Venom in the Veins

by Jennifer Estep

  Alanna grinned at me and kept backing up, one slow, smooth step at a time.

  I couldn’t let her get away, but I couldn’t get to her either. A stream of water separated us now, one that was steadily growing wider and wider as the water kept eating away at the edges of the Ice. I could still leap over the stream, but my weight landing on the other side would definitely shatter the Ice, and I’d doom myself along with Alanna. Something she realized, judging from her smug smirk.

  But I couldn’t stay on my side of the chasm either. This far from shore, the elemental Ice was already weak and thin, and it was only a matter of time before the water washed it away, including the piece I was standing on.

  Besides, I hadn’t gone through all of this just to watch her skate away now. If Alanna escaped, she would go after Mosley again, and Mallory and Lorelei and whoever else got in her way. But I could prevent that. I could keep my friends safe. All I had to do was stop her right here and now.

  In the end, it was an easy decision to make—because the Spider always caught her prey.

  “Fuck it,” I snarled.

  I drew in a breath, then ran forward across the Ice, even though I could hear it crack-crack-cracking away under my feet with every step I took.

  “What are you doing?” Alanna screamed. “Are you crazy? You’ll kill us both! Stop! Stop!”

  She quickened her pace and started backsliding away from the edge of the Ice as fast as she could, but it was too late. I reached the end of my section and leaped forward, all the way across the water and onto her side. I crashed right into Alanna, and my boots hit the Ice a second later with a loud, sickening thud.

  The Ice shattered under my feet, and we both plunged into the dark water below.

  * * *

  I’d expected the lake to be, well, as cold as ice. But I wasn’t prepared for how absolutely, unrelentingly, breathtakingly frigid it was.

  The water closed over me like an icy fist, squeezing all the warmth out of my body. In an instant, I was soaked to the bone and bitterly, bitterly cold—colder than I had ever been before in my entire life. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the water forced its way into my eyes, down my throat, and, worst of all, up my nose. But I kicked my arms and legs, and I broke through to the surface, coughing, sputtering, and sneezing. And I’d thought champagne always made me sneeze. This was a thousand times worse, like I was spewing tiny icicles out of my nose—

  Claws raked down my cheek. I hissed and jerked my head back, blinking through the blood and water that covered my face. Suddenly, Alanna was there, bobbing along in the lake right beside me.

  “You bitch!” she screamed. “You fucking bitch!”

  She lashed out with her glove again, and I barely managed to turn my head in time to avoid her clawing out my left eye. Even in the water, Alanna was far more graceful than I was, and she kept swiping at me. All I could do was hold my arm up and block the worst of her blows, even though she was shredding my skin with her metal glove.

  Alanna was killing me but not nearly as quickly as the cold water was.

  My body grew number with every breath I took, and the wind whistling over the lake only made it that much worse. I had to kill Alanna, or I was dead, and I had to get out of the water and get warmed up, or I was dead. So I decided to focus on the first problem: the vampire bitch in front of me.

  The next time Alanna took a swing at me, I wrapped my left hand around that metal glove, yanked her toward me, and slammed my right fist into her face, breaking her nose. Her head snapped back, and she screamed, although her face slipped below the surface, and the water drowned out her cries.

  I grabbed hold of her hair and wrenched her to the side so that I could hook my arm around her neck. She screamed and lashed out at me again. I hissed as her claws punched into my scalp, but I tightened my grip and shoved her head below the water.

  And this time, I kept it there.

  Alanna thrashed and thrashed like a fish caught on a hook, twisting and turning and trying everything she could think of to make me let go of her. But I was an animal now too, and the only thing that mattered was my survival. Her claws raked into my head and face time and time again, opening up more bloody cuts. Snarls spewed out of my throat, but I didn’t loosen my grip—not for one second.

  Slowly, Alanna’s struggles grew weaker and weaker, and her hands started slapping at the water instead of at me. Then, after another minute, even those motions slowed and finally stopped altogether. But I didn’t loosen my grip. Not until her claws fell away from my body completely.

