Martyr (33 page)

Tenn closed his eyes and imagined that giant block of ice that had spelled the end for every servant of the Dark Lady in the encampment. How many had he killed in those moments? Hundreds? Thousands? He tried to force his mind a different way. How many innocent lives had he
saved?
But it was hard to keep that thought clear with the blood staining his hands. Even the Howls had been human once. And what he'd done to Matthias…that made him more a monster than most.

“You have sacrificed so much to help us,” Rhiannon continued. Her voice was heavy, filled with regrets he couldn't place. “We cannot thank you enough.”

“If it weren't for me,” Tenn said, keeping his eyes closed, “none of this would have happened in the first place. Matthias was after
me
. Not you. If I'd never come here…”

“I will hear no more of it,” Rhiannon said. “We are used to being hunted. If not by the Dark Lady, then by the Inquisitors. That is our life. That is the price of our knowledge.” She paused. “And that is the knowledge that brought you here. Do you truly still wish to hold it?”

Tenn opened his eyes and stared at her. She wasn't kidding. She was honestly asking if he still wanted to know.

He nodded.

“I feared as much,” she said. She looked to the twins. “I am afraid, however, that I cannot give you the answers you seek. Michael was among the first to be fed to our captors.”

Tenn's heart sank.

Of course.

They had come all this way, lost so much, only to have their last chance torn out from under them. He felt the weight of it settle in his stomach.

“He was once our only connection to the gods,” Rhiannon continued, “but apparently that is no longer the case. The spirits are ready to speak to you.”

“I don't understand—” Tenn began, but she waved her hand and cut him off.

“You will,” she said. “For tonight, you are going to meet them.”

35

The
bonfires were ready at dusk.

The entire clan had spent the majority of the day preparing. Wood was gathered; trailers were cleaned. Tenn had even left his bed around midday and helped inscribe new runes on the surrounding trees. After that, he went straight back to bed. Not because he was overly tired—no more so than expected—but because everywhere he turned, someone was there to thank him. He did his best to smile and nod, but he couldn't help but think that none of this would have happened if he hadn't been there in the first place.

By the time nightfall came around, he'd nearly driven himself insane with agitation. All he wanted to do was get back on the road, to head out and find Leanna and save Jarrett. Every blink and he saw his boyfriend bound and gagged, waiting for rescue. Every second grated against his skin.

But he knew, deep down, that leaving for Jarrett right now would be suicide. Sure, he had runes to use for hiding himself, but they wouldn't help him much when pitted against one of the Kin. Not to mention the fact that, if what he remembered from studying Jarrett's maps was true, Leanna's lair was just outside Denver. Even if he left now, it would take him ages to get there, driving or no. Jarrett would be as good as dead by then.

So he waited. And waited. And tried not to go insane while the rest of the clan prepared for his descent.

When Rhiannon walked into the trailer, he nearly sprang to his feet, his heart pounding in his chest. She raised an eyebrow.

“I take it you're ready?” was all she said. He nodded.

“What's going to happen?” he asked, but she shook her head.

“Come,” she said. She took his arm gently and guided him out the door.

The world outside was quiet save for the crackle of fire. Everyone in the clan had assembled around the bonfire, firelight making them all glow orange and red in the coming dusk. Their expressions were solemn. Some held drums and rattles, others had smears of paint across their cheeks. The twins stood to one side, outside the circle as always. They watched him with knowing eyes. When Dreya caught his glance, she gave the slightest inclination of her head. Sweat broke across Tenn's skin, and not from the bonfire's heat. Everyone's eyes were on him. He was tonight's entertainment.

Rhiannon silently led him to a space beside the bonfire, to where a few blankets had been laid out on the ground. Room enough for one. For him.

Rhiannon picked up a bundle of herbs resting beside the blanket. She thrust them into the flames and, once they'd caught, blew out the fire. Heavy smoke wafted from the incense. It smelled of sage and cedar, and with it she began to walk around the fire, leaving Tenn to stand awkwardly on his own.

