Lupi 08 - Death Magic

“Lily!” Deborah cried. “It won’t listen to me! It’s angry—terribly angry—that it was called and wasn’t fed, and it’s angry that those others invaded its territory!”
    A man slipped up behind Deborah. He wore a good-quality suit, no tie, and was tall and thin, with short honey-blond hair. And—like Drummond had said—a prissy mouth. “That’s the way it goes sometimes,” Paul Chittenden said as he slid his arm around Deborah’s neck and squeezed. “Lily Yu, isn’t it? Stop right there. I can break her neck in a second.”
    Lily slowed, not quite stopping, holding her hands out to demonstrate her lack of a weapon. “Scott,” she whispered. “Can you—?”
    “We’re too far,” he whispered back. “If he knows what he’s doing, he could kill her before I get there.”
    Chittenden applied more pressure. Deborah’s face turned bloodless. “I said stop.”
    Lily did. So did Scott.
    The people closest to Deborah and Chittenden had pulled back a few paces. “Hey,” said a beefy man with a crew cut. “What do you think you’re doing?”
    “Stopping evil from spreading,” Chittenden said, smiling. “Do you believe in the Second Amendment, sir?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “So do I.” He drew a gun from inside his jacket and shot the man.
    No one screamed this time. Maybe they’d overloaded on the horrors of the day. No one moved or spoke.
    “Now,” Chittenden said, turning that prissy smile on Lily, the gun held casually in the hand that wasn’t choking Deborah, “we’ll have a chance to get acquainted while my pets are doing their work. So . . . do you come here often? What’s your sign? If you were stranded on a desert island—”
    The woman who jumped Chittenden must have been at least sixty, and probably weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. She belted him in the head with a purse the size of a small suitcase. He staggered, his gun-hand swinging around, his smile gone—and his attention diverted.
    Scott shot forward like a bullet from a gun.
    Chittenden backhanded the woman, who collapsed. And, from ten feet away, Scott leaped.
    Quickly Chittenden brought his gun up. At point-blank range, he fired.
    Scott smashed into Deborah, knocking both her and Chittenden to the ground.
    Lily had shoved into a run the same moment as Scott. She was slower, but she got there. She got there seconds after Chittenden shoved Deborah and Scott off of him, just as he started to scramble to his feet. She got there with her weapon in hand, and she jammed it into his ear while he was still couched on one knee.
    “Give me a reason,” she gritted. “Give me one tiny little reason. I’d love to blow your brains out.”
    He froze.
    Deborah lay on the ground, breathing hard, but stirring. Scott didn’t move.
    “Hell with it,” Lily said, and reversed her weapon and struck him in the temple, hard, with the butt of her gun.
    He collapsed.
    She followed him down and hit him again, just to be sure. Then checked his eyelids. Oh, yeah, he was out. “Deborah, you okay?”
    “Yes, I . . .” She wheezed. “Hurts, but I’m okay.”
    “Check on Scott.” Lily grabbed Chittenden’s right hand. No ring. She reached for the other one.
    “Oh, no.” Deborah sat up and felt Scott’s neck. “He’s . . . there’s a pulse.”
    Relief barely had time to register. Drummond swept into Lily’s field of view. He patted his upper chest urgently, scowling.
    She scowled back. Then she got it. A necklace. Chittenden wore the thing around his neck. She reached inside Chittenden’s shirt. A moment’s groping and she touched it—and recoiled.
    The ring had been foul. This was ... putrescence. Needles and slime and decay, glass shards, blood gone rotten. Touching it was like being kicked in the chest. For a second she forgot to breathe.
    How many? How many people had he killed to load this thing with so much death magic?
    Grimly she forced herself to retrieve it, but this time she felt for the chain first. A couple of hard yanks broke the clasp and she pulled it free.
    It was an amulet, as Cullen had predicted, the stone a match for the one in the ring—a dark, dull red that didn’t look like any gemstone Lily knew. The stone was oval in shape and about two inches long, set in some plain metal. Not gold, and it lacked the sheen of silver.
    She sat back on her heels. Now what?
    Now she took it to Cullen and hoped like hell he’d healed his concussion enough to attempt mage fire. She shoved to her feet and