Blood of the Wicked (22 page)

She saw Naomi, a long, lean shadow braced against a fallen slat of broken wall and sighting down the barrel of a large gun. She raised one hand briefly, fingers splayed, and Jessie lurched around the corner as three more armed figures darted across the street.

More witch hunters. Jesus God, how many were there in New Seattle?

Fists clenched, Jessie rapidly cataloged her choices. Stay here, get killed by the hunters. Stay here, hunters lose, get captured by the coven. Probably killed.

Run, find Caleb, extract him from his mess—with a rock to the back of his head, if she had to—and get the hell out of this death trap of a city.

Option three sounded like a hell of a bargain.

She’d learn to live with the heartache.

Jessie raised her cuffed hands and wiped at her mouth. Told her feet to move. To run, damn it.

Leave him.

But her gaze stayed on Silas. On the big man he fought back with fists and raw strength. On the seam of light spilling from his jacket cuff and the taut lines of pain carved into his face. He yelled something, she didn’t know what.

Lost cause
, she told herself firmly. Big mistake. She’d known it going in. Live and learn.

Emphasis on
live
.

Jessie turned and promptly kissed the ground when her feet caught on something heavy, something clumsy in the way. Tears of pain sprang to her eyes as her knees skidded on gravel and her elbows took the impact.

Jessie cursed at the ground, rolled over.

Looked into the masked face of a hunter propped against the wall.

She stifled a scream.

Dead. The man was dead. “Christ,” she gasped as her brain slid into a full picture. Blood seamed the wall behind him, gleamed wet and black on his chest. His feet splayed, hands lifeless at his sides. One of those sleek black guns lay discarded beside him. A comm unit was clutched in one hand, as if he’d tried to radio for help.

Maybe he’d succeeded. Maybe that was why three more had arrived.

The sharp, staccato beat of gunfire let up for a moment. A girl screamed, shrill. Frightened.

Jessie snatched the comm from the dead man’s hands, grabbed the gun, and ran like hell. Half hunched, the back of her neck prickling, she prayed no one saw her. That no one right now had a line on her in the dark, staring down the barrel of one of those guns.

Finger on the trigger.

Blood surged to her head, made her dizzy with adrenaline and anxiety. She ran for her life, knowing she did, swearing every word she knew and some she’d learned from Silas as she fled into the dark.

She rounded the street corner, out of line of sight of anyone at that broken lot, and for a brief second, relief swamped her.

Only to kick over to pure, stark fear as two men rose from a patient crouch. She skidded to a stop. For a moment, both were as surprised as Jessie was.

Witches? Hunters?

“It’s her!” the younger one said.

Jessie whirled, took three running steps before something wild, something magical lashed at the back of her knees. She stumbled, went down tangled in magic. When she hit the pavement on her knees for the second time that night, she cried out, pain and shock and vivid anger.

“Holy shit.” The voice behind her sounded too damned chipper. The young one. “Don’t move, Miss Leigh. We don’t want to hurt you.”

She sucked in a breath. Let it out on a shaking sound. “I have a gun,” she warned loudly. “It’s pointed at my heart.”

She heard the footsteps behind her still. Quickly, hunched over the comm, she cracked it open with trembling fingers and jabbed in the number she’d memorized.

“Now don’t do anything rash.” The second voice was also male. Older. Soothing, even. Jessie tilted her head to the left, just a touch. Just enough to see their shapes in her peripheral.

Connect, damn it
. “Where’s my brother?” she demanded.

They exchanged a glance. “I’m not—”

“Did I mention I have a gun?” she cut in. She fought the desire to shift, to relieve the pressure from her knees. “Cut the bullshit, guys. I know you need me, so I want to know where Caleb is. If you don’t tell me right now, I’ll kill myself and you can deal with the consequences. I’ll be beyond caring.”

The unit was silent in her hands. Jessie tucked it under her jacket, into her waistband, and prayed its built-in mic was as good as it needed to be.

This had to work. One way or another, she had to let Silas know. Let him get his bloody coven, just as long as she got her brother. That was fair, wasn’t it?

And if she died in the attempt, murdered for some ritual, well. He’d know why.

The young witch circled around her. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t we take you to Caleb?” He tried to sound cheerful. Unconcerned. Failed, but it wasn’t because he wasn’t good.

