Back Lash

  “I told him to leave,” she said.

  “It’s all right, Tiffany.” He stood. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

  “I...are you sure?” I could hear the frown in her voice but didn’t turn to look at her. My eyes were on Greg alone. “I haven’t finished the mailings.”

  “Mailings can wait for tomorrow,” he said mildly. He wasn’t looking at her either.

  “All right,” she said. “Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She strolled off.

  I stuck my hands in the front pockets of my jeans. “You have fucked with the wrong man.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Found your friend, Harold, in his basement. Still don’t understand why you people are leaving so damn much evidence around.”

  “What evidence? There is no crime.”

  “Tell that to the dead bodies you’ve littered across this city.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not...you don’t understand. What it’s like not to...not to have what I need.”

  “Don’t care what you need. But I will give you exactly what you deserve.”

  “Can you?” His voice dropped to a snarl. “Then do it! Break through the wall that’s surrounding magic and get the hell out of my way.”

  “No. Not happening,” I said. “There are too many people dead because of you. Too damn many people almost dead because of you.”

  I drew Death magic up out of the deep reservoir that filled me, let it whip and stretch into my bones, my blood. Let it fill my chest with a hungry heat. He would be so easy to end. To devour.

  “I don’t care how many people have died,” he said. “I have to find a way to save my kid.”

  Death magic lashed inside me, wanting. But I heard him. Heard the anguish in his anger.

  His kid? Claire’s kid?

  “Who?” I said.

  “Lolly—Laura. Our youngest. She’s ill.” His mouth might have said ill , but his eyes said dying. “And there is nothing— nothing— I won’t do to change that.”

  “Fuck,” I said. “Fuck.”

  I could kill this guy. Make it look like a heart attack. It would be easy. Death magic turned in me, hungry for his life. Wanting his death. Wanting to kill Claire’s husband, the father of their kids.

  Hell.

  I shoved the magic back into the core of me, breathed until I was sure it was going to stay there, until I was sure I had control.

  “You have bought yourself one chance to explain to me exactly what you’ve done with magic. To whom. And for what,” I said, breaking out into a cold sweat with the effort to hold magic at bay. “Talk as if your damn life depends on it.”

  Greg’s lip curled up and I gave him a cold stare. I knew magic burned behind it, making promises I just might let it keep.

  “Sit.” I said, like he was nothing more than a dog. “Speak.”

  He hesitated, reconsidered. Sat.

  I leaned my shoulder against the door jamb and crossed my arms over my chest. Waited.

  “It’s...it’s a rare disease,” he said. “Of the blood. We didn’t know she was sick until she was about three months old and couldn’t gain any weight. Then we tried everything. Tests, doctors, specialists. Nothing.”

  He shook his head and swallowed as if the words were clogged there. “Nothing helps.”

  “So you started killing people with twisted magic,” I said. “How in fuck is that helping your daughter?”

  He shook his head, was still shaking his head. “The...” his voice dried up. He tried again. “I knew Harold most of my life. Knew he was involved in studying magic. How people used it, what it could do. It was a passion of his.” His fingers were linked together, his eyes distant.

  “When magic disappeared, it just made him dig deeper. Old texts, religions. I talked to him...about Lolly. If he could help us. If magic could help her. He convinced friends of his, fellow scholars who were all part of a...group that experimented with ancient magic rituals, to participate in an experiment.”

  So that explained the matching fish tattoos.

  “Pisces,” I said.

  He nodded. “They agreed to complete a ritual he’d found. A linking of bodies, of life energy to draw on magic. To collect it and focus that life energy—to give that life energy to someone else.”

  I ground my teeth together. Idiots. Fucking idiots. Magic isn’t some kind of cozy campfire to poke with a stick as you please. It’s a bomb ready to take out as many people as possible at any given moment.

  “How did that work out for them?”

  “They’re dead,” he exhaled. “All of them. Harold thought if he used himself, his life, as the common thread connecting everyone together, that he would be able to regulate the spells. Regulate how much each of their lives poured out.”

  “Harold’s dead.”

  He was back to nodding again. “He did that. Sacrificed himself to create the link. We didn’t know. Didn’t realize that’s what he intended. When we found him, we didn’t dare move him. Lolly was getting better. We thought if we touched him, changed anything, it all might fall apart. His death would mean nothing. She was so happy....”

  “He’s been dead for a year,” I said.

  He was gone, lost to memories. Maybe of his daughter’s life, maybe of his friend’s death.

  “Hey.” I snapped my fingers. “Why did the people in Pisces show up dead in the last few days? If this magic has been in place for over a year, why are they dropping like flies now?”

  “I don’t know.” His eyes were dazed, all the fire in him gone to ash. “But I’ll probably find out.”

