Heart of Venom

by Jennifer Estep

  I sang, but the men screamed, the sounds rending the air like my knives did their flesh, the high, sharp echoes reverberating around the ridge and then rattling off into the trees and forest beyond. I hoped Sophia could hear these bastards’ terror. I hoped it put the same hard, merciless smile on her face that it did on mine.

  Sophia. Jo-Jo. Fletcher.

  Time ceased to have any meaning. There were just enemies to cut down, one after another, as quickly, brutally, and efficiently as I could, before moving on to the next man standing. I stabbed arms and legs and chests. Drove my blades into throats and ripped them out again. Even punched my knife through one man’s eye. His screams were among the loudest and most satisfying.

  That man fell, and I whirled around to face my next foe—and realized that Grimes and Hazel stood behind me, flanked by several more of their gang.

  Grimes’s gaze scanned over his dead men at my feet, then flicked up to me. His expression was unreadable, but I knew exactly what I looked like. Strands of dark brown hair falling out of my ponytail and sticking to my sweaty, blood-covered face and neck. Even more blood spattered across my hands and arms, with still more soaked into my vest and the rest of my clothes. Even my socks squished with blood, and my boots had left behind an intricate pattern of dull brown stains on the gray rocks, as though I’d been tracing a complicated dance routine over and over again.

  “Who the hell are you?” Hazel asked.

  I grinned. “Your worst fucking nightmare.”

  The men standing behind Grimes and Hazel shifted uneasily on their feet. Their leaders might not be afraid of me, but they were—and with good reason.

  I gestured at the dead men all around me. “You know, you really should get yourself some better help. All your boys are good for is target practice.”

  “Take her,” Grimes ordered in a cold voice. “Alive.”

  I grinned even wider and twirled my knives, flinging fat drops of blood off the ends of the blades. “Please,” I snarled, staring at the men behind him. “Step right up and die.”

  Nobody made a move toward me. I let out a dark, happy chuckle, then clucked my tongue. “So hard to find good help these days.”

  “Now!” Grimes screamed, his calm façade finally cracking.

  Apparently, Grimes’s men were more afraid of him than they were of me, because they rushed forward. Fools. I raised my knives again and stepped up to meet them. First, I’d take care of Grimes’s men, then Hazel and the big man himself—

  “Now, Hazel,” I heard Grimes say.

  A second later, thousands of hot, invisible bubbles brushed against my skin. I had just enough time to grab the man in front of me, turn him around, and use him as a shield before a ball of elemental Fire blasted into us.

  The flames exploded on the man’s chest, burning away his clothes and immediately turning the upper half of his body into a charred, blistered mess. He started screaming and didn’t stop, so I shoved him out of the way and took a step toward Grimes and Hazel, who were holding hands, as if they were combining their magic.

  That was all I saw before another blast of elemental Fire came my way. Then another one, then another one.

  I managed to duck the first two balls but not the third one, which hit my shoulder like a red-hot sledgehammer and spun me around. Before I could move, before I could react, a fourth blast of Fire hit me square in the back.

  This time, I screamed.

  Because I was almost out of magic, and I didn’t have any way to stop the elemental Fire washing over me. The silverstone in my vest heated up as it soaked up the worst of the flames, but it didn’t absorb enough of the magic, not nearly enough.

  The men attacking me fell back, as they started yelling and trying to get away from the flames before they leaped from my body and onto theirs. The stench and sizzle of my own charred flesh filled my nose, and smoke boiled up from my clothes, mixing with the lingering fog from my elemental Ice. The heat and pain were so intense that I couldn’t tell which way was which, and before I could figure out where and whom to attack, a fist shot through the flames, slamming into my skull.

  Mercifully, the world went black after that.

  20

  The sun woke me.

  It streamed in through the open window, as sweet and innocent as could be, warming everything that it touched with its soft golden rays. Outside, birds trilled out high, happy notes, accompanied by the low, steady bass beat of bumblebees and other bugs.

