Venom in the Veins

by Jennifer Estep

  “Certainly.” A mocking smile curved his lips, and his black eyes glittered with amusement. “But it was so much more fun to watch you run around and do it instead.”

  White-hot rage erupted like a volcano in my chest, and I didn’t even think about what I was doing. I lifted my hand out of the water, snatched the empty mug off the tall table, and tossed it straight at his smug face, even though it was my only weapon.

  But Tucker was faster than my speeding mug. His hand snapped up, and he easily caught the mug and set it back down on the low table next to him. The spider rune scars in my palms itched, and I burned to grab the mug and hurl it at him again, but the result would be the same. As much as it pained me, even I knew when to quit.

  Tucker arched an eyebrow, waiting to see if I would continue my temper tantrum, but when he realized that I was done—for now—he leaned back in his chair again.

  “Although I have to admit that I thought you had lost your mind when you went out onto the lake. I didn’t realize you were going to try to kill yourself, along with Alanna and her men. I’m starting to think that you have a death wish, Gin.”

  He shook his head, as though the thought greatly pained him. If only I could have reached one of my knives, I would have shown the bastard what real pain felt like.

  “And why didn’t you leave me out there to freeze to death?” I asked. “That certainly would have solved a lot of problems for you.”

  He sighed and stared into the crackling flames, instead of looking at me. “Call me a sentimental fool.”

  That volcano of rage exploded in my chest again. “My hair is brown, not blond. I don’t look like Eira this time,” I snapped.

  A couple of weeks ago, Bruce Porter, the Dollmaker serial killer, had dyed my hair blond in an attempt to turn me into his dream woman and fulfill his sick, twisted fantasy. Tucker had seemed haunted by how much the dye job made me resemble my mother, the woman he still loved despite all the years she’d been dead. He hadn’t helped me defeat Porter, not really, but he hadn’t killed me when he’d had the chance either.

  Tucker finally looked at me, his black gaze sweeping over my features. I didn’t have my mother’s blond hair and blue eyes, not like Bria did, but I did have her cheekbones, nose, and lips.

  “You will always look like Eira to me, little Genevieve. Whether you like it or not.” His face creased into another smile, although this one was more sad than mocking. “Besides, it’s been rather fun watching you bulldoze your way through the Circle ranks. You, my dear, are certainly not boring.”

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  He arched his eyebrow a little higher at the venom in my voice. “No, I imagine not. But keep this in mind: neither have you. Not when it comes to the real power within the Circle. Damian Rivera and Alanna Eaton were pretenders, wannabes who thought their money and gruesome appetites made them stronger than they truly were. A lesson that you would do well to remember.”

  His warning delivered, Tucker got to his feet. For the first time, I noticed that he was wearing the same sort of anonymous black clothes as mine, along with a thick black parka. I wondered how long he’d been lurking in the woods, waiting and watching. It must have been quite a while, given how warmly he was dressed.

  But the worst part was that I couldn’t stop him from leaving. Not when I was still thawing out, I didn’t have a knife in my hand, and my magic was severely depleted. And especially not when he’d gone to so much trouble to save me, whatever his motives might have been.

  Like it or not, Hugh Tucker would live to see another day—and so would I.

  “I’ve already called your friends. They should be here within the half hour,” he said. “You should be happy to know that your loyal assistant, Mr. Sanchez, threatened certain parts of my masculinity if I laid so much as a finger on you. So did Mr. Grayson.”

  “Silvio’s a good friend that way. And Owen loves me.”

  “Yes, yes, Grayson does love you,” Tucker murmured. “You should treasure that, Genevieve. You don’t know how lucky you are.”

  He stared into the fire again, but I could tell that he was looking at something far beyond the flickering flames. I wondered what memory of my mother was playing in his mind. Part of me didn’t want to know.

  Tucker shook his head, coming back to himself. Then he reached over and grabbed the two blue books from the low table, although he left my knives behind.

  He saw my sudden interest and gave me another amused smile. “Did you really think I was just going to leave these here?”

  “I had my hopes,” I muttered. “Although why take them if they’re just filled with blank pages?”

  He shrugged. “For proof, of course. That this unfortunate incident is finally settled once and for all. I told Mason that Alanna wasn’t up to the task of recovering the books, but he didn’t believe me. So I think a firm, visual reminder is in order.”

  “So you’re going to rub it in his face how wrong he was?” I shook my head. “That seems like a dangerous thing to do, if Mason is really as powerful as you say he is.”

  Tucker’s lips drew back, revealing his fangs. “I can handle Mason. I’ve been doing it for a long time now. Although your concern for my welfare is quite touching.”

  I snorted. The motion made more water splash over the side of the tub. “Not concern. I’d just like to know where to find your body after he finally kills you.”

  “Going to drive a stake in my heart and burn me to ashes to make sure that I’m really dead?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You say the sweetest things.”

  Tucker slid the two books inside his black parka and zipped the whole thing up. Then he started slowly backing away from me, never taking his black gaze off my gray one. “Think about what I said about the real power of the Circle. Because next time, it just might be the death of you, Genevieve.”

