“Damn it, Aidan!” Kianna yelled.
Something soft smacked into the side of his head, knocking the dream away and bringing reality into focus.
The acrid scent of burnt wool filled his nostrils.
“You’ve set the bloody couch on fire!” she said. She stood by the hearth, hands on her hips and a disgusted look on her face.
“I—” he began, but he couldn’t gain his bearings. The sofa smoldered, but it wasn’t in flames, thank gods. Just a few patches in the arms and in the wool blanket. But that dream...
Kianna shook her head.
“And you have a boner. Is that what this is? Fire acting up because you haven’t gotten off in a while?”
“I—”
“Take your time,” she said. “I’ll give you some privacy.”
She chuckled and headed toward the exit, stopping before she left.
“Just make sure you don’t burn the place down when you come.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Aidan didn’t jerk off.
Not that he even wanted to, but having Kianna draw so much attention to it definitely made it the last thing on his mind. Instead, he sat on the edge of the sofa and coaxed the embers in the hearth with a small thread of Fire.
The dream...
It had been so vivid. So real. He hadn’t even realized he was asleep until Kianna woke him up. And yet, he’d only said those things in the dream because it was all a fantasy. He didn’t actually mean any of them, right?
Not that he thought that Tomás was real—the incubus was just some sexed-up fantasy from Aidan’s tired imagination. But still... He’d offered Aidan the world on a silver platter, and Aidan had taken it without question.
It made him doubt his sanity.
Maybe Trevor was right. Maybe he was a liability.
“All finished?” Kianna asked with a smirk.
He looked over to where she poked her head through the open door. He hadn’t even heard her open it.
“Fuck off.”
“I’ll take that as a no.” She plopped wetly down beside him.
“I see the weather hasn’t improved,” he muttered, staring at her clothes.
“Does it ever?”
He just mumbled under his breath and went back to staring at the flames.
“What are we going to do?” Kianna asked.
We. Not you. At least he still had her on his side. For now. He shook his head, and with it, shook off the visions of Tomás and the world on its knees.
“I... I’m not certain.”
She nudged him. “I went to spy on the troops. They’ve begun marching.”
He grunted. Of course they had. He’d been trying to get them to march on Edinburgh for months. According to Trevor, the time had never been right—they weren’t strong enough, or there was word of a different threat, or some other bullshit excuse. Apparently, the real reason he had been waiting was that he needed Aidan out of the way.
“So, here’s the thing,” she continued. “We have supplies for about a week here. Two if you aren’t a pig like usual. Then we’re going to have to move.”
“What about taking Edinburgh for ourselves? Are you just suggesting we give up?”
“I know you want to be all mopey right now, Aidan, but it’s extremely out of character and it’s starting to piss me off. I’m not suggesting we give up. I’m suggesting we don’t commit suicide. They’ll kill you if you follow them, and you aren’t going to get a piece of their glory, no matter how much you whine about it being your idea or how grandiose your dreams of personal power are. Calum is no longer our mark. So. I say we save the little dignity we have—and by that I mean you, because I only kill people intentionally—and go somewhere we aren’t known. Start over. Find some other Howls to kill. I hear there’s a Kin living in Berlin. Always wanted to go to Berghain. Maybe it’s still a party?”
He could only stare at her.
“Are you serious?” Fire smoldered and he had to get to his feet, had to pace to keep himself from exploding. “After everything we’ve done, everything we’ve sacrificed, you want to just...just...give up?”
“You killed a Hunter.”
“By mistake!” The hearth fire burned bright with his anger, even though he didn’t mean for the power to slip from his fingers. Again. “One mistake and you’re willing to walk away from everything we built? We made this country, Kianna. And you want to just fucking up and go?”
She watched him, face blank, a slight rise to one eyebrow.
“The country you’re now technically exiled from.”
“According to who?”
“Whom.”
“God, I hate you sometimes. Whom, then. According to whom? Last I checked, Trevor doesn’t run this country.”
“Technically, he does. Well, him and the Kin, and I guess the Church if you want to consider them, but we probably don’t want to consider those last two since they’re both twats—”
“Shut up!” The fire billowed up and out, and it took all of his self control to quench the flames, to force the Sphere back into submission. In the hearth, the flames sank back to a smolder. But inside, Fire raged. “I’m not leaving Scotland. Not until every last Howl is burned off the map. Not until Edinburgh is mine. Do you hear me? Edinburgh. Is. Mine.”
He stood there, panting, his breath hot and his heart racing, while Kianna just smiled up at him.
“About bloody time you showed up to the party,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” His voice was gravelly, seared. Fire still wanted to burn the place down.
“If I had to sit for another minute with that other you, I was going to kill you myself.” She stood and stretched, every movement sinuous. Languid. That was the word. She patted him on the shoulder, the gentle movement enough to nearly buckle his knees. “I still say we check out Berghain someday. Big warehouse party. Days and days of sex and drugs and rock and roll. You’d love it.”
He glared at her.
