Dark mission 04 - Sacrifice the Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  “I fail to see the relevance,” she said, wrenching at his grip.

  “God damn it, Parker, I’m trying to explain!” He glared at her, stared down at her too-white face and felt like a fool. But he had to try.

  She had to hear him. He had to make her understand. Had to.

  “Juliet’s name was Eve. If that syringe came from Mattie, then it carries the Eve sequence. Don’t you see? You can’t tell Kayleigh—” Her eyes flinched. He verbally stumbled, caught himself and finished grimly, “You can’t tell her where it is. Tell them. That sequence will give Lauderdale everything he wants.”

  “He already has everything he wants,” she spat.

  Maybe. “But he doesn’t have you.”

  He watched his words strike home—saw it in the sudden way her nostrils flared, as if he’d scored a hit. Drew blood.

  So it wasn’t fair. Fuck to fair.

  He pushed on, doggedly. Desperately. “Mattie had the opportunity to give me the data. She didn’t then. Maybe she knew I wasn’t ready to turn, not all the way. Maybe she knew the time wasn’t right. I don’t know. She killed herself instead.” And it cost him to watch her do it. He couldn’t do it again.

  “How could the time be wrong?” The question ripped out of her; so much anger. So much pain. “How could it be any more right than before —” Her teeth clicked together so hard that he felt the aftershocks in her body.

  Simon flinched. “If Lauderdale gets that code, there will be no stopping his army. Mattie wanted me to fix her mistakes, not add to them.”

  “All you want is that syringe for yourself,” she threw back. “You’ll say anything, Simon. Whatever your end goal is, you’ll throw over anyone to do it. I’m not like you.”

  How could he make her understand? His fingers tightened on either side of her head. Spasmed with the force of it, of the wild storm of emotions unleashed under his skin. His heart.

  “I know,” she said quietly, her eyes bright. Too bright. Too many secrets too dark. “It’s the only thing that can save your life.”

  “Fuck my life.” Her eyes widened at his near roar, and she wrenched her face to the side as if she’d escape him just by shaking his gaze. Simon wouldn’t let her. Couldn’t let her. Forcing her to face him, his fingers digging into her jaw, the side of her head, he met her furious gaze with his and growled, “It’s not about my survival anymore.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Believe what you want, but I won’t damn this city for your pride, Parker. Don’t give them that serum.”

  Her lips curved, but there was nothing warm about it. “You already damned me. You damned the only people I know I can trust. Why stop there?”

  The casual cruelty with which she flung the accusation carved a hole in his chest.

  His grip loosened. As pain fractured his senses, he slumped, managed to brace his elbow against the wall beside her and didn’t fight her as she slipped out from beneath him.

  Leaning against the wall for balance, his forehead thudded against cool plaster. “It’s too late, Parker. Don’t do this.”

  She said nothing, but as he turned, grasping for support, he watched her collect her shoes. Her coat.

  He closed his eyes. “Mattie killed herself so that I wouldn’t have to.”

  Parker hesitated, hand on the doorknob.

  “So that I wouldn’t have to pull the trigger on my own mother, or lie about it to Laurence. He’d know. He owns us all, Parker. He made us, he monitored us, he fucking wrote the program.”

  Silence.

  God, he hurt. All over. Inside, outside. Too much. “Now,” he continued wearily, “he’s made his move, half your team is dead or worse. I wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the old man, and time’s caught up with me. You can’t fix this, Director.” And for the first time, he couldn’t bear to drawl the title.

  The door opened beside him. Parker hesitated. Then, quietly, evenly, she replied, “I can’t let them die.”

  “You can’t save everyone,” he retorted, pressing his palms against the wall. “You can’t even save me.”

  “Jesus, Simon. You wouldn’t let me if I could.”

  Simon winced as the door shut, hard enough to send echoes drumming through his head. “You’re wrong,” he whispered roughly, knowing it didn’t have a chance in hell of reaching her now.

