Since I had a knife in my right hand, I reached down with my left and slowly slid the ebony tube out of the pouch on my belt. I held the tube up high and then slowly turned it around, making sure that Clementine saw the flash of Mab's sunburst rune on the smooth wood.
Her eyes narrowed, and she studied me a moment longer.
"Put it on the ground, and roll it over here," she said. "Real easy-like. Or the girl dies."
I slowly bent down and did as she asked. The tube hopped and skipped across the stone, heading toward her. Clementine raised her foot, then brought her boot down gently on top of the tube, stopping it. Still keeping her eyes and her gun on me, she bent down and picked up the tube.
"Opal, you keep your gun on her," Clementine said. "You too, Dixon. I want to make sure that Ms. Blanco gave us what she promised she would."
I gave her a bright, carefree smile. "Why, Clementine, would I lie?"
"Certainly," she replied. "I would."
Apparently, Clementine was more familiar with the tube than I was. Instead of taking a moment to figure out how to open it, she immediately pressed on the ruby in the middle of the sunburst rune. Interesting, that she would know to do that.
Clementine slid the paper out of the hollow tube, unrolled it, and read the sheet. Opal and Dixon kept their guns trained on me, and I stayed perfectly still, not wanting to give them any reason to shoot me or, worse, Eva.
Clementine scanned the sheet for the better part of two minutes before she was satisfied. I kept my eyes on Dixon - and the shadow that was creeping closer and closer to him. Another minute, two tops, and Owen would be ready to make his move, as would Bria and Xavier in the rotunda.
When she finished reading, Clementine rolled the paper up, slid it back into the tube, and stuffed the whole thing into her pants pocket. Then she looked at me again.
"You know, I'm rather surprised that you gave it back to me just like that."
I shrugged. "It's just Mab's will. What do I care about that? It's not like she left me anything. Although I am curious about why you want it so badly. Care to share? After all, you're just going to kill me anyway."
"You'd better fucking believe it," Clementine agreed. "But I'm not dumb enough to tell you anything, especially while you've got that radio clipped to your belt. Why, who knows who might be listening in?"
Well, it had been worth a shot. More important, though, Owen had crept closer to Dixon. He was now standing on the outer circular path behind the column nearest and parallel to the giant. He couldn't move any closer for fear that Dixon or Opal would spot him, but he was well within striking distance. All I had to do now was distract the giants until the right moment.
"You know, you and I are a lot alike, Gin," Clementine said.
"Really? How so?"
She stared at me. "We both do whatever we have to in order to survive. In fact, I rather admire you. Why, to hear the rumors, you're the most heartless, ruthless bitch this town has ever seen."
"My, my, my," I drawled. "What a lovely compliment. Especially coming from someone like you."
"I mean it," she continued in a genuine voice. "The things you've managed to do as the Spider, the folks you've taken down these past several months. I've heard about them, you know. Tobias Dawson. Elliot Slater. Elektra LaFleur. And then of course the biggie, Mab Monroe herself."
I shrugged. "What can I say? I don't like bullies. That's what all of them were - just like you."
Her eyes glittered in her face, but her voice was calm, friendly even, when she spoke again. "Actually, you killing Mab has made life better for a lot of folks, including me. My boys and I have had a lot of fun with that Fire elemental bitch out of the picture. My protection business has been booming. Of course, what the idiots who hire me don't realize is that there's no one around anymore to keep me from taking whatever I want, whenever I want it, especially from them."
"Well, I'm happy that I could help a small business succeed."
"But the problem is that a lot of other people have had the exact same idea," she continued, as if I hadn't spoken. "In some ways, things are even worse than before. At least, with Mab around, you knew where you stood: below her. Now everybody's fighting everybody else. It makes things . . . messy for us all. It's one of the reasons I've been thinking about getting out of town for a while now. Too much damn drama going on these days."
"Pardon me if I don't shed any tears for the trials and tribulations of Ashland's criminal element," I said. "I've got my own problems with them, in case you haven't heard."
