“What?”
“When Gin tracks you down and kills you, tell her that I’m sorry I ever doubted her.” He paused. “On second thought, forget it. You’ll be bleeding out before she gives you the chance to sputter out so much as a single word.”
“You have far too much faith in your little friend.”
“Not my friend,” Finn said, his voice ringing with conviction. “My sister.”
Deirdre stared at him, the blue-white flames of her Ice magic still flickering on her fingertips. Finn lifted his chin, glaring defiantly into her eyes. In that moment, they were almost mirror images of each other—both cold, calm, and completely unwilling to crack, compromise, or give an inch.
“Forget him,” Santos growled. “You’ve been working on him for almost an hour now and haven’t gotten anywhere. Let’s get this show on the road. Unless you can’t hold up your end of the bargain?”
“I told you that I could get into the vault without the access code if necessary,” Deirdre snapped.
“Then quit wasting time and do it already,” Santos growled again.
She shot him a sneering look, but she turned away from Finn and marched over to the vault door. She stood in front of the tight, thick mesh of silverstone bars, staring at them and the vault beyond for a moment. Then she stepped forward, wrapped her hands around the bars, and blasted them with her Ice magic.
In his file on her, Fletcher had said that Deirdre was a powerful elemental, but the old man hadn’t fully communicated the depths of her magic. As soon as she let loose with that first round of magic, the temperature in the basement plummeted ten degrees, and the floor, walls, and ceiling began to frost over. Not because she was targeting them but because her magic was that intense. I shivered again, my breath steaming in the air. Beside me, Bria and Owen did the same. Deirdre Shaw was definitely the strongest Ice elemental I’d ever encountered, and I didn’t know how to kill her without getting frozen alive by her magic.
Deirdre was completely focused on the vault door, and she blasted it over and over again with her Ice power. At first, the bars soaked up all her magic, like a sponge absorbing water, since silverstone had the unique property of being able to hold and store elemental magic.
“What does she think she’s going to accomplish?” Owen whispered in my ear. “She doesn’t actually think she can get through that much silverstone, does she?”
I shook my head. Deirdre didn’t think it—she knew it.
Slowly, the silverstone began to soak up less and less of her power, and her elemental Ice actually started to coat the bars themselves, like layers of icing covering a cake. The blue-white crystals leaped from one piece of metal to the next, getting colder and harder all the while, the bars taking on the same pale, ugly blue color as the burns on Finn’s skin. That’s what Deirdre was doing with her power, using the bitter bite of her Ice magic to burn right through the metal.
Soon the entire mesh door was glowing with the blue-white light of her magic, and the metal began to creak and groan from its exposure to the intense, prolonged cold. Even the access keypad Iced over, the red light on the front snuffed out by Deirdre’s deep freeze.
It seemed to go on forever, although Deirdre’s assault on the metal bars couldn’t have lasted longer than a couple of minutes. Finally, she released her hold on her magic and stepped back, admiring her handiwork. If I’d used that much magic in such a short amount of time, I would have been huddled in a ball on the floor, too tired to even whimper. But Deirdre wasn’t even breathing hard. Santos gave her a sharp, approving nod. Bria’s and Owen’s mouths were both gaping open, and even Finn looked impressed, despite himself. Yeah. Me too.
Deirdre stepped forward again and flicked her long red fingernail against the very center of the mesh.
Tink.
A single crack appeared in the metal and slowly spread out, forming more and more cracks, until the pattern resembled a spider’s web that had been carved into the middle of all that glittering elemental Ice. Deirdre studied the bars a second, then flicked her fingernail in the same spot again.
Tink.
More spiderweb cracks spread through the metal, zipping through the entire vault door. Deirdre leaned forward and flicked her fingernail against that same spot a third time.
Tink.
With a roar, all the elemental Ice shattered, crushing the silverstone bars and the keypad. It fell to the floor in one cold wave, and left a clear, open path into the vault.
