Tangled Threads

by Belle Aurora

Page 32

  Through it all, I held on to my Ice magic. I didn't know how much damage she was doing to me, how badly she was frying my skin or burning me, and I didn't care. All that mattered was keeping her here shackled to me so that she couldn't hurt Bria any more. All that mattered was stopping the other assassin-for good.

  While her lightning crackled around me, Elektra also used her free hand to hit me. Over and over and over again, she slammed her tight fist into my face, my chest, and every other part of me that she could reach.

  But because of my Ice magic, I didn't feel any of the blows. Not a one.

  Still, I had to do something. Sooner or later, I would exhaust my magic, and I didn't know if it would be before or after Elektra ran out of juice herself. Somehow I pushed her away as far as I could, then rolled over onto my hands and knees, half-dragging Elektra with me. A steady burn of light caught my eye, and I stared down. My left hand was open, and the spider rune scar on my palm was glowing a bright silver, just like it had that night in the coal mine when I'd finally broken through the block of the silverstone metal in my hands.

  I looked past it to my goal-the silverstone knife that I'd slapped away from Elektra. The only one I had left. But the only problem with not being able to feel my body was that I seemed to have zero control over it as well. It was like I was floating above myself, watching all this happen to someone else, and not being able to affect the outcome one bit.

  Fuck that.

  I needed that knife, and I was going to get it, numb body or no numb body. So I stared at my fingers harder than I had ever looked at anything in my life, willing them to move with the force of my gaze, to curl up, to just twitch.

  And somehow they did.

  Even though I couldn't feel them, I somehow made my fingers move, just by the sheer force of my mind. My thumb inched closer to the dagger, dragging the rest of my hand along with it. I got one fingertip on the weapon, then another, then another. All the while, LaFleur kept hitting me, kept raining blows onto my back and head. I ignored her the way a dog would a flea jumping around on its ass. The assassin wasn't important right now. Getting my hands on my knife was all that mattered.

  Twenty agonizing seconds later, my hand closed around the hilt of the silverstone dagger. I might have only imagined it but I could have sworn that I felt the spider rune stamped on the hilt sear my skin with a magic that was even colder than my own.

  Meanwhile, LaFleur was still trying to fry me with her electrical magic, even as she kept pummeling me with her free fist. I drew in a breath, concentrating one last time, gathering my strength for this one last thing.

  And then I rolled back over and shoved the knife into her side.

  It was an awkward blow and certainly not one of my best, given the fact that we were shackled together. Fletcher would have shaken his head sadly at my utter lack of form. But it got the job done. Most anything would, if you put enough muscle behind it. And even though I couldn't feel my arms, I knew that I'd driven the knife into her with everything I had.

  Just because my body was numb didn't mean that I couldn't still hear things-like Elektra LaFleur's howl of rage. The wounds in her foot and shoulder might not have slowed her down much, but a knife in the stomach is a little more serious, especially given just how deep I'd shoved it into her. For the first time, real, raw pain filled her voice.

  More importantly, she finally lost her grip on her electrical magic. The green lightning flashing around our bodies vanished in a shower of sparks, as though a firecracker had just exploded over our heads. I'd hurt her bad. But I didn't stop, not even for a second. Even though I still couldn't feel my own hand, my own fingers even, somehow I pulled out the knife.

  And this time, I buried it in the bitch's heart.

  Elektra let out a final shriek. Her body convulsed once, twice, three times, just as mine had done when she slammed her electrical magic into me. That damn eerie green lightning flashed around us once more, slamming us both into the gravel. Elektra's final death blow. Then her limbs slackened, and all the fight drained out of her body.

  We were still shackled together, with me now on top of her. I stared down into her pale, shocked face.

  "You know what, Elektra?" I rasped through my cold, numb, dead lips. "You should have killed me the second you had the chance. Instead, you talked yourself to death, you arrogant bitch. Just like your brother Brutus did. "

  I don't know if she heard me before the last of the green lightning finally flashed, flickered, and faded from her eyes, and she was still.

  Chapter 28

  When I was sure that Elektra LaFleur was dead, I let go of my Ice magic.

