Stone Cold

  Somewhere near Portland. But where, exactly?

  Even with Death magic feeding on my anger and adrenaline, I was fatiguing, my legs shaking.

  Careful, now, Flynn, I thought. Don’t blow this. Just focus on the area surrounding him.

  I concentrated on the Eli heartbeat, then pulled my perception carefully up away from the beat to his body surrounding that beat, to the room surrounding that body, then the building surrounding that room.

  I knew that building. It was part of a shipping yard in St. Johns.

  He was in Portland. Close to Allie and Zay.

  And I could guess why.

  Three Soul Complements died today, but Eli wasn’t done doing Krogher’s dirty work. Allie and Zay, my family, people I loved like siblings, were next on the list.

  And I was so not in the mood to be fucked with.

  I focused to take this shot—twice as far as the last time I’d tried to kill him. Magic flared, blurred; my concentration slipped. I couldn’t keep that tight a focus from this distance. I was too damn tired.

  I came back to my own body standing in the deserted road in the middle of nowhere.

  Blood trickled from my nose, and I wiped it away absently. I had a headache that could swallow a city raging in my head, but I didn’t care. I knew where that bastard was now.

  I hauled my ass back into the SUV and checked to see if any cell phones had been left behind so I could warn Allie and Zay that Eli was about to come knocking.

  Nothing.

  Hell.

  I revved the engine and tore off down the road to Portland.

  • • •

  Eleanor and Sunny had given up trying to talk to me. They sat in the backseat, probably planning my end.

  A phone rang and I nearly hit my head on the ceiling.

  “Jesus,” I yelped.

  It wasn’t on me, not in the side pocket, not in the passenger’s seat. I finally found it in the glove compartment. It wasn’t my phone. Maybe Sunny’s?

  I glanced at the screen. Dash was calling.

  I thumbed it on.

  “What?” I said.

  “Where are you?”

  “Driving.”

  “Shame, listen to me.” His voice was shaking. Yeah, well, he’d just watched me kill Terric. A good man. His friend. And there was the mess I’d made of Mina too. Plus, Sunny was still dead on the couch.

  “Eli’s in Portland,” I said.

  “What?”

  “He’s in Portland. Somewhere near St. Johns. I’m headed there.”

  “How do you know where Eli is?”

  “I found his heartbeat.”

  Dash paused. “Did you call Zay?”

  “No. You do that. Tell them he’s nearby. Tell them he might have those drones with him. To kill them.”

  “Fuck. Okay. Shame, you need to listen to me. What you did to Terric—”

  I chucked the phone at the door. It shattered and fell to the floor.

  That might have been important, Sunny said.

  “Shut up.”

  I was ragged-edge exhausted. The last hour of driving hadn’t exactly been hands at ten and two, safety first. It was everything I could do to stay in the lane.

  This had not been a good twenty-four hours, and before that I’d been dead.

  I wasn’t exactly at the top of my game.

  So I was going to keep one thing ahead of me, one single thing I was going to get done: kill Eli. Nothing else would get in the way of that.

  Shame? a voice whispered from behind me.

  Not Sunny. Not Eleanor.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror.

  Terric sat in the backseat, no blood on his face, no pain in his eyes. He just looked annoyed.

  Pretty much how I expected his ghost would look once it found me.

  Eleanor and Sunny were ignoring him, staring out the window on either side. So either they couldn’t see him, which was odd, or they didn’t want to deal with him, which was more likely.

  “Don’t do this, Ter,” I said, looking away from the anger that flickered across his face. “I didn’t tie you to me. You can move on.”

  You idiot, he whispered.

  I glanced in the mirror again. He was gone. Eleanor and Sunny hadn’t even moved.

  Okay. Apparently I was tired enough to be hallucinating.

  My heart flopped painfully in my chest, slamming against bone. I swore my way through the agony. Heart attack?

  Terric had died and decided to haunt me. Painfully.

  Figured.

