Hell Bent bm-1

by Devon Monk

  And he’d apparently painted it several shades of purple, blue, and yellow since I’d last been by.

  I parked the car in front of the place and Eleanor drifted into the backseat of the car.

  Cody was already walking down the porch and past the rosebushes. He was yellow haired, tan, muscled, quick to laugh, and, if I remembered correctly, just a little older than me. He had on several layers of shirts and jackets in browns, oranges, and blue, a dark green scarf tossed over his shoulders that should have looked messy, but somehow came across as fashionable, and was carrying a bowling ball bag.

  He opened the passenger door, and ducked down as he got in. “You’ll want to head back over the river. West.”

  “I need an address, I don’t need a passenger,” I said.

  “You need both.” Cody slid the seat belt over his shoulder and snapped it in place. “And I want to see you.” He turned toward me. “I want to see what you’re about to do. With magic. With death.” Those blue eyes were just this side of madness, and when he smiled, I realized magic might have done more than just change him.

  “Cody,” I asked before I put the car in gear, “are you sane?”

  “Oh no. But then, neither are you. That’s what makes this so fun.”

  I slowly removed each of my Void stone rings and dropped them into my cup holder. Then I drove west, because damn it, he was right.

  Chapter 22

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  Cody tipped his head to better see around the slight bend in the road where I’d parked. We were in the southwest hills on a narrow one-lane that snaked up along the hillside between cliff-clinging houses with grand views of the city and Mount Hood. We were so close to downtown it seemed like I could spit and hit it, but the way the neighborhood was built to soak up the wide horizon, the city felt like a world away.

  The address had led us to an immaculately landscaped spread with a multileveled house that showed some beige and cedar between the expanses of windows. Decks, probably a pool. Rich, without standing out among the other rich.

  Houses on both sides had bikes tucked up against porches or doors, or a couple kid toys. Families lived here.

  “That’s it,” Cody said. “Head man goes by Phillip Soto. Second is Rene Schuller. I have other names if you want them.”

  “I don’t. You should stay here.”

  “Right.”

  I glanced over at him, surprised he’d agreed so quickly.

  He raised one eyebrow. “I should but we both know I won’t. Are you taking the gun or the baseball bat?”

  “The gun. For show.”

  “How are you going to play this?”

  “No playing. I’m going to walk in there and start killing people until they understand my point of view.”

  “That’s . . . direct.”

  “Things have changed, Cody. I don’t follow Authority rules now.” I drove down the hill a bit and parked the car in the driveway. Then I opened the car door, and he did too, climbing out with his bowling ball bag.

  “That doesn’t sound very different than how things used to be,” he said.

  “It’s different.”

  Afternoon sunlight slipped yellow and heatless through the scattered clouds. It would be dark in a couple hours. I didn’t need the dark to get the job done.

  I strode across the tasteful beige driveway to the tasteful beige stairway, up one flight to the glass-on-glass double-wide doorway framed in yet more glass. A balcony wrapped at that level around the wall of glass windows to my right, and a second balcony and wall of windows wrapped the same way on the next story up.

  For people who lived on the wrong side of the law, they sure had picked a house that was nearly transparent.

  Cody was behind me, not too close, and taking his time to enjoy the architectural details. Eleanor had already slipped into the house ahead of me.

  I kicked the door.

  Glass did not shatter, but a Break spell took care of the hinges and the whole thing fell inward.

  Quick rundown: everything about the place was glass and chrome. A black marble bar curved a crescent to my left, red stools edging the outer arc, the floor was brown marble and a deeply textured beige carpet, and the three men in the room were all reaching for their guns.

  I killed them before they even had their weapons in their hands. Lashed out with magic dark and fast, and stopped their hearts.

  Cody, behind me, let out a little “huh” sound when the three gunmen collapsed to the floor. I didn’t wait to see if he was going to remove himself from the situation, or stick close.

  He chose to stick close.

  Around the bar, past a glass-tiled alcove holding wine bottles hung by chrome hooks, was a staircase. Just planks of glass going up, cabled wire and metal creating an open banister.

  Either I’d been loud or, more likely, the place was wired and I’d been spotted on the security monitors. I could count the hearts pumping up on the next floor—four.

  I pulled my gun and strode up to the second level. Short hall that likely ended in bedrooms, the rest of the space opened up in a huge vaulted ceiling level made even larger by the wall of windows overlooking another balcony and the wide green spread of downtown Portland broken through by tall buildings.

  Rich wooden floor anchored the room and a stone fireplace stretched off to the left. Two gold couches did nothing to take up the space, and even the mini grand piano seemed dwarfed by the sky and city.

  The four heartbeats belonged to four men, three who were standing, and one who was sitting at the gold couch to my right. No one had a gun in their hand, which surprised me. Maybe I hadn’t been spotted.

  No, they wouldn’t be that careless.

  I lifted my gun to get their attention.

  “Have a seat,” I said to the men standing around. “This won’t take long.”

