Kiss of Venom

by Jennifer Estep

  “Phillip!” I yelled, even as I started to run toward him. “Behind you!”

  Phillip hunched down just as Stuart took a swing at him. He easily managed to avoid the giant’s blow, but Richie raced up behind him and planted his fist in Phillip’s kidneys. Phillip grunted and swung back with the hammer he was still holding, causing the dwarf to jump away from him. As soon as Phillip drew the hammer back for another swing, Richie darted forward again, driving his fists into Phillip’s side and making him stumble forward into Stuart. The two men went down on the ground beside the car.

  Richie started to draw his foot back to level a vicious kick at Phillip, but the dwarf’s head turned at the sound of my footsteps pounding against the pavement. He whirled around as I charged at him.

  “Nobody gets in the way of one of my jobs,” Richie hissed.

  “We’ll see about that,” I hissed back at him.

  I raised my hammer and brought it down as hard as I could, trying to cave in his skull with one brutal blow. But Richie snapped his arm up and caught the weapon in his beefy hand.

  He smirked at me. “Now whatcha going to do, tough guy?”

  I slammed my fist into his face. I wasn’t as strong as the dwarf, but I could throw a decent punch. The blow made Richie stagger back, although he managed to jerk my hammer out of my hand and take it with him. The weapon slid out of his fingers and clattered to the ground, sliding to a stop beside the car.

  Meanwhile, Phillip struggled with Stuart, the two men exchanging vicious punches and rolling around on all the oil, dirt, and mud gathered on the pavement.

  “Not my shirt!” Stuart wailed. “This is my lucky T-shirt!”

  “Shut up,” Phillip muttered, and punched him in the face again.

  In front of me, Richie regained his balance and brought a hand up to his lip, which was bleeding. He spat out a mouthful of blood and raised his murderous gaze to me once more. “You made me bleed. You’re going to pay for that.”

  I flexed my fingers. “We’ll see.”

  Richie charged at me, and I stepped up to meet him.

  Smack!

  Smack! Smack!

  Smack!

  We exchanged punch after punch after punch. Richie led with a glancing blow to my chin. I landed a solid one-two combo to his chest. He retaliated by driving his fist into my stomach.

  It was the last blow that made me double over and gasp for air. I’d been punched by a dwarf before, but Phillip had been right when he’d said that Richie was stronger than most of his kind. It felt like someone had dropped a lead anvil on my stomach.

  But Richie wasn’t done with me. The dwarf surged forward, dug his fingers into my hair, yanked my head back, and punched me in the face. He hit me again and again, until the world spun around and around, and white stars exploded over and over in my field of vision.

  I was aware of my legs sliding out from under me and my ass hitting the pavement.

  “Owen!”

  I thought I heard Phillip yell my name, but I wasn’t sure, given the way my ears were ringing right now. One thing that I did know, I had to find some way to fend off Richie, or the dwarf would beat me to death.

  Richie drew back his leg. I jerked to one side, and his foot slammed into the driver’s door of Finn’s car, leaving a dent. The dwarf cursed and hopped around, howling with pain. I got up on my hands and knees and started crawling away from him—

  My fingers brushed something hard and metal lying on the ground, and I felt a wave of magic flowing into me. I focused on the cold, hard, unyielding feel of my own power, and the soft, soothing whispers of the silverstone. After a moment, my vision fully cleared, and I felt stronger than before—

  A hand dug into my shoulder and threw me against the side of the car. I slumped back down on my ass, although this time, I managed to hang on to my hammer. My hand closed around the handle, and my fingers slid into the worn, smooth, familiar groove.

  “Time to die,” Richie hissed, his mouth curving up into a bloody smile.

  I waited until he leaned down to punch me, then I raised up the hammer and hit him in the head with it as hard as I could.

  Crack.

  All the movement in Richie’s body just stopped, like a toy that had had its battery ripped out.

