Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

actually made a dent in the thick metal, a perfect, Gin-shaped groove with arms and legs spread out wide like a cartoon character. Wiley E. Gin.
    For a moment, I just lay there and breathed, grateful that I’d timed the jump just right and landed on top of the car, instead of slipping in between two of them and getting run over by the relentless, churning wheels. I doubted even my Ice and Stone magic would have let me survive that.
    But the train wasn’t moving quite fast enough.
    Ten seconds later, Elektra LaFleur popped into view, running parallel on the level above me, powerful green lightning crackling in her hands once more. LaFleur stopped and reared back, ready to throw another ball of her deadly electricity at me.
    By this point, I was weak, dazed, and utterly drained. I wasn’t sure I could bring enough Stone magic to bear to ward off LaFleur’s power again, especially since my silverstone vest was liquefied and the metal car I was lying on would probably conduct her electricity that much more. So I did the only thing that I could.
    I rolled out of the Gin-shaped groove, toppled off theside of the car, and fell another fifty feet into the Aneirin River below.
    As an assassin, provided you live long enough, you’re sure to experience déjà vu from time to time. When you kill someone the same way that you have a dozen people before. When you use the same disguise to get close to a target. When you feel your latest victim’s warm, sticky blood coat your hand.
    I’d done another swan dive into the Aneirin River a few months ago, when one of my hits had turned out to be a trap, so I was familiar with exactly how chilly the river actually was. But I’ll be damned if the water wasn’t that much colder tonight. My mind, hell, my whole body, immediately went numb from the shock of it. The bitter chill surprised me, making me stupid and sloppy enough to open my mouth, and water poured down my throat, the icy, bone-rattling cold of it further freezing me from the inside out. The water also cooled down the melted silverstone in my vest, turning it heavy and solid once more, while the force of the fall peeled the black ski mask off my head.
    Gagging on the fishy-tasting water, I forced my legs to kick upward in a steady rhythm, and a few seconds later, I broke the surface. The swift current had already pulled me several hundred feet away from LaFleur, although I could still see the green spark of her lightning flickering, getting farther and farther away with every second.
    I wondered what would happen if the assassin threw her lightning at the river itself, if the whole length of it would light up with her electrical magic. I shuddered atthe thought. Maybe she was too far away or maybe, like me, she just didn’t have that much juice left. But more seconds passed, and no lightning came arcing toward the river, something I was infinitely grateful for.
    I was too dazed to do much of anything but go with the flow of the water. I drifted maybe a mile downstream before I finally saw a rocky outcropping I thought I could swim to. So I drew in a breath, turned my head, and flailed that way, making my arms and legs go through the motions, even if I couldn’t exactly feel them at the moment.
    I didn’t quite reach the rocks, but I managed to get into shallow enough water to wade up onto the shore. I fell onto my stomach in the frozen mud and frosted cattails, panting from the effort, entirely disconnected from my own body. I didn’t feel anything anymore—not even the cold that I knew had invaded my body and was slowly killing me.
    I don’t know how long I huddled there before I managed to summon up the strength to roll over onto my back and fumble with one of the zippers on the front of my vest. At this point, my whole body shook from the cold, even though I didn’t actually feel it. My hands trembled from the force of it, but apparently the message just wasn’t reaching my brain, because it wasn’t registering as an actual physical sensation to me. I didn’t feel anything but numb. Completely numb. Or maybe dead, if this is what being dead felt like. I’d helped a lot of people get that way over the years, but I hadn’t actually been on the receiving end of things myself—yet.
    But the really weird thing was that the spider rune scars on my hands were glowing.
    A small circle surrounded by eight thin rays, one embedded in either palm, and they were both as bright as the lights on Owen Grayson’s