  The closest he’d ever get to confessing the chaos of emotions under his skin.

  They didn’t have time for this.

  He didn’t have time for this.

  As he dug two fingers into his temple, his gaze fell on the comm she’d dropped to the floor.

  That was it. He’d done his best.

  Maybe he could tell that to Mattie in whatever kind of hell the devil reserved for people like them.

  Slowly, every muscle aching with effort, Simon knelt to the carpet. He dragged the comm toward him, flipped it over and found the list. Skimming it fast, he cursed.

  I can’t let them die.

  Stone, Silo, Williams, Smith—four people he knew weren’t Salem Project agents. Four people likely to turn against the glut of witches in their midst.

  Pawns. All of them, pawns to Parker’s queen.

  Devil take it all, what had Kayleigh done? He cleared the screen, input a number. It only thrummed once.

  “Where the hell are you, Wells?”

  “Why is Jonas Stone on the hit list?”

  “I—What?” The word cracked. “He’s not! He’s not a Salem— Damn it, Simon, where are you?”

  Fuck. Fuck. He pushed a rough hand through his hair. Sucked in a breath and said grimly, “The director’s in the wind.”

  “What?” Another crack. Another octave higher. “Wasn’t she just— Look,” she added sharply, cutting herself off. “You need to report back here. There’s a lot happening. I— I need to talk to you.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Simon studied the comm. “You get one question.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath. “This isn’t a game, Simon!”

  “Don’t I know it?” He swayed. “Ask.”

  Kayleigh hesitated. Then, slowly, “Did you manipulate your records?”

  He swallowed a laugh. “That isn’t what you really want to know, is it, Kayleigh? Yeah,” he added, humor fading just as fast. “Maybe one day, you’ll find out why.”

  “Simon—”

  “I did my part, kiddo. Now it’s your turn.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  He grimaced. “It means try to remember who your mother was.” Because he’d done what he could. And it wasn’t enough. Maybe Mattie’s own flesh and blood could do better.

  He didn’t have it in him to try.

  Kayleigh made a frustrated sound. “Simon, my dad has—”

  He snapped the comm closed as the floor slid out from under him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Amy Silo loved her job.

  The Holy Order’s library rivaled anywhere else she could think of. From the prettiest, richest penthouses to the wildest clubs in the lower streets, none of it compared.

  A vast landscape of knowledge and learning, the library featured six floors of shelves filled with stacks upon stacks of books. She’d apprenticed here as a little girl, placed with the previous head librarian when the orphanage teachers realized how quickly she learned.

  She’d spent her whole life in these walls. Knew them inside and out.

  Silo lived in the top floor, a loftlike flat originally serving as an extra reading hall. Large windows overlooked the vista of the city, sprawled out in tiers beneath the highest tower.

  The rest of the library tended toward thick, heavy red drapes and the dry, musty fragrance paper achieved once old enough. The lights were designed to be as natural as electrical lights could be, which kept the damaging daylight away from the pages and spines she and the staff maintained.

  No book was less than fifty years old. And so many more were older.

  Silo lifted a thick volume from the cart beside he
r. Its leather binding still gleamed, as unmarred as the day it came away from the press that created it. Raised letters under her fingertips glittered with faintly tarnished gold leaf, such a complete waste back in the day.

  But so perfect, too.

  Silo loved books. She loved the words inside them, the knowledge they imparted. The messages they carried, from the leanest pamphlet to the thickest encyclopedia.

  She loved them for the same reason the Church didn’t.

  But she was happy here in the Holy Library.

  She found the empty slot in the shelf for the book and slid it gently into place. She reached for another, smiled as the title caught her eye.

  She’d read it fourteen times.

  Silo liked books, loved the library, but that didn’t mean she didn’t pay attention. She knew a lot about the people who came here regularly. Director Adams was one. A good woman. A little overly focused on her job, but who wasn’t in the Mission?

