Venom

by Jennifer Estep

  I whimpered and thrashed, trying to get away from the horrible, burning sensation.

  “Hold her still, Sophia,” a voice commanded. “Or her nose is going to look like something from a Halloween shop. You too, Finn.”

  A pair of iron hands tightened around my shoulders, immobilizing me. A larger but lighter set of hands clamped around my ankles.

  “Hmph,” someone grunted.

  For some reason, it sounded like she was saying go ahead.

  The burning continued a moment longer, then abruptly ceased. The sour stench of my own sweat filled my nose, and I panted with relief. A gentle hand smoothed back my damp, bloody hair, then cupped my cheek.

  “Go to sleep now, darling.” This time the voice was low, warm, sweet, soothing. “Just sleep, Gin.”

  So I did.

  The next time I woke up, I was stretched out in an oversize salon chair that had been laid back like a recliner. Much better than lying on the cold grass of the college quad—or on a steel slab at the morgue.

  My eyes drifted over the white and blue, cloudlike fresco painted on the high ceiling. Familiar as always. I knew where I was, of course. Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux’s beauty salon. This wasn’t the first time I’d woken up in one of the cherry red chairs staring up at the cloud painting after being healed. I didn’t think it would be the last time either.

  Something rough and wet and warm scraped against my right hand. I craned my neck to one side. Rosco, Jo-Jo’s pudgy basset hound, had dragged his fat, lazy ass out of his wicker basket in the corner long enough to come over and lick my hand.

  “Good boy,” I murmured and rubbed one of his long, floppy ears between my blood-spattered fingers.

  Rosco grunted out a huff of pleasure and collapsed in a brown and black furry heap next to the chair. Walking the thirty feet across the room to me had plumb tuckered him out. I smiled and rubbed the hound dog’s other ear.

  “About time you came out of it,” a feminine voice drawled off to my left.

  A pair of bare feet strolled into view next to Rosco’s inert form. Bright fuchsia nail polish covered her toes. Only one person I knew still padded around without socks in early December. I looked up to find Jo-Jo Deveraux looming over me. Well, as much as a dwarf who topped out at five feet could loom. Then again, Jo-Jo was rather tall for a dwarf.

  Although she was two hundred fifty-seven and counting, Jo-Jo didn’t look a day over one ninety-nine. She always reminded me of a Southern magnolia, aging ever so gracefully. Tonight the dwarf wore a long, fuzzy, pink flannel robe, topped off with a string of gravel-size pearls. Jo-Jo never went anywhere without her pearls. To her, they were the ultimate symbol that she was a true Southern lady. Even though it was getting late, Jo-Jo’s bleached-blond-white hair still stood tall, teased, and proud in its usual helmet of curls, and her eye makeup looked as fresh as if she’d just applied it. Gloss covered her pursed lips. Strawberry, from the smell of it.

  Most people would have thought Jo-Jo was just another aging debutante, still trying to be the belle of the ball and clinging to her youth despite the laugh lines around her mouth and eyes. They would have been wrong.

  Everybody knew Jo-Jo Deveraux was an Air elemental who used her beauty salon and magic to help folks stave off the ravages of time on their faces, breasts, legs, and asses. Pure oxygen facials could do wonders for even the most stubborn crows’ feet. But few people knew the dwarf was also the best healer in Ashland, capable of curing everything short of death. Even then, you had a better chance of Jo-Jo finding some way to bring you back to life than with anyone else.

  Jo-Jo Deveraux had been fast friends with my mentor, Fletcher Lane. When I’d started doing the assassinating instead of the old man, Jo-Jo had transferred her healing services over to me. Of course, I always paid for her time, expertise, and magic, but the dwarf was family to me now. So was her younger sister, Sophia, who was a cook down at the Pork Pit, the barbecue restaurant Fletcher had left me upon his death. Sophia was also rather handy at disposing of the many bodies I left in my wake.

  “How are you feeling?” Jo-Jo asked in her low, easy voice that oozed like warm honey.

  “Like I got beaten by a giant.”

  Concern flashed in her pale gaze. Except for the pinprick of black at their center, the dwarf’s eyes were almost colorless, like two cloudy pieces of quartz set into her middle-aged face.

