“Yeah,” I rasped. “I’d noticed that about you.”
Elektra smiled, then slid her hand inside her green jacket, which she was still wearing. I knew exactly what she was reaching for. The bitch thought that she’d already won. How wrong she was.
Sure enough, Elektra drew a single white orchid out of the depths of her coat. I don’t know how she had managed to keep it from getting smushed during our struggle, because it was just as soft, white, and exquisite as the others I’d seen her with. Maybe she used her electrical magic to make the petals perk up just the way she wanted them to. Didn’t much matter either way. She was going to be dead in another minute, two tops. My fingers tightened around the bit of metal in my hand behind my back, getting ready to make my move—
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
Elektra reacted immediately to the whine of bullets zipping through the air and threw herself down to the ground, rolling, rolling, rolling across the loose gravel to make herself a smaller, harder target to hit. Just the way I would have done. The white orchid that she had been holding flew out of her hand and twirled to the ground like a helicopter.
My head snapped up, and I spotted Detective Bria Coolidge standing about fifty feet away, her arms up and loose, her feet hip-width apart. A classic shooter’s stance. Somewhere along the way, my baby sister had gotten a gun — one that she’d turned on LaFleur. I couldn’t deny the fact that I was happy to see Bria, even if I had told her to get out of here.
Bria advanced toward us, taking aim at LaFleur, who’d used her momentum to roll back up into a low crouch. A dark stain marred the right shoulder of the other assassin’s green coat, slowly spreading outward. Bria had winged LaFleur with one of her bullets.
And my sister wasn’t done. Even though the assassin was still moving, she leveled the weapon at LaFleur’s chest and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Empty. The gun was empty already. Another reason I rarely used guns. They always ran out of bullets too quickly for my liking.
Bria cursed, threw the gun away, and reached around behind her back, coming up with the silverstone knife I’d given her in the railcar. She hesitated a moment, then chucked the knife at LaFleur, who had started toward her. To Bria’s surprise and mine, she actually hit the assassin. LaFleur jerked to one side, but not before the blade sank into her shoulder — the same shoulder that had already been pierced by Bria’s bullet.
But instead of shrieking from the pain, Elektra LaFleur let out a low laugh, the power of her electrical elemental magic still crackling in her voice. She wasn’t close to being dead. Not yet. More of the damn eerie green lightning flashed to life in the assassin’s hands, and she threw the ball of elemental power at Bria.
My sister’s eyes widened. She hurled herself to one side out of the way of the ball of energy, but it hit the ground where she’d been standing. The lightning slammed into the rails and zipped along them, heading straight for Bria. A second later, a muffled shriek filled the air, and I saw my sister’s body twitch and convulse on top of the metal. The lightning flickered around her for another two seconds, before sparking up into the night. I watched, my heart in my throat, my breath completely gone.
“Come on,” I whispered. “Come on.”
Bria didn’t get up, and she didn’t move.
My heart felt like it was being ripped in two inside my chest, and I wanted nothing more than to scream and scream and scream. But I couldn’t do that. Not until LaFleur was dead.
Once she realized that Bria was down, LaFleur walked back over to me. Then the assassin pulled the blade out of her shoulder, just the way her brother, Brutus, had done once upon a time, when I’d wounded him with one of my knives. Elektra dropped the weapon. It landed on the ground three inches away from my left hand.
Her fourth and final mistake. The one that was finally going to cost the assassin her life. Never, ever leave a weapon within arm’s reach of an assassin, especially not the Spider.
“Uh-oh, Gin. Looks like Detective Coolidge didn’t take your advice and was stupid enough to come back to try to rescue you.”
Elektra smiled down at me, her green eyes glowing as smugly as a cat’s in her face. She was oh so pleased with herself.
“Well, I don’t think that little jolt I just gave her was enough to kill the detective, but it will keep me from running after her at the very least. Mab’s going to be so happy when I tell her that I’ve killed the two of you. And in one night. I’ll have to make sure that she gives me a bonus for killing the elusive Spider—”
And that’s when I made my move.
With my still-twitching left hand, I reached out, snatched up the fallen knife, and slammed it into her foot, driving the blade all the way through her fucking stiletto boot to the other side. Elektra hissed with pain and tumbled to the ground beside me, clawing at the knife. She pulled it out and tried to turn it on me, but I slapped it away from her.
With my right hand, I yanked the silverstone handcuffs out of the back pocket of my jeans. Then I grabbed one of her flailing arms and snapped the cuff around it. Elektra hissed again, this time with surprise, and jerked her arm back, but not before I clinked the other cuff around my own left wrist.
“What the hell—” she sputtered.
“Here’s another thing I’ve noticed,” I snarled in her face. “I don’t have to live to win. I just have to make sure you die.”
Elektra screamed with fury then, threw herself on top of me, and unloaded on me with every single thing that she had. All her green lightning, all her electrical power, all her elemental magic. The silverstone cuffs around our wrists absorbed some of her power, but not enough to make a difference. The cuff grew hot against my wrist, as did the vest on my chest, as the pieces of silverstone started to heat up from all the energy pouring into them. The vest wasn’t going to be enough to save me. Not again. Because now, LaFleur was going for the kill shot, and she had all her attention and energy fixed on me.
Instead of reaching for my Stone magic, this time I grabbed hold of my Ice power, pulling it up through my veins, sending it into every single part of my body just the way I would my Stone magic. Instead of hardening my skin like my Stone power did, my Ice magic had a very different, very surprising affect.
It made me cold to the touch — and completely, utterly numb.
Ever since Elektra had unloaded her electrical magic on me the first time in the train yard, I’d been thinking about her power — how much it had just hurt, even though I’d used my Stone magic to insulate myself from it. She’d done the same thing with it to me again tonight. Hurting me, even through the shell of my Stone magic. So I’d known there wasn’t any point in reaching for my Stone power again.
Maybe it was using my Ice magic to help me break out of the silverstone handcuffs, but somewhere along the way tonight, I’d started to think about what Jo-Jo had told me. About what I’d done the night I’d fallen into the Aneirin River, about how I’d used my Ice magic to wrap myself in the cold, to preserve my body from the harshness of the elements. I’d felt nothing that night, not even the cold seeping into and shutting down my body.
The simple fact was that LaFleur’s magic just hurt too much. I couldn’t concentrate on killing her when I was busy thinking about how much agony she was causing me, how her electricity was frying me one cell at a time. So this time I’d decided to use my Ice magic not to feel anything at all.