All Things Wicked (20 page)

Chapter Seventeen

T
here were more ways than one to track a witch. A trail of blood worked as well as any magical crystal.

Caleb’s flashlight swept side to side, picking out the grisly signs of someone’s torturous passing. Blood speckled the ground, smeared on rocks in lurid red only just fading to brown at the edges.

He knelt, angling the light toward a sharp edge of broken, rusted metal. Frowning, he touched the surface. His fingers came away red.

Even if he weren’t standing in the bacteria-filled filth of an abandoned ruin, this much blood was a problem. He didn’t know who it belonged to, had no way of knowing without magic to call on, but he knew a mortal wound when it left a trail like this.

One of his quarry was running. But which one? Clearly, there was no love lost between Alicia and Tobias.

Had one of them killed the other?

He could only be so lucky.

Caleb rose, stepping over the pipe, and arrowed the flashlight along a bank of half-buried walls. Nothing moved in the still air. His nostrils flared, senses fighting the mustiness clinging to everything.

Clatter.

There. Turning, the light skated from wall to wall, filling the dark corners of the remains of some sprawling structure. There was no roof, no doors or windows, as if something had sheared it in half and left the waist-high walls to molder in the damp. Rubble filled half the rooms.

Caleb clicked off the light. The tomblike stillness of the underground filled the space like a blanket, packing the darkness into every spare inch and swelling. He turned his head, closed his eyes, and listened.

Somewhere in the shadows, a breath caught.

Caleb’s smile was grim. He turned the flashlight back on, dimmed it to a dull golden glow, and picked his way over scattered debris.

The pale line of a dirt-smeared arm gleamed like a beacon as he rounded a wall. “There you are.”

Alicia looked back sharply, body jerking, but the pain pinched into her face told him what the trail of blood already had. Time was running out.

His jaw clenched.

“Figures,” she said on a half laugh, slumping back. Her long legs sprawled in front of her, jeans nearly black with the blood oozing through her fingers. They pressed against her abdomen, and despite himself, Caleb winced.

Gut shot. Son of a bitch.

“Rough day?”

“Fuck you.” Her voice strained, features ashen. “You love this.”

“Not really.” Caleb tucked the flashlight under his arm and crouched beside her, surveying the wound as best he could. He whistled, low and long. “Have a falling out with your witch?”

She spat out a laugh, blood flecking her lips. “He’s not my witch.” Every breath gasped, short pants that he suspected were all she could handle. Struggling for air.

He wondered what time it was.

How long she would last.

His fingers flexed. “What do you mean,” he asked slowly, “he’s not your witch?”

She laughed, choking it off on a painful sound. “Fuck you,” she managed between gasps. “You must have seen this coming.”

Caleb took the flashlight from under his arm, set it gently on its end by his feet. Then, thoughtfully bracing his elbows on his knees, he studied her face. Her scars were white with the effort she exerted to hang on to life, to consciousness, her permanent grimace strained. Her eyes flickered, so pale in the gloom they looked ghostly. And afraid.

He didn’t smile. “What would you say if I said yes?”

Her breath caught in her throat. Wrenched spasms through her body, her heels digging into the rock and grit until it scraped away. Blood flecked her chin as she forced out, “Full of shit.”

Caleb pulled up his pant leg. “There you go. Tell me what you meant about Tobias.”

Her lashes fluttered wildly. “Hell, no,” she croaked.

Fishing the switchblade out of his boot, he thought about the rotting corpse pile. The shadows, the chains.

Shadows in the dark. Rough hands.

Hands like Tobias’s.

Her breath, ragged and short, filled the silence. Overflowed it, one desperate inhale into each painful exhale.

He flipped the blade open.

“Fine,” he said, and ice slid into his voice. Crystallized every word into a murderous edge. “You’ll tell me anyway.”

Her eyes settled on the blade. Filled with sudden, brilliant tears. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Please. Please don’t kill me. I’ll help you, I swear I will.”

“Really? After everything you’ve done?” He reached out and she wrenched away, collapsing like a paper doll as blood oozed from her stomach. Her lips.

She flinched, nearly screaming with it as she hit the ground. “Please! Please let me help you. I’ll tell you everything!”

Are you sure about this?

The knife gleamed in his hand, but to his disgust, he found himself lowering it.

