I walked about half a mile before I saw the entrance to the quarry. The city had long ago given up keeping out the bums and wayward kids, and a rusty sign read Enter at your own risk . The remains of a tall iron gate ringed the entrance, but I stepped through a gap where someone had pried the bars loose, and headed inside.
The quarry was shaped like a deep, wide bowl that was over a mile wide. The walls of the quarry rose several hundred feet above my head. Bits of quartz flashed in the gray twilight, reminding me of cameras at a sporting event. For a moment, I felt like I was in some sort of ancient Roman coliseum. A gladiator forced to fight tigers and lions and other men just so I could see another sunrise. In a way, I supposed I'd been a gladiator since I was thirteen, always fighting to survive, and distancing myself from the ugly things I had to do in the process.
I never realized how fucking tired I was of it until right now.
I didn't have to touch the stones to hear their vibrations. With so much of the raw element around me, the sound rang in my head, a low, steady drum, punctuated here and there by sudden beats of unease and anticipation. The stones knew something was wrong, that something had disturbed their slumber and the slow wear of the weather and years beyond the usual deer and squirrels and stupid, drunken kids who slipped from the high banks and fell to their deaths.
A milky white glow arched out beyond a curve in the rock. I'd seen that light before, when Alexis had flipped out at Donovan Caine's cabin. She'd grabbed on tight to her magic already. The only way to make her let go was to kill her. I hoped I was strong enough to do it-for Fletcher.
I rounded the bend, and there she was. Alexis James.
The Air elemental stood in the open about five hundred feet farther in the quarry, where the stone walls rose to their highest peak. The milky white light flickering on her palms bathed the bitch in an angelic glow she didn't deserve.
Alexis's elegant cocktail dress was gone. Or at least covered up. Now she was wearing the same black cloak she'd sported outside Donovan Caine's cabin the night she'd come to torture and kill him. I wondered if she'd worn the same thing when she'd murdered Fletcher. If my mentor's blood was trapped in the fabric. The billowing material made Alexis look like some wannabe wizard out of a Harry Potter book. It didn't really go with the pearls that ringed her neck-or the large jet tooth that hung in the middle of the gleaming strand. The same necklace she'd worn in the fishing photo Gordon Giles had hidden away.
I eyed the rune. Power. Strength. Prosperity. The tooth was as big as my palm and polished to a high gloss. The rune was even bigger than the ruby sunburst Mab Monroe was so fond of wearing. Alexis James was showing off for me.
And she wasn't alone.
My eyes went to Finn and Roslyn. They stood side by side, their hands tied behind their backs with silverstone cuffs. Finn sported a series of fresh cuts and bruises on his face. One of Roslyn's cheeks was red and puffy. Their clothes were torn and bloody, but other than that, they looked no worse for wear. Better than I'd expected.
Alexis had kept her word about one thing, at least.
Three men with guns flanked Finn and Roslyn, forming a potential triangle of death around them. The same three men who'd gotten into the limo at the country club.
Captain Wayne Stephenson. Charles Carlyle's friend from the Cake Walk. The third anonymous flunkie. They must be all the men she had left. Otherwise, she would have brought them all here to kill me. Good to know I'd dispatched the rest of her troops already. That meant there'd be no one to talk after the fact.
I wondered if Donovan Caine had circled around behind the three of them yet. If he could see his senior officer pointing a gun at Roslyn's head.
Finn nodded and gave me an encouraging smile. Roslyn pressed against him. Her fangs poked out of her lips. The vampire was ready to bite anyone who gave her the opportunity. Good for her.
"Assassin, so good of you to finally join us," Alexis James said, throwing back the hood of her cloak.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
"So you're the mysterious Spider." Alexis James's blue-green eyes flicked over me. "I thought you'd be taller."
I returned her cold stare with one of my own. "And I thought you'd have more taste than to wear that cliched witch's cloak. What are you? Twelve?"
"Ouch," she said. "Killer insult." I didn't respond.
"You've caused me quite a bit of trouble, you know," Alexis said.
I shrugged. "Trouble has a habit of finding me. And I have a habit of dealing with it." Her eyes narrowed. "As do I."