  “Sit me up, please,” I asked.

  Jo-Jo nodded. She moved behind me and hit a lever on the chair. The back tilted up, moving me into an upright, seated position. I shifted around, wiggling my fingers, toes, and jaw. I felt tired, but that was to be expected. The body could handle only so much trauma, and going from being well to being severely injured to being well again in the space of a few hours always left me feeling drained and lethargic. It took my brain a while to catch up to the fact that I was still breathing and not six feet under like I should have been.

  Dried blood still covered my clothes and hands, but everything else was in pain-free, working order once more. I sniffed. Jo-Jo had even fixed my drippy nose and purged the flu from my system. Humpty-Dumpty had been put back together again. Despite all of Mab Monroe’s men.

  My eyes scanned over the salon, which took up the back half of Jo-Jo’s massive, antebellum house. It looked the same as it always did. Lots of padded swivel chairs. Several old-fashioned hair dryers. Counters cluttered with hairspray, scissors, pink sponge rollers, nail polish, makeup, and gap-toothed combs. Pictures and posters of models with various hairstyles taped to the walls. Piles and piles of beauty and fashion magazines everywhere. I drew in a breath. The air smelled the same too—chemicals mixed with coconut oil from the tanning beds in the next room.

  Jo-Jo plopped down in the chair to my right. On the floor between us, Rosco actually expended enough energy to roll over, so the dwarf could rub his pudgy stomach with her bare foot.

  “You want to talk about it?” Jo-Jo asked.

  I shrugged. “Not much to talk about. Jonah McAllister got Elliot Slater and two of his giant goons to jump me at the community college. McAllister thought I might have info on his son Jake’s murder. Since I didn’t want to blow my cover, I had to let them beat me. End of story.”

  Jo-Jo stared at me, a reproachful look in her pale eyes. The dwarf had known me long enough to realize when I was fudging the truth.

  I sighed. “And Mab Monroe was there too.”

  Jo-Jo opened her mouth to ask a question, but Finn chose that moment to pop his head into the salon.

  “Is she finally awake?” he asked.

  “Finally?” I groused, looking up at the cloud-shaped clock on the wall. “It’s barely after ten. I only got the shit beat out of me a couple of hours ago. I’d say I was recovering nicely, all things considered.”

  “That’s what you think,” Finn said.

  He leaned against the door frame, a mug of chicory coffee in his hand. Finn drank the stuff at all hours of the night and day, but the caffeine seemed to have little effect on him. Or perhaps he’d just become immune to it. Fletcher Lane had drunk the same kind of coffee.

  I breathed in again, this time tasting the caffeine fumes in the air. The warm, comforting scent always reminded me of the old man. I wished Fletcher had been here tonight, to talk to me about the attack and seeing Bria again. I wished a lot of things about the old man that were never going to come to pass.

  Heavy, plodding footsteps sounded, and another person entered the salon. Sophia Deveraux, Jo-Jo’s younger sister. Where Jo-Jo was all sweet pink sunshine, Sophia was the heart of darkness—as in Goth. Sophia wore her usual black jeans and shit-kicker boots. Her T-shirt was actually a girly pink tonight, although images of decapitated doll heads dotted the light fabric. A black leather collar studded with plastic pink hearts ringed Sophia’s neck. A bright pink gloss covered her lips, but her cropped hair was as black as black could be. It stood out in stark contrast to her pale skin.

  Sophia was an inch or so taller than Jo-Jo and had a
much more muscular figure than her big sister did. At a hundred and thirteen, the younger Deveraux sister was in her prime, instead of firmly entrenched in middle age like Jo-Jo was. Sophia plopped down in the chair to my left and nodded at me. I nodded back.

  And then the three of them stared at me. Finn, Jo-Jo, Sophia. Hell, even Rosco turned his head back in my direction. All of them looking steadily at me, expectation shining in their eyes. Oh, fuck. They actually expected me to talk about what had happened tonight. To share my feelings. I sighed again. I’d much rather have hacked and slashed my way through a platoon of Mab Monroe’s giants than explain how I was dealing with my emotions.

  But they were my family, for better or worse. They deserved to know what had happened tonight—and how it could affect them tomorrow.

