Heart of Venom Page 15

  I couldn’t let that happen—not to the others—and I knew what I had to do now. Maybe I’d always known that it would come to this.

  I waited until we got to the top of the rocky ridge, hurried over to the edge, and risked a quick look down below. I counted around a dozen men, all with guns, in the main camp clearing. Some of them were running to the east, where the pit was and where we’d started our escape. A few others were staring up at the ridge, taking aim with their guns, and waiting for us to appear, although we were out of range of their revolvers way up here. Some of the smarter ones were running toward the west end of the camp, probably to another trail there that would lead them up to this location.

  I didn’t spot Grimes or Hazel, but I knew that they were out there somewhere searching for us, especially Grimes. He wouldn’t let Sophia escape a second time.

  Everything I saw only made me more determined to make sure that the others got off the mountain—even if I didn’t.

  “Get Sophia out of here!” I yelled, stepping away from the lip of the ridge and waving the others on past me. “Go! I’ll hold them off!”

  Sophia pulled up short. “No,” she rasped. “Don’t. Too dangerous.”

  “Somebody has to slow them down, and it’s going to be me. I made Jo-Jo a promise that I’d rescue you, and I’m going to keep it. You wouldn’t want to make a liar out of me, now, would you?” I grinned, trying to show her that I knew what I was doing—and what it would cost me.

  Sophia didn’t say anything, but fear filled her eyes, fear for me and of what Grimes and Hazel would do to me if I was captured. But that was something that I couldn’t let myself think about right now. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to do what needed to be done in order to save my family.

  “She’s right,” Warren said, ripping the bandanna from around his throat and using it to make a crude bandage for his leg. “Now, come on. I’ll drag you if I have to, but we both know that we don’t have that kind of time right now.”

  Warren couldn’t drag anyone, not with that bullet in his leg, but he was just stubborn enough to try, and Sophia knew it. She also realized that he was right.

  Sophia gave me one more sorrowful look before she threaded her arm through Warren’s. Leaning on each other, the two of them slowly crossed the ridge, stepped onto the trail on the far side, and vanished into the woods.

  I shrugged the backpack off my shoulders and dropped it at my feet, along with the bloody knife that I’d been holding. I palmed my second knife, then pulled out the one from against the small of my back and the two from the sides of my boots. I grabbed a couple of guns out of the backpack and laid them on the rocks. Then I stuffed all five of my knives inside the backpack, zipped it up, and handed it to Owen.

  “Here,” I said. “Take this. I don’t want Grimes getting his grubby hands on Fletcher’s maps or the knives that you made for me. Don’t worry. I’ve got plenty more weapons in my vest.”

  “Don’t,” he said in a low, strangled, anguished voice. “Don’t give me your knives. Don’t give up. Don’t you dare give up.”

  “I’m not giving up. I’m being realistic.”

  More shouts echoed through the trees, along with a few more cracks of gunfire, as if to punctuate my words.

  “I want to stay with you,” Owen said, his words almost a snarl. “I want to fight with you and be by your side to the end—no matter what that is.”

  “I know,” I said, my voice as calm as his was violent. “But you can’t. Warren and Sophia are both injured, and they will never get off the mountain without help—your help. Grimes’s men will catch up with them and drag them back here. He’ll use them as leverage against us, and then we’ll all be dead. So I want you to go, Owen. I need you to go. Please. For Sophia and Warren—and especially for me.”

  Owen closed his eyes a moment, his body shuddering, as though his heart was tearing in two as he accepted the truth of my words and what we both had to do now. Then he snapped them open, grabbed my arm, and pulled me close to his body.

  “Whatever happens, you survive,” he growled. “I’ll come back for you as soon as Sophia is safe. I promise.”

  Stubborn determination blazed in his violet eyes, making them burn as brightly as amethyst stars, and my heart swelled with love for him. Despite everything that had happened between us and all the ways that we’d hurt each other, I still loved him. I would love him for as long as I lived.

