Stone Cold

Chapter 10

SHAME

“Shamus,” Dad said, “come on and sit down, son. We need to talk.”

If he hadn’t said anything I probably would have just stood there staring at him for days.

I cleared my throat. “Sure.” I crossed over to him. “Well, it’s . . . it’s good to see you, Da.”

I paused there next to his chair not knowing what to do next. We hadn’t exactly left on speaking terms before he’d been killed. If he was as stubborn as I remember him being, he’d probably carried those grudges all the way up here to heaven and was ready to unpack them on me.

Dad pushed his chair away from the table and stood. He was younger than I remember him being, maybe in his late twenties, but he was still my dad. “Son.”

And then he was hugging me, something I hadn’t experienced since I was ten. I was surprised to realize I was about an inch taller than him, though he still had nearly twenty pounds of muscle on me.

“It is so good to see you, lad,” he said as he gave my back a fond pat.

I swallowed, inhaled the scent of him, cigarettes and Old Spice. “You too, Da.”

Then he pulled back, one hand on my shoulder while he gave me a long, long look.

Funny how even when you’re dead you hope that your parents will be proud of what they see in you.

“You really gave them hell, didn’t you, boy?”

“I got my hits in,” I said.

He shook his head. “I knew you could handle it. Told your mother from the day you were born, you’d be the man who would stop Jingo Jingo. And the apocalypse too.” He pointed at the empty chair between him and Victor and took his seat.

“Well, I had help,” I started. But before I sat down, there was another father I had to say hello to.

I walked over to Victor. “I am so sorry. We tried. We couldn’t get to you fast enough.”

“When?”

“When you died. When Eli killed you.”

“Ah yes.” Victor gave me a look that was not unkind. His hair didn’t have any gray in it now. I’d put him in his early forties. I guess those had been his glory years.

“I didn’t expect you to save me, Shame. The struggle between Eli and me was a battle I chose. I knew what the outcome could be. I have no regrets.”

He stood.

“But if we had been faster, just a little faster—”

“It is done,” he said. “Let it be done. I am not unhappy with my life, nor with what I left behind. I’m not unhappy with who I’ve left behind: you, Terric, Zayvion. You’re sons to me. In that, you’ve never failed me.”

He rested his hand on my shoulder and then pulled me into a hug.

“We miss you,” I said.

“Everything has an ending. It is the order in chaos.” Those were words I’d heard him say more times than I could count.

He released me with another pat and pointed at the chair for me to sit.

“We’re both very happy to see you here, Shame,” he said. “But we think you might have jumped the gun. There is so much more for you to do.”

Bullets flying out of nowhere, tearing through me, searing hot. Eli must have started firing even before he opened that hole in space behind Terric. . . .

“That,” Dad said, “is what we’re talking about.”

I blinked, and the memory went back to being a memory instead of a picture show.

“Don’t follow you.” I picked up the pint in front of me and took a long, hard pull. Good God. It was amazing.

“The Death magic that took housing in you, claiming you, is a very unusual thing,” Da said. “In all of history, we don’t think anyone has ever carried a piece of magic within them.”

“It wasn’t like I planned it,” I said.

“You didn’t plan it,” Da said. “But you did stumble into the way it could be done. Soul Complements joining on the battlefield, using magic to die for each other, and to live for each other. When you screw with the rules of magic, it will screw you back. And what you and Terric did on the battlefield, that was a top-notch screwup.”

“Yeah. Sure,” I said. “We had a shot to kill Jingo Jingo and we took it, consequences be damned.”

“And living with Death magic trying to eat you alive is the price to pay,” he said.

“Was,” I said. “It was the price to pay. Paid up. Everything has an end, right?” I lifted the beer. “Worth it.”

Victor shifted in his chair and folded his fingers together while laying his hands on the table. I knew that glint in his eye. He was planning something.

“You know Terric is still alive down there,” he said quietly.

Nice of him to sledgehammer my moment of happy.

