Heart of Venom (Elemental Assassin #9)

Heart of Venom (Elemental Assassin #9) Page 28

I would have liked, but I'd made do with worse before.

I also picked up one of the rocks from the fire ring itself and hefted it in my hands. Smooth, round, and heavy.

Perfect. crude weapons in my hands, I got to my feet and headed toward the sounds of Owen and his attackers.

I found them about two minutes later. They were definitely Grimes's men - three guys with guns, all dressed in brown boots, old-fashioned suits, and fedoras. Two of them held Owen up against a tree, while the third used his fists on him. They must have surprised Owen as he was coming back from the river, because I saw a couple of full water bottles that had been kicked to one side of the tree.

If they'd walked fifty feet more to the west, they would have easily discovered our campsite. They might have even come upon us while we were sleeping this morning and put a couple of bullets in our skulls where we lay. Too bad for them that they hadn't, because they weren't going to walk away from this spot.

The guy drove his fist into Owen's face, then hit him with a brutal one-two combo to his ribs. Owen hissed with pain, but he didn't give the guy the satisfaction of screaming.

"I'll ask you again, where is the woman?" the leader demanded. "Tell us where she is, and we might let you live."

By this point, Owen's face was bruised and bloody, but he gave the guy hitting him a haughty smirk. "Is that all you've got? My sister can hit harder than that."

"A wise guy, huh?" the leader snarled. "Have it your way. She can't have gotten far. Not after taking a plunge like that. We'll just find her ourselves. Who knows?

Maybe we'll have a little fun with her before we drag her back to Grimes. Maybe we'll even let you watch."

The men laughed. Owen surged forward, but together the two men were stronger than he was, and they held him tight.

The leader chuckled at Owen's struggles, then drew back his fist for another blow. I hefted the rock in one of my hands and the stick of wood in the other, positioning them just so, then strolled out where they could see me.

"Are you boys looking for me?" I drawled. "Well, here I am."

Before they could react, I threw the rock from the fire ring at the leader. The stone zipped through the air and beaned him in the head like a baseball, leaving a bloody welt behind. Even as he stumbled away from Owen, I was already racing forward.

One of the men holding Owen turned to face me and yanked his gun out of the holster on his belt. I stabbed my stick into his hand, knocking the weapon away. The guy growled and lunged at me, but I stepped up and head-butted him in the face, crunching his nose with my forehead. The second his head snapped back, I raised my stick and drove it into his throat. It didn't sink all the way in, not like one of my knives would have, but it did enough damage, especially when I yanked it back out.

The guy fell to the ground, gasping for air, and I fell on top of his back. I ground his face into the dirt and leaves until he quit fighting, and I knew that he was dead.

Owen had turned on the final man, pulled the guy's gun from his holster, and shot him in the chest three times with it, dropping him.

That left the leader, who had finally quit staggering around like a drunk. He gaped at Owen and me and backed up, as if to turn and run. I grabbed the second man's gun from the ground, and a couple of bullets solved that problem.

I got to my feet and scanned the forest, in case there were any more of Grimes's men lurking around who might come running at the cracks of gunfire. But a minute passed, then another one, with no signs or sounds of anyone heading our way. Those three must have been all that were in the area. So I shuffled over to Owen, who had his hands on his knees, trying to get his breath back.

"Are you okay?"

He wiped a bit of blood off his face, winced, and straightened up. "Yeah. Although now I think I know how you felt getting tossed around in the river yesterday."

I grinned at his black humor, but I still kept looking and listening at the woods around us. Just because no one had immediately appeared didn't mean that they weren't headed in our direction.

"c'mon," I said. "I don't know about you, but I'm ready to get off this damn mountain."

"I couldn't agree more," Owen quipped.

Chapter Twenty-six

We packed up our things and headed out. Owen insisted on carrying his backpack and all of the supplies that he'd brought. He offered to carry me too, but I refused. I might be injured, but we'd make better time with both of us on our feet. So instead, he found a tall, sturdy branch that I could use as a walking stick to help me hobble along faster.

