by A. R. Kahler
She leaned in close to him, her green eyes blazing.
“Then you understand why I must do this.” Her eyes flashed to the blade in her hand. She wasn’t a Howl, not one of the monsters that had been kept out of sight of society. He knew that much. She was worse. He’d watched her slow progression toward madness, toward power. And like everyone else at the Academy, he’d done nothing to stop it.
Hell, he might have encouraged it.
He’d been on the admissions board, had hand-picked the students she used for subjects. He’d found fuel for her madness. So much of this was his fault…
“I’ve studied the words of the Dark Lady. I know her secrets. And I think,” she said, leaning in, like this was some intimate secret and not his death warrant, “I think I can become just like her. I could become a goddess.”
The Sphere of Water coursed in her stomach. You’re unstable, he wanted to say. The Spheres have made you crazy. But there was no logic with her, no reasoning. Not anymore.
He couldn’t scream as she brought the blade into his skin, scratching marks along his arms and chest that he couldn’t see and couldn’t comprehend. Runes, she’d said. Runes to make you stronger, to bind you to me. There had been tears in her eyes the first time she’d made a cut, unflinching as she’d been.
Not anymore.
Now she was smiling, his blood staining her lips a deeper crimson.
Tenn surfaced from the flood, barely able to gasp as Water’s grip loosened as reality crashed against the waves. He knew those people. Dmitri had been his teacher. And Helena…he knew her all too well. She had been Silveron’s president.
Dmitri’s body twitched beneath his hand, breath escaping in a hiss from long-silent lips. A voice inside of Tenn screamed, begged him to run from the Howl at his fingertips, the Howl that was slowly coming back to life. But Water bellowed louder. Water wanted to help Dmitri, wanted to mirror his pain.
Water won.
“Please,” Steven cried. “Please don’t do this.”
The boy squirmed on the table, but the ropes held him strong. Helena stood beside Dmitri, watching him work, watching as he sobbed with hunger and hatred.
She handed him the knife.
“Do it,” she whispered into his ear. “My love, my slave.” She kissed the back of his neck.
Dmitri’s hand trembled as he brought the knife down. He could feel Steven’s pulse without touching him, could hear his heartbeat echoing his own. The water, the water—it was all he could sense, all he could taste. His throat burned with hunger, with need. Steven struggled as Dmitri slowly lowered the blade. It made Dmitri’s bloodlust rise—that increase in pulse, the terrified patter of the boy’s heart. He barely heard the boy scream as the blade pushed through flesh, shallow first, then deep as the hunger took over. Red filled Dmitri’s vision. Red filled his lips. His starving Sphere sang, and hunger became ecstasy.
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 whimpered.
“Dmitri is dead, you made sure of that,” he hissed. She struggled against the bonds holding her to the table, but the knots held strong. She had taught him those knots, and he was nothing if not a fast learner.
Everything raged 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 said, leaning in close. “I’ve had practice. I can keep you alive forever if I like. Just like you showed me.”
He dug a finger into her forearm, his nail burrowing deep. Blood pooled within the depression. She screamed. There were tears in her eyes.
This time, he was the one laughing.
“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 said. But they wouldn’t stop screaming. They wouldn’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 were crying blood.
“Shut up!” he yelled. They sat in the corner, crying. He ran over to them, smashed in their skulls, but they were still crying. He kicked their bones, scattered them like sticks, but they wouldn’t stop. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”
He banged on the door, but it was still locked. Helena had locked it behind her. Bitch. She was in the corner, too, sitting by herself. She wasn’t crying. She was stuck with him.
Forever. My love, my slave.
He crawled over to her. So hungry.
“Speak up,” he hissed at her. He picked up her skull, stared into her empty eyes. “Speak up.”
Her mouth was open, skin taut, but she wasn’t saying anything.
She’d stopped talking weeks ago.
But not the blood.
Her blood was still screaming, still singing in his bones. She was still with him.
She would never get away.
Water stopped.
Tenn was floating, floating. Everything was warm. His arm tingled. 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.
23
“What the hell?”
Dreya’s voice pulsed through the darkness, a wash against the red that stained 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 wracked his body, a shiver that sent a lance of pain shooting 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 open 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.
“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 made him do?
A perfect crescent moon of gashes 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.
“You lost a lot of blood,” Dreya said. “You are lucky you did not bleed out.” She moved over to him and put a hand to his shoulder, Water opening in her stomach like a delica
te blue lotus. 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.
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 blacking out 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 put his hands to his head 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 bite in his mouth.