She was as good as dead anyway.

One less death on his conscience.

In his soul.

She grabbed his arm. Caleb tensed, but all she did was pull herself up, inch by trembling inch, sobbing against his shoulder. Wracking, wild tears. “Thank you, thank you,” she said, over and over.

He pushed her away, sickened. “You can find your own way out,” he said flatly, getting to his feet. He unhooked the small medical kit pinned to his belt and dropped it beside her. “Just tell me where he’s taking Juliet.”

He shouldn’t have stooped to pick up the flashlight, he realized, but the thought came too late. Sobs shifted to a sudden, ragged burst of laughter as her bloody fingers skated across the black canvas of the underground. The sigil flared in the naked air, brilliant red, and Caleb threw himself to the ground a nanosecond before a fiery inferno enveloped the very spot where he’d been standing.

His skin prickled, edges of his clothing curling as the vortex seared the air. Alicia screamed, fury and venom, and with adrenaline scorching through his veins, Caleb reared back and slammed a fist into her temple.

She reeled, bowed backward and couldn’t balance. Her head crunched into the wall. Loosened rock crumbled to the ground around them as she sprawled.

“Motherfucking son of a—” Caleb leaned over, snagged her shirt collar, and wrenched her back up.

She screamed as the motion tore at her ruined stomach.

In the fire’s wild radiance, Alicia’s eyes gleamed. Pain, fear. Malice. “I’ll tell you!” she shrieked, throwing up her bloody hands. Soot clung to the tips of her fingers. “Please, I’ll tell you everything!”

Anger fed anger; determination slid through him like molten steel.
I can handle her.

So could he. Caleb grabbed his discarded switchblade. “Yes,” he said evenly, every breath a harsh rasp. “Yes, you most definitely will.”

Fear etched wild lines through her distorted features. “What are you going to do?”

“What you wanted all along, Alicia.” Caleb pushed her to the ground, ice and rage and crystal clarity battling beneath his skin.

Whatever it took. He’d have to do it. Better him than anyone else, better him to carry that weight to the grave.

There was only one way to learn what Alicia refused to share.

I’ll rip it from her spirit.

His head pounded. That voice echoed, hard and angry and alien. And yet, so damned typical. Was he cracking?

He shook his head, fingers tight on the hilt. “I’m going to teach you the ritual.”

All the blood drained from her already pale skin. “You can’t. You have no silk or iron.”

“They’re only focuses,” he told her. “Useful, but not necessary. Now pay attention. You’re only going to see this once.”

“No . . . No!”

He pinned her arm to the ground with his knee. “First,” he said grimly, his voice a harsh croak, “the symbols of power.”

Alicia threw back her head and screamed, ragged and savage and with such malevolence, it was as if a thousand echoes took it up and spit it back, shattered shards of bloody glass.

The knife gleamed.

S
he came to fighting.

Large hands circled her wrists, shackling them to her sides even as she fought through the tangled threads of unconsciousness. “Juliet!” The baritone voice rumbled over her head, solid and real in ways every image sliding through her head wasn’t. “It’s Silas, it’s okay. You’re safe.”

Juliet wrenched away from the dreams, the nightmares; came to awareness, gasping.

A single flashlight painted Silas’s face in gold and wicked shadows, but sympathy softened his expression. And worry. “Welcome back,” he said, fingers loosening. “You’ve been out for about an hour.”

Her heart slowed its frenetic beat. Swallowing hard, Juliet elbowed herself upright, shoving her hair from her face with a shaking hand.

Everything hurt. Her legs, her feet. Her body.

Her heart.

She swallowed hard. “Where are we?”

He passed her a canteen, steadying it for her as she raised it to her lips. “Almost out of Old Seattle. We’re about five minutes away from the barricade.”

As she drank, he glowered at the comm unit cradled in one large hand. He stabbed at the buttons, raised it to his ear, and waited.

Juliet washed the grit from her throat.

Had he carried her all this way? What about Caleb?

She fingered her temple, wincing as it spiked a painful note through her head. Had he . . . hit her?

Of course he had. What was hitting
her
compared to murder?

“Right,” Silas said darkly, snapping the comm closed impatiently.

She pushed the canteen away. “What?”

