Jennifer Estep: By a Thread

I got to my feet, blinking away the last of the spots and sucking down another deep breath for good measure. But instead of palming another knife and charging after Dekes, I picked up the staff that had fallen to the floor and slowly started twirling it around and around. Vanessa started to step in front of me and hurl her ball of Fire at Dekes, but I held out one hand, stopping her.

“Save your magic,” I muttered out of the side of my mouth. “He has all three of our powers, plus your sister’s Air magic, which makes him stronger than us right now. We’ve got to get him to drain off some of that excess magic first before you throw another ball of elemental Fire at him. Wait for my signal and stay out of the way. Because if this doesn’t work, or if he manages to take me down, then you are going to want to run, and run fast.”

Maybe it was all that stolen elemental magic pumping through his veins, but Dekes recovered quickly. He tugged the knife out of his leg and held it up, studying the crimson drops sliding off the end. I wondered how long it had been since he’d seen his own blood and not what he’d taken from his victims. My hands tightened around the staff. I hope he enjoyed the sight, because the bastard was about to see a whole lot more of it.

Dekes’s upper lip curled with disgust underneath his mustache, and he threw away the knife and glared at me. “That’s going to cost you, Gin. Severely .”

“Bring it on, you psycho,” I snarled, still twirling the staff.

Surprise flashed in his eyes. Apparently, he’d been so used to being obeyed for so long that it never crossed his mind that someone would stand up to him—that I would stand up to him, especially after the way he’d mauled me almost to death.

“Surrender to me now, and your punishment won’t be quite as severe. Keep fighting, and I will make you wish that you had never been born,” Dekes warned.

“Ah, if only you’d known how many people have said something like that to me over the years,” I said, mocking him with his own words, then let him see just how cold, hard, and unyielding my eyes really were. “Like I told you the other night, I don’t just lie down and die, and I always come back to finish what I started.”

“Suit yourself, then,” Dekes said, shrugging. “After all, I don’t really need that pretty face of yours intact. Just your heart pumping out all that delicious blood.”

The vampire smiled and reached for his magic—my magic—again. Once more, a ball of Ice power filled the palm of his hand before he threw it at us. Behind me, Vanessa gasped in surprise, but I was already shoving us both out of the way. We slammed into one of the bookcases against the wall, knocking several of Dekes’s precious first editions off the shelves. Vanessa started to scramble up, but I put my hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down.

“Stay down,” I whispered to her. “This is my fight now. You’ve done your part.”

She bit her lip and nodded, her black eyes full of fear.

Still holding the staff, I got back up on my feet and turned to face the vampire again. “Is that all you’ve got, Randy? How disappointing. And look at that, you’ve ruined some of your most prized books.”

I pointed to the front wall of the library. Instead of skewering me, the elemental Ice had punched into the case, the shards turning all the books on five shelves into very expensive pincushions. Dekes’s eyes followed my finger, and his mouth fell open a little when he realized what he’d done.

“All those books in your collection—ruined. What a pity. I know how much you valued them.”

I cluck-cluck-clucked my tongue, and the vampire’s face contorted with rage. He reared back and threw another blast of Ice magic at me, but once again I ducked out of the way at the last minute.

“Is that all you’ve got?” I asked.

Another ball of elemental Ice came my way in reply.

Again and again I taunted Dekes, and again and again he threw his magic—my magic—at me. I retaliated by tossing a few of my knives at him, along with all the books I could pull off the shelves. Of course, Dekes used his stolen Air magic to fling my makeshift weapons away before they so much as ruffled his hair, or incinerated them outright with his Fire power, but that was just fine with me. I didn’t really expect to hit him, and I didn’t really need to anyway.

From her spot on the floor, Vanessa looked at me like I was crazy, antagonizing the vampire so. She didn’t realize that Dekes was doing exactly what I wanted him to, exactly what I needed him to do.

Finally, though, I ended up back in front of Vanessa. This time, I couldn’t stop her from getting to her feet and standing behind me as I turned to face Dekes for the last time.

By this point, the library looked like an Ice bomb had gone off inside. Long, jagged icicles stuck out of the walls, the books, and even the green leather couch in front of the fireplace. The temperature had dropped ten degrees, and just about every surface had an inch of elemental Ice on it now. I’d give Dekes credit. He could fling my magic around just as well as I could.

“What’s wrong, Gin?” the vampire snarled, spittle flying out of his lips. “Did you finally run out of room? No matter, I’m tired of playing this game with you. This ends right now.”

“You’re damn right it does,” I muttered.

Dekes reared back a final time, and once more, a ball of elemental Ice formed in between his hands. The vamp studied the silvery magic shimmering between his fingers, looking at it with undisguised glee and hunger, before raising his eyes and giving me a sneering smile. Then he threw both hands forward and shoved the raw, pulsing ball of power at us.

Vanessa gasped again. Behind me, I felt her take a step back, even though it was already too late for either of us to get out of the path of the magic roaring toward us. We wouldn’t escape it—not this time. Dekes had meant it when he’d said that he didn’t care what kind of shape I was in as long as I was still alive, because he’d put every last bit of power he had into this final blast. It wasn’t a kill shot, but it was meant to cripple in the most brutal, painful way possible.

The magic streaked through the library, seeming to gain more force and more power with every molecule of space it gobbled up between us, just like Vanessa’s elemental Fire had earlier in the hallway. At the very last second, I stopped twirling the silverstone staff that I’d been holding on to this whole time and held it out in front of me like a spear.

A moment later, the Ice magic hit the end of the staff—and stopped cold.

No, stopped wasn’t the right word. The staff didn’t really stop the Ice magic from hitting me and Vanessa—the silverstone that it was made out of did.

Elementals had rings, necklaces, watches, and more made out of the magical metal to hold bits and pieces of their power, but the shapes didn’t matter at all—it was the metal itself that made the difference. That’s what I’d realized when I saw my silverstone knives on the fireplace mantel soaking up Dekes’s earlier ball of Ice magic—that the staff in my hands could do the exact same thing, only on a bigger scale.

All I had to do in the meantime was level the playing field between me and the vampire by getting him to waste as much of his magic—my magic—as possible. That’s why I’d been flinging myself across the library and ducking Ice blasts for the better part of three minutes now. I’d had to get Dekes to fritter away most of his stolen magic so that the staff could soak up the rest.

Randall Dekes had spent three hundred and some years stealing blood and magic from elementals. To him, there was an endless supply of both, and when he used up one elemental, he simply tossed her aside like trash and found another to take her place. But even the strongest elementals could completely exhaust their magic in a fight, something that I’d learned when I’d killed Mab, something I’d realized again tonight when I had to struggle to make two simple Ice picks.