Kiss of Venom

by Jennifer Estep

  Phillip and I left the club, got into my car, and drove over to the Delta Queen, which was docked downtown on the Aneirin River. The casino was closed for the night, and the strings of lights that swooped down from one deck to another were all dark, although the whitewashed wood and brass railing still glimmered in the moonlight.

  Phillip got out of the car and came around to my side. I rolled down the driver’s window, and he propped his forearms on the frame.

  “Well,” he drawled, staring down at the blood spatters on his jacket sleeves. “I suppose that this suit is officially ruined.”

  Mud, blood, and grime covered just about every inch of his white suit. Wisps of blond hair had escaped his ponytail, dirt smudged his chin, and the left side of his face had already started to bruise and puff up from where the giant had hit him. Phillip looked terrible, and it was my fault—again. He’d taken a beating because of my desire to protect Gin, and we were both extremely lucky that things hadn’t been a whole lot worse.

  Guilt surged through me, but I made my voice light. “Well, feel free to send me the dry-cleaning bill,” I said, trying to make a joke.

  “Oh, I intend to.” His face was dead serious.

  I winced. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dragged you into the middle of my fight like that. Next time, maybe we’ll have a better guys’ night out. Or at least a less violent one.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he drawled. “You. Me. Out on the street. Facing down some punks and getting the best of them. You were right. It was just like old times—good times.”

  His face creased into a wide smile, his blue eyes bright with victory. For a moment, it was like the years melted away, and I saw the scrawny kid he had once been, grinning like a fool because he’d managed to steal a couple of apples for him, Eva, and me to eat.

  My chest tightened, the sensation even more painful than when Sierra used her stun gun on me. It had been so long since I’d seen him smile like that. It had been so long since he’d looked at me like that, without a trace of anger, hurt, or bitterness marring his features.

  Phillip had been my best friend, the person I depended on more than anyone else, but I’d thrown that all away when I’d believed Salina and her lies over him.

  Once again, I cursed my own foolishness, and I couldn’t get rid of the hollow ache in my chest either. Because as the weeks had passed, and I got more perspective about Salina and all the horrible things that she’d done, I’d realized something else. Salina hadn’t just cost me my friendship with Phillip—she’d also stolen my time with him.

  Phillip and I had been estranged for years because of her, and Cooper and I hadn’t fared much better, at least not after Salina had first left Ashland. I’d missed out on so much with them. Phillip growing up and making a name for himself as the owner of the Delta Queen. Cooper and all of his blacksmith projects. Not to mention Eva and all of the happy, sweet childhood innocence that Salina had taken from her.

  It made me sick, thinking about all of those wasted years, all that precious time that I could have spent with people who truly cared about me. But instead, I’d squandered it by wondering where Salina had gone and why.

  And now the same thing was happening with Gin.

  The days were turning into weeks, and I was still no closer to figuring out how to set things right between the two of us than I had been the night that Salina had died—

  “What are you thinking about?” Phillip asked, interrupting my thoughts. “You look so serious all of a sudden.”

  I stared at him, and once again, I thought of all the quiet moments like this one that I’d lost with him because of Salina and her lies.

  And in that second, I vowed that it wasn’t going to happen again. Not with Phillip, Cooper, or Eva—and not with Gin either. Salina had already taken so much from me. She wasn’t getting anything else. Not one more damn second of my time.

  “Owen?”

  I made myself smile at him, as though I had nothing important on my mind. “I was just wondering how you’re going to make me pay for this later.”

  “We’ll start with a new suit.” Phillip grinned again. “Although I’m sure that I can come up with some other acts of contrition that you can complete to atone for your sins. Tell you what. Come by tomorrow for lunch, and I’ll tell you what you can do to complete your penance.”

  If only he knew that was exactly what I was planning on doing. Making it up to him. Making things up to everyone. Cooper, Eva, Gin. I couldn’t undo what Salina had done. But I could sure as shooting try my best to let them know how sorry I was for everything that had happened—and how much I loved them.