  I pulled the hammer out of the dent it had made in his skull, and the dwarf pitched forward without another sound, his blood spattering all over me and his body sprawling across mine. I shoved him away and slowly got to my feet. A few feet away, Phillip was raising his own hammer high and bringing it down on Stuart’s throat. He didn’t need my help. He rarely had, even when we were kids.

  I looked at the bloody end of the weapon in my hand. Maybe I should make Gin a hammer instead of another set of knives—

  Clack-clack-clack-clack.

  It took me a moment to realize that someone was running toward me in what sounded like a pair of high heels. I whipped around, and then I wished that I hadn’t, as the movement made my skull start pounding even worse than before.

  “Gin?” I mumbled, wondering if she’d somehow seen the fight and come to help.

  But it wasn’t Gin who was racing toward me. It was Sierra, the waitress.

  She stopped right in front of me. Since I’d last seen her on the dance floor, she’d put a red leather jacket on over her black bustier, and a matching red purse dangled off her right shoulder.

  I frowned, wondering if maybe my vision wasn’t quite as clear as I thought it was. “Sierra? What are you doing here—”

  “Hi, sugar,” she drawled.

  Sierra smiled, pulled a stun gun out of her purse, shoved it into my chest, and hit me with it.

  6

  The volts of electricity pumping through my chest made every single nerve ending in my body flare to life and explode with pain. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Instead, my legs went out from under me again, and I slumped to the ground, my muscles jumping and twitching with spasms. It was all I could do to hold on to my hammer, but I knew that if I let go of it, I was dead.

  Sierra smiled, leaned down, and hit me with the stun gun again. My head arched back, and I could feel every tendon in my neck, shoulders, and chest straining against the electricity surging through my body. Once again, I opened my mouth to scream but couldn’t get a sound out. Every wave of electricity felt like ropes of fire curling tighter and tighter around my body.

  Sierra finally pulled the stun gun away from my chest, and I slumped against the side of the car, all the fight fried right out of me. Sweat ran down my face, the salt of it stinging my eyes, and I struggled to blink away the moisture and push down the pain pulsing through my body.

  I was dimly aware of Phillip still struggling with Stuart off to my left. It sounded like the giant had had a little more life left in him than I’d thought.

  “Geez,” Sierra muttered, staring at Richie, who was still lying on the pavement where he’d fallen. “You really did a number on him, didn’t you?”

  She dug the sharp toe of her red stiletto into the dwarf’s side, but of course, Richie didn’t move. He was much too dead for that.

  “Who . . . are . . . you?” I finally managed to rasp.

  She bent down so she could look into my eyes. “I’m the woman who’s going to kill the high and mighty Spider—not you and your buddy there. I knew that you were up to something. You were showing way too much interest in her inside the club. Tell me, did they hire you to take out Blanco too? As a backup team in case I failed?”

  They? Who were they? Who had hired Sierra to kill Gin?

  “I don’t know . . . what you’re . . . talking about,” I said, my voice still low, strained, and hoarse.

  Sierra narrowed her hazel eyes, as if she didn’t believe me. She started to hit me with the stun gun a third time, but her cold gaze flicked to Phillip. He must have been close to fini
shing off Stuart, because Sierra straightened up.

  “Ah, well. You want something done right . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she gave me another predatory smile. “Now, at least, I don’t have to split the money with those two idiots. Not that I planned on doing that anyway. While Blanco was killing them, I was going to take her out.”

  So Sierra had planned for the two men to be a distraction while she snuck up on Gin, just like Richie had been going to do to Stuart.

  “Of course, now I’ll have to add you and your friend to the body count.” Sierra shrugged. “But that’s something else that I don’t have a problem with.”

  She reached into her purse, pulled out a revolver, and pointed it in Phillip’s direction.

  Even though my fingers were still twitching, I managed to tighten them around the grip of my hammer. Once again, I felt a wave of my own power flow from the metal to my body, easing some of my aches and pains. I grabbed hold of that cold, hard, unyielding sensation and let it center me. Then I raised the hammer and smashed it into Sierra’s right knee as hard as I could.

