Hell Bent Read Free

into a fist, the rings lining up like brass knuckles.
    “How about you drink this?” Terric said.
    I turned. He held the coffee out.
    “Why? Did you poison it?”
    That, finally, 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 together. 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, I could feel Life magic reaching out to me like a cool breeze. It made my mouth water.
    I took the cup. We both ignored how bad my hand was shaking.
    “We could solve this,” Terric said. “Use magic together, you and I. Cast a spell. 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 and time. An entire year and a half. We’re still Soul Complements. We can use magic like no one else, break it so that it’s just as strong as it used to be. Why fight that?”
    He was right about magic. It didn’t have the delightfully dangerous “use it hard and it will use you back harder” kick like the days before the apocalypse. We’d forced dark and light magic to join and mingle together, diluting the strength of both. Magic had gone soft. Limp. Light spells were a dim glow, Illusions were thin as glass, and a knock-you-senseless Impact spell was no worse than 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. The best you could hope for was a barely discernible spell that might give you a case of gas.
    And while I found it hilarious that people who used to do very bad things with magic were now raging to find the magical equivalent to Viagra, I was simultaneously just a little terrified about what magic could do in my hands.
    Well, in my hands 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, as some people like to call us, could make magic do all those powerful things.
    As long as we used it together.
    I could have told him all that. But he had heard it before. He knew why I didn’t want to cast magic with him.
    I took a drink of the coffee. Whatever snappy comeback I was working out died on my lips at about the same moment the coffee came alive on my taste buds. I didn’t care that it was hot enough to scorch. I gulped it down all in one go.
    “You know you need it,” Terric said. “Need me. Need Life magic. Just like that coffee.”
    I tipped the cup down. Was going to ask what the hell he was talking about. But then I got it. He’d put something, a spell of some kind, in the coffee.
    “You spiked my coffee.”
    “I spelled your coffee.”
    “With what?”
    “Health. A little Life will do you good, Shame. Nothing you say will change my opinion on that.”
    I dragged my tongue over the roof of my mouth a couple times. “Gritty.” Truth was, I felt a hell of a lot better. Sure, I was still hungry, sure, I was still hungover, but at least there was something—coffee and magic—in my belly. Something to stave off the death growing in me.
    I hated to admit that Terric could do something to make my hunger and need go away.
    Because every time he cast magic with me, every time I admitted I needed him, magic tied us closer together. I’d watched it happen with other people like us, other Soul Complements.
    I knew what my future held. Either I would become 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 drag Terric down with me.
    “There’s a meeting today?” I asked.
    He