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. Then she 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.
Chapter 28
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 flames and 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. Not for a second. Instead, she raised her hands, elemental Fire spewing out of her fingertips in a steady, unrelenting stream, every bit of her power, every bit of her fury, directed at me in a molten ball of heat, flames, and death.
My vision went red from the Fire crashing into me, and I flashed back to that fateful night when Mab had murdered my mother. I remembered in excruciating detail how her magic had just kept getting closer and closer to Eira, slicing through my mother's Ice magic, until the hungry flames had washed over and consumed my mother completely. Then Annabella. Both charred to ash in an instant.
That's how elementals fought-by flinging their raw power at each other until one elemental finally succumbed to the other's magic-and that's how Mab and I were fighting now. But I wasn't just an elemental-I was an assassin too. I was the Spider, trained by the best, trained by Fletcher Lane, the Tin Man himself. If there was one thing the old man had taught me, it was that it didn't matter how you killed your opponent, as long as she was dead and you weren't when the bleeding was done. My Stone magic wasn't going to save me from Mab, it wasn't going to help me kill her in the end. Not really.
Fletcher was-just the way that he'd always intended. The old man had trained me for this one moment, for this one fight, for years. Now, I just had to figure out a way to kill Mab and live up to the faith that he'd always had in me.
"Give it up, little Genevieve," Mab said in a mocking tone. "You're no match for me. You never were, just like your miserable excuse for a mother. One of the happiest days in my life was when I finally killed Eira. Today is going to rank right up there with it. Because not only will I get rid of you, but I'll burn that sweet little sister of yours to death too. Along with the dwarves, Owen Grayson, that shyster banker you call a foster brother, and anyone else who was stupid enough to come here with you. They won't escape me, Genevieve. None of them will. Not a single one. Your charred remains won't even have to time cool before I send the rest of them to join you."
I screamed. Not in pain or fear or surprise this time, but in sheer, undeniable fury, in raw elemental force, pouring my magic into that one primal sound. The bitch wasn't killing anyone else that I loved. Not now, not ever. I didn't care what I had to do to stop her-or what I had to sacrifice.
Triggered by my scream, my Stone power tore through the rubble and rocks around us, pulverizing and shattering them instantly, one after another, just as it had done the night this had all started. It was like watching a row of dominos fall down on top of each other. The giants, the bounty hunters, my friends. All the people who'd been fighting in the courtyard stumbled and staggered as the stone foundation under their feet literally disintegrated out from under them. The few walls that had been standing collapsed with a collective roar, sending more piles of rubble crashing down, and shards of rocks zipped through the air, joining the angry swirl of snowflakes.
The elemental force of my scream surprised even Mab, breaking her concentration for the briefest second. The Fire streaming out of her hands flickered and dimmed for the smallest fraction of time, but it was enough to let me draw in another breath and focus myself.
But my magic didn't stop with the stones of my ruined house. It spread out farther and faster than it ever had before, leaping from one rock to another, until even the forest around us seemed to quake, mutter, and vibrate with it.
I'd never known that I'd had this much magic before.
The thought skipped through my head just the way it had the last time I'd been here-the night that I'd collapsed my own mansion on top of everyone who'd been inside it. Mab, her men, Bria, even myself. Before, back then, my magic had scared me, and with my guilt over thinking that I'd killed Bria with it, I'd spent years using it in only the smallest of ways. But now I gave myself over to it completely. I could feel the power inside me, the incredible magic running through me like a vein of the finest, richest silver imaginable. Stone, Ice, Ice, Stone-there was no separation anymore. It all mixed together in me until there was just sheer power, just raw, furious force over the elements themselves. So much power, so much force, that I went cold and numb from it. Fingers, toes, torso, I couldn't even feel them anymore. My magic was the only thing I was aware of, surging through me, building and building and building toward something spectacular-