“It’s the difficulties that make strong bonds, isn’t it, Terric? And you and I, well, we’ve had our difficulties, haven’t we? Now here we are. Each a half of nothing.”
He stopped talking and just sat there, his eyes going distant, hollow. As if all the fire in him had been snuffed.
“It’s not how I wanted things to go,” he whispered. “At all. We really were on the same side once.” He smiled, just slightly.
“Before . . . before the end of the world. But then all my memories came back. All those years taken away from me by Victor.” He shook his head. “I enjoyed killing him. Wished I had more time to do it properly. But they always had the upper hand, these people.” He gestured to the warehouse. “They had me, because they had her, Brandy. No matter what I did, no matter who I asked to help me, to save her, they’ve gotten what they wanted from me. And no matter what I’ve given them, she’s still dead. . . .”
He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they were the eyes of a man broken. Defeated.
“Sometimes I think they wanted it. Wanted Shame to kill her. So I would stay with them, do what they asked. Revenge is a weakness of mine. Always has been. And while I dislike being predictable, being played . . .” He shrugged. “At least I’m the one who will see this to the end.
“Now, the endgame.” He sat forward. Not close enough for me to touch him, but close enough the camera that was on the cage wouldn’t see his face. I knew he did it on purpose. I just didn’t know why.
“Pretty simple, really. The government wasn’t happy to find out there were people who knew how to make magic strong again. People like you and me—Soul Complements. The only people in the world who can break the core of magic and unleash the power, the destruction. So yes, I threw my chits in with them. Made them an offer. Government assistance in getting my Soul Complement, Brandy, out of the loony bin. In exchange for a few tricks I’d learned. Tricks I played on Davy Silvers—carving spells into him, spells that changed him. You remember Davy, don’t you? How you tried to save him and how you failed?”
My breathing picked up.
He waited. Waited me out. “Ask me,” he whispered, a small smile on his face. “Ask me what I did to poor Davy.”
I swallowed, the burn sliding farther down my throat. Felt like I hadn’t had water in years. “Where is he?”
“Don’t want to give me time to brag about my exploits?” he asked. “Fine. Since you didn’t ask, I activated a few spells I carved into him all those years ago. And then I killed him.”
I tipped my head back, my breathing ragged now.
Eli winked. His hand, which was in front of him and out of the camera’s line of vision, lifted slightly and he crossed his fingers.
Lying? He was lying?
“I killed him because we got everything we needed to know from him. He was my blueprint, my plan for carving all those other people up with spells. Spells you’ve supercharged, thank you, Terric. Couldn’t have done it without you.
“The program is going forward, thanks to your cooperation. It will be easy to find the Soul Complements in the world since there are so few and the Authority’s records have long been accessed by the government. Then it will be even easier to take these magic-carved people, these drones, to each Soul Complement, trigger the magic they carry, and kill the Soul Complements. Of course it will also kill the drones, but magic has always come with a price, hasn’t it?
“Once the Soul Complements are out of the way, no one will have massively destructive capabilities with magic. Well, except Krogher and his warehouse of walking bombs. I do believe that will make covert operations and worldwide negotiations quite a different game. Our government will be the only one in the world that has a stockpile of destructive magic. It is a limited resource, but hey, if you’re the only kid with the toys everyone wants, the world is your sandbox.”
No more winking, no crossed fingers. He wasn’t lying about this.
“Why tell me?” I asked. “You know I’ll stop you. I’ll stop them.”
“With what, Terric? Magic? You don’t have that anymore. We drained you dry. To access magic again, to really access the power of it, you’d need someone who could use magic in perfect concert with you. What’s that person called? Something . . . oh yes, a Soul Complement. No luck there. Shame is dead, dead, dead. He is dead, isn’t he?”
I didn’t know why he asked me that. He knew the answer.
“Just like Brandy, I suppose,” he said. “Gone.”
Eli might be right about Shame, but he was wrong about me. I wasn’t empty. Magic still flickered in me. Close enough I could almost reach it. I just needed a little more time.
“They’ll stop you,” I said. “They’ll break magic and stop you all.”
“Who? The Soul Complements? I think you are grossly overestimating their abilities. After all, who is more dangerous than you and Shame? Who is more powerful than Life and Death? If we can kill him, if we can do all these things we have done to you, Terric, who do you think can stop us?”
I didn’t say it. I didn’t have to.
“Allie and Zayvion. That’s who you’re thinking of, isn’t it?” His smile was a little less convincing. “Even they can’t stop this machine. Krogher will take out the Soul Complements, and then he will have the world in the palm of his hand. I’ve seen the things that he wants magic to do. I’ve seen how he wants the world to end. . . .” He stared down at his feet. “It is not a pretty picture. For anyone.
“Now,” he said, slapping both hands flat on the table. “Let’s get on with this. Today, Terric, I’m going to take a burden off your mind. I’m going to Close you so you can’t use magic anymore. No more responsibility, no more worrying if Life magic is doing harm to anyone. No more worrying about magic at all. You won’t even remember it existed, and if by some strange circumstance you do remember magic, you will have no idea how to use it.”
Cold terror clenched my gut. If I couldn’t use magic, there was no chance I’d break out of this place. Without magic, I had no cards to play. Without magic, I wouldn’t be worth keeping alive.
“Why don’t you just kill me?”
“Kill you? No, not yet. I need you.” He paused as if that were an important admission on his part. Then, in a lighter tone: “You are the liability insurance. Just in case we need to load a few more spells, you’ll be right here, easy for the taking. Oh, we know you’re drained of magic right now. But you might surprise us. I always plan for surprises. Always.
“So, let’s get on with this, shall we? It’s been a while since I’ve done anything old school, like Closing. I can only assume I’ll be a little rusty. We’ll just muddle through together, won’t we?”
He snapped his fingers.
I jerked.
Footsteps echoed in the warehouse, people walking this way. Two guards led a boy and an older woman toward us, both of them blank-eyed and filled with magic, one spell carved into their flesh. They walked up to the cage and wrapped their hands around the bars.
“There is a certain irony in your own magic being used against you, to keep you from using magic, isn’t there?” Eli stood, walked to the corner of the room where a table was spread with scalpels, hammers, wire, Void stones, mortar, pestle, and more. Things he had used on me. Things he had done to me.
He paused there, glanced over his shoulder to make sure I was watching what he was doing. “This,” he said, pulling out a circle of metal with glyphs carved into it, “was the beginning of the solution. The problem? If you can raise an army of walking, mindless spell holders, how then do you activate those spells? How then do you deactivate those spells? I began with this.” He turned and held the disk in the fingers of his right hand.