by A. R. Kahler
He ran at Tomás, swinging a fist. Tomás ducked and turned in one smooth motion, catching Tenn’s arm and twisting it behind his back. Tenn’s arm went cold and numb immediately. Tomás held him there, immobilized, his shoulder a moment away from snapping out of its socket.
Tomás leaned in and whispered into his ear, “Don’t fuck with me, Tenn. I’ve kept you alive because I like you, but that doesn’t mean I’ll tolerate such rudeness.” He bit Tenn’s ear and wrenched his arm just a little further. “I had no hand in your lover’s death, pain me as that does. I’ve saved your ass more times than I care to count. Don’t make me regret it.”
“I’d rather die than have you help me again. A Howl that thinks he’s a god is still a Howl.”
Tomás blazed heat. It burned and seared and froze Tenn’s skin as Tomás screamed in his ear, “How dare you call me that!”
With a yell, he jerked Tenn’s arm further, snapping his humerus in one quick motion and throwing him to the floor. Tenn winced and looked up at Tomás. The man was transformed. The air around him quivered and glowed red like a hellish mirage. His lips pulled back in a sneer, his canines bared and more pronounced than normal. His clothes and hair seemed to billow in the storm of his rage. Tenn didn’t cower. Without Jarrett, he had nothing to live for. He watched Tomás and held his broken arm and waited to die.
“You’re still a monster,” Tenn said. “Look at yourself.”
And then, just like that, a switch snapped. The aura around Tomás disappeared, the flame in his eyes winked out. He slouched down to his knees.
“He thinks I’m a monster,” he whispered. “A monster. I’m a monster.” He looked up at Tenn. “I hurt you.” He shook his head and stared at the wall. “No, he deserved to be hurt. He dared insult me.” Another shake of the head, a flicker of red aura. “He deserved pain.” His entire body shuddered this time, like something was trying to escape. When he looked back to Tenn, his face was carefully composed, perfectly arranged.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He clutched one hand to the side of his face. “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s hard to…” He shook his head. “We can’t fight what we are, Tenn. Not forever. Not even you. We’re a lot alike, you know. You burn. You burn even brighter than me.” He reached out and touched Tenn’s heart. The Sphere of Fire flared under Tomás’s fingertip, made Tenn’s breath catch. “You’ll burn the whole world, given half the chance.” He removed his finger and sat back, staring at Tenn like a sad specimen. Tenn’s whole body ached for that touch, for the hate and passion that seemed to ooze from Tomás’s skin. He wanted to burn forever.
“Why. Are. You. Here?” Tenn asked, biting hard on each word to keep his body in control. His broken arm ached, but he knew the moment he opened to Earth to heal it, they’d have even more company. How this entire interaction was evading the Prophets’ notice either spoke poorly of their skills or frighteningly of Tomás’s power.
A confused look passed over Tomás’s face, as though he weren’t so certain of that himself. It passed in a heartbeat as the perfect mold of composure slipped back into place.
“I am here,” he said, his words their usual purr. He leaned a bit closer, putting his weight on one hand like a prowling cat. “Because I know what you want. You want revenge.”
“I want Jarrett back,” Tenn said.
“We can’t always get what we want!” Tomás snapped, another flare of energy whirling and settling around him. He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath.
“I am here,” he said, his eyes still closed, “because I can help you fight back. I know how to reach Leanna. I know her weaknesses. You can’t get your lover back. I know how that feels. I would rip the head off whoever did that to me.” He smirked, the tone of condolence fading. “I did, actually. It felt amazing.”
“Why would you help me?” Tenn asked.
“I have my reasons,” Tomás said quickly, as though those reasons were of the utmost secrecy. “Jarrett would have wanted this, you know. He would have wanted you to defend him. Do you think, if roles were reversed, he would have let your killer live?”