  I blinked sweat out of my eyes and kept my foot on the gas. I was less than an hour away from Portland.

  The highway took a bend, following the river. Dawn was wiping the stars out of the sky and leaving behind a swath of pale yellow and gray. Traffic, which had been sparse, thickened the closer I got to the city.

  I didn’t have time for a morning commute. I had a man to kill.

  Traffic crawled down to a dead stop. The highway was blocked, a dozen black cars and a bulletproof box van parked across the road. Police walked between the cars, flashlights in hand, getting IDs. Looking for something. Maybe looking for me.

  Krogher had connections. Police would be just the beginning of what he could throw at me.

  The cops were headed to the truck in front of me. Which meant I’d be next.

  Goddamn. If they thought they could stop me, they were wrong.

  I took a breath, put the car in park, and got out.

  Killing would be easy. But it would also be messy. I didn’t have time for messy.

  What are you doing? Sunny asked. Shame, what are you doing?

  My stocking feet on the cold asphalt made no sound. In the pale light of morning, strangely unnecessary details stood out for me. The hole in my left sock heel, the smell of asphalt and tar, the I LIKE IT DIRTY written in the dust on the side of the truck.

  And the Death magic that sat like a dangerous, but also nearly endless source, of magic in me.

  I didn’t have to be seen if I didn’t want to be.

  I didn’t want to be.

  I drew a quick Illusion, pulled on the magic within me, poured it into the spell. Asphalt cracked, growing things alongside the road turned brown, withered, died as Death drank them down.

  And the Illusion caught silver fire, then fell around me like a spider-silk cloak.

  No one saw me as I walked by. No one even looked my way.

  I strode past the barricade of cars, past the armored van, to the last car on the other side of the roadblock.

  The car was empty and convenient. I checked for keys. Got in, expanded the Illusion spell to cover the car—to make it look as if the car stayed behind.

  The level of magic and skill it took to pull off a spell like that wasn’t taught in kiddie school. It also wasn’t easy.

  Pain stabbed through my brain and I cussed and rubbed at my eyes until I could see some of the road ahead of me. It hurt like hell, but I didn’t let go of the Illusion. Not yet. I turned the car toward Portland.

  ... you shouldn’t be driving, Eleanor said. If you pass out on the road, you’ll kill yourself . . . probably.

  “Do you think I care?” I asked her. “Do you really think I give a damn about that anymore?”

  How about car accidents? she said. You could kill other people too. Innocent people. You can’t tell me some part of you doesn’t care about that.

  I looked over at her. “If I’d thought, for one second, that killing every man, woman, and child in a mile square, either side of that road, would have gotten me what I wanted, I would have drunk them down like cold water.”

  You don’t mean that, she said. You can’t—

  “Shut up, El.”

  Just listen.

  “Don’t. Talk.??
? I wiped the sweat off my face, swerved back in my lane, trying to hold that double Illusion spell just a little longer.

  Shame! Eleanor screamed. Look out!

  Terric stood in the middle of the highway. His ghost, anyway. He was not annoyed anymore. He was furious.

  Turn back, he said, and I heard him even though I shouldn’t at this distance, at this speed.

  Hallucination?

  I was going to hit him. Run him over unless I did something pretty quick to avoid it.

  Would a ghost survive the impact of an automobile?

  I lost the Illusion spell.

  All I heard was Eleanor screaming.

  And all I saw was Terric.

  No time to avoid a collision. I drove right at him, braced for the hit. Ghosts don’t offer a lot of physical resistance.

  The car went right through him. More than that, he went right through me.

  A stream of light and color and blinding pain flooded me, claimed me. Terric and I shared the same space for a split second, shared the same body.

  I’d lived with a ghost for almost four years. Was living with two now, one of whom liked to punctuate her sentences with knives. I knew what it was like to be hit by a spirit, knew what it was like to be touched, knew what it was like to be stabbed.

  This was nothing like that.

