Stone Cold (13 page)

“Which means she's writing a report for someone somewhere to read. Probably Clyde,” I said. “We leave tonight.”

“Shame,” Dash said. “I think you need to get through a whole twenty-four hours of breathing before we drive your ass across two states.”

“I can breathe in a car. You think Terric is there?” I got my feet over the edge. Held still to give my lungs a chance to catch up.

“We don't know where Terric is,” Dash said. “We think Davy's there.”

“Can't you tell?” Sunny asked. “I thought you could feel Terric. With that Soul thing you have?”

“No,” I said. That was the truth, the hell I was not ready to face. I couldn't feel Terric. At all. It might be because our connection had broken when I died. It might be because he was dead.

Or it might be because I'd died and come back not quite what I had been before. Something that didn't match to a soul anymore.

The hunger rolled in me and Eleanor arched back, pulling against the rope that tightened on her neck. I pushed at the magic, shoved Death away until it subsided.

Damn.

“So if you can't feel him . . . ,” Dash was saying.

He knew the answer. Terric might be dead.

If he was, then I had myself some unlucky bastard to track down and obliterate.

“Do you remember what happened?” Dash asked. “Do you remember who shot you?”

“Eli.” I pushed up onto my feet. The insides of me knotted up and lurched and threatened to become the outside of me.

“. . . Shame,” Dash said, in front of me with his hands on my shoulders. “Breathe!”

Right, as if it was that easy. Still, I gave the lungs a try, swallowed air. Enough to make the blackness filling the room step on back a bit. Note to the wise: Lungs plus bullets do not equal fun times.

“You can't do this. Not yet,” Dash said.

“Dash,” Sunny warned.

“You two might as well take the argument to the other room.” I pushed Dash's hands off me, gently, because I didn't want to hurt him, and because really, that was all the strength I had in me. “I'm going to get some clothes on.”

Sunny started toward the door. Dash, bless him, hesitated. “You dying—again—isn't going to help us find Davy. Or Terric. Or anything. Shame, you need to rest.”

I gave him a small smile. He really was concerned about me, about Davy, about Terric.

“Well,” I said as I shuffled over to my dresser. “As soon as we're sure I'm actually alive again—then we can worry about me dying again.”

“Shame,” he said softly. “This can wait. At least a day. Please.”

I paused by the drawer, wondering if I had it in me to open the damn thing. “Eli shot me, and he took Terric. I think he took Terric. If Eli also has Davy, then that's where we're going. Where I'm going. Even if it's just to kill Eli and bury Terric's body.”

Dash didn't say anything, so I did.

“I would kill for a cup of coffee, mate. That tea just isn't cutting it.” Life would help too. Dash's life, Sunny's life. But I'd already done . . . something terrible to Eleanor. Trapping her, tying her down with that black rope of magic. I wasn't going to let that happen again. I didn't want to hurt anyone else.

“Jesus, Shame.” Dash rubbed at his eyes. He looked tired. Of course, he'd spent a week looking for Terric and me, and when he'd found me I was dead. It hadn't been an easy go for him lately either.

“Coffee, Boy Wonder,” I said. “And make it strong. We have a long road ahead of us.”

Dash shook his head and walked out of the room. “Stupid, stupid idea.”

I could hear Sunny telling Cody we were headed out.

All right, Shame. Time to really take stock.

I took a gander under the bandages. I'd apparently sprouted a collection of holes. One in each shoulder, deep enough I could stick my pinkie into it up to my middle knuckle—which, by the way, hurt like a bitch. They were bloody, but not bleeding, and were strangely cold. My body temperature was way below manufacturer's recommendations.

Five in my chest, two in my right leg, three in my left. Two in my right hip.

All of them deeper than I wanted to go digging around in, but the exit wounds were just as small as the entry wounds. Bullets didn't work like that. I should be fifty percent ground beef in the back with that many shots in me.

I guess that if one is already filled with Death magic, it might make dying a little more difficult.

I pulled on the dresser drawer, gulped air until I could see straight again, pulled out a T-shirt, and dragged the soft cotton over my aching skin.

Gun. I had been in the kitchen. Terric was with me. We were eating pizza. Doing our magic thing to that poor plant. And then . . .

... blood. A knife cutting into his throat. Terric's eyes, as he fell . . .

... fell at Eli's feet.

Son of a bitch.

