Hell Bent

  “The cougar is Simone Latchly, and the man with her—he’s older than me, Shame—is Brian Welling. They’re out of San Diego. The other couple is from Arizona. Anthony Pardes and Holly Doyle. You should know that. You were Head of the Authority.”

  “I left the details to my underlings.”

  “Nice try. I know what you did your first year. I was there with you, remember?”

  What I’d done was worked my ass off to keep the normal people in the world from killing every Authority member they found out about. There was a lot of anger, mistrust, and blatant hate in the first year of everyone getting their memories back.

  If you looked at it right, I’d saved a lot of lives that first year. Well, Terric and I had.

  Healing magic had proved that secrets, grudges, hurt feelings, and lawsuits do not die easily.

  I just shrugged and rubbed my thumb over the edge of the ring on my finger. We were well out of the dead zone. Magic pooled naturally and flowed through the networks and pipelines far belowground.

  Easy to access as it ever was.

  My hunger, which must have been snuffed out by being around Terric, then poisoned, covered in Void stones, and dragged to a nonmagical zone, was gnawing on me again.

  I needed to consume. Now.

  Davy was, strangely, one of the only people who didn’t make me want to drain him. He was right about magic changing him. I could sense it in his heartbeat too. He still carried a trace of the tainted magic that had almost killed him. A lot of magic poured through his body, in his blood and bones. It didn’t give him the power to break magic, like Terric and me. It was simply keeping him alive and, therefore, not easily consumable.

  Davy was not quite a real boy.

  Eleanor was in the back of the truck, immune to wind or cold or rain.

  I didn’t have the concentration to draw on the vegetation rolling past at seventy-five miles an hour. But the truck engine was burning. Working hard. Changing mass into energy. Fire, heat. I could work with that.

  “Listen,” I said. “It’s been a long and weird night. I’m going to catch some z’s. I assume you’re taking me back to Portland, and maybe to Clyde or whoever is on top of the information coming in on Joshua’s death?”

  “Something like that,” he said.

  “Right. Wake me when we get there.”

  I closed my eyes and very carefully drew on a thin burn from the engine. Not so much to kill it, but enough that Davy’s gas mileage was going to go to hell.

  I didn’t really sleep, but I did my best to be still, to drink the heat and fire and destruction off the truck, and leave Davy and every living thing around me alone.

  I’d gotten good at pushing the world away. At making people and anything even remotely resembling life, anything that I might care about, something that existed at a far distance from me.

  Worked on doing that now. Closed out the world. Closed out the motion, the sounds. Made all the edges soft and far, far away.

  And when I had finally done that, finally settled into that dark, padded place where me and my insanity could sit down for tea, all I saw was Dessa’s face, her laughter breathing over me so close it dug in like a sweet, sharp dream.

  Chapter 10

  Where we did not go: to the police. To the office. To the Overseer.

  Where we did go: to the morgue.

  And yes. Terric was there, waiting for us. He looked clean, showered, clothed in dark jeans and a tight black T-shirt. Like his night hadn’t been full of ropes, guns, and trunk rides.

  Or, you know . . . maybe it had been.

  “Davy, Shame.” Terric held out a cup of coffee for each of us.

  I took mine but hesitated before drinking it. “If you spiked this, I’ll make your life miserable.”

  “It’s coffee with five sugars and an ungodly amount of cream,” he said.

  I took a sip. Man was speaking the truth. It was sweet, creamy, unpoisoned heaven.

  “Why so twitchy?” he asked.

  “Been running bad odds on my likelihood of being poisoned lately.”

  “So she did slip you a roofie,” Davy said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Who?” Terric asked. “What ‘she’ slipped you a roofie? When? At the bar?”

  I could tell he was getting worked up. Not because of his tone or heartbeat, but his control of Life magic was slipping, sort of covering him in a glowing white light.

  It occurred to me that having a Life magic user like Terric lose control in the middle of a morgue might be option C for how to kick off the zombie uprising.

  “Just a misunderstanding with a beautiful redhead,” I said. “No worries. Davy was watching my back.”

  “Really?” Terric turned to Davy. “How long have you been doing that?”

  Davy gave a loose shrug. “Not long.”

  “Davy,” Terric began in his boss voice.

  “Hey!” I said. “Isn’t there a dead body we should be looking at? I mean, come on, Terric. Put your issues on the back burner for a minute. This isn’t always about you. Have you no decency?”

  Terric turned toward me so Davy was behind him. Davy shook his head at me and rolled his eyes.

  “Joshua’s here, isn’t he?” I asked.

  That seemed to bring Terric back to the business at hand. “Yes. Davy, you don’t have to come in if you don’t want to.”

  “I want to,” he said.

  So we all followed Terric down the gray hall to a door at the left. Then through the doors and into a room with a metal wall of twelve closed drawers, each big enough to hold a human. Paperwork hung from a few of the drawers, and when I took a second to glance at the rest of the room I noted medical equipment, sinks, lights, and movable tables.

  All as clean as could be.

  Well, except for the harder-to-reach corners and tiles where vague proof of the day’s business lingered.

