Venom in the Veins

by Jennifer Estep

  Except for Terrence Phelps. I had some questions for the vampire about his boss. Then he could join the rest of his soon-to-be-roadkill friends.

  Bullets kept blasting against the windshield, and many of them punched through the glass and ping-ping-pinged around inside the van, throwing hot sparks everywhere. I palmed one of my knives, unbuckled my seat belt, and slid down into the open space between the two front seats.

  Crack!

  Crack! Crack!

  Crack! Crack! Crack!

  The gunfire continued at a steady clip, so I crawled toward the back doors. I kept to the side of the van as much as possible, maneuvering around the bookcase in the middle and climbing across the tops of the boxes of books and knickknacks.

  Smack!

  A bullet punched into a box beside my elbow, and paper shreds sprayed everywhere like confetti. My eyes narrowed. If those bastards had ruined my first edition of Huck Finn…well, they were going to wish they hadn’t.

  A few seconds later, I was at the back of the van, crouching right next to the doors. The vehicle didn’t have any rear windows, but I could still hear the steady screech-screech-screech of the crowbar tearing into the seam between the doors.

  The two giants back here probably thought that Phelps and the others had either already killed me or at least had me pinned down in the front. If I was still alive, no doubt they would stick their own guns inside the vehicle, shoot me in the back, and finish the job. They wouldn’t be expecting me to come at them from this angle. My knife still in my hand, I waited, just waited, for the doors to open and for my enemies to show themselves—

  SCREECH!

  The loud, ear-splitting burst of noise made me wince. One of the back doors finally wrenched open, and the giant with the crowbar stuck her head inside.

  “I see a lot of boxes. What are we looking for again?” she called out over the continued cracks of gunfire.

  Wait a second. Were they trying to kill me or rob me? Probably both, given my bad luck.

  I pushed the thought aside and surged forward, throwing myself out of the van and onto the other woman. The giant screamed in surprise and tumbled backward, losing her grip on her crowbar and landing awkwardly on the pavement. She broke my fall perfectly, and even better, her head snapped back against the asphalt, stunning her. While she was still dazed, I rammed my knife into her heart, making her scream again, then yanked the blade free.

  Crack!

  The second giant snatched up her friend’s crowbar from the road, stepped forward, and slammed it into my back. I grunted at the hard, bruising impact, but thanks to my Stone-hardened skin, the blow didn’t do much more than piss me off even more than I already was.

  I rolled off the dying woman and came up in a low crouch on the pavement. The second giant stared at me, her face paling as she realized just how much trouble she was in.

  I got to my feet and stalked toward her. She brandished her crowbar, backing up all the while, but I kept coming. Her gaze dropped to the bloody knife in my hand, and panic sparked in her dark eyes. The giant started swinging the crowbar in wide, reckless arcs, as if that would keep me from killing her. All the while, she kept backing up, not bothering to look behind her.

  The giant took another step back, and her black boot caught on the edge of the pavement. The sudden, unexpected tilt threw her off-balance, and she stumbled backward and landed on her ass in the dirt and grass on the side of the road. The crowbar slipped from her grip and clattered against the asphalt, and she lurched forward, trying to grab the weapon, but I stepped up and kicked it away from her, sending it skittering end over end down the road.

  Before the giant could get to her feet, I reached down, dug my hand into her hair, and pulled her head up just enough so that I could bury my knife in her neck. She screamed and flailed her arms, trying to throw me off. I held on and twisted the blade in deeper, until her screams subsided, and her body sagged as the fight, blood, and life leaked out of her.

  “You should have watched your step,” I hissed, and ripped my knife free of her neck.

  She let out a dying gasp of agreement, pitched forward, and did a face-plant onto the ground, already closer to dead than alive—

  Click. Click. Click.

  The distinctive sounds of fresh magazines being jammed into guns rang out. I whirled around. Three giants stood in front of me, their guns pointed at my chest, with Phelps lurking behind them. They must have realized that I’d gotten out of the van and had come back here to finish me off.

