Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

done.
    “You’re the woman who’s been going around town killingMab Monroe’s men,” Bria said in a dull tone. “All those men the last few weeks. And Elliot Slater and all those giants up at his mountain mansion before that. How many has it been since you started? Or even since I’ve been in town? A dozen? Two?”
    The accusation in her voice hurt me worse than if she’d hauled off and delivered a stinging slap across my face, but I made myself stay calm, cold, detached, just the way Fletcher Lane had taught me. I would survive this, just the way I had so many other unpleasant things over the years. Even if I was about to lose my own sister—again.
    I shrugged. “I quit keeping count a long time ago.”
    “Why?” she asked. “Why did you kill them all? Why are you … what you are?”
    I knew that these were the questions Bria would ask me when she finally found out I was the Spider, the ones she’d demand answers to. But the truth was far too twisted and complicated to get into—at least tonight. And I couldn’t help the hurt that pierced my heart at the look on her face—the absolute shock and the sheer horror of realizing what I was. Of knowing that her long-lost sister was a brutal killer. Maybe it had been a pipe dream, but I’d wanted Bria to accept me the way Owen had. But as I looked into her hard blue gaze, I knew she didn’t—and probably never would.
    There was no time for hurt feelings. No time to dwell on the past or the sea of emotions between us. No time to give into sloppy sentiment and shattered hopes and dreams. All that mattered now was surviving—and killing LaFleur before the assassin told Mab that we were here and at her mercy.
    So, as tough as it was, as much as I just wanted to sit down with Bria and explain everything to her, as much as I wanted to beg her to love me the way I loved her, the way I’d always loved her, I forced my feelings aside and embraced the coldness in my heart once more. The cold, hard, black part of me that had let me survive so much over the years—the murder of my family, living on the Southtown streets, becoming an assassin, and all the ugly, bloody, terrible things I’d had to do in between just to survive.
    “Look,” I said. “I know we have a lot of … things to discuss, but there’s no time right now. We need to get out of this car and out of the train yard before LaFleur comes back. At least, you do.”
    “And what are you going to do?” Bria asked in a cold voice. “Stay behind and kill her?”
    “You’d better believe it,” I snapped.
    My sister gave me a hostile look. Evidently she didn’t care for my brutal honesty. Too damn bad. Because I’d gone through too much as a kid to save her life only to let her die now on this cold December night.
    So I reached around and drew my third knife out of the small of my back. I walked across the railcar toward her. Bria tensed, as though she thought I was actually going to use the weapon on her. That hurt me more than anything else she’d said or done. I might be a monster, but I wasn’t that kind of monster. And I never would be. She should have known that. She should have just—
known
.
    But I forced the feeling aside, buried it under my determination to get her out of here—no matter what. Surprise filled my sister’s face when I held the weapon out to her hilt first.
    “Have you ever used a knife?” I asked.
    She stared at me for a long moment, then shook her head. “No. Not like you have.”
    I nodded. I’d expected as much, which meant I was going to have to do all the heavy lifting here tonight. Maybe it was better that way.
    “All right. If things go according to plan, you won’t have to use it anyway,” I said. “But it’s better to have a weapon than not, so take it.”
    Bria stared at the silverstone weapon in my hand as though it were a copperhead that was going to lash out and bite her.
    “Take the knife,” I ground out the words. “LaFleur could come back here any second, and we don’t have time to argue about it.”
    She hesitated a moment longer, then took the cold weapon from my hand, careful not to let her fingers brush against mine. My heart twisted in my chest at the small, deliberate slight, but I ignored it, the way I had so many other emotions over the years.
    “All right,” I said. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
    It took only two minutes of screaming and pounding on the metal wall before the giant standing guard out front opened