Stone Cold

  He walked out.

  I pushed away from the wall, not knowing where to go, but not wanting to stay here either.

  “Thirty minutes, Shame,” Dash said. “Give me that. You owe him that. At least.”

  “I know, I know, Spade. Give it a rest,” I said. I knew the debts between us. They were carved into my soul. “Have you heard from Zay and Allie?”

  “I called. She’s in labor again.”

  “Again? Does it usually go this way?”

  “No.”

  Is the baby okay? Eleanor asked.

  “Is the baby okay?” I repeated for her. She gave me a faint smile.

  “Dr. Fischer is there.”

  That wasn’t a yes.

  “And the baby is . . . ?” I asked again.

  Dash rubbed at his forehead and I finally noticed he was bleeding from a cut near his hairline. His hand was shaking pretty badly too. He’d been hit and probably hadn’t done anything to take care of his wounds.

  Since I was already pacing, I walked to the bathroom. Dug for bandages. I should have done this when we first arrived, but I hadn’t been thinking. Still wasn’t.

  “The baby, Dash,” I said again, since talking about other things helped me ignore the things I didn’t want to talk about.

  Found a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a clean towel. Took that back to the room and handed it to him. Didn’t look at Terric. Didn’t stand too close to the bed.

  If I did, there wouldn’t be anything or anyone who could pull me away from his side.

  “They aren’t sure.” Dash tipped the alcohol onto the towel. “Zay sounded worried.”

  That wasn’t good. I’d stood side by side at the end of the world with that man and he’d barely worked up a sense of concern.

  “That’s not all,” Dash went on. “Clyde called. Anthony was just found dead.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I whispered. Anthony was another Soul Complement. “How about Holly?” I asked.

  “Can’t find her. They are assuming the worst.”

  The worst being that she was dead too. Krogher wasn’t wasting any time. That was the second Soul Complement pair in less than twenty-four hours.

  How long before he had drones around Allie and Zay’s place? How long before he wiped out the only people who could break magic and stop him and his magic army?

  “We need a new plan,” I said.

  We had a plan? Sunny asked.

  “You mean something other than walk straight in the front door, into live fire?” Dash asked.

  “Worked for me,” I said.

  “No so much for Sunny,” Dash said.

  I pressed my palm over my eyes. “I know. If I could change that, I would.”

  Killing Krogher seemed like a good idea. It wasn’t a smart idea. Probably wasn’t the thing Terric or Allie or Zay or . . . hell . . . anyone would get on board with. But seeing the light snuff out of Krogher’s eyes before any other Soul Complement died would do me worlds of good.

  At least it would make Sunny’s death worth something.

  I couldn’t think here so close to an almost-dead Terric. I needed air. I needed space.

  “If you try to leave this house, I’ll knock you out cold.” Dash wasn’t even looking at me. Couldn’t have known I was walking out.

  I glanced back at him. He pressed the towel against his temple, pulled it away, and stuck it over the blood on his thigh. His glasses hung loosely in his other hand. He hadn’t looked away from Terric. “If you try to leave, I’ll tell Davy to make sure you stay unconscious. I think he’d be on my side. He’s pretty sure you got Sunny killed.”

  I peered down the hall to the living room where Davy sat in the chair next to Sunny’s dead body. He was staring at me. Angry. Unmoving. The neon magic that was dripping out of him like a torn artery leaking blood was just a smear of dull blue shining up the darkness of his T-shirt. Boy was a ticking time bomb.

  I was his target.

  “Do you think that?” I asked quietly.

  “I think I’m not going to ask what happened back there yet. And I think you’re staying here, with us, until I say you can leave.”

  “Who said I was going anywhere?”

  Dash dug the towel into the hole in his jeans and sighed. “You’re angry.”

  “So?”

  “Have you looked in the mirror when you get angry?”

  “No.”

  He pointed toward the bathroom with the bloody bit of the towel. Then folded it to press a clean patch over his thigh wound again.

  I walked back into the bathroom.

  Stopped dead when I caught sight of myself in the mirror above the sink.

  Too thin, eyes too black, skin too pale with dried blood at the corner of my eye and down the side of my face and neck. That was your basic bar-brawl chic and could have been me any given Friday night.

  But a dark light surrounded me, as if every edge had been carved out of thick ice with a hard brightness shining behind it. I barely looked human. I was stone cold.

  Death.

  It wasn’t just inside me anymore. It was me. It made me. Every inch of me. From heel bone to brainpan.

  So much for hiding the monster on the inside. The line between me and it had officially been destroyed. I wore it just as much as it wore me.

  Looking in that mirror made a couple of things clear: The monster and I were not happy.

  And the monster and I were not weak.

  Good. We had work to do.

  • • •

  The doctor was a very nice, if extremely nervous woman with short, dark hair and thin-rimmed glasses. Dash promised she could be trusted with this sort of stuff.

  Since this sort of stuff hadn’t happened before, I had no idea what she’d put on her résumé to land the job.

  Her name was Mina, and even though she seemed nervous at first, as soon as she got one look at all of us with our various injuries, she was all business. Quick. Efficient. Capable.

  Ordered people around.

