“Did you find Davy?” I asked.
She shook her head. “He has to be in there, though, Shame. It’s heavily guarded and I can smell magic. I think they have an Illusion over it.”
“The drones?” I said.
“I’m guessing. The access road half a mile back will get us in the back door.”
I glanced at the SUV. Didn’t think there was a single chance I could get in it again and keep Death magic from devouring my friends. “I’ll meet you there,” I said.
Sunny stormed up the dirt road and grabbed my shirt with both hands. “I don’t care what your problem is. I don’t care that you died, Flynn. You owe me a favor. This is that favor. So shut up, stow your shit, and help me get Davy out of that hole. My way. Do you understand me?”
“You are so missing the point here. Death?” I swallowed. “It’s all I can do to keep it under control. Keep it away from hurting you.”
She was so close, her heartbeat sent shivers of need across my skin. The exhalation of her breath against me made me dizzy with hunger. I wanted to drink her down, drink down her heat, her life. It was more than want. I needed it.
Thumb on the windpipe, Shame, thumb on the windpipe. It was not much of a calming mantra, but it was, apparently, mine.
Blinding-hot pain shot through my shoulder.
“What the shit!” I stumbled backward as Sunny pulled her knife out of my shoulder.
“Do I have your attention now?” she asked with a tip of her head. “Or do I have to use your blood in a spell to slap some sense into your thick head?”
Blood magic users. Crazy bitches with blades.
“Stabbing?” I panted, trying to swallow back the magic that wanted to kill her. “Did you want my help, or did you want to piss me off? ’Cause stabbing me is only going to get you one of those things.”
“Shame . . . ,” Cody said.
“Shut up, Cody.” I put my palm over my shoulder to hold what remaining blood I had where it belonged. “You want me to be your weapon against Eli and everyone else who’s hurt Davy, fine. But if you so much as scratch me again, Sunny, I will walk, and you will be lucky to still be alive.”
“Shame . . . ,” Cody said again.
“You don’t get this, do you?” she said. “I own you, Flynn. For this, I own you. And I don’t care what you say about the magic in you.”
“I’m the only thing standing between you and an early grave,” I said. “I’m on your side, you crazy fool.”
“That’s it,” she warned.
“Hurry,” Dash yelled, jogging our way. Where had he gone? “Cars are coming.”
Cody sighed. “That’s what I was trying to—”
“Get in,” Dash said. “Now!”
Neither Sunny nor I moved. We were just stubborn that way.
And then Cody and Dash were there, shoving Sunny and me into the car, which meant we ended up in the backseat together while Cody took shotgun and Dash slid into the driver’s seat and peeled out, taking the road at speed.
“Access road,” Sunny said. “South.”
“I heard you,” Dash replied. “Cody, you know anything else we don’t know?”
“I think Shame’s losing control, and if we want him to be conscious and . . . well . . . human by the time we hit the warehouse, you’ll want to drive faster.”
“Hey,” I said. “Give the stabbed guy some credit.” But my heart was stuttering, no longer quite in working order, and my lungs had gone to hell. I needed to kill. Needed life. Needed to feed the death inside me before it killed me.
Or let it kill me and not have to pay back that favor I never should have promised Sunny.
The rope around Eleanor’s throat had tightened and shortened. She was sitting so close to me we’d be touching if she wasn’t pulling against the rope as hard as she could.
If we got too close, would I drain her the rest of the way down? Would I kill her? Again?
“Just get me to the warehouse,” I said, or thought I said. From the speed of things whipping past the car to the conversation around me that sounded as if it were underwater, I was pretty sure I wasn’t on reality’s frequency.
Eleanor shoved her cold, cold hand into my head, right through skin, bone, and meat, and wiggled her fingers in my skull.
And for a second, all the world went silent.
There was no sound, no motion, no pain. No Death magic hunger. I drifted, just outside my body.
Took me a minute, but I finally realized Eleanor was talking to me. . . . kill me, then you’d better make it worth it. Get a grip on the magic inside you. It’s the only way you’re going to save them all. Kill them all. Find him and use it with him.
“Him? Davy?” She was talking faster than I was thinking.
Terric. He’s not—
“Shame!” A palm hit my face, hard.
Okay, so basically things were not going well in Shameland. I was being chewed out by a ghost I’d enslaved and slapped by . . . I opened my eyes . . . my gay ex-assistant, who, come to find out, had a decent right cross.
We must have stopped for a change of drivers.
“Dash,” I wheezed. “You hit me again, I will drink you down to sixty-two.”
He frowned. “What does that even mean? Keep breathing. We’re about half an hour away.”
How much time had I lost? “Warehouse?” I asked.
“Hospital. You’re a mess.”
Rolling me up to a hospital would be like sitting a starving man down to a smorgasbord.
“Stop the car,” I said. “Stop it. Now.”
Dash glanced up and I did a recalculation on the entire situation. Still nightish, still in the SUV. Sunny driving. Cody next to her. Dash risking his fool life to try to keep me alive.
“I’m better,” I said. Whatever Eleanor had done to my head had at least restored my ability to lie. And to think. And to hold down Death magic. For now.
“I won’t fight you,” I said. “I don’t need a hospital. They wouldn’t know what to do with me anyway.”
“That’s true,” Cody said. “They only treat the living. Dash, we’re only about twenty minutes from the warehouse. We should take our shot while we can.”
“Shame,” Dash said. “We’re not going in there unless we have proof Davy’s there. Can you feel his life?”
It wasn’t a bad idea to ask me that. I could tell how many heartbeats were within a ten-mile radius, and Davy’s heartbeat was one of the more unusual ones on the planet since Eli had carved him up with magic a few years ago.
Only problem was that I had crap for control. If I used it, if I tapped Death magic, it was pretty good odds I’d kill my friends and all the living souls within a mile.
“Get me close to the warehouse and I’ll try,” I said.
Sunny gunned the engine, and time slipped by, measured by my slow breaths and ragged heartbeats. Dash kept looking over at me with that face that said he was sure I’d be dead between one breath and the next.
I winked at him and he sighed. “This isn’t the time to be flirting.”
“I’m not,” I said. I was going to tell him I knew that I was close to being dead or undead or whatever it was a Death magic user turned into when he lost control. “But you all will need to get clear of me real soon now.”
Before I became a monster. Just like Jingo Jingo. A monster that sucked the lives out of people and chained up their souls for a bedtime snack.
Yeah. That.
Fifteen minutes crawled by. The car stopped and Sunny was out the door. Pretty sure I heard a shotgun rack a round. That’d be Sunny all right.
Cody turned in his seat. “Be careful how you look for him, Shame. Be careful what you see. You might not like what you find.”