I picked it up. Was impressed at the weight and craftsmanship.
“Let’s go,” I said softly.
Eleanor looked from me, to the statue, then back to me. She gave me a small smile.
I bought the boots, the statue, and a pack of cigarettes. Made my way toward the front of the store. Passed in front of a stockroom door and noted a guy walking out of it.
Walked past him before I heard the click.
I turned.
Did not expect the Taser in that man’s right hand, nor the gun in his left. I also didn’t expect the other two guys who strode out of the sporting goods and household paint aisles.
I called on magic, just as the guy with the guns raised them both and pulled a trigger.
Heads or tails. Would I be shot or electrocuted? Heads said bullets.
Before I could raise my hand for a spell, before I could lash out and drain their lives down, someone flipped a switch and a million volts of electricity blew through me.
Huh. It was tails: electrocution.
I came to being dragged away from bright lights and basketballs, and into the stale, cold stockroom.
Maybe another door went by. Then the two guys who had my arms over their shoulders dropped me into a chair.
I decided not to let them know I was conscious.
They stepped away and a new set of boots came closer.
“I know you’re awake, Shamus,” Jeremy said. “Don’t make me shoot you to prove it to my men.”
I opened my eyes, tipped my head back. He wasn’t holding a gun, but the four other guys around me were.
Bullets are faster than magic. Even my magic.
“Some reason why you don’t want to face me alone, Jeremy?” I asked. “That’s an awful lot of firepower for a junkie piece of crap like me, don’t you think?”
He was a good five feet away from me, and didn’t come any nearer. “You have two options here.” He started like I hadn’t even been talking. “You either leave town, leave Terric, and leave me the hell alone, or we will kill you.”
I rolled a shoulder and wondered if that blast of electricity and the drugs Eli had shot me up with were going to get in the way of me killing this prick.
“Really?” I said. “Is this how you Black Crane lads take care of your problems? Threats in department stores? Does anyone ever fall for that?”
Jeremy’s eyes narrowed. “I could kill you before you took another breath.”
“What’s stopping you?” I asked. Really, I was curious.
From the fear that slipped across his eyes, I suddenly knew what it was. He wasn’t sure I’d die. After all, I carried Death magic in my bones and that hadn’t killed me. He probably thought a bullet or two wouldn’t work either.
He’d be wrong.
I hoped.
“Let’s get this straight,” he said. “I am giving you one chance to get out of my sight, and out of our territory.”
“I don’t think Terric would like that,” I said.
“Terric isn’t your concern.”
“Well, you’re wrong about that, mate. Terric is my concern. As a matter of fact”—I pushed up onto my feet to the accompaniment of his boys racking the slides and lifting their weapons toward my head—“you have suddenly made yourself my concern. This is not a good move on your part.”
I didn’t wait for him to threaten me again. I didn’t wait for him to snap his fingers so his minions would blow my brains out.
I let the monster free. Death magic lashed out, dark whips hooking tightly into each gunman, cutting down to bone, piercing organs. The rush of drawing on their lives rocked through me in a wave of adrenaline and orgasmic need.
In that split second, four men collapsed to the floor, unconscious, while Jeremy was reaching for the inside of his jacket.
“You pull a gun, and I will kill you,” I said. No more nice. The monster in me was lapping down those men’s lives, even while Eleanor was standing in front of me yelling at me to stop. I wasn’t listening. I wanted more. I wanted Jeremy.
Jeremy smiled. Just half of his mouth cut upward to gave a quick flash of teeth. He wasn’t a stranger to death. Didn’t look afraid of me now. “What would Terric say if you killed me?”
“‘My boyfriend? Again?’”
Okay, that was worth it. He blinked. All that smugness drained away.
“Here’s how this goes,” I said, strolling over to him. “You are going to go back to your bosses, and tell them that if the Black Crane crosses my path, or the path of any one of my friends, I will take it as a personal insult, and I will kill every single person involved in the organization. Every last person. You will tell them that Terric is no longer their toy. They, and you, are no longer allowed anywhere near him. You will tell them that I am watching and that I would be delighted—” I licked my lips and one of the men on the floor screamed and writhed. “—to remove them all, permanently, from this world.”
“You think you have the power here?” His voice shook a little, but he managed some scorn. “Go home to your bottle, Shamus. You’re nothing.”
I nodded, thought about just how easy it would be to kill him, how easy it would be to kill whatever was left of those men on the floor.
Eleanor stood in front of me and pushed her hand on my chest.
No, in my chest. Until her icy fingers wrapped around my heart.
Ow.
She shook her head and then pointed at the unconscious gunmen. Alive. Maybe alive. I didn’t care.
But looking away from Jeremy gave him the time to pull his gun.
Well, that was stupid of me. Stupid of him too, come to think of it.
“You’re a dead man, Shamus.”
I laughed. He didn’t know how true that was.
The fear rolling off him was palpable. He was sweating so hard I didn’t know how he kept hold of the gun.
I reached out with magic.
His finger twitched. Bullets are fast. The silencer smothered the explosion.
Pain blew through my upper arm, as his shot went wide.
Jesus.
