Before the Witches

by Karina Cooper

  “Erin really.” Mattie frowned at her, disapproval clear in her voice.

  She winced. “Sorry, Dr. Lauderdale.”

  Nigel barely heard. Shaking his head, over and over, he picked his way through a sea of faceless refugees. Not that he could go anywhere.

  There was nowhere to go.

  His world had become a trailer filled with strangers.

  “May Day,” he whispered as he gripped the edge of a window. He stared out into it, saw only ash and the glowing ember of hell inside it.

  Love you, too, Dad.

  The strangers said nothing as tears slid from his gritty eyes.

  Chapter Nine

  The trailer was quiet. Now and then, a child’s voice rose on a sob or a question, to be hushed by whatever exhausted adult was nearby.

  Exhaustion filled her to the bone. Wrapped so tightly she could barely breathe, Katya remained silent while she watched Nigel in the dim interior. He stared out of the dingy window and didn’t bother wiping away his tears.

  Tears for his city?

  For someone else?

  She’d been so selfish. While she had been so focused on herself, she’d never bothered to ask him what—who—he’d lost in the cataclysm.

  The truck shook, jarring everyone inside as another earthquake tore through the bedrock. Mattie linked hands with some of the more frightened children. “It’s all right,” she soothed.

  They clung to her as if they knew her. Children from the hospital? Was she a doctor?

  A doctor who’d saved those she could.

  Katya got carefully to her feet. Mindful of the crowded conditions, she worked her way through the tangled knot of people until she could slip her fingers into the window frame beside Nigel’s for balance.

  “Nig—”

  He didn’t let her get a word out. Silently, he turned, caught her in one arm and crushed her to him in a hug that stole the last of the breath from her body.

  What could she do? As he buried his face in her hair, she held onto him. As tightly as if he’d fade, cease to exist if she didn’t. As if she could tell him without speaking how much he meant to her.

  He whispered something ragged against her hair.

  The terrible, shattering crack of thunder came again. The glow beyond the ash flared wildly, suddenly lighting the sooty sky to a muddy orange.

  They lurched against the wall as the truck swayed. Screams punctuated the creak and echo of hands and bodies hitting the walls, the floors.

  Mattie grabbed the nearest children and herded them against the wall. “Hold on,” she ordered. “Laurence!”

  The window cracked open. “Earthquake,” came the man’s voice, locked down with obvious tension. Obvious control. “It’s a big one, so hang on tight.”

  Nigel’s arms folded her closer. Katya raised on her tiptoes, trusting in his greater strength, and pressed her lips to the hollow of his throat. It was as far as she could reach.

  He rasped something that could have been a laugh.

  The truck lurched, trembling violently as Laurence tried to stabilize it. Tucking Katya between his body and the wall, Nigel grabbed the window frame again. His hips locked her in place.

  His arms strained on either side of her body, protective and strong.

  Leaning against his chest, she watched as Mt. Rainier spewed and frothed. The trailer jostled wildly, bucking as if it would break in two.

  Nigel’s stance, military-strong, braced as he held her. “Hell on earth,” he murmured over her head.

  He didn’t have to say more. As one, as if by some unspoken order, the refugees clung to each other and silently watched as the southern edge of Seattle’s skyline crumbled.

  Katya loosely wrapped her fingers around Nigel’s wrists, her thumbs squarely on his steady, rapid pulse, and took a deep, aching breath. I love you, too, she thought. Truth.

  But now wasn’t the time.

  Maybe once they were safe, she could tell him.

  Maybe, just maybe, it’d be enough to soothe some of the haunted look from his eyes.

  The horizon spat orange fire.

  “Hang on tight,” Mattie ordered. “We’re not out yet.”

  Nigel’s arm tucked around Katya’s ribs, and she took as deep a breath as the bandages would allow. Screw timing. “Ya vas lyublyu,” she whispered.

  He looked down at her. “I know. God, I hope it’s enough.”

  It had to be. Love was all they had to give, now.

