Hell Bent bm-1

by Devon Monk

  Terric found a table in the corner where the lighting was low enough I could take off my sunglasses. It was thoughtful of him.

  Eleanor got busy checking what the other patrons in the bar were eating and drinking. She finally sat next to a good-looking man who was reading on a screen, and leaned forward just enough to read along with him.

  The waitress, a curvy girl with a great smile, came around and took our beer orders. Terric also ordered shepherd’s pie.

  “Get food,” he said.

  “Not hungry.”

  “Yes, you are. He’ll have the baby spinach and beet salad.”

  “Like hell he will.”

  The waitress raised her eyebrows, then reapplied her smile. “It’s a good salad.”

  “Just bring me a burger. Rare. Lots of cheese. Fries.”

  “Good choice.” She sauntered off.

  “So,” Terric said. “We’re unemployed and being hunted. Got any ideas about that?”

  “You’re a graphic designer,” I said. “So you’ve that to fall back on. Mum’s inn brings in enough I can skim profits, and she doesn’t care.”

  “I was talking about the hunted part. Price on our heads. Wanted by the government?”

  I shrugged. “Let them want me. I’m not worried.”

  He leaned forward, the Void stone necklace swinging outward just a bit before it settled again against his pale gray dress shirt, and regarded me with a look that was too kind for the sort of hell he’d been through in his life. “You won’t even consider relocating? There’s nothing holding you here, Shame.”

  “Sure there is.”

  “What? Name one thing that ties you down to Portland.”

  Was that a dare? Did he want me to say it was him? Us? Soul Complements and magic?

  “I have a better idea,” I said, picking apart the side of the wooden table with my thumbnail. “You just tell me what you want to do, since that’s why we’re really talking, right?”

  He inhaled, exhaled, eyes tightening slightly. Annoyed.

  “I get that you don’t fear death,” he said. The waitress showed up, set our beers out for us. Mine: dark. His: dark. Huh. I wondered when he’d switched over from the light brews.

  “And I know you don’t care if someone tries to kill you,” he continued once she had moved on. “But this isn’t a street brawl, Shame. This isn’t even a magic user after you. This is the government. Bullets are faster than magic. Even our magic. The government has resources and reach you can’t escape.”

  “Who says I want to escape?” I said cheerfully. I picked up my beer, swallowed some down. Damn fine. Set it back on the table. “It does sound like fun, doesn’t it? Being chased. Wanted man. Final showdown.”

  He leaned back and gave me a courtroom stare. No more happy in those eyes. No more kindness. “Ever think that maybe they don’t want to kill you, Shame? Ever think that maybe they have ways to force you to stay alive? Ways to force you to do what they want you to do?”

  “That someone might want to use me, use this thing inside me? Sure,” I said. “I think about it every damn minute. What happens if I lose control. What happens if someone else tries to control this.” I lifted my fingers just a bit and the rings across my right knuckles crackled with sparks of red.

  “There isn’t anything out there that scares me anymore, Terric. Not the big bad government, not the big bad Authority. Not life. Not death.”

  He took a drink of his beer, set it down, and turned it slowly with just the tips of his fingers clearing away the condensation. Didn’t look at me. “Three out of four, anyway.”

  “How’s that?”

  Took another drink. Looked at me this time.

  “I believe three out of four of those. You might not be afraid of the government or the Authority, or death. But life? I think life scares the crap out of you, Shame Flynn. Why else have you been running and hiding from it for almost two years?”

  I just shook my head and drank my beer.

  I hated when he was right.

  Terric’s phone rang. Which was just as well. I was done with this conversation years ago.

  The waitress showed up with our plates. I gave her a hey-baby smile and a thank-you.

  When I looked back over at Terric he was frowning at his phone and texting.

  I took a huge bite of the burger and groaned with joy. I felt like I hadn’t eaten in days. Did a quick count in my head.

  Yep. Days.

  Terric didn’t touch his food. He hit SEND on the text, then wrapped his fingers around his beer and stared at the table.

  “More bad news?” I asked.

  “No.” He lifted his fork and dug at his food before putting a bite in his mouth.

  I worked my way through half the burger. Watched Terric rearranging the food on his plate.

  “What was that text?” I asked.

  “Personal.”

  “And?”

  “Do you really want to know what’s going on in my personal life?”

  “Well, no. Not really. But that text made you stop talking. And I am always interested in ways of accomplishing that.”

  Faint smile. He sat back, fork left behind in the mashed potatoes. “I’m dating someone.”

  “Uh-huh.” I drank beer to wash down salt and grease.

  He was watching me. Waiting.

  “Terric, you always have a boyfriend. Don’t care.” Half the burger down, half to go. I took another bite.

  “That was him on the phone.” Shrug.

  “You like him?” I asked.

  His eyes skittered away from mine. “Most of the time.” Eyes back on me again. Smile that faded too quickly.

  I moved on to the pile of french fries. “And the rest of the time?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  I ate for a bit, wiped my fingertips on the napkin, then finished my beer.

  Terric still wasn’t eating. Wasn’t looking at me either.

  “Here’s what I think,” I started.

