They kept to the highway as they made their way to the town. It was so dark and the wind so biting it was impossible to see more than a few feet in front of them. They made their way from car to abandoned car, finding brief solace against toppled semis. Every once in a while, Dreya would pulse a small flame between her hands, letting the faint light filter out between her fingertips to guide the way. Then darkness would swallow them again. What Tenn wouldn’t give to once more live in a world with electricity. Or at least a flashlight.
It was the third or fourth time that Dreya opened to Air that she stiffened and halted them in their tracks. The flame in her hand burned longer than usual, but her eyes were focused on the road before them.
“Something is moving,” she said.
Tenn’s grip instinctively tightened on his staff. Even through the thick leather of his gloves, the metal was bitingly cold.
“Howl?” he asked.
“I do not think so,” she whispered. “It is staggering.” She sniffed. “Blood. I smell blood.”
“Tori,” Tenn said.
He opened to Earth and Water, a quick flash, just enough to let him sense the figure’s approach. Sure enough, it was a young girl, maybe thirteen, maybe younger. He could feel her cooling flesh, taste the blood that sprinkled on the ground with every footstep. Every shivering, bare footstep.
“She’s hurt,” he said. Then instinct took over. He opened once more to Earth and ran, the power guiding him through the dark.
“Tenn, wait!” Dreya yelled, but it was too late. He had already taken off, the twins falling fast behind him. He knew it was a trap. He knew that he was running to his death. But Water and Earth told him all he needed to know: Tori’s pulse was failing, her skin was bare. If he didn’t reach her soon, she was as good as dead.
He wouldn’t lose someone else because he was too slow, because he had hesitated. He wouldn’t let someone die because he hadn’t been there to help. Not again.
He couldn’t get Jarrett’s face out of his head.
He ran full speed, Earth fueling his muscles and numbing him to the wind and the snow that beat down in chunks of ice. A few hundred yards. A hundred. Fifty away, and he felt her stagger. She fell into the snow, shivering. He felt her heart skip.
He reached her seconds later, dropped to his knees in the snow and tried not to panic. Now that he was near, he could sense all the things he’d been too distanced to notice before. Like the way blood smeared over every inch of her flesh. Or the thousand cuts slashed across her bare skin. Not one inch of her was clothed, and not one inch was spared from the slices that slowly bled her dry.
When he placed a hand on her shoulder, she flinched away and screamed.
“Shh, shh,” he whispered. “It’s okay. I’m here to help.”
But the girl was lost to him. Her screams split the air, and with every inch she tried to put between them, another ounce of blood was lost. If he didn’t act fast, she’d bleed out before he even had a chance to start healing. If she didn’t die of hypothermia first.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He reached out and grabbed her arm, clamped it tight as a vise. Then he began pouring Earth into her body.
She screamed again at the pain he knew the process was inflicting. Her heart hammered fast. Stuttered. She fell silent.
He knew the cuts that crossed her skin. He’d seen them before. They weren’t the casual, careless marks of a kraven or even a necromancer. They were made by a bloodling, one who knew how to prolong the pain and the bleeding, how to make the most from their victim. He’d felt himself make those same marks when consumed by Dmitri’s past.
Devon and Dreya knelt by his side. Dreya put a hand on his shoulder. Cool light filtered down around them, but he didn’t check to see which of them was using magic.
“Tenn, you must stop,” she said. “The power you’re using will give us away.”
“Either help me or shut up,” he snapped. He wouldn’t lose her. Not like he lost his parents. And Katherine. And Jarrett. And countless others.
He poured his focus into the girl. The process was painstakingly slow, even though he worked as fast as he could. A small voice inside of him screamed that it wasn’t fast enough—he could only heal one cut at a time. He didn’t listen. He forced Water into her veins and Earth into her bones, tried to replenish the blood that was quickly seeping into the snow, staining it crimson.
There was only the slightest hesitation from Dreya.
