But Benson was truly hopped up on adrenaline, emotion, and blood now, and he whirled around almost too fast for me to follow. One second, he was doing his best bogeyman impression with the crowd. The next, he’d snatched Owen’s hammer out of midair. He let out an amused chuckle, then turned and hurled the weapon as hard as he could. It sailed away as free and easy as a kite, as if Benson had the strength of some Olympic god, and it didn’t stop until it clattered against the side of his mansion, knocking a chunk of stone off the side before falling to the ground.
Benson grinned at me again, his fangs seeming even bloodier than before. “And now, Gin, I think it’s time for you to die.”
Before I could move, before I could react, before I could even think about ducking, Benson was on me. I lashed out with my knife, but he let out a mocking laugh and slapped the weapon out of my hand. I palmed another knife, but Benson slapped that one away too, sending it flying through the air. It came to a stop right beside my first knife. I started to reach for the third knife against the small of my back, but Benson stepped forward, grabbed my shoulders, and slammed his head into mine.
With all of that fresh blood and emotion pumping through his veins, this blow was harder and sharper than all the others he’d landed so far. I felt like my skull had gotten run over by a Mack truck, and I lost my grip on my Stone magic.
Benson used the opening to head-butt me again.
I managed to bring enough of my magic back to bear to keep the blow from killing me outright, but my brain rattled around in my skull like a coin tumbling through a slot machine. White, gray, and black stars winked on and off in my vision, and I was flat on my back on the pavement before I realized what was happening.
I lay there, trying to blink-blink-blink the dangerous spots away and come up with some sort of plan that would let me kill Benson without getting dead myself. In my earpiece, I could hear Bria, Xavier, Owen, Finn, and Phillip all screaming at me to getup-getup-getup!, but scrambled brains aren’t great for comprehension or action.
I blinked again, and Benson was kneeling on the pavement beside me, his hand wrapped around my throat. He easily hoisted me off the ground and lifted me up into the air, so that my feet were kicking in the breeze and my gaze was level with his.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Bria, Owen, and Xavier start forward, only to draw up short as Benson’s men moved in front of them, cutting them off from me.
“I don’t have the angle,” Finn yelled in my ear. “I don’t have a shot!”
“Neither do I!” Phillip yelled back.
Things had not gone my way, and my friends were still trying to save me. But they were going to be too late.
So I’d just have to save myself.
I pushed all the noise away. Finn and Phillip still screaming in my ear. Bria, Xavier, and Owen shouting from behind the guards. The excited whispers of the crowd. I ignored it all and focused on Benson. The sweaty warmth of his hand wrapped around my throat. The strength in his arm as he held me up. The hot blue glow of magic in his eyes. The bloody flecks painting his glasses. The lemony scent wafting up from his body.
It was that last one, his smell, that made me flash back to my time in his lab. Different day, same situation. Because right now, I was just as helpless as I’d been in his chair, when Benson shoved that Burn pill down my throat and then made me swallow it—
Malevolent understanding burned through me like acid, making me grin. Because I wasn’t helpless. Not here, not now, not ever.
And I knew how I could beat Benson: the exact same way he’d beaten me.
All around us, the crowd gasped, pressing forward in anticipation of the end. They knew that this was the moment when the vamp could snap my neck with a thought, if he so chose.
Benson knew it too, because he started laughing. He turned this way and that, lifting me up higher and higher into the air for the crowd’s and his own inspection and amusement, as if I were some sort of trophy he’d won and was hoisting skyward.
But what the bastard didn’t realize was that he hadn’t won—not yet—and that I wasn’t about to let him be the end of me.
Finally, Benson quit waving my body through the air and brought me back down so that my eyes were level with his again. He stared at me, his happy face creasing into a thoughtful frown. Once again, he did that weird, tilting thing with his head, staring at me like a bird about to gobble up a worm, as if he were surprised by something I’d said, even though he had such a tight grip on my throat that I could have barely done more than croak out a few words, even if I’d wanted to crow about how I was going to kill him.
“Fascinating,” he said. “Truly fascinating.”
Benson loosened his hold on my neck and waved his free hand in front of my face. The rough, sandpaper feel of his Air magic sloughed against my body, trying to pinpoint the emotions under the surface of my skin and tear them out of me. But I didn’t let them. Instead, I reached for my Ice magic and let the cold power center me the way it had done so many times in the past.
Benson gave me a little shake, as if trying to rattle the emotions out of me, like pennies stuck to the bottom of a glass jar. I gritted my teeth as my brain sloshed around inside my skull again, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of hissing in pain. Instead, I focused on my magic, letting it make me as cold as ice—literally—from the inside out.
But my lack of response, my lack of emotion, my lack of fear, made him go from curious to enraged in a heartbeat.
“How can you be so damn calm?” he hissed. “Don’t you know that I’m seconds away from killing you? Where’s your fear? Your panic? I want your terror, Gin. Give it to me. Give it to me now.”
I rasped out a low chuckle. “Oh, sugar, do you really think that you’re the only nasty thing that’s ever had his hand around my throat? Please. This isn’t my first heavyweight bout, but it’s going to be your last.”
He shook me again, then brought his face even closer to mine, so close that I could smell the coppery stink of blood on his breath, mixed with his lemony scent, both as bitter and foul as any poison. “You should be scared, you stupid fool.”
“No,” I countered. “You should be scared. You like getting people hooked on your drugs because it makes it that much easier for you to feed on their emotions. You’re so proud of your power, of your formulas and experiments, and you think that they make you so smart, so superior to everyone else. But you’re just as much of an addict as all those poor people in your basement. You’ve been the undisputed king of Southtown for so long that you’ve forgotten one important thing—the only thing that matters right now. Kind of sad, since you so painfully reminded me of it yesterday down in your lab.”
“And what would that be?” he hissed again.
I smiled, my features even more predatory than his. “That no matter who you are—addict, assassin, or vampire—everybody needs air to breathe, even you.”
I shoved my hand out so that I was touching his right cheek, cupping it almost the way a lover might.
Then I unleashed my Ice magic on the bastard.
A silver light flared between us, leaking out from the spider rune scar branded in the center of my palm. For a moment, the light was so intense that I couldn’t even see Benson standing in front of me. But I didn’t need to see him, because I could feel my magic, and I directed it at him with all the force of an arctic blizzard.
In an instant, his skin was severely frostbitten and even bluer than his eyes. He drew in a breath, and the air crystallized and froze deep in his lungs, killing all of that precious tissue. And then, for the coup de resistance, I coated his entire face with three inches of elemental Ice, a trick I’d learned from Bria.