Jessie
knew
lies. Anger snapped around her like a cloak. A very solid, bolstering cloak. She seized it. Banked it.

Anger was real. It could protect her. Should have protected her from Silas, except she’d forgotten to be angry about his vocation. Forgotten he was a killer as he stroked her in the dark.

“What do you say?” the kid asked, hands spread at his side.

The other man circled the other way.

Shit, shit, shit
.

Jessie was trapped. She jerked her eyes back down the road, back to where the gunfire had stopped. Thinking quickly, she asked, “Caleb will be there?”

“Oh, yeah,” the older man said quietly.

Lightning-fast, Jessie threw the gun to the side. Both men jumped, startled, but they watched the gun.
Yes
. She raised her cuffed hands above her head. “I just escaped from the hunters. They’ll be after me, so let’s go.”

A beat. A moment of wordless glances. Jessie waited, screamed at them to hurry in her head. To grab her and go. Take her to Caleb.

Take them all to Caleb.

The older man reached her first. He was tall, not overly wide, balding with a ragged scar hooked over his cheek. He helped her to her feet and tugged ineffectually at the metal cuffs. “We can’t—”

“I’ll deal,” she said sharply. “Let’s go.”

He nodded, exchanged another look with the younger, sandy-haired witch whose freckles threatened to monopolize his face. The boy gestured.

“Ladies first. After Dawson, I mean.”

Jessie summoned a grin. Teasing. Relieved.
Lie
. “So he’s a real lady, huh?” she asked lightly.

The older man frowned. “Move.”

They did, Jessie hemmed in between the men as they ran down the street. Away from the chaos, the hunters.

From Silas.

Her heart thudded painfully in her chest, in rhythm with her steps as the run eased into a jog. And then a hurried walk off the streets and through back alleys she’d never been through before.

Finally, as the man in front of her slowed, she asked, “How far are we going? My knees are killing me.”

He glanced at her, said nothing.

Ass.

“The catacombs,” the kid said behind her, and caught her as she stumbled over the leaden exhaustion of her own feet. His fingers tightened. “Are you okay?”

Jessie managed a wan smile. “I think I scraped myself up pretty bad.”

“Hang in there.” He let her go, but stayed close. It would have been cute, if Jessie hadn’t already known his motives. Death. Pain. Ritual.

“Old Seattle’s huge,” she said as she tromped across broken, pitted asphalt. She’d already lost track of the alleys they’d trekked through. The streets they’d crossed, carefully, wary for signs of pursuit.

She hoped to hell that comm still worked.

The man in front of her said nothing still, but he occasionally looked back. Checked her progress, her pace. Scowled.

The freckled witch patted her on the shoulder as he moved up to match her hampered stride.

She wanted to kick him.

“There’s a place about two miles in. It’s an old park, or used to be. You can still see signs of trees and stuff, but only weird plants grow in the dark. Mushrooms and slimy stuff.”

“Michael,” the older man warned.

“What?” The kid smiled at her. “It’s not like she won’t see it. There’s this old, faded sign. I guess they called it the Waterline. Used to be real nice.”

Jessie wracked her memory. “I’ve never heard of it. Is that where all of you live?”

“You’ll see it,” the young witch named Michael said cheerfully. Too cheerfully. Too vaguely. “Soon enough.”

“That’s enough,” the older man snapped over his shoulder. “We have to be quiet now.”

Michael put a finger to his lips, rolling his eyes at Jessie, and for a brief, muddled second, she found herself charmed. Truly, delightfully charmed.

His magic clung like cobwebs, and she knew.

He was deliberately trying to put her at her ease. To charm her in all the ways possible.

Clever. Young, and mostly unpracticed, but clever. His focus had to be hidden somewhere on him.

She smiled back, willing to let him think it worked. That his magic had her. Bent her.

They worked their way quietly through the nighttime city, avoiding the carousel. They slid down ladders she’d never realized existed, bolted to the sides of cement foundations. Layer by layer, they left New Seattle behind.

And she prayed the comm stayed on.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“W
ho is your coven leader?”

The young witch in Silas’s grip spit in his face. Warm, thick spittle slapped against his cheek, wet and disgusting.

