“. . . sit,” Dash said, bending with me to fold me into the chair. “. . . dumb idea. If you die on us, Shame, I’m going to kick your ass, you understand?”
Whoa. Kind of harsh on a guy who’d just marched his naked ass halfway across the universe for a shower.
“Take it easy,” Cody said to him. “Why don’t you go make some coffee and check on Sunny? I’ll stay here and make sure he doesn’t drown.”
Maybe Dash said something; maybe he and Cody got in a fistfight, danced the tango, or took up skeet shooting. Didn’t care. There was water—warm, soft, life-filled water—pouring down over my body.
Eleanor hovered across the room, still as far from me as she could get. She refused to look at me.
“I’m . . . sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t stop it. I . . . El. I’ll fix this. I promise.”
She still wouldn’t turn.
It would have to wait. She would have to wait. I was too damn tired to do anything but sit and breathe. Everything else, the whole damn living world, would have to wait until I had my feet under me.
Lost some time again. When I woke up, it was dark out. The lamp in the corner of the room glowed softly. I was back in my bed, propped up with pillows so I was not quite sitting. Had a pair of boxers on. I moved a little and bandages scraped against the sheets. Bandages on my arms, my legs, my chest.
I felt like a piñata, the day after the party.
“Are you awake, Shame?” Sunny asked. I heard her shift in the lounger chair set in the corner of the room.
I tried to get moisture in my mouth. “Who do I have to blow for a drink of water?” I rasped.
More rustling; then she sat on the bed next to me. “You don’t have to blow,” she said. “Just suck it, Flynn.” She angled a straw into my mouth.
Funny. I sucked and the water hit my mouth with a shocking clean coolness full of flavor. Water had never tasted so good. I got a few mouthfuls of it down before Sunny took it away.
“You are a piece of work,” she said quietly as if she didn’t want to wake the other people in the house.
“What, this?” I said, trying a smile. God, that hurt. “It’s nothing.”
“Shame,” she said, “you’ve been dead. For a week.”
“Miss me?”
She didn’t say anything for a second or two. Then, “We can’t find Terric.”
Gut punch.
“What? What does that mean?”
“He’s not here in the house. He’s not anywhere else either. A lot of old blood on your kitchen floor, and we’re pretty sure not all of it is yours.
“I followed up on some leads on Davy. Think I have a pretty good idea where Davy’s being held. Then I came back to get you. To make you come with me and kill the bastards who are holding him. Only no one had seen you. For days. And no one had seen Terric. So Dash, Cody, and I looked everywhere. We finally came here. Don’t you ever lock your front door?”
“Why? What could go wrong?”
“Goddamn, Shame. This isn’t funny. This isn’t one of your play-it-loose-and-it-will-all-work-out schemes. People are dying here. Davy. Maybe Terric, if he’s still alive. And you, you jackass. I need you to get your head in this. I need you to . . .” She waved her hand at me.
“Be a weapon so you can save Davy?” I asked.
She gave me a long look. One thing I had to give the woman. She did not back down. Blood magic users. Tough as steel.
“Yes. I need you, and I need the Death magic you carry. You do still carry it, don’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you? Know? I need you to know, Shame. Because if you don’t have it, then I’m going to go after Davy without you. Tonight.”
“Where?”
“There’s a warehouse up in Washington. Outside Ephrata. I think he’s there.”
“You worked the Spokane lead?”
She nodded. “I think Eli’s there too.”
“Who else have you told?”
“Just a few Hounds. Well, and Dash and Cody.”
“Who has Dash told?”
“No one,” Dash said from the doorway. He looked a little rumpled in a T-shirt and jeans but had his boots on. He also had two mugs in his hand. I thought I smelled tea. “This is off the radar, Shame. We agreed we don’t want to drag anyone else into it if we go get Davy.”
“We?” I asked.
He walked in. “Sunny, Cody, and me. We didn’t want anyone else in the Authority involved, which is why I haven’t even told the boss man, Clyde. He’d just tell us not to do whatever it is we are going to do anyway. And we certainly didn’t want to worry Zay and Allie.”
Allie. The baby.
A memory scraped across all the raw and screaming in my head. Something about Allie. Something about her baby. “Is she? Did she have her daughter yet?”
Davy handed me one of the mugs. Half-full, black tea with honey and cream. I pulled it toward me and took a sip. Braced for the explosion of scent and flavor, lost myself to it for a minute or two.
This “living” was a heady thing.
“. . . girl?” Dash was saying. “Shame? Are you listening?”
“No. What’d I miss?”
“Did Allie tell you she was having a girl?”
I looked up at his cautious concern. Checked out Sunny, who was giving me the same look.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know,” I said, chasing memories. Someone had told me. Said she was having a girl. Told me more. That I had to save Terric, save the world. Kill Eli. Stop Krogher. No matter the cost.
“Has she had her? Or it? Has she had the baby?”
“Not yet,” he said. “Any day, though. Why?”
I took another swallow of tea, filling my whole mouth with it, shuddering through the glorious riot of flavor. It burned all the way down. “We need to go now.” I held the cup out for Davy, who took it. “Before the baby is born.”
