Stone Cold

Chapter 16

SHAME

By the time I’d pulled on a pair of jeans and laced up my boots, I was so tired, I wanted to weep. Nothing in me was working. My lungs stuck shut with every breath, my vision went black if I moved too fast, and my heart tripped like a three-legged bull in a china shop.

Eleanor refused to acknowledge me and made it a point to stay as far away as possible.

I eased down and sat at the foot of the bed. Didn’t think I’d be getting up under my own power anytime soon. I’d never felt so broken. It wasn’t just my body. It wasn’t just magic. Deep down, in the core of me, where maybe my soul should be was a gaping wound. I was torn, empty, shattered.

Terric was gone.

Jesus. I didn’t love living with him, but being without him was worse.

Dash stepped into the room with a cup of coffee. “You look worse,” he noted as I accepted the cup he offered and took a small sip.

Coffee Mack-trucked my senses: hot, bitter, sweet, thick. I held on as it took the corner down to my stomach, where it crashed in a burn that rolled out across my nerves.

C’mon, caffeine. Shamus needs to go out and play.

I looked up. Expected Dash to be saying something I wasn’t listening to. But he was standing there, waiting. He’d brushed his hair back, found his glasses, shrugged on a gray jean jacket. It was startling how very alive, whole, and well he was.

Compared to the pale imitation of a human I’d seen staring back at me from the mirror, he was a beacon of life.

“Before we go,” he said, “I need to know a couple of things. Can you tell if Terric is alive?”

“No. But . . .” I shook my head. “What we had, our connection. That’s gone.”

“Right,” he said softly as he put two and two together and carried the conclusion. We were Soul Complements who had used magic together more than once. It meant we were tied. Soul to soul. If Terric were alive, I’d know it.

Wouldn’t I?

Dash cleared his throat, but his voice shook just a little. “You think Eli took him?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, can you access magic at all?”

Even the idea of it made me nauseated. And hungry. I licked my lips, tasting the old blood from cuts there. “I don’t know.”

“Let’s find out.”

“Really? Dash, I’m just . . . I think that’s a bad idea.”

“Before we get in the car. Before we go hunting Davy. Before we look for Terric, alive or dead. Before we run into Eli. I want to know, right now, what shape you’re really in. I know this is hard—”

“Stow the sympathy,” I said.

“Not sympathy, Shame. Let me lay this out for you. Sunny is too invested in finding Davy to think any of this through. Cody’s in his own world, like he always is. I’m here to make sure you’re going to make it through the night.”

“Listen. It’s sweet of you to worry,” I said.

“No. It’s practical. Sunny thinks you’re the gun she can wave to get Davy back. But you’re my friend, Shame. You died.” He paused, letting that statement linger in the silence. Then, a little quieter, “I’m not going to let you walk into battle and die again. So prove to me you’ve got the legs to survive a rescue mission against the same people who kicked your ass to hell and back.”

I glanced up at him. Saw maybe for the first time someone other than my ex-assistant and general nice guy. Sometime over the last three years, Dash had stepped into his own. He was keeping a clear head under ridiculous circumstances. Taking charge.

Man might make a fine head of the Authority one day.

Huh.

I hadn’t known him when powerful magic was something anyone could use easily, although I’d read his record and known he had mostly stayed away from using magic, and instead dealt with the business sides of the Authority’s needs.

But that man leaning against my bedroom wall had this possibly explosive magical situation under control and was determined to see it through.

Since the explosive situation in this case was me, and I was barely holding it together, I was impressed by his composure.

“What are we going to do, Dash?” I said. “Fight? Think you can take me?”

“Right now my grandmother could take you.”

I smiled. “True.” I swallowed another couple mouthfuls of coffee and left the cup on the edge of the bed. I pressed my hands into my thighs and pushed up.

“This is me. I am on my feet,” I said. “Where’s the battle, Chief?”

“Use magic,” he ordered. “I don’t care what spell. But you’re going to show me what you got.” He tipped his head down and made that hurry-up motion with his fingers.

I glanced over at Eleanor, who had her back turned to me, staring out my window. The black rope around her neck snaked toward me and latched in to my arm like a dark IV line.

“This is such a bad idea,” I whispered.

“Why?”

“There’s a good chance I’m going to hurt someone.”

“Won’t know until you do it.”

I finally looked away from Eleanor. “You just won’t let this go, will you, Spade? Why haven’t you used this kind of determination to get Terric to date you?”

I was hoping bringing up his love life would make him pull back. Sore subjects usually do. But he didn’t even flinch.

“Magic, Shame. Now would be good, but I can wait. Days, if that’s what you need.”

