Heart of Venom

by Jennifer Estep

  Grimes and Hazel stretched their arms out in front of them. They let their Fire build and build.

  Then they threw it at me—all their strength, all their power, all their hate.

  Wave after wave of searing, smoking, unbelievable heat slammed into my body. I gritted my teeth much tighter to keep from screaming. It was all that I could do to use my power to block the combined strength of theirs.

  I tried to get to them, tried to get close enough to cut just one of them with my knives, but every time I managed to stagger forward a few feet, another wave of Fire magic would send me sliding back. But I kept struggling, kept fighting, kept churning forward, even though all I was really doing was digging my heels into the burning grass underfoot. All I needed was to separate them, to stop them from sharing their magic and throwing the combined force of it at me, and then I could kill them.

  At least, that’s what I told myself, even if I knew that it wasn’t true.

  Because I’d already used up a fair amount of my magic fighting Hazel, and I didn’t have enough left in the tank to stop them both. Even with the power I’d put back into my spider rune ring over the past two days and what was in the knives in my hands, I was still going to run out of magic before they did. Then their elemental Fire would wash over me and reduce me to soot and smoldering ashes on the spot.

  And there wasn’t a damn thing that I could do about it.

  “Gin!” I thought I heard Owen yell. “Hang on! I’m coming!”

  Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

  My friends fired still more shots, but what was left of Grimes’s men returned their fire, holding them at bay. They wouldn’t reach me in time, and we all knew it. Still, I was going to hold on for as long as I could. Because if I couldn’t kill Grimes and Hazel, then maybe they could. Because, magic or not, if Finn and the others pumped them full of enough bullets, then their magic would wane, and Finn could step up and finish the job—

  Through the smoke and flames, I saw a figure slam into Grimes and Hazel, and I realized that it was Owen.

  He threw himself at the brother and sister, and all three of them went down like pins knocked over by a bowling ball. Even though he had shattered their concentration, Grimes and Hazel were still holding on to their magic, and the flames washed over Owen, as though he were the wick in the center of a burning candle. His hoarse screams echoed all the way around the ridge.

  “Owen!” I screamed, staggering toward him. “Owen!”

  The three of them were still rolling around on the grass, but they finally came to a stop. Grimes’s head snapped against the ground, stunning him, but Hazel positioned herself on top of Owen. She snapped her hand back and reached for her Fire magic once again.

  I reached through the flames, dug my fingers into her hair, and yanked her off him. I tossed her aside as hard as I could, tearing clumps of black hair out by the roots. Hazel shrieked with pain, but I didn’t give her time to recover. She hit the ground, and a second later, I was on top of her. Hazel reached for her Fire, throwing it into my face.

  I ignored the flames searing my skin, raised my knife high, and buried it to the hilt in the bitch’s black, burning heart.

  Hazel arched her back and let out a bloodcurdling scream. I ripped the knife out and drove it right back into her chest, twisting and twisting and twisting it in. Muscles ripped, tendons snapped, and one of her ribs cracked under my brutal assault. Hazel slapped at me, her blows getting weaker and weaker with every passing moment, the Fire on her fingers giving way to smoking red and orange sparks. I tore the knife out of her chest once again.

  And this time, I slit her throat with the blade.

  Blood gushed out of the wound, spattering onto me, as hot as the flames still licking at my skin. Hazel’s screams died down to gurgling wails, then were choked off altogether. She stared at me, the bright, shimmering Fire in her eyes slowly, stubbornly dimming and dulling as death crept up on her. Her head lolled to the side, and the last of the flames dancing on her fingertips vanished into smoke. After a moment, even that drifted up into the evening sky and dissipated.

  When I was sure that she was dead, I crawled over to where Owen lay on his back on the grass. Deep, dark, ugly red burns and blisters covered every part of him that I could see—his chest, hands, arms, and face. His eyebrows had been singed off, and his scalp gleamed a baby pink in places where his black hair had been burned way. Bile rose in my throat at his devastating injuries.