  It wasn’t the mightiest blow I’d ever landed, but it was certainly effective, and I felt her bones crunch underneath the head of the hammer. She screamed with pain, but she didn’t go down, so I raised the hammer again and slammed it into the top of her foot. She screamed again, higher and louder this time, and staggered back.

  One of her heels caught in a pit in the pavement and snapped, sending Sierra’s legs flying out from under her.

  Crack.

  Her head hit the ground at an awkward angle, and just like with Richie, all the movement in her body simply stopped. Her mouth gaped open, but nothing came out except a bit of blood, darker than the crimson lipstick that she wore. More and more of it began to pool on the pavement under her head, and I knew that she was dead.

  I let out a breath and finally released my hammer. The weapon clattered to the ground, but I could hear the metal murmuring, this time with pride. It always enjoyed hitting things, no matter what they were.

  “Owen!”

  I blinked, and suddenly, Phillip was crouching down in front of me.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his blue eyes full of concern.

  I grimaced. “I’ll live. I think.”

  Phillip helped me up. My muscles still jerked and burned with electricity, but I managed to stay upright.

  He stared down at Sierra. “She really didn’t want to take no for an answer, did she?”

  “Only you could make a bad joke like that at a time like this.”

  Phillip grinned a moment, but then his face turned serious. “Who do you think she was?”

  I shrugged and immediately wished I hadn’t, as the small motion sent more ribbons of fire racing through my body. “I don’t know. She said that she was here to kill Gin. She thought that whoever had hired her had hired us too, in case she and her men couldn’t get the job done.”

  Phillip bent down and rifled through her purse. “No ID on her but plenty of weapons. There’s a knife in here, along with some garroting wire.”

  He let out a low whistle and held out a piece of paper so I could see it. The words One million were scribbled on it, probably the amount that Sierra was supposed to get paid, along with three letters: M.M.M.

  “Do you think that’s who hired her?” Phillip asked. “Because we both know of someone with the same three initials.”

  Along with everything else that had gone down at the Briartop museum, Gin had also discovered that Mab had left her estate to some long-lost relative, M. M. Monroe. So far, Gin hadn’t been able to find out anything about this mysterious Monroe, not so much as his or her full name. But it looked like this person knew all about Gin—and that worried me.

  I took the note from him and slid it into my pants pocket. I’d think about it later. Right now, we had more pressing concerns.

  “Now what?” Phillip asked.

  “What do you think? Now we get rid of the bodies.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “I think you’ve been spending way too much time around Gin. We go out for a simple guys’ night on the town, and you end up dropping three bodies in the nightclub parking lot. You’re picking up her bad habits.”

  A wry grin pulled up my lips. “But it was fun, right? Just like old times, when we’d get into some street fight with a couple of gangbangers who thought that they were tougher and smarter than we were.”

  Phillip snorted. “Yeah, except this time, you got electrocuted, and I got a couple of bruised ribs.”

  “Well, I’d say that’s a big improvement, since we used to get the snot beat out of us,” I said. “Isn’t progress grand?”

  Phillip snorted again, but the smile on his face matched the one on mine.

  * * *

  We started with Stuart, since he was the largest. Phillip took his shoulders, while I grabbed his ankles. Together, we moved the giant out of the street, across the sidewalk, and into the shadows that spilled out of the alley where the Dumpsters were. Then we hurried to do the same thing with Richie and Sierra.

  We’d just laid Sierra on the ground beside the giant and the dwarf when footsteps sounded. Phillip and I looked at each other, then both crouched down behind the closest Dumpster—something else that was eerily familiar from our time on the streets.

  The footsteps grew louder, and a moment later, Gin strode into view, with Bria walking beside her. Bria was chatting about something, holding her hands out as she walked and talked, but Gin was much more wary. Her eyes never stopped moving from shadow to shadow, and I could tell that she was only listening to Bria with half an ear. Gin knew that this would be a great place for someone to try to ambush the Spider, and she was ready for whatever danger might be lurking in the shadows. But I’d already done the dirty work for her tonight.

