Jennifer Estep - Venom

“Xavier?” I mumbled, trying to move my broken jaw as little as possible.

More silence.

Then the three figures turned to stare at me once more. Probably shocked I could form a coherent sentence, much less actually speak, given the way my face looked right now.

“Do you know her, Xavier?” the woman asked.

A large knee flattened the grass beside me, and a shadow fell over my face, blocking the bright lights. I stared up into Xavier’s dark eyes. The giant’s gaze flicked over my features, trying to see through the blood, bruises, and swelling. Finally, comprehension filled his face.

“Gin?” he asked.

“In the flesh,” I mumbled.

“Do you know her?” the woman asked again.

Xavier nodded his massive head. “Yeah, I know her. Name’s Gin Blanco. She owns the Pork Pit. It’s a barbecue restaurant a few blocks away. Geez, Gin, they really did a number on you, didn’t they?”

“You’re talking to her like she can actually understand you,” the woman said somewhere above my head.

“That’s because she can, detective,” Xavier replied. “Gin’s the toughest gal I know. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking, just like a Timex. Isn’t that right, Gin?”

“Right,” I croaked. “Now, do me a favor.”

“Name it.”

“Call Finn.”

Xavier nodded, pulled his cell phone off the holder on his belt, and flipped open the device. “What’s his number?”

I forced out the numbers, which Xavier punched into his phone.

A few seconds later, the giant smiled. “My man, Finn. It’s Xavier. Listen, I need to talk to you about Gin…”

I let myself drift as Xavier explained the situation to Finnegan Lane. After a brief conversation, Xavier snapped his phone shut.

“The man’s on his way. Should be here in about five minutes. He said to tell you that he’s calling Jo-Jo right now, whatever that means.”

I nodded. Jo-Jo was Jo-Jo Deveraux, the dwarven Air elemental who always healed me whenever I got into a rough scrape. Like the one tonight.

“Good,” I croaked. “Now, help me sit up. Please.”

“You really shouldn’t move her—” the female detective started.

Too late. I wrapped my hand around Xavier’s massive forearm, and the giant eased me up into a sitting position. It took me several moments to get my breath back and blink the white spots out of my vision. Once I did, I realized I was the center of attention. While I’d been unconscious, someone had strung yellow crime scene tape around the spot where I’d been lying. A small crowd of late-night students had gathered around the tape like vultures flocking to a fresh corpse. Several of them had their cell phones out, snapping pictures of my battered face to post on the local campus gossip websites.

I squinted against the glare, trying to see if I recognized anyone. I spotted a couple of other coeds from my classic literature class, but that was it. Hardly worth the effort of sitting up. The pain washed over me again, and I would have toppled over from the force of it if Xavier hadn’t been propping me up. Right now, all I wanted to do was lie on a soft mattress somewhere, whimper, and plot my revenge against Mab Monroe, Elliot Slater, and most especially Jonah McAllister. Because the three of them were going to die. By my hand. Sooner, rather than later.

“Xavier, put her back down,” the female detective snapped. “She needs medical attention. Immediately.”

My eyes flicked up, but all I could see of the cop was her navy coat, the longish shag of her blond hair, and the three small rings she wore on her left index finger, which tapped out a quick pattern on her thigh. I would have tilted my head up so I could get a look at her face, if I hadn’t thought the movement would make me vomit blood all over the detective’s boots. Still, despite my limited view, something about the woman seemed familiar. Strangely so. Then again, the way my eyes were ping-ponging back and forth in their sockets, anything that didn’t spin around felt familiar.

“You want her to asphyxiate on her own blood? Trust me. She needs to sit up,” Xavier replied. “Besides, her friend will be here in a few minutes. Gin can hold her own until then. Can’t you, Gin?”

“Oh yeah,” I mumbled. “This is nothing. You should see me on a bad day.”

The detective snorted. “Snappy comeback for a woman covered in her own blood.”

“Oh, that’s me,” I said, staring at her jeans. “Snappy to the bitter, bitter end.”

Against my side, I felt Xavier’s wide chest quiver with contained laughter. At least I was amusing someone tonight.

The detective hitched up her jeans and crouched down in front of me, so we were eye level with each other. I blinked away another round of white starbursts and got my first good look at her.

And my heart stopped.

Longish, wavy, honey blond hair that curled under at the ends. Cornflower blue eyes. Perfect, rosy skin. A full, lush mouth. The detective was a breathtaking woman. But her beauty wasn’t what made my raspy breath catch in my throat and my heart twist in my bruised chest. It was what was on the silver chain she wore around her neck.

A primrose.

A small silverstone rune shaped like a delicate primrose rested in the hollow of the detective’s smooth throat. A primrose. The symbol for beauty. The same rune, the same necklace my baby sister, Bria, had worn as a child.

Bria.

She looked exactly the same as she did in a photo I had of her and exactly like my memories of our mother, Eira Snow. The only real differences were the hard glint in Bria’s blue eyes and her tight, remote features. Both were more pronounced in person than they’d been in the picture. Bria’s beauty was a cold, guarded one. An elemental Ice queen come to life in every sense of the word.

For a moment, I wondered if I was losing my mind. If I was already dead, and this was just some sort of bizarre dream or final wish fulfillment before the powers that be shipped me off to Hades. A brief, tantalizing glimpse of what I wanted to see most, only to be taken away as quickly as it had appeared.

I drew in a ragged breath and had to spit out another mouthful of warm, slick, coppery blood before it choked me. No, not a dream. A dream wouldn’t hurt this much.

Bria, my baby sister, the one I’d thought was dead for the past seventeen years, the one I’d thought I’d inadvertently killed with my Ice and Stone magic, was here, crouching right in front of me. And all I could do was just stare at her.

Bria’s blue eyes met mine. She frowned, as though puzzled by the wonderment in my gaze. “Ma’am, I understand you have a friend on the way. Personally, I’d suggest you wait for the paramedics to get here. You’ve got some serious, nasty injuries. You need to be stabilized before you go anywhere.”

I kept staring at her. A pressure gathered in my chest, an icy fist squeezing my heart so tight and hard I thought it would explode right then and there. Shatter into a million icicles that would impale what was left of my body. An odd, cold wetness ran down my face. Tears this time, instead of blood. Big, fat, salty tears.

Crying. I was crying. I hadn’t expected to cry when I saw Bria again. Hadn’t expected to feel this icy tightness, this cavernous ache, this intense longing that made me want to scream and wail and weep all at the same time.

“Ma’am?” Bria asked again. “Can you hear me?”

I snapped out of my daze. Now was not the time to be thunderstruck. Now was the time to think, to piece the facts together. Bria was here in Ashland. A detective working for the po-po. I was in no position to talk to her tonight, in no position to do anything but gawk at her. But underneath the blood and bruises, I was still Gin Blanco. Restaurant owner. Stone and Ice elemental. Former assassin. And all-around badass. I could track down my sister easily enough when I was well. When I’d had some time to process her sudden reappearance in my life — and figure out what I was going to do about it.