  Everything that made Terric . . . well . . . Terric slammed into me. Memories, thoughts, fear, joy, hope, anger, a whirling cascade of faces, buildings, conversations, sensations of his life, the good, the very good, and the very, very bad.

  Like taking down an entire bottle of whiskey in one shot.

  He left me reeling.

  Left me wanting. Wanting him.

  Unfortunately I was still driving.

  And then I blacked out.

  Chapter 21

  SHAME

  I smelled bubble gum and cigarette smoke.

  Opened my eyes. My lashes scraped across fabric. Blindfold. I tried moving my hands. Bound at the wrists with . . . I wiggled my hands . . . silk? Something that felt like a woman’s scarf.

  This wasn’t right. I lifted my hands, ran into metal above me. Dragged my fingers across it, then out to one side, then the other. I was in a box. A metal box. Tied and blindfolded. The vibration of an engine transferred through the box along with the smoky bubble gum smell. Where the hell was I?

  “Morning, sunshine,” a woman’s voice called out. “Are you awake?”

  I knew that voice. Beatrice. One of Allie’s, well, Sunny’s Hounds. Which explained the bubble gum. And the smoke probably belonged to Jack, her partner.

  I licked my lips. At least I wasn’t gagged. I couldn’t tell if Eleanor and Sunny were shoved in here with me. I couldn’t feel them. Didn’t hear them.

  “Why am I in a box?”

  There was some rustling around and then Bea’s voice was just on the other side of the metal.

  “We’re taking you to St. Johns,” she said, slowly and carefully as if I had a concussion.

  “In a box?”

  “Void stone box. You’re pretty toxic right now, so we’re taking precautions.”

  “Who are you working for, Bea?”

  She laughed. “Come on, Shame. How long have you known me? Do you really think I’d take a job on the dark side?”

  “If the money was right?”

  “Okay, true. But there was no money. Dash called. Told us to track your ass down, hog-tie you, and lock you up. Also, to take you back to Portland. You’ve been a bad boy, Shamus. A lot of people aren’t very happy with you.”

  “How did you find me?” I asked.

  “Not hard to find an unmarked cop car driven off into the gully. Thanks for making it supereasy for us.”

  Hell. “Open the lid.”

  “Sorry. I can’t. Just hold tight and think happy thoughts.”

  “Just because I’m locked up doesn’t mean I don’t have magic. You don’t want to be in my way when I break out of this.”

  “Knock yourself out, babe,” she said. “If you can break that box, I’ll give you a standing ovation.”

  Death magic pooled in me, cold and sluggish as an icy stream. Bea wasn’t kidding when she said the box was made of Void stones. I could reach the magic, could even bring it to the tips of my fingers. But it stopped there, like flame under water. Canceled, void.

  I couldn’t use magic to break out. I was tied up, bruised and banged up enough I couldn’t tear my way out of the thing either.

  “Eleanor?” I said quietly. “Sunny?”

  No answer. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

  So I closed my eyes and thought happy thoughts of Eli’s head on a platter.

  After maybe half an hour, the car stopped.

  “Hold tight, sugar,” Bea said. “We’ll just be a minute.” Doors opened, closed. I couldn’t hear people moving or talking, but they weren’t gone for long.

  Another door opened. Sounded like a hatchback.

  “Ready?” Jack said.

  “You going to open this thing?” I asked.

  The box slid, and I heard hands grabbing at the side of it, a couple of grunts as I was lifted, like a corpse in a coffin, out of the car, then carried.

  “Really?” I yelled.

  No answer.

  I was pretty sure I was taken up some stairs, then maybe an elevator. When I finally came to rest, it sounded as though it was on something padded.

  Footsteps backed away. Wooden floor. Silence. Another set of footsteps came near. Then a latch was popped on each side of the coffin and the lid was drawn away.

  The rush of air told me two things: One, I was at the Den, the Hounds’ headquarters in Portland. Two, I hadn’t been sold out.

  “Sorry for the ride,” Cody said. “But you were down-hilling crazy, Shame.”

