Bria looked at Jenkins, but the informant wasn't daunted by the anger burning in her icy blue gaze. "What's going on, Lincoln? I thought that you had information on what was going down in Ashland. What the hell are you trying to pull?"
"I'm not trying to pull anything," he said. "Except earn myself a cool ten grand for leading my new friends here straight to you."
I frowned. The dwarven mobsters had paid Jenkins ten large to set up a fake meeting with Bria? Why? What for? What did they plan on doing with her?
Bria glared at him. "You sold me out, you son of a bitch."
Jenkins's lips pulled back in a wide grin, revealing the fake gold grill stuck on his teeth. "Sorry, baby, but I got to get paid."
My fingers clenched around the hilt of my knife. The only thing he was getting tonight was dead. Another minute, two tops.
"Why?" Bria snapped, turning her attention to the leader once more. "Why give Lincoln ten grand? I would have been happy to set up my own meeting with you."
Bria's hand tightened on her gun, her knuckles white against the black barrel, telling everyone exactly how that meeting would have ended. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I couldn't help the warm pride that filled me at her bravado. Bria was no more a coward than I was. Still, that gun wouldn't do her much good against five dwarves. Like giants, dwarves were strong enough to take a couple of bullets in the chest and keep coming at you.
"Well," Don said in his thick accent. "It's not exactly you that we're after. But we figured that you were the easiest way to get to the person that we really want, so here we are. So quit talking and drop your gun, detective. Or me and my boys will drop you."
I didn't have to imagine the horrible, brutal things that these men would do to Bria if she surrendered. All of them were eyeing her, their cold gazes flicking from her crotch to her chest and back down again, already salivating at the prospect of getting their hands on her. My sister made no move to lower her gun. She was too smart for that. She knew as well as I did what the men had in mind-and that they would swarm over her the second she showed any weakness.
Instead of giving up, I felt the faintest trace of cold power trickle off her, like ice melting in a glass. Bria was an Ice elemental, a magic that she'd inherited from our mother, just as I had. Now my sister was reaching for her power, getting ready to use it against the men. Another weapon to her, just like the gun in her hand-and one that was just as deadly. I'd once stumbled across a giant that Bria had blasted with her magic. He'd looked like a human Popsicle after she'd gotten done with him, and I had no doubt she could do the same thing to the dwarves. The only problem was that she'd get only one of them before the rest overpowered her.
Don must have seen the blue glow that tinged Bria's eyes because his expression hardened with resolve. "I'm going to count to three. After that, my boys are going to put a few rounds in you. And when we have you down on the ground, well, trust me when I say that you won't like what happens next."
Bria didn't say anything, but she kept her gun up and level with Don's chest.
"One," Don said. "Two-"
I didn't wait for three. I sprinted out from behind the SUV, grabbed the man closest to me, buried my hand in his hair, yanked his thick neck back, and cut his throat. Even a dwarf wasn't tough enough to survive a severed carotid artery. The man gurgled out a scream at the sudden, brutal wound, and everyone's head snapped around to see what the noise was all about.
For a moment, no one moved. Then everything happened at once.
Another one of the dwarves swung his gun toward me, apparently to try to shoot me through his dying buddy.
A soft puff-puff of air sounded, and the man hit the ground a second later, already dead from the two bullets that Finn had put through his right eye. I shoved the dwarf that I'd stabbed away from me. He slammed into the side of the SUV and slid to the pavement, twitching violently as his body shut down from the massive trauma it had just received.
"Take care of the bitch with the knife!" Don snapped. "I'll get the cop!"
Don pulled the trigger on his gun. Crack! Crack!
Bria threw herself to one side, and the bullets slammed into the Dumpster behind her. My sister rolled across the cracked pavement and came up on one knee, raising her own weapon to fire at Don. Her other hand was outstretched, and a blue light flickered there, as she formed a ball of elemental Ice to fling at him. Even across the parking lot, I could feel the cool caress of Bria's Ice magic calling out to my own.
But the bastard was quicker than she was. He rushed forward and slapped the weapon away before she could put a couple of rounds in his chest. The blow also broke Bria's concentration, and her hold on her Ice magic slipped, the blue light cascading away in a shower of icy sparks. My sister retaliated by bracing her hands on the pavement and kicking up with her foot. Her boot slammed into Don's knee, and he staggered back, hitting the hood of the SUV. But the dwarf never stopped moving, bobbing, weaving, and gathering himself for another strike at her.
Another puff-puff of air sounded, and Don grunted as two bullets slammed into his left shoulder. A rare miss for Finn, who had no doubt meant to put the bullets through his eye instead, but the dwarf was moving too quickly, too erratically for that. Two more puffs of air hissed out, but by that point, Don had tucked into a tight ball and launched himself back at Bria. The bullets punched through the hood of the SUV, hitting the radiator and making it steam.
Lincoln Jenkins cowered on the right side of the vehicle, hugging the chrome rim like it was a shield that would protect him.
That all happened in the three seconds it took before the other two guys turned and came at me.
They both raised their guns and fired, but not before I used my Stone magic to harden my skin into an impenetrable shell.
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
The bullets pinged off my body and disappeared into the darkness. The dwarves exchanged a puzzled look, wondering what was going on, but I didn't give them any time to recover. I stepped forward, my knife flashing.
I used my blade to slice a path across the closest man's stomach. He screamed and tried to punch me in the face, using his gun for extra pop. I dodged his awkward blow, palmed a second knife, and buried that one in his heart, twisting and tearing through the thick, hard muscles in his chest to get to it. He screamed again, even as his limbs went limp, and I let him flop to the ground.
The second guy snarled with anger and threw his body into mine, tearing my knives out of my hands and smashing me up against the side of the SUV with his dwarven strength. He raised his gun up to put a couple of bullets into my face, but I grabbed the barrel and shoved the weapon back into his nose, breaking it. The gun slid out of his grasp and clattered to the ground. Blood spattered onto my face, just the way it had a hundred times before. A thousand times before. I grinned. Nothing gushed quite like a broken nose.