  I cracked my eyes open. A painting of puffy clouds drifting across a summer sky covered the ceiling above my head, like they always did whenever I woke up at Jo-Jo’s house after a fight to the death. For a moment, I relaxed, even though part of me wondered why I was lying on the hard wooden floor instead of in the bed beside me. But the more I stared at the ceiling, the more it seemed like there was something slightly . . . off about it. Like the painting wasn’t the same one that I’d seen so many times before.

  A soft summer breeze fluttered in through the window, ruffling the pretty, delicate lace curtains—and bringing the stench of death along with it. And I finally realized that I wasn’t in Jo-Jo’s house after all; I was in Harley Grimes’s piss-poor substitute.

  But instead of springing to my feet, I lay there on the floor and took stock of the situation, trying to force the rest of the fuzziness to fade from my mind. I still had on the same bloody clothes as before, although I could feel the breeze dancing over bare patches on my arms and legs from where Grimes’s and Hazel’s elemental Fire had seared through the fabric. The soft kiss of the wind made the burns and blisters that marred my skin start pulsing with pain, and I had to grit my teeth against the sensation. More cuts and bruises dotted my body, adding to my aching exhaustion. I’d put up a good fight, but it had left its mark on me.

  Once I realized that I was more or less in one piece, I focused on my magic. My spider-rune ring was still empty and would be until I filled it up again, but being knocked unconscious had given my body a chance to regenerate some of my power, although it was still little more than scraps inside me, not nearly enough to let me go toe-to-toe with Grimes and Hazel with any hope of success—or survival.

  I shifted on the floor and put a hand on my chest, patting myself down. I was still wearing my silverstone vest, and the front was largely intact. Then again, Grimes and Hazel had put most of their Fire power into my back. But all of my supplies had been fished out of the vest pockets, including my extra knives. Not surprising. I supposed I should be grateful they’d left my clothes on, burned and bloody as they were, instead of stripping me naked and shoving me into some sort of sundress and heels like they had done with Sophia. Actually, I wondered why they’d let me live in the first place. They should have grabbed one of my knives and cut my throat with it while I was still unconscious—

  “Oh, good,” a voice purred. “You’re finally awake.”

  I raised my head to see Hazel standing in the doorway, along with three men, all with guns pointed at me.

  Hazel gave me an evil smile, then held out her hand. Elemental Fire sparked to life on her fingertips, swaying back and forth like lanterns dancing in the wind. Even though she wasn’t actively roasting me with the flames, I could still feel the intense heat blasting off them and brushing against my already burned skin, adding to my misery. The sensation made a snarl rise in the back of my throat, but I swallowed it down.

  “Harley wants to see you,” she purred again. “Now, are you going to come along quietly, or do I have to . . . encourage you?”

  The flames on her fingers burned a little brighter and hotter in anticipation. They matched the cruelty flickering in her dark eyes.

  I sat up and immediately had to put a hand down on the floor to keep myself from toppling right back over. After a moment, my head quit spinning, if not aching. Whoever had punched me had done an excellent job of it, judging from the pain that radiated out from my jaw and throbbed up into my right temple. Slowly, very, very slowly, I got up onto my knees and the
n onto my feet. The change in elevation made my head spin that much more, and I swayed from side to side until the white spots cleared from my vision and I found my balance. This was all not to mention how every single movement made my burned skin ache and how every shift of my singed clothes threatened to pop the blisters covering my arms, legs, and back.

  So as much as I would have liked to have tackled Hazel, driven her to the floor, and strangled her to death with my bare hands, I didn’t have the energy for it right now. Besides, she and Grimes had kept me alive for a reason, and I wanted to know what it was.

  “I think I’ll go with the first option,” I finally said when I could open my mouth without hissing with pain.

  Hazel pouted, obviously disappointed by my cooperation, but she curled her hand into a tight fist, snuffing out the flames and causing the resulting bit of smoke to drift toward the ceiling.

  “Come on, then,” she snapped. “Nobody keeps Harley waiting—or me either.”

  Again, I wondered why they’d bothered to let me live, but I supposed that I’d find out soon enough.

