“Which means?”
“We need you to go back,” Victor said. “There are things you could accomplish, things you and Terric could accomplish that will make a difference for so many. Magic is on the brink of being used as a global weapon. So many will die. Too many. If we do nothing to stop it, the world will enter a war that will never end.”
“Still can’t let go of the old job, can you?”
“It’s important, Shame. You left this fight far too early.”
“I died, Old Man,” I said. “Let’s keep that clear. It’s not like I strolled up here on a lark.”
“That aside,” Dad said, “Terric is still alive down there, half a soul without you, and soon to be only half-sane. You know how destructive Life magic can be. You know he was barely managing it when you were with him. And now, alone . . .”
“He’s capable. He’ll find a way to cope,” I said.
That was a lie. The broken tie of our Soul Complement was a punched ticket to insanity. If he still had access to the Life magic inside him, he would be capable of doing terrible things. I didn’t want to do that to anyone I cared for, to break him like that.
“So you want me to go down there and stop him? Kill him?”
“No,” Victor said. “We want you to go back and save him, before Eli Collins kills him.”
Just the thought of Eli killing Terric made me want to hit something.
“But if Terric dies, he comes here, doesn’t he?” I asked. “I’m not going to lie to you. I feel good here. I feel right here. Better than I have for”—I lifted my hands, trying to find the words—“for as long as I can remember. I finally feel good. Maybe this is the best for us, for me, for Terric. Maybe death is as good as it gets for Soul Complements.”
Victor finished his drink, then gave my dad a look. I suddenly remembered that these two had known each other back in the day when they were the young rebels raising hell in the Authority.
Shit.
“Here’s the way of it, lad,” Da said. “You and Terric have a chance to stop what Eli and the government behind him want him to do. Things are a little fuzzy from this height, but we are pretty sure if you don’t, the world we knew, the one we all fought for, and died for, where magic isn’t used as a weapon against humanity, will be gone, erased. All the people you care for, all the people we care for will suffer. You have a chance to change that. We think you should take that chance.”
“How many apocalypses does a man need to stand in front of, Da?” I asked. “There must be someone else who can take this on. Someone living.”
“No one else is the embodiment of magic, Shame,” Victor said. “Not even Allie and Zayvion can do what you and Terric can do. Life. Death.”
He was right.
“I don’t even know that I can go back to living,” I said. “And if it’s a twelve-step program to zombiedom, I’m outs.”
“We can help with that,” Victor said. “Even if you’re not tied to Terric, there is a draw, an affinity. As long as he is alive, you should be able to reach him.”
“That’s what started the last apocalypse, you know,” I said. “Soul Complements slipping out of death to be together in the living world.”
“Which we consider the precedent that proves our theory,” Victor said.
“And you, son”—Dad pointed at me with his beer—“aren’t returning to destroy the world. You’re returning to save it.”
“I suppose the two of you have worked out a way for me to do this?”
“We have ideas,” Victor said.
“I knew you would,” I said. “What’s it going to take?”
Dad leaned forward. “Magic.”
Chapter 11
TERRIC
There must have been a time when I was not in pain. Certainly I’d had a childhood. I’d been born, loved, cared for. I’d spent years running with Zayvion and Chase and Greyson. Those had been good years. Even with Shame.
And that’s where my thoughts always stopped: Shame.
Surely there’d been some time in my life when I hadn’t hurt since I met him. If life was pain—and it was—Shame had to be something else, right?
But all I could remember from my time with him was the pain.
He’d nearly killed me when we were twenty and the creature we had been hunting got past him and almost tore me apart. That had broken my ability to use certain magics: Faith magic, Blood magic. His mistake had changed me, changed my life. But it had been a mistake.
Yes, I’d forgiven. Because what he’d done to me had broken him more than me. He had never forgiven himself. He had spent years with the guilt, the regret. It was like watching a man slowly cut his way through his own throat. For years.
Years.
Shame’s life had changed because of what he’d done to me. Shame had changed.
“Are you awake, Terric?” Eli asked.
I couldn’t track time anymore, had given up trying.
Time was stretching out toward eternity. It had been days, weeks since Eli had tapped in to the magic I carried and used it to power up those people. Days of dead bodies scattered around my cage, eyes empty, staring at me, at their killer.
Faces I would see for the rest of my life, however long that was.
Then the dead were dragged away, blood and fluids mopped up by men with surgical masks who could not hear my screaming.
And always there was Eli, more torture, more pain.
And now there was now.
“I want you awake for this,” Eli said.
I was strapped down again. Hadn’t I just been standing?
Sitting now. A chair. Shackled by feet, arms, chest. The drugs they’d kept me pumped full of left the taste of burnt plastic and hot concrete in the back of my throat.
“You might be wondering what our endgame is.” Eli sat in front of me now. There was a table between us. He took off his glasses and polished them with a yellow cloth that looked like a square of sunlight in shadows. Surrounded by gray and black as I was, it had been too long since I’d seen a color other than red.
“I’d want to know what this all adds up to if I were, well . . .” He pointed at me with his glasses. “If I were on the other side of the table.”
I didn’t say anything. Not because the back of my throat was numb. Because there was power in silence. Right now it was all the power I had.
Eli placed his glasses back on his face like a man who had been working too many hours. “Have you guessed? Do you know what this”—he gestured to the cage and warehouse around us—“is all about?”
I waited.
“You know this wasn’t my idea, don’t you?” he said. “I asked you and Shame to save me. To save her. I begged.” His hand clenched into a fist and he was silent until his fist stopped shaking, until the color faded from his face, until the hatred in his eyes slipped back into madness.
His Soul Complement, Brandy, the other half of his soul, was dead. Yeah, well, so was mine. He and I had something in common. We each wanted to see the other person planted six feet under.
“If it were my idea,” he went on, “I’d have left him alive, Shame. So he could feel what I’ve done to you. So he could suffer every. Last. Cut.” He smiled. “It would have been . . . poetic.”
My heart beat harder. Life magic flickered somewhere within me, responding to my need, but was so drained and far from my reach, I couldn’t get at it. Yet.
Keep talking, Eli.
“But they . . .” He leaned back. “They wanted what you had. And they knew only I could get it for them. Life magic. I got to it, didn’t I? I always deliver. I’m a genius, you know. And yet you aren’t dead. That’s impressive. Any other man . . .” His voice faded and he frowned. “Funny how it all works out. You and I, on the same side, serving the same cause. Maybe not willingly, but serving. Good little soldiers.