Runemaker, page 23
Tenn nodded. The Dark Lady must have used the same travel runes he had. She hadn’t just rallied, she’d gathered every last member of her army and brought them to his front door. The sight was enough to make bile rise in his throat and his legs wobble. He had never seen so many Howls before.
And at the front of the army was the Dark Lady herself, still in her deep purple dress, as though she were going to a ball. The Violet Sage—no, she was no longer the Violet Sage, she was now a monster, a puppet, a Wight—floated at her side, dull-eyed and rippling with power. Even from here, Tenn could see the nervous glances the other necromancers and higher-level Howls cast toward the creature.
A monster the world had never seen, and now it was the main weapon of the army.
The army stood only a few yards from the shield. Thousands of points of lights glowed from within the necromancers’ Spheres. Tens of thousands of kravens bristled, starved for flesh. And the rest were Howls Tenn couldn’t place, which made them even more dangerous. Breathless and incubi and bloodlings, able to freeze or asphyxiate the entire Guild in a heartbeat if they managed to get past the wall.
And of course they would get past the wall.
The Guild had maybe a hundred Hunters, two hundred at most. Even if every Hunter in existence magically showed up.
They didn’t stand a chance.
They were going to die.
Even with the Witches and their reinforcements, even with all their knowledge and all their runes, it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. The Dark Lady had won. As, in the deepest pit of his heart, he’d known she would all along.
Tenn looked to his companions. To the Hunters beyond. Somewhere along the line, he knew, Jarrett stood just as grim. Tenn wasn’t even going to get to see him before they died. Maybe he should go find him. Fight by his side as it should have been all along. Die next to his lover, rather than in the midst of a nameless horde. Then he looked at Aidan, and realized this was where he was meant to be, even if he didn’t know why.
“Well,” Aidan said. A thousand emotions warred over his face—despair and betrayal, but most of all, anger. A rage just waiting to be unleashed. Tenn knew Aidan had more to hate about the Dark Lady than perhaps any of them. She had promised him everything, had made him turn his back on everything he knew, before turning her back on him. “What are we waiting for? An invitation?”
Fire burned bright in his chest, flames flickering around him like fireflies. It made Tenn think of Devon, made him wonder if Devon had managed when so many others had failed.
Had the runes he placed been correct? Or had Tenn failed in that, too?
“Let’s kill this bitch,” Aidan growled.
Before Tenn could stop him, Aidan curled flame around his fist, white-hot and bright as the sun, and hurled it straight at the Dark Lady’s heart.
Everything seemed to pause in that moment. The fireball grew in brightness and size as it flew, until it burned like a comet, more destructive than a bomb.
Neither the Dark Lady nor the Wight moved, though a few of the lesser Howls and necromancers twitched or bolted away. The Dark Lady merely stood there, a slight smile on her lips as the fireball neared, and Tenn knew Aidan had wrapped so much hatred and fury into that sphere, it could wipe out a city. As he’d done before. He winced, readied himself for the explosion and rumble.
And then, five feet from the duo, the fireball exploded in a series of sparks that swirled around the Wight, spiraling around the crown of her head before vanishing, sucked inside the creature’s forehead.
The Dark Lady laughed.
“How charming. I already told you, magic has no effect.” She amplified her words, so they soared over the entire Guild. So everyone could hear how futile this defense was. “Anything you throw at her will only make her stronger. Here. Let me show you.”
She snapped her fingers, and the Wight’s vacant eyes snapped toward Aidan. It didn’t move a limb. Instead, Fire flared in its chest, hotter than even Aidan’s Sphere, and motes of light swirled in front of it, spiraling into a ball of fire that propelled itself toward Aidan. Tenn ducked on instinct.
The ball exploded against the shield surrounding the city, became a tidal flame that swept up and over them with a dull roar. Devouring the shield as it went.
“Shield down!” someone called out along the wall, which Tenn thought was a stupid thing to say. Not that it was a secret to the Howls beyond.
