But it was his eyes that worried me the most. They pulsed a bright blue from the terrified emotions he’d sucked out of his dying guard, burning hotter than the noon sun overhead. Benson was stronger now than ever before.
And I wasn’t.
I’d already used up a good chunk of my magic just keeping him from breaking every single bone in my body. I needed to finish this, I needed to kill him, before my own magic ran out entirely, just like he said. Or I’d be the one dying in the street today.
Benson grinned, showing off his fangs, stained red with blood. “What were you saying about my winding down? I can do this all day long, Gin. But you can’t.”
I tightened my grip on my knife. “I don’t have to do it all day long. It shouldn’t take me more than another minute, two tops, to finish off the likes of you.”
Benson growled and launched himself at me again. But I was expecting the move, so I was able to sidestep at the last possible second, and he slammed into his own car instead of me, putting a bigger dent in the metal with the force of his own body than I had with Owen’s hammer.
But it didn’t slow him down for an instant. Benson let out a loud, guttural growl, reached down, hooked his hands on the bottom of his car, and flipped it over onto its side, causing the people gathered on the sidewalks to scream in surprise and terror. Benson grinned, whirled around, and took a menacing step forward, as though he were going to plunge into the crowd and do to them what he had done to his own guard. He would too, the second he felt like he needed another hit of power.
In his own way, Benson was just as much of an addict as all the people he’d gotten hooked on his drugs over the years.
He chuckled at the crowd’s fear, his eyes burning brighter than ever before. He might not be able to feed on their emotions without touching them, but he could sense their fear, and it was adding to his own twisted high. I had to distract Benson from the crowd before he attacked someone else and became too strong for me to kill, so I darted over, grabbed Owen’s hammer from where it had landed, and hurled it in his direction.
But Benson was truly hopped up on adrenaline, emotion, and blood now, and he whirled around almost too fast for me to follow. One second, he was doing his best bogeyman impression with the crowd. The next, he’d snatched Owen’s hammer out of midair. He let out an amused chuckle, then turned and hurled the weapon as hard as he could. It sailed away as free and easy as a kite, as if Benson had the strength of some Olympic god, and it didn’t stop until it clattered against the side of his mansion, knocking a chunk of stone off the side before falling to the ground.
Benson grinned at me again, his fangs seeming even bloodier than before. “And now, Gin, I think it’s time for you to die.”
Before I could move, before I could react, before I could even think about ducking, Benson was on me. I lashed out with my knife, but he let out a mocking laugh and slapped the weapon out of my hand. I palmed another knife, but Benson slapped that one away too, sending it flying through the air. It came to a stop right beside my first knife. I started to reach for the third knife in the small of my back, but Benson stepped forward, grabbed my shoulders, and slammed his head into mine.
With all of that fresh blood and emotion pumping through his veins, this blow was harder and sharper than all the others he’d landed so far. I felt like my skull had gotten run over by a Mack truck, and I lost my grip on my Stone magic.
Benson used the opening to head-butt me again.
I managed to bring enough of my magic back to bear to keep the blow from killing me outright, but my brain rattled around in my skull like a coin tumbling through a slot machine. White, gray, and black stars winked on and off in my vision, and I was flat on my back on the pavement before I realized what was happening.
I lay there, trying to blink-blink-blink the dangerous spots away and come up with some sort of plan that would let me kill Benson without getting dead myself. In my earpiece, I could hear Bria, Owen, Finn, Xavier, and Phillip all screaming at me to getup-getup-getup!, but scrambled brains aren’t great for comprehension or action.
I blinked again, and Benson was kneeling on the pavement beside me, his hand wrapped around my throat. He easily hoisted me off the ground and lifted me up into the air, so that my feet were kicking in the breeze and my gaze was level with his.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Bria, Owen, and Xavier start forward, only to draw up short as Benson’s men moved in front of them, cutting them off from me.
“I don’t have the angle,” Finn yelled in my ear. “I don’t have a shot!”
“Neither do I!” Phillip yelled back.
Things had not gone my way, and my friends were still trying to save me. But they were going to be too late.
So I’d just have to save myself.
I pushed all the noise away. Finn and Phillip still screaming in my ear. Bria, Xavier, and Owen shouting from behind the guards. The excited whispers of the crowd. I ignored it all and focused on Benson. The sweaty warmth of his hand wrapped around my throat. The strength in his arm as he held me up. The hot blue glow of magic in his eyes. The bloody flecks painting his glasses. The lemony scent wafting up from his body.
It was that last one, his smell, that made me flash back to my time in his lab. Different day, same situation. Because right now, I was just as helpless as I’d been in his chair, when Benson had shoved that Burn pill down my throat and then made me swallow it—
Malevolent understanding burned through me like acid, making me grin. Because I wasn’t helpless. Not here, not now, not ever.
And I knew how I could beat Benson: the exact same way he’d beaten me.
All around us, the crowd gasped, pressing forward in anticipation of the end. They knew that this was the moment when the vamp could snap my neck with a thought, if he so chose.
Benson knew it too, because he started laughing. He turned this way and that, lifting me up higher and higher into the air for the crowd’s and his own inspection and amusement, as if I were some sort of trophy he’d won and was hoisting skyward.
But what the bastard didn’t realize was that he hadn’t won—not yet—and that I wasn’t about to let him be the end of me.
Finally, Benson quit waving my body through the air and brought me back down so that my eyes were level with his again. He stared at me, his happy face creasing into a thoughtful frown. Once again, he did that weird, tilting thing with his head, staring at me like a bird about to gobble up a worm, as if he were surprised by something I’d said, even though he had such a tight grip on my throat that I could have barely done more than croak out a few words, even if I’d wanted to crow about how I was going to kill him.