Heart of Venom

Chapter Twenty-six

We packed up our things and headed out. Owen insisted on carrying his backpack and all of the supplies that he’d brought. He offered to carry me too, but I refused. I might be injured, but we’d make better time with both of us on our feet. So instead, he found a tall, sturdy branch that I could use as a walking stick to help me hobble along faster.

To my surprise, we made it back down to the parking lot at the foot of Bone Mountain without any problems.

We hunkered down in the trees and watched Roslyn’s car for several minutes, but no one was waiting to ambush us. Still, I made Owen check under the hood to see if one

of Grimes’s men had planted a bomb there, just in case.

But the car was clean, and thirty minutes later, Owen had stopped the vehicle outside cooper’s house.

Quite a few cars were clustered together in the driveway now, facing out and forming a solid metal barricade

in front of the house. I recognized Finn’s Aston Martin, Bria’s sedan, and Phillip’s Audi. The battered gray pickup truck had to belong to Warren, given the rifle in the gun rack attached to the back window.

Owen and I got out of the car and shuffled up to the house. At this point, he was dragging his backpack along the ground with one hand, while I had both of my hands wrapped around my walking stick, despite the splinters digging into my palms. Neither one of us was in the best shape of our lives, but we’d made it back alive.

A few soft murmurs of conversation sounded as we

headed around the side of the house and stepped into the backyard. The others were sitting around the table outside on the patio, almost as if they were waiting for us to show up. Finn in a perfect suit and tie, Phillip wearing the same thing, the two of them looking as cool as icebox pies, despite the sweltering afternoon heat.

Bria in her usual jeans and button-up shirt, her badge and her gun both clipped to her black leather belt. Eva wearing shorts and a tank top. Roslyn in an elegant sleeveless sundress.

They were all leaning in toward the table and talking quietly, with Finn leading the conversation, judging by the wild way that he was gesturing. He was the first to spot Owen and me, and he stopped in mid-sentence to stare at us.

I grinned. “Honey, we’re home.”

The others scrambled to their feet. Eva raced over and gave Owen a long, tight hug, while Phillip clapped him on the back and almost sent him and Eva tumbling over.

Bria came over and hugged me, along with Roslyn, and

then the two of them stepped to the side so Finn could get in on the action.

He stopped in front of me, crossed his arms over his chest, and gave me a critical once-over, his green eyes as sharp and bright as emeralds in his handsome face. “You look like hell,” he finally said.

My grin widened. “You should see the other guys.”

Finn sighed and opened his arms. “come on, come

on, you know you want to hug me and get blood, mud, dirt, and who knows what else all over my brand-new suit.”

“Why, I thought you’d never ask,” I drawled.

I stepped into his arms, and Finn carefully hugged me, mindful of my injuries.

After a moment, he pulled back and sniffed in that haughty, superior way of his. “I told you to wait for me.

You wouldn’t be beat up nearly as badly if you’d done that.” His tone was rough and grumbly, but I could still hear the worry in his voice.

“I know,” I said, patting his shoulder and trying to soothe his ego and his concern. “Next time, I’ll definitely wait for you.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” he warned.

“I know you will.”

Finn hugged me again, and then everyone changed

places. Eva gently wrapped her arms around my neck, while Phillip stood by. Bria and Roslyn hugged Owen, while Finn went over to him and gave him a cuff on the shoulder.

“I thought that I told you to take care of Gin,” Finn said. “Not bring her back half-dead.”

His words and his face might have been stone-cold

serious, but his tone was light with relief that I’d come back at all.

After a moment, Owen smiled. “Well, I tried, but you know Gin,” he said. “She just had to kill a couple more guys before we finally left.”

Finn returned his grin. “That I do.”

Owen stayed outside on the patio to fill the others in on everything that had happened on the mountain, but I opened the door and stepped inside the house. I didn’t have far to go, because they were all sitting in the den— cooper, Warren, Sophia, and Jo-Jo.

cooper and Warren were sprawled over two matching

recliners, rocking back and forth and making the springs creak-creak-creak. I gave them both respectful nods, then turned my attention to Sophia and Jo-Jo.

The sisters sat side-by-side on the brown-striped

couch, their fingers intertwined, and Rosco was sprawled across their feet, taking a nap. It looked like all of their injuries had been healed. I didn’t see any blood on either one of them, no bruises, no burns, nothing that would indicate all of the terrible things that had happened over the past two days.

Sophia was once again in her black jeans and boots.

A black T-shirt with a picture of a bloody, broken heart on it stretched across her chest. She looked like her usual self, right down to the black lipstick that slashed across her face. But I couldn’t quite get the image of the photo that I’d seen in Grimes’s house out of my mind, the one of a young Sophia wearing a white dress. I wondered what she’d been like before he’d taken her all those years ago. If

she’d been a sweet Southern belle like Jo-Jo or something else entirely.

