Deadly Sting

19

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Bullets zinged through the air. I started to throw myself forward onto Owen, but he shook his head and held up his finger, pointing at the tree branches above us, and I realized what he was getting at. Those shots had been far too high for someone to have seen us. So why was someone shooting? Why waste their ammunition like that?

Crack! Crack! Crack!

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” a mocking voice called out.

Owen and I looked at each other and reached for our weapons. I didn’t know how many giants were waiting, but we’d fight our way through them just like we had all the others tonight—

A loud sigh sounded. “Quit messing around, Dave,” a second voice, this one female, said. “We’re supposed to be searching for the thieves. Do you want somebody to hear the noise and shoot us by mistake?”

“Please,” Dave, the first giant, said. “Whoever set off that bomb is long gone. So I say we have a little fun before we go back inside. Besides, we’re the only ones still out this far. Everyone else has headed back to the museum already, from what I’ve heard on the radio.”

A knife in my hand, I crawled over to the weeping willow at the other end of the hedge of briars and slowly got to my feet. Owen took cover behind another tree. Using the long, fluttering tendrils as a screen to hide me from sight, I peered around the tree trunk.

I spotted two giants in the semidarkness, both holding guns and standing about twenty feet away from us beyond the row of thorns. The male was tall and extremely skinny, with a shaved head that looked like a cue ball in the moonlight, while the woman was a bit shorter, with a plump body.

“Come on, Dave,” the woman said again. “We need to get back so we can help load up the rest of the art.”

“Sure, Cindy. We’ll go back—in a minute.”

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Dave laughed as he fired off a few more random shots.

“Will you stop that?” Cindy hissed. “It’s creepy enough out here already without you acting like a jackass—”

A sharp crackle of static filled the air, and a second later, Opal’s voice sounded. “Team one, what’s your position? I thought I heard shots in the trees near the west exit.”

Cindy raised her walkie-talkie to her lips. “It’s nothing, Opal. Dave thought he saw something and fired off a few rounds, but it was just a rabbit. We’re coming back inside now.”

“Roger that,” Opal replied.

Cindy clipped her walkie-talkie back to her belt and shot Dave another hot glare.

I put my finger to my lips, then made a circle and a slashing gesture with my knife at Owen. He nodded and held up his gun, telling me that he was ready to help.

Despite everything that had happened between us, Owen knew that we were in this together. Once we got off the island, well, we’d have to see where we stood. But for right now, we were together, and I was going to enjoy the solidarity while I could, even if I knew it was a result of circumstances, rather than of choice.

The tangle of briars wasn’t quite so thick around this tree, so I was able to maneuver around the far side of the trunk past the row of thorns and circle around so that I was parallel with the two giants.

“Come on, Dave,” Cindy said, a little more heat in her tone this time. “Let’s go back.”

“Fine,” Dave muttered, holstering his gun. “I’m out of ammo anyway.”

Out of ammo? What a shame. I smiled and headed toward my enemies. Maybe something was finally going to go right—

Cindy turned her head at exactly the right moment to see me step out from behind the trees.

“Dave!” she yelped. “Watch out!”

As always, I cursed fickle, fickle luck for messing with me yet again, but there was nothing I could do but follow through with my strike.

Thanks to Cindy’s warning, Dave was able to sidestep my initial attack. The giant was quicker than I expected, and he grabbed hold of my arm and shoved me into the closest tree before stepping up and driving his fist into my kidneys.

I hissed from the impact, but I returned the favor by snapping my elbow back into his ribs as hard as I could. Dave took several steps back, which put him right in Owen’s path. Owen crashed through the middle of the briars, raised his gun high, and smashed the weapon into the side of Dave’s head. The giant grunted, reached out, and tackled Owen. The two of them fell to the ground, rolling back and forth in front of the thorns.

I whirled to face the other giant, but Cindy must have started moving away the second she saw me, because she was already fifteen feet away from my position. Cindy kept right on moving, even as she fumbled for her walkie-talkie. I started after her, but I’d only taken three steps when my boot snagged on one of the briars, making me pull up short. Even as I tried to yank free, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get to the giant in time. Helpless, I watched as Cindy raised the radio to her lips—

Pfft!

The walkie-talkie shattered into a dozen pieces.

Pfft! Pfft!

Two holes suddenly appeared in Cindy’s throat. Her eyes widened in pain and surprise, but she dropped to the ground without making another sound.

Dave managed to throw Owen off him and scramble to his feet. He turned to shout or maybe run—

Pfft! Pfft!

