Hell Bent

Read on for an exciting excerpt from the next Broken Magic novel by Devon Monk, STONE COLD Coming in April 2014 from Roc.

The door behind Eleanor opened, letting in the March wind, a little rain, and the man I had come here to kill.

The man was a few years older than the photo I’d seen, black hair shot through with gray, white face gone pudgy behind square bifocals. His name was Stuart, and he carried himself like someone who was irritated with his own skin: stiff movements, coat clutched closed with one hand over his stomach, a scowl hammered into his face.

Not what I’d expected a murderer to look like, but then killers came in all shapes and sizes.

He glanced around the diner. Didn’t notice me. I didn’t stand out in a diner that hadn’t passed a health inspection in a decade. And although it would be fun, I didn’t wear a sign that said “Shame Flynn. Death magic user, loyal friend, troublemaker, and the last guy you’d want to meet in a dark alley if you’d done something naughty.”

He didn’t notice Eleanor either, but that was understandable.

Eleanor was a ghost.

She sat across from me, long blond hair flowing with an underwater grace as she moved. Soft features, sweet smile, she was beautiful when alive, and still beautiful when dead. She noticed me noticing him. Tipped her head a bit, narrowed her eyes. “What?” she mouthed.

I couldn’t actually hear her because—hello—she was dead. But I’d learned how to read her lips over the last couple years since she’d been stuck with me.

“Nothing,” I lied.

She, as usual, didn’t believe me.

She scanned the diner, saw the guy take the booth just off to our right, looked back at me. Shook her head.

“Not listening.” I stared at my breakfast so I didn’t have to see her, poked at the waffles. My fork bounced off the hardened whipped cream.

She shifted through the table like someone forging a stream and floated in front of me, half of her body stuck in the table.

“Jesus. Do you stay up at night thinking of ways to creep me out?”

“No killing,” she mouthed. Or maybe it was “No kidding.” I didn’t say I was good at reading lips.

“Sorry. I made a promise. I never go back on my word.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Fine. Lately,” I amended. “I never go back on my word lately. And that man”—I lowered my voice because, seriously, I did not need people looking at the crazy guy who was yelling at his waffles—“has done unspeakable things to people. With magic. For years. He’ll continue doing unspeakable things, with or without magic. He should have been dead a long, long time ago. I’m just taking care of business.”

“Terric.” She pointed at my heart, which wasn’t beating all that well today. A problem I intended to take care of as soon as the ghost got off her high horse so I could kill the guy.

I lifted my knife. “We’ll leave Terric out of this. Plus, he’s avoiding me, not the other way around.”

Not that I could ever get away from him. We were Soul Complements: Death magic, Life magic. Ever since the magical apocalypse a few years ago had made magic a gentle force, it was just us Soul Complements who could break magic and make it do the old, horrifying things.

Well, and the old, wonderful things too, but that wasn’t really my department.

I was the guy who handled the darker side of things.

I’d been a damn fine Death magic user back in the day. And now? Well, now I was death.

While it had its perks, it didn’t come without a hell of a price. I carried death, but if I didn’t let it loose, didn’t let the Death magic in me consume and kill, then it simply consumed and killed me.

I was never going to be an old man. Hell, I’d be lucky to live another year.

But I was damn sure going to live long enough to take out some people before my time was up. For one, that killer in the booth across from me, and for two, the psychopath Eli Collins, whom I still hadn’t tracked down.

A cold slap of pain hit my shoulder and forced my attention back on my surroundings. The grease and noise of the diner fell back around me again, the heat of the air, the cool of the wind coming through the door. Eleanor had her hand up, ready to slap me again to get my attention. She didn’t need to.

Another man stood just inside the door, scanning the diner.

Terric Conley was a bit taller than me, dressed better than me, and had blue eyes and good looks angels would fistfight for. His hair had been white since the day I’d tried to kill him and he’d killed me back. Altogether, he was the sort of man women fell for. Unfortunately for women, he was the sort of man who fell for men.

He was also a hell of a Life magic user, and, when we admitted such things, my friend, my partner, and my Soul Complement.

He annoyed the hell out of me.

He spotted me and started my way.

“Shame.” He stopped by the table, glanced down at the untouched plate of waffles, strawberries, and whipped cream in front of me. A frown wrinkled his forehead. “Breakfast? Why are you eating breakfast here? Now?”

“What’s wrong with here and now?”

“For one”—he glanced back across the diner, then at me—“this place is a dump. And you promised you’d go with me to a meeting today.”

