Stone Cold

Chapter 25

SHAME

I hated gates. Zay and other people who could open the damn things seemed to love jumping through them. But whenever I stumbled through one, it felt as if someone inserted hot peppers up my nose, into every other orifice, and kicked me off a cliff into the salty deep.

Unpleasant, and I almost always ended up puking.

The magic Davy shouldn’t have been able to access landed us in the driveway in front of Kevin’s house.

Every inch of me burned, but at least I wasn’t going to lose my lunch. I had no time for it.

Eli was walking up the front steps. Eli was almost at the door. Eli was almost close enough to hurt two of the people left in this world whom I most wanted to be safe.

“Hey!” I yelled.

He looked surprised as hell that we were right behind him. I thought for just the barest second that he glanced at Davy and gave him a nod. What? Were they in this together? But then I didn’t have any time to pick out the subtleties of what the fuck was going on.

Half a ton of rock tumbled out of the sky, all wings, claws, and fangs.

Stone the gargoyle.

He had probably been roof-side and noticed both Eli and our arrival at the same moment. He tore down out of the sky aiming straight at Eli.

Good boy, Stoney.

Two things happened at once: I unleashed Death magic. Terric reached out with Life magic.

Okay, three things happened.

Eli opened a gate in the ground behind him and stepped back into it just as Stone lunged for his throat. He and Stone fell through it and were gone.

“Son of a bitch.”I was running to where Eli and Stone had just been on the porch. I was also yarding back on Death magic so it wouldn’t consume everything living in its path. Terric, I assumed was doing the same with Life magic.

Dash and Cody were a couple steps ahead of us, but they pulled up short when the door opened.

“Stop right there.” Kevin stood just inside the expansive entryway, a semiautomatic rifle in his hands. Correction, a semiautomatic rifle in his hands pointed at us. “What the hell are all of you doing here?”

Kevin was the kind of guy you might miss in a crowd—thinning hairline, sad eyes, and average in most every other way. But when he was holding a gun, he was riveting.

“Eli was outside,” Terric said. “Stone tackled him. They gated out. Could be gating back at any minute. Are Allie and Zayvion all right?”

“No one comes into the house,” Kevin said. “Not even you.”

“Kevin,” Dash said, “it’s all right. We’re here to help.”

“How’d you get here?”

“Davy opened a Gate,” I said.

Kevin turned his gun on Davy.

What we had here was a powder keg and a book of lit matches. Nothing but boom ahead.

“We came to stop Eli,” I said. “We can leave. Terric and I can leave.”

“It’s not Terric and you that I’m worried about,” Kevin said. “Step back, Davy. Way back. Now.”

“Davy? Davy’s not the problem,” I said. Kevin wasn’t making any damn sense. “He brought us here to hunt for Eli. If Eli isn’t here, we’re gone.”

“Sure he brought you here,” Kevin said. “Because he’s under Eli’s orders to do so.”

“What?” I said.

Bullshit, Sunny said. Davy’s not working for Eli. He was tortured by him. Held captive by him.

“You sure about that?” Dash, who couldn’t hear Sunny, asked Kevin.

“One hundred percent,” Kevin said. “Back off the property, Davy Silvers, or I will drop you where you stand.”

Davy held up his hands. “Kevin. You’re wrong. I would never take orders from Eli.”

He sounded like Davy. Looked like him—well, like a version of him who had recently been hammered through hell. The Davy I knew would rather slit his own throat than work for the man who had turned him into a monster.

“Back up,” Kevin repeated.

No, Sunny said. Shame. Don’t let him kill him. Don’t let him shoot.

“Davy,” I said, “you’d better listen to him, mate. Just step outside and we’ll get this all sorted.”

Davy didn’t move, didn’t say anything.

“Davy?”

That wasn’t Davy behind those dead eyes. Maybe hadn’t been Davy for a long time.

Shit.

Magic can do wonderful things. Back in the day it healed the sick, fed the poor, made the world an easier place to live in. Of course magic back then always came with a price: You used it, and it used you.

The price for using magic was pain.

Then Cody healed magic, turned it into its new extra-gentle form and made it so using magic didn’t cost much because it didn’t do much.

Those spells carved into Davy were dark magic. Eli had carved spells from a time when magic was broken, raw, and extremely deadly.

Spells that would kill a man. Spells that would change a man. Spells that destroyed anything they touched.

And in those black hashed and looped designs were a few more spells. Things that would take care of Eli’s enemies. Things that would take care of Krogher’s problems.

Davy wasn’t just a blueprint that Eli had used to carve the drones into bombs; Davy was his master weapon.

His very first, very best, flesh-covered bomb.

Right here, at Kevin’s house, where Allie and Zayvion and Terric and I had gathered. Two sets of powerful Soul Complements. Maybe even the most powerful Soul Complements. Maybe the only Soul Complements left in the world. The only people who could stop Krogher and his drones.

And we’d brought Davy here—Eli’s walking weapon. We’d let him bring us here. All together now, cozy and easy to kill.

Fuck. Me.

I triggered Death magic, sent it straight for him, at the exact moment Davy threw his hands down and out to the side. He arched back, his entire body consumed by the blue flame of those spells.

Magic called up from the wells beneath the city, magic called down out of the cloudless sky, a firestorm of hell. Magic Davy should not be able to access, if he were just human. Magic that was damn near impossible to pull on anymore.

An ungodly immense amount of raw magic.

There was no way I could block it.

And then the world exploded.