Deadly Sting (11 page)

A bit of cold silver light leaked out from underneath my palm; it only took a second for small crystals to spread out from underneath my palm, run up to the top of the marble wall, and snake down the hallway toward the camera. I alternated looking at the camera and at the giant, but he wasn’t an elemental, so he didn’t sense me using my magic.

I waited until the camera was turned away from the giant before I pushed even more of my power outward. A second later, an inch of elemental Ice encased the camera, freezing it in its tracks, so to speak.

As soon as the camera was Iced over, I grabbed my knife and headed for the giant. I let the cold, black rage rise in me once more, even as I crept up behind him, my bare feet as soft and quiet as silk skimming across the marble floor, since I was still carrying my heels in my other hand. The giant had a gun in a holster on his leather belt, along with his own fists and whatever other weapons he might have.

It really wasn’t fair—to him.

“Where is the stupid thing?” he muttered, still digging in his pockets.

He was so distracted that he didn’t hear the faint rustle of my skirt or see my shadow sliding up the wall next to him like a murky movie monster about to gobble him up. I stopped about five feet behind him. Then I stood there and waited—just waited for the right moment.

“Finally! There it is—”

I dropped my shoes on the floor.

The giant whirled around at the sharp
crack-crack-crack-crack
of the heels hitting the marble, a plastic key card clutched in his long fingers. “What the—”

I stepped up and buried my knife in his throat before he could utter another word.

As I ripped the weapon out of his windpipe, blood gushed through the air, spraying onto the gray floor and walls and soaking into my scarlet dress. The giant gurgled and clawed at the fatal wound, frantically pressing the plastic card against his neck as if the small rectangle could keep all the important fluid inside his body. Card or not, there wasn’t enough pressure in the world for that.

His hand slipped off his bloody neck, and the card dropped from his fingers and clattered onto the floor. The giant staggered back and hit the wall. His legs buckled, and he slowly slid down the marble until he came to rest on the floor, like a puppet whose strings had been severed. The sightless glaze of death already coated his dark eyes.

I paused, looking left and right, but I didn’t see anyone, and no heavy footsteps thumped in this direction. I padded over to the door and pressed my ear against it, but I didn’t hear any movement on the other side. The metal was too thick for that. Good. That meant that whoever was inside the security center probably hadn’t heard us either.

Too bad I had no idea how many more of Clementine’s men might be inside. One, two, a dozen. I had no way of knowing, but it was a chance I had to take. I needed to make sure Owen was okay, and I needed to see exactly what Clementine was making him do that was so important. Both of those things would help me plan my next move.

I dropped to a knee beside the dead giant and started patting him down—another calculated risk, but I was hoping that it would be at least a couple of minutes before someone decided to investigate why the frozen camera wasn’t working. There were at least fifty giants in the museum, and I needed some more weapons to kill them with.

But there wasn’t much to find. He didn’t have any ID on him, and the only thing of real value or interest was the leather utility belt he wore. In addition to the gun I’d noticed earlier, the belt also contained an extra clip of ammo, a metal baton, a small bottle of pepper spray, and, most important, a walkie-talkie. The device was turned on, but currently no squawks or cracks of static echoed from the black plastic.

I unbuckled the belt and tugged it out from underneath the giant’s body. I stood and cinched it around my waist, looping it as tight as it would go. Even then, it sagged and rode low on my hips. Good enough.

Then I did something that would have made Finn wince with agony and shriek with despair: I chopped up my dress.

Using my bloody knife, I sliced off the bottom half of the skirt, so that the fabric ended just above my knees. I also made several more slits in the skirt, making it easier for me to reach through them and get to the second knife I had strapped to my thigh. Finn would no doubt bitch and moan when he saw what a hack job I’d done on the beautiful gown, but the long skirt just wasn’t practical for fighting. Besides, the giant’s blood had already ruined it, and I imagined I’d get the garment quite a bit more messy before the night was through. More like before the next two minutes were up.

I also used my knife to cut the extra fabric into long strips, threading a couple of them through the straps on my heels and tying them to the left side of the utility belt. I couldn’t risk wearing the shoes, but I didn’t want to wander around barefoot all night either. I stuffed the rest of the fabric strips into a pouch on the belt.

As a final measure, I checked the giant’s gun, making sure the safety was off and that there was a round in the chamber. I also practiced drawing it out of the holster a few times until I could do it quickly and smoothly. I didn’t much care for guns, but I’d use them if the situation called for it—and it certainly did tonight.

When I was ready, I leaned over and grabbed the key card from where it had landed next to the giant’s body, using the edge of my shortened skirt to wipe the blood off the plastic. Then I turned toward the door and drew in a breath.

I wasn’t sure what I would find behind the metal, but I was as ready as I could be to face it—and to kill whatever danger might be coming my way.

11

I slid the card through the reader. A light on the top flashed a bright green, and the door
snic
k
ed open. I stuffed the card into a pouch on the utility belt and tightened my grip on my knife.

