Stone Cold

Chapter 14

SHAME

The problem with falling is that there is always something to hit at the bottom.

I hit a fist.

Or rather, a fist hit me. Pounded my chest, broke a rib. Took another shot. Broke two.

Holy shit, that hurt.

Someone was yelling, cursing. Taking my name in vain. I didn’t know who I’d pissed off, but there wasn’t nobody having any fun here today.

“Fuck,” I gasped, “you.”

The beating paused. A woman’s voice filtered through the hell in my head.

“Shame? Are you alive? You’d better stay with me, you son of a bitch, or I will carve you a new one.”

Sunny. Sounded like Sunny. I wanted to open my eyes to find out, but it was everything—and trust me when I say everything—I had just to fill my lungs with enough air it could wheeze out of me.

Where the hell was I?

“Just keep breathing,” she said as if that was an easy thing. “Dash! Get your ass in here. He’s alive.”

I thought she might be jumping the gun a bit on that one. I wasn’t even remotely close to alive yet. Hell, the jury was still out on breathing.

“Jesus,” Dash said. “Get this under his head. Here.”

There was some movement around me, but I still couldn’t see Jack, and couldn’t feel squat.

“Hello?” yet another voice called out. Took me a second to place it. Finally got it. Cody Miller. The one guy I always got into the most trouble with back in the day. “You two find anything? What are you doing?”

“Calling nine-one-one,” Davy said.

“Don’t bother,” Cody said. “They wouldn’t know what to do for him.”

“He’s dying, Cody,” Dash said.

“No,” Cody said thoughtfully. “I think he’s way past that.”

“Can you help him?” Sunny asked. “Cody, do you know of some way to help him?” She sounded angry, but also a little worried. I might have thought it was sweet if I didn’t also know she’d been the one slugging me repeatedly in the chest just a second ago.

Where the hell was I?

The lungs were working slightly better, though I couldn’t get more than a mouthful of air down into either one of them. The rest of me either was numb or felt like crap.

Time to give the eyes a try again.

One, and a two . . .

Got it. Kind of. Was rewarded with blurry light. Then Dash’s face, screwed up with concern, hovering over me. “I’m calling nine-one-one.”

“Give him a minute,” Cody said. “He’s almost back.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dash said.

“I am saying, he’s almost got it,” Cody said. “The hang of living. Well, when I say living . . .”

Shame? Eleanor floated over from across the room. Remember why you’re here. You have to live. You have to save the world, save Terric, save . . . everything. This is what you came back for. So live.

There was something different about her, something I should remember. Oh, right. She was free. She was no longer tied to me.

That’s right, she said. I took the jump with you. But I’m here on my own terms now. You need to draw on life, on something, Shame, or you’re corpsing out.

“Go,” I wheezed, trying to warn her, “away.”

Dash backed up. So did Cody. But Eleanor didn’t move away quick enough.

The hunger inside me was mindless, wild. Any life would do—it just had to be close to me.

No. Not Eleanor. Not again.

I fought for control, desperate not to hurt her.

She didn’t have much life in her, but she was an energy. And she was in the hunger’s reach.

No!

The magic in me, Death, was too strong. It snapped out, wrapped around her neck, pulled her down to me, and drank her up.

I heard her scream. Tried to let go of her, tried not to tie her soul to me.

And then I couldn’t hear anything anymore because everything in me caught fire at the same time, all nerves firing, screaming. I’d be joining the chorus, only I didn’t have air for it, and was pretty sure I was rattling around on the floor—kitchen floor—seizing like a mother.

Good times.

Something turned out the lights. Maybe just the overload of pain. Maybe Sunny punched my clock, bless her violent little heart.

I woke up in a bed—my bed. I was naked, clean sheets around me, a pillow under my head. Didn’t want to move and ruin the moment, but my face itched like a million ants were swarming over it.

I lifted my right hand to try to push some of the ants off the side of my face. My hand didn’t make it that far.

“Hey, Shame,” Cody said from somewhere to my right. “I thought you might be waking up soon. Welcome back.”

I gave up on making my hand do what I wanted it to do. “I feel like shit.”

“You should. You died.” Cody was sitting in the chair, his feet on the wooden crate of ammo I used as a nightstand.

Right. I thought I’d heard something about that. Seemed to remember there being a bar or something. “Swell,” I whispered. “How long?”

