Bitter Bite

by Jennifer Estep

  Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, Tucker stormed out, a gun in one hand and a phone in the other. I held up my own stolen phone and zoomed in on him.

  “Find her!” he yelled.

  Giants moved all around him, yanking out their guns, spreading out around the warehouse, and heading into the maze of shipping containers beyond. One of the keys to hiding was to remain perfectly still, as though you were just another part of the landscape, dull, harmless, and completely unworthy of notice. Darting around like a wounded animal would get you caught quicker than anything else, so I stayed still and quiet in my hiding spot.

  And it worked.

  The guards expected me to run as far and as fast as I could, not to double back and spy on their boss. They didn’t even consider the fact that I could be hiding so close to the warehouse, and more than one man ran right by me as they moved deeper into the shipping yard.

  Tucker paced back and forth for a minute, texting furiously. His phone beeped back, and a smile curved his face. I frowned. What was he up to? He should be pissed that I’d escaped, not looking as pleased as punch.

  Part of me wanted to slither out of the shadows, sneak up behind him, and put a bullet through his head. But two giants were standing by his side with guns out, so there was no way I could get close enough to kill the vampire. I stayed in my hiding spot, watching and waiting.

  Tucker punched a button on his phone, then held it up to his ear. “Blanco escaped,” he said. “No, she didn’t shoot Deirdre. We have no leverage. She’s not going to fall in line.”

  Well, he was certainly right about that.

  “She has no idea who we are,” he continued. “The meeting can still take place as scheduled next month.”

  My ears perked up. What meeting? Where? I needed more info.

  “I’ve already put our contingency plan in place.” He checked his watch. “In fact, it should be coming to fruition any second now—”

  Ice magic blasted me in the back.

  I screamed, and another blast hit me in the same spot, freezing and burning my skin at the same time. The pain was bad enough, but even worse, the force threw me out of my hiding spot and sent me tumbling to the ground in the middle of the row of containers, right where Tucker could see me. He casually waved his hand, and his two guards raced in my direction.

  My lungs felt as though they were frozen solid inside my body, and I gasped for air, even as I tried to scramble across the snow to where my stolen gun and phone had landed. But Tucker’s guards reached me first. They grabbed my arms and dragged me along the cold, snowy ground, then threw me down right in front of the vamp.

  Tucker gestured for someone to step forward. A few seconds later, Deirdre limped up to his side, smirking down at me, the blue-white flames of her Ice magic dancing along her fingertips. She was favoring her right leg, and blood still oozed out of the cuts that dotted her body, but her silverstone cuffs were gone, and her face was smug now instead of fearful.

  “I told you that she would double back and try to spy on you,” Deirdre said. “Just like Fletcher would have done. You really need to quit being so predictable, Gin.”

  I huddled on my knees and focused on forcing air in and out of my frozen lungs, even as my hands curled into the snow, searching for a rock or a piece of metal or something else—anything else—that I could use to wipe that smirk off her face.

  “Deirdre convinced me to give her a chance to redeem herself,” Tucker said. “Said that she could get you before you got out of the shipping yard. Looks like she was right.”

  So that’s why he’d been standing out in the open—as bait. He’d wanted me to creep close enough for Deirdre to sucker-punch me in the back with her Ice magic, and I’d fallen right into their trap. I wondered if Tucker’s call had been fake too. No way to know.

  He waved his hand at the Ice elemental. “Freeze her, and then my men can drop her into the river.”

  Deirdre loomed over me, the flames of her Ice magic burning cold and bright on her fingertips. “I’m going to enjoy this,” she hissed.

  I reached for my Stone magic, using it to harden my skin again, but she’d already frozen part of me, and I didn’t have the strength to fend off more of her magic.

  Deirdre smirked at me a final time, then drew her hands back to unload on me—

  Crack!

  A black bullet hole appeared in the middle of Deirdre’s hand, snuffing out her Ice magic and making her scream.