  Especially Gin.

  “Owen?” Phillip said. “There you go, looking all serious again.”

  I gave him the same saucy wink he’d been using on all the women at the club tonight. “It’s a date. See you then.”

  He shook his head. “It’s so sad that you have no game. That’s something else we’ll have to talk about tomorrow. Later.”

  He gave me a much saucier wink, then straightened up and waved at me before walking up the gangplank and disappearing from view.

  I put the car in gear and drove away from the riverboat, thinking about everything that had happened tonight. Talking with Phillip, laughing with him, fighting side-by-side with him. For the first time since we’d reconnected, it felt almost . . . natural. Like we were finally starting to get back to where we’d once been as friends. My lips pulled up into another smile.

  Good times, indeed. And I hoped there were many more to come.

  * * *

  I drove home. Eva was spending the night with Violet Fox, her best friend, so the mansion was dark and quiet when I went inside. I took a long, hot shower to wash Richie’s and Sierra’s blood off me, then changed into a T-shirt and some jeans, along with a pair of boots and some heavy blue coveralls. I also retrieved the hammers from the trunk and cleaned the blood off them.

  Even though it was after two in the morning now, I felt energized—galvanized, even—so I grabbed my hammer and went to my forge.

  Two stone walls held up the pointed slate roof, but the other two sides were open so the air could flow inside and fuel the fire. It wasn’t as large as Cooper’s forge—not even close—but it was mine, my own space for me to do my own work.

  I flipped the lights on and got started. It didn’t take me long to light the fire, arrange my tools, and select a piece of iron to work with. In fact, I found comfort in the familiar routines, just like Gin did with her cooking.

  Once the iron was properly heated, I picked up my hammer and reached for my magic, feeling the cold, hard power rising up out of the pit of my stomach, flowing through my shoulders, down my arms, through my hands, and all the way into my fingertips. The hot iron began to whisper in anticipation of how I might shape it, while the other bits of metal in the forge chimed in, wondering what I was going to do next. I drew in a breath, really focusing in on my magic and gathering up more and more of it. The whispers of the metal intensified; it knew what was coming next. When I had a firm grip on my magic, I slowly channeled it into my hammer, until the silverstone was humming with raw power—just like I was.

  Then I brought the hammer down.

  I hit the iron time and time again, making sparks erupt and zing through the air like fat red bumblebees before the sticky humidity of the night snuffed them out. I ignored the sparks and focused on the metal, until I could feel each and every bit of the iron, down to the smallest shaving. Then I started whispering back to the metal, not with actual words but instead with my magic, coaxing it, molding it, sculpting it into the exact shape that I wanted.

  A couple of hours later, when I was finished, I looked down at the piece I’d created, examining it from every angle. It was good, certainly better than my other attempts to make this particular shape, but I could do better still. I would do better—for Gi
n.

  Because she deserved the absolute best in all things, but especially from me.

  I knew what I wanted to do with the shape now, what form I wanted it to take. Phillip had actually given me the idea, with all his talk of flowers, candy, and jewelry tonight. I just hoped that the finished piece would be as meaningful to Gin as it was to me. Either way, I’d spend the next few weeks, maybe even the next few months, working on it. Sketching and resketching. Shaping and reshaping. Forging and reforging until the piece was the best that it could be.

  For her, for Gin.

  The woman I loved, the one I was determined to win back.

  Oh, I knew that I didn’t deserve a second chance with her. Not really, not after everything that I’d done, not after all the ways that I’d hurt her. But damned if I didn’t want one anyway. Maybe that was selfish of me. Maybe Gin would reject me outright. Maybe she’d say that too much had happened and we could never get back what I’d made us lose.

  If so, I wouldn’t like it, but I’d live with it. Just like I’d live with the memories of what Salina had done and how I’d failed to stop her. Jillian’s death. And all the other things that haunted me these days. But penance was about atoning for your sins and trying to make things right. That was all that I could do.

