Free Fall (5 page)

When the noise stopped, the mageheld collapsed at her feet. He saw her shoulders slump with relief. She was wrong. Killing a demon’s physical body wasn’t enough. Not if he wanted to stay alive and free, which he did, and not if he wanted to make sure that goddamned mage couldn’t fuck both those demons worse than he already had.

To stay dead, the dead fiends’ magic had to be safe from the magekind. If Telos allowed the mageheld’s life force to drift sentient but unable to interact with the corporeal world, he risked Michael taking the magic for himself. For the demonkind, that was Hell; to have your still-living magic trapped like that.

Michael came down the steps at a run, blood still dripping from his arms. Idiot. Some vanilla human was going to notice and call the cops. Telos knelt at the nearest mageheld’s side and gave the life there a path home. Though it cost time he didn’t have, he did the same for other one, too. When he was done, he grinned at Michael with vicious satisfaction. “Too late, mage.”

Michael hit the last step, slowed, and then walked toward Fensic. She extended the canister and pointed it at Michael, deadly serious. “Not another step.”

The mage lifted his hands. “You betrayed me.”

She yelped and dropped the canister, shaking her hand as if she’d been burned.

“Fitting, I think, if your companion kills you for me.”

“Enough, Michael.” She stood her ground, shoulders back. She’d gone opaque again. “No more.”

Michael glanced at his arms and muttered something under his breath. His words carried power that made the skin on the back of Telos’s neck ripple. The blood on Michael’s arms flaked away. “Once you two are dead, I think I’ll be done for the day.” He spoke in that tone of aristocratic entitlement the magekind tended to have.

Telos reacted to the magic the mage was holding; a shiver down his spine, the allure of all that power. No way in hell was this asshole some self-taught street mage. Someone like Michael trained for this from the day he could walk and talk. Judging from the color of his eyes, an opaque and unnaturally bright brown, he’d recently taken copa. The effects came at a price. Copa was addictive and eventually lethal for the magekind.

He pulled magic through him again. He was prepared for anything. “There’s rules in this territory, mage.”

“I don’t take orders from demons.”

“Nikodemus won’t be happy when he finds out about the talisman. How many magehelds did you murder to pull off that one?” The unknowns were a worry. He didn’t know how many magehelds Michael had, how much copa was raging through his system, or how much new power he had after the ritual murders. This could go all kinds of wrong fast. He jerked his head in Fensic’s direction. “Not to mention what you’ve been doing to her.”

The mage brushed lingering flakes of blood off one of his arms. “I don’t know what she’s told you, but surely you’ve noticed by now she’s too dangerous to be on her own. Uncontrolled. She doesn’t have any idea what she can do. She might be nothing but a street witch, but she’s almost as dangerous as you.”

“Nikodemus is going to find out about what you’ve been up to.”

“I do not accept that creature’s authority over me. Or anyone.” He sneered. “The sooner you’re all dead, the better.”

“The car,” Fensic said from behind him. “Start the car.”

Without taking his eyes off the mage, Telos pointed his fob backward in the direction of his car and pressed the button. The minute the motor came to life, he flipped the keys to her. He didn’t hear them hit the pavement and hoped that meant she’d caught them. Every second’s delay brought them closer to disaster.

Michael’s attention flicked past him to the car, assessed the risks, then snapped back to him.

Fensic needed time to get to the car. They were both dead if she didn’t make it in time. “You’re going to die a painful death, mage.”

The mage muttered words that weren’t English. A chill shot down Telos’s back and the surface of his skin crawled. He wasn’t any stranger to pain, but the electricity turned searing hot. Foul magic spread through his body as Michael worked the spell that would enslave him. It happened a lot faster than he expected, losing his freedom. His chest burned and his heart slowed. The pain short-circuited his brain. There wasn’t any air, and when the mage headed for him, he was paralyzed.

His legs crumpled and both knees hit pavement with a crack. He fought for his life, reaching for his magic, deeper than could ever have been safe for a place where there were vanilla humans, and he pulled. Nothing happened. Panic and horror at what was happening floored him. There had never been a time when he hadn’t been able to touch his magic. A trickle came through, and he seized it, and pushed all of it at the mage. He managed to rock Michael back on his heels, but the respite wasn’t going to last.

