Too damn bad.

After a few more seconds of silent contemplation, Benson threw back his head and laughed, as if my challenge was some great joke. His dark, evil chuckles rang out through the street, and mutters of unease rippled through the crowd. They knew what Benson was capable of, and they didn’t want any part of it. Couldn’t blame them for that.

But I was ready to end this—and him.

“Ah, come on, Beau,” I said, when his laughter finally died down. “I’m here, you’re here. We’ve even got a crowd to see our heavyweight title bout. Don’t tell me that you’re going to be too chicken-shit to take me up on my offer.”

Instead of waiting for him to laugh at me again, I turned to the people behind me. More of them had gathered while I’d been jawing with Benson, with others walking this way and more cars cruising in this direction.

I threw my hands out wide. “C’mon,” I called out. “Don’t y’all want to see a show?”

Whistles, claps, and screams of approval roared back to me. I faced Benson again, my grin even wider and more predatory than before.

“You wouldn’t want to rob all these folks of a little blood sport, now, would you?” I said. “It would be a shame if they and I walked all the way down here for nothing. Then again, it would prove you to be the coward that you really are.”

“I am not a coward,” he snarled. “I am a scientist.”

I clucked my tongue at him. “Could have fooled me. Here I am, offering you the biggest, baddest prize in all of Ashland. Me, the assassin, the Spider. So why are you hesitating, Beau? Unless you think that you’re not up to the task of taking me on.”

Everyone sucked in a collective breath at me so openly, so boldly, identifying myself as the Spider.

Silence.

And then the crowd roared.

It was so loud for a moment that I couldn’t hear anything, not even Finn, Owen, and the others murmuring to one another through my earpiece. But the explosion of emotion quickly died down to a series of taunting jeers and harsh, accusing shouts rising up from the crowd, egging me on. Some of Benson’s own guards started looking at him sideways, wondering why their boss wasn’t salivating at the idea of killing me. But Benson was too busy staring at the people behind me to pay attention to his own men. His eyes glowed a faint blue as he reached for his vampiric Air magic and used it to feel all the emotions surging off the crowd—the same mix of excitement, anticipation, and derision that I could hear in their catcalls, shouts, and jeers.

Benson frowned, realizing the same thing I did: that the people on the street, the ones he’d lorded over for so long, were very close to openly sneering at him. And that if he didn’t do something soon, the crowd would turn against him completely, thinking that he was weak. And so would his men.

“Come on, Beau,” I called out, mocking him one final time. “I’m here, and I’m ready to go. So why don’t you man up and face me? Winner take all.”

Benson stared at me, his face calm, but more and more of that anger sizzled in his eyes, even hotter than the blue burn of his magic. He didn’t like being so openly and directly challenged, especially not on his home turf.

“Oh, very well,” he huffed, as if I were a mere fly that was annoying him. “If you insist.”

“Oh, but I do.”

Benson snapped his fingers.

Nothing happened.

He snapped them again.

And still, nothing happened.

After a few seconds, when he realized that no one was obeying his command, probably to bring him a white lab coat, Benson turned his head and glared at his guards. They swallowed, but none of them scurried forward.

Benson gave them all another cold look, then started unbuttoning his shirt sleeves. He rolled up the fabric, revealing his pale, skinny forearms. His movements were slow, deliberate, and meant to intimidate me. Didn’t work. Never did.

I looked at Bria and rolled my eyes. She grinned back at me.

Finally, when he deemed himself appropriately ready for the fight, Benson glanced over his shoulder at his men clustered behind him. “If anyone interferes before I kill her, shoot them.”

Concerned whispers shot through the crowd at the thought of a firefight, but the large majority of people crept even closer, wanting to have the best view possible.

Finally, though, Benson stepped forward so that he was standing about ten feet away from me, directly on the other side of the center lines. He let out a loud, put-upon sigh and started swinging his arms back and forth, loosening up for the fight. He flexed his fingers, rolled his shoulders, and even cracked his neck a couple of times, the dry snap-snap-snaps almost as loud as gunshots in the eerie, absolute silence that had descended over the street.

