(Elemental Assassin 01) Spider's Bite Read Free

stood up, and rammed it into his heart.
    “And you,” I murmured in his ear as he jerked and flailed against me, “I’m not getting paid for you. But considering how you get your kicks by raping female patients, I’ll consider it a public service. Pro-fucking-bono.”
    I yanked the pen out of his chest and stabbed him twice more. Once in the stomach, and once in the balls. The flickering, lecherous light in the orderly’s eyes dimmed and died. I let go, and he thumped to the floor.
    In less than thirty seconds, it was over. Game, set, match. Too easy. I wasn’t even winded.
    My gray eyes flicked to the four other people in the room. Jackson still drooled at nothing. The other two men stared at the floor as if something was wrong, but they weren’t sure what it was. The fourth person, a woman, had already gotten down on her hands and knees. She dipped her fingers into Evelyn’s blackening blood, then licked it off like it was the sweetest honey. Vampires. They really would eat anything.
    The granite floor’s insane murmurs intensified, fueled by the fresh coat of blood seeping through the loose weave in the carpet and dripping onto the stone. The harsh discord made me grind my teeth together. I would be glad to leave this place and that noise behind. Far, far behind.
    I yanked the pen out of the orderly’s groin and picked up my screw. Witnesses were bad, especially in my line of work, and I considered killing Jackson and the others. But I wasn’t here for them. And I didn’t slaughter innocents, not even these pathetic souls who would be better off dead and free of their cracked mortal shells.
    So I pocketed my still bloody weapons and headed toward the door. Before I stepped out into the hallway, I glanced over my shoulder at Evelyn Edwards’s lifeless body. Her face and eyes were wide open in a look of shocked surprise. An expression I’d seen more than once over the years. No matter how bad people were, no matter what evil they committed, or who they fucked over, nobody ever really believed death was coming for them, courtesy of an assassin like me.
    Until it was too late. 

2
    Now came the trickier part—getting out of the asylum. Because while all it had taken to get thrown in here was a faked psychotic episode and a few greased palms, several obstacles lay between me and the outside world, namely two dozen orderlies, a couple of security guards, a variety of locks, and twelve-foot-high walls topped with razor wire.
    I crept to the end of the hall and peered down the next passageway. Deserted. It was after seven, and most of the patients had already been put back into their padded cells to scream away the night. With any luck, Evelyn and the orderly wouldn’t be discovered until morning. But I was going to be long gone before then. Never count on luck to get you through anything. A lesson I’d learned the hard way long ago.
    Using the route I’d memorized and keeping in mind the orderlies’ timed circular sweeps, it was easy enough to make my way through the dim corridors to the right wing of the asylum. Thanks to the piece of tape I’d put over the lock, the door to one of the supply closets was already open. I slipped inside. Industrial supplies were crammed into the dark area. Mops. Brooms. Toilet paper. Cleaning solvents.
    I walked to the back corner, where the builders had been too cheap to cover the granite wall with paint, and pressed my hand to the rough stone. Listening. As a Stone elemental, I had the power, the magic, the ability, to listen to the element wherever it was, in whatever form it took. Whether it was gravel under my feet, a rocky mountain outcropping soaring above my head, or just a simple wall, like the one I had my hand on now, I could hear the stone’s vibrations. Since people’s emotions and actions sink into their surroundings, especially stone, over time, tuning into those vibrations could tell me a number of things, from the temperament of a person living in a house to