Heart of Venom

Chapter Twenty-eight

The next morning, I went to the Pork Pit and opened up the restaurant right on time, just like usual.

Despite the fact that I was being hunted by a couple of Fire elemental psychopaths, I still had a barbecue joint to run. Besides, Grimes was looking for a woman who said that her name was Gin Blanco, and everyone knew that the Pork Pit was mine. I only wondered how long it would take him to realize that I really was the Spider and come here to confront me.

The only thing missing from the restaurant was Sophia. She was still stashed away at cooper’s house, along with Jo-Jo. I’d told the sisters to take it easy and rest up, that nothing was going to happen today. That I had Finn tracking down some leads and was formulating a plan on how best to deal with Grimes.

I didn’t tell them that I’d already worked everything out with Finn, Owen, Phillip, and Bria. I didn’t want Sophia and Jo-Jo involved in my scheme, and I didn’t want them anywhere near me, not when I was waiting for Grimes to make the first move. They’d already faced him twice, which was two times too many. I was going to handle things from here, like I’d promised Fletcher. I didn’t want Sophia and Jo-Jo to set eyes on Grimes ever again—at least, not until after I’d killed him.

I didn’t think that the sisters really believed me, but they’d reluctantly agreed to stay put, especially since neither one of them was a hundred percent. Despite the fact that cooper continued to use his magic on her, Jo-Jo was still weak, and Sophia, well, Sophia had been shot, kidnapped, and tortured. She needed some time to recover from that and from all the grievous wounds that she had on the inside, the ones that no magic could ever fix.

It made me a little melancholy, stepping into the restaurant and not seeing Sophia standing behind the counter, slicing up her homemade sourdough rolls for the day’s sandwiches, or hefting a big pot of Fletcher’s secret barbecue sauce onto a back burner to bubble away. But it was good that she wasn’t there. If she was, all I would do was worry about her, and I couldn’t afford to do that. I couldn’t afford to be distracted for a moment, not when Grimes and Hazel were coming for me.

So I did my usual sweep of the restaurant for bombs, explosive runes, and any other nasty surprises that someone might have planted on the doors, inside the storefront, or even back in the restrooms overnight. When I was satisfied that no one had been inside the restaurant who shouldn’t have been, I flipped the sign on the front door over to Open, tied a blue work apron on over my clothes, and switched on the appliances to start cooking.

The waitstaff showed up about half an hour later. A few were surprised when I told them that Sophia wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week, but nobody said anything to me about it. They were all too worried about what I might do to them as the Spider to give me any lip about working a little harder because we were a man down.

But the day passed quietly. I cooked, waited on tables, cooked some more, and even managed to read a few chapters of Dr. No by Ian Fleming, which I was reading for a spy-literature class that I was going to start over at Ashland community college in a few weeks.

People came and went, flowing in and out of the restaurant in a regular, familiar, comforting rhythm. No one entered the Pork Pit who shouldn’t have, and no one tried to kill me. All in all, it was a rather boring day.

I knew that it wouldn’t last, though. And I was looking forward to showing Grimes that I really and truly was the Spider.

Grimes’s men showed up at the Pork Pit just before noon the next day.

Oh, they tried to hide who they were by trading in their usual old-fashioned suits in favor of jeans, cowboy boots, and western shirts, complete with pearl-button snaps. But their clothes were obviously new, judging from the stiff, starchy look of their shirts, the sharp creases in their jeans, and the fact that there wasn’t so much as a speck of dirt on their fancy boots. Plus, one of them brought his brown fedora into the restaurant and threw it down onto the booth beside him, a hat exactly like the ones all of Grimes’s men had worn.

For all intents and purposes, the two men looked like a couple of wannabe cowboys who’d come to the restaurant in search of a good, hot, greasy meal. But their eyes tracked my every movement, and they paid more attention to me than they did to their food. Pity. The strawberry-peach pie was quite excellent that day.

