All Things Wicked (17 page)

Caleb didn’t step onto the porch. “Great. Fine. Now
I
want to know—”

“Everything,” she cut in quietly, “will be explained in time. You want to know who I am, and why I taught you the harvesting ritual. You want to know why it matters, and what’s wrong with your sister, and why Juliet Carpenter bears the same mark as she does.” Caleb flinched. “I will tell you, but things are dire. We have to be faster than explanations will allow.”

Silas sat on the porch steps, elbows on his knees, and stared at Caleb, his expression hooded. “Jessie is dying, man.” His mouth worked for a moment, and then, even quieter, he added, “Please.”

Fuck. Caleb scowled. “Just tell me one thing.”

She cocked her head, inquisitive and birdlike.

“Are—” He swallowed, forcing the words out through the tightened rasp of his throat. “Are they related? Is Juliet my . . .”

Sudden amusement lit the old woman’s expression, vivacious and brilliant beneath her paper-thin skin. Her eyes crackled with laughter. “That’s your one question? No,” she said quickly, seeing his face. She sobered just as fast. “Rest assured, no blood ties them. I can promise you that.”

“Thank God,” Silas muttered, and Caleb locked his knees as relief turned them weak. He didn’t say anything.

He wasn’t sure he could. What was there to say? So he banged a girl who wasn’t his sister. Simple as that.

His fists clenched.

Matilda rifled in a small wooden box beside the chair, withdrawing a worn pipe and old-fashioned matches. “To answer the deeper question, both of them are teacups. Very, very old teacups.”

Caleb blinked at her. Then glanced sidelong at Silas, who shrugged.

Matilda smiled faintly. “I did say I wasn’t senile, didn’t I? Picture a teacup, gentlemen, filled with tea. Most people sip from their teacup; not them. They can’t. They must break to get the tea, and now all the tea is pouring out. You can clean the mess, but you can’t stop the leak.”

“She’s . . . leaking?” Silas asked, brow furrowed deeply. “Something cracked her . . . what, her control, and now she can’t stop it?”

“More or less,” the old woman allowed, and settled her dark, serious eyes on Caleb. “Visions. Tell me.”

Caleb pushed his fists into his pockets. “I’ve had one.”

“Just one?”

“The same one twice, but only a glimpse the first time. It starts in darkness,” he said. “I see a pile of bodies, twisted and broken.”

“Like them?” Silas asked, gesturing to the night that swallowed each of Naomi’s hauled corpses. “Did you see this fight?”

Caleb jerked his head in denial. “It’s a mountain of them, hundreds . . . maybe thousands of bodies, all tangled. They don’t have faces. I see a smear of ink, bar codes stamped on legs and arms and shoulders and God knows.” Matilda’s eyes remained trained on him, unblinking and steady. “They’re putrefying into the ground. I can’t smell, but I know it’s awful. Worse than anything I’ve ever smelled before. Worse than anything I’ve seen.”

Silas grimaced. “That’s . . . disheartening.”

The man had been to at least one of Caleb’s ritual scenes. Caleb knew that of them all, the ex-missionary understood exactly what it was Caleb meant.

He nodded. “At the very top,” he continued, “there’s a woman.”

A match head hissed, sparked and flickered to life. Matilda cupped the flame in one weathered hand and touched it to the bowl of the pipe. “Does she have a face?” she asked, teeth clamped on the wooden stem.

Caleb’s fists tightened in his pockets. “She’s the only one that does. It’s Juliet. She’s naked and spread out, chained in place.” The images overwhelmed the darkness behind his eyes. Juliet’s pearly skin, grotesque against the waxen, rotting flesh of her throne. She sat locked at the top of that fleshy mountain, rings piercing the flesh of her vagina, spreading it wide. Chains hooked into each ring, vanished into the dark.

“I can only see one hand holding one of the chains in the shadow, but I can’t see who it belongs to. There’s a lot of people,” Caleb said hoarsely. “Silhouettes.”

Silas stirred, but froze when the old witch raised a silencing hand.

“I see one at the forefront, just a shadow. He’s the one holding the chain. Or maybe it’s a woman. Hell if I know, but the voice is too rough to tell.”

“What does it say?” Matilda asked, her eyes dark pools as the last cloudy light of day finally slipped into shadow.

Caleb looked up at her. His mouth thinned. “Eve.”

