Lure of the Wicked (23 page)

“I told you,” Silas replied, “I have someone on the inside.”

“Who, what?” She eased the car into traffic, movements stiff. Too fucking much tension. “Who just happens to know everything going on in there?”

“Something like that.”

Naomi’s grip ached on the wheel. “Silas.”

“Yeah.”

“When this is over?”

“Yeah?”

She didn’t look at him, her eyes skimming the tops of the spires looming above the carousel. Smoke boiled like a blight into the sky, black on gray. “Run like hell. Don’t ever let me see you again.”

His laugh choked, half a snort. “Yeah.”

They rode in silence until sirens overwhelmed the quiet. Emergency vehicles blitzed by them on the road. Naomi swore, slammed the pedal to the floor, and overtook them again.

“Racing them might not—”

“Fuck off, I’m trying to beat them there,” Naomi growled, deftly spinning the car between two ambulances and a fire truck. Horns blared, sirens wailed, and Silas clung to the door handle like a little girl.

She slanted him a contemptuous smile as they blitzed through the security checks. Yellow and black roadblocks rebounded off the hood, clattered over the windshield, and sent a security agent diving for cover.

In her rearview mirror, a sec-comp skittered higher into the air, its programming likely set to follow any vehicle breaking protocol. “Company,” she said tightly.

“Let it.” Silas hunkered down in his seat. “It’ll bring more help to the hotel.”

New lights flashed on behind them, quickly left behind as they raced up the carousel. The car ate pavement like it was nothing, tearing through the back entrance and squealing into the parking garage. Dead silence wrapped around them like a coffin as Naomi climbed out of the car, her heart pounding.

The smoke wasn’t as thick here. Yet.

She stripped off her jacket, tossed it over the hood, and zipped the Mission suit to her chin.

Silas checked his comm. “There’s a passage here.”

“I hate this place,” Naomi snarled, lashing out with a foot. The car rocked as the impact echoed through the garage. “Hate this goddamn—”

“Naomi.”

She whirled, scraping her fingers through her hair, and didn’t meet Silas’s eyes. “Where’s the fucking passage?”

“Down here.” The feminine voice echoed from her left. Naomi spun, gun in hand, and aimed at the floor as a section of grating shifted. “A little help, maybe?”

Springing forward, Silas bent to the grate, yanked it hard, and shifted the whole thing away. Metal clanged against stone, ringing desperately through the garage. Red hair gleamed in the dim light as he helped Cally out of the hole.

Naomi tucked the gun back into her holster. Tawny eyes met hers. Narrowed.

Brown eyes. Not green. Naomi’s fingers itched. “Shitfuck,” she snarled. Before the woman could react, Naomi grabbed a handful of that shiny red hair and yanked hard enough to send Cally sprawling.

Except it came off in her hand instead.

Waves of tousled blonde hair slid to her shoulders, and Naomi stared into the rueful, impatient face of Jessie Leigh.

The witch Silas had died for.

Silas snatched her out of the air as she lunged. Shook her hard enough to rattle her teeth. “West!” he barked. His voice bounced from wall to wall.

Jessie raised her hands. “I’m sorry,” she said, but Naomi flung an elbow into Silas’s shoulder.

It dug into the tender muscle of his neck. He only grunted, wrestled her back from the hole, and slammed her back down on her feet. Hard.

Her ankles tweaked a warning.

“That’s enough,” Silas snarled.

Naomi thrust her face inches from his. “You son of a bitch. You’re still—”

“Gemma Clarke is dying.” Jessie’s calm intensity wrapped around Naomi’s brain and squeezed. Hard.

She whirled. “What?”

“Do I have your attention now?” Sympathy filled her golden brown eyes, edged with something fiercer. Something Naomi hadn’t recognized the first time they’d met.

Raw determination.
Dedication
.

Fuck. She pushed away from Silas, shrugging off his large hand in disgust. “How?”

“The missionary shot her. I can take you there.”

Naomi glanced at the yawning hole at her feet. “Through there?”

“He hasn’t figured out all the halls,” Jessie said, nodding. “But time’s running out, Miss West. He’s set fire to the outlying wings and the others can only work so fast.”

Naomi’s smile cut. “Others.”

“The witches not part of the coven,” Jessie replied quietly. “We’re all fighting them. It’s not pretty.”

Pretty. Fuck pretty. Naomi slammed her gun back into the holster. “Take me in.”

Silas shifted. “I’ll—”

Jessie put a hand on Silas’s chest. Palm to heartbeat. Naomi flinched, turned away as something raw and emotional filled his face.