  That’s when I knew that she was finally dead.

  I let go of her, and Alanna’s body turned over and floated back up to the surface. Her eyes looked like two pieces of green glass in her face, while her mouth was frozen open in one final, waterlogged scream. Her gaze focused on the moon and the stars above, but she wasn’t seeing it anymore.

  Alanna Eaton was dead.

  Like mother, like daughter, after all.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Another gust of wind whistled over the lake, slapping me in the face and reminding me how bitterly cold I was.

  Alanna was dead, and I was going to be too, if I didn’t find some way to get out of the water and get warmed up.

  I swam over and tried to pull myself up and onto the Ice, but it was too slick and smooth, and I couldn’t get a good grip on it with my numb, frozen hands. I needed something sharp, something with a point that I could dig into the Ice, something like—

  Claws.

  My head snapped around.

  Alanna’s body was still floating on the surface of the water, although the current had carried her several feet away from me. I ground my teeth to keep them from chattering and swam over to her.

  My hands and fingers felt dead, like they weren’t even attached to my arms anymore, but I forced them to move and bend and flex. It took me several precious seconds, but I managed to strip off Alanna’s metal glove and shove my right hand inside the contraption. I didn’t get it exactly into place, but it was good enough for what I had in mind.

  I spun around so that I was facing the edge of the Ice again. Then I drew in a deep breath, kicked my legs hard, and propelled myself up and out of the water as far as I could.

  I didn’t get very far up on the Ice, given the water weighing down my boots and clothes and trying to suck me back down, but I did manage to stab the claws on the end of Alanna’s glove into the Ice.

  Tink.

  I flopped my other arm up and onto the Ice, bracing myself with my elbow. Then I kicked my legs again, even as I stretched and reached out with Alanna’s glove, digging those claws into the Ice a couple of inches higher than they had been before.

  I repeated those motions over and over again, digging and pulling with my talon-tipped fingers, bracing with my elbow and kicking with my legs, trying to escape the sucking grasp of the water and squirm higher and higher onto the Ice.

  Dig, pull, brace, kick. Dig, pull, brace, kick. Dig, pull, brace, kick…

  The rest of the world fell away except for those four simple motions. I didn’t know how long it took, but eventually, I managed to kick up out of the water one final time, drag myself forward, and roll over onto my back on the surface of the Ice.

  For a moment, I lay there panting from the exertion, even though I could barely feel my own body anymore. My fingers, hands, arms, legs, feet, toes. Every single part of my body felt cold, heavy, and numb. Another gust of wind sliced across the lake, making my teeth chatter and adding to my wet, frigid misery. But it also reminded me that I wasn’t done yet, that I had to keep moving, that I had to get back inside the mansion where it was warm, or I would wind up as dead and frozen as Alanna and all the men in the lake.

  So I forced myself to roll over, get up on my hands and knees, and start crawling across the Ice.

  I’d done a better job of cracking the Ice than I’d thought, and the entire surface creaked and groaned under my weight. If the Ice broke under me, I wouldn’
t be able to pull myself out of the water a second time. I had to get off it as fast as possible, but I was so cold at this point that I couldn’t do much more than worm forward a few inches at a time. So I lifted my head, focused my gaze on the sandy shore in the distance, and kept crawling.

  Inch by inch, foot by foot, I crept toward the shore, watching it slowly get closer and closer. Even when I reached the sand, I still wouldn’t be safe, since I had no idea how I was going to climb the stone steps back up to the terrace, much less actually make it all the way back inside the mansion. But first, I had to get there, so I kept going, slithering across the Ice like the slowest snake ever.

  The rest of the world fell away again, and all I was aware of was peeling my hands and knees off the ice, shoving them forward, and dragging my body after them.

