Bitter Bite (Elemental Assassin #14) Read online

  “Engrossing!” —Publishers Weekly

  “Gritty!” —RT Book Reviews

  Praise for the Goodreads-nominated and Romantic Times award-winning Elemental Assassin series

  SPIDER’S TRAP

  “The continued evolution of not only Gin but all the rest of the core characters as well is what keeps this series fresh and immensely entertaining. These relationships give such rich depth and emotional heft to the otherwise nonstop action.”

  —RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!)

  “Nonstop action, great characters, humor, and even some moments where your heart is in your throat.”

  —Dark Faerie Tales

  BLACK WIDOW

  “Everything that I adore about this series is right here and more so in Black Widow. There’s expertly crafted fights, banter, and suspense that continued to keep me on the edge of my seat. I can’t recommend this book enough and love being on the roller-coaster ride that is Gin Blanco’s life.”

  —All Things Urban Fantasy

  “Black Widow is crazy good and Gin Blanco is still one of the best-written heroines in urban fantasy. I was riveted from beginning to end.”

  —Fiction Vixen

  POISON PROMISE

  “A knockout . . . Lots of vividly depicted battles, a high body-count, and high-octane escapes worthy of a James Bond movie keep the pages turning.”

  —Booklist

  “A quick-moving plot and characters that jump off the page . . . Estep finely balances a confident tough-edged personality with an inner life filled with doubts and emotions, making Gin a surprisingly down-to-earth heroine whom readers will root for.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  THE SPIDER

  “By virtue of her enormous skill, Estep keeps this amazing series fresh and unputdownable!”

  —RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!)

  “Made me fall in love with Gin all over again.”

  —All Things Urban Fantasy

  HEART OF VENOM

  “Amazing . . . Estep is one of those rare authors who excels at both action set pieces and layered character development.”

  —RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!)

  “Action-packed with tons of character growth . . . One of the best books in the series, which says a lot because Estep’s writing rarely, if ever, disappoints.”

  —Fall Into Books

  DEADLY STING

  “Classic Estep with breathtaking thrills, coolly executed fights, and a punch of humor, which all add up to unbeatable entertainment!”

  —RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!)

  “I’ve been hooked on this series from the first word of the first book. I can’t get enough.”

  —Fiction Vixen

  WIDOW’S WEB

  “Estep has found the perfect recipe for combining kick-butt action and high-stakes danger with emotional resonance.”

  —RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!)

  “Filled with such emotional and physical intensity that it leaves you happily exhausted by the end.”

  —All Things Urban Fantasy

  SPIDER’S REVENGE

  “Explosive . . . Hang on, this is one smackdown you won’t want to miss!”

  —RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!)

  “A whirlwind of tension, intrigue, and mind-blowing action that leaves your heart pounding.”

  —Smexy Books

  TANGLED THREADS

  “Interesting story lines, alluring world, and fascinating characters. That is what I’ve come to expect from Estep’s series.”

  —Yummy Men and Kick Ass Chicks

  VENOM

  “Estep has really hit her stride with this gritty and compelling series . . . Brisk pacing and knife-edged danger make this an exciting page-turner.”

  —RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!)

  “Gin is a compelling and complicated character whose story is only made better by the lovable band of merry misfits she calls her family.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  SPIDER’S BITE

  “The series [has] plenty of bite . . . Kudos to Estep for the knife-edged suspense!”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Fast pace, clever dialogue, and an intriguing heroine.”

  —Library Journal

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  To my mom, my grandma, and Andre—

  for your love, patience, and everything else you’ve given me over the years.

  And to my grandma, who always says, “Why ask for one million when you can ask for two?”

  Acknowledgments

  Once again, my heartfelt thanks go out to all the folks who help turn my words into a book.

  Thanks go to my agent, Annelise Robey, and editors Adam Wilson and Lauren McKenna for all their helpful advice, support, and encouragement. Thanks also to Melissa Bendixen.

  Thanks to Tony Mauro for designing another terrific cover, and thanks to Louise Burke, Lisa Litwack, and everyone else at Pocket and Simon & Schuster for their work on the cover, the book, and the series.

  And finally, a big thanks to all the readers. Knowing that folks read and enjoy my books is truly humbling, and I’m glad that you are all enjoying Gin and her adventures.

  I appreciate you all more than you will ever know.

  Happy reading!

  1

  Digging up a grave was hard, dirty work.

  Good thing that hard, dirty work was one of my specialties. Although, as an assassin, I’m usually the one putting people into graves instead of uncovering them.

  But here I was in Blue Ridge Cemetery, just after ten o’clock on this cold November night. Flurries drifted down from the sky, the small flakes dancing on the gusty breeze like delicate, crystalline fairies. Every once in a while, the wind would whip up into a howling frenzy, pelting me with swarms of snow and spattering the icy flakes against my chilled cheeks.

  I ignored the latest wave of flurries stinging my face and continued digging, just like I’d been doing for the last hour. The only good thing about driving the shovel into the frozen earth was that the repetitive motions of scooping out the dirt and tossing it onto a pile kept me warm and limber, instead of cold and stiff like the tombstones surrounding me.

