Back Lash

  BACK LASH

  A Shame and Terric Novel

  Devon Monk

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2015 by Devon Monk

  Published by Odd House Press

  Cover Design by Robin Ludwig Design Inc.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  ISBN: 978-1-939853-00-4

  Dedication

  For all the readers who asked for more Shame and Terric. As you wish.

  Acknowledgment

  I’d like to thank my tireless first readers, Dejsha Knight and Dean Woods, for your terrific insight and patience. You are both the greatest! Big shout-out to my copy editor Sharon Elaine Thompson, my proofreader Eileen Hicks, and my artist Robin Ludwig. You have all helped to make this novel shine.

  Thank you to my family who told me not only “yes” but also “it’s about time” when I talked about publishing a Shame and Terric ebook. I am also forever grateful to the wonderful community of authors, publishers, artists, and bookish people who have been so willing share advice and ideas along the way.

  To my husband, Russ, and two sons, Kameron and Konner: you have always been and will always be the best part of my life. I love you.

  And to you, dear reader. Thank you for sharing this wordful journey with me.

  Chapter 1

  Some people just don’t die easy.

  I should know. I, Shamus Flynn, had died several times—all of them the hard way.

  Being the only person in the world who carried Death magic came with a catch. Death magic needed to be fed, needed to devour life. It got all kinds of stabby when it didn’t get what it wanted.

  Most of the time I managed it and managed myself so that I didn’t go full-on Grim Reaper.

  Occasionally I slipped. And that meant some unlucky bastard was in for a very bad day.

  I wasn’t alone in this magic-user thing though. My not-best friend, work partner, and unwelcome-roommate, Terric Conley was my opposite: a Life magic user who, I admitted only in my darkest moments, I couldn’t function without.

  The tie Life and Death magic had welded between us—the Soul Complement—was unbreakable.

  Trust me, we’d tried breaking it.

  I was a walking, talking Grim Reaper, and he was the vessel of healing and life.

  Yin-yang. Beauty and the beast. Cancer and cure.

  He and I had once been the head of magic here in Portland, Oregon. Before we’d been fired, hunted, tortured, killed (then had saved the world, and destroyed magic) and were finally, painfully reborn.

  Good times.

  But out of all that, we had made one thing happen: no one could access magic any more. No one could offer up a little pain and draw a spell glyph and expect magic to jump to.

  Magic flowed like water through channels beneath the cities and land. It flowed especially strong beneath Portland.

  That magic used to be as simple to tap as turning on a faucet.

  Not any more. Terric and I had put an end to that extraordinarily easy, dangerous access.

  Which is why the half-naked dead guy slumped in the pile of garbage in the alley in front of me was such a surprise.

  This corpse—a fat man in designer slacks and new shoes who looked like he had clenched it just this side of sixty—had the glyphs for Pain and Surrender and Binding burned across his forehead, chest, and throat.

  Burned into his flesh with magic, not fire.

  Brutal and effective magic work.

  A hell of a gruesome way to go.

  Well, then. Someone had been a bad boy, and it wasn’t me for a change. What was the world coming to?

  Here’s the thing: no one can use magic except Terric and me.

  What? A couple blokes die to save the world and they can’t slip a little loophole into the new rules?

  Plus, being the only people who could stir the magic pot wasn’t for kicks. Magic still demanded a price for using it, and that price was still pain.

  Constant pain.

  “Don’t know what you did to piss off Mr. Nice Guy,” I said to the corpse. I dug in my hoodie pocket for a cig and a light. “But it’s going to be all sorts of delightful to watch him try to talk his way out of his > no more killing, Shame’ rule.”

  I glanced at both ends of the alley. Normal non-magical people walked the street doing normal non-magical things in the normal, dear-God-so-damn normal non-magical spring day. No one paid attention to me because, frankly, I looked like I belonged in the alley: dark hair in need of a cut, black hoodie, fingerless gloves, jeans, boots.

  Lean, angry, broken. It all described me.

  But that wasn’t all I was.

  I lit my cigarette, sucked the destruction of paper and tobacco into lungs, then deeper, feeding it to the gnawing, bottomless hunger of Death magic inside me. One burning cig wasn’t much to feed the need for death that pounded like a second pulse behind my throat, my eyes, my mouth.

  But it wasn’t nothing.

  These days I took every bit of death I could get.

  I exhaled smoke, then tsked.

  “Leaving those marks behind is just...sloppy.” I crouched next to the corpse to get a better look. Noticed a tattoo obscured by the Binding glyph over his heart. Maybe the head of a dragon, maybe a fish? Something that looked like it came out of a tourist stall in Chinatown.

  “It’s not like people don’t remember that they used to use magic. It’s only been off limits for a year. Am I right, buddy?”

  The corpse, being dead, didn’t say anything, and there was no ghost left behind either—something I was happy about.

