Lure of the Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  “Thanks,” she muttered, but he was gone. The door swung back and forth behind him. Efficient, anyway.

  Absently Naomi scratched at the seam of the bandage, her gaze drawn to the sealed sauna. The glass had been replaced already.

  They worked fast.

  Her heels echoed in the vast, humid space, catching on the rosy slate tiles in sharp, staccato rhythm. Water lapped at the colorful rim of each pool, surrounded her with the echoes and ripples of what she supposed was a soothing sound.

  Never mind an old woman nearly died here.

  The dressing rooms split into two sections, two signs. Naomi pushed open the women’s door, already pulling the sweater up over her head.

  Abigail Montgomery looked up from applying her makeup in the wide, multipaneled mirror taking up the entirety of one wall. Naomi froze.

  She was dressed in what Naomi assumed was the latest in resort fashion. Her white pants were pristine, crisply pressed, and her boat-neck blouse was a brilliant jewel green. She looked gorgeous, glowing, polished.

  Processed for beautiful.

  Her smile was perfunctory at best, a slash of glossy pink indifference. “I’ll be done in a minute,” she said in the same tones she’d used to dismiss Naomi just yesterday.

  Cool. Cultured. Indicating clearly that anyone else should wait for her to finish before stepping into her precious air.

  Naomi’s fingernails scraped the door as her hands curled into fists. “Don’t worry about it.” The words should have choked in her throat, they were so tight. She turned back to the main hall and hesitated, jamming her elbow against the door when Abigail said, “Wait a second.”

  Naomi couldn’t force herself to go. Couldn’t say anything around the tight knot in her throat. She should have kept walking.

  She didn’t know why she waited.

  Behind her, Abigail set down her lipstick. The metal tube clattered against the polished marble, and Naomi half turned to see the way Abigail leaned a hip against the counter, arms crossing over her chest.

  Blue eyes narrowed in deep thought.

  Only she wasn’t considering new jewelry or the latest line of topside fashion to fill her never-ending closets with. Not this time.

  “I’m sorry if this seems rude,” the stranger who was her mother said, speculation lengthening each word and grating over Naomi’s already exhausted nerves, “but have we met at some event or foundation before? Do we know each other?”

  Naomi nearly laughed. She choked back the bitter sound, knowing that if she let it out—if it worked its way past the vicious ache in her chest—she wouldn’t stop.

  Instead, drawing fatigue around her like a cloak, Naomi said quietly, “No. We don’t know each other.”

  “Are you sure? What’s your name?”

  Naomi closed her eyes. “Ishikawa,” she said, so low the word barely reverberated in the air as sound. “Naomi Ishikawa.”

  The door swung closed on Abigail’s sharply indrawn breath, but Naomi didn’t stop to see if she’d come out. She wouldn’t.

  Her mother had never come for her.

  Wordless with rage, with weariness, Naomi skirted the divide and pushed into the men’s room. It was empty. Clean. The shelves had been stocked with masculine fragrances and soap that smelled like wood shavings, and she grabbed whatever came to hand.

  She showered under water hot enough to scald and tried to pretend that she wasn’t straining to hear the sound of her mother’s voice over the rush.

  Tried to pretend that disappointment didn’t close like a fist when it never came.

  Abigail Montgomery wasn’t her problem. She’d get hers, a lonely life without company or love. Every day age drew another scar on her mother’s so perfect flesh. Every day she was that much closer to dying an ugly, twisted old shrew.

  Naomi only regretted the fact that she’d miss the declining years. Let the woman spend her blood money on cosmetic surgery and every restorative known to man. Let her fight against age.

  Nothing would help her. Nothing.

  Naomi wanted to spit in her grave when she died.

  But that meant outliving her. The odds of that weren’t high.

  Still, she thought as she rubbed herself down with a towel that smelled like warm spice and firelight, it was a nice thought. If a bullet didn’t catch her first, Naomi would go to the woman’s funeral and laugh.

  Maybe that would fill her chest with something other than hollow rage.

