Venom

by Jennifer Estep

  Since I didn’t feel like dragging his body off the patio, I tipped the dead giant into the pool. He sank to the bottom, blood still spurting out of his wounds, turning the crystal water the ugly brown color of iodine. Under my boots, the stone of the patio took on a harsher note from the giant’s spattered blood. A symphony wouldn’t have sounded better to me at the moment.

  Gin 3, giants 0.

  I waited a few seconds, but no one seemed to have heard me take out my latest victim. When I was sure that the kill had been clean and quiet, I eased over to the glass patio door, turned the knob, and slipped inside.

  The inside of the mansion looked just as I’d expected it to—lush, elegant, expensive. Thick carpeting, throw rugs, and just enough natural wood and stone to make you think that you were in some rustic oasis instead of a carefully crafted structure. I could tell Slater had had the structure built especially for him because all the doorways had at least a twelve-foot clearance and were five feet wide. Giants didn’t like to be crowded.

  I stood inside the patio door a moment, thinking about the blueprints of the place that Finn had procured for me and getting my bearings. In the woods, Elliot Slater had told his man to chain Finn up in the downstairs living room. I currently stood on the back side of the house, which meant the living room was several hundred feet in front of me. I knew that Slater had at least one more man with him right now—the one who had carried Finn out of the woods—but I didn’t know how many other giants might be lurking around. Best to do a perimeter sweep and kill as many of them as I could before taking on the big kahuna himself.

  Besides, some small part of me hoped that Roslyn Phillips might still be alive. I owed it to the vampire to get her out of here if she was still breathing. Jo-Jo Deveraux could fix anything short of death, no matter what horrible things Slater might have done to Roslyn. I’d promised the vampire that I was going to protect her from the giant. That he was never going to hurt her again. So far, I hadn’t lived up to my word, but if Roslyn was still breathing, then I’d be damned if I was leaving here without her.

  A long hallway stretched out north and south before me. I tiptoed up the north side, keeping to the shadows and pausing every few feet to look and listen.

  Silence.

  I didn’t hear any movement. No rustle of clothing, no labored breathing, no scratch of shoes on the rugs or carpet. Just silence.

  I kept going, eventually coming to a set of stairs that led up to the third floor. Once again, I visualized the blueprints that had been in Finn’s folder. If I remembered correctly, the interior of the mansion was hollow. The downstairs living room on the second floor was the focal point of the structure, with the ceilings of the other floors cut out above it. Balconies on every floor led to other rooms while still overlooking the living room below, which featured floor-to-ceiling windows on one side. Since I wanted to see Elliot Slater’s setup before I went after him, I headed up the stairs so I could get a bird’s-eye view of things. Besides, the master bedroom was located on the third floor. Which is where Slater had probably taken Roslyn first when he’d brought her here.

  Again, I heard no one and saw nothing except furniture—until I reached the door that led to the master bedroom. To my surprise, the door was cracked open, and soft murmurs slid out into the hallway where I stood. I cocked my head to one side. A man’s voice doing most of the talking, but not Slater’s. The pitch was too high. Didn’t much matter. Other than Finn and Roslyn, whoever else was in this house was going to die right along with the giant, no matter what his voice sounded like.

  I crept closer to the door, and the murmurs sharpened into real words.

  “… know how beautiful you are? It doesn’t have to be like this,” the man said.

  More silence, as if he was waiting for someone to respond.

  “I’m talking to you, bitch. Answer me.”

  More silence.

  Slap-slap-slap.

  A series of violent blows rang out, and a low moan sounded. My eyes narrowed, even as my heart lifted. Because the moaner was a woman. And it sure sounded like Roslyn Phillips to me.

  I eased closer to the door and put my eye up against the crack. The door was only slightly open, showing me a narrow strip of what lay inside.

