Hell Bent

  “Shame,” Terric warned.

  “I should have killed you!” Jeremy swung for my face. Stupid move. I ducked that and buried the knife up to the hilt between a couple ribs, then yanked it out and stepped out of his reach.

  He staggered back, but had enough anger, and whatever other substance in him, that one wound wasn’t going to shut him down.

  I’d gotten what I wanted, though: his blood.

  He stuck his hand in his pocket, reaching for a gun.

  “Stop!” Terric ordered, and a concussion of magic wreaked havoc on the air pressure and my eardrums.

  Jeremy was motionless, tightly frozen from knee to neck in the paralyzing Hold spell Terric had cast. “This is out of control,” he said. “Crazy. Both of you. I won’t stand here and watch you kill each other.”

  “I didn’t come here to kill him,” I said. “I can do that anywhere, anytime I want. And when I do”—I looked Jeremy in the eye and smiled—“I will make sure there are no witnesses.”

  “Shame, you are not helping.”

  I dragged my fingers across the blade, catching up Jeremy’s blood, which he was still leaking quite quickly. Before Terric could start arguing with me, I nicked my finger. With his blood and my blood combined, I drew a Truth spell.

  The strong scent of cherries filled the room, the unmistakable mark of Blood magic being used.

  Jeremy’s eyes widened as the Truth spell spun out from our joined blood, locking us into the binding of Truth, shaped by my hand and will.

  “Do you love Terric?” I asked.

  “Shit.” Terric exhaled.

  Jeremy was sweating. Thing is, a Truth spell is as strong as the user’s will, and I was a very determined man.

  “No,” he snarled through gritted teeth.

  “Do you care for Terric?”

  “No.”

  “Were you planning on using him and his magic for customized drugs for the Black Crane?”

  He was shaking now, his face gone purple-red. “Yes.”

  “Did you ever care for him?”

  “Enough,” Terric said. “Shame, break it. It’s enough.”

  I broke the Truth spell. It fell around his feet like loose ropes that soaked into the carpet and were gone.

  “You piece of shit,” Jeremy said.

  “I’m done,” Terric said. “Done with this. If you don’t walk out that door right now, Jeremy, I’ll call the police and have you forcibly removed.”

  “Police?” I said. “We don’t need the police for him.”

  “Yes,” Terric said, “we do. It is too late at night to be dragging a corpse out back and burying it. Which,” he said as he finally moved away from the fireplace and walked over to stand next to me, “is what will happen if you stay.”

  “You think he’s going to kill me?” Jeremy said.

  “He wouldn’t have to,” Terric said.

  Jeremy finally seemed to hear him. He switched tactics. “Come on, Terric,” he said, pouring on the nice and sweet. “I lost my temper. You know how I get sometimes. I just love you so much I go crazy. If you fix my side, I wouldn’t be hurting so bad. You and I could talk this out. Privately.”

  “Good-bye, Jeremy.”

  Jeremy looked at Terric, then turned his gaze to me. He was a little pale from blood loss, but he must have finally realized he had lost this battle.

  “You know what, Conley?” he said. “You were a lousy lay.”

  Then he turned and walked out of the house, his hand clamped tight over the knife wound. Even managed to slam the door behind him.

  We stood there for a minute, me staring at the door, Terric looking at the new bloodstains on the carpet.

  “What a mess,” he whispered.

  “Want me to follow him?” I offered. “Make sure he gets to the ER or something?”

  “No. Just. Would you stay? For a while?”

  I finally looked over at him. It was like someone had smothered the fire in him. He looked exhausted, pale, and when he spoke, his voice was too soft.

  “Just an hour?” he asked.

  “I’ve got time,” I said. “Maybe you should get some sleep.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “you’re right. You’re probably right.” He walked carefully around the blood and got halfway to his bedroom door before he stopped and came back into the living room. “I’m going to have to burn some memories before I sleep in there again.” He folded down on the couch, facing the back of it.