I glared at him. Would have continued the argument, but just standing there holding up my attitude was wearing me out. If I was going to cast magic, which apparently I was, then I’d better do it while I had the strength to control it. I didn’t want to drink another person down.

I didn’t want to hurt Eleanor.

Something easy, like Light, seemed a good bet, but what Davy really wanted to know, and what Sunny really wanted to know, was if I could handle Death magic.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

I took a breath, held it, then drew on the place inside me where Death magic sat.

It came to me, slowly, cold, and painful. Filled my bones with a weight that threatened to snap my bones.

Holy shit, it hurt.

But I stood, holding against the weight of it. I directed Death magic, sluggish, heavy, and raw, to Death something. But not a person. Or a ghost.

The dresser looked like a good enough target.

I turned toward it, held out my hand. Nothing. Magic was there, I could feel the lead weight of it in my chest, in my spine, filling my arm so that it was difficult to keep extended, but magic would not move through me.

Hell.

I trudged over to the dresser. Put both hands on it. Reached in for the magic again, dragging it forward.

Death, I thought. Now.

Magic responded by paralyzing me.

Shit.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eleanor dim and flicker.

Magic oozed out of my bones, slithered through my veins, cold, toxic.

My hands cracked with black lines as Death magic carved new channels and paths in me. Paths that hadn’t been open even before I’d died.

I couldn’t breathe.

Well, that was inconvenient.

Magic poured out of my fingertips like oil and ink, puddling and spreading from under my palms, covering the dresser in the black and slime, dissolving wood and nails and brass, aging them all, decomposing, killing.

Death.

The dresser went ash gray and crumbled into a pile of dust.

I was still standing, mostly because I couldn’t move. Just enough nerves were firing to let me know I was going to be hurting or unconscious—or both—when magic was done with me.

“Shame?” Dash said. “Shame?”

I tried to answer, to tell him not to touch me, for God’s sake.

No go. Magic wasn’t done with me yet. It crept out from the ashen pile of rotted wood and across the floor to the outer wall, where it leaked beyond the bedroom to the plants that surrounded the house.

And killed them all in one quick strike.

An explosion of pleasure blew through me. I closed my eyes as the death of each plant rolled hot and sweet across my skin, my bones, my soul. It was sex; it was more than sex. It was death and life, wrapping around me in an embrace so sensual I lost all thought.

I wanted life. The life Death magic could give me.

Death magic drank down the easy, sweet life of plants, bushes, trees.

I wanted more. So much more. Cars rushed by on the road that wound above the house. Cars filled with sweet, blood-pumping life. That would be enough to fill me. To begin to fill this cold dark hole inside me. To ease my pain.

And then Eleanor was in front of me. She’d been crying, her eyes red-rimmed, her cheeks wet. She shook her head. Stop, Shame. You don’t want to kill innocent people. You don’t want to lose your humanity to this darkness.

She was right. I just couldn’t move, couldn’t get ahead of the magic that had swallowed me whole.

Eleanor must have seen something in my eyes. She smiled sadly, then reached out and pressed her hand over my heart.

For a moment, I felt her hand as if she were solid, real, alive. Or as if I were dead, ghostly like her.

Magic paused, eased its grip on me.

It wasn’t much of a break, but I took full advantage of it.

Enough. I focused my will over it and drew the magic back to me, hauling on it, hand over hand, as if it were a rope, a chain that I could drag away from the living world and pack away inside me.

Magic snapped back with concussive force. I grunted from the pain but didn’t let go of the magic. I forced it down, back into that hole in my brain, chaining it to me and drawing it in, tight, tighter.

“Shame.” Dash was right in front of me now. I didn’t know where Eleanor had gone. Dash looked angry. “Let go, Shame,” he said. “Please, just let it go.”

Nope, not angry, worried.

“So, that good enough for you?” I asked, though it came out a faint wheeze.

I felt like magic had just bad-touched me from the inside out. I was cold, sweaty, and I stank of it.

Dash didn’t move. Didn’t reach out to help me. After I got done breathing too hard, and my vision cleared, I realized why.

He wasn’t worried or angry. He was afraid.

Join the damn club.

“That was delightful,” I said. “Thanks.”

“You think that’s control?” he asked.

“Enough.”

He clearly didn’t believe me. That was okay, I didn’t believe me either.

“You need a day to rest. Well, a year might be better, but at least a day, Shame. This can wait.”

“No,” I said. “It can’t. We haven’t had a lead on Davy and Eli for months. We do this now, while there’s still a trail to follow.” I gave the walking thing a try. After three wobbly steps, my legs and muscles got back on talking terms. As a matter of fact, I felt the best I had since rising from the dead. My lungs were on autopilot, and my heart pumped on its own, although very, very slowly, which was both odd and distracting.

