I ignored his taunts and his hands tightening around my neck. My whole world had shrunk to hooking my fingers through that handle and sliding the box free from the wall. My fingers slipped, and slipped again, but I kept trying.
Santos shook me again, moving my arm just enough for me to wrap my fingers around the handle and tug the box free from the wall. Whatever was inside was heavy—heavy enough to yank my arm down—and I almost lost my grip on the whole thing. Even though my strained muscles were screaming at me to let go, I gritted my teeth and used the downward momentum to swing the box right back up and smash it into Santos’s face.
The box cracked against his left cheekbone hard enough to leave a dent in the metal. The sharp blow stunned him, making him loose his grip on my throat and stagger back. I fell to the floor, coughing and wheezing, but I hung on to the box, surged back onto my feet, and slammed it into his face again, this time catching him in his already broken nose. At this impact, the box popped open, spilling black velvet bags everywhere. Loose diamonds came tumbling out of the bags, sparkling like ice chips embedded in the rubble.
Santos growled and clapped his hands to his nose. I wrapped my hand around the handle and swung my entire body around, driving the box into his head as hard as I could. I managed to get the angle just right, and one of the metal corners stuck in the sweet spot at his temple, cracking his skull open like an egg. Blood sprayed everywhere, and this time, Santos was the one who whimpered. His shoulders slumped, his knees buckled, and he crumpled to the floor, his body sprawling at an awkward angle on top of the shattered stones.
I stood there, sucking down dusty air, and watched him bleed out on top of all those diamonds. Then I tossed the safety-deposit box aside, staggered over to the wall, and followed it over to the vault entrance.
The dust had finally started to dissipate, letting me see that Finn was gone, cut ropes hanging over the chair that he’d been tied down to. I squinted, but I didn’t see him or the others. Santos must have hit me harder than I’d thought. I blinked and peered down the hallway again—
A blast of cold hit me from behind.
I screamed as the wave of magic slammed into my back, catapulting me right out of the vault. I hit Finn’s chair and bounced off, face-planting onto the marble floor of the hallway. In an instant, my body burned with cold, my back turning stiff and brittle, just like the crystals that were spreading across my skin, trying to freeze the rest of me. I immediately pushed back with my own magic, stopping the crystals in their tracks, but the damage had already been done, and most of my back was frozen solid. I felt like an ice cube that had somehow grown arms and legs, but I groaned, grabbed hold of the chair, and pulled myself back up onto my feet.
Deirdre stood in front of me.
I’d been so concerned with keeping Santos from choking me to death that I’d lost track of her. She too was covered with marble dust, and blood dripped down her face, neck, and arms from where the stone shrapnel had shredded her coveralls and cut into her skin. Deirdre was wounded, but she was by no means dead. Her pale eyes glittered in her face, and the cold blue-white flames of her Ice magic shot out of her clenched fists like frosty fireworks exploding over and over again.
“You meddlesome bitch!” she hissed.
Deirdre shoved her hands forward, shooting out a spray of long, jagged Ice daggers at me, any one of which would be enough to end me if it hit in just the right spot. I covered my head and face with my good arm and ducked back behind the chair, using it as a shield.
Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk.
The chair took the brunt of Deirdre’s assault, the wood splintering apart as the Ice daggers speared it, but one of the cold, sharp projectiles punched into my thigh. I screamed and staggered back, but my knee buckled, and I sprawled in a heap on the floor. Still, I kept going, clawing at the floor with my one good hand, trying to pull myself over the slick marble and away from her.
Too late.
Deirdre marched down the hallway and kicked me in the ribs, forcing me to roll over onto my back and look up at her.
“Well, now I realize why the others were all so worried about you.” A sneer twisted her lips. “At least killing you will earn me some favor with them.”
Them? Who was them? And why were they so interested in me?
Deirdre raised her hands, Ice daggers sprouting like blue-white spikes on her fingertips. There was no way I could avoid her magic. Not this time. So I reached for the scraps of my Stone power and hardened my skin as much as I could, even though I knew that it wasn’t going to be enough to stop her from skewering me—