Hell Bent

Chapter 5

Okay, a small detour.

The Corvette’s navigation system was too tempting to ignore. Since it stored locations where those punks had been lately, I decided to give it a look.

I pulled down a side road, parked, and scrolled through the list: a couple out-of-state addresses, a few trips to the east and west side of the state. Then an address I knew very well.

Terric’s house.

They knew where he lived. Which meant they either knew him or were keeping an eye on him. I didn’t like either idea. A couple other addresses showed up on the list: someplace out in the West Hills, Allie and Zay’s house, and the inn.

So those dicks who liked to settle arguments with a baseball bat were keeping an eye on all of us Soul Complements. Who were they working for?

Terric said the ox, Hamilton, might be involved with the girl killed by magic found up in Forest Park. If these guys were his friends, were they magic users? Murderers?

Probably would have been smart of me to ask Terric a few more details about the whole thing. Maybe then I’d understand why they were stalking members of the Authority.

What did they, or their boss, want?

I forwarded the last-visited addresses to my phone, which was back in my room, and did a quick search of the car for anything else that might tell me something about these guys. Nothing in the glove compartment, nothing in the trunk. I did find a black crow feather tucked beneath the visor. Not exactly useful.

Then I rubbed my fingerprints off the dashboard and everywhere else I’d been snooping. Time to hand this thing over to someone who might get some information out of it.

In under five minutes, I was strolling into the police department and wishing the cool, clean air from outside reached more than three feet into the stale funk of the place. But it didn’t. It never did.

Detective Stott’s real office was somewhere downstairs, but I didn’t want to stay that long or get that cozy. Walked up to the first workstation at the end of the hall, knocked on the top of the desk. Waved at the security camera. Didn’t have to wait long for a cop to show up.

“You still breathing, Flynn?” Cop was a huge dude from Hawaii, name of Mackanie Love. We’d met back in my petty crime days. He’d never cut me slack. But then, I hadn’t deserved any.

“Once or twice a day, whether I need it or not. I have something for you.” I held out my hand, the car keys hanging from my fingers, the baseball bat in the other.

He eased his bulk down into the chair and nodded at the keys. “What’s that all about?”

I placed them on the desk. “Car about halfway down the block. Black Vette. It belongs to some people you might want to keep an eye on.”

“Did you steal a car?”

“Please.” I pressed my fingers against my chest. “You think I’d steal a car and just walk in here to turn myself in? I’d make you work for it, mate. You know that.”

“So what’s that really?” This time he pointed at the keys.

“Detective Stotts was pretty interested in a guy Terric tipped him off to this morning. Name of Hamilton. And those”—I nodded toward the keys—“belong to two other guys who didn’t like Terric and me getting in the middle of their friend’s business.”

“Tell me you didn’t steal a car from the Black Crane Syndicate.”

“Okay.”

He leaned back just a little, the chair creaking in protest. “You know what Black Crane is, yeah? Blood and drugs. Human trafficking. Dark magic.”

Black Crane. A crime syndicate we’d kept under control when magic was strong, and that apparently continued to thrive off the magic and drug trade, even though magic didn’t have the kick it used to.

“Sure, I know Black Crane.” Oh! Crow feather. Suddenly made sense. “But I only borrowed their car. Borrowed. After they stopped me in the street to express their displeasure with me.”

“Are they dead?”

“Not stupid enough to come in here if they were.”

From the look on his face, he didn’t think that was funny.

“Listen, I don’t care what you do,” I said. “Terric got me involved when he chased down Hamilton this morning. And, I’d like to point out, nobody told him to mind his own business. But when two guys get out of their car and tell me they want to beat me senseless because I’d gotten their friend arrested, I’m not going to stand there and take it.”

“What did you do?”

“Left them reconsidering their manners beside the road. And brought you their car.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“What part?”

“Any of it. Don’t you own a phone?”

“Not on me. Would you rather I had brought them here with me? Citizen’s arrest?”

“No. I’d rather you stayed out of this, Shamus. From now on.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to say. I am staying out of it. See you around, Detective.”

I turned and strolled off, baseball bat over my shoulder.

“Flynn?” he called out. “Go see a doctor. You look like death warmed over.”

He had no idea.

I just kept walking.

Fresh air and more sunlight. It wasn’t far to the office. Fifteen or twenty minutes. If I walked fast enough, Eleanor might not even notice all the fancy shops we were passing by.

Keep walking. Keep walking. Dodge the man with the dog. Dodge the woman on her phone. Green light. Yellow. Sprint across the intersection. Almost clear of the shops. . . . no luck.

Eleanor went from drifting along to a dead stop. She got one look at a hat shop on the corner and clapped excitedly. I groaned.

