Heart of Venom

Chapter Seventeen

Eventually, Hazel grew tired of her gruesome game and quit throwing her Fire magic at Sophia. The bodies continued to smolder, though, and I didn’t see how Sophia kept from retching at the gruesome graveyard stench—or breaking down entirely.

“We’ve got some business to attend to back at camp.

You five, stay here and watch her,” Grimes ordered some of his men. “She’s a clever thing. Don’t let her out of your sight, and don’t go near her, no matter what. She’s killed more than one man with a shovel.”

Sophia spun the shovel around in her hands and gave the men on the bank a dark, toothy grin. More than one shuddered and looked away from her. Nobody wanted his skull bashed in, and they especially didn’t want to end up in the pit with all of the other bodies. But the men did as Grimes ordered, drawing their guns and lining up on the dirt bank opposite her, making sure to keep well away from the edge of the pit.

Sophia studied them, considering her options, looking for any sign of weakness, just like I would have. But the men had the high ground and the guns, and she knew it.

So Sophia shrugged and went back to her digging, stabbing the shovel into the black earth, then swinging the dirt away in sharp, vicious arcs. I wondered if she was imagining that the earth was Grimes and Hazel. I would have been.

“Good,” Grimes said in a pleased voice. “You’ve decided to behave. You see? We’re making progress already.

I’ll be back just as soon as I can, darling. Then we’ll have a nice dinner and talk about our future here together.”

Sophia kept her back to Grimes so he couldn’t see the disgust on her face, and she kept right on digging, as if she hadn’t even heard him.

But she wasn’t the only one who didn’t like his words.

Jealousy pinched Hazel’s face, and she gave her brother an incredulous look. A few flames sparked on her fingertips, further hinting at her anger, but Hazel quickly curled her hand into a tight fist, smothering the Fire before anyone else noticed it. It seemed that Hazel didn’t like it that Grimes was planning to devote so much of his time and attention to Sophia. I imagined that Hazel enjoyed playing queen of the mountain, given that I hadn’t seen another woman in the entire camp.

Ever the gentleman, Grimes held out his arm to his sister. Hazel took it and shot Sophia a triumphant look, but the dwarf ignored her. Together, the siblings left the pit and headed back toward the main part of the camp, along with the rest of their men. The five whom Grimes had ordered to stay behind leaned against some of the sturdier-looking tombstones.

One minute slipped by, then another, then another.

Still, I waited, wondering if this might be some sort of trick, if Grimes and especially Hazel might double back and hide in the woods so they could torture Sophia some more, should she try to escape again. But five minutes passed, and they didn’t reappear. Maybe they really did have some other business to take care of, after all. I wondered what was so important that Grimes would leave Sophia for it, especially when he’d just captured her again.

“How do you want to do this?” Owen whispered.

I stared at Grimes’s men, who were standing roughly parallel to our position in the trees, before studying the landscape around us. Because this wasn’t just about killing the men in front of me; it was also about making sure that we got Sophia away from Grimes forever.

Finally, I turned to Warren. “What’s the fastest way back down the mountain to the car?”

He pulled his blue bandanna down from around his nose so he could answer me. “The same way we came up.”

“There are no other shortcuts? No way we could get there quicker?”

He shook his head.

“What about Grimes and his men? Is there another trail that they could take to get in front of us and cut us off?”

Warren shook his head again. “Not a direct trail, no, although they can always just cut through the woods.”

I nodded. It wasn’t ideal, but there was nothing that I could do about it.

“And how do you want to take out those guys guarding her?” Owen asked.

I unzipped my backpack, drew out one of the silencers inside, and held it up where he could see it.

“Quietly,” I said, passing the metal over to him. “I’ll approach them head-on, while you sneak around behind them. We should be able to take them out before they realize that they’re surrounded. But whatever happens, we can’t let them get a shot off. That’s my main worry, that they’ll signal Grimes, and he’ll realize that we’re here to rescue Sophia.”

“That’s a big chance to take,” Owen said, screwing the silencer onto the end of his gun.

I let out a breath. “I know, but we’re just going to have to risk it. This is our best, quickest chance to get close to her. It might be our only chance. I want to get Sophia out of here before Grimes and Hazel can do anything else to her.”

