Black Widow (18 page)

I was half on the floor, hanging on to the dwarf's knees like a child clinging to her mother. The dwarf shook off her daze and put her arms on my shoulders, trying to push me off. Even as her fingers dug into my skin, I raised the bloody shiv and rammed it deep into the meaty part of her thigh, twisting and twisting and twisting the weapon in as deep as it would go, before ruthlessly yanking it back out again.

The dwarf yelped with pain, so I stabbed her again, trying to hit her femoral artery so she'd bleed out. I wasn't that lucky, but I'd put more than enough force behind the blow to make her feel it. The dwarf screamed, her feet scrabbling for purchase on the slick floor. Her worn-out sneakers slipped in a pool of her own blood, and her legs went out from under her. The dwarf slid down the bars, until she was on the floor with me.

I kept stabbing her the whole time.

Punch-punch-punch-punch.

Using the toothbrush shiv, I opened up wounds in her legs, chest, and arms. Whatever I could reach. I wasn't picky. Then, when she was down at eye level with me, I drove the shiv so far into her throat that there wasn't enough of the plastic sticking out for me to grab hold of and yank free again.

The dwarf died with a wheeze, pitching to one side, her body
scrape-scrape-scrap
ing against the bars almost like she was rattling a tin cup back and forth asking for more food. A second later, she landed on the floor, choking to death on her own blood.

Three down, two to go—

Fingers dug into my hair, yanking me away from the dead woman and making me yelp. The second dwarf had finally gotten in on the action, and he pulled me up and then shoved me forward, mashing my face against the silverstone bars, as if he were trying to push my whole head through them. With one hand, he held me up against the bars. With the other, he slammed his fist into my back and kidneys over and over.

Thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack.

The folks watching the fight hadn't had much to cheer about up until this point, but they hooted and hollered with delight and surged up out of their chairs as the dwarf pinned me against the bars. Dobson got right up in my face on the other side of the metal.

“How does it feel, Blanco?” he hissed, spittle spewing out of his lips. “Knowing that you're going to die here tonight?”

Instead of responding, I snaked one arm through the bars and grabbed his silk tie. Then I yanked him forward as hard as I could, making his head
bang
against the bars just like his nightstick had earlier and adding a third goose egg to the collection on his face. Dobson grunted and fell back on his ass, making the crowd howl even louder.

I would have liked to have reached through the bars, latched onto Dobson's ankle, and dragged him back in range so I could strangle him to death with his own tie, but there was the small matter of the dwarf and his continued pummeling of me.

So I flung my right hand out to the side and reached for my magic. A second later, I had another Ice dagger clutched in my fingers. I twirled the crude weapon
around, brought it up, and then stabbed the dwarf in the thigh with it. He grunted, but he didn't stop his assault.

The dagger broke off in his leg, so I wrapped my hand around the jagged end and let loose with another round of Ice magic, this time blasting my cold, frosty power deep into the wound I'd opened up in his thigh—along with certain sensitive areas a bit higher up on his body.

That was enough to get the dwarf to yelp and finally let go of me, since I'd just given him the worst case of frostbite
ever
. I whipped around and gouged my fingers into his eyes, adding to the pain already racking his body. The dwarf slapped at me, but his blows were wild, and his hands clattered off the bars instead of hitting me. Behind him, I could see the Fire elemental drawing her hand back, another ball of flames crackling in her palm. So I grabbed hold of the dwarf's jumpsuit and pulled him close to me, ducking down behind his short body as best I could.

The elemental's Fire ball exploded against his back a second later.

The dwarf screamed, and so did the folks who'd gathered behind me, as they ducked to get out of the way of the flames shooting through the gaps in the cell bars.

The dwarf wasn't quite dead, but he was close enough to it, so when the flames died down, I shoved his charred body away and stepped toward the elemental.

Four down, one to go.

The Fire elemental's eyes narrowed as she stared at me, both of us moving step by step, going around the cell in a large circle. Finally, I stopped when I reached the back wall, standing right in front of the two toilets.

“You don't have anybody to hide behind now,” she hissed.

“I don't need anybody else,” I snarled back, throwing my hands out wide. “Take your best shot, bitch.”

All around the cell, the crowd pressed forward on all sides, clutching the bars, sensing that this could finally be the end of me. Even Dobson had managed to get back on his feet,
bang-bang-bang
ing his nightstick on the bars in a steady drumbeat of encouragement. His screams for the Fire elemental to kill me
right fucking now
were among the loudest.

I looked up at the balcony. Madeline, Emery, and Jonah were all on their feet now, clutching the metal railing, and leaning forward in anticipation. The giant and the lawyer were both smiling wide, thinking that I was about to meet my maker at long last. But Madeline's expression was far more subdued, almost pensive, as if she realized that I was up to something.

But I pushed Madeline out of my mind and focused on the more pressing threat of the Fire elemental standing twenty feet from me. On the floor in between us, the shivved giant and the burned dwarf let out softer and softer moans of pain as they circled the drain toward death. The other giant and dwarf that I'd already killed lay where they had fallen, their sightless eyes fixed on me in ugly, silent accusations.