  I just hoped that it would be enough for everyone—Phillip, Cooper, Eva, and especially Gin.

  I reached up and grabbed the horseshoe that I’d hung over the entrance for luck when I’d first built the forge years ago. I replaced the horseshoe with the piece that I’d made tonight, stepped back, and admired it. A small circle surrounded by eight thin rays. Such a simple shape but so powerful at the same time. It looked good hanging there, just like I’d known it would.

  Satisfied, for tonight at least, I made sure that the fire was cold, turned out the lights, and left the forge. I reached the back door of the house and glanced over my shoulder.

  In the distance, moonlight bathed the forge in a soft, silvery light, making Gin’s spider rune wink at me from its new perch. I grinned, winked back, then headed inside to bed.

  My penance had started.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Once again, my heartfelt thanks go out to all of the folks who help turn my words into a book.

  Thanks go to my agent, Annelise Robey, and editors, Adam Wilson and Lauren McKenna, for all their helpful advice, support, and encouragement. Thanks also to Julia Fincher.

  Thanks to Tony Mauro for designing another terrific cover, and thanks to Louise Burke, Lisa Litwack, and everyone else at Pocket Books and Simon & Schuster for their work on the cover, the book, and the series.

  And finally, a big thanks to all of the readers. Knowing that folks read and enjoy my books is truly humbling, and I’m glad that you are all enjoying Gin and her adventures. I hope that everyone enjoys reading things from Owen’s perspective as well.

  I appreciate you all more than you will ever know.

  Happy reading!

  Keep reading for a sneak peek at the next book in the Elemental Assassin series

  HEART OF VENOM

  By Jennifer Estep

  Coming soon from Pocket Books

  Order your copy of Heart of Venom today!

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Click Here to Order

  1

  “What do you mean, I can’t come?”

  I jerked my head down at the heavy weight swinging between us. “Do you really want to talk about this right now?”

  “I can’t think of a better time,” he replied, then dropped his half of the load onto the ground.

  I let go of my half of the weight, put my hands on my hips, and rolled my eyes at the whiny, petulant tone in my foster brother’s voice. “You can’t come because it’s a girls’ day at the salon. No guys allowed. That includes you.”

  Finnegan Lane sniffed, straightened up to his full six-foot-plus height, and carefully adjusted the expensive silk tie knotted around his neck. “Yes, but I am not just any guy.”

  More eye-rolling on my part, but Finn ignored me. His ego was pretty much bulletproof, and my derisive looks wouldn’t so much as scratch his own highfalutin opinion of himself.

  “Besides,” he continued, “I’d get more enjoyment out of a spa day than you would.”

  “True,” I agreed. “I don’t particularly care how shiny my nails are or how well conditioned my hair is.”

  Finn held out his manicured nails, studying them with a critical eye, before reaching up and gently patting his coif of walnut-colored hair. “My nails are good, but I could use a trim. Wouldn’t want to get any split ends.”

  “Oh, no,” I muttered. “We wouldn’t want such a horror as that.”

  With his artfully styled hair, designer suit, and glossy wing tips, Finn looked like he’d just stepped out of the pages of some high-end fashion magazine. Add his intense green eyes, chiseled features, and toned, muscled body to that, and he was as handsome as any movie star. The only thing that ruined his sleek, polished look was the blood spattered all over his white shirt and gray suit jacket—and the body lying at his feet.

  “Come on,” I said. “This guy isn’t getting any lighter.”

  The two of us were standing in the alley behind the Pork Pit, the barbecue restaurant that I ran in downtown Ashland. A series of old, battered metal Dumpsters crouched on either side of the restaurant’s back door, all reeking of cumin, cayenne, black pepper, and the other spices that I cooked with, along with all of the food scraps and other garbage that had spoiled out there in the July heat. A breeze whistled in between the backs of the buildings, bringing some temporary relief from the sticky humidity and making several crumpled-up white paper bags bearing the Pork Pit’s pig logo skip down the oil-slicked surface of the alley.