  “Assassin bitch,” one of the giants growled. “You killed Diana and Penny!”

  All three giants raised their guns a little higher, taking better aim at me. There was no way I could close the distance between us and attack before they pulled the triggers, so I reached for even more of my Stone magic to protect myself against the bullets that were coming my way—

  Crack!

  Crack!

  Crack!

  I tensed, expecting bullets to slam into my body, but the three giants dropped to the ground instead, all of them killed by headshots. Judging by the sounds, the gunfire had come from the woods behind me.

  My heart lifted. Finn must be here. He was the only person I knew of who could shoot like that. He must have heard the gunfire up at the estate, realized that I was being ambushed, and raced down here to help me.

  Phelps cursed, lifted his own gun, and started firing at me. But he was backpedaling the whole time, and all of his bullets went wide. I reached for my Ice magic, snapped up my hand, and flung a spray of daggers out at him. But Phelps ducked behind the van, and my Ice daggers hit the side of the vehicle and broke apart into jagged chunks.

  I paused for a moment, expecting the vampire to lean around the side of the vehicle and fire at me again, but footsteps smacked on the pavement instead. Too late, I realized what he was doing.

  I cursed and charged forward, crossing the asphalt and rounding the side of the van, but Phelps had already retreated all the way back to his sedan. He threw himself into the driver’s seat, shut the door, slammed the car into reverse, hit the gas, and screeched down the road. Fifty feet later, he yanked the wheel hard, and the sedan lurched to the side. Phelps threw the car back into gear, turned the wheel again, and zoomed off. A few seconds later, he was gone.

  “Dammit!” I snarled. “Dammit!”

  If my van hadn’t already been shot to shit, I would have lashed out and kicked one of the tires. But since they were just about the only part of the vehicle that wasn’t riddled with bullets, I decided not to abuse them.

  Footsteps scuffed behind me, and a low, happy whistle trilled out, as though someone was pleased about a job well done. I turned around.

  “Hey, Finn. Thanks for the assist—”

  The words died on my lips. A familiar figure stood on the road in front of me, but it wasn’t Finn. No, this was a tall, lean man with black hair and eyes and a neatly trimmed goatee. One who had his gun aimed straight at my heart.

  Hugh Tucker.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I tightened my grip on my knife and kept hold of my Stone magic in case Tucker decided to shoot me.

  He squinted down the gunsight at me, as if he was seriously considering it. But after several tense seconds, he slowly lowered the weapon to his side, although he kept his finger curled around the trigger, ready to snap up the gun and fire it if I took so much as a single step toward him. Given his amazing vampiric speed, he could easily empty the rest of his magazine into me before I got within striking distance with my knife or even had a chance to fling a spray of Ice daggers out at him. So I held my position.

  For now.

  “What’s up, Hugh?” I drawled, trying to hide my surprise. “You know, I’m starting to think you have a little crush on me, the way you keep popping up wherever I go.”

  Tucker didn’t bat an eye at my insult. He didn’t react at all, except to keep staring at me. Alanna Eaton might be hard to read, but Hugh Tucker was a master of the inscrutable expres
sion. If he ever got tired of being a Circle henchman, he could always take up professional poker. I imagined he would be just as good at cards as he was at killing people.

  Frustration surged through me, along with more than a little annoyance, but I ignored the emotions. I could be just as calm, cold, and remote as he was. We stood there in the middle of the road, staring each other down, with blood, bodies, and bullet casings littering the pavement all around us.

  Finally, Tucker’s black gaze flicked to the two giants I’d stabbed to death, as well as the three he’d shot. He shook his head. “Alanna really should have sent more people after you. I told her at least ten, but she didn’t listen to me. Then again, she never listens to me. That’s going to be her downfall.”

  Of course, I had realized that the giants worked for Alanna, since Phelps had been leading them, but I wondered why Tucker was so casually confirming it—and what this had to do with the Circle.

