“Hand it to Dessa.”
“I can do it,” he said. “Hello,” he said to Dessa, as if just noticing her in the car.
“Hey,” she said back.
“Call Stotts,” I said. “Dessa, do you have a phone?”
I’d left mine in the room, but she pulled hers out.
“I need you to dial this number.” I told her Allie’s number. She dialed.
I took the phone from her, each ring an eternity. What if Victor wasn’t the only one who’d been hit?
Stotts must have answered almost immediately because Terric was already talking, and as far as I could tell, his voice was steady, and he was giving clear information.
“Jones,” Zay answered.
“This is Shame,” I said. “Victor’s been hit. Davy got a message to Terric. We’re on our way to Victor’s now—”
I braced, ran a light at speed, and avoided a head-on collision with a garbage truck.
“Shame?” Zay said.
“Keep your eyes open and be ready in case anything’s coming your way,” I finished. “I’ll call in when we know more.”
“Keep it tight,” he said. “Listen to Terric.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror. Terric looked like he’d finally shaken off his confusion and had gotten his head straight. “I’ll do that,” I said.
I handed Dessa the phone, then slowed to seventy or so as I navigated the neighborhood streets.
Came up on Victor’s house. The cops hadn’t made it here yet. We were out of the car before the engine stopped growling.
Dessa pulled her gun. My gun was also somewhere in my room with my jacket. Neither Terric nor I carried any weapon other than the magic at our fingertips. I glanced over at him, checking to see if he was together enough for this.
“I’m clear,” he said without looking at me.
I got to the front door first. It was locked. But then, if Eli had used that gate technology, he wouldn’t need to open the door.
“Shoot it,” I said.
Dessa stepped up, shot it without hesitation. Then she shouldered into the room, gun raised.
Damn it. I did not want her in harm’s way.
And there was the drawback to having an assassin girlfriend.
“Victor!” I yelled. No answer. “Fuck.”
I took off running to the living room and kitchen. Terric ran past me to the bathroom and bedroom.
Victor was an uncle to both of us—no, more than that. A father when my father died. A trusted counselor when Terric had lost his ability to use Faith magic. A steady wisdom and calm voice throughout all the pain and struggle and uncertainties of magic, the Authority, and our place in the world.
He had, in a very real way, made us the men we were.
He trusted us, demanded the best of us. He stood by us when we took on the challenge of building a world where magic was no longer a secret.
I knew the moment when Terric found him. Knew it even before I heard Terric’s anguished moan. Could feel the pain and sorrow like a shot straight through Terric’s heart, tearing through mine.
Victor was dead.
I knew it as I ran to Terric, knew it as I stepped through the doorway to the bedroom. Terric knelt on the floor next to the bloody, broken form of Victor.
Everything went silent. I couldn’t hear Terric pleading, couldn’t hear Dessa jogging our way, couldn’t hear my own heartbeat. The world was smothered.
I closed my eyes, hovering there in that mad lucidity.
The monster within me stretched, opened its arms, and latched each slick tentacle around me, drawing me into it, into the nothingness where it promised blood, destruction, and vicious release. Where it promised I would never have to feel pain again. Where it promised the terror of others would fall upon me like a numbing salve.
“Shame?” Dessa’s hand rested on my arm.
I opened my eyes.
And the world, the room, pounded down around me.
Terric, on the phone, blood on his hands, blood streaked through his hair where he must have pulled at it with his fingers. Dessa at my side, her gun still in her hand and aimed at me.
“Dessa,” I said. “Are you . . . are you all right?”
“I’m not the one on fire.” She nodded at my hand.
I lifted my right hand. The rings were glowing red, but as I watched, the burn was fading like coals dusted at the edges.
“He’s sane,” Terric said to Dessa as he pocketed his phone. Then, in a voice louder than that whisper, “Dessa, put the gun down. He could kill you before you pulled the trigger.”
She hesitated. Finally lowered the gun.
I turned. Looked into blue eyes that were not frightened—but were very wary.
As she had every right to be.
“Did I hurt you?” I said with what gentleness I could manage.