  “Why would you only half-strip a guy, Terric?” I muttered around the cigarette in my mouth. I took a moment, sucked the flame deep, burned a column of ash. Held my breath. Tossed the butt over my shoulder into the wet of moss and slime.

  “You like your men all the way naked,” I continued on the exhale. “And a hell of a lot younger than this guy. And leaner.” I took a good look at his face. “And better looking. So I’m going to guess this wasn’t a lover’s spat.”

  I slid a finger in the dead guy’s front pockets. No I.D.

  Pivoted on my boots scanning the alley for the man’s shirt and coat. Nothing.

  “The more I look at this...” I tipped my head up, checked roof lines for movement, cameras, guns. No, no, and no.

  “...the more I think you, Deadguy, are a set up to frame someone for murder.”

  I stood, weighed my options.

  “What I want to know is who the hell has access to that much magic and can use life-ending spells without killing themselves in the process. Other than Terric. What poor chump was supposed to get nailed for your murder?”

  I tugged the phone out of my pocket. Snapped a picture of the guy.

  Then I leaned down over the top of him. I placed the heel of my palm against the Pain glyph on his forehead. That glyph was not a joke, not a fake. That was a spell burned into his flesh. A very deadly spell.

  I called on the knot of magic inside me and let it pour out through my hand to eat away at that spell. Left a bloody mess and the smell of rotten oranges and old ass behind. Did the same to his th
roat and chest.

  Stood back to check my handiwork. Looked like he’d put acid in his body spray.

  At least it didn’t look like death by magic.

  Good enough.

  What I should do was call Terric, find out what he had to say about all this. What I could do was hit the pub and get my liquid lunch on.

  Since there was plenty of day left, and I was pretty sure it was gonna take a couple beers to get the taste of magic-fried corpse out of my mouth, I headed to the pub.

  Chapter 2

  “All of them,” Terric said, sliding the sheet of paper across the kitchen table toward me. “Every last one.” He snapped a pen down on the paper and leaned back in his chair, watching me through narrow, angry eyes.

  Terric was in many ways my opposite. Clean-shaven and fashionably dressed. White hair recently chopped for a short, messy look, blue eyes, and straight-up Hollywood handsome. Also, he was responsible, fair-minded, and even-tempered.

  “Formal interrogation before breakfast?” I waved my coffee cup his way. “You and Dash fighting again?”

  The soft chime of dry cereal pouring into a glass bowl behind me paused. Dashiell Spade—Terric’s boyfriend—sighed, then filled a second bowl. “We’re not fighting. Trying to change the subject won’t hide the fact that you’re killing people, Shame.”

  Dash came around the table and placed a bowl of cereal in front of me and one in front of Terric. He was dark-haired, light-skinned, and wore black framed glasses that only accented his moss green eyes. I noted he didn’t touch Terric’s shoulder like usual, noted Terric’s steady gaze on mine did not flick up to acknowledge Dash.

  I’d been throwing shit about them fighting. But it looked like I’d hit the bull’s-eye.

  “You both know I’ve killed,” I said. “Mr. Death magic, right here.”

  Dash pulled the milk out of the refrigerator and placed that on the table too. I was watching Terric not watch Dash. Raised my eyebrow in question.

  He blinked, shook his head slightly. That, along with the Soul Complement bond between us, let me know he didn’t want to talk about whatever was wrong with the two of them.

  It would have been easy to bring it up. To throw their possibly first argument and relationship snarl out on the breakfast table. It would have taken the heat off them accusing me of killing someone I had not killed.

  But thing is, I liked Dash. He was smart, knew when to keep his mouth shut, and had been invaluable when Ter and I had been dealing with the fallout from the Authority—a secret society of magic users—going public. All the good, bad, and terrible things that secret society had done had become public knowledge, and the public had not liked it one bit.

  I owed Dash a little something for standing beside Terric and me when all hell was coming loose and anyone who remained near us was just putting themselves in the blast zone.

  So for Dash—not Terric—I let go of the easy way out.

  What can I say? I’m maturing as a person.

  “All of the people you’ve killed for the last year,” Terric said, with a little less anger.

  Dash still hadn’t sat down to breakfast. He stood at the toaster as if fascinated by the browning of bread between coils.

  I flicked a look at the blank paper and the pen. There was no way in hell I was going to tell him how many people I’d killed in the last year.

  Yes, I killed people. Horrible, right? Monstrous? I don’t disagree.

  But the Death magic burning in me demanded to be fed. If I didn’t choose what death to shovel into that fire, Death magic took what it wanted. Devoured and destroyed with random, brutal, efficiency.

  Innocent people died if I didn’t give death its due. So I made sure to only take out the people who had committed magical crimes so terrible they’d gotten their memories wiped by the Authority.

  Killing by magic was a bit more difficult now. For one thing, the criminals had all regained their wiped memories when the Authority went public. Having found out they had been removed from their lives, sometimes given new personalities, new jobs, new memories didn’t make a single one of them happy. But the criminals had already been tried, judged, and sentenced. Taking their memories was a mercy killing back when the Authority was in full swing.