  “Gin . . .” he rasped.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered, trying not to let him see how worried I was. “You’re going to be okay—”

  A shadow fell over me, blotting out the evening sun. I looked up. Harley Grimes had shaken off his daze and now stood over me, more Fire pooling in the palm of his hand. He reared back his arm, ready to throw it at me, ready to end me. I reached for what little magic I had and hovered over Owen, determined to protect him as much as I could—

  A dark figure dressed all in black slammed into Grimes from behind. Sophia.

  Sophia? What the hell was she doing here?

  I blinked and blinked, wondering if my eyes and the clouds of smoke that filled the yard were playing tricks on me, but it was her. Sophia was here, and she was fighting Grimes.

  With one hand, Sophia ground Grimes’s face into the dirt. With the other, she unleashed a series of sharp, brutal blows to his kidneys.

  Grimes managed to raise his head and let out a delighted laugh. “Oh, Sophia,” he purred. “Still trying to kill me after all these years. When will you ever learn?”

  Grimes reached around with one hand and blasted Sophia with his Fire magic. She grunted with pain and rolled away from him, smothering the flames scorching her clothes and skin. A moment later, they were both back on their feet, fists clenched, staring each other down.

  My gaze flicked past them. Sophia’s classic convertible sat in the driveway behind the vehicles that Grimes’s men had driven up here. I hadn’t heard the car pull up in all the commotion. But she wasn’t the only one who’d come. Jo-Jo was leaning against the side of the car, holding on to Cooper’s arm to steady herself. I hadn’t told them what was going down tonight, but they must have figured it out for themselves. That, or Finn had told them.

  Finn, Bria, and Phillip came running up, having finally dispatched the last of Grimes’s men. Finn took aim at Grimes. He looked at me, but I shook my head. Finn nodded and lowered his gun.

  Grimes stared at Finn, Bria, and Phillip, then at Owen and me, and finally, at Cooper, Jo-Jo, and Sophia. For the first time, he seemed to realize that he was all alone and that Hazel and the rest of his men were dead.

  But it didn’t faze or worry him in the slightest. Instead, he reached for his Fire magic once again, more of it than ever before, until his eyes burned like dark liquid gold with his own power, and flames sparked and crackled like fireworks exploding on his fingers.

  “Come with me now, Sophia,” he ordered. “And I won’t kill your friends.”

  Another damn lie, and we all knew it.

  Sophia shook her head. “No. You’re not killing anyone.”

  Grimes threw back his head and laughed—a wild, loud, crazy laugh that told us all just how far off his rocker he was. His plan to hunt me down, find Sophia, and drag us both back to his mountain had completely unraveled, and Grimes was coming undone at the seams right along with it.

  “Really? And who’s going to stop me, you?” He sneered. “Please. You’re not strong enough to stop me. You never were. That’s why you had to get that assassin to protect you all these years. Because you weren’t strong enough to kill me yourself.”

  Sophia shrugged. “Maybe not then. But strong enough now.”

  Jo-Jo hobbled forward, helped along by Cooper, and went to stand beside her sister.

  “We both are,” Jo-Jo said in a clear, sharp voice. “My only regret is that we didn’t do this years ago.”

  Grimes threw back his head and laughed again. Finally, when he realized that he was t
he only one who found it funny, he glared at Jo-Jo with pure hate in his eyes. “You won’t kill me. You don’t have enough magic to kill me. None of you does. None of you is strong enough.”

  Jo-Jo gave him a sweet smile. “That’s the funny thing about Fire,” she said. “No matter how strong it is, it simply can’t survive without Air—and neither can you.”

  She reached for her Air magic, her eyes glowing a milky white. But instead of blasting Grimes with it, Jo-Jo did something even more clever and devious. She sucked all of the oxygen away from him.

  The flames burning on his hand were immediately snuffed out. Grimes stared down at his hand in disbelief, then started snapping his fingers together, as though they were a cigarette lighter that he was trying to coax to life. He reached and reached for his magic, but without all that precious oxygen, he couldn’t get so much as a single spark to flare to life.

