Heart of Venom

  Since Bria had Jo-Jo’s shoulders and I had her ankles, I grimaced, thinking about how Finn and I had moved those giants’ bodies a few days before behind the Pork Pit. And now here I was, doing the exact same thing to Jo-Jo. It was one of the cruelest, sickest feelings of irony that I’d ever experienced.

  And another thing that I was going to kill Harley Grimes for.

  “We aren’t getting anywhere like this,” Bria finally said. “Put her down. I have an idea.”

  I bit my lip, wanting to scream at the delay, and she noticed my hesitation. Rosco let out another whine, mirroring my frustration.

  “Trust me,” she said.

  I nodded, and we slowly lowered Jo-Jo to the blood-spattered floor. Once that was done, Bria moved in front of the dwarf, as though she was going to leave the salon and step out into the hallway, although she ended up crouching down beside Jo-Jo’s bare feet. She put her hands flat on the floor, and the bluish white light of her magic leaked out from underneath her palms. A blast of power filled the salon and rolled outward through the entire house, and my own Ice magic stirred in response to the welcome, familiar feel of my sister’s cold, frosty power. A second later, the light and the feel of her magic vanished.

  “There,” she said, getting to her feet. “Maybe this will help make it easier to move her.”

  I peered out into the hallway, which now resembled some sort of crystal cave. My sister had used her magic to coat the floor from the salon all the way to the front door with an inch of elemental Ice.

  “We can drag her along the Ice easier and faster than we can carry her,” Bria explained.

  I grimaced again at the thought, but then I nodded. “You’re right. It’s not pretty, but I think it will work.”

  We moved back over to Jo-Jo, picked her up again, and shuffled forward until she was in the hallway. Then we put her down on the sheet of Ice. The cold crystals seared the bottoms of my bare feet, but I didn’t care. All that mattered was saving Jo-Jo. Bria and I leaned down, each of us grabbing one of Jo-Jo’s legs.

  Then we pulled her across the Ice.

  Bria had been right. With the slick surface, we were able to move farther and faster than if we’d still been trying to carry Jo-Jo. Rosco trotted along beside us, his black toenails digging into the Ice for traction.

  We were still careful, though, trying not to jostle her any more than necessary. I hated doing this to Jo-Jo, dragging her along like she was just another body that I needed to dispose of, but we didn’t have a choice, not if we wanted to get her to Cooper before it was too late.

  Jo-Jo didn’t utter a sound the whole time, although I knew how much pain she had to be in, not only from her wounds but also at the thought of what Grimes would do to Sophia. Instead, she fixed her gaze on the ceiling. The clouds that had been painted up there matched the white mist that filled her eyes.

  But what made my stomach clench were the scarlet smears left behind on the Ice, like long, thin talons trying to tear into the crystals. I couldn’t tell if the stains were from all of the blood that covered Jo-Jo’s clothes or if her wounds had started bleeding again. It didn’t much matter, since I couldn’t do a damn thing about it either way.

  Not one damn thing.

  Jo-Jo wasn’t going to die, I vowed. I wasn’t going to let her. I’d already lost my mom; my older sister, Annabella; and Fletcher. I wasn’t going to lose Jo-Jo too. Not like this and not to a piece of scum as twisted, dirty, and rotten as Harley Grimes.

  When we reached the end of the hallway, Bria bent down and sent another wave of Ice crystals rolling out in front of her, coating the front porch.

  We had managed to tug Jo-Jo out onto the porch and started to pick her up again to carry her down the stairs when a car pulled up the driveway and stopped in front of the house. I tensed, thinking that maybe Grimes and Hazel had come back for their men, after all, or maybe even for Bria and me. But after a moment, I recognized the silver Audi and realized who it belonged to.

  A woman opened the driver’s-side door, got out, and stepped around the car. Like Bria and me, she was dressed down, in a black T-shirt, khaki shorts, and black strappy sandals, but the simple clothes only seemed to enhance the generous swell of her breasts, her toned legs, and all of the lush, lovely curves in between. She pushed her sunglasses up onto her head to hold back her black hair. The bright morning sun brought out the rich color of her toffee skin and eyes, further enhancing her beauty.

