Stone Cold (25 page)

“She's breathing,” Hayden said. “By God, she's breathing. Call an ambulance.”

I think Cody or Dash called 911.

Davy showed up with a blanket to cover her.

I didn't know what good an ambulance would do. Mum might be breathing, but she was still tied to me, her spirit, her soul, caught by the Death magic in me.

Shamus,
she said,
can you break this tie between us and let me back into my body?

The last time I'd tried that—with Mina—she had died.

I just shook my head, not willing to risk that with my mom. “I can't—”

Maybe this time it will work,
Eleanor said.

“No.” The last time it hadn't worked. The doctor's spirit had stepped back into her body and died.

I didn't know how long I stood there. Long enough for Hayden to get Mum bundled in the blanket. Long enough for Terric to be standing next to me again. Long enough the ambulance pulled up to the place.

What a mess they'd find. Three dead bodies, a burned room, and a woman in a coma.

“. . . need to go now,” Dash was saying from somewhere ahead of me.

Terric pulled on my arm, Cody pushed at my shoulder. We were moving, running.

“Go, go,” Cody urged. Out the back hallway. Out the back door into the shaded afternoon light beneath the trees behind the inn.

“Where are we going?” I asked. “Why are we leaving?”

Sunny and Mum and Eleanor floated there next to me, looking just as confused as I felt.

“Did you see where the drones came from?” Dash asked. “When the gate opened. Shame, did you see where they came from?”

“Yes. Kevin Cooper's manor. His house—the one out in the West Hills. I'm sure that's where Eli was standing.”

“Kevin Cooper?” Dash asked. “What does he have to do with the drones?”

“Not him,” I said, “Eli. Eli was there. Right outside Kevin's house. He told me to come and get him.”

“Wait,” Terric said. “You saw Eli? In a flash of an instant, you knew where he was?”

“It wasn't like that,” I said. “Time stopped. You didn't feel that? Hear that?”

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.

Unpleasant, and I almost always ended up puking.

The magic Davy shouldn't have been able to access landed us in the driveway in front of Kevin's house.

Every inch of me burned, but at least I wasn't going to lose my lunch. I had no time for it.

Eli was walking up the front steps. Eli was almost at the door. Eli was almost close enough to hurt two of the people left in this world whom I most wanted to be safe.

“Hey!” I yelled.

He looked surprised as hell that we were right behind him. I thought for just the barest second that he glanced at Davy and gave him a nod. What? Were they in this together? But then I didn't have any time to pick out the subtleties of what the fuck was going on.

Half a ton of rock tumbled out of the sky, all wings, claws, and fangs.

Stone the gargoyle.

He had probably been roof-side and noticed both Eli and our arrival at the same moment. He tore down out of the sky aiming straight at Eli.

Good boy, Stoney.

Two things happened at once: I unleashed Death magic. Terric reached out with Life magic.

Okay, three things happened.

Eli opened a gate in the ground behind him and stepped back into it just as Stone lunged for his throat. He and Stone fell through it and were gone.

“Son of a bitch.”I was running to where Eli and Stone had just been on the porch. I was also yarding back on Death magic so it wouldn't consume everything living in its path. Terric, I assumed was doing the same with Life magic.

Dash and Cody were a couple steps ahead of us, but they pulled up short when the door opened.

“Stop right there.” Kevin stood just inside the expansive entryway, a semiautomatic rifle in his hands. Correction, a semiautomatic rifle in his hands pointed at us. “What the hell are all of you doing here?”

Kevin was the kind of guy you might miss in a crowd—thinning hairline, sad eyes, and average in most every other way. But when he was holding a gun, he was riveting.

“Eli was outside,” Terric said. “Stone tackled him. They gated out. Could be gating back at any minute. Are Allie and Zayvion all right?”

“No one comes into the house,” Kevin said. “Not even you.”

“Kevin,” Dash said, “it's all right. We're here to help.”

“How'd you get here?”

“Davy opened a Gate,” I said.

Kevin turned his gun on Davy.

What we had here was a powder keg and a book of lit matches. Nothing but boom ahead.

“We came to stop Eli,” I said. “We can leave. Terric and I can leave.”

“It's not Terric and you that I'm worried about,” Kevin said. “Step back, Davy. Way back. Now.”

“Davy? Davy's not the problem,” I said. Kevin wasn't making any damn sense. “He brought us here to hunt for Eli. If Eli isn't here, we're gone.”

“Sure he brought you here,” Kevin said. “Because he's under Eli's orders to do so.”

“What?” I said.

Bullshit,
Sunny said.
Davy's not working for Eli. He was tortured by him. Held captive by him.

“You sure about that?” Dash, who couldn't hear Sunny, asked Kevin.

“One hundred percent,” Kevin said. “Back off the property, Davy Silvers, or I will drop you where you stand.”

Davy held up his hands. “Kevin. You're wrong. I would never take orders from Eli.”

He sounded like Davy. Looked like him—well, like a version of him who had recently been hammered through hell. The Davy I knew would rather slit his own throat than work for the man who had turned him into a monster.

“Back up,” Kevin repeated.

No,
Sunny said.
Shame. Don't let him kill him. Don't let him shoot.

“Davy,” I said, “you'd better listen to him, mate. Just step outside and we'll get this all sorted.”

Davy didn't move, didn't say anything.

“Davy?”

That wasn't Davy behind those dead eyes. Maybe hadn't been Davy for a long time.

Shit.

Magic can do wonderful things. Back in the day it healed the sick, fed the poor, made the world an easier place to live in. Of course magic back then always came with a price: You used it, and it used you.

The price for using magic was pain.

Then Cody healed magic, turned it into its new extra-gentle form and made it so using magic didn't cost much because it didn't do much.

Those spells carved into Davy were dark magic. Eli had carved spells from a time when magic was broken, raw, and extremely deadly.

Spells that would kill a man. Spells that would change a man. Spells that destroyed anything they touched.

And in those black hashed and looped designs were a few more spells. Things that would take care of Eli's enemies. Things that would take care of Krogher's problems.

Davy wasn't just a blueprint that Eli had used to carve the drones into bombs; Davy was his master weapon.

His very first, very best, flesh-covered bomb.

Right here, at Kevin's house, where Allie and Zayvion and Terric and I had gathered. Two sets of powerful Soul Complements. Maybe even the most powerful Soul Complements. Maybe the only Soul Complements left in the world. The only people who could stop Krogher and his drones.

And we'd brought Davy here—Eli's walking weapon. We'd let
him
bring us here. All together now, cozy and easy to kill.

Fuck. Me.

I triggered Death magic, sent it straight for him, at the exact moment Davy threw his hands down and out to the side. He arched back, his entire body consumed by the blue flame of those spells.

Magic called up from the wells beneath the city, magic called down out of the cloudless sky, a firestorm of hell. Magic Davy should not be able to access, if he were just human. Magic that was damn near impossible to pull on anymore.

An ungodly immense amount of raw magic.

There was no way I could block it.

And then the world exploded.