Runebinder

by Alex R. Kahler

  Tenn jolted back, surfacing with a gasp. Dmitri pulled him closer. Tenn couldn’t have pulled away; he didn’t want to pull away. Water throbbed inside of him. Everything felt slower, drugged.

  Dmitri brought Tenn’s hand to his cracked lips. Tenn didn’t flinch when the bloodling’s teeth sliced into his flesh. Water, Water, Water was all. Dmitri drank, and Tenn fell under the waves.

  “Dmitri, please,” Helena whimpers.

  “Dmitri is dead, you made sure of that,” he hisses. She struggles against the bonds holding her to the table, but the knots hold strong. She taught him those knots, and he was nothing if not a fast learner.

  Everything rages inside of him. Every hurt and hate, every regret. Every hunger. Every guilty drop of blood. Her fault. All her fault. Make her pay for what she did.

  “Don’t worry,” he says, leaning in close. “I’ve had practice. I can keep you alive forever if I like. Just like you showed me.”

  He digs a finger into her forearm, his nail burrowing deep. Blood pools within the depression. She screams. Tears fall down her face as he leans in and licks up her blood. Her blood, like poison, like honey.

  Her blood, like power.

  “Stop,” Tenn whispered.

  Water fluttered inside of him now, a thin stream siphoning through a tunnel. It didn’t hurt, that loss. He didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt, not even as Dmitri’s teeth dug into his wrist, warmth spilling across his skin. The numbness was a beautiful release. It was freedom.

  Tenn slumped down on top of Dmitri. It felt like falling on bones.

  “Quiet, kids, quiet now,” Dmitri says. But they won’t stop screaming. They won’t stop crying.

  Blood everywhere. On hands and knees, cleaning every drop, licking every drop. But still hungry, so hungry. Not enough blood. Never enough blood. They’re crying blood. The water is never enough. Never enough.

  “Shut up!” he yells. They sit in the corner, crying. He runs over to them, smashes in their skulls, but they’re still crying. He kicks their bones, scatters them like sticks, but they won’t stop. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

  He bangs on the door. Locked. Helena had locked it behind her. She’s in the corner, too, sitting by herself. She isn’t crying. She’s stuck with him. Forever. My love, my slave.

  He crawls over to her. So hungry. She’d brought down the last of the students—those who were kept behind—ages ago. Weeks. Months. Years. She brought the last. And when that wasn’t enough, he took her.

  “Speak up,” he hisses at her. He picks up her skull, stares into her empty eyes. “Speak up.”

  Her mouth is open, skin taut, but she doesn’t say anything.

  She’d stopped talking weeks ago.

  But not the blood.

  Her blood still screams, still sings in his bones. She is still with him.

  She will never get away.

  When he gets away, he will make them pay. He will devour—

  Water stopped.

  Tenn floated, warm, his arm tingling with pain and pleasure. Red. Warm and wet and red.

  “Saving your ass grows tiresome,” Tomás whispered into his ear. A warm hand stroked his face, chilling the spilled blood to frost. Everything was red.

  Red, red and black.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

  Dreya’s voice pulsed through the darkness, a wash against the red staining his inner eyelids. He wanted to float there, lost in emptiness, but there was a hand on his skin now, a tingle of magic that swept through his bones. The energy filled his insides with fire and ice. His eyes fluttered open as a shiver racked his body, a shiver that sent lances of pain through his arm.

  It took a few moments for the scene to focus.

  Dreya knelt by his side, one hand on his chest. Devon stood behind her like a sentinel. Both of them stared down at him, awash in pale white light that filtered from an orb hovering above Devon’s head. The room took even longer to come into view. First the floor, smeared with what looked like black oil, glinting in the light, then the sensation, the wetness, the softness beneath him. His arm gave another twinge. He looked back and nearly yelped.

