Hell Bent

Chapter 19

“Everything you can tell us,” I said. “Quickly. Zay. Step it up, man. Use words.”

Terric was at the sink now, getting a clean cloth wet so we could clear some of the blood off Zay’s chest to see if there was a serious wound beneath it all.

“We were at the table,” Zay said in that very, very calm tone he had that really meant he was very, very angry. “We both heard something crack. He was standing inside our kitchen. Smiling.”

Zay jerked as Terric pressed the cloth on his stomach. “Did he shoot you?”

“No,” Allie said. “He had a knife. He didn’t want to kill Zayvion.”

Zay picked up where Allie left off. “He wanted to hurt me and make me watch while he killed Allie. Said he was going to carve the life out of her.”

The baby.

Fuck.

“So you broke magic,” I said.

“We broke magic,” they said simultaneously.

“Did you kill the bastard?” I asked.

“No,” Zay said. “He had something like a gate.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it. Tech, I think.”

“You’ve seen it?” Allie asked. “You’ve seen Eli? When?”

“Last night. He left me a message. Said that people are going to die if I don’t find him and save him. Oh, and he’s the one who’s going to do the killing.”

“Why would he warn you that he’s going to kill people?” The shock of what had just happened appeared to be wearing off and Allie was back on her game.

The distant wail of sirens filled the air. Maybe the police, maybe an ambulance. Maybe coming here.

“He said he’s being held captive and being used to kill people. People like Joshua. He said they’re holding his soul. His Soul Complement.”

“He’s lying,” Zay said.

“No,” Terric said. “Victor told us. They’ve known who his Soul Complement is for years. She had been in a mental institution all this time until she disappeared a short while ago. Victor took away Collins’s memory of her.”

“Shit.” He exhaled. “How long?”

“She’s fifteen in the file photo,” I said. “Thirty-five now. And Eli says they might have her.”

“What do they want with him?” Allie asked.

“Their very own Soul Complement pair weapon? I’ll give you one guess. But the thing we ought to worry about, boys and girls, is that he’s a Breaker. Even though she’s damaged and he’s bat-shit crazy, if they work together, they can break magic and make it do whatever they want it to do.”

“What isn’t adding up for me,” Terric said, “is why Eli came here with a knife. He’s not shy about guns. He’s not shy about taking his one shot and making it count.”

That was true. Eli liked death, destruction, and bloody mayhem and didn’t mind getting his hands dirty. “So he didn’t want to kill Zay. Probably didn’t want to kill Allie. Or at least not quickly. Did he have anything else with him?”

“A needle.”

I nodded. “Right. Had that with me too. But no tranq gun?”

Zay frowned. “No.”

I looked over at Terric. “Maybe this was a diversion. Maybe this was just to scare us. Force Allie and Zay to run. Or force them to stay. It feels like a chess move, more than an attack.”

“The hole in my chest says otherwise,” Zay said.

The sirens were getting closer.

“Are you staying?” I asked.

Allie and Zay looked at each other. Maybe read each other’s thoughts.

Allie nodded. “We’re staying. We’ll set up Hounds to keep an eye on the house.”

“He has the tech to show up anywhere he wants,” I said. “Hounds wouldn’t react fast enough.”

“We’ll set up guards,” Zay said. “Trip spells. Traps.”

“You’d have to break magic for anything to be strong enough to stop him,” Terric said. “And with the baby . . .”

“The baby will be fine,” Allie said.

I didn’t care how brave and steady her words were. She was white as a sheet. This had scared the hell out of her. She was afraid the baby would be damaged if they broke magic and used it. Was probably already worried the baby had been damaged.

“We’ll do it,” I said.

No one hurt my friends. No one.

Zay looked at me, raised one eyebrow. “Who?”

“Terric and me. We’ll break magic, set the traps and trips, make it so that if he techs into the place again, he’s knocked out cold. Shouldn’t be too hard.”

Silence in the room. I thought Terric had gone completely mute.

“When was the last time you two broke magic?” Allie asked.

“I do not like the tone of your voice, young lady,” I said. “We’re . . . capable. We can do it.”

Zay was staring at me like I was an unsolvable puzzle. He took a breath and looked over at Terric instead. “What do you think?”

