“Fascinating,” he said. “Truly fascinating.”
Benson loosened his hold on my neck and waved his free hand in front of my face. The rough, sandpaper feel of his Air magic sloughed against my body, trying to pinpoint the emotions under the surface of my skin and tear them out of me. But I didn’t let them. Instead, I reached for my Ice magic and let the cold power center me the way it had done so many times in the past.
Benson gave me a little shake, as if trying to rattle the emotions out of me, like pennies stuck to the bottom of a glass jar. I gritted my teeth as my brain sloshed around inside my skull again, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of hissing in pain. Instead, I focused on my magic, letting it make me as cold as ice—literally—from the inside out.
But my lack of response, my lack of emotion, my lack of fear, made him go from curious to enraged in a heartbeat.
“How can you be so damn calm?” he hissed. “Don’t you know that I’m seconds away from killing you? Where’s your fear? Your panic? I want your terror, Gin. Give it to me. Give it to me now.”
I rasped out a low chuckle. “Oh, sugar, do you really think that you’re the only nasty thing that’s ever had his hand around my throat? Please. This isn’t my first heavyweight bout, but it’s going to be your last.”
He shook me again, then brought his face even closer to mine, so close that I could smell the coppery stink of blood on his breath, mixed with his lemony scent, both as bitter and foul as any poison. “You should be scared, you stupid fool.”
“No,” I countered. “You should be scared. You like getting people hooked on your drugs because it makes it that much easier for you to feed on their emotions. You’re so proud of your power, of your formulas and experiments, and you think that they make you so smart, so superior to everyone else. But you’re just as much of an addict as all those poor people in your basement. You’ve been the undisputed king of Southtown for so long that you’ve forgotten one important thing—the only thing that matters right now. Kind of sad, since you so painfully reminded me of it yesterday down in your lab.”
“And what would that be?” he hissed again.
I smiled, my features even more predatory than his. “That no matter who you are—addict, assassin, or vampire—everybody needs air to breathe, even you.”
I shoved my hand out so that I was touching his right cheek, cupping it almost the way a lover might.
Then I unleashed my Ice magic on the bastard.
A silver light flared between us, leaking out from the spider rune scar branded in the center of my palm. For a moment, the light was so intense that I couldn’t even see Benson standing in front of me. But I didn’t need to see him, because I could feel my magic, and I directed it at him with all the force of an arctic blizzard.
In an instant, his skin was severely frostbitten and even bluer than his eyes. He drew in a breath, and the air crystallized and froze deep in his lungs, killing all of that precious tissue. And then, for the coup de resistance, I coated his entire face with three inches of elemental Ice, a trick I’d learned from Bria.
By the time I dropped my hand, Benson looked like he was wearing a bubble of bluish glass over his face. His hand slipped from my throat, and he staggered back, beating and clawing at the elemental Ice on his face. I dropped to the ground, gasping for breath, but I was already pushing the pain away and coming back up onto my hands and knees. I lashed out with my foot, driving it into the side of Benson’s knee, and then I sent out a burst of Stone magic, cracking the pavement under his feet.
This time, he was the one who landed flat on his back. Using his enhanced strength, Benson finally broke through the Ice on his face and started sucking down some much-needed oxygen, his breath coming in painful rasps, given how much of his lungs I’d just destroyed. While he was busy wheezing, I flattened my hands against the asphalt and reached for my power.
I didn’t have a fancy chair to help me subdue the vampire, but I didn’t need one. Benson might be the king of Southtown, but the foundation of everything around us was made of stone—my element, the one that I was queen of.
Like the street he was lying on.
So I pressed my palms into the pavement and sent my Stone magic racing through it, causing more and more of the asphalt to crack-crack-crack-crack. And then I poured even more of my power into the pavement, causing all those broken bits of stone to rise up and come together again, until they formed five specific shapes.
Shackles.
Using my magic, I clamped a Stone shackle around each of Benson’s arms and legs and his neck, then sank them down deep into the asphalt, as though they were about to pull him down into the center of the earth along with them. For extra insurance, I coated each shackle with three inches of elemental Ice, so that even if Benson could use his strength to break through the restraints, he’d still have to expend even more energy to get through the Ice too.
The vamp must have already used up a good portion of the dead guard’s blood and emotions, because he heaved and bucked and thrashed against my improvised restraints, but he couldn’t break free of them.
Just like I hadn’t been able to break free of the ones in his lab.
Desperate, Benson looked at me, his fingers crawling across the broken stone, trying to touch me so he could siphon off enough of my emotions to escape. Well, he was finally going to get his wish, since I was more than ready to open up about my feelings.
I went down on one knee beside the vamp, staring at him as dispassionately as he had stared at me in his lab. Then I slowly drew the knife from the small of my back and tapped the point of it against my cheek, as if I were considering all the secrets of the universe.
“Tell me, Beau,” I drawled. “How does it feel to be completely helpless? What sort of emotions are you feeling right now? Hmm? Why, I think it would make for a fascinating scientific study, don’t you?”
He opened his mouth to scream or perhaps yell at his men to shoot me, but before he could, I raised my knife and slammed it into his heart.
“Why, I do believe that’s agonizing discomfort you’re experiencing,” I murmured. “Every nerve ending in your body probably feels like it’s on fire right now. Sort of how I felt when you pumped me full of Burn.”
Benson screamed, but I clamped my hand over his bloody mouth, cutting off the sound.
“Now, what was it you told Troy the night you murdered him? Oh, yeah. Don’t be frightened. It’ll only hurt for a minute. Well, you’re right about that. Because I’m not like you. I don’t torture people. I’ve already killed you with that one blow.”