitted.

  “What?” he asked, his watery eyes gauging her expression.

  “You just … don’t feel very rotten.”

  “That’s ’cause I’m not,” he grumbled. “Not any more than I was when I came outta the ground, anyway.”

  “How?”

  “It’s a charm. He cast it. I wouldn’t be any good to him if I kept rotting, would I?” He snorted. “Can we get on with the healing? I’m feelin’ like Canadian bacon over here.”

  Edie took a deep breath and moved her hands to his face, sure she wouldn’t be able to do anything. But the second she touched the burnt skin, something changed. She felt strangely like she was touching some sort of membrane she couldn’t see. Rubbery threads stuck to her fingertips, and if she moved her fingers in the right way, she could guide them away from their current alignment in frayed, ashy paths.

  Somehow, suddenly, it made sense.

  She concentrated, zoning out as she gently worked each sinewy strand into different avenues—the right ones. She could feel a bit of elasticity return to the membrane as she coaxed it into place, and was able to move the threads a little more quickly.

  Cal grunted in pain, drawing her attention. The exposed tissue and muscle on his face was turning; charred skin renewed, not completely lifelike but not burnt either. The blackened veins branching across the planes of his face faded, rid of irritation. His ruddy, grayish-yellow hue returned.

  Spots of darkness closed in on her.

  “Kid? You all right?” Cal took her hands and carefully unstuck them from the invisible membrane of his aura, then forced them down into her lap. He reached up and flipped the rearview mirror toward her.

  She hadn’t looked on top of the world before, but now she looked … demonstrably worse. Worse in a way she hadn’t thought was possible, given that she’d looked normal mere hours ago. Now her complexion looked like a melted candle, waxy and pale. Her eyelids were bruised, ringed in deep purple, and her lips matched.

  “Just take it easy,” Cal said, rolling his window down.

  She allowed her head to loll in his direction and looked him over. He looked much better, albeit a little the worse for wear—but wasn’t he always? His eyes were no longer smoky, his face wasn’t burnt, and he looked aware of his surroundings.

  He glanced back at her, lips tight, killing the engine entirely. “Didn’t realize it would take so much outta you.”

  “I’ll be fiiiii…. Just need … rest,” Edie managed, raising her shaking hands to rub her own face. Suddenly, she could barely think, drained by something that had, a moment ago, seemed so simple.

  Cal opened his door. “There’s probably vending machines in there. I’m gonna grab you something.” He slammed it as he left.

&nb
sp; The blood drying on her clavicle sang to her again. Without even meaning to, she drank in its song. The hot, fuzzy darkness clouding her mind abated, but only barely.

  She turned, curled herself tight against the leather seat, and fell asleep.

  Zaedicus growled in frustration, striking the surface of the cool water in the scrying basin. Droplets hit his armed guards, packed tightly into the small, dark room; the water sloshed gently over the side, staining the basin a darker black.

  This was not acceptable.

  The high-wight leaned forward, gripping the sides of the scrying basin, looking into its now-dark waters. With only a candle lighting the room, he could barely see his reflection staring back. Across the basin, the vampire woman from the previous night—Scarlet—stood. She had downgraded from her dress to a leather bustier and trousers, and she chewed on her maroon lip as she watched him.

  For a long time, the only sound between them was Zaedicus’s frustrated breathing. Finally, he said, “Is this all you can show me?”

  Scarlet knit her brows, eyes wide as she frowned. “The connection was severed when she passed out. I could try to connect to the revenant—”

  “No. It is no matter. I’ve seen enough.”

  Scarlet was tedious, but she had proven herself useful, and a loyal member of the Gloaming. She was a talented scryer, and a memory leech. He had plans for her. If she followed orders, the Wounded would surely reward her.

  The same could not be said for Zaedicus. If he didn’t pin the hellerune down, soon, he would be punished.

  He raised a hand and shooed the vampire away. There was no sense in prolonging the inevitable. His lord had to be told what was going on, if he hadn’t already been enlightened.

  The high-wight felt his injured pride whimper in pain. The Wounded was powerful, influential, but he was still a human—and a young human, at that, no older than five-and-twenty years. Zaedicus was practically serving an infant, yet he trembled at the thought of holding an audience with him.