Devon Monk - Hell Bent

We ran to the car. Terric outpaced me, but only by a step or two. In the car, doors slammed, engine. Terric tore through the city, heading northeast. Heading to St. Johns. Heading to Zayvion and Allie.

He tossed me his phone. I caught it without looking, dialed Clyde.

“This is Clyde Turner,” he answered.

“It’s Shame. Someone broke magic. We think it’s Zay and Allie. We think they’ve been hit.”

“Hit by magic?”

“We don’t know. We’re going out there now.” I hung up. Terric probably would have told him to call the cops, or the cavalry or whoever it was we had to answer to these days, but I did not give a single damn about procedure.

Terric and I were enough to deal with whatever was going down.

His phone rang. Dash. I thumbed it on speaker and answered, “Shame.”

“The police are on their way,” he said. “Do you need anything else? Anyone else?”

“We got it,” I said.

“Were there any reports?” Terric asked. “Has anyone else called this in?”

“No,” Dash said. “Just you two.”

“Let us know if you hear anything,” Terric said.

“I will. Be careful.” Dash hung up. I did too.

Terric pulled up to Zay and Allie’s place, double-parking on the gravel lane that ran between their three-story farmhouse and the empty lot in front of the river. They had a front door. We didn’t use it.

We jogged past their low stone fence, the leafless rosebushes, and the hedge of dormant daisies. Past the garden Allie was so proud of, which held three decent-sized pumpkins and some random gourds and flowers the Hounds had thought would be funny to plant when she wasn’t looking, up the weathered wooden steps of the porch, to the kitchen side door.

I tried the door handle. It was unlocked.

Got exactly one step into the room.

A fist came out of nowhere and hit me in the head like a bull at full charge.

Holy shit.

I stumbled into Terric, who didn’t bother catching me on my way down to the floor. He was halfway through a spell.

“Stop.” Allie’s voice. Allie. I blinked upward. At a very angry Zayvion Jones, who was glowering down over me, his eyes molten gold.

“Jesus, Zay,” I said. “We came here to help you.”

“Zay,” Allie said calmly. “It’s Shame and Terric. Let them in.”

I didn’t think Zay was listening in the language we were speaking.

“Zayvion,” Terric said. “It’s all right. We got this. The police are on their way. Tell us what happened.”

For no apparent reason, he listened to that.

Zay closed his eyes, opened them again. Still gold, but this time there was sanity mixed in with the anger. “We were attacked.”

“Fuck,” I said, picking myself up off the floor. I wiped the blood off my nose and almost howled. “Also, you broke my nose. Asshole.”

“Are you all right?” Allie said.

“I’m fine.” I looked at Zay and he finally moved that mountain of muscle over to one side so I could walk the rest of the way into the room.

They had the old-fashioned farm kitchen thing to go with the rest of the old-fashioned farmhouse. I walked to the oversized sink and found a washcloth hanging from the facet. Used that to mop up the blood running out of my face. Then turned to get a look at the situation.

Allie was sitting at their kitchen table. She had been crying. Zay was still in guard mode. Terric was trying to talk him down toward something resembling reason. Wasn’t getting anywhere.

“For crap’s sake.” I pinched my nose with the cloth, crossed over to Zayvion, grabbed his wrist, then led him over to Allie, who held her hand up for him. “She’s fine and she’s right here.”

Their fingers touched and I pulled my hand quickly away from the connection between them—an almost physical sense of heat.

“What happened?” Terric asked again. “Allie, we felt magic break. Did you break it?”

She nodded. Her eyes were wet. “I don’t know why I’m crying. This is so . . .” She wiped at her eyes with her free hand and sniffed, then took a deep breath. “I’m fine. I’m not hurt. I’m just angry.”

“Want to tell Mr. Jones to stand down and make with the talking?” I asked.

She looked up at Zay. Maybe for the first time realized how furious he still was. “Zayvion, I’m fine. The baby’s fine too.”

Right. Baby. No wonder why Zay had gone feral.

“Tell us what happened, Z,” I said as I leaned back against the counter, rag over my nose. “Tell us why you broke magic.”

Maybe it was the angle of light from where I was standing, but that’s when I noticed Zayvion’s black T-shirt was dark with blood. He was injured.

“Zay, mate,” I said. “You’re bleeding.”

Terric was looking out the door, but at that, turned and shut it. “Sit down, Zay.”

Zay sat in the chair next to Allie, and Terric lifted his shirt to see the damage.

“Who did this?”

“Collins,” Allie said. “It was Eli Collins.”

“Everything you can tell us,” I said. “Quickly. Zay. Step it up, man. Use words.”

Terric was at the sink now, getting a clean cloth wet so we could clear some of the blood off Zay’s chest to see if there was a serious wound beneath it all.

“We were at the table,” Zay said in that very, very calm tone he had that really meant he was very, very angry. “We both heard something crack. He was standing inside our kitchen. Smiling.”

Zay jerked as Terric pressed the cloth on his stomach. “Did he shoot you?”

“No,” Allie said. “He had a knife. He didn’t want to kill Zayvion.”

Zay picked up where Allie left off. “He wanted to hurt me and make me watch while he killed Allie. Said he was going to carve the life out of her.”

The baby.

Fuck.

“So you broke magic,” I said.

“We broke magic,” they said simultaneously.

“Did you kill the bastard?” I asked.

“No,” Zay said. “He had something like a gate.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it. Tech, I think.”

“You’ve seen it?” Allie asked. “You’ve seen Eli? When?”

“Last night. He left me a message. Said that people are going to die if I don’t find him and save him. Oh, and he’s the one who’s going to do the killing.”

“Why would he warn you that he’s going to kill people?” The shock of what had just happened appeared to be wearing off and Allie was back on her game.

The distant wail of sirens filled the air. Maybe the police, maybe an ambulance. Maybe coming here.

“He said he’s being held captive and being used to kill people. People like Joshua. He said they’re holding his soul. His Soul Complement.”

“He’s lying,” Zay said.

“No,” Terric said. “Victor told us. They’ve known who his Soul Complement is for years. She had been in a mental institution all this time until she disappeared a short while ago. Victor took away Collins’s memory of her.”

“Shit.” He exhaled. “How long?”

“She’s fifteen in the file photo,” I said. “Thirty-five now. And Eli says they might have her.”

“What do they want with him?” Allie asked.

“Their very own Soul Complement pair weapon? I’ll give you one guess. But the thing we ought to worry about, boys and girls, is that he’s a Breaker. Even though she’s damaged and he’s bat-shit crazy, if they work together, they can break magic and make it do whatever they want it to do.”

“What isn’t adding up for me,” Terric said, “is why Eli came here with a knife. He’s not shy about guns. He’s not shy about taking his one shot and making it count.”

That was true. Eli liked death, destruction, and bloody mayhem and didn’t mind getting his hands dirty. “So he didn’t want to kill Zay. Probably didn’t want to kill Allie. Or at least not quickly. Did he have anything else with him?”