Heart of Venom

by Jennifer Estep

  But the three men didn’t give me any opportunity to cause trouble. The first two guards kept their hands clamped on my arms, their eyes on me at all times, while the third guy hung back, his gun up and ready to pump me full of bullets if I so much as twitched funny.

  They marched me down the long hallway, out the front door, down the porch steps, and across the yard. I thought that they might turn and head toward the pit, so I could join the other poor souls rotting there, but instead, they forced me to walk straight ahead. When we reached the middle of the clearing, they stopped. The two men holding on to my arms yanked me back and forth for a minute, until I was standing on a particular patch of dirt that had been worn smooth by the tread of so many feet on it over the years. Then those two and the third guy did a most curious thing: they slowly backed away from me.

  The last guy with the gun raised his weapon high into the air and fired off nine shots, three bursts of three in rapid succession. That must have been Grimes’s signal to gather ’round again, because more men started streaming out of the barracks, kitchen, and other buildings.

  And they all had weapons.

  Most carried guns, long, sleek rifles that could take down an enemy at a hundred paces, and the wooden stocks gleamed like polished bronze in the afternoon sun. Others held big old-fashioned revolvers, which they slowly twirled around and around on their fingers, as though they were cowboys right out of the old West, getting ready for a showdown at high noon. A few clutched knives, while some had crude, simple weapons like the sharpened stakes that I’d seen earlier in the forest.

  My gaze went from one man’s face to another. They all grinned, their eyes lighting up at the thought of my impending torture, whatever it was going to be. No one looked away, and no one had any spark of compassion, uncertainty, or unease in his face. No surprise there, given how many of their buddies I’d killed already. I was mildly surprised that they hadn’t brought out the tar, feathers, and pitchforks, along with their other weapons. That seemed like something that Grimes would enjoy, given his seeming fascination with the past.

  The men didn’t speak, but a collective sense of anticipation and excitement rippled through them, as though this was some show that they’d witnessed many times before and were eager to see repeated. One guy even drew a silver lighter out of his pocket and lit a cigarette with it, as though this was some sort of smoke break before the main event started. He kept snapping the lid up and down on the lighter, ready to get on with things.

  I wondered how many other folks had stood in this exact same spot, facing down Grimes’s mob. Would these gangsters all raise their weapons and fire at once? Would they swarm me en masse? Or would they all throw themselves at me, drive me to the ground, and tear me limb from limb? No way to know, until they decided to attack.

  I’d killed around a dozen men up on the ridge, but there were a dozen more gathered around me now. My gaze roamed over the crowd again, this time searching for any sign of weakness, any gap in the ring that might be big enough for me to fight my way through, any way that I could escape and live to kill another day. Or at least get back to Grimes and take him down before I died.

  But there was nothing—no weakness, no gap, no hope of escape.

  So I straightened my spine, stared back at the men, and braced myself for my impending execution.

  * * *

  I didn’t have to wait long.

  I’d only been standing in the ring of men for about two minutes when the front door of the house banged open, and Grimes and Hazel appeared. Hazel had her arm linked through his, and Grimes escorted her down the steps, through the yard, and out into the clearing in a show of gallantry as complete as any old-fashioned Southern gentleman ever could have managed.

  The men parted enough to allow Grimes and Hazel to join in the ring. Once again, the big man kept out of arm’s reach of me, but I swallowed my frustration. I couldn’t kill Grimes, but I couldn’t survive this either, despite my promise to Owen that I would. I’d known that the words were most likely a lie when I’d said them, but I’d at least hoped to destroy Grimes before I met my own end. Now I didn’t even think that would happen.

  My heart clenched at the thought of Owen, and I focused on the tightness in my chest, imagining it as a drumbeat and letting it steady me.

  Live, live, live, live . . .

  I could almost hear Owen’s voice whispering that to me over and over again, and I seized onto that determination until there was no room for anything else. No doubt, no hesitation, no fear. Just the will to do what needed to be done to survive this.