  Roslyn Phillips gave us a happy wave and headed toward the porch, somehow not noticing the two dead men lying in the grass off to her left.

  “What are y’all doing out here?” she called out. “I thought that y’all would be back in the salon where it was cool—”

  What she did finally notice was the blood on Bria and me and the fact that Jo-Jo was lying on the porch between us. The smile slipped off her face, her eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open in surprise and growing horror.

  “Gin?” Roslyn asked in a hesitant voice.

  “Open your car door!” I yelled at her. “Now!”

  Roslyn didn’t ask any questions as she hurried around the car, yanked open the back passenger door, and pulled out the basket of vegetables that had been sitting there. Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and more tumbled out of the container and rolled across the driveway. Once that was done, she ran over to the porch. Bria and I started to lean forward to grab Jo-Jo’s shoulders and ankles again, but Roslyn waved us away.

  “Don’t worry,” Roslyn said. “I’ve got her.”

  She crouched down and scooped up Jo-Jo like the dwarf didn’t weigh any more than a small child. It was bizarre, seeing svelte Roslyn holding stocky Jo-Jo in her arms, but it wasn’t entirely unexpected. Roslyn wasn’t an elemental, not like Bria and I were, but she was something that was even better in this situation: a vampire.

  My eyes narrowed. “You’ve been drinking Xavier’s blood.”

  Like all vampires, Roslyn had to drink blood to live, but she got more than just vitamins and nutrients from it. Depending on whose blood she was chugging down, a vampire could absorb everything from an elemental’s Fire magic to a dwarf’s toughness from a frosty glass of O-negative. Even regular old human blood was enough to give most vamps enhanced senses and above-average strength. Since Xavier, Roslyn’s significant other, was a giant, it only made sense that she was strong enough to pick up Jo-Jo.

  Roslyn nodded. “Xavier says that my drinking his blood makes him feel better about me working at the club so late. He figures that if I have his strength, or at least a portion of it, then it’s the next-best thing to him being there on nights when he’s out working the police beat with Bria.”

  “Remind me to thank him for that,” I murmured.

  Roslyn quickly carried Jo-Jo over to her car and maneuvered her into the backseat, while Bria raced back inside the house. I climbed in beside Jo-Jo, and Rosco squeezed into the footwell, covering my bare feet with his warm, plump body. A few seconds later, Bria reappeared and slid into the front passenger seat, her arms full of towels.

  “Where to?” Roslyn asked as she jumped into the driver’s seat.

  “Cooper Stills’s place,” I said. “Start heading north. I’ll give you directions as we go along.”

  “You got it.”

  I took Jo-Jo’s bloody hand in mine as Roslyn threw the car into gear, backed up, turned around, and zoomed down the long driveway.

  6

  While we raced toward Cooper’s place, Bria passed me the towels that she’d grabbed from the salon. I used the cloth to keep steady pressure on Jo-Jo’s wounds, which had started bleeding again, despite the healing ointment that I’d slathered on them.

  “Who did this?” Roslyn asked, smoothly zooming her car around a sharp curve. “And why?”

  Bria shook her head. “I don’t know. We were in the salon, eating and talking, when these guys burst into the house. It looked like they’d followed Sophia there. They took her and shot Jo-Jo. Gin and I killed some of the men in the sa
lon . . .” She looked over her shoulder at me.

  “And I took out two more outside the house,” I said, finishing the story. “But they still managed to get away with Sophia.”

  Roslyn eyed me in the rearview mirror. “Gin?”

  “His name is Harley Grimes,” I snarled. “And he’s a fucking dead man.”

  I didn’t say anything else, but Roslyn and Bria exchanged a glance. They had heard the vengeance in my voice, and they knew exactly what it meant.

  At the sound of Grimes’s name, Jo-Jo let out a low moan and weakly thrashed against me. I put a bloody hand on her forehead and smoothed back a few strands of her hair, trying to calm her down. Despite the violence that she’d suffered, her white-blond curls were still as perfect and springy as ever. So was her makeup, except for the drops of blood on her face.

  “Shh,” I said. “It’s okay. Don’t try to talk. We’re on our way to Cooper’s right now. He’ll be able to heal you.”