  The blanket he’d used on me was folded on a chair in the corner of the room. I picked it up and placed it over Terric, who, as far as I could tell, had already escaped into unconsciousness.

  I did not sleep. Spent too much time thinking about relationships and love and how nobody got out of either unscathed.

  After a couple hours, I got up, checked to make sure he was still asleep, then went outside, locking the door behind me. I checked to see if my phone was in my car. It was. I dialed Sunny.

  She picked up on the first ring.

  “This is Sunny.”

  “I need a Hound and a favor.”

  She sighed. “I’ve had zero sleep in the last two days.”

  “I know,” I said. “How are the leads on the syringe working out?” She had been looking into finding Davy just as much as Clyde and the Authority. Maybe more.

  “Nothing solid,” she said. “What favor?”

  “I want a Hound to find Jeremy Wilson and tell me where he is right now.”

  “That’s a job, not a favor.”

  “I’ll pay. The favor is I don’t want anyone knowing I sent them to do this. I want the Hound to contact you, and I want you to tell me when they find him.”

  “Who’s Jeremy Wilson to you, Shame?”

  “He hurt Terric.”

  Out of all the people I knew, Sunny understood running against the rules, running on instinct, and doing everything possible to keep someone you loved safe. She was a Blood magic user. There was no getting out of that discipline without dealing with the darker side of the world.

  “We’ll forget we ever talked about this, I assume?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ll make finding Davy a top priority. Pay me a favor when I want it?”

  “Deal.”

  “I’ll call you back.” She hung up.

  I lit a cigarette and waited. It was cold out, but the sky had cleared, letting stars pierce holes in the heaven.

  Took fifteen minutes, flat. Yes, the Hounds are that good.

  The phone rang. “Shame.”

  “He’s at a bar down on Third Street. You owe me.”

  “I owe you.” I hung up.

  Didn’t take me long to drive down there. I found his Jeep and parked nearby, waiting for the bar to close. Got out of the car and smoked a cigarette, pacing the shadows of the building by his Jeep. Eleanor was with me. She hadn’t tried to talk me out of this.

  I wasn’t going to let her.

  Jeremy walked out of the bar. Maybe drunk, maybe not. Didn’t matter. He strode across the street toward his car.

  Didn’t see me in the shadows.

  When he reached the sidewalk, I sent magic to snake out, dark, silent. It wrapped around his heart, shot up his spine to his brain, paralyzing. His fear washed through me.

  Good.

  I pushed him into the shadows, forcing his feet to move to my command.

  And then I released the hold on the hunger inside me. It consumed. Tore apart his body, snapped his bones, boiled his blood, and burned flesh with fire darker than shadows.

  A second passed. Two.

  No time to scream. No time to beg.

  I drank until there was nothing but ashes falling to the ground.

  I drank until his ghost hovered in front of me, frightened, confused.

  I threw my cigarette into his ashes and crushed it under my boot. Stared straight into his dead eyes. “Welcome to hell.”

  He opened his mouth to scream, but I couldn’t hear him as he faded away. r />
  With a flick of my fingers, even his ashes were gone.

  Problem solved.

  Chapter 34

  I went back to the inn. Found myself sitting at my desk, staring at Eleanor’s angel statue.

  There was one more death I needed to deal with.

  Just before dawn I texted Terric and Zay. Told them I was going out of town to clear my head for a day or two. Mountains or coast, I hadn’t decided yet. And if they needed to reach me, I’d have my phone on.

  Then I stuffed the phone in my sock drawer, made sure the clerk would look after the ferret, and picked up Eleanor’s statue since she made several gestures that she wanted me to do so.

  I left.

  Headed to Seattle. Lost myself to the drive and my thoughts.

  Stopped for coffee once and bought a red rose from a roadside vender. Took me some time to get where I wanted to be. Finally found what I was looking for.