  And maybe, she thought as she dressed, it was the rage that kept regret at bay. Naomi gripped the edge of the bay of lockers and stared sightlessly into the neatly etched numbers, damp towel hanging limply over her shoulders. A drop of water dripped from her hair, slid down her neck. Her cheek.

  Dripped into the pink stain at her feet.

  She blinked at it. Opened her mouth and didn’t know what to say.

  Not this time.

  Already knowing what she’d find—if not who—she reached for the locker latch and unhooked the metal bolt.

  The body spilled out of the narrow confines like a broken doll, and Naomi stepped back in mute pity. Mousy blond hair pooled to the floor as her skull cracked against the tile, and gravity sucked the rest of her gray-tinged corpse out of the impromptu metal coffin.

  Katie Landers.

  Hysteria crawled up her spine, but Naomi crouched with an icy kind of calm. As if she weren’t the one reaching out to roll the limp body over.

  As if it weren’t her hands that tipped the ashen face up to the light, revealing livid purple bruises around Katie’s throat. That wouldn’t have been pleasant.

  But it was the stabbing that killed her.

  The scent of blood had always reminded Naomi of metal; something warmer than the tang of the acid rain that pounded the city’s lower streets, something meatier than anything she’d ever known before. In quantities, it filled the nose. The head.

  The memory.

  She didn’t dream of blood anymore, but the nausea never truly went away. It splashed into her throat now as she tilted the locker door wide. Browned and thick, the dead girl’s blood coated the inside. Pooled on the bottom and caught on the humidity of the pool hall to speckle the floor beneath the locker.

  Another one dead. Another corpse. One in the laundry room and one here. All right, so Naomi had killed the witch and Carson had moved the body, but why was Katie dead? It had all the hallmarks of an agent kill. Quick, brutal, and thorough.

  Had Carson killed her for something he wanted?

  Did she happen to get in the way? See something she shouldn’t?

  Christ, was she one of Carson’s plants?

  Naomi seized the edge of the locker for balance, but her thoughts of searching the premises turned into a wordless sound of surprise as the lights flickered. Between one breath and the next, the power surged out.

  For a brief four seconds, long enough to send Naomi’s heart hammering hard against her ribs, the resort was deathly silent. No drone of electricity. No froth and bubble of water jets.

  Impossible.

  Every hair on her neck stood straight up as she forced herself to her feet in the pitch black. Failing energy gave way to a new surge of adrenaline clamping around her chest. The power guttered again, struggling to flood back through the fixtures. She crossed the room between flickers, shoved open the door and made it three sprinting strides toward the main doors when a flurry of sparks erupted to her left.

  Throwing her arm up over her face, Naomi swore loudly. The crackle of open electrical currents sizzled in the air, and a feminine voice shouted something fast and startled behind her. The sparks faded, scattered to nothing on the tile, and Naomi warily circled a thick bundle of cords hanging from the ceiling.

  Electricity vibrated along it, a wicked hum of warning as it coiled like a serpent, alive with a powerful electrical surge. The slack end slithered along the floor, too close to the water.

  “Naomi!”

  She flinched, whirling to see the redhead Phin had
called Cally beckoning her away.

  The cable sparked again, showered a flurry of blue and white. “Be careful, there’s a fuck-ton of electricity through here,” Cally shouted, her voice echoing eerily. “If it hits the water—”

  “I get it!” Naomi waved her back. “Go get— Oh, my God.” Her heart jumped into her throat. Tightened. “Fuck, shit. Call for help!”

  She didn’t know if the woman obeyed. She didn’t know if she’d said it, or only thought it, or if the world had come to a screaming halt for only her.

  She sprinted across the tiled floor in seconds, dove cleanly into the water. Half of her expected to be shocked into the next world, electrocuted into so much bubbled flesh and melted bone, but the rest of her could only thrash, struggle as her hands tangled in short blond hair.

  In flowing green silk.

  Gasping for breath as she resurfaced, Naomi pushed and shoved Abigail’s limp body to the edge of the pool. Every nerve shuddered, violent anticipation, but Naomi forced herself to move. To seize the unresponsive woman by her hair, her clothes, her lifeless limbs, anything that put her over the edge.