We stared at each other. Magic flickered like lightning in Alexis's gaze, brightening her eyes until they were almost pure white. A similar glow outlined her palms. She was focusing on her power, ready to use it on me the instant I stepped out of line. I could feel her Air elemental magic snapping around her like a dog at its master's feet.
The sensation of the opposing element made my skin crawl. Or perhaps that was just because I'd seen what Alexis liked to do with her magic. How she liked to flay people alive with it.
"So tell me," I said, trying to give Donovan Caine as much time as possible to come in behind them. "Of all the assassins out there, why did you pick me to double-cross?"
"Because you were the easiest to identify." "How?"
"What's the old saying? Loose lips sink ships? Or in your case, get your photo on the six o'clock news." Alexis chuckled at her seeming cleverness. "You might not know it, but my old friend Gordon Giles liked to visit hookers. Seems he needed a little help getting it up and was embarrassed by more traditional relationships." I'd seen exactly what kinds of relationships Gordon liked to have in his photo stash-ones that involved costumes.
"When I realized Gordon was suspicious about where so much of the company's money was going and was poking around, I made Stephenson follow him and pick up the women he was with to see what he'd told them, if anything," Alexis continued.
"Gordon was smart enough to keep his mouth shut to the whores, but Stephenson got some interesting information out of one of them. Information about an assassin called the Spider."
So that's how they'd found us. No good deed goes unpunished. Fucking pro bono work.
"It turned out you'd done some work for the hooker. Killed a cop for her. It took some legwork, but I managed to identify your handler and contact him. The rest was easy." Alexis smiled.
I flashed back to the file Fletcher had compiled on Gordon Giles. Fletcher had noted Giles's tendency to visit hookers. Not to mention all the kinky pictures I'd found along with the flash drive. So Giles had visited the woman whose daughter had been raped. The one who'd contacted Fletcher and asked me to kill Cliff Ingles. We'd come full circle with the irony and bad luck tonight.
Finn stared at Alexis. Hate flashed in his green eyes, making them burn even brighter than hers did. A muscle twitched in his puffy cheek, but he held himself still. Finn knew better than to make any sudden moves. He knew I'd take care of Alexis-or die trying.
"The old man was easy enough to find at the barbecue joint," Alexis continued. "But you, we never could spot you."
Of course they couldn't. I took great pains to make sure no one ever followed me from the Pork Pit back to my apartment. Besides, I was just another lowly restaurant worker. As Evelyn Edwards, the asylum shrink had said, someone like me couldn't possibly have been moonlighting as someone like the Spider in my spare time.
"So that's why you brought Brutus in," I said. "To take me out at the opera house.
Since you couldn't find me to do it yourself after the fact."
"Brains too. Aren't you the complete package?" Alexis smiled again. "But enough talk. Let's get down to business. Do you have the flash drive?"
I slowly reached into my jeans pocket and pulled it out. "I do."
"That's it?" she said. "That's the only drive? You haven't made any other copies?"
"I couldn't copy the drive. Gordon Giles encrypted it with some kind of weird software. You look at it the wrong way, and all the data gets erased." An easy lie. Just before I'd left the apartment, I'd used my laptop to send out a timed e-mail with all the information on it. At exactly six o'clock tomorrow morning, the e-mail would be sent to officials at the police department, the Ashland Trumpet newspaper, and Mab Monroe. Unless I was alive to stop it. Just a bit of added insurance. I might die tonight, but Alexis James's days would be numbered as soon as Mab got the e-mail. I'd feel that satisfaction even in death.
"What about Donovan Caine?" Wayne Stephenson spoke up. Alexis turned to him.
"What about Caine?"
The captain stared at her. "She had to be the one who saved him from those men you sent after him. They've got to be working together. So where is he? Why isn't he here?
You said it yourself. He's a loose end that needs to be tied off." Alexis dismissed his concerns with an airy wave of her hand. "We'll find the detective later. He can't hide forever. The assassin's here, and she's got the flash drive. You know what to do. Kill her. Now."
Stephenson didn't hesitate. He raised his gun and fired at me.