  A bed dominated the room—the biggest bed that I’d ever seen. The sucker had to be at least twenty-five feet square and was covered with an ivory comforter. Thick wooden posts rose up from the four corners of the bed, and I could see some sort of heavy, hemp rope tied to them. The rope creaked, as though someone was tied down by it. A man also stood before the bed, but it wasn’t Elliot Slater. His hair was a bright red, instead of the blond wisps of the other pale, chalky giant.

  This giant was also naked, with an ass that was so fat, dimpled, and hairy that I would happily have killed him just for inflicting the sight on me.

  “Like I told you, Slater’s busy right now. Besides, he doesn’t know a good thing when he has it anyway. Smashing up that pretty face of yours, beating on that soft body of yours, what a fucking waste. If you were mine, I would have found something much better for us to do together. Something we’re going to do right now,” the man drawled in a soft voice, as though he wasn’t casually talking about raping someone.

  “He’ll… kill you… for this.”

  The voice was low and weak and raspy, but I still recognized the person it belonged to—Roslyn Phillips. She was still alive—and she was damn well going to stay that way.

  I couldn’t see the man’s face, but I got the impression that he smiled.

  “No, he won’t because you’re not going to live long enough to tell him about it,” he replied.

  The man moved forward to the edge of the bed. He held a rag in his hand. The bits of rope I could see jerked and spasmed. Roslyn, trying desperately to get free before the bastard gagged and raped her. A cold, calm, familiar sort of determination filled me, and my hands tightened around my bloody knives.

  While the naked giant wrestled with Roslyn, trying to get the gag into her mouth, I opened the door and stepped inside the room. The man was too busy with the vampire to hear my soft footsteps on the carpet. I came at him at an angle, so I could see what kind of shape Roslyn was in.

  The sight on the bed sickened me.

  I’d been right on one count. Elliot Slater had wanted to hurt Roslyn before he killed her. The vampire lay spread-eagled on the bed, her arms and legs tied to each of the four posts. Blood and cuts and bruises covered her body—every single inch I could see of it.

  If I hadn’t known it was Roslyn, I wouldn’t have recognized her. That’s how bad she looked, her features all mushed and mashed together, like she’d been run over by a car. Roslyn’s skin looked like it had been rubbed raw with sandpaper. Her beautiful face was a mess of pulpy, purple, swollen flesh, and the vamp’s blood had long ago turned the ivory comforter a dark crimson. There was so much blood on her that it took me a second to realize that Roslyn was still wearing clothes underneath all the gore. Her pants and shirt were torn in places, and blue-black bruises peeked out from the rips like dark eyes.

  I didn’t often feel rage, but cold fire burned in my veins at what had been done to the other woman—and what sort of torture Elliot Slater had in store for Finn if I didn’t save him. For a moment, I felt almost crazed with this burning need to kill the giant and everyone else here, everyone who had hurt Roslyn and Finn.

  The giant put one hairy knee on Roslyn’s stomach. The vampire thrashed weakly against him, but he would have been much too heavy for her to dislodge, even if she’d been free of the ropes and at full strength. I gathered my own will and waited until the giant leaned over Roslyn, trying to force the gag into her bloody mouth before I spoke.

  “Having fun yet, you sick bastard?” I growled.

  The giant’s head whipped around to me. His mouth fell open, and he started to sputter out some excuse about what he was doing. But it was too late for that. Much, much too late.

  I threw myself at hi
m. My knives flashed like liquid silver in the light. And someone else’s blood besides Roslyn’s spattered onto the ivory comforter.

  Less than a minute later, the dead giant thumped to the floor. I wiped my bloody knives off on the comforter, then used them to saw through the ropes that bound Roslyn to the bed. The vamp turned her head to look at me. I didn’t know if she could see me through her battered, black eyes, so I reached forward and gently squeezed her hand.

  “It’s Gin,” I said in a low voice.

  “Gin?” Roslyn whispered through her bloody, swollen lips. “You… came… for me? After… I left… Jo-Jo’s… Why… would you… do that?”

