Thump, thump. His feet hit the desk in a slow, rhythmic swing.
Naomi crumpled to the floor.
Thump, thump.
“Daddy?”
Her heart slammed into her stomach. Nausea gathered, sharp and fast.
“Daddy, Nanny says it’s time for supper.”
She turned, suddenly feeling as if she were made of lead. Her blood filled with it, slowing her. Freezing her in place, unable to call out, to warn the little girl who pushed open the study door.
Her hair gleamed in the firelight, as black as her father’s and gathered into two pigtails, each wrapped with pink ribbon. Her skirt hung neatly pressed, her blouse frilly and so tiny. She wore saddle shoes in pink and white and cradled a small horse doll in one hand.
She’d loved that doll.
“Daddy?” Her voice wavered. Her little feet tripped over the carpet, and Naomi struggled to break the terror of memory. To wrench herself from the dream shattering her heart.
But it didn’t fade.
Instead, as the little girl sat on the carpet and watched her father swing, Naomi reached out. Her fingers trembled desperately as she hovered one hand over the tiny child’s glossy black hair.
The scream of the nanny threw the house into chaos.
Naomi flinched.
“This isn’t your fault.”
A broken sound, at least partly a laugh, tore from her chest.
“Naomi.” Blue-violet eyes met hers. So wide, bright with unshed tears. Her young, childish voice resonated, matured eerily from her bow-shaped mouth. “This isn’t your fault.” She reached out to stroke a tiny hand over Naomi’s cheek. It passed through.
Naomi shot to her feet, spun and screamed in rage, in fear, as her father’s purple, bloated face swung inches from hers. Back and forth. “This isn’t your fault,” he wheezed, slowly spinning.
The cord creaked. Thump, thump.
“No.” Naomi backed away. She passed through a figure wrapped in silk and expensive perfume. Trails of ghostly color clung to her face, skeins of a fragrance that haunted her dreams, her skin. Naomi staggered.
Abigail turned in a frothy sea of peach lace and cream, her smile sad. “This wasn’t ever your fault.”
Naomi shook her head, over and over, a high, keening wail locked behind her teeth. “No,” she sobbed, the word a broken sound of understanding. “No. It’s yours. All of it, it’s all your fault, the both of you.”
The corpse’s smile turned ghastly. “There is honor to consider.”
“There was still so much I had to have,” Abigail said lightly.
“And you lost it all,” Naomi whispered. She scrubbed at her face, furiously dashed her tears aside. “You lost honor when you abandoned your child to become a killer. When you used me like some sort of revenge.”
The corpse’s skin mottled.
Naomi flung a finger at Abigail, sharp accusation. “You. You lost everything. You threw it all away, hoping to find some miraculous fountain of youth, and now it’s too late. Nothing of you lives on. Nothing.”
Both specters stared at her. Watched her in brutal silence.
And five-year-old Naomi Ishikawa watched her from the floor, her eyes brimming with too much awareness.
Too much knowing.
So many untapped tears.
It’d be years until one man would break through that dam. A standstill decades long.
Naomi swallowed hard, and remembered what she’d forgotten. What she’d always known. “Your mistakes aren’t my fault,” she whispered. “You’re right. But I can fix what is my fault, and fuck you, I will not be the twisted, lonely woman my parents made me.”
“Oh, sweetie—”
“You have to go,” the little girl said solemnly, cutting off Abigail’s trilling laugh. “You have to go back before it’s too late.” Boots tromped through the halls, echoed shouts and sirens piercing the ghostly solitude. Within moments, emergency technicians poured into the study, a regulated wash of chaos.
Naomi shook her head. “How?”
Somberly the little girl with Naomi’s own face moved around the adults. She pressed herself to the fringe and watched the corpse of her father hit the ground. Crumple bonelessly, bloated face jiggling. Mottled.
Dead.
“I don’t know,” she said.
A hot tear trickled down Naomi’s cheek. The girl glanced at her. Followed the tear as it dripped from her chin and splashed over Naomi’s hand.
The girl’s mouth curved down. “How do you know where you belong?”
