Hell Bent

Chapter 20

“Act natural,” Terric said.

“Seriously? Natural? Like we’re just two guys who happened to have dressed out of the same closet, standing in the rain and fog on an abandoned lot casting magic the likes of which hasn’t been seen for three years? That kind of natural?”

“It’s just Paul,” he said. “He knows we’re on the side of the good guys.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Terric, Shame,” Detective Stotts called out. “Can I have a word with you?”

“I say we run for it,” I said.

“You have zero survival instinct, Flynn.” Terric started toward Stotts and I followed.

“What are you two doing out here?” Detective Stotts asked.

“Skipping rocks,” I said.

He turned to Terric. Why did people always ignore me?

“Terric?” he asked.

“We came out to see Allie and Zay.”

“So you know they were attacked?”

“We’re the ones who told Clyde Turner.”

“You know I’d prefer it if crimes were reported to the police first.”

“It was a matter of seconds between me knowing they were hurt, to Clyde knowing, to you,” he said.

“Those seconds count,” Stotts said. “I’d like to have them so that my people, our guns, and the law can get here in time to keep things contained.”

“We weren’t even sure that they had been attacked,” Terric said calmly.

“Then why did you tell Mr. Turner they were?”

“What we told Clyde was that Zay and Allie cast magic,” Terric said. Then, a little quieter, “They broke it.”

Paul Stotts was the boyfriend of Allie’s best friend, Nola. No, wait. Husband. They’d tied the knot a couple years back. And Paul had stood by us through the worst of the apocalypse. He knew things about magic and magic users that no one knew back in the day.

He knew things today about magic we still try to keep quiet—namely that Soul Complements can break it.

“Why did they do that?” he asked.

“That’s what we wanted to know. Especially since Allie is . . .” Terric paused. “Has Allie talked to Nola?”

“Are you kidding? She’s planning the baby shower.”

“Right. Since Allie is pregnant, they didn’t want to break magic,” Terric continued. “So when we felt it break . . .”

“You can feel it when magic breaks?”

Terric shrugged. “We did this time. We assumed they wouldn’t have broken it if they weren’t in trouble.”

Stotts nodded, then glanced over at the house. “I’ll need a statement.”

“You know we can’t admit to breaking on record,” Terric said.

“I’ll want something from you, even if it’s just you had a bad feeling and followed up on your hunch.”

An ambulance rolled up, and the EMTs got out and walked up to the kitchen.

Good thing we’d triggered the spells to only react if Eli tripped them.

“Zayvion’s been stabbed,” Stotts said.

“We know,” Terric said.

“I don’t suppose you know anything else about this, do you?”

“No,” Terric said.

Yes, that surprised me. I thought he liked telling the truth and following procedure.

Stotts finally looked back at me. “Shame, do you know anything else about this?”

“Nope. Not a thing.”

“All right.” He glanced up as one of his officers walked our way. “I want to see you both in the station later today.”

“We’ll be there,” Terric said so smoothly, even I had a hard time telling if it was a lie.

Stotts moved up the path toward the house and Terric went the other way to the car.

I glanced back at the house. A movement along the rooftop drew my eye.

There was a gargoyle on the roof. Namely, Stone.

Well, he was really an animate—which is a construction of stone and gears powered by magic. He’d been made by Cody Miller, who had once been an incredible artist and magic user.

Even though magic shouldn’t be strong enough to keep Stone going, he was still as mostly alive as ever. He’d been Allie’s loyal companion for years now, was a good-natured doofus who liked to stack household items.

In a fight he was a deadly, ferocious brute.

He folded his wings and four-footed it to the chimney, sitting with his hands wrapped over his toes. He peered down at the police moving around, then looked out at me.

I held up a hand. “Look after Allie,” I said in a normal voice I knew he’d hear. He tipped his head, both ears rising into sharp points, and showed a little teeth.

He must have been with Cody when the attack happened. I was glad he was here now. I suddenly felt a lot better knowing a ton of fanged, clawed, winged living rock was going to be there with Allie and Zay.

I turned and caught up with Terric and walked along beside him. “I see what you did there with the detective, you little liar.”

“Shut up, Shame.”

He got in the car and I got in after him. Eleanor slipped into the backseat.