  Hazel pivoted on her high heels and stormed out of sight of the doorway. The three guys with guns stepped down the hallway far enough for me to leave the bedroom and fall into step behind her, then followed us with their weapons pointed at my back. I thought about whirling around and going for one of their guns, but in the end, I decided against it. I might have been able to kill the three men, but they’d probably have managed to put a couple of bullets into me for my troubles. Not to mention the fact that Hazel would be quite delighted to roast me with her Fire magic, which I had little ability to defend against while my own power was still so low. So I decided to go along with them—for now.

  We walked downstairs, and I was once again struck by an eerie sense of déjà vu. Grimes’s house was almost an exact replica of Jo-Jo’s, inside and outside. The floor plan, build, and construction were identical, right down to the dark cherry wood that had been used for the stairs and the curlicues carved into the railing that ran alongside them. Even the walls were painted the same soft blues, pinks, and whites as in Jo-Jo’s house.

  I wondered how Grimes had been able to match everything so exactly. He must have been inside Jo-Jo’s house at some point. But when? I thought back. The only time the sisters had been away recently was when they’d come down to Blue Marsh to help me out with a particularly nasty vampire a few months ago. Perhaps Grimes had been in the sisters’ house then without them realizing it; that was the only explanation that I could think of.

  The only things that were different were the photos on the wall next to the stairs. Instead of shots of Jo-Jo, Sophia, Finn, Fletcher, or even me, pictures of Harley Grimes covered the wall. Most of the photos had the brown, faded, vintage look of old daguerreotypes, and almost all of them showed a grinning Grimes tipping his fedora, holding a glass jar of moonshine, or clutching a pair of revolvers crossed over his chest, as though he really was some romantic bootlegging outlaw mugging for the camera, instead of a sick psychopath who liked to kidnap and torture folks.

  Other pictures showed Hazel in the same poses, along with one of her on a high ridge, looking off into the distance, queen of everything she surveyed, a set of diamond pins glinting like some sort of crown in her wavy black hair. There were even a few family portraits of Grimes and Hazel with a couple of other men who looked like them. Probably Horace and Henry, the brothers Fletcher had killed.

  But there was one photo in particular that made me stop with one foot in midair: a picture of Sophia.

  It was about halfway down the wall, right in the middle of a cluster of pictures of Grimes with his guns, and it looked like it had been taken with an old Polaroid camera. At first, I wasn’t sure that it was Sophia. She looked so young in the photo, and she was wearing another white dress patterned with tiny red flowers. Her black hair was much longer and tied back into a pretty braid that trailed down over her right shoulder, but she was staring at the camera with the same flat, murderous expression I’d seen earlier at the pit.

  The photo must have been taken the first time Grimes had kidnapped Sophia, which meant that he’d kept it all these years. Once I spotted the one, I noticed more photos of my friend. They lined the bottom of the wall, leading back up to the first.

  All of those photos looked as though they’d been taken at a distance and featured a young Sophia in various spots: on the lawn at Jo-Jo’s house, on the front porch of Country Daze, sitting in a library, reading a book. These pictures must have been snapped before Grimes had kidnapped her the first time. Because in all of them, she looked relaxed and happy and was sporting a variety of clothes in a rainbow of colors—white jeans, red tops, khaki shorts.

  None of the photos showed Sophia in her dark Goth clothes. I wondered if she’d adopted the style after her first encounter with Grimes. I would have never wanted to see another dress, ribbon, or pair of high heels again either, if I’d been her.

  Just how deep Grimes’s obsession with her ran made the whole thing worse and reminded me that I needed to find some way to kill him before I died up here on the mountain. Otherwise, Sophia and Jo-Jo would never be safe.

  “Come on,” Hazel growled from the bottom of the staircase, realizing that I’d stopped to stare at the photos. “Keep moving.”

  One of the men behind me shoved his gun into my back, encouraging me. I stared at the first photo of Sophia in the white dress for a second longer before trudging the rest of the way down the stairs.