  The truck engine roared as Laurence stomped on the gas.

  Epilogue

  The medical truck carrying thirty-two refugees eventually made it out of the Pacific Northwest, traveled south into California, and found—and lost—more souls along the way. As the aftershocks faded into the occasional tremor behind them, the refugees split into groups of shared ideology.

  The most vocal of these were those desperately searching for someone to blame.

  Mattie and Laurence Lauderdale kept their patients close, while a band of more militant refugees became one of a handful of marauders determined to survive at all costs. Even if it meant leaving others to die.

  Katya and Nigel left with a small group of hopeful idealists, pioneers determined to make it in this new world. Somewhere in the south of the devastated country, they found and fell in love with a small parcel of land by the ocean and developed a commune. Although they would never know it, Katya’s first child became the first baby born after the cataclysm.

  Like her mother, she was a witch.

  But witches weren’t welcome in America anymore.

  It would be three years before the extent of the damage could be processed, but the repercussions began almost immediately. Terrified and eager for an answer, encouraged by a religious sect that had somehow survived the disaster intact, the country saw a scapegoat in the men and women deemed too “different” to be human—and enacted the worst witch hunts in humanity’s bloody history.

  It would be years before humanity finally managed to find some footing amid the rubble, but those years would remain a gory wound in the memories of all who experienced them. Governments were scrapped, many surviving leaders fed to the witch fires. New leaders were shaped into shadow councils bent on serving tyrants or pale imitations of the republics they used to be.

  In America, the federal government lost ground to state leaders, and isolationism increased as only the most urban metropolitan areas were rebuilt. Survivors flocked to these bastions of safety, to find refuge behind newly built city walls.

  The Holy Order of St. Dominic rose as the undisputed king of the new era, and at their side the witch hunting mission became a weapon of mass annihilation.

  Millions died, in Seattle and across the world. But at least a third fell to the fires of zealotry.

  Later, as the survivors organized, they would come to understand that the San Andreas Fault had fractured. Every sister fault along the massive chasm’s trajectory cracked wide, as far north as the ruins of Vancouver and nearly as far south as Mexico, which had lost half its land mass beneath the sea. South America was cut off, and all contact eventually lost.

  Most of Seattle slid into the new fault, bringing an end to any hope of search and rescue operations. They called the chasm the Sea Trench, as tons of water from the Puget Sound roared through it.

  New York, Chicago, Detroit, even farther to England, Germany, Italy, Japan. New Zealand was gone, washed clean by tsunamis created by tectonic shifts so massive that it split the island in two.

  Humanity had only just barely survived the worst years of its millennial history, and they were sure that witches were to blame—hellish creatures spawned of Satan and whose very presence, whose very tolerance among God’s children, had caused Him to punish the whole world.

  Millennia ago, it had been a flood. This was no different.

  And while the fanaticism ran hot and bloody, scientists gathered data. Measured it, calculated it, argued over and filed it. They delivered reports to their respective countri
es, many too splintered to have the resources to care, and those files were lost, misplaced, or burned—with the brilliant mind who delivered it—as heresy.

  Science had no place in the Holy Order’s domination.

  It would be over fifty years before those files would come to light. Each culminating in a single warning:

  The cataclysm will come again.

  About the Author

  Born from the genetic mash-up of lesser royalty, storytellers, wanderers and dreamers, Karina Cooper couldn’t help but be a writer. After writing happily ever afters for all of her friends, she eventually grew up (kind of) and fell in love with paranormal romance. Because, really, who doesn’t love hot men and a happy ending?

  When she isn’t writing about things that go bump in the night, Karina designs Steampunk and neo-Victorian couture for gentlemen hobbyists and ladies of questionable reputation. She lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with a husband, four cats, one rabbit, the fantasy of a dog and a passel of adopted gamer geeks. She adores hearing from readers, so grab a cup of tea and visit www.karinacooper.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Coming Soon from Karina Cooper

  Blood of the Wicked

  June 2011

  Lure of the Wicked

  July 2011

  Keep reading for a

  Sneak peek at

  Karina Cooper’s first novel

  In her Dark Mission series

  Blood of the Wicked

  Coming June 2011

  From Avon Books

  Chapter One

  Operation Echo Location reeked.

