Heart of Venom

managed to stumble onto some sort of forest service access road.

There might even be an ATV nearby that I could flag down or hotwire, if it came to that— As I burst out of the trees, I immediately had to put on the brakes. The opening before me wasn’t a road. It was a cliff.

I skidded to a stop just in time to keep myself from plunging over the edge. I stared down, and I remembered something important from Fletcher’s maps that I’d forgotten: the river flowed through Bone Mountain.

The Aneirin River twisted and turned through Ashland and the Appalachian Mountains that ran around and through the city. I didn’t know if this was the river itself or one of the many mountain streams that fed into it. Although stream was a bit of an understatement, given that the water was at least thirty feet wide and white and frothy with rapids.

Oh, yes, I remembered seeing the river on Fletcher’s maps of the mountain. I just had no idea that I was this close to it—and no idea how to get across it.

Because this wasn’t any old ridge that I was standing on top of; it was a bona fide cliff, with a sheer, vertical, three-hundred-foot drop to the water below. Not exactly your usual summer swan dive. Still, I might have considered it if I hadn’t been so low on my magic. But I couldn’t risk it. Not now. I’d have to find some other way off the mountain— Crack!

While I’d been gaping at the rapids below, Grimes and Hazel had closed the distance between us. The first shot clipped the back of my left shoulder and spun me all the way around.

Crack! Crack!

The next two bullets thunked into the front of my vest, making me stagger back.

One of my feet slipped off the rocks, and I had to windmill my arms back and forth to keep from teetering the rest of the way over the side. Finally, I managed to catch my balance and stumble away from the edge, although I probably shouldn’t have bothered, since Grimes and Hazel slowly approached me. He was still holding his rifle, while yet another ball of elemental Fire flickered in her hand. There was no way I could get a shot off with my own rifle without both of them unloading on me first.

“Well, well, well,” Grimes crowed in a triumphant voice. “It looks like we’ve cornered us a pesky little varmint.”

Instead of responding, I glanced over my shoulder at the rocks and rapids in the canyon below.

“Oh, now, don’t be like that, Ms. Blanco,” Grimes said, picking up on my train of thought. “We hunted you down fair and square. The least you can do is come on back to camp with us and hold up your end of the bargain.”

“Why?” I snarled. “So I can be raped, tortured, and murdered?”

“Of course,” Hazel chimed in. “That’s your punishment for all the bad things that you’ve done. Besides, you jump, you die. Simple as that.”

“I go back with you, I die anyway,” I countered.

Grimes shrugged. “Not right away. Who knows? You might be able to escape . . . eventually.”

It was probably the same line he used whenever he cornered someone in the woods like this.

Oh, come on back to camp, I could just hear him saying in that soft, syrupy, twangy drawl of his. It’s better than dying out here in the middle of the woods. Who knows? You just might live through this, after all.

But it was nothing but a damn, dirty lie. It had been a lie for all the people before me, and it would be for me too. Because Grimes and Hazel didn’t have any intention of letting me live. No, I’d entertain them and their boys for a few days—if that long—and then they’d dispose of me in the pit, along with all the others.

“Besides,” Grimes continued, thinking that I was wavering, “I’m starting to take a shine to you, Ms. Blanco.

You’re strong, just like you said Sophia was. And I do so admire the strong.”

He didn’t admire strong people; he wanted to break them to make himself feel stronger. That’s what he had tried to do to Sophia all those years ago: break her spirit, break her strength, break her will to live, to survive all the horrors that he had visited upon her. But he hadn’t broken Sophia, and he wasn’t going to break me either.

“come on, now,” he said, his voice taking on a soft, cooing note. “If you come back with us quietly, I’ll keep you for myself. None of my men will touch you. I promise you that.”

Hazel’s mouth gaped open for a moment before her whole face tightened with rage and jealousy. The Fire flickering in her hand coalesced into a ball of molten lava that oozed out between her fingers and splattered onto the rocks at her feet, causing the stone to shriek in agony.

But Grimes didn’t notice. He only had eyes for me.

After a moment, he licked his lips, like his men had done back at camp, and his gaze flicked up and down my body.

No doubt the bastard was thinking about how I’d look in a pretty white dress with my hair in a sweet little braid.

Well, he was never, ever going to find out.

My only regrets were that I wouldn’t get a chance to tell my friends and family how much I loved them and that I wouldn’t be able to stop Grimes once and for all.

I thought of Owen and how he’d kissed me on top of the ridge. There had been a desperate promise in that kiss, one that said that there was still a chance that things could get better between us, one that had kept me going through all of this. Just when it seemed like we’d finally turned a corner, we were going to be torn apart again forever.

But Owen would understand. He’d seen the pit. He’d seen what Grimes and Hazel had done to Sophia. He’d understand why I had to do this. I just wished . . . I just wished that I could have seen him once more.

But wishes were for fools. People made their own decisions, their own lives, their own fates. That was what Fletcher had always said, and it was certainly true in this  case.

I’m sorry, Owen. So sorry. I wish that I had been able to keep my promise to you.

I slowly held the rifle out to my side, laid it down on the ground, and kicked it away, sending it skittering across the stones. Then I straightened back up, holding both of my hands out to my sides. Grimes smiled with hungry, sadistic glee, thinking that I was finally surrendering, that I was finally weakening, that I was finally giving up.

His grin lasted until I started walking backward toward the edge of the cliff.

“Don’t be stupid,” Grimes warned. “You’ll never survive a fall like that.”

“Probably not,” I agreed. “But I have no interest in being your little torture toy either. I’d rather take my chances with the river and the rocks. Simple as that.”

Before he could react, and still thinking of Owen, I turned and threw myself off the cliff.

Chapter Twenty-three

It seemed as though I had a pair of cement blocks strapped to my boots. That’s how quickly gravity yanked me down.

The cliff rushed by my face in a swirling mix of grays and greens, and the wind tore at my hair and screamed in my ears.Even as I plummeted toward the rocks, river, and rapids, I grabbed hold of what little Stone magic I had left and used it to harden my body as much as I could. I reached and strained and clawed for all those tiny bits of power, trying to weave the scraps into my usual solid shell, but I didn’t know if it would be enough. If not, at least the end would be quick.

I hit the water a second later.

The impact knocked all of the air from my lungs and pulled me deep beneath the surface. For a moment, everything went cold and wet and black, and I thought that I was dead.

But then that pesky, determined, undeniable instinct to survive, to live, rose inside me, and I realized that