Runebinder

by Alex R. Kahler

As his breathing slowed and his thoughts became his again, he did none of those things.

  Not because he was scared of Tomás’s wrath, but because, around Tomás, he felt alive in ways he never had before.

  He didn’t want to push that away. Not just yet.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TENN SAT IN the branches of a willow tree; its long limbs dipped into the lake stretched out below. Across the water, glinting like stars scattered across the sky, warm windows shone with the promise of home. He brought his knees closer to his chest and stared out. He’d come here, to the Academy, to learn about magic. He hadn’t known at the time that the biggest lesson he’d learn was loss and the heavy absence of home.

  The lake was where he’d spent most days over the last month or so training. Ever since he’d been attuned to Water, he’d come out here with a small handful of other classmates to practice connecting to the waves, all from the warmth of their small lakeside pagoda. The hours were long and boring—staring at the water, trying to feel it in his veins, trying to stretch and manipulate it like a limb. But it wasn’t the practice that was getting to him—it was the Sphere itself. Water seemed to have a life of its own. He’d been to the guidance counselor weekly since the attuning, thinking he’d developed schizophrenia or depression or bipolar disorder. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop falling prey to visions of his early childhood: all the family fights he hadn’t consciously remembered, all the time sitting alone in his room and wishing elementary school would grant him at least one friend. All the tears he’d shed or hidden. The counselor assured him it was normal. That was just what Water brought up for people.

  That might have been nice to know beforehand, he’d thought at the time, but he knew it wouldn’t have changed anything. They didn’t have a choice in which Sphere they were attuned to. After the testing period, they were all paired up to their optimal match and given the tattoo that connected them to the magic. Your magical mark, his professor had said.

  The Mark of the Beast, the protest signs along the road warned.

  Tenn pushed those images away. The protesters scared him more than the power, even if Water did seem to set everything on edge. But the fact that the overly emotional Sphere had been considered his best fit made him question his own stability...and that wasn’t something he wanted to be worrying about.

  At least it might have explained all the emotions that had bubbled up around that boy in his history class. Kevin. It wasn’t the first guy he’d crushed on, but it was the first time he’d let himself realize it. The first time he let himself imagine it going somewhere. Kevin just had this presence, this calmness, to him. And when he smiled...ugh. Tenn hated just how much he loved it when Kevin smiled.

  It didn’t help that the guy was crazy smart and cute, in all the ways Tenn felt he was not.

  “So this is what you dream, Tenn?”

  Tenn jerked around, nearly falling out of the tree.

  A man stood on the shore a few yards away. He was unfamiliar—pin-striped black suit, slicked gray hair. The man didn’t belong here. But then again, neither did he. He glanced down at his hands. They were worn—calloused and scarred, hands used to battle and bloodshed. And he wasn’t in school uniform; he wore the ragged blacks of a Hunter.

  “What are you doing here?” Tenn asked.

  He half expected the dream to fade, now that he was aware he was, in fact, dreaming, but it didn’t. Somehow, that was worse.

  He tried opening to the Spheres, and nothing happened. It was as if he’d never been attuned. He couldn’t even feel them.

  He was facing the man who’d killed his comrades, and he could do nothing about it.

  “I’m just observing,” Matthias answered. He took a step closer. His feet didn’t leave an impression in the sand. “After all, someone whom Leanna so actively seeks must surely be an interesting specimen.” He chuckled to himself. “I must say, I am so far unimpressed. All you seem to be good at is running away and letting others die in your place.”

  It was a blow to Tenn’s gut. The tree around him seemed to shudder from the pain, from the sudden wind that howled through the branches, screaming like Tenn’s fallen comrades.

  “Get out of my dream.” Tenn stood up on the thick branch. He wanted to fight. He wanted to prove that he didn’t just run. But he had no weapon and no magic—what good was he against the man who had killed Derrick with a snap of his fingers?

  Matthias didn’t answer. Instead, he sauntered closer to the tree.

  “Why do you dream of this night?” he asked. “Why is this so tender in your heart?”

  Tenn said nothing. Matthias glanced out to the horizon. Above them, the stars began winking out with small flares.

  “Ahh,” Matthias said as recognition dawned. “I see.”

  More stars blinked out. Even the lights on the horizon faded as the dream twisted into nightmare, as the wind picked up and the howls became inhuman.

  The sky dripped darkness.

  “This is the night before the Dark Lady began her work.”

  Tenn shivered. The Dark Lady: the woman who had created Leanna and Tomás and the other four Kin, the woman who vanished off the face of the earth once her work was done—some said killed, others said in hiding. She was the woman who had set the world ablaze—follow her, and you would have immortality. Destroy for her, and She would grant a new life.

  The Resurrection occurred when She turned the first human into a Howl. It had been impossible to miss—every television station, every radio channel, every website and social media outlet, all of them had been hijacked. All of them had aired the same footage, at the same time, on repeat. It was the first human turned into a new form. That was the day monsters and twisted magic became mainstream and the necromancers began their attacks.

  The day that Tenn realized his life as he knew it was over.