  Silas Smith knew bullshit when he smelled it. Sure, it smelled a lot like sweat and cigarette smoke and desperation, but it was pure bullshit. Shoved into a manila envelope and jammed down his throat.

  Fuck, his head hurt. The overloud electronic crap they called music at the Pussycat Perch began its skull-wrecking vendetta the instant he stepped through the door. The pain fed off the industrial bass rocking the foundations of the converted warehouse, played counter to the painful throb of his left knee. Between light, sound, pain, and the shitty mood he’d been nursing since he’d returned to the damned city, it was all he could do to figure out where the hell anything was around him.

  Silas blinked in the scattered flash of multicolored beams of light. Every breath burned, smoke and humid energy sliding over his tongue. Dancers filled the floor to capacity, writhing in a sea of light and limbs and gleaming, sweaty skin. Gyrating, mostly naked women wrapped around bolted poles at three stages, and the cacophony skewered through his brain, pissing him off even more than when he’d walked in.

  Finding anyone in this mess was going to be a complete pain in the ass. As with every joint like it, the Perch had built its success on too-loud music, too many people, too much skin.

  Sex, drugs, and debts too deep to ever climb out of. He’d see it here in the too-bright eyes of the avid voyeurs and the dead, doll-like stares of the women who danced for them.

  So he’d find Jessica Leigh and get the hell out again. Where the fuck was the bar?

  It took him several minutes to find it, scarred wood countertops hidden behind a sea of demanding customers. It took longer to force his way through the oversexed crowd. Dancers thrashed around him, drunks staggered by, and he’d made it halfway through the mess before white-hot static shorted his brain on a crackled snap of pain.

  Instinctively he caught the woman who’d slammed into him, elbow to gut and knee to knee, barely cognizant of her slurred apology. He pushed past her, cursing, forging through the masses as he fumbled in his pocket for the aspirin he kept close.

  The chaos around the bar was an ocean of calm compared to the death trap of a dance floor. He grabbed the edge of the wooden bar to stake his claim to a foot-wide piece of real estate, even as he popped the painkillers into his mouth dry.

  “What’ll it be?”

  Silas turned at the husky half shout near his ear, caught an eyeful of red velvet and smooth, bare skin. He swallowed the bitter pills on pure reflex.

  She was sex wrapped up in gold ribbon.

  Tight, trim curves smoothed out a wine-dark corset strapped with gold. The overhead lights cast radiant colors over her bare arms and shoulders, gleamed over her wavy tousle of black hair. Her wide mouth curved up at one corner, painted bloody crimson and guaranteed to make a man like him take notice.

  He did. So did his dick. Contrary to every vicious reminder of how much he hated strip joints, he was suddenly, viscerally aware of the rhythmic bass thudding inside his chest. And his jeans.

  “I said,” she repeated, throaty amusement coloring the half-shouted words, “what’ll it be?”

  Sweat and sex and your mouth on my—

  Jesus Christ, that wasn’t right. He hadn’t come out here to troll for ass. Silas reached into his inner coat pocket. “Looking for someone.”

  “Sorry, they’re not here.” Bright. Smooth.

  Silas studied her light brown eyes. Whiskey eyes, he thought, and frowned. “How do you know who I’m looking for?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” She braced slim arms on the bar top, giving him a tantalizing view of the cinched-up swell of her small breasts. Notched, grimy bills peeked out from beneath her bodice, startlingly dirty against the clean shine of her skin.

  He jerked his gaze back up to her face. “I need—”

  “They aren’t here,” she repeated, firmer this time. Velvet and steel. “So what do you drink?”

  Lust warred with annoyance. Pure frustration. So the Perch was one of those places. Hell, and why not? Silas settled for a nod. “Beer.”

