Free Fall by Carolyn Jewel Read Free Book Online

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