My heart kicked against my ribs and I groaned, waiting for the pain to pass. Eli had gotten into the kitchen. Eli had shot the gun. Eli had killed me, something that did not sit well with me at all.

Eli had slit Terric's throat.

Everything inside me twisted again, agony I braced against and sweated my way through.

I glanced up at Eleanor, and this time she just stood there, blankly staring at me. She didn't appear to be in pain. But I could see the tears streaking her face.

I didn't know if it was withdrawals from death, or that I was allergic to life, but either way, something was irreparably wrong with me. With my body.

I needed life. Needing living. The Death in me was a bottomless hole, burning black in me. Hungry. And I was having a hell of a time fighting it.

In the end, I supposed it would win.

So I had some things to get done before I kicked off for good.

I had to find Davy for Sunny. Had to find Terric. Kill Eli. Kill Krogher, stop the drones. Save the world, no matter the cost. No matter what I gave up for it.

I was the last human on earth who should be given this responsibility. One look at Eleanor proved that. I'd shackled a woman who had jumped out of heaven for me.

What kind of monster was I?

I glanced up at the mirror, above the dresser.

The face of my nightmares looked back at me. I'd seen that look on the last Death magic user I'd killed. It was hunger and darkness and need. It was the thing that using Death magic was turning me into—a monster I could not sate or control.

TERRIC

A hand tapped the side of my face. “Wake up, Terric. We need to go.”

I wasn't sleeping. I was just sitting here, wherever here was. Prison. There were bars all around me, so it must be prison.

“Terric?”

The man in front of me was maybe in his twenties, blond hair. He was sweating and breathing as if he'd been running a marathon. His nose was bleeding.

I shook my head. Where was I? Why was I here?

“Let's go. Eli won't be out for long, and I can't hold this—”

The man flickered, disappeared.

Holy shit.

I scrambled up onto my feet. There was another man bleeding on the floor, a broken coffee cup shattered at my feet. I was in hospital clothes, and there was enough medical equipment in the room that it wasn't a big leap to think I was sick.

The bars didn't make any sense. What kind of hospital kept people behind bars?

Was I insane? That man who had just been here and disappeared could have been a hallucination.

Okay, so insane was looking like a probability. That would mean the man on the floor was a doctor or an orderly, and I was . . .

... I had no idea what I was. I had no idea
who
I was.

That was terrifying.

Panic shot ice through my veins.

“Okay,” I said, talking myself through this. “Okay. Names. Records. Something. Look for answers. There must be something here.”

I knelt, gasped at the pain that squeezed my ribs. Broken ribs, judging from the bandages wrapped around my chest. And from the gauze packed around my left hand, I was pretty sure I was missing a pinkie.

Bars, bandages, missing digits. That painted a new picture. Not so much a medical facility as a place of interrogation. Torture?

A memory cracked open and spilled through my mind: knives in the hand of that man who was unconscious on the floor. Knives cutting into me.

Eli. His name was Eli, and he'd used more than knives to cause me pain.

He'd used magic.

Then the memory was gone and I grunted at the snarling headache that replaced it. I didn't even know who I was, couldn't remember why I was here, but I knew that I should not have been able to access that memory.

Maybe the hallucination had been right. I needed to get out of here before the man on the floor woke up.

I stepped over Eli.

Every motion hurt. Breathing hurt. It felt as if someone had taken a hammer to all the things inside me and left me shattered and bleeding.

Even so, I made it to the table covered with blades, saws, and other hardware.

If even half of those things were used on me, it was no wonder I was in pain.

No key for the door. I took one of the knives, walked to the bars, which were painted with designs or maybe a language. Nothing I could read. The lock was electronic.

“Terric.” The hallucination man appeared on the other side of the bars. “You have to follow me. We need to get the hell out of here before they get the cameras back online. The blocking spell I cast won't last for long.”

“Who are you? Where are we?”

“You've been Closed. Or at least partially Closed. He took away your memories. We're in a warehouse in Washington and we don't have much time before they find out I'm not dead, and you're not catatonic.”

“Closed?” I managed.

“Magic.” He searched my face for understanding, and found none. “Okay, fine. You want out of here, you'll just have to trust me on that. And if this knocks me out or . . . kills me, I want you to tell Sunny yes for me, okay?”

“Yes?”

