Widow's Web

7

I stood there, still shielding Eva and Violet, and stared at the wet, floppy thing that had been a man just seconds before. Poor bastard. He’d never had a chance.

Kincaid fought through the screaming crowd of students and went down on one knee by Antonio, not caring that he was getting his pants wet with, well, Antonio. He started to touch the giant, then thought better of it. There was nothing that could be done for the man. Not now. Disgust and pity filled Kincaid’s face, along with rage—so much rage.

My eyes narrowed. That look told me that the casino boss knew exactly who had done this and why—things I planned on asking him just as soon as I got Eva and Violet to safety.

By this point, Sophia had managed to shoulder her way through the students over to my side.

“You get the girls off the boat!” I yelled at her. “I’ll handle Kincaid!”

Sophia nodded. The dwarf reached out and clamped a hand on Violet’s trembling arm. Sophia started to do the same to Eva, but the girl twisted away from her.

“No!” Eva shouted. “I’m not leaving him behind. Not again!”

Again? What did she mean by that?

Before I could grab her and ask, Eva shoved away from the doors and ran toward Kincaid as fast as she could, given the people still trampling over each other. Now, instead of just running around in a blind panic, everyone was racing toward the gangplank, determined to get off the boat before what happened to Antonio happened to them too.

“Stay with Violet. I’ll get Eva!” I yelled to Sophia.

Knife still in my hand, I headed after Eva, dodging and darting between the stampeding students. The giants that made up the casino’s security force weren’t any calmer. Their heads swiveled left and right as they shouted at each other, all trying to stay as far away from Antonio as they could, lest they end up just like him. Some of the giants even shoved kids out of their way in their mad dash to safety.

Up ahead, I saw Eva reach Kincaid’s side. She stared at the dead giant and the pools of water under his body, then turned away and threw up all over the deck.

Kincaid cursed, got to his feet, and reached for her. “Eva, it’s okay—”

And that’s when I felt another gust of that cool, deadly magic sweep across the deck. Only this time, it was focused on our host.

I didn’t know exactly how it happened. One second, Kincaid was reaching for Eva. The next, his feet had gone out from under him, and he was on his back on the deck, clawing at something around his throat. Eva must have seen him fall out of the corner of her eye, because she wiped her mouth and turned her head in his direction. Her eyes widened, and her already pale face whitened that much more.

“Philly!” Eva screamed. “Philly!”

She dropped to her knees beside him, tearing at his neck with her nails, just as Kincaid himself was doing. I surged past a frat boy and sprinted over to the two of them. My eyes flicked left, then right, looking for the source of the danger, looking for the elemental who was behind this, but all I saw and heard were screeching kids and panicked giants.

Since I couldn’t immediately eliminate the danger with my knife, I squatted down next to Kincaid. Something translucent shimmered around his throat, and it took me a second to realize that it was . . . water.

Somehow, a long, thick stream of water—of Antonio, really—had attached itself to Kincaid’s neck and solidified there like a noose, slowly digging deeper and deeper into his throat and cutting off his air. The casino boss clawed and clawed at the water, but it was stuck to his skin like a coat of wet plaster. The water even looked like a noose, the length of it taking on a braided, twisted design and forming a tight knot in the center of Kincaid’s neck. The elemental definitely had a sick sense of humor.

“Gin!” Eva screamed at me, tearing at the water and trying to peel it off just as hard as Kincaid was. “Do something! Help him!”

Eva was a strong girl, a tough girl, who’d been through a lot in her life, including the murder of her parents, but she looked absolutely terrified right now. Like Kincaid was the most important person in the world to her and she’d be absolutely devastated if she lost him. What was going on between them? And why didn’t I know anything about it? Eva and I might not have been best friends, like she and Violet were, but we talked, and I dated her brother. I should have known something about her relationship with the casino boss.

Kincaid’s eyes met mine. I could see the pain in his gaze—and the hope that I could somehow save him.

Part of me knew the smart play was to let the elemental finish the job—to let Kincaid die. With him dead, there’d be one less bad guy in Ashland, one less person to come after me. If it had been Jonah McAllister, I wouldn’t have hesitated. I would have gotten myself a drink, leaned against the railing, pulled out my cell phone, and recorded the whole thing for repeat viewing. But to my knowledge, Kincaid had never made any moves against me or mine, except for luring me here tonight, and I was starting to get a glimmer of an idea why he’d really done that.

