Back Lash

  “It will take some time to sort through the papers up there,” Dash said. “Maybe there’s something in them that explains all this.”

  “So these...shitty glyphs hold magic?” I asked.

  “One way to find out.” Terric handed Dash the folder then pulled out a pocket knife. He crouched down next to the corpse, studied the marks, then sketched the Proxy glyph into the dirt floor.

  “Wow,” I said. “That is the worst glyphmanship I’ve ever seen out of you, Ter. D+ and the plus is only because you used a pocket knife like a big boy.”

  “Shut up, Shame.” He stood, and took a few steps backward. “Let’s see what it does.”

  I could feel the tension tighten the connection between us. Decided to take a couple steps back myself.

  Terric called on magic, reaching toward it, where it flowed beneath the earth, where he and I could still get at it, and sending it into the glyph.

  That would have worked in the old days. Should have worked now if the dead body told us anything.

  I waited. We all waited.

  Nothing.

  “That’s a bust,” I said. “Nice theory about the new rules, though, Dash.”

  “One attempt does not a theory disprove,” Dash said. “Did they do anything with those wands except point them at you?”

  “They chanted,” I said.

  “Could have mentioned that before,” Terric said.

  “I was dead before.”

  “Still not okay with you joking about that nightmare,” Terric said. “Do you remember what they were chanting?”

  I thought about it, tried to form the syllables in my head.

  “It was nonsense. Something like: > lictu, lambas, boreal, noctu.’“

  The glyph exploded into a ball of flame.

  “Shit!” Dash grabbed for Terric.

  “No!” I lunged for both of them.

  Too late.

  The fire—magic fire—arced to Terric like a flame to oxygen. He threw up his arms up to shield his face. The magic burned a glyph into his flesh and filled the room with a nauseating mix of scorched meat and rotten oranges.

  Then the fire was gone, magic was gone, and the basement was quiet and dark again.

  Terric ticked his gaze toward me. Blood covered his face. His chest. “That wasn’t so...”

  His eyes rolled up into his head and he screamed.

  “Get him down,” I yelled as I helped Dash manhandle him to the floor where he writhed and yelled.

  “Shame,” Dash said. “Do something!”

  “Get his shirt off.”

  I held him down while Dash broke the buttons off his shirt and dragged it up over his head.

  I could feel the magic push through him like a sickness worming into his flesh, his muscles, his bones. Life magic burned bright against it, but even with the magic he carried, this magic, this twisted sickness that had just burned into him was eating through Terric’s body.

  As quickly as Life magic healed him, this dark magic destroyed him.

  Excruciating pain poured through our connection. I was covered in sweat. Shaking. Swallowed whole by his agony.

  I wanted to scream right along with him.

  I set my jaw and got busy reciting swear words instead.

  I was not going to fucking pass the fuck out.

  “Shame,” Dash yelled. “Don’t you pass out on me.”

  “I’m good,” I growled. “Don’t let go of him.”

  I tapped the Death magic that filled me, hard. Precise.

  Here’s the tricky part: Death magic devours. The completely dead guy behind me wasn’t much of a meal. But the man in terrible pain whom I knelt over? The man to whom death would be a mercy? Terric?

  Well, Death magic wanted to devour his life and give him the grim, final mercy.

  Except I was standing in its way.

  Just because the best thing Death magic did was kill things didn’t mean it was the only thing Death magic could do.

  Death could be an easing, a lessening of suffering, of pain.

  Death was an ending. But that didn’t mean it had to destroy.

  Death could be a pause.

  Magic can be wielded very easily like an ax. Draw a glyph, fill it with magic—with fire, with pain, with impact—and you’re gonna get the job done.

  But magic is much, much more difficult to wield precisely, with finesse, with restraint.

  My hands were shaking so hard, I had to inhale and blow air out several times just to get control of them.

  “Try to keep him steady,” I said, maybe loud enough for Dash to hear over Terric’s moans of agony.

  I drew Death magic into my hands, into my fingers. Then I bent over Terric and very carefully traced my fingertip over the glyph that was burning in his body.

  I killed the magic, cooled the flame, eased the pain, and cauterized the wound across his arms and chest.

  Pain between us lowered to a sickening ache. I slashed my finger across his right arm, left, then chest.

  Death magic canceled the glyph, canceled the magic.

  Terric went dead still.

  “Terric?” Dash said, had been saying. “You’re okay. You’re going to be fine. We got you. We got you.”

  I placed my hand over Terric’s heart. Felt the stroke of fast, even beats.

  “What are you doing?” Dash asked. “Shame?” He clamped fingers around my wrist and squeezed until I could feel the pain. “What are you doing?”

  I glanced up at him.

  I don’t know what he saw in my eyes. If I had to guess, it would be rage and sorrow and death.

  “Talk to me right now, or I swear I’ll knock you on your ass,” he said.

  Had to give it to the guy. He never backed down. Not even when he was staring death in the eyes.

  “I’m going to put him in a deep sleep. So he can heal.”

  “A coma?”

  “No. Close, but no.” I was calm. Sounded reasonable.

