Runemaker, page 14
“Well, well, well,” Tomás said. “Here we are at last. All of us. How pleasant.” He glared at her, but the scowl broke into a grin. He pulled aside his shirt to reveal his smooth flesh. “No hard feelings, of course. It takes a bit more than a few gunshots to kill me.”
“I look forward to it,” Kianna said. She took a step forward, but Tenn put a hand on her arm.
Surprisingly, she didn’t lop it off.
“Wait.” He looked at Aidan with those damn watery eyes, and Aidan had to fight down the memory of Trevor looking at him the same way. The sadness. The fear. The absolute ache of betrayal, right before Aidan had burned him to ash on Calum’s throne. “Aidan,” he continued. His voice smooth. Calming. The way you’d talk to a feral dog. Fire sparked at the indignation. No one should talk to him like this. And yet, something in the way Tenn said his name... “Aidan, I don’t know what you’re doing. But it doesn’t have to be like this.”
Aidan laughed. “Please. You don’t even know what this is.” He gestured wide, sparks racing across his arms. “What, you believe that just because you’re the chosen one, you have a part in all this? You don’t. This has nothing to do with you.” He looked to Kianna. “With any of you.”
“Then what does it have to do with?” she asked. “Because it sure as hell looks like you’re standing over the woman you vowed to kill, beside a monster you swore to kill, as well.”
Tomás chuckled and bowed at the word monster. Aidan was impressed. Normally, that was enough to set Tomás off.
Then he realized why everyone was static. It wasn’t just because they were uncertain. It was because he held this entire situation in the palm of his hand. He could kill them in a heartbeat if he wanted. He could bring the very castle down around their heads. Or, he could be a merciful god and let them live.
He looked to Kianna. His only friend. Then he looked at the pistol pointed at his chest. Perhaps she was no longer his friend, Fire purred. Perhaps she has joined with them.
“Things aren’t so black-and-white,” Aidan said. “Not anymore.” He clenched his fingers, brought his destroyed hand in front of him. Lowered his voice, tried to level the burn. “Don’t you understand? After everything we’ve been through, there isn’t a pure good or pure evil. Just power. She knew this.” He pointed to the Dark Lady. “And I’m quickly learning. This world doesn’t give a shit about good or bad. It never has. It only bows to one thing—power. And we either use that power, or we are chained by it. I know precisely which side I want to be on.”
He placed his hand on the Dark Lady’s chest, right over her heart. Felt the shiver of life within. Just as he felt the words of the runes snaking over his skin. He had undone them. Most of them. But there was only so much he could do.
There had been another curse hidden within the runes.
A requirement.
He looked to Tomás.
“I suppose I should thank you,” Aidan said. “You taught me that good and evil are just what we make of them.”
Tomás nodded, but his grin was slipping. Probably because Aidan’s was slashing into place.
“The true heart of everything is power. You showed me that. That life was only about the burn, the acquisition. No matter who we have to consume along the way. You’ve taken me far, Tomás. Here to the very end.”
He paused, let them linger on the word end while he looked at the others.
“And you are also to thank for bringing us all back together again. You and that treacherous heart of yours.”
He traced lines of flame over the Dark Lady’s chest.
“You have risked everything to bring me here. To help me achieve everything I desire. You’ve given your life to bringing your mistress back, when all your brethren were content to lock her away. All because they were too weak. Too frightened to see what she might create.”
He looked to Tomás as he burned the final runes into the Dark Lady’s skin, as the runes of the pedestal fell away, and a new language took their place. He reached to the blade at his hip, his fingers wrapping around the hilt.
“You were imperfect. All of you. And you had hoped that by bringing me here, by aiding me, I would overlook that imperfection.”
Tomás growled in the back of his throat. But he didn’t take a step forward. Didn’t try to rip out Aidan’s tongue. Everyone stood silent. The whole world waiting to see what he would do.
“But if there is one thing I have learned from you, Tomás, it is that weakness has no place in the world. Your mistress knew that better than most. You say you would do anything to bring her back? Good. Because she requires something of you. One more little thing.”
Aidan struck.
He lashed the final runes into the Dark Lady’s chest, deep into her static heart, and twined tendrils of flame around his arms as he thrust his dagger into Tomás’s chest. Tomás screamed.
It shouldn’t have been enough to kill him. On their own, the dagger or the flame would have been nothing to the incubus. But the runes...
The power of the runes Aidan seared on the Dark Lady’s heart twined with those he burned into Tomás’s chest, linking one to the other. As Tomás’s heart failed, as his spark winked out, the runes on the Dark Lady dragged that power in.
Tomás’s eyes widened.
“What’s the matter?” Aidan asked, making sure to stare deep into the Howl’s copper eyes. “You told me you would die for me. Did you truly think I wouldn’t call your bluff?”
Distantly, he heard commotion. As if in another room, another world, he heard the other Hunters leap into action, felt the flares of their power. But the power he wielded billowed around him, the fire a cocoon of searing warmth. The power of his own inner flame. The power of Tomás’s dying light.
The spark of her awakening.