Anger roiled through Tenn’s veins. A hundred curses whipped across his tongue—you didn’t know him, don’t ever mention him, he was too good—but the truth hit him like a stone to the chest. He knew Jarrett. And yes, if the roles had been reversed, Jarrett would never have stopped looking for his killer, not until every Howl and necromancer had paid for what they’d done. I’ll never stop fighting for you, Jarrett had sworn. He deserved the same. Tomás seemed to read his thoughts. His sneer widened, and he crept a few inches closer. Heat coursed through Tenn’s body as images floated through his mind—tearing Matthias limb from limb, stabbing the unknown Leanna through the chest. Tomás’s visage seemed to echo over all of it, like some heathen god of destruction.
“Yes,” he hissed. “That’s the fire. Jarrett deserves your anger. Your retribution. Fight for him.”
Tenn shook his head against the visions of blood.
“What do you want from me? From this?” Tomás was by his side now, his face inches away. His copper-flecked eyes glinted in the candlelight.
“Let’s just say Leanna and I have a score to settle. You help me kill her, and I’ll help you get your revenge. We both get what we want.” Tomás leaned in, gently brushed Tenn’s cheek with a hand. Goosebumps tingled under that touch. “And if you’re like me, you want a lot. It’s about time we got what we wanted, wouldn’t you agree?”
His eyes burned into Tenn’s. In that moment, Tenn couldn’t decide if he wanted to rip the man apart or rip off his clothes or both.
He nodded. He couldn’t be certain what would come out if he opened his mouth.
“I thought you would see things my way.” Tomás leaned back. “I can’t do anything to help you here. Too dangerous.”
Tenn didn’t ask why Tomás wanted to kill his own sister. He didn’t ask why Tomás didn’t just do it himself. He didn’t ask because he wanted that victory to be his.
If he couldn’t have Jarrett back, Tenn would make damn sure that the bastards who did this to him would suffer. All of them.
Tomás included.
18
Tomás vanished into the shadows a moment later, saying he couldn’t stay there anymore without attracting attention. Tenn sat, huddled on the floor, staring at the space Tomás had just occupied. The moment the incubus was gone, he felt cold, hollowed-out. It was like Tomás had come in and carved out every corner of emotion left in Tenn’s body and swallowed it whole, leaving him both numb and raw at the same time.
Well, one part of him decidedly had feeling.
The shock from the break was wearing off, and sharp pain stabbed through Tenn’s arm. He gritted his teeth. It wasn’t the act of healing he was preparing for; it was the inevitable discussion with whomever came storming in to see why he was using magic. That meant working and thinking up a story, fast.
He dragged himself over to the bed. His arm dangled sickly at the side, and every lurch made his head swim with pain and nausea. He tried not to pass out. Then he’d never be able to explain it.
When he finally flopped down on the bed, he arranged the sheets around him with his good hand and mentally composed himself.
He gingerly touched his arm and found the fracture. Even with that one touch, he could tell it was broken neatly in two. A spiral fracture, he believed it was called. His arm flopped on the bed like a wet noodle. With painful slowness, he readjusted it. He clamped his teeth together to keep from screaming. Once it seemed like the bone was lined up, he opened to Earth and shot a lance of magic through his body, numbing his nerves. Another pulse of magic, and his fracture mended in a dizzying instant. He flopped back on the bed the second the tension released, and not a moment too soon.
The door burst open. In came the twins and the unnamed Priestess.
“Is everything okay?” Dreya asked the moment they were inside. Their eyes cast around to the shadows of the room, but of course, there was noth
ing to be seen. Not anymore.
Tenn feigned surprise and blinked. “What? Where am I?” He hesitated and looked around the room, let his voice drop. “Oh.”
He released Earth. A dull ache spread through him, but it was a small price to pay.
“I thought you were in trouble…”
Tenn shook his head. “I was scanning. Where the hell are we?”
“You seem to have calmed down,” the Priestess said. Tenn noticed she distinctly avoided the question, but she didn’t avoid looking at him like he was an interesting specimen or a misbehaving child. Ironic, since she looked like she was barely fifteen. She stepped forward.
“Don’t kid yourself,” Tenn said. “I still hate you for what you did.”
