Mab shrugged. "Not enough profit to make it worth my while. She's getting too old for what some of my prospective customers want, and her coloring's all wrong. Besides, she's a loose end, and it's always better to cut those off before they unravel on you."

The Fire elemental stared at the assassin with no mercy or feeling of any kind in her soulless black gaze. "So kill the brat. Tonight."

Chapter 17

Mab and Elektra starting talking about other things then, namely how fast they thought the construction workers could finish remodeling the old train depot and all the railcars. I hung on the ladder outside the window and considered my options.

Right now, I was as close to the two women as I could possibly get and still take them by surprise. I longed to kill them, both of them. Every cell in my body screamed at me to do it. To crash in through the window, toss my silverstone knives, and lash out at them with every ounce of Ice and Stone magic I possessed.

But the problem was that there were two of them, both powerful, dangerous elementals in their own right who were more than happy to use their magic to kill. Whereas I was out here swinging in the breeze all by my little lonesome, except for Finn and his rifle across the train yard. There weren't any windows on the side of the railcar facing his location, and as good as Finn was with his gun, even he couldn't shoot through solid metal. Not from this distance anyway, not even with the silverstone bullets that I knew he always used.

And the truth was that while I might have been able to take Elektra out by myself, I didn't have the same confidence when it came to Mab. Not after what I'd seen her to do my mother and older sister all those years ago. Throw Mab and her Fire magic into the mix with LaFleur's electricity, and I was the one who'd wind up getting dead.

But most importantly, there was Natasha to think about. A scared little girl who had already suffered who knew what kinds of horrors. And she was going to die tonight by LaFleur's hand unless I decided to go save her. Right now.

I hung there on the ladder for a second longer, debating my choices. Try to kill Mab and LaFleur or go save a little girl. There was no choice, really. There never had been. I might be a cold-blooded assassin, but even I still had a heart, what little, black, patchwork bits there were left of it. Besides, I'd promised Vinnie that I'd find his daughter and bring her back to him, no matter what kind of terrible shape she might be in. I didn't go back on my word-ever. Not as Gin Blanco and certainly not as the Spider.

So I hopped down from my perch on the ladder, palmed another one of my silverstone knives, and slithered off into the darkness.

According to Elektra LaFleur, Natasha was being held in the next railcar over, which stood about fifty feet off to my left and back from the old depot. Keeping to the shadows, I picked my way through the train yard, still careful not to send any of the debris littering the ground flying with my feet. It was easy enough for me to creep up to the railcar, scurry halfway up the metal ladder on the back side, and peer inside the window.

Unlike the car Elektra and Mab had been in, this one hadn't been completely renovated yet. The walls had been polished to a high silver shine, but none of the other furnishings had been put in place. The floor was bare, and only a lone bulb hung overhead.

But there was still plenty of light for me to see the two giants sitting inside, their seven-foot frames hunched over the small table that they were playing cards on. I looked at the far corner. A third, much smaller form huddled there against the wall, buried under a pile of dirty, tattered blankets.

That had to be Natasha. I watched the blankets, tracking the slight, steady lift and fall of them. She was still breathing, at least. I didn't know what kind of shape the girl was in, what horrible things had been done to her, but it didn't much matter to me right now. I'd promised Vinnie I'd do everything that I could to rescue his daughter-even if she might already be dead and broken on the inside.

The front door of the railcar was halfway open and, unfortunately enough, faced the depot where so much of the construction action was going on. Which meant I couldn't go in that way, not without drawing unwanted attention. I thought about my options, then tucked one of my silverstone knives back up my sleeve, holding one in my right hand only.

Then I drew in a breath, put my left hand up to the window, and reached for my Ice magic.

A cold silver light flickered in my palm, centered on the spider rune scar, and snowflake-shaped Ice crystals spread out from my hand, freezing the window. As always, it surprised me how much easier it was to use my Ice magic now, how much more control I had over it than before, and most especially, how much stronger it was.