  Despite the snow, I still had plenty of light to see by, thanks to the old-fashioned iron streetlamps spaced along the access roads throughout the cemetery. One of the lamps stood about thirty feet away from where I was digging, its golden glow highlighting the grave marker in front of me, making the carved name stand out like black blood against the gray stone.

  Deirdre Shaw.

  The mother of my foster brother, Finnegan Lane. A strong Ice elemental. And a potentially dangerous enemy.

  A week ago, I’d found a file that Fletcher Lane—Finn’s dad and my assassin mentor—had hidden in his office. A file claiming that Deirdre was powerful, deceitful, and treacherous—and not nearly as dead as everyone thought she was. So I’d come here tonight to find out whether she was truly six feet under. I was hoping she was dead and rotting in her grave, but I wasn’t willing to bet on it.

  Too many things from my own past had come back to haunt me. I knew better than to leave something this important to chance.

  Thunk.

  My shovel hit something hard and metal. I stopped and breathed in, hoping to smell the stench of decades-old decay. But the cold, crisp scent of
the snow mixed with the rich, dark earth created a pleasant perfume. No decay, no death, and, most likely, no body.

  I cleared off the rest of the dirt, revealing the top of the casket. A rune had been carved into the lid, jagged icicles fitted together to form a heart. My stomach knotted up with tension. Fletcher had inked that same rune onto Deirdre’s file. This was definitely the right grave.

  I was already standing in the pit that I’d dug, and I scraped away a few more chunks of earth so that I could crouch down beside the top half of the casket. The metal lid was locked, but that was easy enough to fix. I set down my shovel, pulled off my black gloves, and held up my hands, reaching for my Ice magic. The matching scars embedded deep in my palms—each one a small circle surrounded by eight thin rays—pulsed with the cold, silver light of my power. My spider runes, the symbols for patience.

  When I had generated enough magic, I reached down, wrapped my hands around the casket lid’s locks, and blasted them with my Ice power. After coating the locks with two inches of elemental Ice, I sent out another surge of power, cracking away the cold crystals. At the same time, I reached for my Stone magic, hardening my skin. Under my magical assault, the locks shattered, and my Stone-hardened skin kept the flying bits of metal from cutting my hands. I dusted away the remains of the locks and the Ice, took hold of the casket lid, dug my feet into the dirt, and lifted it.

  The lid was heavy, and the metal didn’t want to open, not after all the years spent peacefully resting in the ground. It creaked and groaned in protest, but I managed to hoist it up a couple of inches. I grabbed my shovel and slid it into the opening, using it as a lever to lift the lid the rest of the way.

  Dirt rained down all around me, mixing with the snowflakes, and I wrinkled my nose to hold back a sneeze. I wedged the length of the shovel in between the lid and the edge of the casket so it would stay open. Then I wiped the sweat off my forehead, put my hands on my knees to catch my breath, and looked down.

  Just as I expected, snow-white silk lined the inside of the casket, with a small square matching pillow positioned at the very top, where a person’s head would rest. But something decidedly unexpected was situated next to the pillow, nestled in the middle of the pristine fabric.

  A box.

  It was about the size of a small suitcase and made out of silverstone, a sturdy metal that had the unique property of absorbing and storing magic. The box’s gray surface gleamed like a freshly minted coin, and it looked as clean and untouched as the rest of the white silk.

  I frowned. I’d expected the casket to be completely empty. Or for there to be a decaying body inside. If I had been extremely lucky, Deirdre would have been in there, dead after all.

  So why was there a box in it instead? And who had put it here?

  I stared at the box, more knots forming in the pit of my stomach and then slowly tightening. I’d recently gone up against Raymond Pike, a metal elemental who had enjoyed planting bombs before I helped plant him in some botanical gardens. Pike had received a letter with Deirdre’s rune stamped on it and had bragged that the two of them were business associates. He’d also said she was the most coldhearted person he’d ever met. I wondered if he’d booby-trapped the box in Deirdre’s casket as some sort of favor to her, to blow up anyone who might come investigate whether she was truly dead.

  I reached out, using my Stone magic to listen to all the rocks in the ground around the casket. But the rocks only grumbled about the cold, the snow, and how I’d disturbed their own final resting place. No other emotional vibrations resonated through them, which meant that no one had been near the casket in years.

  I crouched down and brushed away the dirt that had fallen on top of the box when I opened the casket lid. No magic emanated from the silverstone box, although a rune had been carved into the top of it, the same small circle and eight thin rays that were branded into each of my palms.

  My spider rune.

  “Fletcher,” I whispered, my breath frosting in the air.

  The old man had left the box here for me to find. No doubt about it. He was the only one who seemed to know that Deirdre wasn’t actually dead. More important, Fletcher had known me. He had realized that if Deirdre ever made an appearance back in Ashland, back in Finn’s life, I would find his file on her and come to her grave to determine whether she was dead and buried.

