Runebinder (The Runebinder Chronicles #1)(96)

A sick feeling settled itself in Tenn’s gut. He closed his eyes and focused on the runes he had inked into his friends’ wrists. Only Devon was still on the hillside. His heart sunk, though he’d known she would break command like this: Dreya was heading toward them. Barely a hundred yards away.

Tenn knew that Dreya was coming to find him. While Devon was throwing around as much magic as he could to distract the guards and Leanna, she was coming in for the rescue. He glanced up at Justin. Even if Dreya did make it into the house, there was no way she’d make it past him. Not if she was going for the element of surprise. Which left one shaky alternative.

“My friends are going to kill you. Again,” he said. It wasn’t much, but it did get Justin’s attention. The guy looked at him with a bemused expression.

“Oh, really? How, precisely? This place is a bunker guarded by hundreds of necromancers. Even if they do get in, they’ll have to deal with Leanna and me.”

Tenn shrugged, as much as he could under restraint.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “They will. Tell me, what were you? You know, before you became Leanna’s toy.”

Justin laughed, his mouth curving into a smile.

“And why would you want to know?” he asked.

“Because you had a spine once. I can’t imagine what that would have been like.”

In the blink of an eye, Justin was hunched over Tenn, a finger jabbed between his clavicles. Tenn didn’t gasp, even though it felt like Justin was about to collapse his throat.

“I was a fitness instructor in LA before my girlfriend joined the cult of the Dark Lady,” he said. “She turned me. I was her first.”

“So why are you with Leanna?” Tenn managed to ask.

Justin’s eyes narrowed. “My maker was human. Humans. Die.” His finger dug deeper. “So I came to serve Leanna, who is as close to my goddess as we can become.”

“Then tell your Goddess of Death hello for me,” Tenn whispered.

“What?”

The door at the top of the stairs blew open.

The force of the explosion made Tenn’s ears ring, but in that one brief moment of Justin’s distraction he pushed the chair over and opened to Earth. The bonds broke free. Tenn crashed to the side and scrambled away on shaking limbs. Justin didn’t try to stop him. He didn’t curse. He just stared up at the broken door with his arms crossed over his chest, a bored expression plastered on his face.

Dreya floated down the steps, her white coat fluttering in the windstorm. She looked like a goddess, her body laced with an aura of yellow and blue, her Spheres blazing. Tenn ran toward Dreya’s side. Her power roared in his ears.

“Go,” Dreya said. There was a tightness in her eyes as she stared at Justin, a recognition that bordered on madness. It reminded him of when Devon let Fire take control.

“I’m fighting,” Tenn replied.

She said nothing to this.

Justin didn’t attack. He raised an eyebrow instead and looked at them like they were mice toying with a cat. Tenn was still horribly weak, and the very thought of fighting again made him want to sink into the ground and never come up. But Jarrett was alive. He was alive. And that was worth fighting for.

“Who are you?” Justin asked.

“You wouldn’t remember me,” Dreya replied. “But I remember seeing you, running. You escaped me that once. You will not do so again.”

She struck. The air within the basement became a cyclone of dust and rubble. It whipped around Tenn, slashed marks in his skin, but he didn’t flinch and he didn’t close his eyes. He might not have been any use in the fight, but he was going to see this through.

Water sprayed from the wall as the water heater tore away, crashing into storage boxes and scraping along the concrete floor with the wail of banshees. Everything swept up in the maelstrom—pipes burst, foundations cracked. Everything thrashed about but Justin.

He stepped forward, appearing from the screen of flying debris in a halo of stillness, water sloshing around his feet. The Sphere of Air burned in his throat, a bruised blue, a garish yellow, and Tenn realized the awful truth: his inverted Sphere consumed the power Dreya whipped at him.

Justin grinned. “Dumb bitch.”

Tenn had no idea how he could hear the guy over the roar of wind, but his voice carried like they were talking over a dinner table.

“You’re making him stronger!” Tenn yelled, praying that Dreya would hear him. “He’s a Breathless One!”

“He is,” she replied. “And he was there, when our clan died. He was there, stealing their breath. For that, for all of this, he deserves a slow death. I will make him suffer.”

Her face was a grimace, a mask of barely controlled rage. Then she opened her mouth and sang.

The burning light within her flashed bright as a strobe as the power inside the basement amplified. Wind howled. Tenn sank back against the wall behind her, trying to find shelter from the hell Dreya had unleashed. Through the blinding light and whirling debris, he saw Justin take a step forward. He was laughing now, and his twisted Sphere devoured the power. The water heater flew past, and he smashed it with a fist without even looking. His eyes were focused entirely on Dreya.

“I will eat you alive, little bug,” he sneered. “I will drain you till your bones implode. And then I’ll feed you to the kravens.”