The moment the flame washed over them, the dark tide swept forward, and the war began.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
AIDAN
Doubt twisted in Aidan’s heart for a split second as he watched his fireball sent back, as he watched it destroy the little defense they had. Then he pulled deeper through Fire and burned that doubt away.
“The Wight absorbs magic,” he growled.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Kianna replied.
“She’s guarding the Dark Lady.” He had to yell over the roar of the crowd racing toward them, over the thunder and lightning pulsing through the sky. Over the chaotic fervor of his own heartbeat. “We have to separate them. It’s the only way to kill her.”
“And how do you suggest we do that?”
It wasn’t Kianna, but Dreya who asked.
“We need to distract the Wight. Draw it away.”
Dreya watched the field, her three Spheres blazing, eyes locked on the Dark Lady. She looked otherworldly, her power enough to make his skin crawl. Even after all he’d seen, she had a radiance that was impossible to deny.
“The Dark Lady controls Maya.” Her eyes were calculating, and it was clear she couldn’t deduce an answer. “She could end us all in a heartbeat if she desired. Undo every last one of us. So why does she not fight?”
“She won’t have to if we stay up here blabbing,” Kianna said. She grabbed her pistol and unsheathed her sword, looked at Aidan. It was the same smile she’d given him before every other battle. Even here, facing the end of the world, it was a small comfort to know she hadn’t changed. “Come on. Let’s do what we do best and kill these fuckers.”
He smiled.
This was what they had trained to do. What they were born to do.
“Always said we’d go out with a bang. Killing the Dark Lady and a Wight seem like the way to do it.”
“Yeah,” she said with a wink. “But let’s not forget that you’re the one who brought them about.”
She opened to Earth and vanished, reappearing on the ground, just outside the perimeter wall. Right in harm’s way. Despite her cockiness, seeing her down there, facing the oncoming tide of death, made his heart ache. A pain not even Fire could burn off.
This was the end.
This was their end.
Even though this was how they wanted to go out, it was still intimidating to realize that this, without question, was the moment they would die.
He turned to Dreya. “Protect her,” he said.
She nodded, a dozen words unspoken between them. Then he pulled through Fire and teleported down to Kianna’s side.
Just in time to see the cracked and misshapen faces of the Howls surrounding them.
Just in time to let Fire out to play.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
TENN
Tenn growled as Kianna and Aidan disappeared from the battlements. They were the only two Hunters on the field, and the Howls swarmed around them like ants on fruit.
But the Hunters on the wall weren’t waiting.
Above, the heavy sky broke apart with lightning and rain, and flames swept across the field—burning through foes but often deflected, or turned to fuel by some incubus.
Dreya closed her eyes and began to hum, a terrifying, melancholy noise that made the hairs on his neck stand on end. Air and Water and Fire blazed within her, and at her call, great tornadoes swirled down from the sky, flames billowing within and lightning flashing in tendrils. They scoured over the landscape, swallowing up Howls and burning them alive before tossing them like cannonballs amongst their kin.
Below them, by the wall, the earth rumbled and flames spiraled out, gunfire echoing amidst the chaos. Enough to let him know Kianna and Aidan were still alive.
For how long, he couldn’t say. Judging by the tide of Howls, none of them had long at all.
He couldn’t make out individuals in the dark mass anymore. But he could tell where the Dark Lady and her Wight wrought their magic—deep in the heart of the swarm, a circle seemed carved out, a place no magic would venture.
From it, the Wight cast her own magic, sent flames the size of tsunamis over the field, carved great swathes in the earth before her. Tenn could barely see the Wight through the blaze of her Spheres. But he saw the Dark Lady. She stood at the Wight’s side, her eyes cold and calculating. Maya a constant halo around her, a mirage refusing to break. But she didn’t seem to wield her own magic. Then again, why would she need to, when she had the Wight at her disposal?
