Stone Cold (20 page)

“Has this ever worked?” I asked as I untangled the rope that tied Mina to me from the other ropes.

We've had good results in the operating room.

“But pulling someone back from death?” I guided her rope toward the spell. The spell tugged on the rope, on the ghost of her, like a magnet pulling to metal.

She didn't answer me. Maybe she couldn't hear me. The spell was drawing her in.

“Live,” I said.

I released my hold on her, concentrated on sending her spirit into that floating glyph.

She poured into it with violet light, filled the spell, and triggered it.

Sunny and Eleanor drew closer to the spell, like moths drawn to a flame.

The spell arced through the air and hovered above Mina's body. It draped over her like lavender lace. The black rope between us dissolved.

Our tie was gone, broken. The spell really had carried her soul, her spirit. She should be firmly back inside her body now.

Good. This was good.

She'd been dead maybe a few minutes at most. All systems were go. Lots of people had been revived after a much longer death.

I took a few steps back so I wasn't deathing up the area around her. Gave her space to revive.

I waited.

She's not breathing,
Sunny said.

Eleanor bent down next to her, touched her face.
Mina. Wake up, Mina.

Shame,
Sunny said.
Do something. Get someone.

Someone could do CPR. Not me. With the Death pulsing through me, I'd either rekill or reghost her.

I jogged to the house. Maybe Dash could help. Or Cody.

“Help,” I said as I stepped into the living room. “I need help out here.”

Cody and Dash hurried into the room.

“Shame?” Dash said. “What?”

“The doctor. Mina. She needs help.”

“What happened?” Dash asked as he stormed out the door. “What happened to her?”

I didn't turn. I didn't have to. I knew the exact moment he found her there, dead on the ground. I heard him call for Cody. I heard him tell him to call 911.

“Me,” I whispered. “I happened to her.”

Eleanor and Sunny were just outside the door, watching. We waited. A full minute. We waited two.

She's dead,
Eleanor said.
Gone. Oh, Shame. She didn't make it.

Sunny swore, and paced past me, her knife clenched tight in her hand as if it could protect her from me. Protect her from death.

“You killed her?” Davy asked.

I turned. I hadn't seen him in the room. Probably because he hadn't wanted me to.

He sat on the floor again, in front of Sunny's corpse. The glow of blue magic leaked light through the bandages someone must have wrapped him in.

Mina. Bandages Mina must have wrapped him in.

His hair hadn't been cut in too long, and fell into his eyes. He didn't bother to brush it out of his way as he stared at me, waiting for my reply.

“Who?” I asked. Not that it would matter. The answer would be yes.

“Do you know what I'm going to do for you, Flynn? I'm going to give you a head start. If you're smart, you'll track down Eli Collins and kill him. Before I find you. And kill you for what you've done.”

He hadn't moved an inch, but the rage in him was a palpable thing pushing out toward me.

“Well, then, mate,” I said quietly. “Until we meet again.”

I walked away. Away from the house, away from the dead bodies. I thought Davy might have the right of this situation.

My best use, hell, my only use right now, was Death. And Eli was the man we all wanted dead. After that . . . well, it would be interesting to find out if the spells Eli had carved into Davy, the things he had done to change Davy, would be enough to kill me.

Wind dragged cold across my sweat-covered skin, sticking my jacket to my back and sending a chill up my bare neck.

Dash yelled my name.

I ignored him and jogged to the SUV, got in, started the engine.

I might still be able to find Eli.

But I'd be damned if I was going to kill any more innocent people tonight.

Ever.

A gunshot ricocheted off the vehicle. I glance in my rearview mirror. Dash was there, took a second shot, for the tires, I thought.

Hit the car, missed tires.

Too bad, mate. But I had no time to stay and explain things. I had a killer to take down.

•   •   •

I pulled off to the side of the road about twenty minutes later.

I'd left my boots back in that ditch near the house. The gravel on the shoulder of the road was sharp and cold. That was fine with me. I just needed enough contact to the earth for Death magic to find Eli's heartbeat again.

