“So here we are,” Mab murmured, her silky voice slithering like a snake through the courtyard.
Perhaps the stones of my ruined house sensed the Fire elemental’s opposing magic, or perhaps they knew she was the reason that I’d lashed out at them in the first place. Either way, the stones’ mutters grew harsher and sharper underneath my booted feet. The raging sound made me smile. It matched exactly how I felt.
“Here we are.” I returned Mab’s de facto greeting.
The two of us stood there, staring at each other. The Fire elemental was twenty feet away from me, with Bria tucked another twenty feet behind her. No, Mab wasn’t taking any chances that I could snatch my sister and escape with her.
“Now that this moment has finally arrived, I have to say that I’m at a loss for words,” Mab admitted in a sly, satisfied voice.
I arched an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t start crowing about your ultimate victory just yet. That’s a good way to get dead, especially when I’m around. Just ask Elektra LaFleur. Oh, that’s right. You can’t, because I killed her.”
Mab’s eyes darkened, a bit of fire flashing in her black gaze. The sparks seemed to suck up even more of the dusky twilight, instead of reflecting back the faint light.
“Your insolence is noted, little Genevieve, and it does not please me. Or have you forgotten that I have your sweet sister over here at my mercy? That I’ve had her at my mercy all day long already? I have to say, I’m actually glad things worked out this way. What fun I’ve had with her, especially in seeing how long and loud I could make her scream while I burned her with my magic. It’s been most entertaining. After I kill you, I think I’ll start on her face. Melt it right off and then put out her pretty little eyes with my thumbs. I might even let her live, keep her around as a sort of pet. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Rage filled me at her words—cold, black, unending rage. Whatever happened to me, Mab would not hurt my sister again. She would not.
But I didn’t let any of what I was feeling show in my hard features, and I didn’t look at Bria. If I did that, if I saw the fear in her eyes again, I might come undone, which was something I couldn’t afford.
“Oh, no, I haven’t forgotten that you have Bria. Kind of sad, though. That you needed a bargaining chip to catch me. But then again, you’re not as young as you used to be, are you, Mab?”
Yeah, I was taunting her, but we both knew exactly how this was going to play out. Despite whatever empty promises she’d made to me over the phone, Mab wasn’t letting Bria go or me walk out of the courtyard alive. Not unless I made her—not unless Finn, Owen, and the others made her. My part in this was to keep talking and taunting her. Every second I did that was another second that Finn and the others had to slip out of their hiding places in the woods, quietly take out the bounty hunters stationed on the perimeter, and get into position at the edge of the courtyard.
Buying my friends that precious time meant putting on a show for all those in attendance. So instead of staring at Mab, I turned around in a slow circle, looking at each one of the giants and bounty hunters gathered around me. My gaze drifted from one face to another. Most of them stared back at me head-on. After all, it wasn’t like I was dealing with choirboys and schoolgirls here. These were professionals who were just as hard and ruthless as I was. But a few shied away from my eyes, while others dropped their heads entirely. Their reluctance to even look at me gave me some hope that my friends would be able to break their ranks and morale long enough to rescue Bria.
“I’m giving everyone here a chance,” I said. “Walk away right now, and you can live. I won’t come after you afterward. I know what Mab’s like. How she’s forced some of you to be here against your will. How she’s threatened your wives, kids, whatever. I won’t hold that against you, not if you leave right now and never look back.”
My harsh words echoed through the courtyard, out into the remains of the ruined house, and even into the forest beyond. The stones under my feet muttered at my voice, recognizing it and the hidden elemental power in my words. The stones didn’t want to negotiate, they didn’t want to let anyone go. No, the stones wanted to lash out, to crush whoever came close and grind their bones into dust, just like I’d done to them once upon a time. Just the way I wanted to do to Mab right now. But some small part of me insisted that I give the others a chance first—which was more than they or the Fire elemental would ever do for me.