  Though Silo was a missionary in the strictest sense of the word, she answered to all the leaders in the area. The bishop, Director Adams, Director Lauderdale. Each had reason to send their people to her library.

  All of them had reason to be watched. Carefully gauged. Reported if Silo sensed something wrong in the knowledge they sought.

  To date, her own people requested more access to restricted areas than the Church.

  But less than Director Lauderdale’s scientists.

  Change was in the wind.

  Silo only hoped her library survived.

  She shelved the worn book, somewhat more dog-eared than the others.

  As she collected two more, she tilted her head. Her long, pale blond hair slid over her shoulder as she said, “It’s still early. No one is here but me.”

  A footstep rasped behind her. A quiet, subtle click of metal. “Amy Silo?”

  She shelved the two books side by side, a matched set. Tenderly, her fingers stroked along the neat row of dark spines. The dyes they’d favored in those days tended toward muted colors. Reds. Blues, greens, and browns. All darker hues. All gilded.

  “Are you Agent Silo?”

  She braced her hand on the shelf as she turned. “Yes,” she whispered.

  Silo loved the library. Loved the early mornings most, when the staff hadn’t yet clocked in and she could work on whatever project fascinated her for the time. Shelving books, reading, researching when the Mission required something more.

  She’d hoped to spend her life here.

  She got her wish.

  As the muzzle flare lit the interior of the fifth-floor archive, the report slammed into the thick drapes, the muffling weight of thousands of books. The Holy Library swallowed the sound of a body thudding to the carpet.

  Blood and gobbets of gray matter splattered the colorful bindings. A wet, viscous spray that would have horrified the librarian whose skull it had once belonged to.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It didn’t make any sense.

  Parker let herself in through her front door, the hair on the back of her neck prickling under the certainty that she was being watched. She had to be. There was no way Sector Three would leave her apartment unmanned.

  Not unless Lauderdale assumed Simon would do his job.

  Then it made perfect sense.

  Parker swallowed the spike of anger, of tears. There was too much work to do, too many things to fix—people to rescue.

  Please, let there be people to rescue.

  The alternative was unthinkable.

  Parker shut the door behind her, surveying the strangely neat living room. As far as she could tell, everything remained in its place. Which bothered her.

  Wouldn’t Lauderdale’s people have tossed it? It’s what her people would have done. No cushion unturned, nothing left to chance. Evidence mattered to Parker.

  Maybe not so much to previous directors. Or to Lauderdale.

  Sloppy?

  Or a trap?

  Parker leaned against her door, listening for a long moment. The rain had let up, leaving the roads wet enough to splash as cars drove by the complex. She could dimly hear the faint strains of movement—other tenants above and below preparing for their days.

  Unaware that anything was wrong.

  Beneath the subtle hum of the electrical grid and her own blood in her veins, everything was still.

  No bell. No Mr. Sanderson to greet her.

  Damn it. Had they let him out? Did they take him, did they do worse? Parker pushed away from the door, bit her tongue before she called for the animal that had been her friend for over a year.

  The cat had been a designer castoff, that strange mix of white hair and blue eyes that all the genetically created litters seemed to throw once in a while. Parker didn’t care. He was adorable; playful and lovable and a little bit grumpy.

  And now he was gone. One more thing this whole mess had cost her.

  Come on. Of all the things she could be worrying about, a cat should have been the least.

  Parker glanced at the small table by her coatrack. Her coat still hung on the peg where she’d left it.

  Every sense straining, she strode through her living room. “Mr. Sanderson?” she whispered.

  Like it mattered.

  “Kitty?”

  No bell. No gravelly meow.

  Parker wanted to cry.

  Instead, firming her jaw against the ache building there, she turned and headed for her office. Her gun was gone, left behind in Simon’s car, but her safe held a few extra things. Another gun, smaller but just as useful in a pinch.

  The syringe.

  But no extra identification.

