It was inevitable. All the fights I'd been through tonight, all the nicks and cuts and lumps and bumps I'd gotten. None of them debilitating or life-threatening, but they'd all chipped away at my strength, at my magic, until I had nothing left in the tank. And now the giant was cutting off my air supply. I'd be dead in another minute, two tops, unless I could figure out some way to get her off me long enough for me to regroup and grab one of my knives. Even then, I didn't know if I'd have strength enough to kill her with one of the blades -
Strength.
The word rattled around in my mind, bouncing from one side of my skull to the other, and I remembered what Clementine had said to Owen earlier tonight in the vault.
This isn't about strength, Mr. Grayson, it's about finesse.
And I realized that's what this fight really came down to - my strength versus Clementine's. Physically, I wasn't a match for the giant, especially not now, since she was using the weight of her body to pin me down. But maybe I didn't need brute strength, raw force, sheer power, to beat her. Maybe all I needed was a little of that finesse she'd talked about earlier.
Or maybe the lack of air was already making me hallucinate, because I just couldn't think of a way to stop her.
Still, I kept fighting - clawing, slapping, and punching with all my might. Clementine continued to laugh. Apparently, my weak, pitiful struggles amused her. She let go of my throat long enough to slap my hand away from hers, the blow so hard that it caused my knuckles to crack into the marble walkway -
Wait a second.
Marble - I was lying on a solid sheet of marble. In fact, the whole boathouse was made out of stone. I'd once collapsed an entire coal mine, so I knew that I could use my magic to do the same thing to the boathouse. But as satisfying as that might be, dropping a couple of tons of rock on top of Clementine's head wouldn't help me. The rocks would either crush us outright or shatter the walkway and drag us both down to the bottom of the river. I didn't want to drown, especially not if Clementine was going to be trapped on top of me for all eternity.
Still, there had to be some way to use my magic against her without killing myself in the process. Oh, I'd sacrifice myself if it meant murdering her too, but I wasn't ready to give up yet. Not until my air was almost completely gone and I had no other chance of stopping her.
I moved my head left and right, my gaze shooting every which way, but there wasn't much to see. Just the marble ceiling over my head, the columns on either side of the boathouse, and the statue of the old fisherman to the left of Clementine -
The statue.
My gaze locked on it, but it wasn't the figure of the old man I was interested in - it was the spear clutched in his hand. I hadn't made a dent in the giant with my silverstone blades or Ice knife, but that spear looked to be at least six feet long and three inches thick. That spear would take down anyone, even a giant as tough and strong as Clementine Barker.
All I had to do was find a way to finesse it right into the bitch.
I quit fighting the giant, quit clawing at her hands, quit kicking and punching and trying to buck her off me. I even quit using my Stone magic to harden my skin. Instead, I gathered and gathered the power inside me, combining it with all the Ice magic I had left, added to what was stored in the spider rune ring on my right index finger.
Clementine noticed that my skin had reverted back to its normal texture. She paused and drew her hand away from my nose and mouth. I sucked down breath after breath, but all the while, I kept reaching and reaching for my magic, getting ready to make one final strike with it.
She grinned. "Out of magic already, Gin? How disappointing. I thought that the legendary Spider would be tougher to beat than this. Why, I haven't been hitting you more than three minutes now. Going to let me beat you to death after all? Pathetic. But I have to thank you. This will be so much more fun than simply smothering you."
She drew back her fist and drove it into my chest.
Thwack.
One of my ribs cracked.
Thwack.
Another rib splintered.
Thwack.
She went for my shoulder that third time, and pain exploded in the socket and reverberated along my collarbone and down into my arm. Fuck. I hated having a broken collarbone.
The pain almost overwhelmed me, but I forced it to the back of my mind and concentrated on the cold, raw fury of my magic, drawing it up from the deepest, darkest, blackest part of me. I let the Ice power flood my body first, numbing me from head to toe, until I couldn't feel the sharp, pulsing pain in my ribs or the fact that my collarbone felt like broken bits of confetti barely clinging together. I reached for more and more of my Ice magic until all I felt was cold - and the determination to end this bitch once and for all.
Clementine stopped hitting me long enough to throw back her head and laugh again. She didn't notice me stretch my arms out to either side of my body and press my palms flat on the stone walkway. Looking past Clementine, I stared at the statue of the old man, my gaze narrowing in on the spear in his hand.
Finally, she quit laughing. "But as much as I'd love to break every single bone in your body, you were right before, Gin," Clementine said. "I have a boat to catch and a fortune to spend. It's a crying shame that Opal and Dixon won't be around to help me use all that money, but I'll toast to them - and your death - with the finest champagne. Good-bye, oh, great and not-so-mighty Spider."
Clementine drew back her fist for the final, killing blow. Instead of trying to fight her off, I reached out with my Stone magic, pushing it toward the statue. The giant finally noticed that I wasn't paying attention to her anymore. She hesitated, wondering what I was doing.
"You know what, Clem?" I mumbled through a mouthful of blood, my eyes still on the statue.
"What?"
"Don't count your diamonds before they're fenced," I snarled.
And that's when I finally unleashed my power.
Chapter 26
I pushed my magic out through the marble. The force of it made the walkway ripple like the surface of the river below us, but I focused, aiming the power across the floor and then forcing it up into the statue. The figure of the old man seemed to shudder as my magic raced up his legs, then spread into his chest and out into his arms.
Clementine felt the walkway rise and fall beneath us. She glanced at me a moment, then turned her head to look over her shoulder, trying to figure out what I was doing with my magic. "What the - "
I focused even more and pushed more of my magic into the statue, putting everything I had into the marble - all of my Stone magic, all of my Ice power, every single drop of magic that I had left, along with what was stored in my spider rune ring. And then I grabbed hold of all that magic, all that power, and I made the statue move.