Then I pushed the blankets off.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Dash said. “Dr. Fischer wanted you to rest. She said she’d be here in the morning to check on you.”
“Which means she’s writing a report for someone somewhere to read. Probably Clyde,” I said. “We leave tonight.”
“Shame,” Dash said. “I think you need to get through a whole twenty-four hours of breathing before we drive your ass across two states.”
“I can breathe in a car. You think Terric is there?” I got my feet over the edge. Held still to give my lungs a chance to catch up.
“We don’t know where Terric is,” Dash said. “We think Davy’s there.”
“Can’t you tell?” Sunny asked. “I thought you could feel Terric. With that Soul thing you have?”
“No,” I said. That was the truth, the hell I was not ready to face. I couldn’t feel Terric. At all. It might be because our connection had broken when I died. It might be because he was dead.
Or it might be because I’d died and come back not quite what I had been before. Something that didn’t match to a soul anymore.
The hunger rolled in me and Eleanor arched back, pulling against the rope that tightened on her neck. I pushed at the magic, shoved Death away until it subsided.
Damn.
“So if you can’t feel him . . . ,” Dash was saying.
He knew the answer. Terric might be dead.
If he was, then I had myself some unlucky bastard to track down and obliterate.
“Do you remember what happened?” Dash asked. “Do you remember who shot you?”
“Eli.” I pushed up onto my feet. The insides of me knotted up and lurched and threatened to become the outside of me.
“. . . Shame,” Dash said, in front of me with his hands on my shoulders. “Breathe!”
Right, as if it was that easy. Still, I gave the lungs
a try, swallowed air. Enough to make the blackness filling the room step on back a bit. Note to the wise: Lungs plus bullets do not equal fun times.
“You can’t do this. Not yet,” Dash said.
“Dash,” Sunny warned.
“You two might as well take the argument to the other room.” I pushed Dash’s hands off me, gently, because I didn’t want to hurt him, and because really, that was all the strength I had in me. “I’m going to get some clothes on.”
Sunny started toward the door. Dash, bless him, hesitated. “You dying—again—isn’t going to help us find Davy. Or Terric. Or anything. Shame, you need to rest.”
I gave him a small smile. He really was concerned about me, about Davy, about Terric.
“Well,” I said as I shuffled over to my dresser. “As soon as we’re sure I’m actually alive again—then we can worry about me dying again.”
“Shame,” he said softly. “This can wait. At least a day. Please.”
I paused by the drawer, wondering if I had it in me to open the damn thing. “Eli shot me, and he took Terric. I think he took Terric. If Eli also has Davy, then that’s where we’re going. Where I’m going. Even if it’s just to kill Eli and bury Terric’s body.”
Dash didn’t say anything, so I did.
“I would kill for a cup of coffee, mate. That tea just isn’t cutting it.” Life would help too. Dash’s life, Sunny’s life. But I’d already done . . . something terrible to Eleanor. Trapping her, tying her down with that black rope of magic. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. I didn’t want to hurt anyone else.
“Jesus, Shame.” Dash rubbed at his eyes. He looked tired. Of course, he’d spent a week looking for Terric and me, and when he’d found me I was dead. It hadn’t been an easy go for him lately either.
“Coffee, Boy Wonder,” I said. “And make it strong. We have a long road ahead of us.”
Dash shook his head and walked out of the room. “Stupid, stupid idea.”
I could hear Sunny telling Cody we were headed out.
All right, Shame. Time to really take stock.
I took a gander under the bandages. I’d apparently sprouted a collection of holes. One in each shoulder, deep enough I could stick my pinkie into it up to my middle knuckle—which, by the way, hurt like a bitch. They were bloody, but not bleeding, and were strangely cold. My body temperature was way below manufacturer’s recommendations.
Five in my chest, two in my right leg, three in my left. Two in my right hip.
All of them deeper than I wanted to go digging around in, but the exit wounds were just as small as the entry wounds. Bullets didn’t work like that. I should be fifty percent ground beef in the back with that many shots in me.
I guess that if one is already filled with Death magic, it might make dying a little more difficult.
I pulled on the dresser drawer, gulped air until I could see straight again, pulled out a T-shirt, and dragged the soft cotton over my aching skin.
Gun. I had been in the kitchen. Terric was with me. We were eating pizza. Doing our magic thing to that poor plant. And then . . .
... blood. A knife cutting into his throat. Terric’s eyes, as he fell . . .
... fell at Eli’s feet.
Son of a bitch.
My heart kicked against my ribs and I groaned, waiting for the pain to pass. Eli had gotten into the kitchen. Eli had shot the gun. Eli had killed me, something that did not sit well with me at all.
Eli had slit Terric’s throat.
Everything inside me twisted again, agony I braced against and sweated my way through.
I glanced up at Eleanor, and this time she just stood there, blankly staring at me. She didn’t appear to be in pain. But I could see the tears streaking her face.
I didn’t know if it was withdrawals from death, or that I was allergic to life, but either way, something was irreparably wrong with me. With my body.