“I promised Terric I’d be there,” I whined.

She just raised her eyebrows. Yeah, telling her I didn’t want to be late for work was not going to fly. She knew I didn’t care.

“You can’t even wear them.”

She drifted toward the hat shop door. Got her max distance from me and waited, arms crossed.

“I don’t wanna.” I started toward her anyway. Living women: stubborn. Dead women: about a hundred times worse.

I walked to the front window, close enough she could go in the shop. She waved at me to follow her.

“No.” I pulled out a cigarette and backed away from the door so the shop owners wouldn’t call the cops on me for smoking. I lit up.

Glanced over. Eleanor stuck her tongue out at me, then slipped through the glass door into the hat shop.

I leaned my head against the brick and ignored everyone around me. Didn’t care that they were alive. Didn’t care that their pulse echoed in my skull like drums. Didn’t care that my cigarette was out before I’d had more than two drags on it. Did. Not. Care.

Pushed the world into dimness, into fog. Away. So I didn’t have to feel the life. So I didn’t have to feel.

Cold fingers pressed on my fingers. Eleanor. I let the world back in.

Snap, click. Pow. Edges and beating hearts.

She pointed at her head, then at mine. Big grin on her face, all excited. Talking. Too fast for me to figure out what she was saying, not that I could hear any of it.

A few more gestures toward the shop, and finally I got the basic of it.

“No. Hell no. I do not want a hat.”

I pushed off the wall and ignored her for the next five blocks.

She finally gave up floating in front of me with her hand in my face—sorry; that doesn’t make me trip anymore—and flipped me off before window-shopping along behind me.

Building, up a flight of stairs, office: destination achieved.

Pushed through the second set of doors and past a short lobby that had four potted plants, all growing.

When had the place gotten so damn green? I pushed through the next set of doors, leaving two potted plants still growing.

Tall ceilings, lots of light coming in through windows, hardwood floors, shelves, and several desks. Modern, but unable to shake its past as a grain warehouse, it was expensive real estate the Beckstrom fortune had donated to the Authority back when Allie’s dad was moving and shaking the world of magic.

Eleanor floated off and sat outside on the window ledge to pout.

There was exactly one heartbeat in the room besides mine.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Dashiell Spade,” I said to the man walking toward me with a file folder in his hand.

He was younger than me by a few years, about five eleven, dark hair combed back and up with just a bit of muss to it, black-rimmed glasses that didn’t hide the fact that he had a face that had probably gotten him all the prom dates he could handle. Trim, dressed in a checkered long sleeve with a light sweater, slacks, and dress shoes. Northwest office chic.

Came in as our assistant three years ago. Looked like the poor guy hadn’t found a way to break free. Wondered what kept him here.

“Shame! It’s great to see you again. Coffee? Booze?”

“Yes, please.”

“The whiskey’s where you left it,” he said. “I’ll pour the coffee.”

I pushed off to the desk where I used to sit. Corner of the room where I could see the doors and all the windows.

Everything was pretty much where I’d left it. Phone, computer, knife stabbed into a stack of notes. There were also three potted plants on the desk, two of which were some kind of vine that crawled up the brick wall into the rafters and across the windows.

Those I had not left there.

“So, how’s life been treating you, Dash? I thought you’d have moved on by now.”

“Things are good, thanks.”

I crouched down and pulled the bottle out of the holster that kept it stuck beneath the top of the desk.

“We’ve missed you around here,” he said. “Most people’s long weekends don’t last for months. Or years.”

“Well.” I stood, studied the bottle, which was nearly full. “I knew the place was in good hands. Terric, he’s all right at what he does, I suppose.”

Dash grinned and shook his head. “No one’s cared more or worked harder than he has.”

“Proving my point. And you are damn near the best secretary . . . administrative assistant?”

He handed me the cup of coffee. “Second. I’m Terric’s second.”

“So, that’s a step up, right?”

He nodded. “I’ve left you a few messages lately.”

“Oh?”

He glanced over at the door and frowned.

“Terric should be here soon,” I said. “Out with it, lad.”

He seemed to make up his mind. “Come on back to my office.”

“You have an office?”

He just pointed toward one end of the large room that had been sectioned off into two with wooden walls and windows. The office on the right took up the majority of the room and lorded over the outer windows. That would probably be Terric’s.

I, correctly, took the door to the left into the smaller office.

He stepped in behind me, and shut the door.

“You okay with this?” he asked.

“With what?” I gulped coffee and whiskey and savored the double burn. His heartbeat was steady, calm.

“Close quarters, all these plants, me living. That what.”