The same emotion mirrored in the witch’s expression.

“You need to go find the others,” she said quietly. “The accused witches and supporters Phin tried to evacuate are trapped in the basement, you need to find them and get them to safety.”

Silas scowled, catching the nape of her neck as if it would make his point that much sharper. “I’m not leaving you,” he said roughly.

Jessie’s laugh was as smoky as the hand on his cheek was tender, and Naomi’s shoulders stiffened.

He loved a goddamned witch. A
witch.

And if it was the kind of spell the Church swore it had to be, she’d carve off her own tattoo and eat it. Goddamn him.

“I’m not alone,” Jessie said softly. “Naomi will protect me.”

The look Silas slanted Naomi should have gutted her where she stood. She lifted her chin, refusing to look away.

Silas let out a hard sound. Frustration. Resignation. “Be careful,” he said. Pleaded, damn him. “Sunshine, you be careful. Promise me.”

“It’s not my fight, remember?” Jessie eased up to her toes, kissed him with all of that raw passion and something so much softer. Gentler.

Naomi couldn’t watch. Not this. Not while Silas held a witch close, kissed her as thoroughly as Naomi had ever known a kiss to be.

Jessie touched his face, so sweetly, and then jerked her head at the hole. “After you, Miss West.”

Silas’s fists clenched. “I love you.”

“I never liked you,” Naomi shot back, and couldn’t help a fierce surge of amusement as he made a rude gesture in her direction.

Behind her, Jessie laughed. “I love you, too,” she whispered. “Go do what you have to.”

“Thirty minutes,” he said fiercely. “Thirty fucking minutes, not a second more or I’m coming in after you. You hear me, West?”

“I hear,” she muttered, and stepped into the hole. The instant Naomi sank into the gloom beneath the parking garage, she knew it wasn’t going to be as easy as that. Smoke curled around her chest. It ghosted around her with every motion, burned her nose and throat.

Jessie landed behind her, shoes scraping against the concrete flooring. “Gemma needs you first.”

“Where’s Phin?”

The witch pushed past her, clicking on a flashlight that shattered the dark. Tendrils of gray curled into the beam. “Gemma first,” she repeated.

“God damn it—”

Jessie turned, the flashlight beam suddenly stark in Naomi’s face. She swore, her night vision shattered, and couldn’t see to stop it when Jessie’s hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of her collar.

“You listen to me,” Jessie said tightly, her voice a lash of tightly leashed fury and pain. “Fifteen people are dead. Do you understand that? Only eight of them were caught in that fire, and we’re not counting the witch you killed.”

Naomi seized the thin wrist under her chin, but she didn’t use it. Didn’t twist her grip and send the girl flying.

Maybe it was the passion.

Maybe it was the tide of regret, of focused rage welling deep inside.

“I hear you,” she said quietly. “Yeah, I get it. I’m going to kill Carson, don’t you worry about that.”

“That’s not the part that worries me.” Her fingers loosened, and Naomi let her go. “I really wish you’d been quicker on the uptake.”

“Fuck you. If you know everything—”

“I don’t.” Jessie turned, once more following the narrow hall. “But what would you have done if I’d come to you and said, ‘Hey, if I point out a group of people and call them witches, can you lock them up for me?’ ”

Naomi opened her mouth, hesitated. Her fingers curled into her palms as she admitted grimly, “I’d ask all sorts of questions.” She frowned. “Jesus Christ. Just lead the way, princess.”

“Funny, Miss Ishikawa.” Jessie’s tone flattened as the flashlight arced through the smoky shadows. “Who’s the princess now?”

Naomi ate that one. Fucking fate.

They walked in silence, following turns and bends that Naomi couldn’t place. She didn’t know where they were. Where they’d come out of. Finally, tired to death of staring at the faint luster of the light on Jessie’s gold hair and sage green uniform, Naomi broke the silence. “How the hell do you know about these tunnels?”

Jessie’s eyes gleamed as she glanced over her shoulder. “Spatial awareness.”

“Bullshit.”

The woman sighed briefly. “Didn’t your last director tell you guys anything?”

Naomi’s jaw locked. “Apparently not. Peterson’s notes didn’t seem out of the ordinary.”

“Your new director must be having a field day,” Jessie said wryly. “I know about this stuff because I see the present.”

“See—?”

