Stone Cold

Chapter 20

SHAME

Minutes dragged by, measured by my own ragged breathing. But not Terric’s. Terric wasn’t breathing. The Life magic in him had been snuffed, smothered out by the touch of Death magic.

Come on, Terric, I begged. Breathe.

Cody had been wrong. Cody had been very wrong.

I’d killed him. My friend. My soul.

The rolling clack of a bullet chambering a round rang out in the silence.

“Shame,” Dash said. “Back away from him now.”

Terric’s ghost wasn’t pulling free of his body. He wasn’t tied to me like Eleanor and Sunny. But he was not alive either.

“Last chance, Flynn,” Dash warned. “Bullets might not kill you, but they will slow you down.”

Terric wasn’t breathing, still wasn’t breathing.

Goddamn you, Cody. You said he’d live. Like me.

I pressed my palm over Terric’s heart. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“Move,” Dash said, “away.”

I swallowed the tears, swallowed pain. Nodded. I’d done this, made this choice. The wrong choice.

He was gone. Gone. I’d killed him. Just like I always thought I would.

Death spread its arms and wrapped around me like a thick, soft blanket, and I let it. Let it feed on my shock and pain, leaving me dull, blank.

I moved away from Terric as Dash said, backing away from the bed.

I’d killed him.

Everything went silent under the weight of that reality. The world slid past me in slow motion.

Dash moved toward the bed, shifting his aim to keep the gun pointed at my head. He bent and pressed fingers against Terric’s neck, feeling for a pulse.

I stared at Dash’s gun. Wished it could kill me.

I wished I was the dead guy in that bed. Wished I’d never crawled out of heaven and off that damn kitchen floor. If I could give up something to change this, to change everything, I would.

But there was nothing I could do.

Yes, I’d find a way to die. Soon. Dash was right—bullets wouldn’t do it. Something would, though. I was sure of that.

But before I found out how to take myself out of this world, I had someone to destroy.

Eli Collins.

Death magic closed around me tighter, a black wave that swallowed the last of me.

I did not fight it.

I started walking, clearheaded and calm. Revenge is a wonderful focusing tool, when applied correctly.

Through the house, out the door. Maybe Dash was calling my name. Maybe Sunny said something as I stormed through the living room. Maybe the doctor put down her cell phone and walked out the door behind me.

Maybe Death didn’t give a damn.

Out to the front of the house, out to the dirt road that wound off the highway and back into these hills. Out past the Illusion spell I had cast to keep us safe.

Only I didn’t want to be safe anymore.

Not one little bit.

Come at me, boys, I thought. I’m not hiding anymore.

I bent, unlaced my boots, pulled them off, and threw them into the ditch. Stocking feet pressed against the cold dirt. Dirt tied in to everything in this world. Dirt beneath my feet was dirt beneath Eli’s feet.

And there was a world of magic flowing between us. Magic I was a part of. Magic I knew he was a part of.

“Mr. Flynn,” the doctor said, her voice sounding miles away and small.

Eli was somewhere on this earth. I was going to find him, find his single, beating heart out of millions of beating hearts. Then I was going to tear him apart and drag him down to hell with me.

Death curled my hands into fists. I was angry, but anger was only the beginning.

Shame, Eleanor said. Whatever you’re thinking about doing, don’t do it. Think about this. Think about what your actions will do.

Death could drink down every life in a ten-mile radius. Every life in a hundred miles. But the only life I wanted ended was Eli’s.

“Please, Mr. Flynn,” the doctor said. “Let me see to your injuries.” Her hand gently touched my shoulder.

Death turned to her, to the life pulse thrumming in her, and smiled, hungry.

No, I thought

No! Eleanor said.

The doctor smiled back. “Let’s go inside.”

Death was fast. My hand whipped out and cupped the back of her head. My other hand pressed against her heart.

It was enough to snap me out of the shock, to shake off some of the numb grief that held me down.

But Death had the edge on me. I fought for control of my own damn hands, my own damn body.

