Hell Bent

Hell Bent

Book 1 — Broken Magic

 

I’m the kind of guy who, given the chance, can break anything: hearts, dreams, lives, and yes, magic. Death magic user here. Everything I touch dies.

It’s not as much fun as it sounds.

Ever since the magical apocalypse that those of us in the great city of Portland, Oregon, liked to call “just another Thursday” slapped the crap out of our city and wrecked magic, my life had gone from handbasket to hell.

Today wasn’t looking up.

“Don’t make me throw water over your head, Shamus Flynn,” Terric Conley said from where he’d settled on the crappy chair next to my bed.

I don’t like Terric. This is a problem because Terric and I not only have to work the same damn office job together, but we are also tied by the only magic I can’t break: Soul Complements.

Ironic, right?

About an hour ago, I’d stumbled into my room here at my mum’s inn, undone my pants and belt, and fallen into bed. From the sweaty weight on my feet, I hadn’t gotten my boots off yet.

About fifteen minutes ago Terric had shown up, cheerfully yelling over the top of my hangover and pulling back curtains to let in the light.

Daylight, for shit’s sake.

“Get out of my room,” I mumbled into the pillow on my face.

“It’s Wednesday.”

“Fuck-de-doo.”

“You said you’d come to work today, Shame. The meeting’s today. No option. Not this time.”

“No option?” I pushed the pillow off my face. Oh God, the light. It was blinding, even through my eyelids. “I’m the boss—remember, mate? I work when I say I work.”

“No, we are the boss. We, Shame, not you. Not you alone. Which is good because you haven’t worked for a year and a half.”

Gut punch. Not that he was wrong. I’d put in a solid year of civic-mindedness before deciding I was not a people person and was more suited for darkness, destruction, and the slow madness of trying not to give a damn.

Plus, there was the whole death-touch thing, the constant hunger to kill that made me count the pulse beat of every living thing around me. After a year, that had gotten so bad I salivated whenever I was in a closed room with people, plants, or combustibles.

Death magic in me needed life. Needed to drink it down, lap it up. Food helped, so did smoking, drinking, and other unsavory recreations. But none of it pushed the hunger away for long.

Grim-damn-Reaper, here.

So of course someone thought it would be funny to put me in charge of a city full of angry magic users. A desk job. Customer service. Paperwork and complaints about every magical glitch that happened in the entire damn city.

A lot of people were alive right now because I’d had the brains to stop punching the time clock and did my best to put distance between me and the living. Not that I’d told Terric about how hard Death was riding my back. Not that I had to.

He knew me better than almost anyone. That came from half our lives spent together growing up in the Authority, chasing down illegal magic and deadly creatures like it was all one big game.

Until I almost killed him. And he repaid the favor.

We have what is known as a difficult relationship.

“Shame.” He kicked the bed.

“Have I said fuck off yet?”

“I’ll drag you out of here.”

I huffed a laugh. Terric had spent the better part of a year going out of his way to keep his hands to himself. Well, to himself and his boyfriend of the month.

“I’d like to see you tr—”

Terric’s hands were around my ankles so quick I didn’t even hear him move. He yanked on my boots and dragged me half down the bed before I could finish insulting him.

Eyes snapped open: Jesus, the light! Every damn window poured full-watt sunlight into the room. It was daymageddon in here.

I glared at him.

Terric was nearly my opposite. I had dark hair, eyes that were sometimes black and sometimes dark green, rarely bothered to shave, and lately, I’d been running a good twenty pounds under my fighting weight.

Terric was taller than me, which I hated, and built like a guy who might need to jump on a jet and hit the catwalk at any moment. His hair was white-silver even though he was on one side or the other of thirty and his blue eyes were set in a face that could knock Hollywood’s leading man off the marquee. We used to be best friends before I’d almost destroyed his ability to use magic.

After that he’d moved to Seattle and become a graphic designer and gay, although he insisted he’d actually always been into both those things, I just never noticed.

“Shame,” he said, almost gently. His hands were at his sides, fingers stretched out wide as if he’d just touched something filthy. “You can’t keep doing this. Not this way.”

“What? Get some sleep? No, apparently, I can’t. Because you won’t leave me the hell alone.”

I knew what he meant. With that one small contact, he’d realized I was starving for life. The Death magic inside me demanded any life. Mine, if there was nothing else to devour.

I hadn’t killed anyone for more than a year, and that had been an accident—I’d passed out in an alley and woken up next to a dead homeless person. I hadn’t destroyed, drained, demolished a living thing since. Sure, I consumed. Some. A little. Enough. Just enough. Maybe a plant withered and died, maybe a bird fell out of the sky. But not as much life as I needed. Not what death craved.

I’d always wanted to be a superhero, well, maybe a superneutral. But Reaperman? No.