“Really, Jones?” I asked. “First you punch me in my beautiful face. Then you kick me right in my tender ego. I don’t need Terric’s permission to make a plan. A good plan.”

“We can do it,” Terric said with a smoothness that probably hid the fear I could feel in the fast beat of his heart. He didn’t want to break magic with me.

Or maybe he really desperately did.

Didn’t matter. Didn’t care. We were doing it. Discussion done.

“Let’s get it done before the police arrive. We’ll pull from the crystal well,” I said, tugging my rings off, one by one. “Three levels of spells. By the time he’s able to break through all three protections—if he can break through them—Zay and Allie will either be out of the house, ready to defend themselves with magic—”

“Or have guns in our hands,” Zay finished.

“Right,” I said. “That works too.” I started pacing, suddenly full of too much restless energy. “Three spells: Block, Hold, Sleep. Or maybe not Sleep. We could do Pain, or Freeze, or something more permanent.”

Yes, I was talking a mile a minute. I was nervous. It had been a long, long time since we’d broken magic. I had an overwhelming need to control this event.

“Shame,” Terric said. I think he’d been talking to Zay and Allie while I paced. I think they’d decided on things without me. Also, Zay had a new towel he was pressing against the puncture wound.

So, I’d lost some time.

“Let’s take this outside. Allie needs to be at some distance from us when we break magic to protect the baby. And since the police are almost here, we don’t have a lot of time.”

“The police can wait. I’m not going to cast a crappy spell because they’re in the way.”

“It will be fine,” he said.

“Of course it’s fine. Of course it will be fine. Fine is the way it’s always going to be.”

Okay, now I was rambling.

Terric walked over to the door. Opened it. Pointed outside. Like I was some kind of dog who needed to pee. “Outside.”

Zay was already on his feet. He didn’t move like he was in much pain, but then, he had been through worse than a knife in the gut. He wrapped his arm around Allie protectively and she leaned into him as they walked out of the kitchen.

It was odd to see Allie so shaken by this. She was one of the bravest women I knew. And I would lay good money that she hadn’t flinched in the face of danger. Hadn’t been afraid to fight Eli. But now that the danger was past, she had time to think of how the situation could have turned out, had time to realize her life could have been very different in the matter of seconds. She could have been babyless, Zayless. They were realities she did not want to come true.

And neither did I. I dug in my pocket with shaking fingers as I walked back down the porch stairs.

“No time for cigarettes,” Terric said.

I left them in my pocket. My hands weren’t steady enough to light them anyway. It was almost frightening how much I wanted to do magic with Terric, to break it and make it into the glorious, dangerous force it used to be.

And on the other hand it was the absolute last thing I wanted to do.

“How long?” I asked.

“Until the police get here?” he asked. “I think about a minute. If we’re going to do this, we need to do it fast.”

Terric was calm, relaxed. Looked like he was talking about cataloging receipts, not breaking magic open like a ripe melon and letting all the fruity goodness spill out into the world.

“Somewhere where they won’t interrupt us,” I said. “The car?”

“Not enough space,” he said. “How about down by the river?”

“River works for me.” We walked through the undeveloped lot, stepping over a low chain fence there and ignoring the sign that insisted we were trespassing. The rain had let off a bit, but it was a gray enough day that I couldn’t see the river, even though I could hear it—the lapping of water, the distant metal and engine sounds of boats and cranes. I knew we’d run into the refinery before we hit the sand or the river, but was happy when Terric stopped, after having walked only a few feet across the lot.

“You don’t have to do this, Shame. We don’t have to do this,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “we do.”

“Then let’s do it.” Terric turned toward me. “Three spells. Hold, Block, and Pain.”

I was surprised he’d picked Pain, not Sleep. “Seems more like what I’d want to cast. Are you sure, Mr. Goody-goody?”

“I don’t like Eli either,” Terric said. “And I am pissed he hurt Allie and Zay.”

“Good,” I said. “Nice to see you here on the dark side. We do have more fun, you know.”

Terric shook his head once. “Work, not bullshit. Tap the well, let’s get this done.”

Well, well. Look at who had gone all bossy.

Still, he was right. I reached out with that part of my head that was always aware of magic, of how it whispered in the back of my thoughts, how it tempted and begged.

