Heart of Venom

  His gaze focused on me, then on Bria, and he smiled again. “There’s no hurry, though. I got what I came for, so take a few minutes to amuse yourself with these two, if you want. Just be sure they won’t be able to speak to anyone about it after the fact.”

  The four men let out dark, delighted chuckles at the thought of raping and killing Bria and me, but they weren’t nearly as cold and sinister as the black rage beating in my heart. I ignored the men and looked at Bria. My sister’s blue eyes blazed with anger. I nodded at her, and she nodded back. We knew what we had to do now.

  Grimes stuffed his gun back under his suit jacket, then gallantly flipped his gray fedora back up onto his head. He leaned forward and mockingly tipped his hat at Jo-Jo. She glared at him as best she could, but her eyes were glassy and slightly unfocused with pain.

  “I would say until we meet again, but we both know that’s not going to happen,” Grimes said. “But don’t you worry, Ms. Deveraux. I’ll take real good care of Sophia for you. Just like I did before. In fact, I plan to give her my full attention in the days and weeks ahead. After all, we’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for.”

  Jo-Jo made a strangled sound, but Grimes had already turned his back on her.

  He stepped through the salon doorway and crooked his finger at the two men still holding Sophia, who tightened their grip on her and started dragging her toward the doorway. Hazel stood to the side and watched, that ball of Fire magic still burning in her hand.

  But Sophia wasn’t going without a fight. She grabbed on to one side of the doorframe, holding on with one hand and stretching the other out to her sister.

  “Jo-Jo!” she rasped, a plaintive wail to her low hoarse tone that I’d never heard before. “Jo-Jo!”

  “Sophia!” Jo-Jo screamed in return, holding out one hand and reaching for her.

  The two men had their hands around Sophia’s waist, trying to drag her away, but the dwarf was stronger than they were, and she could have held on forever—if the wood hadn’t cracked.

  One second, Sophia was hanging on to the doorway. The next, the wood had splintered off into a long shard, sending her flying back into the hallway with the men. They landed in a tangle of arms and legs, the men shouting and Sophia snarling.

  “Now, now. We’ll have none of that,” Hazel said.

  Stepping into the hallway, she grabbed Sophia by her hair, jerked her up, and slammed the ball of Fire magic into her back. Sophia screamed, but after a moment, the flames licking at her T-shirt were snuffed out. Sophia had Air magic, just like Jo-Jo did, and she was using her power to push back against Hazel’s Fire.

  But it didn’t work.

  As soon as the flames disappeared, more Fire flashed to life in Hazel’s palm, and she shoved it into Sophia’s back, causing her to scream once more. That gave the two men she was fighting a chance to latch onto her again and start dragging her down the hallway.

  Sophia fought them—she fought them with all the strength and magic she had, but it wasn’t enough. Not with Hazel burning her over and over again and laughing the whole damn time. The more Sophia struggled, the more magic the Fire elemental used on her, and the more she cackled with glee, until her light, pealing chuckles rang through the entire house.

  Sadistic bitch.

  As difficult and painful as it was, I shut the sound of Sophia’s screams and agony out of my mind and focused on the four men left in the salon. They weren’t at all concerned about the elemental battle raging in the hallway. The two men who’d been guarding Jo-Jo started kicking the dwarf, adding to her injuries, while the two men holding Bria and me decided to listen to Grimes’s advice and have some fun with us.

  The man guarding me tightened his grip on my arm, his fingers digging into my skin. “Don’t you worry, honey,” he said, leering at me. “I’ll treat you real good.”

  “Really?” I said. “Is that so?”

  He pulled me up flush against his body. “Oh, yeah. I’ll give it to you so good that you’ll be begging me for more.”

  I coldly smiled into his face, then whipped my right hand out from behind me and stabbed him in the throat with my knife. I yanked the weapon out as brutally as I had driven it in and followed up my first fatal blow with another furious punch to his heart. He was dead before he hit the floor.

  He wasn’t going to be the only one, though—not by a long shot.

  I shoved the dead man away, grabbed another knife from the buffet table behind me, and headed toward Bria’s man. He was so surprised by what had happened to his buddy that he gaped at me. He didn’t notice Bria drop her hand down to her side or the bluish white light that flickered in her palm as she reached for her Ice magic.