  It took every ounce of strength she had to do it. Her hair streamed into her eyes, the chlorine stung, but swearing, heaving, Naomi ducked under the surface, visions of charred death by voltage dancing in her mind’s eye, and jammed her shoulder under Abigail’s back.

  The woman rolled. Threatened to topple the wrong way. Naomi’s straining breath turned into a scream, and Abigail’s limp body hit the tile.

  She wasn’t moving. Dear God, she wasn’t moving, she wasn’t breathing, Naomi couldn’t tell if—

  Out. She had to get out.

  Summoning every iota of willpower, she grabbed the edge of the pool and wrenched herself out. She struggled as the water seemed to wrap around her hips, her legs, her sodden clothes. Swearing, cursing, gasping for breath, she crawled over the tile, over Abigail’s inert body.

  Blood ran from a gash at the woman’s cheek. It painted the woman’s beautiful face in a cruel mask of crimson, of running mascara.

  “Ambulance,” Naomi gasped. She needed, oh, God, she needed an ambulance. She needed help. She needed anyone, damn it, she needed Phin. “Help me!” she screamed, even as adrenaline surged through her flagging limbs. She wrenched Abigail into her arms, terror thick and acrid in her throat. Her heart.

  Somehow, she didn’t know how, she got to her feet. Somehow she carried her mother away from the coiling, sparking cable. Away from the water that hissed and sizzled as the cable thrashed itself into the pool. The power surged around her as the water sucked out every last current of power; the ceiling lights shattered out in an explosion of glass and sparking electricity.

  Somehow Naomi made it to the double doors. Shoved out of them. Staggered.

  Warm arms wrapped around hers. Caught her, caught Abigail before they buckled. Phin’s voice. His orders.

  His strength.

  People moved around her, ants to the anthill under attack, and Naomi let Phin take Abigail from her. He carried her like the woman weighed nothing, an easy, comforting strength as he stood in the middle of chaos and calmly ordered that a gurney be brought, that emergency maintenance be called, that staff see to guests.

  The ambulance was coming.

  Slowly, effortlessly, Phin restored order.

  And she couldn’t watch. Couldn’t watch him stand in the middle of everything and look so cool, so calm in his dress shirt and slacks and newly washed hair. So patient and compassionate and strong.

  Cradling the woman who had abandoned her.

  The woman Naomi couldn’t allow herself to return the favor to.

  Shaking, shivering with cold, with delayed shock, Naomi withdrew from the madness. She withdrew from the bubble of calm that beckoned her, lured her like that moth to a flame more insidious than anything she’d ever known.

  Coward.

  Naomi fled.

  “Go.” Lillian pushed Phin away from the flurry of activity around Abigail’s gurney. “I know a problem when I see one, go.”

  Though it went against every executive bone in his body, Phin obeyed his mother; heard and obeyed the urgency in her voice.

  He felt the same gnawing worry in his gut.

  One minute Naomi had been right there. When he looked up next, she was gone. Getting into trouble, doing something stupid, chasing whatever ghost her Church had demanded she find, he didn’t know.

  He dialed security. “Get me Naomi Ishikawa’s location,” he said as the comm clicked over.

  Barker cut off his own greeting with a clipped “Yes, sir.” It only took a minute, but every second slammed into Phin like a dagger of apprehension.

  Something was very wrong.

  “She’s on the athletic floor,” Baker reported. “In the gym.”

  “Who’s with her?”

  “No one, it’s clear.”

  “Good.” Phin hurried across the courtyard. “Put out the word. We’re closing for the duration. I want every man on your team on this.”

  “Yes, sir, we’re already scouring the floors.”

  “Bring in extra help, I don’t care who you have to strong-arm, but get them in here. Escort the temporaries to a safe location—safe, do you hear me?—and release the staff to go home as soon as everyone is out.”

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Clarke, about Vaughn—”

  “Later.” Phin let out an explosive breath as he cut the line. He sprinted through the double doors, following the line of glass panels to the gym.

  He heard her before he saw her.

