Runemaker, page 10
But for once in his life, he was warm. Blessedly warm. Fire burned within him, and in that heat, there was no room for weakness.
Tomás squinted through the snow.
“Russia,” he said. “We’re here to pay my sister a little visit.”
“Your sister lives here? There’s nothing around.”
Nothing but rolling dunes of snow and a horizon that seemed to stretch into infinity. Not even trees.
“My sister has a flair for the dramatic,” Tomás replied. “Come. You’ll see.”
He strode through the snow, his feet melting deep footprints with every step. Aidan followed. The hiss of steaming snow and ice sounded like screaming. So much screaming.
He smiled at the memory of the battlefield, even if a small part of him whined that it had been too easy. Far too easy. He glanced to his arm and the network of cauterized runes he’d scratched there. A new Hunter’s mark. A new promise. If only he’d had them sooner, he could have ended the Kin’s reign before it ever began.
“Who was he?” Aidan asked as he strode to keep up with Tomás. “The one I killed on the field.”
Tomás looked over his shoulder and quirked an eyebrow. “Does it matter?”
Aidan shrugged.
Truthfully? No. It didn’t matter. None of these lesser Kin mattered. He knew now killing any one of them wasn’t a victory. Destroying all of them, though...that was something to gloat about.
“His name was Sigmund,” Tomás said. “He ruled Western Europe from Germany. Of all my brethren, he was, perhaps, closest to me. He at least knew how to have fun.”
Aidan didn’t care to ask what he meant. Just as he didn’t care to apologize for killing Tomás’s brother. Tomás didn’t seem to care either way—he spoke as if discussing the weather.
The very shite weather.
“And what’s this one’s name?” He didn’t care. It was just a way to make conversation. What did it matter what her name was? She’d be dead by day’s end whether Aidan had a name for her or not, and his name would replace her own in the annals of history.
“Natasja,” Tomás said wryly. “Could you ask for a more Russian name? She was a homeless orphan when my mistress found her. Unwanted. Unloved. I suppose it’s no surprise she became this.”
“Became what?”
Tomás paused. Stared at something in the snow at his toes.
Markings in the ice.
Runes.
He looked at Aidan.
“What do they tell you?”
Aidan stared at the runes. They shone heavy and dark against the snow, shadows burning against the brightness, jagged and serpentine and moving under his scrutiny. As if ashamed. Because as he heard their whispers in his mind—deceive and be deceived, burn and blister—he knew they were incomplete.
He knew he could have done better.
“She’s hiding,” Aidan grunted. He looked up, past the runes, to the unending snow. And he knew that farther in, Natasja waited. Just as he knew that one step over these runes would blow him to pieces, no matter how powerful he was. “And she’s scared.”
“Scared?”
Aidan looked to Tomás. It wasn’t what the runes told him. Rather, it was the presence of the runes that spoke to him. These were defensive runes. Ones to hide her away and destroy anyone unlucky enough to cross over them.
“She’s heard about me.” Aidan smiled. “She knew I’d be coming for her.”
He knelt down and placed his fingertips to the ice, ready to redraw the runes. He still hadn’t decided if he wanted to negate them, or invert them, making everyone within the perimeter a target for the runes’ destruction. Then he paused.
She knew I’d be coming for her.
Thoughts swirled. Thoughts he’d been too strung out to understand before.
“What is it?” Tomás asked. “Can you not undo them?”
But Aidan wasn’t listening.
He’d known Tenn would come after him, yes. But how had Tenn tracked him? Vaguely, he remembered overhearing a conversation Tenn had had with Kianna. He’d thought it just a fever dream. But as he sorted through the mire of his memories, he remembered. Tenn had shown her a tracking rune on his forearm. He’d said it was how the four of them kept track of one another.
So how had Tenn been able to find him from an ocean away? The only thing they had in common was the incubus standing beside him.
Aidan looked up to Tomás.
“How did he find me?”
“Who?” Tomás asked, his voice shifting from gloating to guarded.
“Don’t play stupid. It doesn’t suit you.” He nodded to the landscape before them, to the Kin that waited within. “You guided me here. How the hell do I know you didn’t guide him here, as well?”
“I would never—”
“Bullshit. You would in a heartbeat if you thought it would serve you.”
Aidan stood. He may not tower over the incubus, but when he pulled in through Fire, the might of it made even Tomás step back. It filled him not only with warmth, but with anger. He knew he’d been toyed with. He’d just been so focused on his victory that he’d ignored it.
Well, here was the final victory. One more Kin to kill only a few hundred feet away.
One more, besides Tomás.
“No more games, Tomás. The Dark Lady chose me to do Her work. Do you truly think she would mourn if that work included destroying you?”
Tomás shook his head, his eyes wide. For once, he actually looked scared.
“I have served you,” he said. “Just as I have served her. I had nothing to do with Tenn’s unwelcome obtrusion into your life.” He swallowed. His eyes flicked away when he said it.
Aidan took a step forward.
“The truth.” He grabbed Tomás’s arm, poured Fire through his veins so even the incubus’s skin steamed. “Or I throw you over those runes and see how you look missing half your limbs.”
