But I knew it was just a matter of time before Davy and I had it out over Sunny’s death. Only a matter of time before he tried to kill me.
Hell, maybe I’d let him. It wasn’t as if I didn’t deserve it.
I paced until I was back in the bedroom again, just inside the door. I leaned my shoulder against the edge and stared at Terric.
The doctor had removed the bullets and put Terric on an IV with pain meds and antibiotic. She hesitated over all the signs of torture he’d been through. Finally defaulted to a gel and clean bandages for the burns, brands, and cuts.
But the deeper wounds, the things they had done to his mind, his soul, and his magic, were beyond her care.
“How long has he been missing?” she asked.
“A week.” Dash hadn’t budged from his side. He stood there, steady on his feet, though he looked a couple heartbeats away from a drinking binge and self-administered unconsciousness.
“Was he wounded before that?” she asked.
Dash shook his head.
“The knife wound at his throat,” I said quietly from the shadows of the doorway. “That was the first.”
She startled and glanced over her shoulder at me. She must have forgotten I was lingering there, even though she’d made a point to nod at me when she first came into the room.
“All right,” she said. “The neck wound is nearly healed. It looks to be much older than a week. From the bruising, bleeding, and swelling, I’d guess his internal injuries are more than a few days old also. Weeks at least. And the cuts, the removed finger?” She nodded. “Those were done weeks ago, not days ago.”
“That can’t be right,” Dash said. “He was fine a week ago. He was with us, at Allie’s party. Healthy.”
“No physical wounds, anyway,” I said.
“Did he suffer from some other kind of wound?” the doctor asked.
“Withdrawal,” I said.
“Drugs? Alcohol?”
“Magic.”
She paused in taping the IV to his arm and waited for me to deliver the punch line.
I gave her a steady stare.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “Magic. Do you know what he was using? Which spells? Blood magic?”
“Life magic,” I said. “It’s complicated.”
She took a moment to study Terric. “I’m not sure I understand the consequences of that addiction. Do you think it caused any of these injuries?”
“No,” I said. “Those are from torture.”
She placed his arm carefully back at his side and then pulled the blanket up to his waist. “Does he have family?” she asked.
“Yes,” Dash said. “Brothers, sisters. His parents are still alive. He has a lot of family. Why?”
“We’ll want to contact them. They should know.”
Dash opened his mouth but closed it as soon as he put two and two together and realized what she was saying.
Terric’s family should know that he was going to be dead soon.
Death magic thumped on the lid in my head. A fist. A heartbeat. A demand.
“How much longer does he have?” I asked.
Dash closed his eyes and turned his back on the bed.
“Not much, I think,” she said. “Maybe a few hours.”
“What about a hospital?” I asked calmly. “Better equipment? Would it buy us time? Would it buy him time?”
“Assuming he could survive the transport? His injuries are just too numerous. And many of them were inflicted with magic. There are spells carved into him. Spells I’ve never seen before. I’ve dealt with magical wounds for years now, but nothing like this. I’m sorry. I really am. Even if we take him to a hospital, we should still contact his next of kin.”
Terric’s next of kin. His family. Contact them and tell them he was dying.
I was having a hard time accepting those words.
Dash said something to her that I’m sure was appropriate and thoughtful. After a minute or two, he walked with her out of the room. There were other injuries, other people to take care of besides Terric.
The doctor could do some good for them.
But not Terric.
Spells carved into him. There was a reason she’d never seen those spells before. They weren’t spells any sane person would think of combining and inflicting on a person. I only knew one magic user twisted enough to create this kind of magical torture—Eli Collins.
I walked over to the bed and stared down at Terric.
Death magic growing, pounding, raging. Thump. Thump. Thump.
“You are a pain in the ass, Terric Conley,” I said quietly. “I’ve tried . . . tried to keep you out of the blast zone of my screwed-up life, but you just wouldn’t walk away. Not even when . . . when I gave you my life on the battlefield there years ago. Idiot. Why didn’t you just let me go then? None of this would have happened.”
The link of pain between us was gone—wiped out by the meds pushing happy-feel-good through his veins. He wasn’t hurting. He was resting peacefully.
This was the kind of exit everyone hoped for, right? Asleep. Quiet. Easy.
I pulled the chair up closer to his bed and sat. “If you had just let me die, I never would have done . . . the things Eli tortured you for. Killing Brandy. I really fucked that up, didn’t I? But I guess you and I are good at fucking things up. Carrying Life and Death magic inside us, mate? Who does that? No one. Maybe we should have just taken our beating back on the field with Jingo Jingo. Let the bastard win. Lain down and died.”
Terric didn’t say anything. His breathing didn’t change. I had no idea if he could even hear me. Probably not. His ghost wasn’t here, so he wasn’t dead. But he wasn’t all that alive either.
People could linger for years like this . . . comas. Maybe that’s what would happen to Terric. Maybe the life magic in him would do more than the doctor expected. Maybe it would hold him stable, and over time, he would heal.
Cody thought he’d heal a different way. By fighting against a quick, hard death.
A death I could give him. Darkness sparking light, magic snapping against magic, death closing the loop so life could begin again.
There was fire in that sort of thing. Maybe it was the fire Terric needed to survive.
Maybe it would kill him.
“Jesus, Ter,” I whispered, leaning my face into my hands. “What the fuck am I supposed to do?”
He didn’t answer. This one was all on me. This choice mine alone to make.
“This shouldn’t be in my hands, this choice,” I said, even though I knew he wasn’t listening. “That’s you. You’ve always been the reasonable one, the thoughtful man. You’ve always been right.”
I wiped at my face and the wetness there. “The right thing would be for me to leave. Let you heal, hope you heal.” I nodded, and blinked until my eyes cleared enough that I could see him.
“But I am a selfish bastard, mate. You know that. If there’s a chance you can be here, with me to track Eli down and drag him to hell, I want you here, beside me. I . . . can’t do this alone.”
It was probably a mistake, this decision I was making. Everything else I’d done in my life had been a mistake, so why would this be any different?
I sat on the edge of the bed. Watched as my proximity made his chest stop moving, his lungs pause.
I placed my hand in the center of his chest.
“I’m sorry, Ter,” I whispered. “But you were right. I can’t live without you.”
I didn’t know how, exactly, to do this. Cody had said all I had to do was take his death upon myself just as I’d taken his pain upon myself. That would give life some room to thrive in him.
Don’t leave me, Ter, I thought. Not yet.
I kicked free the lid on Death magic. It washed through me with its own pulse, humming in anticipation, feral.