“You lied to a police officer,” I said with mock disappointment. “Aren’t you worried they’re going to take your hero card away?”

“If he knew what we knew, he’d stop us from doing what we’re going to do,” he said.

“Kill Eli?”

“Kill Eli.”

“Let’s drink to that. Swing by and get me a coffee, won’t you?”

“Coffee, not booze?”

“When they open a drive-through bar, I’ll be the first in line. Until then, coffee.”

What could I say? I was in a good mood. Breaking magic had taken care of my hunger, and made me feel lazy and satisfied, like finally scratching an itch I couldn’t reach. Watching Terric lie to the cops was the candy sprinkles on top of today’s donut.

Terric stopped at a coffee shop, ordered an Americano for himself and a double caramel latte for me.

Score.

“Do you think we should have stayed with Zay and Allie?” I asked after I’d drained half the cup.

“We talked with them about that. Don’t you remember?”

“No.” It was probably when I’d been pacing and not paying attention to them. I pushed at my cheekbone gently and flipped the visor down for the mirror. The bruise had spread down to my jaw and was making it a little difficult to see out of one eye. Zayvion Jones knew how to land a hit.

“...offered,” Terric was saying. “Zayvion refused. He said they’d call Stotts and make sure there were EMTs coming to look at his wound. He said he’d rather stay at the house with Allie, since he had planned on casting protections on it.”

“Protections we cast.” I flicked the visor back up. My face hurt, but I didn’t think anything other than the nose was broken.

“Yes. He’ll call if anything happens, but if you and I do our job—”

“Kill Eli?” I just loved how that rolled off the tongue. Felt like I could say it all day.

“No, find Dessa, who might know where Eli is.”

“Then kill Eli?”

“Maybe, yes. Stop him for sure. Find Brandy and release her, or use her as a bargaining chip against Eli.”

“That’s . . . calculated.”

“That’s practical.” He took a drink. “If we do our job, then Eli will be in no position to attack Allie or Zay or anyone else.”

“Because he’ll be dead. Come on, Ter. You know that’s how this is going down. We’re going to take Eli out. And by ‘out’ I mean mulch him into grave filler.”

Terric’s phone rang. It was in his cup holder, so I pulled it out. “Dash,” I said. I thumbed on the speaker. “This is Shame.”

“Shame,” Dash said. “Can I speak with Terric?”

“I’m listening,” Terric said. “What’s going on?”

“We have a lead on Eli. Davy just called in—”

“From where?” Terric asked.

“Don’t know. He rigged a blocker on his phone so I couldn’t track it.”

“Okay,” Terric said. “Are you at the office?”

“Yes.”

“We’re on the way over now. Let’s finish this conversation there.”

“I’ll put the coffee on,” he said.

I hung the phone up. “Don’t want to talk to him?”

“Don’t want a phone record if we’ve been bugged.”

“Do you think you’ve been bugged?”

“No, I’m sure I haven’t been. I don’t know about the lines at the office, though. If they know where Eli is, I want to hear it in person.”

I finished off the last of my coffee, sat back, and let the man behind the wheel take us to the office.

By the time we found parking, the rain had stopped. We got out. Everything was wet and when the higher clouds broke, the fog torched up with sunlight.

Eleanor drifted beside me of course. On the drive over here, I caught her staring at the statue. I almost brought the statue in with us, just in case Terric and I didn’t leave in the same car after this, but she shook her head.

So we stormed across the street, Terric and me step in step. People moved aside. I supposed we made quite a pair.

We walked into the building, took the elevator up to the office.

It had only been a few hours since I was down here getting the riot act read to me by Clyde. Funny what a difference a few hours made.

The haphazard tower of empty boxes was now a squat pyramid of neatly taped, labeled, and stacked boxes. Probably contained the few things I’d left behind and were otherwise filled with Terric’s possessions.

The framed picture of Paris he had taken back before college that used to hang in his office was propped against the pyramid.

I guess Clyde was moving in.

“Terric, Shame.” Dashiell paused halfway across the room and looked me up and down. “Those are good colors on you, Shame. But what happened to your face?”

“I ran into Zay’s fist.”

“So . . . wait. What’s that now?”

“Nothing to worry about,” I said. I strode off to the small storage closet just outside the bathroom. Mop, cleaning supplies, extra toilet paper. And up there on the top shelf next to a box of caulking tubes was a jacket.