  “And why would Alanna send men to kill me?” I asked, fishing for information. “I haven’t done anything to her.”

  At least, not recently.

  Tucker didn’t answer me, and we continued our face-off.

  “What’s this all about?” I asked, trying again. “What did these giants want?”

  He flashed me a sly, knowing grin. “You know I can’t make it that easy for you, Gin. Besides, I’m looking forward to watching you figure it out for yourself.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Is Alanna some new rival of yours in the Circle? Is this some lame attempt to get me to kill her? If so, you can forget it. I’m sick and tired of doing your dirty work. If you want Alanna dead, then go kill her your own damn self.”

  I didn’t know much about Circle politics, but from what little I’d gleaned from Tucker, it was a no-holds-barred game with deadly consequences for the losers.

  Like Damian Rivera.

  With his massive family fortune, Rivera had been one of the Circle’s main cash cows, but he’d also knowingly employed Bruce Porter, the Dollmaker serial killer, as his right-hand man. The Circle was all about maintaining its anonymity, and the members hadn’t wanted the attention that having a serial killer in the ranks would invite, especially given Bria and Xavier’s investigation into the Dollmaker. So they’d sent Tucker to tell Rivera to deal with Porter—or else. But Rivera had ignored Tucker’s warning, and insulted him to boot, so Tucker had killed Rivera and framed Porter for his boss’s murder.

  I had gotten involved because Porter had kidnapped Elissa Daniels, but Tucker had been pulling my strings from behind the scenes the whole time, eventually manipulating me into a position where I’d had to kill Porter in order to survive. So I couldn’t help but wonder if Tucker was doing the same thing again right now. Pointing me at Alanna because she’d done something to piss him off or was some sort of threat to him within the Circle.

  Tucker shrugged. “I don’t care about Alanna. Not in the slightest. She’s the one who volunteered for this little mission. As she rightly should have, since the situation is entirely her fault. She never should have let things get this far, this out of hand.”

  “And what mission would that be?”

  His black eyes glittered with a cold, hard light. “Let’s just say that Alanna thinks she can do my job better than me, so I’ve decided to let her try. I’m especially looking forward to watching her suffer the consequences when she fails.”

  He smiled, baring his fangs, and I knew that he was equating the consequences of Alanna failing with my killing her. But what had she done that required Tucker’s attention? What mission could she possibly be on for the Circle? And most important, why had Tucker helped me by killing her men?

  Given how many times he had tried to murder me in the past few months, he should have stayed hidden in the woods and hoped Alanna’s giants did the job for him. But he’d drawn his gun and shot them instead. Why? My head pounded with all the unanswered questions. Once again, Tucker was playing some game that I didn’t understand.

  “Well, I don’t care about whatever feud you have with Alanna,” I snapped. “Do us both a favor, and leave me out of your petty power struggles.”

  Tucker shrugged again. “I’m not the one who dragged you into this. You have Stuart Mosley to thank for that. You got in Alanna’s way when you saved him from her muggers the other night. Now she’s coming for you too.” He paused. “Then again, I suppose that’s only to be expected, since you killed her mother.”

  Shock jolted through me, and I had to work very hard to keep my face blank. At the auction last night, Alanna had said that Tucker had told her all about me, and I’d wondered if that included my role in her mother’s death. But I had dismissed the thought, since no one else had known about that particular assignment except Fletcher and me. At least, I’d thought no one else had known. The old man was dead, and I certainly hadn’t blabbed about it to anyone other than my friends. So how had Tucker found out that I was the one who’d murdered Amelia Eaton all those years ago?

  And the way he so casually dropped the knowledge made me think he had known about it for quite some time, which was even more worrisome. Had the Circle been involved with Amelia? Or had they somehow been keeping tabs on Fletcher the same way he had on them? More and more questions crowded into my mind, but I didn’t have any answers.

