Heart of Venom

Chapter Six

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 salon . . .” 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 a thing 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 simplyhadto 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.