“She asked me to marry her, then took off to Florida. Before I could call her, I got my ass handed to me by Eli and the rest of these fuckers. I never got a chance to give her my answer. It's yes. Now stand back.”

He wrapped his hands on the bars and exhaled slowly. The symbols etched into the metal caught white fire, arcing from bar to bar to glow brighter, then run like hot oil down to the lock.

“Davy,” a voice said behind me. “How nice of you to join us. I'd thought you were gone from the world for good.”

I turned. Eli was no longer unconscious. He stood, his face covered in blood from that broken nose and sliced cheek.

He held a gun aimed at us.

“Shoot, you bastard,” Davy said. “I'm coming for you next.”

“You don't have the strength,” Eli said. “And I should know.” He shifted the gun just a fraction.

“I wondered if you would find that little loophole I couldn't plug,” he said. “Some of those spells in your flesh just refuse to be canceled out, no matter what I try. But you must understand there are plans in place.
Plans
,” he said to me as if I knew what he meant, “that would be the best for all of us to follow. While I would love to further my research on you, Davy, I will not let you get in the way of my plans.”

Eli squeezed the trigger.

“No!” I threw myself in front of Davy.

Just as the bars around me went white-fire supernova from Davy's spell.

The first bullet burned through my chest, the second right behind it. I hit the bars behind me. Yelled as fire engulfed me. Tasted ash, oil, and blood.

I thought I heard Davy yell. And then everything went black.

SHAME

By the time I'd pulled on a pair of jeans and laced up my boots, I was so tired, I wanted to weep. Nothing in me was working. My lungs stuck shut with every breath, my vision went black if I moved too fast, and my heart tripped like a three-legged bull in a china shop.

Eleanor refused to acknowledge me and made it a point to stay as far away as possible.

I eased down and sat at the foot of the bed. Didn't think I'd be getting up under my own power anytime soon. I'd never felt so broken. It wasn't just my body. It wasn't just magic. Deep down, in the core of me, where maybe my soul should be was a gaping wound. I was torn, empty, shattered.

Terric was gone.

Jesus. I didn't love living with him, but being without him was worse.

Dash stepped into the room with a cup of coffee. “You look worse,” he noted as I accepted the cup he offered and took a small sip.

Coffee Mack-trucked my senses: hot, bitter, sweet, thick. I held on as it took the corner down to my stomach, where it crashed in a burn that rolled out across my nerves.

C'mon, caffeine. Shamus needs to go out and play.

I looked up. Expected Dash to be saying something I wasn't listening to. But he was standing there, waiting. He'd brushed his hair back, found his glasses, shrugged on a gray jean jacket. It was startling how very alive, whole, and well he was.

Compared to the pale imitation of a human I'd seen staring back at me from the mirror, he was a beacon of life.

“Before we go,” he said, “I need to know a couple of things. Can you tell if Terric is alive?”

“No. But . . .” I shook my head. “What we had, our connection. That's gone.”

“Right,” he said softly as he put two and two together and carried the conclusion. We were Soul Complements who had used magic together more than once. It meant we were tied. Soul to soul. If Terric were alive, I'd know it.

Wouldn't I?

Dash cleared his throat, but his voice shook just a little. “You think Eli took him?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, can you access magic at all?”

Even the idea of it made me nauseated. And hungry. I licked my lips, tasting the old blood from cuts there. “I don't know.”

“Let's find out.”

“Really? Dash, I'm just . . . I think that's a bad idea.”

“Before we get in the car. Before we go hunting Davy. Before we look for Terric, alive or dead. Before we run into Eli. I want to know, right now, what shape you're really in. I know this is hard—”

“Stow the sympathy,” I said.

“Not sympathy, Shame. Let me lay this out for you. Sunny is too invested in finding Davy to think any of this through. Cody's in his own world, like he always is. I'm here to make sure you're going to make it through the night.”

“Listen. It's sweet of you to worry,” I said.

“No. It's practical. Sunny thinks you're the gun she can wave to get Davy back. But you're my friend, Shame. You died.” He paused, letting that statement linger in the silence. Then, a little quieter, “I'm not going to let you walk into battle and die again. So prove to me you've got the legs to survive a rescue mission against the same people who kicked your ass to hell and back.”

I glanced up at him. Saw maybe for the first time someone other than my ex-assistant and general nice guy. Sometime over the last three years, Dash had stepped into his own. He was keeping a clear head under ridiculous circumstances. Taking charge.