Deirdre looked at Santos. “What were you saying about getting the show on the road?”
The giant ignored her gloating and reached into a duffel bag sitting on the floor. He grabbed a crowbar out of it, then stepped into the vault. He had moved out of my line of sight, but the screech-screech-screech of metal filled the air as Santos dug his crowbar into the first safety-deposit box, then the next. His giant strength let him pop the heavy metal boxes out of the wall as easily as I could crack a can of soda.
“So the bank vault was your endgame all along,” Finn said, his voice brimming with bitterness. “But why go to all this trouble? You could have just stolen the jewelry from the armored truck. You could have had Santos do that, collected the insurance money, and kept your cover intact. So why rob the bank too? Why blow your contacts and everything else you set up in Ashland? Why take such a big risk?”
“Big risk, big reward. You should know that. Every money man does.”
Finn glared at her, but she laughed, reached out, and patted his cheek. She put a bit of Ice magic into the gesture, making him hiss with pain and jerk away from her cold, cold touch.
“Don’t worry, Finnegan, honey, and don’t look so glum,” Deirdre crooned. “Soon you won’t have to worry about me or anything else. In fact, you won’t feel a thing. I promise.”
She patted Finn’s cheek a final time, then headed into the vault to collect her bounty.
26
Deirdre stepped to one side of the vault and moved out of my line of sight, just like Santos had. A second later, blue-white flashes of light started appearing in the vault, as she used her Ice magic to crack open the safety-deposit boxes just like she had the silverstone bars. Meanwhile, Santos kept up his own steady assault with his crowbar. Looked like they were going to force open all the boxes first before they started rifling through the loot inside them.
“Now what?” Bria whispered. “The second they see us coming, they’ll kill Finn. One blast of Ice magic from Deirdre would be more than enough. All she has to do is step out into the center of the vault, and she can hit him.”
“Now we do some shock and awe of our own,” I whispered back. “This way.”
Bria and Owen followed me back to the men’s bathroom. Owen gave Bria and me a boost through the hole we’d created, then we reached down and helped him climb up. Together, the three of us left the first-floor bathroom and stepped back out into the lobby.
Silvio was standing by the front doors, his phone in one hand and a gun in the other. He hurried over when he saw us. I marched to the center of the lobby, which was directly on top of the basement vault, and the others gathered around me.
“What are you going to do?” Bria asked.
I studied the floor, listening to the low, dark mutters of violence that had sunk into the marble from the thieves taking over the bank and killing the guards, along with me cracking through the bathroom floors.
“I’m going to bust through the floor and drop down right on top of Deirdre and Santos in the vault. If I’m lucky, I’ll bury them in the rubble and kill them outright. But even if they survive, they’ll be too surprised and too busy dealing with me to worry about anything else, including Finn. It should give you, Owen, and Silvio enough time to get him to safety.”
Bria gave me a worried look. “You saw what Deirdre did. She blasted through those vault bars like they were made out of paper. And she still has plenty of magic left.”
We could all hear exactly what she wasn’t saying—that Deirdre might very wel
l kill me with her Ice magic.
“I know, but this is our best chance to rescue Finn—our only chance. We have to take it, or Deirdre will kill him as soon as she and Santos are done looting the vault.”
Bria didn’t like it, but she nodded her agreement. So did Silvio and Owen.
Silvio made sure that our watches were all still synchronized, and then he, Owen, and Bria hurried over to the bathroom to slip through the hole in the floor and back down to the basement.
I gave them three minutes to get into position, just like we’d planned, then closed my eyes a moment, gathering my thoughts and my magic. Big Bertha was the most secure part of the bank, encased in marble and silverstone, and I would need almost all my power to blast through it. So I reached and reached for that mix of cold and hard magic flowing through my veins, letting it pool in the palms of my hands, until my spider rune scars were glowing a bright, brilliant silver with the cold, continuous ripple of my magic. Then I tapped into the Ice and Stone magic stored in my spider rune ring and necklace.