My jacket.

One of them, anyway.

I pulled it down, turned my head, and shook the dust off it. Black, lightweight, shorter than the peacoat. Really not much more than a hoodie, but hell, it was my hoodie.

I shrugged into it. Realized that even with the bulky sweater, the hoodie still fit.

I was seriously tired of things reminding me of how thin I was. Maybe I should start working out.

Ha!

I strolled back into the main room where Dash and Terric were standing and Clyde leaned against a desk. They all had coffee in their hands.

Detour to the coffeepot. I made myself a cup, stole a truly sorry-looking bear claw sitting alone in a bakery box, and noted I’d left the baseball bat those thugs had threatened me with propped up by my desk. That was leaving with me. And so was the gun I figured was still in my drawer.

I walked over to my desk. Pulled the drawer and stuffed the gun in my pocket.

“...EMTs are taking care of him,” Terric said. “We’ll be giving Stotts our statements later today if we have time.”

“And what are you going to tell him?” Clyde asked.

“That we were planning on stopping by anyway,” Terric said. “And had a hunch that something was wrong, so we let you know in transit.”

He nodded. “Not the best we’ve ever come up with, but it should do. And you, Shame? Where do you stand on all this?”

“On the side of better donuts,” I said, turning toward them. “Where the hell did you buy this greasy sponge?”

“They weren’t for you,” Clyde said.

“Thank God for that,” I said. I shoved the last of it in my mouth and chewed. “Awful.”

“Where do you stand on this, Shame?”

“Whatever Terric just said, I’m probably against it, but am too lazy to do anything about it. So, what do we know about Eli?”

“We got a call from Davy,” Dash said. “He thinks Eli is working out of one of the hospitals in the area.”

“As a doctor?” The implications of that made my skin crawl. “Ew.”

“He didn’t say,” Dash said. “But he found this.” He walked over and handed me a printout of names.

“It’s a printout of names,” I said.

“Right,” Clyde said. “The first twenty-five on that list have hit the missing persons reports. Three of them have shown up dead in Forest Park.”

“Davy thinks Eli is . . . smuggling people out to Forest Park and killing them?” I guessed.

“He thinks it’s connected,” Clyde said. “Said there’s security footage of him being in the waiting room while one of the people on the list was there too.”

“Doctors see lots of people. Lots of patients in waiting rooms,” I said.

“You know what all those people on that list of names have in common, Flynn?” Clyde asked.

“They’re on this list?” I held up the paper.

“They were all hospitalized for tainted magic poisoning three years ago during the battle to heal magic.”

I looked at the paper. Tried to follow the logic of how that linked up with Eli. “Uh . . . buy a vowel?”

“Davy thinks Eli’s using those people who carried tainted magic as experiments,” Clyde said. “That he’s been picking them out, running tests on them, and then killing them and dumping their bodies.”

“Two things,” I said. “One: Davy does not trust Eli, has good reason not to. Two: Davy considers Eli a monster who likes to carve magic into people to screw with them just like he screwed with Davy. And two-part-two: Collins the Cutter is not that sloppy. If Eli wanted to do tests on someone and not get caught, we’d never find the bodies.”

Terric nodded. “So do you think he wants us to know he’s killing these people? To . . . lead us to him?”

“Are any of the victims altered in any way?” I asked.

“You mean with glyphs?” Dash asked.

“Or any other way.”

“Not that we found,” Clyde answered.

“Well, there were the tattoos,” Dash said.

“What?” I asked.

“Tattoos. Each of them had a tattoo somewhere on his or her body.”

“What kind of tattoos?” Terric asked. “Roses, hearts, serpents?”

“Glyphs.”

Clyde hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “Lots of people have tattoos of spells now. Especially since magic has changed. There’s a bullcrap myth that if you get a tattoo of a certain kind of spell, that spell will be stronger when you cast it.”

“I’m guessing there’s a lot of fertility inks out there,” I said.

He nodded.

“Do you have a list of them, Dash?” Terric asked.

“Fertility spells?” Dash asked, a little startled.

I laughed. “The look on your face! Priceless!”

“No,” Terric said, giving me a scorching glance, “the tattoos on the missing people.”