But I pushed the thoughts aside and focused on the task at hand. I used only a trickle of power, as Mab and Elektra would be sure to notice anything more since they were elementals too. Still, in seconds, the entire window had completely Iced over, glass, metal frame, and all.

When I was satisfied I'd made the glass weak and brittle enough for my nefarious purposes, I let go of my Ice magic and dropped my hand. I climbed up another rung on the ladder, calculating the angles and my method of attack one last time.

Then I drew in another breath and dived through the window.

I sent out another brief burst of Ice magic as I went through it, willing the thick wall of it that I'd put over the window to shatter. It worked and took the glass along with it. I tucked into a tight ball, hit the floor of the railcar, and came up slashing with my knife.

The two giants never had a chance.

They looked up as the window shattered, startled by the sharp, sudden, unexpected noise. While they were still processing what was going on, I was already moving toward them.

With my first pass, I cut the throat of the man closest to me. Blood spattered over the cards on the table, turning them all into red hearts. The giant clutched at the crazy crimson smile on his neck, gurgling and gasping for breath, but the light was already starting to leak out of his eyes.

The second man was a little quicker. He actually made it up onto his feet before I got to him. I leaped up onto the low card table and buried my silverstone knife in his heart. He started to scream from the pain, but I clamped my hand over his mouth, yanked out my knife, and used it to cut his throat as well. His arms flailed wildly for about ten seconds before his brain quit working. He thudded to the floor and was still.

I hopped off the card table, the bloody knife still in my hand, crept over to the front of the railcar, and looked out through the partially open door. The whine of power saws and steady thwack-thwack-thwack of hammers filled the air. No one outside had heard me shatter the window and kill the two giants, because no one was looking, running, or pointing in this direction. Instead, the men continued with their construction work, oblivious to the danger in their midst.

I glanced over my shoulder at the two giants, but their card table had been tucked back out of sight of the open door. Their dead bodies couldn't be seen by anyone casually glancing in this direction. Satisfied that I was safe for a few seconds, I headed for the pile of blankets in the corner. Whoever was inside heard my footsteps, and the blankets shifted and then slowly lowered.

Natasha Volga peeked out from underneath the layers of fabric, her back pressed against the wall of the railcar. She looked a lot like Vinnie, with dark brown hair, blue eyes, and a pretty, round face that hadn't quite lost that last bit of baby fat yet. She looked ... well, I didn't know exactly how old she looked. It wasn't like I'd spent any time around kids. I remembered Roslyn saying that she was eight, or maybe ten. I also wondered if she had the same kind of Ice elemental magic as her father, but now wasn't the time to ask.

I dropped to my knees in front of her, and Natasha shrank back even more from me, as though she wanted to melt into the metal of the railcar just to get away from me. Couldn't blame the kid for that. I could only imagine how scary I looked in my black clothes, with the ski mask still covering my face. But I didn't dare take it off, not even for her.

I could also feel the warm blood that coated my torso like a crimson shroud. Still more of the sticky substance dripped off the point of my knife onto the floor of the car. It also speckled my hands as though I'd been painting with it. I dropped the weapon down by my leg, but I didn't put it away. Not when another giant could poke his head inside at any second.

"Hi, sweetheart," I murmured in a soft, soothing voice. "Sorry to scare you, but I'm here to take you home to your father."

Natasha was calmer than I'd thought she'd be. Or maybe she'd been through so much already in the last twenty-four hours that she was just in shock about it all. Instead of screaming and trying to get away from me, she sat still and thought about my words.

"My-my daddy sent you? Really?" Her voice was no more than the barest whisper, and I had to strain to hear her.

I nodded. "He sure did, sweetheart. Now, let's get you out of here before more of those bad men come this way. I need you to be a good girl for me and not make a sound. Okay? If you do that, we'll both be fine, and you'll be back with your daddy real soon. I promise you that, and I always keep my promises."

