Elemental Assassin 03 - Venom

this, enjoying my suffering, this hot, searing, excruciating pain that felt like it would never, ever end.
    Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I screamed. And again. And again. And again—
    I woke up, my mouth open in a silent scream. My eyes flicked around the dark room, and it took me a moment to come back to myself. To remember that I was safe in Fletcher Lane’s house. That it was just a dream, just a memory, and nothing more. Nothing that could physically hurt me now. I drew in a ragged breath and flopped back against my damp pillow.
    I’d been having these sorts of dreams ever since Fletcher’s murder a couple of months ago. The old man had been tortured to death by an Air elemental who’d hired me to do a job, then decided to double-cross and murder me so the hit couldn’t be traced back to her. I’d killed the Air elemental, of course, but it hadn’t brought Fletcher back to me—or stopped the dreams. If anything, it waslike the old man’s death had opened a floodgate to my past, and the images kept spilling out no matter how much I wanted them to sink back into the darkness.
    Only they weren’t really dreams so much as memories of my past. Of that fateful night when my mother and older sister had been murdered—by Mab Monroe. Of when the Fire elemental had tortured me to get me to give up Bria’s hiding place.
    I opened my hands and stared at my palms. A bit of moonlight slipped in through the bedroom window and highlighted the silverstone scars on my hands. A small circle surrounded by eight thin lines. A spider rune. The symbol for patience. I’d born the marks for seventeen years now, but tonight, it felt like they’d just been made yesterday. Everything had felt fresh and raw and sore since Bria’s reappearance in my life.
    I thought of that folder of information Finn had compiled on my sister. Of what secrets it might hold. I wondered what Bria remembered of the night our mother and older sister had died. If she knew Mab Monroe was the one who was responsible for it all. Why Bria had come back to Ashland. Why now, after all these long years?
    But instead of getting out of bed, going downstairs, turning on a light, and looking at the file like I should have, I pulled the sheet up to my chin, as though the soft, warm flannel could protect me from, well, everything. All the horrible things that had happened, and all the ones that were yet to be.
    Tomorrow, I thought. I would look at the information tomorrow.
    Tonight, I only wanted to sleep—and forget.

7

    At exactly two o’clock the next afternoon, Xavier pulled open the front door of the Pork Pit, making the bell chime. Punctual. I liked that in a man.
    The giant held the door out wide so Roslyn Phillips could maneuver around him and step inside. The vampire madam and nightclub owner was dressed down today in a pair of black wool pants and a thick, ivory turtleneck sweater. A black and ivory checked coat covered her slim shoulders, and silver glasses perched on the end of her nose. Roslyn was still a striking woman, even without the party clothes and heavy makeup she wore when working the floor at Northern Aggression.
    Catalina Vasquez, one of my best waitresses, heard the bell chime too. Her head snapped up from the chemistry textbook she’d been reading. Like me, Catalina was a student at Ashland Community College who worked part-time at the Pork Pit to make ends meet. With her longblack hair, hazel eyes, and full-bodied figure, Catalina was quite popular with my male customers—especially Finnegan Lane, who always stopped to admire her assets whenever he came by the restaurant.
    Catalina grabbed a couple of menus off a holder on the back wall and hurried behind the long counter that ran down one side of the barbecue restaurant. She reached the end, where I perched on my usual stool behind the old-fashioned cash register. I put down the copy of
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
that I’d been reading and signaled Catalina to stop.
    “The lunch crowd has died down,” I said. “Why don’t you go on break now? I know you’ve got some errands to do. Take a couple hours if you want. I’ll handle them. I was thinking about closing down until four anyway.”
    Catalina flashed me a wide, grateful smile. “Thanks, Gin. You’re the best.”
    “Hmph.”
    A grunt sounded from the middle of the counter, where Sophia Deveraux stood slicing a thick wedge of Jarlsberg cheese, one of the key ingredients in the Pork Pit’s most