Too late.

Death magic wrapped her, skin to soul, smothered the life out of her, and sucked it into me. The flare of her surprise, followed by pain, fear, and then the gentle release of her consciousness was thick against my tongue, heavy in my belly.

God, what had I become?

Shame, Eleanor said. Let go of her.

I heard her, and had enough control that I lowered the doctor to the ground and stood back.

Her spirit stepped out of her body, ghostly and confused. There was a new rope attached to my arm, a rope that wrapped around her neck.

Death magic was sated for the moment. Not easy to shove away, but I leaned into it, pushed it down, held it back.

The doctor was crying. Why? she asked softly.

“I’m sorry,” I said, the words numb against my lips.

You killed me with a single touch, she said. That’s not how we die. That’s not how anyone dies.

“I know,” I said. I had no words for her. No words she’d want to hear.

Eleanor and Sunny took her away from me, as far as their chains would allow, turned their backs on me, and on her dead body, and whispered comforting things to her.

If you’re going to do it, Sunny said. Do it now.

I must have been standing there for a while. Eleanor and the doctor—Mina—still had their backs to me, but Sunny was in front of me now.

“What?”

You killed Terric and he died. Then you killed Mina too, she said. Which I’m guessing was because you lost control of the snake pit of magic writhing in you. I can only think of one reason why you didn’t just force Dash to blow your brains out. You want revenge.

“Eli,” I said.

Good, she said. I want him dead too. Kill the son of a bitch. Kill him for what he did to Terric. Kill him for what he did to Davy. And kill him for what he did to you, Shame. For turning you into this crap-fest of magic, and hatred, and pain. For making you kill the people you care about.

“He didn’t do that,” I said. “That’s on me. My choice. My weakness.”

Some of it, yes, she said. But you have to know this is what Eli wanted. What he counted on when he was torturing Davy, torturing Terric: to make you suffer. So make him suffer back.

I shook my head. Blood magic users. Always looking for a way to turn pain to their advantage.

She was right, though. If there was a price to pay for all of these deaths, I wasn’t the only one who owed dues. Eli had blood on his hands.

“Why are you on my side now?” I asked.

You’re my only way out of this, if there is a way out. Also, fuck Eli.

Death magic curled inside me, tempting, seductive.

I nodded. Revenge made strange bedfellows, but killing Eli was something Sunny and I both wanted. I had my body again, control again. The magic inside me was a tool I could use.

I inhaled, drawing just the thinnest smoke of Death magic into my hands. It slipped through my veins, cold and invigorating and powerful. I spread my fingers wide, sent tendrils of Death out to search for Eli.

Thunder rolled against the predawn sky.

“Come on, you bastard,” I whispered. “Let’s hear your heartbeat.”

Hundreds of heartbeats tapped against my ear, then thousands as Death magic reached out in an ever-growing circle, wider and wider, tens of miles, hundreds of miles. Millions of hearts pumping, living, thriving.

I only wanted one. I only needed one: Eli.

Every pulse of life in the world was different. Fast, slow, old, young, hot, cold. Like a million fragile liquid notes, streaming out, pulsing, tangling, joining, breaking to make one vast, beautiful, chaotic song.

One of those notes had to be Eli’s. One single life.

I held my breath, sorting heartbeats, sorting lives, digging and sifting through the dirt of this world until only one heartbeat remained.

Eli’s.

Got him. He wasn’t far, less than a hundred miles north of here. Close enough I might be able to kill him from where I stood. If I could hold my concentration. If I could control the Death magic long enough to kill him.

Sure, I wanted to be there to see him take his last breath. But I had a clear shot. I intended to take it. “Burn in hell, you son of a bitch,” I snarled.

I cleared my mind, set my feet to bear the weight of throwing magic that far—impossibly far—and aiming it that precisely. Rolled my shoulders, tipped my head down. One strike, clean. That’s all I needed. It would do no good to take down a mile-wide swath of innocent people on accident if I lost hold of the magic. I aimed . . .