Clementine grinned. "Oh, I've heard, all right. Did you know there's a huge betting pool about who will kill you and when they'll do it? Last time I'd heard, the pot was more than a million bucks."
I didn't respond, but the news didn't surprise me. There was already some fool supposedly selling T-shirts with some cheesy slogan about eating at the Pork Pit and living through the experience. I didn't know whether to be flattered or annoyed that people were cashing in on my notoriety. Finn would have been annoyed, especially since he wasn't getting a cut of the action.
"Really?" I asked. "Well, who am I to stand in the way of commerce? Although I pity the folks who try to collect on that particular wager. It's a deadly gamble."
Her grin widened. "I thought you might say something like that. That's another way we're alike. You make sure that your enemies don't live too long, just like I do."
"Well, I'd say that you've failed pretty miserably at that so far tonight, since I'm still breathing. Then again, you should never trust a minion to do something important, especially one who doesn't know when to quit with the self-tanner." I looked at Dixon. "You do realize that you look like a pumpkin on steroids, right?"
"Hey!" Dixon shouted, his features turning petulant and sullen. "I'll have you know that this was a spray tan. The best spray tan money can buy."
Opal rolled her eyes. So did Clementine.
"And my point is made. If you want something done right . . ." I let my voice trail off.
"Oh, don't you worry, Ms. Blanco," Clementine said, flexing her free hand into a fist and taking a menacing step forward. "I plan to give you my personal attention this time around - "
A sharp, high-pitched squawk sounded through the walkie-talkie on Clementine's belt, followed by several more distinctive sounds.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Gunshots burped through the device. Looked like Bria and Xavier had finally pulled their triggers on the giants in the rotunda, so to speak.
"Clementine! Clementine!" a voice screamed through the walkie-talkie. "We're taking fire! We're taking - "
The voice abruptly cut off with a loud gurgle, although other screams and more crack-crack-cracks of gunfire continued to sound through the walkie-talkie. Clementine stared down at the device, then her head snapped up to me.
"What the hell did you do, you meddlesome bitch?" she demanded.
"You have your crew, and I have mine," I said. "Right now, they're killing your giants in the rotunda. And when they're done up there, they'll come down here and help me finish off you and the rest of your sick, twisted family - "
Clementine didn't bother responding to my taunts.
Instead, she raised her gun and fired at me.
Chapter 24
The second Clementine started to raise her gun, I ran to my right, ducking behind the fisherman statue.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The three bullets she'd just shot at me slammed into the statue. One of them punched through the brim of the old man's hat, causing the marble to wail.
Dixon also raised his gun to fire at me - just as Owen stepped out from the shadows.
"Eva!" Owen screamed. "Get down!"
Eva twisted out of Dixon's grasp and immediately dropped to the ground. Dixon whipped around, searching for this new danger even as he brought his weapon up. Owen didn't give him a chance to react. He raised his gun and shot the bastard in the face.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
With each shot, Owen stepped forward. He knew as well as I did that it took a lot of bullets to put down most giants, so he emptied the whole clip into Dixon, catching him in the face, throat, and chest. Owen might not have been as good a shot as Bria and Xavier, but Dixon was a big target and hard to miss, especially with Owen closing the distance between them.
The giant screamed and jerked as the bullets tore through his tan flesh. Shock and surprise filled his face - what was left of it, anyway. Owen had blown off a chunk of Dixon's chin and peppered his throat with bullets. Good. It was time the giant got a taste of his own medicine.
Click.
The gun was empty, so Owen tossed it aside and grabbed another one from against the small of his back. He didn't have to use it, though.
Dixon opened his mouth and tried to mumble something, but apparently, it's hard to talk when the bottom half of your face is missing. He staggered back, tripped over Eva, who was huddled into a tight ball on the stone behind him, and did a header into the water.
"Dixon!" Clementine screamed. "Dixon!"
But it was too late for her nephew, and we all knew it. Owen raced forward and helped Eva to her feet. He shoved his sister behind him and started backing up, moving his gun back and forth between Opal and Clementine, ready to shoot them if they made a move toward him and Eva.
