All Things Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  What an idiot he was.

  He’d done his part. Killed Delia, arranged to have Juliet sent on a wild-goose chase guaranteed to keep her the hell out of the way, and wrecked the coven while she was gone.

  It should have been enough. Should have, and wasn’t. The coven was obviously rebuilding, and they hadn’t forgotten him. Juliet wasn’t out of his life at all, and that damned meddling sister of hers still lived on in his mind. His memories, his every waking moment. He could have happily gone his whole life without knowing she’d called Juliet her little rose.

  Fragile. Sweet. Beautiful.

  Fuck it. Over a year had passed, but as Caleb listened to Juliet’s even breathing, he couldn’t help but think about all the ways he’d failed.

  Spectacularly.

  The room they’d been unceremoniously dumped in had nothing going for it. The witches had dragged them inside, tightened his ropes to make sure he couldn’t so much as wiggle a finger, and left, shutting a heavy door behind them. Silence reigned, broken only by the faint drip, drip, drip of water echoing from somewhere in the dark around them and the soft, even breathing of his fellow captive.

  It was cold, dank like all subterranean basements seemed to be, and tomblike. It stank, wet mildew and stale air, and he shivered, goose bumps rippling across his naked chest.

  To make matters worse, they’d left him facing Juliet Carpenter—the one bright spot in a sea of black shit memory—across the expanse of a dirt-crusted cement floor.

  His own personal brand of hell.

  They were in Old Seattle. He knew that much—the tomb of the ruined city had a smell that infected the brain. Like time fallen apart, all moldy and decrepit.

  That meant that this was one of many abandoned basements under New Seattle. One of countless structures that hadn’t collapsed when the earthquakes hit decades ago. He’d made use of his fair share of dilapidated buildings and tunnels when he could, and the coven had maintained a handful as a base of operations. So did squatters, or at least those too stupid to go anywhere else.

  This cellar was nothing to boast about: cement walls, cement floor, cement ceiling. All of it lined with decades of dirt and the silt remains of old flooding.

  In the circle of light provided by an old camping lantern, Juliet sat slumped against her bonds. His fists clenched behind him. They’d traveled through the black expanse of the underground city for an hour; it worried the hell out of him that she hadn’t surfaced from the chemical cocktail they’d served her.

  Caleb shifted, gingerly testing the knots cutting off the circulation in his arms. His body hurt, but it always did. Some days were worse than others.

  This one was going to be a winner.

  If he managed to survive it.

  He didn’t have the strength to tear through the constraints Juliet had so kindly tied for him, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to carry her out if he did.

  Leaving her wasn’t an option.

  He’d already done that once.

  Look at her.

  He didn’t want to. But the insistent echo in his head, in what he would have once upon a time called his soul, couldn’t be ignored.

  You promised.

  Against his will, his gaze flicked back to the woman who haunted his every waking dream. She was slumped back in the metal chair, her arms pulled behind the metal frame and secured in place. The position arched her back, thrust the shape of her full breasts out from her open jacket in ways that suggested it hadn’t been on accident.

  Caleb knew a grade-A fuckwad when he met one, and the tattooed witch qualified.

  He shook his head hard enough to jerk the ends of his hair out of his eyes. He didn’t know the witches of the coven anymore. They hadn’t rebuilt, not really—he’d have known if they’d managed anything more than campfire troupes in the dark—but there were enough new faces to make him worry.

  A year was a long time. Things were bound to be different.

  Who led them?

  He closed his eyes, caught himself straining to see something—anything—in the darkness behind his eyelids. It wouldn’t work. He already knew there was nothing to see.

  Hadn’t been since he’d woken, his body nothing more than a smoldering mess of ash and carnage, deliriously wandering the lowest streets of New Seattle. Stripped of magic. Stripped of everything that had made him who he was.

  Hounded by the too-strong vestiges of his final victim.

  That was the price he’d paid for his betrayal.

  “Fuck,” he seethed between clenched teeth, sweat gathering over his shoulders as he wrenched at the ropes. How the hell was he supposed to protect her—protect anyone—without his magic?

  What would his sister do?

  What she’d taught him to do. Run.

  Impossible.

  He glanced at Juliet. Her chest rose as if she could shift from the position that strained her shoulders, but she didn’t open her eyes. He wished she would.

  He was going to need help. And he didn’t need the visual reminder of her open jacket to remember what her generous curves had felt like in his hands, warm and soft and—

  “Give me a break,” he muttered. The faintest echoes rebounded from the shadows, hollow and ghostly. He shook his head harder, wincing as it pulled at the scarred tissue at his jaw.

  He would never get used to that feeling, as if bits of him had been peeled off, rolled like dough and super-glued back onto the rest.

  He wondered what Juliet had thought when she’d seen the scars.

  Then remembered the knife and let his head rest against the chair back in grim humor. He didn’t have to wonder, did he? She wanted him dead.

  Even if she couldn’t do it herself.

  Too damned soft.

  Metal creaked, and he raised his head again as her lips parted on a sigh. Ear-length black hair framed her pale skin like a velvet curtain, hanging awkwardly over her closed eyes. Her mouth curved downward in sleep, fuller top lip slanted in a deep line of sadness that scored a brand through Caleb’s conscience and set it on fire. Great. It matched the excruciating pain in his shoulder where she’d plunged the knife.