  Gin and Bria stopped a safe distance away from Finn’s car. Gin remotely unlocked the doors and started the engine. Then the sisters waited, in case someone had planted a bomb on the car while they’d been inside the club. It broke my heart that Gin had to take such elaborate precautions, that she had to be so vigilant all the time, even when she was just out trying to have a drink with her sister. But it was part of her being the Spider now, and it probably always would be.

  A minute passed, and the engine rumbled along smoothly. Bria headed over to the passenger’s side to get in, while Gin went over to the driver’s door. She reached for the handle but then stopped. Gin frowned, bent down, and touched part of the pavement next to the car. Then she brought her fingers up into the light.

  I could see the blood shining on them from here.

  I bit back a curse. We’d moved the bodies out of sight, but I hadn’t thought to clean up all of the blood on the pavement. Maybe I hadn’t spent enough time with Gin after all. Or with Sophia Deveraux, the dwarf who got rid of some of the bodies that Gin left behind.

  Gin frowned as she studied the blood on her fingers, and then her gaze flicked to the door in front of her—and the dent in it, the one that Richie had put there with his foot. Her frown deepened, and she slowly turned her head left and right, peering into every shadow on the street, including the one that Phillip and I were crouched in.

  I thought about rising to my feet, calling out to her, and explaining what had happened, but in the end, I stayed where I was, hidden in the shadows.

  Gin looked past us once, but her gaze drifted back to our location, and her eyes narrowed as she tried to see into the darkness. Phillip started to show himself to her, but I put my hand on his shoulder, silently telling him to stay where he was.

  “Something wrong?” Bria’s voice drifted over to me.

  After a moment, Gin rose to her feet and shook her head. She pulled a tissue out of her jacket pocket and used it to wipe the blood off her fingers. “Nah. Nothing important. Looks like somebody dinged Finn’s car. Probably some fight gone
wrong.”

  Bria sighed. “Great. He’ll never let us hear the end of that.”

  “I know,” Gin replied, stuffing the tissue back into her pocket. “And that’s why we’re not going to tell him about it until at least tomorrow morning. Now, let’s get out of here.”

  They both got into the car, and Gin drove off. I waited until the car’s taillights had disappeared into the night before I got to my feet and stepped back out into the street.

  “What was that about?” Phillip asked. “Why didn’t you go over and tell her what happened? I felt like a teenager again, hiding in the bushes outside my girlfriend’s house, hoping that her dad wouldn’t come and knock me around.”

  “I didn’t want to ruin her night,” I said in a soft voice.

  “How would this ruin her night? You killed the bad guys for her. She didn’t even have to get her knives bloody. We did all the work.”

  I shook my head. Phillip didn’t understand how tired Gin was of being everyone’s target, but I did. She deserved at least one night where she didn’t have to worry about blood, bad guys, and bodies, and I was determined to give it to her.

  “Besides,” Phillip continued, “as far as grand romantic gestures go, I can’t think of a better one for an assassin than a couple of dead bodies.”

  “What happened to all your talk about flowers, candy, and jewelry?”

  He shrugged. “Like you pointed out, Gin’s not exactly that kind of woman.”

  I stared down the street at the corner where Finn’s car had disappeared. “No, she’s not. Now, come on. Help me finish getting rid of the bodies.”

  * * *

  By the time Phillip and I had heaved the bodies into the Dumpsters, wiped some of the blood and dirt of the fight off us, and gone back inside the club to tell Xavier that Sierra wasn’t quite what she seemed, it was after midnight. Xavier took us back to Roslyn’s office, where she looked through some records. It turned out that Sierra had only been working at the club a few days, probably just as a cover job. Roslyn and Xavier promised to find out what they could about Sierra, but I doubted that they’d come up with much. Northern Aggression wasn’t exactly the kind of place that was conducive to truth telling, either by the patrons or by the employees.