Deadly Sting

by Jennifer Estep

  My search complete, I headed over to the exterior door. I listened a moment, but I couldn’t hear any more through it than I had before, so I cracked it open and gazed out into the hallway.

  The dead giant lay in the same position as before, although more blood had pooled under and around his body. Sharp, shocked whispers reverberated through the gray marble, but I shut those sounds out of my mind and listened for any other notes of warning, danger, or unease that might be rippling through the stone. But there was nothing. Now that Clementine and her crew had taken control of the museum, the stones had settled down a bit, their tension lessened—at least, until I killed someone else within the marble walls.

  I considered moving the giant’s body inside the antechamber but discarded the idea. He was far too heavy for me to carry. Sure, I could drag him, but it would take some effort on my part, and I needed my energy for more important things. I couldn’t have cleaned up all that blood, anyway, not without Sophia and her Air elemental magic to help me. Sooner or later, one of Clementine’s men was sure to stumble across the dead giant, but I just had to hope that luck, that capricious bitch, would let it be later. I doubted my chances on that, but there was nothing else I could do.

  I shut the security-center door, stepped over the giant’s body, and went on my merry, murderous way.

  * * *

  I moved through the museum halls as quickly and quietly as possible. Since the evening’s festivities had been centered in the rotunda area, most of the other lights had been turned down low, casting many of the hallways in darkness. Fine by me. The lack of light gave me more shadows to skulk through.

  Three times I passed rooms that Clementine’s men were busy looting, the exhibit halls I’d heard her mention before on her walkie-talkie. The giants had switched the lights on in those areas, the better with which to see the art they were stealing. I repeatedly thought about storming inside and taking out the giants, but there were six men in each room, which was about four too many for me to kill with anything resembling quiet. Besides, I needed to get out of the museum before the bodies were discovered, so I tiptoed across the open doorways when the robbers’ backs were turned and hurried on.

  Finally, I reached a door that led outside. It was locked, but my stolen key card changed that. In the hushed quiet of the museum, the metallic snick the door made seemed to reverberate from one hallway to the next, like a locator beacon pinging and giving away my position. The giants were probably too busy rolling up paintings and hefting sculptures around to notice the noise, but I still needed to move. So, knife in hand, I slipped outside and pulled the door shut behind me, wincing once more at the unwanted sound it made.

  A series of rhododendron bushes had been planted on either side of the entrance, and I wormed my way in between them and the marble wall of the museum, ignoring the tickles and faint scratches of leaves and stems along my bare arms and the soft, loose soil working its way between my toes. Crouching down, I stared out into the night.

  I was on the left side of the museum, facing west toward the river. A series of lush gardens rolled across the landscape in front of me. A gray stone path zoomed from the door straight to the gardens before splitting into three separate branches that plunged even deeper into the dark foliage, like a pitchfork stabbing into the shadows. Whitewashed benches and gazebos stood here and there among the manicured beds of roses and pansies, while weeping willows towered over them all, their tendrils kissing the soft petals below. Magnolia and mimosa trees had also been planted in the gardens, right next to sunflowers that drooped under the heavy weight of their own seed-laden heads. Old-fashioned iron streetlights placed along the paths provided a soft golden glow, filtered by the wash of bugs dancing around the globes. Once again, the aroma of honeysuckle saturated the air, although now the scent seemed sickly sweet, as though it were the funeral-home stench of perfumed, floral death.

  I didn’t see or hear anyone, but I stayed low, hugged the marble wall, and followed the path of the rhododendrons all the way around to the front corner of the building. It was just as quiet here as it had been in the back, and only the annoying hum of the mosquitoes broke the silence. I started to ease across one of the side lawns so I could slip into the parking lot when a small beep sounded, and a door hissed open to my left. I hunkered back down into the bushes.

  Two giants carrying a couple of cardboard boxes each stepped out into the night air, along with Dixon, who was speaking into his walkie-talkie. I’d turned the volume down on the one I’d swiped from the first giant I’d killed so it wouldn’t crackle and give me away at the wrong time, but Dixon wasn’t even trying to be quiet, so I was able to hear his words loud and clear.