Maybe the Hunters attacked. Maybe they didn’t. It didn’t matter.
He watched Tomás sink to his knees, the dagger still in his chest.
He felt the Kin’s heart stutter against the blade.
Felt the Kin’s power flood through him. Past him. And into the woman who warmed beneath his fingertips.
“The Dark Lady does not forgive treachery,” Aidan said. “And neither, my prince, do I.”
Tomás’s heart stalled.
He crumpled to his side.
And as his eyes closed and his head thudded to the floor, the woman the world had thought dead was reborn.
“There is no death.
There is no darkness.
There is only truth
and that truth
is me.”
—Teachings of the Dark Lady
PART 3
BLOOD LIKE POISON
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
DREYA
“Go!” Dreya yelled. She shoved the rest of her comrades back, pouring as much Air into the shield between them and Aidan as she could. “Go, now!”
But they did not move. Of course they did not move.
Tenn screamed out even as Devon pulled him back. Kianna fired her gun into the hellstorm, but her bullets melted the moment they hit the flames. Everything was heat and hatred, and in her heart she heard the screaming.
The screaming of the spirits. The Ancestors. The very souls that had sent them here, the very gods who thought that they could make the world anew.
Screaming at their failure.
Screaming that the end had come again.
She watched in awe and terror as the incubus dropped to his knees, his fingers fluttering like birds’ wings over the hilt of the dagger in his chest.
Watched as the runes connected, as the swirl of the incubus’s final life force was ripped from his body and channeled into the woman at Aidan’s side.
She watched as the power snapped through the woman’s veins. As her eyes opened and her lips parted in a gasp.
She watched as the woman looked over. As the eyes that had haunted her nightmares since the Resurrection’s beginning locked on her own.
Then she grabbed onto Tenn’s arm, to Kianna’s wrist. Do it! she yelled in her thoughts to Devon.
He nodded.
Seared the runes of travel into the dust at their feet.
She poured her own power into the runes, prayed that Kianna and Tenn were doing the same.
But as the world vanished around them, she knew hope was already lost.
CHAPTER FORTY
TENN
“Fuck!” Tenn yelled.
He kicked the low stone wall, but he was so numb, so shocked, he didn’t even feel the pain.
Where they were, he had no idea. Somewhere dark and wet and desolately urban. It was fitting.
With Tomás dead, he had no way of using the tracking runes, no way of telling how far they were from the boy he had failed to save.
He thought it was just raining. Then he realized the pools in his eyes were tears.
Someone placed a hand on his arm. He tried to shake it off.
“Tenn,” Dreya whispered. Her voice barely cut through the screaming in his head. His own voice, calling himself a failure. A failure. “You must get a hold of yourself. We must be rational. We must think.”
Think.
Think of what? The way Aidan’s eyes burned with purpose as he stabbed Tomás in the heart? The bodies of the Kin that had fallen at Aidan’s feet? Or did she want him to think about the power? The power Aidan had wielded like it was nothing, the runes that had burned holes in Tenn’s mind with their might, words and whispers this world had never—and should have never—seen. Aidan had done the unthinkable.
He had brought the Dark Lady back to life. He had unleashed the worst darkness the world had ever known.
And now...now...
“We’re right fucked,” Kianna said.
She paced at Tenn’s side, and Devon sported a nasty bruise on his eye from where she’d punched him in the chaos. She had wanted to leave Aidan even less than Tenn.
“I can’t believe the wee bastard,” she said, her accent thickening in her anger, becoming more Scottish than British. “I knew he was getting dark. I didn’t realize he’d gone that dark. That was the Dark Lady, wasn’t it? He brought the bitch back.”
Tenn nodded and forced down the sadness, the defeat. Water roared within him, the betrayal fresh as a wound. He was still alive. That meant he still had a responsibility.
He’d thought his purpose was to save Aidan. Perhaps not. Perhaps Jarrett had been right all along—perhaps he was meant to end him. The Violet Sage had warned that Tenn could sway Aidan to the side of the living or the dead. Clearly, Tenn had fucked it up and sent Aidan spiraling into the Dark Lady’s clutches.
“She’s back.” He stared up in the dreary night. Even saying the words didn’t make the truth feel real. Nothing actually seemed different. Surely her return should have been more apocalyptic—heralded with blood raining from the clouds and the dead rising from the soil. Instead, there was just the gloom and the haze and the already-destroyed buildings around them. He almost wanted to laugh. “The Dark Lady is back.”
Was there really much worse she could do?
Even thinking that made his stomach clench. Of course there was. Of course.
In that moment, all the futures he’d ever dreamed of having—a house and Labs with Jarrett, a happy-ever-after, a future at all—were crushed under the weight of the new reality. Aidan had damned them all.
Tenn had damned them all. The Violet Sage told Tenn to make Aidan trust him. He had failed. This was all his own doing.
Water delighted in the misery of it.
“So what do we do?” Kianna asked. “I should have put a bullet between his eyes when I had the chance.”
“There is no use dwelling on what was,” Dreya said.
“No,” Devon interrupted. “She’s right. We should have killed him.”
