The ox held up his hands, maybe to cast a Block spell or maybe just surprised to see such a huge, violent spell snarling inches in front of his flattened nose.
Only a handful of people can temporarily break magic into light and dark. Like splitting an atom, when you break magic, it is a power untamed. The only Breakers I knew of were Soul Complements, and there weren’t many in the world.
You want to know how I know God has a twisted sense of humor? I’m one of the people who can break magic. Power at the snap of my fingers. Well, if Terric and I snap our fingers at the same time.
Casting magic on my own delivered a harder hit than a non-Breaker could ever hope for. After all, Death magic coiled inside me and raged through any spell I cast.
But casting magic didn’t come without a bit of a price to pay. That headache of mine was ramping up to ride me for a day at least.
“Shamus Flynn, do not. Do. Not,” Terric was saying.
Another price I paid for casting magic? Terric’s nagging.
“Bind,” I said, using that word to push the spell at the ox. The spell wrapped him from knee to throat and squeezed tight, dipping razor tips into his skin just deep enough to draw blood.
The ox yelled.
Now for a little Shamus happy fun time.
“This is how it’s going to work, my friend.” I braced my hand on the wall and tested my vertical capabilities. Knees held, back straightened, world steady as a drunken hobo.
I hurt from the kick, concussion, whiskey overdose, and magic price. But more than that, the fingers-down-the-pants need to consume the man’s life and every living thing around me set my heart kicking it junkie-style.
I wanted life. I wanted to drink it down and lap out the bottom of the bottle.
The moss under my fingertips was wet, spongy, and very, very alive. A tip-of-the-tongue honey-sweet burn of life filled my mouth as the moss turned brown and died. Consumed. Dead.
And I was just getting started.
I glanced over at Eleanor, who stood at the opening of the alley. She looked afraid.
“If you touch him.” Terric strode my way, his pace hampered by a slight limp. “I will kick your scrawny Irish ass. And then I will tell your mother what you did.”
“You’re going to tell on me to my mum? What are you, six?”
That got half a smile out of him. But it did not soften the look in his eyes. The one that said Shame’s happy fun time was over.
“I called Detective Stotts.” Terric held up his phone like I’d be impressed he had a cop on speed dial.
“Why Stotts?” Hungry now. Done talking now. Not paying attention.
“Because the police handle murder cases. We just handle magic users.”
“Paperwork. All we handle is paperwork.”
“You don’t even do that. Why did you follow me? I told you to stay in the car. Do you enjoy getting the crap beat out of you? Don’t you know how dangerous . . .”
That’s when I completely tuned him out because I’d heard this lecture so many times I could sing along without the bouncing ball.
Also, the need for life and the consuming of it wasn’t getting any less. The ox was still standing there, wrapped in that Binding spell I’d cast. Hurting. Ripe. Alive.
Bleeding.
Since he liked to beat up perfect strangers in dirty alleys, I presumed he was not a nice person. Therefore I would feel less horrible about killing him.
“...just deal, you idiot.” Terric slammed his hand into the middle of my chest. Hard enough both my shoulders hit the bricks behind me.
I blinked, swallowed. Focused on him.
“So, Terric,” I said. “When I’m breaking your fingers do you want me to start or finish with your thumbs?”
Terric completely tuned me out and was whispering to himself. So rude.
That’s when I noticed he’d pulled off his Void stone necklace and dropped it somewhere at our feet where it would do exactly zip to dampen the magic coursing through him.
Life magic.
“No,” I said. “Not happening. Not here. I told you to keep your hands off—”
Terric called on Life magic.
Here’s what happens when he does that—he goes all white-light angelic looking, which the chicks, and I guess some of the dudes, really like. Then the magic inside him devours his humanity. His eyes go silver, no pupils, no white. Any shred of heart, soul, or mind of that man is wiped away. Replaced with a cold, alien thing that looks out from behind his eyes. Life magic. It was not human. It was not Terric.
And one of these days when he called on it, Life magic was going to take over for good and Terric wasn’t going to come back to being Terric.
Every time he lost control of Life magic, it changed him. Sure, it had been subtle for the first year or so. How he’d forget to laugh or to carry on a conversation without long pauses. How he’d stare out a window and whisper to himself for hours and not remember doing it.
Each time he used Life magic, it took him a little longer to come back to being the Terric I knew and sometimes, such as around repentance holidays, liked.
He’d told me I was just making shit up about him going inhuman.
He was right to think so. I made shit up all the time. But not that shit.
Terric, who still looked mostly human, drew a glyph with his free hand, tracing white magic that glowed green at the edges into the air.
Something brushed my boot.
Plants sprang to life. Vines and flowers and those tropical leafy things that always look plastic in hotel lobbies wriggled up out of the cracks in the concrete and bricks, growing at time-lapse speeds.
“No. Just. Don’t,” I said.
“Shut up and eat your vegetables,” Terric snarled.
Annoying—that was still the Terric I knew.
The plants were elbow high, vibrating with life. Terric showed no sign of backing down.
I hated him for not backing down. I hated him for being right. I needed life. And he could give it to me without it killing him.
Much.
I couldn’t endure the hunger a second more. I cussed and threw my hands out to both sides, palms down. I gave in to the hunger and devoured the plants, greedily consuming, killing. Without moving a single inch, I sucked the sweet life out of every stalk and frond he called up out of the world.
I was pulling on the life around me so hard the concrete under my feet cracked and shifted as I dug down looking for more.
As fast as I could consume life, Terric could call upon it faster. Life magic poured out of him in that alien white light, green and growing, smothering me, drowning me in life.
Somewhere in the back of my head a reasonable part of me was counting down from ten. When I hit one, I’d punch Terric in the face if that’s what it took to get his hands off me and break his magic spree.
We’d both done stupid things when we lost control of magic. Stupider things when we’d lost it at the same time, together.
I’d sort of made it my life’s goal not to use magic with him. Not to let him use magic with me. Because when I did, when we did, Terric wasn’t Terric anymore. He wasn’t human. And one of these days he wasn’t going to recover from that.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
Two and a haaalf.
I curled my right hand into a fist. Time to stop this. Time to stop him.
Before I lost him.
“Terric,” Detective Stotts said from somewhere to my right, completely blowing my concentration. “What is going on?”
Detective Paul Stotts was a decent human being with Hispanic heritage and an unflappable moral code. Today, he was wearing a blue scarf tucked into the collar of his jacket, dark slacks, and a frown. They used to say he was cursed, but that wasn’t true. An awful lot of cover-ups and deaths in this city were caused by magic people didn’t know about, and it was Stotts’s job to investigate those deaths.