I needed life. Needing living. The Death in me was a bottomless hole, burning black in me. Hungry. And I was having a hell of a time fighting it.
In the end, I supposed it would win.
So I had some things to get done before I kicked off for good.
I had to find Davy for Sunny. Had to find Terric. Kill Eli. Kill Krogher, stop the drones. Save the world, no matter the cost. No matter what I gave up for it.
I was the last human on earth who should be given this responsibility. One look at Eleanor proved that. I’d shackled a woman who had jumped out of heaven for me.
What kind of monster was I?
I glanced up at the mirror, above the dresser.
The face of my nightmares looked back at me. I’d seen that look on the last Death magic user I’d killed. It was hunger and darkness and need. It was the thing that using Death magic was turning me into—a monster I could not sate or control.
Chapter 15
TERRIC
A hand tapped the side of my face. “Wake up, Terric. We need to go.”
I wasn’t sleeping. I was just sitting here, wherever here was. Prison. There were bars all around me, so it must be prison.
“Terric?”
The man in front of me was maybe in his twenties, blond hair. He was sweating and breathing as if he’d been running a marathon. His nose was bleeding.
I shook my head. Where was I? Why was I here?
“Let’s go. Eli won’t be out for long, and I can’t hold this—”
The man flickered, disappeared.
Holy shit.
I scrambled up onto my feet. There was another man bleeding on the floor, a broken coffee cup shattered at my feet. I was in hospital clothes, and there was enough medical equipment in the room that it wasn’t a big leap to think I was sick.
The bars didn’t make any sense. What kind of hospital kept people behind bars?
Was I insane? That man who had just been here and disappeared could have been a hallucination.
Okay, so insane was looking like a probability. That would mean the man on the floor was a doctor or an orderly, and I was . . .
... I had no idea what I was. I had no idea who I was.
That was terrifying.
Panic shot ice through my veins.
“Okay,” I said, talking myself through this. “Okay. Names. Records. Something. Look for answers. There must be something here.”
I knelt, gasped at the pain that squeezed my ribs. Broken ribs, judging from the bandages wrapped around my chest. And from the gauze packed around my left hand, I was pretty sure I was missing a pinkie.
Bars, bandages, missing digits. That painted a new picture. Not so much a medical facility as a place of interrogation. Torture?
A memory cracked open and spilled through my mind: knives in the hand of that man who was unconscious on the floor. Knives cutting into me.
Eli. His name was Eli, and he’d used more than knives to cause me pain.
He’d used magic.
Then the memory was gone and I grunted at the snarling headache that replaced it. I didn’t even know who I was, couldn’t remember why I was here, but I knew that I should not have been able to access that memory.
Maybe the hallucination had been right. I needed to get out of here before the man on the floor woke up.
I stepped over Eli.
Every motion hurt. Breathing hurt. It felt as if someone had taken a hammer to all the things inside me and left me shattered and bleeding.
Even so, I made it to the table covered with blades, saws, and other hardware.
If even half of those things were used on me, it was no wonder I was in pain.
No key for the door. I took one of the knives, walked to the bars, which were painted with designs or maybe a language. Nothing I could read. The lock was electronic.
“Terric.” The hallucination man appeared on the
other side of the bars. “You have to follow me. We need to get the hell out of here before they get the cameras back online. The blocking spell I cast won’t last for long.”
“Who are you? Where are we?”
“You’ve been Closed. Or at least partially Closed. He took away your memories. We’re in a warehouse in Washington and we don’t have much time before they find out I’m not dead, and you’re not catatonic.”
“Closed?” I managed.
“Magic.” He searched my face for understanding, and found none. “Okay, fine. You want out of here, you’ll just have to trust me on that. And if this knocks me out or . . . kills me, I want you to tell Sunny yes for me, okay?”
“Yes?”
“She asked me to marry her, then took off to Florida. Before I could call her, I got my ass handed to me by Eli and the rest of these fuckers. I never got a chance to give her my answer. It’s yes. Now stand back.”
He wrapped his hands on the bars and exhaled slowly. The symbols etched into the metal caught white fire, arcing from bar to bar to glow brighter, then run like hot oil down to the lock.
“Davy,” a voice said behind me. “How nice of you to join us. I’d thought you were gone from the world for good.”
I turned. Eli was no longer unconscious. He stood, his face covered in blood from that broken nose and sliced cheek.
He held a gun aimed at us.
“Shoot, you bastard,” Davy said. “I’m coming for you next.”
“You don’t have the strength,” Eli said. “And I should know.” He shifted the gun just a fraction.
“I wondered if you would find that little loophole I couldn’t plug,” he said. “Some of those spells in your flesh just refuse to be canceled out, no matter what I try. But you must understand there are plans in place. Plans,” he said to me as if I knew what he meant, “that would be the best for all of us to follow. While I would love to further my research on you, Davy, I will not let you get in the way of my plans.”
Eli squeezed the trigger.
“No!” I threw myself in front of Davy.
Just as the bars around me went white-fire supernova from Davy’s spell.
The first bullet burned through my chest, the second right behind it. I hit the bars behind me. Yelled as fire engulfed me. Tasted ash, oil, and blood.