  I was just taking care of old business.

  “Nope,” I said. “Not going to happen.”

  Terric waited, measuring me. That Soul Complement bond worked both ways. If he was paying attention, he knew just how much nope I was about to throw at this.

  He took a breath, sat back and lifted the fingers of one hand. “Just the last three months. It’s important.”

  I slurped coffee, watched him jerk when the toaster popped. Watched him not look over while Dash scraped butter across toast and spread marmalade.

  This was amusing, but also ridiculous.

  “You going to eat on your feet today?” I asked Dash.

  He carried a plate over to the table and sat in the only other chair, between us.

  “It’s none of your business what’s bothering us, Shame,” he said, getting right to the point of what I was not talking about, and they were not ignoring.

  He poured milk into Terric’s bowl while giving Terric a pointed look. “We’ll figure it out.”

  Dash wasn’t a part of our Soul Complement bond, but he was a smart man. He knew Terric and I had been not talking about them.

  “What we don’t have figured out,” he continued, “is why you’re knocking off people and leaving them out in the open with magic burned into them. How is that in any way smart?”

  “It isn’t,” Terric said. “It’s sloppy and stupid. You might be one of those things, but you are never both. What in the hell is wrong with you?”

  “ I’m not the one leaving dead bodies in alleyways.”

  Terric exhaled a short breath and shook his head. “Don’t play this game.”

  “Game? No,” I said. “Uh-uh. You are not going to do the dirty and blame it on me. I didn’t leave anyone dead in an alley, obviously killed by magic.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “The man doth protest too loudly,” I said.

  “I’m not stupid enough to leave a body out in the open.”

  “And I am?”

  “I’m not the one who has a goddamn hit list in my pocket.”

  I took a drink of coffee, mostly to bother Terric and to give myself a moment to consider what he’d said. The coffee went ice cold in my hands, Death magic inside me sucking out the heat of it. He was right to suspect me. I did have a hit list.

  So Terric didn’t do it. Or wanted me to think he didn’t. Why?

  “Half-naked man isn’t exactly my style,” I observed calmly, watching his reaction.

  “Who said anything about half-naked?”

  “The man in the alley I found yesterday was stripped to his slacks. Half naked.”

  Terric lifted his head, his eyes searching my face. He knew I wasn’t lying. He should sense that through our connection too.

  “You found?” he said. “Yesterday?”

  I nodded. I was watching Terric, but also keeping tabs on Dash out of the corner of my eye.

  Terric and I were the only people in Portland who could use magic. As far as we knew, we were the only people in the world who could use magic at all. We’d been pretty clear about that loophole we’d slipped into the new rules of magic when we’d locked magic away.

  Only he and I got to play with the cool toys.

  Dash was the one person who knew we could access magic. He looked slightly shocked and more than a little sick.

  “In an alley off of Burnside,” I went on. “I didn’t kill the guy. I did clean up the magic marks. Burned them off so when the cops found him they’d find a bloody, but not magic mess. Are you sure you want to tell me you didn’t do it, Ter?”

&nb
sp; “I don’t kill people,” he said. Through our bond, I heard what he didn’t say: like that.

  “Well, neither do I,” I said. “Like that. Which means we have a problem, boys.”

  “No one can access magic,” Dash said.

  “Someone did,” I said.

  “Maybe it just looks like a magic kill?” he suggested. He glanced over at Terric, who was staring at me, and then he looked back at me, staring at Terric.

  “It was a magic kill,” Terric said.

  “I wasn’t a part of it,” I repeated. “Did you touch the corpse, Ter? Did you get a read for what kind of magic was used? Did you sense me in it at all?”

  “I touched him.”

  “And?”

  “Healed him.”

  I drank coffee while I let that set in. “You healed a dead guy.” It wasn’t a question, but some things just needed to be said out loud.

  “Life magic,” he noted.

  I nodded. I hadn’t ever thought through his need to pour life into the world as far as healing the dead. Raising the dead? Maybe. Mending dead flesh? Creepy.

  “Cause of death?” I asked.

  “Cops will think it’s a heart attack. The guy on Burnside?”

  “Mugging with an acid burn chaser.”

  “Did you recognize the signature?”

  I dug in my pocket for my phone. “I didn’t look at it that closely since I thought it had to be you. Took a picture though.”

  “Shit,” Terric said. “I should have thought of that.”

  “I did.” Dash pulled his phone out of his pocket.

  “You took a picture of me healing the corpse?” Terric looked over at him for the first time today. Dash was flipping through photos, so didn’t notice.

  “Just the glyphs. Something seemed...off about them. Too neat. Too...practiced for Shame.”

  “Hey, I’m practiced.”

  “No, you’re experienced. There was something so...Sunday school about these glyphs.”