All Things Wicked

All Things Wicked

A Dark Mission Novel

Karina Cooper

Dedication

This one is for Alex,

who has been impatiently waiting

for a story about a little brother.

And for Esi and Laura,

who make up one of the most fabulous teams

I could ever hope to work with.

I wouldn’t be so awesome without you.

Contents

Chapter One

N
o such thing as rest for the wicked.

Caleb Leigh opened gritty, burning eyes, giving up on the fitful doze that was all his pain-wracked body could manage for sleep. The filthy motel room came into focus as the neon lights outside the grimy, patchy curtains popped and fizzled, thrusting red and orange knives into his retinas.

How long had he managed to sleep this time? Two hours? Three? Hellfire sparklers of pain spasmed in his muscles. His skin twitched as if it wanted to crawl off his abused body and slink away for painkillers and a shower.

God. He’d kill for a shower.

Muffling a groan, he reached down for the shirt he’d left on the floor, caught the edge with his fingers, and froze as a whisper of a breeze ghosted across the sensitive scars on his back.

Off. The room felt off. Unbalanced.

He inhaled, smelled New Seattle’s own peculiar brand of acid-tinged summer rain, acrid smog, rotting garbage and . . . something else.

Get up!

A floorboard creaked behind him.

Caleb threw himself off the bed as a black silhouette loomed out of the neon-spattered darkness. Beads and rock clicked as his charmed necklaces clattered together; rusted springs screeched, a high-pitched shriek rising in a crescendo as his assailant landed lightly on the mattress. Caleb’s grunt of pain as his feet hit the floor drowned in the raw fury clamping around his head.

He’d had no warning. Not even a
whisper
of magic.

He should have been less surprised.

The shadow pushed off the bed as Caleb leaped to his feet. Silver winked a deadly promise in the orange-red glow spilling through the single broken window; serrated steel, wicked edge gleaming. Knife gripped in a black-gloved hand, the figure pointed at him.

“Why aren’t you dead, you bastard?”

The already cramped motel room walls slammed in tight around him. That voice. Feminine. Breathy with exertion, with fear, but so fucking familiar that it sucked out his breath on a raw sound.

Memory. Affection. Worry.

Love.

It rose like a dream, a sigh of lazy summer days and laughing secrets, and Caleb fought the slick, blissful whisper back behind gritted teeth. It wasn’t
his
love. It wasn’t his affection, his worry, his goddamned memory that fisted in his heart.

And Juliet Carpenter had no fucking business being anywhere near him.

A year wasn’t nearly long enough.

The neon lights snapped and crackled in rhythmic chaos outside the window. It slanted lurid color over her black hair, cut shorter than he remembered and in a fashion that suggested she was aiming for edgy and tough. The dark, choppy fringe framed her face, her faintly square jaw, and the ghostly green eyes that he’d last seen half closed and luminous as he sank balls-deep inside her warm, straining body.

Promise me.
His fists clenched at the echo of his own words, so long ago. He’d done his part, damn it. “Get out,” he said flatly.

“You son of a
bitch.
” Deftly, the sawlike blade in her hand rotated as Juliet jumped onto the thin mattress and launched herself at him.

His body locked. Every goddamned nerve in his left side detonated as he plucked her from the air. Her legs swung to the side, knees ramming into his ribs and jarring a painful grunt from between his clenched teeth as he fisted both hands into her jacket collar and used her own momentum to slam her against the wall behind him. Plaster cracked.

The breath left her on a hard, wordless snarl.

His chest squeezed, his own breath banding tightly under the fiery protest of unhealed wounds on his weakened left side. “You still can’t listen worth a damn,” he growled, glaring through the sizzling edges of his vision. “I said get out.”

The knife glinted. He shackled her slender wrist with one hand and slammed it back against the wall. White dust floated to her dark hair in a gritty cloud.

Sweat gleamed on her face, an echo of the perspiration drying across his shoulders. It wasn’t all courtesy of the unusually muggy summer heat that had settled into the deepest crevasses of the city. Holding her in place shouldn’t have been as hard as it was, but his body still wasn’t recovered from the burns that had nearly killed him a year ago.

Every day was a lesson in pain. Pinning a witch against a wall as her feet thrashed a foot above the floor wasn’t helping.