  “We’re outside. I’m going with Leroy and Keith to load up one of the trucks, then checking on Hannah and Anton down by the bridge.”

  “Good.” Clementine’s voice sounded through his walkie-talkie. “Tell Hannah and Anton to make sure the job is done right. I don’t want any mistakes. If the bridge goes too soon, we’re screwed.”

  The bridge? What were they doing at the bridge?

  “Understood.” Dixon clipped the walkie-talkie back onto his belt, then gestured at the giants. “Well, you heard her. Let’s get going.”

  Dixon led the two giants toward the museum’s main entrance. I stayed behind the bushes and followed them. Four large moving trucks were now parked in front of the building. The back of one truck was open, revealing long, skinny tubes and odd shapes covered with thick sheets of bubble wrap—all the art the giants had grabbed so far.

  “All right, let’s get what’s in these boxes loaded up,” Dixon said.

  The other two giants climbed up into the back of the truck and started unloading the contents of the boxes they’d been carrying, carefully stacking up more tubes and rearranging the padded sculptures so they could have as much room as possible inside for their stolen loot.

  Dixon stayed on the ground and watched the other men work. While they were distracted, he casually bent down as though he was going to tie his boot. Instead, he slipped a small cell phone out of his pants pocket and hit a button on it. A faint beep sounded. Dixon nodded to himself and slid the phone into his pocket again before smoothly getting back to his feet.

  My eyes narrowed. What was Dixon up to? And why didn’t he want his comrades to know about it?

  The giants finished unloading their latest haul and hopped out of the back of the truck with their now-empty boxes. Dixon waved them toward the museum.

  “You two go back inside and get the next load,” he said. “I’m going down to the bridge to check on the others.”

  The giants nodded, walked up the main steps, and disappeared into the museum. Dixon set off in the other direction, heading away from the truck and the museum. Curious, I crept after him.

  Dixon followed the main road down the sloping hill to the covered bridge. Luckily, the gardens ran alongside the pavement, so I was able to slide from tree to tree and bush to bush and move parallel to him. My bare feet didn’t make a sound on the soft, dew-covered grass, but Dixon didn’t even think to look around and see if someone might be following him. He thought everyone was secure inside the museum.

  He’d realize how wrong he was soon enough—when I killed him.

  Finally, Dixon reached the bridge. I stopped in the gardens and hunkered down behind a holly bush, about twenty feet from him. Two of the old-fashioned iron streetlights were planted in the pavement on either side of the bridge, although their golden glow did little to dissipate the shadows spilling out from the mouth of the structure.

  Two other giants—a man and a woman—were crouched right inside the bridge entrance. The woman was shining a flashlight at the wooden boards while the man rummaged through a duffel bag on the ground next to him. I thought he might have another welder’s torch stuffed inside, like the men in the vault had, but instead, the giant drew out a crowbar and a roll of duct tape.

  Along with a bomb.

  I squinted and leaned for
ward, wondering if I was imagining things, but the giant held the device up in the flashlight’s beam, and I got an even better look at it. A flowery blossom of colored wires and a cell phone taped and plugged into a small, foil-wrapped brick. Yep, that was a bomb all right. My eyebrows shot up in my face. What the hell were they going to do with that?

  “How’s it going, Anton?” Dixon asked.

  “Good,” the male giant replied. “We’re just getting ready to put everything into place.”

  Anton set the bomb and the duct tape aside, picked up the crowbar, and used it to pry up one of the bridge boards. The old, weathered wood groaned in protest, but it was no match for his strength. When the board was free, Anton taped the bomb to the underside of the wood before slowly, carefully fitting the board back into its original position.

  “You’re up, Hannah,” Dixon said, looking at the female giant, the one with the flashlight.

