Lure of the Wicked (21 page)

The voice was pleasant enough, plain. It wasn’t deep, and it wasn’t shrill. Average, polite.

Phin skidded across the hallway, frantically searched for the catch that would release the hidden door. If the man was on the intercom, he wasn’t in the halls. He had to move fast.

“Mr. Clarke.”

Phin froze. Slowly he turned to face the security camera tucked inside one of the beveled curves of the upper wall molding.

“Yes, I see you, Mr. Clarke.”

The security suite. It was the only office that had access to every monitor, every feed.

“You will do me the favor of ensuring that everyone makes their way to the pool area.”

Phin’s heart jumped in fear. “I don’t—”

“I can’t hear you, so save your breath. I shall pass the message for you. Everyone? Everyone,” the voice said smoothly. Loudly. “Mr. Clarke requests that everyone still in the building—and yes, I can see you—gather at the pools. Anyone who does not comply will be made very, very sorry.” A beat. “At least for as long as it takes them to die. I trust I’m clear?”

The intercom hummed, clicked off. Within moments the lobby doors swung open, and Lillian hurried out with Rook and Jordana in tow. She was pale, but she led them with that polished mask of calm she did so well.

“Phin, what’s going on?” she asked.

“The bastard’s in with security.” Which meant his team was either somewhere else in the building, or dead. Swallowing hard, he offered his hand to his mother. “Where’s everyone?”

“Your mother was in the beauty floor gathering a few things,” Lillian said, twining her fingers tightly with his. “Staff is scattered, I don’t know where. Most are gone already.”

Behind her, Jordana looked ill, tears already tracking mascara under her eyes.

“We aren’t going to huddle up like sheep, are we?” Rook slammed a bony fist into an equally bony hand. “We know where he is, why don’t we just rush him?”

“Because he now has the guns,” Phin said quietly. He tipped his head toward the wide hall and the pool beyond. “So in order to get out of here with as little bloodshed as possible, we’re going to be good hostages.”

“That’s—”

Phin rounded on him. He would have stepped closer if it weren’t for Lillian’s restraining grasp, tight on his wrist. “You listen to me,” he said, so low, so taut with menace and tension that it all but vibrated the air between them. “I will not have my family put in danger. The man has threatened to kill anyone who doesn’t comply. If you have any thoughts to play hero and get my people killed, I will stuff you into the nearest maintenance closet right now and leave you until this is over, do you hear me?”

Rook took a step back. “Er . . . okay,” he finally said, nodding. He smoothed down his blazer, nodded again. “Okay, I get it.”

Behind them, Joel stepped into view. “Mr. Clarke, we should go.”

Phin glanced at the masseuse, met his calm green eyes, and nodded. Once. “Can you handle them?”

“I always do,” Joel said with a faint, crooked smile. “Come on, everyone. We’ll all be okay.” He slipped his arm around the wavering Jordana, and after a scowling moment, Rook followed, thin shoulders hunched.

Lillian squeezed Phin’s fingers. “I love you,” she murmured.

“I love you, too.” He smiled at her, matched his stride to hers as they followed the others. “But that’s no reason to get yourself hurt, okay?”

“I just want everyone safe.”

“Me, too.” Phin let go of her hand, looped an arm around her shoulders, and wondered if it would be enough. His chest tight with worry, with fear, he pushed aside the doors and met the impact of half a dozen pairs of panicked, frightened eyes.

Under his arm, Lillian straightened. “Thank you for coming,” she said. “We’ll do our best to make sure this goes as smoothly as possible.”

Steady as she goes.

Phin echoed her posture, her ease of command. “Everyone please stay calm, and we’ll get through this fine. No matter what, just do whatever he tells you. Don’t try to help.” A hard look at Rook. The man looked away. “And please, don’t try to reason with him. You let me do the talking.”

“No, I think I’ll do the talking.” The smooth, plain voice echoed from tiled wall to wall. Everyone turned.

Everyone froze.

The man wasn’t tall, but he wasn’t short, either. Average, Phin thought again, from the top of his thinning brown hair to the shape of his plain features to the tips of his workman boots. Nothing about him would have caught his eye on a good day.

The forearm pressed tight against Gemma Clarke’s esophagus caught his eye now.

She looked so out of place beside him, as calm as a sunflower in the face of a storm. Phin’s throat closed with fear, but she met his eyes and smiled reassuringly.

His fingers curled into fists. Lillian stiffened. Shock or anger, he didn’t know, but he shifted so that she couldn’t rush past him.