I had no way of knowing, so I focused on Jo-Jo instead.

She too wore her usual pink dress and pearls, but her face was free of makeup, her blond hair hung limply around her shoulders, and her wrinkles were more pronounced than I remembered them being. For the first time since I’d known her, Jo-Jo seemed pale and thin and tired, not at all like the bright, vibrant, cheery force of nature that she usually was. I supposed that was to be expected, since she’d almost died from Grimes’s bullets, but seeing her look so haggard and defeated made my heart hurt all the same.

Jo-Jo struggled to get up out of the soft cushions, but I went over to her instead. I dropped down to my knees, leaned forward, and gave her a gentle, careful hug, not wanting to undo any of the magic that cooper had worked on her. Jo-Jo reached up and patted my back, despite the blood, dirt, and grime that covered me, and it seemed like I could feel each and every one of her bones, as delicate and fragile as a bird’s under my fingertips.

I held on to her until I managed to blink back the scalding tears that had threatened to leak out of my eyes.

“How are you?” I asked, finally pulling back.

“Better, now that you’re here, darling,” Jo-Jo said.

I looked at Sophia. “And you?”

“Fine,” she lied, although she couldn’t quite hide the flash of pain in her eyes.

“Grimes?” Jo-Jo asked.

“Not dead—yet.”

She glanced at Sophia, and they clasped hands again,

even tighter than before. They were thinking the same thing that I was, that it wouldn’t be long before Grimes came back for them again. But I had a plan for that, one that should take care of him, Hazel, and the rest of his men for good.

cooper stopped rocking in his chair, leaned forward, and cleared his throat. “I hate to be rude, but you seem, um, tired, Gin.”

“Tired?” Warren snorted. “What he really means is

that you look like a survivor out of one of them zombie movies and almost as dead as one of those critters yourself.”

cooper shot Warren a sharp look, then turned his attention back to me. “Would you like me to, you know?”

He gestured with his hands.

“Heal me?”

He winced. “If you want to call it that. I still feel like I’m fumbling around with my magic, more than anything else.”

Jo-Jo gave him a soft smile. “You did just fine with Sophia and me. You’ll get the hang of it. Practicing on Gin will be good for you.”

cooper grinned back at her, and his solid chest puffed up at her praise.

Well, I didn’t know how I felt about being a test

dummy for cooper’s Air magic, but Jo-Jo was obviously still too weak to heal me, and I didn’t have any other options right now. Not if I wanted to be a hundred percent when Grimes, Hazel, and what was left of their miscreants came knocking on my door. In a day, maybe two tops, Grimes would find the bodies of the three men he’d

sent to search for me along the river, and he’d realize that I’d survived after all. He’d want his revenge for me having the audacity to escape his evil clutches, not to mention all the death and destruction that I’d inflicted on his men and his camp. Grimes might have destroyed Jo-Jo’s salon, but I’d paid him back in spades with what I’d done to his mountain hideaway. He wouldn’t be able to let that stand, not if he wanted to hold on to the men he had left.

Besides, I’d seen the look of anticipation in his eyes on the cliff. He would want his revenge, but more than that, he would want to break me like he had all the other poor women and men that he’d kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. Grimes wanted to hear me scream and cry and beg for mercy. And the second that I did, he’d lose interest in me and toss me aside to Hazel and his men, just like he had with all the others. That’s why he was still so obsessed with Sophia all these years later, because he simply couldn’t fathom how anyone could be stronger than he was.

Well, let the bastard come. I was going to enjoy showing him exactly how wrong he was before I killed him.

“Gin?” cooper asked, cutting into my dark, murderous musings. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah, I’m ready.”

Warren got up, and I sat down in his chair. cooper scooted his recliner close to mine, then reached out and took my hand. His fingers felt rough and callused, although his skin was pleasantly warm, as though the heat from all the fires in his forge had soaked into his body over the years. A moment later, his eyes began to glow a bright, familiar copper, and the prickly feel of his Air magic gusted through the den.

cooper wasn’t nearly as skilled in his magic as Jo-Jo was, not in this way, at least, so it took him far longer to heal me than it would have taken her, and it hurt a whole lot worse. Jo-Jo’s magic had always felt like needles poking into my skin, uncomfortable but bearable. But cooper’s Air magic was much rougher and far more intense, as though my own knives were stabbing into my body, sawing through my muscles, and then haphazardly pinning everything back together again.

Still, I clamped my jaw down, ground my teeth together, and hoped that he wouldn’t notice how I kept wiping my free, sweaty hand on my ruined jeans and digging my fingernails into the spider-rune scar in my palm to try to take my mind off the fresh, clumsy pain raging through my body. cooper was doing me a favor, so I couldn’t complain. And I wouldn’t, because that would hurt his feelings. Besides, I’d been through worse—much worse.

Ten minutes later, cooper let go of his Air magic and dropped my hand. The copper glow was snuffed out of his eyes, and he sagged back against his recliner, causing the chair to creak weakly once more.

