(Elemental Assassin 01) Spider's Bite (45 page)

The first guy raised his hand. A small knife glinted in his red, chapped fingers. A hard, thin smiled curved my lips. I liked knives.

“Chill out, Jake,” the second guy muttered. “There’s no need to scream.”

I looked at him. Where his buddy was blond and beefy, robber number two was short and bone-thin. His wispy hair stuck up due to uncontrollable cowlicks, instead of an overabundance of product. The locks were a bright red that had probably earned him the nickname Carrot, at some point. Carrot shoved his hands into his holey pockets, shifted on his feet, and stared at the floor, clearly wanting to be somewhere other than here. A reluctant sidekick at best. Probably tried to talk his buddy out of this nonsense. He should have tried harder.

“No names,
Lance
. Remember?” Jake snarled and glared at his friend.

Lance’s bony body jerked at the sound of his own name, like someone had zapped him with a cattle prod. His mouth dropped open, but he didn’t say anything.

I used one of the day’s credit card receipts to mark my place in
The Odyssey
. Then, I closed my book, straightened, slid off my stool, and stepped around the long counter that ran along the back wall of the Pork Pit. Time to take out the trash.

The first guy, Jake, saw me move out of the corner of his eye. But instead of charging at me like I’d expected, the half-giant moved to his left and jerked one of the girls up and out of her booth—a Hispanic girl with a pixie haircut. She let out another squeaky scream. Her thick, beef sandwich flew out of her hand and spattered against one of the storefront windows. The barbecue sauce looked like blood running down the smooth, shiny glass.

“Leave her alone, you bastard!” the other woman shouted.

She jumped to her feet and charged at Jake, who backhanded her. He might have been only a half-giant, but there was still enough strength in his blow to lift the woman off her feet and sent her careening into a table. She flipped over the top and hit the floor—hard. A low groan sounded.

By this point, Sophia Deveraux had become a little more interested in things. The dwarf moved to stand beside me. The silver skulls hanging from the black leather collar around her neck tinkled together like wind chimes. The skulls matched the ones on her black T-shirt.

“You take right,” I murmured. “I’ve got left.”

Sophia grunted and moved to the other end of the counter, where the second woman had been thrown.

“Lance!” Jake jerked his head at the injured woman and Sophia. “Watch those bitches!”

Lance wet his lips. Pure, uncomfortable misery filled his pale face, but he trotted over to the injured woman, who had pushed herself up to her hands and knees. She shoved her wild tangle of blue-black hair out of her face. Her pale blue eyes burned with immediate hate. A fighter, that one.

But Lance didn’t see her venomous look. He was too busy staring at Sophia. Most people did. The dwarf had been Goth before Goth was cool—a hundred years ago or so. In addition to her skull collar and matching T-shirt, Sophia Deveraux sported black jeans and boots. Pink lipstick covered her lips, contrasting with the black glitter eye shadow on her eyelids and the natural pallor of her face. Today, the color motif extended up to her hair. Pale pink streaks shimmered among her cropped black locks.

But Jake wasn’t so dumbstruck. He pulled the first woman even closer, turned her around, held her in front of him, and raised the knife to her throat. Now, he had a human shield. Terrific.

But that wasn’t the worst part. A bit of red sparked in the depths of his brown eyes, like a match flaring to life. Magic surged like a hot, summer wind through the restaurant, pricking my skin with power and making the scars on my palms itch. Flames spewed out from between Jake’s clenched fingers, traveling up and settling on the knife. The blade glowed red-orange from the sudden burst of heat.

Well, well, well, Jake the robber was just full of surprises. Because in addition to being a petty thief, Jake the half-giant was also an elemental—someone who could control one of the four elements. Fire, in his case.

My smile grew a little harder, a little tighter. Jake wasn’t the only one here who was an elemental—or very, very dangerous. I cocked my head, reaching out with my Stone magic. All around me, the battered brick of the Pork Pit murmured with unease, sensing the emotional upheaval that had already taken place inside and my dark intentions now.

“I said,
nobody fucking move
.”

Jake’s earlier scream dropped to a hoarse whisper. His eyes were completely red now, as though someone had set two flickering rubies into his baby-fat face. A rivulet of sweat dripped down his temple, and his head bobbed in time to some music only he could hear. Jake was high on something—alcohol, drugs, blood, his own magic, maybe all of the above. Didn’t much matter. He was going to be dead in another minute. Two, tops.