  Bria drove her elbow into the guy’s side, making him grunt, release her, and stagger back. But she wasn’t about to let him get away. Instead, she whipped around, grabbed his jacket, pulled him forward, and shoved her hand into his face with one smooth motion.

  Then she unleashed her magic on him.

  The bluish white glow of her Ice power intensified, burning as brightly as a star, and a frigid sensation blasted through the salon, colder than any winter day. A second later, the light faded, and Bria let go of the man. He thumped to the floor, his whole head encased in two inches of elemental Ice. If he wasn’t dead already from the extreme, sudden frostbite, he’d suffocate soon enough. I was already turning to the two men kicking Jo-Jo, but I made a mental note to tell Bria how impressed I was by the creativity—and viciousness—of that display of her power. I’d have to remember that particular trick.

  The last two men finally noticed that Bria and I were fighting back. A little smarter and quicker than their friends had been, they raised their guns and fired at us.

  Crack! Crack!

  Bria and I both dived for cover behind two of the salon chairs. The bullets hit the chairs, sending bits of fluffy white fabric puffing up into the air like snow. Bria had managed to snag her straw bag in the confusion, and she quickly upended it and grabbed the gun that came tumbling out. She clutched the weapon with her right hand as another ball of elemental Ice pulsed to life in her left palm.

  Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

  The men continued to fire at us.

  “Go!” Bria shouted. “Get Sophia! I’ll cover you!”

  I hated to leave her in the middle of a fight, but she was right. We had to save Sophia.

  I nodded at Bria. “Now!” I screamed.

  We both rose from behind the salon chairs. The men raised their weapons to fire at us again, but Bria reared back and threw her Ice magic at them, causing them to duck down out of the way of the chilly blast. She followed that up by raising her own gun and firing it at the men while I sprinted for the doorway.

  Hazel and the other two men had already managed to drag Sophia outside. Knives in hand, I sprinted through the house and ran out the open front door. I leaped down off the porch and hurried across the lawn, my bare feet squashing the grass.

  A large white van sat in the driveway, parked at a haphazard angle behind Sophia’s classic convertible and a beige sedan that I didn’t recognize. Hazel had already gotten into the driver’s seat of the van and had cranked the engine. Sophia was still struggling with the two men at the back of the vehicle as Grimes looked on, apparently unwilling to get his suit or his hands dirty. I didn’t bother screaming at the men to let go of Sophia. They’d do that as soon as I killed them—and Grimes and Hazel too.

  Grimes must have seen me racing toward him out of the corner of his eye, because he turned in my direction. He frowned and considered me a moment, as though he was surprised that I’d managed to get past his men and make it all the way outside.

  Then he threw his Fire magic at me.

  The flames streaked through the air, seeming to burn hotter and brighter as they zoomed across the lawn. I didn’t have time to duck them, not if I wanted to save Sophia, so I used my Stone magic to harden my skin as the elemental Fire engulfed me.

  The searing strength of th
e heat stopped me in my tracks, and it took all my concentration to keep holding on to my own power so I wouldn’t be incinerated. Grimes wasn’t quite as strong as Mab had been, but his magic still packed a hell of a wallop.

  I didn’t want to waste precious seconds dropping to the ground and rolling around to smother the flames, so being one of the rare elementals who was gifted in not one but two areas, this time, I grabbed hold of my Ice power. I sent out a blast of magic and used my cold power to douse the Fire trying to scorch my skin. The flames immediately froze into weird twisted shapes, cracked off my body, and plummeted to the ground like icicles falling off a roof. The cold Ice hissed as it came into contact with the hot embers and smoldering grass underfoot. I darted forward again.

  Apparently impatient with his men’s lack of progress, Grimes was now wrestling with Sophia himself. He didn’t bother to look at me to see if I was still standing. He seemed confident enough in his magic to believe that one fiery burst was enough to toast me to ashes. Fool.

  Grimes grabbed Sophia and rammed her head into the side of the van. She kept fighting him, so he slammed her head into the metal again, hard enough to leave a dent behind. She collapsed on the driveway, unconscious. Grimes easily picked her up and tossed her into the back of the van.