He stood, slinging the flask back over his shoulder, and glanced up instead. The light glittered off a maze of rusted, tangled pipes. “I don’t suppose you want to know where Caleb—”

She stiffened. “No.”

“It’s just that he—”

“
No
,” she repeated, and clambered to her feet when the word, her voice, trembled. She knuckled her eyes because it was better than looking at him. Seeing the sympathy, the concern, on his face.

She didn’t care what Caleb did.

He was a murderer. A user. She wanted nothing to do with him.

He
lied
to her.

“Right,” he said again, slowly. “No. Got it.” Shifting back on his heels, he fell silent while Juliet struggled to put a cap on the raw edge of her nerves. Struggled to lock the grief behind a wall until she could sort it out.

She wasn’t going to just sit here and be helpless, damn it.

She inhaled deeply, opening her eyes. To her surprise and relief, they remained clear.

She could cry later. Much later.

“What’s the plan? Where are we going?” she demanded.

“The plan is to keep you safe. They’re tracking your blood.”

“My blood?” She frowned. “How did they get my blood?”

“I don’t know, but we’re not safe at the sanctuary. We’re headed to the lower city,” Silas replied. Forever grateful for it, Juliet read nothing but impassive determination in the man’s face.

She could do that, too. “Then?”

“Then we lose them in the rat maze—” He tensed, glancing at the comm as it buzzed softly. “Fuck me for a doorknob.”

Her chuckle didn’t quite loosen the struggling knot in her chest, but it earned her an apologetic grimace as Silas slid the case open.

“Smith,” he said into the unit. “Yeah? Sure.” He glanced at her, expression suddenly on edge again. Soldier mode, she thought. Stabbing another button on the unit, he pulled it away from his ear and said, “Go.”

The speakers crackled. “Are we all here?”

“Naomi?” Juliet frowned at the box. “Where are you?”

“Topside,” Silas rumbled. “Spill it.”

“You heard him,” Naomi’s voice said, and Juliet’s eyebrows winged upward as an unfamiliar tenor, clear and even despite the worry infecting it, asked, “Could you remove the gun from my ear, Nai?”

Silas glanced up to the ceiling. “West.”

“Better?”

“Ow! Cripes, that’s my— All right, all right,” he said hastily. “Uh, hi, Silas. I knew you weren’t dead.”

“
Now
,” Naomi said flatly.

“Right,” he said, just as Silas murmured, “Jonas.” The expression on his face puzzled her. Part pained, part regret. Irritation and something that looked nostalgic. Pleasure?

Juliet’s fingers pressed into her temples, focusing her gaze on the comm intently. “I’m so confused,” she said uncertainly. “Who are you?”

The man chuckled, as if he didn’t have Naomi’s frightening shadow looming over him. “You must be the Wayward Rose. Nice to meet you, I’m Jonas Stone.”

She raised her eyebrows at Silas, who shrugged evasively.

Naomi’s voice crackled. “Missionary, witch. Witch, missionary. Good? Great. Can we please get to the part where the missionary recalls the fucking gun shoved in his spine?”

“Missed you too, honey,” Stone muttered, and Juliet slapped a hand over her mouth before hysteria bubbled to the surface. “Fine, fine, here. This is everything I’ve been able to compile in the day since Director Adams set me on this.”

Silas’s eyes narrowed, but Naomi beat him to it. “What does little Miss Parker have to do with this?”

“It’s a Mission task,” Stone replied simply. “Operation Wayward Rose.”

“That’s me?” Juliet asked, blinking.

“Know any other Juliets?”

Silas only looked blank, and Juliet shook her head. “Just me,” she said, and murmured as an aside, “Old story. Not well-known anymore.”

“The director has a rarefied sense of humor,” Stone said wryly, his grin clear even over the static hazing the line. Keys clattered faintly. “Anyway, long story totally short, she had me dig into the Church mainframe to figure out why you, Madam Rose, suddenly hit the top of the list.” He paused. “That’s the list that—”

“She knows what it is,” Naomi cut in. “Tell her what you told me.”

“Impatience only— Hey, jeez! Okay!”

“Naomi,” Silas growled.

“Sorry,” she said silkily, sounding anything but.

Stone sighed. “God, I miss you, woman. All right, at the same time, Director Adams had me investigating two new boys on the block. I didn’t think there’d be any correlation, but lo and behold, that’s why I am the master of the wave.”