Crack! Crack! Crack!
Another barrage of shots echoed through the trees, as Finn mowed down whichever fool had been stupid enough to step out from behind his vehicle.
Knives in my hands, I moved forward. By this point, snow crusted my boots an inch thick in places, so my footsteps made little noise. I crept up until I stood at a right angle with the three bounty hunters, who were dickering about who should lead the way into the tunnel. Despite their weapons, none of them wanted to come face-to-face with the Spider in her own house.
They just didn’t realize that it was too late for that already. Way too late.
The three bounty hunters continued to mill around the tunnel entrance, still arguing. When it was apparent that they couldn’t come to a decision by themselves, they held out their hands and decided to go rock-paper-scissors for it. They slapped their hands together, and I used the noise to tiptoe even closer to them. I stood in the woods and waited, but all three of them picked paper, so they had to do it again.
I rolled my eyes. And these were the people that Mab was promising millions of dollars to if they found, captured, or killed me. At least Elektra LaFleur had been smart and strong enough to be a real challenge. Mab was wasting her money on these amateurs.
Finally, their hands smacked down for the final time, and the two women grinned, because they’d both picked paper again, while Connor had chosen rock, which meant that he’d lost.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “I’ll go first since you ladies are so afraid to—”
The silverstone knife I’d just thrown sank into his right eye, and he fell to the snow without a sound. For a moment, the two women stood there—stunned—and stared down at their fallen comrade, mouths open, their brains not quite catching on as to what was happening.
And that’s when I made my move.
I palmed another knife, darted out of the shelter of the trees, and raced toward them. Connor had been the only one with a gun, which is why I’d dropped him first. My focus was on keeping the noise to a minimum—not letting Connor shoot up the woods and give away my location. Besides, if I couldn’t take out two chicks with only a sword and a whip between them, then I wasn’t the Spider, wasn’t half the assassin Fletcher had trained me to be.
After another second, the women snapped back to reality and realized that there was someone else in the clearing, someone who was an immediate threat to them—me. Celia reached down, fumbling at her sword, trying to get it free of the loop on her belt.
I didn’t give her the chance.
My first knife punched into chest, rupturing her heart. Her hot blood painted my hands a steaming crimson, spattering onto the snow like scarlet teardrops. Celia opened her mouth to scream, but I used my second knife to cut her throat before she could utter so much as a whimper. I pushed her dying body away and turned to face the other woman—
Her whip snapped against my neck.
I hissed in pain and staggered back, my blood mixing with that of the other bounty hunters’ on the snow. In front of me, Liza flicked her whip over the ground, making it writhe like a rattlesnake. She also backed up out of the range of my knives. Smart. Just not smart enough.
“So you’re the Spider,” she muttered. “I suppose I should thank you for killing Connor and Celia. Now, I won’t have to bother with it—or share the bounty with them.”
I gave her a cold, hard smile that was as wintry as the landscape around us. “You’re assuming that you’re going to live long enough to collect.”
Liza returned my smile with one of her own. “Oh, I will, Spider. Don’t you worry about that—”
I rushed her, trying to take her by surprise while she was still talking, but the bounty hunter had been expecting the move and raised her whip. I threw myself to one side, but the leather streaked through the air like black lightning. The blow opened up a deep cut on my cheek, burning my skin almost as much as Mab’s elemental Fire had. I hissed again.
“What’s the matter, Spider?” Liza laughed. “Don’t you like the feel of my whip?”
My eyes narrowed, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I began moving to the left, trying to get into her blind spot. But she turned with me, and the two of us circled around and around, like two dogs fighting over a bone that lay between them.
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
Another round of shots rang through the woods. Someone else must have tried to approach the house, and Finn had killed him for his trouble. Still, I knew it wouldn’t be too much longer now before the bounty hunters decided to storm the structure en masse. I needed to get Finn and Bria out of there before that happened.
Trying to end things, I darted forward, but the bounty hunter raised her whip again. This time, the weapon cut through my leather bustier and opened a stinging gash on my chest, right above my heart.
“By the time I’m through, you’ll have more cuts than any you ever made on one of your hits,” Liza crowed, flicking her whip back and forth.
“The hell I will,” I snarled.
Too late, the bounty hunter spotted the hard anger in my face. Liza backed up and raised her whip even as I charged her again. The leather sliced through the air toward me, but this time, instead of ducking it, I caught the leather in my hand, even though it opened up another deep cut on my palm.
And I didn’t let go.
The bounty hunter tried to jerk her whip out of my grasp, but I used my Ice magic to numb my fist, so I wouldn’t feel the whip cutting into my skin. Then I moved toward her, one quick step at a time. Once more, Liza tried to tug the whip out of my grasp. When that didn’t work, she turned and started to run.
But by then, it was too late.
My knife sliced into her back, and Liza joined her other two dead friends on the forest floor.