When I had gathered up all that power, I slowly turned my hands over so that my palms—and my spider runes—were facing the floor.
I raised my hands, steeling myself, then snapped my hands down, blasting all my magic at the floor directly below my feet.
Crack!
Crack! Crack!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The surface of the marble immediately shattered, and I slammed a wave of my Ice magic down into all the jagged zigzags. The stone shrieked at the sudden, brutal assault, but I ignored its cries and hammered at it with the brutal one-two punch of my Ice and Stone magic, pouring all my power into the growing cracks and widening them even more, shattering every single bit of stone, then all the metal underneath.
The seconds ticked by, and I reached for even more of my power, gathering up every single scrap of it and forcing it down, down, down—
CRACK!
With one giant, crashing roar, the floor beneath my feet split wide open.
* * *
For a moment, there was just noise.
A rushing roar filled my head with a dizzying symphony of sound. I had the sense of free-falling, and I reached for what little was left of my Stone magic to harden my skin, so that I wouldn’t impale myself on a piece of shrapnel and bleed out before I got the chance to kill Deirdre.
I hit the ground hard, bouncing off the rocky rubble that covered the vault floor from my blasting through the one above it. Dust clouded the air, making it hard to breathe, and I coughed and coughed, trying to clear the pulverized marble from my lungs.
I dug my hands into the loose rocks under my body and managed to push myself up and then onto my feet. I squinted, trying to see through the billowing clouds of dust, but I couldn’t so much as see the walls around me, much less peer out the vault door and tell if Bria, Owen, and Silvio had managed to rescue Finn yet.
As I stumbled around the vault, trying to figure out where the door was, I palmed one of my knives, searching for someone to kill.
“You bitch!” a voice roared behind me. “You just don’t know when to quit, do you?”
I whipped around just in time for a fist to zoom out of the dust and slam into my face. Thanks to my jarring landing, I’d lost my grip on my Stone magic, so the punch socked me square in the jaw, making pain explode all the way up my cheekbone.
The force of the punch threw me back through the dust and up against a bank of safety-deposit boxes, some of which had been opened. I slammed the metal drawers shut with my body, each one punching into my back like a hammer and making me groan with pain. So that was where one of the walls was. Good to know.
Santos loomed up in front of me, his black hair now gray with marble dust. Even more of it coated his face, including that jagged scar on his cheek, making him look like he’d upended a sack of flour over his head. He growled and came at me. I raised my knife to stab him, but he knocked the weapon out of my hand. He tried to punch me again, but I blocked the blow and slammed my fist into his throat, hitting the giant where he was vulnerable.
Santos coughed, wheezed, and sputtered, but he surged forward again and wrapped his hands around my throat. He lifted me off the ground and wrenched me left and right, slamming my body into more open safety-deposit boxes, like I was the silver piece in a pinball machine and he was trying to get a high score.
I punched him, slamming my fists into his face over and over again, but he just snarled and took the blows, even though I managed to break his nose with one of them. The blood mixed with the marble dust on his face and made him look even more angry and vengeful.
I palmed a second knife, but Santos realized what I was up to, and he grabbed my arm, pulled it forward, and then rammed my hand back against the wall. The bones in my left wrist shattered on impact, and I screamed, my knife slipping from my numb, nerveless fingers. The weapon clattered to the floor and dropped into a hole in the piles of rubble.
White spots began winking on and off in my field of vision, and it was only a matter of time before I ran out of air. I’d already used up most of my magic breaking into the vault, and an Ice dagger wouldn’t do me any good against the giant. My eyes flicked left and right, looking for something that I could use to at least get him to let go of me. Once I had air back in my lungs, I could figure out the rest.