To my surprise, we made it back down to the parking lot at the foot of Bone Mountain without any problems.

We hunkered down in the trees and watched Roslyn's car for several minutes, but no one was waiting to ambush us. Still, I made Owen check under the hood to see if one

of Grimes's men had planted a bomb there, just in case.

But the car was clean, and thirty minutes later, Owen had stopped the vehicle outside cooper's house.

Quite a few cars were clustered together in the driveway now, facing out and forming a solid metal barricade in front of the house. I recognized Finn's Aston Martin, Bria's sedan, and Phillip's Audi. The battered gray pickup truck had to belong to Warren, given the rifle in the gun rack attached to the back window.

Owen and I got out of the car and shuffled up to the house. At this point, he was dragging his backpack along the ground with one hand, while I had both of my hands wrapped around my walking stick, despite the splinters digging into my palms. Neither one of us was in the best shape of our lives, but we'd made it back alive.

A few soft murmurs of conversation sounded as we headed around the side of the house and stepped into the backyard. The others were sitting around the table outside on the patio, almost as if they were waiting for us to show up. Finn in a perfect suit and tie, Phillip wearing the same thing, the two of them looking as cool as icebox pies, despite the sweltering afternoon heat.

Bria in her usual jeans and button-up shirt, her badge and her gun both clipped to her black leather belt. Eva wearing shorts and a tank top. Roslyn in an elegant sleeveless sundress.

They were all leaning in toward the table and talking quietly, with Finn leading the conversation, judging by the wild way that he was gesturing. He was the first to spot Owen and me, and he stopped in mid-sentence to stare at us.

I grinned. "Honey, we're home."

The others scrambled to their feet. Eva raced over and gave Owen a long, tight hug, while Phillip clapped him on the back and almost sent him and Eva tumbling over.

Bria came over and hugged me, along with Roslyn, and then the two of them stepped to the side so Finn could get in on the action.

He stopped in front of me, crossed his arms over his chest, and gave me a critical once-over, his green eyes as sharp and bright as emeralds in his handsome face. "You look like hell," he finally said.

My grin widened. "You should see the other guys."

Finn sighed and opened his arms. "come on, come on, you know you want to hug me and get blood, mud, dirt, and who knows what else all over my brand-new suit."

"Why, I thought you'd never ask," I drawled.

I stepped into his arms, and Finn carefully hugged me, mindful of my injuries.

After a moment, he pulled back and sniffed in that haughty, superior way of his. "I told you to wait for me. You wouldn't be beat up nearly as badly if you'd done that." His tone was rough and grumbly, but I could still hear the worry in his voice.

"I know," I said, patting his shoulder and trying to soothe his ego and his concern. "Next time, I'll definitely wait for you."

"I'll hold you to that," he warned.

"I know you will."

Finn hugged me again, and then everyone changed places. Eva gently wrapped her arms around my neck, while Phillip stood by. Bria and Roslyn hugged Owen, while Finn went over to him and gave him a cuff on the shoulder.

"I thought that I told you to take care of Gin," Finn said. "Not bring her back half-dead."

His words and his face might have been stone-cold serious, but his tone was light with relief that I'd come back at all.

After a moment, Owen smiled. "Well, I tried, but you know Gin," he said. "She just had to kill a couple more guys before we finally left."

Finn returned his grin. "That I do."

Owen stayed outside on the patio to fill the others in on everything that had happened on the mountain, but I opened the door and stepped inside the house. I didn't have far to go, because they were all sitting in the den -  cooper, Warren, Sophia, and Jo-Jo. cooper and Warren were sprawled over two matching recliners, rocking back and forth and making the springs creak-creak-creak. I gave them both respectful nods, then turned my attention to Sophia and Jo-Jo.

The sisters sat side-by-side on the brown-striped couch, their fingers intertwined, and Rosco was sprawled across their feet, taking a nap. It looked like all of their injuries had been healed. I didn't see any blood on either one of them, no bruises, no burns, nothing that would indicate all of the terrible things that had happened over the past two days.