  A graveyard where Thomas had a plot. Where Dessa had a headstone since there wasn’t anything left of her to be buried.

  I had still been in the hospital, sitting in Terric’s room waiting for him to prove he was going to live through another day, when they’d done this.

  She’d told me she had family. But the Hounds who had spied on the burial said only a minister had been there.

  It make me think that was why her brother’s death hit her so hard. He was all the real family she had had.

  I rolled slowly through the graveyard, parked, and got out of the car. Wandered to the southwest corner. I had forgotten to bring the files with me, but I had a decent memory of the layout.

  Eleanor always seemed a little wary in graveyards, though I never understood what she feared. Because, seriously, she was a ghost.

  I finally found the grave. A headstone was already placed and simply read DESSA OLIVIA LEEDS, along with the dates of her birth and death.

  Eleanor touched my hand, where I held the statue of death with angel wings. Then she pointed at the grave.

  “Are you sure?” I whispered.

  She touched my heart and nodded. So I placed the statue there, Death’s weary head lowered, the scythe useless in his hands, as his wings stretched out for a sky he would never know.

  Eleanor stood beside me, her arm cold around my waist.

  I didn’t know how long I stood there and stared. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. It rained, stopped, and rained again.

  Eventually I became aware of a heartbeat that wasn’t mine. Blinked and looked around. Terric stood just a short ways off. Noticed me trying to decide if he was a mirage or not. Came walking over.

  Bastard had followed me up to Seattle. I wondered how many Hounds he’d had tracking me. Probably dozens. I hadn’t been very observant lately.

  But at least he didn’t say anything, just came closer until he was beside me, looking down at her grave with me.

  Everything around me was dead. The grass over her grave, the trees and bushes.

  I remembered the rose in my hand, the only flower I’d ever bought for her. I knelt, but once my knees sank into that cold, wet, dead grass, my hands started shaking. I suddenly realized it was pouring rain, merciless. And very, very cold.

  I placed the rose where I thought her heart might be. But the flower had been in my care for too long. It was withered. Dead.

  Just like everything I touched.

  I wiped rain off my face. “I can’t even keep a flower alive,” I said. “Everything dies. Anyone I . . . care for is going to die. I’ll make them die.”

  “I’m still alive,” he said.

  “Not forever. Not for long,” I said.

  “Maybe.”

  That admission, that it was a very real possibility for me to kill everything I laid a finger on, for me to kill him, did more for me than any attempt at comfort.

  “You can still make choices,” he said. “Choose to be a man.”

  “No,” I said, the memories of drawing on Death magic, the memories of surrendering to its vengeful need filling me with a shudder of pleasure. I wanted that. The pleasure. The oblivion. “I don’t think so. Not anymore.”

  Terric knelt in the rain next to me. Reached out and placed his fingers on the dead rose. Bent his head, like a man grieving, or praying.

  I felt magic draw to him like a mist over the grass. Felt it filling the words he spoke.

  The rose trembled, then washed with life again, velvet red petals, deep green stem and leaves, and roots that reached out and dug deep into the rich earth. Planting there in the newly green grass. Growing. Alive.

  The bushes around us stirred as if caught in a wind, and new sprouts pushed up from the ground.

  He pulled his hand back and caught me with his gaze. He was still human. Still Terric.

  “We do this together,” he said. “You’re not alone, Shame. And, yes, we might not be men anymore,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we have to be monsters. Our fate is still our own.”

  “Do you believe that?” I asked quietly.

  “I’m trying to,” he said. “Because it’s all that keeps the madness away.”

  He stood. Held his hand down for me. I took his hand and pulled myself up onto my feet.

  “Did it hurt?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Admitting you’re not perfect.”

  He scowled at me. “Shut up, Shame.”

  I smiled and shut up because, well, most of the time, Terric was my friend. Sometimes he was more than that. A brother.

  He hung his arm over my shoulder.

  We walked away from the grave. Walked away from the death we’d never be able to leave behind us, walked away from the past we could not escape.

