The dwarf realized what I was up to, but it was too late, and she was too committed to her strike to stop. She plunged the toothbrush shiv into the center of the giant’s chest. She’d put all her strength behind the blow, punching the makeshift weapon right through his ribs and up into his chest cavity, where it had lots of vital things to hit, rupture, and tear through.
The giant screamed and screamed, blood streaming down his chest in warm, coppery spurts. He staggered back, ripped the shiv out of his body, and tossed the weapon aside. But his actions only made the sucking chest wound that much worse, and he teetered back and forth on his feet for a few seconds before his knees buckled. He curled up into a ball on the floor, both hands pressed tight against his chest, trying to stop the blood loss, even though it was already far too late for that.
Two down, three to go.
The dwarf’s mouth gaped open, but I didn’t give her the chance to shake off her surprise. I scrambled over, snatched up the bloody shiv from where it had clattered to the floor, and threw myself at her.
I went low, tackling her around the knees, since I was no match for her incredible upper-body strength. She’d been standing close to one of the cell walls, and I shoved her back far, fast, and hard enough to make her head smack up against the bars and rattle her brain around inside her skull.
I was half on the floor, hanging on to the dwarf’s knees like a child clinging to her mother. The dwarf shook off her daze and put her arms on my shoulders, trying to push me off. Even as her fingers dug into my skin, I raised the bloody shiv and rammed it deep into the meaty part of her thigh, twisting and twisting and twisting the weapon in as deep as it would go, before ruthlessly yanking it back out again.
The dwarf yelped with pain, so I stabbed her again, trying to hit her femoral artery so she’d bleed out. I wasn’t that lucky, but I’d put more than enough force behind the blow to make her feel it. The dwarf screamed, her feet scrabbling for purchase on the slick floor. Her worn-out sneakers slipped in a pool of her own blood, and her legs went out from under her. The dwarf slid down the bars, until she was on the floor with me.
I kept stabbing her the whole time.
Punch-punch-punch-punch.
Using the toothbrush shiv, I opened up wounds in her legs, chest, and arms. Whatever I could reach. I wasn’t picky. Then, when she was down at eye level with me, I drove the shiv so far into her throat that there wasn’t enough of the plastic sticking out for me to grab hold of and yank free again.
The dwarf died with a wheeze, pitching to one side, her body scrape-scrape-scraping against the bars almost like she was rattling a tin cup back and forth asking for more food. A second later, she landed on the floor, choking to death on her own blood.
Three down, two to go—
Fingers dug into my hair, yanking me away from the dead woman and making me yelp. The second dwarf had finally gotten in on the action, and he pulled me up and then shoved me forward, mashing my face against the silverstone bars, as if he were trying to push my whole head through them. With one hand, he held me up against the bars. With the other, he slammed his fist into my back and kidneys over and over.
Thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack.
The folks watching the fight hadn’t had much to cheer about up until this point, but they hooted and hollered with delight and surged up out of their chairs as the dwarf pinned me against the bars. Dobson got right up in my face on the other side of the metal.
“How does it feel, Blanco?” he hissed, spittle spewing out of his lips. “Knowing that you’re going to die here tonight?”
Instead of responding, I snaked one arm through the bars and grabbed his silk tie. Then I yanked him forward as hard as I could, making his head bang against the bars just like his nightstick had earlier and adding a third goose egg to the collection on his face. Dobson grunted and fell back on his ass, making the crowd howl even louder.
I would have liked to have reached through the bars, latched onto Dobson’s ankle, and dragged him back in range so I could strangle him to death with his own tie, but there was the small matter of the dwarf and his continued pummeling of me.
So I flung my right hand out to the side and reached for my magic. A second later, I had another Ice dagger clutched in my fingers. I twirled the crude weapon around, brought it up, and then stabbed the dwarf in the thigh with it. He grunted, but he didn’t stop his assault.
The dagger broke off in his leg, so I wrapped my hand around the jagged end and let loose with another round of Ice magic, this time blasting my cold, frosty power deep into the wound I’d opened up in his thigh—along with certain sensitive areas a bit higher up on his body.
That was enough to get the dwarf to yelp and finally let go of me, since I’d just given him the worst case of frostbite ever. I whipped around and gouged my fingers into his eyes, adding to the pain already racking his body. The dwarf slapped at me, but his blows were wild, and his hands clattered off the bars instead of hitting me. Behind him, I could see the Fire elemental drawing her hand back, another ball of flames crackling in her palm. So I grabbed hold of the dwarf’s jumpsuit and pulled him close to me, ducking down behind his short body as best I could.
The elemental’s Fire ball exploded against his back a second later.
The dwarf screamed, and so did the folks who’d gathered behind me, as they ducked to get out of the way of the flames shooting through the gaps in the cell bars.
The dwarf wasn’t quite dead, but he was close enough to it, so when the flames died down, I shoved his charred body away and stepped toward the elemental.
Four down, one to go.
The Fire elemental’s eyes narrowed as she stared at me, both of us moving step by step, going around the cell in a large circle. Finally, I stopped when I reached the back wall, standing right in front of the two toilets.
“You don’t have anybody to hide behind now,” she hissed.
“I don’t need anybody else,” I snarled back, throwing my hands out wide. “Take your best shot, bitch.”
All around the cell, the crowd pressed forward on all sides, clutching the bars, sensing that this could finally be the end of me. Even Dobson had managed to get back on his feet, bang-bang-banging his nightstick on the bars in a steady drumbeat of encouragement. His screams for the Fire elemental to kill me right fucking now were among the loudest.
I looked up at the balcony. Madeline, Emery, and Jonah were all on their feet now, clutching the metal railing, and leaning forward in anticipation. The giant and the lawyer were both smiling wide, thinking that I was about to meet my maker at long last. But Madeline’s expression was far more subdued, almost pensive, as if she realized that I was up to something.