... and Eli’s heartbeat disappeared.

“Son of a bitch,” I yelled.

I scrambled to follow him, follow the sound of his life among the snarled sounds and beats of all those other lives. It would be easier to find a single grain of sand in a tsunami. Too many currents washed over me, too many lives coming, going, living, dying, changing.

I lost him in all that living.

Goddamn it.

Ice raked down the side of my face. I opened my eyes, gasped in a breath, started coughing. When had I stopped breathing? When had I fallen flat on my back?

Eleanor knelt in front of me, her hand on my cheek. You are insane, Shame, she said not unkindly. Trying to kill him from here. Not even you can do that.

“We know that now,” I said. “Are you okay?” Throwing that much magic could have hurt her, could have hurt Sunny and the doctor too.

Enough, she said. But we need to deal with Mina, okay?

“Mina?”

The doctor. We know how you can let go of her so she can live again.

“Who we? You and Sunny?”

Me. The doctor floated over to stand next to Eleanor.

I’d like to return to living, she said calmly. It hasn’t been too long for me to recover from this. I’d like you to let go of me, and I think I can help you with that.

“You can’t. No one can.”

Not true. She crossed her arms over her chest. I used to be a Death magic user, back before magic changed. I understand the way spells can be used for supporting life, for holding off death. Let me help you.

This was a bad idea. Using the Death magic inside me seemed to be nothing but bad ideas.

Eleanor’s hand slipped down to my heart. Not digging around in my chest looking for a way to kill me, just a cool, soft pressure there.

This is the right thing to do, she said. You know it is.

Her gaze searched my face. Not judging. Just waiting, patient. Something inside me that might have been my humanity kicked at the walls of grief and anger and darkness that surrounded me.

“All right,” I said. “She goes back to living. How?”

Eleanor smiled. There’s my hero. She moved away while I got myself back up on my feet.

Mina drifted closer to me.

Do you know the Resurrection spell? she asked. It was being experimented with in hospitals several years ago.

“Not a doctor,” I said. “And I don’t raise the dead.”

That’s okay. I know the spell. I can draw it, and then instead of filling it with magic, you can fill it with this—she touched the black rope between us—and me—she touched her chest.

Even the crazy parts of me thought that was crazy.

“What makes you think it will work?” I asked.

Strong theories. She gave me a smile. If it doesn’t work, what’s the worst that can happen?

I didn’t have time to run through all the possible disasters, but the most likely was that she’d be dead and still tied to me just like now. It was, in theory, a low-risk proposition.

“I think this is a terrible idea,” I said. “But if you want to try it, I’ll do it. I owe you that. I owe you more.”

Good, she said. Good. Thank you. Where do you want me to draw the glyph?

“Between us should be fine,” I said.

Eleanor and Sunny moved off a bit to give us room. Mina stood in front of me and then drew the glyph for Resurrection.

She cast with an odd blend of styles: half how I would expect a Life magic user to cast spells, and half how I’d expect a Death magic user to cast. The glyph knotted and looped in such a way that I lost track of the lines between blinks. Mina drew it as if she’d practiced it a million times, confident, clean, smooth, without a pause.

It hovered there in the air between us, the lines of it fading in and out of my vision, as if she had scratched the color off the world to make room for the spell.

That’s it, she said. It’s done.

She took a step away from the glyph. I could see where magic would fit into it. More than that, now that the spell was completed, I could see where a soul fit into it.

A soul like Mina.

“Who the hell came up with this?” I asked. I’d lived in the know of the secret, dangerous magic all my life and I’d never seen a spell like this.

Please hurry, Mina said. Before my concentration fails and the glyph breaks.

“Has this ever worked?” I asked as I untangled the rope that tied Mina to me from the other ropes.

We’ve had good results in the operating room.

“But pulling someone back from death?” I guided her rope toward the spell. The spell tugged on the rope, on the ghost of her, like a magnet pulling to metal.