  Crack!

  Another hole appeared in her shoulder, driving her away from me.

  Crack!

  And a final kill shot, straight through her cold, cold heart.

  Finn was here.

  My brother was the only one who could make those kinds of shots, especially on a snowy, moonlit night.

  And he’d just killed his own mother so that I could live.

  Deirdre toppled to the ground, her blood turning the snow a startling scarlet. I scrambled forward on my hands and knees and yanked her icicle-heart rune necklace from her throat. It was a foolish risk, but I wanted Finn to have it.

  “Kill her!” Tucker ordered, ducking behind his own man for cover. “Kill her now!”

  The other giant stepped forward and snapped up his gun. I tensed, ready to throw myself at his legs and try to spoil his shot—

  Crack!

  Finn put a bullet in the shooter’s head, and the man dropped to the ground beside Deirdre. I snatched up his gun, scrambled to my feet, and fired off shot after shot at Tucker and his other guard. I was backpedaling toward the shipping containers the whole time, so my aim was lousy, but my wild shots had them ducking down and running in the opposite direction.

  Drawn by the gunfire, other giants sprinted from the warehouse in my direction. I fired at them until my gun ran out of bullets, and I tossed the weapon aside in disgust. I darted forward, grabbed the stolen phone and the gun that I’d dropped earlier, and quickly emptied that weapon too.

  The guards realized that I was out of ammo, and they quickened their pace, trying to catch me before I could disappear into the shadows.

  Crack!

  Crack! Crack!

  Finn put the guards down before any of them could get close to me. I sprinted through the rows of shipping containers, looking right and left. Another giant stepped out from behind a container ten feet in front of me, already raising his weapon. I skidded to a stop and reached for my Stone magic again, wondering if I could harden my skin before he pulled the trigger—

  Crack!

  The giant crumpled to the snow.

  That shot had been much closer than any of the others, and my head snapped up.

  Finnegan Lane stood on top of one of the shipping containers.

  My brother was wearing a long gray trench coat over a gray suit. The fabric glimmered like pure silver in the moonlight, which also frosted the tips of his dark hair and brought out the hard planes of his handsome face. He looked like a ghost come back for vengeance.

  He waved me over, and I sprinted in his direction. He swung his legs over the side of the container and dropped to the ground, then popped right back up, slinging his rifle on top of his shoulder and grinning widely, his green eyes glinting in his handsome face. In that moment, he looked so much like Fletcher that it made my heart squeeze tight. He’d come to my rescue, just like the old man had done so many times in the past.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I got your text about coming over to the Pork Pit,” Finn said, still grinning. “I pulled up right as those giants were carrying you out of the front of the restaurant. Looked like you could use a little help.”

  He frowned, snatched his rifle off his shoulder, and fired off another round, dropping two more giants who’d been heading this way.

  “You’re awfully popular tonight,” he drawled. “I think we should go and leave them wanting more.”

  Crack! Crack! Crack!

  More giants caught sight of us and starting firing, the bullets pin
ging off the metal containers all around us.

  “Good idea,” I said.

  Finn fired off another round of shots, then held his hand out. “Ladies first.”

  I laughed and disappeared into the shadows, with him right beside me.

  31

  Finn and I made it out of the container maze and back to his car. He threw it into drive, and we zoomed away from the shipping yard. We didn’t speak for several blocks.

  “Jo-Jo’s?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” I winced. “My back is burned and frozen solid from Deirdre’s Ice magic. Double the fun, double the pain.”

  He nodded and turned onto the highway that would eventually take us to Jo-Jo’s salon, and we both fell silent again.

  Finally, I cleared my throat and gently placed Deirdre’s icicle-heart necklace on the console between us. I’d managed to hold on to it through the fight in the shipping yard. For a moment, Finn stared at the blood—Deirdre’s blood—that coated the diamond icicles. Then his lips pressed into a harsh line, and he looked away from the rune.

