Elemental Assassin 05 - Spider's Revenge

chicks with only a sword and a whip between them, then I wasn’t the Spider, wasn’t half the assassin Fletcher had trained me to be.
    After another second, the women snapped back to reality and realized that there was someone else in the clearing, someone who was an immediate threat to them—me. Celia reached down, fumbling at her sword, trying to get it free of the loop on her belt.
    I didn’t give her the chance.
    My first knife punched into chest, rupturing her heart. Her hot blood painted my hands a steaming crimson, spattering onto the snow like scarlet teardrops. Celia opened her mouth to scream, but I used my second knife to cut her throat before she could utter so much as a whimper. I pushed her dying body away and turned to face the other woman—
    Her whip snapped against my neck.
    I hissed in pain and staggered back, my blood mixing with that of the other bounty hunters’ on the snow. In front of me, Liza flicked her whip over the ground, makingit writhe like a rattlesnake. She also backed up out of the range of my knives. Smart. Just not smart enough.
    “So you’re the Spider,” she muttered. “I suppose I should thank you for killing Connor and Celia. Now, I won’t have to bother with it—or share the bounty with them.”
    I gave her a cold, hard smile that was as wintry as the landscape around us. “You’re assuming that you’re going to live long enough to collect.”
    Liza returned my smile with one of her own. “Oh, I will, Spider. Don’t you worry about that—”
    I rushed her, trying to take her by surprise while she was still talking, but the bounty hunter had been expecting the move and raised her whip. I threw myself to one side, but the leather streaked through the air like black lightning. The blow opened up a deep cut on my cheek, burning my skin almost as much as Mab’s elemental Fire had. I hissed again.
    “What’s the matter, Spider?” Liza laughed. “Don’t you like the feel of my whip?”
    My eyes narrowed, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I began moving to the left, trying to get into her blind spot. But she turned with me, and the two of us circled around and around, like two dogs fighting over a bone that lay between them.
    Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
    Another round of shots rang through the woods. Someone else must have tried to approach the house, and Finn had killed him for his trouble. Still, I knew it wouldn’t be too much longer now before the bounty hunters decided to storm the structure en masse. I needed to get Finn and Bria out of there before that happened.
    Trying to end things, I darted forward, but the bounty hunter raised her whip again. This time, the weapon cut through my leather bustier and opened a stinging gash on my chest, right above my heart.
    “By the time I’m through, you’ll have more cuts than any you ever made on one of your hits,” Liza crowed, flicking her whip back and forth.
    “The hell I will,” I snarled.
    Too late, the bounty hunter spotted the hard anger in my face. Liza backed up and raised her whip even as I charged her again. The leather sliced through the air toward me, but this time, instead of ducking it, I caught the leather in my hand, even though it opened up another deep cut on my palm.
    And I didn’t let go.
    The bounty hunter tried to jerk her whip out of my grasp, but I used my Ice magic to numb my fist, so I wouldn’t feel the whip cutting into my skin. Then I moved toward her, one quick step at a time. Once more, Liza tried to tug the whip out of my grasp. When that didn’t work, she turned and started to run.
    But by then, it was too late.
    My knife sliced into her back, and Liza joined her other two dead friends on the forest floor.
    I plodded over and retrieved the knife I’d thrown at Connor, breathing harder than I would have liked. The fight with Mab had taken its toll on me, and I’d just used up the remaining scraps of my magic to defeat the bounty hunter. My heart raced, my lungs burned, and my legs trembled with the effort of just standing upright. Not to mention the blood that dripped out of the fresh cutson my skin. Right now, I wanted nothing more than to get Jo-Jo to heal me, then crawl into bed and sleep for twelve hours. But I couldn’t do that. Not until Bria and Finn were safe, and the three of us were far, far away from here—
    A branch creaked somewhere farther back in the forest.
    I whirled around, silverstone knives up and at the ready. Looking, listening, straining to