Venom

I must have blacked out, because the next thing I knew, I was sitting upright. I jerked, but heavy ropes held me down. My hands felt like they were lashed together too, with something cold and metal stuck in between them. I concentrated on the shape and realized it was my spider rune. Someone had taken the silverstone medallion off my necklace and stuck it between my hands. But why?

I tried to open my eyes to see what had happened to me, to try to figure out where I was and how I could get away, how I could get back to Bria. But something scratched against my eyelids and weighted them down. Cloth, maybe. Was I blindfolded?

"There’s no use in struggling," a female voice said in my ear. "I’ve made sure those ropes are quite secure."

The low, sibilant voice reminded me of a copperhead’s rasp. A fingernail slid down my cheek, leaving a ribbon of fire in its wake. I yelped and jerked my head back from the burning sensation. The Fire elemental had me. I could tell it was her by the way her hot magic lashed and pricked against my skin, even if I couldn’t see her.

"What do you want?" I whispered. "Why are you doing this?"

She laughed. A low, mocking sound that told me exactly how helpless I was. "Because I can. Because your bitch of a mother took far too many things from me over the years. Because the very existence of your happy little family sickens me. Because it needed to be done before the Snow sisters became any kind of threat to me. But mainly, because I wanted to."

How could anyone want to hurt us? Why? What had we ever done to her? Sour bile filled my throat. Somehow I choked it down. Throwing up would only make her angrier.

"Now, dear, sweet Genevieve," the Fire elemental purred. "I need you to do something for me."

"Wh-what?" I stammered.

"Tell me where your sister Bria is."

So the Fire elemental and her men hadn’t found my baby sister yet. She wouldn’t be asking about Bria otherwise, and I wouldn’t still be alive. Relief filled my body, along with a small bit of determination. A cold little knot deep in my stomach. I wasn’t going to tell the elemental where Bria was, I vowed. No matter what she did to me. I wasn’t going to kill my sister. Not now, not ever.

The elemental dug her cruel fingers into my hair and yanked my head back. "Tell me now!"

Just the touch of her hand against my head made it feel like she was scalping me with a red-hot knife. Tears of pain filled my eyes and soaked the blindfold, but that small knot of determination tightened inside me.

"No," I whispered. "I’ll never tell you."

Silence.

After a few seconds, the Fire elemental let go of my hair. Footsteps sounded, and I had the sense she was circling me the way a vulture would fly around a carcass. The footsteps stopped. I turned my head this way and that, trying to figure out where she was and what she would do next. No use.

"Fine," she murmured. "We’ll do it the hard way. It’s always more fun. In case you haven’t realized, I took the liberty of removing that quaint little rune you wear around your neck. I had one of my men duct-tape it inside your hands. You’re going to tell me where your sister Bria is, or I’m going to use my magic to heat the rune. I trust you know what burning flesh smells like by now. Imagine that being your own. The stench, the excruciating pain, the knowledge that your own skin is melting away into nothing. Tell me, is your sister worth all that?"

I thought of Bria. Sweet little Bria with her chubby fingers and big blues eyes and shy smile. She was worth it. Worth all that pain and more.

"Go-go to hell, bitch," I said in the strongest voice I could muster. "I’m not telling you anything."

"So brave, so young, so very stupid. Have it your way then," the Fire elemental said.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then I felt a hot, pricking sensation gather between my palms. The silverstone spider rune grew warm between my hands, and I started sweating, more out of fear than the heat. She was really going to do it. Really going to torture me. Really going to heat the rune until it burned my palms. I wondered if it would actually catch fire, and if I’d be engulfed in flames along with it.

For a moment, I wavered, ready to tell her where I’d hidden Bria. Then I thought of my mother and Annabella, of their burned, smoking bodies lying on the floor. No, I vowed. I wouldn’t do that to Bria. I wouldn’t give her to the Fire elemental.

The rune continued to heat up. I felt blisters form on my palms. I tried to move, tried to slip the metal out from between my hands, but they were taped together too tightly. All I could do was sit there and endure it. The blisters popped and turned into a burning sensation. I gritted my teeth, even as more tears streamed out of my eyes, and sweat dripped off my fingers. The burning intensified. What came after burning? Scorching? Scalding? Searing? The acrid smell of my own melting flesh filled my nose, along with sour sweat and fear.

The Fire elemental’s low chuckles washed over me. She was enjoying 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 was like 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.