Crack!
A bullet zinged off the rocks to my right, and I realized that one man had already made the trek through the woods and up the side of the ridge.
Crack! Crack!
Too bad he had lousy aim. The bullets pinged off the rocks around me, but none of them actually came close to hitting me.
I ducked down behind a boulder, then scrambled on top of it and launched myself through the air. The man raised his gun, but I hit his body before he could pull the trigger, and we both went down on the ground. I was the only one who got back up.
Footsteps crunched through the leaves on the trail to my right, and shouts rose from that direction, like a pack of hounds baying out their location.
"Up here!"
"There she is!"
"Get that bitch!"
Men darted out of the woods and headed toward me.
I raised the guns in my hands and took aim.
Sophia. Jo-Jo. Fletcher.
That was the mantra I chanted in my head as I fired off shot after shot, carefully aiming at every person who came within range of my weapons and trying to make every single bullet count. Man after man went down, tumbling to a stop at my feet with holes in their heads, necks, and chests, but all too soon, my guns click-click-clicked empty.
I threw them away, palmed the knife that I'd tucked up my sleeve, and grabbed another one out of a pocket on my vest. More properly attired, I twirled the weapons in my hands and stepped forward.
Sophia. Jo-Jo. Fletcher.
I whirled first one way, then the other, cutting into every man who got within arm's and knife's reach of me, trying to make every single slice and stab as devastating as possible. Blood spattered everywhere, on me and especially on the rocks. Below my feet, the stone began sing - ing a dark, rousing tune about all the death that I was dealing out, and I found myself merrily, loudly humming along in time to it, even though I was the only one who could hear the vicious chorus.
I sang, but the men screamed, the sounds rending the air like my knives did their flesh, the high, sharp echoes reverberating around the ridge and then rattling off into the trees and forest beyond. I hoped Sophia could hear these bastards' terror. I hoped it put the same hard, merci - less smile on her face that it did on mine.
Sophia. Jo-Jo. Fletcher.
Time ceased to have any meaning. There were just enemies to cut down, one after another, as quickly, brutally, and efficiently as I could, before moving on to the next
man standing. I stabbed arms and legs and chests. Drove
my blades into throats and ripped them out again. Even punched my knife through one man's eye. His screams were among the loudest and most satisfying.
That man fell, and I whirled around to face my next foe - and realized that Grimes and Hazel stood behind me, flanked by several more of their gang.
Grimes's gaze scanned over his dead men at my feet, then flicked up to me. His expression was unreadable, but I knew exactly what I looked like. Strands of dark brown hair falling out of my ponytail and sticking to my sweaty, blood covered face and neck. Even more blood spattered across my hands and arms, with still more soaked into my vest and the rest of my clothes. Even my socks squished with blood, and my boots had left behind an intricate pattern of dull brown stains on the gray rocks, as though I'd been tracing a complicated dance routine over and over again.
"Who the hell are you?" Hazel asked.
I grinned. "Your worst f**king nightmare."
The men standing behind Grimes and Hazel shifted uneasily on their feet. Their leaders might not be afraid of me, but they were - and with good reason.
I gestured at the dead men all around me. "You know, you really should get yourself some better help. All your boys are good for is target practice."
"Take her," Grimes ordered in a cold voice. "Alive."
I grinned even wider and twirled my knives, flinging fat drops of blood off the ends of the blades. "Please," I snarled, staring at the men behind him. "Step right up and die."
Nobody made a move toward me. I let out a dark, happy chuckle, then clucked my tongue. "So hard to find good help these days."
"Now!" Grimes screamed, his calm façade finally cracking.
Apparently, Grimes's men were more afraid of him than they were of me, because they rushed forward.
Fools. I raised my knives again and stepped up to meet them. First, I'd take care of Grimes's men, then Hazel and the big man himself -
"Now, Hazel," I heard Grimes say.
A second later, thousands of hot, invisible bubbles brushed against my skin. I had just enough time to grab the man in front of me, turn him around, and use him as a shield before a ball of elemental Fire blasted into us.
The flames exploded on the man's chest, burning away his clothes and immediately turning the upper half of his body into a charred, blistered mess. He started screaming and didn't stop, so I shoved him out of the way and took a step toward Grimes and Hazel, who were holding hands, as if they were combining their magic.
That was all I saw before another blast of elemental Fire came my way. Then another one, then another one.
I managed to duck the first two balls but not the third one, which hit my shoulder like a red-hot sledgehammer and spun me around. Before I could move, before I could react, a fourth blast of Fire hit me square in the back.
This time, I screamed.
Because I was almost out of magic, and I didn't have any way to stop the elemental Fire washing over me. The silverstone in my vest heated up as it soaked up the worst of the flames, but it didn't absorb enough of the magic, not nearly enough.
The men attacking me fell back, as they started yelling and trying to get away from the flames before they leaped from my body and onto theirs. The stench and sizzle of my own charred flesh filled my nose, and smoke boiled up from my clothes, mixing with the lingering fog from my elemental Ice. The heat and pain were so intense that
I couldn't tell which way was which, and before I could figure out where and whom to attack, a fist shot through the flames, slamming into my skull.
Mercifully, the world went black after that.
Chapter Twenty
The sun woke me.
It streamed in through the open window, as sweet and innocent as could be, warming everything that it touched with its soft golden rays. Outside, birds trilled out high, happy notes, accompanied by the low, steady bass beat of bumblebees and other bugs.
I cracked my eyes open. A painting of puffy clouds drifting across a summer sky covered the ceiling above my head, like they always did whenever I woke up at Jo-Jo's house after a fight to the death. For a moment, I relaxed, even though part of me wondered why I was lying on the hard wooden floor instead of in the bed beside me. But the more I stared at the ceiling, the more it seemed like there was something slightly . . . off about it. Like the painting wasn't the same one that I'd seen so many times before.