  Matthias’s next words were low, the mockery gone. He looked at Tenn as though he knew the most intimate details of his soul. Like he’d been following his every step. His every thought.

  “This is the night before the world was damned. The last night you had a home.”

  Tenn said nothing. He didn’t move, just stood among the branches and watched the lights wink out, one by one, as the screams grew louder.

  “She’s not gone, you know,” Matthias said, his calm words piercing the din. “Not really. My goddess, She still lives. And She stirs.”

  The words made Tenn’s limbs go cold. He gripped a branch until he felt blood drip between his fingers.

  “I don’t believe in your goddess,” he whispered.

  “But She believes in you,” Matthias said. “And in the end, that is all that matters.”

  All the lights winked out, save for two red eyes on the horizon. The Dark Lady smiled in the depths of the darkness. She purred.

  Then She swallowed Tenn whole.

  * * *

  Tenn woke screaming. The sheets were tangled at his feet, and the hurricane lamp burned low on the nightstand, casting shadows throughout the room.

  He was alone.

  His heart raced as he looked around the room. He had the worst feeling that he was being watched, but neither Tomás nor Matthias lurked in the corners. Or—he thought, with a certain sense of disappointment—Jarrett. He flopped back on the bed.

  For a long time he just lay there, trying to calm the furious racing of his heart, the staccato of his breath, wondering if someone would come in and ask if he was okay. He could still feel those red eyes on him, and every second that ticked by made him feel more and more alone. With every blink, he expected to see her, the Dark Lady, watching him from the shadows. Matthias’s words echoed in his skull: She believes in you.

  A few years ago he’d barely been a presence in whatever outpost he’d been stationed. Now, every force of the Dark Lady wa
s after him.

  His thoughts drifted. What had Tomás meant about Jarrett? Hell, what had the incubus meant about anything?

  Water surged in his stomach. It didn’t want to be toyed with; it wanted to be in control. Tomás and Jarrett thought they had the power, but Water wanted to prove otherwise. If only he would let go. If only...

  “Damn it.” If he stayed in here, he’d probably flood the whole compound.

  Tenn pushed himself out of bed and followed the copper pipes hanging in the corridor toward the bathroom, watching the walls change from smooth earth to moldy tile. A shower wouldn’t fix everything, but it would definitely help. At least it would get him out of the room and keep his mind off things.

  The showers were clearly part of the original gym, and Tenn highly doubted that they’d have hot water—not many places did anymore—but when he walked over to a stall and slipped out of his ragged clothes, he discovered that they had hot water in excess. He stepped under the spray and felt his muscles unknot and his stress melt away. He sighed and pressed his forehead to the cool tile wall, watching the water drip down his limbs.

  His eyes caught on his Hunter’s mark.

  He’d received it after undergoing all the preliminary tests at Silveron: the written exams, the consultations, even the strange free-association art projects. The series of concentric circles and strange symbols had seemed like a badge of honor at first, some sort of badassery on an otherwise-boring kid like himself. He’d definitely been the youngest from his hometown to get a tattoo, let alone one that connected him to a Sphere of magic. But now, as he stared at the crossing lines, at the circles and symbols he’d researched and realized were variations on Celtic and Norse—and many unknown—runes, the whole thing felt like a curse. It whispered to him, the symbols murmuring of power. Of servitude. He wanted to scratch it off his skin. Wanted to burn the ink from his flesh.

  Not that that would help. He’d seen comrades lose limbs. They could still use magic.

  Once you were attuned, there was no turning back.

  He really wished they would have told him that at the Academy.

  Tenn couldn’t help but wonder about Jarrett, about why he had such a tug on him. Maybe it was just the connection to his past. Jarrett was probably the only living person who knew him from before. Who knew him as Jeremy, and not a name he now bore out of necessity. He wanted so badly to corner Jarrett, to ask him about what he remembered from childhood, from before he became a weapon. He wanted to figure out why he still felt the pull toward him. Why, after three years apart, after barely even knowing the guy at school, there was a part of Tenn that still spiraled toward him. That still wanted to be in his orbit.

  He’d barely thought of Kevin, or Jarrett, or whatever he wanted to call himself, after they’d parted ways. There hadn’t been time. And, honestly, he’d figured Kevin—like the rest of his classmates—had been killed by the Howls.

  Now, he was traveling with a reminder of the future he could never have.

  He’d spent the last few years running away from it. He’d tried so hard to become something else. But here was Jarrett, holding up the mirror and reminding him that he hadn’t run fast enough.

  Tenn closed his eyes, let a finger on his free hand trace the slight raised lines of his mark. Water bubbled at the touch.

  He couldn’t run fast enough. I can’t run fast enough.

  Before he could stop it, Water boiled over.

  “Mom, Dad? Are you home?”

  It’s too much to hope for; he knows it before opening the front door. But he holds on to that flickering light, anyway. It had led him here by bus and on foot, across miles and miles of highway crawling with dead bodies and not-so-dead bodies. The thought of the monsters he’d had to avoid to get there makes his stomach lurch. The thought of what he’d had to do when he couldn’t hide made it worse. The news had said things were bad. He’d had no clue just how bad they were until leaving Silveron.