Silas returned the gesture with a fist to her face, hard enough to snap her head around. To draw blood gushing from her wide nose. “Where is your coven located?” he snarled.

The blond laughed, but it wobbled. The gunshot wound to her abdomen wasn’t going to give him enough time. “Good luck with that,” she managed, and spit again.

This time, blood dotted his cheek. His shoulder.

Swearing, he dropped her. Ignored her scream of pain as she hit the gravel at his feet, crumpled over herself. Naomi rose from her crouch, dirty, tousled, a field bandage wrapped tightly over her upper arm and the bullet she’d managed to acquire in the hail of gunfire.

On the ground beside her, the missionary she’d called Miles cupped his thigh, his uncovered face a mask of sweat and blood. “Bad news, boss,” he said. Pain thickened his voice.

His goddamned youthful voice.

Silas strode past both of them without a word.

“Silas,” Naomi said. Snagged him by the arm when he would have kept walking. “Smith! She probably just ran off in the fighting.”

His heart thundered in his chest. In his ears. Every nerve slammed against his skin. “Maybe,” he said, but shook her off. “Maybe not.”

Naomi sidestepped around him. Heedless of the threat he projected, she got so close to his face that he could see the individual violet starbursts in her eyes. They glinted, sharp as hell. “You going after her, or after them?”

Hell of a missionary.

Hell of a time to push him. Jaw clenched, Silas thrust his face right back into hers. “I don’t have time for your bitch factor to warm up, so back. The fuck. Off.”

Naomi’s eyes flickered. Narrowed. “Fine,” she said, every syllable neatly clipped. “What do you plan to do? How do you plan to find her?”

“Fuck.” Silas turned, scanned the missionaries who helped the wounded. The dead witches whose blood gleamed black and wet in the dim shine of the streetlights. “Fuck!” he snarled again, explosive. Violent. His fists clenched.

Naomi touched his shoulder. “We’ll—”

“Christ!” Silas jumped as his comm thrummed against his heart, a muted buzz. He jerked at his jacket and withdrew the unit. A message. Fear, fury, a goddamned slice of hope made his hands shake as he slid it open. Jammed in the code.

“Silas?”

“Shut up,” he muttered as the unit connected.

Naomi moved around him, gesturing at the two missionaries who strode by to pick up Miles. The man cursed as his leg wound jostled, but Silas didn’t spare him the concern Naomi did.

Instead, eyebrows furrowing, he sucked in a hiss of breath as Jessie’s voice filtered, muffled, through the electronic system. He clenched his fingers on it. “It’s her. I can’t hear it,” he said tightly. “I can’t fucking hear what they’re saying.”

“I know who can.” Naomi strode away, one hand gesturing. “Come on. Let’s go nail your witch.”

His witch.

Silas’s jaw popped as he clenched his teeth and followed.

She led the way across the street, to the safe house complex the Mission must have set up as a launching point. Silas passed a bare handful of other missionaries, men and women he didn’t recognize.

Didn’t bother to meet.

Naomi strode past the complex, past the stretchers carrying dead witches to tag and bag later for ID and toward the large truck parked just by the side. She ignored the cab, but rapped sharply on the trailer wall as she walked beside it.

Silas limped behind her, his throat already closing over the words his brain lodged there.

He knew. Without waiting for the back door of the trailer to open, he fucking knew.

Naomi popped the door and gestured him inside. “Jonas!”

“Hey, sweetcheeks,” floated from the brightly lit interior. Easy, but not cheerful. Welcoming. “I thought you’d be upstairs by now.”

All too goddamned familiar.

Ignoring the tension that gripped him, that raked bitter claws of memory over his mind, Silas grabbed the latch and swung himself inside.

It was like walking into a computer lab on wheels. Electronics lined every wall, crammed into every available space and wired up in ways he’d never been able to understand. Lights blinked, glowed, flickered, wires tangled and connected.

Jonas’s lean form rolled out on a chair designed to fit easily among it all. His eyes widened. Brightened. “Silas!”

Jonas Stone. Missionary. Technical prodigy.

The man who had barely survived when his tech truck exploded around him.

On Silas’s mission.

