Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

direction.
    Fuck.
    I palmed another knife, gritted my teeth against the pain pounding through my hip, and started after him. I needed to kill the vamp before he got out of the park. Before he got to a phone, called LaFleur or Mab Monroe, and gave them a description of me and what had happened here tonight.
    But the relentless throbbing in my hip slowed me, and despite the stab wound in his thigh and his other injuries, the vampire was running like Death himself was after him. I supposed that he was, in a way. Still, I hurried after the vamp. It was darker on that side of the park. Maybe luck, that capricious bitch, would smile on me, and he would fall and break his ankle—
    The flash of lights caught us both by surprise.
    The bright glare illuminated the vampire, who was so stunned that he stopped where he was in the middle of one of the park’s grassy areas, eyes wide open like a deer.
    An engine revved, and a second later, a black SUV appeared out of the darkness and slammed right into the vampire. The vamp sailed thirty feet through the air before a tree trunk stopped his unnatural flight. I could hear his back break even from here. He didn’t get up after that.
    I was out in the open too, with nowhere to run or hide, so I stood my ground as the SUV turned and headed in my direction, its tires flattening the frosty grass. If worse came to worse, I could always harden my skin again with my Stone magic and roll out of the way of the vehicle. After that, well, I’d find a way to do something clever and deadly. I always did.
    The SUV stopped about ten feet away. The glass wastinted, so I couldn’t see exactly who was inside, although I got the impression that the driver was a giant.
    The passenger’s side door opened, and, a moment later, a familiar, grinning face appeared over the top of the door.
    “Need a lift?” Finnegan Lane quipped.

8
     
    Two more doors opened on the SUV. Xavier got out on the driver’s side, while Roslyn hopped out of the back. They, along with Finn, hurried over to me.
    Finn stopped in front of me, his green eyes sweeping over my blood-spattered clothes and the silverstone knives glinting in my hands. Assessing what he could see of my body and injuries, just like his father, Fletcher, used to do back when the old man was my handler.
    “Is any of that blood yours?” Finn asked.
    “Not enough to matter.”
    He nodded. “Good.”
    My eyes cut to Xavier. “Nice driving. The vamp never knew what hit him.”
    The giant dug his hands into his pants pockets and grinned at me. “What can I say? I’m a closet NASCAR fan at heart.”
    I grinned back at him and shook my head before turningto Finn. “Well, the party’s over now. I was beginning to think that you weren’t coming, since I called you more than twenty minutes ago.”
    “Sorry, Gin,” Finn said in an apologetic tone. “I would have been here sooner, but Roslyn decided that she wanted to tag along to see what was happening with Vinnie. And then Xavier saw us leaving Northern Aggression and offered to drive.”
    I looked over at the vampire and the giant. “You didn’t have to do that, Roslyn, Xavier. Neither one of you. This is my fight with Mab. Not yours. Do yourselves a favor and don’t get involved. I already know that it’s going to end badly for me. Call me crazy, but I’d rather not see you two end up as collateral damage.”
    Roslyn stepped forward, her eyes hard behind her silver glasses, her mouth a thin, determined line in her face. “That’s where you’re wrong, Gin. It’s our fight now too. It has been ever since that first day Elliot Slater came into my club and started stalking me.”
    A few weeks ago, the giant had gone to Northern Aggression to question Roslyn about how one of her heart-and-arrow rune necklaces had ended up around the neck of a fake hooker who’d killed one of Mab’s flunkies. The fake hooker had been me, of course, and I’d used the necklace to sneak into one of Mab’s parties so I could take out Tobias Dawson, the greedy mine owner who’d been threatening Violet Fox and her grandfather.
    But the Fire elemental didn’t believe that I’d died in a mine collapse along with Dawson, so she’d sent Slater to lean on Roslyn. The vampire hadn’t cracked, hadn’tgiven me up, but she’d been exposed to something much worse—Slater’s creepy fascination with her.
    Once again, my heart ached for everything that had been done to Roslyn, for all the pain and anguish and fear