Blood of the Wicked (9 page)

He touched her cheek. It was the worst thing he could have done.

It was exactly what she needed.

She turned her face into his warm, callused palm and resigned herself to heartbreak for it when he dropped his hand as if she’d burned him. He stepped back. Wordlessly he collected the gun he’d thrown away.

If she survived this mess, she knew it wouldn’t be unscarred.

Jessie fisted her fingers around the ache in her palm. “Let’s get out of here.”

Chapter Nine

“O
ne down for sure.”

Caleb Leigh stared at the pedestal thrusting up from the mossy brick circle. Behind him, the pretty black-haired witch he only knew as Alicia watched him.

“Nick was the first one they found,” she added. Prodded.

He knew all this already. He’d known when he woke up this morning after a fitful few hours’ sleep, and her faintly mocking tone only dragged claws down his patience now.

He grunted a nonanswer.

She took that as invitation and circled around to stand beside him. Like him, her eyes settled on the pedestal. There was something remarkably . . . empty about its hollow slant. “All signs point to one hunter for sure, maybe two. There were a few signs Nick tried to zap whatever hit him, but no other bodies around.” A beat. “Except the one in the circle.”

Caleb glanced at her. “Too dead to be much help,” he said dryly.

She shrugged. “If Kojo—”

“Alicia, she was obviously dead
before
the hunter came,” he explained impatiently, cutting into her what-if. “She only knows what she saw when alive. Kojo’s powers of the dead won’t help here.” Or rather, it would, but not in a way that’d help
him
. He needed the zombie witch’s raising magic well away from the corpse of Delia Carpenter.

After all, she’d died with his secrets fresh in her mind, and his face was the last thing she had ever seen.

Caleb should have cut out her tongue when he had the chance.

Alicia’s bright blue gaze would have scalpeled the skin from his body, if it could. In his peripheral vision, she smiled tightly. “As you say, soothsayer.”

He knew a problem when he saw it. Alicia was the coven master’s pet witch, and she knew it, but it wasn’t enough. She desperately wanted power. She relished the coven master’s attentions, and she bided her time like a cat, waiting for the moment when Caleb would slip up and end up with his ass in the fire. She’d want ringside seats, and he was determined to make sure she never got the chance.

At least for the moment, he was safer than she could ever be. He knew the future; his prophecies were as invaluable to the coven master as gold. That was something Alicia of the sky blue eyes would never harness. Not unless she tore it from his still-breathing body, which wasn’t something she knew how to do.

Few of his fellow coven witches knew how to forcefully transfer power the way he did.

He smiled back at his reluctant ally, knew it for the grim slant it was and didn’t care to mitigate his even tone. “John is dead.”

“How do you know?” He said nothing. He didn’t have to. After a beat, a dull, red flush crept up under her pale skin and she fisted her delicate hands. “Where?”

“Pattern out. You’ll probably find him out in the open.”

She nodded tersely and spun around without another word. He heard her footsteps stalk away, crunching over moss and brick and shattered stone.

Caleb closed his eyes, his chin drooping. John Cunningham had been the closest thing he’d had to a friend. A hard man to get close to. He’d taught Caleb how to play poker, real poker. They played for laughs.

Now he was dead.

And he wasn’t going to be the last.

“Fools,” he muttered.
Morons
. Magical puppets dancing on the end of a very tangled string. He had to make sure they stayed the fuck out of the tiny room with its bloody decoration, and he had to redirect them away from further inquiries while he could.

Delia’s wasn’t the only corpse in Old Seattle, but he wasn’t responsible for them all. Another dead body wouldn’t necessarily lead right to him; it was just another gruesome scene in a tomb that fed on them.

But the Mission’s presence changed everything.

He withdrew a small metal penlight from his pocket and studied the plain black cylinder. How had they found the scene of his crime?

Caleb was not a man who believed in coincidences.

If he could bring the hunter’s name and description to the coven, it’d be another achievement for him. Another fuck-you for Alicia. It’d buy him more time, more freedom, and earn him greater trust from the coven master who guided them all.

It would take a ritual to focus on the greater picture, but as he curled both hands around the metal cylinder, he was unable to help himself from taking a peek now. From tracing the pattern that wove itself around the item, as clear as a mark of ownership to his magical sight.

Caleb had an ace up his sleeve sharp enough to kill. He knew about the Mission tattoos, the holy protection that was just another version of magic—not that the Church would ever admit it.