The life from the plants had done some good.

“I’m fine,” I said to Dash and his sideways looks.

“You look worse,” Dash said.

“Ever thought about going into motivational speaking?” I asked. “Because you’d be amazing.”

“Shut up, Shame.”

That’s my boy. I gave him a smile and walked out of the room, down the hall, and into the living room, where Sunny was pacing the perimeter.

“About damn time, Flynn.” She slung a glare my way and then went ghost white. “What the hell happened to you?”

I paused, held out my hands to each side. “I got dressed. Like it?”

She looked over at Dash as though maybe he had something to say about my wardrobe.

“You’d better get used to it,” he said to me. “Because you just disintegrated all the rest of your clothes.”

The dresser. He was right.

Well, shit.

“How bad was it?” Cody asked, coming in from the kitchen with a plastic cup of pudding.

“What?”

“Death magic. You drained . . . something, drank some living thing down and it fueled you, right? But there must be a price.”

At my look, he said, “I’m the guy who held all of magic until it healed, remember? You’re an anomaly, Shame. I can see it in you. Before today, I wouldn’t think someone could come back from the dead with that much Death magic gluing them together. What’s it like?”

“Hungry,” I said. “Cold. Painful.”

He nodded and scooped pudding into his mouth. “And the price?”

“Having to answer dumb questions.”

He ate another bite of pudding and waved the spoon at me. “By changing the subject?”

Sunny and Davy were silent, but I knew that was the question foremost on their minds too.

I didn’t blame them. They were about to road-trip with Death, after all. You’d have to be an idiot not to want to know if I had magic under control.

“It’s different,” I said. “But I think I have a handle on it. And as long as I don’t use it, I think I’ll be okay. I think you’ll all be okay. If that changes, I’ll tell you.”

I walked to the door and pulled my coat off the hook. “How about we get on with the rescuing of Davy and the saving of the world?”

“So you’re good, Shame?” Sunny asked.

I just gave her a bored look. “I’ve never been good, babe.”

She glanced at Dash again as if he were my keeper or something. “All right,” she said, uncrossing her arms and picking up her duffel. “Let’s go. And you can cut the ‘babe’ shit.”

Dash strolled up to me. “So we’re going to pretend you have control?”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t ask me that.”

“And we’re ignoring all that black blood that poured out of you, and gray light and magic that destroyed your dresser?”

“It wasn’t blood,” I said. “It was Death.”

“So is that what we are paying attention to?”

“You’re still standing. That’s what we’re going to pay attention to.”

“My survival? Was that a problem?”

“No. Maybe. Hell, I don’t know, Dash. Right now I have control over the magic inside me. I’ll tell you if that changes. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“That’s good to hear,” he said. “So listen to me now. I don’t want you hurt either. If you need help with that magic, if you need us to do something for you, or to you, tell us.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll do that.” Not that anyone could do anything. Still, he seemed comforted by my words.

His phone rang and I motioned for him to step through the door. I followed as he answered the call. Didn’t bother to lock the door behind me.

“Dashiell Spade,” he said.

Sunny and Cody stood by a black SUV that must be something Sunny rented. Sunny was glaring at me. Cody was finishing off his pudding and staring up at the trees that surrounded the driveway. I glanced up at the trees too.

Dead. Every one of them gray and white, needles rusted, leaves shriveled at the tips of branches. All the life sucked out of them. Not just the trees. All the plants, ferns, grasses, and brush were shriveled, brown, barren.

As if a month of winter had set down right here in my driveway and gone on a killing spree.

“Love what you’ve done with the landscape,” Cody said. “You could open a business, you know.”

“Who?” Dash said into the phone.

“The hell you talking about, Miller?” I asked Cody.

“Yard care. You’re poison and weed whacker all in one. You can call it Death to All Shrubbery.”

Okay, yes. Cody and I had run together a lot when we were younger. Before his mind had been broken, he and I use to swindle, gamble, and generally pal around. I liked him. But he was getting on my nerves.

I pointed at my chest. “Not in a joking mood, mate. Not even a little bit.”

He ran the spoon across the bottom of the pudding cup, catching up the last dregs. “I think he’s still alive, you know. Not that you asked me.”

“What?” I asked.

“Terric.” He looked up, those blue eyes of his giving me no clue how sane he was at the moment.

“How would you know?” I asked.

“Eleanor told me.”

That stopped me cold. “You can see her? Hear her? Now?”