  Because if I couldn’t kill Grimes now, that meant that I had to live to try again another day.

  The Fire elemental swept his hat off his head and bowed low to the crowd, before straightening back up and gesturing at me with his dapper fedora. “Allow me to introduce Ms. Blanco,” he said in a loud, booming voice. “At least, that’s what she says her name is. But we don’t pay too much attention to names up here, do we, boys?”

  The men all chuckled. Several wet their lips as they stared at me, while others slowly looked me up and down, their lecherous gazes trying to see my breasts through the blood-soaked vest that I wore.

  “Now, we all know what we do to the folks we decide to bring up to our camp or those who wander in here by accident,” Grimes continued. “We give them a choice. They can stay, or they can go.”

  A choice? I seriously doubted that, but I had no idea what he was babbling on about.

  “Usually, that choice only involves a few of you, since it’s a reward for those who have worked extra hard over the last few weeks. But I think that you will all agree that Ms. Blanco’s . . . antics have earned her a special sort of punishment.”

  The men all hooted and hollered, their dark cheers rising in a swelling tide of impending violence. The guy with the lighter clicked it on and held it up as if he was at a rock concert, while a few of the others fired their guns into the air or stamped their feet, like they were bulls about to charge me. I really should have been wearing a red cape. It was my color, after all.

  Grimes raised his hands, and the commotion slowly quieted down. “Now, you all know how many good men we lost today because of Ms. Blanco and her friends.”

  The crowd sobered at that, and angry, accusing gazes slammed into me from all sides.

  “Rest assured that we will track down the other people responsible for the attack on our camp, and we will deal with them accordingly. But in the meantime, there is the question of what to do with Ms. Blanco.”

  Grimes looked at each man in turn. “Well, boys? What should we do with her?”

  A chorus of shouts erupted from the crowd.

  “Kill her!”

  “Shoot the bitch where she stands!”

  “Throw her in the pit!”

  Naturally, that last screamed request came from Hazel.

  Grimes grinned and cupped a hand to his ear, as though he were listening to each and every hoarse, murderous scream and was considering them all quite carefully. From Fletcher’s file and what I’d seen, I’d thought that Grimes was just another bad guy, just another underworld thug, just another elemental who used his magic to keep his minions in line. But I had to admit that he had a certain charisma to him, a certain way of playing to a crowd, a certain cruel strength that others might admire and flock to. I had no doubt that his men feared him, but they respected him too.

  After a few minutes, he raised his hands, and the men quieted down once more. “Well, those are all fine, fine ideas, but I have one that I think you’ll like even better,” Grimes said. “As some of you know, Ms. Blanco here claims to be the Spider, the most feared assassin in all of Ashland.”

  This time, derisive laughs and snorts rippled among the men.

  “Now, I doubt that she’s telling the truth,” Grimes continued. “But let’s say that she is. I know how much you boys like to go hunting, and I’d say that this is a prime opportunity to go up against the best of the best. Wouldn’t y
ou?”

  More hoots and hollers. More stomping feet and lascivious grins. More fingers rubbing over the triggers of guns and the hilts of knives, itching to use the weapons on me.

  “Now, we’ve all suffered a terrible loss here today,” Grimes said, when the men had fallen silent once more. “This woman has taken our brothers in arms from us. Fine men and fine soldiers. She came up here, snuck up here in the shadows, and killed them, like a hunter shooting deer from a stand. Hardly sporting at all. So I say that we give her a taste of her own medicine and show her what it feels like to be hunted for a change.”

  Grimes fixed his gaze on mine. His eyes glowed a bright, almost golden brown, not from any Fire magic that he was embracing but from the strength and surety of his own crazy convictions.

  “I like to think of myself as a sporting man, Ms. Blanco,” Grimes said. “And the rules of this game are quite simple. You get a five-minute head start. After that, it’s open season—on you.”

  When I didn’t respond to his taunts or show so much as a flicker of fear, Grimes turned to his men once again.

