Rune Awakening

by Genevra Black

  She was only about halfway upright when hot jaws closed around her ankle and pulled her to the ground again.

  Somewhere behind her, tires squealed, and she could hear the trundling of a huge vehicle heading her way. Someone laid on the horn, and it was so loud it left ringing in her ears.

  Edie turned onto her belly just in time to see Cal swerve past in a pirated ambulance and ram into the wolves on her tail.

  She could feel the rush of wind as the ambulance sped by, close enough that she could have reached out and touched it. The wolves didn’t even have time to whimper before they were tangled in the tires.

  The ambulance screeched to a halt, tearing up the lawn as it went. Once the vehicle settled, its horn beeped the beginning of the “Rock You Like a Hurricane” chorus: Here-I-Am!

  Edie dug the staff into the ground again and this time, with a little effort, was able to lift herself to her feet. She leaned on it as she limped carefully across the pavement and onto the grass where the ambulance sat, purring. Better not to look and see if the wolves were still alive. They were out of the way for now, and she had to get back to Mercy.

  Cal leaned over in the driver’s seat and opened the passenger door, then helped her up with one arm. “Good to see you in one piece, Ash.”

  She cleared her throat. “You heard that, huh? No Ghost?”

  “Didn’t wanna get her all bloody. She’s already been through enough.” He grinned and revved the engine. Something yelped in pain under the tires, then they started forward with a thud as they rolled over it.

  “Jesus,” Edie said, wincing and slamming the door.

  “We owe them a lot more, I’d say. You ready to kick some ass?” Cal steered with one hand and reloaded his revolver with the other.

  “Can’t walk very good. One of them bit my ankle ... and I need to get back to Mercy.” She eyed the EMT radio mounted beside the dashboard. “We need another ambulance.”

  “No prob.”

  Cal set his gun down on the dashboard and unclipped the radio. On the other end, someone was requesting a status update and becoming increasingly bothered by the lack of response.

  The revenant cleared his throat before speaking into the mic, keeping it close to his mouth.

  “Send ... more ... paramedics,” he rasped, just like Radio Corpse #1 from Return of the Living Dead, then hung up and mounted the handset back on the transmitter. There was a pause. “I’ve always wanted to do that.”

  Sárr bore down on Marius’s shield, teeth bared. The vivid was beginning to tremble under his opponent’s immense strength, and the Wounded could see it.

  “Where is Tyr’s blessed justice now, Vivid?” he taunted again, pushing harder against the flickering light shield. “Now that you see the wolf’s jaws, you aren’t sure you’d like to put your hand in, are you?”

  “You are no Fenrir,” Marius managed, staggering back and letting Sárr’s sword slide from his shield. There was only enough time to hazard a slash with the solar lance before he had to raise his shield to deflect another attack.

  Sparks flew, but they didn’t seem to faze the Wounded. He simply struck the shield again and again, relishing each time he caused Marius to stumble. “You’re only delaying the inevitable. When the time comes, you’ll be sorry you didn’t lie down and die.”

  “So be it.”

  Finally, Marius saw his chance: His opponent moved to raise his heavy weapon again, and the vivid lashed out with the solar lance.

  Sárr’s markings ignited, suddenly ablaze with white light, as the lance cut him deep enough to draw blood. With a yelp, he stepped back, his entire body trembling as though he was having a hard time containing the sudden light.

  It was as good an opening as Marius had had this entire fight. Marius lashed out again, this time leaving a long, molten-orange streak in the Wounded’s breastplate. He lashed out again, then again, each time striking his opponent somewhere new, until his movements were no longer precise but more like a blur, fueled by pure rage.

  He thrust his lance once more, this time aimed at Sárr’s head—and it stopped suddenly, abruptly, almost taking Marius off-balance. The sound of burning, hissing flesh reached his ears.

  The Wounded was gripping the end of the lance, staring at Marius with white-hot hatred. The light inside of his eyes and his markings shone so bright it was hard to look at, and his whole body shook, skin cracked. From every orifice, he gleamed like a star about to go supernova.