Owen’s face hardened, and anger sparked in his violet eyes, the same anger that I felt. He nodded.

“And me?” Warren asked. “What do you want me to do?”“You stay here, and lay down some cover fire for us if things go wrong,” I said. “I’d like to kill these guys and slip away before Grimes realizes what’s happened, but

Owen’s right, and we probably won’t be that lucky. So if worse comes to worse, we kill as many of them as we can here, then get Sophia to safety.”

Warren patted his rifle. “You got it.”

I looked at him, then Owen, wondering if I was about to get us all killed. If they had the same thought, they didn’t show it. Their hands curled around their guns, and their gazes were steady, determined, and level with mine.

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

I looked at Owen, who had moved about thirty feet to the left of where I crouched at the edge of the trees. He nodded, and I threw a rock high overhead. It landed in the woods on the far side of the clearing, crashing into the underbrush beyond the pit. The men had been talking among themselves, but their heads snapped in that direction, and they straightened up and pushed away from the tombstones they’d been leaning against. A few of them raised their guns and took some tentative steps forward, as though they were thinking about investigating the noise, although they still kept away from the edge of the pit and out of Sophia’s reach.

While the men were debating what they’d heard and whether it was some sort of animal, Owen used their distraction to sprint out of the woods behind them. I threw another rock in the same general direction as before. It too tumbled through the underbrush, keeping the men from noticing Owen crossing into the woods on the far side of the clearing.

Sophia noticed, though.

She glanced over her shoulder at just the right moment to see Owen disappear into the trees. She froze, her eyes wide, and I could almost see the wheels spinning in her mind as she wondered whether she’d actually seen what she thought she had.

“What are you looking at?” one of the men muttered.

“Get back to work. That ditch isn’t going to dig itself.”

Sophia shrugged and went back to her digging, but she kept turning her head from side to side, peering into the trees that lined the clearing. She knew that something was up. Good.

After a few more minutes, the men settled down again, having decided that it was likely some animal creeping through the woods, after all.

Not an animal—the Spider. But they were going to find that out soon enough.

“Show time,” I whispered to Warren.

He nodded, dropped to a knee, and raised his rifle to his shoulder, getting a bead on the men.

I slid my knife back up my sleeve, pulled my vest down so that it covered as much of my chest as possible, crept down the hill, and walked out into the clearing.

I kept my pace steady and even, ambling along as though I was out for a nice, quiet walk in the woods, instead of deliberately heading toward a bunch of sadistic psychopaths with guns.

“Excuse me,” I called out. “Yoo-hoo. Hello, over there.”

This time, all of the men’s heads snapped around in my direction. I smiled and gave them a bright, happy, cheery wave. Their mouths gaped even wider, as if they’d never seen a woman before. Then their eyes narrowed with wariness, and they raised their guns, aiming them at my chest.

“Hold it right there, lady!” one of the men barked, stepping in front of the others.

I kept right on waving and walking toward them, as if their guns didn’t concern me at all, making sure that all enemy eyes stayed on me. And it worked. The men didn’t notice Sophia start creeping across the pit toward the bank where they were standing—or Owen sliding out of the woods behind them.

I kept my smile firmly fixed on my face as I neared the group.

The man in front thumbed back the trigger on his revolver. “I said stop. I mean it, lady.”

“Whoa, now, boys,” I drawled, doing as he asked and faking surprise. “Hold on there a second. There’s no need to get violent. I’m just a little lost way out here in the woods, and I was wondering if you could help me. How do I get back to the Bone Mountain trail from here? Because I, like, totally lost my map back in the woods. One second, I had it. The next—poof!—the wind sent it sail— ing right over one of the ridges.”

The leader frowned, his eyes scanning the woods behind me. “You’re out here by yourself? Just you?”

“Yup, it’s just little ole me,” I said, making my voice even more syrupy-sweet and helpless. “All by my lonesome.”

The man lowered his gun, his thumb tapping against the hilt as he tried to figure out whether I was telling the truth. Apparently, he wasn’t concerned about one lone woman, because he holstered his gun.

“Did you hear that, boys?” he said, looking over his shoulder at his friends. “This poor little lady is lost. Lucky for her that she wandered into our camp, eh?”

He let out a dark chuckle, and all the men joined in his laughter, no doubt salivating over all the horrible things they wanted to do to me. They wouldn’t be laughing in another minute, two tops.