“Khunbish!”

From the street-side, Fensic popped up over the driver’s side of his car and tossed something at him. He caught whatever it was with the tips of his fingers while he battled for what shreds of himself he could protect. Michael walked closer, muttering ugly words, words that touched the core of him and turned it. The tearing inside him stopped his heart.

In a desperate bid for his freedom, he rolled out of Michael’s immediate reach, but he was already dying and about to be reborn a slave. The mage’s will flowed over him like stagnant water. His fingers tightened reflexively, and he realized one of his hands wasn’t empty. A corner of his mind made the ironic observation that he was spending his last moments of freedom with a can of pepper spray.

Michael stood over him, triumphant. “You will kill Lys. Make it painful for her, please.”

On his back, and with his entire body being ripped apart and reshaped as Michael’s order hooked into him, he oriented the device and depressed the button, and then he gave in to the rage of losing his freedom and the compulsion Michael had set on him.

The mage went down sputtering.

The pain and tearing stopped.

Telos’s heart contracted once and sensation flashed through his body.

Michael howled.

His obscene connection to the mage vanished. Telos lurched to his feet. Jesus, fuck. He was going to puke. Right after he killed that goddamned mage so dead the parts left over wouldn’t fill a tuna can. Behind him, a motor revved, and before he could off the mage, his car shot past him, forward and over the verge. Fensic jammed on the brakes in time to pull even with him. Then her head disappeared and the passenger-side door flew open.

“Get in! Khunbish. Now!” She was straightening from her stretch along the seat when his brain understood they needed to get the fuck out of here. He threw himself inside. She hit the gas while he grabbed the passenger door and slammed it shut.

The car flew over the curb so fast his head snapped back and hit the side of the headrest. The BMW went briefly airborne. He braced one hand on the dash and grabbed the seat belt with the other, and somehow he managed not to break his head against the windshield when they hit the pavement. Fensic gunned the car, his head hit the seat again, and they roared down the street like her foot was welded to the gas.

“What the hell?” Fensic threw one hand in the air.

“Both hands, Goddamn it!” He was woozy every way that counted, but his will to not end up bleeding in a heap of twisted metal was in fine working order. “At this speed, you drive with both hands on the wheel.”

Her palm slapped onto the leather-covered steering wheel. The car fishtailed when she took the corner at the first intersection. He reached for his magic and there it was, a wide open tap. A fucking lake, and he pulled until he was inches from a physical change. If Michael came after them, the mage was dead. As long as Fensic didn’t kill them first. She made the next turn at near reasonable speed.

“What the hell was he doing to you?” She wheezed, but her eyes were focused on the road, so there was at least a chance they weren’t going to die. “I felt that. I felt what he did and what it did to you. What the hell was that?”

The loss of her usual cool had the ironic effect of settling him down. Psychically speaking, she was wide open to him and now, now, he understood the control she had over herself, and it terrified him that any street mage could have that kind of magic and live and fool people like him into thinking she was mostly normal.

Lys Fensic was fucked up. Bad. He was already in a volatile state, on the brink of physical transformation, and edgy as hell from all that shit with Michael. He’d been nanoseconds from breaking the one rule he knew Nikodemus enforced ruthlessly. No harming the magekind. He sat up straighter. “Thanks.”

Like thanks even began to cover it.

“Thanks? For what? God, Khunbish, I am so sorry.” Her voice shook.

“Slow down.”

“I know what he’s like. I never should have brought you when there was even a chance he’d be there. Never.”

Rubbing his chest didn’t relieve the ache from Michael’s attempt to take him, but he did it anyway. Now that he was calming down, recovering, he was reacting to Fensic’s unshielded magic. He was turned on. He couldn’t help it. His kind reacted to human magic that way. The magekind counted on it.

“I hope his eyeballs are melting in his head.”

“Amen, sister.” He risked a brush of his finger along her arm because he knew from how she’d reacted before that touching her helped calm her down when her control frayed. One touch and her magic blasted through him hard enough to bring on a partial transformation to one of his other forms. He got that stopped before she noticed. “Get us out of here without getting pulled over, would you?”

