Elemental Assassin 05 - Spider's Revenge

goes back to one thing—you killing my family,” I said. “If you hadn’t done that, well, who knows what would have happened? I might have grown up to help people. Become a doctor or something. Learned how to save lives instead of being so very good at taking them.”
    “None of that matters,” Mab scoffed.
    “Of course it does—it’s
all
that matters. Especially here in this place. Especially now.”
    Mab’s eyes narrowed to slits, but the elemental Fire still burned in the smoldering depths of her gaze. “And why is that?”
    “All the people that I’ve killed over the years? Yeah, I did most of them for the money, because being an assassinwas a job and one that I was good at. But the biggies, all the folks that I’ve taken on in recent months, Alexis James, Tobias Dawson, Elliot Slater, Elektra LaFleur. You see, I’ve gradually come to realize something about them—and how they’ve each been different from everyone else that I’ve battled over the years.”
    “And what would that grand revelation be?” Mab asked.
    This time, I tilted my head at her and smiled. “That they’ve all just been practice for you, bitch.”
    We stared at each other, the Ice and Stone magic in my gray gaze a perfect, natural enemy for the elemental Fire flickering in Mab’s black eyes.
    “Well, then,” she said in her silky voice. “Let’s see just how much you’ve learned, little Genevieve.”
    Mab brought up her hand and curled it into a fist. Fire spilled out from between her clenched fingers and dripped down them like water before falling away to the ground.
Plop-plop-plop
. The stones underneath our feet shuddered, snarled, and screamed as her Fire burned into them. The rocks’ angry mutters blended in perfectly with the steady, evil hiss of the melting snow. Ribbons of steam twisted up into the frigid air between us, delicate ropes binding us together.
    I never took my eyes from Mab’s black gaze, watching her the way one gunfighter would another, waiting for that small twitch that would tell me that she was ready to draw down on me. I drew in a breath and got ready to reach for my own power.
    Mab smiled at me a final time, confident in her magic, her strength, her unmatched, raw elemental power. Thenshe drew back her fist and hurled everything that she had at me.
    A second later, the elemental Fire hit me, and the scorching flames engulfed my body, just like they had my mother and older sister before me.
    And I screamed.

Mab’s magic slammed into me with the force of a thousand infernos, each one blazing brighter than the sun, each one burning out of control, with the sole purpose of frying me alive.
    She almost succeeded.
    Despite everything I knew about Mab, despite all the long hours that I’d studied her, despite what I’d seen her do to my mother and older sister, despite the damage she’d inflicted on me at the country club last night, none of that prepared me for the raw elemental force of her Fire. The heat, the intensity, the sheer, unrelenting
strength
of it took my breath away like no one else’s magic had ever done before. Not that of Alexis James, Tobias Dawson, or even Elektra LaFleur. Those other elementals had all been strong, incredibly so, when I’d battled them.
    But Mab—Mab was just elemental Fire and flamesand fury herself. She was in a completely different league from all the others I’d faced before.
    At the last second, I reached for my Stone magic, bringing all of it to bear, hardening my skin, head, hair, eyes, and every other part of me into an impenetrable shell, just the way I’d done so many times before.
    And it saved me once again.
    Mab’s raging Fire didn’t immediately kill me. But it still hurt, worse than any pain I’d ever experienced before, even the shocking jolts of LaFleur and her electrical elemental magic. Even through the shell of my Stone magic, I could feel Mab’s flames licking at my skin, eroding my magic, burning through all the many layers of my Stone power. I staggered back from the sheer force of the blast, and the silverstone in my vest immediately liquefied from the heat. Sweat streamed down my face, and it was all I could do to hold on to my own magic, to not be overwhelmed by the deadly surge of Mab’s power. She’d gone for the kill shot first, and I knew that I’d been lucky to survive it.
    Mab had more raw power, more pure magic, than any elemental born in the last five hundred years, so she didn’t stop her assault on me.