  Some of my surprise must have shown, because Tucker arched an eyebrow. “Don’t blame me,” he murmured. “I didn’t tell her. Apparently, Alanna figured it out all on her own when she saw you save Mosley the other night. Despite her arrogance, she can be clever on occasion.”

  So Alanna had been there watching the whole time from her car, just like I’d thought. My knives, my fighting style, the way I walked, talked, moved. No doubt those things were ingrained in her brain, just like all the horrible little details of my mother’s murder were ingrained in mine. She had recognized me, and she’d put two and two together about her mother’s death.

  Tucker might not have told Alanna that I’d killed her mother, but I wondered if he’d confirmed her suspicions after the mugging. But how had he known for sure that I was involved? Had he known about all the terrible things Amelia Eaton did on her estate? And why would he tell Alanna anything about me if he hated her so much? To further pit her against me in hopes that one of us would kill the other? But if that was the case, then why had Tucker helped me now by killing her giants?

  Every word he said only added to my anger and confusion, not to mention the migraine pounding like a sledgehammer inside my skull. I just didn’t know anything anymore, especially when it came to Hugh Tucker and his twisted motivations.

  I opened my mouth to demand some fucking answers, even though I knew he would never give them to me, not even if I sliced him to pieces with my knife. But I never got the chance.

  Tucker aimed his gun at me again and started backing up, heading toward the trees. Unlike the giant I’d killed earlier, he never missed a step and smoothly transitioned from the asphalt onto the grass. Even if he had stumbled, his vampiric speed would have let him recover his balance long before I had a chance to get close to him.

  Tucker stopped at the edge of the trees, raised his gun to his forehead, and snapped off a mocking salute with it. “See you soon, Genevieve.”

  Then he turned and disappeared into the woods, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the road, still surrounded by all the blood, bodies, and bullet casings.

  * * *

  This road wasn’t a busy thoroughfare, but it was only a matter of time before somebody came driving along, and I needed to be gone before that happened. So as soon as Tucker vanished, I hurried over, knelt down, and rifled through the pockets of the dead giants. I was still wearing my winter gloves, so I didn’t have to worry about leaving fingerprints behind.

  The dead men and women were carrying wallets and IDs, but I didn’t recognize any of the names or faces, so I moved on to their phones. The devices were all burners and locked with passwords, rendering them useless, so I tossed them aside in di
sgust and kept searching. A pack of gum, some lip balm, crumpled tissues, a couple of quarters. I didn’t find anything interesting in any of the giants’ pockets, much less a bona fide clue that would tell me why they—and Alanna—had targeted me.

  Why here? Why now? If Alanna knew that I’d killed her mother, I would expect her to try to kidnap me, so she could torture me for an extended period of time. So she could make her revenge last as long as possible. Not send some anonymous minions to simply gun me down.

  I let the last man flop back down to the ground and got to my feet. Then I turned around in a slow circle, studying where the dead giants had landed and searching for anything I might have overlooked. And I found something: the crowbar one of the women had used to force her way into the back of my van.

  I see a lot of boxes. What are we looking for again? The woman’s voice whispered in my mind.

  My gaze flicked over to the vehicle. Thanks to the giant and her crowbar, the right rear door was barely clinging to the rest of the frame, and the opening gave me a clear view of the bookcase tied down in the van, surrounded by boxes of books—books that had belonged to Mab Monroe.

  My eyes narrowed. Hmm. Maybe this wasn’t about me. At least, not entirely. Maybe it was more about what was in my van.

  If she wanted me dead, Alanna could have attacked when we were alone in the library at the estate. But she had waited until after I had taken possession of my auction items before she’d sicced Phelps and the giants on me.

  Alanna wanted something of Mab’s.

  It was the only explanation that made sense. And the only reason for Tucker to be involved was if that item had something to do with the Circle. After all, Mab had been a member of the evil group too. Maybe she had set something aside for a rainy day, some damning piece of evidence or blackmail that she thought would keep her safe from Mason and from being killed the same way she had killed my mother.