He sat behind the desk and watched me, waiting. He had hazel eyes that were moss green with bits of brass in them. And those eyes were giving me a very knowing look.

Jesus. He knew. How much I wanted to consume. That I barely held it in check. I hadn’t ever talked to him about it.

Well, maybe just that one time when I was really drunk.

“Want me to pinkie-swear I won’t kill you, mate? Worried that I’ll lose control of Death magic and squeeze the pulse out of your ticker?”

“No. You’ve got this. Your control is solid. Criminally so.”

“Bless you. Talk.”

“I try not to get into Terric’s personal life. But there’s something that I can’t stay quiet about anymore. I”—he looked down at the desktop, suddenly interested in the calendar there that he pushed slightly to one side— “care for him.” Eyes up again, steady on me. “As his second. We’ve worked together for a long time and he is—his health is important to me.”

Lie. Well, not lie. More like truth pushing to be heard behind all those careful, yet oddly clumsy words. He cared for Terric as his boss, sure. And he cared for him a hell of a lot more than that.

Huh.

“Right,” I said, letting the subtext go. “I know that. But if you’re going to give me the lecture about how I should be around more because I make him feel better, Soul Complements, and blah-de-blah, don’t bother.”

“No.” He shook his head. “You already know you should be. You’ll change your mind, or you won’t. It doesn’t matter what I say about that. I’m talking about Jeremy Wilson.”

“Who?”

“The man he’s dating.”

“Do I need to know about this?”

“I think Jeremy is hurting him.”

Silence. I drank coffee. Not because I had nothing to say. A hurricane of words and rage ignited in my head, pounding to get out. If I said one thing, I’d be yelling. Incoherent. And then I’d kill.

Dash waited. Didn’t make any sudden moves. Didn’t breathe faster, didn’t elevate his heart rate.

He was a smart man. A good man. He waited me out while I bitch-slapped my demons.

I took one last swallow of the coffee and set the empty cup down on the edge of his desk. The cup crumbled into a dusty pile of ceramic.

And . . . I had my cool back.

Dash’s eyebrows ticked up. “Maybe I should talk to you about that other thing.”

I gave him a smile, shook my head. “I never liked that cup.”

“Noted.”

“Talk to me about Jeremy.”

“He and Terric started dating about four months ago. Terric was . . . discreet about it. He tries to keep personal stuff away from work. But about six weeks ago, I came into the office early. Found Terric coming out of the bathroom without his shirt and shoes. He’d slept here most the night. He had burns down his arms—cigarette burns. His wrists were raw and his ribs were black and blue.”

Ticked it off like a laundry list. No emotion. But his pupils dilated. Dash was pissed about this.

“Maybe he and the boyfriend like it rough,” I said. “Terric can take care of himself.”

“I know he can. And he did. By that afternoon, the burns and wrist scars were gone. He wore a T-shirt just so I’d notice. He has Life magic in his blood. He can use it to heal himself.”

I hadn’t thought of that. I supposed he could, though.

“I’ve seen him with a lot of men, and never seen a mark on him,” Dash continued. “But every time he’s with Jeremy, he comes in bruised or limping.”

I shrugged. I just couldn’t picture Terric willingly being abused. There must be more to it than that.

Dash leaned back a bit. “Shame, he can heal himself. And he does. I think Jeremy makes sure that no matter how fast he heals himself, he still walks away from their time together injured. And too tired to make himself better.”

“Maybe he just—”

“Too tired to make himself better,” Dash repeated, “because he’s spent his energy, poured his life into Jeremy.”

I took a breath, let it out. “Dash, you’re a smart guy. But I think you’re stretching this a bit.”

“So I looked Jeremy up,” he went on quietly like I’d never said a word. “Records are easy to get ahold of. He used to be into Blood magic. Ran money for some of the drug lords. Big syndicate.”

Bet I could guess which one.

“No recent activity of that on his record now. Not since his diagnosis. Cancer, Shame. Brain. Stage three. He’s dying. He’s been dying for years. But in the last four months, he’s gone into complete remission.”

“Because of Terric,” I said unnecessarily.

Dash pressed his lips together, then nodded. “I think so, yes.”

“Okay. Fine. Listen, maybe it looks like a twisted sort of relationship to you”—I held up one finger at his expression—“and to me, but Terric is a grown man. He’s made his choice and lives his life the way he wants. If he didn’t like the guy, he’d walk away in a flat second. You’ve seen him go through boyfriends before.”

“That’s true. I have. Which is why I’m telling you, this guy is different. He’s hurting Terric, and Terric’s not doing anything about it. You know him, Shame. Better than I do. Does that sound like Terric?”

“No.”

That was all I had time to say, because the exterior door opened.

