Martyr (29 page)

Tori continued to slip from Tenn's fingers. She shivered uncontrollably in spite of the heat. He poured more power into her, more than he would have ever dared. Her back arched as wound after wound sealed itself. The ground began to rumble.

More flames erupted on all sides, and the earth heaved violently as a fresh surge of dark magic flew their way. Tenn lost his grip on Tori. Just for a moment, their connection severed. He stumbled back, leaped over to her side.

But that had been long enough.

Too long.

When he placed his hands on her cold skin once more, he felt her heart beat for one, final time.

“No,” he whispered. He shook her, gently, flooded her limp limbs with magic. “No,” he said, louder, over and over until he was screaming it at the top of his lungs and it wasn't Tori on the ground, but Jarrett, Jarrett staring up with those pleading blue eyes, Jarrett soaked in his own blood.

Blood, blood everywhere.

Tenn rocked back on his heels as another wave of magic rolled over them, sent the ground squirming. The twins screamed with power.

Blood on his hands. Blood on his jeans. Blood seeping through his skin.

Red filling his vision.

He stood. Red, red everywhere, and Water was raging, raging red. Water filled him with power. All that red. All that blood. All that magic. Filling him. Rage and water and power.

He screamed.

It wasn't a scream of loss or desperation. This was the scream of Water, of rage and death and bloodlust. The Sphere howled in his gut as torrents of energy lashed through his body. The world seemed to pause. Even the twins went silent, the flames around them flickering out for a heartbeat.

Then his heart beat again, and it beat with power.

He reached out, latched on to the hearts and pulses of every creature in that damned town. He felt them, all of them—the Howls and the humans, the damned and the damning. He felt their hearts throb, the water pulse in their veins. Magic flooded through him in painful ecstasy. He felt their hearts beat. All of them, beating a rhythm of life. A rhythm neither Jarrett nor Tori would ever feel again.

He clenched his fingers, felt every muscle cord.

And then he stopped their hearts.

The blowback was immediate and immense. He felt his own heart scream as the hundred lives at the ends of his fingertips squirmed for life. He held on. Water filled him, amplified the pain, the pure ecstasy of it all. His head whipped back and his arms stretched to the side as he felt the power flood through him, lifting him off the ground in a halo of blue. The enemy screamed. He screamed louder. Their pulses throbbed. Ached.

Stopped.

A snap. The power vanished. And as he fell to the ground like a marionette cut from its strings, he felt the hundred others die with him.

He crumpled. He let himself drown in the death knell.

29

Tomás
stroked the side of Tenn's face.

“It's rare,” Tomás said.

“What is?” Tenn asked.

He sat before Tomás on a fur rug of some sort, while the incubus lounged in a large leather chair, a fire crackling in the hearth behind him.

“To meet one like you. You're a challenge.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

In the corner of the room, chains clinked together. Tenn looked over. Jarrett was there, chained to the wall like a dog, a thick collar around his neck. He was naked and smeared with blood.

“Let him go,” Tenn said. He looked back, but it was no longer Tomás. It was the necromancer, Matthias. He sneered, his dark eyes burning like coal-fires.

“Of course. He doesn't matter. But you? You're mine forever.”

Tenn glanced at the chains on his own wrists and ankles, felt the large manacle around his neck. Matthias held the other end in his hand. Matthias opened to Fire; the chains glowed red. Tenn smelled his flesh burning before the pain arrived. When it hit, his whole world went white.

“You're still alive,” Dreya said.

Her words cut through the haze of his dream. He couldn't tell if it was a statement or a question.

He tried to move, but every single joint in his body ached. It felt like he'd been filled with acid—his very blood seemed to beat against him. When he opened his eyes, he found that it was morning. At least, he thought it was morning. The sun sat on a cloudy horizon, the world a pinkish wash of white.

“What happened?” Tenn asked.

He couldn't remember anything, just pain. Then it began to come back to him in a haze. Heading out to the city, the army, the girl…

“Tori,” he said. Despite the pain, he pushed himself up to sitting. “Where's the girl?”

Dreya looked down, then pointed to her side. He followed her finger and found a blanket-wrapped bundle sitting at the edge of the clearing they were in, nestled against the trunk of a pine. Tenn's heart sank. He'd hoped that had been part of the dream as well.

“I didn't save her,” Tenn said. He slumped back down onto the ground.

“You tried,” Dreya responded. “What you did—”

“Didn't help,” Tenn said. He couldn't get the bitterness out of his voice.
I failed
.

“You saved our lives,” Dreya said. There was a note in her voice, something he'd not heard before. Awe. “I don't know how you did it. I've never seen so much power.”

