by Devon Monk
Contact. It was the best I could do. I put Terric’s hand on Shame’s palm.
“Allie,” Zay yelled. “Here. Now!”
And then I was running. Down the hall after him. Hayden was in the lead, in front of a door. He cast a spell, braced his stance, and moved both hands as if he were practicing tai chi, pushing the magic into the spell he needed. The building seemed to shift to the left—that vertigo slide again—and there was another row of doors stretched out before us.
This entire place was like a set of locks and cogs. Use the right magic, and all the cogs moved, bringing a new level of the prison forward.
“Here,” Zay said. “He’s here.” Zayvion broke the spell on the first door. The door blew open.
I caught a glimpse of one of the solid Veiled in the room, the 1950s woman who was no longer in her dress and heels but in prison gray. She saw Zay, and terror twisted her features. She held her hand out, begging.
Leander was behind her. He put his shadow hand through her back, fingers clamping down on her heart.
The disk in her neck dimmed from a thin glow to black.
Zay got two steps into the room before she faded away, dissolved into thin air, the disk falling from her throat and shattering like glass on the floor where she had just stood.
Where she and Leander had just stood. He was a shadow. Fast, dark. Burning through the wall to the neighboring cell.
Hayden swore and blew open the door on the next cell. He unloaded the shotgun into the room. Magic on those bullets too. I could smell it. Zay and I were right behind him.
“He’s moving,” Hayden yelled.
I caught a glimpse of another solid Veiled in the room, horror warping his face as he disappeared. Then the wind-chime rattle of another disk shattering against the floor. The shotgun and the magicked bullets had no effect on the Veiled or Leander.
“What is he doing?” I panted as we ran to the next door.
“Drinking the magic out of the disks, out of the Veiled,” Zay said.
Zay was ahead of Hayden and blasted open the next door. “Gone. Move!”
Hayden was already running. He shouldered through the next door. We saw the last Veiled—Truance with her deer-wide eyes—fade away, watched as the disk clattered to the floor, and Leander, eyes burning, body nothing but a shadow filled with an electric swarm of magic, threw his arms wide.
Hayden yelled, “Down!”
Zay tackled me. We went down, knees, elbows, hip.
I yelled out in pain.
Thunder exploded through the marble halls. A spell sliced through the room—just like the spell Leander had thrown at us at the inn. Razor sharp, fast, it was as black as the rift, sparks of magic and unspent spells flashing through it.
If we’d been standing, we’d be dead, cut in half.
I sucked in a breath and ground my teeth against another yell. Everything hurt. Zay was already pushing up into a run. Down the hall.
“Lock it down,” Zay yelled. “I’ll Close the gate.”
Gate? I didn’t know Leander could open a gate.
I was on my feet, swearing, hurting. I took three steps past Hayden, who was pushing magic in that tai chi form again, chanting, and locking down the prison.
Zay blew open another cell and strode into it.
There was so much magic being thrown around in so small a space, the air sparked with it. Random fingers of fire crawled over the walls, the floors, the ceiling, catching, then burning out, leaving behind charcoal trails of spells.
I don’t know if I felt it or tasted it, but I knew that the spell Zay wielded was Closing. The kind of Closing used on a gate.
I glanced in the cell, beyond Zay. It was empty except for a rolling black fog of a gate being Closed. Hayden’s spell hit and shook the entire building. It was a lock, a trigger for broken wards, or maybe a whole new net of wards that fell over the building and bled all the magic off while trapping everything else inside.
Hayden grunted and spit blood. “Nothing’s getting in or out now,” he said, wiping his hand over his beard. “Let’s take care of Shame and Terric.”
Zay strode out of the cell, and the door locked behind him.
“Was there a gate?” I asked, perhaps stupidly.
“Yes.”
“Anything get through?” Hayden asked.
“Nothing came through the gate,” Zay said as he stormed past me. “Don’t know if anything got out. There was no one in that cell, no disk on the floor. We’ll need to pull records and see if there was a prisoner in there.”
