Widow's Web (Elemental Assassin) (8 page)

One second, everything was normal. Kids were laughing, talking, drinking, eating, and playing games. The next, everyone had stopped what they were doing, puzzled expressions on their faces as they tried to figure out why someone was interrupting their buzz. Then, when the screams didn’t stop, panic rippled through the crowd, until all the kids were pushing, shoving, and lurching around the deck, trying to put some distance between themselves and whatever horrible thing was happening.

I immediately palmed one of my silverstone knives and turned toward the source of the disturbance, although I made sure to keep Kincaid in my line of sight as well, just in case this was some kind of trick to distract me. He might be the boss here, but I wouldn’t have put it past him to pull a gun or knife on me and get his hands dirty himself.

“Back, back, back!” I yelled at Eva and Violet, pushing
the two girls until they were up against the closed doors that led inside the riverboat.

Knife in hand, I put myself in front of them, protecting them from whatever the danger might be—and that’s when I realized the screams were coming from Antonio.

Given their tall, strong, thick bodies, giants were tough to injure and even tougher to kill. Sure, you could take one down with a gun or knife, but you usually had to work to do it. But Antonio was bent over double in the middle of the deck, his hands clutched to his head as though he had the worst migraine imaginable. He just kept screaming and screaming, and I couldn’t figure out why. He didn’t appear to have been stabbed, and I hadn’t heard any gunshots ring out. He didn’t seem to have so much as a paper cut. So what the hell was wrong with him?

Antonio finally lifted his head and straightened up. Once again, I looked him over, searching for any injuries and what might have caused them. I didn’t see any blood or wounds—not so much as a nick or a bruise—but wait . . . There was something wrong with his skin. It looked . . . wet.

And that’s when I felt the first gust of magic swirl through the air.

The elemental power slid against my skin as cool, slick, and gentle as water dripping off waxed paper. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation—not at all—but I didn’t welcome it either. Because magic most always meant trouble.

I focused, concentrating on the feel of the other elemental’s magic, but I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from or who in the panicked crowd was wielding it—just that it was concentrated on Antonio.

After a few more seconds, the giant’s screams faded to garbled gasps. He was having trouble getting words out, and then his voice dried up altogether. He stood in the middle of the deck, his dark eyes empty, his body swaying from side to side like a tree about to topple over.

And he literally melted.

I watched as his skin, which had seemed damp before, took on a glossy sheen, as though he’d just run ten miles uphill and was sweating profusely. But it wasn’t sweat slicking down Antonio’s face, neck, and hands. It was water—all the water in his body, leaving.

“A water elemental,” I muttered, although my voice was lost in the commotion of the crowd.

I knew there were elementals gifted with water magic, and I’d heard of the ways such people used their abilities for everything from sailing, skiing, and fishing to more serious matters like flood control. But I’d never seen anything like this.

The human body was mostly made of water, and giants’ bodies were no different. More and more water beaded upon Antonio’s skin until it dripped off the ends of his fingers, his chin, hell, even the tip of his nose. His soaked suit was plastered to his body, and water leaked out of his wing tips and slowly spread across the deck. Well, that explained his agonized cries. Having the water forced out of every single cell in your body would make anyone scream, even a giant.

Without all that precious fluid, there wasn’t much of Antonio left. The giant’s face took on a gaunt, hollow look, and his whole body seemed to slowly deflate, like a tire that had sprung a leak.

It was sickening to watch.

Antonio wasn’t screaming anymore—but everyone else was. Even I had to bite back a snarl of disgust, especially when the elemental used their magic to pop the giant’s eyeballs right out of his head. The orbs splattered onto the deck and oozed over the glossy wood like white, runny eggs. That was a little excessive, if you asked me, a bit of showing off, especially since the giant was already so close to dead.

In less than a minute, it was all over. Antonio had been reduced from a rough, tough, seven-foot-tall giant to a pile of loose skin topped by an eyeless skull. The giant’s mouth opened once more, as if he wanted to scream a final time, but he never got the chance.

Antonio collapsed onto the deck, his skin and bones resting in the puddles of water that had just been forced out of him.

7

I stood there, still shielding Eva and Violet, and stared at the wet, floppy thing that had been a man just seconds before. Poor bastard. He’d never had a chance.

Kincaid fought through the screaming crowd of students and went down on one knee by Antonio, not caring that he was getting his pants wet with, well, Antonio. He started to touch the giant, then thought better of it. There was nothing that could be done for the man. Not now. Disgust and pity filled Kincaid’s face, along with rage—so much rage.

My eyes narrowed. That look told me that the casino boss knew exactly who had done this and why—things I planned on asking him just as soon as I got Eva and Violet to safety.

By this point, Sophia had managed to shoulder her way through the students over to my side.

“You get the girls off the boat!” I yelled at her. “I’ll handle Kincaid!”

Sophia nodded. The dwarf reached out and clamped a hand on Violet’s trembling arm. Sophia started to do the same to Eva, but the girl twisted away from her.

“No!” Eva shouted. “I’m not leaving him behind. Not again!”

Again?
What did she mean by that?

Before I could grab her and ask, Eva shoved away from the doors and ran toward Kincaid as fast as she could, given the people still trampling over each other. Now, instead of just running around in a blind panic, everyone was racing toward the gangplank, determined to get off the boat before what happened to Antonio happened to them too.

