Jennifer Estep - Spider's Revenge

Gentry shrugged. “Oh, that was just something to say. There wasn’t much guesswork to it really. This end of the forest offers the quickest, most direct route out to the main road. It’s the way I would have come tonight, if I’d been in your shoes.”

Her logic and reasoning were spot-on, although I didn’t compliment her on them. Instead, I stared at her speckled hand and the easy, familiar way she held her revolver, like it was an old friend she didn’t want to let go of. Gentry definitely knew how to use that gun. Her shots wouldn’t go wide like the others fired at me earlier tonight — especially not at this short distance.

Gentry gave me a thoughtful look. “I don’t think that I would have missed Mab, though. Risky, taking a shot like that when there was someone else that close by. You should have waited, at least a few more seconds. Guy was shifting on his feet. Easy to tell that he wasn’t going to keep still much longer.”

I shrugged. She was right, but I wasn’t going to give the old woman the satisfaction of agreeing with her.

She stared at me, peering closely, as if she could somehow see through my ski mask and get a look at my true self — Gin Blanco. Even more interesting was that Gentry seemed rather hesitant to pull the trigger on her revolver. I didn’t know why she hadn’t plugged me full of holes yet, or at least tried to, but that hesitation was going to cost her — her life.

Gentry finally came to some sort of decision about whatever she’d been contemplating because she gave me a regretful shake of her head.

“Well,” she said. “Why don’t you turn around, and we’ll start marching the other way back toward the mansion—”

And that’s when I made my move.

I turned around like I was going to obey her, then pivoted back the other way and threw myself at the other woman. But Gentry was even smarter than I’d thought, because she’d been expecting the bluff. She got three shots off — a tight kill cluster, all of which caught in the silverstone vest on my chest — before I tackled her and drove her to the ground. The snow cushioned our fall, and Gentry fought back. She tried to club me with the butt of her revolver, but I slapped it away. With my other hand, I brought my silverstone knife up against her neck. Gentry had the good sense to stop before I slit her throat. Something that I was going to do anyway in another minute, two tops.

We lay there on the ground, me on top of her, both of us breathing hard, surrounded by the frosty, foggy cloud of our own exertions. And then, for some reason, Gentry chuckled, as if she was pleased to be an inch away from her own death at the edge of my blade.

“Damn,” she drawled, a deep southern twang coloring her voice. “You’re just as good as they say you are, Spider. But I’m good at what I do too. Gotta be in this line of work or you don’t last long.”

My eyes narrowed. “And what line of work would that be—”

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

For the third time tonight, something surprised me when it shouldn’t have.

Four bullets sliced through the air. One zipped by my face, so close to my cheek that I could feel the heat radiating off it, before disappearing into the darkness. The other three were a bit more problematic. Two thudded into my left arm, instantly numbing it, while the third slammed into my upper thigh.

The impacts knocked me back, and I hissed with pain. While I was off balance, Gentry got her hands in between us, shoved me away, and scrambled over the ground toward her revolver.

I rolled backward away from Gentry, my body flattening the snowdrifts, before coming up into a low crouch. Ribbons of fire spread out from my wounds, moving downward through my left arm and leg. I gritted my teeth and bit back a snarling curse. Fuck. I hated getting shot.

But I was already pushing away the pain, forcing it to the back of my mind, because I had something else to worry about — where those bullets had come from. My head snapped to the left, backtracking the projectiles’ paths.

And that’s when I saw the girl.

It was the same girl who’d been with Gentry in the dining room in the mansion, although at some point during the evening, the girl had put a patched, threadbare coat on over her ridiculous pink prom dress. A pair of worn, cracked boots covered her feet. The shoes were identical to the ones that the old woman wore. The girl also happened to have a rifle with a pearl-inlaid stock aimed at my chest, just like Gentry had a moment before. Déjà vu all over again.

“Leave Gentry alone,” the girl ground out the words and advanced on me, slow and steady just the way the older woman had.

I cursed again, this time at my own carelessness. I should have remembered that Gentry had been with the girl before and that maybe she would be out here with her now. Still, despite the two-on-one odds, I wasn’t done for. Not even close, though I could feel the blood pumping out of the hole in my leg. That wound was definitely the most worrisome.

The girl kept coming at me. I stayed in my low crouch and let my silverstone knife slip out of my right hand. Then I dug my fingers into the snow and closed my hand into a tight fist.

Satisfied that I wasn’t going to try to attack her, the girl’s hazel eyes flicked to Gentry to check on the other woman, who was still searching for her revolver. The girl was distracted, just for a second, but it was all the opportunity I needed.

I snapped up my hand and hurled my snowball in her direction. The wad of ice hit the girl’s rifle, and she shrieked with surprise. She did the smart thing and pulled the trigger again, but I was already up and moving at an angle toward her. The girl turned toward me, but by that point I was too close. I jerked the rifle out of her hand and cold-cocked her in the face with the butt. She dropped like a stone, and I turned the gun around, ready to pull the trigger and shatter that thin, pretty face of hers with a bullet or two—

“Sydney!” Gentry cried out in a low, hoarse voice.

Something in her voice, some tone, some tiny bit of anguish that she couldn’t quite hide, made me look over at her instead of pulling the trigger. Gentry had forgotten all about her revolver. Instead, she huddled on her knees. Her gray hair had come loose from its tight bun, and snow crusted her face, but Gentry didn’t care. Fear flickered in her pale blue gaze, and she held her brown, wrinkled hands out wide, silently begging me not to kill the girl.

I studied her carefully, but as far as I could tell, this was no sly trick she was trying to pull. Gentry seemed genuinely concerned for Sydney, which was more than warranted, considering that I was about a second away from ending her existence.

I even went so far as to turn back toward the girl, my finger tightening on the rifle’s trigger. But then she let out a low moan of pain and stared up at me with her hazel eyes. Deer eyes — doe eyes — wide, liquid, and trembling, glistening with tears, pain, and fear.

Damn and double damn.

Something inside me, some little black shred of my heart, wouldn’t let me kill the girl, even if she had just put three bullets into me. Maybe because she reminded me of myself at that age — poor little Genevieve Snow whose family had been so brutally murdered. Maybe because I was exhausted. Maybe because I was suffering from the blood loss already. Or maybe it was because I could hear Fletcher’s voice whispering in my ear. No kids — ever , the old man seemed to murmur to me, even though he was long dead and cold in his own grave.

I’d ignored the old man’s teachings earlier, when I’d hastily pulled the trigger on my crossbow instead of waiting until I had an absolutely clear shot at Mab. I wasn’t about to turn my back on Fletcher again, even if he was only a ghost in my head.