Life magic flared again, but this time I repeated a mantra, tried to breathe slowly, tried to calm my mind. I was no stranger to the pain magic inflicted. I knew how to cope.
“See there?” Eli said. “I told you he’d fall in line. Because Terric always does the right thing. Don’t you, Conley? You have such a hero complex.”
“Did you kill him?” I asked.
“Who? Your little fuck-buddy Flynn?” He stepped up to the bars, a hypodermic needle in one hand and a black leather satchel with glyphs painted across it in the other. “Tell me you didn’t feel the connection break. Tell me you can’t feel, right now, a raw burning sickness chewing its way through your spine, screaming and puking in your brain. Tell me you didn’t feel him die.”
I was breathing hard, trying to keep Life magic from flaring and burning me up. “Did you kill him?” I asked again.
The door to the cage slid aside and he stepped into my prison.
He was close enough I could kill him with a thought.
Except the glyphs that bound me to the cot, the spells carved into the cell bars, the spells burned into the concrete floor, bound me too. I knew how to kill him, but Life magic refused to move, refused to take shape to my will.
He had done a very good job of locking magic up inside me.
Eli strolled over to the cot. Distantly, I heard the clack of Krogher’s gun chambering a round. Heard that echoing throughout the warehouse, three, four, half a dozen other guns trained on me.
So there were at least six other people here. People I could not sense.
Magic is fast. Bullets are faster.
But I was two things: patient and vengeful.
Eli stopped next to my cot. Stared down at me through round gold-wire glasses. It had been some time since I’d seen him. Haggard, he hadn’t shaved in probably a week, his hair was three missed appointments too long, and his clothes—a button-down white work shirt and gray gabardine trousers—were wrinkled and stained at the cuff.
Stained with blood.
“Did I kill Shame?” Eli bent at the waist, putting his mouth near my ear. “Yes. Just like he killed Brandy.”
I jerked at that. “Your Soul Complement? She died of a heart attack.”
Eli straightened, then placed the satchel next to him, his face immobile as his hands delicately manipulated the locks on it.
“She was under doctors’ observation,” I said. “Close observation. Shame didn’t kill her. He couldn’t have.”
The locks gave with two soft snicks. I smelled sharp chemicals and hot plastic.
“Eli,” I said, “there were cameras on her. Protection spells on her. She was under lock and key. We wanted to keep her alive. There was nothing in it for us if she died. Shame never touched her. He couldn’t have touched her.”
I knew I was reasoning with a madman, but getting through to Eli was the only card I had to play right now.
He didn’t turn, didn’t shift from the slow, measured motions of whatever he was unpacking onto the table or surface just beyond my view. Like a man caught in the trance of a dream he’d gone through too many times.
I looked the other way. Krogher was still there, the gun pointed at my head and his finger resting near the trigger. I knew there were other gunmen doing the same.
“He was there,” Eli said so quietly my own breathing nearly drowned out the sound of his words. “He sat down beside Brandy. Covered her mouth so she couldn’t scream. Stared in her eyes. Told her . . .”
He held up a knife, long and razor sharp, glyphs and spells cracking into shadows and sparks of light as he turned it. “. . . that he wanted to hurt her. For me. To make me feel pain. Her pain. To tell me . . .” He turned toward me the knife—a blood blade—in one hand. In the other hand was the hypodermic needle.
“To tell me that he was coming to kill me. For what I’d done to Victor. For what I’d done to Dessa. For what I’d done to you. What have I done to you, Terric? What have I ever done to you?”
“Shot me,” I said with every ounce of calm I could call upon. “You nearly killed me, Eli. You wanted to kill me.You did kill Victor. And Dessa and Joshua. And many others.”
My heart was pumping too hard, pain riding each beat. Shame never told me he killed Brandy. He’d acted just as surprised and angry as any of us that she had died before we could use her as a bargaining chip to negotiate Davy’s release.
He’d lied to me.
Jesus, Shame. Why couldn’t you trust me? Why couldn’t you tell me?
“Only nearly?” Eli said, tipping his head so a bar of liquid light warped across his glasses, hiding his eyes behind the reflected fire of magic. “I nearly killed you. Well, I promise you I completely killed that filthy rat fucker, Shame.”
“Mr. Collins,” Krogher said. “We are on a schedule.”
“Eli.” I was breathing too hard. Trying to find the words of reason buried in my anger and hate. “I want you to listen to me very closely. Are you listening to me?”
“Mr. Collins,” Krogher said again. “You have work to do. Get it done.”
Eli paced over to me, stood there a moment, then bent, the needle aimed at my arm.
That was all I needed. He was finally close enough to hear me.
“Eli,” I said. He shifted his gaze away from the needle hovering over my vein and met my gaze. “Listen very closely. I’m going to strip the oxygen from every molecule in your body. Do you understand me? When I get out of here—and trust me, I will—you will be more than dead. You will be erased from the earth.”
He blinked several times. Then, “Without your Soul Complement, you are nothing, Terric. Less than nothing. Trust me,” he said, shoving the needle in my vein and thumbing the plunger down. “I know.”
The poison traveled faster than blood, pushed by the spells in the needle and the mix of magic and chemicals.
It burned hot, crackling like fire over my skin, then under my skin. It numbed me completely as it passed through me.
Eli turned away to his worktable again.
“Now,” he said. “Let’s get this show on the road.” He was still holding the knife, but in his other hand was a glass bowl. “We’ll need some blood for this spell. Sorry to say, this is going to hurt. A lot.”
I braced for it. I centered my thoughts, stared him straight in the eye, accepted the pain that was coming, accepted that it would last for hours, days. Accepted that there would be an end to it.
“Better make it your best shot,” I said. “Because when I get free, I’m going to tear you apart, put you back together, and tear you apart again until you beg me to kill you.”
Eli’s top lip lifted away from his teeth. Then he shoved the knife into my chest.
Chapter 8
SHAME
Okay. Let me just make this one thing clear: death was awesome.
To hear Allie speak of her one trip to death, it was a broken place that looked like a dark, twisted version of Portland. Zayvion, who had also spent some time caught on the other side, didn’t remember much of it except light and pain.
They both got it wrong. I’d died, and now I was standing outside a bar. That made death officially awesome.
“Are you just going to stare at the door all day,” Eleanor asked, “or are you going to buy me a drink?”
I turned. She leaned against the side of the building not too far from me. She was wearing the same thing she’d been in when I killed her—dark slacks and shirt—but instead of looking sort of see-through, she was solid, real, and grinning from ear to ear.
“El? What are you doing here?”
“You crossed over and I hitched a ride,” she said. “Looks like that tie between us finally paid off. Also? You owe me a drink, Flynn. Hell, you owe me an entire liquor store.” She pushed away from the building and took a couple of steps toward me. I could hear her bootheels on the concrete.