  This wasn’t going to be easy. But then, when had it ever been?

  The dark fan of her lashes fluttered open. Her gaze, as light green as the rare jade she’d cut from his wrists, was hazy, shadowed. Uncertain. It glittered in the dim light as she searched the dark corners of the room.

  He watched awareness slowly fill the vacant uncertainty of her expression. Watched her lips twist as those pale, soul-wrenching eyes settled on him.

  He opened his mouth. Hesitated.

  What the hell could he say?

  Nothing.

  Slowly, firmly, he shut his mouth on the words that filled his head. They weren’t his.

  Taking Delia’s life had left him with far too many of her fringe memories. The others he’d killed were in there somewhere, he could sense them sometimes, but Delia was by far the strongest. It surprised him at the time, but there was always a price for power.

  The side effect to the transfer ritual was something he’d damn well learn to live with.

  By himself.

  Juliet stiffened, jerked on her ropes, and bared her teeth as the metal legs of her chair scraped against the cement floor.

  “Son of a bitch!” Her voice shattered the near silence, bounced back in a flurry of sibilant whispers.

  They scraped at his nerves, tightened his already edgy voice to something rougher. “Shut up. We don’t have much time.” He forced himself not to look away as her gaze once more tangled with his. Narrowed.

  “Where the hell are we?” Her shoulders shifted. The open zipper of her coat slid away, baring more of the thin material of her tank top.

  The pale line where her skin met black fabric.

  Caleb’s eyes drifted lower, to the shadowed juncture of her thighs wrapped in black denim. Something uncoiled deep in his veins.

  Something deeply buried hummed in approval.
>
  Not on his life. Or hers.

  “Cellar in the Seattle ruins,” he said shortly. “Old coven ground.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “An hour and change.” He wrenched a shoulder, growling as tightened loops bit into his flesh. “Jesus Christ, Jules, what the hell were you thinking?”

  Her head snapped back as if he’d slapped her. Her eyes glittered, and he watched the skin around her mouth go white with strain.

  Suddenly, his head throbbed.

  “Not really sure,” she bit out, every word as precise as if she’d carved it with a razor. “I think it had something to do with seeing you dead.”

  Amusement cut a bloody swath through the buzzing pressure in his skull. “Then you should have killed me yourself.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  Escape looked downright unlikely. No tools. No excess anything. They’d left him with two chairs, a battery-operated light, and a lot of empty space. He knew this kind of space.

  Sweat trickled down his temple. It was too cool beneath the city foundation for the summer heat to travel far, but it wasn’t heat that caused him to break out in a cold sweat now.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  Juliet sighed, frustration clear as a candle in the dark. “Don’t you have any rituals stored up?”

  Not for a year.

  He’d be damned if he told her that now. Without bothering to open his eyes, he said wearily, “Neither one of us can cast anything while tied up.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “If you didn’t want to die here,” he pointed out, finally opening his eyes, “you shouldn’t have called them. Haven’t you learned anything about coven solidarity?”

  She stiffened, cheeks turning red. Damn, but she heated up fast. “Are you even human?” she demanded. The word broke, and she jerked hard enough at her ropes that the chair rocked. “Do you even think about the crap that comes out of your—”

  Muffled voices filtered through the dusty air, a murmur that gathered intensity and cut her off. Caleb jerked his head around, craning to look back over his shoulder.

  “Whatever happens,” he told her, “you keep your mouth shut.”

  “But I—”

  His head snapped back. “No,” he cut in. Her eyes narrowed. “Shut up, be silent, don’t even breathe.”

  Juliet tipped her head back to look at the ceiling, hidden somewhere out of reach of the light. Her throat worked silently to swallow the verbal dagger he was sure she’d meant to fling at his heart, and he cast a fervent prayer to whatever the hell kind of demon watched over people like him that she would obey.

  The door scraped open behind him. His pulse spiked a staccato tempo in his ears.

  Keep her safe.

  “Oh, finally.”

  Two words. Breathlessly spoken. And even at a near-whisper, more than enough volume to set off every alarm he had and send them howling with dread.

  Across from him, Juliet’s eyes narrowed, her jaw tight. This was going to take some serious verbal footwork, and Caleb wasn’t sure he had it in him to try.

  He didn’t have a choice.

  He looked away. “There’s a voice I haven’t heard in a while,” he said, tilting his face until he could just barely see the outline of the door in the corner of his eyes. “Alicia. I’m surprised you aren’t dead.”

  “One whole year.” Alicia’s voice was the same as it had ever been, sharp and effortlessly seductive.

  “Fourteen months,” he corrected with deliberate calm, “but who’s counting?”

  She moved silently, suddenly behind him, her warm, bare thighs bracketing his twisted hands. Her palms slid up his arms. “Oh, I’ve been counting.” Her left hand dragged over his scars, and he flinched. “I’ve been counting every. Single. Day.”

