Free Blackbirds & Bourbon by Heather R. Blair

we slide over the ice-covered tarmac.
    My elbow knocks painfully against the buckling window as I lose my grip on the ceiling, having never refastened my seat belt. We bounce off stone again and back the other way. I see sparks fly and smell gas, my stomach starting to tighten and heave as I bite down on my lip and taste blood.
    This time when we hit the safety rail it gives way with a resounding crack, sending us free-falling toward the angry grey water.

7
     
    My door is yanked open seemingly in mid-air.
    Jack pulls me from the SUV just before it goes over. I don’t see or hear anything else because in seconds we’re deep in the woods, probably miles from the highway.
    My stomach roils violently the instant he lets go of the wind. I stumble, feeling dizzy and confused. Jack stays close long enough to make sure I’m not going to fall down or hurl, then he backs away, both hands stabbing through his ice-speckled hair as he snarls, “Do you have a death wish, Seph? Is what happened on that beach messing with your head that bad?”
    I put a hand out to a tree to steady my trembling legs, shaking with the combined effects of the short hop on the wind, the accident and the extreme cold of the storm swirling around us. “Of course it’s messing with my head, Jack. Because unlike some people, I actually have a conscience, not to mention a goddamn heart!”
    “You think I don’t have a heart ?” There is something like laughter in his voice, but the bitterness in it hurts my ears.
    Jack whirls away, throwing out an arm. A thin sheet of ice balloons through the glade, sparkling blue and green and pink. Slowly it expands and rises toward the angry sky. Unreal, otherworldly and unbelievably beautiful, like the skin of a frozen bubble, it stretches above us, creaking and groaning as it holds back the fury of the storm. The noise reminds me of that night on the beach, right before the wall of ice came down…
    I suck in a breath. Jack glances over his shoulder, his gaze narrowing at whatever he sees on my face. Just as abruptly those frosty irises widen again.
    “Down, Seph!” he shouts.
    I dive, barely getting a glimpse of the vampire flashing through the woods before he hits Jack, knocking him sideways. Glistening fangs sink deep into Jack’s shoulder, tearing through leather and flesh. Jack sways, barely keeping his feet as Ivo clings to his back like a pale monkey and drinks.
    And drinks.
    I’m too stunned to scream. Getting to my knees, I lift my hands, muttering my rhyme with a swiftness born of terror as Jack starts to recover, slamming an elbow into Ivo’s face. Blood flies as the vampire releases him, stark crimson splattering against the snow. With a shattering creak, Jack’s protective layer of ice collapses. Jack looks up and curses as the wind howls down on us once more.
    Ivo steps back, his broken nose already healing, a wide, victorious smile stretching his bloodstained lips. “There goes your magic, Frost.”
    “But not mine.” My hair whips over my face, already coated in sleet and stinging my skin. I’ve got this.
    I hope.
    It doesn’t matter if Ivo ingested Jack’s protection against me along with his magic, because my spell’s not aimed at the vampire, but the sky.
    Like a golden whip, my magic lashes at the dark mass of clouds. A rip forms instantly, a single shaft of sunlight piercing through the storm, bright and blinding. Ivo’s eyes widen, then his face starts to blister and peel, blackening like a marshmallow over a campfire, sending the smell of roasting flesh and ash into the air. With a scream, he vanishes from sight. He might be dead or more likely miles away, recuperating, but either way, the vampire’s no longer an immediate threat.
    Jack watches blankly as I run forward to press my fingers to the warm blood seeping from his jacket. The healing I’m trying for doesn’t take; my innate magic fizzles and dies where it touches him. He’s still immune to me. “Fuck!”
    He doesn’t