  You’d think I’d feel right at home here. All this death. All those dead bodies cooling on the shelf.

  I didn’t. It gave me the goddamn creeps.

  Terric strolled over to the metal drawers and tugged on the one to the far left, bottom. No paperwork there. As a matter of fact, I noted he pulled out a set of keys and unlocked it before tugging it open.

  “Keys? Don’t those belong to Clyde Turner now?” I asked.

  “I haven’t had time to turn everything over to him yet,” Terric said. “Was going to finish that up today.”

  He pulled the drawer open.

  Thankfully, Joshua was draped with a sheet, leaving only his head uncovered.

  Still, it wasn’t easy to look down on a man who I’d last seen laughing at a birthday party.

  Terric was calm, steady. He handled death a hell of a lot better than I did.

  Bastard.

  “They initially said it looked like a heart attack,” he said. “So that’s what I’m letting out to the media and police. For now. There are some marks I want you to see, Shame. And, Davy?” He glanced up at Davy, his hand on the edge of the sheet. “Are you sure you want to stay?”

  “Even more now that you’ve asked me twice,” Davy said.

  Terric drew the sheet down to reveal Joshua’s bare chest and stomach.

  Carved into his skin with a thin, artistic hand were spells. Pain. Binding. Death.

  “Jesus Christ,” Davy breathed.

  I glanced up, met Terric’s gaze. Even though I couldn’t hear his thoughts, right then, right there, he and I had an agreement: kill the son of a bitch who had done this.

  “Shame,” Terric said, maybe more for Davy than me, “do you recognize this signature?”

  See, here’s the thing. Every magic user has to draw glyphs, or symbols, that in turn magic fills and acts upon. And just like handwriting, every magic user has a unique signature. The way I cast Light doesn’t look exactly the same way Terric casts Light.

  Hounds, like Davy, are trained in knowing every magic user’s signature. They spend a lot of time keeping up o
n such things, and there were databases where each magic user had to register his or her signature.

  But I didn’t need a database to know who had killed Joshua.

  “Eli Collins,” I said.

  Davy’s heart kicked up into fight-or-flight mode, the kind of sweat-terror you fall into when realizing the nightmare didn’t go away when you turned on the lights.

  “Davy,” Terric said in a tone that pushed Davy’s heartbeat down a notch. “Do you agree?”

  Davy nodded. “That’s his work. I’d swear on it.”

  The door opened.

  We all turned, Davy with his hand on his hip—was he carrying a gun now?—Terric with his left hand casting a spell, and me with my right hand already through a spell, only the cracking red static across my rings holding the magic from filling it.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” Dessa said as she sauntered in without batting an eye at any of the near deaths we were aiming her way.

  “Shame,” she said, “want to introduce me to your friends here?”

  “No.”

  She stopped about halfway across the room. “Look, I’m unarmed. Well, I have these guns.” She reached inside her jacket and Davy pulled a gun.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “I’m going to put them on the counter here, so you don’t have to worry about it,” she said.

  “Let her,” Terric said.

  “Fine,” Davy said. “Slowly.”

  She reached into her jacket, pulled her guns, slowly, one by one, and placed them on the counter.

  “Step away from it.” Davy sounded like he’d done this more than once. Over the past three years of Hounding for the police, I assumed he had.

  She stepped away and even kept her hands out to the side. “So, were they killed by magic?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Why the hell are you here?”

  “You know why.” She took a couple steps closer. “Also, we forgot to set our lunch date.”

  Terric lowered his hand, then, to me, “Shame.”

  I sighed and let go of the spell. I shook my hand and a loud crack of electricity lashed out to the floor in a red arc, the pull on magic interrupted like a fuse shorting out.

  Dessa’s eyes went a little wide and she paused before coming any closer. I noted Davy did not put away his gun.

  “Her name is Dessa,” I said. “She never told me who she works for. If I had to guess?” I gave her the up-down, gauging her with sober eyes. “I’d say government.”

  “Very good,” she said. “Dessa Leeds,” she said to Terric. “And I know you’re Terric Conley, and you’re Davy Silvers. What I don’t know is who the dead person is.”

  “Why should you?” Terric asked.

  “She shouldn’t,” I said.

  “I’ll make it worth your while, Mr. Conley,” she said.

  “Ha! Barking up the wrong tree, sister,” I said.

  “How?” he asked.

  “I have information,” she said, “about the movement against Soul Complements.”

  Terric weighed her comment and, as I expected he would, decided the information and possible safety of others was worth the risk. “I won’t give you his name,” Terric said.

  “That’s fine,” she said. “I just want to see his injuries.”

  Terric nodded.

  I sighed again. So not the way I would have let this go down. I missed being in charge.

  Terric was on the far side of the drawer, I stood near the head of it, and Davy was on the other side, closest to Dessa.

  She walked over, and paused nearest me.

  I folded my arms over my chest and watched her while she studied Joshua’s wounds. Okay, I’m not a sentimental guy—not really. But I’ve always seen pain as a very personal kind of thing. Tell someone you’re hurting, and you’ve just told them how you are vulnerable.

  So I did not like letting Dessa, no matter how nice she was, stare at my friend’s dead body. Stare at the wounds that had proved his final weakness.