There were no takers, of course. Everyone remained where they were, weapons at the ready. Couldn’t blame them for that. After all, I was the one seemingly twisting out here in the snow and wind all by my lonesome. Not for long, though. Not for long.
Mab let out a little peal of laughter when no one took me up on my offer. “Oh, please. You don’t actually expect to walk out of here alive, do you, Genevieve?”
The sound of her saying my name again, my real name, made that little primal voice in the back of my head start muttering the way that it always did whenever I was around the Fire elemental. Enemy, enemy, enemy…
I shrugged. “It seems to me like you’re the one not expecting to walk out of here alive, considering all the men that you brought along with you. Admit it, Mab. You’re scared of me. You always have been. Deep down, there’s a part of you that realizes that I might be just that much better than you, that much stronger than you. That’s why you killed my mother and older sister. That’s why you tried to kill me and Bria. Because you’ve always been scared of us and what we could do to you. At the end of the day, you’re nothing but a bully and a fucking coward.”
Rage flickered in Mab’s eyes, more rage than I had ever seen her show before. I’d hit a little too close to home with my words, but the Fire elemental would never admit it. Not even now, at the end.
“I killed your mother because I wanted to,” Mab snarled. “Because she was an arrogant, pompous bitch who took everything that I ever wanted, including your father, Tristan.”
I’d once heard Elliot Slater say that Mab had pursued my father because she’d wanted to pass his Stone magic on to any kids that they might have had together, even though that wouldn’t have been a certainty. But my father had loved my mother and chosen her instead. Tristan had died when I was a child, supposedly in a car accident, and I barely remembered him.
“Our families have hated each other for years, Genevieve. We’ve been at war for decades,” Mab continued.
“And why is that?” I asked, genuinely curious.
Mab smiled. “My family has always had certain… ideas about how things in Ashland should be run. And your family has always opposed us, being the goody-goodies that they inherently are. Ice elementals. Always so weak. But I was strong enough to make my family’s ideas, our plans, a reality. I was strong enough to take my rightful place as the head of the Ashland underworld. But doing all that involved things that your weak, spineless mother didn’t approve of, and she felt it was her duty to try to stop me, just as her mother thwarted mine for years before.”
“Things like what? Murder? Extortion? Kidnappings? I wonder why Eira had such a problem with all that,” I drawled in a mocking tone.
Mab waved her hand. “Please. Eira cared as little about me as I did about her, until one of her friends racked up a gambling debt to me that he just couldn’t pay off. So I killed him, and then I killed his family, locking them in their own house and burning it to the ground.”
I froze. Owen. She had to be talking about Owen’s family and how she’d killed them. Somehow, my mother had known Owen’s parents, and she’d started fighting Mab because of their deaths. Just when I thought that I knew everything there was to know about my past, something else reared up to surprise me once more.
“After that, Eira showed more gumption than I’d ever thought she’d had. Every time I made a move to gain power after that, she countered it, undercutting me. But I took care of her in the end.”
Mab’s eyes darkened that much more, and I got the sense that she was having her own flashbacks, remember
ing her own battles against my mother. I wondered if she was as haunted by them as I was by her. But the moment passed, and the Fire elemental stared at me once more.
“As for your being stronger than me? Please,” Mab scoffed. “Says who?”
I straightened. “Jo-Jo Deveraux, for starters. For years, the dwarf has been telling me that I have more raw magic than any elemental that she’s ever seen—including you, Mab.”
Something almost like uncertainty flickered in her face. Around us, a few of her men shifted on their feet, the scrape of their shoes as loud as gunshots in the absolute quiet. They didn’t know what to make of my threatening their boss—or the fact that she didn’t immediately dispute my outlandish claims.
Mab stared at me, hate twisting her features. I wondered if this was how my mother had seen her. The two of them had grown up as part of two opposing elemental families. I wondered if this was what my mother had noticed in Mab that had made Eira stand up to her—the evil and hate that turned the Fire elemental into something small and black and ugly.