The red glow in Jake’s eyes brightened as he reached for his magic again. The flames flashing on the silver blade flared hotter and higher, until they licked at the girl’s neck, threatening to burn her. Tears streamed down her heart-shaped face, and her breath came in short, choked sobs, but she didn’t move. Smart girl.

My eyes narrowed. It was one thing to try to rob the Pork Pit, my barbecue restaurant, my gin joint. Down-on-their-luck elementals, vampire hookers, and other bums strung out on their own magic and jonesing for more could be excused that stupidity. But nobody—
nobody
—threatened my paying customers. I was going to enjoy taking care of this lowlife. As soon as I got him away from the girl.

So I held up my hands in a placating gesture and kept the cold, calm violence out of my gray eyes as best I could. “I’m the owner. Gin Blanco. I don’t want any trouble. Let the girl go, and I’ll open the cash register for you. I won’t even call the police after you leave.”

Mainly because it wouldn’t do me any good. The cops in the southern metropolis of Ashland were as crooked as forks of lightning. The esteemed members of the po-po barely bothered to respond to robberies, especially in this borderline Southtown neighborhood, much less do something useful, like catch the perps after the fact.

Jake snorted. “Go ahead. The police can’t touch me, bitch. Do you know who my father is?”

In addition to being a Fire elemental, Jake was also a name-dropping prima donna. A wonder he’d survived this long.

“Don’t tell them
that
!” Lance hissed.

Jake snorted and turned his red eyes to his buddy. “I’ll tell them whatever I want. So shut your sniveling mouth.”

“Just let the girl go, and I’ll open the cash register,” I repeated in a firm voice, hoping my words would penetrate Jake’s magic high and sink into his thick skull.

His red eyes narrowed to slits. “You’ll open the cash register, or the girl dies—and you along with her.”

He jerked the girl back against him, and the flames coating the knife burned even brighter, taking on an orange-yellow hue. The silverstone scars on my palms—the ones shaped like spider runes—itched at the influx of magic. I tensed, afraid he was going to do the girl right here, right now. I could kill him—easily—but probably not before he hurt the girl with his magic. I didn’t want that to happen. It wasn’t going to happen. Not in my restaurant. Not now, not again.

“Jake, calm down,” Lance pleaded with his friend. “No one’s making any trouble. It’s going just like you said it would. Quick and easy. Let’s just get the money and go.”

Jake stared at me, the flames dancing in his red eyes matching the movement of the ones on the knife blade. Pure, malicious glee filled his crimson gaze. Even if I hadn’t been good at reading people, that emotion alone would have told me that Jake enjoyed using his magic, loved the power it gave him, the feeling of being invincible. And that he wasn’t going to be satisfied with just stealing my money. No, Jake was going to use his Fire power to kill everyone in the restaurant just because he could, because he wanted to show off his magic and prove he was a real badass. Unless I did something to stop him.

“Jake? The money?” Lance asked again.

After a moment, the fire dimmed in Jake’s eyes. He lowered the glowing blade a few inches, giving the girl some much-needed air. “Money. Now.”

I opened the register, grabbed all the wrinkled bills inside, and held them out. All Jake had to do was let go of the girl long enough to step forward and grab the cash, and I’d have him.
Come on, you bastard
.
Come and play with Gin
.

But some sense of self-preservation must have kicked in, because the beefy half-giant jerked his head. Lance left his post by the injured woman, tiptoed forward, snatched the money out of my hand, and stepped back. I didn’t bother grabbing him and using him as a hostage. Guys like Jake weren’t above leaving their friends twisting in the wind—or stuck on the edge of my blade.

Jake licked his thick, chapped lips. “How much? How much is there?”

Lance rifled through the green bills. “A little more than two hundred.”

“That’s it? You’re holding out on me, bitch,” Jake snarled.

I shrugged. “Monday’s a slow day. And not many people like to get out in this kind of cold weather, not even for barbecue.”

The Fire elemental glared at me, debating my words and what he could do about them. I smiled back. He didn’t know what he’d gotten himself into—or who he was messing with.

“Let’s just go, Jake,” Lance pleaded. “Some cops could come along any second.”

