Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

through my cold, numb, dead lips. “You should have killed me the second you had the chance. Instead, you talked yourself to death, you arrogant bitch. Just like your brother Brutus did.”
    I don’t know if she heard me before the last of the green lightning finally flashed, flickered, and faded from her eyes, and she was still.

28
     
    When I was sure that Elektra LaFleur was dead, I let go of my Ice magic.
    Pain immediately flooded my body, cutting through the cold numbness, but I didn’t care right now. I flopped over onto my back, scooting as far away from her as I could, given the handcuffs that still bound us together. The metal had weakened from the heat of LaFleur’s magic, but the cuffs hadn’t completely melted. Something soft brushed against my fingers, and I turned my head to the right.
    Elektra LaFleur’s orchid, the one she’d planned on dropping on my body, lay on the ground next to me. Somehow the flower had survived being crushed during our fight. A breeze whistled through the train yard, ruffling the delicate white petals. I shuddered and turned away from it.
    I lay there on the loose gravel, riding the waves ofpain, and watching the green-gray smoke puff up from my body and drift away like ribbons unfurling into the night sky.
    But I couldn’t rest yet. Not until I’d checked on Bria. Not until I knew whether my baby sister was still alive.
    I didn’t have long to wonder. Just as I started to force myself to sit up against the pain, footsteps crunched on the gravel behind me, and a second later, Bria’s face came into view above mine. Dirt smeared her features, along with a few scrapes and bruises from where she’d thrown herself onto the gravel, and her shaggy blond hair was a static-charged mess. One of her blue eyes twitched, and similar spasms zipped down her throat and into the rest of her body, making her arms and legs jump ever so slightly. But other than that, she was fine. She’d just been jolted by Elektra’s magic, not killed outright.
    I let out a quiet sigh of relief. My sister was fine for one more night. Which made everything I’d just been through worthwhile, including the pain that kept flooding my body like a river relentlessly rising inch by inch. I gritted my teeth and pushed it away as best I could.
    “Are you all right?” Bria asked in a soft voice.
    Her gaze locked onto the macabre smoke drifting up from my body. I could smell it, of course. But for once, the acrid stench didn’t bother me and didn’t trigger any old, unwanted memories. Maybe that’s because I was still alive and LaFleur wasn’t.
    “I’m still breathing,” I rasped. “That’s good enough for now. Help me up, please.”
    Bria gave me her hand and pulled me up into a sitting position. Despite my attempts to ignore the pain frommy injuries, it took me a moment to get my breath back. My wrist was also still cuffed to LaFleur’s, and her arm flopped against my own. Dead weight, in every sense of the word. Elektra’s green eyes stared sightlessly up into the night sky. Blood still oozed from the stab wounds on her chest and stomach, and the warm, coppery scent of it filled my nose.
    I didn’t have any magic left, not even enough to make another Ice pick so that I could unshackle myself from her dead body. I just sat there and stared dully at the handcuffs.
    “Let me help you with those.”
    Bria must have sensed what I was thinking, because she held out her hand and reached for her own Ice magic. A blue light flickered in her palm, and the familiar caress of her elemental power flowed over me like a cool, refreshing breeze, washing away the static remains of LaFleur’s electricity. Somehow, Bria’s magic made my injuries, my pain inside and out, just a little easier to bear. It felt so good, so
right
that it made me want to weep.
    A second later, Bria had two Ice picks in her hand that looked identical to the ones that I’d made earlier tonight. She crouched down beside me and went to work on the handcuffs. It took her a couple of minutes and a few soft curses, but eventually the silverstone clinked open, and LaFleur’s dead arm fell back to the ground to join the rest of her.
    Bria sat back on her heels, crouching there in the cold beside me. She stared at me, then at the dead assassin beside me. I couldn’t read the emotions flashing in her eyes—or maybe I just didn’t care to tonight. Maybe I was just afraid of what I would see.
    “What are you going to do now?” I