Mab snapped her fingers. I tensed, ready to reach for my Ice and Stone magic, expecting her to throw a ball of elemental Fire at me just like she had in the country club. But instead, a small red dot popped up on my chest, just level with my heart.
Well, well, well. Someone had a sniper rifle handy. I wondered if it was Sydney or one of the other bounty hunters. Didn’t much matter, though. I’d taken the precaution of putting on one of my heavy silverstone vests before I’d walked into the courtyard. No mere sniper’s bullet could get through the hard shell of the magical metal that shielded my chest.
“As you can see,” Mab sneered. “I learned from my past mistakes. As you said before, I didn’t come here alone, and now, it’s your turn to die—for good this time.”
I just smiled at Mab. “Wow, you really must be afraid of me if you can’t even bring yourself to use your magic to kill me. Going to have one of your boys do it instead, are you? I was wrong before. You’re no bully. You’re nothing but a cowardly bitch.”
Mab’s eyes narrowed to slits, but she didn’t respond to my taunt. “Good-bye, Genevieve.”
Mab snapped her fingers again, and a shot rang out, shattering the silence of the falling snow.
The bullet ripped through the air on its deadly course—but not at me.
Instead, a sharp, startled cry sounded. A second later, a man rolled down a pile of rubble that he’d been perched on top of about thirty feet off to my left. His body came to rest in the base of the courtyard. For a moment, everyone was stunned. Just stunned.
Then Mab turned back to me, fury rolling off her in palpable waves so hot that the snow under her stilettos started to ooze and melt from the constant, invisible drip of her elemental Fire power.
“You didn’t really think that I came here alone, did you, Mab?” I mocked her. “That’s one down. Which one of your men wants to die next?”
Mab opened her mouth, no doubt to direct some other cutting retort at me, but I beat her to the punch.
“Now, Finn!” I screamed. “Now!”
Crack! Crack!
Two more shots rang out, and one of the giants holding onto Bria collapsed in the snow, thanks to the bullets that Finn had just put through his eye. One down, one to go.
Then the most surprising thing happened. Ruth Gentry pulled out her revolver and shot the other giant in the back of the head three times. He too dropped to the snow. Gentry reached forward and jerked Bria back, putting my sister behind her. Across the distance, the bounty hunter gave me another nod. For whatever reason, she’d changed sides. Hell, maybe this had been her plan all along. Let me and Mab duke it out, then sell Bria back to whoever was left standing at the end. Either way, she’d gotten Bria away from the giants and that much closer to safety. So this time, I nodded back at her.
Startled by the shots, Mab’s head whipped around, wondering what had just happened to her two men, but everyone else was just as distracted as the Fire elemental. Except maybe Jonah McAllister. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the lawyer staring at me, his face suddenly pale. He took a step back, then another one. What was McAllister up to? Running away? Or something more devious?
A giant off to my right charged me, his hands arching into claws like he wanted to wrap them around my throat and just squeeze. I had no more time to think about McAllister. I palmed one of my silverstone knives and turned to meet him. The blade sank into his chest before I ripped it out and used it to lay open his throat. He died with a gurgling scream, and I shoved his body back into the ring of men surrounding me. They scattered like the vultures they were as he thumped to the ground at their feet.
“Who’s next?” I snarled, the giant’s hot blood still dripping off my knife.
A couple of the bounty hunters on the far edge of the ring looked at each other and started easing away from me. Apparently, my words hadn’t been enough, and it had taken more of a visceral display to make them see the light. However much Mab was paying them, the money wouldn’t do them a damn bit of good if they were dead.
“Get her, you fools!” Mab screamed at her men. “Now!”
