Runebinder. Alex R. Kahler
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.
“You’re...an incubus.” Even before the words left his lips, he knew it was the wrong thing to say. Tomás’s eyes sparked red.
“Incubus?” His composure cracked. Model became monster, and Tenn’s desire turned to fear. “You dare call me incubus? Monster? Demon?” Tomás grabbed a fistful of Tenn’s hair and yanked his head back. Where Tomás’s flesh touched his, Tenn’s skin turned to ice.
“I am more than any incubus, little mouse,” Tomás whispered. His lips just brushed the nape of Tenn’s neck, sending ice and flame across his skin. “And you would do well to remember this.”
He let go, and Tenn stumbled, nearly careening off the roof’s edge. When he steadied himself, Tomás was a step back, hands clasped behind him and an insidious smile slashed across his perfect face.
“The army is coming,” he said. His words were calm, and a frightening juxtaposition to the rage that seemed to lurk within. “They will be here before dawn. You cannot stop them. If I were you—and I’m most assuredly grateful I am not—I would be gone before they arrive.”
Tenn tried to catch his breath. He hadn’t realized just how fast his heart was pounding, just how much he wanted to run. But whether he wanted to run away from or toward Tomás, he couldn’t tell. Fucking incubus. They were renowned for their ability to draw desire from their victims. He couldn’t believe he was falling for it.
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
Howls didn’t reason. They didn’t talk or tell you their names. Howls killed. The fact that Tomás didn’t follow any of these rules scared the shit out of Tenn.
Again, Tomás’s head cocked to the side. The grin didn’t slip and, for a moment, he just stood there, considering, as rain dripped down his delectably disheveled hair. Tenn kept his focus on the man’s eyes; he couldn’t be trusted to let them wander anywhere else. It already took all of his concentration to keep his thoughts focused, to not imagine what the man would look like naked, or how they would feel pressed against each other.
His pulse doubled every time he considered it.
“Because,” Tomás finally said, “my sister, Leanna, has an interest in you. And what she desires, I, too, covet.”
That name rang a bell, this one louder than the first. Leanna was the Kin who controlled America. The one who ran the Farms and dictated where the necromancers attacked. For many, she was an embodiment of the Dark Lady herself.
Tomás’s name clicked into place.
Tomás was also one of the Kin, one of the six most powerful Howls in the world—the direct descendants or creations of the Dark Lady. They were the ones who ran the world now; the monsters who had humanity under their thumbs. Tenn’s eyes widened.
“Bingo,” Tomás said. “Tell the boy what he’s won.”
“What the hell?” Katherine yelled. The roof door slammed shut.
Tenn looked past Tomás at Katherine, who was holding a covered plate. The next moment, Tomás was beside her, a single hand around her neck.
The plate fell to the ground and shattered.
“You will be inspired, I think, to tell others you have seen me.” Tomás didn’t raise his voice, but it still cut through the rain, as if aimed for Tenn’s ears alone. “Perhaps to warn them of my presence. Perhaps to try and save yourself. That would be a very bad decision.”
Tomás barely moved, but the crack that resonated said enough.
He let go, and Katherine crumpled to the roof, her neck crushed.
Tomás stepped forward, not even looking at Katherine. Tenn wanted to throw up. Bile twisted in his stomach, but with Tomás’s every step toward him, the sensation faded, replaced by a growing desire to pull the man closer, to tear the world down and bathe in blood and flame. Tenn forced down the imagery. Or tried to.
“I have marked you, Tenn. I will follow you everywhere you go. And if you so much as speak my name aloud—” he was now so close that Tenn’s skin burned