“As near as we can tell, you haven’t been breathing for a week. The bullet holes look at least that old. Well, they did. Since you came to, you’ve healed. Well, you aren’t bleeding and all the bullets were expelled, which isn’t quite the same as healing, but it did seem to help you breathe better. You look like hell on a half shell, though.”

I heard him, I really did. But my brain simply refused to process most of what he was saying.

I’d died. Why didn’t I stay dead?

Eleanor floated up behind him. She was almost completely see-through. A black rope around her throat tied her to me.

No. I didn’t mean to . . . not again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “God, I’m so sorry.”

She flipped me off with both hands. Then she floated as far away from me as she could reach, arms crossed over her chest, turning her back toward me.

I’d seen her like that so many times over the years. She was angry. At me.

And she had every right to be. I hadn’t meant to consume her again, to tie her soul to me. But I hadn’t been strong enough to stop it from happening either.

“Shame?” Cody asked. “Are you okay? You’re staring at me.”

“I’m not okay.”

“Can I—” he said.

“No. Nothing.” I glanced at Eleanor one last time. Didn’t know what I could do to fix what I’d done. Didn’t want to talk to Cody about it. “I need to take a leak.”

He pointed to the left. “Bathroom’s that way.”

“I know. This is my house, you idiot.” I pushed at the sheet. It resisted my attempts to move it.

Jesus, I was tired.

“I heard talking,” Dash said as he walked into the room. “Shame, why are you moving? You shouldn’t be moving. Dr. Fischer is on the way. Where do you think you’re going?”

“Bathroom,” I said. I’d pushed the sheet down to my waist and was working on sliding a leg over to the edge of the bed.

“Here.” Dash stepped to the side of the bed and half hauled, half supported me out of it. He didn’t say anything about me being naked and dead, and I was too naked and dead to care.

Got me to the bathroom. I tackled the problem of the toilet by propping one elbow on the towel rack and trying not to pass out.

Having managed that, I decided to go for the gold.

Turned toward the shower. Who in their right mind built a shower three miles away from the toilet? Didn’t care. I was going to wash this pain, blood, sweat, and hell off me, no matter how long it took for me to do it.

“. . . got it,” Dash said, suddenly appearing out of nowhere, his arm around my waist as he helped me toward the shower. “Almost there.”

“Dash,” I said as we crept ever closer and closer to the shower, which was already on and steaming up the room. Strange. No, Cody was over there, putting something in the shower. A plastic patio chair? What the hell?

“. . . sit,” Dash said, bending with me to fold me into the chair. “. . . dumb idea. If you die on us, Shame, I’m going to kick your ass, you understand?”

Whoa. Kind of harsh on a guy who’d just marched his naked ass halfway across the universe for a shower.

“Take it easy,” Cody said to him. “Why don’t you go make some coffee and check on Sunny? I’ll stay here and make sure he doesn’t drown.”

Maybe Dash said something; maybe he and Cody got in a fistfight, danced the tango, or took up skeet shooting. Didn’t care. There was water—warm, soft, life-filled water—pouring down over my body.

Eleanor hovered across the room, still as far from me as she could get. She refused to look at me.

“I’m . . . sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t stop it. I . . . El. I’ll fix this. I promise.”

She still wouldn’t turn.

It would have to wait. She would have to wait. I was too damn tired to do anything but sit and breathe. Everything else, the whole damn living world, would have to wait until I had my feet under me.

Lost some time again. When I woke up, it was dark out. The lamp in the corner of the room glowed softly. I was back in my bed, propped up with pillows so I was not quite sitting. Had a pair of boxers on. I moved a little and bandages scraped against the sheets. Bandages on my arms, my legs, my chest.

I felt like a piñata, the day after the party.

“Are you awake, Shame?” Sunny asked. I heard her shift in the lounger chair set in the corner of the room.

I tried to get moisture in my mouth. “Who do I have to blow for a drink of water?” I rasped.

More rustling; then she sat on the bed next to me. “You don’t have to blow,” she said. “Just suck it, Flynn.” She angled a straw into my mouth.

Funny. I sucked and the water hit my mouth with a shocking clean coolness full of flavor. Water had never tasted so good. I got a few mouthfuls of it down before Sunny took it away.

“You are a piece of work,” she said quietly as if she didn’t want to wake the other people in the house.

“What, this?” I said, trying a smile. God, that hurt. “It’s nothing.”

“Shame,” she said, “you’ve been dead. For a week.”

“Miss me?”

She didn’t say anything for a second or two. Then, “We can’t find Terric.”