  Jo-Jo looked at Sophia, and the sisters nodded to each other. Sophia slowly approached him.

  “Fine,” Grimes muttered, finally giving up on his power. “I don’t need magic to put you in your place, Sophia. I never did.”

  He let out a loud roar and charged at her.

  And then they danced.

  Despite all the years that I’d known her, I hadn’t seen Sophia fight all that often. But she was as efficient and brutal with her blows as I was. More than that, she was motivated by all of the things that she’d suffered at Grimes’s hands.

  For a while, Grimes was able to block her blows, and all they did was exchange punch after punch after punch. But Sophia slowly wore him down. He missed a block, and she socked him square in the jaw. He missed the next block, and she slammed her hand into his sternum, cracking a rib, judging by the way he suddenly started gasping for air.

  Grimes went on the attack, swinging, swinging, swinging, but Sophia swatted away his blows one after another after another. He overextended himself, and she slammed her boot into one of his knees. He howled with pain, but before he could stumble out of range, she clamped her hands on his arms and rammed her boot into his other knee. The cracking of his bones rattled through the entire yard.

  Sophia let go, and Grimes dropped to the ground like a cement block. That’s when we all knew that it was over.

  Sophia positioned herself on top of Grimes and started hitting him, over and over again, as though she were working a heavy bag at the gym.

  Thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack.

  She pounded away at his chest, focusing on his ribs and driving all of the air out of his lungs, so that he couldn’t even scream at what was being done to him—just like she hadn’t been able to scream after he’d destroyed her vocal cords by making her breathe in elemental Fire.

  Jo-Jo. Cooper. Finn. Bria. Phillip. They all stood there and watched Sophia beat Grimes to death, while I huddled on the ground next to Owen. Nobody said a word, although Bria winced at the brutality that Sophia unleashed. But she hadn’t been up at the camp. She hadn’t seen the pit, so she didn’t fully understand his depravity.

  But I did. More important, I understood Sophia’s response to it and why she had to do this herself.

  I’d wanted to spare her and Jo-Jo from facing Grimes again, but they’d come anyway because they needed closure. They needed to help defeat him. And most of all, they needed to know that the nightmare was truly, finally over.

  Thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack.

  And Sophia was making sure that happened with every single blow she landed.

  Eventually, Cooper helped Jo-Jo over to Owen. The two dwarves settled themselves on the scorched earth, took Owen’s hands in theirs, and reached for their Air magic, healing the horrible burns on his body. Then they used their power to heal me as well. Finn, Phillip, and Bria moved silently through the yard, their guns still drawn, checking on Grimes’s men to make sure that they were all dead.

  I got to my feet and went to stand close to Sophia. And I stayed right there, watching her, supporting her, through the whole thing.

  I couldn’t tell exactly when Harley Grimes died. One moment, he was still rasping for breath. The next, I realized that his eyes were focused on Sophia but that he wasn’t seeing her anymore.

  Sophia kept beating Grimes long after he was dead, but I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t try to stop her. She deserved all the time that she needed, for everything that he’d done to her and Jo-Jo.

  Finally, though, her blows slowed, sputtered, then stopped altogether. Sophia sat back on her heels, breathing hard, covered in more blood than even I’d ever had on me. Her arms were completely coated with it, and it dripped off the ends of her fingertips like scarlet teardrops.

  I looked down at Grimes—at least, what was left of him. It wasn’t pretty. Sophia had used her dwarven strength to its fullest. His face was a bloody, pulpy, bony mess; his chest had caved in; and his knees were sprawled out at awkward, impossible angles where Sophia had broken them. If I hadn’t known that it was the body of a man, I would have thought him no more than a pile of roadkill, bloated, bloody, and rotting on the side of some country road.

  I stepped in front of Sophia where she could see me, then held out my hand, which was still covered with Hazel’s blood. After a moment, she took it and let me pull her to her feet. She started to let go, but I tightened my grip on her hand.

  “Not alive,” I said. “Not anymore.”