Eleanor was already on him, both hands around his gun hand. He stiffened from her icy touch, his eyes wide as his hand went numb.
I tore the gun from his useless hand, pulled the clip, and threw it across the warehouse. The pain in my left arm was excruciating, but I fed it to the Death magic inside me, pain from dying cells, torn nerves, ripped muscle, broken skin feeding my hunger.
A wash of pleasure rippled through me. It was wonderful. Also, nauseating.
“Wrong decision,” I said to Jeremy.
Eleanor let go of his hand and advanced on me, angry. She mouthed, No, then Terric and Now.
Crap. I had no idea how long I’d been gone. I didn’t want Terric to find me here, killing his boyfriend. He had said Victor wanted us right away. He must be looking for me by now.
Plus, I was bleeding.
“So,” I said, “this was fun. You trying to kill me. But if you ever get in my way again, you’ll be dead. I promise you that, mate.”
I turned, started walking, and threw his gun in a trash can. “Do tell your bosses what I said.”
“Fuck you.”
I lashed out with magic and slapped his heart. Hard.
Heard him groan, then retch. Served the bastard right. I hoped he was having a seizure.
I pushed through the doors, then stuck one hand over my arm to stop the bleeding. It wasn’t as bad as I expected. I think Death magic had cauterized it.
I took a little more care watching the people around me and finally headed outside again.
Just in case there were more gunmen watching me, I paused outside the front of the store and pulled the statue out of the bag I’d somehow kept ahold of, trying to look casual. There was a lot of blood drying on my hand.
No gunmen I could see. I scanned for signs of Dessa. If she was following me, she had gotten good at staying out of my line of sight.
Eleanor touched the back of my hand and
pointed at the car. She hadn’t seen any other gunmen either.
I lit a cigarette and crossed the parking lot. Eleanor stayed at a distance from me. She was still angry about me almost killing those men. I didn’t know what to do about that.
I ducked into Terric’s car. Chucked the UGGs in the backseat, then twisted and carefully propped the statue in the seat for Eleanor. “I’m sorry,” I said to her.
She sat next to the statue and shook her head, her eyes sad. She didn’t like it when I lost control.
“Then don’t smoke in my car,” Terric said.
“You made me wear those things.” I turned back around and rolled down the window so I could exhale smoke. “You have to deal with the terrible, terrible trauma they caused me.”
“For God’s sake, Shame. UGG trauma?”
“Look at my hands. They’re shaking.” I held my hand out and rocked it slowly back and forth.
“You have blood on your hand.”
“And on your sweater. Sorry about that.”
“What happened? Are you bleeding?”
“Just a nick. My arm. Besides, aren’t we late?”
“What. Happened.”
“I ran into Jeremy.”
“And?”
“We had a discussion.”
“About?”
“He’s part of the Black Crane, Terric, what do you think we talked about?”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Yes. I do. And you could know it too if you ran his record.”
“I don’t run records on my boyfriends.”
“I think he was counting on that.”
“What about your arm?”
“He shot me.”
“What the hell?”
“Bad aim, though, I think it grazed.” I rolled up the sleeve to look. Okay, so not just a graze. A thumb-sized angry red hole marked my upper biceps. When I twisted my arm to look at the back of it, I discovered the exit wound was twice as large.
“Crap,” I said.
“Put out the cigarette.”
I sighed. Threw it out the window. “Happy?”
“Thrilled.” He pulled a lever to open the trunk, got out of the car, rummaged around back there, then got in the car, slamming the door shut behind him.
He had a red first aid bag.
“I don’t want you healing me,” I said.
“I’m not. I’m going to clean and bandage that so you stop bleeding on my interior.”
He set about doing so with the efficiency of an emergency room doctor. It hurt. I didn’t tell him, because I figured he already knew.
“What did you do to him?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
Quieter: “What did he do to you?”
“Threatened me. Shot me. Tased me. You know, the usual.”
“Tased you too?” He glanced up.
“Black Crane, Terric. Drugs and magic. He’s the drugs, you’re the magic. He wanted to make that clear to me.”
“He said that? Exactly that?”
“He did not say exactly that. He did say he wanted me out of his territory and away from you.”
“Shame—”
“Forget it,” I said. “He might be someone you care about, but one: he shot me and two: he’s using you. For himself, and for the Black Crane. So he and I have decided to agree to disagree.”
“Which means what? You’re both going to kill each other?”
I waited until he’d stuck a thick cotton pad on both wounds, then wrapped my arm in gauze he pulled tight. Didn’t answer him. Because yeah, that was pretty much what we’d agreed upon.
“Have you seen Dessa?” I said to change the subject. “Or Davy?”
“No,” he finally said, dropping the conversation. I hadn’t expected that. Maybe he was having second thoughts about the man. He threw everything back into the bag and tossed it in the backseat. Then he started the car.
“Davy hasn’t reported in to anyone,” he said as he navigated out of the parking lot.
That was odd. Davy had said there was at least one Hound on each of us Soul Complements. I should have seen someone following us, and thought it would be him.
“Did she say anything when she dropped me on your doorstep?” I asked.