“Right.” The witch drew on the end of her pipe, and the smell of tobacco floated through the night air. When she spoke again, it was on a stream of smoke. “We need to move fast.”

“Eve?” Silas shook his head. “What does that mean?”

“Whoever it is,” Caleb said, “they’ve been waiting for a long time.”

“Exactly,” Matilda said, nodding. “Silas, my dear, can you operate?”

The man scowled. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” Naomi said as she rounded the porch, “that your woman is dying inside that house and she needs to know if you can function knowing that.”

Silas’s shoulders went rigid. “Jesus Christ, Nai!”

“He can,” Caleb said, not looking at the man he wished his big sister hadn’t fallen in love with.

And was so fucking
glad
she had.

“He’ll work harder than anyone else,” he added firmly.

The man’s foggy eyes shifted to Caleb, narrowed and turned to Matilda. “Can she be healed?”

The red-haired witch hesitated. “Probably,” she said, and Caleb closed his eyes. “If we move fast enough, we may yet glue the pieces together.”

“Then yes,” Silas said grimly. “Hell, yes, I can operate.”

Matilda nodded. “Caleb?”

“I want,” he said between gritted teeth, “answers.”

“Let’s start with this one,” Matilda replied, her old chin rising. “They’re tracing Juliet through her blood. No matter where she goes, they can find her. Blood magic is far above the level of these hiding wards. I can protect only those whose blood I’ve added to the magic, and she’s not one. We must get her back. We must do so at
all
costs.”

“What’s the vision mean?” Silas asked. “I don’t get it.”

Matilda shook her head. “Juliet Carpenter is the key to a plot that has been simmering since long before the earthquake. They’ve been searching for her for over twenty years.”

Caleb jerked his hair out of his face. “When do I leave?”

“Now,” Matilda replied. “Before she makes it to wherever they’re taking her.”

Naomi perched a hip against the porch edge, folding her arms over her chest. “
We
will leave just as soon as we have a plan,” she said.

Caleb shook his head. “No time,” he said, and straightened. “Give me a working comm. I’ll track her now before the trail goes cold. Can you trace the frequency?”

Silas rounded on him, but Naomi cocked her head. “You think you can take on the witches that have her?”

“Watch me.”

She studied his gaze, and Caleb met her violet scrutiny head-on. Whatever it was she read in his face—hell, he didn’t even know what he was thinking, much less projecting—she nodded. “Here,” she said, unclipping her comm from her belt. “It’s got Smith’s frequency already locked in. Go get her, tiger.”

Silas opened his mouth, hesitated. Then, with the faintest edge of a humorless smile, he added, “Go save your girlfriend.”

Caleb shot him a narrow look.

“There’s a back way in,” Matilda said. “Just behind the house. Run your fingers along the cliff edge and you’ll all but fall into it. And take this.”

Caleb tucked the comm into his pocket, frowning as she extended her open palm. A seven-pointed crystal glittered in her hand, a red gleam buried deep within the carved facets. “What is it?”

“Think about who you want to find,” she said simply.

“I can’t use magic.”

Silas stared at him. “What?”

Caleb ignored him.

“It’s not that kind of magic,” Matilda said, and pressed it into his hand. Her warm, dry fingers squeezed once. “And you’re wrong, you know. You’ve got a lot more at your disposal than you think.”

“What the hell do you mean, you can’t use magic?” Silas demanded.

“Smith.” Naomi dug her elbow in his back. “Shut up.”

“I’ll bring her back,” Caleb said over them both, his eyes on the old woman’s, “and then I swear to God, you’re going to tell me everything you know.”

Her smile softened. “I promise,” she said. “There will be answers.”

He spun, fingers clenching over the sharp crystal edges. Jessie was dying in that green house. Juliet had been kidnapped by a coven desperate to drain her of her life, her magic.

Was that what his vision was? Did they have a ritual? A need for Juliet to act as some kind of caged focus?

As if that wasn’t bad enough, an old witch who had taught him how to harvest the lifeblood of the dying now smoked a pipe in what he’d thought was a safe place, casual as if it were a day out in the sunshine, and—Jesus Christ, when had he lost control of things?

It didn’t matter.

He had to retrieve Juliet. Before the chains he’d
seen
in the future became reality. Before the shadowy puppets in the background of his visions claimed her.

Before
his
reality turned again to blood and ash.