  Pain immediately flooded my body, cutting through the cold numbness, but I didn't care right now. I flopped over onto my back, scooting as far away from her as I could, given the handcuffs that still bound us together. The metal had weakened from the heat of LaFleur's magic, but the cuffs hadn't completely melted. Something soft brushed against my fingers, and I turned my head to the right.

  Elektra LaFleur's orchid, the one she'd planned on dropping on my body, lay on the ground next to me. Somehow the flower had survived being crushed during our fight. A breeze whistled through the train yard, ruffling the delicate white petals. I shuddered and turned away from it.

  I lay there on the loose gravel, riding the waves of pain, and watching the green-gray smoke puff up from my body and drift away like ribbons unfurling into the night sky.

  But I couldn't rest yet. Not until I'd checked on Bria. Not until I knew whether my baby sister was still alive.

  I didn't have long to wonder. Just as I started to force myself to sit up against the pain, footsteps crunched on the gravel behind me, and a second later, Bria's face came into view above mine. Dirt smeared her features, along with a few scrapes and bruises from where she'd thrown herself onto the gravel, and her shaggy blond hair was a static-charged mess. One of her blue eyes twitched, and similar spasms zipped down her throat and into the rest of her body, making her arms and legs jump ever so slightly. But other than that, she was fine. She'd just been jolted by Elektra's magic, not killed outright.

  I let out a quiet sigh of relief. My sister was fine for one more night. Which made everything I'd just been through worthwhile, including the pain that kept flooding my body like a river relentlessly rising inch by inch. I gritted my teeth and pushed it away as best I could.

  "Are you all right?" Bria asked in a soft voice.

  Her gaze locked onto the macabre smoke drifting up from my body. I could smell it, of course. But for once, the acrid stench didn't bother me and didn't trigger any old, unwanted memories. Maybe that's because I was still alive and LaFleur wasn't.

  "I'm still breathing," I rasped. "That's good enough for now. Help me up, please. "

  Bria gave me her hand and pulled me up into a sitting position. Despite my attempts to ignore the pain from my injuries, it took me a moment to get my breath back. My wrist was also still cuffed to LaFleur's, and her arm flopped against my own. Dead weight, in every sense of the word. Elektra's green eyes stared sightlessly up into the night sky. Blood still oozed from the stab wounds on her chest and stomach, and the warm, coppery scent of it filled my nose.

  I didn't have any magic left, not even enough to make another Ice pick so that I could unshackle myself from her dead body. I just sat there and stared dully at the handcuffs.

  "Let me help you with those. "

  Bria must have sensed what I was thinking, because she held out her hand and reached for her own Ice magic. A blue light flickered in her palm, and the familiar caress of her elemental power flowed over me like a cool, refreshing breeze, washing away the static remains of LaFleur's electricity. Somehow, Bria's magic made my injuries, my pain inside and out, just a little easier to bear. It felt so good, so right that it made me want to weep.

  A second later, Bria had two Ice pick
s in her hand that looked identical to the ones that I'd made earlier tonight. She crouched down beside me and went to work on the handcuffs. It took her a couple of minutes and a few soft curses, but eventually the silverstone clinked open, and LaFleur's dead arm fell back to the ground to join the rest of her.

  Bria sat back on her heels, crouching there in the cold beside me. She stared at me, then at the dead assassin beside me. I couldn't read the emotions flashing in her eyes-or maybe I just didn't care to tonight. Maybe I was just afraid of what I would see.

  "What are you going to do now?" I asked.

  She knew what I was asking-if she was going to arrest me and turn me in for being the Spider. For killing Mab's men and all the others I'd murdered over the years.

  Bria sighed and ran her hand through her hair. Green static crackled around her fingers. She shuddered and dropped her hand. "I'm going to call in and report that I was abducted tonight by someone claiming to be an assassin. That she was going to torture and kill me before the Spider intervened. Mainly, that the assassin is dead and that I was locked in a railcar the whole time and didn't see a thing. "

  "You're not turning me in?" I whispered.

