Elemental Assassin 03 - Venom

lighter tab to keep the flame going.
    “Finally,” he muttered.
    Last word he ever said. The giant never even saw me step out from behind the furniture and creep forward so that I was directly in front of him. He lit his cigarette and lifted his head, smoke streaming from his nostrils like he was a mythical dragon. My first knife ripped into his stomach, spilling his guts all over the stone patio. The second knife slammed into his windpipe, cutting off any sound he might make. The poor guy never knew what hit him. He choked on his own blood, even as his body spasmed from the shock of the two vicious, fatal wounds. He went down on his knees, halfway to dead, but I held him up and cut his throat, just to be sure.
    Since I didn’t feel like dragging his body off the patio, I tipped the dead giant into the pool. He sank to the bottom, blood still spurting out of his wounds, turning the crystal water the ugly brown color of iodine. Under my boots, the stone of the patio took on a harsher note from the giant’s spattered blood. A symphony wouldn’t have sounded better to me at the moment.
    Gin 3, giants 0.
    I waited a few seconds, but no one seemed to have heard me take out my latest victim. When I was sure thatthe kill had been clean and quiet, I eased over to the glass patio door, turned the knob, and slipped inside.
    The inside of the mansion looked just as I’d expected it to—lush, elegant, expensive. Thick carpeting, throw rugs, and just enough natural wood and stone to make you think that you were in some rustic oasis instead of a carefully crafted structure. I could tell Slater had had the structure built especially for him because all the doorways had at least a twelve-foot clearance and were five feet wide. Giants didn’t like to be crowded.
    I stood inside the patio door a moment, thinking about the blueprints of the place that Finn had procured for me and getting my bearings. In the woods, Elliot Slater had told his man to chain Finn up in the downstairs living room. I currently stood on the back side of the house, which meant the living room was several hundred feet in front of me. I knew that Slater had at least one more man with him right now—the one who had carried Finn out of the woods—but I didn’t know how many other giants might be lurking around. Best to do a perimeter sweep and kill as many of them as I could before taking on the big kahuna himself.
    Besides, some small part of me hoped that Roslyn Phillips might still be alive. I owed it to the vampire to get her out of here if she was still breathing. Jo-Jo Deveraux could fix anything short of death, no matter what horrible things Slater might have done to Roslyn. I’d promised the vampire that I was going to protect her from the giant. That he was never going to hurt her again. So far, I hadn’t lived up to my word, but if Roslynwas still breathing, then I’d be damned if I was leaving here without her.
    A long hallway stretched out north and south before me. I tiptoed up the north side, keeping to the shadows and pausing every few feet to look and listen.
    Silence.
    I didn’t hear any movement. No rustle of clothing, no labored breathing, no scratch of shoes on the rugs or carpet. Just silence.
    I kept going, eventually coming to a set of stairs that led up to the third floor. Once again, I visualized the blueprints that had been in Finn’s folder. If I remembered correctly, the interior of the mansion was hollow. The downstairs living room on the second floor was the focal point of the structure, with the ceilings of the other floors cut out above it. Balconies on every floor led to other rooms while still overlooking the living room below, which featured floor-to-ceiling windows on one side. Since I wanted to see Elliot Slater’s setup before I went after him, I headed up the stairs so I could get a bird’s-eye view of things. Besides, the master bedroom was located on the third floor. Which is where Slater had probably taken Roslyn first when he’d brought her here.
    Again, I heard no one and saw nothing except furniture—until I reached the door that led to the master bedroom. To my surprise, the door was cracked open, and soft murmurs slid out into the hallway where I stood. I cocked my head to one side. A man’s voice doing most of the talking, but not Slater’s. The pitch was too high. Didn’t much matter. Other than Finn and Roslyn, whoeverelse was in this house was going to die right along with the giant, no