  “All right,” I said. “Here’s the short version.”

  I recapped the events of the evening, starting with Jonah McAllister and Elliot Slater bracing me, Slater beating me, and Mab Monroe stepping in and leading her goons off into the dark night. And then there was the biggie—my unexpected meeting with Bria, my long-lost younger sister.

  “So Bria’s a detective? Working in Ashland?” Jo-Jo asked. “Why didn’t we know this before?”

  “Because she’s a new transfer, only started a week ago,” Finn said, taking another sip of his chicory coffee. “I did some checking while you were healing Gin.”

  In addition to (mis)handling other people’s money, Finn was also something of an information trader. If you wanted dirt on someone, Finnegan Lane could get it for you—in a hurry.

  “Bria has been working down in Savannah, Georgia, ever since she graduated from the police academy a couple of years ago. She moved up to Ashland a few weeks back.” Finn hesitated and stared at me. “She took Donovan Caine’s position in the police department.”

  My hands tightened around the padded arms of my salon chair. A man’s face flashed before my eyes. Black hair, hazel eyes, bronze skin, and a lean, hard body that had felt marvelous pressed against my own. Detective Donovan Caine. One of the few honest cops in Ashland who actually tried to fight crime, rather than taking a bribe to look the other way. Caine had also been my sometimes lover, until he’d left town a few weeks ago.

  Detective Donovan Caine had been upstanding to a fault, with a strict code of justice and morals that never, ever bent. He’d had a hard enough time dealing with the fact that I used to be an assassin—and that I’d killed his former partner, Cliff Ingles, for raping a thirteen-year-old girl. But when I’d gone after coal mine owner Tobias Dawson for threatening an old friend of Fletcher’s, Donovan hadn’t handled it well at all. He’d known I’d planned to assassinate Dawson, and he’d done nothing to stop me.

  After I killed Dawson, well, Donovan’s morals, his ideals, started eating away at him. He’d come down to the Pork Pit one night and said he couldn’t be the man he wanted to be and be with me at the same time. Donovan Caine had broken off our complicated affair and left town to get away from me and the attraction between us—and the fact that he still wanted to fuck me despite a) his precious morals and, b) all the bad things I’d done.

  I’d been willing to share my life, my heart, with Donovan, and he’d walked out on me. On the possibility of us. Maybe it was a good thing he’d left town. Otherwise, I might have been tempted to do something stupid. Like try to seduce him into giving us just one more chance. And be pissed off all over again when he said no.

  “Gin?” Finn asked. “Are you still with us?”

  I shook my head to banish my troubled, unwanted thoughts. “Yeah, I’m still here. So my mysterious sister took Donovan’s place in the department. What else do you know about her?”

  Finn shrugged. “Not much. I’ve only been digging for an hour. But Bria’s got a reputation for being a real hard-ass. Cleaning up corruption, sticking up for the little people, that sort of thing.”

  So Bria was a crusader, just like Donovan Caine had been. Just what I needed. Another honest cop complicating my life. Especially when I was still trying to figure out why Mab Monroe had murdered my mother and older sister all those years ago—and how I could kill the Fire elemental now without getting dead myself.

  “And, of course, we know that Bria is drop-dead gorgeous,” Finn said in a dreamy tone. “That picture of her that Dad somehow got his hands on does not do the woman justice.”

  Finn was referring to a photograph Fletcher Lane had left for me. It had been in a thick folder, along with all the other information about my mother’s and older sister’s murder at the hands of Mab Monroe. Autopsy photos, police reports, newspaper clippings. Jo-Jo had given me the file after the old man’s death. Bria’s picture—which made me realize she was still alive—had been the only nice thing in the gruesome folder.

  I rolled my eyes. “Do me a favor, Finn. Don’t look like that when you talk about my sister.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re thinking about her naked and in your bed.”

  Finn grinned. “Would I do something like that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” On my left, Sophia grunted her agreement. That was about as expressive as she ever got. Unlike most folks, the Goth dwarf preferred to communicate in short, monosyllabic bursts.

  Finn put his hand over his heart. “Oh, Gin, you wound me with your jaded cynicism.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “My words are like knives. Just let me decide what I want to do about Bria before you start hitting on her, okay?”