I plodded over and retrieved the knife I’d thrown at Connor, breathing harder than I would have liked. The fight with Mab had taken its toll on me, and I’d just used up the remaining scraps of my magic to defeat the bounty hunter. My heart raced, my lungs burned, and my legs trembled with the effort of just standing upright. Not to mention the blood that dripped out of the fresh cuts on my skin. Right now, I wanted nothing more than to get Jo-Jo to heal me, then crawl into bed and sleep for twelve hours. But I couldn’t do that. Not until Bria and Finn were safe, and the three of us were far, far away from here—
A branch creaked somewhere farther back in the forest.
I whirled around, silverstone knives up and at the ready. Looking, listening, straining to see what new danger might be waiting in the dark.
Nothing. I saw and heard nothing.
Maybe it had just been the wind rattling through the trees, a branch collapsing under the weight of the snow, or a wild animal drawn by the smell of fresh blood. But I didn’t believe that. Not really, not deep down in my gut where it mattered. Because Gentry was out there somewhere, with Sydney and her rifle. Nothing I could do about it now, though. Getting Finn and Bria out of the house was my first priority. I’d deal with everything else later—including Gentry, should she decide to show herself.
The snow started to fall once more as I ducked down and slid into the tunnel.
Fletcher Lane’s escape tunnel reminded me of a coal mine that I’d been in not too long ago—low, squat, and round, with rough, uneven, earthen walls supported by thick wooden beams. The air smelled as old and musty as a dust-covered book long forgotten on a shelf. Dried-up leaves littered the entrance, and they crackled like cellophane under my boots as I moved farther inside.
The leaves gave way to hard-packed dirt, worn smooth and shiny by the tread of countless feet across it over the years. Fletcher had told me that the tunnel had once been used by bootleggers back during Prohibition, a hiding place for them and their mountain moonshine to rest before continuing their journey. Even now, all these years later, the rocks underfoot muttered with worry, tension, and fear of discovery. The on-edge sound matched my own mood perfectly.
I’d picked up one of the bounty hunt
ers’ flashlights before stepping inside so it was easy enough for me to make my way down the tunnel. Still, I sidestepped carefully to avoid disturbing the spiderwebs that stretched from one wooden beam to the next like wispy threads of silver silk. If any more of the bounty hunters discovered the tunnel, I didn’t want them to realize that I’d been in here—or that I’d taken Finn and Bria out this way.
Ten minutes later, I reached the far end of the tunnel. I walked up a series of steep steps to a heavy metal door and banged on it three times with the flashlight, then three more times, then still three more times—a long-standing signal Fletcher had taught Finn and me should we ever need to get into the house this way.
I’d barely finished tapping on the door when I heard the bolt screech back. A second later, the metal door opened, letting light from the house stream into the tunnel. I shielded my eyes against the glare and looked up to find Bria staring down at me, her gun pointed at my head. She wasn’t taking any chances. Good.
“You all right?” I asked.
Bria lowered her weapon and moved to one side so I could climb up out of the trapdoor that was set into the floor of Fletcher’s cluttered office, right behind the old man’s desk.
“I’m fine,” she said.
She looked no worse for wear—despite the fact that she didn’t have on a shirt and had just thrown her long wool coat on over a pale pink camisole and a pair of jeans. Her bare feet were stuffed into a pair of my sneakers. A missing shirt and socks. That must have been as far as Finn had gotten to undressing her before the two of them were interrupted.
“Where’s Finn?”
“A few rooms over still picking off bounty hunters,” Bria said.
“Get him, and let’s get out of here,” I said. “I had to drop a couple of the more curious ones out in the woods already, and I want to be clear of here before the others start searching the area around the house and find their bodies and the entrance to the tunnel.”
Bria nodded and left the room. Fletcher’s office stood in one of the front corners of the house, so I eased over to the window and peered out through the curtains and silverstone bars that covered the glass. The bounty hunters still ringed the front of the house.
Every once in a while, one of them would take aim and fire off a couple of shots, even though the bullets did nothing more than catch in the thick, reinforced walls and the slabs of granite that covered the house like an armadillo’s layered, protective shell. Still, the bullets pinging into the granite had activated the runes that I’d traced into the stone with my magic. Small, tight, spiral curls—the symbol for protection. In addition to using them as symbols of their magic and allegiances, elementals could also imbue runes with power and make them perform specific functions.
When I’d first moved back into Fletcher’s house several months ago, I’d spent hours tracing the runes into every bit of stone that composed the house, watching them shimmer with the silver color of my magic before sinking into the stone. My own personal alarm system. If anyone tried to sneak inside the house, she would trigger the protection runes, and my magic would echo through the granite, rising to a shrill shriek that would rouse me from the deepest, darkest, deadest sleep. Just like it was doing now. I gritted my teeth at the harsh sound of the stone wailing all around me. Yeah, I knew we were in trouble—I didn’t need my magic to remind me of it.
Thirty seconds later, Bria entered the office again. Finn followed her inside, a flashlight in his left hand. He clutched a revolver in his right hand and had another stuffed into his waistband. The pockets on his pants bulged with ammo, and he jangled louder than a cowboy sporting a pair of shiny new silver spurs. Finn looked just as disheveled as my sister did. His suit jacket was missing, along with his tie, and his impeccable shirt was mussed and untucked, the tail of it flapping against his pants like a loose tongue.
