Runebinder (The Runebinder Chronicles #1)(61)

Tenn didn’t answer. He just dug his head back into his palms and tried to force out the memories. Control it. Right. The Sphere was controlling him. He just hoped he could turn the tables before it killed him.

*

The twins helped him limp through the halls and up the steps. His stomach burned with hunger, and every muscle in his body felt like it had been pressed through a meat grinder. He wanted to lie down and sleep for eternity, but he knew that wasn’t going to be a possibility. They weren’t safe here. Once he told them about the message on the desk, it hadn’t taken long for them to decide that, even if it risked everything, they would find the Witches tonight.

Dreya didn’t leave his side while Devon retrieved their things. Without speaking, she magically drew the blood from his clothes. He watched impassively as the gore trickled down his jeans and across the floor before evaporating into nothing. There was a look in her eyes that told him she was keeping silent for a purpose. She was calculating. It wasn’t until Devon returned to the lobby that he realized what she was trying to figure out.

“How did we not feel that bloodling?” she asked.

“It was dead,” Tenn said. He nearly lost his appetite just thinking about it. “At least, until...” Until I fed it my own blood.

“But how?” she asked. She glanced at him, but her gaze wasn’t accusatory. She was curious. “Bloodlings aren’t able to compel their victims. They can’t hide from magic. I searched every inch of this place. We should have felt it, just as we should have felt it drawing you in.”

He didn’t want to remember, but it was too easy to sift back through those moments. Dmitri’s life and death were as firm in his mind as his own history. Maybe even stronger.

“He wasn’t like other bloodlings,” Tenn said.

Dreya raised an eyebrow.

“Runes,” Tenn continued. “The necromancer who turned him...she covered him in runes before actually draining his Sphere. She said they would make him stronger. That they would let him keep his mind and his magic. She wanted to make him like the Kin.” Even just saying the words sent memories coursing through his mind. He tried to squash them down and keep talking. “I don’t think it worked, though. The runes turned him into something different. Gave him power. But not like the Kin.”

“That is the key,” Dreya whispered. She shared a glance with her brother. “I saw the marks on the bloodling’s neck, but there was too much blood.” She pushed herself to standing. “I must go investigate.” Another glance to Devon, who nodded solemnly in return. Then she left.

“What do you think it means?” Tenn asked. He didn’t think Devon would respond. The guy just stared past him, eyes fixed on something out of sight. When he finally spoke, his words made Tenn jump.

“There is more to this than anyone will say,” Devon said. “The language of the runes should have been lost when the Dark Lady died. If her words are being spoken once more...” He focused on Tenn. “We’re as good as dead.”

*

They left soon after Dreya returned from her study of Dmitri. Her expression was stormy as they trudged down the path that led away from Silveron.

“What did you find?” Tenn asked.

“Nothing good,” she replied. Her words were clipped—he knew she wanted to keep it at that. But after what he’d experienced, he couldn’t let it lie.

“How did he come back to life?” he asked. “Was it the runes? I’ve never seen a Howl covered in marks like that.”

With kravens it was impossible to tell, what with their twisted bodies and warped skin—Earth wasn’t kind to its hosts when inverted. But he’d killed his fair share of bloodlings. None of them had those marks.

Dreya shook her head. “I have never seen runes like that before. I can only guess...”

“Then guess,” Tenn said. He didn’t mean to sound so angry, but he had almost been killed by a creature that should have been nothing more than a corpse.

“The runes were clearly meant to give the creature power,” Dreya said. “And it worked. Howls die out if they cannot feed, albeit slowly. Perhaps the necromancer wanted to make him like the Kin, but she failed. She made him into something else. Something almost immortal.”

“Until we killed it.”

“But perhaps, if you had never appeared, it never would have truly died. It was kept alive by magic alone. Perhaps that magic is what kept him hidden from us. And what drew you to him. Water pulled.”

He shuddered. Water had definitely gotten him into this mess. But that didn’t answer the question of what had gone wrong in Dmitri’s conversion or what the runes actually did. He’d seen so much of Tomás’s skin, and there hadn’t been a single rune or tattoo. So how had the Kin been created? If Dmitri was a failure, but still close to immortal, what did that mean about the Kin themselves?

The silence stretched between them the full length of the night. The fields and forests they trekked through were empty, and the only light came from a few dim flares that hovered around them like fireflies. Every second he expected to see a fire on the horizon, for Matthias to appear in a blaze of flame and turn his friends to ash.

Which was why, when he saw the dim light in the distance, his throat constricted with dread.

But the light didn’t flicker like fire. Wasn’t warm. It glowed white and steady like a city. But there were no cities out here. Nor any farms. This part of America had been abandoned because of winters too cold and summers too harsh, the weather itself sharpened by the claws of the Resurrection.