  At least, that was my hope. The only thing I’d ever heard of Cooper doing with his magic was using it to help him build weapons, sculptures, and fountains in his blacksmith’s forge. But he had Air magic, and he was Jo-Jo’s best chance of making it through this alive.

  Her only chance.

  Jo-Jo let out another low moan, but the clouds that were still drifting through her eyes slowly parted, and she fixed her gaze on me.

  “Gri . . . Grimes . . .” she whispered. “It was . . . him. He’s finally . . . come back . . .”

  I smoothed back another one of her many curls, this one stiff and matted with blood. “Shh. Don’t worry. I remember what you told me about Grimes. I’m going to get you settled at Cooper’s, and then I’m going to go get Sophia back, lickety-split. Believe me when I tell you that Grimes will wish that he’d stayed away.”

  “Prom . . . promise?” Jo-Jo rasped, her voice sounding eerily like Sophia’s.

  I bent down so she could see the cold determination in my wintry gray gaze. “Promise.”

  Jo-Jo nodded, and her eyes fluttered closed, as though that one simple word had solved all of her problems, including the bullets in her chest.

  Roslyn steered around the curvy mountain roads with all the skill and speed of a race-car driver, and we made it to Cooper’s faster than I thought we would. Good thing, since every minute, every second, counted for Jo-Jo—and Sophia too.

  Roslyn turned off the road and eased the car onto a driveway, which was really little more than a bumpy dirt track that seemed to lead to nowhere in particular. Roslyn slowed down, crawling up the hill, but the car still rocked from side to side. I grabbed hold of Jo-Jo and tried to keep her from jostling around too much. Rosco whined at my feet. He didn’t like the roller-coaster ride either.

  Finally, Roslyn rounded a curve, and a large, sprawling house came into view. It was a beautiful structure, made out of smooth gray river rock and topped with a coal-black A-line roof. To my surprise, a car was parked in front of the house, a silver Audi that could have been a twin to the one we were riding in. It looked like Cooper had a visitor. Odd, given how far up in the mountains we were and how much the dwarf liked his privacy. But I didn’t care who was here or what they saw, as long as Cooper managed to heal Jo-Jo.

  Roslyn parked the car. As soon as the vehicle stopped, she, Bria, and I were in motion, opening our doors and pulling Jo-Jo out of the backseat as quickly and gently as we could. Bria and I passed Jo-Jo over to Roslyn, so the vamp could carry her toward the house.

  “C’mon,” I said. “Cooper will probably be around back. That’s where his forge is.”

  Bria and I led the way, with Roslyn behind us, cradling Jo-Jo in her arms. Rosco trotted alongside the vampire, his stubby legs churning to keep up with her, staying as close to Jo-Jo as he could.

  “Cooper!” I yelled. “Cooper! We need you!”

  We rounded the corner of the house and stepped into the backyard. A series of wide, flat stones made out of the same gray river rock as the house had been set into the grass, forming a patio. A stone path wound from the patio over to a large forge, which was also made out of gray rock.

  But the forge was dark and empty. Two men were sitting in wrought-iron chairs on the patio, drinking frosty glasses of sweet iced tea from the tall pitcher sitting on the glass-topped table between them. One of the men was tall and strong-looking, with piercing blue eyes and blond hair slicked back into a ponytail. He wore an expensive, impeccably tailored business suit that added to his sleek good looks. The other man was a dwarf, wearing a gray cotton work shirt and matching pants, both blackened here and there with the embers and ash that had shot up out of countless fires in his forge. His hair was a soft, shiny silver, shot through with patches of peppery black, while his eyes were an unusual rusty color.

  Phillip Kincaid and Cooper Stills stared at us. Both men froze, their mouths open and glasses halfway to their lips.

  “Gin?” Cooper finally said, lowering his iced tea to the table.

  “Hello, Cooper,” I said in a grim voice. “Jo-Jo needs your help.”

  * * *

  Cooper led us through a den cluttered with tools, sketches, and bits of metal and into a kitchen. A long rectangular table divided the room in two. It too was covered in sketches, along with pencils, erasers, rulers, and several panes of blue, red, and green stained glass. Cooper darted forward, put his arm down, and shoved everything off the wooden surface and onto the floor at the far end. I winced at the clatters, crashes, and cracking glass, but the mess wasn’t important right now—Jo-Jo was.

