Free Small Magics by Ilona Andrews

gift from the south tower.
    He was completely exposed now. The next bolt would hit him where it counted. Adam braced himself. He couldn’t dodge a bolt, but he could turn into it. Better take one in the shoulder than one in the gut.
    The guard tower stood silent and still. No bolts sliced his flesh. He grasped the shaft of the bolt protruding from his thigh and wrenched it out. It hurt like hell, but it would heal. It always did.
    The tower’s door slid open, and Siroun emerged. Behind her, a camouflaged figure fell to the floor, its arms slack. Siroun leaped onto the green shoot feeding the ward and dashed along its length as if it were a wide path on solid ground.
    So graceful.
    Siroun reached the end of the shoot, crouched, and struck in the same smooth movement, slashing the roots. Pale liquid oozed from the cuts. She cut again, lightning fast. The ward trembled and vanished, and she dropped to the ground softly.
    Adam sprinted to the house. When he got going, he was impossible to stop. His shoulder smashed into the reinforced door. It flew open with a pitiful screech of snapped bolts and shattered boards. Adam stumbled in, glimpsed the sharp end of the crossbow bolt staring at him from six feet away, and dodged to the left. The bow twanged, and the bolt fell at his feet sliced in half. Siroun leaped forward, swung her curved knives, and the guard’s head rolled to the floor. Blood spurted in a thin spray from the stump of the neck, painting the wall crimson. The body took a step forward and tumbled down.
    Adam exhaled.
    “Death number one,” Siroun whispered.
    * * *
    The house stank of unclean magic. Siroun ran down the hallway, light on her feet. Adam’s hulking form moved next to her. It always amazed her how fast he could move. You’d expect a man of his size to shamble, but he was surprisingly agile, the way giant bears were sometimes surprisingly agile just before their claws caught you.
    They had been making their way toward the center of the house, where Chang’s blueprint indicated a stairway. They’d run into the guards. Both times, she avoided casualties. Now the bloodlust sang through her, slithering its way through her veins like a starving, enraged serpent. She needed a release.
    Somewhere deep within the house, a knot of foul magic smoldered. It brushed against her when she stepped through the door and recoiled, but not fast enough, not before she caught the taint of its magic. It felt old, primitive, and starved, gnawed by the same hunger inside her that longed for blood and severed lives.
    A faint red sheen blocked the hallway ahead. Another ward, weaker and simpler than the first. Still, it would take time.
    Adam moved toward the ward, casually bumping the fey lantern on the ceiling with his hand. The hallway drowned in darkness.
    She ran up to the ward on her toes and swept her palm over its surface, close but never touching. Thin streaks of yellow lightning snaked through the red, trailing the heat of her hand. Past it, down the hall, she saw another translucent red wall.
    Three men burst from the side room on their left. Adam barreled into them like a battering ram. The two front guards flew several feet and crashed to the ground in a heap of cracked bones. Siroun snapped a kick, connecting with the third guard’s jaw. He went down with a low moan.
    Adam bent over the fallen female guard. The woman jerked back when she saw his face. He probed her side. “You have a broken rib,” he informed the woman. “Don’t move.”
    She glared at him with remarkably blue eyes. “Go fuck yourself.”
    Siroun pulled the duct tape from her pack. Six seconds, and the guards lay trussed up on the floor. Adam spun toward the ward. Siroun touched his arm and pointed to the side room. He understood and charged into it. His shoulder hit the wall. The wooden boards exploded, and she followed him into the next room, bypassing the ward.
    Another wall, another crash, another ragged hole in the wood. The sheer