Blood of the Wicked (20 page)

Beside him, Jessie raised her head. He didn’t have to see to know her eyes were fixed on him. Her ears on him. He lurched to his feet, staggered a few paces away.

“Silas!” Jonas’s voice had always been a fine tenor, easy to distinguish on the electronic feeds. Now, with concern etching every word, he said, “Where the hell are you? We’ve had teams combing the trench for hours.”

Every damn syllable kicked him in the chest. Silas closed his eyes. “Naomi reached you, then.”

“Come on, Silas.” His voice edged. “Don’t pull that same crap on me—”

He wasn’t going to deal with it now. Later, Silas promised himself, and cut in sharply, “Has Naomi filled you in?”

A pause. “Yeah,” Jonas said, and laughed. “Christ, it’s great to hear your voice, man. Now, where are you?”

Great to hear his voice? To work on his so-called team? The guy was out of his goddamned mind. “I’m on my backup,” Silas replied. “Track it. Papa seven delta delta one.”

“On it. How much juice on that thing?’

Silas checked the screen. “Half a bar left. Send a ladder, we’re still in the trench.”

“Right, we’ll be there in an hour.”

He checked the sky, saw nothing but black, and rubbed his lips with icy fingers as he said grimly, “You better shorten that. We’re on borrowed time out here.”

“You got it.” In his ear, Jonas called out orders to a crew Silas didn’t hear, before focusing back on the mic. “We’ll be there in— Cripes, Naomi! Okay, hang on—”

Silas flinched as the earpiece rattled, obviously changing hands. “You still with the Leigh girl?” Naomi’s voice filled the line, clipped down to the quick.

He frowned. “Yeah, she—”

“Sit on her,” Naomi ordered. “We got the blood back from the lab. Your piece of ass is a witch.”

His blood froze, sharp as glass in his veins. His fingers tightened on the comm as he said, very softly, “Explain.”

“One sample tested positive at the scene we cleaned up,” Naomi said, sounding as if she skimmed the salient points from a report in front of her. “We got a hit off the bandage you put around Jessica Leigh’s skinny neck.”

Everything inside him struggled to deny the claim, to toss the goddamned comm into the icy river and drown Naomi’s matter-of-fact smugness. He didn’t.

Because it all made sense. Like a piece of the puzzle, it clicked.
Snick
. Brother and sister witches weren’t uncommon. Her running from job to job, home to home, her easy lies. The witches that kept finding them. Trying to kill him.

To take her. A front.

He didn’t turn, didn’t look at the woman who’d lied to him, played him from the start.

Stiffening his shoulders, Silas’s voice flattened as something bitter and frigid seeped into his chest. Around his heart. “How strong?”

“No way to tell from a fleck of DNA, but I’d guess about on par with her brother.”

Shit. Shit, fuck, shit,
shit
.

Had she been watching him the whole time? Laughing at him as she led him on a merry goddamned chase? As she let him into her body? Thinking with his dick. Fuck. He’d done just that.

“Silas.”

He cut Naomi off. “I’ll be ready.” He cut the connection, slid the comm closed with careful, precise fingers. No longer cold, hell, barely even aware of the chill as rage ate at him from the inside, Silas turned and slowly made his way across the rock ledge.

Jessie huddled where he’d left her, her cheek pillowed on one knee. In the shadows, he saw the mottled outline of the bruised gash at her temple. Saw her mouth curve.

Heard the concern, her damned fake concern, as she asked, “You all right? That sounded terse.”

“Fine.”

She lifted her head at his icy tone. Her eyes narrowed. “Hey,” she began, only to uncoil as he stepped closer. Menace, fury, duty all roiled inside him. Conspired to hide the hurt. The denial.

The fear.

“Get up,” he said, and grabbed her by the collar when she didn’t obey fast enough.

“Silas?” Fear made her voice shake, but he ignored it. She should be scared.

Goddamned murderous witches should be scared of the Mission.

