Wrong Ways Down

  He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. He would not.

  Fuck … her body against his, her voice in his ear, the taste of her skin, her legs wrapped around him …

  “This is your chance. You can have her. Any way you want, as many times as you want. She’ll love you for—”

  It weren’t even a thought. Not a conscious impulse. But his hand closed around Brian’s throat, squeezing hard.

  Because no. No, she wouldn’t. That were the problem. She wouldn’t love him, not the right way. Not the way he wanted. Even iffen she said it, it would be a lie.

  And he didn’t want that. He didn’t want just her body, some fucking blow-up doll with her face. Iffen he ever had Chess in his bed—not that he ever would, he knew that, but if—he wanted it to be real. True. He wanted to look in her eyes and see her there, Chess, looking at him. Wanting him, not some fake bullshit magic version of him, not some dull-eyed manipulated version of her. He wanted her to choose him, and iffen she ever said she loved him, were he ever to hear those words in her voice, he wanted it to be Chess saying em. The real Chess. His Chess.

  Having it any other way—having her any other way … that was the wrong way. And he were not fucking doing it the wrong way. Not with her.

  Through the haze of anger and determination and sex he saw Brian sink to the floor, felt Brian’s Adam’s apple hard against his palm, Brian’s pulse pounding as his blood struggled to get past Terrible’s fist. Fucker. Motherfucker. Bad enough what he’d done to the whores. That were enough for Terrible to want to slice open he stomach and yank out his guts. But now he were using Chess to sell his shitty magic? Trying to use Chess to get Terrible to make a deal. Trying to use the way Terrible felt about Chess. She weren’t even there, Brian had never even met her, and he was using her. Trying to turn Terrible into someone just as bad as him, causen what he were suggesting Terrible do to Chess were no different from what they’d done to the whores. They was trying to take him down with them.

  And fuck Roley, too. Terrible shoulda killed him harder.

  But what else would shitbags like them do? He ain’t could forget what that magic came from, what they’d done to create it. He held on to that anger and used it to remember: to remember Slick’s body—aye, both Roley and Brian said they hadn’t done Slick, but still—and Essie and Clapper Sue and Drina, and suddenly he didn’t feel turned on any more. He felt sick. Manipulated.

  And furious. Furious at Brian and Roley and all them in this building who’d made that magic. Furious at himself for forgetting even for a second, and for actually … for enjoying it for a second, for letting it work on him. Maybe he couldn’t help it—he had the feeling he probably couldn’t have, that iffen he were to ask Chess on it she’d say there were no way to keep from feeling anything with magic like that—but he shoulda remembered sooner, shoulda thought on it before he opened that door.

  That magic came from someplace wrong, from something wrong, and disgust rolled his stomach and spread through the rest of him. And he encouraged that disgust, kept thinking on how that magic came to be, because being turned on by it made him sick.

  He’d learned from Chess that the best way to kill a spell was to throw it in a river, or wash it down a sink. Anything to cover it with running water. But the room—his eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and he were still sweating but he’d managed to make the images in his head fade some—was loaded with magic, boxes piled up the walls, row after row and layer after layer. Looked like they reached the whole length of the building. No wonder he felt it so strong.

  Burning spells weren’t always right to do, so Chess said. Could spread the ashes or some shit. But he had the thought that sex spells weren’t the kind he had to be that careful with. People kept em in their houses and all.

  No choice, anyroad. He had to destroy the spells. And he ain’t at all minded the idea that destroying the spells would destroy the whole fucking building, neither. What they deserved.

  He dragged Brian by the throat over toward one of the boxes against the wall, a half-open one, and peered in. The spells were just little cloth bags, like most he’d seen. Good, then. They’d burn easy.

  Pain erupted in his side. What the—oh. He’d loosened his grip on Brian, and the fucker had taken the chance and jumped at him, knocked him into one of the file cabinets.

  Woulda been a mistake iffen Brian weren’t gonna die anyway, but he was. And it weren’t like fighting Brian was hard. Wouldn’t have been hard even if Brian ain’t still had his wrists taped together behind him.