  I’d spent the last few days tiptoeing around, trying to give him the time and space he needed to come to terms with everything, but I couldn’t do that anymore. Not after what happened tonight. Not after he’d shot his own mother to save me.

  “I’m sorry you had to kill her,” I said in a soft voice. “I know how much you cared about Deirdre.”

  Finn shrugged. “But she didn’t care about me, did she? Not one little bit. No matter how much I wanted her to.” His voice dropped to a low rasp, hurt and longing rippling through his words. After a second, he cleared his throat. “I’m glad it was me. I think that Dad would have wanted it to be me.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “After Santos got control of the bank and tied me to that chair, I asked Deirdre why she was robbing the bank. She told me everything. How she’d manipulated Dad into killing her parents so she could get her trust fund and then how she’d used me to get access to the bank.” He paused. “She said that I was an even bigger fool than Fletcher had ever been, because you’d warned me about her, and I’d refused to listen to you. She was right about that.”

  I shook my head. “She was your mother. Of course you wanted to believe that she’d come back to Ashland to be with you. She was counting on it.”

  He sighed. “Yeah, and I fell right into her trap. I hurt you because of her. And Bria and Jo-Jo too. I’m sorry about that. Sorrier than you will ever know. And I’m going to make it up to you, all of you.” His mouth hardened, and his hands tightened around the steering wheel. “But for right now, I’m just glad that bitch is dead.”

  His voice was cold, but hurt still flickered in his eyes. Finn might have killed Deirdre to save me, but he’d be feeling the bitter bite of her betrayal for a long time to come, just like Fletcher had.

  We rode in silence for a couple of miles before Finn spoke again.

  “Tell me about the shipping yard,” he said. “What did Tucker want with you?”

  I filled him in on everything that had happened. Everything Deirdre had said and everything Tucker had threatened, including that there was some sort of secret group that really pulled the strings of the underworld and everything else in Ashland.

  “Who do you think they are?” Finn asked.

  “I have no idea, but Tucker wanted me to work for them. To be their front woman, their puppet. Just like Mab, who he said had been working for the group all along.” My hands curled into tight fists in my lap, my fingers digging into the spider rune scars embedded in my palms. I drew in a breath and forced out the rest of the words. “Tucker claimed that my mother was involved with them too, although I don’t know how. He said that this group, this Circle, gave Mab the okay to murder her.”

  Finn’s eyes widened, and he looked at me. “Do you believe him?”

  A wild sob rose in my throat, and I wanted to scream that of course I didn’t believe Tucker, that of course it couldn’t be true, that of course my mother couldn’t have been working with him, with this group.

  That my mother couldn’t have been a monster like Tucker and Mab and Deirdre.

  But I couldn’t force out the denial, no matter how hard I tried, so I ended up shrugging instead. “Why would he lie about something like that? He was either going to blackmail me into working for him or kill me outright. He had nothing to gain by lying.”

  I cleared some of the raspy emotion out of my voice. “Whether everything he said was true or not, there’s something going on here, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

  Finn reached over and placed his hand on top of both of mine. “We’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

  I tightened my fingers around his. “You’re damn right we are.”

  * * *

  Just before noon the next day, I was standing in Jo-Jo’s kitchen with Finn and Owen. The dwarf had healed me, and I’d spent the last several hours resting and recuperating. Jo-Jo had packed up her supplies to go help a client who was in a beauty pageant, and Sophia was covering the Pork Pit for me. Finn and Owen were sitting across the butcher-block table from each other.

  “I said I was sorry for everything I said to you at the Pork Pit that day.” There was a wheedling note in Finn’s voice. “What more do you want from me?”

  Owen crossed his arms over his chest and glared at my brother.

  I rolled my eyes. Finn had been apologizing to Owen for the last five minutes, and Owen had been pointedly holding a grudge. I ignored them and went back to layering pasta sheets, spicy marinara sauce, and mounds of mozzarella and Parmesan cheese in a large casserole dish for my homemade lasagna.

