Read Elemental Assassin 05 - Spider's Revenge for Free Online

anguish that she couldn’t quite hide, made me look over at her instead of pulling the trigger. Gentry had forgotten all about her revolver. Instead, she huddled on her knees. Her gray hair had come loose from its tight bun, and snow crusted her face, but Gentry didn’t care. Fearflickered in her pale blue gaze, and she held her brown, wrinkled hands out wide, silently begging me not to kill the girl.
    I studied her carefully, but as far as I could tell, this was no sly trick she was trying to pull. Gentry seemed genuinely concerned for Sydney, which was more than warranted, considering that I was about a second away from ending her existence.
    I even went so far as to turn back toward the girl, my finger tightening on the rifle’s trigger. But then she let out a low moan of pain and stared up at me with her hazel eyes. Deer eyes—doe eyes—wide, liquid, and trembling, glistening with tears, pain, and fear.
    Damn and double damn.
    Something inside me, some little black shred of my heart, wouldn’t let me kill the girl, even if she had just put three bullets into me. Maybe because she reminded me of myself at that age—poor little Genevieve Snow whose family had been so brutally murdered. Maybe because I was exhausted. Maybe because I was suffering from the blood loss already. Or maybe it was because I could hear Fletcher’s voice whispering in my ear.
No kids—ever
, the old man seemed to murmur to me, even though he was long dead and cold in his own grave.
    I’d ignored the old man’s teachings earlier, when I’d hastily pulled the trigger on my crossbow instead of waiting until I had an absolutely clear shot at Mab. I wasn’t about to turn my back on Fletcher again, even if he was only a ghost in my head.
    Instead of pulling the trigger, I heaved the rifle as far as I could into the trees. The gun hit one of the snow-splatteredtrunks and clattered off into the night. Gentry just looked at me, mouth agape, as if she couldn’t believe that I hadn’t gone for the kill shot when I’d had the chance. Part of me couldn’t believe it either, but that was the way things were.
    Even as an assassin, even as the Spider, I didn’t kill innocents—ever. Sure, the girl had shot me, but she couldn’t be more than fifteen, sixteen, tops. Still a kid in so many ways.
    Gentry crawled across the snow to the girl and held her close, shielding her from me, like she wasn’t sure what I was going to do next. Damned if I knew either.
    “Next time, sweetheart,” I murmured to the girl as I bent down to pick up the knife that I’d dropped. “Keep shooting until you run out of bullets and not a second before.”
    Gentry and Sydney both stared at me, their eyes identical pools of wariness, shock, and fear.
    I skirted around them and disappeared into the snowy trees.

Stumbling and bleeding, as well as listening for sounds of pursuit from Gentry, the girl, or whoever else might be following me, I somehow made it to the old, anonymous car I’d stashed in a thicket of trees two miles from the edge of Mab’s property. I sank into the driver’s seat, cranked the engine, and turned the ancient heater up as high and hot as it would go.
    White starbursts exploded in my eyes, and I struggled to blink them away. The girl, Sydney, had been a better shot than I’d given her credit for. The two bullets in my shoulder throbbed and burned with pain, and she’d gotten close to my femoral artery with that last shot to my left thigh. Good for her, bad for me. I’d left a blood trail through the snow that a child could follow. If I hadn’t had the car here, I would have been done for, still out floundering in the trees, trying to stay ahead of Mab, her giants, and her dinner guests, two of whom had alreadytaken an unhealthy interest in me. And I was still in the proverbial woods, if I didn’t get the leg taken care of soon.
    I ripped off my sweat-soaked ski mask, tore the fabric into strips with my silverstone knife, and used the pieces