Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

scanned the street, much the same way that I’d been doing for the last hour. But I knew she couldn’t see us, given where wewere parked. The Dumpster sitting at the end of the narrow alley in front of Finn’s vehicle screened us from her line of sight.
    After another thirty seconds of looking, the woman turned back to the dwarf and advanced on him. For a moment he looked confused. Then startled. Then his eyes widened, and he turned and started running away from her.
    He got maybe five steps before the woman lifted her right hand—and green lightning shot out of her fingertips.
    Finn jerked, almost spilling his coffee again. Even I blinked at the sudden, powerful flash of light.
    The dwarf arched his back and screamed, his harsh cry echoing down the deserted street, as the lightning slammed into his body. The woman advanced on him, the magical light in her hand intensifying as she stepped closer.
    And she was so fucking
strong
. She stood at least a hundred feet away from me, but I could still sense the sharp, static crackle of her power even here in the car. The feel of her elemental magic made the spider rune scars on my palms itch and burn the way they always did whenever I was exposed to so much power, to so much raw magic. And she had plenty to spare.
    A second later, the dwarf caught fire. He wobbled back and forth before pitching to the cracked pavement, but the woman didn’t stop her magical assault. She stood over his body, sending wave after wave of lightning into his figure, even as the green elemental flames of her power consumed his skin, hair, and clothes.
    When she was done, the woman curled her hand into a tight fist. The bright lightning flickered, then sparked away into nothingness, like a flare that had been snuffed out. Greenish gray smoke wafted up from her fingertips, and she blew it away into the frosty night air, like an Old West gunfighter cooling down his Colt after a shootout. How dramatic.
    “Did you see that?” Finn whispered, his coffee 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.
    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 you had to be able to tap into to be considered a true elemental. But magic had many forms, many quirks, and some people could use other areas, offshoots of one of the four elements. Metal 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—Ice and Stone. But I’d never seen someone with electrical power before. And I wasn’t so sure it was a good thing that I had now.
    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. Thenshe reached inside her coat, drew out something white, and tossed it down on top of 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 the block 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, the elegant, green-gray ribbons wafting up to the black sky. I breathed in through my mouth, but the stench of