Naomi closed her eyes. She fisted her hands tightly, nails biting into the callused edge of her palms and struggled to remember.
To forget.
Warm brown eyes met hers in the dark recesses of her mind. A dimpled smile tugged at her heart.
Phin. She belonged there. At least for the moment, at least for the time it would take to say good-bye.
More than she’d ever done for anyone else.
“You just know,” Naomi whispered. Shuddering, she took a deep breath.
And smelled chlorine.
Tears streamed over her cheeks as she opened her eyes. Tears of regret, bottled grief so long capped and filled to the breaking point that it raged from her now. Warm water battered at her, crimson currents swirled until the tub looked like a pool of steaming blood. Wordless, sobbing with the weight of it, with the unfairness of it all, Naomi clung to Gemma’s lifeless body as anguish poured from that forgotten place deep inside.
That place Naomi had sworn didn’t exist.
Steady hands bracketed her shoulders. “I know,” Jessie murmured against her hair. “Let it out. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
Maybe it would be. Someday.
A high-pitched whine sliced the air into auditory shreds. Overhead the speakers turned over into a quiet hum. “This is Phin Clarke, Carson.”
His voice echoed from wall to wall. Battered at her grief. He was steady. So calm.
“I know you’re in this building somewhere. You’re holding innocent people hostage. Let them get out before the fire spreads, and I’ll give you what you want.”
Naomi sucked in a hard, shuddering breath as Lillian sobbed at the edge of the tub.
“That was unexpected,” Jessie said slowly.
Gently, her heart aching with it, Naomi forced herself to let go of the woman who’d seen in her something Naomi still couldn’t. She didn’t know what. Maybe she’d learn, one day.
But not today.
She watched Gemma’s pale body drift across the bloodied current. Watched as, shoulders shaking, Lillian wrapped her arms around the lifeless corpse of her wife.
Gemma had loved the water. Naomi didn’t know how she knew that, but she did. There was solace in the water.
Solace in the fountain.
It simmered deep inside. A golden current, a whisper. How do you know where you belong?
“That’s because,” she said on a low, resigned sound of frustration, “Phin is an idiot. Put them somewhere safe, Jessie. I need my gun.”
“I will. What are you going to do?”
Naomi climbed out of the tub, her skin crawling with the knowledge that she wore Gemma’s blood. Like a banner. A battle standard. “Go after him before he gets killed,” she said.
Another voice cracked across the hall. “No! You can’t do that.”
Naomi turned. Slowly. Rage dragged bleeding furrows across her heart as she met Agatha’s snapping gaze from across the floor. The woman had been bound tightly, her features pale and bruised underneath a sheen of sweat. Beside her, two other witches watched in silent accusation. Hatred.
Resignation, she didn’t know. She didn’t care. Naomi’s eyes narrowed. “Watch me.”
“Don’t be so stupid,” Agatha hissed, struggling against the ropes. “You are the fountain, you can’t—”
“I’m the only fucking one able to end this.”
“You selfish—”
“By the sanctions of the Ho
ly Order of St. Dominic,” Naomi cut in grimly, checking the cartridge in her borrowed gun, “you are hereby accused and proven to be a witch.”
Jessie swore behind her, a sharp crescendo in a sea of sudden mutterings. The old words didn’t carry any power, but years of persecution levied a weight that reverberated.
Agatha blanched as Naomi slid the cartridge back into place. Four bullets left. “Blah, blah, blah. You know what? I just don’t care anymore.” With her stomach twisting into brutal knots, Naomi sighted down the barrel and squeezed the trigger. Once, twice. Again.
Screams, shouts, swearing entwined with the thunderous rapport of the gun. Jessie spat something hard and angry behind her, but Naomi threw the gun to the ground and turned her back as the three witches slumped, boneless and bloody to the floor. Silent, jaw thrust hard, she stalked across the spattered crimson tile.
“Wait—”
“Let her go.” Jessie’s voice cut through the chaos. Flat, exhausted. “She’s going to go kill a missionary.”
Naomi’s smile twisted. Four witches. One missionary.
Seemed fair.
