Scars climbed up his neck, tendrils of ropy flesh carving wefts over his jaw. His cheek. It slanted his mouth into a permanent smirk. He wore long sleeves, but his left hand gleamed in the daylight, shiny skin and corrugated edges.
Wordlessly, Juliet reached out.
Caleb took her hand. “That was the point,” he said. His eyes, uncomfortably sharp, settled on Simon. “You son of a bitch.”
But there wasn’t any heat to it.
Simon nodded. “You of all people know what it means to do what we do.”
“I know where your head was,” Caleb confirmed, but rigidly. As if he didn’t like even admitting that. “Doesn’t excuse it. For either of us.”
Juliet frowned. “Caleb doesn’t have to act alone anymore.”
“Neither do you,” Caleb said to Simon, finishing her thought with ease. His gaze landed on Parker. Slid over her, from her braided red hair to the skimpy pink dress, her scuffed coat and stained jeans.
His permanently slanted mouth twitched. “I expected you to be more imposing.”
“Caleb,” Juliet protested.
“I get that a lot,” Parker replied evenly. “I have a file filled with the names of people you murdered in my office topside.”
“It’s true.” Brutal candor. “I’m not excusing anything.”
She blinked.
Phin shifted his weight, an awkward gesture.
Simon watched it quietly. Watched them all as he stood solid and still against Parker’s side.
“Let’s go sit down,” Phin suggested. “There’s tea and food. We can talk there.”
“Okay.” Parker spoke before Simon could refuse, aware of the sheer will he expended to stay upright. Show no weakness.
They didn’t have that luxury anymore.
“You know what I do,” Caleb said to him.
Simon nodded. “Most of the new Coven of the Unbinding witches are Salem Project operatives. You and your sister’s . . . abilities are known to Sector Three.”
“Then you know I mean it when I say there’s still a chance.” Caleb plucked the basket from Juliet’s hands, caught her hand as she tried to grab it back and brought it to his mouth for a kiss too tender for Parker not to look away. A gold ring on Juliet’s finger flashed.
Juliet’s features darkened. Uncertainty. Mistrust. “Another vision?”
Worry, most of all. Parker knew the feeling.
“It’s okay, Jules,” Caleb murmured.
What Parker didn’t know, didn’t know how to really name, was a strange feeling of . . . solidarity unfolding within her. Of sympathy, shared knowledge.
Caleb’s gaze seemed to take everyone in, studied them all, catalog them. File them away.
They settled on Parker again, briefly.
Understanding flashed there.
Simon’s hand flattened on her back. So possessively that Phin tried and failed to hide a grin.
“I saw a vision,” Caleb confirmed. “I saw two paths.” He tucked the basket under his arm. “At the end of each, I saw death standing with a scale.”
“A scale,” Phin repeated. “What?”
“The future is a mess of riddles,” Juliet said wearily. “Signs that aren’t what they seem. Or maybe are.”
“He’s seeing the future?” Parker demanded.
“Saw it,” Caleb corrected. “Ask him.” His chin thrust at Simon in a kind of acknowledgement. “He knows how it works.”
Simon looked away.
The blond witch’s smile quirked at the scarred edge of his mouth. “In this vision, one path led to a slaughterhouse. Hundreds dead, hanging from hooks. Infants lay strewn upon the floor, forgotten. Everything’s dark. And cold.” Caleb recounted this quietly. Grimly. Phin scowled. “The other path leads to total destruction. Thousands of corpses, hundreds of thousands, piled high. Men, women, children all scattered over the broken ground.”
“Oh, God,” Parker whispered.
Juliet flinched, cheeks paling. “I hate this.”
As if he couldn’t get enough, as if he both offered comfort and demanded a touchstone, Caleb laced his hand with hers. His scarred hand.
Parker’s throat closed as Juliet didn’t pull away.
Love. Real love, the kind that would last forever. She was surrounded by it.
Was this what it could have been?
No, she wouldn’t think like that. She’d made a promise. Wordlessly, she rested her head against Simon’s shoulder.