The girl shrugged. “Be that as it may, I did save your life. I suggest you lose the attitude before the Prophets see you.”
“Who are you anyway?”
“My name is Erin,” she said, giving a slight bow. “And to answer your previous question, you are in the temple of Maya, though I cannot give you its exact location. As I’m sure you understand.” She walked closer, now that it was clear Tenn wouldn’t rush her again, and sat on the edge of his bed.
“I am sorry for your loss. We have all lost so many in this war, and I fear we have only tasted the beginning. But do not let that cloud your mind forever.”
Tenn wanted to be pissed at the girl, pissed at her and the Prophets and the rest of the Priests, especially since the Prophets seemed to have a death wish for him. But he knew they weren’t the reason the world was the way it was. They weren’t the monsters that would have taken Jarrett away from him sooner or later. His vendetta was against Leanna. No, his fight was against the mythical Dark Lady herself, the goddess and creator of the necromancers and their spawn. He knew revenge wouldn’t solve anything. It wouldn’t bring Jarrett back. But maybe, just maybe, it would mean no one else would have to feel this way again. That alone was worth dying for.
“You said you brought me here because the Prophets wanted to see me,” he said. The twins exchanged a look, one he didn’t even want to try and read. He knew his change in temper was unsettling, and he knew Dreya—always one for decorum—was probably dying inside because of his attitude. He didn’t care. He just wanted out of here. He had some blood to spill.
Erin nodded. If she was taken aback, she didn’t show it.
“They are waiting,” she said. “Would you like anything to eat first? It’s nearly noon.”
He shook his head and forced himself off the bed. The ache in his arm was a little worse, but he couldn’t risk using any more magic without having to explain it away. His stomach was already rumbling loud as thunder. He’d used far too much Earth in the last twenty-four hours. He needed to eat. To actually rest. But the last thing he wanted was to stick around here and make small talk with the girl who had inadvertently pulled him away from his only lifeline. He needed to keep moving.
More than anything else, he needed to make someone pay.
“We will be here,” Dreya said, “when you return.”
He paused. “You’re not coming with?”
She shook her head, but it was Erin who answered.
“The Prophets will speak to you alone. No other is meant to hear their prophecy.”
Tenn’s gut churned over again, and not from hunger. It was one thing to have people say you were being singled out. It was another to stand on the doorstep of finding out why. But he had some questions of his own. Like why they had used him as bait and why they seemed to fluctuate between wanting him killed and wanting him safe.
“Lead on,” he said. He did his best to steel his voice. He doubted it was very effective.
Erin stood and led him from the room. He was expecting long, dim corridors to await him outside the room, maybe even the sound of chanting, the whiff of frankincense. After all, the residents called themselves priests, right? But the moment he stepped out the door, his expectations shattered.
The corridor was long, yes, and there were torches in iron sconces along one wall. But that was only one wall. The other side of the corridor was edged with a wood-and-iron banister that reached Tenn’s waist. And beyond? Green. Giant green leaves twice the size of his body hid massive ashen trunks that twisted out of sight. Vines curled and draped like wedding lace from the branches. The air in the courtyard was warm, thick, and filled with the sounds of birds and monkeys. Something flickered between the branches, something with scaled wings that was definitely not a bird. He couldn’t see through the dense vegetation to know if there was another side, but the hall seemed to curve both before and behind him, so he assumed the entire place circled around this piece of jungle.
“Where are we?” Tenn gasped. He walked up and gripped the warm banister, staring as high up into the trees as he could. Although warm light filtered down from above, he couldn’t actually see the sky.
“That…is difficult to explain.” She walked up next to him and stared out. “What do you know of Maya?”
“Not much,” he said, awe momentarily overtaking his thirst for revenge. “I thought it was just a myth.”
“If only,” she said with a small laugh. “Maya is no myth. It’s the Sphere of spirit, the very fabric of everything within and without Creation. The other Spheres, the elements, they let us play with the forces of nature. Maya lets us play God.”
The way she said it…there was no humor, no lightness. Her words conveyed a burden Tenn could barely comprehend.
