Devon Monk - Stone Cold

He shook his head but had gone very pale.

“Eli stopped time. Long enough for me to notice him. Long enough for him to show me that he was holding a disk.”

“Why?” Dash asked. “Why would he want you to see him? You want him dead.”

“That’s why,” I said. “This confrontation. Our confrontation, he and I. Without Krogher in the middle of it pulling his strings. He wants us to come to him, me to come to him. And finish this fight.”

“I hate to say it again, but why ?” Dash asked. “He has the gates, he has fucking disks, apparently. He has the drop on us.”

Terric shook his head. “Not now. Not if Shame and I use magic together. Break it. Break the core of it into dark and light so we can change the world if we so choose.” He was silent a moment, then, “Eli’s Soul Complement is dead. We have the upper hand now. He’s choosing the ground upon which we kill him.”

“Kevin’s house,” Cody mused. “Dash, where are Allie and Zay holed up?”

Dash shook his head. “They haven’t told me. Just said they’d be safe and that Dr. Fischer was with them.”

Cody turned and looked at me. “Shamus. How much money would you bet that Allie and Zayvion are hiding at Kevin’s house?”

“Damn it. Call them,” I said. “Dash, call Zay or Dr. Fischer and find out where they are. Now.”

Dash pulled out his phone, dialed.

But driving wouldn’t get us there fast enough. We might already be too late to stop Eli’s attack.

“Can you open a Gate?” I asked Terric.

You would have thought I’d asked him to fly to the moon and back.

“No,” he said. “Shame, I haven’t been a Faith magic user for years. You broke that in me, remember? Closings, opening gates . . . that’s all Faith magic.”

“All right. Fine,” I said. “Can we open a Gate? Together. If we break magic?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. Maybe. Do you want to test our control over magic by tearing a hole through the fabric of reality?”

“I vote no,” Cody said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because I don’t want to be at ground zero of a nuclear explosion,” he said. “But hey, I like being alive.”

Dash hung up. “You were right,” he said. “They’re at Kevin’s. But they haven’t seen any sign of Eli or the drones.”

“He was at Kevin’s house,” I said. “I’m sure of it. With that gate thing of his, Allie and Zay won’t know they’re surrounded by drones until they are right up their asses.”

“I sent Stone to keep an eye on Allie,” Cody said. “For a magical gargoyle made of rock, he’s . . . sensitive to such things, fluctuations in magic. He’ll warn them.”

Not fast enough. Not good enough. Not enough for them to kill Eli.

I was already striding out to the parking lot. “Warning isn’t the same as stopping,” I said. “Or killing.”

“I can do it,” a low voice said. I glanced over at the cover of trees.

“Davy?” Sunny said.

“Davy?” I echoed. “What are you doing out here?”

“Watching you.”

“Easy,” Dash said. “Just take it easy, Davy.” His tone made me do a double check for guns in Davy’s hands.

No guns, but from the look in his eyes, I was pretty sure ol’ Davy Silvers would rather kill me with his bare hands.

Looked like Cody should be worried about two nuclear reactors in the area.

What’s wrong with Davy? Mum asked me.

He’s angry about Shame killing me, Sunny said.

Oh, Shamus, Mum said.

“I didn’t mean to,” I said.

He’s going to kill you, Sunny said. And I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.

Sunny! Mum used her teacher voice, and Sunny shut up. I understand you’re angry he killed you. Fine. He killed me too.

“God,” I groaned. Just what I needed. Arguing ghosts.

But, she continued, we are not in hell yet. And as long as we are on this earth, alive or in spirit, we do our job. Take care of magic, keep it out of the hands of people who would use it to harm others, and save the innocent.

Your own son is one of the people who harmed others with magic, Sunny said. He killed Eleanor too.

It’s more complicated than that, Eleanor said.

We should be keeping magic out of his hands, Sunny said. We should be stopping him .

Death magic demands many sacrifices, Mum said. It’s what you do with those sacrifices that makes them worthy of the price. I trust you, Shamus.

Dash was still talking too, but I had sort of lost that side of the conversation. The ghosts were arguing pretty loudly for beings that had no lungs.

“Shame?” Terric’s hand on my shoulder shot an electric pulse through me again, and once again I felt grounded, connected. Life magic flared and died in his eyes, and he knew the cool darkness of Death magic rolled through me.

Like lightning and thunder, we were a storm rising.

The clash of our magics wasn’t unpleasant. It wasn’t even that uncomfortable resistance of one magic tearing against the other. Something had changed between us again. Life magic set me straight and clear, and Death magic, apparently, returned the favor for him.

Soul Complements. Maybe we didn’t have to be living in each other’s heads like Allie and Zay. Maybe we didn’t have to go insane. Dying had brought us closer to each other. I was having a hard time finding something wrong with that.

Being drawn closer together wasn’t exactly how we wanted things to go, but right this minute, it wasn’t so bad.

“So you killed Sunny?” Terric asked quietly.

I couldn’t lie to him. He’d know if I did. “Yes.”

“Is she tied to you?” Terric asked.

“What?”

“Sunny. Do you have her soul?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He turned and once again stood between me and the man who wanted to see my guts on the floor. “We’ll find a way to make this right, Davy. But right now Allie and Zay are in danger. We stop Eli; we kill him, kill Krogher, stop the drones. Once that’s done, we’ll make amends. Even if what you want is our deaths.”

“Whoa, wait,” I said. “ Our deaths? You didn’t have anything to do with me killing anyone, Terric. This is on me. I clean up my own messes. Do you understand me, Davy? This is on me.”

He nodded but was looking at Terric, not me. “I understand you. If you want Eli, I can get you there.”

“How?” Dash asked.

Davy unbuttoned his shirt, revealing the spells carved into his skin.

Oh, mercy, no, my mum whispered. The poor thing.

There were so many spells carved into the meat of him that I couldn’t even see his skin. His entire chest was just a crossing and recrossing of black lines that pulsed with that strange blue neon.

“He left me his calling card,” Davy said calmly. “And a few other things.”

“Other things?” Terric asked.

“Ah, crap,” Cody said. “I think this is going to hurt.”

And then Davy pressed his palms together, blue magic surging up the lines of his arms to the tips of his fingers, completing an overarcing spell carved through him. When he pulled his hands apart, the air around us sizzled and burned.

No, not just the air. Magic. Davy had opened a Gate.

Then he said one word, and we all fell through.

SHAME

I hated gates. Zay and other people who could open the damn things seemed to love jumping through them. But whenever I stumbled through one, it felt as if someone inserted hot peppers up my nose, into every other orifice, and kicked me off a cliff into the salty deep.