Blood of the Wicked (4 page)

Shivering, she straightened from her half crouch. Here and now. She had to focus. She couldn’t afford to be anywhere else but the present.

What she needed was to hit the stairs across the eight-lane highway, climb six levels down, head east to the tenements, and keep to the shadows. If she could lose herself in the squalor of the lower edges, it’d be a done deal.

And now she had a lead on Caleb, if what Silas had told her was true. She didn’t need anybody else’s help to find her brother. How hard would it be to find a coven? “Because that’s the dumbest move ever,” she sighed, blowing her soggy hair away from her mouth. She eyed the steady rush of traffic, gauged her moment, and darted across the first lane when the vehicles thinned out enough to let her through.

She heard him call her name two lanes in.

Arms windmilling, she spared a look over her shoulder to see Silas leaving the alley behind her, murder in his scowl. “What the hell are you doing?” he roared.

Jessie gritted her teeth and leaped through a gap between cars. Before she could get her balance, another gap opened, and she chanced it.

An angry horn blared as the side mirror of a rusted old boxcar tagged her shoulder, spun her wildly. She flailed, staggered into the lights of an oncoming speeder, and swore her life turned into a sudden cliché as it flashed in front of her eyes.

There should have been more to it, she thought, and braced for pain.

Solid arms banded around her chest, jerked her backward. Jessie’s legs spun out. She yelped as she caught tread off the gold trim of the speeding sports car. Silas’s voice growled something in her ear as he wrenched her back with monumental effort, muscles taut against her back, wrapped like iron around her ribs. Somehow, the world whirling in a blur of limbs, metal, and asphalt, he launched them both into the same alley she’d just vacated. Headlights twisted into shadow, the wind slammed out of her lungs, and then there was only broken cement at her back.

Shock filtered through her muscles, turned them to icy liquid as she stared into Silas’s taut, furious face. Dimly she realized that headlights of passing cars grazed over them at too-fast intervals. That the smell of rain-stirred muck and exhaust turned the air to something hard to breathe. Somewhere in the back of her head, a dire warning urged her to get up. Get away.

But her senses were full of his hands anchored on either side of her head, of her heart pounding a staccato rhythm inside the cage of her ribs.

“What,” Silas gritted out, his eyes burning into hers, “the
hell
?”

She licked her lips, tasted salt and the faint traces of acid from the rain. “I thought—”

“Don’t,” he said roughly, and hauled her up by the front of her jacket. He wasn’t gentle as he set her jarringly back on her feet.

Jessie sucked in a breath. “Don’t what?” Anger and adrenaline-scored fear fueled her, made her reckless as she shoved at his rock-solid chest. “Don’t think? Don’t try to escape from some crazy guy who— Damn it, let me go!” Jessie tipped her face up to his and glared.

Soaked to the bone, he should have looked comical. Or at least less threatening. His dark hair lay plastered to his head, tendrils dripping into his eyes as his gaze bored into hers. Lightning and headlights illuminated the alley, painted him in demonic orange and gold. Every line of his body radiated tension. Tension wrapped in rangy, chiseled muscle.

“Don’t,” he said again, the one syllable vibrating with something bottomless and raw.

Jessie’s fingers curled into fists. “Go to—”

“
Christ
,” he gritted out, and caught her face between his palms. Before she could think, react,
breathe
, he seized her mouth in a kiss that left no room for anything else but stark, raw heat.

It was awkward. It was almost painful, with her head half tilted on her neck, her shoulders suddenly flattened against the cold wall. It was forceful and angry and it should have frightened her.

It was like setting a match to dynamite.

Arousal simmered from her lips to a pulsing warmth between her legs so fast, so intensely that she gasped. He swept in to claim that sound, to taste the damp heat of her mouth with a groan every bit as angry as his tense fingers twisted into her tangled hair.

He electrified every soaking wet nerve until she thrummed to life in his hands. Ached under his angry, desperate, demanding assault.

She caught fistfuls of his thin T-shirt, twisted the fabric tighter against the hard expanse of his chest. Dragged the sodden fabric up to reveal hot, wet skin and that amazingly defined muscle.

He fed on her incoherent moan, slid his tongue between her lips. There wasn’t anything refined or gentle about it. He didn’t seduce; he took, claimed, forced his way inside her mouth as if he’d absorb every last iota of heat she had to give. He let go of her head to grab her hips, to seize her close and pull her hard against the undeniable ridge of his erection.

Every inch of her body clamored for more, ached for more of that pressure just where she needed it. She cried out in mingled pleasure and shock.

Silas wrenched his mouth away, cursing. It was a strangled sound, even as his fingers flexed at her waist.

