Venom in the Veins

by Jennifer Estep

  The soft, dreamy tone to her voice told me that she was being absolutely sincere. Other kids had fond memories of summer camps or ski trips, but Alanna’s warm-and-fuzzies were of murdering, butchering, and eating innocent people. I held back a shudder.

  “How did you get in here?” I asked. “I thought Mosley had the estate locked up.”

  She waved her glass around. “He did, but that was for the auction. All of Mab’s things were shipped out hours ago, so the auction is officially over. Mosley and his men packed up and left earlier this afternoon.”

  “And what? You decided to just move on in?”

  She shrugged. “It’s my family’s home—my home. I have the right to come and go as I please.”

  I wondered if she actually had a key or if she’d broken in. And if she had broken in, whether she’d tripped any alarms. My gaze flicked up to the security cameras mounted in the ceiling corners. I didn’t see any lights blinking on the devices, so I couldn’t tell whether they were on. Didn’t much matter either way. No one was going to bust in and save me from her, so I’d just have to save myself.

  I shook my head. “In case you’ve forgotten, the estate doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to Mosley, right down to that champagne glass in your hand.”

  Alanna waved her glass around again, unconcerned by my words. “As long as he’s alive, which won’t be for much longer at all. I’ve already got men hunting down Stuart, as well as the rest of your friends who escaped with him.”

  Her words filled me with relief. I’d been so worried that she had captured the others and had them stashed somewhere, just waiting to trot them out and use them against me. I didn’t care what happened to me. I could endure any kind of torture the vampire dished out. Well, until she started eating me. But it would break my heart—it would break me—if my friends were hurt.

  “It’s only a matter of time before my men figure out where Stuart’s hiding. Once they do…” She grinned, showing off her fangs. “Well, let’s just say that I’m looking forward to finishing my previous conversation with him.”

  Given how injured Mosley had been, Owen, Lorelei, and Mallory had probably taken the dwarf to Jo-Jo’s salon so she could heal him. Good. That was good. Jo-Jo would be there, along with Sophia, and the two of them could help Owen and Lorelei keep Mallory and Mosley safe. At least, until they could call Finn, Bria, and Silvio for backup.

  “Let’s say that you find Mosley and you actually manage to kill him,” I said. “You still won’t get the estate back. It’s part of First Trust’s assets, which will go to Mosley’s heir, not you.”

  “True,” she agreed. “But I imagine that person will be far more reasonable about selling the estate back to me, especially given how much money I plan to offer them. And if they’re not reasonable, well, they’ll either see the error of their ways, or I’ll be dealing with the next person in line to inherit my family’s property. And so on and so forth.”

  I couldn’t fault her methods. Killing people until you got what you wanted was a time-honored tradition, especially in Ashland.

  “And where are you getting all this money from?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. “You don’t have anything but that trust fund that Mosley set up for you. I know you’re rich, but you’re not that rich.”

  Alanna’s smirk thinned out, becoming as sharp as a razor’s edge. She didn’t like being reminded of everything Mosley had done for her. Ungrateful brat. She had no idea how good she’d had it, thanks to him.

  Yes, her mother had been murdered, and she’d lost her home, but she’d never had to eat garbage or wrap newspapers around herself to stay warm or sleep behind trash cans so that no one would beat, rob, or otherwise hassle her during the night. I’d had to do all those things and a dozen more that were even more horrible. I would have literally killed for a guardian angel like Mosley to come and save me from the streets. In a way, I supposed I had killed by becoming the Spider after Fletcher took me in.

  “You’re right, Gin. I don’t have the money to buy the estate.” Alanna leaned forward, her smile turning genuine again. “But Hugh Tucker and the rest of his friends certainly do.”

  Silvio had already told me that Tucker and the Circle were backing her, but I wanted to know everything she knew about them, so I kept fishing for information. “And how exactly did you meet Tucker?”

  She leaned back in her seat again and took another sip of champagne. “Don’t you know? My mother used to work for the Circle. Before you killed her, of course.”

  My fingers slid down the champagne glass still resting on my knee, and I almost lost my grip on it completely. Surprise rippled through my body, adding to the ache in my skull, but I pushed it away and studied Alanna. She arched an eyebrow, noting my shock, but she kept staring at me, her gaze steady on mine.

  I thought back to the photos of the Circle members that Fletcher had left in those safety-deposit boxes at First Trust bank. I had spent days going over each and every one of those pictures, and I was absolutely certain that Amelia Eaton hadn’t been in any of them, not a single one, not even in the background.

  But I couldn’t deny the certainty on Alanna’s face and her smug delight in dropping this little bombshell on me. She was telling the truth. Her mother really had worked for the Circle.

  Every time I thought that I was finally getting somewhere, that I was finally getting a clear picture of the evil group’s operations and chipping away at their rotten core, something like this came along and threw me for another loop.

  “And what did your mother do for the Circle?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice.

  Alanna let out a light, pealing laugh. “You haven’t guessed already? I would have thought the answer would have been obvious. My mother did what she did best. What my family has done best for generations on this land.”