  Sophia looked at me with a somber expression. But after a moment, she grinned, her smile wider, happier, and brighter than I’d ever remembered it being.

  “No,” she rasped. “Dead—finally.”

  30

  We spent the rest of the night cleaning up the mess.

  Or, rather, Sophia did.

  One by one, she packed the bodies of Grimes, Hazel, and their men into the trunk of her classic convertible. When that was full, she stuffed the other ones into Roslyn’s car, which I was still driving, since it was already such a lost cause. But instead of using her Air magic to sandblast away and dissolve all the blood into nothingness the way she normally would, Sophia left the stains where they were in the yard. The weather would take care of them soon enough. Besides, this wasn’t the first blood that had been spilled in front of Fletcher’s house, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

  Still, as I watched her work, I thought about what she’d told me at Cooper’s house, about how being with the bodies in the pit had been the only peace that she’d ever gotten while she’d been Grimes’s prisoner. I wondered what she was thinking now that his was one of the bodies that she was disposing of, but I didn’t ask. We all had our own demons, and Harley Grimes was one of Sophia’s, to deal with in her own way and time. Besides, for once, I rather enjoyed the irony of the situation.

  Still, I went over to Sophia, who had a tape measure out, trying to determine how many more bodies she could stuff into the trunk of Roslyn’s car. I put my hand on her arm. She stopped measuring and looked up at me.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked in a quiet voice. “I can get rid of the bodies. You shouldn’t have to do this anymore. Not for me. I don’t want you to do it anymore.”

  Sophia stared at me, her black eyes thoughtful.

  “It’s who I am,” she rasped. “It’s what I do. For Fletcher—and for you too.”

  “But you shouldn’t have to clean up my messes,” I protested. “Not when I know what it reminds you of. Not when I know how much it hurts you.”

  Sophia stabbed her finger at her heart. “My choice. Not yours.”

  “But—”

  She reached up and cupped my cheek with her bloody hand. “No buts. I love you, Gin. And this is how I show it.”

  Then she smiled, and I got a glimpse of the girl she had once been, before Grimes, before the pit, before everything.

  “Not soft,” Sophia rasped. “Neither one of us. Not anymore. Never again.”

  I blinked, surprised that she remembered the conversation we’d had in the Pork Pit so long ago after we’d battled those two giants. But she was
right. We were definitely not that. Broken, maybe. But not soft.

  “Okay?” she rasped, her black eyes searching mine.

  “Okay.”

  I didn’t like it, and I would always feel guilty about it, but it was her choice, just as it had always been. Sophia patted my cheek. Then she picked up another body, stuffed it into the trunk of Roslyn’s car, and bent down to grab the next one.

  And that was that.

  “Gin!” Finn called out. “Come here and look at this!”

  Before Sophia had started packing the bodies into the cars, Finn had quickly rifled through all of the dead men’s pockets, including Hazel’s and Grimes’s. When he realized that they didn’t have anything terribly interesting on them, Finn had gathered up their car keys and had started going through their vehicles one by one.

  Now, he had reached the last car, that of Grimes and Hazel. He stood next to the open trunk, along with Bria. They both wore grim expressions.

  “I thought that you’d want to see this for yourself.” Finn gestured at the open trunk, then stepped to one side.

  A couple of foam-lined cases sat inside the space, all with their lids hinged open to reveal the guns grouped inside. Rifles, shotguns, revolvers, even some semiautomatic weapons. It was quite an assortment. Another case held boxes and boxes of bullets.

  “There are more guns and more ammo in the trunks of the other two cars,” Finn said, his voice more serious than I’d heard it in a long time.

  “So Grimes was going to deliver some guns to someone,” I said. “So what? We knew that already. Remember, I told you about the person who was at his house. This is probably that order.”

  Finn and Bria glanced at each other, and then Bria leaned into the trunk and slowly closed the lid on one of the cases. A small yellow note was stuck to the top of the plastic. A name was scrawled on the paper: M. M. Monroe.