We made it to Shame and Terric.
Terric sat next to Shame, his back against the wall, arms draped over his bent knees. Shame was still unconscious.
“Did we win?” he asked faintly.
Hayden snorted. “Not by a long ways. Leander broke out. Drank the magic out of the solid Veiled.”
“Any good news?”
Hayden knelt next to Shame and shook his shoulder gently. “We Closed the gate and locked the place down before anything else went wrong. And you and Shame are still alive.” He looked over at Terric and gave him a short nod. “That’s a good thing.”
Shame moaned, then, “Fuck. Terric?” he whispered.
“You got hit by Leander,” Hayden said. “Terric took care of it, but that knocked you cold. Open your eyes, boy. Let’s see if you can tell me how many fingers I’m holding.”
I looked away from Shame to see where Zay had gone.
He was on his knees, oblivious to the blood he was kneeling in, one hand on Chase’s shoulder, his sword on the floor next to him.
She was not breathing. She was oddly still in the way only a corpse can be.
I walked over to Zay and glanced at Greyson.
Greyson was still a man. The disk at his throat was not only dark; it had shattered. His eyes were open, unfocused at the ceiling. His chest rose with a fraction of a breath. He was dying.
I knelt down next to him and touched his arm.
“Chase?” he whispered.
“She’s here. She’s with you,” I said.
“I can’t feel her,” he breathed. “I can’t hold her.”
I put my hand on his cheek, but his eyes did not move. “Everything’s fine,” I said. “You’re both going to be just fine. You’re together now.”
“I love,” he started. His breath caught, and his eyes went too wide. “I love . . .”—he exhaled, the pain draining from his face—“. . . her. My . . .”—less than a whisper—“. . . soul . . .” And then he was very still and said nothing more.
I pulled my hand away from his already cooling cheek and rubbed my fingers over my jeans, wanting to wipe away his death. Wanting to wipe away the unexpected sorrow I felt. I looked up at Zayvion. He had not moved, was barely breathing as he stared at Chase. I did not think he saw her.
“Zay?” I said softly.
He didn’t move.
“Zay? Are you okay?”
He finally looked away from her. Looked at me. The pain and sorrow in his eyes, raw, angry, made me want to close my eyes. Made me want to forget he could hurt that much for someone. For Chase. Who had tried to kill him. Tried to kill us.
“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was. I knew Chase and Greyson had done horrible things. But there was a time, not all that long ago, when Zayvion and Chase were lovers. He had loved her.
She had left him for Greyson. Even though Zay had accepted that, it didn’t mean he had stopped caring for her. I think he hoped she would somehow survive this, survive all she had been through, and be a strong, whole-minded person again. That somehow we’d find a way to cure Greyson. That they’d live their lives together.
There was no happily ever after for Soul Complements. Not in life. Maybe in death. Maybe Chase and Greyson would finally be happy together there.
“Time to be moving,” Hayden said quietly.
Zay didn’t move.
“We need to let them take care of this, Zayvion,” Hayden said. “We’ll only be in the way.
”
I looked up and realized there were four other people in the room—people I didn’t recognize. Three women and a man, all in jeans and matching jackets. They were talking quietly among themselves, and there were two gurneys staged to one side of the room.
I glanced over at Shame and Terric. They were both on their feet, though Shame still leaned one shoulder against the wall and looked a little dazed. Yeah, I knew how he felt.
“Who—?” I started.
“Cleanup crew,” Hayden answered. “They’ll make sure all the locks are in place, check on the prisoners. Take care of them too.” He nodded toward Chase and Greyson.
“Think you can get Zayvion to move?” he asked.
“Yes.” I pressed my hands against my thighs and pushed up onto my feet. Then I walked around Zayvion, careful not to step in the blood, even though it didn’t really matter. I had their blood on my boots, heavy at the hem of my jeans, on my palm and under my fingernails. It would be a long time before I felt clean of it.
