“I hear it hurts,” Dreya said, the song cutting off, her words slicing through the maelstrom like a knife. “I hear that the hunger is unbearable. That this is why you kill the very people you once loved, because it hurts too much to do otherwise. Consider this your final blessing, then. No. More. Hunger.”
She flung her hands forward, sending a blinding torrent of magic and wind at Justin’s locked frame.
Justin gasped. His hands shot to his throat.
And in that instant, with a roar of magic that sent shivers through Tenn’s very bones, Justin’s Sphere...healed.
There was no other word for it. One moment, the Sphere was a vacuum in Justin’s throat. The next, it was whole: shining, flickering, exuding. Dreya let go of her power. If Tenn hadn’t been watching her, he would have missed the way she slouched and steadied herself on the stair banister. She quickly righted herself, her chest heaving with exertion and her eyes wild.
“You healed him,” Tenn whispered.
He looked to Justin, who was just as shell-shocked as Tenn felt. The man had been cured of the incurable.
Dreya didn’t give him time to question. She grabbed him by the sleeve and began pulling him up the stairs, her breath loud and ragged even against the roar of leaking water.
“Wait!” Justin called out.
Tenn looked back. He was still stuck in the concrete, water quickly rising past his knees. The basement was small. How long would it take to fill? Water sent a chill through him. What would it feel like to drown?
“Don’t leave me like this!”
Dreya paused, perhaps from the panic in his voice, perhaps because she couldn’t move any farther. Her eyes were pale, and her chest fluttered as fast as a rabbit’s. She leaned against the wall and looked back to the Howl. She didn’t speak. For a moment, Tenn wondered if she even could.
“You saved me,” Justin said. He was frantic, struggling against the concrete that was lodged around his legs. “You can’t just leave me like this. I’ll die.”
“I did not save you,” Dreya said. Her voice was flat, emotionless, but it also had a breathlessness that made Tenn fear the worst. She’d drawn way too much, and they still had to find a way out of here. “You are still a monster,” she continued. “But you will die a human.”
She turned and walked up the stairs. Justin screamed.
Tenn didn’t move. There were tears in his eyes. Justin screamed at him, begged to be released. They couldn’t let him die—not when he was no longer a Howl. Not when he was human, and scared.
Dreya grabbed Tenn by the collar, pulled his face close to hers.
“Move,” she grated. “Before the Kin return.”
“But you saved him! You made him human again.”
Sure, Tenn had brought Jarrett back from the brink of becoming a Howl. But that wasn’t reversing the process and that wasn’t his power. That was the runes. Dreya had done the impossible, the task they’d come all this way to achieve.
Dreya squeezed her eyes shut. Her breath was fast, too fast, and when she spoke it was barely a whisper.
“It’s impossible,” she said. Another rumble shook the house, but neither of them flinched.
“But I just saw—”
“You saw nothing,” she said, her eyes opening in a flash of blue. Her voice was tired. “You cannot cure the disease that ails him.”
“But—”
Again, her eyes closed.
“One can only assuage the Sphere’s hunger for a time. When the Sphere is damaged to that degree, it cannot be mended, not by any human hands. Soon, that Howl’s Sphere will eat itself again. And when it does, he will be just as broken as before. He will always be a monster, Tenn. I just wanted him to remember how it felt to be a terrified human.”
Tenn glanced back at the man who, only moments before, had threatened his life. He deserved to die. He deserved to die like this. Right?
What are you becoming?
What have you become?
The question made his heart sink. Dreya pulled him again, and he followed.
“I’m sorry,” Tenn whispered. He doubted Justin heard it over his own, terrified screams.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
THE SKY BURNED RED. Not just the red of fire, but the red of a wound, raw and bleeding. Clouds dripped fire like lava, and the once-picturesque mountain landscape now looked like the fangs of some broken beast. Flames roared on the hillside, weaving trails of smoke up into the air as lightning forked back and forth with strobe-like speed. Everything was heat and fury. Every hair on Tenn’s body stood on end, his Spheres echoing the destruction around him. And yet, in spite of the havoc that wove like madness through the countryside, the town below was strangely untouched. Only a few fires leaped between buildings, snaring the dark shadows that raced through the streets. Tenn knew Devon was trying to avoid the innocent lives that swarmed near the outer wall. Trying, and probably failing. There were just too many to save.
Dreya paused in the doorway and turned to him. Her breath was still erratic, and she looked paler than usual, as though her skin was becoming translucent. She reached out a shaky hand and took Tenn’s arm.
“I must go help my brother,” she said.
“Is Jarrett...?”
“Alive. With Devon. Though we will speak of what happened later. You must finish this.” She took a deep breath. Swayed. “I am no help. I should not have killed the Breathless One like that. Anger overtook...”
Tenn reached out, steadied her.
She shook him off. When she looked at him, her eyes were fierce, even if the rest of her seemed uncertain.
“Leanna cannot make it out alive,” she said. “End this.”
His legs were lead. He’d already run in here alone. But to be left amid the destruction?
“I can’t—”
She shook her head.
“Your pain gives you strength,” she said. Another chill swept through him. Did she know she was repeating Tomás’s words? “And that will help you win this fight. Just don’t let your pain consume you.”
Air flickered in Dreya’s throat. It was faint, barely a trace of its normal strength, but the wind still whipped around her and sent her white coat fluttering. She lifted herself up, hovered a few inches above the ground. “Good luck,” she said. “We will see you on the other side.”
And with that, she shot through the air like an arrow, speeding toward her brother.
It wasn’t until he turned to find the Kin that he realized her parting words were far from comforting.
*
Tomás was near, that much was certain—the incubus’s tracking rune glowed in Tenn’s mind, a red lace against the fibers of the Howl’s heart. Tenn ran around to the back of the house. His body screamed with protest, but he shut it down, deep in the recesses he usually reserved for silencing Water’s screams. Those, he let loose. If ever there was a time to drown in the wrongs he had suffered, in the rage he wanted so badly to unleash on the world, it was now. He had Jarrett back, sure. But he was done with being used. It was time to use his power.