by A. R. Kahler
“The rune,” Devon said. He looked at Dreya, his eyes wide. A second passed, and then she hissed in a breath.
“It is moving,” she whispered.
Tenn didn’t ask more. He closed his eyes and visualized the tracking rune. He could feel its location. It was right in front of them, pulling them on. And that’s when he felt the slight shift, the tug.
Devon was right. The rune was moving. Fast.
“What the hell?” he said.
They all shared a glance. Then, as one, they jumped to a stand and grabbed their things. When they started back down the highway, they were running, Earth fueling them all.
Despite the speed of Earth that Tenn fed into their muscles, they didn’t reach the woods until just before dusk. Tenn pushed his senses through the trees. For a moment, nothing seemed amiss. The woods were empty. Still. Except…
“I can feel the trailers,” he said. He looked at Dreya.
“The runes,” she said. “They must have been compromised.”
They ran into the trees at full speed. They didn’t hesitate to examine the marks on the trees that they passed, the lashings that seemed less than random. They all knew the marks of kravens when they saw them. And Tenn knew without a doubt that these slashes were cut across the runes themselves, rendering them useless. Impossible. No one should have even known about them.
Their fears were confirmed the moment they reached the trailers. They hadn’t felt any of the usual shifts, the vertigo or sensations of being lost.
The trailers were silent. Empty. Earth and Air told them as much.
The fire in the center had burned out, and more than one trailer door stood open, swaying gently in the wind. They stepped into the midst of the encampment, feeling for all the world like they were entering a ghost town.
“Search them,” Tenn said. Even his words seemed too heavy in the emptiness of this place. “Maybe they fled. Or left a clue.”
They split up and did precisely what he commanded, though he knew it was from protocol and not actual hope. The Witches wouldn’t have just left. Either they had felt the Howls coming and run, or they’d been taken.
Tenn seriously doubted it was the former.
He ducked inside Rhiannon’s trailer. The curtains were drawn and bowls of cold porridge sat untouched on the table. The scene reminded him of the dining room, where he’d first encountered emotional transference, but no shades of the dead ran through him. He glanced to the cabinet holding the singing bowl. It was open, the door dangling from a single hinge. Empty. Whatever happened, Rhiannon had had the foresight to grab the bowl with the rune. She wanted to be followed.
Someone yelled. He bolted outside.
It was Devon.
Devon stumbled backward from a trailer, his hands over his face. He tripped, fell into the snow. Dreya was at his side in an instant, Tenn not far behind.
Dreya smoothed his hair, whispering soothing sounds into his ears. His eyes were wide, and he gripped the arm she wrapped around him.
“What happened?” Tenn asked.
“Go…” Devon stammered. “Go look.” He raised one hand and pointed a shaky finger at the trailer he’d just left.
Tenn looked at Dreya for support, but she raised her eyebrow in manner that told him he was definitely on his own for this one.
He stood, doing his best to steel himself for whatever was waiting inside. If it had been enough to scare Devon, he expected the worst.
He crept up to the trailer, Earth blazing in his stomach and his staff gripped tight in one hand. The door opened with the screech of hinges.
The interior was dim, barely illuminated by the dying light outside. But it was enough.
The trailer was perfectly intact—the bed made, clothing folded on the nightstand, a cold mug of tea on the counter. Everything looked normal. Everything, save for the lump on the edge of the bed. At first glance, he’d thought it was a pillow. Only pillows didn’t drip crimson.
It was a body.
Half of one.
And there, splattered on the wall in the corpse’s blood, in a jagged script he’d never seen, were two words.
Found you.
30
Tenn buried his second body at nightfall, the only light coming from an orb of magic hovering in the air.
It was far less ceremonial than with Tori. Tenn didn’t even try to be gentle as he pulled the body down into the earth.
There was no point.
They’d never found the other half of the corpse.
“What are we going to do?” Dreya asked.
