D E L P H I N I U M

My gaze locked onto Gigi—so covered in blood and grime that her ONNT-issued white clothes were barely visible underneath. As far away from me as she was, I could still see the sadistic look in her eyes.

Everything faded to the background: Benny's escape, the realization that Riley had betrayed us all, Jaxon's imprisonment in a supermax prison, Arlo and Kane's anger. Our team was falling apart but it didn't matter. Not now. Not that Gigi was back, somehow broken out of the ONNT facility.

Gigi was here to kill me. During our fight, she'd said that she eventually would and now she was here to fulfill her promise. My daggers were already out. She wouldn't take me down.

"Delphinium and Gigi, how awkward for you two to be back together now," Benny said, smiling wide at me. He'd planned this. Imperium had planned everything. After I was finished with Gigi, I'd carve that smirk off his face.

I eyed the new girl standing at Benny's side. She wore the outfit of an ONNT soldier but she was clearly with Imperium. However, once I searched her squinted dark eyes and the rest of her elegantly-featured face, I knew that I didn't recognize her. I guessed that she was just another one of Imperium's agents, but of course I could have been wrong—she was here in the middle of a brewing battle for a reason.

"I told you that I'd get out of that cell eventually, Secerător," Benny told me in Romanian. "Now that I have, your destruction shall begin."

"What is he saying to you?" Kane's tone was accusatory; did he honestly think that I was planning something with his brother?

"That's it," Jake hissed from behind me, ignoring Kane and stalking toward Benny. "I told you that the day I saw you out of your cell was the day you'd die."

He fired the first shot at the assassin. After that, the airport fell into chaos.

Both Benny and the assassin girl ran for Jake. Jaxon resumed screaming at Riley and Kane later joined in. Sooner or later, I knew they'd resort to using their weapons.

Gigi came at me with a shriek. She held no weapons, at least none that I could see as she streaked toward me. When she was halfway there, I began running for her, ready for war. She wasn't the only one who wanted blood.

When the two of us were so close I could see the whites of her eyes, I ducked down and rolled to the side, swiping out with my knife. It caught her leg as she tried to correct her position. She uttered another terrible scream and dragged me down with her. My body endured countless hits as she pounded me with both arms and legs. I waited for an opening before stabbing downward at her. Unfortunately, she moved to the side and punched me in the face right as my dagger sunk into her shoulder.

I stood and blinked back the prickling tears that automatically welled in my eyes. With my eyes stinging, Gigi took the opportunity to rise to her feet and make a fist with her hand. My stomach tightened and nausea swelled in me. I barely had enough time to bend over before I was emptying the contents of my stomach into the concrete. Gigi had me sprawled out on the ground with a single kick to the back, daggers strewn about.

Turning over so that I was on my back, I did my best to edge away from my furious opponent. My knives soared back into my hands and slashed at anything I could get close to. She jerked back but I was still on the floor.

Before I could get to my feet, I heard a terrible crack and yelped as pain screamed through my right leg. She'd broken my femur with her mind. I screamed louder as she broke the other.

I screeched both English and Russian curses, crawling away with only my hands. My legs were both bent at unnatural angles. Through rapid breaths, I sent my knives shooting into her. One sunk into her abdomen, the other into her thigh.

"It's no use, Delphinium. Being able to heal myself is a wonderful quality; I can keep this up for a long time." She pulled the dagger out of her abdomen and threw it down. I barely had enough strength to bring the two of them back to myself. "You, on the other hand..."

I felt a sharp snap within my abdomen and knew that she'd broken at least one of my ribs. Every breath hurt. Blood from my nose flowed into my open mouth.

Another two ribs broke. A horrible scream came out of my mouth. She was killing me, leeching my power away. I hadn't expected this from her, any of this. The back of my head hit the pavement and I glanced desperately to the side. Jake—along with Finn—was locked in a battle for his life with Benny and the new assassin girl. Even if he could get away from the other two, Gigi would break him from the inside out as well.

"He can't help you," Gigi said after seeing me glance over at the raven-haired boy. "No one can."

To my surprise, the familiar warm, tingling feeling returned to my legs and abdomen. She was healing me, giving me my strength back. I had no idea what her plan was, but I wouldn't stay down long enough to find out.

"You should-" I cut off whatever biting remark she was about to make by reaching out and slicing her legs to ribbons. Blood spurted everywhere but I didn't care. Not anymore.

I succeeded in knocking her over and hurling a knife into her bad shoulder before she snapped my legs again. Crashing to the ground, I was now aware that she'd only healed me so that she could break me all over again. It was her twisted version of making me pay for what had happened to her mother. The pain in my body was suddenly unbearable.

Writhing on the ground, I knew I only needed to wait until she healed me again. Once my strength returned, I would make her pay. My price was blood.

Rib after rib in my chest was broken. "This is for my mother," Gigi said through gritted teeth. "Your suffering in return for hers. Wherever she is now, she's smiling down on me. You deserve this."

