Elemental Assassin 03 - Venom

the cold caress of Ice magic surging through the house. A sensation so like my own Stone and Ice power that it made me want to weep. Not surprising, even if it was something that I hadn’t thought about in years. Because Bria was an Ice elemental, of course. Just like our mother, Eira, and older sister, Annabella, had been. I was the only one who’d inherited our father, Tristan’s, Stone magic as well.I just hoped Bria had enough juice to hold off Elliot Slater and his men until I could even the odds.
    The Ice magic flowed around me a second longer before snuffing out like a candle. Either Bria didn’t have much power or something had broken her concentration—like a fist to her face or a bullet to her gut.
    The brass hinges of the back door barely clung to the stone frame. One of the giants must have just shouldered his way through it, rather than bother with the pretense of knocking. Although my heart screamed at me to keep running, to get to Bria as quickly as possible, I slowed my steps and paused just outside the door. Me barging into whatever fight was going on inside wouldn’t help Bria. That’s not how I’d operated as the assassin the Spider, and I wasn’t going to do it now. Besides, there was always the off chance that Bria could mistake me for one of the giants and turn on me. Being killed by one’s own sister would be a shitty way to die.
    So I stood there and listened. Another series of
pop-pop-pop
s sounded, followed by three more shots. Two people exchanging gunfire.
    “Fuck!” A sharp, masculine cry. One of the giants had been hit.
    Then silence.
    I crept a few feet inside the door, taking care to be exceptionally quiet. The back door opened up into a kitchen, and the white tile floor and countertops gleamed like they were made of ivory. The fight had started in here, judging from the black splashes of blood on the floor. Sharp, melting pieces of elemental Ice also littered the tile underfoot like a wet carpet.
    But what was most surprising was the refrigerator. The top door had been blown off, and a rune shimmered with a bluish white light inside the frosty depths of the freezer. The symbol zigzagged up and down like the teeth of a saw. That’s what it was called—the saw. Symbolizing pure, biting force. In addition to using runes to identify themselves, elementals could also imbue runes with magic. In other words, make the symbols come to life and perform some specific function.
    The saw was a defensive rune that could be used by any elemental and was especially popular as a sort of magic trip wire and bomb rolled into one. Since Bria was an Ice elemental, she’d drawn the saw symbol in her freezer, using the rune and appliance to contain her frosty magic. When the giants had broken into her house tonight, she’d most likely sent a burst of her Ice power into the freezer, triggering the explosive saw rune inside. And then—
boom
! The freezer door had blown open, spraying the giants with sharp, jagged icicles. Hence the blood on the floor.
    I recognized the trick. I’d done it myself with stone a time or two. Baby sister had booby-trapped her own freezer. Despite the situation, I found myself grinning underneath my ski mask.
Nice.
    I saw all this in the three seconds it took me to creep to the opposite side of the kitchen. I crouched down and peered around the doorjamb. A long hallway stretched out before opening up into the front of the house. Rooms branched off either side of the hallway, which was now littered with debris. A couple of porcelain vases had been shattered, chairs overturned, a table splintered, a mirrorknocked off the wall and broken. More blood glistened on the wooden floor, and a couple of bullets had punched into and blackened the walls. I started forward—
    “Give it up, Coolidge!” Elliot Slater’s voice rumbled through the house like thunder. “We’ve got you surrounded, and it’s only a matter of time before you run out of ammo. We’ll kill you quick, I promise.”
    “Fuck you, Slater,” Bria snarled.
    Not the most original of retorts, but it was hard to be witty under pressure. Still, I frowned. Despite her bravado, Bria’s voice had sounded high and thin, like she was in pain or injured. But she was still breathing. As long as she kept doing that, Jo-Jo Deveraux could fix the rest of the damage. From the sound of things, Elliot and his men had Bria trapped somewhere in the front of the house. Which meant they wouldn’t be expecting a sneak