“After we kill Calum, of course.” She smiled. “Oh, come on, lighten up. You’re about to fuck over the Guild a second time. That’s exciting! Even if you don’t manage to kill Calum, you’ll still be a first. Infamy is as good as heroism, right?”
“I don’t know why I put up with you.”
“Because I’m the only one who puts up with you.” She considered for a moment. “And also probably because you have piss-poor taste in friends. I know I do.”
* * *
He didn’t know where he was going when he left the flat, just knew that he couldn’t stay there and couldn’t risk trailing after the army just yet. If there were stragglers, he’d be captured or forced to kill again, and that wasn’t something he wanted to deal with right now.
Kianna might have thought he was over his slump, but she was wrong. Not that he was broken. Or, to use her word, mopey. He just felt...off. Too many dreams ricocheting in his head, drowning his waking life. Too many rugs pulled from under his feet.
He hated to admit that he needed anything or anyone. But as he left to walk out his anxious energy, he realized the truth: now that he was exiled, now that he wasn’t waking every single morning with an immutable purpose, he felt adrift.
When he was with the Guild, there’d always been a focus—finding food, defending the innocents, planning the inevitable attack or defense. Now, the only voices telling him what to do were his own and Kianna’s. And Fire. And not one of those was a voice he should be listening to.
He needed to kill Calum. Needed this victory more than anything else. He needed to prove to Trevor and the rest of the Guild that he wasn’t expendable. That he had purpose. Great purpose. With Calum’s blood on his hands, he could make his way back to the top. He could lord it over the rest.
He could rule.
For some reason, that thought made his dream hiss
back through his mind, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember anything beyond a throne. One he very much planned to sit on.
It was still pissing rain outside, and he was still in exile, which meant he shouldn’t be using magic. Even the small amounts that would keep him warm and dry would give him away to any Hunter out scouting. He just had to hope all of Trevor’s forces were already on the move, and those left to defend the Guild were safely behind the wall, a few miles away. He had to hope he knew the city better than any of them.
That, at least, was a hope he could bank on.
So, rain coursing down his back, he slipped down the street and back into the subway tunnel, his boots slipping on the moss and muck with every step. At least down here it was dry.
He realized a few steps down, however, that he didn’t have a torch, and he wasn’t about to trudge back through the rain to borrow one of Kianna’s.
“Fuck it,” he whispered, and opened to Fire. Just a little.
The Sphere unfurled in his chest in a flurry of sparks, a gust of wind in the ashes. Instantly, on reflex, he funneled the heat through his limbs, burning off the rain and drying himself in moments. Just that little bit was a bump to the system.
His heart thudded faster. His brain felt clearer. And as he spiraled sparks of flame around him in a makeshift light, he felt more himself. More empowered. More in control.
With Fire, he would always be in control.
For a moment, he stood there, watching the sparks dance around him, feeling the sparks dance within him, and wondered what the fuck had actually happened yesterday. Fire didn’t feel any different now. It didn’t feel stronger. Didn’t feel like he was struggling for control.
He laced a tendril of flame around him, making it dart through the air like a dragon. He turned up his palm, let the fire rest in the cup of his fingers as he peered into the red-and-orange light. Felt it as surely as he felt his own heartbeat.
Whatever had happened yesterday—and, to a lesser extent, this morning—was a fluke. He’d been tired. He’d been having weird dreams. Those were to blame. Not Fire itself.
If he started doubting his Sphere, he would have a lot greater worries than exile.
“They just don’t understand,” he whispered to his flame.
Of course Fire got out of control at times. Fire didn’t give a shit.
Which was precisely why he and the element worked so well together.
He sent the flame spiraling around him as he walked. Firelight lanced his shadow out like the petals of a black lotus. He fed his doubts and his fears to the flame, and the fire consumed them eagerly. Until all he had left was the low-burning anger, the desire to destroy, to grow brighter. He almost wished he would come across some hungering Howls.
His feet thudded on a body. He glanced at the bloodling he had killed yesterday. Her corpse floated in the calf-deep water, blood long since dispersed. What had her name been?
“What does it matter?” he asked no one, Fire’s words burning past his lips. She was dead. He was alive. That was the only thing that mattered in the end.
It wasn’t her pallid corpse that kept his attention, however. It was the flier floating atop the film of sludge and rainwater, caught against the track.
REPENT
THE END IS HERE
ALL SINNERS BURN
REPENT, AND BEG
FOR SALVATION
Aidan picked it up, the sodden paper mushing in his hands.
He hadn’t seen Church propaganda for the last few years. He’d driven them out of Scotland years ago, when it was clear that even though the Church reportedly defied the Dark Lady, they also defied anyone who used magic. Which meant Hunters were lumped in the same category as necromancers.
As far as he knew, the members of the Church had all perished in the wilds as they fled south to England. After all, without magic to keep them safe, what chance did they have?
It’s not like any religion had prevented or saved anyone from the apocalypse.