Almost instantly, I caught a heartbeat that could be him about two hundred miles northwest of here.

Somewhere near Portland. But where, exactly?

Even with Death magic feeding on my anger and adrenaline, I was fatiguing, my legs shaking.

Careful, now, Flynn,
I thought.
Don't blow this. Just focus on the area surrounding him.

I concentrated on the Eli heartbeat, then pulled my perception carefully up away from the beat to his body surrounding that beat, to the room surrounding that body, then the building surrounding that room.

I knew that building. It was part of a shipping yard in St. Johns.

He was in Portland. Close to Allie and Zay.

And I could guess why.

Three Soul Complements died today, but Eli wasn't done doing Krogher's dirty work. Allie and Zay, my family, people I loved like siblings, were next on the list.

And I was so not in the mood to be fucked with.

I focused to take this shot—twice as far as the last time I'd tried to kill him. Magic flared, blurred; my concentration slipped. I couldn't keep that tight a focus from this distance. I was too damn tired.

I came back to my own body standing in the deserted road in the middle of nowhere.

Blood trickled from my nose, and I wiped it away absently. I had a headache that could swallow a city raging in my head, but I didn't care. I knew where that bastard was now.

I hauled my ass back into the SUV and checked to see if any cell phones had been left behind so I could warn Allie and Zay that Eli was about to come knocking.

Nothing.

Hell.

I revved the engine and tore off down the road to Portland.

•   •   •

Eleanor and Sunny had given up trying to talk to me. They sat in the backseat, probably planning my end.

A phone rang and I nearly hit my head on the ceiling.

“Jesus,” I yelped.

It wasn't on me, not in the side pocket, not in the passenger's seat. I finally found it in the glove compartment. It wasn't my phone. Maybe Sunny's?

I glanced at the screen. Dash was calling.

I thumbed it on.

“What?” I said.

“Where are you?”

“Driving.”

“Shame, listen to me.” His voice was shaking. Yeah, well, he'd just watched me kill Terric. A good man. His friend. And there was the mess I'd made of Mina too. Plus, Sunny was still dead on the couch.

“Eli's in Portland,” I said.

“What?”

“He's in Portland. Somewhere near St. Johns. I'm headed there.”

“How do you know where Eli is?”

“I found his heartbeat.”

Dash paused. “Did you call Zay?”

“No. You do that. Tell them he's nearby. Tell them he might have those drones with him. To kill them.”

“Fuck. Okay. Shame, you need to listen to me. What you did to Terric—”

I chucked the phone at the door. It shattered and fell to the floor.

That might have been important,
Sunny said.

“Shut up.”

I was ragged-edge exhausted. The last hour of driving hadn't exactly been hands at ten and two, safety first. It was everything I could do to stay in the lane.

This had not been a good twenty-four hours, and before that I'd been dead.

I wasn't exactly at the top of my game.

So I was going to keep one thing ahead of me, one single thing I was going to get done: kill Eli. Nothing else would get in the way of that.

Shame?
a voice whispered from behind me.

Not Sunny. Not Eleanor.

I glanced in the rearview mirror.

Terric sat in the backseat, no blood on his face, no pain in his eyes. He just looked annoyed.

Pretty much how I expected his ghost would look once it found me.

Eleanor and Sunny were ignoring him, staring out the window on either side. So either they couldn't see him, which was odd, or they didn't want to deal with him, which was more likely.

“Don't do this, Ter,” I said, looking away from the anger that flickered across his face. “I didn't tie you to me. You can move on.”

You idiot,
he whispered.

I glanced in the mirror again. He was gone. Eleanor and Sunny hadn't even moved.

Okay. Apparently I was tired enough to be hallucinating.

My heart flopped painfully in my chest, slamming against bone. I swore my way through the agony. Heart attack?

Terric had died and decided to haunt me. Painfully.

Figured.