Man might make a fine head of the Authority one day.

Huh.

I hadn't known him when powerful magic was something anyone could use easily, although I'd read his record and known he had mostly stayed away from using magic, and instead dealt with the business sides of the Authority's needs.

But that man leaning against my bedroom wall had this possibly explosive magical situation under control and was determined to see it through.

Since the explosive situation in this case was me, and I was barely holding it together, I was impressed by his composure.

“What are we going to do, Dash?” I said. “Fight? Think you can take me?”

“Right now my grandmother could take you.”

I smiled. “True.” I swallowed another couple mouthfuls of coffee and left the cup on the edge of the bed. I pressed my hands into my thighs and pushed up.

“This is me. I am on my feet,” I said. “Where's the battle, Chief?”

“Use magic,” he ordered. “I don't care what spell. But you're going to show me what you got.” He tipped his head down and made that hurry-up motion with his fingers.

I glanced over at Eleanor, who had her back turned to me, staring out my window. The black rope around her neck snaked toward me and latched in to my arm like a dark IV line.

“This is
such
a bad idea,” I whispered.

“Why?”

“There's a good chance I'm going to hurt someone.”

“Won't know until you do it.”

I finally looked away from Eleanor. “You just won't let this go, will you, Spade? Why haven't you used this kind of determination to get Terric to date you?”

I was hoping bringing up his love life would make him pull back. Sore subjects usually do. But he didn't even flinch.

“Magic, Shame. Now would be good, but I can wait. Days, if that's what you need.”

I glared at him. Would have continued the argument, but just standing there holding up my attitude was wearing me out. If I was going to cast magic, which apparently I was, then I'd better do it while I had the strength to control it. I didn't want to drink another person down.

I didn't want to hurt Eleanor.

Something easy, like Light, seemed a good bet, but what Davy really wanted to know, and what Sunny really wanted to know, was if I could handle Death magic.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

I took a breath, held it, then drew on the place inside me where Death magic sat.

It came to me, slowly, cold, and painful. Filled my bones with a weight that threatened to snap my bones.

Holy shit, it hurt.

But I stood, holding against the weight of it. I directed Death magic, sluggish, heavy, and raw, to Death something. But not a person. Or a ghost.

The dresser looked like a good enough target.

I turned toward it, held out my hand. Nothing. Magic was there, I could feel the lead weight of it in my chest, in my spine, filling my arm so that it was difficult to keep extended, but magic would not move through me.

Hell.

I trudged over to the dresser. Put both hands on it. Reached in for the magic again, dragging it forward.

Death,
I thought.
Now.

Magic responded by paralyzing me.

Shit.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eleanor dim and flicker.

Magic oozed out of my bones, slithered through my veins, cold, toxic.

My hands cracked with black lines as Death magic carved new channels and paths in me. Paths that hadn't been open even before I'd died.

I couldn't breathe.

Well, that was inconvenient.

Magic poured out of my fingertips like oil and ink, puddling and spreading from under my palms, covering the dresser in the black and slime, dissolving wood and nails and brass, aging them all, decomposing, killing.

Death.

The dresser went ash gray and crumbled into a pile of dust.

I was still standing, mostly because I couldn't move. Just enough nerves were firing to let me know I was going to be hurting or unconscious—or both—when magic was done with me.

“Shame?” Dash said. “Shame?”

I tried to answer, to tell him not to touch me, for God's sake.

No go. Magic wasn't done with me yet. It crept out from the ashen pile of rotted wood and across the floor to the outer wall, where it leaked beyond the bedroom to the plants that surrounded the house.

And killed them all in one quick strike.

An explosion of pleasure blew through me. I closed my eyes as the death of each plant rolled hot and sweet across my skin, my bones, my soul. It was sex; it was more than sex. It was death and life, wrapping around me in an embrace so sensual I lost all thought.

I wanted life. The life Death magic could give me.

Death magic drank down the easy, sweet life of plants, bushes, trees.

I wanted more. So much more. Cars rushed by on the road that wound above the house. Cars filled with sweet, blood-pumping life. That would be enough to fill me. To begin to fill this cold dark hole inside me. To ease my pain.

And then Eleanor was in front of me. She'd been crying, her eyes red-rimmed, her cheeks wet. She shook her head.
Stop, Shame. You don't want to kill innocent people. You don't want to lose your humanity to this darkness.