  Odd, since everything inside me was raging to kill. “You go get the car, bring it as close to the house as you can.”

  “I’m not leaving him with you,” he said.

  The corner of my mouth twitched upward. “Good instincts. But what choice do we have?”

  “You go get the car.”

  “The only reason he’s not screaming is because I am bearing half of the pain he’s in. Do you want me to lose focus on that? Let him bear this pain alone?”

  He paused. Swallowed. Made his decision. “I’ll get the car.”

  Bless him for trusting me.

  “If you kill him, Shame, I will tear you apart.”

  For mostly trusting me.

  “I’m not killing him.”

  Even I didn’t think that sounded very convincing. “Go,” I said. “He’ll be breathing when you get back.”

  Dash eased him down onto the floor and stood. “Don’t fuck this up.”

  “I won’t.”

  He jogged out of the room.

  I kept my hand on Terric’s chest, slowly, gently easing his heart into a more natural beat, then slower still, into sleep. If I let Death magic reach into him any deeper, he’d be hovering in a coma. More than that, he’d be comatose. After that: dead.

  “You are not going to die on me, Conley,” I said. “Not here and not now. You are going to heal. Do you understand that? Heal. All that Life magic in you that you use on everyone else has one job to do now. Heal you. This isn’t good-bye. Got that?”

  I sent Death magic gently into his body, his heart, bringing him very close to a coma state.

  The remnants of pain between us finally eased. Here, in this state, he wasn’t hurting. Hopefully, he could heal.

  Here, in this state, my head cleared and Death magic backed off an inch.

  “I will find the fuckers behind this,” I promised him
. “And I will tear them apart.”

  I didn’t lift my hand from his chest, couldn’t leave him half-dead and alone on this cold dirty floor. But I did shift so I could see the glyphs around the lawyer’s corpse.

  The answer to who was behind these killings, the answer to who was accessing such a brutal, twisted magic was right here. Drawn in dirt and flesh and death. The way to find that answer was here.

  I didn’t know why I hadn’t realized it earlier.

  We knew the deaths were linked. The actual glyphs on each of the dead were identical. So, too, the kind of magic that had killed them.

  If the records Dash had dug up were correct, the people who had been killed were all connected, a part of the Pisces group.

  All I had to do was follow those connections.

  Through the glyphs that connected them. Through the magic that connected them.

  I carefully gathered Death magic to my will, sent it plunging through the glyphs carved in the dirt, plunging through the glyphs carved in the dead body.

  Connections and links worked both way. Whether we liked it or not.

  Magic poured out of me, burning down lines of old magic like fire down gunpowder trails. It was dizzying, draining.

  I felt like I’d just nicked an artery. But instead of losing blood, I was losing magic, draining down hard.

  With that outpouring came knowledge. My vision swam with images of glyphs being drawn: drawn by wands that glowed with symbols carved into them. Flesh burned with the rancid, twisted magic, magic that leaped to the chants of voices, dozens of voices joined together.

  And from that tangle of voices, of connections, of magic being dragged and twisted free from where we thought we’d safely locked it away, came one voice.

  One face.

  One magic user all the others were connected to.

  One man behind the others.

  “Fuck,” I breathed.

  The vision was hot-sharp.

  I saw his face.

  And he saw mine.

  Connections work both ways. Whether we like it or not.

  Then the man I’d run into at Jak’s place—Greg Padgett—lashed out with magic and broke the link.

  Chapter 13

  It wasn’t easy, but it didn’t take long to carry Terric up to the car. Dash had parked so close to the cabin door, that all we had to do was ease Terric through it and into the back seat.

  “Hospital?” Dash asked.

  “Home. There isn’t anything a doctor can do for him. Fucking magic. Give me a sec.”

  I strode back into the house, locked the basement door, then found a chain to loop through the front door handle I’d ruined. I focused Death magic on the chain links, heating them until they fused together, which was as good as it was going to get for locking the front door.

  “I hate leaving all those damn magic books in there,” I said as I ducked into the passenger seat. “Go.”

  “You think someone’s going to take them? Use them?” Dash started the engine and got the car turned so we could make the bridge.

  “Fuck if I know. The magic that hit him? It’s not magic I’ve felt before. Magic doesn’t turn on like a light switch when you say a few bullshit words.”

  “That magic did. The old rules don’t work anymore.” He’d rolled across the bridge and was navigating the crappy dirt drive as quickly as possible.

  Maybe the only way Greg, and whoever the hell else was in this with him, could dig magic free from the locks Terric and I had set on it was to twist magic, change it, use new ways to filter and pull on it.

  Magic was a constant. It had always been in the world. Mankind had tried a lot of ways to reach it. The system of glyphs that the Authority and humankind in general had used to access magic had been deemed to be the easiest way to provide the desired results.

  But it probably wasn’t the only way. There were old stories of older cultures that had tried all sorts of things to access magic.

  Spells, items, sacrifices.

  Not all of them good.

  “Is he...okay? Are you okay?” Dash asked as we hit the paved road at speed.

  “He’s healing. Not in pain right now. It tried to eat him. That magic.”

