Page 20 of Devil Bound
“Liza, tell me how you died.”
The beady-eyed poodle started growling all of a sudden, and Liza’s body twitched.She raised a cold hand and pointed.
“He killed me.”
I let go of the essence and Liza’s hand dropped.I spun.
The mailman was standing in the door.I could see the gleam of a kitchen knife in his right hand.He was pale, lips pressed tight together and brows drawn.Anger.
“She was supposed to shut up forever,” he said.
I raised my hands.“Hey, don’t do anything—”
But it was too late.The mailman raised his knife and came at me.
10
Lionel
I’dneverbeentrainedto wield magic like a cudgel to defend myself, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t.Every magic user could do a little bit of something in the realm of physical manifestation of power.
The problem was, I froze.Perhaps it was because I felt so good after the raising, perhaps it was the fact that I was here with the murderer, by myself, thinking,Fuck, I’ll die alone just like I was born.
The mailman was a bullet aimed for my heart.Well, he was a postal worker with a knife trying to kill me, but the metaphor sounded nicer.I could see how this was going to go badly.
Then, there was a clicking sound—tick, tick, tick—that I couldn’t make any sense of.Out of the corner of my eye, something white flashed past, and before the mailman could repurpose my skull as a knife block, he hissed in pain and stumbled.
The knife—a fucking kitchen knife made to take apart big, chunky cuts of meat—dropped from his hand and impaled itself in the carpeted floor about three inches away from my left leg.That finally made me jump, and I made a sound, but didn’t really manage a proper scream to get help in here.Christine had to be just outside the door.
“Fucking dog!”The mailman was on the floor, one hand clutching his left ankle.
The poodle.The fucking poodle had charged at him and gotten him in the heel.She’d moved back now, away from the immediate striking distance he had, but that was only going to last for so long.
“Aaaah,” I said.Help.The word isHelp, Lionel Hawkes.
The mailman looked at the knife.He was going to go for it and try again, and this time he was going to take the poodle with him.The canine in question was still in the room.She hadn’t run, her beady eyes focused on him, her lip raised as she growled like an itty bitty chainsaw that fit in your purse.
“No,” I breathed.Was I whispering?“No…” I was fucking whispering.
The mailman went for the knife, only…
He sort of withered.Like, he shriveled up like a grape forgotten at the very back of your fridge, his skin going dark and drying out until his eyes looked too big for his shrinking skin.His fingers were dried sticks, curling in on themselves, and he collapsed, making more noise with the gasp that followed than I had managed.
I knew what that was.I looked at the poodle.The poodle looked right back at me.
“You’re cursed?”
Being a dog, she didn’t respond, and anyway, that was when Christine came charging back, her jaw dropping when she was confronted with the sight of a second body that hadn’t been here five minutes ago.
“Hawkes, what the fuck?”
“He…he tried to kill me.”I pointed at the knife that was still conveniently stuck in the carpet.Exhibit A.
“Shit,” she said.“Oh, shit.What the fuck did youdoto him?”
Of course she would think it was me, never mind that my necromancy couldn’t do anything like turning a killer into a raisin.But when a magic user was in a room with a newly deceased person—well, he was still sort of gurgling, so not quite there yet—even someone as open and tolerant as Detective Rice looked at me first to see if I had done it.I couldn’t blame her.She didn’t know any better.
So I shook my head and explained.I pointed at the poodle.“This dog is cursed.She bit him.Oh, Liza said he killed her, and I guess he heard.He came at me with a knife.”