What they didn’t know was that the seals didn’t matter to his brand of magic. As long as he focused on time, as long as he didn’t touch the hunters themselves with his searching power, the tattoos failed to activate.

Loopholes. They always missed the loopholes, and the future, past, and present of a man was a damned big loophole.

Swallowing hard, Caleb seized the magic.

He expected to see death, to see the determined glare of a witch hunter’s bigoted stare. He wanted a look at the man or woman who killed without remorse or mercy, who beat a man’s head in with raw strength and bare hands.

What filled every sense he possessed sent his heart pounding into his throat.

Jessie
.

Her smile, her laugh. Her skin smeared with blood as she fought fiercely for her life. The sky rained fire down upon her. The water turned bloody at her feet. She screamed.

She screamed his name.

Caleb tore himself free of the vision to find himself on his knees, huddled around the tiny metal cylinder as if it could protect the sister he’d long ago abandoned. Standing water seeped into his pants, soaked into his legs, and reminded him that members of his coven fanned out around him.

They searched for the corpse of their brother.

They couldn’t see Caleb like this. Weakness would beget questions, and questions would cause suspicion to undermine everything he worked for. Shaking, heart hammering, he sucked in a harsh, gasping breath and straightened.

The witch hunter who owned this little tool was going to kill her. One day, someday soon maybe, he’d stumble on her trail and hunt her down, a fragile fox tormented by bloodthirsty hounds.

He knew the scene of her death as if it were carved onto the backs of his eyelids. It was his own prophecy, dreamed a year ago as he slept on the anniversary of his mother’s death. But now he had the face, the name to go with the warning. Now he knew
how
her death would arrive.

Caleb had to make sure she was alive. Time ticked by, too fast, damn it.

He needed to know more. To see more. Could he risk it?

He set his jaw, knowing he had no choice. All the preparations for the Coven of the Unbinding, all the plans and careful maneuverings weren’t going to mean anything if Jessie was just going to be executed anyway.

Caleb had already sold his soul to the coven. He’d murdered. He’d tortured and schemed and made deals with the demons that rode his back, but a man had his limits. His sister was off-fucking-limits.

She had to be.

He turned and strode across the square, leaving the others to sanitize the area.

By the end of his spell, he’d know everything he needed to know about Silas Smith, missionary and murderer.

Dead man walking.

Chapter Ten

O
nce they’d cleared the old city tunnel, Silas pushed the engine for all it was worth. There weren’t any cops this low in the city, and he wanted the hell away from the ruins.

No, he wanted
Jessie
away.

She shifted beside him, her scored hand curled against her chest. “It’s okay,” she began. He shot her a look that telegraphed every icy calm, murderous fantasy he was feeling at the moment. She shut up.

She also looked away, which made him feel even more like an ass than he already was.

That was twice he’d put her in danger. Twice she’d been hurt because of him, because of her goddamned brother and because Silas himself was incapable of keeping her out of trouble.

He wasn’t going to be responsible for her funeral, too.

The truck lumbered through the barren streets and it was all he could do to keep the wheel from coming off in his rigid grip.

As if it weren’t bad enough, as if he hadn’t screwed up enough already, he’d gone and shoved her against a wall in the fucking ruins of a fucking dead city and watched her come apart against him. Around him.

Silas clenched his teeth. Her body had been slick and tight, her voice breathy and fragmented as he filled her. Bent against a goddamned wall.

Gentle, Smith. Really tender
.

But he didn’t goddamned do tender.

“Oh, stop.” Her voice cut through his thoughts like a sharpened knife.

He glanced over, met her eyes. They remained shadowed, dark smudges of exhaustion like bruises at her cheeks, but her mouth curved up. “If you’re scowling because you’re trying to come up with a way to apologize for what we did, save your breath. I’m a big girl.”

“I should.” Silas shifted his gaze back to the road. “It wasn’t exactly—”

“Yes,” she cut in with entirely too much gratification. “Yes, it was.”

“Damn it, Jessie.” He scowled. “You’re bleeding, exhausted.” And he could have gone his whole life without knowing how warm her skin was around the odd bar code tattoo imprinted into her spine.

Or how tight her body was around him.

And how she breathed his name when she orgasmed.

His jaw clenched hard enough to audibly pop.

Her eyes narrowed. She shifted in her seat to face him, old springs creaking. “Wait a minute. Is that your problem? That I was hurt?”