  I wasn’t terribly surprised when Hazel led me into the back half of the house. I steeled myself and stepped through the doorway after her, expecting to find some sort of twisted replica of Jo-Jo’s salon, but the area was completely different. Instead of combs, curlers, and hair dryers, Grimes had set up a fancy, old-timey office and parlor in the space.

  An antique desk trimmed with brass stood in the middle of the room, close to the back wall, with a variety of leather wing chairs arranged in front of it. A perfect place for Grimes to hold court and pontificate to his men. All of the seats were a dark green, except for the one behind the desk. It was the same vibrant cherry red as the salon chairs at Jo-Jo’s.

  A set of double doors to the left of the desk led out to what looked like a stone patio and then a fenced-in yard beyond. Grimes stood on the patio a few feet outside the open doors. He was dressed in a fresh suit, this one in a pale baby blue, and a blue fedora with a matching feather stuck in the brim perched on his head. I wondered how many of those old-fashioned suits he had hanging in his closets and in how many different colors.

  But the surprising thing was that Grimes wasn’t alone. Someone was on the patio with him. I couldn’t see who it was, though, or even if it was a man or woman. A bit of black fabric was barely visible around the edge of one of the doors, telling me that the person was wearing some sort of dark pants, but that was all.

  Grimes had his hands up and was gesturing. Bits of conversation drifted in through the open doors to me.

  “. . . bit of a problem . . . nothing that I can’t handle . . . the shipment won’t be delayed . . .”

  Then the other person: “The guns had better not . . . that would . . . upset me.”

  I still couldn’t tell whether the stranger was a man or woman. I was too far away, and the voice was too much of a low, smoky murmur.

  I’d thought that Grimes would dress down the mystery person for his or her insolent tone and not-so-veiled threat, but the pleasant smile on his face tightened, his lips pulling back to show even more of his perfect teeth, as though he was grinding his molars together to keep the expression firmly in place. After a moment, he nodded. “Of course.”

  I frowned, wondering who this person was who could intimidate Grimes with only a few words, especially since I, with my knives and my killing spree of his men, didn’t seem to have had much of an impact. I tried to shift to one side, so I could get a better look at his mysterious guest, but a rough hand on my shoulder and a gun shoved against my s
pine made me stop.

  Grimes’s answer must have satisfied the other person, because he or she didn’t say anything else. Grimes swept his fedora off his head and gave a low, elegant bow, but I couldn’t see whether the other person returned the gesture with a polite nod of his or her own. Grimes turned, as if watching someone walk through the backyard. A second later, something creaked, like a fence gate being opened. Then . . . silence.

  Grimes settled his hat on top of his head again, then strode inside the office and shut the double doors behind him.

  Hazel looked at her brother. “Well?”

  “There was a bit of . . . concern about all of the noise and commotion, and of course, we left the client waiting here in the house for far too long while we dealt with the situation,” Grimes said. “All of which I apologized profusely for, in addition to offering a discount for all of the worry, waiting, and trouble, so I think that I managed to salvage the deal.”

  Hazel crossed her arms over her chest. “I told you that we should have waited until after this was done before you went after that haughty Deveraux bitch again.”

  Grimes gave his sister a cold, chilling look. “And I told you that I wanted Sophia back as soon as possible—back here with me, where she belongs.”

  Hazel’s nostrils flared, and her jaw tightened, but she didn’t argue with her brother any more. Still, it was obvious that she had no love for Sophia. I wondered why—well, beyond the obvious fact that she was a sadistic bitch. Was Hazel jealous because Grimes was still so fixated on Sophia all these years later? Because he’d apparently spent months building a replica of Jo-Jo’s house for her to live in? Because he’d decided to bring her there despite the fact that it might jeopardize some big gun deal that the brother and sister had cooking? Or maybe it was a combination of all that and more. Grimes bringing Sophia in, even as his victim, would threaten the amount of time that he had for Hazel. Maybe that was why she liked torturing people so much, especially the young women Grimes kidnapped and brought here. Maybe Hazel didn’t want any competition for her brother’s attention—or anyone replacing her as queen of the mountain.