  I just didn’t know how much longer that would be.

  Because I didn’t think that I would survive this fight. Grimes and Hazel had too many guns, too many men, too much magic, and I was all out of time—and options.

  This one precious moment might be all that I had left.

  So I cupped Owen’s cheek with one hand and stroked my bloody fingers over his face, smoothing out his worried frown and trying to memorize his features. I stared into his eyes, letting him see just how much I cared for him, just how much I loved him. Then I wrapped my arms around his neck and crushed my lips to his, wanting to feel his arms around me just one more time.

  He returned my kiss with equal fervor, wrapping his arms even tighter around me. Emotions exploded inside me, one after another—heat, desire, need, want, love. For a moment, I gave myself over completely to it, this hot, burning, unending wave of emotion that threatened to pull me under and drown me with its intensity.

  Crack! Crack! Crack!

  Another round of gunfire burst out, closer this time, shattering the moment, and our kiss ended as quickly as it had begun, although the emotions lingered, sparking through my body like bolts of electricity, jolting every part of me and making me feel more alive than I ever had before.

  Owen leaned forward and touched his forehead to mine, still staring into my eyes. “Survive,” he whispered. “Promise me.”

  “I promise,” I whispered, even though I knew the words were an empty lie. Then I stepped away from him. “Now, go. Before it’s too late for all of us.”

  His eyes met mine, violet and gray, and the emotions roared over me again, even stronger than before—heat, desire, need, want, love. They made me want to fight, they made me want to survive—for him, for us—even though there was a slim chance of that, at best. Still, I grabbed on to those feelings, those emotions, those soul-wrenching jolts, and added them to the cold, black rage that was steadily beating in my heart, crystallizing my determination to protect him and the others, no matter what.

  Owen nodded, shouldered my backpack, and started backing away across the ridge. He kept his gaze on mine the whole time. All too soon, though, he reached the trees on the far side. I grinned, trying to reassure him.

  He returned my grin, although agony still burned in his eyes at the thought of leaving me behind. But Warren couldn’t get Sophia off the mountain by himself, not before Grimes’s men caught up with them, and we both knew it.

  “Go,” I called out to him. “Now.”

  Owen gave me one more longing, solemn look before he turned and disappeared into the trees. I watched him go, wondering if I’d ever see him again.

  I hoped so.

  But hope was a useless emotion in this situation, so I set it aside and locked it down tight inside me, along with all of my other soft feelings, where they would stay safe and out of the way of what was to come. Instead, I embraced the blackness in my heart until there was nothing left but the icy rage to kill every single person who came within arm’s reach of me.

  Until I was no more and no less than the Spider once again.

  Then I unzipped a pocket on my vest, grabbed one of my extra silverstone knives, and went to face my enemies.

  19

  When I was sure that Owen, Warren, and Sophia had a good head start on Grimes’s men, I stepped out into plain view on the top of the ridge, my knife in my hand, making sure that everyone in the clearing below could see me.

  Crack!

  Crack! Crack!

  Crack!

  A few bullets pinged harmlessly off the ridge farther d
own the slope. Most of the men seemed to be armed with revolvers, so they weren’t really in range yet, but they surged forward, scrambling up and over the rocks, trying to fix that. I stood there and let them come.

  My gaze scanned over the men, and I counted at least a dozen headed my way, each armed with at least one gun. There were probably more of them at the east and west ends of camp, slogging through the woods and racing toward my position, but they wouldn’t be a factor right now.

  Twelve on one. Not bad odds, considering.

  “This is for you, Fletcher,” I said. “I hope that I make you proud.”

  Crack!

  Crack! Crack!

  More bullets pinged off the rocks, although they were slowly getting closer to hitting the mark. Still, I waited. Until finally—crack!—a bullet chipped into the stone at my feet.

  I grinned. Now that was definitely close enough. Still, I waited until most of the men had climbed a few feet higher before I crouched down and held my hand up.