“I . . . wondered. When I didn’t see him here. . . .” I swigged beer, which, while delicious, wasn’t really cutting it for me. I was in a whiskey mood.

As soon as that thought crossed my mind, the beer wasn’t beer anymore. It was a glass of whiskey.

I took a sip. Correction, it was angel song in a tumbler, liquid heavenly voices raised in pure heat and pleasure.

I set the glass down, did a reality—well, a heaven—check. The bar was the same. The people there the same. Only my drink had changed.

Dad and Victor, however, were watching me as if they were working out exactly how to tackle a particularly difficult problem.

I leaned back. “So Terric’s alive. That’s a good thing, right?”

Victor raised an eyebrow, nodded. “It is. But it would be a better thing if you were alive with him.”

“We’re better apart,” I said. “I know that. We’ve tried being together and . . .” I shook my head. “This is my heaven. I belong here.”

“This is all of our heavens,” Dad said. “Changing for each of us, as we meet, rejoin, or part. But you carry Death magic, Shamus, and there is no place death can’t be.”

“Which means?”

“We need you to go back,” Victor said. “There are things you could accomplish, things you and Terric could accomplish that will make a difference for so many. Magic is on the brink of being used as a global weapon. So many will die. Too many. If we do nothing to stop it, the world will enter a war that will never end.”

“Still can’t let go of the old job, can you?”

“It’s important, Shame. You left this fight far too early.”

“I died, Old Man,” I said. “Let’s keep that clear. It’s not like I strolled up here on a lark.”

“That aside,” Dad said, “Terric is still alive down there, half a soul without you, and soon to be only half-sane. You know how destructive Life magic can be. You know he was barely managing it when you were with him. And now, alone . . .”

“He’s capable. He’ll find a way to cope,” I said.

That was a lie. The broken tie of our Soul Complement was a punched ticket to insanity. If he still had access to the Life magic inside him, he would be capable of doing terrible things. I didn’t want to do that to anyone I cared for, to break him like that.

“So you want me to go down there and stop him? Kill him?”

“No,” Victor said. “We want you to go back and save him, before Eli Collins kills him.”

Just the thought of Eli killing Terric made me want to hit something.

“But if Terric dies, he comes here, doesn’t he?” I asked. “I’m not going to lie to you. I feel good here. I feel right here. Better than I have for”—I lifted my hands, trying to find the words—“for as long as I can remember. I finally feel good. Maybe this is the best for us, for me, for Terric. Maybe death is as good as it gets for Soul Complements.”

Victor finished his drink, then gave my dad a look. I suddenly remembered that these two had known each other back in the day when they were the young rebels raising hell in the Authority.

Shit.

“Here’s the way of it, lad,” Da said. “You and Terric have a chance to stop what Eli and the government behind him want him to do. Things are a little fuzzy from this height, but we are pretty sure if you don’t, the world we knew, the one we all fought for, and died for, where magic isn’t used as a weapon against humanity, will be gone, erased. All the people you care for, all the people we care for will suffer. You have a chance to change that. We think you should take that chance.”

“How many apocalypses does a man need to stand in front of, Da?” I asked. “There must be someone else who can take this on. Someone living.”

“No one else is the embodiment of magic, Shame,” Victor said. “Not even Allie and Zayvion can do what you and Terric can do. Life. Death.”

He was right.

“I don’t even know that I can go back to living,” I said. “And if it’s a twelve-step program to zombiedom, I’m outs.”

“We can help with that,” Victor said. “Even if you’re not tied to Terric, there is a draw, an affinity. As long as he is alive, you should be able to reach him.”

“That’s what started the last apocalypse, you know,” I said. “Soul Complements slipping out of death to be together in the living world.”

“Which we consider the precedent that proves our theory,” Victor said.

“And you, son”—Dad pointed at me with his beer—“aren’t returning to destroy the world. You’re returning to save it.”

“I suppose the two of you have worked out a way for me to do this?”

“We have ideas,” Victor said.

“I knew you would,” I said. “What’s it going to take?”

Dad leaned forward. “Magic.”