I arched an eyebrow, more than a little bored by his show, but I kept my gaze on him the whole time. Because I wouldn’t put it past Benson to try to lull me to sleep with his exaggerated stretching routine.

As if he could hear my thoughts, Benson smiled, an evil light flaring in his eyes, then stepped forward and launched himself through the air at me.

•

I’d been expecting some sort of sneak attack, and I immediately reached for my Stone magic and used it to harden my body.

Still, for a split second, everything slowed down but was somehow magnified at the same time, almost as if I had the enhanced senses that so many vampires did.

The pearl-white gleam of Benson’s fangs in his mouth. The smell of car exhaust mixed with that metallic tang of autumn and the vamp’s own lemony scent. The rush of air flowing over my face as he leaped toward me. His looming shadow blotting out the sun and sky overhead.

It was that last small sensation, that cold touch of darkness on my face, that snapped me back to the here and now. I spun around, whirling out of the way of Benson’s first attack.

I didn’t know how many other folks’ blood and emotions Benson had been snacking on besides Silvio’s, but they gave him enough strength to leap the ten feet that separated us like he was stepping over a crack in the sidewalk. And it made him fast too, so fast that he was able to pivot back in my direction and slam his open palm into the center of my chest like he was some sort of kung-fu master.

The force of the blow knocked me back ten feet and sent me careening down the street like a ball of tumbleweed. I rolled to a stop facedown on the pavement, trying to shake off the jarring impact. Benson wasn’t playing around, and he would have caved in my ribcage with that one crushing blow if I hadn’t been using my Stone magic to protect myself. My power also saved me from splitting my skull wide open on the asphalt, but I still felt the hard smack of the landing, and it took me a few seconds to stop my eyes from spinning around in their sockets.

“Dude, is she down already?”

“Stay back!”

“Watch out!”

The crowd’s excited chatters were all the warning I had, and I heaved my body to the side just in time to avoid his feet landing where my head had been a moment ago. I shook off the rest of my daze and got back into the fight.

Before Benson could leap at me a third time, I scrambled up onto my hands and knees and lashed out with my foot, kicking him in the side of his left knee. Benson staggered forward, and to my surprise, some enthusiastic cheers rose up from the crowd.

“That’s it!”

“Get that bastard!”

“Kill him!”

Apparently, home-court advantage wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and Benson wasn’t nearly as beloved in his little kingdom as he thought he was. I grinned. I was starting to like these people cheering me on.

I palmed a knife and threw myself at Benson, hoping to slam the weapon into his back and end him, but he used his enhanced speed to snap back up onto his feet and slide out of range of my weapon. I was too committed to the blow to stop, so I staggered past him, although I managed to right myself and regain my balance. Knife in hand, I whipped around. Benson did the same, and we faced each other in the middle of the street.

His hands clenched into fists, and he cracked his knuckles a few times in anticipation of hitting me again. I twirled my knife around in my hand, in hopes of doing the same to him. I would do the same to him.

Or I’d die trying.

The people pressed forward, forming a loose ring around us, hooting, hollering, and cheering at the tops of their lungs. Bria, Owen, and Xavier held their position by the sedan, alternating between keeping an eye on Benson’s guards and shooting worried looks at me. Through my earpiece, I could hear Owen murmuring. I didn’t focus on his words, but the sound of his voice was more than enough encouragement for me.

Meanwhile, Benson’s guards had formed a line on the sidewalk in front of his mansion, their guns out but down by their sides—for now. They still thought that their boss was going to kill me, so they weren’t going to interfere. They couldn’t, not and have Benson continue to be the king that he’d portrayed himself as for so long.

Benson might be a villain, but I was one too, and I was eager to show him that I could be more ruthless than he ever dreamed of being.

