She touched my heart and nodded. So I placed the statue there, Death’s weary head lowered, the scythe useless in his hands, as his wings stretched out for a sky he would never know.
Eleanor stood beside me, her arm cold around my waist.
I didn’t know how long I stood there and stared. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. It rained, stopped, and rained again.
Eventually I became aware of a heartbeat that wasn’t mine. Blinked and looked around. Terric stood just a short ways off. Noticed me trying to decide if he was a mirage or not. Came walking over.
Bastard had followed me up to Seattle. I wondered how many Hounds he’d had tracking me. Probably dozens. I hadn’t been very observant lately.
But at least he didn’t say anything, just came closer until he was beside me, looking down at her grave with me.
Everything around me was dead. The grass over her grave, the trees and bushes.
I remembered the rose in my hand, the only flower I’d ever bought for her. I knelt, but once my knees sank into that cold, wet, dead grass, my hands started shaking. I suddenly realized it was pouring rain, merciless. And very, very cold.
I placed the rose where I thought her heart might be. But the flower had been in my care for too long. It was withered. Dead.
Just like everything I touched.
I wiped rain off my face. “I can’t even keep a flower alive,” I said. “Everything dies. Anyone I . . . care for is going to die. I’ll make them die.”
“I’m still alive,” he said.
“Not forever. Not for long,” I said.
“Maybe.”
That admission, that it was a very real possibility for me to kill everything I laid a finger on, for me to kill him, did more for me than any attempt at comfort.
“You can still make choices,” he said. “Choose to be a man.”
“No,” I said, the memories of drawing on Death magic, the memories of surrendering to its vengeful need filling me with a shudder of pleasure. I wanted that. The pleasure. The oblivion. “I don’t think so. Not anymore.”
Terric knelt in the rain next to me. Reached out and placed his fingers on the dead rose. Bent his head, like a man grieving, or praying.
I felt magic draw to him like a mist over the grass. Felt it filling the words he spoke.
The rose trembled, then washed with life again, velvet red petals, deep green stem and leaves, and roots that reached out and dug deep into the rich earth. Planting there in the newly green grass. Growing. Alive.
The bushes around us stirred as if caught in a wind, and new sprouts pushed up from the ground.
He pulled his hand back and caught me with his gaze. He was still human. Still Terric.
“We do this together,” he said. “You’re not alone, Shame. And, yes, we might not be men anymore,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we have to be monsters. Our fate is still our own.”
“Do you believe that?” I asked quietly.
“I’m trying to,” he said. “Because it’s all that keeps the madness away.”
He stood. Held his hand down for me. I took his hand and pulled myself up onto my feet.
“Did it hurt?” I asked.
“What?”
“Admitting you’re not perfect.”
He scowled at me. “Shut up, Shame.”
I smiled and shut up because, well, most of the time, Terric was my friend. Sometimes he was more than that. A brother.
He hung his arm over my shoulder.
We walked away from the grave. Walked away from the death we’d never be able to leave behind us, walked away from the past we could not escape.
I guessed we had decided to face the madness together, or die trying. Sounded good to me. Might even be fun.
I wrapped my arm around his shoulder too and he leaned his head against mine.
It wasn’t much of a beginning.
But it was ours.
Epilogue
I had waited. Long enough that no one was following me to make sure I wasn’t doing something wrong. Something destructive.
But now it was night, and darkness was exactly what I needed.
It wasn’t hard to walk into the facility. I could cast Sleep without using so much magic Terric would know what I was doing.
So I did.
I could cast Scatter to interfere with the cameras.
So I did.
And then I walked through the high-security facility, counted the doors until I reached the one I wanted.
Locks are easy to pick.
Then I was inside. With her.
Brandy lay in her bed, eyes open, but not seeing this world. They kept her heavily medicated. They said it helped her remain calm.
And they needed her calm, because they needed her alive.
So we could bargain with Eli. So we could bargain with his masters.
But there was no bargaining with monsters. I should know. I was one.
I stepped over to her bed, my boots loud in the hollowness of the room.
She didn’t see me. Didn’t hear me.
That was fine. She wasn’t who I had come here for. She was simply a way to get what I wanted.
And I wanted revenge.
I sat on the bed next to her, studied her face, her hair, her lips. She could have been pretty, if there was any sense of humanity looking out from her eyes.
But she was a shell, cored out and emptied by madness many long years ago.
I understood madness too.
I brushed her hair away from her face, then leaned so I was directly in her line of vision even though she didn’t see me.
I put my hand over her mouth.
Death can be painful, or . . . sweet. I didn’t need her death, not just yet. But I wanted her pain.
I reached out with Death magic, letting it cover her. I drank down an ounce of her life.
Brandy’s body arched and she screamed.
“Do you feel that, Eli?” I asked, keeping eye contact with Brandy as she trembled. “Do you feel her agony?” I drank more of her life down, Death magic twisting her nerves, catching fire beneath her skin.
The monster inside me liked it.
I liked it too.
“Do you understand what I can do to her?
“Yes, of course you know,” I said as fear set her heart beating faster. But this was not her fear; she was too far gone to know fear.
This was Eli’s fear.