“We call to the spirits,” she said as she walked, “to the Ancestors and gods. We call to the earth, to the sky, to the flame and the streams. We call to the Mystery that binds us all, hear us!” When she reached Tenn again, she wafted the fragrant smoke over him, from his toes to the top of his head. The scent made his head spin. Inside, he felt the Spheres flicker in response, the smoke pulling some magic out of him he hadn't known he possessed.

“With this smoke I purify you,” she said. “In body, mind, and spirit, you are clean.”

If only it were that easy
.

She drew the smoke about her, smudging herself, and then raised her hands to the heavens.

“On this eve, we call to you and beg for your guidance. Like a fire in the dark, we seek to bring light to this world. Let us be the flame, the star. Let us be the way to wholeness.” She swept her arms down and looked at her clan, then gestured to the blanket on the ground. He just stared at her before realizing she wanted him to lie down. He did so, staring up at her as she continued waving the smoke over his body.

“We bring you the boy,” she said. “We bring you the one you seek. Share with him your secrets. Let him be your vessel.”

She knelt by his side and placed the herbs on a patch of dirt, then whispered in his ear. “Close your eyes, Hunter, and let the drums guide you. Delve deep into the earth, to where the Ancestors sleep. They will guide you from there.”

For the briefest moment, she rested her hand on his temple, the lightest butterfly of a touch. Then she stood.

The drumming began.

It reverberated in his bones, made his whole body vibrate with sound and intensity. It was a pulse, a heartbeat, the very hum of life. He had worried he wouldn't know what to do, that this was all some smokeand-mirrors bullshit, but the moment the drumming started, he felt himself fall. His body became heavy. His Spheres flared into life. And like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, he felt his consciousness sliding into the soil.

Stars streaked across his closed eyes as the imagined tunnel took him deeper, deeper, his mind or spirit or whatever riding the beat of the drums like a horse into the underworld.

The tunnel seemed to stretch on forever, and soon he forgot that he was actually lying on the ground beside a bonfire. It was like a dream, that world, and it slid from his mind as another reality woke him.

After what seemed like both eternity and no time at all, the tunnel opened before him. He stepped out into a cavern that glowed white as snow, light coming from every crystalline surface. Water swirled at his feet, but it wasn't cold or warm or wet. It had a presence, a vibration like static, and it made his whole body hum. He looked around at the vast expanse, at the great stalactites dripping down from a ceiling that glowed the dull grey of a wintry night sky. Something splashed at his feet, a ripple that drew his gaze down to the shimmering waters.

A tiny fish swam against his calves, its scales glinting silver and light. He knelt down. The fish didn't swim away, and it was in that moment that he realized the fish wasn't reflecting light, but creating it. The creature glowed like a platinum star.

He reached into the water. It felt like sifting through smoke. He cupped his hands.

The fish swam between his fingertips. It tingled, sent chimes flurrying across his skin. Its light grew.

Light spiraled through his arms, twisted around his chest. He felt his skin dissolve, his body unraveling into tendrils of radiance as he floated, hovering above the water in a cave that was more than a cave. It was a body, a womb, a heart.

He looked down to the water that shone like a mirror, at the fish that was a constellation of stars. He saw his reflection as fluid as smoke, as luminescent as moonlight. It glimmered like a thousand dancing fireflies.

It changed.

The face that stared back at him was no longer his. The waters now showed a boy, a boy with brown skin and dark hair swept back in soft spikes. His hazel eyes glinted copper, his right eyebrow and lower lip pierced with tiny rings. Those eyes breathed galaxies, a thousand suns whirling like the lights that swam across the water's surface.

Tenn reached out to touch the boy and felt the entire earth hum with need.
Find him, find him
, and for a moment, he forgot who he was, why he'd come there, all of it replaced by the one need to reach out and touch this boy he had never seen. But that movement caused the water to ripple, and the boy's face vanished in the dust of stars.