Either they were there to kill me and prove what badasses they were to the rest of the Ashland underworld, or they were watching me on Grimes’s orders. Since they didn’t try to murder me in front of the cash register or lie in wait and jump me in the alley when I took out the trash, that meant that they were most likely on a reconnaissance mission.

The two guys lingered in the restaurant for more than two hours, ordering second helpings of everything, including the pie. I hoped they enjoyed their last meal.

While the men were finally, slowly, finishing up their second servings of pie, I plopped down on my stool behind the cash register, pulled my cell phone out of my jeans pocket, and called Finn.

“Finnegan Lane, always at your beck and call,” he answered in a cheery tone.

“It’s on for tonight.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

I opened my book to the page that I’d marked earlier with a credit-card receipt, as though my conversation with Finn was so casual that I could read a few pages and talk to him at the same time. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see one of the men shoving a bite of pie into his mouth and staring at me.

“I’m sure. Let the others know. I’ll keep to the schedule that we worked out.”

“Roger that.”

Finn hung up, and so did I. Now all that was left to do was wait and see exactly when Grimes would strike.

The men eventually finished their meal, paid up, and left. They didn’t say anything to me, and they didn’t approach me at the cash register, instead leaving more than enough money on the table to cover what they’d ordered.

I dropped the change into the tip jar for the waitstaff to share.

But apparently, Grimes wasn’t content simply to know where I was, because not ten minutes after the first pair of fake cowboys had left the Pork Pit, another set took their place. Same starched shirts, same creased jeans, same spotless boots. Their clothes were an exact match for the ones worn by the first set, and these two followed the same routine. Ordering lots of food, lingering over everything, not paying up until two hours later.

After they finally left, a third pair came in ten minutes later, just like clockwork, to rinse and repeat the whole process yet again.

Well, Grimes was definitely thorough. I’d give him that. He’d managed to keep at least two sets of eyes on me most of the day. I wondered if he really thought that I was stupid enough to lead him to Sophia and Jo-Jo and that I hadn’t anticipated that he’d come after me in the first place.

“People sure must be hungry today,” catalina Vasquez, one of my waitresses, remarked as she grabbed a pitcher of water from the counter behind me. “Because those guys who just came in ordered a truckload of food. That’s the third table that I’ve waited on today that’s wanted practically everything on the menu.”

“Must be the heat,” I drawled. “Nothing works up people’s appetites quite like being in the great outdoors, hiking up and down mountains, digging graves, things like that.”

catalina completely missed the sarcasm in my words.

She gave me a puzzled look, like I was spouting nonsense.

Perhaps the gravedigging remark had been a little over the top. But after a moment, she shrugged and went over to refill the watchers’ water glasses.

I turned another page in my book, completely unconcerned by the sly, angry glares coming my way—and the violence that was sure to follow before the day was done.

I followed my usual routines, and the hours slipped by until it was finally time for me to close down the restaurant for the night. After catalina and the rest of the waitstaff went out the back, I locked the door behind them, then headed into the storefront to turn off all of the appliances.

When everything was shut down, I flipped off the lights, went out through the front door, and locked that one behind me too. Then I stuck my hands into my jeans pockets, whistled a jaunty tune, and slowly ambled to the next block over, where I’d parked my car on the street.

The Pork Pit wasn’t all that far away from Southtown, the part of Ashland that was home to hookers, pimps, gangbangers, and other desperate, dangerous folks. Two vampire hookers had left their usual hunting grounds a few blocks away and had wandered over, trolling for customers. Sequined tube tops barely covered their breasts, while skirts that were all of six inches long clung to the tops of their thighs. They were wearing even less than usual, given the stifling heat.

The two hookers I passed gave me respectful nods and made sure to stay out of my way. Even their pimp, who was lurking behind a Dumpster in the alley, hunched down more at my appearance. Word had spread on this block and the surrounding ones about who I was and just how very dead I could make you.

Everyone else’s deference to me made the two idiots following me stick out that much more.