She blinked. Jerked her hands away from his shirt as if they burned. As her heartbeat hammered in her ears, Jessie fought to even her breathing.

What was she thinking?

Obviously sex in an alley, with a man who frightened her. Who tempted her. Who’d kill her if he ever found out about her gifts.
Stupid
.

Jessie tried to straighten, tried to reclaim what ground she’d lost as she lifted her chin, but he didn’t let her move. He caught her arm before any words coalesced in her spinning brain.

A conflagration of arousal and pure confusion gave way to icy shock as cold metal banded around her wrist.

She half turned under his shove, gasped when her other wrist joined the first behind her back. “What are you doing?” she demanded, struggling against the same hands she’d been struggling to put herself into not sixty seconds before.

“Taking you back,” he replied, his voice edged with ice. “Move.”

Fury ignited, a sudden rage of heat that made her shake with it. “You have some nerve.” She wrenched at his grasp. Didn’t care that her shrill voice rebounded off the alley walls around them. “Who do you—”

“You can yell at me later,” he cut in. She stumbled under a hard push to her lower back. “Move it.”

Common sense barely managed to keep her from doing something stupid, like kicking him squarely where it counted. Instead Jessie dug her feet in. “I’m not moving,” she began, and cursed as blue as she knew how when he caught her upper arm and yanked her down the road instead.

Silas didn’t even look at her as he half dragged her beside him. “You are. Now shut up, Jessie.”

Her lip curled. “Fuck you,
Agent
Smith.”

Mouth thinned, he didn’t say another word as he marched her all the way back to the run-down complex. Wet, furious,
handcuffed
for God’s sake, Jessie tried to ignore the way her lips felt swollen in the stinging rain. How they tingled as if she’d pressed them to a live conduit crackling with electricity.

She held her tongue in mutinous silence as he pushed her into the elevator. Didn’t look at him once as she shivered and dripped all over the scuffed floor. She hoped he felt guilty, the miserable son of a bitch.

She hoped he dreamed about the way her body had curved into his.

A flush of embarrassment, of stubborn arousal, clashed with the bitter cold of processed air wafting over her soaked clothing.

“For what it’s worth,” he finally said as he thumbed the lock open, “I’m sorry about this.”

“Yeah, I’m s-sure you are,” she muttered, teeth gritted tightly to keep them from chattering.

In her peripheral vision, she saw his jaw shift. It worked silently as if he had something to say, but instead he just splayed a hand across her lower back and guided her to the bedroom.

He didn’t push. She was grateful for small favors.

Her body hurt like hell.

Shaking back her hair, she stepped again into the plain, cramped bedroom she’d just vacated and tried not to look at the open window. The sheet lay in a sodden pile, and Silas kicked it aside.

She could climb right back out it again.

“Sit,” Silas ordered. He caught her shoulder, forced her to the floor.

The first vestiges of trepidation fluttered in her stomach. “You aren’t—”

“Shut up.”

She did, because she was all too aware of how much man had been packed into the lean frame looming over her. She was all too familiar with the muscle and the speed and the sheer animal grace of him, mere feet from where she stared up at him from the floor.

He wouldn’t kiss her again. He wouldn’t try to hurt her.

Would he?

Jessie bit her lip. Bit it harder when his hands moved to his belt and undid it with a snap of metal and nylon. It hissed free of the denim loops holding it in place. Her gaze leaped to his implacable face, the hard, angry pinch at his eyes.

Fear skittered through her mind. Was he—?

Was this her punishment? Oh, God, was he going to—

“I know you’ll run,” he said. He knelt behind her. She tensed, flinched when his fingers grazed her arms. Metal clicked as he unhooked the cuffs, but he caught her wrists before she could do more than flex in surprise. “I’m doing my damnedest not to treat you like a fugitive, here. Do us both a favor and just stay put.”

“Yeah, well your hospitality sucks.” Jessie held her breath as the callused edge of his fingers rasped against her skin as he knotted the belt around her hands. Then he hooked the other end to the heater behind her. “And this isn’t the warmest— Ouch!” The lead snapped taut behind her as she twisted.

Silas stood again, feature implacable. “You’ve got enough lead to lay down and the belt won’t dig in as much as the cuffs will.” His mouth twisted. “Believe me, I know. So just get some sleep.”

Relief that all he’d done was tie her up suddenly shattered into simmering fury. She pressed her fingers together tightly, twisted them hard. God, she hated witch hunters.

Jessie didn’t dare move. Her heart pounded so loudly that she was sure he heard it as he turned and left the room. The door shut hard behind him.