  With a strength borne of what must have been horrendous pain, Sárr roared and planted a foot in the center of Marius’s chest, knocking him on his back in the blood-painted grass. He gave another roar and bore down on him, hard. Agony radiated through Marius’s ribs and down his arms, but the pressure just kept increasing without reprieve.

  Tires screeched to his left, a horn started. There was a boom. The air around Marius became uncomfortably hot, but the pressure receded. Above him, Sárr howled in pain.

  “Get up, Marius!” he heard Edie shout.

  His heart sped at the sound of her voice. This was his chance.

  He closed his eyes and searched for the light inside of him, willing it to fill him; he would need it if he was going to stand up and deliver the final blow. A horrible burning sensation filled his chest, and he could feel his broken bones grinding back into place as the light encompassed him.

  With a long, loud shout of pain, the vivid raised himself to his feet and grabbed Sárr’s shoulders hard, pulling him close.

  He looked at the sky and unleashed his aura.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  A blinding golden light burst from where Marius had stood, a white-hot gleaming bubble that expanded and swallowed everything around him. Edie fell to her knees and covered her face, eyes closed tight. Last time she’d been in range of that kind of explosion, she’d gotten a sunburn—and she really didn’t need to add that to her list of injuries at the moment.

  A horrible noise filled the air: the low, throaty moan of some great beast. It was so loud, so all-encompassing, that it shook the earth beneath them. Edie raised her head just in time to watch as Marius’s aura faded. He was on his knees, and Sárr had collapsed next to him, markings fizzled out.

  The bone-chilling howl faded, too, and two bright flashes whizzed past Edie and Cal, one golden and one azure. They raced toward the Wounded before engulfing him in a helix of light.

  And then they—both Sárr and the wolves—were gone.

  Everything was silent. Edie and Cal said nothing to each other as they limped over to where Mercy’s body lay.

  “I can’t feel her pulse anymore,” Satara breathed, moving aside, her own hands shaking.

  Edie collapsed to her knees and gently pulled Mercy closer, minding her legs. The rags she’d been using to staunch the bleeding had been bled through, but Satara had torn them up, fashioning them and a broken axe handle into a makeshift tourniquet.

  “Mercy....” Edie’s fingers ghosted over her friend’s cold, gray face.

  Cal sat on his knees across from her and laid a big hand on Mercy’s chest, still for a moment. “She’s still alive.”

  “Her heart’s barely beating, she’s in shock.... The paramedics will never make it in time.”

  He looked up at Edie, his eyes hard. “You don’t need no paramedics.”

  Looking back down at her poor friend, Edie shook her head. She’d raised Hervey from the dead, sure, but Mercy was still in there somewhere. Forcing life back into a corpse was one thing; pushing back against Death itself was another.

  Tears welled in her eyes, and her voice shook and cracked as she spoke. “Cal, I don’t know how. I don’t know how to do it.” She looked down at her friend, brushed her blood-matted bubblegum hair out of her beautiful face. She couldn’t lose her. She couldn’t lose a best friend, a sister—the only person she’d had. And Mercy still had so much to do. How could the world keep going without her in it?

  Not her. Please, not Mercy.

  “Come here.” Ca
l’s voice was gentle as he took Edie’s hands, laying one on Mercy’s chest and the other on her forehead.

  “But—” Edie sniffled, looking up at him. “But how do you know—”

  He shushed her. “Close your eyes.”

  She did.

  “You remember how you healed me? You had to put the energy in to see the lines, didn’t you?”

  Edie concentrated hard, remembering. When the witchwolf had burnt up Cal’s face, she’d had to feed her own energy into him, almost like she was coaxing the membrane of his aura to open up so she could manipulate what was underneath. “Yeah, but ... that was healing dead flesh. This is—”

  “Just trust me. First, stop the bleeding.”

  Blood magic. If she could draw energy from the blood, she could stop it from escaping Mercy’s veins, too, couldn’t she? With Cal guiding her hands, she tried to envision the blood stopping—envisioned the open veins cauterizing and closing up, the blood coagulating. Her fingers shook, pressure building up in her arms until the force of it was almost painful.