  Thankfully, Water filled in the blanks when it came to fighting. He may have wanted to run; the Sphere, however, wanted to seek out blood.

  Maybe that wasn’t something to be thankful for. He wasn’t a killer. He wasn’t a killer.

  He only wants to save them.

  Has to save them.

  The house feels empty, and he knows it is in the pit of his gut. Not just empty. His house is hollowed, like someone stepped in and ripped out its heart.

  He steps into the upstairs hall. His heart thuds in his chest and Water churns memories in his gut.

  “No,” he whispers. “No.”

  Blood smears across the walls in long streaks, straight to their bedroom. Straight to the closed door he’d knocked on every Christmas morning. Straight to the clean, bloodless door.

  “No,” he repeats. He wants to run. He wants to turn around and never look back. But Water leads him forward, pulls him by his gut. It can’t be theirs, he thinks. It can’t be.

  He presses his hand to the door.

  It swings in on silent hinges, the only sound his blood in his ears.

  It’s empty.

  “Mom?” he calls quietly. “Dad?”

  Their bed is made, the quilt from his grandma folded neatly at the foot. The windows are closed. Blinds open. It’s sunny. It shouldn’t be sunny. There should be clouds and storms and screaming. But it’s quiet. His whole damn town had been quiet. It was worse than the screams. Far worse.

  He walks over to the nightstand and the photo sitting there, under the lamp.

  He and his dad at Christmas. He’d been four when it was taken. They’re surrounded by crinkly wrapping paper, with a fire roaring in the hearth behind them. He can see his mother’s slippered foot at the bottom of the frame—she was always the one taking the photos. She’d sent him a box of them his second week at Silveron, complete with homemade cookies and confetti.

  He sits down on the bed and picks up the picture, stares at his dad’s smile.

  Then his heavy heart sinks.

  There, in the corner, is a tiny smudge of blood.

  Outside, a gust of wind slams the shed door. He starts. Looks up. Another gust, another slam—

  “Tenn? Are you in there?”

  Tenn opened his eyes, Water sloshing away with the sound of slamming doors. His heart was ice in his chest, though the shower was still scalding.

  “Yeah,” he called. His voice was rough and his lips were salty. How long had he been standing there? How long had he been crying?

  “You have been summoned,” Dreya said.

  He wiped his eyes and peeked around the curtain. Dreya stood in the doorway in a new pair of faded jeans and a fluffy white knit sweater. Where she got fresh, mended clothes in a world of disrepair was beyond him. Maybe she had a stash from her travels. Her hair hung over her shoulders in waves, almost disappearing against the pale shirt. She was doing that hawk-gaze thing, which didn’t make him feel any more comfortable about being naked. It was like she could see through the curtain and into his thoughts.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Cassandra, our commander. She has summoned you.” A hesitation. “All of us. We are having a meeting. The entire guild.”

  “A meeting?” The way she said it made him think the worst.

  “Yes.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “It’s about what happened to us, isn’t it?”

  She nodded.

  “Shit.”

  “I suggest you hurry,” she said. She gestured to a chair, which had a new set of clothes and a towel folded neatly on top. “I altered these for you. I hope they are to your liking.” She shook her head, as though realizing it didn’t really matter. “Cassandra called the meeting ten minutes ago, but we couldn’t find you. You’re already late.”

  With that, she turned and left. Tenn
shut off the water and grabbed the towel. He hadn’t even been here a day before drawing attention to himself. He’d been hoping to have a bit longer before they threw him out.

  CHAPTER NINE

  TENN WISHED HE’D had a moment to relish the fact that he was wearing the first new clothes he’d had since joining the Hunters—up until now, he’d been given hand-me-downs from the dead. New recruits rarely got anything better. His new clothes were black, but the jeans were slim and fit perfectly, and the long-sleeved shirt was snug. It was the coat, however, that made him want to stop and stare at himself—it was perfectly tailored and, like the white ones worn by the twins, covered in belts and buckles. Far above and beyond the guild standards he’d grown used to. Dreya must have been a seamstress or something in a previous life.

  Dreya was waiting for him outside the bathroom, her arms crossed and her eyes closed. Devon was at her side, just as silent as always. She looked Tenn up and down the moment he was out, gave a quick nod and then headed down the hall. Devon followed close behind. Tenn didn’t even have the chance to thank her for the clothes, or ask how she’d known his size.

  He wanted to ask them something, anything, to get them talking about who they were, and where they trained. If they were as powerful as they seemed, they had to know more about magic than him. He’d seen them both use Water, so maybe they knew how to control it. Maybe they knew how to control the visions, the flashes of power. At the very least, he hoped they knew how to keep it from controlling them. But the urgency with which they walked told him that now wasn’t the time.

  It would probably never be the time.

  The meeting took place in an old basketball court. By the time Tenn and the twins got there, it was already well under way. He knew it was all in his head, but he felt like everyone looked at him when he entered the room. Like they could tell he was new.

  Like they could tell he was the cause of all this... Whatever “all this” was.

  The twins edged past the open double doors and stood in the shadow of the bleachers, and Tenn followed close at their sides.