“Holy shit,” Cody said. “He’s alive, Shame. Tell Sunny he’s alive.”
I’d be happy to pass along that news, but the spell spun where Davy had knelt, burning with blue fire that caught red. Thunder fired somewhere above us, and the air sizzled.
In the center of the room was a hole. Not just a hole in space, but a break in reality, a tear in magic. Zayvion had been wrong. It was a Gate.
Go, Mum was yelling. Now, Shamus, now!
I ran for it, Terric right beside me. Dash was on our heels. We tucked our heads and jumped.
Chapter 27
SHAME
Hit solid ground on the other side.
Concrete floor.
The Gate slammed shut. Thunder so loud I covered my ears, palms sticky with blood.
A hand grabbed at my shoulder, dragged me up by my hoodie.
I reached out, got ahold of a shirt. Terric. Blinked until the burning in my eyes, ears, and mouth backed off a bit.
We were in a room that might have been an art gallery. Beige walls carved out alcoves of more beige walls, track lights running across a white ceiling with the glyph for Lock painted across it in black. The torn-up strip-wood floor looked like it was made of old pallets and was painted, carved, and burned with dozens of glyphs: spells for containing, draining, binding.
Terric panted beside me, hand on my shoulder, mine on his. Dash was gone. He hadn’t made it through the Gate.
Magic users only? Or maybe it was a door made just for Terric and me.
There, right in front of us, was Stone the gargoyle. He was on all fours, wings extended, head down, and lips pulled back from his teeth. But he was not moving.
He looked like a statue. As if someone had found his “off” button.
Ah, Stoney, no.
“Here they are,” a voice behind us said. “The Soul Complements.”
We pivoted.
Eli Collins stood about forty feet away from us, wearing the white shirt, suit/vest combination I usually saw him in, his sleeves rolled up, wire-rim glasses hiding his eyes.
But nothing hid the automatic rifle in his hand.
Behind him was an alcove as wide as the room, filled ceiling to floor with what looked like security camera monitors.
“Good to see you again, Shame, Terric,” Eli said. “I’m glad you finally accepted my invitation. Although it did take you long enough.”
“And you’re not shooting us, why?” I asked.
“You don’t die easily. Either of you. Good news for me.” He licked his lips, smiled. “Well, killing you would have been nice too, but there is so much more I want now that you’ve proved you can keep on ticking. Death. Life.” He waved the gun between us. “Revolving door for the two of you.”
I could kill him from here. One quick strike with Death magic. Totally worth a few bullets. I reached for the Death magic inside me.
And got nothing.
“There it is,” Eli said. “You’re getting it now. No magic, unless I say you can use magic, Shame. And no leaving this room unless I say you can leave.” He pointed to the glyphs on the floor. “You are locked down. Just like Stone.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
“Just ask Terric,” Eli said. “Terric, tell the poor boy how good I am at keeping a person exactly where I want him to be.”
“What do you want, Eli?” Terric asked.
“I want my Soul Complement back. I want Brandy. Alive. And I want you two to make that happen.”
“The hell,” I said. “Brandy’s been dead and buried for months.”
“She has not been buried. She was never buried.” He tipped his chin toward the alcove to his left. Not an alcove, a room with a door open just enough I could see the foot of a cot.
“She is waiting for the man who killed her to bring her back to life.”
Eli stared straight at me, that gun pointed at me.
“I can’t bring her back,” I said evenly. “My return from death was a fluke, a onetime shot, Eli. I can’t bring people back to life. I don’t have that power.”
He lifted the gun, aiming at Terric. “You will make sure she lives,” he said to him. “You”—he pointed the gun back at me—“will fetch her soul for me.”
“Not going to happen,” I said.
“That’s unfortunate.” Eli took two steps to the side so we could see the monitors behind him. “Every spell-filled drone under Krogher’s control is there on the screens.”
A dozen screens. On one of them: Zayvion and Allie, on the way to the operating room. Good. They’d gotten out of the house. Another: my mum in ICU, Hayden beside her. The Den. The Inn. Two other remaining Soul Complements eating somewhere in Rome. Cody. Kevin and Violet and their kid, Daniel. The police department. Every hospital in the city.
All being stalked by a walking bomb.
Son of a bitch.
“What are you doing, Eli?” I asked.
“Krogher isn’t the only one who has control of these weapons,” he said. “I worked a loophole into each of those spells I carved into them. I’ve found it prudent to have a back door, seeing how consistently I have been betrayed.
“With one word, I can trigger every spell simultaneously. And then . . . well. You lose. Everything.”
“I can’t bring her back,” I said.
“Oh? Then maybe I should show you just exactly how I can trigger a bomb.” He took several steps over to the monitors.
“He’ll do it,” Terric said. “He’ll bring Brandy back.”
I looked over at him. Terric knew I could not do that. I didn’t have a road to heaven or hell or anywhere a soul might be and had never put a soul back in a body successfully.
“You’ll have to let me heal her first,” Terric went on, like a teacher who was reciting a lecture on a subject he’d been over a hundred times before. “And then Shame can get her soul.”
Calm words, yes. But Terric’s heart was racing. And no wonder. He had just offered his torturer a little private time with him in the back room.
“Fuck. Fine,” I said, going with whatever plan Terric had. “If you want this to work, I need to see what Terric does. So where he goes, I go.”
Eli tipped his head, the light sliding down the lenses to pool shadows under his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks.
We were promising a madman things we could not deliver—that was going to end well.
“Jesus, Eli,” I said. “You and I want mutual destruction. But I don’t want all those people dead because you’re being a dick. You keep your finger off the big shiny red button of doom, and I play by your rules.”
He nodded. “I can do worse than kill you,” he said quietly. “You understand that, don’t you, Shamus?”
“Sure.”
He strolled closer to us, to where we were held imprisoned, trapped by magic. “Keep that in mind. While you go retrieve her soul.” He fired six or eight bullets into my heart.
Bastard.
I went down. Terric’s hand on my shoulder, but no magic in his touch. He couldn’t use magic here, locked in these damn spells, just as I couldn’t use magic here locked in these damn spells.
It was, in a sick and twisted way, kind of funny. Eli was betting everything on killing me to go find Brandy’s soul, expecting, of course, that the Death magic in me would bring me back . . . even though he had blocked me from using Death magic.
Not like him to be so stupid.
I was so going to kill the fucker.
“Those are Void stone bullets,” he said. “To keep your options limited, Shame. Now, Terric, drag him outside the circle.”
I didn’t know what Eli did to cancel the Binding spells that had held us in place, but I was dragged ten feet or so.
Magic hit me like a falling anvil. I cussed and moaned.