Runemaker, page 21
Tenn swallowed. It felt like he was describing himself.
“What are we doing here?” Aidan asked.
He hunched beside Tenn, snow melting around him by the second, like he was a one-man furnace.
“Finding reinforcements.”
He considered waiting. Considered sending up the runes and symbols he’d seen Devon work before. It seemed like the polite thing to do. The Witches must be entreated. But there was no time. He brought the tracking rune on Dreya’s wrist to mind, felt it drawing him forward like a thread in the night, and followed it into the trees.
Ahead, he felt the tingle of runes. The first line of defense.
“You’ll want to take my hand,” Tenn said.
“Like hell.”
“That wasn’t a suggestion,” he said, surprised to hear the steel in his own words.
Aidan glowered. Then reached out and took Tenn’s hand in his own.
It wasn’t his imagination—the moment their palms touched, sparks raced over Tenn’s skin, along with a crashing, falling, soaring sensation that nearly dropped him to his knees. It wasn’t love or lust, but something cosmic, the snap of gravity connecting two planets. He looked to Aidan, the briefest glance, to see if he had registered the feeling, too. But Aidan’s poker face was absolute; he stared forward resolutely, unreadable. Tenn turned his attention back to the forest and the first line of runes.
He felt the runes quiver around him, felt the caress of their warnings—turn away, this is wrong, this is a trap—but he was used to them by now. He knew their language, and they washed over him without much hassle.
Aidan, on the other hand, freaked.
“Where are you taking me?” His eyes were wide, his palms slick with sweat. “The hell is this?”
“It’s okay.” Tenn tried to keep his voice calm and comforting, even though a part of him wanted to laugh. Aidan thought he was a badass, and yet here he was, cowering from some simple magic tricks. “It’s just the runes. They’re meant to dissuade visitors. Turn you around. Just hold my hand and keep walking. And breathing.”
Aidan took a deep, gulping gasp of air. Tenn gripped his hand tighter—Aidan’s fingers shook.
“The next line is coming up,” Tenn said. “Nearly there. I should warn you, they’re a bit worse than the first.”
He couldn’t help but notice Aidan’s breath was faster, and even though he nodded, there was no conviction in his features.
The runes were designed to scare off intruders. What could they be showing Aidan that would freak him out this much?
The next line washed over him.
Aidan’s grip tightened painfully.
“No,” Aidan gasped as he crossed the line. His eyes were wide. “No no no, where are you taking me? You’re working for her, aren’t you? You’re working for her!”
“Calm down, man,” Tenn said. “I’m not working for anyone. It’s okay. Just one more. Just one more.”
Aidan didn’t respond. His eyes darted everywhere and his palm was so slick that even though he held Tenn’s hand in a death grip, it was sliding away.
“Almost there,” Tenn said.
He crossed the final line of runes; the Witches’ caravans came into focus, along with the twins and Kianna, who jogged toward him with Mara in tow.
He smiled. Felt his heart lighten.
Then Aidan screamed and let go of his hand, and before Tenn could stop him, the boy vanished into the woods.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
AIDAN
Monsters howled deep within the woods. Tenn was a distant memory. Tenn had betrayed him, had wanted him dead. This had been a trap. A trap. And he had to get out.
He ran, and when Tenn vanished from sight, another figure appeared. A figure in a purple raincoat, blood dripping from the seams.
“Mom?”
She nodded. Her raincoat was slashed in a dozen places, and her skin a dozen more. But she was whole. He took a step toward her. Her eyes widened, focused on something behind him. Then she turned and ran.
She darted through the trees as the howls increased behind him, and he ran after her, uncaring about the creatures chasing him, his vision twitching every other footstep. The forest shifting this way and that, the snow beneath his feet now fresh, now churned, now covered in her blood.
“Mom!” he yelled. He crashed through the undergrowth, but she was too fast. She was always ten steps ahead, just out of sight, nothing more than a flash of purple between the trees while behind him the monsters were gaining and screaming, and he was lost, lost, but he had to find her, had to find her, had to—
“Hello, Aidan,” she said.
She stood in a clearing. And around her, fallen like dominoes, were bodies.
Tenn and the strange twins, Jarrett and Kianna. Those, and more bodies he didn’t recognize. Dozens of them. Hundreds. They spiraled out around her, a dull array of color. Beneath them, the snow ran crimson.
“Even now, you aid me,” his mother said. Only she was no longer his mother. Her features shifted. Sharpened. Until it was the Dark Lady surrounded by the dead. “Even now, you bring me closer to them.”
Aidan swallowed. Backed up and ran straight into a tree.
“I’m not helping you,” he said. “You tried to kill me.”
She smiled.
“I didn’t try to kill you.” She stepped forward, her feet squishing atop a body. A new body.
His mother.
His true mother.
“I don’t try to do anything, stupid child,” she said. She continued walking, uncaring of whom she stepped on to get there. Just as he had been. “I have set the trap. And now, I get to watch as you stumble into it. I can follow you anywhere, Aidan. I know your heart. And soon, I will hold it in my hand.” She pressed her hand to his chest.
