“Which means she’s writing a report for someone somewhere to read. Probably Clyde,” I said. “We leave tonight.”
“Shame,” Dash said. “I think you need to get through a whole twenty-four hours of breathing before we drive your ass across two states.”
“I can breathe in a car. You think Terric is there?” I got my feet over the edge. Held still to give my lungs a chance to catch up.
“We don’t know where Terric is,” Dash said. “We think Davy’s there.”
“Can’t you tell?” Sunny asked. “I thought you could feel Terric. With that Soul thing you have?”
“No,” I said. That was the truth, the hell I was not ready to face. I couldn’t feel Terric. At all. It might be because our connection had broken when I died. It might be because he was dead.
Or it might be because I’d died and come back not quite what I had been before. Something that didn’t match to a soul anymore.
The hunger rolled in me and Eleanor arched back, pulling against the rope that tightened on her neck. I pushed at the magic, shoved Death away until it subsided.
Damn.
“So if you can’t feel him . . . ,” Dash was saying.
He knew the answer. Terric might be dead.
If he was, then I had myself some unlucky bastard to track down and obliterate.
“Do you remember what happened?” Dash asked. “Do you remember who shot you?”
“Eli.” I pushed up onto my feet. The insides of me knotted up and lurched and threatened to become the outside of me.
“. . . Shame,” Dash said, in front of me with his hands on my shoulders. “Breathe!”
Right, as if it was that easy. Still, I gave the lungs a try, swallowed air. Enough to make the blackness filling the room step on back a bit. Note to the wise: Lungs plus bullets do not equal fun times.
“You can’t do this. Not yet,” Dash said.
“Dash,” Sunny warned.
“You two might as well take the argument to the other room.” I pushed Dash’s hands off me, gently, because I didn’t want to hurt him, and because really, that was all the strength I had in me. “I’m going to get some clothes on.”
Sunny started toward the door. Dash, bless him, hesitated. “You dying—again—isn’t going to help us find Davy. Or Terric. Or anything. Shame, you need to rest.”
I gave him a small smile. He really was concerned about me, about Davy, about Terric.
“Well,” I said as I shuffled over to my dresser. “As soon as we’re sure I’m actually alive again—then we can worry about me dying again.”
“Shame,” he said softly. “This can wait. At least a day. Please.”
I paused by the drawer, wondering if I had it in me to open the damn thing. “Eli shot me, and he took Terric. I think he took Terric. If Eli also has Davy, then that’s where we’re going. Where I’m going. Even if it’s just to kill Eli and bury Terric’s body.”
Dash didn’t say anything, so I did.
“I would kill for a cup of coffee, mate. That tea just isn’t cutting it.” Life would help too. Dash’s life, Sunny’s life. But I’d already done . . . something terrible to Eleanor. Trapping her, tying her down with that black rope of magic. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. I didn’t want to hurt anyone else.
“Jesus, Shame.” Dash rubbed at his eyes. He looked tired. Of course, he’d spent a week looking for Terric and me, and when he’d found me I was dead. It hadn’t been an easy go for him lately either.
“Coffee, Boy Wonder,” I said. “And make it strong. We have a long road ahead of us.”
Dash shook his head and walked out of the room. “Stupid, stupid idea.”
I could hear Sunny telling Cody we were headed out.
All right, Shame. Time to really take stock.
I took a gander under the bandages. I’d apparently sprouted a collection of holes. One in each shoulder, deep enough I could stick my pinkie into it up to my middle knuckle—which, by the way, hurt like a bitch. They were bloody, but not bleeding, and were strangely cold. My body temperature was way below manufacturer’s recommendations.
Five in my chest, two in my right leg, three in my left. Two in my right hip.
All of them deeper than I wanted to go digging around in, but the exit wounds were just as small as the entry wounds. Bullets didn’t work like that. I should be fifty percent ground beef in the back with that many shots in me.
I guess that if one is already filled with Death magic, it might make dying a little more difficult.
I pulled on the dresser drawer, gulped air until I could see straight again, pulled out a T-shirt, and dragged the soft cotton over my aching skin.
Gun. I had been in the kitchen. Terric was with me. We were eating pizza. Doing our magic thing to that poor plant. And then . . .
... blood. A knife cutting into his throat. Terric’s eyes, as he fell . . .
... fell at Eli’s feet.
Son of a bitch.
My heart kicked against my ribs and I groaned, waiting for the pain to pass. Eli had gotten into the kitchen. Eli had shot the gun. Eli had killed me, something that did not sit well with me at all.
Eli had slit Terric’s throat.
Everything inside me twisted again, agony I braced against and sweated my way through.
I glanced up at Eleanor, and this time she just stood there, blankly staring at me. She didn’t appear to be in pain. But I could see the tears streaking her face.
I didn’t know if it was withdrawals from death, or that I was allergic to life, but either way, something was irreparably wrong with me. With my body.
I needed life. Needing living. The Death in me was a bottomless hole, burning black in me. Hungry. And I was having a hell of a time fighting it.
In the end, I supposed it would win.
So I had some things to get done before I kicked off for good.
I had to find Davy for Sunny. Had to find Terric. Kill Eli. Kill Krogher, stop the drones. Save the world, no matter the cost. No matter what I gave up for it.
I was the last human on earth who should be given this responsibility. One look at Eleanor proved that. I’d shackled a woman who had jumped out of heaven for me.
What kind of monster was I?
I glanced up at the mirror, above the dresser.
The face of my nightmares looked back at me. I’d seen that look on the last Death magic user I’d killed. It was hunger and darkness and need. It was the thing that using Death magic was turning me into—a monster I could not sate or control.
Chapter 15
TERRIC
A hand tapped the side of my face. “Wake up, Terric. We need to go.”
I wasn’t sleeping. I was just sitting here, wherever here was. Prison. There were bars all around me, so it must be prison.
“Terric?”
The man in front of me was maybe in his twenties, blond hair. He was sweating and breathing as if he’d been running a marathon. His nose was bleeding.
I shook my head. Where was I? Why was I here?
“Let’s go. Eli won’t be out for long, and I can’t hold this—”
The man flickered, disappeared.
Holy shit.
I scrambled up onto my feet. There was another man bleeding on the floor, a broken coffee cup shattered at my feet. I was in hospital clothes, and there was enough medical equipment in the room that it wasn’t a big leap to think I was sick.
The bars didn’t make any sense. What kind of hospital kept people behind bars?
Was I insane? That man who had just been here and disappeared could have been a hallucination.
Okay, so insane was looking like a probability. That would mean the man on the floor was a doctor or an orderly, and I was . . .