It was the two men who’d come into the restaurant first today, still wearing their pearl-button shirts, jeans, and cowboy boots. They walked about fifty feet behind me. Since it was after seven, all of the commuters had left downtown for their nightly schlep out to the suburbs, and there wasn’t that much foot traffic on the sidewalk or many vehicles coasting down the street.

Well, except for the two vampire hookers and the drivers who slowed down to ogle them. One man gave an appreciative toot-toot of his car horn. The hookers cocked their hips to the side and waved at him, inviting him to come get a closer look at everything they had to offer.

Other than that limited action, the area was largely deserted, and I’d have had to be blind not to realize how interested the two cowboys were in little ole me. Maybe Grimes hadn’t trained his boys as well as I’d thought. Or maybe he was scraping the bottom of the barrel, given how many I’d killed at the camp.

Either way, I reached my car, got inside, cranked the engine, and drove away. I looked in the rearview mirror.

The two men were hoofing it over to their own car, which was parked at the very end of the block. So I slowed down and stopped at the light, even though I could have easily coasted right on through it. I didn’t want the idiots to lose track of me. It might take them hours to find me again, and that just wouldn’t do, especially since I wanted Grimes dead before the sun set.

By the time the light changed, the men were pulling away from the curb and zooming up the street behind me. I went through the intersection, then drove over to Fletcher’s house as though I didn’t have a care in the world—and didn’t realize that someone was following me.

And they did a piss-poor job of it too. Instead of hanging back at a safe distance, the men raced up until they were right on my rear bumper, then abruptly backed off.

When they realized that they’d dropped too far behind and were in danger of losing me in the downtown loop, they roared right back up on my bumper again. And it was rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, all the way over to Fletcher’s house. I rolled my eyes. Good help truly was hard to find.

But I made it home without them rear-ending me

and turned into the driveway. I took my foot off the gas, coasting forward, but the men didn’t veer onto the path behind me like I thought they might. Instead, they drove right on past the entrance, as though they were going somewhere else entirely.

I sighed. I’d really wanted to get on with the business of killing them and confronting their boss. But good things came to those who waited, and I was very, very good at waiting.

So I steered my car up the driveway, parked it, and went inside the house to get ready for my not-so-unexpected visitors. It didn’t take long.

Half an hour later, I was sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch, drinking some blackberry lemonade, when Harley Grimes finally made his move.

One minute, I was alone, sipping my beverage and

wondering how much longer I’d have to sit out here before Grimes and Hazel took the bait that I was so thoughtfully dangling in front of them—me. The next, I heard a car start rumbling up the gravel driveway. Then another one. Then another one. Three vehicles total, all churning up the hill as fast as they could, as if they thought that I would run once I heard them coming and realized who they were.

I wasn’t running, not tonight.

The cars left the driveway and skidded to a stop in the yard near the edge of the trees, spewing dirt and gravel everywhere, and cutting off any escape I might have thought of making to the woods. Men erupted out of the vehicles a second later. Guns drawn, they spread out in front of me. There were only eight of them, which was about what I’d expected. I recognized six as the watchers from the Pork Pit earlier, although they’d traded in their cowboy clothes for their regular old-fashioned suits, boots, and fedoras. But it didn’t much matter what they had on. Because every single one of them was dead—they just didn’t know it yet.

Finally, two more figures climbed out of the last car: Hazel and Harley Grimes.

Hazel marched over to join the group of men clustered on the lawn, but Grimes lingered by the car, staring up at Fletcher’s house. I wondered if he was thinking about building some similar, twisted version of it up on his mountain. Well, he wasn’t going to get the chance.

I put one foot up on the railing, tipped my rocking chair back a little farther, and took another long swig of my lemonade, completely unconcerned by all the guns pointed at me.

Finally, Grimes walked over and joined Hazel and his men, standing in the middle of them all. He too was wearing another old-fashioned suit, this one in a black that was as dark as his soul. His hat was black too, with a white feather jauntily perched in the brim just like usual.

