The Spider(Elemental Assassin series)

27





Finn drove fast on the deserted streets, and we made it over to Fletcher’s house in record time. Finn pulled into the bottom of the driveway and stopped, although the engine was still running.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Should we do this quiet or loud?”

I held my knife up where he could see it. “Loud—and bloody.”

He grinned and slammed his foot down onto the pedal. The car churned up the driveway and crested the top of the ridge. A black SUV sat in front of the house, with the same Vaughn Construction bumper sticker as the one that had been outside Finn’s apartment.

The giants were already here.

Finn stopped the car, making the tires spit gravel everywhere. He reached into the backseat to get a gun out of his bag, but I was already out of the vehicle. I raced over to the SUV, hoping that the giants had just arrived, but it was empty. They must already be inside—

Crack!

Crack! Crack!

Crack!

Gunshots sounded, and orange blasts of gunfire lit up one of the downstairs windows. I sprinted for the porch. The front door had been kicked in and clung to the frame with one lonely hinge. Finn stepped up onto the porch with me, a gun in his hand. I gestured at myself, then the opening, telling him that I would go in the front. Finn nodded, hurried off the porch, and disappeared around the corner of the house so he could come in from the back.

I eased past the broken door and stepped inside the house. Despite the late hour, several lamps blazed in various rooms, casting pools of light into the hallway. Fletcher must have been waiting up for me again. My heart wrenched at the thought, but I made myself focus. I looked and listened, but I didn’t hear any sounds, not even the TV softly murmuring in the den. Fletcher and the giants must be somewhere deeper in the house.

So I crept down the hallway, easing up to all the rooms and peeking inside them. Fletcher’s house had always been cluttered, but all of the knickknacks and furnishings seemed to take on a sinister air, given the combination of light and dark inside the house, along with the moonlight streaming in through the cracks in the curtains.

The house itself was also a bit like a maze, given all the additions that had been tacked onto it over the years. Hallways zigzagged here and there, doubled back on each other, and ultimately led to dead ends. Tonight, with the giants lurking inside, it was a maze of death. Still, I wanted to let the old man know that he wasn’t alone, not anymore.

“Fletcher!” I yelled. “I’m here!”

Silence.

“Fletcher!” I yelled again.

A floorboard creaked deeper in the house.

I thought for a moment, trying to judge where the sound had come from, then quickly slid through one of the downstairs living rooms and out the other side into a hallway that ran parallel to the one that I’d been in. If I was right, it sounded like someone was in this middle section of the house, close to the den in the back.

I eased up to the doorframe of another living room and peered around the edge—

Crack!

Crack! Crack!

Crack!

I ducked back out into the hallway as bullets slammed into the wood, splintering it. Yep, at least one of the giants was right where I’d guessed he would be. I thought for a moment.

“Fletcher!” I yelled again.

Crack!

Crack! Crack!

Crack!

I stuck my head around the doorframe again and ducked back as more bullets zipped in my direction. Then I turned and hurried away, making sure to thump my bare feet into the wooden floorboards so they’d creak like they had under the giant’s weight. I got to the end of the hallway and doubled back the way I’d just come, this time taking care where I stepped so I wouldn’t give away the fact that I hadn’t run away after all. Ten seconds later, I was right back where I’d started, outside the doorway.

“Jack!” I heard someone hiss inside the room. “It’s Frank! Where are you?”

But Jack didn’t answer his friend. I wondered if Fletcher had managed to kill that one—and where the third and last man might be.

But my trap worked, and heavy footsteps scurried in my direction. I stayed where I was beside the splintered doorframe and waited, just waited.

But Frank was a little more cautious than I expected him to be. He stuck his gun through the doorway first and swept it from side to side, ready to shoot at anything that moved in the hallway beyond. I stayed where I was, out of his line of sight.

Frank stepped into the corridor. He started to hurry to his right, the direction he’d thought I’d gone, when he saw me out of the corner of his eye. He turned, trying to bring his gun up so he could fire at me, but I was already moving, moving, moving.

I slashed my knife across his stomach, tearing through his muscles and slicing open his guts. Blood spattered onto my hands and sprayed all over the floor and walls. Frank howled with pain, brought his gun up, and pulled the trigger.

Crack!