  I stared at the vampire’s body, at all the horrible things that had been done to her on the outside, and all the other horrible things that I couldn’t see on the inside. All the things that might never, ever heal. All the things that I’d brought down upon her when I’d asked her to help me get into Mab Monroe’s party. The guilt from it made me sick, and I knew that it always would. I was Roslyn’s now, and I always would be. Whatever she needed, I would freely give to her, anytime, anyplace.

  Still, I made my voice as gentle as I could, given the cold rage and sharp guilt still burning and twisting through my veins.

  “Because I’m the Spider. Because my retirement’s been a fucking bore. Because you asked me to do a job, and I never go back on my word. Because we’re friends, in a weird sort of way. But mainly because nobody deserves to be treated like this—except the bastards who live here.” I paused to let the cold venom seep back into my tone. “And you can believe that I’m not leaving this place until every single one of them is dead.”

  27

  Roslyn Phillips wasn’t in the greatest shape of her life, which is why I unzipped one of the pockets on my vest and drew out a tin of Jo-Jo Deveraux’s healing ointment. I made Roslyn lie still on the bed while I slathered the ointment on the worst of her wounds on her chest and arms.

  It was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do.

  I knew that Roslyn didn’t want me touching her, that she might not want anyone touching her ever again, given how badly she’d been beaten. But it had to be done to save her. Roslyn flinched every time my fingers brushed her body and with every single movement of my bloody hands, but she didn’t complain, and she didn’t ask me to stop.

  I’d never seen anything so brave in my entire miserable life.

  Still, I did the best I could to distract Roslyn, keeping up a steady stream of chatter, telling her exactly how the bastard who’d been about to rape her had died and exactly how I was going to do the same thing to Elliot Slater. I don’t know if it was my cold, measured words or the healing power of Jo-Jo’s magic, but Roslyn stilled after a few minutes, only flinching every other time I touched her.

  While Roslyn lay on the bed, letting Jo-Jo’s ointment patch up the worst of her wounds, I opened one of the closet doors, looking for something else for her to wear—something that didn’t have her own blood all over it. To my surprise, a variety of women’s clothing was mixed in among Elliot Slater’s oversize suits. I grabbed some pants, a sweater, socks, shoes, and even some clean underwear from the interior and tossed them to Roslyn.

  “Take off those bloody rags, and put these on,” I said in a gentle voice. “And then we’ll get you the hell out of here.”

  The vamp did as I commanded, even though her movements were still slow and stiff, despite the healing ointment. I helped her as best I could. When she finished, I dug another small tin out of one of my vest pockets and handed it to her.

  “Here. Put this one on your face. It’s more of Jo-Jo’s ointment. It’ll hold you together long enough for you to get to the dwarf so she can heal you up properly.”

  Roslyn’s hands shook so badly that I took the tin back from her, dipped my fingers into the ointment, and slathered it on her face.

  “Sorry for the rush,” I murmured. “But Elliot Slater’s got Finn downstairs, and I need to get to him before Slater kills him.”

  “Finn’s… down there?” Roslyn rasped, letting me work on her face.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Seems he had the same idea about rescuing you that I did. Offered himself up as a distraction so I could slip inside the mansion.”

  Some of the swelling went down on Roslyn’s face, and I saw the gleam of tears in her toffee eyes.

  “No matter what happens,” she rasped. “Thank you… Gin… for coming… for me.”

  The vamp fumbled about until she wrapped her bloody hand around mine. I gently squeezed her trembling fingers.

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “Now let’s get you out of here.”

  While I waited for Jo-Jo’s healing ointment to put Roslyn’s face back in some kind of working order, I questioned the vamp about how many more guards there might be inside the house.

  “How many have you killed already?” she asked.

  “Four.”

  She nodded. “There should be two left, besides Slater.”

  “Where would they be?” I asked, checking my silverstone knives and the two swords still strapped to my back.