Jonas grabbed a shelf with the fluid familiarity only time spent on the job gave a man, rolled forward on the padded chair. He was lanky, skinny enough to fit between the shelves and get to anything he needed. His dark brown hair hung too long around his face, and a matching, scraggly goatee shaped his mouth as he smiled. Thin, rimless glasses perched on his nose. His eyes gleamed a muddy green behind them.

The pain Silas read there, the age that reached far beyond the man’s years, clutched at Silas’s throat. Guilt rose like a goddamned smothering tide.

That was his fault.

And here Jonas was, holding out a scarred hand like some long-lost brother. “Hey,” Jonas said happily. “Long time, no see.”

Somehow, with his chest too tight to breathe, Silas managed to say, “Yeah.” His fingers clenched on the comm. “Yeah. A long time.”

Naomi pushed past him. “No time for reunions,” she said briskly. “Jonas, we have a message from a runaway witch, too damned muted to hear. Can you work your magic?”

Jonas shifted his gaze to Naomi, rotated his outstretched hand to a cup, palm up. “For you, beautiful, anything. Let’s have it.”

Silas placed it in his hand. “Jonas.”

“Nope.” The man flashed him a grin, teeth white against his sparse goatee. “Not interested in hearing it, buddy. But if you want to look over my shoulder while I crack this baby, you’re more than welcome.”

Naomi raked her hands through her hair, purple tendrils escaping from her fingers. “Be quick,” she said. “Time’s—”

“Always of the essence,” Jonas said wryly, and put the comm in his lap. He grabbed the shelves on either side, two racks of electronic crap Silas didn’t recognize, and pulled himself back along the row. The tracked chair zipped easily back to the small computer with its mass of bundled wires. He clipped the comm to the computer.

After a long, tense moment, Silas followed.

“Okay, here’s how this works,” Jonas was saying as his long, thin fingers flew over the keyboard. A visual sound wave blossomed on the screen. “There’s a hell of a lot of noise, so if I mute that, frame the main voices . . .”

Silas watched, already lost as the wavelength shifted in length and consistency. Jonas glanced at him, sidelong behind his glasses. “You look like hell.”

He grunted.

“And still your charming self,” Jonas continued lightly, even as his fingers continued their frenetic pace. “Still, it’s good to see you, man. You kicked yourself out for way too long. Ah!” He straightened.

Silas didn’t miss the grimace of pain that shaped the tech’s face as he did.

“Okay, be ready to fall to your knees in awe and worship.” Jonas tapped a key. The message played. Almost crystal clear.

Silas’s hands tightened into slow, angry fists.

Behind him, Naomi muttered, “The Waterline.”

Jonas didn’t look up from the screen as he reached over and switched on a second panel. “All right, searching the databases for any historical references to the place.” The second screen shimmered to life, suddenly filled with miles of scrolling text.

But Silas wasn’t watching it. He wasn’t seeing the computer, or the missionaries around him.

He pictured Jessie’s face.
You’ll take me to Caleb?

Of course. She knew they wanted her for some kind of ritual. If she’d meant to go after Caleb, she could have found any number of ways around it, but no, she let them escort her right into the nest of snakes below the city.

That was the point. That’s what the message was for. To share. To tell him.

He was sure of it. In an instant, he was certain. She was smart.

We can track the frequencies.

His own words to her before they’d gone into the trench. His skin went cold. “Whose comm does she have?”

Naomi shifted. “Hell, could be anyone’s.”

“Fuck.” He bent over Jonas’s chair, one hand braced on the back of it. He tapped the screen where the wavelength all but flattened. It was a pose so familiar, as easy as breathing, that he didn’t think anything when Jonas jerked his gaze up to Silas’s profile in wide-eyed surprise. “What’s this?” he demanded.

After a brief, blinking moment, Jonas shook his head. “The comm stayed on, but they weren’t talking. There wasn’t enough pitch in the frequency to be helpful as to location, but—” The second screen froze, and Jonas grinned. “And that’s why I am a god, ladies and gentlemen.”

Naomi snorted, leaned in behind Silas. “What’d you find?”

As the ambient noise of the comm’s message played on, Jonas highlighted the file and tapped in a few easy commands. A map filled the screen.

“Old-time plans,” Jonas said slowly. Silas peered at it, but it made no sense to his tired eyes. His roiling brain. “Prequake, post–turn of the century. Public works property, means it’s in the ruins and—ha!”