Gut punch.

“What? What does that mean?”

“He’s not here in the house. He’s not anywhere else either. A lot of old blood on your kitchen floor, and we’re pretty sure not all of it is yours.

“I followed up on some leads on Davy. Think I have a pretty good idea where Davy’s being held. Then I came back to get you. To make you come with me and kill the bastards who are holding him. Only no one had seen you. For days. And no one had seen Terric. So Dash, Cody, and I looked everywhere. We finally came here. Don’t you ever lock your front door?”

“Why? What could go wrong?”

“Goddamn, Shame. This isn’t funny. This isn’t one of your play-it-loose-and-it-will-all-work-out schemes. People are dying here. Davy. Maybe Terric, if he’s still alive. And you, you jackass. I need you to get your head in this. I need you to . . .” She waved her hand at me.

“Be a weapon so you can save Davy?” I asked.

She gave me a long look. One thing I had to give the woman. She did not back down. Blood magic users. Tough as steel.

“Yes. I need you, and I need the Death magic you carry. You do still carry it, don’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you? Know? I need you to know, Shame. Because if you don’t have it, then I’m going to go after Davy without you. Tonight.”

“Where?”

“There’s a warehouse up in Washington. Outside Ephrata. I think he’s there.”

“You worked the Spokane lead?”

She nodded. “I think Eli’s there too.”

“Who else have you told?”

“Just a few Hounds. Well, and Dash and Cody.”

“Who has Dash told?”

“No one,” Dash said from the doorway. He looked a little rumpled in a T-shirt and jeans but had his boots on. He also had two mugs in his hand. I thought I smelled tea. “This is off the radar, Shame. We agreed we don’t want to drag anyone else into it if we go get Davy.”

“We?” I asked.

He walked in. “Sunny, Cody, and me. We didn’t want anyone else in the Authority involved, which is why I haven’t even told the boss man, Clyde. He’d just tell us not to do whatever it is we are going to do anyway. And we certainly didn’t want to worry Zay and Allie.”

Allie. The baby.

A memory scraped across all the raw and screaming in my head. Something about Allie. Something about her baby. “Is she? Did she have her daughter yet?”

Davy handed me one of the mugs. Half-full, black tea with honey and cream. I pulled it toward me and took a sip. Braced for the explosion of scent and flavor, lost myself to it for a minute or two.

This “living” was a heady thing.

“. . . girl?” Dash was saying. “Shame? Are you listening?”

“No. What’d I miss?”

“Did Allie tell you she was having a girl?”

I looked up at his cautious concern. Checked out Sunny, who was giving me the same look.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know,” I said, chasing memories. Someone had told me. Said she was having a girl. Told me more. That I had to save Terric, save the world. Kill Eli. Stop Krogher. No matter the cost.

“Has she had her? Or it? Has she had the baby?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Any day, though. Why?”

I took another swallow of tea, filling my whole mouth with it, shuddering through the glorious riot of flavor. It burned all the way down. “We need to go now.” I held the cup out for Davy, who took it. “Before the baby is born.”

Then I pushed the blankets off.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Dash said. “Dr. Fischer wanted you to rest. She said she’d be here in the morning to check on you.”

“Which means she’s writing a report for someone somewhere to read. Probably Clyde,” I said. “We leave tonight.”

“Shame,” Dash said. “I think you need to get through a whole twenty-four hours of breathing before we drive your ass across two states.”

“I can breathe in a car. You think Terric is there?” I got my feet over the edge. Held still to give my lungs a chance to catch up.

“We don’t know where Terric is,” Dash said. “We think Davy’s there.”

“Can’t you tell?” Sunny asked. “I thought you could feel Terric. With that Soul thing you have?”

“No,” I said. That was the truth, the hell I was not ready to face. I couldn’t feel Terric. At all. It might be because our connection had broken when I died. It might be because he was dead.

Or it might be because I’d died and come back not quite what I had been before. Something that didn’t match to a soul anymore.

The hunger rolled in me and Eleanor arched back, pulling against the rope that tightened on her neck. I pushed at the magic, shoved Death away until it subsided.

Damn.

“So if you can’t feel him . . . ,” Dash was saying.

He knew the answer. Terric might be dead.

If he was, then I had myself some unlucky bastard to track down and obliterate.

“Do you remember what happened?” Dash asked. “Do you remember who shot you?”