  Peel, shove, drag. Peel, shove, drag. Peel, shove drag…

  My hands reached out, but instead of more slick Ice, they touched something gritty. I blinked and realized that I’d done it. I’d actually made it back to shore. I slid off the Ice and crawled into the sand, which was as cold as everything else. I raised my head and focused on the stone steps looming up in front of me. So close yet so agonizingly far away.

  I wasn’t going to make it.

  By this point, I was so cold that my teeth weren’t even chattering anymore. All my strength was gone, and my body felt absolutely dead. Even my brain seemed dull and slow, as though it was slowly being frozen, like the rest of me already was. Before I knew what was happening, I had pitched forward and landed face-first in the sand. The grit worked its way into my eyes, up my nose, and down my throat, choking me, but I didn’t even have the energy to lift my head up out of it. I’d escaped the water only to drown in the sand. If I’d had the strength, I would have laughed at the bitter irony of it, but a tidal wave of blackness swept over me, and I couldn’t push it back anymore…

  A pair of hands grabbed my shoulders and rolled me over. At least, I thought they did. My body was so cold that I couldn’t quite tell, but my face wasn’t smushed into the sand anymore, and I could breathe much easier. A slight improvement, but I’d take what I could get.

  “You’ve really done it this time, haven’t you?” a familiar voice muttered, although I couldn’t have said who it was or why the sound made my heart clench with dread.

  Whoever that voice belonged to lifted my arms up over my head and started dragging me along the shore. All I could do was stare down at my boots, watching them leave deep grooves in the sand. For some reason, the sight amused me, and I tried to laugh, but all I really did was croak up sand…

  The next thing I felt was…warmth.

  Welcome, welcome warmth. My eyes cracked open, and I realized that I was lying on the floor in front of the library fireplace. Red-hot flames danced and crackled behind the grate, much higher than they had the last time I’d been in here fighting Alanna and her men. Someone had stoked the fire.

  And that same someone was in here with me right now.

  Fingers moved over my body, peeling off my frozen boots and socks and unzipping my silverstone vest and tossing it aside. But my entire body was still so cold and numb that I couldn’t even turn my head to look and see who was helping me…

  After that, I had the sensation of being lifted up and then set back down. Something deliciously warm and soothing flowed around me, all the way up to my chin, as though I were taking a luxurious bubble bath. The warm wetness soaked through my cold clothes, bringing some much-needed heat back to my body. I thought I let out a soft, happy sigh, although I couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t right now…

  “Drink this,” a voice commanded.

  Someone pressed a mug to my lips, and I obediently swallowed, too out of it to try to resist. Something hot scalded my mouth, and I tried to pull away, but that person shoved the mug up to my lips again and kept it there, making me swallow the liquid inside until it was all gone. Eventually, I realized that it was hot chocolate with a ton of sugar in it, as if someone was force-feeding me dessert. The drink was far too sweet, although Silvio would have loved it. The thought made me giggle, and I drifted off again…

  The next time I woke up, it was for good. It took me several seconds to blink the world into focus. When I finally did, I realized that I was still in the library, and I hadn’t been imagining that warm, soothing bubble bath after all.

  I was lying in a claw-foot tub that was filled to the brim. I was still wearing my black turtleneck and cargo pants, only now they were soaked through with warm water instead of the frigid lake water. A few feet away, the flames still crackled merrily in the fireplace, and the tub was turned so that I could bask in as much of the fire’s heat as possible.

  I frowned. Okay, I wasn’t that out of it. At least, not anymore. This tub had not been here before. Someone had dragged it—and me—into the library. But who? Sophia was the only person I could think of who had that kind of strength. My friends must have found and rescued me after all.

  A soft creak sounded, and I glanced to my right, finally realizing that someone was in the room with me, but it wasn’t Sophia, Silvio, Owen, or any of my other friends.

  Hugh Tucker was sitting in a chair by the fireplace.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I jerked back in surprise, making water slosh up and over the rim of the tub. The drops spattered against the floor like a sheet of rain. My whole body tensed, but I forced myself to sit still. Tucker could easily kill me before I managed to get to my feet, much less actually climb out of the tub.