Into his chest.
Fire shot through his veins.
He screamed.
“You scream like a bloody girl.”
Aidan collapsed against the tree, panting, his breath hot in his lungs. He clutched his chest with both hands, expecting to feel blood.
Nothing.
He looked up to see Kianna a few feet away. Farther, beside a tree, was Dreya. She stood like a ghost, white on white, and when he focused back on Kianna, Dreya practically vanished. It was only then he realized Kianna had a pistol pointed straight at his head.
“I promised you,” she said. “Ages ago, I promised you, you ever let Fire take over, and I would be the first to put a bullet between your eyes. You remember that?”
He swallowed. He couldn’t find the words. What even were the right words?
“You remember?” She took a step forward, shook the gun. “Say something, you bloody twat. Speak!”
“Do it.” His voice was gravelly. Behind her, he could still see the shade of the Dark Lady, the bodies of everyone he had condemned to die. Kianna’s included.
“What?”
“I said do it!” he yelled. He looked her in the eyes. “Shoot me, Kianna. Put me out of my fucking misery. You’re right, you promised. Keep your bloody promise.”
She shook her head, biting her lip.
He knew she would do it. He wasn’t trying to call her bluff.
He realized, in that moment, he truly wanted to die.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the people he’d murdered. The Prophets, the acolytes, and farther back—Brother Jeremiah and Trevor and Vincent and a hundred others. All of them stained his palms and heart with blood, but now, Fire couldn’t burn the guilt away. Fire only inflamed it. He squeezed his eyes shut as if he could block out himself.
He had murdered. He had betrayed.
He’d told himself it was so he could get ahead, so he could rule, so he could end the Howls for good, because only under his reign would the world finally fall back into order.
All he’d done was give the world over to the one creature he should have been sworn to kill. Because she had promised to do the one thing he could not. And she had lied.
Which meant it—all of it—had been for nothing.
Kianna should have killed him the moment she met him, back at the abandoned hostel ages ago.
“Damn it,” he heard her growl. “I hate him like this.”
“You must be patient with him,” Dreya whispered. “He has been through a great deal of pain.”
“He’s caused a great deal of pain. And it’s only going to get worse from here.”
“He was manipulated.”
“He manipulated himself.”
A crunch of boots on snow, and then there was a hand on his shoulder, gruff and firm. He opened his eyes to look straight into Kianna’s.
“If I’m going to kill you,” she said, “it’s going to be on your feet. And you’re going to take it like a man. This is just pathetic.”
“That may be the most chauvinistic thing you’ve ever said,” he whispered. He coughed, closed his eyes. “I killed them.”
“You’ve killed a lot of people.”
“No,” he said. “The Prophets. Everyone on that island. I killed them. She told me it would get my mother back.”
“That sounds like a you problem. Come on, up.”
She hoisted him to standing.
“We cannot kill him,” Dreya said. “He’s too important.”
Kianna looked him over once. “Doesn’t seem that important to me. Except for in his mind.”
Dreya shook her head. “No. He cannot die here. Not by your hand. Not yet. He has seen the Dark Lady’s language. He has spoken her tongue.”
“Yeah, and he brought the bitch back with it.”
Dreya stepped toward them. Her pale blue eyes speared Aidan to the spot, unraveling him, reading the shadows on his soul.
He almost wished Kianna had put a bullet in his head.
“He did,” Dreya said. “And that which is brought back cannot simply be put away. But we have been seeking the end to the Dark Lady’s scourge for years. We have used all the runes the Ancients allowed us, and still it was not enough.”
“Aye. We know it’s hopeless.”
“Not hopeless. Misguided. Perhaps we were simply speaking the wrong tongue. Perhaps, with his knowledge and her words, she and her work can be undone.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
DREYA
It was a foolish notion. But as she watched Aidan and Kianna talk, as she watched the boy struggle with himself, the idea struck her like a bolt of lightning.
She had known Tenn was key to destroying the Dark Lady and all of her progeny. But Aidan...he had been another key, one to the same door. And Dreya knew, somehow, the two were required to open it.
Besides, she had had her fill of murder. She would not stand around and watch Aidan be massacred. No matter if he deserved it. She must believe he still had good in him, that he could still help their cause. Too much had happened to have him snuffed out in the forest like a common animal. He was important. She just had to figure out how, before he turned on them, or Kianna decided to follow through on her vow.
She knew, if Devon had been here, he would have helped Kianna pull the trigger.
Once more, she was grateful she did not have her brother’s rage.
Kianna adjusted her hold on Aidan, and together, the three of them began making their way back to camp.
“Remember,” Dreya said. “The runes will try to dissuade you. You must stay strong. They are naught but illusion.”
“You don’t understand,” Aidan said, his voice scratchy from tears. “She isn’t an illusion. She’s watching me. She knows where I’m going. I’m just guiding her to you.”
Dreya forced down the chills that traced her spine.
“Be that as it may, we are stronger together than apart.”