She counted to ten, taking a slow breath between each number. The metal heater behind her pinged twice, groaned, and spit out air only a little warmer than room temperature. Still, she was grateful as it seeped into her wet clothes. Slowly, so slowly that she was sure she’d go crazy from the effort, she tugged at her wrists.

They snagged on nylon. Twisted tautly. The bastard knew knots. She pulled, writhed, until her skin burned with effort.

“Goddamn it,” she whispered, and sank back against the warmed metal. Her vision blurred behind a press of hot, angry tears, but Jessie blinked them roughly away.

She couldn’t afford to cry, not right now. Once she got free, once she found Caleb and pulled him out of whatever mess he’d landed in, she’d give in and have a good long wailing session.

She exhaled loudly.

Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine what kind of people she’d be meeting with come daylight, and whether she’d survive the encounter. It was going to require every last bit of nerve she had, but she was going to have to lie to a room full of witch hunters and live to laugh about it.

Even if her laughter bordered on hysteria.

God. What had she done to deserve this? What had Caleb done? Was it really just about their gifts?

Was something else going on?

Exhaustion rolled over her in a violent, vision-blurring wave. She shifted, tried to get comfortable, and simply gave in when she couldn’t keep her head up anymore.

It would be morning soon. With the help of these unwilling missionaries, Jessie was going to save her baby brother.

Period.

Chapter Four

S
unlight seeped through the open window. It sliced through her eyelids in a muted shade of blue, an insistent slant that split gentle dreams of maternal laughter and candlelight into waking blindness.

Jessie bolted upright, banged her head against the protruding heater knob, and swore as pain shredded the last vestiges of sleepy comfort. She tried to grab her head and grunted as her shoulders twisted, wrists catching on the belt and her skull ringing.

Shaking her head hard, she leaned back on her still-bound hands and blinked until the stars cleared from her eyes.

A faded blue blanket pooled at her waist, warm from her body heat. “What?” she muttered thickly, staring uncomprehendingly at the faded edge. “With the where?” When had the blanket showed up? Who had put it there?

Silas? It seemed the likeliest explanation—he probably hadn’t wanted his star informant to catch pneumonia and die, after all—but why hadn’t she woken up when he’d entered her space?

Christ, just thinking about him in the same room while she’d slept like the dead was enough to raise the fine hairs on her arms to prickling unease. She shifted, struggling to get her legs under her without her hands to help for balance, and froze as she shifted farther than she expected.

What the hell?

Twisting, she frowned fiercely at the bubbled edges of Silas’s belt trailing on the floor behind her. Bits of seared nylon clung to the inside of the metal bars, evidence of the heat trapped behind the slatted bars.

Some freaking luck. Quickly, Jessie worked her bound hands around her legs. Once in front of her, it was the work of moments to pick the nylon apart with her teeth.

What time was it? This apartment was mid-level, higher than her usual haunts, which meant enough sun to paint the air in muted shades of blue. Judging by the brightness, it was morning. Where were the other missionaries?

What about the damned
meeting
?

She clambered to her feet, alarmed, and barely kept from pitching back to the thin carpet when her body snapped back on agonizingly stiff muscles. “Jesus,” she groaned. She didn’t bother trying to figure out what part of her night she could blame for this one.

Assaulted by a tattooed meathead, jumping two stories, playing tag with cars, sleeping on the floor; she would have laughed, if it didn’t hurt just to suck in a breath. She wanted a bath. Desperately.

None of this, she thought as she gritted her teeth and forced herself upright, could ever be classified as a brilliant plan. God, she hurt.

It took effort, but every step toward the bedroom door allowed her muscles to give a little more. With the grating rasp of synthetic wood on wood, the door opened under her careful, questing tug.

He hadn’t locked it. Was he stupid?

Clouded daylight filtered into the stark living room, left no room for a mote of dust to move undetected, much less a missionary hovering somewhere over six feet.

Jessie frowned deeply. If he’d left her, she was going to—

What? Climb out the window again? Shit. “Agent Smith?” she called, moving stiffly through the empty apartment. She tapped on the bathroom door. “Silas? Are you here?”

The answer clicked into her brain, sudden enough to make her growl a wordless sound of aggravation. Yeah, he’d left her. The son of a bitch had left her.

Now what? As she stood in the middle of the empty room and stared down at the worn, spotted carpet, the same questions clattered around in her head.
Why
had he left her? Wasn’t she part of his hunt? His method to capture Caleb?

Wasn’t she necessary to them?

Or had he lied?

The first inklings of suggestion slipped like oil through her thoughts. Beckoned. She could check on him. See where he was.