“Eli.” I pushed up onto my feet. The insides of me knotted up and lurched and threatened to become the outside of me.

“. . . Shame,” Dash said, in front of me with his hands on my shoulders. “Breathe!”

Right, as if it was that easy. Still, I gave the lungs a try, swallowed air. Enough to make the blackness filling the room step on back a bit. Note to the wise: Lungs plus bullets do not equal fun times.

“You can’t do this. Not yet,” Dash said.

“Dash,” Sunny warned.

“You two might as well take the argument to the other room.” I pushed Dash’s hands off me, gently, because I didn’t want to hurt him, and because really, that was all the strength I had in me. “I’m going to get some clothes on.”

Sunny started toward the door. Dash, bless him, hesitated. “You dying—again—isn’t going to help us find Davy. Or Terric. Or anything. Shame, you need to rest.”

I gave him a small smile. He really was concerned about me, about Davy, about Terric.

“Well,” I said as I shuffled over to my dresser. “As soon as we’re sure I’m actually alive again—then we can worry about me dying again.”

“Shame,” he said softly. “This can wait. At least a day. Please.”

I paused by the drawer, wondering if I had it in me to open the damn thing. “Eli shot me, and he took Terric. I think he took Terric. If Eli also has Davy, then that’s where we’re going. Where I’m going. Even if it’s just to kill Eli and bury Terric’s body.”

Dash didn’t say anything, so I did.

“I would kill for a cup of coffee, mate. That tea just isn’t cutting it.” Life would help too. Dash’s life, Sunny’s life. But I’d already done . . . something terrible to Eleanor. Trapping her, tying her down with that black rope of magic. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. I didn’t want to hurt anyone else.

“Jesus, Shame.” Dash rubbed at his eyes. He looked tired. Of course, he’d spent a week looking for Terric and me, and when he’d found me I was dead. It hadn’t been an easy go for him lately either.

“Coffee, Boy Wonder,” I said. “And make it strong. We have a long road ahead of us.”

Dash shook his head and walked out of the room. “Stupid, stupid idea.”

I could hear Sunny telling Cody we were headed out.

All right, Shame. Time to really take stock.

I took a gander under the bandages. I’d apparently sprouted a collection of holes. One in each shoulder, deep enough I could stick my pinkie into it up to my middle knuckle—which, by the way, hurt like a bitch. They were bloody, but not bleeding, and were strangely cold. My body temperature was way below manufacturer’s recommendations.

Five in my chest, two in my right leg, three in my left. Two in my right hip.

All of them deeper than I wanted to go digging around in, but the exit wounds were just as small as the entry wounds. Bullets didn’t work like that. I should be fifty percent ground beef in the back with that many shots in me.

I guess that if one is already filled with Death magic, it might make dying a little more difficult.

I pulled on the dresser drawer, gulped air until I could see straight again, pulled out a T-shirt, and dragged the soft cotton over my aching skin.

Gun. I had been in the kitchen. Terric was with me. We were eating pizza. Doing our magic thing to that poor plant. And then . . .

... blood. A knife cutting into his throat. Terric’s eyes, as he fell . . .

... fell at Eli’s feet.

Son of a bitch.

My heart kicked against my ribs and I groaned, waiting for the pain to pass. Eli had gotten into the kitchen. Eli had shot the gun. Eli had killed me, something that did not sit well with me at all.

Eli had slit Terric’s throat.

Everything inside me twisted again, agony I braced against and sweated my way through.

I glanced up at Eleanor, and this time she just stood there, blankly staring at me. She didn’t appear to be in pain. But I could see the tears streaking her face.

I didn’t know if it was withdrawals from death, or that I was allergic to life, but either way, something was irreparably wrong with me. With my body.

I needed life. Needing living. The Death in me was a bottomless hole, burning black in me. Hungry. And I was having a hell of a time fighting it.

In the end, I supposed it would win.

So I had some things to get done before I kicked off for good.

I had to find Davy for Sunny. Had to find Terric. Kill Eli. Kill Krogher, stop the drones. Save the world, no matter the cost. No matter what I gave up for it.

I was the last human on earth who should be given this responsibility. One look at Eleanor proved that. I’d shackled a woman who had jumped out of heaven for me.

What kind of monster was I?

I glanced up at the mirror, above the dresser.

The face of my nightmares looked back at me. I’d seen that look on the last Death magic user I’d killed. It was hunger and darkness and need. It was the thing that using Death magic was turning me into—a monster I could not sate or control.