Stay calm.
“Mr. Carson, I presume.” It took effort, so much effort not to storm across the tile. To demand. “What do you want?”

The man smiled, showing crooked teeth. Averagely crooked. He pushed forward, one arm snugly around Gemma’s throat as he guided her ahead of him.

To Phin, he moved in a way that seemed somehow familiar. Predatory, cautious.

Phin tensed, every muscle in his body locking as he saw the gun pressed to her back.

Lillian swallowed a sob.

“Easy,” he murmured. He withdrew his arm, guided her to Joel. “Please.”

Joel took her hand.

Phin continued to circle the silent crowd. Deliberately he put himself between them and him. Carson watched him with a lazy, half-amused expression and tightened his grip on Gemma’s throat. “That’s far enough.”

Gemma gagged, her hand whitening around Carson’s forearm.

Phin stopped. “Let her go. We’ll give you what you want, just please don’t hurt anyone.”

“I wish it were that simple,” Carson replied.

The words were right, but his tone suggested otherwise. The man enjoyed himself. Power, Phin thought. Control. It was clear in the avaricious glitter of his brown eyes, in the delight he took in Gemma’s every rasped breath against his forearm.

“If it’s money, just take me to the offices below—”

“Oh, no.” The man smiled. “It’s not money. You have something else I want.”

“What?” Phin raised his hands slowly, spread his fingers to show he was unarmed. “Name it.”

Behind him, Lillian murmured, “Phin.”

“I want the fountain.”

Everything inside Phin’s body turned to ice. His glance flicked to his mother, back to Carson’s face.

The man’s smile deepened. “I know you know what I’m talking about,” he said. “Don’t lie to me.”

“Phin,” Lillian breathed again, intent. He knew what she was saying.

Knew he had no choice.

He took a step closer, holding Carson’s glittering eyes. “If you mean the one in the lobby—”

The man moved like a snake. Gemma hit the tile, sprawled hard, and couldn’t do anything else but protect her face from colliding with the unforgiving floor as Carson stepped in and swung the gun at Phin.

Pain exploded like wildfire behind his eyes, blood filled his mouth. He spun with the momentum, knees cracking as he buckled to the floor.

Carson seized him by the hair. “Don’t lie to me, boy.” Spit dripped onto Phin’s burning cheek. “Don’t ever lie to me, you son of a whore.” He paused, and all at once, the venom eased. Dribbled out like so much oil and smoke.

Terror replaced pain as Phin stared into the suddenly laughing eyes of a madman, and he flinched as Carson chuckled. “Son of two whores, actually,” he said thoughtfully. Amused. “I wonder how they managed that.” He rubbed the mouth of the gun along his cheek, as if he had an itch, and glanced over Phin’s head at Lillian. “Did you hire some guy to lie between you?”

Her shoulders went rigid.

Phin struggled to get to his feet. “That’s enough.”

So casually it seemed almost effortless, Carson twisted his fingers in Phin’s collar, knocked his legs out from under him, and shoved him to the floor again. Phin grunted as his knees cracked on the slate. Choked when Carson jerked his head up.

“Or maybe,” he said, lowering his mouth to Phin’s ear, “they knew their unholy communion would never be sanctified by a mortal man. Maybe they got the very Devil himself to lie with them both. Shove his giant red cock inside their unclean bodies until one of them conceived, you think?”

Rage battered away pain. Across the floor, Gemma struggled to sit up, to straighten. She shook her head, touched her lips with her fingers, and traced the air in familiar encouragement.

I love you
.

He swallowed hard. “I don’t know what kind of fountain you need,” Phin said, struggling with calm as fury licked at the black edges of his control. “But we’ve only got a few.”

Carson went still. He breathed out a short, empty laugh and straightened. “Okay, boy. Okay.” With raw, wiry strength, more than it seemed his lanky body could hold, he wrenched Phin around. His own collar choked him as Carson dragged him back to the group.

The gun pointed at Jordana, who screamed.

“Everyone stays right here,” he said.

Phin turned, watching warily as Carson picked his way toward the locker room again. “I was hoping someone in this heretical blight would be reasonable, but it seems you’re a stubborn bunch. You’d rather people suffer and die. Selfish, unholy bastards.”

Phin wiped at his mouth with his sleeve. “You tried to kill Alexandra.”

Carson smiled. Easy. “And the rich bitch. I knew you could save them both, if you wanted. Which you didn’t, clearly.”