  Hannah got down on her knees and held out her hand. A moment later, a bit of elemental Fire sparked to life on her index finger, and her eyes began to glow a dull orange from her power, like two matches burning in her face. Her magic pricked at my skin like tiny, invisible needles, making me grind my teeth together. Hannah didn’t have nearly as much juice as Mab had. In fact, she was quite weak in her magic, but she still had enough power to lean down and trace something into the top of the board: a rune.

  In addition to using them as their personal, familial, and business symbols, elementals could also imbue runes with magic and get them to perform specific functions. No doubt Hannah was scorching some sort of Fire symbol into the wood.

  Hannah finished creating the symbol and leaned back on her heels. She let go of her power, and the elemental Fire was snuffed out on her fingers, causing a bit of smoke to waft up into the night sky. The uncomfortable feel of her magic vanished a moment later.

  “Good job,” Dixon said, clapping her on the shoulder. “Your rune and that explosive will be more than enough to blow the bridge.”

  So that’s what they were planning, to toast the bridge. The when was easy enough to figure out: after they’d sacked up all of the art and were on the mainland once more. But why destroy the bridge at all? All of the hostages would already be dead, so it wasn’t like there would be anyone left to follow them or sound an alarm . . . unless . . . unless the giants didn’t plan to kill the hostages after all.

  I tapped my fingers against the hilt of my knife as I tried to figure things out.

  Obliterating the bridge was one way of trapping all of the hostages on the island and avoiding chase. But why even leave the hostages alive in the first place? It wasn’t like Clementine had any qualms about killing people. So why let anyone live who could identify or come after her after the fact? It didn’t make sense that she would, especially if she wanted her giants to take over the underworld from all the crime bosses being held in the rotunda.

  And it wouldn’t solve the problem of the cops that would be hot on her trail just as soon as someone sounded the alarm. By the time the giants got done in the museum, they’d have four big, heavy trucks full of art—too much for a quick getaway, especially given the twisting, curving two-lane road that led from the museum back down into the city. Clementine had to have realized that. So what else did she have up her sleeve? How was she planning to evade the po-po? That I didn’t know worried me.

  “Pack it up and get back to the museum,” Dixon said. “We’ve still got more rooms to go through.”

  Hannah grinned. “Sure thing. We wouldn’t want all that art to just hang there, now, would we?”

  All three giants laughed. Bad jokes seemed to be the calling card of this crew.

  Dixon left the bridge and headed back up the hill, leaving the other two giants behind to collect the gear they’d stowed a few feet away from the bridge entrance. Dixon started whistling, and the cheerful sound made the black, murderous rage beat in my heart once more. I would have liked nothing more than to follow the bastard and knife him in the back for what he’d done to Jillian, but he wasn’t important right now—the bomb was.

  Hannah turned off her flashlight and put it down on the pavement while Anton shoved his crowbar back into his duffel bag. Dixon was already out of sight—and, more important, earshot, since I couldn’t hear him whistling anymore.

  Knife in hand, I straightened up and headed toward the edge of the garden. Unfortunately, the foliage stopped short of the bridge, leaving about ten feet of dead space and plenty of chance for the giants to see my approach.

  I thought about using my Stone magic to harden my skin in case they were able to get to their guns quicker than I was able to get to them. But in the end, I decided not to. I wanted to conserve my magic as much as possible, since I didn’t know how many more giants I might have to fight before the night was through.

  So I grabbed my second knife from its holster, drew in a breath, and stepped forward—

  A twig cracked under my bare foot.

  It wasn’t a loud sound, but it seemed to boom as big as a clap of thunder in the hushed night air. I cursed my own sloppiness and bad luck. First the creaky door, now this. I just couldn’t catch a break tonight—or at least be quiet enough to sneak up on someone.

  For a moment, the two giants froze, staring at each other. Then Anton fumbled for his gun while Hannah turned toward where I was, more elemental Fire flaring to life in the palm of her hand.

  I stepped up and threw my first knife at Hannah, but my aim was off, and the knife only sank into her shoulder. Still, it was enough to break her hold on her magic, and the Fire was snuffed out in her hand. She screamed, clutched at the blade in her body, and staggered back against the wooden railing that ran along the outside of the bridge.