  The three glanced at the man sitting on the couch. Black hair, soul patch, fake tan, he wore a jacket that was obviously designer and sat with his arms across the back of the couch.

  “Mr. Shamus Flynn,” he said, a slight smile narrowing his eyes. “What brings you to my home?”

  “I have a message I’m not sure has been made clear to you, Mr. Soto,” I said, guessing correctly who he was. “I don’t care how big a network the Black Crane has developed over the last three years. Don’t care how powerful or rich you think you are. This is still my town. And there are people within it who are off-limits to you and your goons.”

  “Of course,” he said. “We respect the Authority has certain concerns for its people. Boundaries we respect.”

  “I’m not talking about the Authority. This is just about me. You’ve pissed me off. You’re using people I care about. I’m here to make you understand that if you don’t back off and leave my friends and Terric Conley alone, I will destroy your little pop shop and kill your members one by one.”

  “Mr. Flynn, please,” Soto said. “We are all reasonable men here. Surely we can discuss this without resorting to threats. It is a crude way to do business.”

  “I want your word you will leave Terric Conley alone.”

  “I don’t think you understand the situation properly,” he began.

  He didn’t finish. Because I killed him.

  Drank down his life without even twitching my fingers.

  His eyes rolled into the back of his head, his heart stopped. He slumped forward and the remaining three men bolted off the couches, reaching for their guns.

  “Keep your hands off your weapons,” I said.

  “I’d do as he says,” Cody said behind me.

  I didn’t look back, but the men in the room all glanced at him, then held their hands out to the side.

  “Let me make myself clear,” I said. “I am not here to discuss the situation. I am not here to do business. I am here for an unbreakable guarantee that Terric Conley will be cut free from everything and anyone involved with the Black Crane. Who’s going to give me that guarantee?”

&nbs
p; “I will see that Mr. Conley is removed from our attention,” one of the men said. He was taller than me, probably in his early fifties, with light brown hair going gray and receding at the temples. His eyes were heavy-lidded, and his mouth at the bottom of his long, narrow face was thick-lipped.

  “My name is Rene Schuller. I have a position in this organization that can ensure my desires are acted upon.”

  “And your desire is?” I prompted.

  He smiled, even though neither of us was buying it. “To make you happy, Mr. Flynn.”

  “Good. Make me happy, Mr. Schuller, and I won’t go out of my way to kill you.”

  I could feel their pulses as if they were my own, three thrumming beats that would be so easy to slow, slow, slow until they were gone.

  Instead I turned my back and walked across the room toward the stairs. Cody stood to the right of the staircase, holding a sawed-off shotgun at his hip. So that’s what he carried in the bag.

  “Don’t bother,” I said to Cody loud enough they’d hear. “I could kill them before they squeezed a trigger.”

  I paced down the steps and Cody followed behind. Passed the bar and dead bodies, then got into the car.

  “You’ve become a little more blunt, I see,” Cody said as he got into the passenger’s seat.

  “I tried subtle. It chafed.” I started the car but didn’t back out of the driveway yet.

  I drew on the magic deep beneath the city and cast a spell. It was a spell that required quick, scribbling strokes, winding into a tightly coiled center.

  A few seconds later, Scatter hung in the air between me and the windshield. I cast it with a push of both hands, and it rolled into the big house. If they had surveillance cameras, they were now fried, the information that might have been stored there scattered and irretrievable.

  “In the old days you’d have done that first,” he said. “You’re getting sloppy, Shame.”

  “I’m not sloppy,” I said, finally putting the car in gear and getting the hell out of there. “If I’d screwed with their cameras before we walked in, they would have known someone was coming and would have been waiting for us. This way, no one got hurt.”

  “Except the four men you killed.”

  “Yeah, well. They were in my way.”

  “That was probably a little over the line, don’t you think?”

  “What line?” I glanced over at him. He stared calmly ahead, maybe at the city, maybe at whatever else it was that man saw.

  “The law’s line, to begin with. After that, justice. You didn’t know those people, Shame. They might not have been guilty of the crimes you accused them of, crimes you killed them for.”

  “Cry me a river, Miller,” I said. “Everyone in that house was guilty of crimes, whether we know about them or not.”

  “And you are now guilty of murder.”

  I let that sit for a minute or two. “Those aren’t the first men I’ve killed in my life. I grew up in the Authority, remember? Ran with the Closers, was a star pupil of Death magic. There are casualties in any war.”

  “Is that what this is? A war?”

  “Not yet. Right now it’s just my life.”

  “So pretty much the same thing?”

  “Yeah, pretty much the same,” I agreed.

  “How long have you been fighting the magic inside you?” he asked.

  “None of your business, crazy guy.”

  That got a smile out of him. “I think it is, but fine. We can talk about something else. When did you suddenly become Terric’s guardian angel?”

  “Never, because I’m not.”

  “You just killed four people for him.”

  “I killed four guys to get them off my back. The Black Crane didn’t use to be anything but a couple of punk drug dealers, and now they think they can run this town? They came after me with a baseball bat. They jumped me with a Taser. They might even be behind the missing people cases the police can’t crack.”