  I ignored the low, scraping, skittering noises of the bags and concentrated on the sound of the stones around me.

  People’s actions, thoughts, and feelings last longer and have more of an impact than most folks realize, since all of those actions and feelings resonate with emotional vibrations that especially sink into the stone around them. As a Stone elemental, I have magic that lets me hear and interpret all of the whispers of the element around me, whether it’s a jackhammer brutally punching through a concrete foundation, rain and snow slowly wearing away at a roadside marker, or the collective frets of harried commuters scurrying into an office building, hoping that their bosses won’t yell at them for being late again.

  Behind me, the brick wall of the Pork Pit let out low, sluggish, contented sighs, much the way the diners inside did after finishing a hot, greasy barbecue sandwich, baked beans, and all of the other Southern treats that I served up on a daily basis. A few sharp notes of violence trilled here and there in the brick, but they were as familiar to me as the sighs were, and I wasn’t concerned by them. This wasn’t the first person I’d had to kill inside the restaurant, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  “Come on,” I repeated. “We’ve had our body-moving break. You grab his shoulders again, and I’ll get his feet. I want to get this guy into that Dumpster in the next alley over before someone sees us.”

  “Dumpster? You mean the refrigerated cooler that Sophia hauled in just so you could keep bodies on ice close to the restaurant with at least a modicum of plausible deniability,” Finn corrected me.

  I shrugged. “It was her idea, not mine. But since she’s the one who gets rid of most of the bodies, it was her call.”

  “And why isn’t Sophia here tonight to help us with this guy?”

  I shrugged again. “Because there was some James Bond film festival that she wanted to go to, so she took the night off. Now, come on. Enough stalling. Let’s go.”

  “Why do I have to grab his shoulders?” Finn whined again. “That’s where all the blood is.”

  I eyed his ruined jacket and shirt. “At this point, I don’t think
it much matters, do you?”

  Finn glanced down at the smears of red on his chest. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

  He grumbled and let out a few put-upon sighs, but he eventually leaned down and took hold of the dead guy’s shoulders, while I grabbed his ankles. So far, we’d moved the guy from the storefront of the Pork Pit, through the rear of the restaurant, and outside. This time, we slowly shuffled away from the back door of the Pit and down the alley.

  Finn and I had moved bodies before, but the fact that this dead guy was a seven-foot-tall giant with a strong, muscled figure made him a little heavier than most, and we stopped at the end of the alley to take another break. I wiped the sweat off my forehead and stared down at the dead guy.

  Half an hour ago, the giant had been sitting in a booth in the restaurant, chowing down on a double bacon cheeseburger, sweet potato fries, and a big piece of apple pie and talking to the friend he’d brought along. The two giants had been my last customers, and I’d been waiting for them to leave before I closed the restaurant for the night. The first guy had paid his bill and left without incident, but the second one had swaggered over to the cash register and handed me a fistful of one-dollar bills. I’d counted the bills, and the second my eyes dropped to the cash register, he’d taken a swing at me with his massive fist.

  Please. As if no one had ever tried that trick before.

  But such were the job hazards of an assassin. Yep, me, Gin Blanco. Restaurant owner by day. Notorious assassin the Spider by night. Well, actually, it was more like I was the Spider all the time now. Ever since I’d killed Mab Monroe, the powerful Fire elemental who’d owned a good chunk of the crime in Ashland, everyone who was anyone in the underworld had been gunning for me. I was a wild card in the city’s power structure, and lots of folks thought that arranging my murder would prove their mettle to everyone else. Tonight’s giant was just the latest in a long line of folks who’d eaten in my restaurant with the intention of murdering me right after sopping up the last bit of barbecue sauce on their plates.