She struggled, but she was numb, too cold, and he was stronger in his rage. She cried out sharply when he spun her around, shoved her face first against the rock wall. “Everything,” he gritted out, planting an elbow squarely between her shoulder blades to keep her still. “Everything you told me was a lie.”

She sobbed in a terrified breath, but she didn’t struggle now. She pressed her palms against the broken rock, fingers splayed. “Silas, I—”

“No.” He didn’t care. He didn’t want to hear more. Roughly he stripped the ribbon from the end of her braid and pulled the tight bow loose with his teeth. She gasped when he yanked her hands behind her back.

And only hung her head as he looped the ribbon around her wrists and knotted it tightly. “You’re hurting me,” she said, so softly he almost missed it under the constant rush of the trench river.

He bared his teeth. Ruthlessly stomped on the pity, the guilt, that tore jaggedly through his anger. “Witch,” he growled, and spun her around. Her shoulders hit the wall, bracketed by his arms as he braced both hands on either side of her head. “I should have known it when you called Naomi by her last name. I’d never told you that.”

Her eyes met his, glittered defiantly.

Tears. Christ. Of course, tears.

Silas clenched his fingers into the stone, muscles rigid with strain. “Don’t try it,” he snarled, inches from the face he thought he’d known. And to think he’d been so suckered. She’d used him, lied to him. “What was the plan?” he demanded. “Lead me right into the coven and let them kill me?”

Her eyes widened. “No!” A tear spilled over her lashes, a trail of silver in the dim light. “Silas, please—”

“You’re the reason those goddamned witches found us every time, isn’t it?”

“No, I wouldn’t—”

“Save it, Jessica.” He curled his lips into a sneer. “You used me.”

Jessie flinched.

And it was all the answer he needed.

He pushed away from the wall, turned his back so suddenly, so furiously that she staggered.

But he didn’t help her this time.

She straightened. “You’re so fucking hypocritical. Don’t tell me you weren’t using
me
,” she shot back, and he said nothing. Knew it was true, and said nothing. Fists clenched, he counted to ten. To twenty.

Counted to fifty before the blinding rage lessened. Before he could look at her again without wanting to draw back his fist and—

“I wanted to tell you.” Her voice, pitched low in the dark, trembled. Silas closed his eyes. “You made it clear you’d kill every witch you met. Anyone who had that blood type. Me, you, a baby.”

He shuddered at her words, thrown back like a knife between his shoulders. He turned, angry curses thick on his tongue, and couldn’t do it. Couldn’t stand to hear her. Couldn’t fucking listen.

She sat huddled against the wall, head tilted back, eyes open, staring at the black void above them. “If you just—”

“Enough,” he snarled. He knelt in front of her, jerked her forward so he could ensure the makeshift rope remained tight, that she hadn’t found a rock and sawed through it. Knowing her, she probably planned to jump into the water.

“The nearest city is at least a week away, on foot,” he said tightly. “I don’t suggest risking the river.” Her face jerked away from him, her loosened hair falling like a golden curtain over her face. “You’ll be back in Seattle soon, and you can talk all you want to people who care. I don’t. I’ve had enough of your lies.”

“They weren’t all lies,” she said wearily. She tipped her face back up toward his. It was too dark to see, but he knew exactly how close her mouth was.

What it would taste like.

“Silas, I wasn’t lying when I realized I love—”

“
Don’t
.” The word ripped out of him, tearing loose on a guttural roar. It echoed the pain radiating from his fist as he punched it into the wall by her head.

She froze. Her eyes enormous pools in her too-pale face, she barely breathed. Bone-deep wariness shaped her expression, and damn it, it twisted in his gut. Ruptured every weakened link of control he had left.

With a soul-wrenching groan, Silas caught her head in his bloodied, aching hand and crushed his mouth to hers.

She didn’t struggle. She should have struggled, should have thrashed and shoved and tried to say no.

Instead, her breath hiccupping on a sob, Jessie’s mouth opened under his, cool and sweet and demonstrative in ways no words could say. She met his thrusting tongue, matched his anger with her own. Pushed back, but not to get free. To get more.

