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Finn said something, probably telling me to wait for him or slow down, but I couldn't make out what it was. I was already out of the car and sprinting toward the hou
se.
Elliot Slater and his giants had a good head start on me-almost a quarter of a mile. I saw the five of them slip through the trees that circled the back side of the house. Another few seconds and they'd be at the back door and surging inside. An icy fist squeezed my heart and lungs, making it hard to breathe. I'd just found my sister again, and now Slater and his men were here to kill her. Why else would they be sneaking around Bria's house this close to midnight?
Run, run, run, run. . . The thought drummed through my head as my boots slapped against the pavement. I chugged past the parked Hummer, leaped over the concrete curb, and ran through the frost-covered grass. The tiny blades crackled like glass under my smashing feet. If Slater and his giants bothered to stop and listen, they'd hear me coming for sure. But I didn't care. All that mattered was getting to Bria before she got dead.
I broke through the line of spindly pecan trees, and Bria's house rose up in front of me, two stories of charming gray brick. I blocked out the blood roaring through my ears and reached out with my Stone magic. But the house was freshly constructed, and the stones were too new to tell me anything about Bria-or what might be happening inside.
I was a hundred feet away from the back door when lights flashed and a series of pop-pop-pops sounded. The distinctive sights and sounds of someone firing a handgun. A window shattered, and a series of loud curses spilled out into the night air. Bria was putting up more of a fight than the giants had expected.
A few seconds later, an intense, bluish white glow filled the downstairs windows and burst through the open back door. Even though I was outside, I could still feel the cold caress of Ice magic surging through the house. A sensation so like my own Stone and Ice power that it made me want to weep. Not surprising, even if it was something that I hadn't thought about in years. Because Bria was an Ice elemental, of course. Just like our mother, Eira, and older sister, Annabella, had been. I was the only one who'd inherited our father, Tristan's, Stone magic as well. I just hoped Bria had enough juice to hold off Elliot Slater and his men until I could even the odds.
The Ice magic flowed around me a second longer before snuffing out like a candle. Either Bria didn't have much power or something had broken her concentration-like a fist to her face or a bullet to her gut.
The brass hinges of the back door barely clung to the stone frame. One of the giants must have just shouldered his way through it, rather than bother with the pretense of knocking. Although my heart screamed at me to keep running, to get to Bria as quickly as possible, I slowed my steps and paused just outside the door. Me barging into whatever fight was going on inside wouldn't help Bria. That's not how I'd operated as the assassin the Spider, and I wasn't going to do it now. Besides, there was always the off chance that Bria could mistake me for one of the giants and turn on me. Being killed by one's own sister would be a shitty way to die.
So I stood there and listened. Another series of pop-pop-pops sounded, followed by three more shots. Two people exchanging gunfire.
"Fuck!" A sharp, masculine cry. One of the giants had been hit.
Then silence.
I crept a few feet inside the door, taking care to be exceptionally quiet. The back door opened up into a kitchen, and the white tile floor and countertops gleamed like they were made of ivory. The fight had started in here, judging from the black splashes of blood on the floor. Sharp, melting pieces of elemental Ice also littered the tile underfoot like a wet carpet.
But what was most surprising was the refrigerator. The top door had been blown off, and a rune shimmered with a bluish white light inside the frosty depths of the freezer. The symbol zigzagged up and down like the teeth of a saw. That's what it was called-the saw. Symbolizing pure, biting force. In addition to using runes to identify themselves, elementals could also imbue runes with magic. In other words, make the symbols come to life and perform some specific function.
The saw was a defensive rune that could be used by any elemental and was especially popular as a sort of magic trip wire and bomb rolled into one. Since Bria was an Ice elemental, she'd drawn the saw symbol in her freezer, using the rune and appliance to contain her frosty magic. When the giants had broken into her house tonight, she'd most likely sent a burst of her Ice power into the freezer, triggering the explosive saw rune inside. And then-boom! The freezer door had blown open, spraying the giants with sharp, jagged icicles. Hence the blood on the floor.
I recognized the trick. I'd done it myself with stone a time or two. Baby sister had booby-trapped her own freezer. Despite the situation, I found myself grinning underneath my ski mask. Nice.