Then I tapped in to the well not too far from here and felt magic cover me like an electric heat over my entire body. Pure magic, not just the Death magic that lurked inside me.

It was glorious.

Terric tapped the well too. I didn’t know what he was feeling, didn’t care. I was having a hard time not being swallowed by the sensation of drawing on magic. God, I loved it. Missed it. Craved it.

I pulled magic to me in huge greedy handfuls, holding it tight. I’d have to carve a spell, have to make the glyph for magic to fill and bring us whatever outcome we wanted, but right now all I wanted was to stand there with magic burning across my skin.

I might have moaned. Normally, that would be embarrassing. But right now I didn’t think Terric was paying any attention to what I was doing or what I was feeling either. He was dealing with his own experience of drawing on raw magic—drawing on it knowing that we were going to break it, make it stronger. Make it into what it used to be.

Make it into the thing we loved.

“Hold,” Terric breathed.

Took me a second to realize he was talking about the spell. Right. We were supposed to be casting spells.

I did what I could to focus my attention on the spell, on casting it with him. Best I managed was mirroring his movements. Terric drew the spell, I drew it facing him, opposite to him, but frankly magic had me so distracted that, if he hadn’t been leading the charge, I would have given up and fallen into other, much more pleasurable spells.

“Shame,” he said, out loud I thought. Not in my mind. I hoped. “Focus, for fuck’s sake.”

That got a smile out of me. Fine. Focus. I could do that. Enough that I did not do a shabby job completing the glyph for Hold.

“Ready?” Terric asked. He was breathing in rhythm with me, his heart in rhythm with mine.

It felt right. It steadied the hunger inside me. Pushed it away, and filled me with ease. Made me feel whole again. Real again.

“Always.”

Our eyes locked.

We broke magic.

It was like running a knife along the soft, ripe skin of a fruit and feeling it split beneath my fingers. But instead of digging down into the fruity middle, we tore the seal on magic open and released the power. A hell of a lot of power. An explosion of power that had been waiting for us to set it free.

Magic poured into the glyphs traced in the air in front of us. Hung there and burned like fire.

“Hold,” Terric said. “To stop those who would break this sanctuary.”

One thing I had to admit, Terric knew how to set a spell so it stuck.

I waited until the glyphs were burning a hot cherry red before I passed my hand across it, sending it out to wrap the house. It would be visible for a moment or two. We’d done our best to cast a Fade into the spell so it wouldn’t be seen with the naked eye.

Ever since magic had been healed, it had also become much more visible. So the smart magic users now made sure they included something to hide the spells they cast.

The spell wrapped the house from roof to foundation, glowing red for a moment, then fading away beneath the gray of the day.

The sirens were getting closer.

“Block is next,” Terric said, his voice a little husky.

Glad I wasn’t the only one enjoying this.

I got my fingers busy and drew the negative image of the spell as he drew the positive. We both pulled on more magic, poured it into the glyphs, which glowed a deep blue this time.

“Block,” Terric said. “To protect those within this sanctuary.”

He didn’t really have to say anything out loud for the spells to work, but he had studied for a long time beneath Victor and Faith magic. Some of the history of those kinds of spells involves prayer, intonation, mantras. I guess old habits are hard to break.

I waved my hand across the spell and sent it spinning to the house, where it immediately sank into the walls.

“Last is Pain,” Terric said, beginning the spell.

“Let me.”

He nodded and wiped his fingers through the beginnings of the glyph, clearing the air.

I carved the glyph for pain in the air between us, making sure it would wrap and hold and bite and paralyze. I carved it so that if Eli tripped it, he’d be lucky to be breathing by the time the spell ran its course. Terric mirrored my movements, no comment on the viciousness of the spell I was shaping.

The police arrived. We were behind a screen of brush. With the fog closing in, I didn’t think they’d immediately notice the black spell smoldering between us.

And because Terric had done it, as soon as the spell was formed and filled with magic, I spoke too.

“Pain,” I said. “To bring our enemy to his fucking knees.”

“Amen,” Terric said. He wiped his hand across it and pushed it toward the house, where it fell like a hard hail of dark rain, soaking it through.

That, the cops saw. But I didn’t think they knew where it had come from. Until I glanced out at the road, and noticed Detective Stotts looking our way.