Page 63 of Poison Ivy
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IVY
Somethingabout this entire situation is bugging me. What exactly does Tate’s warning mean? If Torin ordered this hit, does he expect me to go through with it, kill his dad, and then what? Are he and Bram, and possibly Tate as well, going to abduct me? Kill me? Follow me back home to see if they can get access to The Syndicate? Tate’s warning wasn’t really very clear. I crouch down by a massive tree and ponder my options. Going in there as Poison is probably going to come back and bite me in the arse. But not going in as Poison will require notifying my bosses about this situation in case they think Poison failed and some other chick got to him first.
Deciding that throwing the guys off track is probably my best bet, so I pull out my phone and flick it onto the camera. I slide my thumb over to video and hold it up, pressing record.
“Video evidence that this situation calls for adisguise. Shifting from Poison to…” I think of a name off the top of my head and my gaze lands on the tree I’m crouched behind. “… Aspen, to complete the assignment.” I stop speaking and allow a tertiary shift to occur. Long blue hair that curls in waves around my face and down my back, violet eyes, sharper cheekbones, cuter nose, paler skin, taller and with massive tits that burst against the top but do the job.
“Aspen out,” I mutter and end the recording. I fire it off to Ramsey, who will get it to where it needs to go, and shove the phone in my back pocket again. “Okay, Aspen. You’ve got this.” I retreat back into the forest and make my way around the back. The odds are that if Torin, Tate and Bram are already here, they’ll be waiting facing the front of the house. Sure, I could be wrong, but I’m probably not. This cottage won’t have a back door. It’s too small and doesn’t need one. But it will have windows. Hopefully ones that are easy to open from the outside.
I creep around to the back of the cottage, keeping low and moving as silently as possible. As I suspected, there’s no back door, but I spot a small window about chest height. Perfect.
Crouching beneath it, I pull out one of the throwing stars from my bag and carefully work it into the gap between the window and frame. After a few tense moments, I hear a soft click as the lock disengages. Slowly, I ease the window open, wincing at every tiny creak.
Once it’s open wide enough, I hoist myself up andslip through, landing softly on the wooden floor inside. I freeze, listening intently for any sound of movement, but the cottage remains eerily silent.
I’m in what appears to be a small bedroom. A rumpled bed takes up most of the space, and the air is stale with disuse. Walcott clearly hasn’t been here long.
Moving silently to the door, I press my ear against it. Nothing. Carefully, I turn the handle and ease it open a crack, peering out into the main living area of the cottage.
There is a man sitting in an armchair with his back to me. It has to be him.
I assess the situation. For an ancient vamp, he doesn’t seem to have noticed my entrance. That strikes me as a bit odd.
But I’m here for one reason and one reason only. I pull out the syringe of holy water, gripping it tightly in one hand and the plug-in in the other. I spot a socket nearby and crouch down to slide it in, watching as the lavender-fragranced holy water disperses into the air.
Creeping forward, expecting the unexpected and also the guys kicking the front door in, I loom over Walcott from behind and slam the needle into the side of his neck, pushing the plunger down as fast as I can.
I stifle my scream as his head rolls off his shoulders, hanging on by a thread before that thread snaps and it falls to the floor with a loud thump. Walcottgoes up in a cloud of ash, making me cough as I gasp for breath in my surprised state.
“Holy shit. Holy shit!” I mutter, my heart beating erratically at the completely unexpected turn of events. There is no way in hell I was prepared for that, despite thinking of different ways this could go down.
I stare in shock at the pile of ash that was Walcott Ashford just moments ago. What the fuck just happened? Something is very wrong here. How did The Syndicate not know Walcott had already—well, practically—been taken out? How? None of this makes sense. Unless they did know, and it was my job to finish him off. Which means someone expected me, or Poison, or any fucking one to show up and finish the job.
“Fuck.” My instincts scream at me to get out now. I spin around, ready to bolt back out the window, but I screech to a halt when a beautiful but cruel-looking woman steps out of the shadows.
She smiles and throws something down. It explodes into a purple cloud, making me cough and go dizzy. I stumble back, trying to clear the air as the front door bursts open, only to notice she has vanished.
Torin, Bram, and Tate burst into the cottage, magick crackling around them. Their eyes widen as they take in the scene of purple dust, vampire ash, and me.
“Who the fuck are you?” Torin snarls, fangs dropping, as he glares at me.
“Huh?” Then I remember. Oh, right. I’m not Poison. I’m Aspen. “Just doing my job,” I say coolly. “Time to bounce.”
I aim for the door that leads back the way I came in, but Bram is there in a flash, eyes narrow suspiciously. “You’re with The Syndicate?”
I shrug, trying to appear nonchalant even as my heart races. “Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, I’m out of here.”
Tate’s gaze is piercing as he studies me. Does he know it’s me? I can’t tell.
But then a subtle tilt of his head tells me all I need to know. He knows it’s me.
“Not so fast,” Torin growls. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell us exactly what happened here.”
I force a cocky smirk onto my face, channelling the confidence of my Poison disguised as Aspen persona. “Sorry, boys, but I don’t kill and tell. Now, if you’ll excuse me...”
I make a move towards the door, but Bram’s arm shoots out, slamming me back against the wall. His eyes glitter dangerously as he leans in close. “I don’t think you understand the situation you’re in, little girl. We can do this the easy way, or the very, very hard way. Where is Poison?”