Pinning
this
witch wasn’t something he’d ever expected to do again.

She’d lost weight.

Her jacket was a little too loose, her black shirt baggy where he’d tangled his fingers into the collar of both. The warmth of her full breasts against the back of his scarred hand wasn’t a reminder he needed, but he couldn’t afford to let her go for his own comfort.

He wasn’t a fool. Or some teenage virgin who had never gotten a handful of a woman before. Especially
this
woman.

The dark circles under her eyes couldn’t take away from the visual impact she’d always had on him. Her mouth, top-heavy and so damned expressive it made him crazy for it, twisted as she struggled in his grip. She managed to gain an inch of momentum as she jerked her hand out from under his, but Caleb locked his teeth and shoved it back. Fragile bones grated under his grip.

Pain flickered. Hers. His.

You promised.

Oh, Jesus. That voice. It made itself heard at the worst fucking moments.

Caleb sucked in a breath that seemed harder than it should have to get and drowned out the feminine presence echoing through his head. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He didn’t have to ask. The venom spewing at him from a look filled with revulsion was all the answer he needed.

His grip tightened on her collar, beaded bracelets around his wrist clacking softly. “Let me rephrase that. The coven doesn’t operate alone. Where’s your backup?”

Her teeth clicked together. Her gaze slid away, flicked back as she raised her chin.

She’d never been a good liar.

Narrow-eyed, Caleb stared at her as fury throbbed between his temples. “You don’t have backup,” he said softly. Then, much less quiet, he snarled, “You came alone? You came after me
by yourself
? Jesus Christ, Jules!”

With monumental effort, Juliet raised both feet and planted them against Caleb’s thigh. Instinctively he braced, swore as her move raised her out of his grip and threw him off balance. She reached up with her right hand, grabbed the knife out of her left, and swung it back around. Caleb swore again, jerking away, but not before the jagged teeth of the blade snagged the puckered flesh of his left arm.
Damn it!

Raw, red static shorted his vision as he backpedaled into the mattress. His knees collided with the edge, buckled, and sprawled him backward onto the springs.

Sensing her intent, he rolled, blood smearing the stained sheets, and grunted as her weight barreled into his back. Her knees rammed into the vulnerable hollow beneath his shoulder blades, dug into his barely healed scars hard enough that he threw his head back, teeth locked against a brittle surge of pain.

“Don’t move!” Her fingers twisted in his too-long hair.

Caleb froze.

Her thighs clenched around his waist. They were warm, even through her pants. Warm and familiar. And the press of her soft breasts against his shoulders shouldn’t have mattered more than the knife she held at his throat.

Muscles shaking, taut with the effort to stay still, Caleb waited. It hurt. God, it hurt, but it had nothing on the clash of memory, fantasy, hell,
wanting
that roiled in his blood now.

They’d never made it to a bed. He remembered that. There weren’t that many beds in Old Seattle.

Behind him, on him, Juliet panted for breath. “I just,” she managed, “want to know one thing.”

“Then what?” His voice grated harshly. “You’ll cut my throat?”

He knew it wasn’t true the instant he said it, but that wasn’t the point. Juliet had always been too soft. Everyone had known it.

Her sister had known it.

The same sister who’d occupied a dark corner of his mind since she’d died in his arms over a year ago.

The knife at his throat jerked. A thin, slick line of fire told him how sharp the damned blade was. It’d make a bloody mess of his flesh faster than he could get it away from her.

“You could only be so lucky,” she spat. “I want to know why, you bastard. Why?”

She wasn’t asking why he wasn’t dead. He didn’t have that answer, anyway. No, he knew what she asked in the single, strained syllable, and closed his eyes.

Why had he betrayed the coven?

Not precisely.

More like, why the hell had he wrapped her body around him like silk and rain? Lost himself in her, pulled her apart with anger and need and mind-scorching heat and then betrayed everything she’d ever believed in?

The fact that he’d murdered her sister was something she didn’t know to ask. Fuck.

And you promised!

God, he wished he hadn’t. “Why what?” he asked, and because he already knew the answer, added, “Why didn’t I say no when you threw yourself at me or—”

The fingers in his hair tightened, wrenching his head back at an angle that threatened to pop his neck. She leaned over him, body pushed forward to thrust her face over his. Her eyes were wide, too wide, shimmering with tears that crawled deep inside his chest and twisted. Bloodier than the knife at his throat.

