Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

early morning sunmy underground labyrinth. light slanted across my face, blinding me. I closed my eyes A smile stretched across my battered face. I let go, and and enjoyed its warmth, meager though it was. the world faded to black.
    And with a final burst of strength, I pulled myself up and out into the dawn.
    Some time later, I woke up in the same position I’d been in when I’d collapsed. one cheek planted on the ground. Arms and legs splayed out at awkward angles, heavy and numb. I tried to get to my knees and immediately groaned as pain filled every single part of my body. Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 358-359
    12/17/09 9:32 PM
    360 JENNIFER ESTEP
    Web of Lies 361
    Fuck. It hurt to be alive.
    didn’t really care. I lowered myself down onto one of the Somehow I managed to roll over onto my back as tinrocks and dipped my feet into the water. Cold as ice, but gles of pain shot through my limbs. A maple tree spread it felt like heaven on my swollen feet and ankles. I gulped its branches over my head, offering a bit of shade. The down several mouthfuls of the water and washed off my sun was higher in the sky now. Looked like it was around hands and face as best I could. I was careful to let one part noon. once my arms and legs quit burning with pain, I of my body dry before I moved on to the next. I didn’t raised my head up and studied my surroundings. I lay in want to get hypothermia from the shock of the cold water. the middle of a thicket of woods. Maples, pines, poplars, But cool wetness helped revive me—and made me and more flanked me like soldiers. Rhododendron bushes realize just how much fucking pain I was in. Every sinand patches of briars snaked through the trees like strings gle part of me hurt, but the real problem areas were my of green and brown Christmas lights.
    broken jaw, aching skull, and scraped, bruised, bloody I sighed. Although I wanted to do nothing more than hands, knees, and feet. Jo-Jo Deveraux was going to have lie here and sleep for the next three days, I knew I had to her work cut out for her when she started healing me. move. I didn’t know where the hell I was, which meant The thought made me smile, which turned into a grithe others had no chance of finding me. They probably mace as the muscles in my jaw screamed in pain. thought I was dead already, trapped beneath the earth once I felt strong and dry enough, I used my walking with Tobias Dawson and his two giants.
    stick to push myself up and plodded on. I’d been walking I grinned. I’d enjoy coming back from the grave just to about thirty minutes when I stumbled across what looked see the look on Finn’s face.
    like two ruts in the middle of the forest. I frowned. Did It took me awhile, but I propped myself up on my elsomebody have a house up here? That could be good or bows, then sat up. It took me even longer to get up to my bad. Good, if they were gone and had a phone. Bad, if knees, then my feet. I looked around the clearing where they were home and got a clear look at me. I’d emerged from the earth and found a piece of fallen But I stepped into the smooth track and headed left, wood. Using it as a sort of walking stick, I hobbled forclimbing upward to whatever might lie at the top of this ward. Pain pulsed through my body with every step. I’d rise. I got all the way up to the clearing before I realized cut my feet badly on the rocks inside the mountain, and where I was—on the access road that overlooked Tobias the briars, brambles, and twigs that littered the ground Dawson’s coal mine. I could still see the tire tracks in the didn’t help. But I stumbled forward.
    mud from where Donovan Caine and I had driven up I didn’t know how long I walked, an hour, maybe two, here the night we’d broken into the dwarf’s office. Hell, I but eventually I came to a small stream. Maybe it was the was probably standing in about the same spot I’d been in one that had run over the cavern. I didn’t know, and I when I’d stripped for the detective.
    Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 360-361
    12/17/09 9:32 PM
    362 JENNIFER ESTEP
    Web of Lies 363
    Irony. What a fucking bitch.
    shattered mountain, I really, truly, started to believe her. I shook my head and trudged on toward the edge of The thought made my stomach clench.
    the ridge. Noise drifted up to me from the basin below.
    “Damn,” I whispered.
    Men yelling at each other, along with the grind of heavy For a moment, another image flashed before my eyes. machinery. I