“What can we do?” she asked.
“Heat,” he replied. He could barely hear them through his concentration. “She’ll freeze to death otherwise.”
Devon knelt by the girl’s side and placed his hands on the concrete. Fire opened in his chest, and the snow around them melted in moments. A small cocoon of warmth enveloped them and sweat burst across Tenn’s skin.
“Tenn,” Dreya whispered suddenly. Her grip on Tenn’s shoulder tightened.
“What?” he asked.
“They’re coming,” was all she said.
Tenn glanced up, spared a half second to focus on something other than the girl quickly dying at his feet. The Howls within the town emerged like a swarm of vermin. In spite of the warmth Devon enveloped them in, the air grew colder, a chill that seeped and burned into his very bones. He didn’t need to see them to know what was causing the sudden cold. Succubi. The town was harboring succubi.
“Fight them off,” he said, then refocused on Tori. In that momentary distraction, she had slipped away even further. Her pulse was weak, so weak.
“But the sept—” Dreya began.
“I don’t care about the fucking sept!” he yelled. He glared up at her. “I won’t let her die.”
Her jaw clenched, but she nodded and looked out to the city. Using all this magic would call the full wrath of the Church down upon them, that was for certain. He could only hope that if the Inquisitors appeared, they’d fight off the necromancers and Howls first.
Dreya opened to Air and opened her lips, a single, clear note ringing out into the wild night. The wind became a gale. But the necromancers were ready. Fire billowed up around Tenn and the others. Devon cursed and threw out a shield, the air around them whirling with flame and magic. The heat was suffocating. But it didn’t block out the darker powers at work: Tenn’s hands shook from the succubi’s life-stealing cold.
“I said fight them off!” he yelled. Rage filled him. But it wasn’t just anger, it was desperation. Tori’s skin glistened red and bloody in the firelight, and now, when he looked at her, he couldn’t help but imagine Jarrett lying there, slowly bleeding out. Every blink, and he saw Jarrett’s face. Pleading. Waiting. Dying.
Dreya didn’t answer in words. Instead, her song rose in volume as a blast of wind shot across the countryside, wailing like hungry wolves. Funnels broke down from the sky, but that didn’t stop the oncoming Howls. He could hear their screams, could feel the necromancers’ magic as they worked against him. But that knowledge was small and distant. Every ounce of attention he had he gave to the girl.
“Tenn,” Dreya said, her song cut short. Her voice was strained, her breathing ragged; the twins were already holding each other for support. “I cannot hold them off. There are too many necromancers. And I think... I think they have a Breathless One. Some Howls are resisting my magic.”
In spite of his focus, this made him halt. The Breathless Ones were hard to create and harder to kill and were thankfully rare—but just as Fire magic didn’t harm a succubus, Air didn’t harm the Breathless Ones. If anything, it gave them strength by feeding their hungering Sphere. Bloodlings, succubi, Breathless Ones... What other nightmares had been lying in wait for them?
“Devon,” he said. “Help her.”
Devon nodded. Power flashed through him as Fire billowed in his chest. The town erupted into flame.
T
ori continued to slip from Tenn’s fingers. She shivered uncontrollably in spite of the heat. He poured more power into her, more than he would have ever dared before. Her body shook as wound after wound sealed itself. The ground rumbled with latent magic.
More flames erupted on all sides, and the earth heaved violently as a fresh surge of dark Earth magic flew their way. Tenn lost his grip on Tori. Just for a moment, their connection severed. He stumbled back, hurried over to her side.
But it had been long enough.
When he placed his hands on her cold skin once more, he felt her heart beat for one, final time.
“No,” he whispered. He shook her, gently, and flooded her limp limbs with magic. “No,” he said, louder, over and over until he was screaming it at the top of his lungs and it wasn’t Tori on the ground, but Jarrett, Jarrett staring up with those pleading blue eyes, Jarrett soaked in his own blood.