Sophia was once again in her black jeans and boots.

A black T-shirt with a picture of a bloody, broken heart on it stretched across her chest. She looked like her usual self, right down to the black lipstick that slashed across her face. But I couldn't quite get the image of the photo that I'd seen in Grimes's house out of my mind, the one of a young Sophia wearing a white dress. I wondered what she'd been like before he'd taken her all those years ago. If she'd been a sweet Southern belle like Jo-Jo or something else entirely.

I had no way of knowing, so I focused on Jo-Jo instead.

She too wore her usual pink dress and pearls, but her face was free of makeup, her blond hair hung limply around her shoulders, and her wrinkles were more pronounced than I remembered them being. For the first time since I'd known her, Jo-Jo seemed pale and thin and tired, not at all like the bright, vibrant, cheery force of nature that she usually was. I supposed that was to be expected, since she'd almost died from Grimes's bullets, but seeing her look so haggard and defeated made my heart hurt all the same.

Jo-Jo struggled to get up out of the soft cushions, but I went over to her instead. I dropped down to my knees, leaned forward, and gave her a gentle, careful hug, not wanting to undo any of the magic that cooper had worked on her. Jo-Jo reached up and patted my back, despite the blood, dirt, and grime that covered me, and it seemed like I could feel each and every one of her bones, as delicate and fragile as a bird's under my fingertips.

I held on to her until I managed to blink back the scalding tears that had threatened to leak out of my eyes.

"How are you?" I asked, finally pulling back.

"Better, now that you're here, darling," Jo-Jo said.

I looked at Sophia. "And you?"

"Fine," she lied, although she couldn't quite hide the flash of pain in her eyes.

"Grimes?" Jo-Jo asked.

"Not dead - yet."

She glanced at Sophia, and they clasped hands again, even tighter than before. They were thinking the same thing that I was, that it wouldn't be long before Grimes came back for them again. But I had a plan for that, one that should take care of him, Hazel, and the rest of his men for good. cooper stopped rocking in his chair, leaned forward, and cleared his throat. "I hate to be rude, but you seem, um, tired, Gin."

"Tired?" Warren snorted. "What he really means is that you look like a survivor out of one of them zombie movies and almost as dead as one of those critters yourself."

cooper shot Warren a sharp look, then turned his attention back to me. "Would you like me to, you know?"

He gestured with his hands.

"Heal me?"

He winced. "If you want to call it that. I still feel like I'm fumbling around with my magic, more than anything else."

Jo-Jo gave him a soft smile. "You did just fine with Sophia and me. You'll get the hang of it. Practicing on Gin will be good for you."

cooper grinned back at her, and his solid chest puffed up at her praise.

Well, I didn't know how I felt about being a test dummy for cooper's Air magic, but Jo-Jo was obviously still too weak to heal me, and I didn't have any other options right now. Not if I wanted to be a hundred percent when Grimes, Hazel, and what was left of their miscreants came knocking on my door. In a day, maybe two tops, Grimes would find the bodies of the three men he'd sent to search for me along the river, and he'd realize that I'd survived after all. He'd want his revenge for me having the audacity to escape his evil clutches, not to mention all the death and destruction that I'd inflicted on his men and his camp. Grimes might have destroyed Jo-Jo's salon, but I'd paid him back in spades with what I'd done to his mountain hideaway. He wouldn't be able to let that stand, not if he wanted to hold on to the men he had left.

Besides, I'd seen the look of anticipation in his eyes on the cliff. He would want his revenge, but more than that, he would want to break me like he had all the other poor women and men that he'd kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. Grimes wanted to hear me scream and cry and beg for mercy. And the second that I did, he'd lose interest in me and toss me aside to Hazel and his men, just like he had with all the others. That's why he was still so obsessed with Sophia all these years later, because he simply couldn't fathom how anyone could be stronger than he was.

Well, let the bastard come. I was going to enjoy showing him exactly how wrong he was before I killed him.

"Gin?" cooper asked, cutting into my dark, murderous musings. "Are you ready?"