“Fine. But before you go,” Silas said, offering a snub-nosed pistol. “Just in case. Good luck, Caleb. We’re hot on your six.”

Chapter Fourteen

T
he dark closed in around her, held at bay only by the faint path of her captor’s powerful penlight. Every step he took was another nail in the already stifling coffin of her fate.

Future. Visions. Fat lot of good any of it did.

The future could be changed on a dime. Caleb had taught her that, hadn’t he?

She stumbled over a narrow ribbon of crumbling stone. Pain cinched through her wrists as the plastic ties tightened. The trailing lead in the large man’s hands snapped taut, and he stopped, swung the light back around and blinded her with it.

She flinched. “Hey!”

The man said nothing. Juliet bit her tongue before she gave in to the urge to scream at him. It wouldn’t help.

He hadn’t said a word since she’d woken slung over his shoulder. Kicking and struggling earned her a bone-jarring meeting with the ground as he’d simply rolled her off. The ache in her hip matched the vivid throb of pain pulsing in her elbow, courtesy of the rocks he’d dumped her on.

Asshole.

The light slid away from her face, and Juliet blinked as shards of after-burned spotlights flared in her vision. She didn’t get more than a second before the lead pulled tight, all but yanking her off her feet.

Swearing didn’t make her feel any better. Slipping and staggering over the uneven ground, she concentrated on staying upright as her kidnapper quickened the pace.

Forced marches through the underground were becoming a bit of a habit. One she desperately wanted to break.

Exhaustion dogged every step, sucking at her. Clawing. Her feet felt like lead. However brief her respite at the cove, it seemed a million miles away.

Despite the fact that she knew it wouldn’t help, she spoke anyway. “Where are you taking me?” The fitful silence of the ruined street swallowed her voice. Darkness filled the vacuum left behind.

She gritted her teeth. “Who are you?”

Nothing.

“Are you a coven witch? Do you know Alicia?”

The dim outline of his broad shoulders stiffened.

A reaction. Silent, but something. Juliet pressed on, stepping over a small broken pile of brick and sending grit clattering in her wake. “Don’t like her, huh?” she said wryly. “Kind of a bitch. Well, no, more like a bitch to the bone.”

Silence.

Blinking sweat from her stinging eyes, Juliet forced herself to keep moving. Keep talking. “I don’t like her, either. She’s never been what you’d call
nice
.”

Her wrists burned fiercely. It was either talk, or cry.

“I think she hated the fact that Curio took me in,” she said to his silent back. “Delia always said she was a cat trolling for a fight. I wonder how long she’s wanted to kill me and take all my magic? She seems like a plotter.”

Not even a whisper of a reply. The shadows pooled all around her, cloaking the treacherous path outlined by the powerful flashlight.

Juliet sucked in a breath as her ankle rolled. Stumbling, she caught the plastic lead in her fingers and barely managed to keep from sprawling face-first over rock and glass and heaven knew what else.

His stride slowed, light weaving back and forth. The ragged edges of forgotten tenements leered out from the surrounding dark. The empty windows yawned, black maws of nothing. Just death. The memory of it.

The taste of it, thick and musty on her tongue. In her nose.

She hated the underground.

“You know,” she managed, righting herself as fear painted a slick, icy line down her back, “this would be a lot easier if you’d let me rest a minute.”

Wordlessly, he tugged her forward, striding through a narrow corridor between two slanted buildings.

“Or not,” she said tightly. “Jesus, you’re worse than Caleb. At least he talks. Not all the time, all right,” she conceded after a moment. “But enough. At least
he
makes me feel like he’s human now and again.”

Setting her jaw, Juliet trudged through the narrowing gap, her gaze fixed on the wide line of his shoulders. “He’s not even a very good listener. I mean, it doesn’t matter what you tell him, he just hears what he wants. But then, I guess everyone does. The only person who ever listened to me is gone.”

The raw ache never really went away, but her tired, defenseless heart had nowhere else to focus. Grief welled like a flagging, draining tide in her chest.

Her steps faltered.

The cord snapped taut.

Pain sheared through her legs as Juliet fell to her knees. Sharp rock ground into her shins, forcing a ragged sound from her throat. For a split second, her vision shimmered, white with pain.

Red with anger.

Her temples throbbed.

“It’s about time,” a sultry feminine voice said behind her. Juliet jerked, half spinning until the pain in her knees forced her to spread more weight on her hands. The ground was cold and damp, sharp with cracked cement.

