But I pushed Madeline out of my mind and focused on the more pressing threat of the Fire elemental standing twenty feet from me. On the floor in between us, the shivved giant and the burned dwarf let out softer and softer moans of pain as they circled the drain toward death. The other giant and dwarf that I’d already killed lay where they had fallen, their sightless eyes fixed on me in ugly, silent accusations.
But the Fire elemental didn’t have a scratch on her yet, and she still had plenty of magic left, given the hot glow of the orange-red flames pulsing in her hand.
Excellent.
Thick pools of blood covered the floor, adding even more shiny gloss to the slick gray surface as the crimson rings oozed out toward the barred edges of the cell. All around me, the stone muttered about the violence I had just dished out, adding more dark notes to the guttural chorus that had already sunk deep into the marble from all the fights that had taken place here before. The stone’s cold, harsh song matched my mood perfectly.
But this was the end of this particular battle, and I was already thinking about how I could win the next one—my escape.
We stood there, elemental to elemental, and faced each other. That ball of Fire still crackled in her palm, but I didn’t reach for any of my magic, not even my Stone power to harden my skin to withstand her heated assault.
I didn’t need my magic. Not for this.
Finally, the Fire elemental got tired of waiting for me to do something. Urged on by the roaring crowd, who’d started bang-bang-banging on the bars in anticipation of my end, she gave me a cruel smile, then reared back and threw the ball of flames at me. She put everything she had into this last, final kill shot, and I could feel her trying to channel the last scraps of her magic into the roaring mass of Fire even as it left her hand and streaked through the cell toward me.
I waited and waited . . . everything slowing down as the flames grew closer and closer . . . the glow of them brighter and brighter . . . the feel of them hotter and hotter . . .
And then I simply stepped out of the way.
The flames roared past me and slammed dead center into the toilets, just the way I’d wanted them to. Normally, nothing much would have happened, except that the two porcelain thrones would have gotten a good scorching before the flames died down.
But earlier, when I was pouring my elemental Ice magic down into the toilets, I’d gone the extra step of freezing all the water in them—and in all the pipes that snaked through the marble wall behind them.
Given what I’d heard about the bull pen, I had figured that there would be some sort of death match in here, and that Dobson would send in at least one elemental to try to kill me. For once, I’d gotten lucky, and it had been a Fire elemental. Not only that, but she’d been the last prisoner standing, just as I’d wanted her to be.
Because if there is one fact that has dominated my entire life from the moment that Mab murdered my family, it was this: Fire and Ice never, ever mix.
Her scorching heat met my intense cold, and the toilets exploded.
I turned away and ducked down, putting my hands over my head and finally reaching for my Stone magic to harden my skin into an impenetrable shell so I wouldn’t get sliced to ribbons by the porcelain shrapnel zipping through the air.
The explosion seemed to go on forever, although it couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds.
Everyone in the crowd screamed, scattered, and started stampeding toward the exit, probably thinking that I’d somehow set off a bomb inside the cell, but their hoarse shouts and the smacks of bodies hitting the floor were drowned out by the sound of the cold water gushing out of the busted pipes. I thought that the Fire elemental shrieked as well, but she didn’t concern me anymore. I’d be surprised if she could muster up so much as a candle flame right now, as water-soaked as the area was.
I shut all the screams and shouts and glug-glug-glugs of water out of my mind. Because if I didn’t get out of here now, I never would, and I wasn’t about to waste this opportunity.
So I ran over to the back wall of the prison, placed both palms flat on it, and let loose with a torrent of my magic. The exploding toilets and busted pipes had knocked out large chunks of the wall, and I poured my Ice magic into all the gaping holes and jagged cracks left behind in the marble, driving it down into the stone as deep as it would go. Then, a second later, I sent out a blast of Stone magic, shattering all those pockets of Ice.
I did this over and over again, causing more and more water to rain down on me, until the entire wall started to crack and crumble. My eyes cut left and right, scanning what was left of the wall, and I reached out with my magic, looking for the one weak spot that would send the whole thing tumbling down. It was right . . . there!
I let loose with one sharp, final burst of magic, and my Ice and Stone power punched a gaping hole all the way through the wall. This time, dust choked the air, although it was quickly washed away by the continual gushes of water. But I only had eyes for the starry midnight sky and open space beyond the wall, and I sloshed through the puddles of water, determined to reach it.
“Get her!” Madeline screamed, her voice higher and more furious than I’d ever heard it before, the sound nothing at all like her usual soft, smug tone. “Kill Blanco!”
Grinning and laughing all the while, I scrambled over the busted pipes and broken stone and out into the night.
13
Crack!
Crack! Crack!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Some of the cops recovered enough to send a hail of bullets in my direction, but the spewing water spoiled their aim and swept most of the projectiles away completely. I staggered outside, stepping away from the hole in the wall and out of the line of fire. It would be just my luck to escape from the bull pen only to have someone get in a lucky shot that blew out the back of my skull as I was running away.
As I darted forward, I took stock of my surroundings—the police impound yard.
Cars, vans, and SUVs of all shapes and sizes sat in neat rows in the smooth, wide lot, their clear windshields and chrome rims glinting underneath the tall lights planted in the asphalt. In the distance, spotlights studded a chain-link fence that gleamed a bright, molten silver, with the razor wire on top shimmering like pointed diamonds.
I swiveled back and forth, half-expecting to see some uniformed officers running in my direction, drawn by the sounds of the explosion and the continued crack-crack-cracks of gunfire. But no one appeared. Looked like the po-po thought that the fence was enough to keep the cars safe and secure in the lot. Well, it wasn’t going to keep me penned in. Not for long.