  “Didn’t ask for your opinion.”

  “I think when you date guys you like, you smile a lot. You talk about them a lot. And when you talk about them, you don’t lose your appetite.”

  “Your point?”

  “You haven’t even told me his name, and for a guy who insisted I go out to lunch because you were hungry . . .” I pointed at his nearly untouched plate, then pointed at mine.

  Terric shook his head, then leaned off the back of his chair and took a couple bites.

  I flagged the waitress for another round of beers and finished the rest of my lunch. My gut was killing me. I think that was more than I’d eaten in a week.

  “Maybe it’s time to move on,” I said.

  “Which subject are we on now?”

  “Boyfriend. Maybe you got what you wanted, and it’s time to move on.”

  “He has cancer, Shame.”

  “That’s not your fault.”

  Terric shook his head again. This time there was some fire in his eyes. “You might not give a damn about people, Shame, but I do.”

  “No. What I care about doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m just telling you what you already know. Guilt is a stupid reason to remain in a bad situation.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. So what do you want to do?”

  “About your boyfriend?” I asked.

  “No. Being hunted.”

  The waitress showed up with our beers and I took a long pull before answering, “Fuck all if I know. Stay here. Watch things blow up. Or make things blow up. Do you know what Zay and Allie are doing?”

  “Staying. For now. But they’re making . . . other plans.”

  “Like?”

  He shook his head. “You should talk to them. They should be the ones who tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Nope. New subject: Who’s the redhead following you?”

  I sat back a bit. Impressed. I didn’t think he’d noticed. “Redh
ead?”

  “You’re not blind. You’ve seen her.”

  “I have no idea. And you didn’t answer me,” I said.

  “About?”

  “If you’re staying.”

  “With Jeremy?”

  “Is that his name? Also, no. In Portland.”

  “It makes more sense for me to leave.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Yes, it’s an answer?”

  “Yes, I’m going to stay. Also, yes. It’s an answer.”

  “I forget how much I don’t miss this,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Talking with you.”

  “Nice try,” he said. “You love it. Because there’s no one who knows you as well as I do.”

  “Zay knows me.”

  “I don’t see you having lunch with him.”

  “So you’re really staying?”

  He tipped his head down just enough that his hair fell over his eyes a bit. He gave me a predatory smile. “Someone has to keep an eye on you.”

  “Me?” I grinned. “I’m not the one causing trouble in this town.”

  “No, but you’ll be right in the middle of it when it happens. You can’t resist.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Danger.”

  I waved my hand dismissively. “I got no stake in this game, mate.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  He was right. I did. For one thing, I cared about what happened to Zay and Allie. And my other friends like Dash, and Clyde, and some of the people who worked at my mum’s inn. But that’s not was Terric was getting at.

  He meant him.

  “You mean you,” I said.

  “I mean me. You’re worried about me.”

  “Please.”

  “You asked me about my boyfriend. My boyfriend, Shame. You never ask me about my relationships.”

  I opened my mouth, closed it. Sat back. Scowled. And flagged the waitress.

  “Leaving?” he asked.

  “Drinking. More than beer. And so are you. Because I am done with the talking. And so are you.”

  He grinned. “Not even close.”

  Chapter 7

  A thing I don’t tell a lot of people: Terric is hilarious drunk.

  Mostly because as the drinks go down, his clothes come off. It usually starts with the shoes, then socks, belt, and shirt. Sometimes it goes a lot further than that. I’d bailed him out of jail once for indecent exposure. I’ve never let him live it down either.

  So, yes. I was thinking about seeing how many layers he was going to shed here in a very public pub, but he’d only taken off his shoes and unbuttoned the top button on his shirt before his phone rang. Again.

  He’d ignored it twice already.

  “You going to get that?” I asked.

  The waitress had cleared the food from our table, and now five shot glasses were lined up, neat as socks in a drawer, in front of Terric.

  He downed the sixth and carefully set it in place at the back of the line like a good little soldier.

  “It’s Jeremy.”

  “Right,” I said, toying with my third shot that wasn’t even half-empty yet. Another thing I don’t tell people: when Terric drinks, I just . . . don’t as much. Seems like one of us should be sober in any given situation.

  “Your boyfriend wants to talk to you, mate.”

  Terric looked off over my shoulder, pretending he hadn’t heard what I’d just said. But his heartbeat sped up, and I could see his eyes dilate. Fear? Lust? I sipped my whiskey and waited.

  “He’s picking me up,” he said. “Here.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  He wiped his hand over his eyes. When he took his hand away, his eyes were still closed. He set the fingers of both hands one-at-a-time precisely on the tabletop, as if ready to play a piano.

  “I can feel your heartbeat, Shame.” He said it almost too quietly for me to hear over the noise in the bar. But his finger was tapping the tabletop. Tapping in exact rhythm to my pulse.

  “I can feel all their heartbeats. I can tell who is healthy, who is sick. Who is dying. I can feel their time ticking away under my skin. It burns there with every beat of their heart. And sometimes, some days, I can’t keep the magic from spreading out to swallow them. Life magic heals, mends, fixes.” He nodded, his fingers tapping, tapping.