Dash looked over my shoulder through the window to see who was coming into the office. I didn’t have to look. I’d know that heart, that pulse, that life anywhere. Terric.

“You killed my ficus,” he called out across the room.

I stood. Strolled out into the main office. “They were ugly.”

“They were fragile. And hard to keep alive.”

“Took care of that. You’re welcome.”

He dragged his fingers back through his platinum white hair, grabbing at the back of his head before letting go. “It’s coming out of your paycheck.”

“Don’t bother. I don’t work here anymore. Neither,” I said, “do you.”

“What?” Dash came into the room. “You quit?”

“No,” Terric said. “I didn’t quit. The Overseer has named a new Head of the Authority. Perfectly normal. The position should change hands every once in a while. Keeps things fresh.” He gave Dash a small smile.

Dash swallowed several times, not doing a very good job of hiding that the news had shattered something inside him.

I watched Terric. He didn’t seem to notice Dash was devastated that they wouldn’t be working together anymore.

“But don’t worry about your job,” Terric said. “Clyde is taking our position, and he’ll need a strong second to keep the continuity of everything flowing. You’ve always been the heart of this place, Dash. I’ll hope you’ll stay.”

“I . . .” Dash looked down. When he looked back up, he’d pulled it together and didn’t look shaken at all. “Of course. Of course I’ll stay. Have you thought about what you’re going to do next?”

“Pack,” Terric said. “Take care of some paperwork. Get drunk.”

“Singing my song, mate,” I said. “Well, except for the packing and paperwork thing.” I offered him the whiskey. He took the bottle, pulled the cork, and then tipped it up for a long, hard drink.

“Good,” he said, gesturing toward me with the bottle. “Thanks.”

He started off to his office. With my bottle.

“Just give me a minute or two, and I’ll be right back out,” he said.

Then he walked down the hall. With my bottle.

And shut the door. With my bottle.

Dash exhaled and folded down on a chair, his palms pressed evenly on his thighs. No more calm heart, his pulse was clattering. “Why?” he asked. “Why would the Overseer take this away from him? It meant . . . everything.”

“Dash, buddy. It’s going to be okay. Mommy and Daddy will still love you. They just can’t come to work with you anymore.”

“Fuck you, Shame.”

Had a little fire behind that. Good. Fire meant I wasn’t going to have to deal with tears.

“Honestly? It probably has more to do with me than him. I haven’t been pulling my weight lately.”

“Not everything is about you.” Dash tugged his cuffs, checked the buttons to make sure they were buttoned. They were. Then he got back on his feet. “You want any help packing your desk?”

“Hell, let’s just set fire to the thing. Nothing there I want.”

“So I can have the knife?”

“No. Fine. Get the boxes, Boy Wonder.”

Dash walked out and down the hall to the storeroom. I stood there for a bit, enjoying the aloneness. Except being this close to Terric meant I wasn’t really alone. I wandered over to my desk. Then I found myself walking instead down to Terric’s office.

I paused just before his door. I could see him through his office window. Sitting with his desk at his back, bottle resting on his thigh, other hand over his eyes, head bent.

I should probably just leave. Let him deal with this loss in private.

Terric lifted the bottle, but instead of drinking, he held it out toward me. Still had his hand over his eyes.

I opened his office door. Leaned there in the doorway.

“I don’t want the booze,” I said quietly.

“Yes, you do.” He took his hand off his eyes and leaned back in his chair.

“Yeah, I do.” I walked in, took it from his hand. It was a fair share lighter than it’d been just a few minutes ago.

Tipped it up, took a swallow. Booze went down hot, but the mouthwatering sweet of cinnamon and mint lingered on my lips. Life magic stirred the need in my belly. Terric had been drinking out of the bottle. I should have wiped it off before doing the same.

“I was good at this, Shame,” Terric said. He wasn’t looking at me.

I sat in the chair against the wall opposite his desk. “You’re still good at this.”

“We were amazing at it,” he said.

“True.”

He didn’t say anything else. I took another swig of the whiskey. Ignored my disappointment that the taste of life was gone.

A couple minutes ticked by in silence.

“So, if you don’t need anything,” I started.

“Just.” Terric turned, held my gaze. Blue eyes darkened by sorrow. “Would you shut up and sit here for a few minutes?”

I opened my mouth.

“Please.”

I closed my mouth. Handed him the bottle. He took another drink and handed it back, swiveling his chair so he could stare out the window.

I watched him for a minute. Thought about things I could say. Thought about things I probably should have said a long time ago.

Decided to just do what he asked and kept quiet. I even remembered to wipe the taste of him off the bottle before I took another gulping swallow.