Jake tightened his grip on his flaming knife. “No. Not until this bitch tells me what she did with the rest of the money. This is the most popular restaurant in the neighborhood. There had to be more than two hundred dollars in that cash register. So where did you hide it, bitch? You wearing a money belt underneath that greasy blue apron?”

I shrugged. “Why don’t you come and find out, you pathetic fuck?”

His eyes grew darker, redder, angrier, until I thought the sparking flames flickering inside might actually shoot out of his magic-tinted irises. Jake let out a furious growl. He shoved the girl away and charged at me, the knife held straight out.

My smile widened. Finally. Time to play.

I waited until he got in range, then stepped forward and turned my body into his. I slammed my elbow into his solar plexus and swept his feet out from under him. Jake coughed, stumbled, and did a header onto the floor. His temple clipped the side of one of the tables as he went down, and a resulting bit of blood spattered onto my jeans. The sharp blow was enough to make Jake lose his grip on his Fire magic. The prickling power washing off him vanished, and the flames snuffed out on the knife in his hand. The hot metal hissed and smoked as it came into contact with the cool floor.

I looked to my right. The woman Jake had thrown across the room scrambled to her feet and prepared to launch herself at Lance. But Sophia grabbed the girl’s waist and pulled her back. The woman started to struggle, but the Goth dwarf shook her head and stepped forward, putting herself in front of the customer. Lance swallowed once and backed up, ready to turn and run. But Sophia was quicker. The dwarf punched him once in the stomach. Lance went down like an anvil had been dropped on him. He crumpled to the floor and didn’t move.

One down, one to go.

I turned my attention back to Jake, who’d rolled over onto his side. Blood dripped down the side of his head where he’d cut himself on the corner of the table. The half-giant saw me standing over him, curled halfway up, and slashed at me with his cooling knife. Idiot. He didn’t even come close to nicking me. After Jake made another flailing pass with the blade, I crouched down and grabbed his wrist, bending it back so he couldn’t move it. I eyed the weapon in his locked hand.

“Fuck,” I said. “Get a real knife. You couldn’t even peel potatoes with that thing.”

Then, I plucked the blade from his chapped fingers and snapped his thick wrist.

Jake howled in pain, but the noise didn’t bother me. Hadn’t in years. I shoved him down onto his back, then straddled him, a knee on either side of his beefy chest, squeezing in and putting pressure on his ribs. Giants, even half-giants like Jake, hated it when they had trouble breathing. Most people did.

I adjusted and tightened my grip on the knife, ready to drive it into his heart. A flimsy weapon, but it would do the job. Just about anything would, if you had enough strength and determination to put behind it. I had plenty of both.

A small, choked sob sounded, drawing my attention away from Jake and his high-pitched, keening howls. My gray eyes flicked up. The girl huddled underneath a table a few feet away, her knees pulled up to her chest, her eyes as big as quarters in her face, tears sliding down her flushed cheeks.

A position I’d been in, once upon a time.

A couple of months ago, the girl and her tears wouldn’t have bothered me. I would have killed Jake and his friend, washed the blood off my hands, and asked Sophia to get rid of the bodies before I closed up the Pork Pit for the night.

That’s what assassins did.

And I was the Spider, one of the very best.

But I’d had an epiphany of sorts two months ago, when my mentor had been brutally tortured and murdered inside the Pork Pit—in the very spot Jake and I were in right now. The old man, Fletcher Lane, had wanted me to retire, to take a different path in life, to live in the daylight a little, as he was so fond of saying. I’d followed Fletcher’s advice and quit the assassin business after I’d killed Alexis James, the Air elemental who’d murdered him.

“Hmph.”

Behind me, Sophia grunted. I looked over my shoulder at the dwarf, who still had hold of the other woman. The girl was unsuccessfully trying to pry the dwarf’s stubby fingers off her waist. Good luck with that. Sophia had a grip like death. Once she had you, she didn’t let go—ever. My gray eyes locked with Sophia’s black ones. Regret flashed in her dark gaze, and the dwarf shook her head just the tiniest bit.
No
, she was saying. Not in front of two witnesses.

Sophia was right. Witnesses were bad. I couldn’t gut Jake with the two girls watching and get rid of the body afterward. Not in my own restaurant. Not without blowing my cover as Gin Blanco and leaving everything behind. And I wasn’t going to do that. Not for a piece of trash like the Fire elemental. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t let Jake know exactly who he was dealing with.