The door creaked.
The giant's eyes immediately flicked to one of the blank monitors, and I knew she could see my reflection there. I raised the gun, but it was already too late.
More quickly than I would have imagined, she whirled around and chucked her iPod at me. I ducked the sailing bit of plastic, stepped forward, and raised the gun again, but the giant kicked out with her foot, causing me to jump to the side. My hip slammed into the corner of the second table off to the right, causing a hiss of pain to escape my lips. The table rocked back and forth, causing more sparks to shoot out from the broken monitors.
Before I could raise the gun a third time, the giant barreled out of her chair and chopped her hand down, smacking the weapon out of my fingers. She charged at me again, spreading her arms out wide and trying to catch me in a bear hug and squeeze the life out of me. She probably expected me to retreat, but instead I stepped forward and leaped up, head-butting her in the chin. She growled and staggered back, but she didn't quit. Once more, she surged at me.
This time, I let her come.
Just before the giant put her hands on me, I sidestepped her and hooked my right foot around hers, making her stumble. Grabbing her utility belt, I played off of her own momentum and shoved her into the still-sparking monitors. Her head slammed through one of the glass screens, and a shower of white and blue sparks erupted. Hisses, cracks, and pops sounded, and the giant screamed as her body started convulsing. I took a few steps back, making sure that I was clear of the electricity surge. She screamed a second time, the sound as high, sharp, and whiny as a power saw. I winced again, as if that would somehow protect my eardrums. At this point, I'd kill her just to get her to stop making that awful noise.
But I didn't have to. After a few moments, the giant quit screaming, her body quit convulsing, and she slumped down onto the table, her head still stuck inside the monitor. The sizzle and stench of charred flesh told me that she was dead.
"Hurrah for the sound of silence," I murmured.
With the giant dead, I grabbed the gun from where it had fallen on the floor and slid it back into its holster on my belt. I also took a moment to pull out one of my knives and set it down on the table within easy reach, just in case one of her pals came into the security center before I was ready to leave.
Careful to keep away from the giant, I turned my attention to the bank of monitors on the back wall, the ones that hadn't been shot up and were still working. I did a quick scan of the cameras showing the scene in the rotunda, but things were the same as before. Hostages sitting on the floor, giants surrounding them, Opal transferring the jewelry from the garbage bags to two more silverstone briefcases.
Once again, I wondered what Clementine thought was so important about the jewelry when she had so much art to loot, but I didn't have time to puzzle it out.
I scanned the monitors until I found an angle that showed my friends. Eva, Finn, and Roslyn were still clustered around Phillip. His eyes were open, and he was gazing up at Eva. He didn't look to be any worse, but I couldn't really tell without seeing him in person. One thing was for sure, he wasn't going to get any better just lying there.
That mental clock in my head started ticking a little louder and a whole lot faster. Because every minute, every second, that passed was one that might mean the difference between Phillip living or dying. As the Spider, I'd done jobs on specific timetables, but a friend's life hung in the balance tonight. There was nothing I could do about the time that had already passed, but I could control how I took down Clementine and her crew - the sooner, the better.
So I turned my attention to the last monitor, the one in the bottom left corner that showed Clementine and Owen. I squinted at the screen. The two of them seemed to be standing in front of a very large door, with three of her men waiting behind them. The angle sucked, and I couldn't hear what they were saying, so I started pushing buttons, sliding controls, and toggling the joysticks back and forth. It took me a few seconds, but I was finally able to zoom in on the two of them. I hit another button, and the sound of the giant's country drawl flooded the security center.
"Isn't it a beauty?" Clementine said. "Why, it's almost a work of art itself."
She paced back and forth, walking in and out of the view of the camera. For the first time, I noticed a lock on the door, along with a large round wheel, and I realized exactly where Clementine had taken Owen: the museum's vault.
"The vault walls are marble, just like the rest of the museum, but the door itself is reinforced silverstone, more than six inches thick," Clementine said. "That's the tricky part, and that's where you come in, Mr. Grayson."
Reinforced silverstone? Well, the Briartop directors had certainly gone all out. Silverstone was one of the strongest metals around, with an insanely high melting point. It wasn't something you could just blast through with a couple of sticks of dy***ite or a brick of C-4. No, you needed real power to get through any kind of door with silverstone in it - elemental power. Even then, you'd need to find someone with a whole lot of juice, since the metal could absorb all forms of magic. Or you could do what Clementine had done and find someone with an elemental talent for metal to help you.
Someone like Owen.
"Really?" he asked. "Why is that?"
She looked at him and smiled. "Because you're going to open it for me."
* * *
For a moment, everything was silent, except for the soft hum of the camera feed and the faint, tinny flicker of the black-and-white monitor in front of me. On the screen, Owen stared at Clementine a moment, then threw back his head and laughed.
"You think I can crack that vault?" He let out another series of chuckles. "Lady, you are out of your mind."
Instead of being insulted, her smile widened. "Not at all."
Owen realized that she was serious, and his laughter abruptly cut off, the last notes dying on his lips. He looked at the vault door again, really studying it.
"What's in there that you want so badly?"
"Funny you should ask. You see, art isn't the only thing that Mab Monroe left behind," Clementine said. "In addition to all those baubles on display in the rotunda, the Fire elemental also had a vast personal fortune. But the most interesting thing is that she didn't keep it stashed away in some bank or even just lying around as cash. No, it seems that Ms. Monroe preferred a more tangible, old-fashioned currency: gold."
Owen frowned, his black eyebrows drawing together in thought. "You're telling me that Mab Monroe kept her personal fortune all in gold, and all of it . . . here?"