I kept the empty, ditzy smile on my face and sidled even closer to him. “So can you help me figure out how to get back to the trail, then? Because I’ve got to tell you that it feels like I’ve been walking around out here in circles forever.”

The man crooked his finger at me. “Sure, honey. come on over here, and we’ll fix you right up.”

I went to him, my face all wide-eyed innocence, even as I surreptitiously palmed a knife and dropped it down by my side. Owen crept toward the man standing at the back of the pack, while Sophia eased a little closer to the side of the pit and hoisted her shovel up onto her shoulder, as though she were taking a break.

The leader held his hands out to his sides, like he was welcoming me with open arms. I stopped in front of him and gave him another empty smile. He lunged forward, grabbed my arms, and yanked me up against him, grinding his body against mine.

“Hey!” I cried out in a mock-helpless voice. “What are you doing? Get your hands off me, you creep!”

“Oh, I’ll be putting more than my hands on you in a minute. You go ahead and scream as loud as you want to, honey.” The man sneered into my face, his breath smelling of sour moonshine. “We like it better when they scream, don’t we, boys?”

“Really?” I purred. “That’s funny, because I was thinking the exact same thing about you. No, that’s not true. I actually like it better when you just die.”

I brought my left hand up and slammed my knife into his throat. He died with a choking gurgle, spraying blood all over my hand, face, and clothes, but I didn’t care. Because the warm, sticky drops told me that I was finally doing something to help Sophia—like killing these bastards where they stood.

I shoved the dying leader away, stepped forward, palmed a second knife, and rammed both blades into the next man’s chest. By this point, the others realized that I wasn’t the innocent little Bambi that I appeared to be, and they raised their guns once more.

But Owen and Sophia didn’t give them a chance to fire at me. Owen put his pistol up against the back of the man’s head in front of him and pulled the trigger twice.

Thanks to the silencer I’d given him, the gun barely made a sound, and the man was dead before he hit the ground.

Meanwhile, Sophia whipped the shovel off her shoulder and slammed it into the knees of the guy closest to her, causing him to howl with pain. He toppled over into the pit, and Sophia whacked the shovel against his head, caving in his skull with a satisfying crack.

That left one man standing. He looked around at his fallen buddies, his eyes wide with confusion and fear, wondering how they’d all died so quickly. He drew in a breath to scream, but my knife in his throat cut off that concern.

Less than a minute after it had begun, it was over, and all five of Grimes’s men lay dead at our feet. A good start but not enough. Notnearly enough.

I walked over to the edge of the pit, bent down, and held out my hand. Sophia clasped it, and I pulled her up and out of the trench. Up close, the stench was even more putrid and overpowering, the bodies bloodier and more rotten than I’d imagined. How had she managed to stand it? Both now and back then?

Sophia swayed forward, and I held her until she was steady on her feet. Owen stood off to one side, watching our backs.

Soot and ash flaked off Sophia’s once-white dress, which hung in burnt tatters on her back, while the heels had snapped off her shoes. Her black hair was a singed, tangled mess, while blood had soaked through the white bandages that had been placed over the gunshot wounds on her left arm and thigh. But the worst part was her skin, which was red, raw, and blistered, from her fingertips all the way up her arms. Her throat and face were as bright and shiny as a ripe tomato, her cheeks puffed up from the burns so that they seemed like they would pop if you so much as looked at them too hard.

Every single part of her had to just hurt. But she was still standing, still breathing, still in one piece. Everything else could be fixed—on the outside, at least.

“Jo-Jo?” Sophia rasped in her broken voice.

“cooper healed her,” I said. “At least, he tried to. I don’t know how well he did. Maybe he’ll know more about how she’s doing when we get back to his place.”

Worry glimmered in Sophia’s black eyes, but she nodded.Then the dwarf did something that she’d never done before in all the years that I’d known her: she threw her arms around me and hugged me tight.

“Thank you,” she whispered in my ear.

I would have hugged her back if I didn’t think that it would have caused her even more pain. “You are more than welcome. Now, come on. Let’s get out of here.”

Sophia nodded and pulled back. She leaned down, grabbed her shovel, and used it as a sort of walking stick.

Together, with Owen, we headed toward the woods and our escape route.