Chapter Twenty
“Well, well, Mr. Clarke.” The intercom fuzzed as fire ate away at the systems around him. It was hot, too damn hot, but Phin knew he’d seen everything he needed to.
The bastard hadn’t bothered to warn anyone. He hadn’t cared.
He’d just locked the doors and set it on fire. A few matches, the right incentive. Phin could still smell the gas. Smell the rank, acrid stench of charred flesh.
The knowledge ate at Phin’s soul.
He turned, flinging an arm over his face as sparks shattered over a panel that had once been covered in silk.
“Come out, you bastard,” he roared, but the fire drowned it out. It leached at his breath, seared. Unable to do anything, anything at all, he retreated toward the tunnel door.
“I’ll see you in that lovely garden,” the easy voice said on the intercom. Fire licked at the edges of the metal plate, cracked the audio into broken syllables. “If—fast . . . save— Maybe . . . lucky.”
Phin didn’t shut the door behind him. Hatred spurred his feet, slammed his brain into automatic as he navigated the twisted, turning passages that would take him down the inclines of the secret maze. Hatred, rage.
Terror.
Kill him. Clear the way for everyone else.
Kill him, save his mother.
Just kill him.
Phin kicked the panel wide open. Carefully hidden hinges crunched, split away from the wall. Wood and plaster snapped.
Roaring his fury, Phin barreled into the smoke-filled garden. “Where are you?”
Gray, acrid fog curled around the tree limbs above him, ghostly tendrils of clinging smoke that burned his eyes. It tore strips out of his nose and throat. He spun, tried to peer into the shadows between his mother’s beloved oak trees, into the smoky recess beneath the willow tree.
Wrath pounded a blood-toned staccato through his skull. “Show yourself, you coward!”
Missionaries, he should have remembered, weren’t trained to play nice. Carson came at him from above, a flurry of limbs and lethal, shadowed grace.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he spun, only to grunt with the impact as he took Carson’s full weight to the shoulders. Phin hit the dirt, rolled frantically.
Carson stayed on him, fists like hammers thudding solidly into Phin’s face, his sides. Pain jarred a screeching note through his bones as he collided with a wrought-iron statue, as Carson seized his head and bounced it like a rubber ball against the raised metal.
Reeling, Phin flung a fist out. It collided with something malleable, something edged. Carson cursed, swore a vicious streak as he hit the ground beside Phin.
Blood gleamed on Carson’s lip as both men clambered back to their feet.
Phin gasped for air, for breath in the smoke and fear. “You,” he panted, “sorry . . . son of a bitch.”
Carson straightened slowly, his shoulders lifting in a shrug as he touched dirty fingers to his mouth. They gleamed in the muted fog, crimson and wet. “Well, well,” he said softly. “So the whorespawn has kitten claws.”
“You aren’t getting anything,” Phin spat. Pain radiated from his ribs, a dull ache at his left side. Breathing jerked spots in front of his eyes, but he’d be damned before he let the man see him waver.
He’d shot his mother.
Tried to kill his guests.
Ruined everything Phin had worked so hard for. Ruined everything his mothers had spent their lives building. Ruined him.
“Then you aren’t worth half as much as them ladies think, are you?” Carson shook his head, even as he hoisted the gun that had fallen out of Phin’s waistband. “Oh, and your momma’s going to die anyway. It’s too late to help her. But maybe you can convince me to use that fountain to keep the rest from dying of smoke inhalation, what do you say?”
“Phin!” Naomi’s voice pierced the fog of the garden, but the Phin made of hatred and vengeance ignored her.
Ignored the smoke, the fire, the screams that echoed in his mind, over and over and over. Help us. Save us.
Don’t let us die.
Baby, don’t let him have it.
“My mother isn’t dead,” he growled, so low it was practically a vibration swallowed by the smoke.
“Uh.” The man smiled evenly. “Yeah. I mean, maybe not now, but nothing’s going to save her. Not unless you give me that fountain.” He shifted, holding out one hand. “I’ll save her, kid. I’ll save everyone you want me to.”
Except Carson couldn’t even do that. Tears filled his eyes as Phin laughed. Laughed until the smile faded from the man’s face; laughed until he was vibrating with pent-up fury, shaking with it. “You stupid fuck,” he said, hoarse. Wrecked. “You just killed the only woman who knows what the fountain is.”