  Terrible grabbed Brian’s shirt—Brian was tryna get off him to run away—and threw him back down to the floor. Brian opened his mouth to yell, but Terrible was faster; he crouched down and dug his knee into Brian’s chest, tugging the roll of duct tape out of his bag at the same time. Only took a second to tear off a piece and stick it over Brian’s mouth.

  He ain’t had a lot of time, he knew, but he couldn’t stop himself. He leaned down real close, so he could look Brian right in the eye. So Brian could see what was coming. “Still wanting make a deal?”

  Brian nodded, the jerky, too-fast nod Terrible saw a lot in people scared shitless. Hope lit his eyes up. Terrible couldn’t wait to see it die.

  “How about this one. How about you make it so them dames never got raped, and I forget the whole thing. You do that? Make it so it never happened? Give em back what you fuckin took?”

  Watching Brian’s face fall ain’t should have felt as good as it did, but it did anyway. Watching the fear come back into his eyes stronger than before felt even better.

  Terrible shook his head. “Guessing there ain’t a deal to make then. Too bad for you, aye?”

  He taped Brian’s ankles tight together—Brian weren’t ever gonna walk anywhere again—and dragged him over to sit opposite the door. He could watch what happened next.

  Lighter fluid oughta do it. He had a new bottle in his bag. The smell of it, sharp and somehow cold, filled the air as he squirted it over the spells, opened the file cabinets and rifled through their contents till he found what he wanted. That file he put in his bag. The rest he threw all over the floor. One way or another they was losing all the knowledge they had written down, on all of their magic.

  Just like they were gonna lose their building and their business, and as many of their lives as he could swing.

  He emptied the bottle, making sure he left trails of lighter fluid down the entire length of the room and across the width, making sure each box of sick magic had at least some on it, especially the boxes at the bottom of the stacks. The windows along that outside wall was covered in iron bars, but he could still get at em; he wrapped a rag from his pack around his fist and punched through a couple of the panes to make sure there’d be enough air to feed the fire.

  Voices from downstairs. They’d arrived. Terrible glanced at Brian to make certain he were visible through the open doorway. The handle of his knife practically vibrated in his hand, ready to get used. And over it all that magic still throbbed, his skin still felt all stretched out, his heart still beat too fast. Like hundreds of soft little hands all over him, stroking the back of his neck, his chest, reaching into his jeans. He couldn’t stop being turned on, and he couldn’t stop hating that, and feeling sick from it. All that shit in his head, those memories he never, ever let himself think on, and they were all there again, and he saw Brian on the floor and heard those voices coming closer and it was their fault he was seeing that shit again. Their fault. They’d done this to him.

  Before he knew what he was doing he were in front of Brian again. The part of him that still had control over itself tried to stop him, but it was too late. He knew it was too late causen he drowned that part, that little voice, out without any effort at all.

  It’d felt good punching Brian before. Now it felt even better. All that fucking energy all over him, that thick sex magic, his anger, the memories … it all gathered itself up behind his punch, and he knew he was smiling as Brian’s bones crunched ben
eath his fist.

  The voices behind him, louder. Almost there. Terrible turned—it were all so easy, like everything around him ran slow, like he weren’t even thinking at all just moving by instinct, like being peaceful—and watched em come at him.

  The first one had a knife, some little pocketknife wouldn’t hurt even if he managed to stab Terrible with it. But he wouldn’t. Instead he got his wrist grabbed and twisted; Terrible felt it snap, and kept twisting until the elbow snapped, too, until the dude whose arm it was crumpled to the ground and another one was coming that Terrible could hurt.

  That were all he wanted to do, now. Hurt them. And they were lining up to give him the chance. Dumb fucks.

  One of em jumped at him; he ducked to the side, grabbing the dude’s neck as he did and throwing him back so he slammed into the one behind him.

  Terrible didn’t let go. He drove his knife into the dude’s chest with his left hand, yanked it out and stabbed the other one just the same, shoved the second one to the floor and stomped on him while reaching out to grab another.