“There,” he said, sounding as tired as I felt. “I reckon that’s the best that I can do for right now.”

I slumped down in my chair too and took stock of

my body. The gunshot wound in my shoulder was completely healed, along with the burns on my arms, back, and legs, since those were the areas where cooper had focused most of his magic. cuts and scrapes still dotted my body, along with the rainbow clusters of bruises, but all of the open wounds had closed up, and the worst of

the midnight blues and putrid purples had faded out to healing greens and not-so-sickly yellows. I wasn’t in the best shape of my life, but cooper had managed to put me back together again.

He looked at me with anxious eyes, so I pushed away my exhaustion, got up, and stretched this way and that, like a cat waking up from a long, satisfying nap. My muscles ached in protest, but I ignored the twinges of discomfort. It was worth it to see cooper’s face crinkle up and beam with pride.

“Well, thanks, cooper,” I drawled. “I feel just fine and dandy now. If you’ve got any magic left, you might want to go outside and check on Owen. Some of Grimes’s men got hold of him and beat him up pretty good.”

cooper nodded, got to his feet, and hurried outside, his exhaustion seemingly gone.

Warren looked at Jo-Jo, then Sophia, then me. Without a word, he got up and followed cooper, shutting the door behind the two of them. A minute later, another gust of cooper’s Air magic rippled through the room, although it felt much fainter, given the distance and the door between us.

I sank back into my chair, trying once again not to let my exhaustion show, and faced the Deveraux sisters. They both looked at me with somber eyes. Rosco continued to nap on their feet.

“Tell us what happened,” Jo-Jo finally said in a soft voice.

I drew in a breath and started my story with the fight in the salon. I quickly moved on to my trip with Owen and Warren up the mountain, our rescue of Sophia from

the pit, and my stand at the top of the ridge against Grimes, Hazel, and their men. After that, all that was left to tell was my run through the woods, my swan dive off the cliff, my ride through the rapids, and finally, Owen finding me and fishing me out of the river.

I tried to spare them the worst of it, glossing over a lot of the details, keeping my voice upbeat, and trying to make it seem more like a grand adventure than a brutal fight for my life. I didn’t mention all of the sick, twisted things that Grimes had said to me about Sophia, the photos that he had of her, or how his house had been an eerie replica of Jo-Jo’s inside and out. Of course, Sophia knew some of it, since she’d been in the house too, but I figured that those were her secrets to tell, not mine.

“I’m sorry, darling,” Jo-Jo said, tears streaking down her cheeks like tiny rivers of crystal when I finally finished my story. “So very sorry that you had to go through all of that because of us.”

I shrugged. Fighting for my life against evil psychopaths with personal vendettas wasn’t anything new.

In fact, it had become rather routine over the past few months. Mundane, even. Grimes’s attack had just cut a little closer to home than some of the other ones.

“I wish that Fletcher had killed that bastard all those years ago,” Jo-Jo said in a grim voice. “I wish that I had killed him all those years ago.”

Sophia squeezed her hand, but the motion didn’t comfort Jo-Jo. If anything, it made even more tears well up in her eyes, spill down her face, and drip onto her dress. She let out a small, squeaky hiccup and pressed her fist against her mouth, as though that would hold back her grief.

In all the years I’d known her, I could count on one hand the number of times that I’d seen Jo-Jo cry, and most of those had been before, during, and after Fletcher’s funeral. My heart ached for her, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say or how to comfort her in the face of her tears, her trembling body, and the worry swimming in her clear eyes.

“Don’t think about it right now,” I said. “Sophia and I both made it back, and we’re all safe now. Once cooper gets the hang of his magic, he can finish healing you, and then we’ll all be back to—”

I bit down on my lip, choking on my own words. I had started to say normal, but that wasn’t the right thing to say, because we wouldn’t be back to that for a long time, if ever. I’d never been one to sugarcoat things, but right now, I wanted to ease Jo-Jo’s mind more than anything else. If I could have reached inside her, scooped out her hurt, and shoveled it into my own heart, I would have— and Sophia’s too.

“It’s not over,” Jo-Jo said, finally wiping away her tears.

“Not by a long shot.”

“No,” I replied. “It’s not.”

“He’s never going to stop,” Jo-Jo said. “Not now. Not after you got Sophia away from him again. Not after you’ve embarrassed him. He’ll have to come after you to save face with his men and Hazel too. But more than that, he’ll want to come after you. He’ll want to teach you a lesson.”

“I know,” I said. “I know that he’ll come after me, that he’ll come after all of us.”

“Now what?” Sophia asked, her voice even harsher

than before and full of worry.

I leaned forward and looked at Sophia, then Jo-Jo, letting them see the determination in my wintry gray eyes— and the cold, cold promise of death.

“We let him come to us,” I said. “And then we kill him.”