Runebinder (The Runebinder Chronicles #1)(73)

He wouldn’t lose someone else because he was too slow, because he had hesitated. He wouldn’t let someone die because he hadn’t been there to help. Not again.

He couldn’t get Jarrett’s face out of his head.

He ran full speed, Earth fueling his muscles and numbing him to the wind and the snow that beat down in chunks of ice. A few hundred yards. A hundred. Fifty away, and he felt her stagger. She fell into the snow, shivering. He felt her heart skip.

He reached her seconds later, dropped to his knees in the snow and tried not to panic. Now that he was near, he could sense all the things he’d been too distanced to notice before. Like the way blood smeared over every inch of her flesh. Or the thousand cuts slashed across her bare skin. Not one inch of her was clothed, and not one inch was spared from the slices that slowly bled her dry.

When he placed a hand on her shoulder, she flinched away and screamed.

“Shh, shh,” he whispered. “It’s okay. I’m here to help.”

But the girl was lost to him. Her screams split the air, and with every inch she tried to put between them, another ounce of blood was lost. If he didn’t act fast, she’d bleed out before he even had a chance to start healing. If she didn’t die of hypothermia first.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He reached out and grabbed her arm, clamped it tight as a vise. Then he began pouring Earth into her body.

She screamed again at the pain he knew the process was inflicting. Her heart hammered fast. Stuttered. She fell silent.

He knew the cuts that crossed her skin. He’d seen them before. They weren’t the casual, careless marks of a kraven or even a necromancer. They were made by a bloodling, one who knew how to prolong the pain and the bleeding, how to make the most from their victim. He’d felt himself make those same marks when consumed by Dmitri’s past.

Devon and Dreya knelt by his side. Dreya put a hand on his shoulder. Cool light filtered down around them, but he didn’t check to see which of them was using magic.

“Tenn, you must stop,” she said. “The power you’re using will give us away.”

“Either help me or shut up,” he snapped. He wouldn’t lose her. Not like he lost his parents. And Katherine. And Jarrett. And countless others.

He poured his focus into the girl. The process was painstakingly slow, even though he worked as fast as he could. A small voice inside of him screamed that it wasn’t fast enough—he could only heal one cut at a time. He didn’t listen. He forced Water into her veins and Earth into her bones, tried to replenish the blood that was quickly seeping into the snow, staining it crimson.

There was only the slightest hesitation from Dreya.

“What can we do?” she asked.

“Heat,” he replied. He could barely hear them through his concentration. “She’ll freeze to death otherwise.”

Devon knelt by the girl’s side and placed his hands on the concrete. Fire opened in his chest, and the snow around them melted in moments. A small cocoon of warmth enveloped them and sweat burst across Tenn’s skin.

“Tenn,” Dreya whispered suddenly. Her grip on Tenn’s shoulder tightened.

“What?” he asked.

“They’re coming,” was all she said.

Tenn glanced up, spared a half second to focus on something other than the girl quickly dying at his feet. The Howls within the town emerged like a swarm of vermin. In spite of the warmth Devon enveloped them in, the air grew colder, a chill that seeped and burned into his very bones. He didn’t need to see them to know what was causing the sudden cold. Succubi. The town was harboring succubi.

“Fight them off,” he said, then refocused on Tori. In that momentary distraction, she had slipped away even further. Her pulse was weak, so weak.

“But the sept—” Dreya began.

“I don’t care about the fucking sept!” he yelled. He glared up at her. “I won’t let her die.”

Her jaw clenched, but she nodded and looked out to the city. Using all this magic would call the full wrath of the Church down upon them, that was for certain. He could only hope that if the Inquisitors appeared, they’d fight off the necromancers and Howls first.

Dreya opened to Air and opened her lips, a single, clear note ringing out into the wild night. The wind became a gale. But the necromancers were ready. Fire billowed up around Tenn and the others. Devon cursed and threw out a shield, the air around them whirling with flame and magic. The heat was suffocating. But it didn’t block out the darker powers at work: Tenn’s hands shook from the succubi’s life-stealing cold.

“I said fight them off!” he yelled. Rage filled him. But it wasn’t just anger, it was desperation. Tori’s skin glistened red and bloody in the firelight, and now, when he looked at her, he couldn’t help but imagine Jarrett lying there, slowly bleeding out. Every blink, and he saw Jarrett’s face. Pleading. Waiting. Dying.

Dreya didn’t answer in words. Instead, her song rose in volume as a blast of wind shot across the countryside, wailing like hungry wolves. Funnels broke down from the sky, but that didn’t stop the oncoming Howls. He could hear their screams, could feel the necromancers’ magic as they worked against him. But that knowledge was small and distant. Every ounce of attention he had he gave to the girl.

“Tenn,” Dreya said, her song cut short. Her voice was strained, her breathing ragged; the twins were already holding each other for support. “I cannot hold them off. There are too many necromancers. And I think... I think they have a Breathless One. Some Howls are resisting my magic.”