I rested my hand on Zay’s shoulder.
“We need to go, love. We need to let the others take care of her. There’s a killer out there to hunt.”
His anger, his sorrow, his guilt, brushed through me. But I was too numb to do anything more than just acknowledge it. There wasn’t anything else we could do but accept what had happened. We didn’t have time to grieve.
“Leander’s still alive,” I said. “Out there somewhere, free. I think we need to do something about that.”
My words, if not my emotions, reached him. With one last tender brush of his fingers along the edge of Chase’s jaw, Zay stood. He turned his back and closed down his emotions so completely, I looked at him to make sure he was still standing next to me.
“We’ll take care of this,” Hayden said. “We’ll find that bastard and end him. Let’s get out of here.”
Zay looked over at Terric, then Shame, as if he were surfacing from a dream and did not recognize the world he was waking up into.
“Shame?” he asked.
Shame swallowed. “Fuck of a day. Let’s go kill something.”
Zay looked at me, finally. I could not read his expression, was not touching him, so I could not read his emotions. I could only guess he was worried.
So was I.
He held his hand out for me, and I took it, Chase’s and Greyson’s blood between us. Zay was so locked down, all I felt off of him was a blank static.
We started up the stairs and did not look back. Our shoes echoed against the marble walls, bloody soles drying after only a few steps. Soon Shame’s and Terric’s paces echoed with ours.
It seemed to take a lifetime to climb to the top. I ached from the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet and could not have moved any faster if my life were on the line. The price for using so much magic—for destroying the disk in Greyson’s throat—was already gripping my body. Or at least I hoped that was the only price I was paying. I hoped Greyson’s death wouldn’t also be added to my tally. Since I wasn’t dead yet, I was pretty sure Greyson’s death had only been partially because of my, or rather Dad’s, attack. I was pretty sure breaking the disk while Leander used then discarded his body was what finally killed him.
But if I felt this bad, I could only imagine what Shame and Terric felt like, sharing each other’s pain.
Hayden lingered below, probably taking the time to talk to the cleanup crew. We finally made it to the main floor. I was breathing hard, sweating, trembling. I wanted to ask Terric if he was okay; I wanted to ask Shame; but I had no words and no air. They looked exhausted from the slog up the stairs, and both leaned on a wall near the door, eyes closed.
Finally, Hayden joined us on the main floor of the building.
“Just what Victor and Maeve needed,” he said. “Their best students to go rogue. Whose ass-backward idea was this?”
Shame held up one finger, though he did not open his eyes.
“Boy, you’ll be the death of your mother, you keep going down this road.”
Shame didn’t say anything. That showed just how tired he was.
“What now?” I asked.
“Now my job is to get you all to a doctor to make sure you’re okay. After that, I wash my hands of this mess, and you’ll explain just what the hell you thought you were doing by breaking into the goddamn prison. Zay, give me your keys.”
Zay wordlessly took his keys out of his pocket and dropped them into Hayden’s palm.
“I’ll drive,” Hayden said. No one argued. I wondered how Terric’s car was going to be returned, but since there was only one other vehicle in the parking lot—a medical transport van—I figured one of the people still inside would take care of it. Or maybe it would just get towed.
The van should be able to hold the bodies of the guard and Chase and Greyson. My chest hitched at the reality of what we had just done, what we had just been through. Leander was loose, the disks the Veiled had used empty of magic and broken beyond repair. But there were more disks out there. And more Veiled.
Chase and Greyson were dead.
Terric had almost Closed Shame’s mind to try to stop Leander from having him, from using him to get free. I didn’t know what that would do to Shame. Didn’t know what it would do to the link between them they endured.
I turned and looked back at the structure. It didn’t look like people had just lost their lives there. Didn’t look like a prison. Even without Sight, I could see the locks and wards on the building and the smooth, magic-empty space where the gate had blown open and been Closed by Zayvion’s spells.
I wondered if anyone else had gotten through it, if anyone else except Leander had escaped.