“As you know, one cannot be attuned to Maya, not like the other Spheres. One must seek it through practice, through devotion, and Maya must reach back. But playing God has terrible consequences, and even the greatest of mages may wilt under Maya’s rules.”
“Rules? You said…when you brought me back, that you couldn’t just return me there. Why?”
“It wasn’t safe, for one thing,” she said. She glanced up at him. “My charge was to bring you here safely, not allow you to walk back into the arms of death. Too much is on your shoulders for such hasty decisions.”
“So you lied.”
“No, that was only part.” She looked out at the forest again. “To use Maya requires sacrifice. You think you understand the impact of changing the world through your use of the Spheres—the blowback, the drain. But Maya is worse. Maya requires an equal and opposite exchange.”
“What was the exchange for bringing us here?” he asked. What did another stranger sacrifice for me?
“I didn’t just move you by bringing you here. I tore you from your path, I gave you another chance. I changed the course of not only your future, but the entire world’s. In doing so, I had to give up my own future.”
“I don’t understand.”
She smiled sadly, but not at him. She didn’t take her eyes off the trees.
“I am unraveling,” she said. “Slowly. It will take years, but I have given up the future I could have had in order to save yours. That is why I could not take you back. To use that magic again would have completely destroyed me before I got you there safely.”
She turned to him then, and her smile changed. The sadness left, replaced by pure kindness.
“That is the nature of Maya—sacrifice is our greatest power. Come. We shouldn’t keep the Prophets waiting.”
She began to walk, leaving him no choice but to follow. He turned from the rail and trailed her down the long, curved corridor. More guilt settled in his gut. The girl, the poor, young girl, was going to die just so he could be here, just so he could stay safe. Just like Jarrett had.
A few corridors down, and the atmosphere changed completely. The warmth and humidity faded to a chill that crept under Tenn’s clothes and dug deep into his skin. The hall ended abruptly in a set of iron stairs that curled down into a dim purple darkness. Erin didn’t even hesitate. She took the stairs without looking back to Tenn, her feet echoing in the deep, tubular descent.
Tenn followed. The banister was rough and cold under his hand as he circled down.
At first, he thought he was seeing things, but then he realized the faint flecks in his vision weren’t illusions at all, but crystals. Hundreds of tiny, glowing crystals spiderwebbed across the tunnel’s walls, constellations of pale purple and white that made his skin look ghostly. With every step, the lights grew brighter, as though they were descending into some mythical faerie kingdom. The fog that began to swirl around his ankles only added to that image.
Finally, the tunnel opened out into a cavern the size of his room. The walls were domed and covered in more veins of crystal, a spiderweb of glowing purple. More fog swirled over pools of water as still as silver. Black stalagmites thrust from the cavern floor, nearly reaching their twin stalactites dripping from the ceiling. Everything was black and purple and dusty white, as though the world had been muted down to only the basest of colors.
Erin paused beside a black wooden door that arched high above, like the entrance to a cathedral. Water poured from a small fissure in the wall and snaked its way down into a tiny pool below. Lights flashed within the water. They looked like tiny silver fish.
Without speaking, she bent down and picked up a small brass bowl near the edge and raised it to the fissure, filling it with water. Then she turned and held the bowl in front of her chest, head dipped as if in prayer. Tenn remained near the steps, one hand awkwardly gripping the railing.
“I call to the Ancients,” she whispered. Her voice sent chills over Tenn’s skin. “To the Language None Shall Speak. Hear me.” Was it just his imagination, or did more light seem to glimmer off the bowl? Symbols flashed across the copper surface, quick sears of light that seemed to whisper in the gloom. When she looked up at Tenn, her eyes glinted purple.
“What you see within this hall is for you alone. The mysteries spoken may be shared, but those who speak your riddles shall remain nameless. Blameless. To this you are bound.” There was no mistaking it—there were lights flickering around the bowl, though Tenn couldn’t sense any magic at work. “Do you accept these terms?” Erin asked.