Devon Monk - Hell Bent

He downed the sixth and carefully set it in place at the back of the line like a good little soldier.

“It’s Jeremy.”

“Right,” I said, toying with my third shot that wasn’t even half-empty yet. Another thing I don’t tell people: when Terric drinks, I just . . . don’t as much. Seems like one of us should be sober in any given situation.

“Your boyfriend wants to talk to you, mate.”

Terric looked off over my shoulder, pretending he hadn’t heard what I’d just said. But his heartbeat sped up, and I could see his eyes dilate. Fear? Lust? I sipped my whiskey and waited.

“He’s picking me up,” he said. “Here.”

“Is that a problem?”

He wiped his hand over his eyes. When he took his hand away, his eyes were still closed. He set the fingers of both hands one-at-a-time precisely on the tabletop, as if ready to play a piano.

“I can feel your heartbeat, Shame.” He said it almost too quietly for me to hear over the noise in the bar. But his finger was tapping the tabletop. Tapping in exact rhythm to my pulse.

“I can feel all their heartbeats. I can tell who is healthy, who is sick. Who is dying. I can feel their time ticking away under my skin. It burns there with every beat of their heart. And sometimes, some days, I can’t keep the magic from spreading out to swallow them. Life magic heals, mends, fixes.” He nodded, his fingers tapping, tapping.

“But when I lose control of it, it makes anything grow, accelerate, thrive. Even disease. Even sickness. The living are made stronger, but the dying are accelerated, burned out like old candles. If I refuse to use Life magic, it consumes . . . me. I drown in it, lose my thoughts, my reason. My mind.”

He opened his eyes. Maybe realized those words were coming out of his mouth. Maybe realized who he was talking to and where he was.

I wondered if he’d given up trying to explain to people what it was like to die and come back with magic having changed you. Changed your body. Changed your blood. Changed your needs. I’d stopped trying to explain it years ago.

Let them think I was a burnout. A loser. A slacker.

I guess Terric let them believe he was a success. A winner. A hero.

It didn’t matter. There wasn’t anything to do to fix what we really were. What we both had become: monsters.

Most people did not want to be reminded of how dangerous we were.

But I rarely heard Terric’s fight with Life magic. He never spoke to me about it. Just like I didn’t talk to him about Death magic. I had no idea what it was like to be driven by Life magic. I had no idea what it demanded of him. What it made him do. How it wore him down. How he coped.

“Life magic devours?” I said. “I thought that was Death magic’s trick.”

“Life magic infiltrates, overtakes, possesses. Makes everything grow: plants, people.” A long pause. “Diseases, sickness.” He tipped his head, licked his lips as if remembering the taste of each of those things. “Everything I touch I change. Everything that I touch I force to change.”

“You know there’s a price for letting magic use you like that.”

He nodded once. His eyes were too sober for how much whiskey he’d been drinking. “My life. My . . .” He looked at a loss for words. So I gave them to him.

“Your humanity,” I said.

I didn’t think he’d ever believed me when I said that before. But this time he did.

“When I let go. When I relax, when I just let go and breathe . . .” He stopped talking. Just stared at me.

“It takes over,” I said.

“I become the monster. The magic. I become the hunger. And I don’t want to stop.”

“Ain’t life grand?” I threw back the remainder of my shot.

“I’ve made some bad choices,” he said. “I’ve done some horrible things. When I just breathe . . .” He licked his lips. “I’ve extended . . . suffering. Hospitals are bad. Nursing homes, worse.”

“Good,” I said.

That startled him, but I wasn’t done.

“No, as a matter of fact: thank God. Perfect Terric was really getting on my nerves. It’s good to know you can fuck up like the rest of us lowly humans.”

“Is that what we are? Human?”

“Until the day the monster kills us,” I said. “Or we kill it.”

He smiled a little. “Careful. That almost sounded like optimism.”

“It’s the whiskey talking.”

His phone rang again. He didn’t look at it. Fingers dug harder at the tabletop.

A car horn blared. Paused. Blared again.

“That your friend?” I asked.

Terric took a deep breath, pulled his hands away from the table, then worked on putting his shoes and humanity back on. “Yes.”

He stood, pulled out his wallet and threw some twenties on the table. “Thanks. For this. I’d like to see you at the office again tomorrow. Think you can do that?”

“When have I ever let you down?”

He raised an eyebrow. The horn blared again, taking away his reply.

“Night, Shamus.”

He took a step, reassessed his balance, seemed to pull it together, then started toward the door with a steady gait.

I got up and followed.

“I’m not that drunk,” he said. “You don’t have to follow me.”

“I’m not,” I lied. “Gotta piss. Bathroom’s this way.”

He didn’t argue, not even when instead of turning left to the bathroom, I leaned against the wall near the door. Watched him step out. Waited a minute. Opened the door.

Terric ducked into a Jeep.

The man in the driver’s seat, who I assumed was Jeremy, looked familiar. Short hair, narrow face, and when he shifted so I could see him better, I knew where I’d crossed paths with him before. He was the guy leaving the scene at the alley this morning who pointed at me like he was holding a gun.

What a douche.

Looked like he was reading Terric the riot act.

I was suddenly falling in hate with the guy.

Terric paused in pulling the seat belt over his chest, the door still open. Since his body was turned away from me, I had no clue what he said. But I saw Jeremy’s face change. He shut up. His eyes narrowed. And his heart beat harder. Anger.

Then he looked up at me. Saw I was watching them.

His anger screwed down to tight, red fury.

Oh, that man did not like me. Poor bastard.

I crossed my arms over my chest and made a kissing motion.

He bit off one cussword and looked away.

Yes, I was enjoying this.

“Think I should stop that now?” I asked Eleanor, who had spent most of the last couple hours sitting with different people at the pub and eavesdropping.

She nodded.

Terric shut the car door and the Jeep rolled down the street.

“Too late,” I said. “You should really speak up when you have an opinion.”

Eleanor stuck her fingers into the side of my neck. Ice picks chilled all the way down my spine. “Jesus, woman. A little humor would be nice.”

I rubbed at my neck and stepped back into the pub.

As soon as I was in the main room, I was once again reminded that when I am around Terric, the need to devour and consume life is lessened. Yin/yang, Soul Complements, life/death, and all that. We canceled each other out some when we were in the same general proximity.

Now that he was gone, a tight ball of rage knotted like a fist in the middle of my chest. Death magic was hungry.

Maybe it was time to settle the bill and get the hell away from this place. Away from all these lovely living people.

While we’d been talking, day had stumbled into night. The pub was filled to the walls. I made my way between people standing and yelling to be heard over the noise of the place, and paused by the table.

A woman was lounging in Terric’s seat, arm over the back of the chair, ankle resting on her knee. Knockout pretty. Blue eyes like clear mountain skies, and a soft, full mouth. Her hair spilled down to her shoulders in waves, framing the porcelain white of her skin. Slender build in a tight T-shirt and jeans. My heart, which had been missing for years, kicked over and began beating for the first time.