Runebinder (The Runebinder Chronicles #1)(74)

In spite of his focus, this made him halt. The Breathless Ones were hard to create and harder to kill and were thankfully rare—but just as Fire magic didn’t harm a succubus, Air didn’t harm the Breathless Ones. If anything, it gave them strength by feeding their hungering Sphere. Bloodlings, succubi, Breathless Ones... What other nightmares had been lying in wait for them?

“Devon,” he said. “Help her.”

Devon nodded. Power flashed through him as Fire billowed in his chest. The town erupted into flame.

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 before. Her body shook as wound after wound sealed itself. The ground rumbled with latent magic.

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

But it had been long enough.

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, and 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 and sent the ground squirming. The twins screamed with power. With fear. It was too much. Too much.

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

Red filled his vision.

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

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 with his heart. Everything slowed. Everything stopped.

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 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, every vein, a glowing, terrible lacework of fragile life.

And then he stopped their hearts.

The blowback was immediate and immense. His own heart screamed out as the hundred lives at the ends of his fingertips squirmed for life. He held on. His heart ached. Tears streamed down his face and he heard them screaming. Screaming, just as his parents had screamed, as his friends had screamed, as Jarrett had screamed. Water filled him, amplified the pain, the agony, the pure ecstasy of it all. His head whipped back and his arms stretched out from his sides as the power flooded through him, lifting him off the ground in a halo of blue. The enemy screamed. He screamed louder. Their pulses throbbed. Burned.

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, along with his enemy. When darkness overtook him, he heard nothing but silence.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

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 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. His naked body was 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. His throat was dry. So dry. He needed to drink.

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. The world swayed. “Where is she?”