  I expected her to keep her feelings to herself, but the expression on her face was clear and honest: sorrow.

  “These marks,” she said. “They’re from a blade—a knife—aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” Terric said. I didn’t know if he was watching me or watching her, because I refused to take my eyes off her.

  She shook her head, as if she didn’t want to deal with what was right in front of her. “And magic. They’re spells, aren’t they? The only one I recognize is Binding there.” She pointed to a Celtic-knot-looking design carved between the Death and Pain symbols.

  “They’re spells,” Terric said.

  “And they killed him?” She finally looked up. Not at me, at Terric.

  Terric’s body language shifted. He was measuring her just the same as I had. And he’d come to the same conclusion. She knew something about this. Something that was causing her sadness.

  “My brother was found like this,” she said. “Dead. With spells carved into his chest. Just like these.”

  “You never said that,” I said.

  “I was going to show you, remember?”

  “Who’s your brother?” Davy asked.

  “He was a Closer,” I said.

  Davy nodded. We’d had so many threats against Closers over the years, the death rate was in a much higher percentage than other magic users.

  “His name was Thomas Leeds,” she said. “He worked in Seattle.”

  Terric frowned, searching his memory. “I think I met Tommy once, briefly. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Then he pulled the sheet up to Joshua’s chin and slid his body back into that endless cold.

  “What can you tell us about your brother’s killer?” he asked.

  “Not a lot,” she said. “He used to be a part of the Authority. That’s all I know, other than he may be in this area.”

  Since they’d found Joshua’s body in a parking garage downtown, yeah, I’d say Eli was in the area.

  “And about the government looking for Soul Complements?” he asked.

  “I’ll tell you what I know if you help me find who did this.” She pointed toward the drawer.

  “I am not in a position to guarantee you anything along those lines,” he said.

  Funny, that’s pretty much exactly what I’d told her. I tilted a told-you-so look her way.

  “Well, I’m going to be looking for the killer. Which means I’ll probably be getting in your way. I might even take my story to the police, or to the media. Blow the whole secret about magic being used to kill people right out of the water. I’m sure the citizens of Portland would be thrilled to find out all their fears about magic, and the mysterious Authority, are true.”

  “Blackmail, darling?” I said. “Really? How will that help your hunt? I don’t think having cops and reporters crawling over every move is going to give you time to find anything except a good lawyer.”

  “Either I’m in on finding the man who killed my brother and your friend there, or I’m going to make sure that we’re all out.” An ultimatum. Gutsy move.

  I opened my mouth to tell her she was out of luck.

  “Then you’re in,” Terric said.

  I kept my surprise to myself. “Wonderful,” I muttered.

  “Good,” she said, looking surprised at his decision too. “Good. Where do we start?”

  “We’ll need to see if there are records on your brother we can pull,” Terric said. “Did you drive here?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can follow us downtown to the office.” He locked the drawer, then started toward the door, pausing only to take her guns and shove them in his pockets.

  “Those are my guns,” she said.

  “Not while we’re working together, they aren’t,” he said without looking back.

  Have I mentioned there are moments when I really, really like that guy?

  “They’re not my only guns,” she said.

  “Then you can give me the rest at
the office,” Terric said.

  Davy just shook his head. “You have no idea what you’re getting into, Leeds.”

  “Don’t I?” she asked as she followed Terric. “All right. How about you fill me in?”

  “I think you’ll find out soon enough.”

  He followed behind her. I noticed Davy did not put his gun away.

  Me? I paused next to the door. Let them all get a distance down the hall. Then I said a prayer for Joshua. Hell, said a prayer for the rest of us while I was at it.

  I had a bad feeling we’d need all the help we could get.

  Chapter 11

  Davy was gone before any of the rest of us, slipping down the street and rumbling away in that big old truck. I figured he was going to report Joshua and Dessa and everything else to the Overseer.

  We had maybe fifteen minutes tops before Clyde Turner found out and locked us out of the records, and any- and everything else he thought we shouldn’t be digging around in.

  I swung into the passenger seat of Terric’s car.

  “Fifteen minutes?” I said.

  “Until?” he asked.

  “The Overseer tells Clyde to lock us out of this case.”

  “Clyde might say no.”

  We were headed to the office. I noted it was still dark out, and checked the dashboard clock. Four in the morning. Jesus, I hated going to work this early. Or at least, I assumed I did. I didn’t think I’d ever gone into work this early.

  “ . . . for me would you?”

  “What?”

  “Dash. Call him. Tell him to meet us down there.”

  “At the office,” I said, taking Terric’s cell phone.

  “Yes. Don’t you ever listen to me?”

  “Every word.”

  I dialed. Dash, that overachiever, answered before the first ring was done.

  “Spade,” he said.

  “Hey, Dash, this is Shame. Terric wants you to meet us at the office as soon as possible.”

  “Trouble?”

  “You could say that.”

  “I’ll be there in five.” He hung up.

  “Be there in five,” I said. “Where does that kid live?”

  “Loft space just a few streets down. So, she poisoned you?”

  “Well, yes. I let her poison me.”