There weren’t any more bodies, thank the gods, but that also meant there weren’t probably any survivors. Devon was still in shock, his arms crossed around himself tight. Tenn didn’t blame him. After seeing what had happened in the twins’ past, he knew another dead Witch was hitting far too close to home. He wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be any others.
“We follow them,” Tenn said.
“Do you have a plan?” Dreya asked.
“Yeah,” he said. And he did. Mostly. It had been forming ever since he found the empty cabinet.
“What is it?”
“I’ll explain on the way,” he said. He looked to Devon. “Do you think he’s well enough to travel?”
She nodded.
“Don’t worry about him. He has been through much worse.”
Of that, Tenn had no doubt.
They left a few minutes later. As promised, Tenn told them the plan he’d been hatching. Much to his surprise, the twins didn’t tell him it was as insane as it sounded.
“It may work,” Dreya admitted. But then she fell silent, Air flickering in her throat as she thought. Tenn knew she was trying to find flaws in his plan. If she did, she stayed silent about them.
The army was miles and hours ahead of them, but with a stream of Tenn’s magic fueling them, the trio was able to make good time. He would have given anything to drive, but the snow was deep and the magic Devon used to clear the path in front of them verged on suicidal. Any more and they’d be walking beacons.
Thankfully, the rune stopped moving around nightfall. Tenn hoped it was because the necromancers were stopping for the night, and not that the bowl had been left behind. Or worse. His body ached. He’d been using far too much magic and had far too little time to rest. He wanted to sleep for a week, wanted to soak in a hot bath. The only thing he could do to stay functioning was eat, and those small bites of bread seemed to be just enough to keep Earth fueled, to keep his hungry Sphere from feeding off him. Every time he wanted to stop, however, he imagined Tori’s body crushed beneath the soil. He wouldn’t let any other deaths weigh on his conscience. If the necromancers were stopping for the night that meant the kravens would have a chance to feed. That was reason enough to move faster.
They stopped shortly before dawn. The sky was still dark, barely tinged the deepest shade of blue. They stood on a small rise beside an aged fir, a large field spread out below them. There, a few miles off, was the army’s encampment. Small fires burned throughout the makeshift tents, and shadows prowled the perimeter. The necromancers were probably asleep, but they’d still have patrols set. Tenn wondered how many higher Howls they had with them. With any luck, Matthias had left all his succubi and breathless behind to trap them, and they were only facing an army of brainless kravens—bloodlings, tops. It was doubtful, though, and assuming that could cost them everything.
They didn’t waste any time. The twins searched for stones while he traced a small circle in the grass, pressing down the stalks like a crop circle. Then he fed a tiny amount of magic into his staff, snapping off an end and curving it into a knife. With this, he scratched runes into the soil around the circle’s perimeter. He wasn’t certain how he remembered them so clearly, but they burned in his mind like letters of an alphabet he’d forgotten but had always known. The soil was hard with frost, but his blade sliced through easily. Each stroke seemed to whisper meaning in his mind, the strands of misdirection, the lan
guage of staying hidden. When the first runes were set, they began to glow.
The twins returned before he completed tracing the runes all around the circle. They carried four stones between them, each a unique size and shape but no bigger than a fist.
“Perfect,” he said as they laid them out in the center. He motioned to the incomplete circle and had them step inside. Once in, he wrote down the final rune and watched the circle glow green.
“Do you see that?” he asked, his voice quiet with awe.
“See what?” Dreya asked.
“The runes,” he said. “They’re glowing.”
Dreya raised an eyebrow but said nothing. It was Devon who spoke.
“They just look like chicken scratch to me,” he said.
“Never mind,” Tenn said. He held out a hand. “Give me your wrist,” he said to Dreya.
She didn’t even pause before holding her arm out. He took it gently, pulling back the layers of her coat and sweater. The skin beneath was pale porcelain, her veins just visible beneath the surface.
“This might sting,” Tenn said. Then he opened to Earth and drew.
