I’d hurt him badly this time, and the giant gave up all thought of trying to attack me. Instead, now wailing and blubbering, he clutched his hands to his stomach, trying to slow the bleeding and shove everything back in where it was supposed to go. But the chains thwarted him once more, and he just couldn’t get his hands up in the right place to really staunch the flow. He’d bleed out soon.
In the background, Vinnie and the vampire continued their struggle in the sandbox, still rolling back and forth, each one trying to get the upper hand.
My hip now throbbing with pain, my bloody knife still in my hand, I turned to face the other giant.
He’d been more cautious than his buddy and hadn’t followed me into the swings. He stared at me a second then launched himself at one of the heavy wooden support beams that held up the whole thing — trying to collapse the entire swing set on top of me, along with his friend. The wood wasn’t as strong as the metal chains were, and the beam creaked, then snapped under the giant’s great strength and heavy weight. The entire structure started to slide sideways.
I threw myself forward out of the way of the flying seats and clanking chains. A second later, the whole thing collapsed in a crashing cacophony of metal, dragging the trapped giant down with it. Chains and seats piled on top of his broad back. The giant groaned but didn’t get up. Well, that was one way to bury someone. I’d take what I could get.
My hands and knees sank into the loose gravel that covered the ground around the swing set, and some of the stones scraped my palms. By this point, the stones had taken on low, ugly, harsh mutters, reflecting the violence that had just happened, as the giant’s blood continued to seep onto them. The gravel was just as dense as the sand in the box, which made it hard for me to scramble to my feet, as did the stabbing pain in my hip.
The second giant surged forward and clamped his hand onto my shoulder, his fingers digging into the socket like drills. The bastard picked me up, hoisted me up over his shoulder, and benched-pressed me as high as he could — a good nine-feet-plus off the ground. There was nothing I could do to stop him or make him put me down. Not from this angle. Fuck. This was not going to end well for me.
“You’re going to pay for killing Olson, you bitch!” the giant screamed and threw me down as hard as he could.
I closed my eyes and reached for my Stone magic, pulling the cool power up through my veins, pouring it out onto my skin, head, and hair, letting it harden my body into an impenetrable shell.
I slammed into the closest seesaw, the whole left side of my body smacking into the metal, before rolling across the top and plummeting down the far side. It didn’t hurt that badly, not like it would have if I hadn’t used my Stone magic to protect myself, but it still jarred me. I still felt the hard, raw, brutal force of it. Especially in my injured hip. I gritted my teeth, ignoring the pain now shooting down into my leg and on past my knee.
But I didn’t get up.
Fighting hand to hand, the giant would kick my ass now, especially since I wasn’t a hundred percent anymore. Which meant that the quickest way to kill the bastard would be to surprise him. Hence my header on the gravel. The force of the fall had ripped my silverstone knife away from me, and I didn’t dare reach for another one. Not yet. Not until he was in range.
Ten … twenty … I hadn’t even counted to thirty before I heard his shoes crunch on the gravel. I cracked my eyes open just enough to track his movements. He came at me from the opposite side of the seesaw. The rows of seats still creaked up and down from the force of my body hitting them. My eyes flicked up at one seat wobbling just above my head.
“Bitch,” the giant muttered as he neared me. “That’ll teach you to kill one of us—”
I surged up, grabbed the seat, and brought it down as hard as I could.
On the other side of the seesaw, the opposing, attached seat zoomed up and clipped the giant in the chin. He groaned, staggered back, and fell — right onto the merry-go-round. The giant’s head slammed against one of the metal handles with a sickening crack. Dazed, he slumped to the ground, half on, half off the merry-go-round.
I got to my feet, grabbed a knife out of my boot, and hobbled over to him. The giant’s oversize, buglike eyes rolled back in his head, but he still saw me coming. He reached up, trying to keep me at arm’s length, but the blow to his skull had messed up his depth perception, which made it easy enough for me to kick him in the balls. The giant howled, his hands automatically going south to cover himself from further assault instead of protecting his chest and head.
I leaned over and cut his throat.
The giant gurgled, his blood spewing out onto the sky blue paint that covered the merry-go-round. I watched him a second to make sure that he wasn’t going to get back up. But his body was already shutting down from the trauma, and he didn’t even try to move.
With the giants down and dying, I turned toward the sandbox just in time to see Brown, the vampire, punch Vinnie in the chest and scramble to his feet. The vamp stared at me, eyes wide in his face, as though he couldn’t believe that I’d actually taken out two giants all by my little lonesome.
Then he turned and raced off in the other direction.
Fuck.
I palmed another knife, gritted my teeth against the pain pounding through my hip, and started after him. I needed to kill the vamp before he got out of the park. Before he got to a phone, called LaFleur or Mab Monroe, and gave them a description of me and what had happened here tonight.
But the relentless throbbing in my hip slowed me, and despite the stab wound in his thigh and his other injuries, the vampire was running like Death himself was after him. I supposed that he was, in a way. Still, I hurried after the vamp. It was darker on that side of the park. Maybe luck, that capricious bitch, would smile on me, and he would fall and break his ankle—
The flash of lights caught us both by surprise.
The bright glare illuminated the vampire, who was so stunned that he stopped where he was in the middle of one of the park’s grassy areas, eyes wide open like a deer.
An engine revved, and a second later, a black SUV appeared out of the darkness and slammed right into the vampire. The vamp sailed thirty feet through the air before a tree trunk stopped his unnatural flight. I could hear his back break even from here. He didn’t get up after that.
I was out in the open too, with nowhere to run or hide, so I stood my ground as the SUV turned and headed in my direction, its tires flattening the frosty grass. If worse came to worse, I could always harden my skin again with my Stone magic and roll out of the way of the vehicle. After that, well, I’d find a way to do something clever and deadly. I always did.
The SUV stopped about ten feet away. The glass was tinted, so I couldn’t see exactly who was inside, although I got the impression that the driver was a giant.
The passenger’s side door opened, and, a moment later, a familiar, grinning face appeared over the top of the door.
“Need a lift?” Finnegan Lane quipped.
8
Two more doors opened on the SUV. Xavier got out on the driver’s side, while Roslyn hopped out of the back. They, along with Finn, hurried over to me.
Finn stopped in front of me, his green eyes sweeping over my blood-spattered clothes and the silverstone knives glinting in my hands. Assessing what he could see of my body and injuries, just like his father, Fletcher, used to do back when the old man was my handler.
“Is any of that blood yours?” Finn asked.