She didn’t answer me. Maybe she couldn’t hear me. The spell was drawing her in.

“Live,” I said.

I released my hold on her, concentrated on sending her spirit into that floating glyph.

She poured into it with violet light, filled the spell, and triggered it.

Sunny and Eleanor drew closer to the spell, like moths drawn to a flame.

The spell arced through the air and hovered above Mina’s body. It draped over her like lavender lace. The black rope between us dissolved.

Our tie was gone, broken. The spell really had carried her soul, her spirit. She should be firmly back inside her body now.

Good. This was good.

She’d been dead maybe a few minutes at most. All systems were go. Lots of people had been revived after a much longer death.

I took a few steps back so I wasn’t deathing up the area around her. Gave her space to revive.

I waited.

She’s not breathing, Sunny said.

Eleanor bent down next to her, touched her face. Mina. Wake up, Mina.

Shame, Sunny said. Do something. Get someone.

Someone could do CPR. Not me. With the Death pulsing through me, I’d either rekill or reghost her.

I jogged to the house. Maybe Dash could help. Or Cody.

“Help,” I said as I stepped into the living room. “I need help out here.”

Cody and Dash hurried into the room.

“Shame?” Dash said. “What?”

“The doctor. Mina. She needs help.”

“What happened?” Dash asked as he stormed out the door. “What happened to her?”

I didn’t turn. I didn’t have to. I knew the exact moment he found her there, dead on the ground. I heard him call for Cody. I heard him tell him to call 911.

“Me,” I whispered. “I happened to her.”

Eleanor and Sunny were just outside the door, watching. We waited. A full minute. We waited two.

She’s dead, Eleanor said. Gone. Oh, Shame. She didn’t make it.

Sunny swore, and paced past me, her knife clenched tight in her hand as if it could protect her from me. Protect her from death.

“You killed her?” Davy asked.

I turned. I hadn’t seen him in the room. Probably because he hadn’t wanted me to.

He sat on the floor again, in front of Sunny’s corpse. The glow of blue magic leaked light through the bandages someone must have wrapped him in.

Mina. Bandages Mina must have wrapped him in.

His hair hadn’t been cut in too long, and fell into his eyes. He didn’t bother to brush it out of his way as he stared at me, waiting for my reply.

“Who?” I asked. Not that it would matter. The answer would be yes.

“Do you know what I’m going to do for you, Flynn? I’m going to give you a head start. If you’re smart, you’ll track down Eli Collins and kill him. Before I find you. And kill you for what you’ve done.”

He hadn’t moved an inch, but the rage in him was a palpable thing pushing out toward me.

“Well, then, mate,” I said quietly. “Until we meet again.”

I walked away. Away from the house, away from the dead bodies. I thought Davy might have the right of this situation.

My best use, hell, my only use right now, was Death. And Eli was the man we all wanted dead. After that . . . well, it would be interesting to find out if the spells Eli had carved into Davy, the things he had done to change Davy, would be enough to kill me.

Wind dragged cold across my sweat-covered skin, sticking my jacket to my back and sending a chill up my bare neck.

Dash yelled my name.

I ignored him and jogged to the SUV, got in, started the engine.

I might still be able to find Eli.

But I’d be damned if I was going to kill any more innocent people tonight.

Ever.

A gunshot ricocheted off the vehicle. I glance in my rearview mirror. Dash was there, took a second shot, for the tires, I thought.

Hit the car, missed tires.

Too bad, mate. But I had no time to stay and explain things. I had a killer to take down.

• • •

I pulled off to the side of the road about twenty minutes later.

I’d left my boots back in that ditch near the house. The gravel on the shoulder of the road was sharp and cold. That was fine with me. I just needed enough contact to the earth for Death magic to find Eli’s heartbeat again.

Almost instantly, I caught a heartbeat that could be him about two hundred miles northwest of here.

Somewhere near Portland. But where, exactly?