I blinked sweat out of my eyes and kept my foot on the gas. I was less than an hour away from Portland.

The highway took a bend, following the river. Dawn was wiping the stars out of the sky and leaving behind a swath of pale yellow and gray. Traffic, which had been sparse, thickened the closer I got to the city.

I didn't have time for a morning commute. I had a man to kill.

Traffic crawled down to a dead stop. The highway was blocked, a dozen black cars and a bulletproof box van parked across the road. Police walked between the cars, flashlights in hand, getting IDs. Looking for something. Maybe looking for me.

Krogher had connections. Police would be just the beginning of what he could throw at me.

The cops were headed to the truck in front of me. Which meant I'd be next.

Goddamn. If they thought they could stop me, they were wrong.

I took a breath, put the car in park, and got out.

Killing would be easy. But it would also be messy. I didn't have time for messy.

What are you doing?
Sunny asked.
Shame, what are you doing?

My stocking feet on the cold asphalt made no sound. In the pale light of morning, strangely unnecessary details stood out for me. The hole in my left sock heel, the smell of asphalt and tar, the
I LIKE IT DIRTY
written in the dust on the side of the truck.

And the Death magic that sat like a dangerous, but also nearly endless source, of magic in me.

I didn't have to be seen if I didn't want to be.

I didn't want to be.

I drew a quick Illusion, pulled on the magic within me, poured it into the spell. Asphalt cracked, growing things alongside the road turned brown, withered, died as Death drank them down.

And the Illusion caught silver fire, then fell around me like a spider-silk cloak.

No one saw me as I walked by. No one even looked my way.

I strode past the barricade of cars, past the armored van, to the last car on the other side of the roadblock.

The car was empty and convenient. I checked for keys. Got in, expanded the Illusion spell to cover the car—to make it look as if the car stayed behind.

The level of magic and skill it took to pull off a spell like that wasn't taught in kiddie school. It also wasn't easy.

Pain stabbed through my brain and I cussed and rubbed at my eyes until I could see some of the road ahead of me. It hurt like hell, but I didn't let go of the Illusion. Not yet. I turned the car toward Portland.

...
you shouldn't be driving,
Eleanor said.
If you pass out on the road, you'll kill yourself . . . probably.

“Do you think I care?” I asked her. “Do you really think I give a damn about that anymore?”

How about car accidents?
she said.
You could kill other people too. Innocent people. You can't tell me some part of you doesn't care about that.

I looked over at her. “If I'd thought, for one second, that killing every man, woman, and child in a mile square, either side of that road, would have gotten me what I wanted, I would have drunk them down like cold water.”

You don't mean that,
she said.
You can't—

“Shut up, El.”

Just listen.

“Don't. Talk.” I wiped the sweat off my face, swerved back in my lane, trying to hold that double Illusion spell just a little longer.

Shame!
Eleanor screamed.
Look out!

Terric stood in the middle of the highway. His ghost, anyway. He was not annoyed anymore. He was furious.

Turn back,
he said, and I heard him even though I shouldn't at this distance, at this speed.

Hallucination?

I was going to hit him. Run him over unless I did something pretty quick to avoid it.

Would a ghost survive the impact of an automobile?

I lost the Illusion spell.

All I heard was Eleanor screaming.

And all I saw was Terric.

No time to avoid a collision. I drove right at him, braced for the hit. Ghosts don't offer a lot of physical resistance.

The car went right through him. More than that, he went right through me.

A stream of light and color and blinding pain flooded me, claimed me. Terric and I shared the same space for a split second, shared the same body.

I'd lived with a ghost for almost four years. Was living with two now, one of whom liked to punctuate her sentences with knives. I knew what it was like to be hit by a spirit, knew what it was like to be touched, knew what it was like to be stabbed.

This was nothing like that.

Everything that made Terric . . . well . . . Terric slammed into me. Memories, thoughts, fear, joy, hope, anger, a whirling cascade of faces, buildings, conversations, sensations of his life, the good, the very good, and the very, very bad.