“We both are,” Jo-Jo said in a clear, sharp voice. “My only regret is that we didn’t do this years ago.”
Grimes threw back his head and laughed again. Finally, when he realized that he was the only one who found it funny, he glared at Jo-Jo with pure hate in his eyes. “You won’t kill me. You don’t have enough magic to kill me.
None of you does. None of you is strong enough.”
Jo-Jo gave him a sweet smile. “That’s the funny thing about Fire,” she said. “No matter how strong it is, it simply can’t survive without Air—and neither can you.”
She reached for her Air magic, her eyes glowing a milky white. But instead of blasting Grimes with it, Jo-Jo did something even more clever and devious. She sucked all of the oxygen away from him.
The flames burning on his hand were immediately snuffed out. Grimes stared down at his hand in disbelief, then started snapping his fingers together, as though they were a cigarette lighter that he was trying to coax to life.
He reached and reached for his magic, but without all that precious oxygen, he couldn’t get so much as a single spark to flare to life.
Jo-Jo looked at Sophia, and the sisters nodded to each other. Sophia slowly approached him.
“Fine,” Grimes muttered, finally giving up on his power. “I don’t need magic to put you in your place, Sophia. I never did.”
He let out a loud roar and charged at her.
And then they danced.
Despite all the years that I’d known her, I hadn’t seen Sophia fight all that often. But she was as efficient and brutal with her blows as I was. More than that, she was motivated by all of the things that she’d suffered at Grimes’s hands.
For a while, Grimes was able to block her blows, and all they did was exchange punch after punch after punch.
But Sophia slowly wore him down. He missed a block, and she socked him square in the jaw. He missed the next block, and she slammed her hand into his sternum, cracking a rib, judging by the way he suddenly started gasping for air.
Grimes went on the attack, swinging, swinging, swinging, but Sophia swatted away his blows one after another after another. He overextended himself, and she slammed her boot into one of his knees. He howled with pain, but before he could stumble out of range, she clamped her hands on his arms and rammed her boot into his other knee. The cracking of his bones rattled through the entire yard.
Sophia let go, and Grimes dropped to the ground like a cement block. That’s when we all knew that it was over.
Sophia positioned herself on top of Grimes and started hitting him, over and over again, as though she were working a heavy bag at the gym.
Thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack.
She pounded away at his chest, focusing on his ribs and driving all of the air out of his lungs, so that he couldn’t even scream at what was being done to him—just like she hadn’t been able to scream after he’d destroyed her vocal cords by making her breathe in elemental Fire.
Jo-Jo. cooper. Finn. Bria. Phillip. They all stood there and watched Sophia beat Grimes to death, while I huddled on the ground next to Owen. Nobody said a word, although Bria winced at the brutality that Sophia unleashed. But she hadn’t been up at the camp. She hadn’t seen the pit, so she didn’t fully understand his depravity.
But I did. More important, I understood Sophia’s response to it and why she had to do this herself.
I’d wanted to spare her and Jo-Jo from facing Grimes again, but they’d come anyway because they needed clo— sure. They needed to help defeat him. And most of all, they needed to know that the nightmare was truly, finally over.
Thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack.
And Sophia was making sure that happened with every single blow she landed.
Eventually, cooper helped Jo-Jo over to Owen. The
two dwarves settled themselves on the scorched earth, took Owen’s hands in theirs, and reached for their Air magic, healing the horrible burns on his body. Then they used their power to heal me as well. Finn, Phillip, and Bria moved silently through the yard, their guns still drawn, checking on Grimes’s men to make sure that they were all dead.
I got to my feet and went to stand close to Sophia.
And I stayed right there, watching her, supporting her, through the whole thing.
I couldn’t tell exactly when Harley Grimes died. One moment, he was still rasping for breath. The next, I realized that his eyes were focused on Sophia but that he wasn’t seeing her anymore.
Sophia kept beating Grimes long after he was dead, but I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t try to stop her. She deserved all the time that she needed, for everything that he’d done to her and Jo-Jo.
Finally, though, her blows slowed, sputtered, then stopped altogether. Sophia sat back on her heels, breathing hard, covered in more blood than even I’d ever had on me. Her arms were completely coated with it, and it dripped off the ends of her fingertips like scarlet tear— drops.
I looked down at Grimes—at least, what was left
of him. It wasn’t pretty. Sophia had used her dwarven strength to its fullest. His face was a bloody, pulpy, bony mess; his chest had caved in; and his knees were sprawled out at awkward, impossible angles where Sophia had broken them. If I hadn’t known that it was the body of a man, I would have thought him no more than a pile of roadkill, bloated, bloody, and rotting on the side of some country road.
I stepped in front of Sophia where she could see me, then held out my hand, which was still covered with Hazel’s blood. After a moment, she took it and let me pull her to her feet. She started to let go, but I tightened my grip on her hand.
“Not alive,” I said. “Not anymore.”
Sophia looked at me with a somber expression. But
after a moment, she grinned, her smile wider, happier, and brighter than I’d ever remembered it being.
“No,” she rasped. “Dead—finally.”
Chapter Thirty
We spent the rest of the night cleaning up the mess.
Or, rather, Sophia did.
One by one, she packed the bodies of Grimes, Hazel, and their men into the trunk of her classic convertible.
When that was full, she stuffed the other ones into Roslyn’s car, which I was still driving, since it was already such a lost cause. But instead of using her Air magic to sandblast away and dissolve all the blood into nothingness the way she normally would, Sophia left the stains where they were in the yard. The weather would take care of them soon enough. Besides, this wasn’t the first blood that had been spilled in front of Fletcher’s house, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
Still, as I watched her work, I thought about what she’d told me at cooper’s house, about how being with the bodies in the pit had been the only peace that she’d ever gotten while she’d been Grimes’s prisoner. I wondered what she was thinking now that his was one of the bodies that she was disposing of, but I didn’t ask. We all had our own demons, and Harley Grimes was one of Sophia’s, to deal with in her own way and time. Besides, for once, I rather enjoyed the irony of the situation.
Still, I went over to Sophia, who had a tape measure out, trying to determine how many more bodies she could stuff into the trunk of Roslyn’s car. I put my hand on her arm. She stopped measuring and looked up at me.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked in a quiet voice. “I can get rid of the bodies. You shouldn’t have to do this anymore. Not for me. I don’t want you to do it anymore.”
Sophia stared at me, her black eyes thoughtful.
“It’s who I am,” she rasped. “It’s what I do. For Fletcher—and for you too.”