It was a cheap trick, one he’d learned early on as an easy way to practice his new Sphere. With an artist’s precision, he changed the pigments in Dreya’s wrist, tracing the tracking rune into her skin. It took only a few seconds. The rune stood out delicate and dark on her wrist. Devon was next, and this time Tenn changed the pigment to white, the rune glowing ghostly against Devon’s dark flesh. He then traced it into his own wrist, the mark black as coal.
“Memorize these,” he said, holding out his wrist. “Once you’re outside of the circle, it’s the only way we’ll have of keeping track of each other.”
He then went about funneling Earth into the stones the twins had gathered. On one side, he drew the runes of misdirection, on the other the tracking rune. With the circle complete, he wasn’t so worried about the necromancers picking up on his magic use. It should keep them fully hidden.
Should.
When the stones were finished, he stood and stretched, melded the knife back into his staff.
“You remember the signals, right?” he asked. Dreya nodded and glanced to the tree.
“All right.”
Tenn took a deep breath and stared out at the encampment. What he was about to do was suicide, but there was no fear or anticipation. Coldness filled him, a dead resolution.
“See you guys in a bit,” he said, the words tasting horribly close to a lie. They nodded solemnly, and Dreya opened to Air.
The stones hovered up and twisted a slow orbit around him. The moment they left the ground, he opened to Earth and siphoned energy into each stone. The runes glowed green with life. He could tell from the sudden glaze in Dreya’s eyes that they had worked; he was invisible.
He jumped and dodged side to side, just to make sure, but the stones continued their rotation around him undisturbed. So long as Dreya stayed focused on the tracking runes, she should be able to keep the stones centered on him. So many shoulds, but it was the best he could hope for.
“I’ll miss you guys,” he said.
As expected, neither of the twins heard him.
He stepped out of the circle, and they vanished from sight.
For a moment, he stood there, staring down at the army, Earth fueling his senses as he sought out the huddle of Witches. He could feel them, just barely, congregated near the center of the encampment. He couldn’t tell from here how many were left, but he had a feeling it was a smaller number than what they’d left with.
He stilled his thoughts, gripped the staff tighter.
Then he ran down into the mouth of Hell.
31
Halfway down the hill, Tenn sent a snap of Earth into the branches of the tree beside the twins, making the limbs shudder. A second later, chaos broke out in the encampment.
Devon’s work was quick and efficient, a vicious blend of calculated destruction and artistic flourishes. With a roar, the dozen or so campfires blazed into life, searing the sky with great pillars of flame. These fires danced about, spreading in seconds, leaping like living beings to ignite flesh and canvas. It was beautiful, in a way, the smear of orange against the dark. Beautiful, save for the scent of burning Howls. Not that he had any time to admire from afar. Even though the fires made sweat drip down his skin, Tenn ran straight into the heart of the army. Everything was sound and heat, screams and cinders, and the madness slashed a grin across his face.
Finally, the monsters knew how it felt to be prey.
How’s this for an ambush? he thought vehemently, imagining Matthias running around, trying to find the source of the magic used against him. And, judging from the silence on the hillside behind him, the man was failing miserably.
Kravens swarmed around, but they edged around his runes like water flowing around a stone. Up close, when he wasn’t trying to kill them or dodge their blows, he saw them for their true monstrosity—greying flesh sagging or peeling off, strands of fat and blood and pus dripping from every open sore and orifice, bones broken and twisted and reshaped as talons and spikes, spines horribly bent, and arms and fingers elongated. Even worse was the smell, the cloying sweetness of rot and blood that seemed to crawl into the recesses of his throat. He wanted to gag. Wanted to strike out and end their putrid existence.
He didn’t.
He just ran, ducking and dodging and waiting for a monster to stumble past his runes, but they never did. The nightmares swarmed around him unaware, and it wasn’t just the kravens that sought out prey, but the more humanoid Howls—the pale bloodlings and deceptively beautiful succubi. They stood out from the throng, both aloof and crazed. They, too, ran around Tenn’s defenses, and he marveled at how well the runes were actually working.