  Dmitri was there, slumped against the wall, his jaw gaping on broken hinges. Dmitri, looking so much more alive than when Tenn came down here. His flesh was full, his chin dripping Tenn’s blood. Much more alive, save for the butcher knife firmly embedded in his neck. Blood slowly dripped off the handle and onto Tenn’s shoulder. Pat, pat, pat. Tenn tried to jerk away.

  “He’s dead,” Dreya said. She forced Tenn to stay still. “It’s okay.”

  Water was a slow thrum in his gut. It ached, but the damned Sphere seemed to enjoy it. He remembered kneeling there, remembered placing his hand on the corpse’s skin...then the rest flooded back in a smear of pain. He had willingly knelt there and let Dmitri feed off him, all while...what? He relived Dmitri’s own painful past?

  What the hell had Water done to him?

  Perfect crescent moon gashes were etched deep into his flesh, his bones just visible through the mess of muscle. Before he could lose any more blood, he opened to Earth and sealed off the wounds. The scars welled up pink as flesh knitted itself together. Shivers racked through him the moment he closed off to the Sphere; somehow, he felt even weaker than before.

  “You lost a lot of blood,” Dreya said. “You are lucky you did not bleed out.” Her magic flooded him, burning through his veins and spurring his marrow to produce more blood. He shivered uncontrollably, but he’d rather she did this than have to do it himself.

  Earth might leave him weak, but there was no way he would trust Water. Not now. How was she able to use it without succumbing to the terrors of this place? How was she not seeing what he had seen?

  Tenn looked back to Dmitri, to the knife embedded in his throat. The voice he heard before fainting filtered through his ears. Saving your ass grows tiresome. Tomás had been here. Tomás had saved his life.

  “What the hell were you doing down here?” Devon asked. He nodded to the broken Howl. “It could have killed you.”

  “Water,” he said. The words left his mouth in a dry croak. “I don’t... I don’t know why. Water pulled me down here. It took over. Again.” He clutched his head in his hands and closed his eyes, tried to drown out the new memories that interlaced with his. He had been there. He had worn Dmitri’s skin. “I felt it,” he said. “I saw his memories. How he died. What he did.” He trailed off. The memories burned. The blood of his classmates was a sharp tang in his mouth.

  He knew it wasn’t his doing, but Dmitri’s sins felt like they were his own now. The blood he’d tasted danced in his veins.

  “That is more than transference,” Dreya whispered.

  Tenn nodded slowly. His fingers dug into his hair, tried to press the images out.

  “I have never heard of this,” she continued. “Places resonate and Spheres answer, but they do not compel you toward death. They do not make you live another’s life.”

  “I don’t care what it is,” Tenn said. He opened his eyes. “I just want it to stop.”

  “You can’t stop it,” Devon said. He knelt down, Fire flickering in his throat. “But maybe...maybe the Witches can help you control it.”

  Tenn didn’t answer. He just dug his head back into his palms and tried to force out the memories. Control it. Right. The Sphere was controlling him. He just hoped he could turn the tables before it killed him.

  * * *

  The twins helped him limp through the halls and up the steps. His stomach burned with hunger, and every muscle in his body felt like it had been pressed through a meat grinder. He wanted to lie down and sleep for eternity, but he knew that wasn’t going to be a possibility. They weren’t safe here. Once he told them about the message on the desk, it hadn’t taken long for th
em to decide that, even if it risked everything, they would find the Witches tonight.

  Dreya didn’t leave his side while Devon retrieved their things. Without speaking, she magically drew the blood from his clothes. He watched impassively as the gore trickled down his jeans and across the floor before evaporating into nothing. There was a look in her eyes that told him she was keeping silent for a purpose. She was calculating. It wasn’t until Devon returned to the lobby that he realized what she was trying to figure out.

  “How did we not feel that bloodling?” she asked.

  “It was dead,” Tenn said. He nearly lost his appetite just thinking about it. “At least, until...” Until I fed it my own blood.

  “But how?” she asked. She glanced at him, but her gaze wasn’t accusatory. She was curious. “Bloodlings aren’t able to compel their victims. They can’t hide from magic. I searched every inch of this place. We should have felt it, just as we should have felt it drawing you in.”

