Hell Bent

Chapter 17

Not a shoe store. Terric parked at a local Fred Meyer, a one-stop-shopping department store between his place and Victor’s. I shuffled in, past the pumpkins in huge boxes outside the door, past the produce section with a colorful display of fruits and gourds. There was also a scarecrow, which might explain why Eleanor was suddenly drifting so sullenly beside me.

She didn’t like Halloween, which, when you thought about it, was ironic. A ghost who didn’t like the celebration of dead things. I figured it was because on that first Halloween, she and I had both held some hope that she might cross into death because they say the veil between the living world and death is the thinnest then.

I’d even taken her out to the graveyard with the Death magic well beneath it.

Other than me getting rained on, and her getting depressed, nothing had happened. Ever since, she’d been sad on Halloween.

I took the most direct route to the shoe section, kicked off the UGGs, and bought the first decent pair of work boots I could find. Nothing fancy, but if someone needed a tree cut down, I could probably handle it. I snapped the tags, shoved the UGG boots into the box, then started toward the checkout on the other end of the store.

Eleanor had drifted maximum distance from me. She was studying an end shelf filled with Halloween trinkets and decorations.

I took a couple steps, expecting her to follow. She stood there, bent just a bit, her long, ghostly hair covering her face as she stared at something in the shelf.

I walked around behind her, looked over her shoulder.

Jack-o’-lanterns, witches, ghosts with smiling faces, and a Frankenstein stein cluttered the shelf. But behind all the cheerful candy-colored decorations was a single statue. Made out of metal that had been treated to a green patina, it was the figure of a cloaked and cowled man, head tipped down, face hidden in the shadows. He held a scythe by the handle, the curved blade at his feet, as if he were too weary to lift it again. And spread wide across his back were angel wings.

The angel of death, grieving.

“You like it?” I asked her, not caring about the woman who looked up at me and hurried away.

Eleanor just shrugged one shoulder. But she did not look away from it.

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 settled 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.”

“So you kept them apart?” I didn’t know why it was bothering me so much. I mean yeah, I had stayed as far away from Terric as I could these last few years. And a few years before that. But that was my choice. No one had made me forget him. No one had forbade me to be with him.

It was my choice.

Eli and Brandy hadn’t had a choice.

“It was decided, by more people than just me, that it would be best for them to never know about each other,” Victor said.

“So you Closed Eli,” Terric said, “took the memories of Brandy away from him. And then you took the memory of how to use magic away from him too?”

“Yes.” He was quiet a moment, maybe thinking over those times, those decisions.

I’d always wondered if Victor followed rules, or made rules to follow. Too many times in the past he’d leaned a decision one way or another to make sure things in the Authority turned out the way he approved of. The way he thought was right, despite what the Authority stood for.

“Yes,” he said, “I did. I made him forget Brandy. I took away his ability to use magic.”

“Not that he didn’t relearn it,” Terric said.

“And when Eli demanded you Unclose him back when Davy Silvers’s life hung in the balance,” I said, “you didn’t give him the memories of Brandy back, did you?”

“No.”

A pause while I, at least, swallowed the fact that my teacher, my friend Victor, had been playing God with someone’s life. With their soul.

“It was my decision not to let him know about her. I still believe it was the correct thing to do. She is broken. There is no future for them together.”

“I had no idea you have a crystal ball,” I said. “How very convenient you know what they can and can’t be.”

The rings snapped with tiny sparks of red.

Yes, I was angry. Even though I hated Eli, I hated even more that Victor had made decisions that only Eli and Brandy should have made.

“Would you rather I have let two very unstable people have full access to a magic more powerful than ninety-nine percent of magic users in the world could access? It is not unthinkable that they could have destroyed the world.”

I knew he wasn’t being overly dramatic. Soul Complements could be walking time bombs. Soul Complements, in fact, had almost ended the world just three years ago.

“But to just cut them off from each other? There had to have been other options.”

“There were not.”

“Have you considered that by not having Brandy it drove Eli to extremes? That all this—all the crap he’s doing—is because of what you did to him? Joshua might still be—”

“Shame,” Terric said gently. “Don’t.”

I just glared at Victor.

He nodded. “Yes,” he whispered. “I have thought of it many times. Especially over the last three years.”

I’m sure he had. One of the side effects of surviving the apocalypse was that Cody Miller had healed magic with the intension of making everything better. That healing had made magic soft, and it had given memories back to everyone in the world who had had their memories taken away by Closers.

Closers like Victor.

So Eli had remembered Brandy and the part Victor and the Authority had played in keeping her separate from him.

“Damn,” Terric said softly. “He’s known for three years that she’s his match? And that she was locked away?”

Victor nodded.

“When did he find her?” I asked.

“Our sources say it was two years ago. She doesn’t have family, was a ward of the state. They were trying a new medication. It seemed to be helping. She was more responsive. Aware.”