  He gave me a mocking salute with his hand, then turned and left the library.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I stayed where I was in the tub, listening, but the soft sound of Tucker’s footsteps quickly faded away. Two minutes later, I heard an engine roar to life somewhere outside the mansion and then a car driving away. The vampire was gone, and I knew that he wouldn’t be back.

  Not tonight, anyway.

  The water in the tub was still pleasantly warm, and the chill of the frigid lake hadn’t quite left my bones yet, so I stayed where I was, staring into the fire and thinking about everything that had happened over the past few days. Eventually, I leaned back in the tub, rested my head on the edge, and looked up at the painting on the wall.

  Most people would have found the scene of the lake, the woods, and the mansion to be quite lovely, but the sight made me shudder and slide a little deeper down into the tub, as if the warm water would protect me from my memories of almost dying here twice now. My head tilted back, my gaze climbed higher, and I found myself focusing on the security cameras that Mosley had strung up to keep watch over the auction items.

  My head tilted back a little more, and my gaze darted from one camera to the next. Hmm. A thought popped into my mind, one that was far more tantalizing than the warm water, and I sat up and heaved myself to my feet. Even though I was barefoot and dripping wet, I climbed out of the tub, left the library, and went to the office where Alanna and I had fought.

  The large antique desk in the back of the room was just about the only piece of furniture that hadn’t been overturned during our vicious struggle. I picked my way through the debris, went around the desk, and sat down in the leather chair. I had started to open the center drawer when my gaze fell on a photo on the corner of the desk, one of Amelia and Alanna.

  Just like the painting in the library, the sight of the photo made me shudder, since both women had nearly killed me. But I was a glutton for punishment, so I grabbed the picture and took a closer look at it.

  The two of them were smiling and standing by the stone wall out on the terrace, staring do
wn at the lake below. Alanna looked to be around fifteen in the picture, which meant that it had probably been taken shortly before I killed Amelia.

  Both of them were dressed in the exact same green sundress, with their hair braided the same way and the exact same shades of makeup on their faces, right down to their red lips. They looked more like twins than mother and daughter. I supposed that in a way, they had been twins, especially when it came to their evil appetites.

  Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if Alanna might have turned out differently if her mother hadn’t worked for the Circle and hadn’t raised her daughter to be a cannibal like she was. But most of all, I wondered what might have happened to Alanna if I hadn’t killed her mother right in front of her.

  Maybe Alanna would have found a way to move past her mother’s death. Maybe she would have left Ashland and never looked back. Maybe she wouldn’t have targeted Mosley. Maybe she wouldn’t have been consumed by vengeance the same way I was.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have had to kill her tonight.

  That familiar mix of guilt and shame churned in my stomach. I still felt responsible for the pain I’d inflicted on Alanna when she was a girl, and I could sit here all night and wonder how things might have turned out differently. But Alanna was dead, along with her mother. There was no bringing either one of them back, and I was going to have to live with the consequences of my actions the way I always did.

  Still, I wondered if Mab Monroe had ever felt this way. If she ever thought about how many people had suffered because of her actions, if she ever felt any guilt or shame or regret for any of the horrible things she’d done, if she ever thought about how deeply she had hurt me and my family. Probably not. As far as I knew, the Fire elemental had never been much for reflection.

  But I was chock full of it, and I couldn’t help but admit that I had once again followed in Mab’s footsteps by eliminating a dangerous enemy. And I couldn’t help but wonder what other terrible things I would do before my war with the Circle was finished, one way or another. I’d never wanted to be Mab, but tonight I felt more like the Fire elemental than I felt like myself.

  At what point did fighting against monsters turn you into one yourself? At what point did the venom in your veins drown out everything else? I didn’t know, but I had the sickening sensation that I was going to find out before this was all said and done.

  I stared at the picture of Alanna and Amelia a moment longer, then set it back in its original spot on the corner of the desk. I didn’t need to look at it anymore.

  Their ghosts would haunt me all on their own.

  * * *

  I grabbed a pen and a notepad from the desk, then left the office. I roamed around the mansion, moving from room to room, drawing a crude map, and marking where the security cameras were. I even opened one of the doors and stuck my head out onto the terrace to check the cameras out there, although the cold wind quickly chased me back inside.

  Finn hadn’t been exaggerating when he told me that Mosley had covered every single inch of the mansion with cameras, and I was going to use the dwarf’s thoroughness to my advantage. I stared down at all the little Xs on my notepad, and my face split into a wide grin.

  Tucker was wrong. This thing wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.

  It was just getting started.

  When I finished with my map, I went back to the library to dry out by the fire and wait for my friends to arrive.

  A few minutes later, loud voices rang out through the mansion.

  “Gin! Gin! Where are you?”

  “Here!” I yelled back. “In the library!”

  Footsteps pounded in this direction, and my friends appeared in the doorway and raced into the library, skidding to a stop in front of me. Owen, Finn, Bria, Silvio, Lorelei. They were all armed, and so was the final person with them, Mosley.