“Dessa?” He shook his head. “Just that she’d found you wasted and wandering and was leaving you at my door. Said you were my problem now.”
“Now?”
“That was my reaction,” he said. “Eli said she knows where he or his Soul Complement is?”
“Yep.”
“Doesn’t line up with her story.”
“I know.”
“If you had to put money on it, who’s lying?” he asked.
I thought about that for a second or two. Eli I had some history with. Dessa I’d barely met, but I was more inclined to trust her over Eli. “Could be both. Dessa knows more than she’s telling us. Or Eli might think she knows something her brother knew before Eli killed him.”
“Someone needs to teach him rule one of negotiation: don’t kill the people who can give you the information you need,” Terric said.
“He said he kills whoever they tell him to kill.”
“And you believe that?”
“I believe that’s one of the reasons he does it. I also believe he’s enjoying it. Joshua was a Closer. Eli’s had a vendetta against Closers ever since Victor Closed him and took all his memories and ability to use magic away years ago.”
“So you think he’s going to hit Closers?”
“I’d say it’s on his list. Don’t know if it falls in with the plans of the people who have him captured.”
“If people have him captured,” Terric added.
Yeah, I’d thought of that too. I lit another cigarette, got three drags off it. Then dug around in his very clean glove compartment, looking for sunglasses.
Even though there were heavy clouds today and it was only half past seven in the morning, the light was too damn bright for me. Apparently Tasers and poison were hard on my delicate constitution.
Terric pressed a button on the ceiling and a pocket opened.
“Thanks.” I pulled the sunglasses out of the pocket and put them on. Didn’t care if I looked ridiculous, just as long as my eyes were covered.
I hunkered down in the seat. I missed my coat.
“If you’re cold, I have a coat in the back.”
“Does it match the boots?”
“Maybe.”
“Pass.”
Victor used to live in a very nice home beneath the Japanese Gardens. A home that was built back in the early nineteen hundreds to guard the Faith well beneath it.
We’d pretty much demolished the place trying to survive the apocalypse, and while I’d been told it had been repaired and rebuilt, Victor had moved into a modest one-level home with a couple of acres and a small creek behind it.
He said it was easier on him because of his bad eyesight. I think he just hadn’t ever gotten over his house being blown to bits by magic.
In some ways, he hadn’t gotten over how much the world had changed now that magic was healed and reduced to a fraction of its strength.
Well, unless you were a Breaker.
Terric pulled up into the drive. We both got out.
“Want the statue?” I asked Eleanor.
“What?” Terric said as he walked to the front door.
“Nothing.”
He shot a look back at me, then kept walking.
I nodded toward the car. Eleanor shook her head.
So we strolled up the path. Terric was already walking inside the house and I slipped in after him.
“Thank you both for coming.” Victor wore a sweater with a shirt collar beneath it, and jeans, and of course, his heavy glasses. He shut the door behind us and turned the lock. “Let’s sit in the living room.”
I chose an overstuffed chair, sat there feeling a little bit like the pupil I once was, and tried to keep my hands and hungers to myself. Terric set
tled on the couch near me, which both helped and, for some reason, annoyed me.
Victor walked with that slow, old man pace he’d settled into since he’d lost almost all of his sight.
“To begin with,” he said, “I didn’t know Eli Collins was involved until yesterday when Joshua’s body was found. I want you both to know that.”
“Victor,” I said. “A confession? My, how the tables have turned.”
“It is not a confession. I am simply clarifying why I haven’t told you this before,” he said. “We know who Eli’s Soul Complement is.”
He stopped at a rolltop desk in the corner and retrieved a file folder. That, he handed to Terric.
“Who?” I asked.
Terric scanned the file, then looked up. “Brandy Scott.” He tipped the file so I could see the picture clipped there. Short dark hair, almond eyes, shy smile with a dimple. She didn’t look old enough to drive.
“How old is she?” I asked.
“That picture is from a while ago,” Victor said. “She’s fifteen in it. She’s thirty-five now.”
“Mental institution?” Terric said.
“That,” Victor said, “is what I needed to tell you. We’ve known Eli had a Soul Complement. Have known it for many years. They were even tested. But Brandy wasn’t stable. We did everything we could, medicine, magic, counseling. But she never recovered from the test to see if she and Eli were a match. Over the years her condition has grown worse. The last report we have from her doctors is that she has grown less and less responsive.”
“You took her from him, didn’t you?” I said, putting it all together. “When you Closed Eli’s memories away, you made him forget her.”
Terric glanced up at Victor over the file. Waiting.
It was, if you thought about it too long, a horrifying thing to do. Like cutting a person in half straight down the middle.
Victor had been standing behind the chair that matched mine. His fingers squeezed the top of the upholstery; then he let go and walked around, sat and exhaled tiredly.
“Mr. Collins . . . Eli is brilliant.” He nodded. “We have the tests that prove it. But he is also unstable and dangerous.”
“A sociopath,” Terric said.
“Yes,” Victor said. “Soul Complements can make magic break its own rules. We’ve always known that. Even when magic was strong, Brandy and Eli were a danger then. To themselves. To the Authority. To mankind.”