I rushed through the opening, my knife up and ready to slice into whoever was standing inside. But instead of cutting down another giant or two, I found myself in an empty hallway.

Actually, it was more like an antechamber, a wide stub of a room. A wooden coat rack stood in the corner, its empty arms making it look like a scalped tree. A series of metal lockers lined the left wall, fronted by a long metal bench.

My gaze snapped to the second, interior door ahead of me, and I waited, just waited, for someone to open it.

But no one did.

No one came to investigate. No one poked a head out of the interior room to ask a question of a fellow robber. No one ambled over to the snack machine that hummed against the right wall, its fluorescent bulbs flickering like a bug zapper.

Well, if they weren’t going to come out to me, I had no problems going in to them.

Still moving as quietly as possible, I pulled the exterior door shut behind me and headed for the one at the far end of the chamber. This door was made of wood instead of metal, and I could hear music playing, some twangy country song about a woman getting revenge on a man who done her wrong. Even worse, whoever was on the other side was singing along in a very loud, very screechy, very off-key voice. I winced. Somebody needed some singing lessons. A chorus of dogs howling and cats hissing would have sounded better. But the caterwauling told me that there was only one person inside. No one else would have put up with the country-western karaoke act.

I shut the awful screeching out of my mind, reached forward, and tried the knob. It turned easily, and I opened the door just a crack. The actual security center wasn’t much bigger than the antechamber, and a series of monitors took up the back wall, along with several keyboards, joysticks, and a control panel, all arranged on a long table. Another table stood at a right angle to the first one. It too was covered with monitors, although all of those screens were fuzzy with snow.

No wonder, since they were peppered with bullet holes. I eyed the monitors and the blue and white sparks flickering inside them. Judging from the blood spatters on the broken glass, someone had been shot in front of the monitors. Maybe even more than one person, given the amount of blood.

A couple of chairs squatted in front of the screens that were still working, but only one was occupied. The offending singer was another giant, one who was tossing her long black hair from side to side as she rocked back and forth in her chair to the music like she was some kind of country diva. An iPod blared on the table. I eyed the device. That was going to be the second thing in here that I killed.

I held my position, waiting to see if the giant would sense me watching her, but she was too engrossed in her song, so my gaze moved past her to the bank of monitors. A few of the screens were dark, but almost all of the cameras that were on were focused on the rotunda, showing the hostages from several different angles. One screen on the top row of monitors was fuzzy, as though there was a thick film covering the lens. That must be the camera in the hallway that I’d Iced over. I also spotted Clementine and Owen on one of the monitors in the far bottom left corner, although I couldn’t tell what they were doing from this distance.

The song on the iPod finally came to an end, and, mercifully, so did the giant’s singing. She leaned forward and grabbed the device, as though she was going to cue up another song. While she was distracted, I tucked my knife back into its slot and grabbed the gun out of the holster on my belt. I used the nozzle of the gun to push the door open slowly the rest of the way.
Three in the head, dead, dead, dead,
just like Dixon had said—

The door creaked.

The giant’s eyes immediately flicked to one of the blank monitors, and I knew she could see my reflection there. I raised the gun, but it was already too late.

More quickly than I would have imagined, she whirled around and chucked her iPod at me. I ducked the sailing bit of plastic, stepped forward, and raised the gun again, but the giant kicked out with her foot, causing me to jump to the side. My hip slammed into the corner of the second table off to the right, causing a hiss of pain to escape my lips. The table rocked back and forth, causing more sparks to shoot out from the broken monitors.

Before I could raise the gun a third time, the giant barreled out of her chair and chopped her hand down, smacking the weapon out of my fingers. She charged at me again, spreading her arms out wide and trying to catch me in a bear hug and squeeze the life out of me. She probably expected me to retreat, but instead I stepped forward and leaped up, head-butting her in the chin. She growled and staggered back, but she didn’t quit. Once more, she surged at me.

This time, I let her come.

Just before the giant put her hands on me, I sidestepped her and hooked my right foot around hers, making her stumble. Grabbing her utility belt, I played off of her own momentum and shoved her into the still-sparking monitors. Her head slammed through one of the glass screens, and a shower of white and blue sparks erupted. Hisses, cracks, and pops sounded, and the giant screamed as her body started convulsing. I took a few steps back, making sure that I was clear of the electricity surge. She screamed a second time, the sound as high, sharp, and whiny as a power saw. I winced again, as if that would somehow protect my eardrums. At this point, I’d kill her just to get her to stop making that awful noise.

But I didn’t have to. After a few moments, the giant quit screaming, her body quit convulsing, and she slumped down onto the table, her head still stuck inside the monitor. The sizzle and stench of charred flesh told me that she was dead.

“Hurrah for the sound of silence,” I murmured.

With the giant dead, I grabbed the gun from where it had fallen on the floor and slid it back into its holster on my belt. I also took a moment to pull out one of my knives and set it down on the table within easy reach, just in case one of her pals came into the security center before I was ready to leave.