“Then?” Terric asked.

“Then the war.” Victor spread his hands. “The end of magic being separated into dark and light. The end of our power. And the beginning of the new world where the Authority is no longer secret, where memories are no longer hidden, where those of us who fought to keep the world, and all its people safe, are ignored. Unwelcome. Silenced.”

“You’re not unwelcome,” Terric said. “The Authority still needs you. Needs what you can teach.”

“Faith magic?” Victor smiled sadly. “The things I would teach are nothing more than a history lesson now. Those spells, Closing people, guarding gates, fighting to keep dangerous uses for magic secret and safe? Unnecessary.”

“All right,” I said, “fine. Things might not have worked out the way you wanted them to. We’ve all shed our tears. But we’re still breathing, and we all have a problem: Eli. How do we find him? How do we stop him?”

“I don’t know the answer to either of those questions, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Do you know about a woman named Dessa?” I asked.

He frowned. “The name isn’t familiar to me.”

“Dessa Leeds?”

His gray eyebrows pushed wrinkles up his forehead. “Leeds? Do you mean Thomas Leeds?”

“That’s her brother,” I said. “Dessa’s brother. You know him?”

“He was a Closer. Out of Seattle. He was working for us. What do you know about him?”

I leaned back. Studied him. “Nothing, really. I do know that you’re holding out on me, though.”

“Shame,” Terric said.

“Come on, Ter. The old man’s got a secret he doesn’t want to share.”

“Old man?” Victor drew himself up and gave me a stern glare. “You know I’m in contact with your mother, don’t you, Shamus?”

I grinned at his indignant tone. For all that I was angry about his decisions with Eli and Brandy, Victor was one of my teachers. I’d grown up with him being a stern, proper sort of uncle. Plus, he’d taught me some of the dirtiest tricks you could do with magic. He was family, and that bond couldn’t be broken. Not even over dangerously poor decisions.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Tell her I’m being disrespectful to one of my teachers. It won’t be the first time she hears it. Oh, and while you’re at it, ask her why you don’t have the balls to tell us the whole truth.”

Terric leaned back on the couch and threw his hands up. “Jesus, Shame. Did that Taser fry your brain?”

I just watched Victor. In the past, needling him couldn’t make the old man change his mind. I didn’t think it would work this time, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. People who are upset or angry tend to say all sorts of interesting things they would never say in a calm state of mind.

“We’ve known the government was becoming . . . interested in the members of the Authority,” he said quietly. “Certain members. Our Closers, our Soul Complements, and those of us in higher positions. But we didn’t know why. We needed someone on the inside. Someone who had a contact.”

“Thomas?” I asked.

“Yes. Thomas thought he could use his relationship with his sister—I do believe her name was Dessa—to get closer to the matter.”

So Dessa did work for the government. “Which department was he infiltrating?” I asked.

“He worked his way into a government-sponsored research and development facility. On the surface, it is a testing lab for biotechnology. Everything from increasing crop yields to deterring invasive species. But beneath that facade, Thomas found evidence of other tests. Human tests.”

“Medical tests on humans are far from rare, Victor,” I said. “What made these different?”

“The tests weren’t for medical advancement. They were searching for ways to weaponize people.”

“What?” Terric said.

Took the word right out of my mouth.

“Now that magic is a known resource, the government is very interested in what people can do with it. How it can be used as a protection. As a weapon.”

It made sense. Any government would want to know how magic could be used, and by whom.

“Okay,” I said. “How do Eli and Brandy fit into this?”

“Brandy disappeared a year and a half ago,” Victor said. “The official report is that she died from a stroke caused by side effects of the medication she was on. But we know she was taken. Stolen out of the institution. By the government. By this research lab.”

Terric opened the file again. Thumbed through it. “Thomas was looking for her, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“And Eli?” he asked.

“We’d lost trace of him at the same time. I don’t know if he was taken, if he went looking for her, or if he was behind her kidnapping. Our . . . resources aren’t what they used to be. But our goal, that has remained the same. To keep the innocent safe from magic and the things people would do with it. Brandy is an innocent in this. But we believe she was taken by men who would use her as a weapon.”

“Tell me you know where the research facility is.”

“From the information Thomas was able to gather, it has branches across the country. We suspect one of them is here in the Northwest. And if they are trying to tap magic, it will need to be near a well.”

“There are a lot of wells. One under almost every city,” Terric said.

“And five under Portland,” Victor said.

“Eli opened a gate,” I said.

That got his attention.

“He— What?”

“He was in my bedroom, and after about two minutes, a gate opened behind him and he was pulled back through it.”

“He used magic?” Victor asked. “Broke magic to open the gate?”

I thought about it. “No. I can usually feel when magic breaks.” From the corner of my eye I saw Terric nod.

“There was magic involved. But there was also technology.”

“Eli spent too long working under Beckstrom Senior,” Terric said.

