By a Thread

16

My arms and legs went dead—absolutely, immediately cold, numb, and dead—but my mind remained strangely clear, and I didn’t lose consciousness. No, I was painfully aware of lying there on the library floor, wanting to kill Randall Dekes more than anything else and not being able to do it. I couldn’t get any part of my body to work, not so much as a finger to twitch, much less point my hands at Dekes and blast him with my Ice magic.

“Prop her up in one of the chairs, and tie her there nice and tight,” Dekes said somewhere above my head. “I don’t want any surprises. Quickly now, before the drug wears off.”

Hands lifted me up and maneuvered me into a chair in front of the fireplace. One of the giants hurried over to the wet bar and reached down for something hidden on one of the shelves there. He came up with a coil of rope, the kind of thick, heavy, almost unbreakable rope that you’d find on a sailboat, the kind of rope that would be a bitch to slice through, even if I’d still had one of my silverstone knives on me. Not that I could have used them, given how numb my fingers were right now.

The giant stepped forward and quickly tied me down to the chair, looping the rope over my chest, arms, and legs until I was trussed up tighter than a Thanksgiving turkey.

Never let yourself be immobilized by the enemy. Fletcher had told me that over and over again, but here I was, tied down to a chair and about to be tortured for the second time in my life. Fuck.

I managed to loll my head to one side to look at Vanessa, but the Fire elemental lowered her eyes. She didn’t want to meet my gaze. Couldn’t blame her for that. I wouldn’t want to watch what was about to happen next either—especially since there was nothing I could do to stop it. Not one damn thing. For a moment, I wished for the blindfold Mab had used when she’d tortured me by melting my spider rune necklace into my palms. At least then I wouldn’t have to see Dekes bite me. But I wasn’t that scared thirteen-year-old girl anymore. I was older and stronger, if not exactly wiser. Either way, I’d face my enemy head-on.

Dekes walked around so that he was beside me and leaned forward over the chair, so close I could feel his hot breath brush against my cheek and smell his spicy aftershave. The floral scent made me want to gag.

“Don’t worry, Gin,” Dekes purred in my ear. “I just gave you a muscle relaxant to make you a little more pliable so my men could get you into the chair right where you needed to be. The effects won’t last more than another minute. You should already start feeling some sensation returning to your arms and legs, while your mind remains completely unaffected. You see, I want you to know exactly what’s happening to you. I want you to feel every last bit of it. I wouldn’t have any fun otherwise.”

He was right. The absolute numbness was already starting to fade, replaced by small, painful tingles. I concentrated and was able to move my fingers, but I knew that it wasn’t going to be enough, that I wasn’t going to recover quickly enough to escape what the vampire had in mind.

Dekes reached down and tilted my head to one side, exposing my throat to him. I couldn’t help but look up into his face. Lust blazed in Dekes’s green eyes, and his tongue eagerly darted out to moisten his lips underneath his bristling mustache. The vampire smiled a final time, letting me see just how long, sharp, and deadly his fangs were.

Then the bastard sank them into my neck.

There are some folks who think that being bitten by a vampire is sexy.

Some people like that first pop of pain, the dizzying rush of their blood leaving their own body, the weak, languid feeling of having someone else steal away part of them. Some folks even get a high off those kinds of feelings, a heady, electric charge that seems to make it all worthwhile.

I am not one of those people.

Being bitten by a vampire is like being stabbed in the neck with a dagger—two of them at the same time. Dekes’s bite was hard, brutal, merciless, and vicious, just like he was. I screamed as he drove his fangs deep into my neck, and I screamed again as he started to suck out my blood in long, agonizing spurts. The last of the numbness from the drug immediately vanished, replaced by pure, pulsing pain. It felt like there was a giant fist wrapped around my neck that was just squeezing and squeezing and squeezing the blood and everything else out of me. The magic, the power, the life.

Some vamps are skilled enough to make their bites feel like minor annoyances, like a veteran nurse knowing exactly how to slip an IV needle into a patient’s hand to minimize that initial prick of pain.