Even with Death magic feeding on my anger and adrenaline, I was fatiguing, my legs shaking.

Careful, now, Flynn, I thought. Don’t blow this. Just focus on the area surrounding him.

I concentrated on the Eli heartbeat, then pulled my perception carefully up away from the beat to his body surrounding that beat, to the room surrounding that body, then the building surrounding that room.

I knew that building. It was part of a shipping yard in St. Johns.

He was in Portland. Close to Allie and Zay.

And I could guess why.

Three Soul Complements died today, but Eli wasn’t done doing Krogher’s dirty work. Allie and Zay, my family, people I loved like siblings, were next on the list.

And I was so not in the mood to be fucked with.

I focused to take this shot—twice as far as the last time I’d tried to kill him. Magic flared, blurred; my concentration slipped. I couldn’t keep that tight a focus from this distance. I was too damn tired.

I came back to my own body standing in the deserted road in the middle of nowhere.

Blood trickled from my nose, and I wiped it away absently. I had a headache that could swallow a city raging in my head, but I didn’t care. I knew where that bastard was now.

I hauled my ass back into the SUV and checked to see if any cell phones had been left behind so I could warn Allie and Zay that Eli was about to come knocking.

Nothing.

Hell.

I revved the engine and tore off down the road to Portland.

• • •

Eleanor and Sunny had given up trying to talk to me. They sat in the backseat, probably planning my end.

A phone rang and I nearly hit my head on the ceiling.

“Jesus,” I yelped.

It wasn’t on me, not in the side pocket, not in the passenger’s seat. I finally found it in the glove compartment. It wasn’t my phone. Maybe Sunny’s?

I glanced at the screen. Dash was calling.

I thumbed it on.

“What?” I said.

“Where are you?”

“Driving.”

“Shame, listen to me.” His voice was shaking. Yeah, well, he’d just watched me kill Terric. A good man. His friend. And there was the mess I’d made of Mina too. Plus, Sunny was still dead on the couch.

“Eli’s in Portland,” I said.

“What?”

“He’s in Portland. Somewhere near St. Johns. I’m headed there.”

“How do you know where Eli is?”

“I found his heartbeat.”

Dash paused. “Did you call Zay?”

“No. You do that. Tell them he’s nearby. Tell them he might have those drones with him. To kill them.”

“Fuck. Okay. Shame, you need to listen to me. What you did to Terric—”

I chucked the phone at the door. It shattered and fell to the floor.

That might have been important, Sunny said.

“Shut up.”

I was ragged-edge exhausted. The last hour of driving hadn’t exactly been hands at ten and two, safety first. It was everything I could do to stay in the lane.

This had not been a good twenty-four hours, and before that I’d been dead.

I wasn’t exactly at the top of my game.

So I was going to keep one thing ahead of me, one single thing I was going to get done: kill Eli. Nothing else would get in the way of that.

Shame? a voice whispered from behind me.

Not Sunny. Not Eleanor.

I glanced in the rearview mirror.

Terric sat in the backseat, no blood on his face, no pain in his eyes. He just looked annoyed.

Pretty much how I expected his ghost would look once it found me.

Eleanor and Sunny were ignoring him, staring out the window on either side. So either they couldn’t see him, which was odd, or they didn’t want to deal with him, which was more likely.

“Don’t do this, Ter,” I said, looking away from the anger that flickered across his face. “I didn’t tie you to me. You can move on.”

You idiot, he whispered.

I glanced in the mirror again. He was gone. Eleanor and Sunny hadn’t even moved.

Okay. Apparently I was tired enough to be hallucinating.

My heart flopped painfully in my chest, slamming against bone. I swore my way through the agony. Heart attack?

Terric had died and decided to haunt me. Painfully.

Figured.

I blinked sweat out of my eyes and kept my foot on the gas. I was less than an hour away from Portland.

The highway took a bend, following the river. Dawn was wiping the stars out of the sky and leaving behind a swath of pale yellow and gray. Traffic, which had been sparse, thickened the closer I got to the city.