  I guessed we had decided to face the madness together, or die trying. Sounded good to me. Might even be fun.

  I wrapped my arm around his shoulder too and he leaned his head against mine.

  It wasn’t much of a beginning.

  But it was ours.

  Epilogue

  I had waited. Long enough that no one was following me to make sure I wasn’t doing something wrong. Something destructive.

  But now it was night, and darkness was exactly what I needed.

  It wasn’t hard to walk into the facility. I could cast Sleep without using so much magic Terric would know what I was doing.

  So I did.

  I could cast Scatter to interfere with the cameras.

  So I did.

  And then I walked through the high-security facility, counted the doors until I reached the one I wanted.

  Locks are easy to pick.

  Then I was inside. With her.

  Brandy lay in her bed, eyes open, but not seeing this world. They kept her heavily medicated. They said it helped her remain calm.

  And they needed her calm, because they needed her alive.

  So we could bargain with Eli. So we could bargain with his masters.

  But there was no bargaining with monsters. I should know. I was one.

  I stepped over to her bed, my boots loud in the hollowness of the room.

  She didn’t see me. Didn’t hear me.

  That was fine. She wasn’t who I had come here for. She was simply a way to get what I wanted.

  And I wanted revenge.

  I sat on the bed next to her, studied her face, her hair, her lips. She could have been pretty, if there was any sense of humanity looking out from her eyes.

  But she was a shell, cored out and emptied by madness many long years ago.

  I understood madness too.

  I brushed her hair away from her face, then leaned so I was directly in her line of vision even though she didn’t see me.

  I put my hand over her mouth.

  Death can be painful, or . . . sweet. I didn’t need her death, not just yet. But I wanted her pain.

  I reached out with Death magic, letting it cover her. I drank down an ounce of her life.

  Brandy’s body arched and she screamed.

  “Do you feel that, Eli?” I ask
ed, keeping eye contact with Brandy as she trembled. “Do you feel her agony?” I drank more of her life down, Death magic twisting her nerves, catching fire beneath her skin.

  The monster inside me liked it.

  I liked it too.

  “Do you understand what I can do to her?

  “Yes, of course you know,” I said as fear set her heart beating faster. But this was not her fear; she was too far gone to know fear.

  This was Eli’s fear.

  And that was the fear I wanted.

  His sudden cold knowledge of what I could do to the other half of his soul shone through her empty eyes.

  “You know what I can do to her, because you killed just like this. Killed Joshua, killed Dessa, killed Victor. You killed people I loved. With no shred of remorse.

  “But you did not think about who you left behind, injured.”

  I drew the magic away from her, and her body went limp. She was sweating hard from the absence of pain. But her eyes were still open. And they were filled with Eli’s terror. With his knowledge, his attention.

  “You have left me injured, Eli. A very bad mistake. I am the wrong man to hurt.”

  I let the monster forward, which was not hard, as it took up so much room in me now. I smiled as his terror turned to panic. Desperation.

  “I am going to destroy you, Collins. I am going to make you writhe. Consider this your invitation to start running. Away from me, or toward me, it doesn’t matter. Because I am going to make the remainder of your life agony.” I smiled at the pleasure I would gain from that. “And then I will make you beg for death until I am tired of hearing you scream.”

  I placed my palm flat over Brandy’s eyes.

  Death comes for us all. Sometimes when we least expect it. Sometimes at our bidding.

  I sent pain twisting through her again, knowing Eli felt it. Knowing how it tormented him. Knowing how helpless it made him feel. Then pulled my hand away so he could see me. So he could see exactly what I was doing.

  I was surprised to see a second awareness in her eyes. For just a moment, it was Brandy looking at me. Please, she mouthed. Kill me.

  I hesitated. She was begging for mercy. For relief from the tortured life she had been living. But I hadn’t come here to show her mercy. Only to make Eli hurt.