The bullet slammed into my chest, spun me around, and knocked me to the ground.
The flash drive flew out of my hand and landed somewhere on the rocky floor of the quarry. Stephenson might have been a crooked cop, but his aim was true. The bullet hit my heart dead on. It would have been a lethal shot-if I hadn't been wearing my vest.
I usually wore some sort of vest when I worked, especially when I knew I was going into a meeting that wasn't going to end well. Made it easier to carry certain supplies, like fake IDs and cash. But this particular vest was special because it was embedded with silverstone. The metal was tougher than Kevlar and would stop anything short of a missile. It would even absorb a fair amount of elemental magic before it started to soften and melt.
Funny, how it had come in handy already.
But the force of the bullet still hurt, like I'd been beaned in the chest with a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball. But I gritted my teeth and lay perfectly still, waiting for the inevitable.
The echo of the gunshot reverberated through the rock quarry, booming like thunder off the walls. It slowly faded away, replaced by an eerie quiet. The stone under my cheek muttered uneasily at the sharp retort, but I blocked out the noise. Ten ... twenty ... forty-five ...
I hadn't even counted to a minute when I heard the words I'd expected from Alexis James. "Get the flash drive," she said. "And put a couple more in her head, just to be sure."
I had to admire her thoroughness, if nothing else. Footsteps crunched on the rocky ground behind me. The tread was slow and even, and I couldn't tell which one of the three men she'd sent over. My hand curled around the knife I'd palmed. Didn't much matter.
A hand settled on my shoulder and turned me over. I looked up into the man's face.
Carlyle's friend from the Cake Walk. His eyes widened in surprise, and his lips pulled back, revealing a pair of yellow fangs.
"She's not-"
Last words he ever said.
I rammed my knife into his heart. The man stumbled back, and I used his momentum to pull myself up. The move surprised the others, and they stood there, not quite sure what had happened.
"Run!" I screamed at Finn and Roslyn. "Now!"
Finn slammed his shoulder into the second man, who stumbled back. Roslyn darted past him and sprinted away. Finn fell in step behind her, and the two of them ran as best they could with their hands cuffed behind their backs. They disappeared around an outcropping of rock. Stephenson and the other guy didn't know what to do -shoot Finn and Roslyn or come after me.
They chose me.
I threw the dead man aside and dived to my right. Three more bullets zipped over my head. I rolled up, grabbed one of the knives in my boots, and threw it. The weapon caught the second man in the stomach. He screamed and dropped his gun. The man yanked the knife out of his gut, his hand black and shiny with his own blood. Stupid of him. He took a step forward and crumpled to the ground. He'd bleed out in a minute or so.
That left Stephenson and Alexis James. I grabbed the knife out of my other boot so that I had one in both hands. But the police captain was quicker than I was. He got off another shot. This one went into my vest too. I couldn't keep myself from staggering back. He put another round in my vest, and I went down on the ground.
One of the knives slid from my grasp and clattered on the rock.
"I'll deal with her!" Alexis screamed. "You get the other two. Now!" Stephenson turned and started running. But the giant was out of shape, and his pace was plodding and slow. I
hoped Finn and Roslyn had enough of a head start to elude him until Donovan Caine could help them.
That left me and Alexis alone in the quarry. I scrambled up, getting ready to throw both of my knives at her. I needed to kill her-now. Before she reached for her magic.
Too late.
Even as I came up on one knee, Alexis James's eyes turned completely white as she fully embraced her power. The milky glow on her fingertips turned into magical flames, licking at her skin. In less than a second, the flames coalesced into a large ball of pure power, burning like a beacon between her fingers.
"Go to hell, bitch!" Alexis hissed and threw the magic at me.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jo-Jo Deveraux had been right. My knives weren't going to help me this time. Only one thing could save me now-my magic.
I closed my eyes and reached for the elemental power flowing through my veins. The stone mumbled under my feet, sensing my rising magic. I concentrated on that stone, on its vibration, and let it feed my own magic, forcing my power through my veins onto my skin, hair, eyes, clothes. Making them as hard and unyielding as the rubble on the ground and the jagged stone walls that surrounded me-