  He peeled a few small bills from the clip in his inner jacket pocket. It gave him plenty of time to admire the taut curve of her ass under barely-there gold shorts as she bent over the back counter, retrieved an unlabeled brown bottle. Glass hit the bar with a thump, and her fingers closed over the money.

  He held on just a second too long. Just long enough to make his own point.

  Her gaze dropped to his hand, to the money and the wooden beads strung on a leather cord around his wrist. The black tattoo half concealed under the hem of his sleeve. “Nice ink.” She plucked the bills from his loosened grasp. “Holler if you want another.”

  With a whirl of gold ribbon and practiced rhythm, she turned and strode back down the bar. Silas watched her go, unable to help himself as his gaze raked over her long bare legs.

  Tempting. And because it was, she was interesting. He didn’t do strippers. And, he reminded himself, shifting on the stool, he had work to do. His fingers itched to pull out the photo from his inner pocket, to refocus. From the moment he’d laid eyes on the picture, Jessica Leigh’s laughing, youthful face had captured him. Branded itself on his brain. She was radiant, caught in a moment of complete candid delight. Wholesome. Fragile.

  Nothing like the cunning, son of a bitch witch in the picture with her.

  So here he was, because he’d gotten a call from a ghost he’d thought he’d long since left behind with this damned city and didn’t know how to say no.

  Find her. Land her. Easy, right?

  He waited with a raw impatience that ate at his already fraying control. By the time an hour crawled by, he’d finished his beer and the pain in his knee had mellowed to a dull ache. He was four aspirin down and seven come-ons up, and annoyed as hell when the latest in a string of stage-light strippers turned out to be bleached blond and not Jessica Leigh.

  He set the empty bottle on the counter, turned to wave the bartender over, and found her tucked back by the employee hatch. One hand curved around the hinged slat of wood, holding it up while she withdrew a small wad of bills from her cleavage.

  The short blond in front of her took it, nodded, and Silas’s pulse spiked hard as adrenaline surged through his system. The riot of noise in the club amplified through his skull as he half stood, ready to move. Get her, get the hell out. She tur
ned, and Silas blew out a disappointed breath.

  Damn it. Just another blond in a fake leather halter, and one hell of a rack to frame in it.

  He was getting tired of this undercover shit. He sat back down, reached for his drink. Remembered it was empty and jammed his elbows on top of the counter instead. Fuck. This. Job. He wasn’t a subtle investigation kind of guy. More got done at the business end of the revolver tucked beneath his jacket, but he’d let himself get suckered into this one.

  Damn Naomi West for finding him.

  He glanced over when the hatch slammed closed. The long-legged bartender locked it in place and sauntered across the floor. Silas watched her because, hell, her hips swayed like she knew what five inches of gold spiked heel did to a man.

  Sharply sweet floral perfume speared through his nose as the new blond with the impressive boob job snagged his empty bottle and tossed it into a bin behind her. Glass shattered. “Another one, sugar?”

  “No, thanks.”

  She followed his gaze, grinning a full-lipped, catlike grin. “Your favorite? She’s hot enough, I guess. I told her she’d make better tips if she stayed blond, men love it. Does she listen to me? Hell, no. I’ve only been in this business for three years, you know? I make damn good money.”

  Only half listening, Silas grimaced, shifting his leg to ease the pain. Yeah, the brunette was hot, but she wasn’t what he needed. Jessica wasn’t here. He’d come back tomorrow, and the next night. See if she showed up, or if the intel had been wrong after all.

  He paused. Frowned. She’d make better tips if she stayed blond.

  Light brown eyes. Full mouth. Wide cheekbones— Hell. Jessica.

  Silas shot to his feet in time to watch the employee door swing closed. Damn it.

  He reached over and grabbed a fistful of synth-leather beside him. The tattooed man jerked out of his grasp, rounded on him. “Fifty bucks,” Silas said flatly, cutting him off mid-snarl. “Can you take a punch?”