Hazel had on a white wrap dress with black ribbon pip— ing down the seams. More diamond pins glittered in her wavy black hair, this set shaped like tiny roses. I wondered if the brother and sister had matching funeral outfits. I hoped so. They’d need them soon enough.

Ever so politely, Grimes lifted his hat for a moment before bowing his head to me. “Ms. Blanco,” he said.

“Please forgive me for my disbelief during our previous encounters at my camp. According to everything that my men have heard, you are indeed who you say you are, the Spider.”

“Well, it’s about time you figured that out,” I drawled, and took another sip of my drink. “I would have thought that all of those dead bodies that I left up at your place would have clued you in to that simple fact. But I guess you’re just a little slow on the uptake.”

“And I see that you’ve picked up the same insolence that Sophia has,” Grimes murmured. “But Hazel can quickly cure you of that.”

Hazel smirked at me, elemental Fire flashing in her eyes in anticipation of the fight to come. She was looking forward to torturing me with her magic again. Good.

Because I was looking forward to cutting her throat.

Grimes’s gaze flicked around the yard again before scanning the front of the house, trying to see if there were any lights on inside or any hints of movement through the windows. “Where is Sophia? I thought that she would be here with you, given how . . . protective you’ve been of her.”

“You might as well forget about Sophia, because she’s somewhere where you will never, ever find her.”

Grimes gave me a thin smile. “I rather doubt that, seeing how easily I found you. I’ve had my men watching you all day long at that restaurant you run downtown.”

I returned his smile with an even colder one of his own. “You think I didn’t know that? You really shouldn’t have dressed them all up like cowboys. Or at least you should have made sure that their clothes weren’t so obviously brand-spankin’ new.”

Grimes studied me, trying to figure out whether I was telling the truth. “If you knew that they were there, that they were watching you, then why didn’t you try to slip away from them?”

“Because I’m not afraid of them—or you. You’re a small, petty, mean little man who gets his kicks by hurting others. If I ran every time one of those came into the restaurant, well, I’d never be open for business.”

His frown deepened, and anger sparked in his eyes.

He didn’t like hearing the truth about himself. Too damn bad.I drained the last of my lemonade, put the glass down on the railing, got to my feet, and stepped off the porch.

I walked out into the yard and stopped about twenty feet away from Grimes and Hazel. They stood in the middle of the eight goons they’d brought along with them. Not exactly the position that I’d wanted them in, but they were here, and that was all that really mattered.

“You should send your men away,” I said. “Unless you want them to die in the crossfire. We all know that this is between you and me and Hazel.”

Grimes gave me an amused look. “You really think

that you can beat Hazel and me and our combined Fire magic? Is that why you let my men follow you home?

Because you have some fanciful notion of defeating us in an elemental duel like you did Mab Monroe?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t feel like hiking up your stupid mountain again. Besides, I figured that it was time for you to come to Ashland and see how we do things down here in the big city.”

Grimes glanced around at the house and the clearing again, and his lips curved into a mocking sneer. “You mean living out here all by yourself in that run-down house? I prefer my camp. You’ll come to love it there, too, over time, Gin. I just know that you will.”

Once again, that greedy, lustful look flared in his eyes, and his oily, lecherous gaze tracked up and down my body, trying to see my curves through the jeans, long-sleeved black T-shirt, and matching black vest that I had on.I gave him a flat look. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again, I’d rather be dead than be one of your playthings.

I managed to survive the mountain. I’ll survive you, your twisted sister, and what’s left of your little army too.”

“You stupid bitch,” Hazel snarled. “You think that you can take all of us on by yourself?”

“Why, sugar,” I drawled, “who ever said that I was by myself?”

She looked at me, and I grinned back at her. Grimes frowned at my words, but it was Hazel who finally realized what I was up to and why I’d let them follow me home. She cursed, and a ball of elemental Fire flashed to life in her hand.

A perfect signal, if ever there was one.