The last thing Aidan wanted was to walk the entire way to London. Thankfully, he didn’t have to.
The Guild had maintained a few small electric SUVs, though they were rarely used—the vehicles could go over a fair bit of terrain, sure, but there was something to be said about riding into battle in a tiny metal box that could, at any time, be collapsed in on itself by a necromancer. That was another problem with vehicles, from planes to tanks to submarines. All it would take is one Earth mage, and you’d be screwed.
This time, though, there was little chance of that. And, with electricity being just a manifestation of Fire energy, Aidan was like a walking battery. He could keep the vehicle going for days.
It still wouldn’t necessarily make the much trip faster—without cleared highways, there would be a lot of off-roading and detours—but it saved them from walking all the way to London. The thought of that made Aidan’s legs ache. One day, he would attune to Air so he could fly. One day.
The vehicle was pretty average—a boxy mini-SUV that was still smaller than a sedan back in America. Dark green. Battered to hell. Missing a headlight. It wasn’t some apocalypse-chic murder machine. No monstrous grill or spikes or flamethrowers because, again, pretty pointless against magic. But it would get them there. Hopefully.
Kianna hopped in the driver’s seat and he called shotgun—a small blessing—and Margaret and Gregory jumped in the back.
Aidan glanced over at Kianna. He kept expecting the bomb to drop. Kept expecting her to make some snide comment about not catching them all on fire. He knew she wouldn’t do that, but he couldn’t convince his murderous Sphere she would stay on his side.
“Barely a week back from battle and we’re sent to the field again. No rest for the wicked, eh?” Gregory asked from the back.
“Shut up, Gregory,” Aidan replied. He closed his eyes. Pressed his forehead to the side window.
This was going to be a long trip.
Hours passed.
The ride down was far from smooth. They navigated around craters blown through concrete and cities melted to glass. Occasionally, Margaret would pull through Earth and smooth out the terrain, but it wasn’t her strongest Sphere, and the acts left her drained and scrambling for the food supplies they’d brought along.
Kianna cycled through the CDs left over in the vehicle. Some electro mixes, some folk, some fluty new age shit he had her turn off after the first thirty seconds...then had her play, a few hours later, because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard music through a stereo and anything was better than nothing.
They’d gone on a few short missions in vehicles, but this felt strange. He stared at the rushing rain, at the shadows of buildings and hills and rolling fields, at the slice of their headlight through the gloom. He wanted to talk to Kianna, but he didn’t know about what. Didn’t know what he could talk about with Margaret and Gregory in the back. Occasionally they’d pull over for snacks or a pee break, but for the most part they drove in silence, him with his forehead pressed against the window and Kianna focusing on the road ahead. No one slept, either. Not with the bone-crunching jolts every few yards, or the quick swerves while Kianna avoided cars or potholes or sheer cliff faces in the middle of the road. Well, he supposed Kianna, at least, was speaking, if the constant stream of cursing counted.
On the plus side, there weren’t any bodies in the road to avoid or crunch over. The Howls weren’t known for leaving anything behind.
Every once in a while, Gregory would speak up from the back, asking a question or making a statement that he probably thought would get the conversation going. Every time, his words were met with silence. Most of the questions had to do with history, or the future. “Remember what it was like when—” “What do you think will happen after—”
This wasn’t the car for hypotheticals or reminiscing. Even Margaret, who probably had more of a heart than he or Kianna did, kept silent.
Eventually, Gregory stopped trying. Thank gods.
About the only things worth staring at on the ride down were the road signs. More numerous the farther on they went. And more ravaged. Adverts for the New Church of Our Salvation.
REPENT OR BURN
THE END IS COME
MAGIC IS THE DEVIL’S WORK
And, his favorite: WE KNOW YOUR SINS
“If that was true,” he said, nodding to the bullet-pocked sign, “I better hope I’m never caught. They’d die of old age before pulling all my sins out.”
Kianna’s knuckles were pale on the steering wheel. She didn’t chuckle. A quick glance in the rearview told him that his joke hadn’t been any better received back there.
It wasn’t a laughing matter, not really. Everyone had heard tales of the Church and the Inquisition, the bloodthirsty arm dedicated to the historical creed from which it stole its name: to seek out and atone the sins of anyone linked to magic.
Which always meant torture.
Sometimes, it meant death. If they were feeling merciful after making you beg and bleed for it.
Another reason Aidan had kicked the Church and all its zealots from Glasgow: they were as dangerous as the necromancers if you were a Hunter. Hell, they were dangerous even if you’d never touched magic in your life. So long as you screamed at the right times, they seemed to think it reached their God all the same.
Let them come, Fire hissed within him, and we will see who burns.
He let the confidence wrap around him. Even the Inquisitors were mortal. Fire had been around from the very beginning and would burn long past the Church’s final sermon.