He had to kill her. Had to. He’d been chosen, had runes the world had never seen and powers granted by the Ancients. This was his destiny. The thought was far from inspiring—with Water pulling at his heart, it was more a weight dragging through his veins.
He didn’t have a choice, though. If he didn’t act, they all died. And as Hunters took to the field, casting their magics and screaming battle cries and terror, he knew he didn’t have long.
And so, he did what he had done before—he opened to Earth and drew the runes of hiding on his skin, wincing against the pain. Dreya glanced over as he winked from existence, but she didn’t say a thing. Not that he would have been able to hear her over the roar of battle.
He felt guilty.
He should have said goodbye.
But he supposed, in a way, he’d already done so a dozen times before. They all had.
He visualized the runes of travel and vanished to the field below. He couldn’t teleport to the Dark Lady’s side, not when she might feel the magic of the runes. He had to rely on surprise. He had to do this the old-fashioned—and more dangerous—way.
This felt like suicide. He might be invisible, but that wouldn’t save him from wayward magic, and he couldn’t risk carving the Church’s symbol into his flesh, not if it might negate the power of the runes. So he ran, Earth fueling his limbs, through the throbbing flesh of the undead horde, and tried not to vomit at the sight or the stench.
Kravens swarmed and gurgled all around him, some old, some freshly made—as was apparent by the amount of decay they’d suffered. He shoved through them. They couldn’t see or smell him, and under normal circumstances an invisible force shoving them aside might have been enough to kick their dead minds into thinking something was there, but in the chaos and swarm of the undead tide, he was barely noticed. Not even when he had to cut down kravens who stood in his way with a lance of Earth. Only then, in the midst of death, he realized he no longer had his quarterstaff. He had a few daggers hidden in his coat, but they wouldn’t go far.
Like the twins, he’d grown accustomed to relying on magic. He had to hope that was enough.
The ground exploded at his feet, tossing him and a handful of kravens to the side. One landed atop him, and he gripped its throat and pulsed Earth into its heart, ignoring the pain it sent through his own. With a terrible ringing in his ears, he rolled the kraven off and tried to stand.
His ankle gave out with a snap.
Shit. Broken.
He gritted his teeth and pulled deeper through Earth, his stomach rumbling at how much he’d drawn. He ignored it, and channeled the power into his foot, mending it with a sickening crunch as bone cracked into place. When he began moving again, his stomach roared and his body shook. Too much Earth. Too much. But he couldn’t tire.
He knew he should utilize Water instead, but he couldn’t risk drowning in it. Not now. Not here.
He continued pushing his way through the crowd, dodging swinging limbs and felling Howls, the tide unaware of the reaper in their midst.
And then, like crashing through a wave to the calm on the other side, he reached the Dark Lady and her Wight.
His heart broke to see the Violet Sage like this. Floating a foot in the air, her white robes limp and frayed, her skin dulled to nothing and her eyes pale. The only color on her seemed to come from her Spheres, which glowed with all the ferocity of the sun, a blinding rainbow.
The Dark Lady watched the battle unfold. Maya was a faint purple swirl above her, the shimmer of a thousand-petaled lotus, but Dreya was right—the Dark Lady could have unmade all of them the moment she arrived. Why hadn’t she attacked? Why was she relying on the others to do her dirty work?
Now that he was here, he had no idea what to do. He stood on the edge of their perimeter and watched. The Dark Lady had already cheated death once, and that meant he had only one shot to kill her.
Maybe, if he cut her off from magic, she wouldn’t be a threat.
The question was, how? He had to split her up from the Wight, and that wasn’t going to happen on its own.
Then it clicked.
He knelt and pressed his hand to the frozen topsoil. He had to act fast.