Silas watched the man zoom out, rotate the map, then bring up a second to overlay in lightning-quick succession. “That’s deep,” Silas said grimly. “If they’re going by foot—”

“They could have been picked up,” Naomi cut in. She reached for the comm on her belt.

“Hang on.” Jonas paused the message, then scrolled along the sound wave until it spiked, rippled one more time. He highlighted the visual hump, tapped a key.

“I really hope you’re hearing this.” Jessie’s voice, a whisper so loud that the speakers almost reverberated with it. “We’re headed deeper into the ruins. There’s a lot of tunnels they use, but I can’t figure out—”

“Hey.” A man’s voice, sudden and sharp. “She’s got a comm!”

“Shit,” Jessie hissed. The speakers thudded, crackled.

Silas gripped the back of Jonas’s chair in both hands as Jessie’s muted sound of pain cut off.

The tech tapped some keys, the
click-click
of his fingers all that filled the tense, oppressive silence for a long moment. Then his voice, apologetic. “That’s it. I can’t get anything else out of it.”

Silas straightened so fast, he slammed his head against an outstretched shelving unit. “Fuck,” he hissed. Naomi flattened herself against the shelves as he shoved past her.

“Smith,” she called. “Where are you going?”

He glanced back, saw Naomi already starting after him. Saw Jonas, who very studiously watched the monitor, elbows planted firmly on the bolted desk.

“Silas!” Naomi said sharply.

He jumped from the trailer. “I’m going after her.”

“After her?” Hard on his heels, she grabbed the back of his shirt and jerked him to a stop. “Or after the coven?”

Silas turned on her. Every muscle tensed as she lifted a finger under his nose.

“You walk real careful, Smith,” she said quietly. “You’ve been out of touch for a long time. Now you’re back in New Seattle and don’t you think for a goddamned second anyone’s forgotten.”

Silas’s fists clenched.

“All the successful missions in the world won’t undo that.” A second finger joined the first. “You consorted with a witch long enough to raise eyebrows all over the place. That alone is enough to get you sent back for processing. Give ’em an excuse and see what happens.” Her eyes blazed, blue and purple fire.

The worry in her voice told him she was telling the truth. Protocol stated that a compromised hunter got sent back to the Church for processing.
Processing
, in every case, meant reconditioning. Retraining.

Maybe worse.

It was a highly classified procedure that never allowed a missionary to return to his old Mission.

He met her eyes. “Are you going to turn me in?”

“Don’t make me have to choose,” Naomi replied fiercely, her fists clenched.

You, me, a baby’s
. . . No
.
They couldn’t
all
be guilty.

Silas wasn’t going to take any more of the Church’s bullshit jammed down his throat.

“I’m going after Jessie,” he said quietly.

Naomi’s mouth tightened. “To kill her.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

“No.” Silas laughed, but there was nothing amused about it. Bitter, resigned, even angry, he admitted, “To save her. She isn’t the enemy.”

“Thou shalt not suffer—”

“
No.
”

She reached for the gun holstered under her shoulder. “You stupid—” she began, and the hard set to her mouth told him she wasn’t going to give him the chance.

Silas grabbed her by the injured arm, dug his thumb into the bullet hole. Her voice twisted to a gasp, face turned shock-white. He didn’t have to read her mind to know that her vision probably went the same color as the gun clattered to the pavement. A bullet hole hurt.

It hurt more when a man had his thumb in it.

“I’m sorry,” he said roughly.

Her foot lashed, caught him square in the knee. Swearing, he spun her around, cupped the back of her head and slammed it hard against the trailer. The metal walls gonged.

Naomi went limp in his grasp.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “You always were too good at this job.” He lowered her to the sidewalk, as gently as he could, and checked her pulse. She’d have one hell of a bruise tomorrow, but for now, she’d be safe. And out of his goddamned hair.

He grabbed her comm, spun around.

“Silas.”

He hesitated. Then, because he knew he owed the man that much, he turned again. Jonas hung out of the back of the trailer, one arm wrapped on something inside.

“Don’t,” Silas warned flatly. “Don’t get involved.”

Jonas raised a comm unit in his free hand. His eyes were steady as they flicked to Naomi at his feet. Back to him. “Use mine, buddy.”