  “Fuck,” Dash breathed. “You?”

  “Fine. The spell didn’t hit me.”

  “How bad are his wounds?”

  I could lie. Tell him Terric would be fine. But I didn’t know that. Didn’t know what that magic had done to him. “I don’t know.”

  Dash clenched his jaw and nodded once, his eyes never straying from the road.

  “We’ll find them,” he said, low enough I almost didn’t hear him over the engine’s growl. “And we’ll take them down.”

  I’ll take them down, I thought. There was no way in hell I was going to put Dash at risk. But I could feel his heartbeat, the anger throbbing through him. He wanted someone dead for what they’d done to Terric.

  I had every intention of making sure that happened.

  ~~~

  “What the hell?” Jolie said. She rushed to hold the front door open for us. We carried Terric’s unconscious body inside the house. “What the hell, what the hell?”

  Her voice went up with each repetition.

  “What. The. Hell?”

  Dash, who was usually the calm and cool one in these kinds of situations, burned with anger and unbreakable silence.

  “He’s going to be okay,” I said.

  “Is he bleeding?” She pushed past us and opened the door on Terric’s and Dash’s bedroom. “Did you call 911? Should I call 911?” She fumbled for her phone in her pocket.

  “No,” I said, “and no.” I nodded toward her phone. “And no.”

  Jolie moved across the room just ahead of us and pulled the covers down. We eased Terric down onto the bed.

  Dash unlaced Terric’s shoes, took them off.

  “Someone better tell me what the hell happened or I swear I’ll call the cops.”

  Dash moved on to unbuckling Terric’s belt, either unaware or completely ignoring that anyone else was in the room with him.

  I took Jolie’s arm and guided her out of the room and into the hall.

  “No,” she said. “I will not be shoved out of the way.” She yanked her arm out of my grip and punched me in the shoulder. “Talk.”

  “Fuck, Jolie.” I rubbed at my arm. She packed a punch.

  She cocked her fist back and I left my hand defensively over my shoulder. She looked like the kind of woman who would hit in the exact same spot if given the chance.

  “Talk,” she repeated. “Why is my brother unconscious, half naked, and burned?”

  “We went out to look into that lead on Harold Thorne.”

  “The lawyer? Did that damn lawyer do this?”

  “No, that damn lawyer is dead.”

  “You killed him?”

  “Found him. In the basement of the cabin. Long dead.”

  “From whom?”

  “From what. Magic.”

  “No one can even access magic anymore,” she said. “And you can’t kill someone with magic.”

  She was angry, panicked, and gone so pale the red of her cheeks was the only color beneath her brittle blue eyes.

  “Yes,” I said, “I can.”

  She took a step back. There was more than fear on her face. “You kill people with magic? Is that why you came home with bullets in your chest? Is that why Terric is hurt? Fuck you, Shamus. I’m calling the cops.”

  I grabbed the phone out of her hand. Resisted the urge to drain down the energy in the battery. To kill it as easily as I knew I could.

  I was trying to be reasonable here, trying not to lose control.

  “No, you will not. The cops can’t handle this. They don’t have the training. They don’t have the magic. I can handle this. And I am going to—witho
ut getting anyone else involved.”

  She narrowed her eyes. I knew she wanted to argue, but I didn’t have time.

  “They told you Terric and I have a little bit of magic in us right?”

  She nodded.

  “That magic in him is helping him heal. It’s what it does. So stay here with Dash. Keep an eye on Terric. He needs time to heal and we’re going to give him that.” I handed her the phone.

  Yeah, the battery was dead.

  “Wait,” she said, but I was already halfway across the living room.

  “You can’t go alone,” she said. “Shame. Wait!”

  But I was done waiting. I got into the car, and left her, Dash, and Terric behind me.

  Chapter 14

  It wasn’t hard to find Greg Padgett’s place. A quick search on Google, a couple clicks, and I was parked outside his office.

  He was a financial advisor of some sort. The sign bolted into the sandstone brick building said: Retirement Planning.

  I sucked the heat out of a cigarette, then got out of the car, flicked the cig in the bushes and strode up to the front door.

  Smelled like carpet glue or maybe new wallpaper inside. The young woman behind the counter at the back of the room glanced up as I walked in. She gave me a cool smile.

  “May I help you?”

  Guess I didn’t look like a guy who was here to plan his retirement.

  “I need to see Mr. Padgett.”

  Her smile didn’t falter, but her eyes did a quick reassessment of me, my jeans, T-shirt, boots.

  “I’m sorry,” she said through her pleasant smile. “He’s not available. Would you like to make an appointment?”

  “No.” I strode past her and through the door behind her. Ignored her warnings.

  Short hallway. Three more doors. I knew exactly which door Greg was behind.

  Strode to the end of the hall. Walked into his office, the woman right on my heels.

  Greg sat behind a modern desk. He was scrolling through something on his screen. There were pictures on his walls. Pictures of Claire, pictures of their children, smiling, playing. Pictures of a happy family.

  Fuck.

  He glanced up, dark eyes taking me in and tightening with hate.

  “You don’t want her here,” I said.