  He didn’t want to remember, but it was too easy to sift back through those moments. Dmitri’s life and death were as firm in his mind as his own history. Maybe even stronger.

  “He wasn’t like other bloodlings,” Tenn said.

  Dreya raised an eyebrow.

  “Runes,” Tenn continued. “The necromancer who turned him...she covered him in runes before actually draining his Sphere. She said they would make him stronger. That they would let him keep his mind and his magic. She wanted to make him like the Kin.” Even just saying the words sent memories coursing through his mind. He tried to squash them down and keep talking. “I don’t think it worked, though. The runes turned him into something different. Gave him power. But not like the Kin.”

  “That is the key,” Dreya whispered. She shared a glance with her brother. “I saw the marks on the bloodling’s neck, but there was too much blood.” She pushed herself to standing. “I must go investigate.” Another glance to Devon, who nodded solemnly in return. Then she left.

  “What do you think it means?” Tenn asked. He didn’t think Devon would respond. The guy just stared past him, eyes fixed on something out of sight. When he finally spoke, his words made Tenn jump.

  “There is more to this than anyone will say,” Devon said. “The language of the runes should have been lost when the Dark Lady died. If her words are being spoken once more...” He focused on Tenn. “We’re as good as dead.”

  * * *

  They left soon after Dreya returned from her study of Dmitri. Her expression was stormy as they trudged down the path that led away from Silveron.

  “What did you find?” Tenn asked.

  “Nothing good,” she replied. Her words were clipped—he knew she wanted to keep it at that. But after what he’d experienced, he couldn’t let it lie.

  “How did he come back to life?” he asked. “Was it the runes? I’ve never seen a Howl covered in marks like that.”

  With kravens it was impossible to tell, what with their twisted bodies and warped skin—Earth wasn’t kind to its hosts when inverted. But he’d killed his fair share of bloodlings. None of them had those marks.

  Dreya shook her head. “I have never seen runes like that before. I can only guess...”

  “Then guess,” Tenn said. He didn’t mean to sound so angry, but he had almost been killed by a creature that should have been nothing more than a corpse.

  “The runes were clearly meant to give the creature power,” Dreya said. “And it worked. Howls die out if they cannot feed, albeit slowly. Perhaps the necromancer wanted to make him like the Kin, but she failed. She made him into something else. Something almost immortal.”

  “Until we killed it.”

  “But perhaps, if you had never appeared, it never would have truly died. It was kept alive by magic alone. Perhaps that magic is what kept him hidden from us. And what drew you to him. Water pulled.”

  He shuddered. Water had definitely gotten him into this mess. But that didn’t answer the question of what had gone wrong in Dmitri’s conversion or what the runes actually did. He’d seen so much of Tomás’s skin, and there hadn’t been a single rune or tattoo. So how had the Kin been created? If Dmitri was a failure, but still close to immortal, what did that mean about the Kin themselves?

  The silence stretched between them the full length of the night. The fields and forests they trekked through were empty, and the only light came from a few dim flares that hovered around them like fireflies. Every second he expected to see a fire on the horizon, for Matthias to appear in a blaze of flame and turn his friends to ash.

  Which was why, when he saw the dim light in the distance, his throat constricted with dread.

  But the light didn’t flicker like fire. Wasn’t warm. It glowed white and steady like a city. But there were no cities out here. Nor any farms. This part of America had been abandoned because of winters too cold and summers too harsh, the weather itself sharpened by the claws of the Resurrection.

  “A sept,” Dreya whispered.

  “What the hell is a sept doing this close to the Academy?” Tenn asked, gut in his chest.

  The septs were the only other established human communes besides guilds. Septs, however, were created and ruled by the Church, and were formed even before the Resurrection. He had no idea how the places managed to survive the undead hordes, no matter how high their walls. Without the magic they deemed as evil, they should have gone under in the first few weeks. It’s not like they could rely on guns or bombs when a single mage could render them useless. Rumor was that their faith kept them safe, but Tenn had seen enough of faith to know it didn’t keep the monsters from tearing out your bones and sucking them dry while you bled out on the concrete.