  A silver light flared in my palm, centered on my spider rune scar, as I reached for the Ice magic flowing deep inside my veins. I studied the glowing circle and eight thin rays of silverstone embedded in my skin, watching the shimmer of magic grow and grow as I grabbed hold of more and more of my power. I wondered if this was the last time that I’d ever see my own rune.

  Well, if it was, I was going to make it count.

  I reached for the closest rock. The stone steamed and sizzled with cold as though I were searing my spider rune into it with the icy brand of my hand. In a way, I supposed that I was. It took less than a breath before cold crystals started spreading out from my palm, encasing the rock that I was touching, then flowing on to the next craggy stone and the one after that and the one after that.

  Jo-Jo had always told me that I was one of the strongest elementals she’d ever seen, and I’d proven that to myself when I’d gone toe-to-toe with Mab and her Fire and lived through the fight. So it was easy for me to coat the rocks around me with an inch of elemental Ice. What wasn’t so easy was pushing my power outward over the whole ridge and then even farther out into the woods beyond the rocks.

  But I had a plan for that too: the silverstone spider rune ring on my right hand, the one that Bria had given me. I tapped into the magic that was housed in the metal there, adding it to the Ice power that was already flowing out of me. The reason silverstone was so prized was that the metal had a special property, the ability to absorb and store all forms of magic. That’s why so many elementals wore rings, necklaces, and watches made out of silverstone, so they could have an extra boost of power when they needed it, say, for an elemental duel.

  So many people had tried to kill me in the past few months that I’d taken to putting a bit of my Ice and Stone power into my ring every morning when I got up and again every night before I went to bed. As a result, the ring held more of my magic than it ever had before, and I intended to tap into every single bit of it.

  It was a risk, using up all of my magic this way, but I wanted to give Warren, Owen, and Sophia the best possible chance to get off the mountain and back to Roslyn’s car. I figured that turning the whole damn ridge into a field of elemental Ice was the best way to do that.

  I kept reaching and reaching for my magic, watching the Ice crystals leapfrog from one rock and one patch of earth to the next, pushed forward by my Stone power like soldiers marching into battle. Below me, the men started shouting as the Ice approached and then rushed on past them like a cold crystal wave. A few weren’t quite quick enough to let go of their handholds on the ridge, and their hands froze to the rocks and were trapped there by the thick layer of Ice. I hoped their fingers rotted, turned black, and fell off from frostbite. It would serve these bastards right for all the horrible things they’d done.

  People thought assassins were evil, but at least my violence was mostly contained to my targets and whatever bodyguards they employed. Grimes and his men hurt everyone who’d ever crossed their path, whether they’d deserved it or not, like all those poor college kids they’d kidnapped and brought up here over the years. And Hazel, well, she liked to use her Fire magic for the sadistic little thrill that it gave her. I wondered how many folks had been innocently hiking through the woods when they’d stumbled across the camp, never to leave it again.

  The thought made the black rage rise in me once more, and I dug down even deeper inside myself. It only took me a moment to release another cold blast of power, this one even stronger than before. The rest of the ridge Iced over, and the crystals kept right on going, spreading out into the woods beyond and the clearing below, until the rocks, trees, grass, and leaves glittered like polished glass.

  Still, despite the elemental Ice, one man actually managed to climb all the way up to the top of the ridge. He stopped short of pulling himself up and over the crest. Instead, he held on to the cold, slippery rocks with one hand, while he raised the gun in his other hand to fire at me.

  Before he could pull the trigger, I rose to my feet and kicked him in the face, smashing my boot into his nose. The sharp jab made his body arch back, and he lost his grip on the slick rocks. End over end, he plummeted to the clearing below. I’d hoped that he would plow into a few of his friends on the way down and knock them off the ridge too, but I’d kicked him too hard, and he fell clear of the rocks.

  Snap.

  I heard his neck break all the way up where I was. I grinned again. One down. Many more to go.

