Elemental Assassin 05 - Spider's Revenge

was strong enough to make my family’s ideas, our plans, a reality. I was strong enough to take my rightful place as the head of the Ashland underworld. But doing all that involved things that your weak, spineless mother didn’t approve of, and she felt it was her duty to try to stop me, just as her mother thwarted mine for years before.”
    “Things like what? Murder? Extortion? Kidnappings? I wonder why Eira had such a problem with all that,” I drawled in a mocking tone.
    Mab waved her hand. “Please. Eira cared as little about me as I did about her, until one of her friends racked up a gambling debt to me that he just couldn’t pay off. So I killed him, and then I killed his family, locking them in their own house and burning it to the ground.”
    I froze. Owen. She had to be talking about Owen’s family and how she’d killed them. Somehow, my mother had known Owen’s parents, and she’d started fighting Mab because of their deaths. Just when I thought that I knew everything there was to know about my past, something else reared up to surprise me once more.
    “After that, Eira showed more gumption than I’d ever thought she’d had. Every time I made a move to gain power after that, she countered it, undercutting me. But I took care of her in the end.”
    Mab’s eyes darkened that much more, and I got the sense that she was having her own flashbacks, rememberingher own battles against my mother. I wondered if she was as haunted by them as I was by her. But the moment passed, and the Fire elemental stared at me once more.
    “As for your being stronger than me? Please,” Mab scoffed. “Says who?”
    I straightened. “Jo-Jo Deveraux, for starters. For years, the dwarf has been telling me that I have more raw magic than any elemental that she’s ever seen—including you, Mab.”
    Something almost like uncertainty flickered in her face. Around us, a few of her men shifted on their feet, the scrape of their shoes as loud as gunshots in the absolute quiet. They didn’t know what to make of my threatening their boss—or the fact that she didn’t immediately dispute my outlandish claims.
    Mab stared at me, hate twisting her features. I wondered if this was how my mother had seen her. The two of them had grown up as part of two opposing elemental families. I wondered if this was what my mother had noticed in Mab that had made Eira stand up to her—the evil and hate that turned the Fire elemental into something small and black and ugly.
    Mab snapped her fingers. I tensed, ready to reach for my Ice and Stone magic, expecting her to throw a ball of elemental Fire at me just like she had in the country club. But instead, a small red dot popped up on my chest, just level with my heart.
    Well, well, well. Someone had a sniper rifle handy. I wondered if it was Sydney or one of the other bounty hunters. Didn’t much matter, though. I’d taken the precaution of putting on one of my heavy silverstone vestsbefore I’d walked into the courtyard. No mere sniper’s bullet could get through the hard shell of the magical metal that shielded my chest.
    “As you can see,” Mab sneered. “I learned from my past mistakes. As you said before, I didn’t come here alone, and now, it’s your turn to die—for good this time.”
    I just smiled at Mab. “Wow, you really must be afraid of me if you can’t even bring yourself to use your magic to kill me. Going to have one of your boys do it instead, are you? I was wrong before. You’re no bully. You’re nothing but a cowardly bitch.”
    Mab’s eyes narrowed to slits, but she didn’t respond to my taunt. “Good-bye, Genevieve.”
    Mab snapped her fingers again, and a shot rang out, shattering the silence of the falling snow.

The bullet ripped through the air on its deadly course—but not at me.
    Instead, a sharp, startled cry sounded. A second later, a man rolled down a pile of rubble that he’d been perched on top of about thirty feet off to my left. His body came to rest in the base of the courtyard. For a moment, everyone was stunned. Just stunned.
    Then Mab turned back to me, fury rolling off her in palpable waves so hot that the snow under her stilettos started to ooze and melt from the constant, invisible drip of her elemental Fire power.
    “You didn’t really think that
I
came here alone, did you, Mab?” I mocked her. “That’s one down. Which one of your men wants to die next?”
    Mab opened her mouth, no doubt to direct some other cutting retort