Tomás’s eyes narrowed. “I must say, your newfound confidence is both disconcerting and maddeningly arousing.” He sighed. “Fine. I had no say in Tenn’s appearance. That I promise you. But when he and I last parted ways, he...he branded me. With one of his damnable little tracking runes.”
“Where?”
He removed Aidan’s hand and pressed it to his chest. Aidan’s palm sizzled against the incubus’s skin, but Tomás said nothing about the pain.
“In here,” he said. He looked Aidan in the eyes. This time, he didn’t look away. “I swear to you, my king. I had no idea he would find you through me. Had I known, I would have ripped out my own heart.”
Aidan dropped his hand and grunted a laugh.
“I may just have to hold you to that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TENN
If Tenn didn’t get out of here soon, he was going to lose his mind. He was trapped. Barely able to move and unable to use magic, unsure if Jarrett would ever come back and release him. Unsure if the twins had known Jarrett would do this, or if he’d been lying about that, as well. Was it just as he’d feared all along? That they’d all been sent not to protect him, but to use him? Was any of their friendship real?
Knowing that Aidan was still alive filled him with both hope and dread. Aidan was alive. So that meant he could still be saved. And yet Jarrett’s words kept replaying in his head—saving Aidan would destroy him. Saving Aidan would cost them everything.
Was it true? Was Aidan already so far gone that there was no way to bring him back?
“What do you want me to do?” he whispered. Maybe to himself, maybe to the spirits he was quickly losing faith in. He wasn’t a murderer. So why did it seem like every time he tried to find another way, he was rerouted back to needing to kill Aidan?
Finally, after what seemed like weeks, the door opened again.
Probably Jarrett, coming down to apologize but not do anything about it. Or else a guard, bringing him dinner. When the stench of whiskey and BO hit him, however, Tenn realized he would have happily taken Jarrett’s disappointment or a crappy meal instead.
“How did you get down here?” Tenn asked.
He stared at the man before him, at the greasy beard and slicked hair, at the worn suit and sharp eyes.
“God is everywhere,” Caius said gruffly. “And since I go with God, I’m everywhere, too.”
He grinned and placed his hands on the bars, leaning in toward Tenn.
“Truth be told, I think they’re worried about you. Think you might have turned to the Dark Lady. And they want me to make sure your soul is pure.”
Tenn flinched back, both from the man’s breath and the fear that shot through his heart. Immediately, he thought of Aidan and the wounds he had suffered at the hands of the Inquisition. If the Guild had let Caius in here, if Caius was actually part of the Inquisition...
“Or,” Caius said with a chuckle, “I’ve had many of my followers held down here. So many visits to ease their souls. So many, that I may have learned a secret passage or two for sneaking in. And out.” He winked.
If anything, it put Tenn even more on edge.
The Church had overthrown London after Calum had been killed. Who was to say they weren’t going to try the same thing back here?
Caius must have noticed the concern in Tenn’s eyes. He laughed. Far too loudly for Tenn’s liking.
“My, you’ve grown much more suspicious since I last saw you. Good. Good. You may just live through all this yet.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about good and evil, Tenn. You’ve seen it firsthand, the darkness that stirs in men’s hearts. I’ve heard the stories of what you’ve done. You’ve read the runes and all that mumbo jumbo.”
“If you’re here to tell me I’ve sinned—”
“Quite the contrary.” His voice lowered, grew quiet. “God speaks to me, Tenn. You may not believe it, but it doesn’t matter. Just as many don’t believe that you have heard the words of gods long past. I say, it doesn’t matter who or what you call it. The Witches and the Church are all after the same thing—God’s love. When you feel it, you’re changed. And you have definitely changed.”
That made Tenn’s heart flip. How did Caius know about that?
“I don’t—”
“Understand. Yes, yes, I know. Why do you think I snuck down here when I learned you were back? It’s not safe for you to stay. Your story hasn’t ended just yet.”
“Why would you help me, though? How do I know this isn’t some sort of trap?”
“Because when we last spoke, I told you that the time wasn’t right for you to learn the truth of the Dark Lady.” His eyes narrowed, and his fingers clutched the bars of the cage tight. “Now, it is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
AIDAN
Natasja’s runes were ridiculously easy to undo.
Aidan knelt in the snow and used a tendril of flame to melt a few small channels in the ice, redirecting the runes’ power. He had considered using the runes to kill Natasja, yes. But that seemed cowardly.
He deserved to see her die.
After all, she was the last.
He glanced at Tomás. So far.
The moment he finished his work, the new runes snapped into power, and an archway of sparks hissed into life before him. On the exterior of the arch, the world looked the same—a long unbroken stretch of snow and ice. But within...
“As I said,” Tomás mused. “A flair for the dramatic.”
Aidan stood in awe, suddenly grateful he hadn’t brought the whole place down without ever stepping foot inside.
This was everything a proper palace should be.
The structure towered high above them, stretching up into the clouded sky like inverted icicles. And that’s precisely what they were.