Two holes appeared in his forehead, and he went down as well.

I finally pulled myself free from the branch and darted behind the closest tree, wondering what this new danger might be, but there was no need.

A second later, Bria stepped into sight, Xavier right behind her, each holding a gun at the ready. I let out a tense breath and walked out where she could see me.

“Hey there, baby sister,” I drawled. “It’s about time you got here.”

We all stood there, listening, but the only sounds outside the museum were the wind rustling through the garden and Owen’s raspy breathing. Wherever they were, the other giants hadn’t heard the fight, which meant that we were safe for at least a few minutes.

Bria stalked over and hugged me tight. I returned her embrace, feeling a little bit of the worry ease from my body. Two against Clementine and the rest of her crew wasn’t great odds. Four against all those giants wasn’t much better, but it leveled the playing field a bit, especially given what I had in mind.

“Are you okay?” Bria whispered in my ear. “I was worried about you.”

I pulled back. “I’m fine. Just a little bruised and bloody, but that’s pretty much par for the course for me, isn’t it?”

Bria’s gaze swept over my body, taking in the tattered dress, the long, thin scratches on my hands, arms, and legs from crawling through the briars and bushes, the blood that coated me like some sort of macabre body art. She grimaced and shook her head, telling me exactly how battered and beat-up I looked. And that didn’t even take into account all of the dull, throbbing aches in my body from where the giants had hit me tonight. But I was still alive, breathing, and upright, at least.

My eyes dropped to the gun in Bria’s hand. “When did you get a silencer?”

“This?” she said, holding it up so I could see it better. “It was a present from Finn for our three-month anniversary.”

“How romantic.”

She grinned. “Well, at least it’s useful, and it does last longer than flowers or a box of candy. I thought it might come in handy tonight. I know how you love to keep things quiet.”

“That I do,” I said, moving past her.

I went over to Owen and touched his arm, the one that wasn’t injured. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, then winced as he gingerly probed a bruise that was already forming on his right cheek from where he’d been grappling with the giant. “I’ve been better, but I’ll live.”

I turned back to Bria. “Where’s Jo-Jo?”

“She’s on her way,” Bria said. “She and Cooper were having dinner at Underwood’s. She said it would take a while for them to get over here. She told me to come on, that you’d need me and Xavier before she could get here.”

I nodded. Jo-Jo had a bit of precognition. Most Air elementals did, since the currents and emotions on the wind whispered to them of all the actions people might take. I didn’t know what Jo-Jo might have gotten a glimpse of, but if she’d sent Bria on ahead, that meant that things were going to get a whole lot worse before they got better—if we all didn’t get dead in the meantime.

“Tell me about the giants.”

Bria shook her head. “We’d just made it across the bridge and slipped into the gardens when we heard them coming our way. One minute, Xavier and I were alone. The next, there were giants everywhere. In the parking lots, on the bridge, in the gardens. All yelling back and forth and looking for something—or someone. So we found a place to hide and waited them out. It took a while, but eventually, they all headed back up to the museum. The last we saw of them, they were clustered around some moving trucks by the entrance. That’s when we headed in this direction.”

“Yeah,” Xavier chimed in. “We were wondering where you and Owen might be, but then we heard someone shooting. So we just followed the sound of the gunshots. And look, they led us straight to you, Gin.”

He grinned at me, and I returned the gesture.

“Gunshots are a pretty good indicator that I’m lurking around,” I said.

“So what’s the situation on this end?” Xavier asked.

I quickly filled them in on all my wanderings, killings, and stealings in the museum, including how I’d gotten Owen out of the vault and swiped Mab’s will.

Bria frowned. “Okay, robbing the partygoers and the museum I understand. But why would Clementine want to steal Mab’s will?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, but she must want it something fierce to go to all this trouble—”

The walkie-talkie on my belt crackled. I’d turned the volume down while Owen and I had been hiding, although I’d made sure it was loud enough for me still to hear the giants’ squawks to one another as they searched for us. But this voice sounded louder and far more forceful than the others, the cadence of the words different, so I adjusted the volume so that we could all hear what was being said. I didn’t catch all the words, but I didn’t have to, since she apparently decided to repeat herself.

Clementine’s voice came through loud and clear. “I’ll say it again. This message is for whoever’s been going around killing my boys. We need to talk.”

I raised my eyebrows, mildly surprised it had taken her this long to reach out to me. I grabbed the walkie-talkie, brought the speaker up to my mouth, and hit the button on the side.

“Why, hello, Clementine,” I drawled. “I was wondering when you might call.”