Elemental Assassin 03 - Venom

like an Old West gunfighter cooling down his Colt after some sort of shootout. How dramatic.
    “Did you see that?” Finn whispered, his coffee now forgotten, his green eyes wide and round in his face. “She
electrocuted
him.”
    “Yeah. I saw.”
    I didn’t add that she’d used elemental magic to do it. Finn had seen that for himself as well as I had.
    Elementals were people who could create, control, and manipulate one of the four elements—Air, Fire, Ice, and Stone. Those were the areas that most folks were gifted in, the ones that you had to be able to tap into to be considered a true elemental. But magic had many forms, many quirks, and there were some people who could use other areas, offshoots of one of the four elements. Likemetal was an offshoot of Stone—and electricity was one of Air.
    One that Finn and I had just seen used to deadly efficiency, thanks to our mystery woman.
    I was an elemental too. In my case, I had the rare ability of being able to control two elements—Stone and Ice. But I’d never seen someone with electrical power before. And now I wasn’t so sure it was a good thing that I had.
    The woman stuck the toe of her boot into the man’s ribs. A large hunk of his body disintegrated into gray ash at her touch and puffed up like some kind of cold, macabre fog. A sliver of a smile lifted her lips at the sight. Then she reached inside her coat, drew out something white, and tossed it down on his body before heading toward the van and sliding inside.
    Thirty seconds later, the woman drove the van down the street, turned the corner, and disappeared from view. But instead of watching the vehicle, I stared at the burned-out body that she’d left behind, wondering what that bit of white was on the dwarf’s still-smoking chest.
    “You want me to follow her?” Finn asked, his hand hovering over the keys in the ignition.
    I shook my head. “No. Stay here and keep an eye out.”
    I got out of the car and made my way across the street, slithering from shadow to shadow, a silverstone knife in either hand. After about five minutes of careful creeping and lots of pauses to look and listen, I reached the edge of the building closest to the dwarf. I crouched there in the black shadows, out of sight, until I was sure that the mystery woman wasn’t going to circle back around theblock and see if anyone had come to inspect her shocking handiwork. Then I drew in a breath, stood up, and walked over to the dead dwarf.
    Even now, ten minutes after the initial attack, smoke still curled up from his body, like elegant, green-gray ribbons wafting all the way up to the black sky. I breathed in through my mouth, but the stench of charred flesh still filled my nose. The familiar acrid scent triggered all sorts of emotions that were better left dead and buried deep inside me. But they bubbled to the surface, whether I wanted them to or not.
    For a moment I was thirteen again, weeping, wailing, and staring down at the ashy, flaky ruined
thing
that had been my mother, Eira, before Mab Monroe had used her elemental Fire to burn her to death, and at the matching husk that had been my older sister, Annabella. Trying not to vomit as I realized the cruel thing that had been done to them. That was going to be done to Bria and me before the night was through. Sweet little Bria—
    I ruthlessly shook away the memory. My hands had curled into fists so tight that I could feel the hilts of my silverstone knives digging into the spider rune scars on my palms. I forced myself to relax my grip, then bent down on my knees so I could get a better look at the white blob resting on the dwarf’s back.
    To my surprise, it was a single white orchid, exquisite, elegant, its petals soft in the dark.
    My eyes narrowed, and I regarded the blossom with a thoughtful expression. I knew what the flower meant and exactly who had left it behind to be found. It washer calling card, her name, rank, and trademark, just like my spider rune was. Something that she’d put here to announce her presence, mark her kill, and serve as a warning to anyone who dared to get in her way.
    She was taunting me, just as I’d been doing to Mab Monroe these last two weeks.
    “LaFleur,” I muttered, saying her name out loud.
    Because the simple fact was that an assassin had come to Ashland—one who was here to kill me.

About the Author

    By night, JENNIFER ESTEP is an author, prowling the streets of her imagination in search of her next fantasy idea. By