Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

two silverstone knives, LaFleur laughed. The crackling peal in her voice made me grind my teeth together. I was going to enjoy silencing that sound—forever.
    Already I could feel LaFleur pulling her electrical elemental magic around her, bringing more and more of it to bear. The hair lifted on my arms and the back of my neck at the feel of it. Once again, I was struck by just how fucking strong her magic was, just how much raw power she had, but I pushed that thought aside. Thinking about how powerful your opponent was was a sure way to get dead. Weaknesses. I needed to focus on the bitch’s weaknesses, not her strengths.
    Elektra reached up and wiped a small tear from the corner of her eye. I’d made her laugh until she cried. Too bad I couldn’t make her die the same way.
    “I’m glad that you find your own impending death so amusing,” I said. “Although in this case, laughter will not be the best medicine. Nothing’s going to save you.”
    Elektra smiled at me. “You certainly are confident, Spider. Then again, so was my brother. Right before you killed him.”
    My eyes narrowed. “Who the hell was your brother?”
    Elektra tilted her head to one side. To anyone else, she would have seemed the figure of easy confidence. But I could see the tightness in her face, the calculations taking place in her eyes. She was looking for weaknesses, just like I was. Waiting for the right moment to lash out at me with her magic. My hands tightened around the hilts of my knives.
    “You probably knew him best as Viper,” she said. “Or maybe Brutus. He had a lot of names.”
    In the file of information that he’d compiled on her, Fletcher Lane had said that LaFleur came from a family of assassins. The file had even mentioned a brother. I’d just never expected it to be him, Brutus, aka Viper, the assassin I’d killed a few months ago at the Ashland Opera House. A man’s face flashed in front of my eyes, and I remembered his tattoo—the one of a snake crawling up his neck, the one he had taken his assassin name from. One that was eerily similar in design to Elektra’s orchid, now that I knew what I was looking for.
    “That fucking neck tattoo,” I spat out. “I should have known. I thought I’d seen it somewhere before.”
    She gave a delicate shrug of her shoulders. “Family trait. We all have one. Our parents decided Brutus should have a snake, even though I was older and wanted to becalled Viper. But they thought it was a more manly symbol. They were rather sexist that way.”
    I put the pieces together in my mind. “So what? That’s your secret motivation? You came here to Ashland, you took Mab’s contract to kill me, just to get revenge for your brother? For Brutus? The bastard double-crossed me. He tried to hit me when I was trying to hit someone else. He got exactly what he deserved.”
    Elektra let out another crackling laugh. “Oh, please. I couldn’t care less that you killed Brutus. He was nothing to me. But I’ll admit he was a good assassin, which made me curious as to who had murdered him and how. We were always competing with each other, you see. Who could do the most hits, who could get to the hardest targets, who could command the highest price. So when this little job in Ashland came up, I thought, why not come and test myself against Brutus’s killer? Why not take on the great Spider? And so here we are.”
    “And so here we are,” I murmured.
    We stood there staring at each other, our eyes locked, green on gray. Neither one of us looking away, neither one of us moving a muscle, neither one of us even breathing. At this moment, we were just like two gunslingers out in the middle of a dusty, deserted street, ready for a duel at high noon. Only one of us would walk away, and I was determined it was going to be me.
    “Well,” Elektra said in a light, happy voice. “I suppose we should get on with things. Before Detective Coolidge gets too far away, and I have to chase her down. I really hate running, especially in these shoes.”
    There was no way she was getting past me. No wayin hell she was putting one finger on my baby sister. No matter what I had to do, no matter what I had to sacrifice to keep that from happening.
    “Bring it on, bitch,” I snarled.
    Elektra LaFleur gave me another smile. Green lightning flashed to life in her hand once more.
    And then we danced.

27
     
    LaFleur reared back and threw her ball of green lightning at me. The other assassin wasn’t