Back Lash

by Devon Monk

  “She’s just great,” he said. “We’ve got a baby on the way.” He grinned. Proud. Like the two of them had done something no one else had ever managed before.

  I fixed a smile on my face. “Fantastic.” I started toward the door. “Congratulations. Tell her I said hello. I wish you both the best.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I will.”

  I left the shop surprised at how quickly the old hurts and guilt with Jak and Claire had hit me.

  Funny how old pain never really disappears.

  I glanced at windows, roofs, street. Didn’t look like I’d been followed. Even though I hadn’t lied to Jak about there being no more secret magic organization, what I hadn’t told her was we’d made plenty of enemies over the years.

  I’d made plenty of enemies.

  I wasn’t a Closer like Zay, but hey, Death magic user wasn’t exactly a warm-fuzzy job. I’d found ways to kill people with Death magic even before magic had been broken, then changed, the Authority had been exposed, and magic had been used, broken once more and finally locked away.

  All those people who had been Closed now had their memories back. It wasn’t a leap to think more than a few of those people wanted revenge.

  Some of those people were probably on my hit list.

  And if I killed them—no, when I killed them—I would make more enemies for myself.

  Even twisted magical criminals had friends and family.

  There were plenty of people out there who might want me dead. People who wanted to hurt the people around me.

  It had happened before.

  I expected it to happen again. But if there was anything I had to say about it, Jak wouldn’t be caught up in it.

  I owed her and Claire and what’s-his-face that much, at least.

  “Three babies,” I muttered as I started the car and rolled down the narrow road. “Jesus, I’m getting old. Old guy needs a beer.”

  I turned left, toward one of my favorite pubs a few miles away.

  Sun skipped through the drifting cloud cover, throwing the street into light and darkness, but no rain. No parking near the pub, so I took what I could get a couple blocks away.

  This part of Portland on the East side of the river hadn’t undergone gentrification yet. The warehouses, shops and homes were a comfortable collection of rust, rot, and repair. I liked it that way. It felt like home.

  The passage of time, the imprint of the people who had lived and struggled here hadn’t yet been erased beneath the preservative glass globe of wealth.

  The sidewalk gave way to mud and gravel. I tromped through that, dug in my coat for a cigarette.

  Sunlight dipped, sending the world into gray, then popped hard again, too bright, too gold, the wind kicking a sudden gust.

  I lowered my head and turned sideways away from the wind to light my smoke.

  Pain stabbed through my shoulder riding the crack of gunshot.

  “Fuck.” I ducked behind a parked car, grabbing at my bleeding shoulder. The ricochet of three more bullets rattled through the air.

  No one on the street. No one in the parked cars. Down the block, the door to the pub opened, letting out the sound of the Timber’s game.

  One of the bartenders, a phone pressed to his ear, looked up and down the street, then pulled back into the bar.

  Calling 911. I did my own surveillance. Plenty of places to hide the shooter across the street in, on top of, or between the half-abandoned buildings.

  Shit.

  I took the last drag off my cigarette, leaned up against the car and dragged Death magic up from my bones, casting it out like a net around me.

  Heartbeats. Loud as drums. Each beat a pulse against my pulse. Hot and slick, all the lives, all that living, spread out like food, like sex, like pleasure so carnal, I moaned.

  I pushed the hunger aside. Ignored the need. Focused on the hearts. Human hearts, not the finger-drumming rattle of rodents and birds, cats and dogs. Just the humans. Just this street.

  Thirty in the pub, one dying of cancer, another weak from surgery. A few in the upper floor on my side of the street, sleeping. Seven at the end of the block sweating in a garage. Ten across the street—maybe an office—worried, hearts elevated. And that one slow steady throb, a heart pushing down adrenalin, too calm for the hormones rushing through veins.

  My shooter was a pro. Lousy shot, but still, a pro.

  I could kill him with Death magic but only if I could put my hands on him. That was one of the drawbacks to locking magic away. It had changed the rules for how it could be used.

  The rattle of hard wheels over concrete turned my attention to the right. A couple of kids, boys, neither over eight, pushed this way on a skateboard and scooter. Maybe excited to see what all the shooting was about.

  Shit. If Crap Shot up there on the third floor of the building across the street popped off a few and missed, he’d hit those kids.

  I stood, stared at a crack in the window behind which I knew my shooter was crouched.

  Had no idea if he was still reloading but no one headed out to kill a person packing only one round.

  The kids rolled down the street, oblivious as only kids can be.

  Damnit.

  I stepped out from behind the car and strode across the street. Not away from the bullets. Right into them.

  He squeezed off another two shots, only one hit—same damn shoulder. I got my swearing on, clenched my teeth through the pain.

  Fucking bastard.

  If he wanted me dead, he sure was taking the long damn road to it.

  Sirens squalled on the edge of my hearing, grew louder fast.

  The kids scattered.

  The gunman was in a hurry to pack it up. I could taste his fear.

  I made the opposite sidewalk, jogged the wooden stair attached to the side of the building.