Silas staggered away, left her to find her own balance as she fell back against the rock wall and stared at him. Her face was pale in the shadows, intent. “You tell me,” she panted, “if that felt like a lie to you.”

Pride, anger, uncertainty. Silas wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Felt a hell of a lot like every stripper I’ve ever met.”

Her mouth opened. Closed.

Flattened into a thin line.

The betrayal he read in her eyes told him he’d scored a direct hit. He spun around, stared at the black water, and choked back the rage that threatened to overwhelm him. She’d lied to him. From the get-go, she’d looked him in the eye and promised to help him find her brother.

Brother and sister witches. The whole goddamned branch was rotten.

Why hadn’t he seen it?

Because, he thought viciously, he jumped the gun. Again. Trusted what he saw. Easy in, easy out.

Fuck
. Silas waited for the Mission rescue crew, his impatience barely leashed. He watched the dark lengthen, deepen. And pretended not to hear her muffled tears.

Chapter Twenty-One

G
od damn him.

God damn them all.

Caleb crouched in a tattered ring of books and paper, most pinned by broken stones he’d found in reach. He rested his elbows on his knees, fingertips pressed lightly together, and stared at the jumbled array of letters. Of pictures.

Of the last vestiges of a fading hope.

He’d been cocky. Damn it, he’d been arrogant.

Caleb had been so sure, so
fucking
certain that he’d finish the ritual in time. That he’d find a way to break Curio’s hold on the coven before it came to this.

He was so close. Even now, Caleb could taste the last, sweetest current of power he hoarded. The heart’s blood magic he’d stolen from the bodies of his chosen made him stronger, and he’d managed to harvest it without the coven suspecting. So far.

He’d used too much to overcome the missionary’s protective seal, but time was too short. He couldn’t risk hunting again.

So fucking close.

Jessie had gotten in the way, and as Caleb flicked his eyes from one worn page to the next, he knew he’d lost the opportunity. He couldn’t make a move first. Had no ability to make a move now. He was going to have to wait until Curio was too invested to hesitate.

It would cost Caleb everything.

He raised his head, pushed back his too-long hair from his forehead. The scene around him was one of untold chaos. Destruction. Forgotten ghosts and crippled dreams. Torchlight danced in a circle of orange flame, raked unforgiving fingers of light over the twisted husk of a park entombed beneath layers of neglect.

Jessie had pushed it all too fast. Forced him to anticipate her, deal with her meddling when she should have stayed away.

He’d
told
her to stay away.

“Soothsayer?”

They’d come up behind him, slowly crossed the broken terrain of the ruined park while he stared at the faded words spread at his feet. Now they stood at the edge of the mottled pool of stagnant water, probably unwilling to test its murky depths. He turned his head, just enough to give them his profile.

The hard slant of his mouth.

“Sir,” the girl said. Maybe fifteen. She tucked her hands under her armpits to keep her dirty, raw fingers as warm as she could. “We have an order from the master. For you,” she added quickly. “If that’s okay?”

An order. Fuck. From Curio.
Fuck
.

“I’m not going to hurry preparations,” Caleb said flatly. “If it’s anything to do with speed, even the master can be patient.” Although he was sure both witches were too young, too unskilled to know more than a few parlor tricks, he used the toe of his boot to nose the book closed. Nudged it over the sheaf of dirty papers.

Just in case.

“Oh.” The girl’s eyes rounded, huge as boulders in her too-thin face. “Oh, no, it’s not that.”

The boy beside her, gangly and awkward, muffled a snort behind hands equally as dirty as hers. It was a rough life, living in the lower city. Scavenging the catacombs and hoping to find something to trade for food, for a bed.

It had always been a rough life, living as a witch.

Caleb’s jaw tightened. “Spit it out.”

“I-it’s just that—” The girl gestured. “They have a lock on your—um, on the—um.”

He wasn’t going to help her. No pity. No fucking weakness. In his peripheral, she gave the younger boy a wild, pleading look.

Which he was too busy snickering into his hands to see.