Caleb shook his head. “I’m not done. At the top of the corpse pile stands a man I’ve seen before, but this time, I see his face.” His eyes pinned on Simon. “It looks like yours.”
Parker stiffened. “There’s no—”
“It’s allegory,” Caleb said over her.
“It’s crap,” she shot back.
Simon said nothing.
The witch smiled faintly. “The point is that those are the things I see. But it’s not a total wash. Last night, the vision became clear enough to recount, but as I watched it, I realized something.”
“What’s that?” Simon asked, but cautiously. Resignedly.
“It’s not you. Not really.” His eyebrows raised. “It’s the same man I saw in the vision that led me to Juliet, the man in the shadows holding the chains that bound her. It’s your father.”
Shocked silence filled the group. Filled Simon beside her.
Then, with a low, strained “Fuck,” he turned away. Strode past Caleb and Juliet, his fist clenched.
Parker took two steps after him, hesitated when Caleb put that scarred hand on her shoulder. “Give him a minute.”
She looked up at his face, the twisted edges of his burn-marred flesh, but all she saw was compassion. And a dangerous kind of determination.
Beside him, Juliet touched her arm. “There’s been a lot of secrets, decades of the stuff. We’re still sorting it all out.”
“We need a plan.” Parker closed her eyes briefly, drew on the Mission training—her own strength—to lock her knees. Keep from tearing after Simon, holding him. Reassuring him.
The urge nearly took her breath away.
When her lashes lifted, she found Caleb smiling at her. “You’re a tough lady, Parker Adams.”
“You have no idea,” Phin said behind her. It was almost a complaint.
Parker stepped away, smoothed the pink dress without hope of getting it to lay right over her jeans. “What does your vision have to do with any of this?” she asked, calm now. Steady. She was good at useless information.
“I’m not sure,” Caleb replied.
“It sounds,” Juliet mused, “like there’s going to be sacrifices on both ends.”
“It’s war.” Parker glanced at the emerald green water, still as glass. Her mind churned, filtering through what she knew. Focus. This would help. Anything would help. Help her, help Simon.
Help New Seattle.
She frowned. “Miss Carpenter.”
“Juliet,” the witch corrected with a small, cautious smile. “It’s okay.”
“Juliet,” she repeated. “Thank you. You used the serum?”
A nod.
Parker glanced at Caleb. “And you saw Lauderdale standing on the pile of corpses in your vision.” Was it strange that she wasn’t discounting images from a witch’s imagination?
No. At this point, she’d use anything she had.
Caleb nodded. “But he wasn’t anywhere on the first path.”
Phin hummed a thoughtful sound. “Because he’s dead?”
“I don’t know.”
Parker nodded slowly. They had one shot at this. And maybe, just maybe, it’d come through. “What if I could get you the one person who could unlock everything?”
The other woman frowned. “Who?”
“Kayleigh Lauderdale. Laurence’s daughter.” Parker’s gaze touched on all three of the coconspirators she never would have imagined herself standing beside, unless it were at an execution. The world was a funny place. Varying degrees of uncertainty looked
back at her. “If we can get her, we can force her to extract the sequence from you, Juliet. Or even Jessie. We can cure Simon and give ourselves leverage against Laurence.”
She recognized the glint in Caleb’s startlingly blue eyes, but she also noticed that he glanced first at Juliet.
All right. She could respect that.
But it was Phin who surprised her. “We’re not going to hurt her.” It wasn’t a question.
Missionary, once. But never that kind. Parker shook her head. “Not if we don’t have to.”
“Jules?”
The witch leaned against Caleb’s shoulder, her hand clenching over the front of his T-shirt. Her gaze locked on Parker. “What about the vision?”
“We have two choices,” Parker said slowly, glancing beyond her. To the foliage Simon vanished into. “One, the director lives. Two, he dies. If I have to choose between New Seattle’s citizens”—Simon— “and being good, I’ll pull the trigger myself.”
A ghost of a smile touched Caleb’s mouth. A faint nod.
“Let’s talk about it with the others,” Phin offered and touched her bare shoulder gently. “You should go check on him.”
She didn’t need to be told twice.