“Who’s repenting now?” Aidan asked, and sent a curl of flame through the edges of the paper, watching the words burn.
Something pricked at the back of his awareness, though, something that felt far too much like fear.
If the flier had been floating down here for years, why was it in such good shape? How had it lasted, when there should have been no one to distribute it for ages?
He flipped the smoldering page over.
On the back was the location of a Church, but the flame licked it away before he could make it out. Above it was a name that had become as much of a curse on this land as any Howl: Brother Jeremiah. The priest had come to power in the early days after the Resurrection, and his name had become synonymous—among the Hunters at least—with danger and fear.
Fuck that fear.
Aidan burned the fear like he burned the page. No matter what, the Church wasn’t a threat. Even if they had been snooping back in Glasgow. Even if they had thought they could regain the devotion of the masses.
He was the only one who deserved devotion.
The flier disintegrated. He let it crumble, drifting down on the bloodling’s face like snow. They would all burn. He would ensure it.
He walked past her. The moment her body sank into the shadows, she and the Church were out of mind.
Fire didn’t know the meaning of looking back.
CHAPTER NINE
And yet, when he reached the end of the tunnel, he realized he was looking back. And he hated himself for it.
The way forward was blocked with rubble and concrete. In the early days of building the Guild, they’d collapsed this part of the tunnel to keep the West End safe. Well, safer. Right before the collapsed wall of dirt was Kelvinbridge Station. Aidan hopped up onto the platform and stared down at the water rushing through the tunnel, draining out to who-knew-where. Technically, the entrance to Kelvinbridge Station was supposed to be caved in as well, but he’d fought hard against it, saying that if they ever needed a fast escape, the tunnels were their best bet. Besides, a single point of entry and exit was easy enough to guard.
He’d won the argument. As per usual.
He made his way up the steps toward the exit. Halfway there, he let go of Fire and let darkness fall back around him, just a faint light and the sound of rain guiding him toward the outer world. The entrance might not be guarded, but anyone within the Guild would sense someone using magic close to the wall.
The scent of mold and dead earth shifted to something alive and verdant the closer he got to the surface. When he finally exited, he stood beside a park that stretched along the River Kelvin, everything lush and green and wet. Ruined tenement flats lined the street behind him, their red-and-ochre facades spots of color in the otherwise gray-and-green landscape. He’d spent a few days here in the West End in the beginning. This was where the University of Glasgow rested, reaching up past the tenement flats like the towers of Hogwarts. This was where art and history jostled with foreign uni students and hipster locals. He and his mum visited tea houses and cafés and museums, staring at Rennie Mackintosh sketches or just wandering the streets, looking up at the tops of buildings, as that’s where they were told all the history and art were displayed.
It was almost possible to still see that past in the landscape. The destruction here was random, like a tornado had torn through. And maybe one had. Some of the flats stood tall—large windows intact and revealing shadowed living rooms—while others were reduced to rubble. She would have hated to see the city like this—to his mum, art was all that mattered. He pushed the thought away. He’d done what he could.
Glasgow had seen hundreds of years of life and battle and despair. He’d managed to keep at least a part of it safe and thriving after the Resurrection. And maybe, when he destroyed Calum, the city would be reborn.
Above him arched an old stone bridge�
�Kelvinbridge, to be exact—and on the other side of the river was the wall that kept the remaining humans of Scotland safe. The wall rose four stories tall and looked like a plateau rather than a man-made construct. All worn stone and rubble and dirt. It sliced straight up and ran along the opposite bank of the Kelvin, making a half canyon that stretched for miles in each direction.
He stared at it for a moment, an odd pang in his chest.
The sight of that wall had been the closest thing he’d had to homecoming since he came to this country. The number of missions he’d returned from, bloody and beaten yet alive. The number of times he’d stood atop that very wall, Fire burning in his chest and hellfire raining down on a distant approaching army. He’d defended this place with his life dozens if not hundreds of times. A city that wasn’t even his. A country he couldn’t leave. He’d given this place everything.
Fat lot of good that had done.
He crept up the covered escalator leading to the top of the bridge and leaned against the wall, just inside the entrance, staring out across the bridge and the wall beyond.
He considered walking out there. Standing at the edge of the thirty-foot gap between the wall and the bridge. Just to see what the guards would do. Just to tempt fate. Instead, he listened to the rain and the rushing river and contemplated what it would take to get this city—his city—back. Without Fire burning away the doubt and the weakness, the memories of this place boiled to the surface. Walking through the gardens with Trevor. Plotting their next attack or defense. Lying in bed together, exploring each other’s bodies. Or, more often than not, screaming at each other when Aidan flared hot and Trevor turned cold.
Some days, they had been partners. Some days, they were at each other’s throats. Fire and Water didn’t mix, and when they tried, it was chaos. But it had been a beautiful sort of chaos. Just as the Guild had been a beautiful sort of home.
A home he’d lost.
Just like he’d lost America.
Just like he’d lost his mum.
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