  “Stop!” I screamed, trying to distract him long enough for me to get to Sophia. “Stop!”

  He glanced over his shoulder at me and frowned again, as though I were some bothersome bug he thought he’d already swatted away. He gestured at his men, and they moved from the driveway over to the edge of the lawn in front of the house. I headed toward Grimes, but his men put themselves in between the two of us, and I had no choice but to go through them to get to him.

  So I tightened my grip on my knives and threw myself into the fight.

  The men pulled out their weapons, but I didn’t give them the chance to fire. I sliced one of my knives into the gun hand of the man on my right, then pivoted and did the same thing to the second man. They both grunted with pain and surprise, but they snapped their hands up, ready to beat me to death. I didn’t care. I moved back and forth between them, whirling this way and that, cutting into the first man, then the second, until they resembled a couple of piñatas, only with blood and guts pouring out instead of candy.

  I finally managed to cut down one of the men in front of me. The other followed a moment later, giving me a clear path to the van and Sophia trapped inside.

  “Sophia!” I screamed, running toward the vehicle. “Sophia!”

  Hazel threw the van into gear and whipped it into a U-turn right in the middle of Jo-Jo’s lawn. The tires threw up grass and dirt, and the van fishtailed, but Hazel managed to get it under control. She gave me an evil grin before flooring it.

  I dropped my knives and chased after the van, throwing myself forward, trying to use my speed and momentum to latch onto one of the rear door handles, but I just wasn’t quick enough to catch the vehicle, and my fingers missed the handles by several inches.

  I fell flat on my face instead.

  My Stone magic softened the landing, but I still felt the jarring, bruising impact through my whole body. Still, I pushed the pain away, rolled forward, and surged back up onto my feet. I wasn’t giving up yet—

  But I was too late.

  The van zoomed down the driveway, screeched through a hard right turn, and raced out of sight—taking my friend along with it.

  5

  I sucked down a breath and started running again. Maybe I could catch them before they got out of the subdivision—

  “Gin!”

  I pulled up short and whirled around. Bria stood on the front porch, covered with blood.

  “It’s Jo-Jo!” she screamed again. “Get in here! Quick!”

  I looked over my shoulder. By this point, the van was gone. I couldn’t catch Grimes and Hazel, and I couldn’t save Sophia.

  I couldn’t save her.

  “Gin!” Bria yelled again.

  My heart burned with rage and guilt and shame, but there was nothing I could do about that right now. So I sucked in another breath, grabbed my knives from where they had fallen on the driveway, and ran back toward the house.

  Once Bria realized that I was headed in her direction, she darted back inside. Dread tied my stomach into tight, aching knots, and I forced myself to move even faster. I leaped up onto the porch, raced down the hallway, and burst into the salon. Bria was already crouched down by Jo-Jo’s side. Rosco was there too, his furry head resting in the dwarf’s lap. He must have come back inside while I’d been chasing after Sophia. He let out a low, plaintive whine when he saw me, begging me to help the mistress he loved so much.

  Jo-Jo was in the same spot as before, slumped against the wall, her head lolling to one side, her clear eyes open, blood all over her chest.

  Fear, guilt, and grief roared to life inside my chest, bubbling up like lava about to erupt from a volcano. My knives slipped from my numb fingers and clattered to the floor. I bent over double from the cruel, searing pain, from the thought that Jo-Jo was gone, dead, murdered—that I’d failed her just like I had failed Fletcher when I hadn’t been able to save him from being tortured to death inside the Pork Pit.

  Then Jo-Jo slowly turned her head in my direction and looked up at me, her eyes bright and cloudy with pain, confusion, and fear—for her sister.

  “Sophia . . .” Jo-Jo whispered, her voice faint and weak. “Grimes . . .”

  Relief surged through me, so sharp, cold, and bittersweet that it took my breath away. My knees buckled, and I stumbled down onto the floor beside her.

  “Don’t you worry about that right now,” I finally said in a rough, ragged tone. “Just try to relax.”

