The giant fell forward onto me, his eyes already going glassy, and I wiggled out from underneath his heavy weight. I got to my feet and stood there, still breathing hard, a bloody knife in one hand and the other hand resting on the back of the table that I’d rolled over.
Behind me, someone started clapping.
I whirled around and found Randall Dekes waiting for me.
The vampire stood in front of the fireplace, still clapping. He wore another pair of dapper gray pants topped by a matching shirt. Once again, that palm tree diamond nestled in the exact center of his silk tie. He must have been working in some other part of the mansion, perhaps his office, because he wasn’t wearing a jacket, and he’d rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. No dart guns up his sleeves tonight. Good.
He’d cleaned the blood off his face since the last time I’d seen him, but he hadn’t bothered to hide the elemental power glowing in his eyes. All that stolen magic made the vamp’s gaze burn with emerald green fire—a fire that I was looking forward to snuffing out forever.
I hadn’t seen Dekes before when I’d done a quick scan of the room, and a second later, I realized why. A door along the back wall was standing open, one I hadn’t noticed before because it was hidden in one of the bookcases. The vamp had slipped into the library from some other part of the house while I’d been fighting the giant. I would have preferred to backstab Dekes from the shadows, but I supposed this saved me the trouble of looking for him.
“What is that? Some sort of secret passageway?” I asked, finally getting my breath back. “Isn’t that a little cliché?”
Instead of being pissed that I was still alive and mocking him, the vampire’s face split into a sinister smile.
“Ah, Gin. What a delightful surprise this is,” Dekes practically purred. “I’m so very happy you’re still alive. More so than you can possibly imagine.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I doubt you’ll be thinking it’s so fucking delightful when you’re choking on all that stolen elemental blood running through your veins.”
Dekes let out a mocking laugh. “Ah, if only you’d known how many people have said something like that to me over the years.”
Instead of responding to him, I tightened my grip on my knife and took a step forward. I was about twenty feet away from the vampire, which meant I was too far away to cut him with my knife, and, with his fast reflexes, he’d be quick enough to duck out of the way if I threw the weapon at him. And of course, I didn’t have enough Ice magic to freeze him where he stood. No, I had to keep Dekes talking while I whittled down the distance between us and got him within arm’s reach.
“I’m sure lots of people have wished you dead over the years, given what a sick, sadistic bastard you are,” I said. “It’s just a shame no one’s been able to make it happen—until now.”
Dekes gave me a small, patronizing smile, as if I were a child whom he was indulging in a temper tantrum.
“You don’t have any hostages to hold over my head now,” I continued, taking another step forward. “My friends have Callie, along with Vanessa and Victoria, and they’re getting them out of the mansion as we speak. And I can tell you aren’t packing your charming little tranquilizer gun up your sleeve tonight. So the way I see it, there’s absolutely nothing to keep me from gutting you where you stand.”
“Ah, but there is,” Dekes said. “You, Gin. Specifically all that lovely, lovely magic I took from you yesterday.”
The vampire held out his hand, and a silver light began to flicker over his palm. I recognized that light—it was the cool glow of my own Ice and Stone magic. Even across the room, I could feel my own power, my own stolen magic, calling out to me. It was one of the most bizarre sensations I’d ever felt, so twisted and wrong and utterly confusing that it put me off my game for one precious second.
A second that cost me dearly.
It was one thing to know that the vamp had my stolen magic running through his veins. It was another to come face-to-face with him—with it. Dekes smiled at the growing horror in my eyes. I rushed forward, trying to close the distance between us and stab him to death, but it was already too late. The silver light coalesced into a ball of power.
It took only a second for the vampire to rear back his hand back and throw my own magic at me.
24
I immediately reached for my Stone magic, trying to use it to make my skin as hard as marble, trying to protect myself from, well, myself.
But there wasn’t any more Stone power in my body right now than there had been Ice magic before when I’d been trying to make the lockpicks. The ball of silvery magic slammed into my chest, right in the same spot where the giant had hit me earlier. I managed to summon up enough magic to blunt the full strength of the vampire’s attack, but the force of it threw me back against the table, and I fell to the floor again. It felt like a concrete fist had hit me, and once again, I gasped for air.
“I’m not sure if you’ve figured it out yet, but I’m not going to kill you,” Dekes murmured, stepping forward and leaning down, his shoes a foot away from my face. “That would be far too wasteful. Oh, no, Gin. I’m going to keep you alive for as long as I can. So I can dine on your delicious, magical blood for as long as I can. With your blood, with your Ice and Stone magic, I can become twice as powerful as I already am. I know about the void Mab Monroe’s death has left in the underworld in Ashland. Perhaps I’ll move up there and take over her operations. Wouldn’t that be ironic? You killing Mab, and then me using you to pick up the pieces of her organization. It’s quite poetic if you think about it.”
It was one thing to want to kill me outright, to want to carve me up into bloody bits the way I’d done to so many other people. I could understand that. Hell, I could even respect it. But Dekes was suggesting keeping me around as his fucking pet, the way he had Vanessa, Victoria, and who knew how many other women. I’d already suffered once at his hands, and I had no desire to repeat the experience.
The vampire biting me over and over again, driving his teeth into my neck and wrists, and sucking the magic, power, and life out of me for years, maybe decades, on end. Just thinking about it made me want to vomit. To say that it would be my own personal hell was an understatement. It would be a waking nightmare—one that even I might not be able to endure or escape from.
Once again, I felt cold, cold fear pressing down on me, smothering me, paralyzing me, but I ruthlessly pushed the feeling aside, squashing it under my own rage. Fear was a useless emotion. Fletcher had taught me that with our trip to Bone Mountain so long ago. He’d left me there in the woods and forced me to rely on myself that day so I’d be prepared for moments like this. So that I’d have the strength and the will to overcome my fear and take down anyone who was stupid enough to mess with me.
I drew in a breath and surged up, trying to drive my knife into Dekes’s black heart the same way that I had the giant moments before. Trying to end this—now.
But the vampire was expecting the move. He held out his hand and blasted me back down to the floor with the Air magic he’d stolen from Victoria when he’d taken her blood. I tried to get up, but Dekes held out his hand, keeping the force of the Air magic steady across my chest and arms like an invisible lead weight pinning me down. No matter how I strained, cursed, and struggled, I just didn’t have enough magic to push back his Air power and free myself.