Simon’s fist collided with the cliff wall. Pain shredded through his knuckles, his elbow, but he didn’t care.
He was going to kill something. But he wasn’t anywhere near the man he wanted to take apart with his bare fucking hands.
And Matilda was already dead.
She’d known.
“Simon!”
Parker’s voice. Urgent.
Concerned.
He spun, just in time to catch her as she launched herself into his arms. A flurry of intent and red hair and—Christ, every inch the woman he loved.
His head throbbed, warning that he was pushing it, but it didn’t matter.
His hands sank into Parker’s hair, cupped her head to hold her for his kiss. Angry and raw, but it softened as she eagerly raised her mouth to his. Gentled as her lips opened for him, cooled his fury. Channeled it.
Carried it with him.
She clung to his shoulders as he drew back. “It’s okay,” she said urgently. “It’s okay, Simon. This doesn’t change you.”
“I should have known!”
She winced as his fingers tightened in her hair. But she didn’t pull away. As the strange mist curled over the emerald green bay, the only bit of privacy he’d been able to find after Caleb’s announcement, he stood in the center of Matilda’s secret sanctuary and felt so alone.
And yet, with Parker’s body pressed to his, so very not.
His head ached as he closed his eyes.
“Kayleigh isn’t just my half sister. Laurence is my father.” He laughed. It broke. “Why would she mix the genes in a vial if my parentage is the same as her daughter’s?”
“Are you sure Kayleigh’s natural-born?”
“I don’t know!” He jerked his hands away, too raw to risk hurting her in his anger. His confusion. “I’m a test-tube creation, Parker. I wouldn’t be degenerating if I wasn’t.”
“Maybe you are. Maybe you aren’t.” She caught his face in her hands, stared up at him with so much in her eyes. Love, reassurance. Concern.
Fear.
“All I know,” she said, every inch the authoritative director that had haunted him, “is that I love you. No matter where you come from.” Her wide mouth quirked. “And I also know that you got played badly by the people you were trying to play.”
It shouldn’t have made him laugh. But it did. As humor welled up beneath the anger and pain, Simon’s hands mapped down her back. Molded her to him, shaped her body against his. Perfect in every way.
“You said Matilda had a plan.” Parker’s fingers traced his jaw. “What if she didn’t really? What if all she wanted was for you to be free?”
“You can’t know that.”
“You’re right. But the way it sounds, she concentrated on two of you. One to help break the genetic fail-safe, and one—you—she made from her own body. Test tube or not, Simon, she wanted you.”
“She wanted someone to fix her mistakes.”
Parker’s smile undid him. Slow, so sweet. “That’s the beauty of being human, Simon. You get to choose your own path.”
“Why bother?” He broke away, didn’t get far before she caught his hand and hauled back with all her weight. He stiffened, barely managed to keep from stumbling.
“Caleb’s vision isn’t absolute,” Parker told him sharply. She laced her fingers with his, wrapped her other hand around his wrist and held on as if afraid he’d vanish if she didn’t.
The way his head knocked, he might. Out with a bang.
“And the way I’m reading it, it’s saying that Lauderdale is going to end up on a mountain of bodies if we don’t do something.” She tilted her head. “May wants our help, the people here can help us, so we’re going to help them. We have plans, Simon.”
“I can’t keep fighting, Parker.”
And there it was. The truth, on a ragged growl.
She raised her chin. “Then don’t. I’ll fight for you.”
She would, wouldn’t she? She really would throw herself into the fray—join these outcast witches and their overwhelming goal to take down Sector Three.
She really would risk it all. Risk time with him. “Why?”
“Because I love you.” Her eyes shimmered, unshed tears bright enough to send a knife through his chest.
He hated to make her cry.
He never would have thought that. Tears didn’t bother him.
Her tears, though. Ah, hell.
Simon pulled her to him, step by step; tugged her into his embrace and nuzzled his lips into her hair with a long, shuddering breath. “Then stay with me here,” he said, appalled to find the words coming from his own lips.
He didn’t want to die alone.
“No.”
His heart stalled.