  I didn’t think he was going to do that, though. If he’d wanted me dead, he could have left me lying down by the lake. I probably would have frozen to death by now. But instead, he’d brought me up to the mansion, shoved me in warm water, and force-fed me hot chocolate.

  He’d saved me. But why?

  “You’re awake,” Tucker murmured. “It’s about time.”

  He raised a delicate china cup to his lips and took a sip of the steaming liquid inside. Probably more hot chocolate, since that’s what he’d made me drink. I could still feel the warmth of it swirling around in my stomach.

  I let out a breath and made myself relax, as though I wasn’t concerned by the fact that my nemesis was sitting less than ten feet away. But down in the water, below his line of sight, my hands clenched into tight fists. I didn’t know what game he was playing, but I was going to be ready for any move he made.

  I slowly sat up a little higher in the tub, my gaze sweeping around, searching for a weapon that I could use against the vampire if he changed his mind and attacked me after all. An empty mug sat within reach on a tall table that stood next to my tub. It would have to do.

  But that wasn’t the only thing resting on the table. So was Alanna’s metal glove.

  Tucker must have stripped it off my hand after he’d brought me in here. I didn’t know why he’d just left it sitting there, but I focused on him again. I didn’t want to look at the horrible contraption right now.

  The vampire slurped down the rest of his hot chocolate and set his cup on a low table by his elbow. I hadn’t noticed them before, but my knives were lined up on the table. Tucker must have found where Alanna had stashed them. But he ignored the blades and picked up two other familiar items from the wooden surface: the blue books that had belonged to Mab Monroe.

  Tucker flipped through one book, staring at the blank pages, then set it back down on the table and did the same thing with the other volume.

  “All this fuss for nothing.” He shook his head and laid the second book down on top of the first. “I told the others that Mab was bluffing. That she never had anything on us. But, as usual, no one listened to me. Still, I suppose it was better to be safe than sorry.”

  Tucker started tapping his index finger on top of the books. I looked at the two volumes a moment, then focused on him again. Those books couldn’t kill me, but he still could.

  “So you brought me in here and warmed me up,” I said. “Let me guess. You
were that weird shadow that I spotted in the woods earlier. Watching from a safe distance to see who would win, Alanna or me. That’s certainly your style. Well, I hope you enjoyed the show.”

  He shrugged, not even bothering to deny it. “I told you on the road outside the botanical gardens that I had a personal interest in this matter.”

  My eyes narrowed. “What interest? Alanna taking your spot as the Circle’s enforcer? As your buddy Mason’s right-hand hit man? Why would you care about that? From what I’ve seen, from what you’ve told me, it wasn’t exactly your choice to work for the Circle, and you grew tired of it long ago.”

  “True—very, very true.” His face hardened, and his finger stilled on top of the books. “But it’s my job, and no one is going to take it away from me. Especially not some spoiled little princess who wasn’t nearly as tough and clever as she thought she was.”

  “So you just stood by and let me kill your competition? Even though it only hurts Mason and your precious Circle in the end?” I snorted. “That’s some seriously twisted logic you’ve got going on there, Tuck.”

  He shrugged again. “My logic is my own business. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  Well, he was right about that. The more I learned about Hugh Tucker, the less I understood about his motivations. First he tried to get me to work for the Circle. Then, when I refused, he tried to kill me multiple times. Now he had saved me from freezing to death—but only after I’d eliminated his enemy.

  It seemed like the vampire’s kindness was based solely on how it benefited him. I wondered what he expected to get from tonight’s generosity. Part of me didn’t want to know, but I couldn’t help asking the many questions that crowded into my brain.

  “If you wanted Alanna dead for however she slighted or threatened you, then why didn’t you just kill her yourself?” I asked. “You wouldn’t have even had to leave the woods to do it. You could have easily shot her the second she stepped outside the mansion, just like you killed her men on the road earlier today.”