“I think you mean worshipping,” I said. “Spent too much time worshipping Allie’s father and all that experimental tech the Beckstrom fortune funded.”

“If they have gate technology,” Victor said, “then none of us are safe.”

“Which means we need to find Eli,” I said. “You didn’t happen to shoot him with a tracking chip over the years, did you?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Victor said. “I wish we’d thought of it.”

“Have you followed up on everyone connected to Brandy and Eli?” Terric asked. “Her doctors, caregivers? Eli’s contacts, where he’s lived, worked?”

“Yes,” Victor said. “We hit a dead end about eight months ago. That was also when we fell out of contact with Thomas.” He paused, then, “We think Thomas was killed.”

“He was,” I said. “Dessa said he was killed by Eli. Said he had marks in him like Joshua.”

“Was she sure?” Victor asked softly.

“She saw Joshua,” I said. “Saw the glyphs carved into him. She thinks it was made by the same magic user.”

Victor took off his glasses and closed his eyes. For a moment, I saw the weight of years change him. He had been in the Authority for longer than I had been alive. He’d seen all manners of horrors committed by both the right and the wrong people having too much power.

And now this.

“You have to stop him.” Victor replaced his glasses and opened his eyes. There was the iron strength of resolve in his words. “Eli Collins should have been killed years ago. We thought then that it was a mercy to just take his memories away. To give him a chance to build a normal life. But he turned to darkness. To killing. To murder. Joshua should not have had to pay the price for our mistakes. I want you to stop him. At any cost.”

“We should let the Overseer know,” Terric said.

“No. Not this,” Victor said. “It has never been the way of the Authority to kill unnecessarily. It is not the way we want to go forward in this new world of magic. But this is an old wound. An old ill that must be ended. Before more innocent people die. I do not want to be hampered by the Overseer’s decisions.

“Eli must be stopped. He will kill each Closer involved with his closing, and then he will kill more. Anyone who ever spoke against him or stood for the laws of the Authority. Anyone who ever stood aside, knowing what had been taken from him. If he finds his Soul Complement . . .” Victor paused, swallowed. “Her broken mind will drive him deeper into darkness. And if they break magic together, and use it to shape the world to their desire . . .”

He didn’t have to tell us what would happen. Having that much power drove people insane. Even people with good intentions were lured by the madness in magic, the temptation of simply making and unmaking the world. And people with bad intentions did things like start the apocalypse.

“Do not show him mercy, Terric,” Victor said, “for he will refuse it. Stop him before he removes every Soul Complement and every magic user in the Authority.”

Terric opened his mouth, but I spoke up over him. “The only way to stop him will be to kill him,” I said. “You understand that, don’t you, Victor?”

“Yes, I do.”

“At any cost?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ll do it.”

Terric sighed heavily. Here’s the thing: Death and me pretty much saw eye-to-eye. I knew one of these days someone would have to take me down when I lost control of magic. And Eli wasn’t just a poor magic user caught by an evil government. Yes, he’d been used by the Authority and others. But even if he had once been a good man, that was over.

He liked killing. Craved it. If the world bowed at his feet, he would want violence, destruction.

I understood those kinds of dark desires. I had no problem ending it for him.

Victor looked between Terric and me. Finally settled on me. “Thank you, Shamus. I know your burden isn’t easy. Death magic—”

“Don’t,” I said.

“Shame,” he said firmly. “Let me finish. I know the changes magic has made in you and in Terric have been painful. I know you struggle for control.”

“Hey, now,” I started, but he just leveled a gaze at me. What could I say? It was the truth. And he knew it.

Victor was not a stupid man. He had known me my entire life. It didn’t take eyes to see how close I walked the edge of disaster every day.

“Your father was a good man, Shame,” he said. “A dear friend of mine.”

I hunched my shoulders unconsciously. I didn’t like it when people brought up my father. He and I had gotten on as most fathers and rebellious slacker sons do. Really, he was a lot more patient than I would have been. I missed him, but I’d had enough time to know he was gone from my life for good.

That wasn’t what bothered me. No, what haunted me was the thing Jingo Jingo had said before I killed that sick bastard. That my father had fallen on his knees and begged Jingo Jingo to end me. To end the monster he knew I would become.

A Death magic user.

Only I hadn’t just become a Death magic user—I’d become a vessel that carried Death magic in my body and soul.

If my dad were alive, I figured he’d want me dead. Before I gave in to the monster inside me.

“This is something that I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time,” Victor said. “Jingo was lying. Your father didn’t beg him to keep you from using Death magic. Your father warned Jingo that if he grew too hungry, if he ever lost control, it would be you, his son, who would stop him. Your father saw the strength in you. Saw how you, of all magic users we had ever seen, have the ability to use Death magic without succumbing to its allure.

“He was proud of you, Shamus. As am I.”

Not what I was expecting to hear. And for once in my life, I didn’t know what to say.