I sprinted into the backyard, looking right and left and doing a quick, visual sweep of the grounds, but no one was there, and I didn't see Cooper or anyone else lurking in the forge. I stopped on the stone patio, my head snapping back toward the house, wondering if they were inside. I'd just taken a step in that direction when I felt another cool gust of magic coming from the woods.
The sculpture garden.
Even though I wanted to get to Cooper as fast as possible, I forced myself to slow my steps and calm my racing heart. I'd need the element of surprise and every bit of magic I could muster up to take out Salina, so I palmed a knife and headed for the sculpture garden.
I'd only gone about fifty feet into the woods when I saw the first giant.
He stood with his back to me, facing the statues, his arms crossed over his chest. He didn't even have his gun out.
I slid behind a tree, hunkered down in the bushes, and scanned the rest of the landscape. The giant in front of me was the only one I could see, but there had been another one down at the moving trucks, and Salina would have been sure to bring at least a couple more, if only to move the last fountain more easily. That was what I would have done if our situations had been reversed. Besides, there was always a chance she couldn't finish Cooper off with her water magic and that she'd need the help of one of her bodyguards.
The faint murmurs of voices drifted out of the trees in front of where the giant was standing. Good. Voices were good. They meant Salina was probably still talking to Cooper and hadn't gotten down to the business of actually killing him yet. Not that the dwarf would go easily. I imagined he would put up a good fight, but I'd felt how strong Salina was on the riverboat. The water elemental was in her prime and only growing stronger - just the way Jo-Jo always described me and my magic.
I wondered if Cooper had put it together, if he'd connected the stolen fountains to Salina as soon as Kincaid had mentioned her name. I wondered if that was why he'd been so insistent about not coming back to Ashland with us, if he'd wanted to catch Salina in the act, face her down and try to kill her himself. Didn't much matter now.
My fingers clenched around my knife, the small spider rune stamped into the hilt pressing into the larger, matching scar on my palm. Owen had made this and my other knives, crafting them with as much care and detail as Cooper did his sculptures, and I planned to put them to use - right now.
The giant never even saw me coming. With the voices still murmuring, I snuck out from behind the tree and headed toward him. At the last moment, I quickened my pace, launched myself upward, and leaped onto his back. As my knife punched into his spine at the base of his skull, he grunted like it was of no more consequence than a bee sting, rather than the lethal blow it was. He went down on one knee. I didn't give him the chance to scream as I yanked out my knife, reached around, pulled his head back, and slit his throat with the blade. The giant was dead before he thumped to the forest floor. One down, who knew how many more to go.
I crept through the underbrush, taking out another giant who'd been stationed at the perimeter the same way, before I was able to ease up to the edge of the sculpture garden itself.
Cooper and Salina stood in the middle of the clearing, their eyes glowing with magic, his a bright copper, hers shimmering from blue to green and back again. They were facing each other with about twenty feet of space separating them, hands down by their sides, intently studying each other. I'd expected nothing less, since they were getting ready to duel.
Elementals often fought by dueling, by flinging their raw magic, their raw strength, at each other over and over again until one person ran out of juice and succumbed to the other's power. Suffocated by Air, burned alive by Fire, frozen solid by Ice, encased in Stone, or some variation or offshoot thereof. None of them painless ways to die. Then again, elemental duels were only about one thing - destroying your enemy as quickly and brutally as you could.
"I was wondering when you would show up," Cooper said. "Seems like you've been busy since you've been back."
Salina smiled - that same cold, calm, serene smile she'd given me at the Pork Pit. "You might say that. You should have known better than to force me to leave Ashland in the first place. I always told you that I'd come back and kill you for it."
"And I always told you that I'd be right here to stop you. I only wish you'd come here first so I could have put you in your rightful place to start with. But instead, you decided on sneak attacks, just like always. Just like your father always did when he was alive. That's why he couldn't kill Mab, you know. Because his sneak attack to stab her in the back failed, and he just didn't have the raw magic to defeat her."
"Don't you dare talk about my father, you miserable little toad!" Salina screamed. "His plan would have worked! He would have killed Mab, if one of his giant guards hadn't gotten greedy and sold him out and told her what he was planning."
I winced at her screeching. Looked like daddy's death was indeed a sore spot, just like I'd thought. I wondered if that was another old score she planned to settle while she was in town, although I had no idea who she'd target, since Mab was already dead.
Salina made a visible effort to unclench her jaw and fists. A moment later, her stiff posture relaxed, and her features were smooth and serene once more. "But enough talk," she purred. "I've waited a long time for this moment, and I plan to savor every second of it."
She brought her hand up, curling her fingers into a loose fist. Then her fist seemed to almost . . . liquefy. Her skin became pale and glassy like, well, water. It almost seemed like I could hear her skin sloshing as she fully embraced her water magic. I could feel the cool, soothing wetness of her power all the way across the clearing.
But Cooper wasn't to be outdone, and the dwarf reached for his own Air magic. The wind seemed to gather around him, like he was standing in the center of a miniature tornado. Around and around the wind whirled, stirring up leaves, twigs, and rocks underfoot and making the trees creak and groan and the metal sculptures sway back and forth, despite their sturdy bases and heavy frames.
While the two elementals gathered their power for that initial strike, I turned my attention to the others, the five additional giants Salina had brought along. Three were about twenty feet behind Salina. They'd already grabbed the last fountain from its perch in the woods and were carrying it through the trees as fast as they could. I'd deal with them later. The other two stood behind Cooper, probably in case he tried to retreat from Salina and her magic. The dwarf didn't seem like the kind to turn and run, even when he knew he was on the losing side - like he was right now.