Alicia knelt beside her, and Juliet noticed she wore boots and jeans this time.

Maybe Juliet wasn’t worth seducing.

Laughter bubbled to her lips.

Alicia seized her short hair in one rough fist, yanking her face up. “Where is Caleb?”

Lips peeled back from her teeth, Juliet blinked away painful tears and said tightly, “Fuck you.”

Her silent captor’s penlight skimmed across Alicia’s face, outlining the widened, skeletal grimace of her smile. Her pale blue eyes flashed in the light, so close that Juliet could see herself reflected inside.

“You,” she said, “have been quite the handful. I’m half tempted to tell Tobias there he’s shit out of luck.”

If the giant cared, he didn’t say anything. Juliet’s nose wrinkled. “Someone yanking your leash, there, Alicia?” The witch’s grip hurt, but Juliet forced herself to sound as calm as she could.

To sound like Caleb.

God, where was he?

Alicia leaned down, close enough that her lips brushed across Juliet’s temple as she whispered, “No problem. He’ll come for you.”

“You wish,” Juliet spat, wrenching away. The fist in her hair twisted, and she bit back a cry of pain, translating it into one of the many four-letter words she’d heard Caleb mutter under his breath.

Alicia’s smile didn’t change as she stood, forcing Juliet to her feet. “Let’s go. We mustn’t be late. Tobias, you know the way?”

The world blurred through her tears, but Juliet couldn’t miss the derision shaping the big man’s face. Scornfully, he turned away, leaving the lead lying on the ground behind him.

The scarred witch picked it up, but not before she sent him a glare filled with such malice, such hatred, that bile gathered into a burning knot in Juliet’s stomach.

What had she been dragged into?

“Let’s go, sweetie, before Tobias gets ahead of himself.”

Juliet took a step, forced her knees to remain steady by sheer willpower alone, and grabbed the plastic rope once more between her trapped fingers. It was all the leverage she could get.

Alicia walked ahead of her, her stride easy and fluid. Careless.

And why not? It’s not as if anything was going wrong in
her
world.

Juliet stared daggers into her back, jaw set.

She didn’t know how long Tobias led them into the ruins, or where they were going. Sweat trickled from her temples, gathered underneath her sweatshirt and stuck uncomfortably. A stitch pulled in her side, and still, the darkness never changed, never shifted. Rock, grit, rubble, and muddied glints of glass glittered from the thin path he forged ahead of them, but nothing gave her any idea of where they were. How far in, how close to the trench, how near to the abandoned roads that lead to New Seattle.

Did they even know?

Alicia glanced back at her, the curve of her face a faint, pale crescent in the dark. “I feel sorry for you,” she said conversationally.

Juliet concentrated on the rocky ground in front of her feet, step by laborious step. “Oh, yeah?” she said between gasping breaths. “That’s a laugh.”

“You think so?” Alicia yanked on the lead, sending Juliet staggering for balance over rocks that rolled and cracked beneath her boots. “Oh, God, Juliet. You don’t have any idea, do you?”

“Why you want my magic?” Juliet wiped her cheek on her shoulder, but succeeded only in smearing dirt and sweat over her already itchy skin. “I can guess.”

“No, you idiot,” Alicia said, laughing openly now. Contrary to Juliet’s discomfort, the witch didn’t sound like she was struggling to keep up with Tobias’s pace. “Who you are. Why you’re so . . . oh, so
special
.”

Juliet squeezed her eyes shut. Popped them open again as her toe collided with a rock and sent her sideways.

Casually, Alicia curled a hand in her sweatshirt until Juliet righted herself. “I don’t have anything against you,” she continued. “Really, you’re a sweet girl.”

“Liar,” Juliet shot back. “You hated the fact Curio liked me.”

The fingers clenched on her shoulder. “You weren’t the only bitch he was banging.”

It was Juliet’s turn to laugh, though it came out tight and choked with the effort to remain standing. To breathe through the knot in her side. “I never slept with him, Alicia. He was old enough to be my grandfather!”

The deformed silhouette of her other hand sliced through the air. “Whatever. If it weren’t for your particular magic, you’d be less than nothing. Hell, honey, if it weren’t for Caleb, I’d probably have forgotten you existed.”

She shook her head wearily. “Lying again. You’d have just locked me away where you could bleed me as you needed it.”