  “But when I lose control of it, it makes anything grow, accelerate, thrive. Even disease. Even sickness. The living are made stronger, but the dying are accelerated, burned out like old candles. If I refuse to use Life magic, it consumes . . . me. I drown in it, lose my thoughts, my reason. My mind.”

  He opened his eyes. Maybe realized those words were coming out of his mouth. Maybe realized who he was talking to and where he was.

  I wondered if he’d given up trying to explain to people what it was like to die and come back with magic having changed you. Changed your body. Changed your blood. Changed your needs. I’d stopped trying to explain it years ago.

  Let them think I was a burnout. A loser. A slacker.

  I guess Terric let them believe he was a success. A winner. A hero.

  It didn’t matter. There wasn’t anything to do to fix what we really were. What we both had become: monsters.

  Most people did not want to be reminded of how dangerous we were.

  But I rarely heard Terric’s fight with Life magic. He never spoke to me about it. Just like I didn’t talk to him about Death magic. I had no idea what it was like to be driven by Life magic. I had no idea what it demanded of him. What it made him do. How it wore him down. How he coped.

  “Life magic devours?” I said. “I thought that was Death magic’s trick.”

  “Life magic infiltrates, overtakes, possesses. Makes everything grow: plants, people.” A long pause. “Diseases, sickness.” He tipped his head, licked his lips as if remembering the taste of each of those things. “Everything I touch I change. Everything that I touch I force to change.”

  “You know there’s a price for letting magic use you like that.”

  He nodded once. His eyes were too sober for how much whiskey he’d been drinking. “My life. My . . .” He looked at a loss for words. So I gave them to him.

  “Your humanity,” I said.

  I didn’t think he’d ever believed me when I said that before. But this time he did.

  “When I let go. When I relax, when I just let go and breathe . . .” He stopped talking. Just stared at me.

  “It takes over,” I said.

  “I become the monster. The magic. I become the hunger. And I don’t want to stop.”

  “Ain’t life grand?” I threw back the remainder of my shot.

  “I’ve made some bad choices,” he said. “I’ve done some horrible things. When I just breathe . . .” He licked his lips. “I’ve extended . . . suffering. Hospitals are bad. Nursing homes, worse.”

  “Good,” I said.

  That startled him, but I wasn’t done.

  “No, as a matter of fact: thank God. Perfect Terric was really getting on my nerves. It’s good to know you can fuck up like the rest of us lowly humans.”

  “Is that what we are? Human?”

  “Until the day the monster kills us,” I said. “Or we kill it.”

  He smiled a little. “Careful. That almost sounded like optimism.”

  “It’s the whiskey talking.”

  His phone rang again. He didn’t look at it. Fingers dug harder at the tabletop.

  A car horn blared. Paused. Blared again.

  “That your friend?” I asked.

  Terric took a deep breath, pulled his hands away from the table, then worked on putting his shoes and humanity back on. “Yes.”

  He stood, pulled out his wallet and threw some twenties on the table. “Thanks. For this. I’d like to see you at the office again tomorrow. Think you can do that?”

  “When have I ever let you down?”

  He raised an eyebrow. The horn bla
red again, taking away his reply.

  “Night, Shamus.”

  He took a step, reassessed his balance, seemed to pull it together, then started toward the door with a steady gait.

  I got up and followed.

  “I’m not that drunk,” he said. “You don’t have to follow me.”

  “I’m not,” I lied. “Gotta piss. Bathroom’s this way.”

  He didn’t argue, not even when instead of turning left to the bathroom, I leaned against the wall near the door. Watched him step out. Waited a minute. Opened the door.

  Terric ducked into a Jeep.

  The man in the driver’s seat, who I assumed was Jeremy, looked familiar. Short hair, narrow face, and when he shifted so I could see him better, I knew where I’d crossed paths with him before. He was the guy leaving the scene at the alley this morning who pointed at me like he was holding a gun.

  What a douche.

  Looked like he was reading Terric the riot act.

  I was suddenly falling in hate with the guy.

  Terric paused in pulling the seat belt over his chest, the door still open. Since his body was turned away from me, I had no clue what he said. But I saw Jeremy’s face change. He shut up. His eyes narrowed. And his heart beat harder. Anger.

  Then he looked up at me. Saw I was watching them.

  His anger screwed down to tight, red fury.

  Oh, that man did not like me. Poor bastard.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and made a kissing motion.

  He bit off one cussword and looked away.

  Yes, I was enjoying this.

  “Think I should stop that now?” I asked Eleanor, who had spent most of the last couple hours sitting with different people at the pub and eavesdropping.

  She nodded.

  Terric shut the car door and the Jeep rolled down the street.

  “Too late,” I said. “You should really speak up when you have an opinion.”

  Eleanor stuck her fingers into the side of my neck. Ice picks chilled all the way down my spine. “Jesus, woman. A little humor would be nice.”

  I rubbed at my neck and stepped back into the pub.

  As soon as I was in the main room, I was once again reminded that when I am around Terric, the need to devour and consume life is lessened. Yin/yang, Soul Complements, life/death, and all that. We canceled each other out some when we were in the same general proximity.