“Hey.” Kianna brandished her gun at him. “That’s my mate you’re talking about. The only one who gets to threaten the wanker is me.”
Devon glowered at her, flames flickering around him like fireflies. But he didn’t say or do anything. Tenn couldn’t tell if Kianna was joking or not.
“We don’t need to fight amongst ourselves,” Tenn said. He swallowed. Remembered all too well how touchy everyone had been around Aidan when his Sphere had been damaged. Maybe this was the aftershock of what they’d seen, what Aidan had done. “That’s what he would have wanted us to do.”
“And what do you want us to do, oh fearless leader?” Kianna asked. “Teleport back there and kiss his boots and beg for mercy? Because we sure as hell can’t kill him now. He’s gotten a taste for power and he won’t stop until he has it all.”
“But he has it,” Tenn said. “He had it. He killed the Kin like they were nothing. He was the most powerful mage in the world. Why would he bring her back? It just means there’s someone else more powerful than him in existence. Someone else to kill.”
“Not if he thinks he can use her.”
Kianna’s words made Tenn’s heart flip.
“What? That’s...that’s...”
She grunted.
“I never said he was smart. Fire’s gone to his head. Always told him magic would get the better of him. Always said he was addicted. And look what he’s done now.”
“It’s not him,” Devon said. “Not really.”
“Oh?”
“It’s Fire. He’s consumed by it.” Devon’s eyes glittered with the flames around him, his entire body haloed by firelight. To think, there was a time when Devon’s might intimidated Tenn. Now, even this display of agitation barely bothered him. Still, it was a good reminder that Aidan wasn’t the only one playing with, well, fire. “He is no longer the man you once knew. That has been burned away. He will crave only one thing—to spread. To consume. He will do everything he can to burn the world down. And if he thinks he can use the Dark Lady to do so, he will.”
Tenn shook his head. How could Aidan be so naive as to think he could use the Dark Lady? He must be really desperate.
Of course he is, Water seethed. You felt his pain. The boy hurts more than all of us combined. You should have saved him. You could have saved him. Now you are too late. Too late...
He forced the thoughts down, drowned them under Water.
“But what can she possibly offer him?”
Kianna shrugged.
“Power changes people. Before and after the Resurrection, people have always been the same. Taste power, and you won’t settle for anything less than more.”
Tenn knew she was telling the truth. He’d seen it in Aidan’s eyes.
Aidan had tasted power none of them could dream of.
“I have to believe there’s still good in him.”
Kianna cawed with laughter, so loud Tenn jumped.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Tenn,” she said through tears. “You really don’t know anything about him, do you? If you think we’re going to find some good left in that one, you’re in for a serious disappointment.”
“I’d say all of this has been a serious disappointment.”
Kianna nodded. “That it has been. That it has.”
They stood in silence, the rain drizzling around them.
“Where are we?” Tenn asked. The place looked like any other ruined town in America.
“Near Outer Chicago,” Dreya whispered. It was one of the few times she’d ever sounded timid.
Tenn bit down his anger. Back to where Jarrett locked me up.
“I thought it safest,” she continued. “And the most prudent. We must let the Guild know what we have seen. They must prepare. They must tell others to prepare.”
“No one can prepare for this,” came a girl’s voice.
For a split second, Tenn recognized the voice. So much that he just assumed it was one of his party. Then the moment passed, and he realized it wasn’t Kianna or Dreya. It wasn’t anyone he knew.
He turned on the spot—all of them did—weapons raised and Spheres blazing.
But it wasn’t a Hunter or necromancer standing in the street before them.
No, it wasn’t human at all.
The silver fox stood in the haze, glimmering like moonlight on water.
“The true end has come,” the fox said, bowing its head. “And only together can we face it.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
AIDAN
Aidan only briefly looked at the place his ex-companions had stood. He had watched Kianna and Tenn try to fight their way forward. To fight him. To kill him. He had known it from the look in Kianna’s eyes even before she pulled the trigger of her gun.
Their friendship was over. She would see him dead.
It pained him. In a distant corner of his burning heart, it hurt. To know that he had incinerated years of friendship in a moment. To know that his hope of ruling with her at his side was gone.
Then the fire burned it away.
Had he ever wanted her to rule at his side? No, no. Fire seethed that there was only room for one throne. Only one ruler. And that would be him.
All his thoughts burned away in a heartbeat.
Because there, on the pedestal before him, the Dark Lady awoke.
He knew he should tremble. Knew he should bend his knee. After all, this was the woman who brought all of humanity to the dirt. The woman who had unleashed hell on earth.
The woman who could bring back the dead.
And yet, with Fire humming in his veins, he didn’t kneel or grovel. He stood only a foot away from Tomás’s bleeding corpse, dagger still in hand, with Tomás’s blood burning on the blade.
He watched her blink. Watched her slowly move her fingers and toes. Watched her carefully push herself up to sitting, facing away from him. Facing Natasja’s body. In all of those movements, she looked terribly frail, terribly human. It made him wonder if he had made a mistake, if perhaps this wasn’t the Goddess of Death, after all.