  He drew open the collar of his shirt, revealing the tattoo of the fish over his heart.

  ~~~

  He told me everything he knew. All the names of the people who were a part of Pisces and explained the ritual that had tied them together. Ink and Harold’s blood had been used to draw a link through the fish tattoo—right over each of their hearts.

  Vows, holy oils, and unholy herbs had done the rest to seal the link between the twelve of them.

  The steady nature of the ritual did indeed mimic the concept of order and intent that glyphs used to draw in magic. It made a sort of sense that the ritual had worked.

  I didn’t doubt that Harold’s death had sealed the deal and allowed for his life, and perhaps a portion of each of theirs, to support Lolly’s.

  “Why the wands?” I asked.

  I was itching for a cigarette or a drink or something to kill. All three would be best. It seemed like I’d been standing in the cramped space of Greg’s office beneath the suffocation of his guilt for hours.

  “Wands?” He gave me a blank look. Shook his head. “We didn’t have wands.”

  “Sure you did,” I pressed. “You have wands and guns and chant.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “No wands. No guns. We did chant the vows back at the cabin, but that was the only time.”

  “Latin bullshit?”

  “What?”

  “The chanting?”

  “English bullshit. A phrase repeated. Some kind of mantra for health, life giving to life.”

  “You didn’t use wands?”

  “No.”

  Hell.

  “You’ve never used wands?”

  “That’s not how magic works, Shamus.”

  Double hell.

  “I know,” I said.

  Two and two were not adding up here. Someone was using wands and magic together. The same words that had powered the wands had triggered that spell Terric drew.

  There had to be a reason why the members of Pisces were dropping dead now.

  It could be that the life span of the spell Harold had cast had expired and it was taking the hosts who were connected to it one-by-one.

  Or it could be that there was another group ou
t there looking for a way to break into magic for their own reasons and they’d happened on the same spells.

  A group who had found a way to twist magic through those wands.

  “Who is the head of Pisces?” I asked.

  He shook his head. Looked miserable. “I don’t know. I only joined—took vows of silence—after Harold told me he, and the group he was involved in, might be able to help Lolly. I never asked those kinds of questions. Didn’t really care.”

  “Can you ask them? Now?”

  “Everyone I knew who was a part of it is dead.”

  He could be lying. But I could tell from his heartbeat and the remorse that shadowed his words that he wasn’t.

  “And your kid? Lolly?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “She’s...not well. Slipping. Already.” He pinched his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “She’s only two.” He placed his head in his hands, fingers tugging at his hair. “What am I going to do? I can’t go home. Not if...not if I’m next to die. I don’t want them to see me that way.”

  Shit.

  “Stay here. Let me handle it.”

  “What can you do?”

  “We’re about to find out.” I turned, left his office.

  He didn’t call after me. Didn’t do anything but sob.

  This had just turned into something I didn’t have a handle on. Something even I knew I was the wrong person to call upon to fix.

  But there was no one else I could think of who could help.

  For a moment, I wished things were the way they used to be. That everyone still had magic. In the old days, I’d hand this over for Zayvion to figure out. He was always cool-headed and smart when magic went to hell.

  No matter how much I wanted to call on my best friend to bail me out, there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t use magic.

  Solving this was on me. All of it.

  A little girl was dying. Someone out there had killed all the people who had tried to save her with both magic and their lives.

  Her dad might be next in line.

  I patted my pockets for my cigarettes. Nothing. Got in the car and slammed my fist into the wheel.

  Fuck this. A little girl was dying. Claire’s daughter.

  If I knew what had triggered those spells the Pisces carried, if I knew how they’d been tapped and how they’d been killed, maybe I’d know how to keep the little girl safe.

  I leaned my head back against the headrest. Scowled as I reached for the seatbelt then cussed when it scraped across my sore shoulder.

  The shoulder I’d been shot in just a few days ago by that fucking sniper in the warehouse who had gotten away.

  Something in my head finally clicked.

  The sniper had left something behind. A broken wooden stick.

  I reached over, checked the cup holder, then leaned down to feel across the floor. Finally found it where it had rolled into the passenger side floor. Held it up to the light.

  Not a stick. A wand.

  Son of all the bitches.

  I stared at it in my open palm. Licked my bottom lip.

  If there was any magic in this, if any of the spellwork they had done to it was still intact, I could trigger it with my magic.

  If I triggered it, would Greg go up in smoke? And if the last person tied to Lolly died, what would happen to her?

  Maybe what was going to happen to her all along. He said she had been sick since she was born. Just because her dad had wild plans to find a cure for her wasn’t a guarantee that she could actually be cured.

  He didn’t say the other Pisces deaths had injured his daughter. Not in an immediate sort of way. It seemed more like these people’s lives, and the magic Harold Thorne had somehow created between them, was supporting her own body’s will to survive.

  If I tapped into the magic in the wand I could use it to track the people who had admitted to killing the members of Pisces to find me. To find Terric.