The lights kept moving, tracing patterns over the water, tracing
a
pattern that burned into his mind. Lights formed a shape, like a broken “T” that whispered of wings and soaring. Over and over the lights moved, the rune glowing so bright it was blinding. It filled him, burst through his senses—the rush of vertigo, the thunder of hoofbeats, the exhilaration of wind in his hair and the horizon opening, opening, expanding and contracting as he sped to meet the rising sun. The sun burned through him, the rune seared to memory.

Light was everything, everything, light and movement and an ecstatic, shimmering truth.

Then he felt the drumbeat change.

He didn't hear it, but he felt it. It tugged at his bones, pulled him up by the scruff of his neck. Like a puppet on a string, he felt the drumbeat drag him away, watched as light faded and the tunnel reappeared, whirling around him in shadows and tremors of sound. All of it vibrating, vibrating, a second heart to echo his own. The tunnel went dark. And like a diver bursting from the tide, Tenn broke back into the world of firelight and madness.

He sucked in a deep mouthful of air, his whole back arched as though possessed. One inhalation, and he fell back to the earth. His body was weak, spent, like it had been inhabited by something else, something that had used him up and left him lying in the dirt beside the fire. But he felt good. Ecstatic. The power was faint, but the light of the cave still hummed in his veins.

The drumming shook and fell apart, cascaded into a cavalcade of beats that faded to the hiss of rattles. Then silence. The crackle of fire.

Rhiannon was at his side, one hand on his shoulder, the other holding a rattle of bone and rawhide. Her eyes were shadowed, expectant. He could only lie there, staring up at a sky that was uncannily clear, the stars above mirroring the cosmos in his mind.

“Welcome home,” Rhiannon said. Then she stood.

Tenn couldn't pay attention to the words she spoke next, only caught snippets of “thanks” and “gratitude.” He spun with ecstasy, weighted to the world that slipped and swum beneath him. Holding on to the memory of the vision was harder than holding fast to a dream. Like the fish, it slipped between his fingertips, shining and beckoning and impossible to grasp.

The twins came over and sat by his side, and it was only then—after tilting his head—that he realized the clan had departed. Rhiannon sat beside them.

“What did you see?” she asked.

He closed his eyes, tried to stir up the memory. There was the rune, glowing in his mind, and something else, something important. It tried to surface, but Jarrett's face filled his vision, and whatever else the journey had shown him was lost at sea.

“A rune,” he whispered. The glowing symbol burned behind his eyes, superimposed over Jarrett's brow like a shining tattoo. He knew the rune would help him find Jarrett. He didn't know
how
he knew, but there was no mistaking the certainty. “For travel.”

He opened his eyes and looked up into the faces of his companions.

“It needs Earth and Air to work, but it will take us…” He almost said
to Jarrett
but faltered. “It will take us to Leanna.”

He pushed himself to sitting. The entire vision fell away, leaving only the rune shining in his memory. He couldn't help but feel whatever else he'd been shown was
important
. But not more important than getting Jarrett back.

The twins exchanged a look, then stared at Rhiannon. She sighed, clearly not pleased with his path of vengeance.

“When will you depart?” she asked.

Tenn looked to Dreya and Devon. He wanted to tell them they didn't need to come along, didn't need to keep putting themselves in danger. But there was a look in their eyes, and he knew without doubt that they would follow him to the end.

“Tonight,” he said. “We leave tonight.”

36

They
were ready within the hour. There wasn't much to pack—just extra rations and layers of clothing. Tenn sat by the fire for most of the preparations, staring into the flames and watching the rune flash over and over again in his mind. With every trace, he felt his understanding shift deeper, as though it were slowly sifting away layers of confusion. He knew it would transport them wherever they desired. He knew it needed Earth for grounding, Air for speed. And he knew it was a power the world hadn't seen in hundreds of years. The weight of that knowledge settled on his shoulders with every crackle of the bonfire. Once more, he was entrusted with something he had no right to possess. What made
him
worthy of this knowledge? Why was
he
the one the spirits or gods or whatever were entrusting their secrets?

And, perhaps most importantly,
would it be enough to save Jarrett?