16

   “Finn!” I yelled. “Finn!”

   I rushed over to him, with Bria and Owen moving much slower behind me. By this point, we were halfway down the alley, underneath a large maple tree with bare, skeletal branches, well away from the crowds on Main Street.

   I started to crouch down beside Finn, who was unconscious, but Bria stumbled into me, almost knocking me down.

   “I don’t feel . . . so good . . . either . . .” she mumbled, her blue eyes as glassy as Finn’s had been.

   She collapsed too, sprawling across the asphalt at my feet, unconscious just like Finn was. Worry clenched my stomach. What was going on here?

   “Gin,” Owen rasped in a low voice.

   My head snapped around in his direction. He too was wobbling on his feet, but he pointed to the alley entrance.

   Roxy was standing there, holding one of her revolvers, spinning the weapon around and around in her hand, just as she had in the restaurant. Brody was right next to her, along with some of the giant outlaws from his gang. But I focused on the man in the dark suit standing in their midst. Black hair, black eyes, black goatee, cold, smug smirk.

   Hugh Tucker had finally shown himself.

   The vampire gave me a bored look and waved his hand. “Take them,” he called out. “Alive.”

   I thought of that sugary grit in the sweet iced tea—tea that my friends had all drunk, while Roxy and Brody had sipped sarsaparillas instead. Not sugar after all, but some kind of sedative, designed to knock us out, so Tucker could do whatever he wanted to us.

   Owen fell to his knees, still staring up at me. “Run, Gin,” he whispered. “Run!”

   Then he too collapsed to the ground unconscious.

   I palmed a knife to step up and fight Tucker, Roxy, Brody, and all the rest of them. But my stomach rumbled, and for a moment my vision went haywire, making me see two of everything. I’d drunk the sweet tea as well, just not as much of it as my friends had.

   Finn, Bria, and Owen were down, and I had a whole passel of bad guys advancing on me. I wouldn’t be able to kill them all before I lost consciousness too. I’d be lucky if I was able to take down one of them. So I did the only thing I could.

   I turned and ran away like the proverbial yellow-­bellied coward.

   * * *

   I sprinted toward the far end of the alley as fast as I could, knowing that I had to put some distance between me and my enemies before the sedative—or whatever they’d slipped us—took effect and knocked me out as well.

   Even now, I could feel the drug working on me. My legs wobbled, my breath came in short, ragged gasps, and sweat streamed down my face, despite the frigid temperature. My stomach gurgled, the ominous rumble sounding like a freight train hitting top speed.

   “Get her!” Tucker hissed somewhere behind me. “Don’t let her get away, you idiots!”

   “Sure thing, boss,” Roxy called out.

   I was so focused on just making it to the end of the alley that her words didn’t register for a few precious seconds. When they finally did sink into my brain, I realized what she was up to. I cursed and reached for my Stone magic, trying to harden my skin in time—

   Crack!

   Too little, too late. A bullet punched through my upper left arm, making me scream, stagger forward, and slam into the wall of the closest building. My blood sprayed all over the dark wood, freezing and sticking there like oddly shaped snowflakes. It was a beautiful, skillful shot, a through-and-through designed to slow me down without killing me.

   It hurt like a son of a bitch.

   Getting shot was bad enough, but the bullet that punched through my arm had the added, evil bonus of being coated with Roxy’s Fire magic. She might only have a moderate amount of power, but she must have spent hours, if not days, coating that silverstone bullet and all the others in her guns with her Fire magic. The result felt like I’d just been blasted by a true powerhouse elemental, someone like Mab Monroe or Harley Grimes.

   Even as the bullet tore through my arm, Fire exploded in the wound, and the stench of my own burning flesh filled the air. I screamed again and rammed my body up against the building, trying to smother and snuff out the flames, but this was elemental Fire, and it just kept right on burning and burning.

   More screams spewed out of my lips, and I clamped my free hand over the wound and blasted it with my Ice magic. That made me scream too, but the cold force of my power finally extinguished the Fire.

   It still hurt like a son of a bitch, though.

   The Fire had cauterized the holes in my arm, so that I wasn’t bleeding, but I could feel the ugly, blistered burns that it had left behind—ones that pulsed and throbbed with red-hot pain with every breath I took. Even the cooling effect of my Ice power wasn’t enough to stop the Fire magic from searing all the way through the wound and the layers of surrounding skin. I knew that it would keep right on hurting until I could get the two holes patched up, as well as do something about the charred skin inside and all around the wound.

   But first, I had to get out of here. So I swallowed down the rest of my screams and pushed away from the wall.

   Crack!

   This time, Roxy’s bullet thunked lower into the wall, right where my left thigh had been half a second ago. More Fire exploded, licking at my clothes and making me throw my hand up to ward off the flames, but I kept going, lurching around the side of the building and out of her line of fire, so to speak.

   An all-too-brief reprieve.

   This alley opened up into a walkway that was full of people, along with food and souvenir carts. I plowed into the heart of the crowd, sidestepping clusters of tourists, but the drug in my system made it difficult, and I ended up stumbling into folks more often than not.

   All of which made it easy for Roxy and Brody to spot me.

   “There she is!” Brody’s voice boomed out behind me. “Get her! Get that thief!”