  All those Pisces people—people who were joined together in a common cause—a good, if misguided, cause—were dead because these wand wavers wanted to break through the walls of magic for their own purposes.

  Over my dead damn body.

  I rubbed at my forehead with my free hand. Took a breath and blew it out. This was going to take some finesse.

  “Let’s see where the hell you came from.”

  I was never very good at meditating. Couldn’t empty my mind and body of thoughts and needs, couldn’t come to peace with them either.

  Still, I tried to think calm thoughts. Drew on the magic within me with fingertips. Light, careful. Sent just the faintest tendril of magic into the wand.

  Spells stirred, that strange rotten orange stench I’d smelled before filled the car.

  The flash of a face, of the man who had held this wand, used it to channel twisted magic while he had a sniper’s rifle trained on me, embedded itself into my mind.

  Brown eyes turned down at the corners. Sandy hair, scar on the curve of his chin, square forehead. He had the look of a bored professor or someone who spent his waking hours cataloging stool samples.

  I knew I could find him. And once I did, I could use him to find all the others.

  Then I’d make it very, very clear to them that they were no longer allowed to use magic.

  As for Lolly...well, a Death magic user wasn’t going to be much help in healing her. Luckily, I knew the man who could.

  I put the car in gear and headed for home.

  Chapter 15

  I knew there was something wrong two miles out. Something wrong with Terric. I stepped on the gas and ran a red.

  Pain flared through our link and, along with it, a good deal of anger.

  Terric was fighting someone, something.

  Good news: he was conscious.

  Bad news: he was in pain. That pain flashed bright, hot.

  And then I didn’t feel Terric at all.

  I took the twisting road up the hill to my house on the edge, swung the car hard into the driveway.

  The house door was open. It looked like it had been ripped off the hinges. Terric’s car and Dash’s truck were still in the driveway.

  But I knew Terric was not in that house. I couldn’t feel his heartbeat. I couldn’t feel the connection between us either. He was unconscious—had to be. I’d know if he were dead because I would feel it in my soul if he were no longer breathing in this world.

  Someone was in there. Just one heart beating too slow.

  I strode into the house. The smell of rotten orange hit me full in the face.

  They’d done more than pull the door off the hinges, they’d tossed the place.

  No one was in the living room or the hall.

  The bedroom doors were flung open, broken bits of furniture scattered the floor.

  I made straight for the kitchen.

  They’d smashed a chair, tossed a couple more, shattered dishes. But I didn’t care about any of that. There in the middle of the floor, in a small pool of blood, lay Jolie.

  She was not moving, her heartbeat slow, her arm bent the wrong way below the elbow, a bruise spreading black and purple over her eye and split lip.

  Anger slipped over that hot edge in my gut and exploded into rage.

  Connections worked both ways. The wand brigade must have tracked the spell that hit Terric in the cabin back to here.

  And there must have been a lot of them. Enough to take out Terric and Dash. Enough to beat Jolie unconscious and leave her in her own blood.

  I knelt and pressed my fingers on Jolie’s throat. Her pulse was steady, her breathing even, if too slow. I checked her head. The cut, from where she’d hit something on the way down to the floor, was small but still bleeding.

  I eased her broken arm against her chest then picked her up because I was all kinds of done with seeing Terric’s little sister bleeding and broken on my
kitchen floor.

  She was supposed to be safe here. We were supposed to keep her safe.

  She moaned softly, rolling her head against my shoulder. I hushed her, made soothing noises as I carried her down to my room and placed her gently on my unmade bed.

  I pulled a cover over her, then went into the bathroom for a cloth and the prescription painkillers I had on hand. Found that, the elastic wrap bandage, and a sling in the medicine cabinet.

  It took a little time and pressure to staunch the bleeding, then I bound her arm and got it in the sling.

  “They took them,” she said as I was adjusting the buckle on the sling.

  “You’re awake. Good.” I handed her one of the pills and the half empty beer on my night stand. “Take it for the pain.”

  She washed the pill down with beer.

  “I’m going to get you to the hospital.”

  “They took Terric,” she repeated.

  “Yeah.” I took the beer from her, drained the rest of the bottle. “I’m going to go get him. First, you’re going to the hospital.”

  “They had wands.” Her voice was stronger. She pushed over and sat on the side of the bed. “What the hell, Shame? Wands only work in movies.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess wands work for assholes too. Think you can walk?”

  “I think I can go with you to find Terric. And Dash.”

  “Nope.”

  Her mouth set and she very carefully stood. All the blood washed out of her face. I knew she was in a lot of pain. Still, she raised her chin. “Move.”

  “How are you going to be any use to Terric with a broken arm and a lump on your head?”

  “Not even close to listening to you. If you won’t drive, I will.” She was half way to the door and getting steadier with each step. The pain pills should be kicking in soon, but they weren’t that fast.

  “Do you think you can just drive down the street and find them? They’re dangerous, Jolie. Dangerous people don’t make a habit of leaving trails.”

  “That’s what I have you for. The way you and Terric are connected—whatever the hell that is—you know where he is, don’t you?”

  We were in the living room now. She was pulling Dash’s coat off the hook by the busted door and sliding it over her shoulders one-handed.