He knew it wasn’t his doing, but Dmitri’s sins felt like they were now his own. 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. Spheres answer. But Spheres 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. The pool of blood stopped a few inches from his knees. He could see his reflection in the crimson. He looked like a ghost. “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. Sunlight stretched through the windows on the upper levels. It was morning, a brilliantly clear day. There was no way they would rest when the weather was so opportune.
That said, even if it had been storming, he wouldn’t have let them stay here. This place was more dangerous than anything on the outside.
Dreya didn’t leave his side while Devon went upstairs to retrieve 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. That is the stuff of stories. We should have felt it, just as we should have felt it drawing you.”
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 finally said.
Dreya raised an eyebrow.
The necromancers kept the secrets of turning their victims under lock and key. Save for the jar Jarrett had brought back, no one knew precisely how they drained a Sphere until it imploded. But something about what Helena had done to Dmitri seemed different. Runes, she’d said. Runes to make you stronger, to bind you to me.
He told the twins precisely what he had seen and heard. With every word, Dreya’s face dropped.
“That is the key,” she 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. If the dead gods are rising…” He focused on Tenn. “We are royally fucked.”
They left soon after Dreya returned from her study of Dmitri. Her expression was stormy as they walked down the path that led away from Silveron. But if she had discovered something, anything, she kept it quiet. For his part, Tenn had more than enough on his mind. He didn’t need to inquire and add more to his plate.
The silence stretched between them the full length of the afternoon. The fields and forests they trekked through were silent, and the sky darkened steadily toward evening. Tenn would have killed to drive, but that would be an impossibility so long as the roads were covered in so much snow. The storm must have hit in the night, adding a few more inches, though the clouds still looked pregnant with precipitation. You never really appreciated the vastness of America until you traversed it on foot. Every minute felt like an hour, and every mile was a slow tick of misspent heartbeats.
Not long after the sky turned, 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.
They trudged through the field for at least an hour, until it was almost impossible to differentiate between the smoky snow and the darkening horizon. Every few minutes, Dreya would open to Air and send a gust of wind behind them, effectively obscuring their own tracks. On the other side of the field rose a forest. There was no mystery as to where Devon was leading them.
Devon stopped a few feet away from the edge of the trees. For a moment, he just stood there, staring into the undergrowth, his eyes set in concentration. Air pulsed in his throat.
“Are you sure?” Dreya asked softly.
Devon nodded.
Tenn opened to Earth and checked for himself, but he couldn’t feel anything. Nothing moved within the trees, nothing pulsed with life, not for miles. He shot a questioning look at Devon but decided not to question him. The guy seemed dead-set in his convictions.
Devon 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 flared into life around him and shot high into the air, blazing against the grey sky. Devon wove them together, lights streaking like white thread, forming intricate knots high above the treeline. Each was a symbol, a language Tenn couldn’t understand, and each symbol flared bright as a strobe before being replaced by another whirling shape. The field around them flashed white and glaring. In a world where fortune favored the meek, this was a dangerous game to play. Who knew how far Matthias’s army had really gone?
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.
He gripped his staff tight and opened to Earth, stretching his focus as far out into the field as possible. Nothing was moving, but that didn’t mean no one had seen it.
“It is the signal,” Dreya said. “The Witches must be entreated. One cannot enter their territory without their express invitation.”
Ten
n whipped his head and his senses into the forest, but that was still and silent, too. If anyone was living in there, they were miles away.
“So what do we do now?” he asked.
“We wait,” Devon said. “And we hope they are still alive.”
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.
Then from the distant field, far out of Tenn’s magical reach, came a noise.
A scream. A Howl.
In unison, their attention snapped to the way they’d come.
“No way,” Tenn said. “They followed us.”
“Did you expect anything less?” Dreya asked, her words biting.
“No, but I also didn’t expect to hand out our location on a silver tray either,” he snapped, glaring at Devon.
Fire flickered in Devon’s chest, and he bowed his head. Tenn wasn’t certain where his own inner rage was coming from—hadn’t he wanted to find Matthias? The bloodlust still sang, but it was muted now. Something about the Academy had dimmed his hatred, had made him realize that there was much more to this than he had bargained for. Tenn turned to Dreya.
“How many?” he asked, because he knew she could sense farther than him. Although it was a vain hope, he was holding on to the idea that it was just a wandering pack of kravens. Something they could dispose of quickly and easily. Something that wouldn’t require him to open to Water. He still had Earth—he always had Earth—but until he strengthened that Sphere, a few uses would drain him completely.
Dreya’s hesitation told him more than enough. When she spoke, her words were ice.
“The full army,” she said. “And it seems it has expanded.”