See
where he was.

Her fingers flexed in nervous anticipation. Jessie hadn’t used her magic in a long time. Not since her last futile attempt to find Caleb had backlashed on her in a wash of power that had left her nursing a headache for a week.

But Silas was something else. Something less protected.

It could be worth it. Beyond worth it to know what Silas Smith, witch hunter and total bastard, was up to when Jessie wasn’t looking. What the rest of his witch-killing team had planned.

Lie to her, would he?

Disappointment simmered just under her surge of anger. Hypocritical, she knew. She’d done nothing but lie to him from the start, so it wasn’t as if she had any right to complain. Still, she had to admit to a flicker of disappointment. He’d seemed so . . . earnest.

“Oh, come on, Jessie,” she sighed, rubbing at the already fading knot decorating her skull. Of
course
he sounded earnest. He killed witches, the scum of the earth according to his Church keepers. He was pretty damn sincere about that one, wasn’t he?

How many times did she have to remind herself? He’d kill her, if she let him. Determined, she retraced her steps to the bedroom and shut the door. She didn’t bother removing her shoes.

Stretching out full length on the stripped bed, Jessie draped one arm over her eyes, laid the other hand over her heart. It thudded against her palm, strong and sure.

There was a trick, a knack, to unlocking the magic she kept leashed so tightly inside. Once upon a time, she’d sat at her mother’s side when she did this. Both of them had used focus items. Amulets. Candles. Stones. Lydia had guided her, with gentle hands and gentle voice.

But all that changed in a wash of blood. Now Jessie used nothing that would draw suspicion. No inks, no charms. Just herself.

It made her weaker. It also kept her alive. People got jumpy when a girl started pulling out rocks and knives.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she took in a slow, deep breath and counted her heartbeats. Center. She had to find her balance, that quiet place deep inside herself.

The magic flowed through the core of her body. It shimmered, gurgled like a hot spring of power and warmth, and it had taken Jessie years to get used to the slide of it under her skin. Now it thrummed. Eager to be free. Eager to be used.

She pictured Silas in her mind’s eye, shivered when he rose so clearly, so effortlessly stark against the backs of her eyelids. His smile, fleeting and hard, and the way his eyes went foggy when he was angry. When he watched her.

When he kissed her.

Slowly the smooth, cool texture of the mattress faded away beneath her. The shabby room, painted shades of blue and gray in clouded sunshine, became nothing more than a vague suggestion.

She hovered, coalesced, a slip of consciousness that carried her gently, resolutely away from the here and now to simply the
now
.

Silas Smith. Where was he? What was his location?

A single thread pulsed amid the tangle. Shimmered silver.
Silas
. The magic reached out before she thought herself into it. It was easy to follow, a flare in the dark, and she mentally skated over the strange place where all the threads combined.

Reeled when the dark crumbled to burning gold.

He paced the length of a bright room. His long legs ate up the floor, a caged rhythm between each turn, heedless of the sunlight outlining his broad shoulders in fire and light. Skylights yawned overhead, the source of the blinding sunlight that burned into her mind now. Jessie squinted, there and not there, and focused herself. Focused on the room.

Wide, luxurious windows and a room big enough to fit every apartment she’d ever slept in, side by side. In the center, a thick, dark wood table dominated the palatial floor. The damn thing could seat over fifty comfortably, but Silas didn’t sit in any of the ornate chairs around it.

He paced like a snarling animal, as out of place as granite among delicate crystal.

Jessie’s mind raced. They were somewhere topside. Closer to the spiraled heights that opened up to the sky.

That meant wealthy. Beyond wealthy, and if this was Church ground, it was no wonder.

Jessie was as formless as a thought, unable to feel the sun coursing through the ceiling glass or taste the clean air that wafted across the heavy wall hangings. She knew it had to be sweet.

Nothing like garbage and mold, acid and bone-deep hunger.

Silas ignored it all. Of course he did, he’d be used to it, wouldn’t he? His face was a mask of repressed impatience, a chiseled line of annoyance as he rounded on the group of people arrayed around the end of the table.

“I won’t do it,” he said flatly, and the surge of awareness Jessie felt for him sent her pulse knocking in places she didn’t dare acknowledge. Not when she rode the magic; not this close. She gritted her teeth and focused on the room. The people.

On Silas.

“I don’t think you’re being given a choice.” The only woman in the room sounded more than a little amused. She sat on the corner of the table, swinging one heavily booted foot. Back and forth, back and forth.