Dekes was not one of those vamps. He didn’t want to minimize my pain or discomfort—he wanted the elemental power in my blood, and he wanted to brutalize me while he took it. The only one getting any pleasure out of this was him, and I could feel his erection pressing against my thigh as he leaned over me. Sick, sadistic bastard. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he was one of the vamps who got a power boost off sex just like he did from drinking blood.

The hot stench of my own coppery blood filled my nose, overpowering everything else. Sweat slickened my hands, my whole body trembled, and white starbursts exploded in my eyes. And still, Dekes kept sucking out my blood. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

As an assassin, I’d suffered just about every injury big and small that a person could experience over the years. I’d been stabbed, shot, beaten, burned, electrocuted, blasted with elemental magic, and buried alive too many times to count. But this was a different kind of agony altogether because not only was Dekes hurting me, he was also taking a piece of me with him at the same time—the elemental magic that was as much a part of who and what I was as the spider runes branded into my palms.

My hands were tied down to the chair arms so I couldn’t see the scars, but I could feel the silverstone—and the magical metal seemed to be wriggling around like hot worms underneath my skin. I blocked out the agony of the vampire’s bite and concentrated on that strange sensation—and I realized that I could feel my scars burning, burning, burning with the cold power of my Ice and Stone magic, until it seemed like the silverstone was soaking up just as much of my power as Dekes was. I didn’t know if I was consciously doing it or some self-preservation switch had been flipped in the back of my brain, but somehow I was directing my magic into the silverstone that had been melted into my flesh, storing the power there and trying to keep as much of it away from the vampire for as long as possible.

Maybe the blood loss was making me hallucinate already, but it almost seemed like I could feel the silverstone scars stubbornly holding on to my power even as Dekes tried to pull it out of my neck. It felt as if I was playing a bizarre tug-of-war with my own magic deep inside my veins. Every time Dekes sucked at my neck, I could feel the scars yanking back, trying to keep my elemental power inside my own body where it belonged instead of flowing through my blood and out into the vamp’s greedy mouth. Too bad I didn’t know what—if any—good it would do me. I might be an elemental, but there was only so much blood that I could lose and still live.

Finally, just when I thought I couldn’t stand another second of the vamp’s fucking fangs in my neck without going absolutely crazy, Dekes lifted his head and stared at me. I’d thought that his eyes had gleamed like a cat’s before, but now they blazed like two emerald suns in his tan features. It was eerie, sickening, and disconcerting, looking into the vamp’s face and seeing my own Ice and Stone power reflected in his gaze. A small, dazed part of me wondered if my eyes ever burned that brightly when I reached for my elemental magic.

Jo-Jo always claimed that I was one of the strongest elementals she’d ever met, and I’d managed to go toe-to-toe with Mab and survive. But the amount of magic that I sensed in the vamp right now was just staggering—and it was supposed to be mine. It was mine, until the bastard had taken it away from me.

“The power,” Dekes murmured in a low, reverent whisper, his words slurring like he was drunk on wine. “I never dreamed of such raw power.”

Then the bastard bit me again, driving his fangs into my right shoulder and snapping my collarbone. I screamed again, although the sound came out as a hoarse rasp, since I was already so weak from the blood loss.

I didn’t know how many people Dekes had fed off during his three hundred–plus years on this earth, how many women he had used for their blood and elemental magic, how many times he had brutalized them until their bodies and power wore out and they simply had nothing more to give him. The vampire had no doubt left hundreds of dead women in his wake, thinking no more of them than humans did of the food they consumed on a daily basis.

But apparently Dekes had never encountered anyone with as much power as I had because the vampire fell into a feeding frenzy, like a shark frantically thrashing around in a sea full of chum, trying to snap up every single bloody, bony scrap that he could. The vamp bit me over and over and over again all across my neck and shoulders, his fangs tearing and ripping and slicing into my flesh as if he couldn’t get enough of my blood, as if he couldn’t ever get enough of the Ice and Stone magic flowing through my veins.