  “Good!” She could hear Cal draw in a shaking breath—or was that her? “Now, tell Death to fuck off.”

  She took a big breath, searching for the power. In her mind’s eye, she reached inside and could see the flow of magic thrumming through Mercy’s body, surging against her skin, looking for a release.

  The darkness reminded Edie of the dark waves on the coast of Maine, or of the unquiet river in her nightmare, and that thought scared her. The waves became more excited as she acknowledged them, pounding against her skin. Vaguely, she was aware of a strange, dim heat under her palm, fading fast. Mercy’s life.

  Edie dove into the dark water, through her chest and out her palms, into Mercy. With a gasp, the floodgates released. She opened her eyes and watched as Mercy’s aura responded to the touch of her magic.

  As if someone had cut the string of a theater backdrop, the world fell away. The faraway drone of Cal’s voice, the girl, and the power were all that were left. Cal was saying something, but Edie couldn’t make it out ... she just looked from him to the body under her hands. The new, dark world seemed to shake around her as she fought against the grip of Death. Or was that her shaking?

  A hazy, almost moldy blue was covering Mercy like an exoskeleton. When Edie got under the skin of it, she found she could push it back. Her magic pounded against it and wore it down, forcing it to ebb. Cold seeped from Mercy into Edie, taking hold of her heart. She sucked the death and fed it into her own body.

  Blackness threatened her vision; her head felt weak. Then she felt Cal’s hand enveloping hers, moving it. She could sense another bright spot of heat, of power. The coppery smell of blood invaded her nose as her hand tangled in something soft and wet, and miraculously, the blackness receded. Blood … the blood all over Mercy’s clothes, the grass—

  “Keep going.”

  Who was that whispering? “Dad?” she croaked.

  “Don’t talk. Take it out of her and into you.”

  There was a cry of anguish and frustration. Was it her? Her throat felt raw, and the sound wouldn’t stop. Death crawled inside of her; her skin was wrong, all wrong on her bones, and her nerve endings cried out for an end to the shuddering pain.

  Under her fingers, the blueness broke apart and rolled off Mercy’s body like smoke.

  Edie’s heart seized up in Death’s grip. Unless she wanted to die here, too, she had to let go; there was nothing more she could do. She could feel that, knew it somehow.

  Screeching. There was screeching on the horizon.

  She raised her eyes and saw that the world was there again, though it swam like an impressionist painting. She tried to blink away the exhaustion, squinting. The sky was lightening.

  Surely, they hadn’t been here all night?

  Edie collapsed on her back, watching through slitted eyes. It wasn’t the dawn breaking.

  As the light came closer, she could discern figures—enormous figures of silver and blue, some mounted on wolves and others on great ravens, their wings outstretched and armor shining.

  Valkyir overtook the sky, riding it in spirals and currents like it was a giant whirlpool.

  It was over. The battle was done, and the choosers of the slain had arrived. Edie’s body, broken and humming with pain, finally surrendered. Darkness swallowed her vision.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  It felt like it was days before sound finally pierced the silent darkness. Something near her breathed softly like a huge beast, and she could hear a soft, soothing beep at intervals. Voices murmured nearby, though she couldn’t make out what they said.

  For a long time, there were only sounds. Even if she could have opened her eyes, she didn’t want to. She just wanted to sleep.

  There was no pain, only a cold feeling in her arms and legs. Edie knew she must be dead. And somehow, that was the biggest relief of all. There was nothing more for her to do. She didn’t have to feel guilty for just lying there.

  Sometimes she lay still, feeling strangely lucid, but the boundless darkness never became boring or scary. Mostly, though, she slept. She dreamed she was walking with her father, having lunch with Mercy, playing guitar in the park, but she forgot the details almost as soon as they happened.

  Then, eventually, the darkness seemed thinner. Sometimes it was still pitch black, but most of the time now, she could feel light on her face, could see it through her eyelids. It didn’t seem like the sun. It was too cold and white. The murmuring that she sometimes heard took shape. She knew those voices from somewhere.

