Deadly Sting

18

“Wait a second,” the giant called out to his buddy, looking back over his shoulder. “I left the lights on in here, and the boss lady said to turn them off when—”

There was no time to run, nowhere to hide, and no way to keep things quiet. The giant turned to face me. He gasped and stopped short in surprise, but I was already rushing toward him, slashing my knife through the air.

The giant managed to throw himself back so that my blade only sliced across his chest instead of tearing open his throat. Still, the shallow, stinging cut made him bellow with pain and surprise.

“Paul?” the other man asked, stepping into the room. “What’s wrong—” His eyes widened as he realized what was going on, and he immediately raised his walkie-talkie to his lips. “I’ve got them! I’ve got them! Near the west exit!”

The giant in front of me started to raise his gun, but I sliced my knife across his wrist, making him drop the weapon and howl with pain.

“You take the other guy!” I yelled at Owen. “Clear a path!”

Owen stepped up beside me, already drawing a bead on the second giant, who was backpedaling.

Crack! Crack!

Two bullets slammed into the doorway right next to the giant, making him curse and duck back out into the hallway. Owen hurried over to the door, stuck his arm out, and fired two more shots.

Crack! Crack!

A high-pitched yelp sounded out in the hallway.

“I winged him, but there are already more of them at the end of the hallway and heading this way!” Owen called out. “We need to go, Gin! Now!”

I shoved the injured giant out of my way and drew my own gun. I peered around the doorframe. Owen must have hit the giant in the leg, because he was hobbling into another room that branched off the hallway. But what worried me more were the four giants at the far end of the corridor. They spotted us and started shooting even as they raced in our direction. Bullets ping-ping-pinged off the walls, and the marble started to wail from this fresh assault on it.

There was only one thing left to do now: run.

I jerked my head at the exit door thirty feet to our left and handed Owen the key card to open it. “Stay behind me!” I screamed at him. “I’ll cover you!”

Owen nodded, realizing what I had in mind. I reached for my Stone magic, used it to harden my skin, and stepped out into the hallway, with Owen right behind me. While he ran for the door, I turned around, raised my gun, took aim at the giants, and pulled the trigger.

Crack!

Crack! Crack!

Crack!

My hail of gunfire slowed the giants down and made them duck for cover, but it didn’t stop them from returning my bullets with several shots of their own. One of the projectiles punched square into my chest, making me stumble back. The bullet would have bored right through my heart if I hadn’t been using my magic to protect myself. I kept backing up, heading toward the exit, and firing away until my clip was empty.

“Gin!” Owen shouted behind me, holding the door open. “Come on!”

I turned and raced toward him.

Crack!

Another shot rang out. In front of me, Owen grunted and staggered outside, leaving behind a smear of blood on the glass door.

“Owen? Owen!” I made it through the opening, let the door close behind me, and ran over to him.

He clutched his left shoulder. “I’m okay. I think they just winged me—”

Bullets slammed into the door behind us, cracking the glass and making us duck down.

I put my arm under Owen’s shoulder, and together we staggered down the stairs and headed for the shadows and sanctuary of the gardens.

I led Owen to the far western edge of the gardens, where the lush flowers gave way to the creeping briars. Despite the giants’ shouts behind us, I risked turning my flashlight on for a few seconds and swept it back and forth in front of a hedge of four-foot-tall briars. Finally, I found what looked like a small animal trail through the thorns. I clicked the flashlight off and turned to Owen.

“Can you go on a little farther?” I whispered.

He nodded, although he was still clutching his shoulder.

“Okay,” I whispered back. “Follow my lead, and just take it easy. Don’t fight the briars. Go where they let you. We don’t want to leave a trail of broken branches behind us that will tell the giants exactly where we went.”

Owen nodded. I went first, worming my way deeper and deeper into the branches. The briars clutched at my tattered dress, but I went slowly, carefully moving branches out of my way. Owen followed along behind me, his breath rasping against the back of my neck.

Ten feet in, a copse of weeping willows soared up out of the briars, and I slid into a small open space between two of the trees that was free from the thorns. Fifteen feet beyond the back side of the bramble patch, the island sheared off in a straight drop down to the Aneirin River two hundred feet below.