  Bria looked at me. Without a word, she shook her head. I didn't ask her why. I didn't think she even knew the reason herself. But that wasn't the only issue between us.

  "And what about us? We're sisters, Bria. "

  "You're . . . It's just . . . I can't . . . " She sighed. "I don't know, Gene-Gin. I just don't know. I need some time to think about things. You're not exactly what I expected to find when I came back to Ashland. None of this has turned out the way I thought it would. "

  "What did you think would happen?"

  A humorless smile lifted her lips. "I thought I'd charge Mab Monroe with the murder of my mother and older sister and see her dragged away in chains, for starters. But that's not going to happen now. Neither is the picture-perfect reunion I'd imagined having with my big sister, Genevieve. "

  There was no real judgment in her voice, no condemnation in her tone, just weariness, the same weariness I felt right now. But her words still hurt. I knew that my being the Spider was the thing that stood between us. My deadly skills might have saved us tonight, but they were also tearing us apart now. Maybe forever.

  All I wanted to do right now was put my arms around Bria and make sure she was really okay. Tell her-no, promise her-that everything was going to be okay, just as I had when we were both little girls and she skinned her knee or lost her favorite doll.

  But we were both too old for such childish things now, and there was just too much between us. Too much history, too much emotion, too many things left unsaid and undone.

  Bria's eyes met and held mine. With all our feelings shining there inside for the other to see. Her shock. My hope. And no resolution to either one in sight.

  Then my baby sister got to her feet and stalked off into the darkness to make her call.

  I sat there huddled on the cold, loose gravel, slowly moving my body and cataloguing my injuries while I waited for Bria to come back. Elektra LaFleur hadn't beaten me as badly as Elliot Slater had, but the other assassin hadn't pulled her punches either. My face had already started to bruise and swell from where she'd hit me, and not all of the blood on me was hers. A slow, steady trickle of it slid down my face from a cut that she'd opened on my left cheekbone. Ugly, nasty, electrical burns also covered most of my exposed skin, especially on my hands and arms.

  But I could still move, still walk, talk, and breathe, so I wasn't too concerned. Jo-Jo Deveraux could heal anything short of death. I might hurt like hell, but I'd live until I got to the dwarven Air elemental healer.

  A few minutes later, Bria returned. She clutched a small silver cell phone in her hand that she passed down to me.

  "Here," she said in a quiet voice. "That's LaFleur's phone. I got it out of the back of the limo where she left it. I didn't want to go digging through the giants' pockets to find theirs. "

  I didn't have to ask her why-because I'd slashed into the men with my silverstone knives, filleting them like fish, until there was probably more blood on the ground around them than was still left in their bodies. Even now, I could hear the gravel of the train yard muttering all around me, the stones whispering of all the dark, ugly, bloody things that had been done here tonight.

  "I thought that you might want to call your friend Finnegan Lane first," Bria said. "Before I do my thing. "

  "Thank you," I said and dialed Finn's number.

  It rang only once before he picked it up.

  "Where the hell are you!?" Finn screamed in my ear. "We've been looking everywhere for you!"

  I winced at his voice blaring out at me. "I'm fine. I'm back at the train yard. LaFleur jumped me behind the Pork Pit and decided to take me for a little drive tonight. "

  "Well, I hope that you had the good sense to kill her for interrupting your evening," Finn sniffed. "And for making us worry. "

  "I did. But I wasn't the only one that she nabbed. Bria's here with me. "

  Silence. I could hear Finn thinking through the phone. He knew that in order to kill LaFleur I'd had to show Bria who I really was-and exactly what I was capable of.

  "And how is she taking the news?" Finn finally asked.

  I looked over at my sister, who was crouched down and examining LaFleur's body, along with my silverstone knife, which was still stuck in the assassin's chest. "Well, she hasn't screamed and run away yet. I suppose that's something. "

  "Sit tight," Finn said. "We'll be there in ten minutes. "

  "Don't worry," I said in a wry tone. "I'm not going anywhere. "

  I hung up the phone and held it back out to Bria. "He'll be here in ten minutes. It'll take the po-po at least twenty to get here. So go ahead and make your call, if you want. "