  In the end, it was hunger that woke her. Where she had felt nothing before, there were suddenly acute pangs in her stomach—to say nothing of how dry her throat felt.

  Once the hunger pangs broke through the dark, it was only a few hours before she was aware of the rest of her body—of the papery sheets underneath her, the way her bandages felt as they scraped against the waffle-weave hospital blankets. Every time she moved her arm a certain way, a way that felt mightily superficial, the voices on the outside reacted.

  God, she was tired. She ignored the hunger and went to sleep again.

  But the next time she woke, she opened her eyes.

  The light hurt at first. It was like she had just reached the end of a long, long tunnel, and she squinted against it. When she tried to lift a hand to shield her eyes, her arm wouldn’t move. She gave a whine of annoyance. The darkness had been a lot less annoying, that was for sure.

  Squinting, she looked around. She was in an austere hospital room, with seafoam-and-gray linoleum and matching walls. Teal curtains were drawn to her left and right, and directly ahead of her, on the wall, was a whiteboard with her name on it. She couldn’t make out what was scribbled underneath.

  The huge beast who had slept next to her all that time was still breathing somewhere nearby. Slowly, she turned her head to look at the curtain to her left. The breathing was coming from in there, and with a shudder, she realized what the noise must be: someone else’s life support.

  “Edie?”

  She looked toward the voice. Cal had just entered the room and was eyeing her now. He must have sensed her waking up.

  “Hi,” she tried, but it came out more like a wheeze with her parched throat.

  “One sec.” The revenant came to her side and crouched, taking a bottle of water out from under the rolling table next to her bed. He twisted the cap off and handed it to her.

  Edie’s hands shook, but she held it tightly so she wouldn’t spill any.

  Cal pulled up a chair. “Good to see you bright eyed and bushy-tailed, Sleeping Beauty.”

  “I feel like shit.” She rubbed her eyes with the back of one hand as she nursed the bottle of water. She thought it tasted strange, then she realized it was her mouth that tasted strange, not the water.

  “You’ve been out a few days. No coma or anything, just sleeping. They had to feed you through a tube. And apparently”—he rolled his eyes—“hospitals haven’t had a smokin
g floor since the 80s. Phff.”

  Edie groaned. But her self-pity was short lived as the memories flooded back, and her heart sped. “Is Mercy okay?”

  Cal nodded and stood from his chair, pulling back the curtain to her right. Mercy lay there, looking like death but definitely breathing. Her face and arms were cut up badly. Her bottom half was elevated with pillows, and she sported a pretty gnarly-looking cast that covered both legs and her waist. Her arm was in a cast, too, strapped to her chest.

  Edie felt tears threatening her eyes again, and she looked at Cal. “The magic worked.”

  The revenant smiled a little, his eyes surprisingly soft. “Yeah, kid. Good job.”

  “What— what did I do?” She barely remembered how it had all happened. She’d practically been delirious, almost half-dead herself.

  He sighed. “It was death magic. Once she was toeing that threshold, you had a lead; you sacrificed some of your own life-force to suck the death out and replace it with … not-death. It’s not exactly healing, but hey, it worked.” But she noticed, after a moment, his eyes flickering to her wrist.

  She followed his gaze, and her heart skipped a beat at what she saw. Sitting just below her IV was what looked like a tattoo. It was solid black, stark against her sickly white skin: an angular, unmistakable shape.

  “I told you they would show up the more you used the magic,” Cal mumbled. “The runes.”

  She could feel shards of fear pierce her body, but she was so tired they were easy to suppress. She relaxed into the pillow behind her, looking up at the ceiling, wanting to just fall right back asleep. But there were other questions she had to ask. “Is Satara okay? And Marius?”

  “I dunno about Sunshine, but Satara’s fine. Only had to have stitches.”

  She let out a breath. “What about Fisk?”

  “Back at your apartment. He begs every day to come see you and Mercy, but like that’s gonna happen.” Cal rolled his milky eyes. “These pricks get pissed off enough with regular visitors, never mind seven-foot fucking fish men.”