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ead, she laughed, leaned forward, and started hitting me again.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
I was flat on my back on the stone walkway, with Clementine on top of me, her knees squeezing in on my ribs. The irony was that I'd done this same thing more than once, used the weight of my body to slowly drive the air out of someone's lungs. I usually ended things rather quickly with a knife to the heart, but Clementine seemed content to keep beating me until her fists punched all the way through my body and out the other side.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
She kept hitting me, her blows even, steady, and achingly hard as she got into the rhythm of the fight. And all I could do was lie there and take it. I couldn't reach the knives strapped to my thighs with her on top of me, and she'd already shown me how useless an Ice knife was. Even the pepper spray hadn't bothered her all that much. I was out of weapons. Right now, it was all I could do to concentrate on my Stone magic to keep her from pummeling me into a bloody smear. Soon that would be gone too.
Finally, though, Clementine grew tired of using me as her own personal punching bag.
"Fine," she growled. "Your skin might be as hard as a rock, but let's see how you do without any air, bitch. "
Still kneeling on me, she wrapped one hand around my neck and used the other to cover my nose and mouth. She might not be able to punch her way through my skin, but Clementine had a death grip on my throat and was slowly pushing her fingers into my windpipe with all her might. I clawed and clawed at her, drawing her blood with my short nails, but she was in the position of power here, not to mention how much stronger she was than me. I didn't have a chance, and we both knew it.
It was inevitable. All the fights I'd been through tonight, all the nicks and cuts and lumps and bumps I'd gotten. None of them debilitating or life-threatening, but they'd all chipped away at my strength, at my magic, until I had nothing left in the tank. And now the giant was cutting off my air supply. I'd be dead in another minute, two tops, unless I could figure out some way to get her off me long enough for me to regroup and grab one of my knives. Even then, I didn't know if I'd have strength enough to kill her with one of the blades -
Strength.
The word rattled around in my mind, bouncing from one side of my skull to the other, and I remembered what Clementine had said to Owen earlier tonight in the vault.
This isn't about strength, Mr. Grayson, it's about finesse.
And I realized that's what this fight really came down to - my strength versus Clementine's. Physically, I wasn't a match for the giant, especially not now, since she was using the weight of her body to pin me down. But maybe I didn't need brute strength, raw force, sheer power, to beat her. Maybe all I needed was a little of that finesse she'd talked about earlier.
Or maybe the lack of air was already making me hallucinate, because I just couldn't think of a way to stop her.
Still, I kept fighting - clawing, slapping, and punching with all my might. Clementine continued to laugh. Apparently, my weak, pitiful struggles amused her. She let go of my throat long enough to slap my hand away from hers, the blow so hard that it caused my knuckles to crack into the marble walkway -
Wait a second.
Marble - I was lying on a solid sheet of marble. In fact, the whole boathouse was made out of stone. I'd once collapsed an entire coal mine, so I knew that I could use my magic to do the same thing to the boathouse. But as satisfying as that might be, dropping a couple of tons of rock on top of Clementine's head wouldn't help me. The rocks would either crush us outright or shatter the walkway and drag us both down to the bottom of the river. I didn't want to drown, especially not if Clementine was going to be trapped on top of me for all eternity.
Still, there had to be some way to use my magic against her without killing myself in the process. Oh, I'd sacrifice myself if it meant murdering her too, but I wasn't ready to give up yet. Not until my air was almost completely gone and I had no other chance of stopping her.
I moved my head left and right, my gaze shooting every which way, but there wasn't much to see. Just the marble ceiling over my head, the columns on either side of the boathouse, and the statue of the old fisherman to the left of Clementine -
The statue.
My gaze locked on it, but it wasn't the figure of the old man I was interested in - it was the spear clutched in his hand. I hadn't made a dent in the giant with my silverstone blades or Ice knife, but that spear looked to be at least six feet long and three inches thick. That spear would take down anyone, even a giant as tough and strong as Clementine Barker.
All I had to do was find a way to finesse it right into the bitch.
I quit fighting the giant, quit clawing at her hands, quit kicking and punching and trying to buck her off me. I even quit using my Stone magic to harden my skin. Instead, I gathered and gathered the power inside me, combining it with all the Ice magic I had left, added to what was stored in the spider rune ring on my right index finger.
Clementine noticed that my skin had reverted back to its normal texture. She paused and drew her hand away from my nose and mouth. I sucked down breath after breath, but all the while, I kept reaching and reaching for my magic, getting ready to make one final strike with it.
She grinned. "Out of magic already, Gin? How disappointing. I thought that the legendary Spider would be tougher to beat than this. Why, I haven't been hitting you more than three minutes now. Going to let me beat you to death after all? Pathetic. But I have to thank you. This will be so much more fun than simply smothering you. "
She drew back her fist and drove it into my chest.
Thwack.
One of my ribs cracked.
Thwack.
Another rib splintered.