Staying as far away from the living world might be a slow way to die. Offering up my life to the Death inside me was not a long-term solution. But it was my death, not someone else’s. And it was under my control.

Terric opened his mouth, then shut it on whatever lecture he’d been about to launch into. He tipped his head and there was, briefly, sorrow and desperation in his eyes that made my heart stop beating.

I hated when he looked at me like that. I hated that I made him look like that.

Even though I don’t like Terric, it’s not because he’s a bad man. Quite the opposite: I am.

“Why don’t you take a shower?” He used the calm and easy voice he thought didn’t show how he was really feeling. “We have time.”

“You’re not my boss.” I shoved up to my feet. “Not even my friend.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Then close the blinds.” I crossed to the bathroom and shut the door behind me. “And don’t touch my stuff.”

I stripped, pissed, got in the shower. Turned the water on as hot as my skin could stand it, let it pound over my back while I washed my hair. The inside of my mouth tasted like gutter runoff, so I dripped on the floor and grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste.

Scrubbed until I could feel my teeth. Back in the shower, I applied soap and a washrag. Rinsed, and got out, even though both me and my headache wanted to linger awhile.

I didn’t shave.

Took all of three minutes from start to finish. I wrapped a towel around my hips and barefooted it to the bedroom.

Terric stood there, a mug from the restaurant downstairs in one hand. “Coffee.”

“Apology coffee?” I stepped over a week’s worth of dirty clothes on the way to my dresser.

“No, just coffee.”

I pulled on boxers, blue jeans, black T-shirt. Added a black sweater and dug for socks of similar color.

“Have you eaten at all this week?”

I could practically feel his gaze scraping over my ribs, spine, and shoulder blades.

“Yes. Also? None of your business.”

There were four heavy rings on my dresser made of brushed steel with Void stones inset in their flat, square surfaces. I slipped the rings, red, black, amber, and white on each finger of my right hand, and shivered as the push of Death magic eased off a bit.

I curled my hand into a fist, the rings lining up like brass knuckles.

“How about you drink this?” Terric held out the coffee.

“Why? Did you poison it?”

That got a dazzler of a smile out of him. Yep. Leading man material. “And ruin a good dark roast? Please.”

I took the cup, which meant he and I were standing pretty close. I could feel the Life magic coiled around him like a second skin. Just as Death magic had changed me, Life magic had changed him. He carried it inside his body, just like I carried Death. This close, Life magic reached for me like a cool breeze. It made my mouth water.

We both ignored how bad my hands shook.

“We could solve this,” he said. “Use magic together. Cast a spell. Cast Life, Shame.”

“No.”

“I don’t understand why you won’t.” He lifted a hand but didn’t touch me. “I’ve respected that you want space. An entire year and a half of it. But we’re still Soul Complements. We can use magic like no one else, break it to be as strong as it used to be. Why are you fighting it?”

He was right about magic. It didn’t have the “use it hard and it will use you back harder” kick like before the apocalypse. We’d forced dark and light magic to join, diluting the strength of both. Magic had gone soft. Limp.

Light spells were now a dim glow, Illusions thin as glass, knock-you-senseless Impact spells were nothing but a polite pat. The price to pay for those spells had lessened too. No more weeks of pain and agony in exchange for powerful spells.

And while I found it hilarious that people who used to do very bad things with magic were now desperate to find the magical equivalent to Viagra, I was also a little terrified about what magic could do in my hands.

Well, in mine and Terric’s hands. Magic might be neutered, or “healed” as Terric likes to remind me, for other magic users . . . but not for us. Soul Complements, or “Breakers” can still make magic do all those powerful things.

As long as we used magic together.

Something I was planning to avoid for the rest of forever.

I drank. Whatever snappy comeback I was working on died as soon as the coffee hit my taste buds. I didn’t care that it was hot enough to scorch. I gulped it down in one go.

“You know you need Life magic,” Terric said. “Need me. Just like you need that coffee.”

I tipped the cup down. He’d put something, a spell of some kind, in the coffee.

“You spiked my coffee.”

“I spelled your coffee.”

“The hell, mate?”

“Health. A little Life would do you good, Shame, and it’s not going to hurt me.” At my look, he added. “It won’t.”

I dragged my tongue over the roof of my mouth. “Gritty.”

Truth was, I felt a hell of a lot better. I was still hungry, and hungover, but at least there was something—coffee and magic—in my belly. Something to stave off the death growing in me.

Terric could do something to make my hunger and need go away. But every time he cast magic with me, magic tied us closer together. I’d watched it happen with other Soul Complements.

I knew my future. Either I became a killing monstrosity like Jingo Jingo and other Death magic users before me, or I would die, consumed by my own hunger. Since the whole monstrosity thing was just too cliché and would make my mum cry, I’d made my choice.

There was no need to tie myself to Terric and drag him down with me.

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