Read Free Fall for Free Online

there.” He smiled as he put a faint emphasis on your . He didn’t let go of her arm, not right away, and they stood there staring at each other while she drew on the bizarre calmness the contact offered. His eyes were completely black. No colors. Just black. She could drop into them and never come out. Five minutes of peace, that’s all she wanted. Five minutes of not having anyone’s fate force its way into her head. That was her idea of paradise.
    He let go of her, and the fractures began to reappear. But now she had more reserves than before. He stayed in front while they walked up the slope to the house she’d lived in for going on ten years. She couldn’t help but wonder how things had gone so wrong. It was her home, and Michael had just moved in and taken over everything.
    Khunbish took the lead up the concrete stairs. There were seventeen of them with a landing in between. When they reached the landing, she fumbled around for her keys and eventually found them in a corner of her bag. He looked over his shoulder at her, and she held up the keys. He didn’t take them from her.
    “We don’t get in without the keys.”
    “Yes we do.”
    She blinked. “You can do that?”
    “Fensic.” He spread his arms wide.
    Computer hacker, door jacker. She should have known. She dropped her keys back in her purse and glanced at her front door. The house gave her the creeps. The upstairs lights were off, but there was a light on downstairs. While she watched someone walked between the light and the curtained window.
    Her heart thumped so hard it hurt. “He’s home.” She took a step back. “Jesus, he’s home.” She tugged on his arm, harder a second time than the first. He didn’t budge either time. “Let’s go. Now.”
    “Fuck.”
    Too late. Too late. Too late. She clamped down on herself because she damn well knew their lives depended on her not losing it. Michael knew how to hurt her when she lost control.
    The front door opened, and Michael stepped onto the porch. From as far away as they were from him, she could still feel that peculiar fullness in the back of her head that seemed to come along with Michael. Not quite the same sensation as with Khunbish, but then Khunbish, she suspected, was a much more powerful mage.
    Michael’s eyes tracked downward, and he walked to the edge of the porch. He’d been using; she could tell from his fever-bright eyes. He looked down to where she and Khunbish stood, a familiar sneer curing the edge of his mouth.
    “Oh, God,” she whispered. “What’s he done?”
    Michael’s arms were deep crimson up to his elbows. Drops of liquid red slid from his fingers to the ground. He shook his head to get his sandy hair off his forehead. Two men emerged from the house and stood behind him, both of them with hair buzzed short. One she didn’t recognize, but the other was the man who’d crashed into her car. He pointed at her and slowly grinned.
    “Lys.” Michael held out a red fist and slowly unfurled his fingers. Bright, glittering sand trickled onto the porch, but more red dripped from his arms to the ground. “You lying bitch.”
    “Asshole,” Khunbish said under his breath.
    “I don’t know why you thought I wouldn’t find it.” Michael swept the toe of his shoe over the sand and pushed some of it to the stair below. He stared at Khunbish. The men behind him stared at her. “This is all that’s left.”
    Her head was back in a vise, her vision going grainy and narrow. But she had control. She wasn’t going to lose it. She refused. Michael wasn’t going hurt her. Not ever again. “You’re supposed to be in LA.”
    “As you can see, I am not.” His attention moved from Khunbish to her. His calculating, drug-enhanced confidence made her sick. He was always worse when he was using. He gestured at the man to his right, the one from the car accident. “You. She’s yours. When you’re done with her, kill her. You.” He motioned to the other. “Bring the fiend to