It was as good a spot as any to hide from the giants, so I gestured at Owen to stop. He sat down on the ground and put his back against one of the weeping willows, the long tendrils brushing against his shoulders like a masseuse’s fingers. I sank down on my knees beside him.

“Let me see your arm,” I whispered.

He nodded, and I helped him shrug out of his tuxedo jacket. I used one of my knives to slice open his white shirt. Two neat holes blackened his left bicep, blood trickling out of each one of them. It was an ugly wound, one that would hurt, ache, and burn with every move, but relief pulsed through me that it wasn’t worse.

“It looks like a through-and-through,” I said in a soft voice.

“Just help me bandage it up. It stings, but it’s not that bad.” Owen grimaced. “Not nearly as bad as what Dixon did to Phillip.”

I ripped his jacket up and used it to make a tight bandage. Owen grimaced, and sweat beaded on his forehead, but he swallowed down most of the pain.

Once that was done, I crouched down a few feet away, with my back to the river and my gaze on the faint path we’d made through the thorns. I didn’t think the giants would venture this far from the museum, but I wanted to be ready in case they did.

And then we waited.

In the distance, I could hear the giants’ shouts as they searched for us. I just hoped they would focus on this side of the island and not the front, where Bria and Xavier would be coming in any minute now. I pulled my cell phone off my belt, intending to text my sister about the new danger, but the moonlight filtering down through the trees revealed a bullet hole in the middle of the device. I bit back a curse and clipped the phone to my belt once more, even though it was useless now. Bria and Xavier were on their own—just like Owen and me.

A minute passed. Then two. Then five.

All the while, the giants swarmed through the gardens, yelling back and forth to one another.

“Where are they?”

“Do you see them?”

“Where did they go?”

Every once in a while, the bright beam of a flashlight would cut across the foliage above our heads, making Owen and me duck down further in the shadows. But the briars made the giants keep their distance, and they didn’t find us.

Eventually, the sounds of their shouts died away altogether, along with the beams of light, and I relaxed. The danger had passed us by—for now.

Finally, Owen spoke, his voice a hard, flat note against the cheery chirp of the crickets in the underbrush. “Jillian’s dead.”

“Yes,” I said. “She is.”

Still keeping watch for the giants, I told him about Clementine sidling up to me first in the rotunda and then later on in the bathroom. I also told him how she had left and Jillian had come in, although I didn’t mention that we’d talked about him.

“Jillian never had a chance,” I said. “Dixon was waiting for her as soon as she stepped out of the bathroom. I don’t know if I would have had a chance to react either.”

Owen’s gaze dropped to my dress. The designer gown was a tattered, ruined, ragged mess, stained with blood, soaked with sweat, and scorched with black bullet holes. His mouth tightened, and he rubbed his forehead. No doubt he was thinking about Jillian and the fact that she was dead because of me.

I wondered if he was still thinking about Salina and how she was also dead because of me—by my own hand, no less.

“I’m sorry,” I said in a quiet voice. “About Jillian. She didn’t deserve to die like that.”

Owen looked away from me. “Me too. She was a friend.”

I wanted to ask if that was all she had been, but I kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. I dropped my gaze from Owen, and both of us concentrated on the thorns around us instead of staring at each other. We were both silent until he finally cleared his throat.

“So now what?” he asked. “We might be out here away from the giants, but Eva, Phillip, and the others are still inside.”

“Now we see what kind of leverage we have.”

I pulled the small ebony tube out of the pouch on my utility belt. Mab’s sunburst rune glimmered in the moonlight, deadly and beautiful, just like the Fire elemental herself had been. I reached for my Stone magic, used it to harden my skin, and traced my finger over the sunburst, wondering if the rune might hold some sort of booby-trap. But the symbol didn’t flare to life or spew explosive, elemental Fire in my face.