  “If you say he’s got Finn, then the two guards will be downstairs with Slater,” she replied. “He always likes to have at least two men with him when he’s working on someone. That’s where he took me first. When he got tired of hitting me, he brought me up here. One of his men came in and got him before he could—”

  Her voice broke on the last few words, and I gave her a minute to compose herself, even though every second I delayed was another second that Finn got the shit beat out of him. I didn’t know if I could stand it if my foster brother ended up the same way that I had that night at the community college when Slater had pummeled me. Just looking at Roslyn made me want to rewind time, go back, and kill all the bastards who had hurt her again—slowly. But I couldn’t do that. All I could do was go forward and hope that I got to Finn in time.

  I opened the bedroom door and peered out into the hallway. Everything was just as hushed as it had been before. I whispered to Roslyn to keep close to me and keep quiet. The vamp nodded.

  I eased down the hallway. About thirty feet past the bedroom door, the right wall opened up, revealing the enormous living room a floor below. I got down on my hands and knees, crawled forward, and peered around the corner, through the wide slats of the banister that ringed the outer wall.

  A floor below me, Elliot Slater stood in the middle of the living room, unbuttoning the sleeves of his pale blue shirt. A giant stood on either side of him, slightly behind their boss. The two men had their hands clasped in front of them, just like good little soldiers would. Their shirt sleeves were already rolled up, their hands already stained with blood—Finn’s blood.

  Finnegan Lane was chained up to a stone column that supported the ceiling several stories above his head. Silverstone cuffs glinted around his hands. The cuffs had been tied to a matching chain that hung on a hook above his head, keeping Finn’s arms up. An uncomfortable position made worse by the obvious beating he’d already taken. Bruises blossomed like purple and blue irises on Finn’s cheeks. The two giants had roughed him up a bit already, no doubt getting him ready for Elliot Slater’s personal attention, but Finn didn’t seem to be in too bad shape. He was still breathing, which was the most important thing.

  Cold rage burned in Finn’s eyes as he watched Slater start rolling up his sleeves. Every once in a while, Finn rattled his cuffs, testing them for any hint of weakness. But there was none. Still, his face was guarded and watchful. He hadn’t given up hope of escaping, of getting the upper hand, even without my help. Finn would never give up any more than I would. The old man had taught him better than that. Still, Finn’s fighting spirit warmed my heart.

  Once I’d fixed the position of everyone and everything in the room in my mind, I slithered back down the hallway to where Roslyn slouched against the wall, waiting.

  “Slater’s down there with two of his men,” I whispered. “He’s got Finn chained
up to a stone column.”

  Roslyn nodded. “That’s where he likes to start with people. He’s got another room on this floor for really difficult cases. Most people don’t make it up here.”

  “I want you to get the hell out of here,” I whispered. “Slip out the side door where the pool is, go to the garage, get one of Slater’s cars, and leave. There’s a gas station at the bottom of the hill. My Benz is parked down there. Get in, and use one of the cell phones in the glove box to call the Deveraux sisters. They’ll come and help you. Xavier too. In case things don’t go well for Finn and me up here. Can you do that for me? Can you make it to the garage?”

  Roslyn nodded. “I can make it that far. What are you going to do?”

  I palmed my two silverstone knives and held them up where she could see them. “Finish this—one way or another.”

  Roslyn disappeared down the hallway, and I eased back to where the balcony was. Slater and his men had their backs to me, and I moved to the other side of the hallway, where it was solid once more. They never even looked up. My eyes went to an iron chandelier that hung down from the ceiling. That would work just fine.

  “Finnegan Lane,” Elliot Slater rumbled, stepping forward so that he was directly in front of my foster brother. The giant had finished securing one shirt sleeve and had gone to work on the other one. “A strange place to meet.”

  “So it seems,” Finn replied in a chipper voice, despite his bruised features.

  “Care to tell me what the fuck you’re doing up here on my land?” Slater asked.

  “Technically, it’s not your land, is it? It belongs to your boss, Mab Monroe. You’re just the caretaker of the place, so to speak. Part of the cleanup crew. Just like you’ve always been.”

  Finn finished his insult with a toothy grin. Slater’s fingers stilled on the fabric of his shirt sleeve, as though he was thinking about lunging forward and punching Finn, but the giant wasn’t that easily baited.