  “And yet you never brought any of that up,” he said. “You just told them to leave Terric alone.”

  “I said more than that.”

  “Not much more.”

  I drove for a while, heading back toward his house. He was right.

  “I know I am,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Right.”

  “Lay off the mind-reading trick, mate. I’m not impressed.”

  “Who says it’s a trick? It’s been a long time since you and I sat down and talked, Shame. You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

  “Let me guess: reading minds?”

  “No. Hearts.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means I know you’ve tried to stay away from Terric. But you’re drawn to him. The magic in you and the magic in him can’t be separated. You hate it. And you want it. Want to use magic as it should be used—with someone who perfectly matches your power. So much so, you’ll kill people if they get in your way.”

  “Not even close.”

  He was totally close.

  “Well, it’s good to see some things haven’t changed about you, Shame.”

  “Oh?”

  “You still lie like a rug.”

  “I will also still pull over this car and make you walk your own ass home if you don’t shut up,” I said.

  Cody grinned. “Just like old times.”

  Chapter 23

  I dropped Cody off at his place, then drove around the area, just to make sure no one had followed us and that he wasn’t in danger. Waited until sundown but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

  Cody couldn’t use magic anymore, but I knew he could take care of himself.

  Satisfied he would be okay, I headed home.

  The inn was up and running full speed tonight. Plenty of diners and people at the bar. We’d started with live music a few months ago, and it looked like tonight the old piano was getting a workout.

  It was, in some ways, a clash from my childhood growing up in the apartment above the other side of the inn. Back then it was home. And while it could have been very busy and alive with customers, there were late-night meetings of the Authority members, and, down in the basement around the well of magic hidden there, all sorts of tests and magic events had gone on.

  Now the well was still hidden, but it didn’t matter. People could tap in to it and magic wouldn’t do anything dangerous. So the whole “here’s our happy home, which also happens to be sitting on a time bomb” atmosphere of the place was gone.

  Honestly? I missed it.

  I wove through tables, winked at the pretty blond waitress, who was definitely jailbait, and then headed up to the room I’d been in since Mum had kicked me out of the house proper.

  Up a flight of stairs, dragged the bat behind me down the hall.

  I paused outside my door. My Shamus senses were tingling.

  Something was wrong with the door. For one thing, it was unlocked and wide open. Sure, I’d left the place drugged out of my brain, but someone would have shut it.

  Interesting.

  I tucked Eleanor’s statue under my arm and lifted the baseball bat, resting it above my shoulder.

  Walked into the room.

  Room looked like my room. Couch covered in clothes and a few books I hadn’t reshelved. Small kitchen area clean because who in their right mind would cook when they had an entire restaurant at their feet? Bedroom door cracked open.

  That wasn’t right.

  Eleanor whisked past me and through the door into the bedroom. She came out and shook her head. Mouthed a word I couldn’t quite make out.

  What? I mouthed.

  She said the word again. Rolled her eyes. Walked up to me and held out one finger. I took one hand off the bat and turned my palm up for her.

  In icy strokes, she spelled out: D-E-S-S-A.

  And if it was Dessa in there, she probably already knew I was in the room.

  “I know you’re in the room,” she said. “Why don’t you come on in?
”

  “Do you have a weapon?”

  “Oh, sure. But I promise to keep my hands off my guns this time. That is, if you play nice.”

  I didn’t put down the bat. But I did leave the statue on the side table before pushing the bedroom door open the rest of the way.

  Dessa was sitting on the edge of my bed. Fully clothed, which was, I’ll admit, a little disappointing. The bed was made, and after I pulled my gaze off her to the room, I noticed she had folded my clothes, set them on the two chairs in the room, and had thrown away all the food wrappers and beer bottles.

  “I didn’t peg you as the domestic type,” I said.

  “I didn’t think you were into sports.” She pointed at the bat.

  I grinned, rested the bat next to the door. “So . . . you clean?”

  She shrugged and looked down at her hands for a moment before looking back up at me. “I’ve thought about what I said today. When I told you I wanted to do this alone. I’ve changed my mind.”

  “You’re making nice so I’ll let you in on finding your brother’s killer, aren’t you?”

  “You already told me you’d do that. This is just me making nice.”

  “A little pleasure before business?” I asked.

  “A little pleasure.” She held my gaze. “Maybe we don’t need business right now.”

  Huh. I nodded.

  “Why did you drop me off at Terric’s last night?” I asked.

  “He’s your friend, right?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “He’s more than that too. Life magic?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was I wrong to do it?”

  “No. But I wish you would have stayed. I’ve spent half the day looking for you. Worrying.”

  “And here I was, in your bedroom all along.”

  “And here you are. So. What’s this really all about?” I waved my hand at my semiclean room.

  “I told you. An apology.”

  “Because . . . ?”

  She quirked a smile and tipped her head to one side. “Can you seriously not just take me at face value? Must you question everything I do?”

  “It’s a failing, my terrible, terrible curiosity.”