“Stop! Stop it, Randall! You’re taking too much! You’re going to kill her!”

I was dimly aware of Vanessa screaming at the vampire and clawing at him with her hands, trying to pull him off me, but I knew that it was no use. Dekes was high on my elemental power, as high as a junkie on any drug could be, and he wasn’t coming down until there wasn’t a single drop of blood or magic left in me.

The bastard was going to drain me dry—and there was nothing I could do to stop him.

For a moment, I sank into the cold, lethargic blackness that was slowly clouding my vision, my body, my mind. It would be so easy to let go, to let myself drown in the darkness where there was no more pain, no more torture, no more anything . . .

Fuck that, I growled at myself. Gin Blanco never gave up—not now, not ever.

I’d found my way out of a collapsed coal mine, I’d been electrocuted by LaFleur—hell, I’d even killed Mab fucking Monroe against all the odds. I’d survived all those things, and I’d come out stronger each time. Not to mention Bria, Finn, the Deveraux sisters, and Owen. I had them to live for now, and I wasn’t going to let some psychotic, power-hungry vamp be the end of me.

Think, Gin. Think.

I struggled to push away the numbing blackness from my mind and focus. My situation wasn’t good. I was tied down, immobilized, and bleeding from the deep, vicious bites that Dekes had inflicted on my neck and shoulders. Even if I were free, there was no way I could have fought my way past the vampire and the giants in the room. Not now, when I was so weak and injured and when Dekes had already stolen so much of my Ice and Stone magic.

Desperately, my gaze zoomed around the library, looking for something, anything, that would help me out of this mess. That would at least make Dekes stop biting me and give me a chance to fucking regroup. But there was nothing. Just books and giants and Vanessa screaming and Victoria lying limp on the couch . . .

My eyes focused on the other woman’s unconscious body, and a plan popped into my head. I couldn’t fight my way out of here, but maybe I didn’t have to. All I needed was a little bit of magic, but that was another problem. There was no way that I could reach for my own power, not with Dekes sucking it out of me as fast as he could—but maybe I didn’t have to do that either.

I looked down at the spider rune ring on my right index finger—the one that contained my Ice magic. I didn’t know if my crazy plan would work, but it was the only chance I had left.

I pushed the pain of Dekes biting me, of his teeth tearing into my neck, to the very back of my mind, surrounded it with imaginary stone walls, and locked it away where it wouldn’t distract me. Then I reached for the Ice magic stored in my ring.

Normally when I used my Ice magic, I pushed it outward, releasing the power through my hands and using it to create lockpicks, knives, and other shapes. But this time, I forced the magic inward, coating my own heart with elemental Ice and then letting the magic spread to my lungs and the rest of my internal organs before carefully pushing it out toward my skin.

Thump . . . thump . . . thump . . .

My heart slowed, and my breathing stuttered, as my lungs frosted over. For a moment, I wondered if I’d miscalculated, if I was actually killing myself with my own magic instead of saving my ass. But I’d subconsciously used my Ice magic to preserve my body once before when I’d jumped into the Aneirin River in the winter, and I was hoping the same thing would happen here. I needed that to happen, or I was as good as dead. Besides, Jo-Jo had always said that my elemental magic was part of me and that it was mine to command however I wished—not the other way around.

I hoped the dwarf was right, because I was about to bet my life on her wisdom.

When I pulled enough Ice magic into my body to make myself completely cold and numb, I rasped out a great shuddering, agonizing cry, arching and thrashing against the ropes as much and as violently as I could. They didn’t call them death throes for nothing.

The sudden bucking motion surprised Dekes enough to get him to stop biting me and lift his head. I kept up with my twitching and thrashing, and the vampire took a step back, wondering what the hell was going on. His eyes were even brighter than before, and once more, I could see my own power burning in his gaze. The sight made me angry—so fucking angry—and even more determined to get out of this alive. Randall Dekes would not be the death of me. He would not.

I kept up my fake death throes for another ten seconds before closing my eyes, slumping forward in the chair as much as I could, given the ropes that held me tight, and letting my body go completely slack.