  “Bring her back dead, and you’ll be richly rewarded,” Grimes said. “Or, if you prefer, bring her back alive, and, well, the man who bags her can have her for an hour before we throw her in the pit and finish her off.”

  This time, the hoots and hollers were so loud that you could probably hear them on the next mountain over. Apparently, Grimes’s boys were all about the thrill of the chase. Fools.

  “Now, being the sporting man that I am, I will warn you that I’m not going to handicap Ms. Blanco in any way,” Grimes said. “Some of you saw her fight up on the ridge, so you know exactly how dangerous she is already.”

  No weapons, no supplies, and a body full of aches and pains. Nah. I wasn’t handicapped at all.

  “Oh, yeah, she might have been tough up on the ridge,” Hazel chimed in, cocking her hip to the side and striking a pose. “But that was when she had a couple of knives on her. I think the boys won’t have nearly as much trouble with her this time around. Don’t y’all agree?”

  The men roared with laughter. They didn’t notice Grimes arching a black eyebrow at Hazel and her cringing and quickly bowing her head in apology. Apparently, the big man didn’t like anyone ad-libbing on his time.

  So that’s why he’d let me keep my clothes, boots, and vest—so I’d put up more of a fight and give his men a better show. The way things stood now, I’d either get gunned down in the woods like a deer or dragged back here and raped before being roasted like a pig in the pit by Hazel.

  I flashed back to the dead woman whom Owen, Warren, and I had found in the stake-filled trap that morning. I wondered if this was the same choice that she’d been given: stay here and live a short, torture-filled life, or try to get away and die.

  That black rage rose in me again, and I let the cold seep into every part of my being, let it coat all the aches and pains in my body, let it fill in the hollow space where I’d used up so much of my magic, let it freeze out everything that might distract me from what had to be done now. Oh, yes. I embraced the rage until it was the only thing thrumming through my body—along with the will to survive.

  Grimes’s first mistake was not killing me while I’d been unconscious on the ridge. His second was this ridiculous blood sport. But his third and most egregious was the fact that he was giving me a chance, however small—because I was going to make the most of it.

  While the men cheered and Grimes grinned at the adoration coming his way, I stared past the ring of jeering fools and scanned the camp, taking in all of the buildings and the woods beyond, comparing where I was with Fletcher’s maps that I’d studied earlier.

  After a moment, a cruel smile curved my lips. If Grimes and his boys wanted a show, I’d be more than happy to give them some fireworks that they’d never forget.

  The hoots and hollers finally died down, and Grimes checked the watch on his wrist.

  “Your time starts now, Ms. Blanco,” he said.

  “If I were you,” Hazel said, giving me an evil smile, “I’d start running, bitch.”

  Hazel hadn’t even finished speaking before I started moving. But instead of immediately breaking through the ring of men, I focused my sights on one particular target: the guy with the cigarette lighter.

  He’d clipped the lid closed and was about to put the device in his pocket when I jammed my fingers into his throat and swiped the lighter from his hand. He dropped to the ground, wheezing. I hurdled over his body and started sprinting toward the east end of camp.

  “Hey! She hit Bert!”

  “She wasn’t supposed to do that!”

  Angry shouts rose behind me, but I tuned them out.

  The smart thing would have been to start climbing up the rocky ridge, then find the path that Warren, Owen, and I had used to get up here in the first place. But I didn’t know that I had the strength for such a quick, strenuous climb, given the burns and blisters on my hands, arms, legs, and back. Right now, it was all I could do to run through the pain.

  And just because Sophia wasn’t here didn’t mean that she and the others were off the mountain yet. I didn’t know how much time had passed while I was unconscious—maybe a couple of hours, maybe less—but I still wanted to give them as much time as possible to get away, so I headed in the opposite direction from how we’d approached Grimes’s camp. Besides, there was something else that I wanted to do before I headed into the woods, one more little surprise I wanted to add to Mr. Grimes’s show.