  Bones were going to break—a lot of them, and none of them mine—before I killed the bastard.

  Door at the top of the stairs was padlocked. Braced on the inside.

  I pressed both palms against the wood near the handle and lock. Death magic sucked the strength out of it, drinking and aging the wood down to rot and dust.

  I kicked open the damn door.

  Storage room filled with cardboard boxes. Stank of film chemicals. A broken cardboard box was spread flat in front of the crack in the window that looked out over the street.

  No gunman. No trace of gunman.

  Fuck it all to hell.

  The window on the other side of the room was open. I strode over there, leaned out. Didn’t see him. Didn’t feel him.

  The sirens were close now. Unless I wanted them to find me in the middle of the crime scene, it was time to move.

  I scanned the room with eyes and Death magic.

  Got a ping. By the window where the shooter had tried to blow my head off, lay a broken stick thick as my middle finger and about as long.

  There was something magical about it.

  I picked it up.

  All my instincts told me to take it. It didn’t look magical. Looked like a stick.

  Screw it. I shoved the stick in my pocket.

  I snarled at the throbbing pain in my shoulder. Left the room. Jogged down the stairs and across the block. Slipped into my car as two police cruisers rounded the corner. They stopped outside the pub.

  I didn’t stay to see what happened.

  Drove home, angry. Tossed the stick in the cup holder to deal with it later.

  I had no idea who had been taking shots at me.

  Too damn many people wanted me dead and the only clue I had were the bullets in my arm.

  I pushed out of the car, slammed the door, still swearing. The pain in my shoulder was starting to soak through the protective barrier of my rage.

  Terric pulled up in the driveway, killed the engine and got out of the car. “What�
��s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” I stormed into the house. Left the door open for him even though I was feeling the need to slam something.

  “Did the package arrive?” He closed the door gently and hung his jacket while I continued my march down to my room.

  “How the fuck should I know? I just got here.”

  “Are you bleeding?” His tone changed. “Why are you bleeding?”

  I yanked open my bedroom door and stopped cold on the threshold.

  A woman, probably in her twenties, lay on top of my bed, a maroon hoodie tossed over her slim hips for a blanket. Her short shag of honey brown hair was tossed over her sleep-glossed eyes, elbow propped so she could stare at me.

  Chapter 4

  “Terric,” I said, both pain and anger temporarily forgotten. “You shouldn’t have.”

  He stepped up behind me, glanced into the room over my shoulder.

  “Jolie?” he said.

  “Who?”

  “My sister, Jolie.” He pushed me aside. “What are you doing here?”

  “In my room,” I added, “not that I mind you, looking like that, in my bed...”

  “Sister, Shame,” Terric said.

  “Hey.” Jolie sat up the rest of the way. She had on a worn-out gray T-shirt, with what was either a high school mascot or a pizza stain down the front of it, jeans and boots. “Sorry. Long bus ride.”

  Terric helped her to the edge of the bed like she was fragile. But that look she was giving me wasn’t fragile at all.

  “Really, Ter,” I said. “I’m good with the naughty Sleeping Beauty thing she’s got going there.”

  “Aw.” She flicked me a grin. “Beauty? Last time you saw me, you called me brat.”

  “We’ve met?” I tried to place her in my memories of the mob of brothers, sisters, and cousins that had always surrounded my visits to Terric’s parents’s place when we were younger.

  Terric exhaled loudly. “Of course you’ve met. We were fifteen.”

  I studied the woman in front of me. All her curves and edges, and that specific curve of her bottom lip that had a tiny white scar right below the center of it. Either an accident, or she’d pierced it.

  She was younger than me. By more than a couple years.

  I dredged my mind for the vague images of Terric’s younger sisters, trying to place her among the pigtails, torn - jean knees, braces, and freckles of my memories.

  Jolie bit her bottom lip, straight white teeth pressing into her pink softness in a move that was all woman. The corner of that mouth tipped a cat-like smile.

  “Don’t you remember me, Shaney?”

  “First: that nickname? Not going to happen. And no, I don’t remember. How old were you?”

  “Ten.”

  “Jesus. Ten?” I looked her up and down.

  She stood and shrugged back into the hoodie, the T-shirt hiking up to bare a palm width of pale skin across her flat stomach and hip as she did so.

  The edge of a tattoo along her left hipbone peeked over the low waist of her jeans.

  Mercy.

  “I’ve grown up a little,” she said.

  “Yeah, you have,” I said with maybe a little too much heat.

  “Shame,” Terric warned. Then, “Jolie, why are you here? I thought you were in college.”

  “Right. About that.” She turned those blue eyes—deeper blue than Terric’s—toward her brother. “Things got...weird. I left.”

  “College?”

  “College. Town. Everything. Since you asked for my help...”

  “I called to check in on you. I didn’t ask for your help.”

  “...I decided to deliver the package myself.”

  “What package?” I asked.

  “Some things I needed from Mom and Dad’s storage,” Terric said.

  “Baby photos?”

  “Designs from my closed business up in Seattle. Nothing,” he said, turning to Jolie, “that couldn’t have been mailed to me. Mailed.”