Maybe it was Eva’s screams, or maybe it was the hope in the bastard’s eyes—the one emotion I could never quite disregard or turn away from. Either way, I knew I had to help him.

I bent down closer to Kincaid, looking at the noose around his neck. Both his and Eva’s fingers dipped into the water time and time again, but they weren’t having any luck grabbing onto the stream and yanking it away. All they were really doing was getting their hands wet, and the water was slipping through their fingers and snapping right back into place like a rubber band. It almost seemed like the elemental was playing with them, solidifying the water just enough for them to think they had a chance to rip it away, then letting it dissolve and run through their hands only to re-form the deadly noose again. No doubt the elemental was enjoying every second of this sick game.

I couldn’t rip the thing off with my hands, any more than Kincaid and Eva could, and my knives wouldn’t be any help either. That left only one option.

“Eva, stop! Stop! Kincaid, quit fighting, and hold still,” I said.

Eva reached for him again, but I shouldered her back and out of the way. Despite the fact that he was the one being strangled, Kincaid was calmer than she was. He managed to nod, although his face was tinged with blue by this point.

I put my hand down on the noose, feeling the water writhe like a snake against my fingers. Then I reached for my Ice magic, letting the power rise up out of the deepest part of me. A silver light flared in my palm. The other elemental would sense me using my magic and probably realize what I intended to do with it, but there was nothing to be done about that right now. I just hoped our assailant didn’t have enough magic left to try to suck the moisture out of anyone else on deck. Probably not, since it took a lot of power to do that sort of thing, and the elemental hadn’t tried the same trick on Kincaid already.

It only took me half a second to completely freeze the noose around Kincaid’s neck and turn all that shifting, sloshing water into a solid ring of elemental Ice. I sent out another burst of magic, shattering the Ice around his throat, and Kincaid quickly sucked down breath after breath.

He looked at me, his blue eyes cold and furious. “Find her,” he rasped. “Kill her . . . now . . . before she . . . gets away. . . .”

Her? So the other elemental was a woman. Good to know. I didn’t need to be asked twice. My head snapped up, and I scanned the deck once more. Off to my right, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a slender figure sneaking onto the walkway that lined the rear of the boat.

Sneaky people were always up to no good. I knew from years of being that way myself.

“Stay here!” I yelled at Eva.

Then I palmed another knife, got to my feet, and raced after the fleeing figure.

Rounding the corner, I sprinted onto the back walkway. It was darker on this side of the boat, with only the moon above and a few globes wrapped around the brass rails to light the way, but a woman pounded down the narrow strip about a hundred feet ahead of me. Just like Kincaid had said. She opened a door that led into a glassed-in sitting area, ran through that, and then shoved through the door on the other side.

I chased after her. I didn’t bother shouting at her to stop. Waste of breath, and we both knew it.

But she was fast. She sprinted down the walkway like she knew her life depended on it, which it did.

She reached the far end of the walkway and rounded the corner, stepping out onto the back deck and disappearing from sight. I put on another burst of speed and ran after her. There was nowhere for her to go, unless she decided to take a header into the Aneirin River. And even if she did that, I could always jump in after her. One way or another, I was getting some answers about Eva, Kincaid, and why he’d really asked me here tonight, and I was willing to bet the elemental knew a lot more about all that than I did.

I drew in a breath, left the walkway behind, and rushed onto the back deck, my knives up and ready to injure, at the very least, or kill, if absolutely necessary.

But she was gone.

My eyes cut left and right as I scanned every shadow, peered into every dark nook and cranny, but the deck was deserted. I craned my neck up and looked at the three levels above my head, but she wasn’t climbing up the side of the boat. I even darted over to the paddle wheel and peered at the wide slats, thinking that she might have somehow lowered herself down.

But she wasn’t there—she wasn’t anywhere on board.

Whoever the mystery woman was, she wasn’t on deck anymore. So where had she gone? I hadn’t heard a splash that would indicate she’d leaped into the water—

Water. Of course.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move out in the river. I rushed over to the railing, thinking that the elemental had done a very quiet swan dive after all and was now swimming across the dark river.

I was right, and I was wrong.

She’d gone over the side, but she wasn’t swimming in the water—she was walking on top of it.