He guided the rattling pickup onto the main carousel and breathed deeply through his nose. It didn’t help. He smelled old leather and rain-drenched woman. Her warm, welcoming scent. His cock stirred; damn it, he wanted her again. Still.

“No,” she decided, shaking her head. “You’re mad you weren’t in control.”

“You’re covered in blood.” It whipped out of him like a fist. “You wouldn’t have even been down there if I hadn’t taken you—”

“Whoa!” Jessie leaned across the cab to shove her face directly into his line of sight. A thunderstorm frothed wildly behind her summer eyes. “Hold it right there, Agent High-and-Mighty. You didn’t
take
me anywhere, I went because I knew where to go and you didn’t.
I
took
you
.”

Silas didn’t like that any more than he liked seeing traces of blood cling to her neck from the hand she cradled against her chest. Didn’t like knowing she was right.

He glanced over his shoulder once, cut across three lanes of traffic, and firmed his grip on the wheel. “This is how it plays out,” he said, low and tight. “We’re going back to the safe house. You are going to stay there—”

“Fat chance.”

“You are going to
stay there
,” he repeated louder, overriding her hot challenge by volume and single-minded authority. His head pounded. “Where it’s safe and where the bastards that peeled apart that woman can’t find you.”

“No.” She straightened her shoulders. Daring, determined.

Jesus. She was going to haunt him forever.

Especially if she died, which was a sure possibility as long as she stayed with him.

“You don’t have a choice,” he said. “If you won’t stay put, I’ll handcuff you to the goddamned bed.”

Her eyes gleamed. “Dare you.”

“
No.
”

She didn’t laugh. Challenge practically screamed from every line of her body as she settled back into her corner of the cab. Watched him. “You need me. I know things you don’t. We’re partners.”

“Bullshit, we’re not partners,” Silas growled, so low that it ripped out of his throat. She flinched, as if he’d reached out and slapped her. She turned away.

That’s right, sunshine. I’m a
total bastard.

He forced his attention to the road. “I’m the agent here, I’m the goddamned one trained to hunt and retrieve and kill.” Her face jerked back toward him, her eyes narrowed to catlike slits. “You’re a stripper, Jessie, you’re trained to sucker men. Don’t ever think there’s more to this than what it is.”

Icy realization crystallized behind her drawn, exhausted features. “You son of a bitch,” she said. Only part was hurt. The rest was pure feminine insult.

Hell, she was spectacular.

“That’s right,” he said tightly.

“Yeah.” She turned in her seat, faced the front again with her arms folded stiffly over her chest. “Well, fuck you, too, Agent Smith.”

Silas swallowed back an angry kick of his own conscience as he set his sights on the windshield and drove them back to safety. The rain had eased to a light drizzle, barely even enough for the windshield wipers he clicked off.

He’d call in someone else to watch her.

As he guided the truck onto the off-ramp, he wondered if he could trust anyone else to do it.

J
essie lasted all of five minutes in boiling, seething silence before she lost the battle with herself. “For the record,” she said tersely, shattering the uneasy silence like a gunshot, “I’ve never stripped in my life.”

His knuckles went white against the steering wheel. “I don’t care.”

“I do,” she shot back. “I worked at the Pussycat Perch as a bartender.”

“You say tomato—”

“
Tomato
doesn’t even
sound
like bartender, you asshole.” Jessie struggled to rein in her temper. Staring at the stacked blocks of tenement housing passing out the window didn’t do anything to make it easier. Images of knocking him on his ass danced across her vision. “I sling beer, but I’ve never slung my body.”
So there
seemed juvenile. She settled for a scathing “Unless you’re planning to leave some money on the table . . .”

The safe house complex eased into view, its dim lights a steady blue-tinged beacon in the lower city gloom. Silas’s teeth clicked together. “Leave it, Jessie,” he said through them, downshifting so fast that the truck dipped.

“
You
leave it,” she shot back, reaching for the dash before the lurching momentum made her kiss it. A car blitzed past them, horn blaring loudly. She ignored it. “You’re the one who—”

A shudder rippled up her spine.

Magic
.

Jessie’s eyes abruptly unfocused, left her blind as the murky lights of the street shimmered.

Power coalesced, tangling like a net spun too fast. She felt it, prickling like needles over her skin,
saw
it with senses that she couldn’t name. She sucked in a breath.

“Jessie?” Silas’s voice, muted as if through a layer of cotton.

Magic spun, invisible but
there
. Tighter, faster, sparking.
A trap
. Right now.
Right, now
. “Go right,” she said hoarsely. “Silas, turn right.”