Across the distance, Owen's eyes met mine. He hesitated, and I saw the worry and concern in his gaze as he debated whether to step away from Eva and try to help me. But I made the choice for him.
"Go!" I screamed at him. "Go! Go! Go!"
Owen hesitated a moment more before nodding, grabbing Eva's hand, and heading toward the front of the boathouse, keeping to the outer circular path and darting from column to column and statue to statue for cover. I sprinted from the statue over to a column on the far right side of the boathouse so the giants couldn't shoot all of us at once.
Clementine didn't hesitate. She leveled her gun at me once more and squeezed off several rounds. Like Owen, she wasn't going to stop with just a couple. But I kept behind the columns and statues as I moved, and all of her bullets just bounced off the marble and rattled every which way through the boathouse, ricocheting into other columns, the statues, even the ceiling high overhead.
Click.
This time, Clementine's gun was the one that was empty. She screamed and tossed the weapon at me in frustration, but it landed in one of the pools of water with a loud plop. She whirled around to face Opal, who was staring at Dixon's body, which was bobbing up and down in the river right next to a couple of white water lilies.
"Opal!" Clementine bellowed. "What are you just standing there for? Shoot her! Now!"
Opal shook off her shock and did as her mother asked.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
More bullets whistled through the air, but I grabbed a second knife from my thigh holsters and kept moving deeper into the boathouse, hiding behind the columns and statues again and letting Opal empty her whole clip at me.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The rest of Opal's shots went wide, although I heard the marble scream as more and more bullets slammed into the columns, causing stone chips to zip through the air like shrapnel.
Click.
As soon as I heard that Opal was out of ammo, I rushed out from behind the columns, stepped onto the path that ran left to right through the boathouse, forming the top part of the T, and headed toward her.
Clementine finally realized what I was up to and why I was running toward Opal instead of away from her.
"Opal!" she screamed, waving her hand at her daughter. "Move! Get away from her! Now!"
But it was too late. Opal started backpedaling, trying to get back to regroup with her mother, but she didn't look where she was going, and her foot caught in a rope that secured one of the paddleboats to its slip. She grunted and yanked her foot free, but those few precious seconds of delay were all I needed to catch her.
My knives arched up, the blades flashing underneath the lights as I slammed them into Opal's chest. She threw back her head and shrieked with pain. Her gun flew out of her fingers, and her hands flapped around as though I were a bothersome mosquito she was trying to shoo away. I was hungry for blood, all right, and I yanked my knives out and stabbed her again. This time, I managed to slide one of the blades between her ribs and into the soft, sweet spot of her heart.
Opal's shrieks abruptly faded into hoarse, rapid, pain-filled rasps. I pulled my knives out of her a second time. She lashed out with her fist, catching me in the jaw. The force of the blow spun me around and made me stagger back five feet, but the damage to her was already done.
Opal stared down in disbelief at her chest and all of the blood pumping out of her wounds. She put first one hand and then the other over her heart, then held them out, as if she couldn't believe that there was so much blood on them. Finally, she looked over at Clementine, her light eyes already starting to dim with death.
"Mama?" Opal whispered.
Then she pitched forward, her body landing with a dull thump on the walkway. The current had dragged Dixon's body over to where Opal was, and her hand slid forward into the water and landed on his broad back, almost as if she were reaching down to try to fish him out of the river.
Silence.
Clementine stood in the middle of the main walkway, slowly swaying from side to side. After a moment, she shuffled forward until she was standing over the bodies of her daughter and her nephew.
"Opal . . . Dixon . . ." she whispered.
While Clementine was caught up in her grief, I eased back the way I'd come, circling all the way around until I was standing in the front of the boathouse right next to the statue of the old man fishing. I didn't want the giant to make a sudden move, charge past me, go after Owen and Eva, and try to get her revenge that way. No, this ended right here, right now. I watched her the whole time, just watched and waited for the rage that was sure to come.