Elemental Assassin 03 - Venom (37 page)

It took Phil a few seconds to turn Henry around and point him back in the direction that the ambush had come from. Which gave me plenty of time to get a better grip on my silverstone knives and slip ahead of them. I waited behind a tree on the far end of the clearing. Once again, I looked and listened, but Slater seemed to be satisfied with his capture of Finn. No more giants came crashing through the underbrush, and all sounds of Slater and Bob, his other man, had vanished, swallowed up by the cold trees. Time for me to get into the game, even if it might already be too late to save Roslyn.

“Come on, buddy,” Phil said to the injured man. “It’s not so bad. I’ll drive you back into the city, and we’ll get you fixed up with an Air elemental healer. A couple hours from now, you’ll be good as new.”

Henry just moaned. No surprise there. A blown-out knee hurt like nothing else, especially when you had to walk on it.

“Come on now,” Phil said again. “Keep it down. You know how Mr. Slater hates whiners.”

At Phil’s urging, Henry made some attempt to tone down his whimpering. Too bad. He should have groaned while he had the chance.

The giants’ progress was slow, but soon their heavy footsteps approached my hiding place. My hands tightened
around the hilt of my knives, and I prepared myself for what was to come. I pushed away all thoughts of Roslyn and Finn and Elliot Slater. All that mattered was the here and now, and taking care of business.

Phil stepped out of the clearing, dragging his buddy alongside him, and walked past me. I let the giants get a couple feet in front of me before I fell in step behind them. Phil was too busy murmuring encouraging words to Henry to hear the whisper of my footsteps on the forest floor. I closed the gap between us. Phil must have seen me move out of the corner of his eye, because his head started to turn in my direction.

And that’s when I struck.

My first knife punched into the giant’s back, scraping his thick ribs, before I thrust the blade up and into his heart. Sticky, black blood coated my hand like I’d just squeezed a ketchup bottle with all my might. Phil jerked and arched back at the sudden, wrenching pain, opening his mouth to bellow out his anguish. But before he could do that, I drove my foot into the back of his knee as hard as I could. The giant lost his grip on his buddy, who stumbled forward and slammed headfirst into a tree trunk. The already injured Henry let out another low groan of pain and misery.

But I focused my attention on Phil, who’d done his own header into a pile of leaves. He thrashed around, trying to get to his feet even as his body started to shut down from the massive injury that it had just received. By this point, Phil was screaming, but the leaves under his face muffled the sharp sound. Since I wanted to keep it that way, I straddled the fallen giant and put my knees on his
back, pinning him on the cold, mossy ground. I dug one hand into his hair, pulling back his head. Phil gulped in a grateful breath, getting ready to scream again.

Too little, too late.

With my other hand, I sliced my silverstone knife across his exposed throat, slashing open his thick neck. Phil moaned and gurgled. With one hand, he flailed back, trying to dislodge me. His other hand went to his throat, trying to stem the steady pump of blood. I paused a second, listening. But Phil’s cries didn’t appear to have been loud enough to attract immediate attention.

So I climbed off the dying giant’s back and went over to Henry, his fallen comrade, who wasn’t in much better shape. The giant writhed back and forth, softly moaning in pain. I kicked him over so that he lay on his back, dropped to one knee, and slit his throat, putting him out of his misery. He didn’t even try to fight back.

In less than a minute, it was over. Gin 2, giants 0. Just the way I liked it.

But my job wasn’t done yet. While the giants bled out, I slid over into the shadows, watching and waiting. But no footsteps sounded, and I didn’t hear anyone rustling through the underbrush. I’d taken care of them quietly enough not to attract attention. Good.

I pulled my knife out of Phil’s back and made sure both giants were dead before I slipped off into the woods back the way that I’d come. The looking and listening were over. It was time to get on with things—and take care of Elliot Slater once and for all.

26

I walked back through the woods to my previous spot and grabbed my duffel bag. I slipped the scabbard that I’d taken from Owen Grayson’s house over my shoulders. The black leather straps crisscrossed over my chest, and I slid the two long swords into their anointed slots. Once that was done, I grabbed a few more small supplies and left the bag where it was.

I headed to the left, keeping inside the tree line and circling to the far, opposite side of the patio until I faced the very back of the mansion. Only one giant guard remained outside next to the pool, since the others had been pulled away to take care of Finn. Like it or not, Finn’s plan had worked.

Since it looked like the shooting was over, the guard had once again lit up a cigarette. He faced away from me, out toward the woods where Finn had been, and I watched while he tucked his gun into the small of his
back. The other man that had been sitting just inside the glass doors was nowhere to be found. He was probably somewhere farther inside the mountain mansion, helping Elliot Slater secure Finn for the torture that lay ahead. I wouldn’t get a better chance than this.

So I took it.

I hopscotched my way down the slope, skipping from one tree to another. The landscape hadn’t been as well cleared on the back side of the house as it had on the front, which gave me plenty of cover to work with. I moved quicker than I had before, but I took care to make as little noise as possible. I still needed every bit of surprise that I could muster. Because now Finn’s life depended on it, along with Roslyn’s.

Two minutes later, I’d worked my way to the edge of the stone patio, which was set about four feet off the ground. I eased up, letting my head rise just above the surface of the rim. All around me, the stones whispered of wind and water. They also reverberated faintly with the sharp crack of gunshots that had just been fired. But those notes of alarm had already started to fade away. That bit of violence had been too brief and the majority of it too far away for the action to permanently sink into the patio. As for what I was about to do to the man in front of me, well, that kind of violence would probably linger in the stone for quite some time to come.