  Instead of heading for the path that led to the pit or plunging into the woods, I veered to the left, straight toward the building that housed the moonshine that Grimes and his men made.

  “Hey!” Another shout rose behind me. “You can’t do that! You’re supposed to run into the woods!”

  I grinned. They wanted to play a game with me, but they didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t doing what they wanted me to, what they expected me to. Well, I wasn’t some poor college girl who’d been kidnapped and was scared out of her mind and running blind. I was an assassin, and I was going to show them exactly how the Spider played this sort of twisted game.

  I leaped up onto the front porch, threw open the door, and burst into the building. The inside had been gutted so that it was one big open space. Three copper stills had been set up in the middle of the area, with different lengths of pipe squatting in front of them, as though they were in the process of being hooked together. A table against the left wall bristled with more pipes, along with tools and rags.

  My gaze snapped over to the right wall, which was covered with shelves and, more important, jars of moonshine. Hundreds of glass Mason jars of various shapes and sizes lined the wooden shelves, all sealed with shiny brass lids. The sunlight streaming in through the windows made the liquid glimmer like white gold. Well, I was about to change that.

  I raced over, grabbed a jar of moonshine, and unscrewed the lid. Caustic fumes assaulted my nose, adding to the hot, sour stench of mash in the air and making me cough. Still, I rammed my shoulder into the shelves as hard as I could, making several dozen jars rattle, fall to the floor, and break. The inside of my nose felt like it was on fire, but I didn’t care. At this point, it matched the aches and pains rippling through the rest of me.

  I quickly stepped through the broken glass and moved to the opposite end of the shelves. I shoved my shoulder into this side too, making even more jars crash to the ground. Puddles of liquid started to ooze over the floor toward the stills, pipes, and supplies.

  When I was sure that there was enough spilled moonshine for what I had in mind, I headed for a door set into the back wall. I also tipped over the open jar of moonshine in my hand, letting the liquid dribble out a little at a time. When the jar was empty, I tossed it away and took the final few steps to the door.

  Grimes thought he was giving his men an advantage by taking away my knives, but he hadn’t realized that I didn’t need weapons or that the simplest thing could be the most d
angerous in certain situations—like the cigarette lighter that I was still holding.

  One of Grimes’s men appeared in the doorway. His eyes locked onto the bit of metal gleaming in my hand.

  “No!” he shouted, realizing what I was about to do. “Stop—”

  I grinned again, clicked the lighter on, and tossed the flickering flame onto the floor.

  WHOOSH!

  The thing about mountain moonshine that made it so irresistible to some folks was the high alcohol content. I’d only been sucking down the fumes for a minute, and I already felt light-headed. In my case, I wasn’t looking for a buzz so much as a burn, and I got one.

  It only took a second for the fire to zip across the alcohol trail that I’d created on the floor and over to the puddles of liquor. It wouldn’t be long before the flames would cause more of the glass jars to shatter, which would add even more fuel to the fire. I grinned into the heat of the flames even as the guy at the door turned and ran. This should keep at least a few of Grimes’s men busy and out of the hunt. Otherwise, the whole camp might go up in smoke—and wouldn’t that just be a crying shame.

  Shouts rose from the front of the building as smoke boiled up and the fire started edging toward the windows. The shimmering red-orange flames made the stills glow a bright copper.

  Crack!

  Crack! Crack!

  Crack!

  I ducked, thinking that the idiots outside were shooting at the building, but it was only the glass jars breaking. More moonshine spilled to the floor, and the flames arched higher.

  “Burn, baby, burn,” I murmured, encouraging the fire a final time before turning and running out the back door.

  22

  Several working stills squatted in the backyard behind the building, but they were far too big and heavy for me to tip over and add to the mayhem, so I raced past them, my eyes fixed on the woods ahead.

  Crack!

  Crack! Crack!

  Crack!

  Bullets pinged off the metal stills and pipes and rattled away into the trees. Apparently, my five minutes were already up. Or maybe I’d forfeited my laughable head start by not playing by the rules.