“We did save them,” Phin began, and then sucked in a breath as the gun shifted from Jordana, leveled at Gemma.

“Nah. A real shame, this. I had hoped that the rich bitch would be the one to make you dust off the fountain. ’Specially since Naomi West is that boy’s piece of ass, and they’re related, ain’t they?”

Phin jerked. “You son of—”

“Glass houses, boy,” Carson said flatly, tightening his grip on the gun. “Since even your girlfriend wasn’t important enough to save her own family for, I’m going to give you all a little bit of time to figure things out. Maybe jar your memory.”

Phin struggled to his feet. Swallowed the blood coating his tongue to say thickly, desperately, “I can’t give you what you want!”

“Get to figuring it out,” Carson said with a smile. “Now, you remember what I said. I’ll be watching. Best be fast, though,” he added, and pulled the trigger.

Thunder cracked. Once. Twice.

Screams, shouting, Jordana’s terrified shriek. Someone thrashed in his peripheral vision, struggling to escape the tight knot of hostages clutching each other, but all Phin saw was crimson on sunshine yellow. Gemma’s eyes widened. She touched the center of her stomach, and the shock on her face shifted to sorrow.

To regret.

She folded, slowly, crumpling into a wash of gold and red in the blue-tinged pool light, and hit the floor before Phin could coerce his shaking limbs to move.

He staggered. Sobbing, swearing, he lurched to her side, falling to his knees and ignoring the terrible lance of pain. There was so much blood everywhere. Already more blood than he knew what to do with.

Gemma’s face turned sallow, her lips white as she gasped for breath.

Hands shaking, Phin gathered her in his arms. “Towels,” he demanded, voice cracking. Gemma coughed. Blood spattered his shirt, soaked into his hands until he knew he’d never forget the warmth of it, the wet, liquid slide of it. “Towels!” he screamed.

Rook was at his side in an instant, his shaking hands filled with pool towels. “My God,” he said, his voice suddenly thready.

Joel sprinted across the floor. “I have some basic first aid!”

Lillian’s sobs echoed as she scrambled to her wife’s side, the room’s acoustics bouncing back every wrenching gasp and breath.

“Baby,” Gemma rasped. She looked up, a pale mask of pain. Caught Phin’s shirt in her hands. “Baby, don’t do it.”

“I can’t let you die.”

“I die,” Gemma whispered, her fingers tight in his shirt, “and he doesn’t get anything.”

His heart wrenched. Tears acidic and too hot in his eyes, he sobbed in a breath and gathered her tightly to his chest. She clutched at him. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t do it.”

“Phinneas, it’s bigger than you, and you know it.”

Beside him, Lillian collapsed to her knees. Tendrils of golden hair tumbled around her face as she hovered trembling hands over the bleeding body of her wife. Her lover. Tears tracked silver trails through her once-perfect makeup. “Gem.”

“Lily.” Gemma caught her hand. Brought it to her chest, to her heart. Blood seeped sluggishly from her stomach. Through the towels Joel bunched there. “You have to tell him. Make him see.”

“You can’t die, love,” Lillian said, her smile heart-wrenchingly bright. Encouraging. “You can’t. You can’t leave us, and you can’t take that with you. Who knows what will happen to this world without you?”

“We can’t let him have it,” Gemma rasped, and she choked, coughing. Groaning with pain, she curled into herself. Into Phin. “We can’t let him.”

Phin closed his eyes.

“Clarke.” Beside him, Rook’s voice went sharp. Odd. “Uh . . .”

“Take care of her,” Phin said. He met Lillian’s too-bright eyes, nodded as she touched his face. “I’m going to fix this.”

“Uh . . . Clarke?” Rook said again, and this time he grabbed Phin’s shoulder.

“What?” He spun, scowled at the three people who filed inside through the double doors. Each wore the uniform of Timeless. Two men, one woman. “Agatha?”

Her old chin high, the beauty floor attendant raked the room with hawk-sharp eyes. “Where is the missionary?” she demanded.

Phin growled.

One of the men leveled a bulky handgun at him. He was blue-eyed, tall with sandy blond hair, and he still wore his dishwasher’s apron. Regret shaped his boyishly handsome features. “Sorry, pal,” he said. “You really had a good operation here.”

Temporaries.
He recognized the men now, witches brought in to wait for a chance to escape the city. The Church.

Liars. Traitors.

Agatha’s eyes were faded blue, icy and unyielding as they took in the knot of people, the wounded Gemma, Lillian’s bloodstained hands and clothes.