The guard stubbed out one cigarette with his foot and reached into his suit jacket for another. I wouldn’t get a better opportunity—so I took it.

I pulled myself up, rolled over, and came up into a crouch behind some heavy, wrought-iron patio furniture.
The guard drew a lighter out of his pocket and clicked it a couple of times, trying to get more than mere sparks out of the cheap plastic. I rose to my feet and tiptoed forward, a silverstone knife in either hand.

The lighter flared, illuminating the guard’s profile. He turned to face me, one hand pressing down on the lighter tab to keep the flame going.

“Finally,” he muttered.

Last word he ever said. The giant never even saw me step out from behind the furniture and creep forward so that I was directly in front of him. He lit his cigarette and lifted his head, smoke streaming from his nostrils like he was a mythical dragon. My first knife ripped into his stomach, spilling his guts all over the stone patio. The second knife slammed into his windpipe, cutting off any sound he might make. The poor guy never knew what hit him. He choked on his own blood, even as his body spasmed from the shock of the two vicious, fatal wounds. He went down on his knees, halfway to dead, but I held him up and cut his throat, just to be sure.

Since I didn’t feel like dragging his body off the patio, I tipped the dead giant into the pool. He sank to the bottom, blood still spurting out of his wounds, turning the crystal water the ugly brown color of iodine. Under my boots, the stone of the patio took on a harsher note from the giant’s spattered blood. A symphony wouldn’t have sounded better to me at the moment.

Gin 3, giants 0.

I waited a few seconds, but no one seemed to have heard me take out my latest victim. When I was sure that
the kill had been clean and quiet, I eased over to the glass patio door, turned the knob, and slipped inside.

The inside of the mansion looked just as I’d expected it to—lush, elegant, expensive. Thick carpeting, throw rugs, and just enough natural wood and stone to make you think that you were in some rustic oasis instead of a carefully crafted structure. I could tell Slater had had the structure built especially for him because all the doorways had at least a twelve-foot clearance and were five feet wide. Giants didn’t like to be crowded.

I stood inside the patio door a moment, thinking about the blueprints of the place that Finn had procured for me and getting my bearings. In the woods, Elliot Slater had told his man to chain Finn up in the downstairs living room. I currently stood on the back side of the house, which meant the living room was several hundred feet in front of me. I knew that Slater had at least one more man with him right now—the one who had carried Finn out of the woods—but I didn’t know how many other giants might be lurking around. Best to do a perimeter sweep and kill as many of them as I could before taking on the big kahuna himself.

Besides, some small part of me hoped that Roslyn Phillips might still be alive. I owed it to the vampire to get her out of here if she was still breathing. Jo-Jo Deveraux could fix anything short of death, no matter what horrible things Slater might have done to Roslyn. I’d promised the vampire that I was going to protect her from the giant. That he was never going to hurt her again. So far, I hadn’t lived up to my word, but if Roslyn
was still breathing, then I’d be damned if I was leaving here without her.

A long hallway stretched out north and south before me. I tiptoed up the north side, keeping to the shadows and pausing every few feet to look and listen.

Silence.

I didn’t hear any movement. No rustle of clothing, no labored breathing, no scratch of shoes on the rugs or carpet. Just silence.

I kept going, eventually coming to a set of stairs that led up to the third floor. Once again, I visualized the blueprints that had been in Finn’s folder. If I remembered correctly, the interior of the mansion was hollow. The downstairs living room on the second floor was the focal point of the structure, with the ceilings of the other floors cut out above it. Balconies on every floor led to other rooms while still overlooking the living room below, which featured floor-to-ceiling windows on one side. Since I wanted to see Elliot Slater’s setup before I went after him, I headed up the stairs so I could get a bird’s-eye view of things. Besides, the master bedroom was located on the third floor. Which is where Slater had probably taken Roslyn first when he’d brought her here.

Again, I heard no one and saw nothing except furniture—until I reached the door that led to the master bedroom. To my surprise, the door was cracked open, and soft murmurs slid out into the hallway where I stood. I cocked my head to one side. A man’s voice doing most of the talking, but not Slater’s. The pitch was too high. Didn’t much matter. Other than Finn and Roslyn, whoever
else was in this house was going to die right along with the giant, no matter what his voice sounded like.

I crept closer to the door, and the murmurs sharpened into real words.

“… know how beautiful you are? It doesn’t have to be like this,” the man said.

More silence, as if he was waiting for someone to respond.

“I’m talking to you, bitch. Answer me.”

More silence.

Slap-slap-slap.

A series of violent blows rang out, and a low moan sounded. My eyes narrowed, even as my heart lifted. Because the moaner was a woman. And it sure sounded like Roslyn Phillips to me.

I eased closer to the door and put my eye up against the crack. The door was only slightly open, showing me a narrow strip of what lay inside.

A bed dominated the room—the biggest bed that I’d ever seen. The sucker had to be at least twenty-five feet square and was covered with an ivory comforter. Thick wooden posts rose up from the four corners of the bed, and I could see some sort of heavy, hemp rope tied to them. The rope creaked, as though someone was tied down by it. A man also stood before the bed, but it wasn’t Elliot Slater. His hair was a bright red, instead of the blond wisps of the other pale, chalky giant.