Still, the problem was that I didn’t see a way to open the tube. Flat discs of silverstone covered both ends of the wood, but I couldn’t pry them off with either my nails or the tip of my knife. I handed the tube to Owen, who ran his fingers up and down it, but he couldn’t figure out how to get inside it either. It had to open, because there was something inside, something that rustled back and forth whenever I shook the tube. I needed to know what that something was so I could deal with Clementine accordingly.

Of course Mab wouldn’t make it easy to loot whatever was inside the tube, especially when I was under pressure and pressed for time. I imagined the Fire elemental was laughing at me even now from wherever she was in the great beyond.

“Laugh your ass off, Mab,” I muttered. “You’ve certainly earned it tonight.”

I held up the tube, wondering if there was something I was missing. Once again, my eyes focused on the sunburst rune. The wavy golden rays took on a muted silver tinge in the moonlight, while the ruby smoldered like a dull, banked ember in the middle of the design. Maybe it was the mocking way the rune seemed to wink at me, but an idea popped into my mind. I put my thumb on the ruby and pressed in on it.

A soft click sounded, and one of the silverstone discs on the end of the tube popped up.

“Here goes nothing,” I murmured.

I hinged the silverstone to one side and tipped the contents of the tube into my hand. I’d been expecting jewels, a fistful of rubies or something like that, something that would have been in keeping with Mab’s bold, flashy, fiery nature.

Instead, a single piece of rolled-up paper slid out of the hollowed-out wood.

“That’s it?” Owen asked. “That’s all that’s in there?”

I shook the wood, but nothing else came out. “Yep, that’s it. So let’s see what’s so important about it.”

I carefully unrolled the paper. It was hard to make out everything, since the print was so small and the night was so dark, despite the golden glow from the garden lights in the distance, but I managed to skim through it.

“It looks like some sort of legal document. I think . . . I think this is Mab’s will.”

Owen frowned. “Why would Clementine go to so much trouble to steal Mab’s will?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured. “But apparently, she wanted it bad enough to arrange the heist and everything else tonight. But you’re right. The question is why.”

“Well, what does it say?” he asked. “Who did Mab leave what to?”

I squinted and read a few more paragraphs. “A bunch of legal mumbo jumbo, and . . . it looks like . . . she left everything to one person. Someone whose last name is also Monroe—M. M. Monroe.”

I stared at the paper. It seemed innocent enough, but I couldn’t help but feel like the earth had just opened up at my feet and I was about to tumble into an abyss.

“M. M. Monroe?” Owen asked. “Did I hear you right?”

All I could do was nod.

Finn had mentioned there was a rumor that the contents of Mab’s will were going to be revealed at the gala tonight. Now that I’d read the document myself, I could easily imagine Mab arranging for things to go down like that. Like Finn had said, it would have been one last hurrah for her—an opportunity to remind everyone how powerful she had been, and a chance to announce her successor in the most dramatic way possible.

Because Mab hadn’t left anything to Jonah McAllister, her other business associates, or even charity. No, she’d given everything to this M. M. Monroe.

I wondered if this mysterious relative had the same devastating Fire magic Mab had wielded.

I wondered if this person knew about the massive fortune he or she had inherited.

I wondered if this Monroe would decide to come to Ashland to oversee Mab’s empire in person—and how much trouble he or she might cause for me if so.

My mother and Mab had been enemies for years before Mab had murdered her and my older sister. Their parents had been enemies before them, and their parents before them. At least, that’s how it had been according to Mab. So it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think that the family feud would continue on into another generation, if that’s what this was. It already had with me and Mab, really.

Once again, I’d thought that I’d taken care of everything when I’d killed the Fire elemental, that I’d finally set myself free from her, but she just kept screwing with me, even from six feet under.

“It doesn’t really matter who Mab left her fortune to,” I finally said, rolling up the paper and sliding it back into the tube. “Just that we have the will and Clementine wants it. We can use it for leverage.”

Owen shook his head. “She’s not going to let the hostages go, if that’s what you’re thinking. You know that as well as I do. Not now, when everyone’s seen her face and knows exactly who she is. She can’t afford to let any of them live.”

“That’s what I thought at first too. But I think good ole Clem has a slightly different plan in mind.”

