Devon Monk - Hell Bent

“You took her from him, didn’t you?” I said, putting it all together. “When you Closed Eli’s memories away, you made him forget her.”

Terric glanced up at Victor over the file. Waiting.

It was, if you thought about it too long, a horrifying thing to do. Like cutting a person in half straight down the middle.

Victor had been standing behind the chair that matched mine. His fingers squeezed the top of the upholstery; then he let go and walked around, sat and exhaled tiredly.

“Mr. Collins . . . Eli is brilliant.” He nodded. “We have the tests that prove it. But he is also unstable and dangerous.”

“A sociopath,” Terric said.

“Yes,” Victor said. “Soul Complements can make magic break its own rules. We’ve always known that. Even when magic was strong, Brandy and Eli were a danger then. To themselves. To the Authority. To mankind.”

“So you kept them apart?” I didn’t know why it was bothering me so much. I mean yeah, I had stayed as far away from Terric as I could these last few years. And a few years before that. But that was my choice. No one had made me forget him. No one had forbade me to be with him.

It was my choice.

Eli and Brandy hadn’t had a choice.

“It was decided, by more people than just me, that it would be best for them to never know about each other,” Victor said.

“So you Closed Eli,” Terric said, “took the memories of Brandy away from him. And then you took the memory of how to use magic away from him too?”

“Yes.” He was quiet a moment, maybe thinking over those times, those decisions.

I’d always wondered if Victor followed rules, or made rules to follow. Too many times in the past he’d leaned a decision one way or another to make sure things in the Authority turned out the way he approved of. The way he thought was right, despite what the Authority stood for.

“Yes,” he said, “I did. I made him forget Brandy. I took away his ability to use magic.”

“Not that he didn’t relearn it,” Terric said.

“And when Eli demanded you Unclose him back when Davy Silvers’s life hung in the balance,” I said, “you didn’t give him the memories of Brandy back, did you?”

“No.”

A pause while I, at least, swallowed the fact that my teacher, my friend Victor, had been playing God with someone’s life. With their soul.

“It was my decision not to let him know about her. I still believe it was the correct thing to do. She is broken. There is no future for them together.”

“I had no idea you have a crystal ball,” I said. “How very convenient you know what they can and can’t be.”

The rings snapped with tiny sparks of red.

Yes, I was angry. Even though I hated Eli, I hated even more that Victor had made decisions that only Eli and Brandy should have made.

“Would you rather I have let two very unstable people have full access to a magic more powerful than ninety-nine percent of magic users in the world could access? It is not unthinkable that they could have destroyed the world.”

I knew he wasn’t being overly dramatic. Soul Complements could be walking time bombs. Soul Complements, in fact, had almost ended the world just three years ago.

“But to just cut them off from each other? There had to have been other options.”

“There were not.”

“Have you considered that by not having Brandy it drove Eli to extremes? That all this—all the crap he’s doing—is because of what you did to him? Joshua might still be—”

“Shame,” Terric said gently. “Don’t.”

I just glared at Victor.

He nodded. “Yes,” he whispered. “I have thought of it many times. Especially over the last three years.”

I’m sure he had. One of the side effects of surviving the apocalypse was that Cody Miller had healed magic with the intension of making everything better. That healing had made magic soft, and it had given memories back to everyone in the world who had had their memories taken away by Closers.

Closers like Victor.

So Eli had remembered Brandy and the part Victor and the Authority had played in keeping her separate from him.

“Damn,” Terric said softly. “He’s known for three years that she’s his match? And that she was locked away?”

Victor nodded.

“When did he find her?” I asked.

“Our sources say it was two years ago. She doesn’t have family, was a ward of the state. They were trying a new medication. It seemed to be helping. She was more responsive. Aware.”

“Then?” Terric asked.

“Then the war.” Victor spread his hands. “The end of magic being separated into dark and light. The end of our power. And the beginning of the new world where the Authority is no longer secret, where memories are no longer hidden, where those of us who fought to keep the world, and all its people safe, are ignored. Unwelcome. Silenced.”

“You’re not unwelcome,” Terric said. “The Authority still needs you. Needs what you can teach.”

“Faith magic?” Victor smiled sadly. “The things I would teach are nothing more than a history lesson now. Those spells, Closing people, guarding gates, fighting to keep dangerous uses for magic secret and safe? Unnecessary.”

“All right,” I said, “fine. Things might not have worked out the way you wanted them to. We’ve all shed our tears. But we’re still breathing, and we all have a problem: Eli. How do we find him? How do we stop him?”

“I don’t know the answer to either of those questions, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Do you know about a woman named Dessa?” I asked.

He frowned. “The name isn’t familiar to me.”

“Dessa Leeds?”

His gray eyebrows pushed wrinkles up his forehead. “Leeds? Do you mean Thomas Leeds?”

“That’s her brother,” I said. “Dessa’s brother. You know him?”

“He was a Closer. Out of Seattle. He was working for us. What do you know about him?”

I leaned back. Studied him. “Nothing, really. I do know that you’re holding out on me, though.”

“Shame,” Terric said.

“Come on, Ter. The old man’s got a secret he doesn’t want to share.”

“Old man?” Victor drew himself up and gave me a stern glare. “You know I’m in contact with your mother, don’t you, Shamus?”

I grinned at his indignant tone. For all that I was angry about his decisions with Eli and Brandy, Victor was one of my teachers. I’d grown up with him being a stern, proper sort of uncle. Plus, he’d taught me some of the dirtiest tricks you could do with magic. He was family, and that bond couldn’t be broken. Not even over dangerously poor decisions.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Tell her I’m being disrespectful to one of my teachers. It won’t be the first time she hears it. Oh, and while you’re at it, ask her why you don’t have the balls to tell us the whole truth.”

Terric leaned back on the couch and threw his hands up. “Jesus, Shame. Did that Taser fry your brain?”

I just watched Victor. In the past, needling him couldn’t make the old man change his mind. I didn’t think it would work this time, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. People who are upset or angry tend to say all sorts of interesting things they would never say in a calm state of mind.

“We’ve known the government was becoming . . . interested in the members of the Authority,” he said quietly. “Certain members. Our Closers, our Soul Complements, and those of us in higher positions. But we didn’t know why. We needed someone on the inside. Someone who had a contact.”

“Thomas?” I asked.

“Yes. Thomas thought he could use his relationship with his sister—I do believe her name was Dessa—to get closer to the matter.”