Natasha stared at me for another minute before slowly nodding. I was mildly surprised that she was willing to go with me so easily, but people always said kids were smarter than you thought. Maybe Natasha realized she didn't have a lot of options. Or maybe she'd heard LaFleur and the others talk about exactly what they had in store for her.

Either way, I didn't hesitate. I got to my feet and held out my blood-spattered hand. After another moment of staring at me, Natasha reached out with her own cold, pale, trembling fingers and took mine. I pulled the little girl to her feet, and the blankets fell away from her body.

To my surprise, she still had on clothes-a pair of long-sleeved blue flannel pajamas. Whoever had taken her had stopped long enough to let her put a pair of slippers on her feet. The fluffy foam shoes were shaped like green frogs, of all things.

I examined what I could see of the girl's body. She had a puffy bruise on one cheek and some nicks and scrapes on her hands, but otherwise seemed to be in good shape.

"Natasha, has anyone ... hurt you while you've been here?" I asked in the kindest voice that I could.

I needed to know if maybe she was bleeding somewhere that I couldn't see, if she had other injuries I hadn't noticed. Injuries that might slow us down, that might mean the difference between our getting out of here or not.

"No," she whispered. "They were waiting until the lady with the flower tattoo told them that it was okay. Some of them-touched me, though."

That was horrible enough, but at least she'd been spared the horrors of being raped by Mab's minions.

"I'm so sorry for that," I said, pulling her over to the broken window. "More than you'll ever know. But I need you to not think about that right now, okay? Just concentrate on me and do exactly what I tell you, all right?"

Natasha stared at me with her blue eyes. "Okay."

There wasn't any time to waste, so I climbed out through the broken window, reached back inside, and helped Natasha do the same. Her blue pajamas were far too light for the kind of shadow skulking that I'd had in mind, but I'd just have to make do. I always did.

Slowly, oh so slowly, I led Natasha away from the railcar. It seemed as if even more men had arrived while I'd been killing the girl's two captors, and the rail yard was swarming with people. They huddled around the depot, moved in between the railcars, and walked back and forth with supplies like busy little worker bees all scurrying to keep their demanding queen happy.

Which, of course, made it all the more difficult for the two of us to slip out of the train yard undetected. Several times I had to push the girl flat on the ground and cover her light pajamas with my black, bloody clothes, in hopes that the giants walking by would just see another shadow pooling on the gravel and not the two people trying to hide in it. But it worked, because the men walked on by and went about their business.

And Natasha was a trooper. I didn't know if she was in shock or completely traumatized or just one extremely brave little girl, because she never screamed, not even when I pushed her down onto the hard gravel that shredded her soft pajamas and dug into her hands and face. We'd made it about halfway across the yard when she looked down and saw the rust-colored stains on her pajamas-blood from the giants that had transferred from my clothes to her. She let out a little whimper then, but I grabbed her hand and pulled her along before she could think too much about the blood, where it had come from and the fact that she'd seen me kill the men it had once belonged to.

Finally, after about twenty nerve-racking minutes, I reached the railcar that was Finn's perch. I let out a soft whistle, our long-standing, prearranged signal. About five seconds later, a black shadow dropped to the ground in front of us. Finn straightened, and Natasha jerked back at his sudden appearance.

"It's okay," I whispered, squeezing her cold hand. "This is Finn. He's with me. He knows your daddy too, and he's going to help me take you to him."

Finn's eyes swept over the girl, and he gave me a questioning look.

"She's in good shape, all things considered," I said in a low voice. "It's not nearly as bad as it could have been. Now, let's get the hell out of here before they find the two giants that I just killed-"

Shouts rang up through the night. Fuck. All I'd needed had been five more minutes, but luck had decided not to smile on me tonight.

I looked over my shoulder. Sure enough, someone had discovered the two dead giants in the railcar. The door was fully open now, and more and more men circled around that area, like bloodhounds treeing a raccoon. It wouldn't be long before they started looking for whoever had killed their buddies. Already I could see heads swiveling around in this direction.