He visualized the runes. And then, with a quick pulse of Earth, he furrowed them into the dirt, ringing them around both himself and the Dark Lady. In the same moment, he flooded the runes with power, and the war around them twisted away.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
DREYA
Dreya could not see where Tenn had run, but she could feel the power as it flooded on the field, the twist of Earth that dragged him and the Dark Lady out of sight. She sensed for him, felt him not too far-off, perhaps a mile away.
Wise boy. He had dragged the Dark Lady off on his own accord. To face her alone.
They must work fast to kill the Wight. Before she returned.
Before she killed him.
Dreya drew through Air and flew off the wall, floating down toward Kianna and Aidan like a goddess on high. She pulsed Air through the kravens surrounding them, sent the monsters sprawling. When her feet touched the ground, she looked to Kianna. Both she and Aidan were covered in black blood and slashes, but neither seemed to be tiring.
Indeed, it was the most alive Kianna had ever looked.
“Tenn has taken the Dark Lady,” Dreya said. “They are perhaps a mile from here. We must act fast to destroy the Wight in her absence.”
“But how?” Aidan said. “Magic doesn’t work on her.”
“See?” Without even looking, Kianna raised her gun and fired. A nearby bloodling fell to the earth in a spray of red. “That’s your problem. You rely on magic too much.” She looked to Dreya. That smile made Dreya’s blood hot. “Lead me to her. I’ll end the bitch. You—” she looked to Aidan “—go help Tenn. Gods know he’ll need it.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine. Or I’ll die. Either way, there’s not much you can do about it. Now go!”
Aidan looked between the two of them. Dreya nodded, remembering his previous words. Keep her safe. She would. On her life.
Aidan pulled through Fire and vanished.
Kianna reached out and touched Dreya’s cheek. Gently. Her fingers left a streak of red.
“When this is over,” she said, “I think we deserve a proper date.” She smiled. Dreya’s pulse doubled. “Shall we?”
Dreya nodded.
She drew deeper through Air, but for once, she didn’t use it to wipe away emotion. She let her pulse race and her heart thrill. In a way, it made her feel even more powerful. Invincible.
With Kianna at her side, she reached deep into her Sphere and blasted a path before them, a lance of air that knocked all Howls and necromancers to the sides. A tunnel. Like parting the Red Sea.
An arrow pointing straight to the Wight.
“Let us end this,” Dreya said. She took Kianna’s hand. Together, they ran.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
TENN
“Tricky, tricky,” the Dark Lady said. She didn’t seem fazed by Tenn’s magic or his invisibility; in fact, she smiled. As though this were a game. As though it were finally getting fun. “But not clever enough I’m afraid.”
Power rippled through the air, an undulation of a mirage, and Tenn staggered back as he felt Maya connect, as his skin burned, crawling with a million fire ants. He fell to his hands and knees, and when he staggered back up, the Dark Lady was smiling at him.
“There you are,” she said.
He glanced to his hands. The runes hiding him were gone.
“Did you think you could save your friends by bringing me here? Did you think you would spare them? You merely delay the inevitable, Tenn. As you have always done.”
She circled him. Once more, he wondered why she didn’t attack, why she didn’t rip him from existence with Maya’s touch. Did she enjoy playing with them all so much?
Then, the question bounced back—why hadn’t he attacked her? After everything she’d done, why was he not on the offensive? Why was he letting her talk?
A voice inside whispered that he wanted to know. To know why she had done it, why she cursed the world. But that wasn’t the truth. The truth was he still wanted to know why she had set her sights on him in the first place.
“I’ve watched you from the very beginning,” she said, reading his darkest thought. “I’ve watched your struggles and your tears. I’ve watched you run from my minions, watched you wrestle with your fledgling power, with the idea that you might be the Chosen One. But you are not, Tenn. You are merely another fighter, another pawn on my chessboard to move as I desire. Every step you have taken has been by my design. Do you not see? I needed you to discover the runes that had been hidden from me, the secrets of the Ancients and the Violet Sage, the powers that they tried so hard to keep from my hands. And you gave them to me.”