  “You think that was crazy? If you don’t get this blindfold off me, I’ll show you crazy.”

  He grabbed my arm, hauled back, and helped me sit, but he didn’t help me out of the box yet.

  He did, however, untie the blindfold.

  I blinked, glad that they’d pulled the curtains on all the windows of the place. They’d done a little remodeling since the last time I had been here, put up some walls in the loft space to create a bedroom of sorts. A couple of bunk beds lined the walls, and a few cots scattered in the center. That’s where they’d set the Void stone box—on top of a cot.

  Only Cody was in the room with me. Well, Cody and Eleanor and Sunny, who stood on either side of the box. The black rope that tied me to the two ghosts remained intact.

  Eleanor waved her fingers at me.

  “What in the hell are you thinking?” I asked.

  Cody drew out a knife and cut the scarf—it was pink and silk, probably Bea’s—off my wrists.

  “You were out of control. We needed your attention. Luckily, you drove off into a ditch and made it easy for us to find you and box you up.”

  “Where are Zay and Allie? Are they okay? Have you found Eli? Did he send the drones after them?”

  Cody turned to one of the nightstands while I worked on removing myself from the box. I stood, and then thought better of it, took a step, and sat on a different cot.

  He handed me a glass of water. “Drink.”

  I took it. Drained the glass. God, I was thirsty. And I hurt. Everywhere.

  “I’m under strict orders to make you shower,” he said. “I’ll answer questions while you scrape some of the blood and grime off, okay?”

  “Whose orders?”

  “Dash’s.” He pointed to the door at the far end of the room. “Just shower, Flynn. You look like hell and smell worse.”

  “Allie and Zay?”

  “Still having the baby. Still okay. Dash has people there. They know about Eli. Shower and we’ll do an
other round of Q and A.”

  He pointed again.

  I pushed off the cot and headed to the shower on sore feet and sore muscles. It even hurt to breathe in too deep.

  I heard voices out in the main loft area, men and women, but didn’t bother trying to track them. Now that I was moving, I knew Cody was right. I was filthy, wounded, and exhausted. Fighting Death magic constantly, and letting it take over my body and do whatever it wanted with me did not appear to be a path toward health and happiness.

  Who knew?

  The bathroom was set up like a locker room, without the lockers. No-frills tile floor and walls, three shower stalls and changing areas to the left, bench down the middle, shelves for towels and supplies above mirrors, and sinks to the right, toilet stalls to the back.

  I pushed my way into the first shower, tugged off my T-shirt, which hurt, then my jeans and socks.

  Left it all on the floor in the corner, turned on the water, and got in.

  Holy fuck, it hurt. Every nick, every cut, every bullet hole—and I had an impressive collection in various sizes—burned.

  I braced my arm against the wall and let the water pour over me. When that pain became familiar, I looked around for soap, found a bottle that said BodyWash, and poured some of that fresh hell into my hands and over my skin.

  “Son of a bitch.” I clenched my teeth, scrubbed as hard as I could bear, digging fingers and soap into my wounds. “Goddamn.”

  “You okay in there?” Cody asked.

  “I’m friggin’ perfect, thanks.”

  I washed my hair, did one last sluice, then got out. I wiped my hair back and rubbed my face, then shook water off my hands. I’d forgotten a towel.

  Opened the door. Cody was sitting on the bench. He looked up as I got out, his gaze taking in my wounds.

  “Holy shit, Flynn. You need a doctor, you know.”

  “A towel,” I said. “I need a towel.”

  He pointed to the shelf I was already walking toward. They were perfectly nice towels. I’m sure they were relatively soft. But it felt as if I were sandpapering off a couple layers of skin along with water and blood.

  “Where are we at on the clothing situation?” I asked.

  He lifted a plastic bag out to me. “We asked one of the Hounds to stop by your place and bring you something. Of course, he found your dresser had been turned into a pile of ash, so he did a little thrift-shopping for you. You owe him twenty bucks.”