I saw all this in the three seconds it took me to creep to the opposite side of the kitchen. I crouched down and peered around the doorjamb. A long hallway stretched out before opening up into the front of the house. Rooms branched off either side of the hallway, which was now littered with debris. A couple of porcelain vases had been shattered, chairs overturned, a table splintered, a mirror knocked off the wall and broken. More blood glistened on the wooden floor, and a couple of bullets had punched into and blackened the walls. I started forward-
"Give it up, Coolidge!" Elliot Slater's voice rumbled through the house like thunder. "We've got you surrounded, and it's only a matter of time before you run out of ammo. We'll kill you quick, I promise. "
"Fuck you, Slater," Bria snarled.
Not the most original of retorts, but it was hard to be witty under pressure. Still, I frowned. Despite her bravado, Bria's voice had sounded high and thin, like she was in pain or injured. But she was still breathing. As long as she kept doing that, Jo-Jo Deveraux could fix the rest of the damage. From the sound of things, Elliot and his men had Bria trapped somewhere in the front of the house. Which meant they wouldn't be expecting a sneak attack from the rear. Excellent.
I tiptoed down the hallway, a silverstone knife in each hand. Although I still wanted to charge forward, I moved slowly, calmly, carefully. Just because I thought Slater and his men were at the end of the hall didn't mean that he hadn't left someone behind to guard their rear. Slater had worked for Mab Monroe for a long time. He wasn't dumb by any stretch of the imagination. So I checked every room that branched off the hallway, looking for trouble.
Two doors up from the kitchen, I found some. A giant slouched over a sink in a small bathroom. Judging from the long, needlelike bits of elemental Ice sticking out of his face, it looked like he'd been the one who'd taken the brunt of the blast from the booby-trapped freezer. The giant held a white towel up over his eye socket. At least, the towel had been white at one point. Blood had turned the cotton fabric a dull crimson. The giant had also been shot a couple times in the chest, and a tight cluster of wounds just above his heart oozed blood. Baby sister was a good shot. She just hadn't had time to finish him off before the other giants had rushed her.
Good thing her big sis Gin was here to take care of that.
I drew in a breath, then burst into the bathroom. My sudden appearance startled the giant so much that he dropped his towel, giving me a good look at the icicle that had skewered his right eye like a toothpick through an olive. The wounded giant opened his mouth to yell for his friends just as my silverstone knife slammed into his throat. The scream turned into a coughing, choking wheeze. My other knife ripped into the giant's stomach. His warm blood splashed all over my ski mask and dark clothes.
But the giant wasn't down for the count just yet. The bastard lashed out at me, flailing wildly with his fists. One clipped my shoulder. The other hit my left kidney. Even weakened, the solid blows still hurt. Being an elemental, I could have reached for my Stone magic and used it to harden my skin into an impenetrable shell. Almost nothing could hurt me when I did that. But I didn't know if Elliot Slater or one of his other men had any elemental power, and I didn't want to tip them off to my presence just yet. Besides, I reserved my magic for the main event. This barely qualified as the warm-up bout.
So I just stood there, slashing the giant with my knives. By the time I'd made my third pass with the silverstone weapons, the giant's pink guts could be seen through the ripped fabric of his shirt. Not to mention the fact that his throat was open almost to his spine. He quit fighting, and his one good eye glazed over. I lowered his heavy body to the floor and tiptoed back to the door.
"What was that?" one of the giants muttered.
"I don't know-" Another man started to respond when another series of pop-pop-pops shattered the quiet.
Someone else returned fire, and I used the noise and distraction to slip out of the bathroom and forward to the end of the hallway. It opened up into a large, square living room that looked like a tornado had ripped through the area. Broken lamps, overturned furniture, shattered knickknacks, cardboard packing boxes that had been split open from things falling on top of them.
To my surprise, a giant lay dead just inside the doorway. He slumped against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. I spotted a couple of bullet wounds clustered in the middle of his chest, but that wasn't what had killed him-it was the Ice. The giant's face looked blue and brittle, an inch of white frost had gathered in his hair, and his eyes resembled frozen marbles. Large icicles hung off his nose and chin, and his mouth was open in a silent scream.