  She took care of Terric first.

  Dash stayed with him while I paced the hall, occasionally glancing in through the open door.

  Coward, Sunny said. She picked at her nails with the knife she’d somehow gotten back. Not exactly comforting to discover she could remanifest a weapon. I foresaw a lot of stabbings in my future. You aren’t even standing by his side. Afraid to see him die, Shame?

  “Give it a rest. You’re angry at me. I get it. I’m angry at me too.”

  I rounded the corner into the living room and almost ran into Davy, who was walking toward the hall. He tipped his head and looked past me. Right at Sunny.

  Davy, she said. Can you hear me? Honey, can you see me?

  He hesitated and I waited, wondering if I would have what it took to block whatever he might throw at me. Then his yellowed gaze ticked back to me.

  “You should go,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Home. While you still can.”

  “And that didn’t sound like a threat.”

  “Did you kill her?” he asked.

  Might as well tell him, Sunny said.

  No, Eleanor said. Not yet.

  Why not? Sunny asked.

  Do you really want Davy fighting Shame? Eleanor said. Who do you think would win?

  Sunny narrowed her eyes, looked at me, looked at Davy.

  It wouldn’t be Davy, Eleanor said. He’d kill him. And then you’d both be dead. Do you want that?

  Cody strolled out of the kitchen and took in the situation. Me, standing in the hall, Davy standing just inside the living room. Neither of us moving. Neither of us talking.

  “Hello, boys,” he said. “What did I miss?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “There’s nothing here to see.”

&
nbsp; This house was suddenly crowded with too many heartbeats, too many people, too many ghosts. Death magic pounded at the lid I’d locked it under.

  It wouldn’t be long before it broke free.

  Davy’s only answer was to walk back to where Sunny’s body lay, covered face to foot by a clean sheet.

  Cody looked at me, back at Davy, then headed after Davy.

  I didn’t know if I should be happy or worried that he thought Davy was the bigger issue to be dealt with here.

  But I knew it was just a matter of time before Davy and I had it out over Sunny’s death. Only a matter of time before he tried to kill me.

  Hell, maybe I’d let him. It wasn’t as if I didn’t deserve it.

  I paced until I was back in the bedroom again, just inside the door. I leaned my shoulder against the edge and stared at Terric.

  The doctor had removed the bullets and put Terric on an IV with pain meds and antibiotic. She hesitated over all the signs of torture he’d been through. Finally defaulted to a gel and clean bandages for the burns, brands, and cuts.

  But the deeper wounds, the things they had done to his mind, his soul, and his magic, were beyond her care.

  “How long has he been missing?” she asked.

  “A week.” Dash hadn’t budged from his side. He stood there, steady on his feet, though he looked a couple heartbeats away from a drinking binge and self-administered unconsciousness.

  “Was he wounded before that?” she asked.

  Dash shook his head.

  “The knife wound at his throat,” I said quietly from the shadows of the doorway. “That was the first.”

  She startled and glanced over her shoulder at me. She must have forgotten I was lingering there, even though she’d made a point to nod at me when she first came into the room.

  “All right,” she said. “The neck wound is nearly healed. It looks to be much older than a week. From the bruising, bleeding, and swelling, I’d guess his internal injuries are more than a few days old also. Weeks at least. And the cuts, the removed finger?” She nodded. “Those were done weeks ago, not days ago.”

  “That can’t be right,” Dash said. “He was fine a week ago. He was with us, at Allie’s party. Healthy.”

  “No physical wounds, anyway,” I said.

  “Did he suffer from some other kind of wound?” the doctor asked.

  “Withdrawal,” I said.

  “Drugs? Alcohol?”

  “Magic.”

  She paused in taping the IV to his arm and waited for me to deliver the punch line.

  I gave her a steady stare.

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “Magic. Do you know what he was using? Which spells? Blood magic?”

  “Life magic,” I said. “It’s complicated.”

  She took a moment to study Terric. “I’m not sure I understand the consequences of that addiction. Do you think it caused any of these injuries?”

  “No,” I said. “Those are from torture.”

  She placed his arm carefully back at his side and then pulled the blanket up to his waist. “Does he have family?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Dash said. “Brothers, sisters. His parents are still alive. He has a lot of family. Why?”

  “We’ll want to contact them. They should know.”

  Dash opened his mouth but closed it as soon as he put two and two together and realized what she was saying.

  Terric’s family should know that he was going to be dead soon.

  Death magic thumped on the lid in my head. A fist. A heartbeat. A demand.

  “How much longer does he have?” I asked.

  Dash closed his eyes and turned his back on the bed.

  “Not much, I think,” she said. “Maybe a few hours.”

  “What about a hospital?” I asked calmly. “Better equipment? Would it buy us time? Would it buy him time?”

  “Assuming he could survive the transport? His injuries are just too numerous. And many of them were inflicted with magic. There are spells carved into him. Spells I’ve never seen before. I’ve dealt with magical wounds for years now, but nothing like this. I’m sorry. I really am. Even if we take him to a hospital, we should still contact his next of kin.”

  Terric’s next of kin. His family. Contact them and tell them he was dying.