She searched my eyes. I did not know what she saw there. Maybe Death magic. It was there, just behind my will, lapping at my control. Pressing and promising.
She held up her hand, turned it one way and the other to examine the skin. “Felt like all the skin burned off when I touched you.”
“And now?”
She curled her fingers to her palm. “Everything works.” She pulled her shoulders back.
“Don’t touch me for a while,” I said. “I’m in control, but it’s not solid.”
She nodded.
I finally turned my full attention to Victor.
He was on his back, in his pajama pants, his shirt cut to shreds, the edges of it burned. Blood soaked the carpet. Terric was kneeling in it.
I walked the few steps to Victor’s prone body. It seemed to take three long years before I reached his side. I rested my hand on Terric’s shoulder and for a second, he leaned his head against my arm.
I felt his sorrow as if it were my own. Because it was.
I wanted to scream. Instead Terric whispered a prayer. It was the words of a very old spell—Peace.
Grief knotted my throat and clenched my gut. I didn’t have time for grief. I couldn’t have time.
So I pushed it away, fed it to the monster within me. Any pain would sate it, even my own.
Terric lifted his head away from me and stood as I knelt, trading places, his hand falling now on my shoulder. Perhaps it seemed an odd thing, the way we moved in tandem without thought, but it was natural as breathing to me.
“The marks,” Terric said.
I moved the edge of Victor’s shirt away, uncovered the shredded mess that was his torso. He had been carved, and carved, and carved again.
Spells: Pain, Refresh, Fire, Refresh, Crush, Break, Sever. Refresh, and Refresh again. Every dark agony cut into him in a continuous circuit of unending torture.
The bastard hadn’t even had the fucking decency to carve Death into his skin. He had carved Life instead. He had squeezed every last ounce of pain out of Victor.
And in the blood around his body was another spell. But from the ragged streak trailing off to one side, it was clear that the spell had been interrupted before it was finished.
“Eli,” Terric and I said at the same time.
It wasn’t a name anymore.
It was the shape of the thing we were going kill.
Chapter 25
I paced. Smoked. Just outside his room. Just over the threshold of his death.
Waiting. For Terric to finish talking. Couldn’t remember who was here worth talking to. Didn’t care.
Cigarette burned down. I flicked it to the fireplace as I paced past, lit the next one. Hungry. Angry.
Because there wasn’t room in me for grief.
Just rage.
The floor cracked like ice under my feet. I’d drawn all that could be drawn out of the wooden floor, out of the bracers beneath them. Had drawn all of the moisture from the air. Three plants in the room: dead. The bushes outside: withered.
Six people in the house, only one was dead: Victor. But there would be more if I stayed longer.
Rings on my fingers hissed and snapped as I turned and followed my anger back to the other side of the room.
This house was my cage. And I was an animal who wanted out. But I’d stay here until Terric told me differently.
Because I’d promised Zay I would listen to him.
I didn’t know if Terric called Zay or not. Hadn’t been paying attention to the bedroom’s blood-covered walls, hadn’t listened while the police came in and Terric told me to stay in the living room and kill no one. Had no idea where Dessa was.
Better that I didn’t.
I was anger. Anger that keened for the hunt. Eli had said he’d give us a day, maybe less.
Eli had lied. He was never going to give us time.
Terric was walking my way, I could feel it before I saw him.
Strode into the room. Still had a streak of dried blood in his white hair, blood on his jeans, his shirt. Victor’s blood.
His eyes were as hard and steady as his stride.
Didn’t stop, didn’t pause. Walked right up to me. Stuck one hand against my shoulder, and grabbed the back of my neck with the other.
“I need you to come back, Shame,” he growled. “If you can’t fight the magic in you, I will.”
The rings on my fingers hissed with magic. The stone on his chest caught white fire.
Life and Death pushed between us like two magnets repelling each other while being shoved together.
Then Life slipped like a clean knife to clash with Death in the middle of my head.
It hurt.
And with pain came clarity.
“...are you clear on that, Shamus?” he was saying.
“I got the last half,” I said.
“We are going to let the police take care of this. You and I are going home together so I can keep an eye on you.”