  “Put her down here,” he said.

  Roslyn gently laid Jo-Jo down on the table and arranged her arms and legs so that she would be as comfortable as possible.

  Jo-Jo stirred and opened her eyes. “Cooper?” she rasped.

  He bent over so she could see him and clasped her hand in his. “I’m right here, doll. Don’t you worry about anything now.”

  Jo-Jo nodded, and her eyes slid shut again. Cooper stared down at her another moment, then ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stand up as high as if he’d stuck his finger into a light socket. He let out a breath and went over to the sink to wash his hands. He quickly dried them off, then moved to stand beside Jo-Jo again. Cooper hesitated, then picked up her hand once more, smearing her blood right back onto his own clean fingers.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know where to start,” he admitted.

  A hard fist of fear wrapped around my heart. If Cooper couldn’t heal Jo-Jo, then she was dead. There wasn’t time to find another Air elemental to heal her, not given how bad her wounds were and how much blood she’d already lost. But screaming at Cooper wouldn’t help, so I swallowed my fear and frustration and forced myself to stay calm and focused.

  “Have you ever done this before, used your magic to heal?”

  Cooper shook his head. “Not exactly. I healed a few cuts and bruises for Eva, Owen, and Phillip when they were younger. But nothing . . . nothing like this.”

  He frowned. “Although . . . it’s strange. Jo-Jo and I have been talking about our magic quite a bit lately. I’ve been telling her how I use my Air magic to help superheat the fire in my forge, making the flames burn as hot as they can for as long as possible so I can get better and quicker results when I’m working with various metals.”

  “And Jo-Jo?” Bria asked. “What has she told you?”

  “Mostly about how she uses her magic to heal,” Cooper answered. “I had a cut on my hand the other day, and she talked about her power while she used it to fix me right up.”

  Jo-Jo had said that she felt like something bad had been about to happen for weeks now. I wondered if that sense of dread included a suspicion that she might get hurt, if that was why she’d starting showing Cooper how she used her Air magic to heal.

  “You can do it, Coop,” Phillip said in a hearty, cheery voice, clapping him on the back. “I know you can.”

  He didn’t add that Cooper simply had t
o figure out a way to make his magic work if Jo-Jo were to survive. We all knew that.

  Some of the worry and uncertainty smoothed out of Cooper’s lined features at the vote of confidence. He gave Phillip a grateful wink. Then he tightened his grip on Jo-Jo’s hand and leaned forward.

  “Well,” Cooper murmured. “Here we go. Ready or not.”

  His eyes began to glow a bright copper as he reached for his Air magic.

  I just hoped it would be enough.

  7

  Cooper’s Air power surged through the kitchen, ruffling my hair and sliding across my bare arms before settling over Jo-Jo.

  Even though his magic wasn’t directed at me, it still felt like there were dozens of tiny invisible needles stabbing into my skin, and I gritted my teeth to keep from snarling at the uncomfortable sensation. Two elements always complemented each other, like Air and Fire, and two elements always opposed each other, like Fire and Ice. With Cooper’s Air magic being the antithesis of my own Stone power, it simply felt wrong to me, the way that fingernails screeching down a chalkboard drove some folks plumb crazy. Bria grimaced too. She didn’t like the sensation of Cooper’s Air magic any more than I did.

  For the longest time, all I was aware of were the uncomfortable pricks of Cooper’s magic, the coppery glow of his eyes, and the steady tick-tick-tick of the clock on the wall. One after another, the minutes slipped by, but we were all frozen in place, not daring to move or even speak for fear of breaking Cooper’s concentration.

  I stood right behind the dwarf, while Bria and Roslyn were on the other side of the table next to the sink. Phillip leaned against a cabinet full of mismatched dishes in the corner, his arms crossed over his muscled chest, his jaw clenched so tightly that I could see the muscles standing out in his neck. Rosco lay at Phillip’s feet, his blood-smeared head resting on one of Phillip’s black leather wing tips.