The bounty hunters exchanged another glance. They hesitated, then bucked up their courage and started toward me once more. My hand tightened around my knife.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Three more bounty hunters went down, each one sporting a neat, round hole right between their eyes. Warren Fox, no doubt, helping Finn with his sniper duties, just like we’d planned. The old man had proudly claimed that he was a hell of a shot and would be more than happy to help Finn thin out the ranks a bit. He hadn’t been lying about how good his aim was.
From outside the ring of men, back behind Mab and even Gentry and Bria, a low, guttural battle cry sounded, rising to a fierce bellow that reminded me of a Viking horn. A moment later, Sophia ran into view, swinging her fists into every single person that she could reach. And she wasn’t alone. Owen charged into the fray right behind her, wielding his blacksmith’s hammer, while Xavier and his massive fists brought up the rear.
“Get Bria!” I screamed at them, even though they were already moving in that direction.
Given a choice between me and the new people in the courtyard, the bounty hunters and giants decided to take the easy way out—they all rushed by Mab, heading for Bria and the others. But the Fire elemental didn’t turn and follow her men. Not this time. Instead, she started walking toward me—and I toward her.
We met there in the middle of the courtyard, only five feet of empty air separating us from each other.
All around us, the courtyard was in total chaos, as Sophia, Owen, and Xavier fought the bounty hunters and giants, even as my allies slowly retreated and took Bria with them. This had been the plan all along. To make it seem like I’d come here alone, then let my friends sneak in behind and get Bria to safety while I battled Mab. I just hadn’t counted on Gentry making things a little easier for us, but I figured luck owed me at least this much. So did the bounty hunter for my sparing her and Sydney that night outside Mab’s mansion.
Nobody had particularly liked the plan, especially the part about leaving me behind to face Mab by myself. But we all knew that this was how it had to be. I was the only one with a chance of stopping the Fire elemental, the only one whose magic was strong enough. It was just—inevitable. Maybe it had been since the day the Fire elemental had murdered my mother and older sister just because I was some vague, nebulous threat to her. A threat she’d made a reality by her cruel actions.
Mab and I stood there in the middle of the battle, somehow untouched by all the blood and bodies flying through the air around us in the chaos of the courtyard. It was as if the rest of the world didn’t even exist anymore, except for me and her and the snow slowly swirling in between us.
“Before we finally do this,” I said. “There’s one thing that I have to ask you.”
“And what would that be?” Mab asked in a low, dangerous voice.
I
stared at her, my gray eyes burning into her black ones, our mutual hatred writhing in the air between us like a living, pulsing, beating heart of darkness.
“Did you ever stop and think that maybe you brought all this on yourself?”
Mab tilted her head to one side, making her hair spill over her slim shoulders. The bright coppery color of her wavy locks reminded me of blood.
Everything about her reminded me of blood and death and fire and that horrible night when she’d so casually destroyed the people I’d loved, leaving nothing behind but dirty, crumbled ash and the hollow echo of my hoarse screams.
The spider rune scars embedded in my palms itched and burned at the brutal memories, the way that they always did. Or maybe that was because Mab was now fully embracing her elemental Fire magic. Her black eyes smoldered like coals in her beautiful face, fueled by her enormous power and her supreme satisfaction at finally arranging a face-to-face meeting with me.
“Whatever do you mean?” Mab asked in her low, sultry voice.
“Did you ever read about Oedipus? You know, the tragic Greek hero who was supposedly destined to kill his father and marry his own mother?”
“What’s your point?” Mab snapped, more than ready to get on with the business of burning me alive.
I really couldn’t blame the Fire elemental for her impatience. Seventeen years had passed since the first time she’d tried to murder me. A long time for anyone to wait to off her mortal enemy.
I shrugged. “It always struck me that Oedipus’s parents went about things the wrong way. Instead of sending their son off to die, they should have kept him at home and loved him. That way, he would at least have known what his own father looked like. Then maybe he wouldn’t have killed dear old dad when he met him on the road years later. But Oedipus thought that his father was just another stranger and not anyone important.”