“That, I have,” Dash said. “Shut up, Shame. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.” Then, to Terric, “Give me a sec.”

“Thanks,” Terric said.

Dash smiled like the sun had just decided to shine on him.

I watched Dash walk off and considered Terric. He had no idea. Zero clue that Mr. Dashiell Spade liked him.

So dense. I wondered if I should give Terric a hint about his secret admirer.

“If it is Eli,” Terric said, back to business before I had a chance to put my thoughts together, “why did he choose those twenty-five out of all those people on the list?”

Clyde shrugged. “Convenience and availability?”

“Naw,” I said. “Eli doesn’t mind doing things the hard way if it means he gets it his way. There’s a reason he picked these specific people. What do we have? Fifteen men, ten women?”

“Yes,” Terric said.

“Do you have files on these people?” I asked. “Photos, medical history, addresses?”

“Yes.” Dash walked back into the room. “We do.” He placed twenty-five files, folded open, across the desk closest to Terric.

“Perfect,” Terric said as he leaned down to look at the files. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Dashiell.”

Dash smiled, and shot me a warning look.

I just blinked innocently.

“Which are still alive?” Terric asked.

Dash pulled away three folders. I noted, with a twinge of anger, one was the ten-year-old girl.

“And what are the tattoos?” Terric asked.

Dash pointed a finger at files with each word his spoke. “Refresh. Enhance. Light. Light. Ground. Impact. Combust. Refresh.”

“Strange collection of spells,” I said. “I can understand Enhance and Refresh. But Ground and Light? Who uses light spells so much they want that tattooed on their body? Ground isn’t even needed anymore. Magic doesn’t ever get so out of control that it needs to be Grounded.”

“Some people just get a tat because they like the look of it,” Dash said. “Even when they don’t know what it means.”

“Okay,” I said, “so that’s one explanation. But if Eli is a part of this, a part of the tattoos, then they are in no way random.”

“Can you put the people in the order of when they went missing?” Terric asked.

“Yep.” Dash moved the files, lining them up in order.

“And the tattoos?” he asked.

“Light, Ground, Light, Refresh, Enhance, Impact. Combust, Refresh.”

“That’s a better setup,” Clyde said. “Cast Light, maybe it doesn’t work, so Ground to keep magic stable, then cast Light again. Maybe it fades too quickly, so you’d need Refresh, then Enhance to make it more focused and then Impact. Combust? Light doesn’t lend to that, Fire does, but okay. And Refresh to keep that strong. Not sure what that can be used for other than knocking the crap out of something or someone.”

“These are tattoos,” Dash said. “Not actual spells. It could be coincidence. You could be seeing order where there really isn’t any.”

“When did they get the tattoos?” Terric asked.

Dash thumbed through the files. “Um . . . other than this older man, Walter, all of the tattoos were fresh ink.”

“How fresh?” I asked.

Dash looked back a couple pages in the file. “On the dead? Coroner said very fresh. Maybe a few weeks or a month at the most.”

“So there’s a chance they were tattooed in preparation for being taken,” Clyde said.

Terric nodded. “They’ve each been missing for more than a few months, but they weren’t all kidnapped on the same day. They were kidnapped weeks, sometimes months apart.”

“Clyde’s theory is starting to look promising,” I said.

“But they’re tattoos,” Dash insisted. “Magic won’t fill a tattoo. It fills a glyph.”

“We don’t think Eli is using magic like normal people,” I said.

“How else can he use magic?”

“He can break it,” Terric said. “He has a Soul Complement. She’s been in a mental institution. Went missing from there. We think he knows where she is. And we know he wants us to rescue her before he kills again.”

Clyde went silent, rolling through just exactly what that all meant.

Exactly what it all meant was that Eli was a weapon now. Potentially just as powerful as Terric and me, or any other matched set.

“So, where is she?” Dash asked.

“We don’t know,” I said.

“And we don’t know where Eli is, other than his possible connection to a hospital,” Dash said.

“Yes,” I said. “But he has technology—probably triggered by magic—that lets him open up holes in space and walk into any room he wants to.”

“Which is how he got to Allie and Zay,” Clyde said.

“Yes.”

Clyde took off his baseball hat and rubbed his fingers through his thick black hair. “That, boys,” he said gravely, “is a situation.”