“You should give up now, Gin,” Benson called out as we circled each other. “Who knows? Instead of killing you, I might take you back down to my lab for a while. Test some of my new drugs on you. I’d love to see your reactions to them. I know that you’d grow to love it too. Quicker than you think. Everyone does.”

My hand tightened around my knife, so hard that I could feel the spider rune in the hilt pressing into the larger, matching scar embedded in my palm. “I’d rather gut myself like a fish than be your damn science experiment again.”

Benson grinned, showing off his fangs, the tips of his teeth as sharp as the knife in my hand. “Well, then, I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t have a problem with that scenario either. Only I’m afraid that I’ll be the one doing the gutting, not you.”

He let out a loud roar and charged at me. I let him come.

Benson swung at me, this time using his enhanced vampire strength to put even more force behind his blows. But I still had my Stone magic, so I used it to harden my skin, head, hair, and eyes into an impenetrable shell. Oh, Benson’s punches still hurt, each one as hard and brutal as me slamming Owen’s hammer into the vamp’s car, and the blows knocked me this way and that, like I was a bit of gravel flying across the road after a semi roared by. But the brutal assaults didn’t crack my ribs and break all the bones in my face the way he wanted them to.

While Benson concentrated on pummeling me, I lashed out with my knife at him.

Punch.

Slash-slash.

Punch.

Slash.

Punch-punch-punch.

We traded blow after blow after blow, his fists pounding into my chest and face over and over again. I got in a few glancing swipes with my knife, but every time the blade would start to sink deep enough into Benson’s body to do some real damage, he would use his enhanced speed to dart back out of range of the edge of the blade. It was a small, subtle movement but extremely hard to do, and I found myself being impressed with his technique. We were playing a game of inches, and he was winning.

“You’re going to lose,” Benson taunted me when we broke apart after another furious exchange. “Face it, Gin. You’re going to run out of magic long before I run out of strength.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I snapped back at him. “Considering that you’ve already started sucking wind, I’m willing to put my belief in my magic—in myself.”

Benson frowned as he realized how true my words were. His breath was coming in sharp gasps, sweat was sliding down his forehead, and the rims of his glasses had fogged up from his exertions.

He growled, stepped forward, and shoved me in the chest with both hands. His strength sent me flying again, this time right into the side of his smashed-up Bentley. My back slammed into the driver’s-side door, adding another dent there, while my legs slid out from under me, and my ass hit the pavement. I raised my knife, expecting Benson to do another one of his soaring leaps on top of me, but instead, he snapped his fingers. One of the guards hurried over to his boss’s side and raised his gun, pointing it at my head. I tensed, wondering if Finn could take him out before he pulled the trigger.

But Benson had something else in mind.

Even as his man turned toward me, Benson came up behind him. Then he casually reached out with one hand, jerked the other man back up against his body, and plunged his fangs into his own guard’s neck. Benson took several long pulls of blood out of the vamp, who screamed and thrashed against his boss’s body, even as his gun slipped from his fingers and clattered onto the pavement. But Benson wasn’t content to just take the man’s blood and his strength along with it.

Oh, no.

Even as the guard’s screams grew louder and his thrashes weaker, Benson clamped his hand onto the side of the man’s head, a blue glow pulsing out from between his fingers like the bright flare of a star. The bastard was sucking the fear, pain, and terror out of his own man just to make himself stronger—just so he could beat me.

It disgusted me, how casually Benson would disregard his own man’s loyalty, how he would betray it in this most ultimate, intimate way in front of everyone, but it didn’t surprise me.

Because that was exactly the kind of scum he was.

Well, not for much longer, not if I could help it.

I scrambled to my feet and started forward. But it was already too late for the guard. Benson ripped his fangs out of the other man’s neck, dropped his hand from his head, and let him go. The guard flopped to the ground, dead.

Benson let out a loud, satisfied sigh that had everyone in the crowd screaming, ducking down, and hurrying to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the vamp and still be able to see our death match.