Though, right now, heat and flame and sparks seemed the furthest things from reality, even as he fed small amounts of magic into the engine.
He stared out at the water streaming down outside, listening to the flutes and some woman singing wordlessly, and for some reason, he thought of Tenn. In that moment, he felt a thread pulled taught between them, heart to heart, and even though he didn’t have any clue what the guy looked like or what Spheres he used or anything, he felt connected. Not in some stupid romantic way. This was cosmic. A shared bench before the table of the gods. Tenn had killed one of the Kin and here Aidan was, paving the way to kill his second. Even though he refused to let Tenn get in the way, he wondered—briefly—whether the boy had ever felt like this.
Did Tenn know Aidan existed? That he had liberated Scotland?
America had put up its walls long before the Kin took control. Even while the rest of the world cried for help, America remained ambivalent—if not entirely averse to—the rest of the world’s problems. But Aidan had a hunch that Tenn would know about Aidan’s triumph. He had to. It would almost be unfair if he didn’t.
Even if Aidan’s name hadn’t spread overseas, there was always Tomás to tell him of Aidan’s existence. It seemed like the Howl was playing the two of them, and Aidan wondered what the game was. Jealousy flared within him for a moment, Fire hissing that Tomás shouldn’t be with someone else, but he burned it away before it could fester. He wanted the incubus, yes. But only to use him.
Aidan was a king. And that meant everyone else was just a peasant. Including the Howl who thought himself a god.
Aidan thought, and Kianna drove, and around midnight he realized there was a glow on the horizon.
“What’s that?” Gregory asked, shifting up in his seat.
The glow was harsh and white, electric. Faint at first, barely a haze through the rain, but it spilled above the dilapidated buildings before them in a corona, a curse. Aidan hadn’t seen that much electric light in years.
“London,” Kianna said. Her words were dull. Depressed.
Aidan couldn’t even imagine what sort of homecoming this was for her—the street tangled with cars, the cityscapes melted and transformed. He could see the clench of her jaw in the light of the dash and the glow of the horizon. If he was any other guy, and she any other girl, he would have reached over and put a hand on her shoulder or thigh to let her know that he was there for her, and he cared.
Since it was the two of them, though, he did nothing but rap his fingers on the door, staring idly at the accumulated dirt under his chipped nails. He needed a spa day.
The thought made him chuckle, and Kianna stared daggers at him.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “So.” He shifted in his seat, leaning against the door to look at her. “What’s the plan?”
“We should probably stop soon.” Kianna yawned.
“Sounds good to me.”
The London glow was still miles away, and the road was getting worse the closer they got. That was the trouble with cities—for the Howls and necromancers, cities were smorgasbords. Especially since—with a few well-placed necromancers—all exits could be destroyed. It didn’t take long to suck the breath or the heat out of a congested street. Just as it didn’t take much to burn a crowd and leave the bones to the beasts.
Or turn them all into beasts.
Another reason why Aidan tried to avoid the big cities when he could. They just felt like graveyards.
He wanted to tell her to keep going, keep calm and carry on and all that, but the truth of it was, he was ready to sleep. Preferably somewhere that wasn’t jostled every five seconds. Preferably without Kianna’s curses a grating lullaby in his ears.
Around them, whatever borough this had been was completely demolished. He could see for miles over the rubble. Rows of flats and shops reduced to piles of charred stone, cars turned and toppled, small bits of flora poking between the debris. He wondered idly just how many people had been killed here, and how quickly it had come about.
“Shite,” Kianna said.
“What?”
She nodded, and he looked forward.
The road ahead was completely clogged. All of the cars pointed directly at him, all of them trying to leave the city. Clearly, none had made it. Not with the gaping crater taking out a full swath of road and half the surrounding flats. There was no way around it—the rubble on each side of the street was too high to drive over, and it traced all the way behind them like a half pipe.
Kianna grunted and shifted into Park. “Looks like we’re walking,” she said, killing the engine. “Either that, or we reverse and hope there’s another route.”
“Walking? I thought you wanted to sleep.”
Kianna shrugged off Aidan’s question. “We’re exposed out here, and I don’t see any places nearby to rest up. Unless you want to take your chances sleeping in the open?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She hopped out of the vehicle and began walking. Aidan was right after her, though the others hesitated a moment before joining. He couldn’t really blame them.
Theoretically, it should have been safe. The Guild ahead should have cleared the nearby land of Howls. Especially a Guild as large as London’s. But the fact was there—if scouts had gone missing, something was wrong. And that meant they couldn’t take any chances.
“Lead on then,” Aidan said. His foot caught on a flier. SINNERS REPENT. Chills raced down his spine, despite Fire’s constant caress. “Just get us sinners somewhere warm.”
“Hell’s warm,” Kianna said.
“Clearly not,” Aidan said, and spread out his arms like a crucifix.