Heart of Venom

easier time torturing, an easier time breaking. It wouldn’t surprise me if Hazel got even more enjoyment out of using her Fire magic on their victims than Grimes did. Sadistic bitch.

Grimes studied her a moment, as though he were considering her words, and a hopeful smile curved her crimson lips. Grimes stood up and walked around his desk, and Hazel turned to meet him. She held her hands out, reaching for his—

Grimes slapped her across the face for her trouble.

Hazel stumbled away, hitting the doors at the back of the office hard enough to make the glass rattle in the panes. She whirled around, her mouth open wide in surprise, a hand pressing against her cheek as if she couldn’t believe the growing red welt there—and the fact that

Grimes had hit her, his own sister, as casually as he would hit anyone else.

“Sophia is mine,” Grimes growled, his brown eyes darkening with fury, as though the answer to Hazel’s question should be obvious. “She’s the only woman I’ve ever met who’s strong enough to be mine. She’s the only one who’s never been cowed by me or backed down from me. All the others who have come through here over the years have been weak, foolish creatures, crying to go home, cringing at the smallest little thing, begging for mercy until I give them to my men just to be rid of their incessant whining. Every single one of them has displeased me, disappointed me with her weakness. But Sophia never has.”

Fletcher had said in his file that Grimes was sick and twisted, but I was beginning to realize exactly how warped he really was. Harley Grimes imagined himself to be the king of this little mountain, and he took whatever and whomever he wanted, brought them here, and expected them to serve him in any way that he deemed fit. And when someone displeased him, when she cried, screamed, and sobbed at the terrible torture that he inflicted on her, then the fault was hers, and off to his men she were sent, to suffer that much more.

“You’re right,” I said. “Sophia is strong. She’s certainly stronger than you, you sick son of a bitch. And as long as I’m alive, you will never lay one hand on her again, not so much as one fucking finger.”

Grimes took a menacing step toward me. I clenched my hands into fists, bracing myself for what was to come.

Because as soon as he was within arm’s reach, I was going to lunge forward, grab the revolver out of the holster on his waist, and shoot him point-blank in the chest with it—even though I knew that I’d die in the attempt.

Either the men behind me would put a couple of bullets in my skull, or Hazel would scorch me to death with her Fire magic. And of course, there was always the possibility that Grimes’s gun was empty of bullets, the way it had been when Sophia had tried to shoot him with it. But

I didn’t care. I’d bludgeon him to death with the thing if I had to. All that mattered was making sure that Sophia and Jo-Jo were safe from Harley Grimes forever. And if I had to sacrifice my life to save theirs, well, it was a trade that I was happy to make. For them and for Fletcher too.

But Grimes thwarted me without even realizing it, because he stopped and smoothed down his suit jacket, obviously trying to rein in his temper. His hands went to one cuff, then the other, pulling them down. As a final touch, he fingered the brim of his baby-blue hat and then the matching feather stuck there, as though making sure the fedora was still securely perched on his head, his peacock’s plume perfectly on display. When he raised his eyes to mine again, he was cool, calm, and in control once more.

Grimes gave me a pleasant smile, the sort a shark would give a guppie before it snapped the smaller creature in two with its many teeth. “Well, then, Ms. Blanco, or whoever the hell you really are, it’s a good thing that you won’t be alive much longer, isn’t it?”

I opened my mouth to tell him exactly what I thought about him, hoping to distract him long enough to surge forward, grab his gun, and end him. But Grimes snapped his fingers, and two of the men behind me stepped forward and clamped their hands on my arms, while the third shoved his gun into my back again.

“Take her outside to the usual spot,” he ordered. “And call the men together. We all might as well have a little fun before we go back down to Ashland to find Sophia and bring her back here where she belongs.”

Chapter Twenty-one

Grimes turned his back on me, dismissing me from his thoughts, at least for the moment, and strode around behind his desk, putting himself well out of range of any desperate lunge that I might make at him.

Hazel moved over to Grimes and laid a possessive hand on his shoulder. She smirked at me. “Don’t worry, now,sugar,” she drawled, using the same mocking tone that I had used earlier. “We’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

There was nothing that I could do but grit my teeth in frustration as the three men forced me out of the office.

All the while, though, I was thinking about distances and angles and how I could kill the men and then take on

Grimes and Hazel.

But the three men didn’t give me any opportunity to cause trouble. The first two guards kept their hands clamped on my arms, their eyes on me at all times, while the third guy hung back, his gun up and ready to pump me full of bullets if I so much as twitched funny.

They marched me down the long hallway, out the front door, down the porch steps, and across the yard.

I thought that they might turn and head toward the pit, so I could join the other poor souls rotting there, but instead, they forced me to walk straight ahead. When we reached the middle of the clearing, they stopped. The two men holding on to my arms yanked me back and forth for a minute, until I was standing on a particular patch of dirt that had been worn smooth by the tread of so many feet on it over the years. Then those two and the third guy did a most curious thing: they slowly backed away from me.

The last guy with the gun raised his weapon high into the air and fired off nine shots, three bursts of three in rapid succession. That must have been Grimes’s signal to gather ’round again, because more men started streaming out of the barracks, kitchen, and other buildings.

And they all had weapons.

Most carried guns, long, sleek rifles that could take down an enemy at a hundred paces, and the wooden stocks gleamed like polished bronze in the afternoon sun. Others held big old-fashioned revolvers, which they slowly twirled around and around on their fingers, as though they were cowboys right out of the old West, getting ready for a showdown at high noon. A few clutched knives, while some had crude, simple weapons like the spiked stakes that I’d seen earlier in the forest.

My gaze went from one man’s face to another. They all grinned, their eyes lighting up at the thought of my impending torture, whatever it was going to be. No one looked away, and no one had any spark of compassion, uncertainty, or unease in his face. No surprise there, given how many of their buddies I’d killed already. I was mildly surprised that they hadn’t brought out the tar, feathers, and pitchforks, along with their other weapons. That seemed like something that Grimes would enjoy, given his seeming fascination with the past.

The men didn’t speak, but a collective sense of anticipation and excitement rippled through them, as though this were some show that they’d witnessed many times before and were eager to see repeated. One guy even drew a silver lighter out of his pocket and lit a cigarette with it, as though this was some sort of smoke break before the main event started. He kept snapping the lid up and down on the lighter, ready to get on with things.

I wondered how many other folks had stood in this exact same spot, facing down Grimes’s mob. Would these gangsters all raise their weapons and fire at once? Would

they swarm me en masse? Or would they all throw themselves at me, drive me to the ground, and tear me limb from limb? No way to know, until they decided to attack.

I’d killed around a dozen men up on the ridge, but there were a dozen more gathered around me now. My gaze roamed over the crowd again, this time searching for any sign of weakness, any gap in the ring that