  Hands clutching his arms, trying to hold him back. Like that were gonna happen. He spun, already throwing a punch. It connected with that sharp, hard little pain, that jolt up his arm that made him feel alive. That felt right.

  Somebody else’s fist hit him in the jaw, and that felt the same way. Good. Right. It fed the rage inside him, made the flames in his head run higher and his focus stronger. Made the memories play faster. More and more of em, like white noise in the back of his head, pictures going faster and faster til they was just a blur. And they hurt, too. A different kind of pain. One inside him.

  One that wouldn’t go away, and even knowing how fucking dumb it was he sometimes thought—not consciously, not really knowing he was thinking it, but it were there in his head like an instinct just the same—that maybe, maybe it might this time. Like maybe this time he could beat em all and get rid of the memories too, make it all go away for good. Like maybe if he hit hard enough, drew enough blood, killed em dead enough, got hurt enough, he could end it.

  But just then he weren’t thinking. He was moving. He weren’t feeling anything but pain and how good it felt to cause it, making them hurt like he hurt, and every time his fist slammed into something, every time he felt blood on his skin, he felt lighter inside.

  Sharp pain on his arm where somebody slashed at him. Sharp pain in his leg where one of em kicked him. All of it only made him think sharper, made his vision so bright and clear it was like a spotlight shone on each of em and he saw everything. Droplets of blood and spit flying through the air, their wide eyes, their open mouths. His left hand kept moving, guiding his blade into doing its own damage. He cut somebody’s throat with it, shoved it into somebody’s stomach.

  And they fell around him, which pissed him off more. They weren’t really hurting him. They couldn’t beat him. Sometimes he wished somebody would, or at least that somebody could come closer than these fucks did, than anyone he’d taken on did. Sometimes he wished somebody could or would actually do some damage to him, for real. Damage outside, stead of what them had done to him inside years ago.

  But they didn’t. They never could, it seemed. And he wasn’t willing to just let them beat him, neither; what was the fucking point in that? He ain’t wanted to give up. Far from it. He just wanted a real match.

  One that would take more from him than this, because while he was still getting worked up, they were done. He ducked a punch—a slow, clumsy one, easy—and threw one of his own. He grabbed a leg while its owner tried to kick him and twisted it, dropped to the floor to deliver another punch, and it was over. Not one of them knew how to fight for shit, and his blood still rushed in his ears, his breath still came hard and fast, his head still buzzed, and there was nothing else to do.

  Except hear the sirens. They was coming after all.

  It was an effort to pull himself back; his body ain’t wanted to stop, his mind ain’t wanted to return from wherever it went. Brian still sat there, whimpering behind the tape, and it was hard not to kill him. Specially since he were gonna die anyway.

  But no. Much as he wanted to—his chest heaved and his knife was still ready in his hand, it’d be so fucking easy to cut Brian’s throat and watch the life disappear from his eyes—he couldn’t. He sucked in a deep breath, closed his eyes for a second he couldn’t afford, and clenched his fists, clenched his arms, tightened very muscle he could until his mind calmed up again.

  Then he bent down and scooped Brian off the floor, flung him over his shoulder. Brian made some noises under the tape, but who gave a fuck what he were tryna say.

  Terrible stopped in the doorway, pulled his lighter out of his pocket, and flicked it open. The sirens outside were louder; flashing red lights showed in the distance through the iron-barred windows. Soon they’d be there. Time to get gone. He thumbed the flame into life and touched it to one of the fluid-covered files near the door. Fire leapt from it; fire ran in hot orange streams across the room, in thin rivulets like scribbled pencil lines as the lighter fluid went up, across the floor, around the bodies, over and into the boxes of spells.

  His phone beeped. Timmy Vee telling him he had one minute. Aye, then. He closed the door on the growing fire, twisted the handle to make certain it were locked, and jammed one of the other keys on Brian’s ring into it. Just in case.

  Then he ran. Down the hall, down the stairs, past all them machines, lugging Brian over his shoulder. The countdown he’d started in his head when he got Timmy Vee’s text told him he had maybe twenty seconds when he hit the door; he burst through it just as the flashing ambulance lights washed bright over the parking lot. Fuck.