  Instantly, he thought of Caius. When you know the truth, you’ll have the whole of the Church at your back.

  Tenn knew the Church had secrets. But what could they have to do with him?

  “If there are any Inquisitors about...” Dreya muttered.

  She didn’t have to finish the thought.

  Inquisitors stayed true to their ancient charge—wipe out witchcraft in all of its forms, from mages to necromancers, and anyone else they didn’t like.

  Tenn had heard enough horror stories of mages tortured by Inquisitors, had seen the bodies after they’d been hung up as examples. He had no clue how the hell Inquisitors were able to capture, let alone torture, mages when they themselves eschewed magic, but if he had to choose between a necromancer and an Inquisitor, he’d pick the necromancer. Necromancers weren’t known for thumbscrews.

  “This is bad,” Dreya said. She kept sharing glances with her brother, who was staring at the glow on the horizon with narrowed eyes. Fire twitched on and off in his chest. “If the Witches are nearby... I do not want to think of what may have been done to them.”

  She didn’t clarify, and Tenn didn’t ask. He didn’t need to wonder. If the sept was nearby, the Witches would be hunted down. If they were caught, they would be tortured. Just like he and the twins would be if they were found. Suddenly, he felt more exposed than he ever had in his life. If Matthias showed up, it would attract the Church and its Inquisitors. But whose side would they err on? The monsters from hell or those who opened the gateway? Or would they just wait until the battle was over and sweep up the remainders for “saving”?

  He didn’t want to find out either way.

  Wherever the Witches were, he hoped they were safe. And close.

  An hour or so later, the lights now somewhat behind them, Devon led them off the highway and into a field covered in freshly fallen snow. There were no tracks anywhere, not from deer or mice or anything else that might live out in the wilds. Just smooth, unbroken white.

  The night air was far too quiet for his liking. Quiet always meant an attack. Always. Every few minutes, Dreya would open to Air and send a gust of wind behind them, effectivel
y obscuring their own tracks. Tenn flinched every time—even that small amount of magic seemed like a beacon in the night. As if the lights that guided them weren’t bad enough. A forest rose, tall and foreboding, on the far end of the field. Devon led them straight toward it.

  They stopped near the edge of the trees. Devon stared into the undergrowth, his eyes set in concentration and Air pulsing in his throat.

  “Are you sure?” Dreya asked softly.

  Devon nodded. Nothing moved within the trees, nothing pulsed with life, not for miles, but Devon seemed dead set in his convictions and, frankly, there was nowhere else to go.

  He opened to Fire, and then, before Tenn could say anything to stop him, he sent up a flare. It was like watching stars fall in reverse—tiny motes of light sparked into life around him and shot high into the air, blazing against the gray sky. Devon wove them together, lights streaking like white thread, forming intricate knots high above the tree line. Each was a symbol Tenn couldn’t understand, and each flared bright as a strobe before being replaced by another whirling shape. The field around them flashed white and glaring.

  Devon dropped the Sphere a moment later. The night seemed even heavier the moment the magical light vanished.

  “What the hell was that?” Tenn hissed.

  “It is the signal,” Dreya said. “The Witches must be entreated. One cannot enter their territory without their express invitation.”

  Tenn pushed his senses into the forest, but that was still and silent, too. If anyone was living in there, they were miles away and far out of both his magic’s reach and the sight of the flare.

  This all seemed insane. And suicidal.

  “So what do we do now?” he asked.

  “We wait,” Devon said. “And we hope they are still alive.”

  It was not the answer he was hoping for. The minutes seemed to stretch on forever. Tenn didn’t let go of Earth, not once, but he didn’t feel anything stirring within the forest. Devon and Dreya were both open to Air, scanning silently, their eyes practically glowing in the darkness. After using so much magic to send up a signal, using the Spheres to scout seemed pale in comparison.