"No," I choked out. It was all I could manage. My vision was going dark and I wasn't sure whether it was because of the pain or because she was blinding me.

"Yes. My mother spent her last minutes alone and scared. You deprived her of the rest of her life. You deprived me of the only person who ever understood who I was. You deserve worse than death."

"You're...a monster." It didn't matter that I was too. As I heard the sound of metal on metal and my teammates screaming death threats at each other, I realized that maybe we all were now.

I knew I'd hit a nerve when she tightened the grip on my heart. I had to hold my tongue to keep from screaming again. "You know who's the real monster here, Delphinium? I'm looking right at her. You put a gun to my mother's head, knowing full well who she was. You pulled the trigger just like you did to so, so many other people. I bet you watched her bleed out on the floor of our own home." She shook her head. "Everyone is acting like I'm insane for going after you."

She stepped closer and I wished I could get up and snap her neck with my bare hands. But I couldn't move; the pain was paralyzing. "Did you enjoy it? Did it satisfy you to break such a delicate thing in your hands? Maybe you like the blood on your hands. It makes everything easier for you. Once you've made your first kill, it's that much easier to make another." I wondered if she was talking about me or herself. "I bet you prided yourself on murdering my mother like some animal. She was just another tally mark on your never-ending list of victims, wasn't she?"

I only had to play a pitiful victim for a few moments now, only until she got tired of my sad state and healed me again. She wouldn't kill me with her power, she'd only torture me. When I coughed—a horrible hacking that made my ribs feel as if they would cave in—I tasted the warm tang of blood on my tongue. As I let out a slow groan, I found that it was half-fake and half-real. My eyes barely worked, a dark haze now covering the world.

When she saw that I was nearly dead at her feet, she looked down at me. "This will be very, very sweet, Delphinium." Again, the warm tingling filled my body. I was nearly healed. Once my strength completely returned...

There it was: the thrumming power beneath my skin, electricity running through my veins. The torture and insults she'd racked against me hadn't broken me like she'd hoped, they'd only increased my rage. I now mirrored her bloodlust.

Slowly, I got back to my feet, daggers in hand. I must have somehow appeared different from the last time, because I saw a flicker of some emotion across Gigi's face. Fear? Confusion? It didn't matter. She'd soon be dead.

She simply stared at me for a few seconds, taken aback by the look on my face. "I'd say I'm sorry for this," I said slowly. "But I'd be lying."

Faster than she could register, I shot out my hands. A nearby helicopter dragged itself closer with a horrible metal-on-concrete screech. One of the landing skids broke off with the sudden force I exerted on it. The entire machine bent at a downward angle, the ends of the blades slightly lower than my eye level.

The blades began to turn. I took a step forward. Then another. Gigi didn't back down.

My knives felt lighter than they ever had as I swung one for her neck and the other for her abdomen. She ducked away, but I still got some of the blood I craved. While she was down lower, I kicked her back. She fell but got back to her feet quickly.

"I didn't kill your mother," I said, my voice hoarse from all my screaming. "I've killed many, but she wasn't one of them." The helicopter blades soared faster.

"There you go again, lying and deceiving!" Her voice was terrible, screeching and grating on my ears. My chest was beginning to hurt again... "It's all you can do. You're a murderer and always will be. You've killed innocents, mothers of children who now will only know loss. I hope that you'll know true pain. I hope that you'll feel the pain of your victims."

With a violent wave of my hand, I cracked the pavement underneath her and watched as she fell in the rubble. "I do know true pain," I hissed, so angry that all I could think about was making the light go out of her furious eyes. "I know it better than anyone."

All the rubble crashed into her, knocking her back again. "You think that you're the only one who knows loss? You think you're the only one here that's broken beyond repair? At least you didn't have to watch your mother die. You didn't see her dead body on the floor of your own home."

The crack I'd created in the pavement revealed a now-broken plumbing tube. I tore it from the rock and wrapped it around Gigi's body like a constricting snake. She couldn't move, but the pain in my chest was nearly paralyzing.

I kept screaming. "I would never kill your mother. I watched as Imperium killed my entire family. Everyone I ever loved was shot in our family home while I was held back and forced to watch. My mother, father, brother, grandfather. All dead. I saw the blood ooze from their heads, the light disappear from their eyes. I couldn't bring myself to kill your mother because she reminded me too much of my own."

The wind now blowing her braided hair forward, I urged her closer to the whirling blades of the helicopter. "I know true pain better than you ever will. I know the taste of it on my tongue, the smell of it. I feel it every night when I toss and turn, failing to find sleep. I feel it every time I end another life." I pushed her even closer, my mind bending the iron that wrapped around her. She had to be just inches away now. "But I won't feel it this time." I stepped forward, the wind whirling through my hair. "This time, I will enjoy it."

The slicing helicopter blades were level with her neck. She may have been able to heal herself after a small knife wound, but she couldn't come back from this. I knew it. She knew it, from the look in her eyes.

I had come here wanting blood and now I was finally going to get it. This wasn't simply a battle. It was an execution.