  Finn gave a reluctant nod of his head. “All right. But figure it out soon. You know I have a thing for hot blondes.”

  I snorted. “You have a thing for anyone with breasts.”

  We might have kept squabbling, but Jo-Jo cleared her throat. I turned my head to look at the dwarf.

  “So what are you going to do about your sister?” the older dwarf asked in a soft voice. “Are you going to tell her who you really are? What you’ve been doing all these years? What your plans are?”

  “You mean am I going to tell Bria that I’m her long-lost, big sister, Genevieve Snow? That I was a renowned assassin known as the Spider? Or that Mab Monroe killed our mother and sister and that I’ve sworn to take my revenge on the Fire elemental?” I shook my head. “Call me crazy, but I think that might be a bit much to process all at once.”

  Just the thought of telling Bria who I really was made my stomach tighten and the spider rune scars on my palms itch and burn. Even though I didn’t often feel it, I knew what the emotion was. Dread.

  “I don’t know. Bria’s your sister, after all. That counts for a lot,” Jo-Jo murmured.

  The dwarf stared at me, but her eyes had taken on a milky white, faraway look that told me that she wasn’t really seeing me but peering into the future. In addition to using their magic to heal people, most Air elementals had a bit of precognition as well. Folks like Jo-Jo could sense, listen to, and interpret the emotions, feelings, and actions that permeated the air and wind. Just like I could hear the emotions, feelings, and actions that had sunk into any stone that I was near—brick buildings, granite furnishings, even the gravel underfoot. My Stone magic whispered of things that had occurred in the past. In Jo-Jo’s case, her Air elemental magic often gave her flashes of what might happen in the future. At least enough of them to make me listen to her.

  I rubbed my head. “I don’t know what to do about Bria right now. I just don’t know.”

  Jo-Jo reached over and squeezed my hand. “Whatever you decide, we’ll support you—and welcome Bria with open arms if that’s what you want.”

  Sophia nodded. “Welcome her,” the Goth dwarf rasped in her low, broken voice.

  “Oh, yeah,” Finn grinned. “In fact, I volunteer to be the very first one to welcome Bria to Ashland.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “With what? Your suave good looks? Or perhaps you were going to whip out that smooth charm you claim to possess, along with your dick?”

  Finn’s grin widened. “Wh
atever works, Gin,” he drawled. “Whatever works.”

  4

  “I can’t believe you dragged me down here tonight,” I muttered. “We have things to do, remember? Long-lost sisters to investigate, Mab Monroe assassination plans to make, her pesky minions to dispatch. Or have you forgotten about all that?”

  Finn pulled his bright green gaze away from a busty blond hooker long enough to glance at me. “Did you say something, Gin?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Nothing important, apparently.”

  “Good.” Finn’s gaze zoomed back over to the hooker, who was gyrating along with several other women on the edge of the dance floor.

  I sighed. Two days had passed since I’d been attacked at the community college by Elliot Slater and his giants. Finn had come by the Pork Pit earlier today and announced that he was treating me to a night out. I’d hoped for a nice quiet dinner somewhere, maybe that new Mexican place that served the spicy-hot fajitas over on St. Charles Avenue.

  Instead, he’d taken me to Northern Aggression.

  Located in Northtown, the rich, highfalutin part of the city, Northern Aggression was Ashland’s most renowned nightclub. Not because it was the epitome of class and sophistication, but because you could get anything you desired here—blood, drugs, sex, smokes, alcohol. The club offered all that and more—for the right price. Not surprising, given the fact the club was managed by Roslyn Phillips, a vampire hooker who’d spent years turning tricks on the rough Southtown streets before she’d put enough cash together to open up her own gin joint.

  Just before midnight, yuppies packed the place. Men in suits, women in as little as was legal. Everybody with a drink or ciggie in one hand and someone’s ass in the other. All of the yuppies were being egged on by the nightclub’s staff of scantily clad, impossibly buff men and women. Most of the staff members were vampires, and all of them were hookers. They were easy to identify since each one wore a necklace with a rune hanging off the end—a heart with an arrow through it. The symbol for Northern Aggression.