Free Breathless Magic by Rachel Higginson

and the last
thing I wanted to do was taint my skin. But I wanted maximum damage done to
this sick bastard, and I knew that could be accomplished by touching him.
    I wrapped my fingers around his outstretched hands and
didn’t even bother to hide my shudder of revulsion. His Magical current was
stolen and foreign in his body. It felt wrong beneath his skin, completely
misplaced. I shivered again at the wrongness of it.
    Playing out my lie, I let my own Magic buzz into his skin
gently. “Concentrate,” I instructed. “You have to open your mind to accepting
this. You have to want the Magic to transfer.” I was pulling this crap from
thin air, but the buzzing seemed to convince him that I was telling the truth.
    “Keep your guns pointed at her belly,” he demanded but then
closed his eyes as if that would help.
    Idiot.
    My Magic built steadily between us as I pushed a little more
into him. He was feeling something but it was not his own prodigal energy
returning to him. It was just me, getting ready to blow him up.
    I tested his Magic, to see if I could steal it quickly
enough, but it wouldn’t budge. I realized that whatever he’d done to Liv, he’d
used the same process on himself. Trying to extract his now bonded Magic
actually hurt, like I’d grabbed an electric fence or stuck a fork in an
electrical outlet. So I backed off. I didn’t want him to notice what I was
doing.
    I thought about his sickness and how that contrasted with
his immovable Magic. If he didn’t reclaim his original energy from me, he could
live forever like this- miserable and ill. It was a small consolation for
everything he’d done to me.
    I tightened my grip on his hands so he couldn’t pull away
easily and let the Magic release faster. His eyebrows dipped as if he wasn’t
quite sure this was right. I pushed more Magic into him and he opened his mouth
as if to give an instruction that I had no doubt I would not like.
    So I let it all go.
    I took from Kiran’s Magic, I pulled from the air around me,
from the ions in the atmosphere, from the particles and atoms, from every
living, breathing, elemental thing until my Magic was a firestorm of danger. I
forced the entire wild force into him at once. There was a sucking sound as if
the Magic was forced through a funnel and then Terletov’s eyes grew impossibly
wide. He looked at me accusatorily for just a moment until the pressure sent
him flying into the ceiling above.
    His body lit up as if I’d actually implanted a bomb inside
him. He hit the high rock ceiling with enough force to break through the stone
and send debris and gravel raining down on us. He let out a terrifying scream
of pain and fear before crashing back to the ground unconscious and limp. He
landed on a pile of rubble made from his own body, blood trickling from his
pale lips and arms and legs bent at unnatural angles.
    His men stared at him with a mixture of shock and awe, but
Kiran and I had the element of surprise on our side this time. We turned to each other, back-to-back, and went to work on the room.
    We didn’t have fancy weapons like they did, but we didn’t
need them.
    Our Magic was strong enough that any weapon thrown at us
could be disabled easily.
    The room flashed with our navy blue energy field as we
disabled gun after gun and man after man. They fell at our feet like dominoes
lined up to be knocked over. We took Magic after Magic, adding it to our
bountiful collection.
    An over-achiever noticed our success and took initiative by
shooting Titus in the neck with his gun. The little bastard was my very next
victim. At the same time I released my smoke to heal Titus, I took the
electricity from that same Guard like I was stealing candy from a baby.
    Titus blinked awake from the ground and grunted a slew of
creative curse words.
    Kiran picked up a discarded sword from one of the men we’d
felled and sliced through Titus’s wrist restraints, then his ankle shackles.
Titus stood up and nodded in gratitude