  She gestured up at that painting of the lake and the forest that surrounded the mansion. I frowned, not understanding her cryptic words. The only thing Amelia had ever excelled at was killing people—

  I suddenly remembered Fletcher telling me about the Eaton family and all the folks they had supposedly hunted like animals through the woods. Not just one or two unfortunate souls but dozens and dozens of people over the years. Enough people that their bones littered the surrounding woods like dead leaves. If you knew that someone was a cannibalistic vampire, then why not take advantage of her proclivities and send your enemies her way? Two birds and one stone, just like Silvio had said earlier.

  “Your mother was some sort of Circle assassin?” I asked.

  Alanna tipped her glass at me. “Now you’re catching on. Not just my mother. Her parents before her and their parents before them.” Her lips puckered in thought. “Although I wouldn’t call her an assassin, exactly. Not like you, Gin.”

  “Then what was it like?”

  “Let’s just say that Hugh Tucker brought certain people to my mother’s attention, and she made them disappear—forever.”

  Alanna glanced up at the painting again, and her lips curved up into a genuine smile, as if the casual discussion of dozens of murders brought back more fond memories. It probably did. And I realized that this was about much more than merely killing people. It was about getting rid of them—permanently.

  “So your mother let Tucker and his Circle buddies bury their bodies on the estate,” I said. “The Circle members literally buried the bodies of their enemies out here in the woods.”

  I thought about what Silvio had told me about the big deposits Amelia would get in her bank account every month. Most likely Circle payments for services rendered.

  Alanna turned her bright smile to me. “Exactly! Although I always thought it was so much more fun when they would bring us a live person instead of just a boring old dead body. Taking care of the live ones, well, that’s how my mother taught me to hunt.”

  Cross the Circle, get tortured and eaten by cannibalistic vampires, and have your body taken so far out into the woods that no o
ne would ever find what was left of you. Well, that was certainly an effective way to deal with your enemies and warn off anyone who might be thinking about making a move against you.

  Oh, yes. I could see my dear friends hiring some little fresh-faced ingenue like you to take me out. They don’t approve of my activities out here, although that certainly doesn’t stop them from using my services to hide their own dirty laundry. Hypocrites. Amelia’s voice whispered in my mind. I hadn’t realized it back then, but she’d been talking about the Circle, and she’d thought they had sent me to kill her.

  “And since the estate is private land, my land, there’s little risk of anyone realizing what we do out here.” Alanna shrugged. “Of course, every once in a while, some stupid trespassing hikers will stumble across some bones and call the police, but the Circle has connections everywhere, and those sorts of annoyances are easily taken care of. Most of the time, the cops are able to convince the hikers that they’ve stumbled across the bones of some wild animal.”

  “And if someone doesn’t agree with the cops’ assessment?”

  She shrugged again. “Then there are other excuses that can be used.”

  Like the cops claiming that someone had been mauled to death by a bear, like they’d done with Taylor Samson, the college boy Amelia had murdered.

  I glanced out the library windows. The exterior security lights were on, bathing the yard beyond in a soft golden glow, but the illumination didn’t come close to reaching the woods in the distance. The moonlight and starlight frosted the evergreen trees, making their spiky tops look like tombstones resting on top of a dark, solid wall, about to be sucked down into the unending black hole of the forest, never to be seen again.

  It truly was a graveyard in the sickest sense of the word.

  “Of course, my mother’s arrangement with the Circle came to an unfortunate end with her death,” Alanna continued. “She’d already started grooming me to take over when you killed her.”

  “Aw, so sorry to derail your family’s evil legacy,” I drawled. “I just hate that for you.”

  At my taunt, her fingers tightened around her drink, and the glass shattered in her hand an instant later. I’d hit a nerve.

  All around us, the giants shifted on their feet. Alanna’s temper tantrum made them nervous, but she remained in her chair, although her eyes glittered with fury. She held out her hand, and Phelps pulled a white silk handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and passed it over to her. Alanna wiped the bits of glass and drops of champagne off her fingers, then tossed the cloth onto the table beside her.

  Playtime was definitely over.

  She snapped her fingers, and Phelps gestured for one of the giants to step forward. I hadn’t noticed it before, but the man was holding two very familiar things: the blue books that had belonged to Mab.

  The giant handed the two books to Alanna, bowed his head, and stepped back. She put one book down on her lap, then held the other one up where I could see it.

  “As you know, Mab Monroe was a full-fledged member of the Circle, and she came into possession of certain records of the group’s activities,” Alanna said. “Of course, Mab being Mab, she leveraged the records to secure her own position within the group.”

  Yeah, I could totally see Mab doing that. She might have ostensibly worked for the Circle, but the Fire elemental would have hated being under anyone’s thumb, and she would have done everything in her power to ensure her own safety and wrest control away from Tucker and especially the mysterious Mason. So the records had been her leverage against them, at least until I’d killed her. Then they had disappeared into Mab’s estate with the rest of her things.