His luck held. He reached the Witches without being discovered. As he’d hoped, they were barely guarded—why should they be when Matthias’s entire army surrounded them? Instead, there was a single necromancer, a man in an old ski coat and knit hat. Not exactly the most intimidating or dark choices in attire, but it was cold. The Sphere of Earth glowed bright in the man’s pelvis, and in his hands he held a stone that was covered in pulsating runes. Another reason why the guard was so loose—Tenn could feel the strands of magic twisting from the necromancer, twining into the entire clan. They were being drained, all of them. Just enough to make them weak and tired, enough to make using magic an impossible chore.
The Witches themselves gathered in a tight knot near the bonfire, the only group in the entire camp that hadn’t moved. Only a few were dressed to be out in the cold; the rest had clearly been taken in their sleep. One man near the edge wore nothing but jeans, his feet bare and frostbitten. Just the sight made Tenn’s blood boil. He saw Rhiannon, her arms wrapped around her daughter. While the army was creating havoc around her, she stood calm and tall, her eyes carefully scanning the horizon. All of the Witches had a sort of stoicism to them, one that said this wasn’t the worst they had undergone.
Tenn stepped closer to the necromancer holding them captive. The man’s eyes were focused on the clan, his gaze occasionally snapping to the side when a Howl ran past. Tenn deliberated how the man should die. Slow and painful? Or quick?
It was then he noticed the smear of darkness on the ground by the fire, the few small mounds he wished he could mistake for rocks. But he knew precisely what those chunks were. The kravens had feasted, and they’d let the Witches watch. He wondered if they’d let the clan choose who died first.
That alone made Tenn want to prolong the man’s pain, but another burst of fire nearby brought him to his senses. While he was here deliberating, the twins were weaving their destruction and keeping him safe. And the army was trying to hunt them down. He had to act fast.
Even if the man did deserve to suffer.
A quick snap of Water, and the blood in the man’s veins boiled, melted him from the inside out. It lasted a few seconds, but Tenn didn’t even watch as the guy fell to his knees, gurg
les of pain escaping his lips. He was already focused on getting the Witches out before they lost any more innocents.
Rhiannon must have sensed he was there; her eyes locked onto him, despite his invisibility. While the rest of the clan stared at the dying necromancer in horror, her eyes never left his form. Before the Witches could panic, Tenn reached out with Earth and snapped another branch from the twin’s tree.
Briefly, he stopped channeling Earth into the stones, a split second as they flew out another twenty feet, drawing the Witches into their orbit. Then he sent out the power once more, rendering them all invisible. Rhiannon gave him the smallest, knowing smile.
“You have come,” she said. She made her way through the crowd, the girl still holding on to her hand, and swept Tenn up in a hug. Her grip was strong, though there was a shake to her touch, a tremor that said she was trying to hold it together, that she was close to breaking but would never show it. He knew the feeling well. She whispered into his ear, “I never doubted you would find us.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t have made it sooner,” he said. His stomach dropped a little further every time he saw the blood staining the ground not a foot away. Was that…a jaw?
“Do not grieve for what you cannot change,” she said. She stepped back and looked him up and down. “You found her, didn’t you?”
Tenn looked down.
She cupped his chin in a hand and gently raised his eyes to hers.
“You did what you could,” she said. “And for that, we thank you.”
“We don’t have much time,” Tenn said. This was the one part of the entire mission he’d been dreading, the one command that truly meant their lives were in his hands. If he’d messed up the first part, the twins could have at least helped the Witches escape. If he messed up now, they were all as good as dead. “Stay close to me. If you can fight, stand to the outside. Hopefully we can make it back to safety without anyone noticing.”
Although the place was swarming with Howls, none seemed to notice the sudden lack of prisoners. The fires were wild now, and the world was a torrent of sparks and heat and chaos. Tenn and the Witches darted through the madness as fast as they could, adults holding the children and those strong enough to fight ringing the perimeter—not that they had anything they could call weapons, but Tenn hoped at least a few of them were attuned.