Street Magic

fat-barreled—a tranquilizer gun, Pete thought—and he pointed it at her with the arm she hadn't hit. "Cute trick, bitch. Bad luck for you that after your stunt with the bansidhe they sent humans."
    He took aim at Pete. "Cold iron doesn't work on us. Stupid cow." He whispered words of power under his breath and Pete's body tensed of its own accord, anticipating pain.
    No dart slammed into Pete, and it wasn't a gun, either—it was magic. Ice-cold and like slamming into a lorry headfirst, it swept Pete up and tumbled her end over end until she hit the far wall of the kitchen and slid down it into a crumpled heap.
    The sorcerer came to her, pointing the sleek black wand between her eyes. "Got anything to say, mage-whore?"
    Pete grasped the edge of the counter and tensed. She had to make the single second she would receive count. "I say I'd take that wand and shove it up your arse, except you'd probably enjoy that."
    The sorcerer snarled and raised his wand again, and Pete sprang, twisting his arm and driving it backward into his stomach. The spell fired a half-second later, and the sorcerer screamed. A pit of flesh exploded at close range, as though the sorcerer had just collided with a car.
    Pete left him to bleed and ran to find Jack.
    Two of the masked men were holding him down and a third was hitting Jack in the face, cursing at him unintelligibly. "Pete…" he managed between blows. "Pete… get back…"
    Pete hit the closest with the frying pan, every ounce of her strength behind the blow. The man didn't shout or scream, he just crumpled with a crease in the side of his skull. The one hitting Jack turned and swiped at her with a skinning knife that appeared from his sleeve. Pete ducked the blade and planted her foot in his gut, and when he doubled, slammed the iron into the back of his head.
    "Stop!" The man holding Jack held his wand to Jack's head. His was spindly and brown, like a piece of root. "Leave off or I spread his brains like jelly, you tart."
    Pete's eyes flicked to Jack's face. Her heart was slamming into her breastbone and she wanted nothing more than to beat the men who'd beaten Jack until they were pulpy sacks of flesh.
    "Listen to him," Jack mumbled through a split lip. "They're sorcerers, they mean it." His hand worked into the pocket of his jeans as the sorcerer glared at Pete. She ignored him and frowned at Jack, ever so slightly. He stared back and then dropped her a wink, so quickly Pete wondered if she'd imagined it.
    She dearly hoped she hadn't.
    "Are you deaf, missy? Drop the kitchenware and get your arse over here!"
    "You'll wish you'd taken your chances with me," Pete said. She dropped the frying pan.
    "Move!" the sorcerer snarled. To Jack he said, "I'm going to fuck her before I kill you. She's tasty, Winter, I'll give you credit for that."
    Pete sighed. "That was the worst thing you could have said."
    Jack's flick-knife sprang open in his pocket, and he pulled his hand free. A little bit of blue fire burst around him, more spark than flame, and when Pete looked again Jack had slipped the sorcerer's grip.
    The man stared, slack and confused for a breath too long. Jack's hand whipped out and he drove the thin blade into the sorcerer's throat to the hilt. "Last thing, too," Jack said, and then his legs went out from under him and he sat awkwardly on the floor with a thump.
    The sorcerer gurgled and fell back, his wand rolling away and blood pulsing out of the wound in time with his heartbeat. Pete knelt down next to Jack, lifting him up with a hand behind his head. Her fingers met a sticky cut.
    "Oh, God," she said. "Jack…"
    " 'M all right, luv," he mumbled. He spat blood and sat up, wiggling his jaw experimentally. "Nothing broken, a few sexy bruises… all in all, could've ended much worse."
    One of Jack's eyes was blacked and he had a triple set of cuts along his cheekbone overriding his old scar. Blood trickled freely down his chin, but he managed to grin at Pete, even though he gave a soft grunt of pain.
    "You look like you just faced off against the entire starting line of Man United," she said. "And the bruises are
not
sexy."
    "That's what your lips say, but your adorable little blush tells me they are," Jack said.
    "I was
worried
you had been
killed
," Pete said severely. She worried her lip with her teeth. "Something's bothering me…" She couldn't make it come clear with all of the adrenaline from the fight still in her veins, but it roiled her stomach nervously.
    "Don't