Oh, that was not going to fly. Terric’s fingers dug into the back of my head, and I realized he wasn’t telling
me
this. He was saying it for someone else.
“Jesus,” I said. “Fine. But you are not my fucking boss, Conley.”
His expression washed in relief. He must have thought that I wouldn’t catch on to his lie and help him tell it. Or maybe he didn’t think I’d return to a semblance of sanity.
Right now I’d do fucking anything to get out of this house. Because I had a man to kill.
We had a man to kill.
Terric let go and stepped back, his body language falling into that corporate clean-cut, responsible, trustworthy falsity. Sure, sometimes Terric was all of those things. But right now I knew he wanted Eli just as dead as I did.
“I’ll keep him for the night,” Terric said. “Please let me know if you get any leads on this.”
“I will,” Detective Stotts said, not unkindly. “We upped the drive-bys on Allie and Zay’s house too. Do you want us to send a unit past your place every hour or so?”
“No,” Terric said smoothly. “If anything happens, we’ll break magic and Hold him.”
“Are you sure you can do that?” Stotts looked over at me.
I just gave him a slow blink.
“I can control him,” Terric said, meaning me, not Eli. “I promise you.”
Stotts nodded, but didn’t look away from me. “If you have any trouble at all, call me. We can lock him up and put him under so far he won’t even know what his name is.”
I couldn’t help it, I smiled.
I could never forget my name because it was stamped in the face of every person I saw: Death.
Stotts’s gaze finally skittered away. With a nod to Terric, he walked back to the other beating hearts in the room.
“Let’s go, Shame,” Terric said.
He walked toward the door. I followed, the floor snapping like old glass beneath my boots.
Then we were outside. His car was there. And so was another pulse beat—Dessa.
“I’m going with you,” she said.
“This isn’t any of your business,” Terric said.
“We’re hunting Eli, aren’t we?” I said, my voice a little too low.
Terric didn’t say anything, just shot me a look.
“She wants him just as dead as we do. She comes.”
Terric didn’t argue. Not with so many police here, not with the ambulance and EMTs pushing the gurney and body bag.
Jesus.
Terric shoved me firmly toward the passenger seat and Dessa got in the back. Eleanor clung to the corner by the window.
Terric drove. I didn’t know where. Probably his house in case any of the police had a Hound on us. I was out of cigarettes, and in no place to be carefully siphoning the heat off the engine. I crossed my arms and tried to push the world away, tried to push Terric away, Dessa away. Tried to push the whole damn living city of Portland over the edge of my awareness. But there was too much within my reach to consume, to hurt, to kill.
Far too much to ignore.
Terric’s hand landed on my upper arm, squeezed. He fed Life magic into me in a steady stream. I didn’t want it, didn’t want the edge of my anger to dull. Thought about doing the same to him. Let him try to keep up with the death I poured into him.
I glanced at his face. Stone cold, flat, and expressionless as he drove. The single tear track he hadn’t wiped away was the only thing that betrayed his grief.
So I kept my hands to myself, let him pour Life magic to sate the hunger in me, and the hunger in him.
By the time we got to his house, I was no less angry, but I was a hell of a lot more in control.
I pulled my arm out of his grasp, and he put his hand back on the wheel, saying nothing.
“Are we going in?” I asked.
“Yes.” Terric got out. I followed, Dessa next to me.
Up the steps to his door, then in his house.
Jeremy was not here. I could tell because I didn’t sense his heartbeat.
Once I was inside, I paused at the door, tipped my head down with my hand still on the doorknob, and listened to the world outside.
Not for the sound of cars. For the beat of a heart.
I wanted to know if Stotts or Clyde had put a Hound on us, and I wanted to know where that Hound might be.
It took about five minutes. Then I felt it. A heartbeat about two houses down. Close enough, probably in a car where, she, I guessed, could watch us. And farther off, a second beat.
Hounds never traveled alone. Sure, only one of them would work a job, but there was always a shadow, always another Hound watching after the first.
“Two,” I said as I walked into Terric’s living room.
“Two what?” Dessa asked.
I looked at Terric. Didn’t have to explain. “Allie said Sunny is running things since Davy is AWOL.”