Careful to keep away from the giant, I turned my attention to the bank of monitors on the back wall, the ones that hadn’t been shot up and were still working. I did a quick scan of the cameras showing the scene in the rotunda, but things were the same as before. Hostages sitting on the floor, giants surrounding them, Opal transferring the jewelry from the garbage bags to two more silverstone briefcases.

Once again, I wondered what Clementine thought was so important about the jewelry when she had so much art to loot, but I didn’t have time to puzzle it out.

I scanned the monitors until I found an angle that showed my friends. Eva, Finn, and Roslyn were still clustered around Phillip. His eyes were open, and he was gazing up at Eva. He didn’t look to be any worse, but I couldn’t really tell without seeing him in person. One thing was for sure, he wasn’t going to get any better just lying there.

That mental clock in my head started ticking a little louder and a whole lot faster. Because every minute, every second, that passed was one that might mean the difference between Phillip living or dying. As the Spider, I’d done jobs on specific timetables, but a friend’s life hung in the balance tonight. There was nothing I could do about the time that had already passed, but I could control how I took down Clementine and her crew—the sooner, the better.

So I turned my attention to the last monitor, the one in the bottom left corner that showed Clementine and Owen. I squinted at the screen. The two of them seemed to be standing in front of a very large door, with three of her men waiting behind them. The angle sucked, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying, so I started pushing buttons, sliding controls, and toggling the joysticks back and forth. It took me a few seconds, but I was finally able to zoom in on the two of them. I hit another button, and the sound of the giant’s country drawl flooded the security center.

“Isn’t it a beauty?” Clementine said. “Why, it’s almost a work of art itself.”

She paced back and forth, walking in and out of the view of the camera. For the first time, I noticed a lock on the door, along with a large round wheel, and I realized exactly where Clementine had taken Owen: the museum’s vault.

“The vault walls are marble, just like the rest of the museum, but the door itself is reinforced silverstone, more than six inches thick,” Clementine said. “That’s the tricky part, and that’s where you come in, Mr. Grayson.”

Reinforced silverstone? Well, the Briartop directors had certainly gone all out. Silverstone was one of the strongest metals around, with an insanely high melting point. It wasn’t something you could just blast through with a couple of sticks of dynamite or a brick of C-4. No, you needed real power to get through any kind of door with silverstone in it—elemental power. Even then, you’d need to find someone with a whole lot of juice, since the metal could absorb all forms of magic. Or you could do what Clementine had done and find someone with an elemental talent for metal to help you.

Someone like Owen.

“Really?” he asked. “Why is that?”

She looked at him and smiled. “Because you’re going to open it for me.”

* * *

For a moment, everything was silent, except for the soft hum of the camera feed and the faint, tinny flicker of the black-and-white monitor in front of me. On the screen, Owen stared at Clementine a moment, then threw back his head and laughed.

“You think I can crack that vault?” He let out another series of chuckles. “Lady, you are out of your mind.”

Instead of being insulted, her smile widened. “Not at all.”

Owen realized that she was serious, and his laughter abruptly cut off, the last notes dying on his lips. He looked at the vault door again, really studying it.

“What’s in there that you want so badly?”

“Funny you should ask. You see, art isn’t the only thing that Mab Monroe left behind,” Clementine said. “In addition to all those baubles on display in the rotunda, the Fire elemental also had a vast personal fortune. But the most interesting thing is that she didn’t keep it stashed away in some bank or even just lying around as cash. No, it seems that Ms. Monroe preferred a more tangible, old-fashioned currency: gold.”

Owen frowned, his black eyebrows drawing together in thought. “You’re telling me that Mab Monroe kept her personal fortune all in gold, and all of it . . . here?”

“Almost like a dragon out of some fairy tale, if you think about it,” Clementine said. “Except, of course, that Mab was much more dangerous than any old dragon out of any old story. But now that she’s gone, well, we don’t have to worry about someone breathing elemental Fire on us, now, do we?”

She slapped a hand to her side and guffawed. It was good that she amused herself, because I didn’t find one thing about this funny, and neither did Owen, judging from his grim, worried expression.

When she was done congratulating herself on being so clever, Clementine started pacing again. “But to answer your questions, yes. I have it on good authority that a big chunk of Mab’s gold is stashed right here in this very vault. Apparently, Mab had a thing about not trusting banks, and she thought it would be less obvious storing her gold here rather than at one of the downtown banks. Plus, I believe the museum director was into her for a substantial gambling debt, so she took it out in trade for this.”

Owen shook his head. “Well, that’s a nice story, but it still doesn’t explain how you think I can help you get into the vault.”

“I’ve done my research, Mr. Grayson. I’ve learned quite a bit about silverstone these last few months. How tough it is, how durable, and how you need elemental magic to get around or even through it. And I think that you’re just the man for the job.”

“Why?” Owen shot back at her. “Just because I have an elemental talent for metal?”

Clementine waved a hand at him, dismissing his concerns. “Oh, I know all about your power, Mr. Grayson, especially the sculptures and weapons you make in your spare time. In fact, I bought one of your knives at a charity auction just last month. Exquisite craftsmanship.”