Free Elemental Assassin [9] Heart of Venom by Jennifer Estep Page A

his ribs. The boy dropped like a stone to the floor.
    Sophia let out a bellow of rage at the sight. She snapped  first one fist, then the other, up into the giant’s chin, driving  him back. And she didn’t stop there. She threw punch after  punch at the giant, driving her fists, fingers, and even her  elbows into his chest, throat, and groin.
    My mouth fell open a little more at her quick, brutal,  efficient assault. I knew that Sophia was strong—she was a dwarf, after all—but I had no idea that she was such a total  badass too. I wondered if this was a result of the training that Jo-Jo said that Fletcher had given her.
    Sophia threw another punch at the giant, but this time, he managed to catch her hand in his. He squeezed her fingers, and I heard her bones pop from the brutal pressure. Sophia grunted with pain, and the giant slammed his fist into  her face. She staggered back, her legs going out from under  her and her head snapping against the counter. She too fell to  the floor, unconscious.
    The giant loomed over her, but when a minute passed and she didn’t stir, he glanced over his shoulder at his buddy.
    “What do we do now, Mason?” he asked.
    The giant who’d hit the boy, Mason, grinned back at him.
    “I say we see how much is in the cash register, grab everything  we can from the back of the restaurant, and then dump their  bodies outside on our way out the back door. What do you  say, Zeke?”
    The other giant returned his friend’s evil grin with one of  his own. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
    Mason grabbed the kid’s leg and dragged him over to where Sophia lay, while Zeke went around the counter and started messing with the cash register.
    I held my position behind the door and tried to think how I could stop them.  
    Because I  was  going to stop them.
    Sure, Sophia might not be my favorite person, but she was  Jo-Jo’s sister, and Jo-Jo dearly loved her. Besides, I couldn’t  let the men kill her, much less a kid they’d already beaten  and tortured, without trying to stop them. That would go  against everything that Fletcher was teaching me about how  to protect myself and especially the people that I cared about.
    Through the door window, I risked another glance into  the storefront, but the men were still busy with the cash register. My gaze kept going back to their massive fists. There was  no way that I was a match for their strength. No, I needed a  weapon if I had any chance of taking them down—I needed  a knife.
    I turned away from the door and ran back toward the  storage room where Fletcher kept the extra vegetable knives,  wondering if I could really do it, if I could really save Sophia,  or if I’d end up being beaten to death along with her and  the kid—
    A soft thunk  snapped me out of my memories.
    One second, I was running through the restaurant on that night so long ago. The next, I was back in cooper’s kitchen, the stench of Jo-Jo’s blood saturating the air like the foulest sort of perfume.
    cooper reached down and picked up something small and metal off the table. He held it up so we could all see the bloody bullet that he’d fished out of Jo-Jo’s chest.
    “One down,” he murmured, setting it back down on the table. “One to go.”
    A few minutes later, another thunk sounded as cooper used his magic to pull the second bullet out of Jo-Jo.
    “Now comes the hard part,” he muttered. 
    cooper reached for even more of his Air magic, so much of it that a strong, steady breeze gusted through the kitchen, whipping up the sketches that he’d shoved onto the floor and whirling them around and around like a tornado. cooper let go of Jo-Jo’s hand and held his palm up over her chest, right above the two bullet holes, his hand and fingers glowing a rich, warm bronze.
    Slowly, very, very slowly, he started moving his hand back and forth over the wounds. And slowly, very, very slowly, the ugly black holes in Jo-Jo’s