Santos drew me away from the wall and then slammed me right back up against it, hard enough to make some of the loose safety-deposit boxes rattle beside my shoulder. My eyes latched onto the one closest to me, and I quit hitting Santos. Instead, I reached down with my right hand and grabbed the handle on the end of the box. At least, I tried to, but the dust and sweat coating my hand made my fingers slip off the handle. I growled with frustration, although it sounded more like a whimper.
Santos must have thought that I was flailing around for no reason because he laughed. “Not so tough now, are you, Blanco? I’m going to enjoy squeezing the life out of you for all the trouble you’ve caused me.”
I ignored his taunts and his hands tightening around my neck. My whole world had shrunk to hooking my fingers through that handle and sliding the box free from the wall. My fingers slipped, and slipped again, but I kept trying.
Santos shook me again, moving my arm just enough for me to wrap my fingers around the handle and tug the box free from the wall. Whatever was inside was heavy—heavy enough to yank my arm down—and I almost lost my grip on the whole thing. Even though my strained muscles were screaming at me to let go, I gritted my teeth and used the downward momentum to swing the box right back up and smash it into Santos’s face.
The box cracked against his left cheekbone hard enough to leave a dent in the metal. The sharp blow stunned him, making him loose his grip on my throat and stagger back. I fell to the floor, coughing and wheezing, but I hung on to the box, surged back onto my feet, and slammed it into his face again, this time catching him in his already broken nose. At this impact, the box popped open, spilling black velvet bags everywhere. Loose diamonds came tumbling out of the bags, sparkling like ice chips embedded in the rubble.
Santos growled and clapped his hands to his nose. I wrapped my hand around the handle and swung my entire body around, driving the box into his head as hard as I could. I managed to get the angle just right, and one of the metal corners stuck in the sweet spot at his temple, cracking his skull open like an egg. Blood sprayed everywhere, and this time, Santos was the one who whimpered. His shoulders slumped, his knees buckled, and he crumpled to the floor, his body sprawling at an awkward angle on top of the shattered stones.
I stood there, sucking down dusty air, and watched him bleed out on top of all those diamonds. Then I tossed the safety-deposit box aside, staggered over to the wall, and followed it over to the vault entrance.
The dust had finally started to dissipate, letting me see that Finn was gone, cut ropes hanging over the chair that he’d been tied down to. I squinted, but I didn’t see him or the others. Santos must have hit me harder than I
’d thought. I blinked and peered down the hallway again—
A blast of cold hit me from behind.
I screamed as the wave of magic slammed into my back, catapulting me right out of the vault. I hit Finn’s chair and bounced off, face-planting onto the marble floor of the hallway. In an instant, my body burned with cold, my back turning stiff and brittle, just like the crystals that were spreading across my skin, trying to freeze the rest of me. I immediately pushed back with my own magic, stopping the crystals in their tracks, but the damage had already been done, and most of my back was frozen solid. I felt like an ice cube that had somehow grown arms and legs, but I groaned, grabbed hold of the chair, and pulled myself back up onto my feet.
Deirdre stood in front of me.
I’d been so concerned with keeping Santos from choking me to death that I’d lost track of her. She too was covered with marble dust, and blood dripped down her face, neck, and arms from where the stone shrapnel had shredded her coveralls and cut into her skin. Deirdre was wounded, but she was by no means dead. Her pale eyes glittered in her face, and the cold blue-white flames of her Ice magic shot out of her clenched fists like frosty fireworks exploding over and over again.
“You meddlesome bitch!” she hissed.
Deirdre shoved her hands forward, shooting out a spray of long, jagged Ice daggers at me, any one of which would be enough to end me if it hit in just the right spot. I covered my head and face with my good arm and ducked back behind the chair, using it as a shield.
Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk.
The chair took the brunt of Deirdre’s assault, the wood splintering apart as the Ice daggers speared it, but one of the cold, sharp projectiles punched into my thigh. I screamed and staggered back, but my knee buckled, and I sprawled in a heap on the floor. Still, I kept going, clawing at the floor with my one good hand, trying to pull myself over the slick marble and away from her.
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