Runebinder (The Runebinder Chronicles #1)(9)

“What?”

“You saved my life. You avenged Michael’s death. So...thank you.” She brushed a strand of hair from her face and looked toward the darkness. “Don’t make me say it again.”

“I...”

But there wasn’t anything else for him to say. He hadn’t tried to save them. He hadn’t wanted to save them. Something else had taken control.

She sighed and walked over to the edge of the roof.

“Derrick is an asshole,” she said. She glanced at Tenn. “And I think he’s scared of you.”

He frowned. “What?”

She didn’t look at him, just kept staring out at the shifting rain and shadows.

“Everyone felt it. That much power... Hell, I was there, and even I don’t believe it.” She paused, took a breath. “It should have killed you.”

“I know.”

“What did it feel like?”

It wasn’t the question he expected.

“Honestly...it was terrible. I’ve never felt so much pain.”

She nodded to herself.

“Fire can be like that, sometimes. It burns through you. But it feels good, in a way. All that pain makes you feel alive. Even if it does nearly kill you.”

“Yeah.”

Except it wasn’t like that. Not really. Fire was about rage. Water just felt like drowning in misery. And delighting in it.

“Are you hungry?” she asked. Again, not the question he expected.

“Yeah.” His stomach rumbled with the thought. Derrick had sent him up here immediately after their meeting, and Earth was still ravenous. “Starving.”

“I’ll grab you something from the storeroom. I think they have Twinkies down there.”

She walked over and patted him on the shoulder.

He wanted to ask her something, anything. He wanted to talk, to have someone help him understand how the impossible had happened. Instead, he stayed silent. He knew she wouldn’t have any answers, and he didn’t want her thinking he was crazy as well as dangerous.

She left, the roof door slamming loudly behind her, and he went back to his watch.

It was nearly impossible to see anything in the darkness, but he was out here to sense more than see. Necromancers would use magic to lead the Howls in their army. Most turned to the Goddess of Death for power or immortality, to be on the winning side of this constant battle. There really wasn’t a middle ground—either you used magic to fight the Howls, or you used magic to create them.

Tenn figured they were all insane. The Dark Lady was just a myth. The trouble was that the necromancers took the idea of her seriously. Their cult was what had caused the Resurrection—the day the first Howl was created. Tenn never quite understood the event’s name—Resurrection—since Howls could only be created from the living.

Really, it didn’t matter if She was real or not. Her followers were dangerous either way.

Footsteps sloshed through the puddles behind him. He didn’t turn around, assuming Katherine had taken the stairs at a run.

“Beautiful night, isn’t it, Tenn?”

It wasn’t Katherine. It wasn’t any voice he knew.

He spun around, staff raised and ready.

The man in front of him was a stranger. Despite the freezing rain, he wore dark jeans and a thin white shirt unbuttoned to his waist. The fabric clung to his body like some romance-cover model, accentuating his perfectly chiseled chest and stomach, his smooth olive skin. Chin-length black hair hung in loose waves and twined over his ears. Everything about the man screamed sex and desire and danger, from his broad shoulders to his low-slung jeans. Even his copper eyes glinted seduction. Tenn’s heart raced, but whether from fear or something else, he couldn’t be sure.

“Who are you?” Tenn asked. He took a half step back, then realized he was already too close to the edge. Thunder rolled overhead; he could barely hear it over the thunder in his own blood. “How did you get up here?”

The stranger cocked his head to the side, the smile never slipping, as though he were examining a plaything. Or a tasty appetizer.

“How civil.” He ran a hand through his hair, and even that movement seemed perfectly executed. His voice was low and husky, a bedroom murmur. “He asks not what, but who.”

In the blink of an eye, he stood an inch before Tenn, his face so close their lips nearly touched. Copper irises filled Tenn’s vision. The guy’s heat sent sweat dripping down his skin.

“My name, young Tenn, is Tomás.” His voice made Tenn’s heart beat with lust.

The name rang a bell Tenn didn’t want to recognize, a tone tolling destruction. He knew he should push the stranger away, should use the staff lodged between them to force a retreat, but he couldn’t budge. Tomás was still as stone and just as immovable. He burned like a radiator; rain hissed and steamed, and Tenn’s skin seared with the nearness. The heat. He should push him away. But the heat...the heat...it made him want to draw Tomás closer.

Something clicked in the far corners of his mind, and Tenn knew precisely what he was facing and just how screwed he was.

“Incubus,” Tenn hissed through clenched teeth.

Tomás’s eyes narrowed. “What did you call me?” The words dripped venom.

The copper eyes. The heat. The perfect seduction. Tomás was a Howl birthed from the Sphere of Fire, a demon craving human warmth. And like all incubi and succubi—their female counterparts—they preferred feeding through more lascivious acts.