  Reminiscent of the first time he’d watched her, she stood in front of a heavy bag, its chains creaking as it swung wildly with every furious blow, every punch, every kick.

  But it was different this time. She was different. Not nearly so controlled. She hadn’t changed her clothes, and there was something wildly incongruous about a woman beating the shit out of a punching bag in jeans, soggy sweater, and high-heeled boots, but she moved as if she was used to fighting in those heels.

  As if she didn’t give a flying fuck what anyone else thought.

  She moved like a missionary.

  And he was the sucker who harbored witches.

  God damn it. It didn’t matter. He rounded the glass. “Naomi.”

  Her bare fist slammed into the bag. Too hard. It swung, but she did it again, expelling a ragged sound of thinly restrained fury with every strike. And again. A left hook, an uppercut that made him cringe. Red gleamed wetly against the vinyl casing. Her wet hair tumbled in stringy knots around her shoulders while her sodden clothes dripped onto the sealed wood floors.

  “Naomi,” he said again. He caught her shoulders. The ruined wool knotted and stretched beneath his fingers. “Stop, sweetheart, don’t hurt—”

  She rounded on him, seizing the front of his shirt in one abraded, bleeding fist. “Back off,” she snarled. Her face was so close, her eyes so haunted, that Phin couldn’t, wouldn’t be cowed.

  Not by her. Not by the woman he had already fallen for.

  He ignored her fist. Ignored her anger and slid his fingers over her cheek. “It’s okay,” he said softly.

  The sound she made shouldn’t have been possible from a human throat. Like a wounded animal, a caged beast, it ripped out of her, tore free from her chest as she wrenched away.

  Phin staggered, but caught himself and took another step toward her as she faced the swinging bag, her shoulders heaving. “It’s okay,” he said again, as gently as if he were coaxing a wounded kitten. A scared child.

  “Stop it.”

  He shook his head. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “You have no idea,” she bit out, and stiffened as he laid his palms over her shoulders.

  Braced for her anger, ready in case she lashed out in whatever pain rode her now, he slid his fingers down her arms. Her body jerked, but he stepped into her space anyway. “Hey,” he murmured against her cold, wet hair. “It’s okay.”

  She sucked in a breath,
and he felt it break. Some kind of leashed tension, an emotional dam crumbling in his arms. Quickly, more easily than he’d expected, he spun her around, gathered her into his embrace and only held her as she trembled.

  Sometime in the near future he’d have to tell her. He’d have to explain about the people Timeless had helped, try to get her to understand that he hadn’t meant to lie to her. Try to undercut the missionary he knew she was.

  Someday he’d have to convince her to trust him, but for now he only held her. Braced her as she fell against him and gave him her weight. She was tall, but he didn’t spend every other day in this gym for nothing. She wrapped her legs around his waist and buried her face into his shoulder, her arms tight around his neck.

  Wordless, everything inside him aching with her, for her, he navigated them into the women’s locker room. He cupped the back of her head and turned on the shower inside a stall. It blasted against them both, soaked through his clothes, a stream of soothing warmth and steady sound. It would muffle the tears he knew she needed to shed.

  But she’d die before she did it by herself.

  His fragile witch hunter.

  He braced her against the wall, leaning back to thread his fingers through her hair and watch her face. Her eyes swam, vivid pools of too much emotion. Grief, fear, resentment.

  Haunted.

  Tipping her face up, he angled her beneath the spray. It beat over her shoulders, her chest; washed away the lingering aroma of sodden wool and chlorine and the acrid stench of ozone from the electrical current that had nearly killed her.

  “Look at me,” he demanded.

  Because she was Naomi, she did. A hard, direct challenge. Phin’s heart swelled. Overflowed. His Naomi. “I don’t need—” She sucked in a breath as he flattened his palm against her breast, just over her heart.

  “Listen to me,” he said softly. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “God damn it—”

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said again, watching her eyes flinch. Her breath shuddered, jarred on the tears he knew were in there. She needed them out.

  When was the last time she had cried?

  Did the Church let its hunters feel? Did it care?