“But it was too late,” he said. He turned over, tried to bury his head in his coat. He could barely remember what he'd done after Tori died in his hands. He just knew he was paying for it dearly. And it hadn't even been enough.
If only you'd found that power sooner
.

Dreya slapped him.

And it wasn't gentle.

“Stop being a fool,” she said. “Only an idiot mourns what he could not change. You saved our lives, and you tried to save hers. Let that be enough.”

He didn't move, but he stared up at her. Her eyes were set, and there was an edge to her voice that told him she'd be more than happy to slap him again.

“Sorry,” he said. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was only then that he realized the true root of his pain; Water sat bruised in the depths of his stomach. He'd drawn way too much. Until Water healed itself, he'd be on edge for a while.

“Where's Devon?” he asked, rather than letting himself drown in images of what he'd failed to do.

“Searching,” she said. “Looking for survivors.”

“And?”

“None so far,” she said. Again, that note of awe. “How did you channel so much power? You took out the entire army in a single swipe.”

“I don't know,” Tenn said. Like so many things happening in his life right now, he didn't have a clue. He wondered if it was better off that way.

She didn't say anything, just settled back on her blanket and looked into the field beyond the trees.

“He will be back soon,” she said. “When he is, we will leave. But I'm afraid…” She sighed. “We're going to have to leave her body here. We have no way of carrying her.”

Again, the thought of driving crossed his mind, but there was no way, not in all this snow. They could melt it, sure, but even though he'd just alerted everything in a hundred miles of their location, he didn't want to use any more magic. Not if it meant drawing more eyes to the clan.

“I can't just leave her out like this,” Tenn said. “Especially if I didn't get them all.”

“That is why we brought her here,” Dreya said. “We hoped that you could bury her.”

Of course. They needed Earth.

He nodded, but he didn't answer. It wasn't a job anyone looked forward to doing. Especially since Earth let you feel everything.

Devon appeared a while later, as promised. There was a bag slung over his back Tenn had never seen before. Tenn didn't have to ask. Although the Howls didn't need food, their human slave-drivers did. The spoils of war were small, but they were spoils nonetheless.

They gathered their things and moved Tori to the center of the glade. Tenn's body hurt like hell and his blood burned with acid, but Dreya had given him a little magic and food to ease the pain. It helped. A bit.

The three of them stood over the wrapped body for a while. None of them spoke, at least not at first. The twins both had their heads bowed. Tenn didn't know if they were praying or just being respectful. He closed his eyes and tried to pray for the girl he didn't know. But as much as he hated himself for it, he couldn't help but find himself praying for Jarrett and the funeral his love would never receive.

He had wondered if there would be a cue, some perfect moment to pull the girl down into the earth. He figured the twins would say something, something from the Witches' funerary rites. They didn't. Instead, after a few moments of silence, they began to sing.

The song was just a melody, but it was deep and sorrowful and sent chills down his spine. The quiet woods seemed to go even more silent, as if every particle of creation had paused to listen in. And that, he knew, was the cue he was waiting for. He opened to Earth and reached deep.

The ground in front of them rumbled. Like quicksand, the snow and dirt became fluid. The body—no,
Tori—
sank into the soil. Tenn could feel her tiny, birdlike body drawn down into the depths of the earth from which she'd come. He wanted it to be beautiful, that final embrace. He wanted to block out the sensation of her bones snapping under the weight of stone, the fluid that spilled from her flesh. But he couldn't. Magic was a curse. Magic would always be a curse.

Finally, when she was at least six feet under, he cut himself from the power and the awareness of her twisted body. He opened his eyes. The twins finished their song. They gave him a solemn look before bowing before the freshly turned dirt and walking off. Tenn hesitated, then did the same.

“I'm sorry,” he whispered into the snow.

He wasn't certain who he was apologizing to.

They gathered their things and began the long, slow walk back to the clan in silence. Tenn couldn't wash the feeling from his bones, the uncleanliness of the magic he had done. At least, sometime during the night, one of the twins had pulled the blood from his clothes. Not that it made him feel any cleaner.

It was midday when they stopped for lunch. And it was midday when they realized something was wrong.

Devon stiffened, his chunk of bread forgotten.

“What is it?” Dreya asked.

He didn't respond at first. But then Devon's lips parted, and he whispered one, weighted word.

“Impossible.”

“What?” Tenn asked. His heart began to race, and he opened to Earth, scanning the countryside for anything moving, any sign of Howls or Inquisitors or worse. He felt nothing.

“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
.