He frowned. “Not now, no.”

“When?”

“She showed up in my bedroom telling me you were here and needed our help, which is when we knew something serious was wrong and came out to your place. I saw her when you woke up.”

He’d seen what I did to her. That I’d used her to live, that I’d tied her to me.

“Cody, I didn’t want to hurt her,” I said.

“They’re dead,” Dash said, thumbing off his phone.

“What?” I asked.

“Simone Latchly and Brian Welling.”

I knew those names. Soul Complements. They’d gone into hiding when we found out the government had suddenly gotten pissy about Soul Complements’ ability to break magic.

“How?” Sunny asked.

Dash shook his head. “There was a bomb. They think there was a bomb. The villa they were staying in was demolished.”

“Any other deaths?” Sunny asked.

“No. Just Simone and Brian. It was magic that hit them. An Impact spell was seared into the rubble.”

We all stood there for a second. The only thing that could power a spell strong enough to take out two Soul Complements was another Soul Complement.

Or those spelled-up drones Eli and his boss, Krogher, had been making.

Son of a bitch.

This was it. This was the move we’d been waiting for them to make for months now.

And we weren’t in any shape to shut them down.

“Let’s go,” I said. “If we find Davy, we find Eli. And before I make Eli eat his own beating heart, we make him tell us where the hell Krogher is, and where his drones are going to hit next.”

Everyone was suddenly moving. I took the backseat because I knew I’d be useless as shotgun. Death twisted inside me, trying to get out, trying to slip my control, but I knuckled down on it.

If it slipped my control in a car full of my friends, I’d be well fed, and they’d be dead.

Sunny started the car.

Dash was next to me, already on his phone.

“We hit the warehouse first,” Sunny said.

“Yes,” I said. “Police, Hounds, and other officials will be crawling over the bomb scene, but I don’t think Krogher or Davy or Eli is anywhere near it. The warehouse is the most solid lead we’ve had in months, right?”

“Yes,” Sunny said.

“Good,” I said. “Give me your phone, Miller.”

Cody tossed it back to me. I thumbed through his contact list, finally found the number I wanted, dialed.

“Cody?” Zay answered.

“No, it’s Shame,” I said. “Things are about to get hot. You need to get Allie out of there. Somewhere safe. Somewhere off-grid where no one would expect you to be.”

“Where the hell have you been, Shame? We haven’t heard from you.”

“I’ll tell you later. You have to leave Portland. Go far away.”

“We aren’t going anywhere.”

“Yes,” I said, “you are. Krogher’s got the bombs up and running. Two Soul Complements just bit it. You’re on his list, and it’s a damn short list.”

“We can’t go anywhere. Allie is in labor.”

“What?”

“She’s having the baby, Shame.”

“No. That’s a month away, isn’t it?”

“It’s right now. We were just headed to the hospital.”

“You can’t.”

A hospital would be an easy target, an easy kill. It wouldn’t take anything to get a person close enough to them to kill them. It wouldn’t take anything to get a drone in to kill them.

There was a pause, then, “We’ll call Dr. Fischer. We’ll go somewhere safe. Where are you now?”

“I’m with Cody, Sunny, and Dash. We have a line on this—the warehouse—and are going to follow up. We’ll be in touch. Just . . . look after her.”

“Nothing’s going to hurt Allie or the baby,” Zay said in that soft voice that sort of made me want to take several steps backward.

“Good,” I said. “We’ll let you know if we have any info.”

“Shame,” he said. “Is Terric with you?”

My heart tripped, stopped beating for a beat or two.

“No,” I said as evenly as I could. “He might be dead.”

His silence said more than words.

“And you?” he asked.

“Holding it together. Mostly.”

He knew it was a lie. He also knew I needed him to pretend it was the truth.

“Is there anything else I need to know?”

“Nothing important. We’ll call. Just keep them safe, okay?”

“We’re all going to be fine, Shame,” he said. “You’re going to do what you have to do, and then you are going to come back and hold my kid in your arms while I tell you you’re doing it wrong. You are going to survive this. Do we have an understanding?”

“Sure,” I said, “we have an understanding.”

I hung up and glanced at the phone in my hand. The glass was cracked, the case broken into tiny brittle bits. Then even the light on the screen went out.

I’d killed it. In under a minute flat. The Death magic inside me had drained down the electricity. And I hadn’t noticed Death slipping past me.

Not good.

“How far to the warehouse?” I asked.

“About five hours,” Sunny said.

Great. Five hours of keeping the lid on Death. I closed my eyes, turned to the magic inside me, and concentrated on exactly two things: breathing and not giving Death magic an inch.