Finn saw me eyeing his rumpled clothes and exchanged a guilty look with Bria before turning back to me. “Gin, we’re both so sorry—” he started.
I held up my hand, cutting him off. “I know you are. Let’s just get out of here. Then I can properly scream at the two of you for being so careless, and you can spend the rest of the night apologizing profusely. Deal?”
They both nodded.
“Good. Then let’s get out of here.”
Flashlight still in hand, I pounded down the steps into the tunnel. Bria followed me, her gun still out. Finn brought up the rear and closed the metal door behind us, this time bolting it from the inside, so that no one from the house could come up behind us in the tunnel—at least not without pounding through the metal and making a hell of a lot of noise doing it.
I moved quickly, despite my lingering aches and pains, and Bria and Finn did the same. Several minutes later, we exited the escape tunnel at the other end, back in the snowy woods. I went first, sliding out and moving off into the trees. Looking, listening, searching for anything that didn’t belong, anything out of place, any shadow that hadn’t been here before when I’d first gone into the tunnel.
Once more, I didn’t see or hear anything, not even the soft fall of the snow as the dime-size flakes fluttered to the ground. Still, a finger of unease crawled up my spine one cold inch at a time. The primitive, predatory, lizard part of my brain knew that something was wrong, but I couldn’t pinpoint it, and I didn’t have time to stop and think about it. Not when the bounty hunters could charge the house or start searching the woods at any second.
“Come on,” I muttered to the others. “It’s clear.”
Finn and Bria slipped out of the tunnel after me. Finn stopped long enough to shut the door on this end as well, and I had to stop myself from snapping at him for the delay. As precarious as our situation was, even a few seconds could mean the difference between life and death. But even worse than that was the grinding screech that the door made. It echoed through the forest just the way that the gunshots had earlier, only this time, there were no bullets flying through the air to help mask the noise. I would have cursed, if that sound wouldn’t have carried as well. If Gentry or any of the other bounty hunters were lurking in the woods, there was no way that they wouldn’t have heard such a high, distinctive sound—or come to investigate. Finn winced and hurried over to Bria and me.
“Follow me,” I whispered to them. “Stay right behind me no matter what. Quickly now.”
They nodded, guns ready. Finn and I turned off our flashlights. We didn’t need them. Both of us had been raised in these woods and had spent hours exploring them. Besides, someone might see the bobbing lights, which was a risk I wasn’t willing to take. There was more than enough moon and starlight to reflect off the snow and show us the way, not to mention the bright, collective glow from the bounty hunters’ cars and the lights still blazing inside the house.
The three of us plowed through the woods, going as fast as we could through the snow and still keep our footing. I took point, putting myself out front, a silverstone knife in either hand, with Bria behind me, and Finn guarding the rear, all three of us looking, watching, listening. Our breaths rasped and frosted in the air like jets leaving vapor trails behind them.
My unease grew, rising up until it matched the wailing shrieks of the stone of Fletcher’s house in its piercing intensity, but I shook it off and kept going—
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The gunshots came out of nowhere.
Too late, I realized what it was that I’d been missing before—the sound of the bounty hunters shooting at the house. The loud cracks of bullets zipping through the night had completely vanished. Now I knew why. Some of them had finally gotten smart and invaded the woods—probably drawn by the creak of Finn closing the tunnel door.
One second the three of us were alone in the forest. The next, figures moved in the trees all around us, like we’d kicked over an anthill and had sent all the biting insects scuttling in our direction, determined to exact what vengeance they could.
“Run!” I told Finn and Bria. “Run!”
&nbs
p; We took off. There was no time to be silent or sneaky, and no time to take the bounty hunters out one by one. There were just too many of them, and they rolled over us like waves crashing against a sandy shore. As soon as one bounty hunter went down, another one swept in to take his place. I led the way, with Bria and Finn behind me, firing their guns at our pursuers. I ran as fast as I dared, as fast as I could go and still have them keep up with me, but I still knew that it was too slow—too fucking slow.
Faces began to appear in the woods. The bounty hunters’ lips were all drawn back into triumphant smiles, while greed made their eyes glint like the predators that they were. Closer and closer they crept, slowly gaining on us. Two giants had moved quicker than the rest and actually managed to get in front of us, stepping out into the path ahead and blocking our escape. Not for long. My hands tightened around my knives.
I barreled into the first giant. My blades sliced one way, then the other, and he went down screaming. But the other bastard stepped up to take his place. Behind me, Bria and Finn had both stopped to reload their guns and take aim at another group of hunters closing in on our left flank.
And that’s when Ruth Gentry made her move.
The old, spry bounty hunter darted out of the trees to our right, like a ghost appearing out of thin air. Gentry timed her attack perfectly, popping out of the forest from less than ten feet away. How the hell had she gotten that close to us without my seeing her?
Before I knew what was happening, before I could even think about stopping her, before I could even scream out a fucking warning, the old woman was on us. She snuck up on Bria’s blind side, grabbing my baby sister by her shag of blond hair. Bria shrieked in surprise and stumbled back but she brought up her elbow, ready to drive it into the stomach of whoever was behind her—