  I crouched down over the ridge again, sending wave after wave of Ice magic out into the rocks and trees and grass below. Cold sweat soaked my clothes, my lungs burned, and my head began to pound from the effort of concentrating so long and so hard, from the sheer will that it took to force all of my magic out in all directions at once.

  Steam rose from the Ice, shrouding the ridge, the woods, and the clearing below in a cold, eerie, misty fog. Well, that should give my friends a bit more cover as they trekked down the mountain.

  Still, despite my best efforts, it wasn’t enough.

  If only it had been a cloudy day, my crystalline creation might have lasted a little longer, but the July sun was already beating down on the ridge and slowly baking it once more. I’d made the Ice as thick as I could, but it wouldn’t be long before it melted away. But I’d done all that I could do to help Sophia, Owen, and Warren escape. The rest was up to them.

  So I let go of the few remaining scraps of my Ice power. My spider rune ring was completely empty of magic. I had a bit of Stone power left, but it wouldn’t do me much good now, unless I wanted to use it to harden my skin, protect myself from the bullets that were still coming my way, and dash off into the woods.

  But I wasn’t going to run. I might have given Sophia and the others a good head start, but her injuries, combined with Warren’s, would make their escape a slow one. I still needed to give Grimes, Hazel, and their men something else to focus on for at least a little while longer: me.

  I slid my knife up my sleeve, grabbed the guns from where I’d placed them on the rocks, and waited for Grimes’s men to come.

  * * *

  After seeing what had happened to their buddy with the broken neck, Grimes’s men quit trying to climb up the frozen rocks to get to me. But they had just as hard a time getting back down again, and several slipped off the ridge and fell to the ground below. Moans, groans, and high-pitched whimpers drifted up to me, along with the sharp, satisfying snap-snap-snap of bones breaking. My elemental Ice hadn’t killed any more of the men, but I’d put at least a few of them out of commission. Hard to think about chasing after someone when your own femur was sticking up out of your skin like a lollipop gushing blood.

  I looked down dispassionately at one man, who was crying, rocking back and forth, and clutching his leg. I could see the white of his bone from where I was. He wouldn’t be getting up without an Air elemental to heal him. Even then, the process of being healed would be as excruciating as the broken leg itself. They should just shoot him. It would
be kinder—

  Crack!

  A bullet zinged off the rocks to my right, and I realized that one man had already made the trek through the woods and up the side of the ridge.

  Crack! Crack!

  Too bad he had lousy aim. The bullets pinged off the rocks around me, but none of them actually came close to hitting me.

  I ducked down behind a boulder, then scrambled on top of it and launched myself through the air. The man raised his gun, but I hit his body before he could pull the trigger, and we both went down on the ground. I was the only one who got back up.

  Footsteps crunched through the leaves on the trail to my right, and shouts rose from that direction, like a pack of hounds baying out their location.

  “Up here!”

  “There she is!”

  “Get that bitch!”

  Men darted out of the woods and headed toward me. I raised the guns in my hands and took aim.

  Sophia. Jo-Jo. Fletcher.

  That was the mantra I chanted in my head as I fired off shot after shot, carefully aiming at every person who came within range of my weapons and trying to make every single bullet count. Man after man went down, tumbling to a stop at my feet with holes in their heads, necks, and chests, but all too soon, my guns click-click-clicked empty. I threw them away, palmed the knife that I’d tucked up my sleeve, and grabbed another one out of a pocket on my vest. More properly attired, I twirled the weapons in my hands and stepped forward.

  Sophia. Jo-Jo. Fletcher.

  I whirled first one way, then the other, cutting into every man who got within arm’s and knife’s reach of me, trying to make every single slice and stab as devastating as possible. Blood spattered everywhere, on me and especially on the rocks. Below my feet, the stone began singing a dark, rousing tune about all the death that I was dealing out, and I found myself merrily, loudly humming along in time to it, even though I was the only one who could hear the vicious chorus.