Darker than the rage that beat at the iron chains of his self-control.

“You know!” The words broke on a ragged sound. “Why did you kill them? Why? When we—”

“We,” he said flatly, cutting her off with barely leashed scorn. “There never was a
we.
”

She blanched. Recovered so quickly that he wasn’t sure he’d seen the blood his verbal dagger had drawn. “We,” she repeated through gritted teeth, “as in the Coven of the Unbinding. We as in your friends!”

“Liar.” Her knee dug into the hollow beneath his left shoulder blade. Neon flashed, and only part of it was the monotonous color outside the seedy motel. The rest popped and sparkled behind his eyes, accompaniment to the ruined skin she pushed on.

“They were your family—”

“Bullshit,” he rasped, all but a growl under the pressure. “They were users. Curio only kept you for your magic.” And, rumor had it, for her body.

He didn’t ask. Even as the words leaped to his lips, he didn’t want to know.

He’d had that body, too. One of many things he’d shared with the late coven leader.

The knife lowered, a fraction. “You killed them. All of them,” she accused, a sharp whisper. “They gathered because they trusted you—”

Fuck.
They’d gathered because they had intended to sacrifice Caleb and his sister for their power-hungry cause.

“—and you just . . . killed them.” Her voice trembled.

“Most of them,” he agreed. Some, like her, he’d managed to distract. Some he’d gotten free.

Her eyes flickered, her face upside down but still so fragile, it stole the breath from his body. Black hair dye wouldn’t make her tough. “Why?”

His jaw locked. Ticked hard. “Because I could.”

He hated himself for doing it. He hated that it had to be done. But Caleb was a lot of things, and gentle wasn’t one. Reversing her flimsy position of power was simple. Reaching up, he seized the back of her jacket and hauled her bodily over his head.

His scars stretched, felt as if they split from the root to the skin, and the angry buzzing in his ears almost drowned out her howl of rage and surprise as she hit the ground on her back. The knife went flying, and Caleb rolled off the mattress seconds before it embedded itself into the wall beside them.

Plaster drifted lazily on the air as Caleb knocked her fist away, seized both hands, and pinned them above her head. The motion barked his knuckles on the rusted bed frame, and he grunted a curse as her knee found his gut. Twisting, he pinned her legs, clamped his thighs around hers, and locked her down.

She strained, but succeeded only in turning herself red with the effort. Dust puffed languidly around them. Sweat dripped from his nose as he stared down at the face he’d hoped to hell to never see again.

Love. God damn it, it had never been
his
to
feel
.

“Stop it,” he ordered roughly as she twisted her hips.

“You traitorous son of—!”

“Son of a bitch. Yes, I know.” He transferred her wrists to one hand, dropping his forearm to her throat. He shoved hard, forcing her head to lie still against the dirty green carpet, and met her eyes precisely because he didn’t want to.

The accusation in them didn’t quite hide the helplessness she struggled to bury. The grief.

Guilt had a punch like a prizefighter.

What the hell could he say? He’d done so much more to her than even she knew.

He
knew, though. It was enough. His mouth thinned. “Let’s get this straight, girl. Yes, I turned on your coven. Yes, I killed Curio—” He pushed hard as her back arched, fury snapping through her like a conduit. The beads on his bracelet scored her pale skin, and he set his jaw. “I killed Curio,” he repeated curtly, “and probably about two dozen other witches who didn’t know when to get out. If I had to do it all over again, I’d make the same choices.”

But he wouldn’t, he thought as tears shimmered in her narrowed glare, choose to touch her again. He wouldn’t commit his body and soul in a single moment of mind-blowing weakness, and he sure as hell wouldn’t promise the impossible to Cordelia Carpenter before he killed her.

But life gave only one chance. His bed was made; he was damn well going to lie in it.

Alone.

“We can play this all day, Jules,” he said, thrusting his face so close to hers that she flinched. “You’re on your own, and I’m stronger than you.”

Her lips twisted, teeth baring as if she would try to bite him. Under the strained pressure of his forearm, her skin flushed nearly purple. It colored her cheeks, her lips. Her eyes flashed, hatred and fear.