“I promised?”

“Okay, fine. I promised. Allie and Zayvion want you there. Us there,” he corrected.

“Busy. Sorry.” I sawed my way through the waffle with a wholly inadequate knife, then shoveled waffle and whipped cream into my mouth. Chewed. And chewed. And kept on chewing.

Tough didn’t describe this waffle. Kevlar had more give.

“Just . . . come, Shame,” he said. “Allie wants you there.”

Ever since Allie had gotten pregnant, she was all sorts of unpredictable in the emotional department. I found it endlessly amusing. Terric had taken to tiptoeing around her, and Zayvion had threatened to tie my spine in knots if I riled her up. Again.

I spit the waffle into the napkin. “If I don’t?”

Terric raised an eyebrow. “You need me to threaten you?”

“Might be amusing.”

“I can promise you it would not be.”

Had some fire behind those words. Man could deal out the hurt when he wanted to. Apparently, me not going would make him want to.

“What the hell kind of meeting is it, anyway? You and I are no longer employed by the Authority.”

“We aren’t the Head of the Authority. Doesn’t mean we aren’t a part of it.”

The killer at the booth had finished his coffee and small bowl of oatmeal. He tossed cash on the table, pushed up on his feet, and, glancing at me, walked out the door.

Damn it. He knew I was tailing him.

I could kill him from here. Without even standing up. Without even laying a finger on him. I could reach out, let the Death magic inside me pop his heart, blow his brain, drain his lungs.

Just the thought of it made my heart stutter, then pause, for several beats too many.

Eleanor put one hand over her mouth and watched me with wide eyes.

It was weird to see her worried that I might die. I was, after all, the bloke who had killed her and then hogtied her to my mortal coil.

I took a couple even breaths and focused on not panicking. Terric was saying something, but I wasn’t listening.

Finally, the vise of death released my heart and blood pushed a hot flood under my skin. Painful and heady.

“...drunk?” Terric was asking.

“Yes.” I had no idea what he was talking about. Hoped it was an offer.

I checked the diner again. Killer guy was long gone. Well, there went two weeks of hunting down the drain.

“Cover that for me, will you?” I asked. “I left my cash in my other coat.” I stood, wavered a little from the head rush.

Eleanor nodded and then pointed at Terric. “Do it,” she mouthed.

Terric sighed and threw a bill on the table.

I gave Eleanor a back-off look. “Is it about Davy?” I asked as we made our way to the door.

He glanced out at the rain and flipped his collar before taking the plunge to the sidewalk. “Weren’t you listening? Never mind. Don’t answer that. No. Nothing new there. We still haven’t found him.”

“So what is it about?”

We strode down to his car double-parked down a block or so. I could feel every heartbeat like a finger tapping a rhythm against my spine. Forty-seven lives in the office building, twelve in the coffee shop, eight in the bank.

He didn’t say anything until we had ducked into the car.

“How’s Eleanor?” He couldn’t see her unless he drew on magic to do so, but lately he made it a point to ask about her. Which she loved.

Women.

She smiled, then made pointy motions toward him again.

“Still dead,” I said.

She slapped me in the back of the head. Ow. Brain freeze.

“Also, angry.”

“What about?”

“Who can tell?”

He glanced at me. Didn’t buy my dismissal. I didn’t care.

Time to change the subject. “You going to tell me what’s really wrong?”

He started the engine. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t get in until five this morning. You paced until six. It’s what, nine o’clock?”

“Ten thirty.”

“You’ve had three hours of sleep. Not like you to miss your beauty sleep.”

His eyes narrowed just a bit. Uncomfortable subject. I should probably just leave it alone.

So of course, I didn’t.

“Come on, now, Ter. Got a new guy working your night shift?”

He stopped at a light and watched the pedestrians without umbrellas take their time crossing the street.

“I’ve been . . . keeping busy. Looking into things.”

“Do these things have names? Social Security numbers?”

He shook his head.

Huh. I don’t know why, but I’d never thought of Terric as the kind of guy to keep secrets. He was too by-the-book, too goody-goody.

“Look at you,” I said. “All mysterious and secretfying. Please tell me it’s both a deep and shamefully dark secret you’re hiding.”

“I’m not hiding anything. Nothing you need to know.”

“Those are not quite the same thing, are they?”

I glanced away and caught the blur of light from the corner of my eye. Light that surrounded him. Huh. Maybe it wasn’t a new boyfriend on his mind.

Maybe it was magic.