  I was having a hard time accepting those words.

  Dash said something to her that I’m sure was appropriate and thoughtful. After a minute or two, he walked with her out of the room. There were other injuries, other people to take care of besides Terric.

  The doctor could do some good for them.

  But not Terric.

  Spells carved into him. There was a reason she’d never seen those spells before. They weren’t spells any sane person would think of combining and inflicting on a person. I only knew one magic user twisted enough to create this kind of magical torture—Eli Collins.

  I walked over to the bed and stared down at Terric.

  Death magic growing, pounding, raging. Thump. Thump. Thump.

  “You are a pain in the ass, Terric Conley,” I said quietly. “I’ve tried . . . tried to keep you out of the blast zone of my screwed-up life, but you just wouldn’t walk away. Not even when . . . when I gave you my life on the battlefield there years ago. Idiot. Why didn’t you just let me go then? None of this would have happened.”

  The link of pain between us was gone—wiped out by the meds pushing happy-feel-good through his veins. He wasn’t hurting. He was resting peacefully.

  This was the kind of exit everyone hoped for, right? Asleep. Quiet. Easy.

  I pulled the chair up closer to his bed and sat. “If you had just let me die, I never would have done . . . the things Eli tortured you for. Killing Brandy. I really fucked that up, didn’t I? But I guess you and I are good at fucking things up. Carrying Life and Death magic inside us, mate? Who does that? No one. Maybe we should have just taken our beating back on the field with Jingo Jingo. Let the bastard win. Lain down and died.”

  Terric didn’t say anything. His breathing didn’t change. I had no idea if he could even hear me. Probably not. His ghost wasn’t here, so he wasn’t dead. But he wasn’t all that alive either.

  People could linger for years like this . . . comas. Maybe that’s what would happen to Terric. Maybe the life magic in him would do more than the doctor expected. Maybe it would hold him stable, and over time, he would heal.

  Cody thought he’d heal a different way. By fighting against a quick, hard death.

  A death I could give him. Darkness sparking light, magic snapping against magic, death closing the loop so life could begin again.

  There was fire in that sort of thing. Maybe it was the fire Terric needed to survive.

  Maybe it would kill him.

  “Jesus, Ter,” I whispered, leaning my face into my hands. “What the fuck am I supposed to do?”

  He didn’t answer. This one was all on me. This choice mine alone to make.

  “This shouldn’t be in my hands, this choice,” I said, even though I knew he wasn’t listening. “That’s you. You’ve always been the reasonable one, the thoughtful man. You’ve always been right.”

  I wiped at my face and the wetness there. “The right thing would be for me to leave. Let you heal, hope you heal.” I nodded, and blinked until my eyes cleared enough that I could see him.

  “But I am a selfish bastard, mate. You know that. If there’s a chance you can be here, with me to track Eli down and drag him to hell, I want you here, beside me. I . . . can’t do this alone.”

  It was probably a mistake, this decision I was making. Everything else I’d done in my life had been a mistake, so why would this be any different?

  I sat on the edge of the bed. Watched as my proximity made his chest stop moving, his lungs pause.

  I place
d my hand in the center of his chest.

  “I’m sorry, Ter,” I whispered. “But you were right. I can’t live without you.”

  I didn’t know how, exactly, to do this. Cody had said all I had to do was take his death upon myself just as I’d taken his pain upon myself. That would give life some room to thrive in him.

  Don’t leave me, Ter, I thought. Not yet.

  I kicked free the lid on Death magic. It washed through me with its own pulse, humming in anticipation, feral.

  If I did this wrong, Terric would die. Permanently.

  Cold sweat drenched me. If I did this wrong, there would be no coming back. For either of us.

  Careful, then.

  I let Death magic pour out of my fingertips, cold and slow, sending it to cover his skin in that dark glass-edge light. Then I sent it deeper, into his body. Into his soul where Life magic flickered like a flame drowning in the wind.

  He wasn’t breathing. He still wasn’t breathing.

  Seconds ticked by, piling up into a minute. Two.

  Undeath him, Cody had said. Take his death on as my burden.

  Easy to say, but there was no spell for assuming someone else’s final end. There was no operating manual for the Death magic I carried.

  It was like aiming a flamethrower to light a candle—messy and destructive.

  “C’mon, Ter,” I said softly. “Let it go. Dying isn’t your thing—it’s mine. And I’ve got you now. You can just let go. And come back to me, mate. Please come back to me.”

  Terric exhaled, long and slow, as I gently killed him.

  And then he didn’t breathe again.

  Chapter 20

  SHAME

  Minutes dragged by, measured by my own ragged breathing. But not Terric’s. Terric wasn’t breathing. The Life magic in him had been snuffed, smothered out by the touch of Death magic.

  Come on, Terric, I begged. Breathe.

  Cody had been wrong. Cody had been very wrong.

  I’d killed him. My friend. My soul.

  The rolling clack of a bullet chambering a round rang out in the silence.

  “Shame,” Dash said. “Back away from him now.”

  Terric’s ghost wasn’t pulling free of his body. He wasn’t tied to me like Eleanor and Sunny. But he was not alive either.