Devon Monk - Hell Bent

“About?”

“He’s part of the Black Crane, Terric, what do you think we talked about?”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“Yes. I do. And you could know it too if you ran his record.”

“I don’t run records on my boyfriends.”

“I think he was counting on that.”

“What about your arm?”

“He shot me.”

“What the hell?”

“Bad aim, though, I think it grazed.” I rolled up the sleeve to look. Okay, so not just a graze. A thumb-sized angry red hole marked my upper biceps. When I twisted my arm to look at the back of it, I discovered the exit wound was twice as large.

“Crap,” I said.

“Put out the cigarette.”

I sighed. Threw it out the window. “Happy?”

“Thrilled.” He pulled a lever to open the trunk, got out of the car, rummaged around back there, then got in the car, slamming the door shut behind him.

He had a red first aid bag.

“I don’t want you healing me,” I said.

“I’m not. I’m going to clean and bandage that so you stop bleeding on my interior.”

He set about doing so with the efficiency of an emergency room doctor. It hurt. I didn’t tell him, because I figured he already knew.

“What did you do to him?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

Quieter: “What did he do to you?”

“Threatened me. Shot me. Tased me. You know, the usual.”

“Tased you too?” He glanced up.

“Black Crane, Terric. Drugs and magic. He’s the drugs, you’re the magic. He wanted to make that clear to me.”

“He said that? Exactly that?”

“He did not say exactly that. He did say he wanted me out of his territory and away from you.”

“Shame—”

“Forget it,” I said. “He might be someone you care about, but one: he shot me and two: he’s using you. For himself, and for the Black Crane. So he and I have decided to agree to disagree.”

“Which means what? You’re both going to kill each other?”

I waited until he’d stuck a thick cotton pad on both wounds, then wrapped my arm in gauze he pulled tight. Didn’t answer him. Because yeah, that was pretty much what we’d agreed upon.

“Have you seen Dessa?” I said to change the subject. “Or Davy?”

“No,” he finally said, dropping the conversation. I hadn’t expected that. Maybe he was having second thoughts about the man. He threw everything back into the bag and tossed it in the backseat. Then he started the car.

“Davy hasn’t reported in to anyone,” he said as he navigated out of the parking lot.

That was odd. Davy had said there was at least one Hound on each of us Soul Complements. I should have seen someone following us, and thought it would be him.

“Did she say anything when she dropped me on your doorstep?” I asked.

“Dessa?” He shook his head. “Just that she’d found you wasted and wandering and was leaving you at my door. Said you were my problem now.”

“Now?”

“That was my reaction,” he said. “Eli said she knows where he or his Soul Complement is?”

“Yep.”

“Doesn’t line up with her story.”

“I know.”

“If you had to put money on it, who’s lying?” he asked.

I thought about that for a second or two. Eli I had some history with. Dessa I’d barely met, but I was more inclined to trust her over Eli. “Could be both. Dessa knows more than she’s telling us. Or Eli might think she knows something her brother knew before Eli killed him.”

“Someone needs to teach him rule one of negotiation: don’t kill the people who can give you the information you need,” Terric said.

“He said he kills whoever they tell him to kill.”

“And you believe that?”

“I believe that’s one of the reasons he does it. I also believe he’s enjoying it. Joshua was a Closer. Eli’s had a vendetta against Closers ever since Victor Closed him and took all his memories and ability to use magic away years ago.”

“So you think he’s going to hit Closers?”

“I’d say it’s on his list. Don’t know if it falls in with the plans of the people who have him captured.”

“ If people have him captured,” Terric added.

Yeah, I’d thought of that too. I lit another cigarette, got three drags off it. Then dug around in his very clean glove compartment, looking for sunglasses.

Even though there were heavy clouds today and it was only half past seven in the morning, the light was too damn bright for me. Apparently Tasers and poison were hard on my delicate constitution.

Terric pressed a button on the ceiling and a pocket opened.

“Thanks.” I pulled the sunglasses out of the pocket and put them on. Didn’t care if I looked ridiculous, just as long as my eyes were covered.

I hunkered down in the seat. I missed my coat.

“If you’re cold, I have a coat in the back.”

“Does it match the boots?”

“Maybe.”

“Pass.”

Victor used to live in a very nice home beneath the Japanese Gardens. A home that was built back in the early nineteen hundreds to guard the Faith well beneath it.

We’d pretty much demolished the place trying to survive the apocalypse, and while I’d been told it had been repaired and rebuilt, Victor had moved into a modest one-level home with a couple of acres and a small creek behind it.

He said it was easier on him because of his bad eyesight. I think he just hadn’t ever gotten over his house being blown to bits by magic.

In some ways, he hadn’t gotten over how much the world had changed now that magic was healed and reduced to a fraction of its strength.

Well, unless you were a Breaker.

Terric pulled up into the drive. We both got out.

“Want the statue?” I asked Eleanor.

“What?” Terric said as he walked to the front door.

“Nothing.”

He shot a look back at me, then kept walking.

I nodded toward the car. Eleanor shook her head.

So we strolled up the path. Terric was already walking inside the house and I slipped in after him.

“Thank you both for coming.” Victor wore a sweater with a shirt collar beneath it, and jeans, and of course, his heavy glasses. He shut the door behind us and turned the lock. “Let’s sit in the living room.”

I chose an overstuffed chair, sat there feeling a little bit like the pupil I once was, and tried to keep my hands and hungers to myself. Terric settled on the couch near me, which both helped and, for some reason, annoyed me.

Victor walked with that slow, old man pace he’d settled into since he’d lost almost all of his sight.

“To begin with,” he said, “I didn’t know Eli Collins was involved until yesterday when Joshua’s body was found. I want you both to know that.”

“Victor,” I said. “A confession? My, how the tables have turned.”

“It is not a confession. I am simply clarifying why I haven’t told you this before,” he said. “We know who Eli’s Soul Complement is.”

He stopped at a rolltop desk in the corner and retrieved a file folder. That, he handed to Terric.

“Who?” I asked.

Terric scanned the file, then looked up. “Brandy Scott.” He tipped the file so I could see the picture clipped there. Short dark hair, almond eyes, shy smile with a dimple. She didn’t look old enough to drive.

“How old is she?” I asked.

“That picture is from a while ago,” Victor said. “She’s fifteen in it. She’s thirty-five now.”

“Mental institution?” Terric said.

“That,” Victor said, “is what I needed to tell you. We’ve known Eli had a Soul Complement. Have known it for many years. They were even tested. But Brandy wasn’t stable. We did everything we could, medicine, magic, counseling. But she never recovered from the test to see if she and Eli were a match. Over the years her condition has grown worse. The last report we have from her doctors is that she has grown less and less responsive.”