I managed to knock his hand away at the last second, and the bullet blasted by my head instead of going through my skull. But the bright muzzle flash ruined my vision, and the sound seared my ears, disorienting me. I stumbled away, and Frank came after me. He raised his gun to fire again. I staggered back, tripping over the edge of a table. My legs went out from under me, and I fell to the floor on my ass, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to keep him from putting a bullet in my chest. I reached for my Stone magic, but I didn’t know if I could harden my skin with it before he pulled the trigger—

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Frank screamed as three bullets punched into his back, but he raised his gun and focused it on me once more.

Crack!

This time, the bullet went into the back of Frank’s skull, and he thumped to the floor without another sound.

I blinked the last of the flashing white spots out of my vision and looked up. Fletcher stood farther down the hallway, a large revolver clutched in his hand. The old man shuffled forward and peered down at the giant, making sure that he was dead, before he raised his eyes to mine.

“That was the last of them,” Fletcher said. “Arrogant bastards thought they could bust right on in here and take care of me. Well, we showed them, didn’t we?”

He smiled and took another step forward. He lowered his gun, and that’s when I noticed the blood dripping down his right arm—and how much of it was splashed all over his clothes.

“Fletcher?” I whispered.

He grinned at me again, then collapsed to the floor.

? ? ?

“Fletcher!” I scrambled over to him on my hands and knees.

He smiled up at me, his face crinkled with pain. “Not so loud, Gin. My ears are about the only part of me that doesn’t hurt right now.”

For the first time, I noticed that Fletcher’s face was red, puffy, and bruised, his lower lip was split, and he was holding his right arm across his ribs like they’d been broken. But what worried me most was the bullet hole in the front of his shirt close to his right collarbone. That’s where all the blood was coming from, oozing out of the wound in a slow but steady stream.

“Finn!” I yelled. “It’s clear! Get in here!”

Footsteps thumped through the back of the house, and Finn burst into the hallway, his gun clutched in his hand. He took one look at his dad and disappeared. He returned a few seconds later with some towels he’d grabbed from the kitchen. He tossed them at me, then vanished again.

“What happened?” I asked, using my knife to cut the towels into long, thin strips that I could use for a bandage.

Fletcher shrugged, then hissed with the pain that flooded his body at the motion. “I heard a car pull up outside about ten minutes ago. I went to the window to look and see who it was, and I realized that it was three giants with guns. They didn’t look happy, so I headed toward the kitchen to grab one of my guns from under the sink. I would have made it too, if not for that damn door. Did it stick for them? Oh, hell no. They kicked it in like it was made of matchsticks. That settles it. I’m putting in that black granite door, with extra silverstone.”

Finn reappeared, this time carrying a small metal tin. A white cloud outlined in vivid blue was painted on top. Finn popped off the top of the tin with his thumb, then dropped to his knees beside me in the hallway. He dipped his hands into the tin, which contained a clear salve infused with Jo-Jo’s healing Air elemental magic. The soft, soothing scent of vanilla wafted over to me as Finn spread a thick layer of the ointment on the bullet hole in Fletcher’s shoulder.

Fletcher sighed as the salve started soaking into his skin. The ointment wasn’t as good as Jo-Jo healing him herself, but the magic in it would lessen his pain—and, more important, his blood loss—until we could get him to her.

When Finn had smeared salve all over the wound, I handed him the shredded towels, and he wrapped the strips of fabric around Fletcher’s entire shoulder, further slowing the blood loss.

Fletcher hissed with pain again. I knew that he was hurting, but the wound had to be bandaged, and he would have been doing the same thing if it had been me lying there instead of him.

It should have been me—I wished it had been me.

I took his hand, trying to give him something else to focus on and comfort him however I could. He crushed his fingers against mine, but I didn’t utter a sound. He could squeeze as hard as he needed to, and I wouldn’t complain.

By the time Finn tied off the towels, sweat had beaded on Fletcher’s face, his skin was pale underneath the blood and bruises, and his eyes were fluttering shut.

“We need to get him to Jo-Jo’s,” I said.

Finn nodded. He knew the signs of shock as well as I did. “On three. One, two, three!”

We each put an arm under the old man’s shoulders and lifted him to his feet. Fletcher groaned, but his body went slack, and I knew that he’d passed out. That was probably for the best right now.

Together, Finn and I dragged the old man away from the dead giant and out of the house.