But the Fire elemental didn't have a scratch on her yet, and she still had plenty of magic left, given the hot glow of the orange-red flames pulsing in her hand.

Excellent.

Thick pools of blood covered the floor, adding even more shiny gloss to the slick gray surface as the crimson rings oozed out toward the barred edges of the cell. All
around me, the stone muttered about the violence I had just dished out, adding more dark notes to the guttural chorus that had already sunk deep into the marble from all the fights that had taken place here before. The stone's cold, harsh song matched my mood perfectly.

But this was the end of this particular battle, and I was already thinking about how I could win the next one—my escape.

We stood there, elemental to elemental, and faced each other. That ball of Fire still crackled in her palm, but I didn't reach for any of my magic, not even my Stone power to harden my skin to withstand her heated assault.

I didn't need my magic. Not for this.

Finally, the Fire elemental got tired of waiting for me to do something. Urged on by the roaring crowd, who'd started
bang-bang-bang
ing on the bars in anticipation of my end, she gave me a cruel smile, then reared back and threw the ball of flames at me. She put everything she had into this last, final kill shot, and I could feel her trying to channel the last scraps of her magic into the roaring mass of Fire even as it left her hand and streaked through the cell toward me.

I waited and waited . . . everything slowing down as the flames grew closer and closer . . . the glow of them brighter and brighter . . . the feel of them hotter and hotter . . .

And then I simply stepped out of the way.

The flames roared past me and slammed dead center into the toilets, just the way I'd wanted them to. Normally, nothing much would have happened, except that the two porcelain thrones would have gotten a good scorching before the flames died down.

But earlier, when I was pouring my elemental Ice magic down into the toilets, I'd gone the extra step of freezing all the water in them—and in all the pipes that snaked through the marble wall behind them.

Given what I'd heard about the bull pen, I had figured that there would be some sort of death match in here, and that Dobson would send in at least one elemental to try to kill me. For once, I'd gotten lucky, and it had been a Fire elemental. Not only that, but she'd been the last prisoner standing, just as I'd wanted her to be.

Because if there is one fact that has dominated my entire life from the moment that Mab murdered my family, it was this: Fire and Ice never,
ever
mix.

Her scorching heat met my intense cold, and the toilets exploded.

I turned away and ducked down, putting my hands over my head and finally reaching for my Stone magic to harden my skin into an impenetrable shell so I wouldn't get sliced to ribbons by the porcelain shrapnel zipping through the air.

The explosion seemed to go on forever, although it couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds.

Everyone in the crowd screamed, scattered, and started stampeding toward the exit, probably thinking that I'd somehow set off a bomb inside the cell, but their hoarse shouts and the
smack
s of bodies hitting the floor were drowned out by the sound of the cold water gushing out of the busted pipes. I thought that the Fire elemental shrieked as well, but she didn't concern me anymore. I'd be surprised if she could muster up so much as a candle flame right now, as water-soaked as the area was.

I shut all the screams and shouts and
glug-glug-glug
s of water out of my mind. Because if I didn't get out of here now, I never would, and I wasn't about to waste this opportunity.

So I ran over to the back wall of the prison, placed both palms flat on it, and let loose with a torrent of my magic. The exploding toilets and busted pipes had knocked out large chunks of the wall, and I poured my Ice magic into all the gaping holes and jagged cracks left behind in the marble, driving it down into the stone as deep as it would go. Then, a second later, I sent out a blast of Stone magic, shattering all those pockets of Ice.

I did this over and over again, causing more and more water to rain down on me, until the entire wall started to crack and crumble. My eyes cut left and right, scanning what was left of the wall, and I reached out with my magic, looking for the one weak spot that would send the whole thing tumbling down. It was right . . .
there!

I let loose with one sharp, final burst of magic, and my Ice and Stone power punched a gaping hole all the way through the wall. This time, dust choked the air, although it was quickly washed away by the continual gushes of water. But I only had eyes for the starry midnight sky and open space beyond the wall, and I sloshed through the puddles of water, determined to reach it.

“Get her!” Madeline screamed, her voice higher and more furious than I'd ever heard it before, the sound nothing at all like her usual soft, smug tone. “Kill Blanco!”

Grinning and laughing all the while, I scrambled over the busted pipes and broken stone and out into the night.

13

Crack!

Crack! Crack!

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Some of the cops recovered enough to send a hail of bullets in my direction, but the spewing water spoiled their aim and swept most of the projectiles away completely. I staggered outside, stepping away from the hole in the wall and out of the line of fire. It would be just my luck to escape from the bull pen only to have someone get in a lucky shot that blew out the back of my skull as I was running away.

As I darted forward, I took stock of my surroundings—the police impound yard.

Cars, vans, and SUVs of all shapes and sizes sat in neat rows in the smooth, wide lot, their clear windshields and chrome rims glinting underneath the tall lights planted in the asphalt. In the distance, spotlights studded a chain-
link fence that gleamed a bright, molten silver, with the razor wire on top shimmering like pointed diamonds.