Carson’s hand dropped. Slid to his waist and propped there as the man stared down at the floor, gaze speculative. Rueful.
Irritated. “Well, son of a bitch,” he murmured. “Guess she’s going to die for nothing after all.”
Rage colored his vision, filled it, burned it redder than the fire licking at the surrounding wings. Wordless, screaming in pain and fury and soul-wrenching thunder, Phin lowered his head and bull-rushed the bastard.
Too late, Phin saw the wicked gleam of firelight on silver. Saw the casual flick of his fingers that spun the knife blade into a deadly angle.
Metal hammered. Machines pounded against the emergency reinforcements, rang like a bell through the lobby. The garden. Sharp, tinny echoes sheared off Phin’s hoarse cry.
Naomi didn’t waste her breath screaming as Phin’s body jerked. He stared into Carson’s face, his own tight with pain, with surprise, one hand fisted in the man’s wrinkled, worn jacket.
She just bent low and surged through the garden, every muscle leashed into the killing machine she knew she was.
Carson pushed Phin to the floor, blood gleaming vividly on the knife he reversed in his fingers. A casual flick, a roll of his wrist, and every instinct screamed a warning. Naomi dropped to the floor, rolled to the side. The air split above her head, inches from her scalp.
Metal bent, shrieked as it tore beneath the machines the city had mustered to tear into the spa’s protective layer. The echoes slammed through the garden, bounced from wall to wall until it squealed a hellish accompaniment to the steady beat of her heart.
Killer. Joe Carson was a killer, but she was better. The better trained, better equipped.
The better killer.
She rolled, leaped to her feet on a surge of adrenaline, determination. As smoke roiled around them, she launched herself at the man who’d ruined it all.
Her life.
Her sanity.
Her goddamn tolerance for everything else.
He backpedaled away from Phin, splayed deathly still at his feet. Away from the path that filled with choking gray. He braced himself, eyes flickering with
excitement. Smile obscene, he caught her first punch in one hand, backhanded her with the other. She didn’t spit out the blood bursting into her mouth.
Turning, she stepped into his space, spun her captured arm over her head as if he only guided her across a dance floor, and jammed her elbow into his cheekbone. Her forearm into his throat.
Her knee into his gut.
One, two, three.
Metal tore free of moorings. Daylight spilled through the shattered double doors. Smoke swirled as the promise of fresh oxygen sucked it through the furrows.
Carson reeled back, let her go with the sudden certainty that she was every bit as trained as he was. She could read it in his eyes, abruptly wary. No longer amused.
“Yeah. I’m here to kill you,” she spat through the smoke. It parted beneath flecks of bloody red. Swirled, clung.
Choked.
He laughed. “Oh, if you only knew.”
“I don’t want to.” Naomi pulled the Colt from its holster, aimed it with no more effort than it took to breathe. Than it took to stand, to walk, to talk. “I don’t want to play with you, you turncoat son of a bitch. You’re no witch.” Her mouth twisted. “You’re a hell of a lot worse.”
Carson stilled. Humor drained from his face. “Never bring a knife to a gunfight,” he said with a small shake of his head. “I knew that.”
“Too late,” she said, finger tightening on the trigger.
“Wait!” He flung out a hand as if a palm could ward off the bullet Naomi intended to put in his skull. She’d dreamed of this. Envisioned turning his brain into so much pulp and red-tinged gray matter.
Nausea blossomed in her belly. Swirled through her chest.
She hesitated.
“I didn’t do this on my own,” Carson said quickly. Pleadingly. “I didn’t make this up. There’s a thing of power here, and I’m not the only one who wants it. It’s the fountain, it gives back life, it heals anything. It’s the damn fountain of youth! And the Church wants it bad.”
Naomi’s heart stilled. Her blood slowed in her veins.
“Let me go, and I’ll tell you all about it,” he said. His voice was quiet. Hands outstretched, empty of everything but the blood that stained them. Phin’s blood.
Lure of the Wicked Page 25
