Chapter 49 #2
“No! No, wait, Mitch!” I moved as much as I could and screamed my lungs out.
I got Mitch to stop before he cut the smith. “Behave, or I’ll dose you again.”
“You don’t understand.” I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. “I need this more than him. You are so, so right about the…wickedness. I’ve always felt it, ever since…” Please, please let this work.
Mitch let go of the smith’s head, and I saw interest spark in his eyes. “Ever since what, Lionel?”
“I’ll tell you, Mitch, just please, help me first.”
Maybe, if I could just buy the smith some time, Christine would find this place and save him.
I had to believe she was looking for him already, had to believe he had someone who was already missing him and demanding that the police do something.
And if Mitch killed me first, he’d have to deal with my body too, so that would give the smith even more time. It was the best I could do for him.
“I will help you,” Mitch said, sounding like he actually meant that.
The hiccupy breath I took wasn’t even acting. “Yes. Please, Mitch. I always knew I needed this. Meeting you wasn’t an accident. I knew when I saw you.”
Crazy Motherfucker Mitch perked right up at that, balm for the psychopathic soul.
“Since when, Lionel?” He took a step toward me, the blade a looming threat in his hand.
“Marc Deacon.” I was trying to make it sound as if I was forcing the words out. “He and I… I seduced him. I was thirteen, he was older, just a couple of months older. I wanted to know what it would be like. The sex, you know?”
Bless Marc Deacon for leaving me with this story that kept on giving.
Mitch nodded. “Lust is a sin.”
Seriously, why were all psycho murderers so messed up when it came to sex?
Lucy wasn’t. Fuck. I couldn’t think about Lucifer now.
I needed to stay focused on buying the smith whatever time I could give him.
I couldn’t think about the way Lucifer had made me feel, not now. It would leave me unable to do this.
“I didn’t know that then, not really. I…” I let my voice drop, speaking quietly. Mitch crouched down next to me again.
“What?” he asked. His voice had gone soft and caring. What had I even been thinking, letting this almost-stranger anywhere near me?
“I didn’t enjoy it at first, until I did.” Oh, the sweet half-truths. “I think I knew then and there that I was messed up.” All I’d known for sure was that Marc Deacon delivered a terrible performance in the sack, but at least he made a great show and tell. In retrospect.
Mitch put his gloved hand on my cheek. The gesture would’ve been tender if he hadn’t been wearing the gloves and wasn’t, well, crazy as fuck.
“Yes, you are. Temptation is everywhere. Everywhere you look. And witches like you choose it, every time.”
I knew he would kiss me even before he really initiated it. Everything went into slow motion, his reflective glasses and the smell of dried blood from that drain in the floor combining with the texture of his rubber glove against my skin. The smell of his skin.
The cold press of his lips against mine made something large and furious run through me, wilder than fear and harder to ignore than disgust. My magic stirred without me consciously reaching for it, and for the first time since I’d raised that dead bird back at school, the magic did what it wanted to do, and this time, rather than channel outward, it pulled, sucking the life force in instead of funneling it back.
It scared me. It almost scared me more than this place did, than Mitch did, than the knowledge of what he’d done did.
I gasped. Mitch stumbled back and fell to his hands and knees, the scalpel falling from his fingers.
What the fuck had I just done? Had I just—no, that couldn’t be.
Reversed necromancy was the draining of the life force.
It was…siphoning. Immortals who could do that were called succubi and incubi in the magical texts I’d studied at the Collegium.
Some demons could do it. Some immortals too.
Not humans. I was human. Channeling magic into and out of me wasn’t right. It wasn’t me.
But there was Mitch, on the floor. Clearly, I had done something.
The smith pulled against his restraints. Mitch wasn’t really down, and even as I watched him, he raised his head. Fury had turned his eyes glassy, and he was reaching for his scalpel again. That was not good. Not good at all.
“What demon spawn are you?”
Mitch’s voice sounded rougher, but he was getting back to his feet. Not fast, but steadily.
“I…I don’t know.”
I had no idea why I was telling him the truth. He wouldn’t let me do whatever the fuck I had done to him again, even if I knew what I had done or how to do it again. He’d kill me fast, and maybe the last thing I wanted to say before he slit my throat was the truth.
I hoped the scalpel wasn’t going to hurt. I hoped Christine would find the smith. A memory of Lucy flashed in my mind’s eye, looking too good, smiling like he was above the world and everyone in it.
His hair was always so fluffy, and I had a strange urge to touch it again, just one more time.
Well, it was too late for that now.