I told Owen about the bombs I’d found on the bridge and under the bumper of the moving truck.

He frowned. “Okay, I understand about the destroying the bridge to help with their escape, but why would Clementine want to blow up the moving trucks?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t quite figured that out yet. But it doesn’t really matter, because the only way she’s leaving this island is in a body bag.”

Owen studied me in the moonlight. “Because of what she and Dixon did to Jillian?”

I didn’t say anything, but he could see the answer in my cold, angry eyes—along with the guilt.

“That wasn’t your fault, Gin,” he said. “It was a mistake, her having on the same dress as you. Just a stupid, simple, cruel twist of fate.” He hesitated. “She was a friend, but you don’t have to avenge her for me, if that’s what you’re thinking. I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”

No, he wouldn’t. Owen preferred to handle such things himself, just like I did. It was one of the many things I admired about him.

“I know you wouldn’t ask me that,” I said. “But I need to avenge Jillian for me. Because it should have been my face that got blown off, not hers.”

“I’m not blaming you for Jillian’s death, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No,” I replied, weariness creeping into my voice. “You just blame me for Salina.”

His ex-fiancée’s name hung in the air between us, writhing around and around like a poisonous snake. But I’d said the words, and there was no taking them back. Despite the danger we were in, the danger we were all in, Eva, Phillip, and the others were right: Owen and I needed to start talking, to start figuring out where we stood and what kind of future we might have together. If I was going to die tonight, if we both might die tonight, well, I wanted to clear the air between us—about this, anyway.

Owen grimaced. He reached out and touched one of the brown briars wrapped around the weeping willow, sliding his thumb over one of the thorns. It was several seconds before he finally spoke.

“I don’t blame you for Salina’s death. You did what you thought needed to be done.”

“But you didn’t agree with it then,” I said. “And you still don’t now.”

He sighed, looking as sad and tired as I felt. “Like I told you before, everything’s all mixed-up inside me right now. You, Salina, how I feel about her death and your part in it. I keep going over it again and again in my head, wondering if I could have done something different, if I could have changed things. But I can’t see how I could have, other than waking up and realizing what Salina was really like when we were young. But I didn’t see the real her, and now she’s dead. I can’t change any of that, and I haven’t sorted any of it out. Not really.”

It was a shortened version of the same speech Owen had given me at the Pork Pit a few weeks ago, when he’d told me that he needed some time to himself. I’d hoped that tonight’s events, that the danger and emotions we’d shared, had meant that he’d come to terms with at least some of his issues. But he hadn’t, and I didn’t know if he ever would.

“Jillian was a friend,” he continued. “But I wasn’t one to her. Not really. Because I didn’t even realize that she wasn’t in the rotunda with the rest of us. When Clementine threw that body down, and I thought it was you . . . I couldn’t think about anything else but you being dead. I always seem to let down the people I care about. Eva, Phillip, Cooper, you. I let you all down because of Salina. And tonight, I didn’t even notice that Jillian was missing. Some friend that makes me, huh?”

Owen barked out a harsh laugh, his face twisting with guilt and misery.

“And that kiss you laid on me in the vault?” I asked.

He didn’t look at me. Instead, he pressed his thumb into the thorn, drawing a bit of blood, pain etching lines in his sweaty, rugged, soot-streaked face. “I was just so glad that you were alive, Gin. I will always be glad for that, no matter what.”

Despite the fact that I’d killed Salina. That’s what it seemed like he really meant. But I couldn’t blame him for his feelings. He’d loved her once, and I’d cut her throat even though he’d asked me not to. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you got over easily, if ever.

Still, I’d hoped—I’d hoped that by saving Owen, I could save us too. Hope. Such a stupid, foolish emotion. One that could lift your heart to the heavens and then grind it into the ground in the very next instant. My emotions felt as tangled and twisted as the briars around us. And every move I made, everything I did to try to make things better, just stabbed another sharp, brittle thorn deep into the desolate wasteland of my heart.

“Gin?” Owen asked again, all sorts of questions in the soft, single syllable of my name.

Before I could answer him, bullets zipped in our direction.