She was beautiful in ways every dancer Jessie had ever known craved to be. Her hair was black and pulled up into a spiky knot, streaks of violet popping like firelit wine in the sunlight. Metal studs and bars decorated her ears and one eyebrow, thick metal spirals shone at her earlobes. A ring glinted in the center of her overly lush lower lip.

Exotically mixed features combined to give her tilted almond eyes and ridiculously full mouth an edgy appeal. At least some part Asian, maybe Japanese, the rest of her was all attitude.

Recognizable a mile away. Jessie committed her to memory as the woman licked at that thin silver ring. “Besides,” she added, her tone thick with something that felt like baggage to Jessie’s sensitive awareness, “you got more to prove than we do.”

“You called me,” Silas snapped, every line of his powerful body tense.

Another man grimaced. “Naomi’s right, Smith. Despite your past—”

“Come on!” Silas threw up his hands. “You pulled this one, Nai, remember? Don’t lay that bullshit card on me.”

Jessie’s fingers curled into her palms as the urge to reach out seized her.

Stop it
. Get a grip.

The power of the present wasn’t just a viewing screen, not just a video feed. She didn’t know what the Mission could do if she messed up now. If she let the power interfere.

The other man who had spoken had no hair to speak of, older and grizzled. The chair made him look smaller than he was, but there was no mistaking the shrewd intelligence behind his hazel eyes. He tapped his fingers on the polished table. “Can you use the sister to hunt down the boy or not?”

Silas’s fists clenched. “That wasn’t my job. You needed an unknown missionary to bring her in, so I brought her in. You needed someone to ensure her cooperation, I damn well ensured her cooperation.”

“Then where is she?” Naomi’s uniquely blue-violet gaze glinted in the brilliant light. “You do have her, right?”

“She’s sleeping,” he snapped. “Treating her like a prisoner wouldn’t get that cooperation, would it?”

Jessie’s vision crackled. Shimmered like a heat wave under the pressure of her own annoyance. Tying her up was definitely
not
the way to ensure her cooperation, which meant he was lying. Why?

“He can’t do it,” Naomi said, shrugging her shoulders. The vibrant red top she wore revealed gaps of pale skin where it had been artfully shredded. “I should have known—”

“The coven cell in this city has killed thirty-seven people.” The timbre of this man’s voice tore through their collective voices like a foghorn. All three hunters turned, gazes swiveling to the man who sat at the head of the long table. The skin around Silas’s eyes tightened.

Jessie studied the man whose face registered only a quiet, palpable determination. His hair was iron gray and cut close to his scalp, his sideburns shaped along his square jaw to perfection. He was much older than any of them, but the lines around his blue eyes didn’t detract from the sheer force of will that surrounded him like a net. To Jessie’s magical eyes, it was as real as a shroud.

Or a shield. Any witch worth her salt thought twice before messing with a human with this kind of willpower.

She let out a slow, steady breath as the older man continued. “Thirty-seven people,” he repeated. “In one year alone. Caleb Leigh has been personally responsible for five of them.”

Jessie’s body tensed on the cool mattress. Her focus sharpened, taut as a bowstring. More lies. They had to be.

“I’m aware of the facts,” Silas began, but the man who had to be his director raised a weathered hand. Cut him off as neatly as if he’d sliced Silas’s words out of the air with a knife.

“It’s reasonable to assume that the coven has marked every member of the Mission here in the city. You are not a member of this Mission.”

“I don’t think—”

“You are not called to think, Silas Smith.” The way the older man used Silas’s full name set Jessie’s teeth on edge. It dripped with condescension. With pointed arrogance. “If the sister is in league with the boy, then she will know us on sight as well.”

Well, she would
now
. Lying, murderous son of a bitch. All of them. The scene jerked, faded as Jessie’s focus caught on the edge of anger. She scrambled to smooth out the corners, to shut down the adrenaline and fury scoring through her control.

God, she was rusty at this. Her fingers twisted over her chest.

Then every hair on the back of Jessie’s neck rose as the man’s words took on an icy edge. “Therefore, it requires someone alien to this city’s battlefield. You, Mr. Smith. You must use her to retrieve the boy, to bring him to this Mission, and if possible, undermine the stability of this coven.”

Silas’s hands clenched and unclenched as he faced the table. Naomi watched him, a lazy half smile curving her mouth. The bald man worried at a thumbnail, brow furrowed. Only the deep-voiced missionary sat in poker-faced patience.

Jessie watched in taut silence. Would he say no? Would he give her, give Caleb, to them?

Silas looked away first. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll use her to infiltrate the coven.”

“You will remain in contact with your team”—Jessie watched a muscle leap in Silas’s jaw—“at all times,” the leader finished simply.