She was right. I just couldn't move, couldn't get ahead of the magic that had swallowed me whole.

Eleanor must have seen something in my eyes. She smiled sadly, then reached out and pressed her hand over my heart.

For a moment, I felt her hand as if she were solid, real, alive. Or as if I were dead, ghostly like her.

Magic paused, eased its grip on me.

It wasn't much of a break, but I took full advantage of it.

Enough.
I focused my will over it and drew the magic back to me, hauling on it, hand over hand, as if it were a rope, a chain that I could drag away from the living world and pack away inside me.

Magic snapped back with concussive force. I grunted from the pain but didn't let go of the magic. I forced it down, back into that hole in my brain, chaining it to me and drawing it in, tight, tighter.

“Shame.” Dash was right in front of me now. I didn't know where Eleanor had gone. Dash looked angry. “Let go, Shame,” he said. “Please, just let it go.”

Nope, not angry, worried.

“So, that good enough for you?” I asked, though it came out a faint wheeze.

I felt like magic had just bad-touched me from the inside out. I was cold, sweaty, and I stank of it.

Dash didn't move. Didn't reach out to help me. After I got done breathing too hard, and my vision cleared, I realized why.

He wasn't worried or angry. He was afraid.

Join the damn club.

“That was delightful,” I said. “Thanks.”

“You think that's control?” he asked.

“Enough.”

He clearly didn't believe me. That was okay, I didn't believe me either.

“You need a day to rest. Well, a year might be better, but at least a day, Shame. This can wait.”

“No,” I said. “It can't. We haven't had a lead on Davy and Eli for months. We do this now, while there's still a trail to follow.” I gave the walking thing a try. After three wobbly steps, my legs and muscles got back on talking terms. As a matter of fact, I felt the best I had since rising from the dead. My lungs were on autopilot, and my heart pumped on its own, although very, very slowly, which was both odd and distracting.

The life from the plants had done some good.

“I'm fine,” I said to Dash and his sideways looks.

“You look worse,” Dash said.

“Ever thought about going into motivational speaking?” I asked. “Because you'd be amazing.”

“Shut up, Shame.”

That's my boy.
I gave him a smile and walked out of the room, down the hall, and into the living room, where Sunny was pacing the perimeter.

“About damn time, Flynn.” She slung a glare my way and then went ghost white. “What the hell happened to you?”

I paused, held out my hands to each side. “I got dressed. Like it?”

She looked over at Dash as though maybe he had something to say about my wardrobe.

“You'd better get used to it,” he said to me. “Because you just disintegrated all the rest of your clothes.”

The dresser. He was right.

Well, shit.

“How bad was it?” Cody asked, coming in from the kitchen with a plastic cup of pudding.

“What?”

“Death magic. You drained . . . something, drank some living thing down and it fueled you, right? But there must be a price.”

At my look, he said, “I'm the guy who held all of magic until it healed, remember? You're an anomaly, Shame. I can see it in you. Before today, I wouldn't think someone could come back from the dead with that much Death magic gluing them together. What's it like?”

“Hungry,” I said. “Cold. Painful.”

He nodded and scooped pudding into his mouth. “And the price?”

“Having to answer dumb questions.”

He ate another bite of pudding and waved the spoon at me. “By changing the subject?”

Sunny and Davy were silent, but I knew that was the question foremost on their minds too.

I didn't blame them. They were about to road-trip with Death, after all. You'd have to be an idiot not to want to know if I had magic under control.

“It's different,” I said. “But I think I have a handle on it. And as long as I don't use it, I think I'll be okay. I think you'll all be okay. If that changes, I'll tell you.”

I walked to the door and pulled my coat off the hook. “How about we get on with the rescuing of Davy and the saving of the world?”

“So you're good, Shame?” Sunny asked.

I just gave her a bored look. “I've never been good, babe.”

She glanced at Dash again as if he were my keeper or something. “All right,” she said, uncrossing her arms and picking up her duffel. “Let's go. And you can cut the ‘babe' shit.”

Dash strolled up to me. “So we're going to pretend you have control?”

“I'm going to pretend you didn't ask me that.”

“And we're ignoring all that black blood that poured out of you, and gray light and magic that destroyed your dresser?”

“It wasn't blood,” I said. “It was Death.”

“So is that what we are paying attention to?”