  As she input the code into the security panel, she barely kept from laughing. A little over a year ago, she’d considered developing a fail-safe—a plan in case things went badly. But she’d talked herself out of it.

  Why not? She’d just made Mission director. What could possibly go awry there?

  Such a fool.

  “Not that it matters,” she muttered.

  And especially not now. Because as the door swung open, her gaze quickly cataloged the contents.

  Gun. Jewelry. Documents. Cash.

  No syringe.

  “What the hell,” she breathed. “What the hell.” What kind of God did she piss off?

  Quickly, she withdrew the small bag with her backup weapon inside. The zipper hissed free, and a nylon holster spilled out. The gun inside wasn’t loaded. She fixed that, too, and slammed the safe closed.

  She’d just run out of options.

  Lauderdale had his sights on her missionaries. Her people. No matter how many of them had turned—if any of them had turned—she owed it to them to get them out. They deserved better than this.

  That serum was her best chance. Now she’d have to scale back the odds.

  Parker took a moment to lean against the wall, wincing as her body pulled in all the places she didn’t want to think about now. The dull ache of her muscles only reminded her that she didn’t care what Simon was doing.

  She didn’t care if he bled to death in that godforsaken safe house.

  She didn’t care if she lied to herself.

  It was time to go. To her death, probably. But it was something.

  Click.

  She froze. Adrenaline pumped through her veins, heightening every sense to overwhelming acuity. She raised her gun, muzzle pointed at the ceiling by her shoulder, and held her breath.

  Someone was here.

  The ambience changed, in that so-subtle way of another presence nearby. Parker’s eyebrows knitted as she strained to hear something, anything that would tell her who—or what.

  Simon?

  Something rasped in the living room, something clattered softly, as if the intruder had picked up an object and set it back down.

  So her place was under surveillance after all.

  Parker blew out a silent breath, seized her courage in both hands—right around the handle of her loaded gun—and stepped out into the
hall. She pulled every footstep, tread lightly to the corner and flattened her shoulders against it.

  Holding the gun to her chest, she squeezed her eyes shut, counted her pulse.

  A voice, male, muttered something unintelligible.

  Not Simon. She’d recognize his voice forever.

  Say you’re mine.

  Never.

  She rounded the corner, gun held at arm’s length, grasp steady. “Don’t move,” she ordered.

  Her voice cracked through the silence.

  The man by her fireplace froze, a small frame in one gloved hand. His back to her, all she could pick out were his clothes—dark wash denim, a hip-length neoprene jacket—dark hair clipped short and styled fashionably back from his face, and gloved hands held up by his head. Lean, but not scrawny. Still, nothing like Simon’s powerful athleticism.

  Disappointment, painful and worthless, squeezed her chest.

  She fought it down. “Who are you?”

  “I’m going to put this down, okay?” The voice wasn’t overly deep, not as clear as Jonas’s tenor but youthful. Steady enough, even if it wasn’t as cool as she would have expected from an operative.

  A fresh recruit? Newly minted out of GeneCorp?

  “Do it,” she snapped, “and turn around. Slowly.”

  The frame clattered faintly against the mantel. Indication enough of his less-than-steady nerves. Score one for her.

  She braced the gun, arms already starting to complain at the weight as the man turned. Sculpted features, smooth jaw. God, young kid. Maybe mid-twenties. Maybe less. He had a youthful charm about him, even as serious as his features were as he stared at her. Handsome, in a naturally charming way. He had the bad-boy look but none of the vibe.

  His eyes were dark enough to nearly be black, and they met hers without fear.

  Well, without too much fear.

  Young enough to play at bold, old enough to know a bullet hurt. But not one of hers.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I know you.”

  His grin, rueful as it was, revealed a dimple at the side of his mouth. “From the café. Yeah, let me explain.”

  Parker took two steps into the living room, but she didn’t lower the gun. “Ten seconds. Talk fast.”