Parker braced one hand over it, raising her face to his. Her cheeks gleamed, damp with her tears. “I refuse to sit by and watch you go. Kayleigh has that damned serum. Maybe she’s got it cracked now. Maybe not. But your cure is up there, and I will get it.”
“I don’t know what I have left,” he insisted roughly. “I could break any time.”
“Don’t worry.” The words, curt but laced with resignation, followed Naomi West out of the foliage. Her smile sharpened. “We can be trusted. And like it or not, we’re on your side.”
It was so similar to what he’d told Parker only days ago, word for word a fuck you of support, that he almost laughed.
Parker looked up at him. A world of hope, of pleading in her beautiful eyes.
“I can’t make up for Matilda,” he said.
“Matilda had a mysterious stranger routine that drove me up the fucking wall,” Naomi cut in, flicking that away. “I hate that she’s dead. But she knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it. I don’t know what she had planned, I don’t care. If you want to ask her, go talk to her grave.” She jerked a thumb back behind her, somewhere in the foliage. “What I know is that shit has hit the fan topside, and until Lauderdale is wrecked, we’re as good as dead.”
Simon closed his eyes as the pressure in the back of his skull drummed, painfully loud.
Last time he’d come, there had been only two bodies on his radar. Matilda, her life fading, and Jessie Leigh.
Now he read seven. Nine, including him and Parker.
Not quite an army.
“Silas is back, and Jonas contacted us,” Naomi said, her tone gentling as much as he suspected it could. A real hard-ass. “He’s got a list of potential friendlies and a plan that may get us killed, but if it works, we’ll nock a victory on our belts that Lauderdale won’t forget. And he says he’s on the trail of something else.”
“What?” Parker asked.
“He won’t say until he knows it’s worth investigating,” she said, “but knowing him? He’ll find it.”
“According to the comm chatter he’s monitoring, that syringe doesn’t exist,” Naomi replied. “Which means someone has it, somewhere. He’s going to find it. Him or his weird ghost friend.”
“Good,” Parker said quietly, her tone low. Intense. “I’m in.”
Simon looked at her. Studied her face, set in determined lines. Bloody obstinate woman. “Fine,” he said. “But when I die—”
“Pessimist,” Naomi snorted, and turned away. “Come back to the house to talk about these plans of yours. And Jessie wants to meet you. Again,” she added, with a subtle emphasis that wasn’t lost on Simon.
He’d met her. He’d kidnapped her.
All because he’d needed that fucking serum.
Naomi’s footsteps receded back toward the main clearing.
Parker’s eyes shone. Too bright. “You aren’t going to die.”
“I wish—”
She raised up on tiptoe, pressed her mouth to his in a kiss that threw him utterly off balance.
When she stepped back again, her cheeks were flushed. “Not,” she repeated.
His mouth slowly eased into a smile. “We’ll see,” he allowed.
“God damn it, Simon, what do I have to do?”
He hooked a finger into the knot on her halter top. “Convince me.”
Her breath caught as the material gave. “We have to go back,” she protested, even while her fingers tunneled under his shirt. Seeking his chest, and the suddenly frenetic beating of his heart.
He sucked in a breath as her palms found his skin. She electrified with a touch. Through pain, through anger and fear. She stripped it all away.
He couldn’t get enough. Didn’t want to stop, to let her go for even an instant.
Forever was an awfully long time. But maybe . . . As her dress came apart in his hands, as she pressed her body to his in willing abandon, Simon groaned.
Maybe he’d try. Maybe he’d force himself to make it, force his body to obey his will and survive the coming storm to see the sun shine on her copper hair one more time. See it reflected in her eyes.
Maybe, God willing and a shitload of luck, he’d succeed. Just for her.
Just for them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born from the genetic mash-up of lesser royalty, storytellers, wanderers, and dreamers, KARINA COOPER was destined to be a creative genius. As a child, she moved all over the country like some kind of waifish blond gypsy and learned how to adapt to the new cultures her family settled in. When she (finally) grew up, she skipped the whole genius part and fell in love with writing paranormal romance because, really, who doesn’t love hot men and a happy ending?
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