Kianna looked at her. The unspoken question hung on the air between them—did Dreya actually believe that, or was she just trying to make Aidan feel better? She had to hope it was the former.
She led Kianna and Aidan through the forest, back to the safety of the Witches. In the back of her mind, she wondered how long that safety would last. Aidan and the Dark Lady had broken through the Violet Sage’s defenses. What hope did they have?
Kianna kept her grip on Aidan while Dreya held her hand. It was easier this way than to risk Kianna wandering off accidentally. She told herself she felt nothing when Kianna’s fingers closed around hers. It wasn’t the time.
Aidan muttered the entirety of their walk, but he didn’t let go. Or rather, Kianna didn’t let go of him. The final two lines of runes washed over them, and when they arrived at the camp, she found they weren’t alone.
Tenn and the others were gathered outside Mara’s trailer, arguing. They parted when Dreya and Kianna appeared, revealing the last man she expected to see, and a woman who seemed more out of place here than ought to be possible.
“Detain him,” Jarrett commanded, pointing at Aidan.
Kianna jumped in front of Aidan, shielding him. Not that there was anything to shield him from; no one moved. Not even Cassandra.
“What is this?” Dreya asked. She poured herself through Air, tried to blow away the unease, the shock. She had sworn to the Witches she would never reveal their location to the Guilds. She had broken that vow bringing Tenn here. And now, somehow, the vow had been broken again.
Cassandra stepped forward. Even here, she emanated power, the aura that she was used to being in command, and having that command taken without question.
“Have you not heard? The end has come with the help of that boy. And we are here to make the final stand.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
TENN
“You can’t do this,” Tenn growled. He and Jarrett stood farther off from the rest of the camp. Cassandra and Mara conferred with the twins, and Kianna and Aidan kept to themselves, apart from the rest but under close watch.
“Do what?” Jarrett said. “Try to save the world?”
“No. Barge in here and take over like this. This isn’t your—”
“Not my fight? The world is ending, Tenn. And not in that hypothetical, far-off street prophet sort of way. People know. I don’t know how, but they know that the Dark Lady is back. There’s rioting in the streets, Tenn. Half of Outer Chicago is on fire and the other half is abandoned. We have reports from every single Guild and Outpost in our network that the Dark Lady’s forces are rallying. She’s back, Tenn. She’s back because you couldn’t do your duty.”
“My duty was never to kill him.”
“Then what was it? Because it sure as hell looks like you’ve done nothing but help him kill us all.”
Tenn went silent. He looked to Aidan, the perpetual question, the wild card. Aidan had apologized. But even thinking that seemed ridiculous. How could you just apologize for murdering hundreds and damning thousands more? What was repentance when you ended civilization?
“Why are you here?” Tenn asked.
He stared at his commander, at his lover, felt the distance between them like a punch to the gut. Even now, even after everything Jarrett had done, after all the lies, all the betrayal, he wanted to touch him. Wanted Jarrett to hold him like the first night in Outer Chicago, to make him feel safe and cared for. Was that a lie, too? Was that a past he could ever resurrect?
“The Dark Lady has rallied, and we need to rally, too. We know the Clans of the Witches are connected, just as we knew that you would be able to find them.” Jarrett did reach out then, and his voice softened as he touched Tenn’s forearm. “And you, I could find anywhere.”
“So you were using me,” Tenn said, wrenching his hand back.
“If you want to look at it that way.” His voice was still soft, still hurting. “I prefer to think of it as caring enough to keep track of you.”
“Is that why you locked me in the dungeon?”
Jarrett swallowed.
“You already know why I did that. And it sounds like if you had stayed, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.”
Tenn wished he could argue, but Jarrett was right.
Aidan might have been the one helping the Dark Lady, but he was the one who opened the door for Aidan to step through. Water sloshed in his gut, heavy with regret. If not for Tenn, Aidan never would have gotten the Violet Sage, never would have gotten access to Maya.
Maya...
“I know how to attune to it,” Tenn whispered. “Maya. She showed me the runes.”
“And you remember them?”
He nodded. Jarrett looked to Cassandra.
“Then maybe we still have a chance.”
High above, the sky darkened with storms.
* * *
It was decided within the hour they couldn’t stay there. The Witches harbored not only fighters, but children and elderly. If Aidan was being hunted—and there was no doubt he was—they needed to take the battle somewhere else. Somewhere they could fight on their own terms.
And that meant going back to Outer Chicago.
Not many Witches could fight. At least, not as many as Tenn had hoped, and a few had opted to remain and protect those who stayed behind. Still, a dozen or so had joined in, and that was more than they had before. He taught the runes of travel to a few of them, those who knew the locations of the other Clans, and watched as they vanished into thin air.
Hopefully, it would be enough. Hopefully, they would be able to bring more Witches to the cause.
Tenn drew the runes of travel into the frozen dirt at the Witches’ feet, runes he had extracted and distilled, runes that would allow anyone to travel, regardless of the Sphere they attuned to. Just like those that led him to the Violet Sage, he traced a location amongst them, leading them straight to Outer Chicago.