“The present,” she repeated. “Anything going on right now, anywhere in this city, country—hell.” She sighed. “Some people see the future, right? I see anything happening right now anywhere in the world. And without setting foot outside my door, if I wanted. It doesn’t stop.”

“Holy fuck.” A witch with that kind of power? Naomi gritted her teeth.

For the moment, she had to trust this witch. Was she fucking surrounded by them?

“Shh.” Jessie clicked off the light. “It’s here somewhere . . .” Naomi waited in the dark as the other woman ran her fingers over the plain, faceless wall. Beams shifted. Dust and smoke swirled.

“Here.” She paused. “Naomi, it’s not good.”

“Just open the fucking door.”

A seam of light split the smoky darkness. Naomi surged past Jessie, threw her weight against the panel. It sprang open, slammed against the wall, and rebounded into her shoulder.

She didn’t care.

All she cared about was the ring of people staring at her, eyes wide. Two held guns.

There was blood everywhere.

“Gemma.” Naomi ignored the guns, ignored the gasps of fear, of surprise. Of recognition. “Jesus, Gemma!”

Two of the men held a gun, each in the Timeless uniforms. They shifted, reached out to stop her from getting past the crimson stains on the floor.

Naomi’s level, murderous challenge forced one to reconsider. The other leveled a gun at her head. “Don’t move,” he ordered. “Please.”

“Let her—”

Too fast, too reckless, Naomi palmed the gun and wrenched it, twisting his fingers. Bone grated against metal. He yelped, squawked in fear and alarm as she caught his wrist, turned, and stepped into his wide open stance as he struggled for balance. She jammed an elbow hard enough into his throat that his shout turned into a gurgle.

He collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath.

Naomi holstered the gun into the waistband of her jeans and met Liz’s narrowed stare. “—come in,” she finished with a muttered snort. “That wasn’t necess—”

“Get the fuck out of my way,” Naomi snarled.

Maybe it was the unbridled impatience. Or the sheer lethal promise Naomi didn’t do anything to mitigate.

Maybe it was Jessie’s wild signal in her peripheral vision.

She stepped out of the way.

Rage guttered. “Gemma.”

Phin’s mother was too pale, her skin gleaming with sweat. With streaks of blood. She lay on her back, her curls stuck to her forehead and cheeks. Naomi could clearly see her veins underneath her fragile, translucent skin.

Could see her lungs rising and falling in shallow, gasping breaths.

Dying in Lillian’s arms.

Naomi sank to her knees beside the stiff-lipped woman, smoothed her hands over Gemma’s damp cheeks. “Fuck.” It was all she could say. All she could think as Phin’s mother bled out around her.

Gemma’s paper-thin eyelids fluttered. Her hands rose, bloody, grasping. “Naomi?”

She caught them, held tight. “I’m here,” she said tightly. “I’m right here. Did Carson do this?”

“Doesn’t—” Gemma coughed, cringing with the pain that Naomi knew must fill every part of her. Burning, eating. Draining. “Doesn’t matter,” she managed. “Need . . . you.”

“I’m here. Where’s Phin?”

Gemma’s smile was weak. Her eyes glittered, feverishly bright into Naomi’s. “White . . . knight. N-Naomi. You must . . . take it.”

Around her, Naomi dimly registered gasps. Mutters.

Questions.

Jessie eased around the circle, a thin, fragile point of awareness in Naomi’s peripheral. She watched her, watched Gemma, and her expression told Naomi what she’d already known.

The woman was beyond help. Gut shot.

Tears balled in her throat. “Take what?” she asked, her voice cracking. “What can I do?”

“The fountain.” Gemma’s fingers tightened. Hard enough that Naomi’s bones ground together, that pain rippled to her elbows. “You’re . . . right.”

“Right?” Naomi shook her head as the first tear trickled over her cheek. “I don’t want to be right, Gemma, I want you to get up off this floor and—”

Gemma’s laugh cut her off. It wasn’t the bitter, broken laugh of a woman dying. It wasn’t the angry surge Naomi expected of anyone gunned down by a bastard with a grudge.

It gentled. Brushed over her like a caress.

Sweet. Loving.

“I know you’re right,” she whispered. “Phin . . . knows you’re right.” Naomi’s heart twisted. “Take the power.”

Her eyes widened. “The what?”

Gemma’s closed. “Take it. Protect it. Pl-please.”

“Naomi.”

She looked up from the shiny, twisted mask of effort on Gemma’s pallid face. Jessie met her eyes, her gaze vibrant gold and shimmering with regret.

“She’s a witch.”

Naomi’s hands jerked.