  “Yeah, well, you get the personal touch.” Jolie picked up the messenger bag on the floor next to the bed and drew a large manila file out of it. “I have the tube in my suitcase.”

  “You’re going home,” he said.

  “No, I’m not. I’m....” She bit her lip again. Not in a sexy way. She was afraid. “I’m in trouble, Terric. I need your help.”

  Terric stood there a moment, studying her. I could feel a faint hint of his emotions, stirred up by her being here and saying those words. Anger and distrust, but overwhelming those was his worry and love for her.

  “What kind of trouble?” he finally asked.

  “Tell you over a cup of coffee and some toast? I’m starving.”

  He seemed to remember we were all standing in my bedroom. Nodded.

  “Fine. Kitchen’s down the hall.”

  I moved out of the doorway so Jolie could walk by. Caught the faintest hint of her perfume. Liked it.

  “Nice place,” she said. “Not what I expected out of you, though, Terric.”

  “It’s Shame’s house.”

  “Oh. That explains it.”

  Terric hadn’t stopped frowning. He walked to my door, eyes on his sister as she walked down the hall.

  “She shouldn’t be around us right now,” I said, crossing to my dresser.

  “I know,” he said, distracted. He rubbed at his shoulder absently. “Why are you hurting?”

  “Took a couple in the arm today.”

  He finally looked over at me. “A couple what? Fists?”

  “Bullets.”

  That wiped all the unfocused out of his eyes. “God damn it, Shame. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I just did.” I pulled off my hoodie and hissed when the fabric yanked out of the holes in my arm.

  “Let me see.”

  I knew better than to argue with him. When Terric got it in his mind to heal something—anything—there was no stopping him. None.

  I’d tried. It had never ended well.

  I pushed my bloody T-shirt sleeve away from my bloody arm.

  “Who shot you?” He placed one hand on the back of my arm. Cool numbing spread under his touch as if he’d just dipped my biceps in Novocaine.

  I couldn’t hold back the sigh of relief.

  The lack of pain came with a lack of adrenalin. I fought down exhaustion because I was not about to pass out at Terric’s feet.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You must have some idea.” He placed the palm of his other hand gently over the entry wounds. This numbness came with healing warmth.

  It was nice. Real nice.

  “Shame?” he said quietly.

  I knew he was pulling on magic. Using it to heal me. Life magic. I knew Life magic pushed him to do this, and letting him heal was actually a favor to him.

  But our past—the things we’d done with magic—and more than that, the things magic had done to us, made me want to pull away.

  I didn’t want my need for life to hurt him.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I got this. I got you. Stop pushing.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “You know.”

  I glanced down at his hand on my arm.

  Blood pooled between his closed fingers, then was gone. In a moment, it pooled there again.

  The Death magic in me was unhealing his healing: drinking Life magic, re-opening the wound so he could heal it again and I could drink down the life again.

  “Shit.” I punched down on the Death magic inside me, pushing it like a huge, unruly snarl of pain and hunger into the closet of my control.

  “Better,” Terric said. He pressed more firmly on the front of my arm, then drew away his hand from the back. I heard the clack of two small metal slugs in his hand.

  “How bad?” I asked.

 
“Without me? You’d lose some use of the hand.” He dropped the bullets in my palm.

  “With you?”

  “Full recovery.”

  And there is was. The reason why Terric wanted to keep Life magic in his body, even though there were drawbacks.

  “Are you sure you don’t know who plugged you?” he asked.

  “Didn’t get a read on him. A man. That’s it before the cops showed up.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Clean up. I don’t want Jolie asking questions.”

  “You going to let go of my arm?”

  “Oh.” He stepped back, and for a very uncharacteristic moment, looked embarrassed. Him healing me was good for him too.

  “We’ll be in the kitchen,” he said.

  “Got it. Thanks, Doc.”

  He gave me a nod. “We don’t tell her about this right?”

  “Hell yes, right,” I said. “We don’t let her live here either, right?”

  “Live here? Not a chance.”

  “Good. People like to shoot at us.”

  “Us?”

  “Me. Which means anyone around me is in danger of getting shot at. And I’m not going to be the cause of your little sister finding out what lead under the skin feels like.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me. We’ll send her home on the first train or plane out tomorrow.”

  He stepped out.

  I tossed the bullets in my sock drawer with the other slugs I’d picked up over the last year. I dragged off my T-shirt, wadded it up and threw it in the bathroom hamper. Scrubbed the blood off my arm and hand in the sink, then took a look at myself.

  Green eyes still too dark, skin paper white, needed a shave. Hair was getting a little out of control. Jak was right. It could use a cut.

  I smiled and shook my head. The smile did a lot to spread some humanity into the bones and edges of my face, into my eyes.

  I might not be only human anymore since I carried magic in me as sure as blood and breath, but I was at least still human-adjacent.

  Good enough.

  Pulled on a new T-shirt—plain black just like the last—strolled out into the hall, then down to the kitchen.

  Chapter 5

  Terric and Jolie were talking quietly.