I didn’t have time for a morning commute. I had a man to kill.

Traffic crawled down to a dead stop. The highway was blocked, a dozen black cars and a bulletproof box van parked across the road. Police walked between the cars, flashlights in hand, getting IDs. Looking for something. Maybe looking for me.

Krogher had connections. Police would be just the beginning of what he could throw at me.

The cops were headed to the truck in front of me. Which meant I’d be next.

Goddamn. If they thought they could stop me, they were wrong.

I took a breath, put the car in park, and got out.

Killing would be easy. But it would also be messy. I didn’t have time for messy.

What are you doing? Sunny asked. Shame, what are you doing?

My stocking feet on the cold asphalt made no sound. In the pale light of morning, strangely unnecessary details stood out for me. The hole in my left sock heel, the smell of asphalt and tar, the I LIKE IT DIRTY written in the dust on the side of the truck.

And the Death magic that sat like a dangerous, but also nearly endless source, of magic in me.

I didn’t have to be seen if I didn’t want to be.

I didn’t want to be.

I drew a quick Illusion, pulled on the magic within me, poured it into the spell. Asphalt cracked, growing things alongside the road turned brown, withered, died as Death drank them down.

And the Illusion caught silver fire, then fell around me like a spider-silk cloak.

No one saw me as I walked by. No one even looked my way.

I strode past the barricade of cars, past the armored van, to the last car on the other side of the roadblock.

The car was empty and convenient. I checked for keys. Got in, expanded the Illusion spell to cover the car—to make it look as if the car stayed behind.

The level of magic and skill it took to pull off a spell like that wasn’t taught in kiddie school. It also wasn’t easy.

Pain stabbed through my brain and I cussed and rubbed at my eyes until I could see some of the road ahead of me. It hurt like hell, but I didn’t let go of the Illusion. Not yet. I turned the car toward Portland.

... you shouldn’t be driving, Eleanor said. If you pass out on the road, you’ll kill yourself . . . probably.

“Do you think I care?” I asked her. “Do you really think I give a damn about that anymore?”

How about car accidents? she said. You could kill other people too. Innocent people. You can’t tell me some part of you doesn’t care about that.

I looked over at her. “If I’d thought, for one second, that killing every man, woman, and child in a mile square, either side of that road, would have gotten me what I wanted, I would have drunk them down like cold water.”

You don’t mean that, she said. You can’t—

“Shut up, El.”

Just listen.

“Don’t. Talk.” I wiped the sweat off my face, swerved back in my lane, trying to hold that double Illusion spell just a little longer.

Shame! Eleanor screamed. Look out!

Terric stood in the middle of the highway. His ghost, anyway. He was not annoyed anymore. He was furious.

Turn back, he said, and I heard him even though I shouldn’t at this distance, at this speed.

Hallucination?

I was going to hit him. Run him over unless I did something pretty quick to avoid it.

Would a ghost survive the impact of an automobile?

I lost the Illusion spell.

All I heard was Eleanor screaming.

And all I saw was Terric.

No time to avoid a collision. I drove right at him, braced for the hit. Ghosts don’t offer a lot of physical resistance.

The car went right through him. More than that, he went right through me.

A stream of light and color and blinding pain flooded me, claimed me. Terric and I shared the same space for a split second, shared the same body.

I’d lived with a ghost for almost four years. Was living with two now, one of whom liked to punctuate her sentences with knives. I knew what it was like to be hit by a spirit, knew what it was like to be touched, knew what it was like to be stabbed.

This was nothing like that.

Everything that made Terric . . . well . . . Terric slammed into me. Memories, thoughts, fear, joy, hope, anger, a whirling cascade of faces, buildings, conversations, sensations of his life, the good, the very good, and the very, very bad.

Like taking down an entire bottle of whiskey in one shot.

He left me reeling.

Left me wanting. Wanting him.

Unfortunately I was still driving.

And then I blacked out.