Mentally, she closed up. Shut just about everything down, and it scared him to think she could do that to herself. She eased up on the gas, and it was awful seeing the ice queen back. An elegant, ice-cold bitch. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. She focused on the road, but her fingers on the steering wheel were bone white. “Where are we going? Anywhere or do I just drive?”

“For now, just drive.” He kept an eye out for cops. Or a tail. As soon as Michael recovered, he was going to send magehelds after them, no question about that. And not just for him. A trained mage was likely to have at least one mageheld demon skilled at tracking. Even a tracker with mediocre talents could follow the residue he and Fensic had left—were leaving now. If they were lucky, they had a day or two before the next set of magehelds found them. If the tracker had some talent, they might have half that. Telos allowed himself a private smile. Either way, he was going to be ready for the rat bastard mage. Fuck Nikodemus and his rules.

The back of the car shuddered again. “Have you always had a lead foot?”

She slowed to forty-nine. “I have a perfect driving record.”

“How many cops let you off because you smiled pretty?”

“My appearance has nothing to do with the fair and equal administration of justice.”

Telos snorted. “Speed limit here is thirty-five. You’re doing forty-three. Slow down.”

“Fine.” She slowed, but not enough. Two minutes later, the speedometer was back to forty-five.

“Do you have any idea how much a speeding ticket costs in this city? I don’t care if you don’t have a job, I’m not paying the fine.”

“I won’t get a ticket.”

“No, instead you’re going to get us killed. Pull over and let me drive.”

“Forty.”

He looked at the speedometer. “Seven. Forty-seven and this is my fucking car. You wreck my ride and you better be prepared to write me a check.”

She bowed her head and over-corrected after the car drifted because she’d taken her eyes off the road. “Fine.”

They made the switch at the first gas station they came to. They didn’t say anything for several minutes, and he was fine with that. He drove, heading west.

She broke the silence. “Those men at my house.”

He signaled for a turn. He didn’t see any reason to pretend about anything. “They weren’t men.”

“Demons. They were demons, is that right?”

“Magehelds. Your ex-boyfriend’s slaves.”

Her shoulders climbed toward her ears, and he got flashes of her mental state: unsettled, determined, and still on the edge of a psychic crash. Why the hell wasn’t she insane?

“He’s not kidding about killing you,” he said.

“You either.”

“He doesn’t necessarily want me dead.”

Her phone rang, muffled since it was inside her purse. She grabbed it and stared at the screen. “Michael.”

Telos reached over and took the phone away from her. He considered crushing it to bits of plastic, silicon, and metal.

She snatched it back. He couldn’t help but catch the ragged emotions leaking from her. He was getting even more turned on. Nothing he couldn’t control, though. Fensic pressed against the back of the seat and went completely still. After a bit more silence, she dropped the phone onto her lap.

The phone rang again. She picked it up and stared at the display.

“Don’t engage.” He rubbed a finger along the steering wheel.

“You know what?” she said over the ringtone.

“What?”

“You’re right.” Phone in her hand, she pushed the button to roll down her window. Wind whipped through the car. Some of her hair came loose from the roll at the back of her head. She stuck her arm out the window and spread her fingers wide. He heard plastic shatter. She raised the window. “I think we can call that refusing to engage.” Her smile was cold as ice. “Don’t you?”

He looked at her and then out the side window. “It’s a start.”

She looked out the window, too. “I probably shouldn’t have done that. I have a year left on my contract.”

“You can get a new phone.”

She slumped on her seat, unaware, or uncaring, of the way her skirt stayed where it was. He was beyond feeling guilty for looking. “I’d rather have a puppy.”

Telos laughed. “A new phone would be less work and less expensive.”

“True.” Fensic tapped her finger on the top rim of the door. “I can expense a new phone.” She let out a brittle laugh. “Well, I could if I still had a job.”

They didn’t say anything more for the twenty minutes it took to reach his house at the far edge of Presidio Heights. He pulled into his garage, punched the button to close the garage door, and shut off the engine.