Blood, blood everywhere.
Tenn rocked back on his heels as another wave of magic rolled over them and sent the ground squirming. The twins screamed with power. With fear. It was too much. Too much.
Blood on his hands. Blood on his jeans. Blood seeping through his skin.
Red filled his vision.
He stood and Water was raging, raging red. Water filled him with power. All that red. All that blood. All that magic. Filling him.
He screamed.
It wasn’t a scream of loss or desperation. This was the scream of Water, of rage and death and bloodlust. The Sphere howled in his gut as torrents of energy lashed through his body. The world seemed to pause with his heart. Everything slowed. Everything stopped.
Then his heart beat again, and it beat with power.
He reached out, latched on to the hearts and pulses of every creature in that town. He felt them, all of them—the Howls and the humans, the damned and the damning. He felt their hearts throb, the water pulse in their veins. Magic flooded through him in painful ecstasy. He felt their hearts beat. All of them, beating a rhythm of life. A rhythm neither Jarrett nor Tori would ever feel again.
He clenched his fingers, felt every muscle, every vein, a glowing, terrible lacework of fragile life.
And then he stopped their hearts.
The blowback was immediate and immense. His own heart screamed out as the hundred lives at the ends of his fingertips squirmed for life. He held on. His heart ached. Tears streamed down his face and he heard them screaming. Screaming, just as his parents had screamed, as his friends had screamed, as Jarrett had screamed. Water filled him, amplified the pain, the agony, the pure ecstasy of it all. His head whipped back and his arms stretched out from his sides as the power flooded through him, lifting him off the ground in a halo of blue. The enemy screamed. He screamed louder. Their pulses throbbed. Burned.
Stopped.
A snap.
The power vanished. And as he fell to the ground like a marionette cut from its strings, he felt the hundred others die with him.
He crumpled, along with his enemy. When darkness overtook him, he heard nothing but silence.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TOMÁS STROKED THE side of Tenn’s face.
“It’s rare,” Tomás said.
“What is?” Tenn asked.
He sat before Tomás on a fur rug while the incubus lounged in a large leather chair, a fire crackling in the hearth behind him.
“To meet one like you. You’re a challenge.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
In the corner of the room, chains clinked together. Tenn looked over. Jarrett was there, chained to the wall like a dog, a thick collar around his neck. His naked body was smeared with blood.
“Let him go,” Tenn said. He looked back, but it was no longer Tomás. It was the necromancer Matthias. He sneered, his dark eyes burning like coal fires.
“Of course. He doesn’t matter. But you? You’re mine forever.”
Tenn glanced at the chains on his own wrists and ankles, felt the large manacle around his neck. Matthias held the other end in his hand. Matthias opened to Fire; the chains glowed red. Tenn smelled his flesh burning before the pain arrived. When it hit, his whole world went white.
* * *
“You’re still alive,” Dreya said.
Her words cut through the haze of his dream. He couldn’t tell if it was a statement or a question.
He tried to move, but every single joint in his body ached. It felt like he’d been filled with acid—his very blood seemed to beat against him. When he opened his eyes, he found that it was morning. At least, he thought it was morning. The sun sat on a cloudy horizon, the world a pinkish wash of white.
“What happened?” Tenn asked. His throat was dry. So dry. He needed to drink.
He couldn’t remember anything, just pain. Then it began to come back to him in a haze. Heading out to the city, the army, the girl...
“Tori,” he said. Despite the pain, he pushed himself up to sitting. The world swayed. “Where is she?”
Dreya looked down, then pointed to her side. He followed her finger and found a blanket-wrapped bundle sitting at the edge of the clearing they were in, nestled against the trunk of a pine. Tenn’s heart sank and tears filled his eyes. How did he have moisture left for tears?
He couldn’t help himself. He started to sob.
