The thought made the black rage rise in me once more, and I dug down even deeper inside myself. It only took me a moment to release another cold blast of power, this one even stronger than before. The rest of the ridge iced over, and the crystals kept right on going, spreading out into the woods beyond and the clearing below, until the rocks, trees, grass, and leaves glittered like polished glass.
Still, despite the elemental Ice, one man actually managed to climb all the way up to the top of the ridge. He stopped short of pulling himself up and over the crest.
Instead, he held on to the cold, slippery rocks with one hand, while he raised the gun in his other hand to fire at me.
Before he could pull the trigger, I rose to my feet and kicked him in the face, smashing my boot into his nose.
The sharp jab made his body arch back, and he lost his grip on the slick rocks. End over end, he plummeted to the clearing below. I’d hoped that he would plow into a few of his friends on the way down and knock them off the ridge too, but I’d kicked him too hard, and he fell clear of the rocks.
Snap.
I heard his neck break all the way up where I was. I grinned again. One down. Many more to go.
I crouched down over the ridge again, sending wave after wave of Ice magic out into the rocks and trees and grass below. cold sweat soaked my clothes, my lungs burned, and my head began to pound from the effort of concentrating so long and so hard, from the sheer will that it took to force all of my magic out in all directions at once.
Steam rose from the Ice, shrouding the ridge, the woods, and the clearing below in a cold, eerie, misty fog.
Well, that should give my friends a bit more cover as they trekked down the mountain.
Still, despite my best efforts, it wasn’t enough.
If only it had been a cloudy day, my crystalline creation might have lasted a little longer, but the July sun was already beating down on the ridge and slowly baking it once more. I’d made the Ice as thick as I could, but it wouldn’t be long before it melted away. But I’d done all that I could do to help Sophia, Owen, and Warren escape. The rest was up to them.
So I let go of the few remaining scraps of my Ice power.
My spider-rune ring was completely empty of magic. I had a bit of Stone power left, but it wouldn’t do me much good now, unless I wanted to use it to harden my skin, protect myself from the bullets that were still coming my way, and dash off into the woods.
But I wasn’t going to run. I might have given Sophia and the others a good head start, but her injuries, combined with Warren’s, would make their escape a slow one.
I still needed to give Grimes, Hazel, and their men something else to focus on for at least a little while longer: me.
I slid my knife up my sleeve, grabbed the guns from where I’d placed them on the rocks, and waited for
Grimes’s men to come.
After seeing what had happened to their buddy with the broken neck, Grimes’s men quit trying to climb up the frozen rocks to get to me. But they had just as hard a time getting back down again, and several slipped off the ridge and fell to the ground below. Moans, groans, and high pitched whimpers drifted up to me, along with the sharp, satisfying snap-snap-snap of bones breaking. My elemental Ice hadn’t killed any more of the men, but I’d put at least a few of them out of commission. Hard to think about chasing after someone when your own femur was sticking up out of your skin like a lollipop gushing blood.
I looked down dispassionately at one man, who was crying, rocking back and forth, and clutching his leg. I could see the white of his bone from where I was. He wouldn’t be getting up without an Air elemental to heal him. Even then, the process of being healed would be as excruciating as the broken leg itself. They should just shoot him. It would be kinder—
Crack!
A bullet zinged off the rocks to my right, and I realized that one man had already made the trek through the woods and up the side of the ridge.
Crack! Crack!
Too bad he had lousy aim. The bullets pinged off the rocks around me, but none of them actually came close to hitting me.
I ducked down behind a boulder, then scrambled on top of it and launched myself through the air. The man raised his gun, but I hit his body before he could pull the trigger, and we both went down on the ground. I was the only one who got back up.
Footsteps crunched through the leaves on the trail to my right, and shouts rose from that direction, like a pack of hounds baying out their location.
“Up here!”
“There she is!”
“Get that bitch!”
Men darted out of the woods and headed toward me.
I raised the guns in my hands and took aim.
Sophia. Jo-Jo. Fletcher.
That was the mantra I chanted in my head as I fired off shot after shot, carefully aiming at every person who came within range of my weapons and trying to make every single bullet count. Man after man went down, tumbling to a stop at my feet with holes in their heads, necks, and chests, but all too soon, my guns click-click-clicked empty.
I threw them away, palmed the knife that I’d tucked up my sleeve, and grabbed another one out of a pocket on my vest. More properly attired, I twirled the weapons in my hands and stepped forward.
Sophia. Jo-Jo. Fletcher.
I whirled first one way, then the other, cutting into every man who got within arm’s and knife’s reach of me, trying to make every single slice and stab as devastating as possible. Blood spattered everywhere, on me and especially on the rocks. Below my feet, the stone began sing— ing a dark, rousing tune about all the death that I was dealing out, and I found myself merrily, loudly humming along in time to it, even though I was the only one who could hear the vicious chorus.
I sang, but the men screamed, the sounds rending the air like my knives did their flesh, the high, sharp echoes reverberating around the ridge and then rattling off into the trees and forest beyond. I hoped Sophia could hear these bastards’ terror. I hoped it put the same hard, merci— less smile on her face that it did on mine.
Sophia. Jo-Jo. Fletcher.
Time ceased to have any meaning. There were just enemies to cut down, one after another, as quickly, brutally, and efficiently as I could, before moving on to the next
man standing. I stabbed arms and legs and chests. Drove
my blades into throats and ripped them out again. Even punched my knife through one man’s eye. His screams were among the loudest and most satisfying.
That man fell, and I whirled around to face my next foe—and realized that Grimes and Hazel stood behind me, flanked by several more of their gang.
Grimes’s gaze scanned over his dead men at my feet, then flicked up to me. His expression was unreadable, but I knew exactly what I looked like. Strands of dark brown hair falling out of my ponytail and sticking to my sweaty, blood covered face and neck. Even more blood spattered across my hands and arms, with still more soaked into my vest and the rest of my clothes. Even my socks squished with blood, and my boots had left behind an intricate pattern of dull brown stains on the gray rocks, as though I’d been tracing a complicated dance routine over and over again.
“Who the hell are you?” Hazel asked.
I grinned. “Your worst fucking nightmare.”
The men standing behind Grimes and Hazel shifted uneasily on their feet. Their leaders might not be afraid of me, but they were—and with good reason.