Whoosh!

   The wood finally broke apart, the trough split into pieces, and water gushed everywhere. I barely managed to suck down a breath before Brody slipped and fell down on top of me, driving the air right back out of my lungs again with his heavy weight.

   He came up sputtering, but he didn’t loosen his grip on my throat, not even for an instant. “You bitch!” he yelled. “Why won’t you just die already!”

   I didn’t bother wasting precious breath to answer him.

   My Ice magic was gone, and I couldn’t get to my knives, given the way that his body was pinning me in place. But I could reach one other weapon—the spare gun holstered to Brody’s belt.

   So I shoved my hand down in between us, trying to get to the gun, but Brody was wearing one of those oversize belt buckles that Roxy was so fond of, and it kept getting in the way of my cold, numb grasping fingers.

   “What are you doing now?” he sneered. “Trying to cop a feel?”

   I ignored his taunt, shoved my hand past the belt buckle, curled my fingers around the gun, and yanked on it as hard as I could.

   Brody frowned, realizing that I was, in fact, not trying to cop a feel. “What the—”

   The gun slid free of the holster. I snapped up the weapon, pressed it against the side of his head, and pulled the trigger.

   CRACK!

   The sound seemed as loud as a stick of dynamite exploding in my ear, and blood sprayed all over my face, stinging my skin with its shocking warmth. For a moment, Brody’s eyes widened, then everything inside him just—stopped. Without a sound, his hands fell away from my throat, and he pitched forward on top of me. I waited several seconds, but he didn’t so much as twitch, and I felt more and more of his blood dripping down my face and neck. The giant was dead.

   I heaved and grunted and finally managed to shove him off me before slowly getting to my feet. I dropped his gun in the mud, bent down, and put my hands on my knees, just trying to get my breath back. Brody was lying on his side, his fingers stretched out in my direction, his sightless eyes fixed on me in a silent accusation that I knew all too well.

   I held my hand up, as though I were tipping the brim of an imaginary cowboy hat at him. “The outlaw Gin Blanco wins again.”

26

   Something exploded inside the saloon, causing more flames to shoot out the busted storefront window and driving me away from Brody’s body. The fire also reminded me that I still had work to do tonight. Now that Brody and the giants were dead, I needed to get to the hotel to help Silvio and the others save the rest of our friends.

   I held up my hand, squinting against the glare, and looked out over the muddy mess around the water trough, searching for the knife that I’d lost in my fight with Brody. There it was, lying in a puddle, the hilt just visible through the thick, sloppy mud. I started to bend down and reach for it—

   Crack!

   A shot rang out, and I screamed as a bullet blasted through my left arm, close to where I’d already been shot earlier today. Once again, elemental Fire erupted in and around the wound, burning hotter than the flames still shooting out of the saloon. Roxy hadn’t come into the park with Brody and the giants, but she was here now, and the bitch had shot me again with one of her Fire-coated bullets.

   I pitched forward, right into the middle of the large puddle, with mud splashing all over me. But the thick, gloppy mud actually doused the Fire, although the magic continued to burn and burn in the wound itself. Curses and snarls spewed out of my lips, and I fought to get the pain under control. Even as I slopped around, I kept expecting another bullet to tear through my body at any second—

   “Well,” a familiar, snide voice called out, “that was certainly dramatic.”

   I raised my head to find Roxy and Hugh Tucker standing in the middle of Main Street.

   And they weren’t alone.

   Finn, Bria, and Owen were behind them, standing off to the far side of the street. Their hands were bound tightly in front of them with thick lassos, while black bandannas had been stuffed into their mouths to keep them quiet. My friends all looked tense and angry, but no visible cuts or bruises dotted their faces. It didn’t seem as though they’d been tortured, and they all nodded at me, silently telling me that they were more or less okay. Relief flooded me. Good. That was good.

   What wasn’t good was the half a dozen giant guards that flanked my friends. Tucker might have sent Brody and his outlaw gang into the theme park after me, but the vampire had realized that he would need more men, and he’d planned accordingly. Still, I’d put a bigger dent in their numbers than I’d expected, and the odds were far more even now than they had been before.

   Especially since the rest of the Blanco gang was lurking around here somewhere.

   I didn’t glance around, but I knew that Silvio, Phillip, Lorelei, and Ira had to be nearby. They would have seen Tucker leaving the hotel with our friends, and they would have followed him down here.

   Unless the four of them were already dead—killed trying to rescue our friends at the hotel. . . .

   Dread filled me, washing away my relief, but I pushed the emotion aside. I wasn’t going to let myself think like that. I couldn’t. Not if I wanted to rescue Finn, Bria, and Owen. Silvio and the others were waiting for the right time to strike, just as I’d asked them to. I had to believe that, just like I had to believe that we were all going to get out of this cursed theme park alive—and that I wasn’t going to die in the next minute or two.

   Roxy stepped forward, her revolver pointed at my head. Her gaze flicked to Brody’s body, and rage flashed in her pale green eyes. “Get up,” she growled, focusing on me again. “Slowly. Any sudden moves, and I’ll put another bullet through you.”

   I slowly raised my hands up out of the mud and staggered to my feet. I risked a glance down and realized that my knife was still sticking up out of the puddle. I stepped in front of it so that they wouldn’t see it lying on the ground.