“You tried,” Dreya responded. “What you did—”
“Didn’t help,” Tenn said through his tears. He wanted to believe the emotion was from Water, but he couldn’t bring himself to buy it. I failed. I failed. I will always fail.
“You saved our lives,” Dreya said. There was a note in her voice, something he’d not heard before. Awe. “I don’t know how you did it. I’ve never seen so much power. You stopped their hearts—such magic should be impossible.”
“But it was too late,” he croaked. He could barely remember what he’d done after Tori died in his hands. He just knew he was paying for it dearly. And it hadn’t even been enough. If only you’d found that power sooner.
Dreya slapped him.
And it wasn’t gentle.
“Stop being a fool,” she said. “Only an idiot mourns what he could not change. You saved our lives, and you tried to save hers. Let that be enough.”
He didn’t move, but he stared up at her, sniffing back his tears. His heart broke and he couldn’t tell if it was the ache of Water or the realization that it would never, ever be enough. Her eyes were set, and there was an edge to her voice that told him she’d be more than happy to slap him again.
“Where’s Devon?” he asked, rather than letting himself drown in images of what he’d failed to do.
“Searching,” she said. “Looking for survivors.”
“And?”
“None so far,” she said. Again, that note of awe. “How did you channel so much power? You took out the entire army in a single swipe. It should have killed you.”
“I don’t know,” Tenn said. Like so many things happening in his life right now, he didn’t have a clue.
She shook her head in disbelief and stared at him for a while.
“Here, I thought the world was done with surprises,” she said. Then she looked to the city on the horizon.
Smoke and red light curled up from the burning buildings. He swallowed harshly and shuffled over to a spot of untouched snow. With numb hands, he began scraping it up and putting it to his lips.
“Here,” Dreya said. She moved to his side and took the snow in her own hands, opened to Fire and Water and both melted the snow and turned the ice below it into a bowl. A crystalline bowl filled with water, beautiful as fine china.
“How did you do that?” he asked. He’d never seen such delicate uses of magic, and maybe it was the rawness of Water, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen something so beau
tiful.
Dreya gave a faint smile.
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” she said. She handed him the bowl, water glittering against her pale, willowy fingers. He took it and drank. Dreya settled back and looked to the city.
“He will be back soon,” she said. “When he is, we will leave. But I’m afraid...” She sighed. “We are going to have to leave her body here. We have no way of carrying her.”
Again, the thought of driving crossed his mind, but there was no way, not in all this snow. They could melt it, sure, but even though he’d just alerted everything in a hundred miles of their location, he didn’t want to use any more magic. Not if it meant drawing more eyes to the clan.
“I can’t just leave her out like this,” Tenn said. “Especially if I didn’t get them all.”
“We hoped that you could bury her. A pyre seems too... I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”
He nodded, but he didn’t answer. It wasn’t a job he looked forward to. Especially since Earth would force him to feel everything.
Devon appeared a while later, as promised. A bag was slung over his back Tenn had never seen before. Tenn didn’t have to ask. Although the Howls didn’t need food, their human slave drivers did. The spoils of war were small, but they were spoils nonetheless. They didn’t speak as they sorted through the bag and made a hasty breakfast. There was nothing else to say anymore.
They had tried, and they had failed. Even eating, his stomach turned against him. Matthias hadn’t been in the city, that much was obvious, both from the lack of seeing him in the battle and Devon’s scouting of the corpses. It felt like he’d sprung a trap. It felt like he was still being played. But he couldn’t for the life of him imagine what the game could be.
Finally, they gathered their things and moved Tori to the center of the glade. Tenn’s body hurt like hell and his blood burned with acid, but the water and food had helped. A bit.
The three of them stood over the wrapped body, the twins with their heads bowed. Tenn didn’t know if they were praying or just being respectful. He closed his eyes and tried to pray for the girl he didn’t know. But as much as he hated himself for it, he couldn’t help but find himself praying for Jarrett and the funeral he would never receive.
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