Elemental Assassin 03 - Venom

been broken, probably long ago, by the rocks, beer bottles, and other trash that littered the street. What did surprise me was that there was one still burning—the one right over the van that the dwarf was now packing his boxes into.
    How…
convenient
.
    “You might as well get comfortable,” I said, staring at the lone light. “Because we’re going to be here a while longer.”
    Finn just groaned.
    We didn’t have long to wait. Less than fifteen minutes later, the dwarf finished loading the last of his boxes into the van. Once I started watching him—really watching him—I realized that he’d been taking his sweet time about things; moving slower than a normal person would have, especially considering the bitter cold that frosted Ashlandtonight. But then again, this was far from the innocent scene that it appeared to be.
    Now the dwarf stood beside the van, smoking a cigarette and staring into the darkness with watchful eyes.
    “What’s he doing?” Finn asked, taking another sip of coffee. “If the man had any sense, he’d crank up the heater in that van and get out of here.”
    “Just wait,” I murmured. “Just wait.”
    Finn sighed and drank some more of his chicory brew.
    Five more minutes passed before a flash of movement along the dock caught my eye.
    “There,” I said, and leaned forward. “Right fucking
there
.”
    A figure stepped out from behind a small, squat shack at the far end of the dock that jutted out into the river.
    Finn jerked upright and almost spilled his coffee on the leather seats. “Where the hell did he come from?”
    “Not he,” I murmured. “She.”
    The woman strolled down the dock toward the dwarf. Despite the darkness, the single streetlight still burning let me get a good look at her. She was petite and slender, about my age, thirty or so. She had a short bob of glossy black hair, held back with some sort of headband, and her features had an Asian flavor to them—porcelain skin, expressive eyes, delicate cheekbones. She also wore black from head to toe, just like the rest of us.
    I frowned. No woman in her right mind would walk through this neighborhood alone at night. Hell, not many would dare to do it during the day—much less wait more than an hour in some run-down shack on aDecember night when the temperature hovered in the low twenties.
    Unless she had a very, very good reason for being there.
    And I was beginning to think that I knew exactly what that reason was—me.
    The woman reached the dwarf, who crushed out his cigarette. She said something to the man, who just shrugged his shoulders. The woman turned and scanned the street, much the same way that I’d been doing for the last hour. But I knew she couldn’t see us, given where we were parked. The Dumpster sitting at the end of the narrow alley in front of Finn’s car screened us from her line of sight.
    After another thirty seconds of looking, the woman turned back to the dwarf and advanced on him. For a moment, he looked confused. Then startled. Then his eyes widened, and he turned and started running away from her.
    He got maybe five steps before the woman lifted her right hand—and green lightning shot out of her fingertips.
    Finn jerked, almost spilling his coffee again. Even I blinked at the sudden, powerful flash of light.
    The dwarf arched his back and screamed, his harsh cry echoing down the deserted street, as the lightning slammed into his body. The woman advanced on him, the magical light in her hand intensifying as she stepped closer toward him.
    And she was so fucking
strong
. She stood at least a hundred feet away from me, but I could still sense the sharp, static crackle of her power even here in the car. The feelof her elemental magic made the spider rune scars on my palms itch and burn the way they always did whenever I was exposed to so much power, to so much raw magic. And she had plenty to spare.
    A second later, the dwarf caught fire. He wobbled back and forth before pitching to the cracked pavement, but the woman didn’t stop her magical assault. She stood over his body, sending wave after wave of lightning into his figure, even as the green elemental flames of her power consumed his skin, hair, clothes.
    When she was done, the woman curled her hand into a tight fist. The bright lightning flickered, then sparked away into nothingness, like a flare that had been snuffed out. Greenish gray smoke wafted up from her fingertips, and she blew it away into the frosty night air,