  Tucker and Mason must have thought that the book was gone for good and would never see the light of day again. It probably wouldn’t have if Jonah McAllister hadn’t tried to steal Mab’s will from the Briartop vault. But that had set in motion a long chain of events, including the charity auction. Now, at the end, I had wound up here with Alanna.

  And only one of us would get out of this alive.

  “After Mab’s death, the book seemingly vanished,” Alanna continued, confirming my suspicions. “Until I came across it when I was cataloging items for the auction. The book was something of a legend within the Circle, and my mother mentioned it to me several times. She even thought about stealing it from Mab, but she never got the chance.”

  “So you took your discovery to the Circle, and they hired you to retrieve their little blue book of secrets. Let me guess. You get the book for them, and they give you the money to buy your family’s estate. Oh, and you get to kill Mosley as an added bonus.”

  “I saw an opportunity to make a deal, so I took it. Seemed like more than a fair trade to me,” Alanna said. “But of course, Stuart kept such a tight watch over things that I didn’t get the chance to actually look inside the book, much less bury it with some dusty old volumes that no one would want. Then there was the fact that there were two books instead of just one, like my mother had told me. Of course, I was planning to buy both books during the auction, but it quickly became apparent that you and Lorelei Parker would not be denied those photos of your parents.”

  “And you didn’t want to tip your hand by bidding on both books.” Another thought occurred to me. “Plus, you saw Lorelei and Mallory with Mosley during the auction. You knew that hurting the Parkers would be just as good as hurting him.”

  “Of course. I figured that I would get your book first, then go after the one the Parkers had, since they were far less likely to realize its importance than you were.” Alanna waggled the book in her hand at me. “This is the book that you had, Gin. The one that I ordered my men to retrieve on the road outside the botanical gardens. I thought it was the one I wanted, but it’s blank.”

  She flipped through the book, showing off the blank pages, and then tossed it down onto the table between us. She grabbed the second book from her lap, lifted it, and showed it off to me as well.

  “And this is the book that Lorelei Parker bought.” Alanna flipped through the pages. “But as you can see, it’s also blank.”

  She flipped through the pages again, much more slowly this time, giving me a chance to focus on them. She was right. They were all shockingly, mockingly blank. Page after page sped by, and none of them contained so much as a random doodle.

  Surprise spiked through me. Blank? How could it be blank? I could see Mab maybe having one blank book as a decoy, but two seemed like overkill.

  Alanna tossed the second book down on top of the table right next to the first one. “There were only two blue books with the auction items, so you obviously swapped out your book—the real book—for the fake one that you were carrying around tonight. After all, you would never risk giving me the actual ledger. Well, your little switcheroo game is over. What did you do with the real book, Gin? Where is it?”

  More surprise spiked through me. This whole time, I’d thought Alanna had just brought me here to gloat before she killed me. But that wasn’t it. At least, not entirely. She still needed the book so that the Circle would give her the money to buy the estate.

  And she thought I had it.

  I quickly dropped my gaze to the glass of champagne still in my hand so that Alanna wouldn’t see my surprise. These two blue books were the only ones I knew about, and I didn’t have any idea where the real ledger was, if it even existed at all.

  As soon as she realized that, Alanna would start carving me up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Maybe it was my aching head, but the strangest thought popped into my mind. Despite her sick, monstrous appetite, she couldn’t eat me all at once, and I wondered if she would make sandwiches with my leftovers the way I always did with the holiday turkey. I shuddered. I didn’t want to know.

  My brain churned, trying to figure out how to turn this to my advantage and get out of the library alive. I shifted in my seat, making a few bubbles drift up through the champagne glass still in my hand. The bubbles caught my attention, and an idea popped into my
mind.

  I might live through this yet—if I was very good and very, very lucky.

  I lifted the glass to my lips and gulped down some champagne, as though I was suddenly nervous. The bubbles fizzled in my nose the way they always did, and this time, I did nothing to hold them back.

  “Achoo!”

  I let out a loud, violent sneeze. Alanna’s lips curled with disgust, and she jerked back in her chair, as if I was going to infect her with some deadly disease just by sneezing on her. Please. She was a fucking cannibal. She’d willingly eaten a lot grosser things than my snot.

  But my sneeze had the desired effect of putting a few more precious inches between us.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Champagne always makes me sneeze—”

  Another sneeze rose up in my nose, and I turned to the side and let it out.

  “Achoo!”

  This time, the giants to my left stepped back, not wanting to be exposed to my germs any more than Alanna did. Their movements created a little bubble of space all the way around me. Now, to take advantage of it.

  Alanna opened her mouth, probably to order me to tell her where the book was again, but I held up my champagne glass, cutting her off.

  “Sorry!” I chirped. “So sorry! I feel one more coming on… A-a-achoo!”

  Unlike the first two, my third sneeze was just for show, although I faked like it was stronger than the others put together, so strong that I fell off the edge of my chair and landed on the floor.

  As I went down, I deliberately dashed my champagne flute against the table between Alanna and me, breaking the glass and curling my fingers around the jagged stem still in my hand. My trap was set, and now all I had to do was wait for someone to take the sneezing assassin slapstick bait.