Elemental Assassin 05 - Spider's Revenge

and she for me. Across the snowy landscape, our gazes met and held. Desperate gray on agonizing blue.
    “Go, Gin!” Bria screamed the words at me. “Leave me!”
    Never
.
    The word burned into my heart like an icy brand, hurting me worse than anything ever had before, including Mab melting my spider rune medallion into my palms. I started forward, thinking to hell with Sydney, her rifle, and the fact that she might put a bullet in my brain, but the giant blocked my path once more. Automatically, I dodged his blows, then brought my knives up, then down, just as I’d done a thousand times before. But even as I cut into him, I knew that it wouldn’t be enough—that I just wouldn’t be fast enough.
    The giant had just started to fall when Gentry and Bria disappeared from sight.
    “Bria!” I screamed, trying to get past the dying giant. “Bria!”
    I wasn’t quick enough. Even as I reached for my babysister, more bounty hunters appeared, half a dozen of them running toward Finn and me.
    “Come on, Gin!” Finn said, grabbing my arm and pulling me forward. “It’s too late! Bria’s gone!”
    It might have been my imagination, but, for a second, I saw a glimmer of silver through the trees, as the moonlight illuminated the rune necklace Bria always wore. A delicate primrose. Bria’s rune. The symbol for beauty.
    “Bria!” I screamed again.
    Then the falling snow swirled and fell like a curtain between us, and she vanished.

I don’t really remember much of what happened after that.
    Somehow, I got myself under control long enough to stop screaming and start running. Finn covered our backs, exchanging enough shots with the pursuing bounty hunters to keep them from overwhelming us, while I took care of any who were unlucky enough to step into our path. Cut, cut, cut. I went through the motions automatically, my limbs heavy and my mind disconnected from the rest of my body. Nothing could penetrate the fear that cloaked my heart like an icy shroud.
    Bria—Bria was
gone
, and it was all my fault. For being so arrogant, for assuming that I could kill Mab. Right now, at this very moment, my sister was being delivered into the Fire elemental’s cruel clutches. I’d lost my baby sister to that bitch for the second time in my life. I wanted to curl into a ball and weep at my miserable, miserable failure.
    But there was no time for that. There was no time to do anything but cut and run, and cut and run some more.
    Somehow, though, Finn and I made it down the steep, snow-covered ridge and back to the sedan that I’d boosted earlier. I was just—out of it, so Finn took charge. He tucked his gun in his waistband alongside his other gun, opened the door, and shoved me into the passenger’s seat. At this point, my hands shook so badly from adrenaline, fear, and fatigue that it was all I could do to pull the door shut. My bloody knives slipped from my numb fingers and clattered to the floorboard. I just stared dully at them.
    Finn ran around to the other side of the car, slid into the driver’s seat, and reached underneath the dash. “Come on, baby,” he muttered, bringing the loose wires together. “Start for me.”
    A second later, the engine roared to life. Finn threw the car in gear, put his foot all the way down on the gas, and swerved back out onto the road.
    Not a moment too soon.
    In the side mirror, I saw several figures run out into the road behind us.
    Crack! Crack! Crack!
    Bullets slammed into the car, one of them blowing out the back windshield and spraying us with sharp splinters of glass. Finn hunched down over the wheel, making himself a smaller target, but I didn’t even have the energy to do that. Didn’t much matter anyway, since Finn rounded a curve, putting us out of sight and out of range of the bounty hunters and their guns.
    Finn took the first side road he came to, then another, then another. When he was sure that none of the bountyhunters was on our tail, he made a final turn, one that would take us to the safe house where the others should be waiting. We rode in silence, with me slumped against the window.
    Bria—Bria was gone. I’d vowed to keep my sister safe, and I’d been stupid and sloppy enough to let her be captured by a bounty hunter, by Ruth Gentry—a woman who was sure to be taking Bria to Mab this very
second
, with Sydney and her rifle along for backup. And when Mab got her hands on Bria…
    Hot, sour, bitter bile rose in my throat at the thought of what the Fire