  I peered at Jo-Jo’s wounds, and my relief vanished, replaced once more by that hot, churning wad of fear, guilt, and grief. Grimes had shot her twice, and he’d made both bullets count. Two ugly holes marred her flesh, close to her heart. Each one a kill shot. The only reason Jo-Jo was still alive was that she was a dwarf, and her dense muscles had kept the bullets from tearing into her heart. But she was losing blood with every shallow breath that she drew in, and it wouldn’t be long until she ran out of it entirely.

  Bria picked up a towel she’d grabbed from somewhere and pressed it against Jo-Jo’s wounds, trying to stem the blood loss. I got back up onto my feet, stepped over the dead men, and started rummaging through all of the pink plastic tubs on the counter, knocking bottles of shampoo, tubes of lipstick, and bags of pink sponge curlers off the surface in my hurried, desperate frenzy to find something that would help Jo-Jo. Finally, my fingers closed over a small metal tin, with a puffy cloud rune painted on the top in white and outlined in a deep, vibrant blue.

  I popped the lid off the tin and dropped down beside Jo-Jo again. “Here,” I told Bria. “This will help.”

  She pulled the towel away from the wounds, picked up Rosco, and moved him out of the way. I grabbed one of my knives from the floor and used it to cut open Jo-Jo’s dress so I could have better access to her injuries. Then I dipped my bloody fingers into the tin, which was full of a clear ointment that had a soft, soothing vanilla scent. I leaned forward and carefully smeared the substance all over Jo-Jo’s chest, trying not to cause her any more pain than was absolutely necessary, but she still winced with every brush of my fingers against her skin.

  Not only could Air elementals heal folks with their magic, but they could also imbue things like lotions, liquids, and creams with their power, as Jo-Jo had done to this tin of ointment. Now I was hoping that she’d put enough of her healing magic into the clear salve to help save her.

  I held my breath as the ointment slowly soaked into her skin. It didn’t pull the black, ragged edges of the gunshot holes back together, but it did slow and then finally stop the blood loss—for now. Jo-Jo’s injuries were deep and serious, and it wouldn’t be long before the Air magic in the ointment faded away and the wounds started to bleed once more, and that was if one of the bullets didn’
t continue its journey on into her heart in the meantime.

  Once again, that hot, agonizing fear that I was going to lose her rose in me, but I ruthlessly squashed it, focusing on what we needed to do next to save her.

  “We’ve got to get her to a healer, to another Air elemental,” I said. “Right now.”

  “But who?” Bria asked.

  Rosco eased back over to Jo-Jo’s side and whined again, as if he was asking the same question.

  Who indeed? Air elementals weren’t all that rare, but they didn’t exactly grow on trees either. Not to mention the fact that not every Air elemental used his or her power to heal. Some, like Sophia, used it to destroy, to rip apart skin and bones and sandblast molecules into nothingness. My heart clenched again at the thought of Sophia and what she could be experiencing at Grimes’s hands right now, but I pushed those sick, guilty feelings away. First, I had to save Jo-Jo. Then I could go after Sophia and rain down all of my cold, cold wrath on Harley Grimes for what he’d done to the Deveraux sisters.

  Jo-Jo coughed, as though she was trying to say something. I leaned closer so I could hear what she was telling me.

  “Coop . . .” she finally whispered. “. . . er.”

  It took me a moment to put the syllables together. “Cooper?”

  Jo-Jo’s head lolled to one side, which I took as a yes.

  Bria frowned. “Cooper? Cooper Stills? Do you think that he can heal her?”

  Cooper was Jo-Jo’s gentleman friend. Well, I suspected that they were a little more than friends, but that didn’t matter right now. All that did was the fact that he had Air magic. Cooper was a blacksmith by trade, so I didn’t know how good at healing he was. Still, I knew that he’d do his damnedest to save Jo-Jo any way he could.

  * * *

  At around five feet, Jo-Jo was tall for a dwarf, and she was heavy, because of her stocky physique. All of her thick, strong muscles had saved her from being immediately killed by Grimes’s bullets, but they weren’t doing her any favors now, because Bria and I didn’t have the upper-body strength to move her as quickly as we needed to. All we could really do was carefully shuffle forward with her a few steps at a time—time that Jo-Jo didn’t have.