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me.”
    Khunbish grabbed her shoulder and pushed her in the direction of the street. “Move.”
    Long before they made it back to the sidewalk, the two men were after them, running full speed.

CHAPTER 4
    Telos pulled as much magic through him as he could without triggering a shift in his physical form. The burn forced a roar from him, half frustration at the need to limit himself, half joy at the power. The air crackled around him as he drew hard on his magic, pulling up from its source and through his body until the energy electrified him. Fensic was taking the steps two at a time. He jumped all of them, skidded to a stop and whipped around to intercept the magehelds while she sprinted for his car.
    He kept himself between her and Michael’s two magehelds as they, too, raced for the street. Both of them were under the mage’s compulsion, so they were moving fast. Once Fensic had a few steps on him—she was fast despite running in heels—he put on the brakes and whirled to the two magehelds.
    They were practically on him, big motherfuckers not looking to start a friendship. He didn’t have time to do anything but go for a kill, the hell with anything she might see that she shouldn’t.
    As soon as the first mageheld’s eyes turned colors, he released everything he had on tap straight into the fiend’s head. A shriek tore through the air, high and piercingly loud. Telos magically dampened the sound before the whole neighborhood called the goddamned police. At the same time, he darted in and slipped an arm around the demon’s neck, braced with his hand and twisted hard because he wasn’t going to get a second chance. He released and stepped back. The corpse dropped bonelessly to the sidewalk.
    The silence was freaky. The other demon had looped around while Telos killed his buddy. It didn’t matter if the remaining mageheld had been fucking in love with the dead fiend. He’d been given a kill order, he had to obey, and that’s what he was doing. Another scream shattered the peace.
    With a mageheld fiend bent on hunting down a witch he’d been told he could fuck at his leisure before he killed her, a two or three second delay was way too long. Telos shot toward Fensic, expecting to see that the mageheld had her already. But she wasn’t the one who’d screamed like a girl. The mageheld was on his knees, scrabbling at his eyes while she stood over him, eyes wild, a small canister in her outstretched arm. Mist wafted toward him, and then his eyes burned and watered, too. She’d maced the guy.
    The mageheld lurched to his feet, still digging at his face. Nothing short of death was going to stop him from doing what he’d been ordered. Probably in the most unpleasant way imaginable. Telos was the last thing between the mageheld and the only revenge an enslaved demon ever got.
    He pulled again and unloaded directly into the mageheld’s head the way he had with the other one. The psychic scream deafened him, but he kept going, shredding the demon’s mental and physical boundaries until the only thing left was a sort of magical goo. It was brutal, but he didn’t see that he had a choice, unless he was going to let Fensic die.
    When the noise stopped, the mageheld collapsed at her feet. He saw her shoulders slump with relief. She was wrong. Killing a demon’s physical body wasn’t enough. Not if he wanted to stay alive and free, which he did, and not if he wanted to make sure that goddamned mage couldn’t fuck both those demons worse than he already had.
    To stay dead, the dead fiends’ magic had to be safe from the magekind. If Telos allowed the mageheld’s life force to drift sentient but unable to interact with the corporeal world, he risked Michael taking the magic for himself. For the demonkind, that was Hell; to have your still-living magic trapped like that.
    Michael came down the steps at a run, blood still dripping from his arms. Idiot. Some vanilla human was going to notice and call the cops. Telos knelt