  Finn snapped his fingers. “Ah. I know what you want.” He got to his feet, went around to Owen’s side of the table, and held his arms out wide. “C’mon, Grayson. I’ll give you a free shot at me. Surely that will make you feel better.”

  Owen frowned, but he made no move to take Finn up on his offer. Finn waggled his eyebrows in invitation, and Owen huffed in response.

  “Fine,” Finn muttered. “If that’s how you want to be—”

  Owen surged off his stool and plowed his fist into Finn’s jaw.

  Crack!

  Finn staggered back against the counter, a dazed look on his face.

  “You’re right,” Owen rumbled, shaking out his hand, even as a smile quirked his lips. “I do feel better.”

  I rolled my eyes again. “Boys.”

  I reached into the freezer and grabbed two bags of frozen peas. I tossed one to Owen for his bruised knuckles and the other to Finn for his jaw. The two of them settled back down at the table, the silence between them far more companionable now.

  Forty-five minutes later, I’d just taken the lasagna out of the oven and started dishing it up, along with a Caesar salad and garlic breadsticks, when the front door slammed open and Bria strolled into the kitchen.

  “That smells amazing,” she said, shrugging out of her jacket and placing a manila folder on the counter.

  “Sit down, and tell us what you found,” I said.

  We all gathered around the table and dug into our food. I breathed in, enjoying the scents of cooked tomatoes, melted cheese, basil, oregano, and other spices that rose from the lasagna, which tasted even better than it smelled. It was the perfect warm, hearty dish to chase away the phantom chill of Deirdre’s Ice magic that still lingered in my mind. Lasagna was also great comfort food, and we could all use a little comforting after everything that had happened.

  Bria took several bites of her lasagna and sighed with appreciation before starting her story. “Xavier and I found Deirdre’s body in the shipping yard, right where Finn shot her.”

  “But?” I asked.

  “But the rest of the place was clean. All the papers and files had been cleared out, all the computers had been smashed, and Xavier found a dozen cell phones torched in a trash can. Whoever Tucker really is, he was certainly thorough. We’ll follo
w up and chase down all the leads, of course . . .”

  “But you don’t expect to find anything,” Owen finished.

  She shrugged. “Probably not.”

  We finished our food in silence. Bria was the first to push her plate away, and she grabbed the folder she’d brought off the counter and placed it on the table. Owen cleared the dishes, and we all gathered around the table again.

  Bria looked at me. “Remember when I told you that I had seen Deirdre’s rune somewhere before?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Well, I finally remembered where, thanks to those photos Mallory gave you.”

  She opened the folder and drew out a photo. It was another shot of that long-ago cotillion ball, just like the one Mallory had shown me several days ago. But instead of a group of girls, this photo showed only two: Deirdre and our mother, Eira. Both of them were smiling and holding out their rune necklaces toward the camera.

  Finn let out a low whistle, and Owen tilted his head to the side. All I could do was stare at the photo.

  Bria tapped her finger on the picture. “Mom had a photo just like this one. I remember her pulling out a whole album of photos and looking through them with me whenever she would tell me those bedtime stories about those old cotillion balls. But it’s not even the most interesting picture.”

  She pulled out another photo, this one of Eira and Deirdre standing with another girl, Mab Monroe.

  The three girls were clustered together, with Deirdre standing in the middle and smiling at the camera. Eira and Mab were on opposite sides of her, and neither one looked particularly happy to be so close to the other. In fact, Mab had her head turned, staring at a guy standing at the very edge of the photo.

  Bria tapped her finger on the photo again. “And look who Mab has on her arm.”

  Black hair, black eyes, confident smile. Even though I could only see the side of his face, I recognized him immediately.

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered. “That’s Tucker.”

  Bria nodded. “There are some more shots of him, talking with different people.” She hesitated. “There are a couple of photos of him with Mom. He wasn’t lying about knowing her.”