Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

didn’t respond. I was already out of the car, running toward the girl.
    Even as I started running, I saw the shadowy figure creep closer to Violet and take on the form of a short, stocky man. A dwarf. I was two hundred feet away. I wasn’t going to make it in time. I was going to be too late. Again.
    I opened my mouth to shout a warning, when something skitter-skittered across the pavement. The dwarf must have stepped on a soda can. Violet froze at the noise, one of her hands still in her purse. Then she bolted. Didn’t look back, didn’t check to see what the noise was. She just ran.
    She got maybe twenty steps before the man grabbed her by her frizzy blond hair. Violet shrieked in pain and turned to flail at him, her hands arced into claws. He let her slap at him. Those sorts of blows would mean nothing to a dwarf. Magic and weapons were the only things that got their attention. Violet paused half a second to Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 90-91
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    draw in another breath to scream. That’s when the man the knife hidden up my left sleeve, and studied the man punched her in the face—hard. I heard the crunch of before me.
    bone a hundred feet away.
    Since he was a dwarf, he wasn’t quite five feet tall, but Violet moaned, and the man hit her again. Her head his shoulders were wider than a chair. His biceps looked snapped to one side, and she fell to her knees, retching. like they’d been carved out of steel and attached to his The dwarf kicked her in the stomach, and the force lifted barrel chest. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt, and a large Violet off the pavement and threw her ten feet. She hit tattoo showed on his left bicep—a lit stick of dynamite. A the hood of a rusty pickup and slid to the ground. She rune. one I’d seen somewhere before, although I couldn’t didn’t move.
    quite place it at the moment. Didn’t much matter. I could The dwarf cracked his knuckles and advanced on her study it in further detail when he was dead. again. He picked her up and splayed her out on the hood
    “This isn’t your fight, lady,” he spat. “This is between of the pickup. The motion snapped Violet out of her the girl and me. Run along before I do you too.”
    daze, and she moaned and looked at her attacker. one of
    “oh, but it is my fight,” I replied in a cold voice. I the dwarf’s hands dropped to his pants. He wasn’t using shifted the knife in my left hand, moving it into position. a gun this time. The dwarf was going to beat Violet to
    “Why’s that?”
    death—after he raped her.
    “Because you shot up my restaurant today.”
    I was fifty feet away and closing fast. I wasn’t trying to The dwarf’s blue eyes narrowed. “So what if I did?
    be quiet, not anymore, but the dwarf was too intent on What are you going to do about it?”
    opening his fly to hear the swish-swish of my sneakers on
    “For starters? This.”
    the wet pavement.
    I threw my knife at him. The dwarf didn’t flinch But the deep, throaty roar of a vehicle rumbling to life as the blade caught him in the chest and sank into his somewhere behind me made him turn. The dwarf spotright pectoral. Damn. I’d missed his heart by at least an ted me running at him, zipped up his pants, and stepped inch. Probably closer to two. I hadn’t been retired that back. Waiting. Just waiting. Violet lay on the hood, her long, but I hadn’t exactly been training every day either. hands underneath her, trying to find the strength to push Looked like some rust had already gathered. Use it or lose herself up, to run away. Blood covered most of what I it, Gin. Since I didn’t want to lose anything, since I knew could see of her face, and the bottom half of her nose I couldn’t afford to, I made a mental note to get in some was no longer in line with the top part. Her glasses barely throwing practice after this was over.
    clung to her face.
    The dwarf stared at the knife in his chest. Then he Since the dwarf was focused on me, I slowed my steps smiled, pulled out the weapon, and let it clatter to the to a walk. When I was ten feet away, I stopped, palmed ground. He rolled his shoulders and cracked his knuckles Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 92-93
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    again. The sound ricocheted like a gunshot off the conof his fist. I let go of the weapon. A sharp blow like that crete barriers around us. “I’m going to enjoy making you would shatter my wrist