Thread of Death Read Online Free PDF

cover fire I’d asked him to, giving me a chance to get to the sniper.
    Finn and the sniper exchanged a few more shots before the shooter pulled back behind a branch high up in the tree. He was probably reloading. I picked up my pace, leaping over the folks still cowering on the ground. Even the minister had taken cover, hunkering down behind Mab’s coffin. He knew the score in Ashland just like the rest of us did.
    I made it over to the tree, sucking wind the whole time. I hadn’t sprinted that far, only several hundred feet, but my knees ached, my legs felt weak and wobbly, and my arms weren’t much better. Damn. I hated not being a hundred percent. Still, I didn’t have time to curse my lingering weakness. Instead, I snapped my head up and peered through the leaves.
    The sniper was about thirty feet above me, standing on a couple of thick, sturdy boards he’d nailed into place. What had he done, built a fucking tree house up there before the funeral? The sniper had noticed my run across the grass. He leaned over to one side, peering down at me, and I realized he was a dwarf with dull brown hair that blended in with the branches around him.
    The dwarf let out a curse, raised his rifle to his shoulder, and trained the weapon on me. My muscles may not have been fully recovered from my fight with Mab, but there was nothing wrong with my magic. As soon as he started swiveling in my direction, I reached for my Stone power, using it to harden my skin into an impenetrable shell.
    Crack! Crack!
    Two more shots came my way, making me stagger back, but thanks to my Stone power, the bullets hit my chest and then bounced right off, flying across the grass. The dwarf looked down at me, his mouth gaping, as if he couldn’t believe I was still standing. Yeah, I got that reaction a lot.
    Despite the fact that he’d just tried to kill me, I could tell a hired gun when I saw one, so I decided to see if he could be reasoned with, mainly because I didn’t have any desire—much less the physical strength—to climb up into the tree and get him. Not today, anyway.
    “You’re going to run out of bullets sooner or later, so you might as well come on down,” I said in a cold voice, peering up through the leaves and branches at him. “Because you do not want me to come up there after you.”
    Apparently the dwarf decided to call my bluff, because he raised his rifle again.
    Crack! Crack! Crack!
    More bullets roared through the air, but the sniper wasn’t as careful with his aim as before, so most of the shots just thumped into the grass at my feet. Still, it was enough to make most of the mourners scream and cower once more.
    The shooting stopped, and the dwarf cursed again as he reloaded. Every movement made him jingle, like his pockets were full of bullets rattling around together. I sighed: it looked like he’d brought along more ammunition than I’d given him credit for. Well, at least he’d come prepared. I had to admire that. Now I just had to figure out how to get him to stop shooting and pry him out of the tree.
    There was only one choice really: I had to use my magic.
    Sure, I’d already reached for my Stone power, using it to protect myself; but what I had in mind now would be a much more obvious display of my elemental ability. Most folks here might have heard the rumors about my being the Spider, but I didn’t want to give them any more hints about me or add any more fuel to the fires of speculation.
    But I couldn’t risk the dwarf pointing his rifle back out at the crowd and taking shots at everyone else. Sooner or later he was bound to hit someone, and it would be just my bad luck that an innocent person would get hurt. Or, worse, that the dwarf would target my family. No, Ihad to get that rifle out of his hands right now. At least, most of the crime bosses were still huddled on the grass underneath the bodies of their giant guards. Maybe they wouldn’t see exactly what I was doing. I snorted. Right. Nobody was