Snared (Elemental Assassin #16)(82)
I staggered to my feet, and Porter did the same. His head whipped left and right, taking in my destruction of his precious cottage. By this point, the fireplace was little more than a crumbled heap of stones, and deep, ugly cracks zigzagged through the entire ceiling and down into the walls. Gray dust covered everything, including that photo of him and Maria. It lay in the rubble in front of the fireplace, the silver frame busted to pieces, the glass shattered, and the actual picture inside reduced to tatters.
“You bitch!” he screamed. “You’ve ruined it! You’ve ruined everything!”
“You’re damn right I did,” I snarled.
Porter charged at me again, but I whipped up my hand and sent a spray of Ice daggers shooting out at him. He lurched out of the way but tripped over the rocky rubble and fell back onto the floor. But even that had little impact, given his thick, strong dwarven musculature, and he let out a loud growl and started to get right back up again.
I couldn’t let him get his hands on me, so I darted past him, threw open the cottage door, and sprinted outside. A wooden porch was attached to the front of the house, just like I thought, and I ran across it, pounded down the steps, and raced out into the darkness beyond. But I didn’t go far.
“Come back here!” Porter yelled.
Instead of responding, I whipped back around so that I was facing the cottage again, snapped up my hands, and let loose another wave of my Stone magic.
And this time, I collapsed the entire fucking house right on top of him.
The cottage might have been perfectly pristine and preserved on the inside, but the outside was old, weathered, crumbling, and covered with dead kudzu vines. I hammered at the structure again and again, cracking the walls and roof with my Stone magic and forcing my Ice power into all those open spaces. Then I used both my Stone and my Ice magic to widen those cracks and break away even larger chunks of rocks. Forget finesse. I battered the structure as hard and fast as I could with my power, and thirty seconds later, I was finally rewarded.
Crack!
Crack! Crack!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The front wall exploded, as though blown apart by a series of bombs. Without that support, the roof caved in, and the other walls crumbled under the suddenly unbalanced weight. Less than ten seconds later, the entire cottage folded in like a house of cards right on top of Bruce Porter. But I kept right on unleashing wave after wave of magic, crushing every single stone that I could and burying the dwarf in this horrible place where he had killed so many innocent women.
Finally, when the house was just a pile of dusty, rocky rubble, I let go of my magic and lowered my hands. I wiped the sweat off my face and drew in long, deep breaths, trying to calm my pounding heart. All the while, I stared at the cottage, looking and listening for any signs of life. But the only sounds were the continued crack-crack-crack and scrape-scrape-scrape of the rocks breaking and sliding together, as what was left of the house slowly settled. I reached out with my magic again, this time listening to the stones themselves, but their mutterings were more relieved than agonized now, as if they were glad that no one else would have to suffer within their shattered walls. The sounds comforted me.
Now that I’d buried Porter, it was time to figure out exactly where I was, so I peered into the darkness. I had no idea what time it was, and there was no moon or starlight to help me. Thick, heavy clouds cloaked the night sky, and it had snowed sometime while I’d been unconscious. A dusting of flakes coated the ground, brightening the landscape just a bit. While I stood there, more and more flakes started falling, and I even thought that I heard a faint rumble of thunder in the distance, like thundersnow. I remembered what Jo-Jo had said about storm clouds being in my future. I shivered—and not entirely from the cold.
Rivera had said that we were still on his estate, and I thought back to the property maps that I’d analyzed when I was scouting out his mansion. Some noise sounded in the distance, and I tilted my head to the side, trying to figure out what it was. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was the Aneirin River. Suddenly, I knew exactly where I was. When Finn and I had been here, I’d noticed an old, crumbling cottage off in the woods in the distance—the cottage that I had just reduced to rubble.
I thought about what I knew of the rest of the area. If I headed toward the sound of the rushing water, I would eventually reach the cliffs that overlooked the river. From there, I could better orient myself and hike out of the surrounding woods. After that, all I had to do was get to a road or a phone, and I could let the others know where I was—
A body slammed into me from behind, knocking me down to the ground. Rough hands flipped me over onto my back, and Bruce Porter locked his hands around my throat.
The dwarf looked like, well, like a house had fallen on top of him. Gray dust and dirt covered him from head to toe, his suit hung in shredded tatters from his body, and the cuts on his face, hands, and arms all dripped blood. He seemed like an angry ghost come back to get his revenge on me.
His hands tightened around my neck, and I quickly grabbed hold of my Stone magic again, hardening my skin so that he couldn’t cut off my air any more than he already was.
“You bitch!” Porter growled. “You think you can run away from me? You think you can reject me? I love you! I’ve always loved you! Why can’t you love me back? Why?”
He wasn’t even talking to me anymore. He wasn’t even trying to kill me anymore. Not really. For Porter, this was still all about Maria, and I was just unfortunate enough to be her latest substitute.