Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

She was using everything she had against me.
    Through it all, I held on to my Ice magic. I didn’t know how much damage she was doing to me, how badly she was frying my skin or burning me, and I didn’t care.All that mattered was keeping her here shackled to me so that she couldn’t hurt Bria any more. All that mattered was stopping the other assassin—for good.
    While her lightning crackled around me, Elektra also used her free hand to hit me. Over and over and over again, she slammed her tight fist into my face, my chest, and every other part of me that she could reach.
    But because of my Ice magic, I didn’t feel any of the blows. Not a one.
    Still, I had to do something. Sooner or later, I would exhaust my magic, and I didn’t know if it would be before or after Elektra ran out of juice herself. Somehow I pushed her away as far as I could, then rolled over onto my hands and knees, half-dragging Elektra with me. A steady burn of light caught my eye, and I stared down. My left hand was open, and the spider rune scar on my palm was glowing a bright silver, just like it had that night in the coal mine when I’d finally broken through the block of the silverstone metal in my hands.
    I looked past it to my goal—the silverstone knife that I’d slapped away from Elektra. The only one I had left. But the only problem with not being able to feel my body was that I seemed to have zero control over it as well. It was like I was floating above myself, watching all this happen to someone else, and not being able to affect the outcome one bit.
    Fuck that.
    I needed that knife, and I was going to get it, numb body or no numb body. So I stared at my fingers harder than I had ever looked at anything in my life, willing them to move with the force of my gaze, to curl up, to just
twitch
.
    And somehow they did.
    Even though I couldn’t feel them, I somehow made my fingers move, just by the sheer force of my mind. My thumb inched closer to the dagger, dragging the rest of my hand along with it. I got one fingertip on the weapon, then another, then another. All the while, LaFleur kept hitting me, kept raining blows onto my back and head. I ignored her the way a dog would a flea jumping around on its ass. The assassin wasn’t important right now. Getting my hands on my knife was all that mattered.
    Twenty agonizing seconds later, my hand closed around the hilt of the silverstone dagger. I might have only imagined it but I could have sworn that I felt the spider rune stamped on the hilt sear my skin with a magic that was even colder than my own.
    Meanwhile, LaFleur was still trying to fry me with her electrical magic, even as she kept pummeling me with her free fist. I drew in a breath, concentrating one last time, gathering my strength for this one last thing.
    And then I rolled back over and shoved the knife into her side.
    It was an awkward blow and certainly not one of my best, given the fact that we were shackled together. Fletcher would have shaken his head sadly at my utter lack of form. But it got the job done. Most anything would, if you put enough muscle behind it. And even though I couldn’t feel my arms, I knew that I’d driven the knife into her with everything I had.
    Just because my body was numb didn’t mean that I couldn’t still hear things—like Elektra LaFleur’s howl of rage. The wounds in her foot and shoulder might nothave slowed her down much, but a knife in the stomach is a little more serious, especially given just how deep I’d shoved it into her. For the first time, real, raw pain filled her voice.
    More importantly, she finally lost her grip on her electrical magic. The green lightning flashing around our bodies vanished in a shower of sparks, as though a firecracker had just exploded over our heads. I’d hurt her bad. But I didn’t stop, not even for a second. Even though I still couldn’t feel my own hand, my own fingers even, somehow I pulled out the knife.
    And this time, I buried it in the bitch’s heart.
    Elektra let out a final shriek. Her body convulsed once, twice, three times, just as mine had done when she slammed her electrical magic into me. That damn eerie green lightning flashed around us once more, slamming us both into the gravel. Elektra’s final death blow. Then her limbs slackened, and all the fight drained out of her body.
    We were still shackled together, with me now on top of her. I stared down into her pale, shocked face.
    “You know what, Elektra?” I rasped