Nobody moved, nobody spoke. All I could hear was Dekes’s ragged breathing as the vampire struggled to come down from the magical high he was riding on.

“Check her,” the vamp finally ordered.

Clothing whispered together, and soft footsteps crept toward me. A second later, I felt Vanessa’s slender fingers skim my throat, trying to find a spot that was free of blood where she could check for a pulse.

Thump . . . thump . . . thump . . .

By this point, my heart was barely beating, and my lungs struggled to function against the Ice that was weighing them down, but I was still breathing. The question now was whether Vanessa would notice or if the little trick with my Ice magic would fool her.

The other woman’s fingers finally pressed against my cold skin, causing more blood to trickle out of the bite marks on my neck. I sat there, holding my breath, limp and still, and waited. Ten seconds passed . . . twenty . . . thirty . . . forty-five . . . sixty . . . My lungs started to burn from the lack of oxygen, but still I didn’t breathe. Sixty-five . . . seventy . . .

“You killed her,” Vanessa said, dropping her fingers from my neck. “Her skin’s already getting cold.”

“Are you sure?” Dekes asked.

“I think I know what a dead woman looks and feels like,” Vanessa muttered. “Given how many of them you’ve made me watch you murder in here. I warned you that you were taking too much blood from her, but you didn’t listen. You’ve got no one to blame but yourself, Randall.”

I drew in a shallow breath, to ease the ache in my lungs. I didn’t know if the Fire elemental really thought I was dead or if she was just saying that to convince Dekes. Didn’t much matter. What was important now was what he decided to do with my body—and whether I had the strength to somehow slip out of the mansion before the vamp or anyone else realized that I was just faking.

More footsteps whispered on the carpet, and I got the sense that Dekes was pacing back and forth in front me. I stayed exactly where I was, slumped forward and doing my best to remain completely still. I’d seen more than enough bodies in my time to mimic the loose slackness of death. Yeah, maybe playing dead wasn’t my finest, most inspired, or deadliest moment as the Spider, but Fletcher had always told me that there was no shame in it if it got you out of a bad situation—like the one I was in right now.

The vampire’s hand touched my neck, but instead of checking for a pulse, he started stroking my wounded flesh, dragging his fingers through the sticky blood that coated my skin and clothes. For a moment, I wondered what the hell he was doing, but then he drew his fingers away and I heard a low sucking sound, followed by a long, satisfied sigh.

The bastard—the bastard was actually licking my blood off his fingers, like I was a piece of fried chicken that he’d been snacking on and he just couldn’t resist getting that last bit of greasy goodness off his hands and into his hungry mouth. The thought made my stomach roil, despite the elemental Ice that still coated my internal organs.

“Such a waste,” Dekes said, swiping his fingers across my neck and licking them clean again. “She was even stronger than Jonah thought. I could have fed off her Ice and Stone magic for years, and no one would have been able to stand against me. No one would have dared to. And I was so looking forward to taking Gin’s power for a test drive. Perhaps even using it against Callie Reyes, since she’s been so reluctant to accept my offer for her restaurant.”

“Why?” Vanessa snapped. “Have you grown tired already of using my Fire magic to burn people to death?”

“Something like that,” Dekes replied in a mild tone. “After a while, it’s all the same. The tears, the screams, the flames. You know how I hate to be bored.”

I thought of the photos that I’d seen of the vamp’s arson victims. So Dekes drank Vanessa’s blood and then used the Fire magic he absorbed from her to toast the people who tried to stand up to him, victimizing everyone but himself in the process. He was a fucking sociopath if I’d ever met one.

At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to turn my head, bite off his fucking fingers, and spit them back in his face, but I concentrated on the Ice magic in my ring, using it to make my skin even cooler, as though the chill of death were already settling into my corpse just as Vanessa had claimed it was.

“Very well,” Dekes said. “Since she’s of no further use to me, take the bitch’s body out on the west balcony and dump it into the marsh. Maybe the gators will have some interest in her rotting corpse.”