Although the ground floor appeared to be dark stone, the upper towers and turrets had been crafted with a sculptor’s grace from delicate, glistening ice. Every window, every arch, every shingle. Beautiful and jagged, powerful and imposing. Impossible in its enormity. So much magic had been fused into this place. Magic, and...
“Why is it pink?” Aidan asked. Because the more he looked, the more he realized the reddish tint to the place wasn’t from sunlight or fire. It was part of the ice itself.
“My sister’s enemies,” Tomás said. “She thought it fitting that those who tried to destroy her should become part of her defenses. She is a bloodling, in case you hadn’t gathered by now. And have I mentioned yet that she is dramatic?”
He began to walk.
Aidan followed, though he refused to call it following.
In the minutes or hours after he’d scratched the new runes into his arm, he’d expected to feel...different. But truthfully, even though he’d harnessed incredible power—what was it Brother Jeremiah had said? What you know of power is but a candle to the sun—he was his normal self. He didn’t have the Dark Lady screaming directions in his ear. He didn’t have shadows or demons following him about.
He didn’t feel evil.
He just felt powerful.
And after all, he wasn’t exactly doing anything evil in the first place. He’d told the Dark Lady he’d bring her back under two conditions—one, that she’d give him his power back, and two, that she’d bring his mother back to life. Two conditions, and his world had hardly changed.
It was almost disappointing.
Here he was, about to destroy the final Kin that barred the way between him and immortality and his mother and everything he’d ever dreamed of. And it didn’t feel any different than storming Calum’s castle had barely a week ago. In fact, this seemed even less climactic. He was walking up to the front door of a terribly imposing castle, about to face down what was supposed to be one of the most powerful creatures in the world, and he felt nothing. No adrenaline. No fear. No rage.
He paused midstride.
Was this what being powerful truly felt like?
If he was being perfectly honest with himself, he was almost...bored.
He stared up at the castle. Remembered the throne room that Calum had blockaded himself within—the twisted frozen corpses of Hunters and civilians past, the throne of interlocked bodies. At the time, Aidan had thought Calum to be a nutter.
But only an hour at the very top of the food chain, and he was starting to understand.
Without the battle of life, what was even the point of living?
“Coming, my king?” Tomás asked. He was five steps in front of Aidan, looking back with a quizzical expression. “Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet.”
Aidan drew in deep through Fire, an inhalation that sent sparks and flame swirling around him, turning snow and ice to steam.
“I don’t get cold anymore,” Aidan said, his lungs filled with cinders. “And it’s about damn time.”
As he continued following Tomás, he realized something he’d never noticed before. Probably because the Kin had never turned his back to him. Aidan jogged a few steps and grabbed hold of Tomás’s bloody, shredded shirt and ripped open the back.
“My king,” Tomás said, pausing but not turning around, “now is hardly the time.”
But Aidan wasn’t interested in sex or coyness. He was staring at the line of black runes tattooed down Tomás’s spine.
“What are these?” he heard himself ask, but he hadn’t actually meant to voice the words. He didn’t need to.
The sinuous black marks that curved and cut down Tomás’s back whispered with the voice of the Dark Lady, as audible as if she were standing right behind him. Runes to change. To control. Runes to command. And he knew as he read them that they were what allowed the Kin to be created. Just as he’d seen on Calum, these allowed the monsters to use magic. Allowed them to maintain a semblance of their original sanity. He reached out and drew his finger down Tomás’s spine.
Both the runes and the incubus seemed to curl at his touch.
The runes were good. Better than the ones scratched and scrawled over Calum’s chest. Better than the ones on the shard. Hadn’t Tomás said that he was the youngest of the Kin? It seemed that the Dark Lady had improved her craft.
Shame she had been halted before she could continue.
Well, almost a shame.
Aidan knew he could have done similar work if he so wanted.
The thought struck him.
He could create more Kin. He could do what the Dark Lady could not.
No.
That would be crossing a line. He snickered to himself at the thought. Of all the things he’d done, he found it hilarious that making a Howl would be the worst.
Maybe I could do it to Tenn, though. Turn him into a mopey bloodling. Aidan looked up to the castle, imagined Natasja brooding away inside. Nah. He would probably enjoy being miserable too much.
“Do you like what you see?” Tomás asked, breaking him from his thoughts.
“Not really.” Aidan stepped past him. He made sure to look Tomás in the eyes when he spoke. “Her work was sloppy.”
A dozen emotions warred on Tomás’s face, but Aidan was past him before any one could settle.
“Why aren’t they attacking?” Aidan asked idly, making his way up the broad, icy avenue leading to the castle. There weren’t any guards, as far as he could see. But any Kin with an ounce of intelligence would sense the threat. “Or did you prepare this one for me, as well?”
Tomás seemed to settle on annoyance as he resumed his pacing at Aidan’s side, his shirt hanging from him like tattered, bloody wings.
“That is not my sister’s way. She prefers to toy with her victims. I think she disdains killing, honestly. I think she prefers when they do it themselves.”
Aidan didn’t bother asking what he meant.