The wind picked up, dragging cold across my skin. I rubbed the chill off my arms and wished I could rub the rest of the day away too.
“Coming?” Hayden asked.
I looked back at the car. Terric and Shame had ducked into the backseat, and Zay was in the front, staring straight ahead. Hayden stood with the open door to his back, the shotgun still propped over one shoulder.
I nodded and got in, sitting next to Shame, who was already snoring quietly.
Hayden pulled out his phone and dialed. I didn’t follow his conversation very closely, but it sounded like we were meeting Dr. Fisher at her office.
As Hayden drove out of the parking lot and started down the old highway toward Portland, twisting above the river far below, I took a clue from Shame, closed my eyes, and tried to forget, if only for a moment.
Chapter Thirteen
Hayden was as good as his word. He took us to Dr. Fisher’s office, on the top floor of the high-rise at the foot of the sky tram. It didn’t take her long to cycle through us, though she spent the most time on Shame.
He ended up with a few sample pills and her recommendation to stop using magic like an idiot for a day or two.
I knew he’d use one of the two things she gave him.
Zay hadn’t said anything. Shame even sat next to him in the waiting room, while Terric took his turn with the doctor, and tried to engage him in conversation. Nothing.
He did finally stand and pace over to the windows that gave a vista of the docks on the river, the tops of other high-rises, and the long, rolling, deep green expanse of Portland to the north and east. Among the green, Beckstrom storm rods fitted to each building glinted like a haze of thin golden threads drawn through the sky.
I was too tired to use my remaining energy on standing. I stayed on the couch, letting the painkiller Dr. Fisher had given me do its best.
Finally, Terric came out, and I don’t even remember whose suggestion it was to go to my house, nor to stop and get Chinese food before we did.
Maybe two hours later, we were walking up my stairs, and, after pausing at my door, we all went inside. The men rambled into my living room and slouched down into their favorite chairs like they’d been living with me for years. I stopped off in the kitchen and brewed some coffee. I took the pot and some cups with me into the livi
ng room.
The Chinese food cartons were open on the coffee table, but from what I could see, no one had taken a bite.
Zay sat in a chair by the window and had drawn the curtains back so he could see outside.
I picked up one of the boxes—fried rice—and a set of chopsticks. Sat on the couch next to Terric and took a bite.
“Oh, God, that’s good.” I don’t know if it was my approval or that I ravenously tore into the food that got the others moving. But within a few seconds, everyone had a box and was eating.
Terric finally hauled himself up and found some napkins and plates in the kitchen, so we could share the containers’ contents more easily.
Even Zay ate, and eventually he stopped looking out at the city and looked, instead, in at us.
“Why?” he asked me.
“Why what?” I refilled my coffee cup and sat back. I’d eaten half the fried rice and a helping of everything else. I was stuffed, still hurting and paying the price of magic even through the heavy-duty painkillers, and really wanted a nap. But at least I wasn’t in overwhelming pain. Dr. Fisher was quickly headed up on my chart of people who could be my BFF.
“Why did you kill him?” Zay said.
If someone had asked me that question even a year ago, I would have had to deal with an avalanche of emotions and second-guessing. For all I’ve lived a Hound’s life—and there is a lot of danger inherent in that life—I am not a killer. I’m not built to heartlessly gun people down.
But I’d been involved with the darker side of magic for a while now. I knew what to accept as my faults and failures, and what to accept as things I cannot change. Greyson’s death was something I could not change.
“I tried to stop him from shooting you,” I said. “I forced Dad to help me. Dad wanted Leander dead. He wanted Greyson dead. When I tried to stop the magic, when I tried to force Dad not to use magic through me anymore, I couldn’t break his hold. I could not stop him.”
Zay watched me speak, his gold eyes weighing the truth of my words. Let him stare all he wanted. It was the truth.
He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and leaned back in the chair. “She couldn’t survive it,” he said quietly. “Couldn’t survive him dying.”