  I got to my feet and studied the dwarf, but Jo-Jo must have healed him, because his face and body were whole once more and free of Alanna’s ugly claw marks. Mosley stared right back at me. When he realized that I was okay, he let out a soft sigh, and some of the tension drained out of his body.

  “Gin!” Bria cried out, stepping forward and swooping me up into a tight hug. “You’re alive!”

  I laughed and hugged her back. “Of course I’m alive. I’m fine, guys. Really.”

  One by one, I hugged the others, including Mosley, who hung on to me far longer than I expected. I started to pull back, but he hugged me again, squeezing my ribs tight. I winced and patted his back, telling him that I was truly okay, and he finally let me go. He cleared his throat and turned away, but not before I saw him wipe a tear out of the corner of his eye. His concern touched me.

  Finn stared at Tucker’s chair by the fireplace, which was where I’d been sitting when they burst into the library. His green gaze focused on the pen, the notepad, my knives, and the empty hot chocolate mugs on the low table next to the chair, then finally on the tub of water. He holstered his gun and slapped his hands on his hips in indignation.

  “What is all of this?” he sniped. “We thought Tucker was in here torturing you. Killing you dead. Not letting you take a freaking bubble bath.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t the only bath I took tonight.”

  I told them everything that had happened, including my drowning Alanna and her men in the lake and Tucker saving me from freezing to death.

  Owen frowned. “Why do you think he saved you?”

  I shook my head. “Honestly? I have no idea. There’s no telling what goes on in that man’s mind.”

  I didn’t say anything about Tucker telling me how I would always remind him of my mother. No one else needed to hear that, and I wished that I hadn’t heard it myself. It almost made him seem…human.

  I didn’t want Hugh Tucker to be human. No, I wanted—needed—him to be an unfeeling, uncaring monster, a horrible, twisted, evil thing that I could kill with no hesitation, no mercy, and especially no regrets.

  But I wasn’t sure that I could do that now, which bothered me more than I cared to admit.

  Silvio placed his hand on my shoulder. “Well, I’m just glad that you’re okay.”

  “How’s Mallory?”

  “She’s fine,” Lorelei said. “A little shaken up by everything that happened. She wanted to come with us, but I made her stay at Jo-Jo’s house and rest.”

  I nodded. That was probably for the best, especially since our night was far from over.

  I looked at Mosley, who was staring out over the mess in the library. “I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

  “Anything,” he replied in a gruff tone.

  I pointed up at the security cameras in the corners of the ceiling. “Are those still hooked up?”

  “Yes. I turned them off earlier this afternoon after all the auction items had been shipped out, but they still work.” Mosley’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Why do you ask?”

  “I want to be sure that I can see every square inch of the mansion, inside and out.”

  “Why?” Silvio asked. “You just told us that Alanna and her men are dead and Tucker is long gone. There’s no one left here to spy on.”

  I grinned at my friends. “Not yet, but I’m betting that there will be.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Why do your grand, elaborate plans always end up with me out in the middle of the woods, freezing my ass off?” Finn whined.

  I rolled my eyes. “Now you sound like Phillip Kincaid. You’re whining even worse than he did when the two of us staked out Jonah McAllister’s mansion a while back.”

  “At least he got to do his stakeout in a van,” my brother muttered. “Where there was always the option of turning on the engine and having a little blast of heat every once in a while. He wasn’t stuck out here in the great outdoors like I am.”

  Finn yanked his black toboggan even farther down on his head and stuck his gloved hands under his armpits, as if he were about to freeze to death right this very secon
d. He should go jump in the lake. Then he’d know what it really felt like to be cold.

  “Oh, quit being such a crybaby,” Owen rumbled. “You’ve only been here an hour. Gin and I are the ones who stayed out here all night.”

  Silvio pointedly cleared his throat.

  “And Silvio,” Owen amended.

  Finn, Owen, Silvio, and I were sitting in a row of camping chairs inside the tree line at the Eaton Estate. We’d picked this spot so that we would have a clear view of the terrace on the back side of the mansion, as well as the lake in the valley below.

  Owen, Silvio, and I were wearing our usual winter hats, coats, gloves, and scarves, but Finn had gone the extra step of wrapping himself up in a sleeping bag, like it was his own personal blankie.

  I glanced over at Silvio. “Anything?”

  He took off his gloves and hit some buttons on the laptop perched on his legs. Several images popped up on the screen, each one showing a different view in and around the mansion. He studied them for several seconds before shaking his head. “Nothing yet.”

  Last night, I had told my friends about Tucker taking the two blue books as proof that he’d recovered them and that the Circle’s secrets were still safe. After Tucker had left the estate, he probably expected me to do the same and never return. Normally, that’s exactly what I would have done, since Alanna and her men were dead. Besides, assassins never stuck around at the scenes of their crimes.

  But it had occurred to me that Tucker might have called my friends to come get me because he wanted us to leave, because he was planning to come back to the estate himself at some point. If I was a Circle higher-up, if I was Mason, the leader, I would want to come to the estate myself and make sure that things were finally taken care of once and for all.

  So I’d decided to stake out the place, with the help of Mosley’s security system.