  Even as she fell back, I raced forward, this time focusing my attention on Anton. He managed to yank the gun from the holster on his belt and take aim at me. I threw myself forward, rolling, rolling, rolling, the pavement digging into my sides, stomach, and shoulders.

  Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

  Anton’s gun had a silencer, just like Dixon’s, so the bullets didn’t make too much noise as they flew through the air over my head and raced away into the darkness. Well, that was one small favor, although Hannah’s scream had already been far too loud for my liking. But there was nothing to do now but finish my enemies and hope that no one would hear the commotion.

  I came to a stop right in front of Anton, and I surged up onto my knees and sliced my knife across his thigh. The wound wasn’t deep enough to sever his femoral artery like I’d wanted, but it was still a serious cut, and blood spattered across my neck, chest, and hand.

  Anton screamed and went down on his ass. He kicked his legs out and crab-walked backward across the pavement, scurrying away from me and heading toward the bridge opening—and the bomb.

  I didn’t know if he was deliberately moving toward the explosive or just trying to get away from me no matter what, but I could not let him touch that Fire rune. Depending on how it was rigged, the rune could ignite at the slightest touch and trigger the bomb, which could blow us all sky-high.

  A gleam of metal caught my eye, and I saw his crowbar sticking out of the top of his duffel bag. Scrambling to my feet, I grabbed the weapon and lashed out with it.

  I cracked the crowbar against the giant’s knee, stopping his backward progress. He moaned and started to curl into a ball to protect himself, but it was too late. I raised the crowbar and brought it down again, this time on his head. The curved end stuck in the giant’s skull, and when I ripped it out, blood spurted up like a geyser, coating the pavement, and Anton’s eyes took on a glassy sheen. He’d be dead in another minute, two tops—

  The crackle of magic filled the air, and I ducked to one side. A ball of elemental Fire streaked by my head and exploded against a nearby maple, sending smoke and sparks whooshing up into the sky. I whirled around to find Hannah standing behind me, the knife that should have been in her shoulder lying on the pavement at her feet.

  “
I’m going to burn you alive!” she hissed, another ball of elemental Fire flickering to life in her hand.

  “Oh, I doubt that,” I drawled, twirling the crowbar in my hand.

  She reared back her hand to throw her magic at me, but I didn’t give her the chance. I closed the gap between us, raised the crowbar high, and cracked her across the skull with it, just like her partner. Hannah staggered back, a dazed look on her face, but I went after her again and again, hitting her across the skull, neck, and chest as hard as I could, driving her back toward the wooden railing that ringed the edge of the island.

  When I got close enough, I dropped the crowbar and buried a knife in her heart.

  She sucked in a breath to scream, but I ripped the blade free, pivoted, and lashed out with my left foot, kicking her in the gut. Hannah grunted and stumbled back, the weight of her body causing the weathered wood railing to creak and groan. I pivoted once more, kicking her again. This time, the railing didn’t hold, making the same sharp, snapping sound that the twig had made earlier under my foot. Hannah’s arms windmilled, and she fell backward into the darkness. A few seconds later, I heard the splash of her body hitting the river far, far below.

  I stood there in the middle of the road, bathed in the golden glow of one of the garden lights, my weapon clenched in my hand. I looked and listened, but the only sounds were my soft, quick breaths and the faint plop-plop-plop of blood dripping off the end of my knife. No shouts of alarm rattled through the air, no footsteps smacked in my direction, no bullets came my way. No one had heard the fight, although the pieces of pavement underfoot had already started to mutter about their sudden, violent deaths.

  I grabbed my fallen knife, put both of my weapons back into their holsters, then stooped down and searched Anton. He didn’t have anything particularly noteworthy, although I did trade my gun for his silenced one and reloaded the weapon with the spare ammo I found in his duffel bag. I also picked the crowbar back up and grabbed Hannah’s flashlight. Once that was done, I got to my feet and stared at the bridge. Thinking.