“That fucking neck tattoo,” I spat out. “I should have known. I thought I’d seen it somewhere before.”
She gave a delicate shrug of her shoulders. “Family trait. We all have one. Our parents decided Brutus should have a snake, even though I was older and wanted to be called Viper. But they thought it was a more manly symbol. They were rather sexist that way.”
I put the pieces together in my mind. “So what? That’s your secret motivation? You came here to Ashland, you took Mab’s contract to kill me, just to get revenge for your brother? For Brutus? The bastard double-crossed me. He tried to hit me when I was trying to hit someone else. He got exactly what he deserved.”
Elektra let out another crackling laugh. “Oh, please. I couldn’t care less that you killed Brutus. He was nothing to me. But I’ll admit he was a good assassin, which made me curious as to who had murdered him and how. We were always competing with each other, you see. Who could do the most hits, who could get to the hardest targets, who could command the highest price. So when this little job in Ashland came up, I thought, why not come and test myself against Brutus’s killer? Why not take on the great Spider? And so here we are.”
“And so here we are,” I murmured.
We stood there staring at each other, our eyes locked, green on gray. Neither one of us looking away, neither one of us moving a muscle, neither one of us even breathing. At this moment, we were just like two gunslingers out in the middle of a dusty, deserted street, ready for a duel at high noon. Only one of us would walk away, and I was determined it was going to be me.
“Well,” Elektra said in a light, happy voice. “I suppose we should get on with things. Before Detective Coolidge gets too far away, and I have to chase her down. I really hate running, especially in these shoes.”
There was no way she was getting past me. No way in hell she was putting one finger on my baby sister. No matter what I had to do, no matter what I had to sacrifice to keep that from happening.
“Bring it on, bitch,” I snarled.
Elektra LaFleur gave me another smile. Green lightning flashed to life in her hand once more.
And then we danced.
27
LaFleur reared back and threw her ball of green lightning at me. The other assassin wasn’t messing around anymore. Now that she knew I was really the Spider, she was going for the kill shot first. Smart of her.
But I was expecting it. I dived forward, tucked into a ball, and rolled back up onto my feet, all in one smooth motion. The lightning sailed over my head and streaked off into the darkness. My momentum carried me within arm’s reach of the other assassin, and I slashed at her with my silverstone knives, trying to end this with two swift cuts.
But she was expecting my move as well and caught my wrists. We stood there, her hands locked onto my arms, seesawing back and forth, with me trying to plunge the knives down into her body, and her holding my hands back. LaFleur was just as strong and determined as I was. Neither of us could get any kind of real advantage, merely grappling the way we were. So Elektra decided to up the ante.
She smiled, and lightning flashed once more in her green eyes.
I was able to grab hold of my Stone magic and use it to harden my skin the split-second before she slammed her elemental magic into me, using her hands like two conduits.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been blasted by magic. A few months ago, I’d gone toe-to-toe with Alexis James, an Air elemental who liked to use her power to flay people alive, to force oxygen under people’s skin and strip it from their bones one slow inch at a time. That’s what Alexis had done to Fletcher when she’d tortured and killed him inside the Pork Pit. She’d tried to do the same to me when we’d had our inevitable confrontation at the old Ashland rock quarry. But Alexis James hadn’t been as strong as Elektra LaFleur.
I felt every bit of the other assassin’s power surge into me, crackling against my own, arcing around me like lightning attracted to a metal rod, trying to break through the protective shell of my Stone magic. Even though my Stone power was blocking her attack and keeping the electricity from killing me outright, it didn’t do anything to stop the pain of it from filling my body. And it still hurt so fucking much, the shock of it arcing and arcing through my body as though I were holding on to a power line. I’d been wrong before when I’d thought you couldn’t electrocute a rock — because that’s exactly what was happening to me right now. My muscles spasmed, my teeth clattered together, and my whole body twitched and cramped and screamed from the agony of the electricity zipping through me again and again and again.
My silverstone vest absorbed some of the other elemental’s magic, growing heavy and warm against my chest, as the metal sucked in the electrical power coursing through it. But the vest didn’t take in enough juice to keep me from screaming over and over again.
And, of course, LaFleur had finally sensed my magic since I was using so much of it just to ward her off. Just to keep breathing. Just to keep my heart from stopping and my skin from catching fire.
“Well, she’s an elemental to boot,” Elektra muttered. “Another surprise. But it won’t save you, Spider. Nothing will. Not from me.”
And then the bitch snapped up one of her hands and punched me in the face.
It was the proverbial straw. I stumbled back at the sharp blow, and one of my knives slipped from my hands. My twitching, spasming feet skidded on the gravel, just like the giant’s had earlier tonight, and I went down on one knee. LaFleur came at me. One, two, three. Hard, bone-cracking blows, all with the extra oomph of her electrical magic behind them. One knocked the other knife out of my hand. The second caught me in the stomach. And the third connected with my jaw, shattering my concentration on my Stone magic.
Green sparks sputtered like fire from her clenched fists every time she hit me. And on the third, final blow, her power finally broke through my own.
For a moment, my vision went pure, hot, pulsing green as LaFleur’s magic coursed through me, and I screamed again as the electricity seared every single nerve ending in my entire body. I convulsed once, twice, three times, before I fell to the ground, my limbs twitching violently from the unexpected burst of energy. If she’d been going for the kill shot then, I would have been dead.
But instead of finishing me off, LaFleur actually let go of me — and more importantly, her electrical magic. Her third mistake. When you’ve got someone down, don’t stop until she’s good and dead.
“Out of Stone magic already? Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Elektra clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and walked around me in a tight circle. “Disappointing, Spider. Very disappointing.”
I was too busy trying to get my spasming limbs under control to come up with a witty response. But I did manage to reach one of my hands around my body to the small of my back. Somehow, I made my still-twitching fingers wrap around a bit of metal there.
“I don’t know how much you know about me, Spider, Gin, whatever you want to call yourself,” LaFleur said, still circling around me. “But unlike you, I don’t use weapons to kill. It’s so … ordinary. So common. Don’t you think? Instead, I like to use my electrical magic to finish people off. It’s so much more visceral that way. Not to mention that I enjoy the light show as well. But I bet you’ve already guessed that little fact about me, given the way you’re writhing around on the ground.”