“What?”

“Now!” Jessie grabbed the steering wheel in both hands. She jerked it, hard enough to fall back into the passenger side of the cab as Silas swore and struggled to guide the careening truck around the other cars around them. The tires squealed with the effort, caught air and listed to the side.

The air scorched white-hot around them. A nanosecond later, Silas stomped on the gas pedal as a ball of fire exploded through the Mission safe house.

Jessie whirled in place, seized the back of the seat. Framed in the rear window, she watched as flames ate at the old brownstone. Glass and wood rained to the street below, sparks and cinders smoldering to smoke on the wet pavement. Debris peppered the surrounding tenements and shattered windows as tires screeched, car horns shrieking in futile warning as fenders collided. Silas deftly guided the shaking truck through sudden chaos.

Lights blazed from nearby windows, doors slammed open as wild-eyed people staggered out to watch the sudden show. There would be casualties. A death toll.

A magical trap. Just for . . . Who? Her?

Silas?

How had she known to
look
?

It took her a long moment to realize she was shaking.

“What the hell was that?”

Jessie stared out the back window as the flames licked higher. Hotter. Hungry. Just fire and heat. The sense of magic was gone. “I—” She what? She
saw
it?

“Jessie.”

She licked her lips, slanted him a sidelong smile. “You won’t believe me.” Truth.

“Try me.”

And the lie. “I’ve lived on my own for a very long time. You learn what to look for, or you end up dead.”

He watched the rearview mirror closely as he navigated through the flickering orange streets. Cars stalled, slowed to watch the carnage, but he didn’t use the truck’s horn. “What did you see?”

Jessie turned around when she heard the sirens blaring in the distance. New Seattle took fire seriously.

God forbid anything happen to the foundation that kept the sparkling glass towers high.

She sighed. “I don’t even know for sure. I just saw the building and something seemed off. Kind of out of place.”

He grunted.

Was it enough? Jessie cradled her wounded palm in her lap. “I figured your security’s tight enough, if something was out of place there had to be a big reason.”

When he only scowled at the windshield, she gloated. Just a little. “I guess that puts a kink in your plan, doesn’t it, Agent Smith?”

That telltale muscle leaped in his jaw.

Gotcha
, she thought. She pulled the ancient seat belt over her chest. “Where to, then?” A beat. “Partner.”

“Fuck.” Silas glanced at the GPS on his dash. “The upper city is the only option left to keep you safe.”

Jessie stiffened. “Topside? With your agents?”

He glanced at her. “We’ve got a suite of offices on the executive levels. It’s considered part of topside, yes, but I can get us both through the security checks without a problem.”

Hell, no. “How do you know it’ll be any safer there?”

He opened his mouth to retort something guaranteed to annoy her, or at least make her life even more complicated than it already was. But then he closed it, surprising her, and said nothing.

Jessie seized the opportunity. “You’re thinking the same thing I am,” she said. “How did they know where the safe house was? Will I actually be any safer topside with all that security?” Where she’d stick out like a sore thumb, watched every moment by cameras and witch hunters and rich people.

No way.

“What do you suggest, then?” he said, clearly aggravated as he rolled his shoulders. “We can’t drive forever, damn it.”

“No, but we don’t have to.” She cast a short, mental prayer that what she remembered was as accurate now as it was then. “Stay off the carousel and head east.”

He frowned at her, clearly unhappy with her direction. “What’s east?”

Witch hunters had their safe houses. Witches had theirs.

At least, Jessie desperately hoped so. “A few years back, I worked for a place called the Pink Beaver.” She shot him a glance, but his eyes remained on the road.

Smart hunter.

“It operated on lower streets than the Perch, a real dive. I met a girl there who slummed it for kicks or something.” Jessie silently apologized to the witch who’d taught her how to blend into the lower city flesh markets. “She set up an apartment for some of the more trouble-prone girls. Said anyone who needed it was welcome to stay until the trouble passed.”

“Nice of her.”

“She was a nice stripper,” Jessie replied mildly, and glanced to the streetlights flicking on along the street. More lights shattered the darkening city around them, red and blue speeding toward the orange glow framed by Silas’s window.

His profile cut a hard silhouette against the lit glass. “Which way?”

Jessie ran the odds. What were her options? Topside, levels above everything she knew and surrounded by witch hunters? Or the safe house possibly occupied by witches.

No contest. She gave him the address.