  He threw Brian into the Chevelle and gunned it for the fence. Not enough time to try and get past the ambulances. Not even enough time to get out that front gate if the ambulances weren’t coming, because his countdown hit single digits, and as the Chevelle burst through the chain-link and left rubber on the street the Peace Factory exploded behind him.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  HE PULLED UP outside the apartment complex in Cross Town five minutes later. The complex where Archie lived, for real—well, not Archie, but Tom Grant. According to the text Terrible got, Tom Grant lived in Building C, in apartment 2022. And Terrible was real fucking happy to be seeing Tom again. The magic he’d felt from that spell at the Peace Factory had faded, but the memory hadn’t, and he’d calmed down some but not all the way.

  It had ended too soon. His muscles still burned. He weren’t done yet, he wanted to … to finish it. To beat on something or someone else, because those shitbags at the Peace Factory hadn’t been enough.

  Tom wouldn’t be enough, neither, and he couldn’t kill Tom, but it were still gonna be fun.

  He left Brian on the floor in the backseat of the Chevelle and covered him with a blanket he kept in the trunk. It was old and grimy, but Brian weren’t in a position to complain and Terrible didn’t give a shit even if he were.

  As he walked up the steps he sent a text from Brian’s phone: “Come outside. Emergency.”

  Then he sidled up to Tom’s door and waited. Only took a minute or two before Tom came out, pulling a jacket over his t-shirt, dumb-looking slippers on he feet. Terrible punched him fast, grabbed him before he could fall, slammed the door shut behind him.

  Before Tom could open his mouth Terrible rested his knife at Tom’s throat. “Be good seein you again,” he said. “Whyn’t you come riding with me. Got some people wanting to have a chatter with you.”

  Tom’s swallow was audible. He glanced around, those fast looks that meant he were tryna find himself an escape route.

  “I ain’t would even think on that one.” He said it real quiet and calm. “Ain’t going nowhere, dig? Ain’t gettin out of this one. Best to just get on with that.”

  Not that he expected Tom to listen. And he didn’t; halfway down the steps he made a break for it, jerking away and tryna run. Terrible let him get a few steps down, waited til he heard
the deep intake of air that meant Tom were gonna yell, before he jumped. They tumbled down to the bottom of the stairs with Terrible on top. The cement edge of the steps scraped at his forearms and elbows, banged hard into his knees. No matter; they barely stung as he taped Tom’s mouth and wrists, then stood up and hauled Tom off the ground.

  The hallway—one a them open-air things supposed to make the place look modern—was empty, but that ain’t meant nobody were watching. Fuck. He’d hoped just the threat of the knife would be enough, and they could keep it all innocent-looking. Now alls he could do was hope nobody caught a good look at him. He’d already need to get a new set of plates for the Chevelle from Low-lie, causen the ambulances mighta caught sight on his at the Peace Factory.

  Nothing else he could do. He shove-pulled Tom to the car, threw him in on top of Brian, and got into the driver’s seat.

  Berta was waiting on the front porch when he got there, waiting with a few of the whores standing around smoking and staring. The kind of stares he never wanted dames aiming at him.

  Brian and Tom ain’t had tried to say a word during the drive over; well, woulda been kinda dumb of em to try, seeing as how they had tape over them mouths, but they ain’t made any sounds at all. When Terrible opened the door and they saw the dames standing on the porch, though, Tom started screaming behind the tape, screaming and wiggling around, tryna shove heself up against the opposite door. Terrible dragged him back by the ankles, let him fall with a thud to the ground. Watching him tryna get his feet under him woulda been funny iffen Terrible were able to laugh at anything just then. As it was he just felt a sort of grim satisfaction. Aye, Tom knew why he were there, what was gonna happen to him.

  So did Brian. Both of em had tears running down their cheeks, glistening in the moonlight. Well, so had Sue, Essie, and Drina. Brian and Tom did this to themselves; Terrible had no fucking sympathy at all. He dragged em both up toward the front porch.