Page 47 of Hellhounds Never Lie

Shit. I was running out of time.

I was still staring at the machine when something hard hit my back. Pain ricocheted through my side. What the hell was that? Because it fucking hurt. I jolted upright and spun around to find Dot brandishing a gun. It was so strange to see the timid deputy waving a deadly weapon around that I couldn’t make sense of it right away.

I couldn't hear her voice because of the machine, but it looked like she was shouting. At me? She didn’t think I was helping the wolves, did she? But the way her surprisingly steady hands pointed the gun at the center of my chest, I decided maybe she did.

"Please, don't," I said, lifting my hands in surrender.

I started babbling more words. Words to distract her. Words to placate her. Words to beg her to be reasonable. I don’t even know what exactly I was saying but it didn’t matter anyway. They were silenced under the enchantment of the magical gramophone, just like everything else.

Her face contorted in another shout. I had no idea what she was saying, but this time she made a show of rubbing her finger along the trigger on her gun.Shit, shit, shit. She looked seconds away from pulling that damn trigger. I felt queasy and wobbly and lightheaded. I wasn’t cut out to be face to face with the business end of a gun.

I needed to talk to her, have her hear what I was saying, make her realize I wasn’t one of the bad guys.

That meant stopping the machine.

Decision made, I waved my hand toward the extension cord. Magic pulsed through me before shorting out the connection. It probably would have been cleaner to yank the cord from the wall, but I doubted Dot would tolerate me making any sudden moves.

Nothing changed.

Did my magic not work? I tore my gaze away from Dot’s gun long enough to glance at the gramophone. It’d stopped spinning, which meant my magic had worked.

So why didn’t I hear anything?

Fuck. It looked like I was right about there being two sources of magic.

The second had to be the amulet. I scanned the room. My eyes jumped from one charred body to the next. Nothing. Where the hell was it? I glanced at Dot, praying she’d give me a little more time. That’s when I saw a strange bulge under her uniform. The longer I stared at the spot, the more my magic sang.

Well, fuck me, Dot was wearing the damn pendant.

That pressure in my chest I’d come to dread over the last several years filled me again. I opened my mouth to release the pressure with a burp. I was too slow. My ass vibrated in an all too familiar way.

Fuck. No. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Heat burst over my face.

I looked around, an apology already falling from my lips. Except… no one could hear it.

Which meant no one could hear or smell the fart that’d just escaped either.

Thank Magic for that.

Damn it. I thought my magic was fixed.

The gun in Dot’s hand jerked. I glanced up at her face. I really shouldn’t have been staring at her chest because we both knew I hadn’t been looking at her boobs. Not that that would have been better, but whatever. Dot narrowed her eyes at me.

Son of a drunken mage, she was going to shoot me.

I stared at the barrel of her gun. Was this really happening?

Her mouth twisted as her finger twitched. Then, without conscious thought, magic shot out of my fingers and straight into the lump under Dot’s uniform. The bright red glow of my fire magic engulfed whatever it was.

Dot’s eyes widened. She wildly clutched at her shirt, her fingers tearing at the buttons. As soon as the first few buttons on her shirt popped open, I saw the pendant, exactly as Dillon had described.

The icy blue magic swirled in its dark depths in a mesmerizing pattern. Dot grabbed at the amulet and ripped it off. She flung it away. My magic followed the object’s trajectory through the air. When the amulet hit the concrete floor, it broke in two. My magic seized its chance and dove into the fresh break, incinerating what was left of the suppressing magic.

The cacophony of clanging, screams, growls, crunching of breaking bones, and even sizzling flesh was deafening, but the smell was worse.

While shifters usually had stronger senses than other supes, a mage’s senses weren’t much different from a regular human’s, or so I’d been told. Right now, I wished for even less than that. The air was laden with the sharp and overwhelming scent of blood and burned flesh. Nausea rolled over me, but I refused to succumb to it.

Dot jerked as the loudness of it all assaulted her. She was a deer shifter. I bet her flight response would burst into action inone,two…