Free Magic Without Mercy by Devon Monk Page A

words, half-caught phrases, like someone had hard jacked an information stream into his head.
    No, not information—Zayvion was reading, whispering, ripping through the man’s memories. Zay’s voice grew louder and he straightened his elbow, somehow pressing the spell deeper into the man’s brain, then twisting it like a knife.
    The man yelled out again and went still. Unbreathing. Dead.
    Zayvion drew his hand away. Inhaled, exhaled, and stood. He was sweating.
    “So dead guy have anything interesting to tell us?” Shame asked.
    “They were sent here by Bartholomew. Have been here for three days. Don’t know that he’s dead.”
    “Well, that’s good news for us,” Shame said. “Did he know when his replacements were coming?”
    “No.”
    “And there’s the bad news, right on schedule.”
    “You killed him,” I said a bit belatedly.
    Zayvion arched a look at me as he knelt next to the bleeding man. “Yes.”
    “You took his memories and killed him.” I felt like I was stuck in a loop. I mean, I’d seen Zayvion kill things, beasts that crossed through the gate of death, the Veiled, who were not really people anymore. But he’d put his bare hands on an unconscious man, sucked out his brains, and left him dead.
    “Yes,” he said again.
    “Why aren’t you paying the price?” I finally asked. “Death for a death, that’s what magic makes you pay. If you kill someone with magic, you have to pay the same price: death. Unless you have some weird Proxy setup I can’t see?”
    Get enough Proxies linked up and you could spread the price of a death across enough people that everyone except the target would walk away. Hurt, but still walking.
    “No,” he said. “No Proxies.”
    He put his hand on the next man, and whispered a spell. I saw the harsh Disbursement flare again and Zayvion’s shoulders jerked back and down like he’d just stuck his finger in a light socket. He was breathing a little heavier now, but began whispering again.
    “Shame?” I said quietly.
    Shame was in mid-inhale on the cig. “Mmm?”
    “Is he going to kill him?”
    I didn’t know why it bothered me. It shouldn’t. Bartholomew’s men would have killed me in a second. Killed Zay. Killed Shame. Done more than that. They would have turned us inside out if they got the chance. They had just tried to kill me, all of us, as we walked in here, as a matter of fact.
    Shame exhaled and threw the cigarette to the ground. “Likely, yes. He’s in a mood, that one.”
    I kept my mouth shut while Zayvion dug through the man’s mind. He took his hand off his forehead and then pulled his knife. One quick stroke and the man wasn’t breathing anymore.
    Zay stood, stalked over to the three men on the other side of the room. One was dead already—gunshot. He put his hand on the other two men’s foreheads, digging through their brains with magic. Then snapped their necks with brutal efficiency.
    “Check the well,” Zay said, a rough edge to his voice, as if he’d just been yelling his lungs out instead of whispering the brains out of people.
    “Crazed rogue Closers,” Shame said. “Gotta love them. All business, no manners.” He clapped his hands together once. “Let’s get to this, shall we?”
    I just stood there, staring at Zayvion. His eyes were hammered gold, no pupil at all, his jaw set as if trying to hold back a scream. It wasn’t fury that boiled beneath that expression—it was madness.
    Too many minds,
Dad said softly.
    What? You mean he Closed too many minds?
    It wasn’t just Closing,
he said.
He was sorting through their memories, their knowledge, their lives. Four lives in just a few minutes is like trying to suck the ocean down in one gulp. He would have caused himself less pain if he’d just Closed them.
    “Zay?” I said, walking toward him.
    He locked his jaw, his nostrils flared, and he shook his head once, as if just hearing his name hurt. He managed to take a step away from me.
    “Ah-ah, leave him a