Caleb unfolded. Slowly, knowing they watched his every motion, he turned in place to levy a flat, patient stare at them both.

The boy dropped every trace of humor. It practically drained out of the soles of his worn sneakers. Young, but his instincts were sharp enough to spot a threat from a dead pool away. Caleb’s fingers twitched.

“I’m sorry,” she said hastily.

“Speak your piece, then go.”

She blanched. “The master sent word that your sister’s been found. He needs to know how your preparations go,” she said, so fast the words ran together. Her freckles stood out in stark contrast to her bloodless skin.

But she didn’t look away.

Caleb gave her credit. She didn’t run.

Maybe she’d make something of herself. Someday.

If she didn’t die in the Church’s fire, or kneel to slit some human child’s throat in a greedy bid for power. Caleb’s hands tightened into slow, tight fists. “Time frame?”

“He said that depends on you, sir.” She swallowed, her throat working noticeably. “He—he said to tell you that if it took too long, he’d come personally to . . . to find out why.”

And showing up personally, seeing the progress Caleb hadn’t made in the few hours he’d had to sweat and study and pray, meant the end of everything.

So which achieved more?

The sister who’d dragged him from shithole to shithole, taught him to lie, to feast on scraps? To survive in a city that feared him?

Or the coven? The coven whose power steadily climbed, whose fingers twisted through every current of the abandoned city. Whose control could one day thrust upward to the sparkling peak of the City of Glass.

“Sir?”

The city of magicians and fools.

Caleb studied his hands, the dirt crusted under his ragged nails and the calluses this city had whipped into him. Studied the twine wrapped around his wrists, gray, yellow, and black. All dulled by grime, by time.

They matched cords he wore around his neck, hung with raw flakes of amber and gray labradorite to keep him shielded. Jade to keep her blind.

And the worst. Flint, white flint to sever the bond.

“Caleb?”

He snapped his gaze up, narrowed his eyes. “Fine. Bring me Jessica Leigh.”

They turned, ran before the last syllable could fade in the tomblike stillness of the old park. Caleb heard the boy’s fearful, muffled voice as they faded into the dark.

He made a mental note to ensure neither was at the ritual as he unfolded his old pocketknife. They weren’t faces he recognized, which meant there was hope for them.

If they survived the night.

He set the serrated edge to the cords at his wrist. One twist, a jerk of sharp edges and muscle, and the choice was made. While there was no visible sign, the magical wards twined into the string unraveled.

Grimy cords fell to the warped cement. Another slice, and unshaped beads clattered to his feet among them. It was as imperceptible as a sigh, a release of power and protection. He wrapped his fingers around the jagged, chipped edge of white flint around his neck and closed his eyes.

No spell, no magic or healing chant, would make this hurt less. He’d always been close to his sister. They’d shared laughter and tears, the pain of their mother’s loss and the fear of the hunts together. She had always had the uncanny knack to find him. She knew when he hurt, and he’d known when she cried. She’d cried so much the first days of his absence.

But the flint had kept her safe. Kept him from going steadily crazy in the vortex of her emotions.

A man like him didn’t deserve the choice. If he was going to go through with this, he was going to deal with every last moment. He’d know what she felt.

Remember it forever.

Grip tight, he pulled on the cord until it snapped in the strained quiet. Just as deliberately, mechanically, he dropped it amid the small pile of what had been, until this very moment, the only protection he’d ever had against his sister’s senses.

For a long moment, Caleb scowled at the frayed cords and worn beads. This was the choice. A sister’s life was fleeting, wasn’t it?

But a coven could stand forever—
this
coven could stand forever. He couldn’t let that happen. No matter what.

Swearing violently in the slant of light, Caleb drew back his foot, viciously kicked the pile with everything he had. Everything he didn’t dare show the others.

Everything he wished he didn’t feel.

Beads scattered over the standing water, sent ripples stretching, reaching. The thin threads touched the surface, clung for a brief moment, and darkened.

He moved to gather the papers before the last thread sank from view. There was a ritual to begin.

A witch to sacrifice.

And time was too fucking short to hesitate now.