“Stay with Violet. I’ll get Eva!” I yelled to Sophia.

Knife still in my hand, I headed after Eva, dodging and darting between the stampeding students. The giants that made up the casino’s security force weren’t any calmer. Their heads swiveled left and right as they shouted at each other, all trying to stay as far away from Antonio as they could, lest they end up just like him. Some of the giants even shoved kids out of their way in their mad dash to safety.

Up ahead, I saw Eva reach Kincaid’s side. She stared at the dead giant and the pools of water under his body, then turned away and threw up all over the deck.

Kincaid cursed, got to his feet, and reached for her. “Eva, it’s okay—”

And that’s when I felt another gust of that cool, deadly magic sweep across the deck. Only this time, it was focused on our host.

I didn’t know exactly how it happened. One second,
Kincaid was reaching for Eva. The next, his feet had gone out from under him, and he was on his back on the deck, clawing at something around his throat. Eva must have seen him fall out of the corner of her eye, because she wiped her mouth and turned her head in his direction. Her eyes widened, and her already pale face whitened that much more.

“Philly!” Eva screamed. “Philly!”

She dropped to her knees beside him, tearing at his neck with her nails, just as Kincaid himself was doing. I surged past a frat boy and sprinted over to the two of them. My eyes flicked left, then right, looking for the source of the danger, looking for the elemental who was behind this, but all I saw and heard were screeching kids and panicked giants.

Since I couldn’t immediately eliminate the danger with my knife, I squatted down next to Kincaid. Something translucent shimmered around his throat, and it took me a second to realize that it was . . .
water
.

Somehow, a long, thick stream of water—of Antonio, really—had attached itself to Kincaid’s neck and solidified there like a noose, slowly digging deeper and deeper into his throat and cutting off his air. The casino boss clawed and clawed at the water, but it was stuck to his skin like a coat of wet plaster. The water even looked like a noose, the length of it taking on a braided, twisted design and forming a tight knot in the center of Kincaid’s neck. The elemental definitely had a sick sense of humor.

“Gin!” Eva screamed at me, tearing at the water and trying to peel it off just as hard as Kincaid was. “Do something! Help him!”

Eva was a strong girl, a tough girl, who’d been through a lot in her life, including the murder of her parents, but she looked absolutely terrified right now. Like Kincaid was the most important person in the world to her and she’d be absolutely devastated if she lost him. What was going on between them? And why didn’t I know anything about it? Eva and I might not have been best friends, like she and Violet were, but we talked, and I dated her brother. I should have known
something
about her relationship with the casino boss.

Kincaid’s eyes met mine. I could see the pain in his gaze—and the hope that I could somehow save him.

Part of me knew the smart play was to let the elemental finish the job—to let Kincaid die. With him dead, there’d be one less bad guy in Ashland, one less person to come after me. If it had been Jonah McAllister, I wouldn’t have hesitated. I would have gotten myself a drink, leaned against the railing, pulled out my cell phone, and recorded the whole thing for repeat viewing. But to my knowledge, Kincaid had never made any moves against me or mine, except for luring me here tonight, and I was starting to get a glimmer of an idea why he’d really done that.

Maybe it was Eva’s screams, or maybe it was the hope in the bastard’s eyes—the one emotion I could never quite disregard or turn away from. Either way, I knew I had to help him.

I bent down closer to Kincaid, looking at the noose around his neck. Both his and Eva’s fingers dipped into the water time and time again, but they weren’t having any luck grabbing onto the stream and yanking it away. All they were really doing was getting their hands wet,
and the water was slipping through their fingers and snapping right back into place like a rubber band. It almost seemed like the elemental was playing with them, solidifying the water just enough for them to think they had a chance to rip it away, then letting it dissolve and run through their hands only to re-form the deadly noose again. No doubt the elemental was enjoying every second of this sick game.

I couldn’t rip the thing off with my hands, any more than Kincaid and Eva could, and my knives wouldn’t be any help either. That left only one option.

“Eva, stop! Stop! Kincaid, quit fighting, and hold still,” I said.

Eva reached for him again, but I shouldered her back and out of the way. Despite the fact that he was the one being strangled, Kincaid was calmer than she was. He managed to nod, although his face was tinged with blue by this point.

I put my hand down on the noose, feeling the water writhe like a snake against my fingers. Then I reached for my Ice magic, letting the power rise up out of the deepest part of me. A silver light flared in my palm. The other elemental would sense me using my magic and probably realize what I intended to do with it, but there was nothing to be done about that right now. I just hoped our assailant didn’t have enough magic left to try to suck the moisture out of anyone else on deck. Probably not, since it took a lot of power to do that sort of thing, and the elemental hadn’t tried the same trick on Kincaid already.

It only took me half a second to completely freeze the noose around Kincaid’s neck and turn all that shifting,
sloshing water into a solid ring of elemental Ice. I sent out another burst of magic, shattering the Ice around his throat, and Kincaid quickly sucked down breath after breath.

He looked at me, his blue eyes cold and furious. “Find her,” he rasped. “Kill her . . . now . . . before she . . . gets away. . . .”