The silence that followed her exhausted accusation only confirmed it. Hadn’t Caleb said as much?

The hand at her shoulder gentled. Even squeezed affectionately. “Smart girl,” Alicia said thoughtfully. “For once. I’m still surprised you contacted us, you know. Why did you?”

Because she was incapable of following through? Because Juliet needed to feel as if she weren’t entirely useless to a coven who’d never made her feel anything but?

She shook her head, pressing her lips into a thin line.

“Not that it matters,” Alicia said dismissively, coiling the lead’s excess length around her scarred hand. “You did, and I’m very grateful. At least, I was.”

Juliet’s gaze flicked sideways in surprise. The witch glowered at Tobias’s back as if her own gaze could be transformed to razors by sheer malevolence.

“And here we are,” the once-pretty witch continued after a moment. She removed her fingers from Juliet’s shoulder, transferring the coiled lead from hand to hand. “Caleb’s probably right. Your powers would be useless to me if I took them from you. I don’t really care to make anyone
else
more powerful than me, which means you’re about as valuable as any tramp with heart’s blood to harvest.”

“Nice.”

“Nice,” Alicia repeated slowly. Amusement laced through the single syllable. “Nice? Have you ever seen the ritual?”

The sound Juliet made could have been a denial. Maybe it was supposed to be, but she couldn’t force herself to shape it past the pain in her side.

Alicia didn’t seem to notice, or care. “First, a ritual circle is drawn. Cardinal directions, all of that. Then the sacrifice is bound in silk and iron.”

Juliet stared at the ground, forcing her leaden feet to move. Saying nothing, she concentrated on the backs of the man’s heels.

“Real silk, mind,” the witch said, almost cheerfully. “Real iron, which is easier to get. And then the true test of patience comes in. The carving.”

Juliet flinched.

“Over every center of power on the body, carved even into the bone. The trick here,” Alicia said, sidestepping a slab of cracked cement, “is keeping the sacrifice alive while you bleed her.”

Shudders rippled through her, but Juliet fisted her bound hands and said tightly, “Sounds like you already know all about it.”

“Oh, no. Not even close.” Alicia tucked the lead over her shoulder, as if out for a casual stroll. Her smile gleamed. “Caleb and Curio are the only ones who’ve done it all, start to finish. Can you imagine how many times our darling soothsayer had to practice to get it right?”

Something sick knotted in her stomach.

“I wonder how many victims he slaughtered before he got the timing down. A handful? A dozen?”

Juliet’s nails bit into her palms. “Shut up,” she whispered.

Pale blue eyes flicked back to her, keloid scarring stretched wide around one. “Why, Juliet. Does it bother you? Knowing that he peeled the skin from humans? Humans like your sister?”

“Shut
up
,” she growled.

Alicia’s laugh trilled like liquid silver. “Oh, you ignorant child. God, I feel so sorry for you. You really fell hard, didn’t you?” She tugged on the leash, forcing Juliet to bend awkwardly. “Tell you a secret,” she confided, eyes glinting. “I always had a thing for him. Even knowing about the blood on his hands. Or,” she drawled, “because of it. I adore a ruthless man, don’t you?”

Juliet clenched her jaw hard enough to drill pain through her temples.

“Of course you do,” Alicia purred. “You naughty thing. What
ever
would your sister say?”

“You shut up about Delia,” Juliet gasped, her side screaming, twisted and cramped. “You shut up, or I swear to God—” The lead loosened, and she sucked in a hard breath. Gasped for it.

“Don’t like the truth, huh?” Alicia taunted softly. “Don’t worry, I do understand. Get close to Caleb and you’ll be close to your powerless whore of a sister.”

Juliet’s head snapped up.

Her boots immediately snagged on the craggy ground. She didn’t have the strength to right herself, pitching forward suddenly. Only her grip on the shortened lead kept her from breaking her face.

Alicia hauled back on the cord, swinging Juliet around so quickly that her back slammed into packed dirt and rock, leaving her gasping before she knew what happened. Rocks dug into her back, her legs, but all Juliet could see were stars.

“Get up,” Alicia snapped.

Juliet squeezed her eyes shut as she breathed through the cramp in her side.

“Get the fuck up!” Then, impatiently, “Tobias, pick her up.”

Boots crunched by her ear. Callused fingers poked into her neck. “We rest.” His voice was wholly emotionless, matter-of-fact as the rocks digging into her back.