  Once again, the old man had left me with clues to find from beyond his own grave, which was located a hundred feet away. For whatever reason, he and Deirdre hadn’t been buried side by side. Something I hadn’t really thought too much about until tonight. I wondered why Fletcher hadn’t buried the supposedly dead mother of his son next to his own cemetery plot. Something must have happened between him and Deirdre.

  Something bad.

  I opened up the bottom half of the casket and ran my fingers all around the silk, just in case something else had been left behind, but there was nothing. So I hooked my hands under the box and lifted it out of the casket. It was surprisingly heavy, as though Fletcher had packed it full of information. The weight made me even more curious about what might be inside—

  “Did you hear something, Don?”

  I froze, hoping that I’d only imagined the high feminine voice.

  “Yes, I did, Ethel,” a deeper masculine voice answered back.

  No such luck.

  Still holding the box, I stood on my tiptoes and peered over the lip of the grave. A man and a woman stood about forty feet away, both of them dwarves, given their five-foot heights and stocky, muscular frames. I hadn’t heard a car roll into the cemetery, so the two of them must have parked somewhere nearby and walked in like I had.

  They were both bundled up in black clothes and weren’t carrying flashlights, which meant that they didn’t want to be seen. Shovels were propped up on their shoulders, the metal scoops shimmering like liquid silver under the glow of the streetlamps. There was only one reason for the two of them to be skulking around the cemetery with shovels.

  My mouth twisted with disgust. Grave robbers. One of the lowest forms of scum, even among the plethora of criminals who called Ashland home.

  They must have sensed my stare, or perhaps they’d noticed the massive pile of dirt that I’d dug up, because they both turned and looked right at me.

  “Hey!” the woman, Ethel, called out. “Someone else is here!”

  The two dwarves started running toward me. I cursed, put the box on the ground next to the tombstone, dug my fingers into the grass, and scrambled up and out of the grave. I’d just staggered to my feet when the dwarves stopped in front of me, their shovels now held out in front of them like lances.

  Ethel’s blue eyes narrowed to slits. “What do you think you’re doing? This here is our cemetery. Nobody else’s.”

  “Aw, now, don’t be like that, Ethel,” her companion said. “Look on the bright side. She did the hard work of digging up this grave for us already. Looks like she found something good too.”

  He stabbed his shovel at the silverstone box. My fingers clenched into fists. No way were they getting their grubby hands on that. Not when it might hold clues about Deirdre Shaw—where she might be and why everyone thought she was dead, including Finn, her own son.

  Don grinned; his bright red nose and bushy white beard made him look like Santa Claus. With her rosy cheeks and short, curly white hair, Ethel was the perfect counterpart. If Santa and Mrs. Claus were low-down, no-good grave robbers.

  “Why, we should thank her,” Don said. “Before we kill her, of course.”

  Ethel nodded. “You’re right, hon. You always are.”

  The two dwarves tightened their grips on their shovels and stepped toward me, but I held my ground, my gray eyes as cold and hard as the snow-dusted tombstones.

  “Before the two of you do something you won’t live to regret, you should know that that box is mine,” I said. “Walk away now, don’t come back, and I’ll forget that I ever saw you here.”

  “And who do you think you are, g
iving us orders?” Ethel snapped.

  “Gin Blanco. That’s who.”

  I didn’t say my name to brag. Not really. But I was the head of the Ashland underworld now, which meant that they should know exactly who I was—and especially what I was capable of doing to them.

  Ethel rolled her eyes. “You must really be desperate to claim to be her. Then again, dead women will say anything to keep on breathing, won’t they, Don?”

  The other dwarf nodded. “Yep.”

  I ground my teeth. Low-life criminals had no trouble tracking me down at the Pork Pit, my barbecue restaurant in downtown Ashland, and no qualms whatsoever about trying to kill me there. But whenever I was away from the restaurant, got into a bad situation, and tried to warn people about who I really was, nobody believed me. Irony’s way of screwing me over time and time again, laughing at me all the while.

  “Besides,” Don continued, “even if you really were Gin Blanco, it wouldn’t matter. Everyone knows that she’s the big boss in name only. It won’t be long until someone kills her and takes her place.”

  He was certainly right about that. The other bosses were plotting against me, and many of the city’s criminals were waiting to see how my underworld reign played out—or how short-lived it might be—before they officially took sides. Still, it was kind of sad when even the local grave robbers didn’t respect you.

  I opened my mouth to tell them to stop being idiots, but Don kept on talking.

  “Enough chitchat. It’s freezing out here, and we need to get to work, which means that your time is up. But since you found that box for us, I’ll offer you a deal. Turn around, and I’ll whack you on the back of the head.” Don swung his shovel in a vicious arc. “You won’t even know what hit you. I’ll even plant you in that grave, so you get some kind of proper burial.”

  I palmed the silverstone knife hidden up my right sleeve and flashed it at them. “As charming as your offer is, I’m going to have to decline.”

  Ethel glared at me. “So that’s how it is, then?”

  “That’s how it always is with me.”