  Curio had always favored Alicia for her raven-haired beauty and wicked mind. She’d hated Caleb for the attention his visions had given him, schemed and plotted to unseat him from her master’s esteem, but Caleb had been more than secure in his power.

  Back then, he could see the future.

  But he hadn’t seen this. Even when the dreams had woke him, sweaty and gasping. When they clawed at his eye sockets and spilled like acid from his head, he never once saw himself here.

  Powerless. Angry.

  With Juliet’s life at stake.

  God damn it. How the hell had Curio’s pet witch escaped the trap?

  In his peripheral, Juliet’s face drained of color as Alicia’s fingers slid back up his sweat-slick chest. His neck. He could feel them, warm and somehow strange. Clumsy. Her hands framed his face, and Caleb fought back the urge to twist his head away.

  Alicia lowered her mouth to his ear and purred, “I am so very glad to see you.” Her breath stirred the ends of his hair.

  He gritted his teeth. “I can’t say the same,” he said from between them, then grunted when she gripped his hair, wrenching his head back. Pain locked in on his vertebrae. “Jesus, Alicia.” He forced a smile, toothy and flat. “You look like hell.”

  Alicia’s grin didn’t slip even a fraction. It couldn’t. Half of it had already been twisted by the oozing remains of flesh gone shiny from extreme heat, leaving her teeth bared in a permanent grimace. Her right nostril had melted, dripped across her cheek and healed over in a gleaming ridge, and one of her sky blue eyes stared from the confines of a keloid growth that had been sliced open to allow her to see through it.

  So she hadn’t escaped his trap at all.

  Like him, she’d only survived it.

  Her eyes glittered from behind a curtain of raven black hair, or what was left of it. A full half of her scalp shone in the same rippled scars that oozed over most of her face. A grotesque mask.

  She touched a thumb to Caleb’s eye, so close that his lashes fluttered under the pressure. “Aren’t. You. Cute?” Every word cracked; a whispered staccato.

  “Alicia!”

  Watery eyes jerked to Juliet. The witch’s grip tightened in his hair.

  Damn it! “This is tedious,” he said, but the twang of pain in his voice was clear even to him. Overriding whatever idiotic thing Juliet intended to say, he added, “Get to whatever it is you want and let’s get this over with.”

  Her gaze returned to him. “Tedious. You are unshakable, aren’t you? Nothing ever surprised you.” Her teeth flashed in the lantern light. “Except for that day Curio sacrificed you.”

  “Tried to,” he corrected. “Failed. So what’s it to be? Are you after revenge? Predictable.”

  If she was coping with even a fraction of the daily agony that threaded through his own bone-deep damage, then she was going to be dangerous as hell. A mind had a lot of time to think while pain lanced a rusty nail into every synapse and held sleep at bay.

  She let him go so suddenly that his head snapped forward. “We’ve been looking for you for a very long time, soothsayer.” She spat the word like a curse, but didn’t wait for a response before she straddled his lap.

  One long leg curved over his hip, the center of her body settling too damned familiarly across his thighs, and he gritted his teeth as the point of her elbow dug into his wounded shoulder.

  The wound parted, edges splitting open beneath the pressure. Perspiration broke out on his forehead. “Not,” he gritted out, “long enough. But who’s—” The pressure increased, and he gasped as pain stole his voice.

  Across the faint circle of light, her face pale over the pink curve of Alicia’s T-shirted shoulder, Juliet flinched. “Alicia, don’t.”

  On his lap, the witch’s shoulders went rigid. Her head came down like a dog sensing a challenge, and Caleb wrenched at his ropes with a low growl. “Get to the point. You’re pissing me off.”

  “What’s wrong, pet?” she crooned, but she stared at Juliet over her shoulder. “Going to vision your way to safety?”

  “I never needed visions to handle you, Alicia. You’ve never been anything
but a third-rate witch.”

  Alicia’s head snapped around. Suddenly, Caleb found himself eye to deformed eye with sheer, naked rage.

  He heard Juliet gasp as the witch’s hand curled around his throat. He jerked his chin up; fingers like sharpened vises tightened, brutally digging into the flesh around his windpipe.

  She thrust her free hand in front of his face, splayed wide.

  Three digits waggled in front of his face. A twisted thumb, keloid scarring overgrowing the nail bed. A forefinger, miraculously untouched and capped by a single long nail. Her last three fingers had fused together, seared into each other until only an enlarged, grotesque flipper remained, mottled by scarred, ulcerated growths. The scars climbed all the way to her elbow, bared in her faded T-shirt with the sleeves cut off.

  “Look at this,” she hissed, somehow worse for it being no louder than a whisper. “Look at what you did to me. Look at what’s left!”

  Caleb struggled for breath. His fingers pulsed in time with the flow of blood trapped beneath the ropes, his head buzzed as if filled with angry hornets, but he didn’t dare move.

  He was desperately, acutely aware of Juliet watching him. Watching them both. Within reach.

  Alicia’s thighs tightened around his bare waist, and he grunted as she slammed that grotesquely malformed hand into his scarred shoulder. “Give me what I want, soothsayer.” Another punch, this time with her closed fist. His stomach jerked as pain radiated from the punctured, scarred tissue, and his lungs clamored for oxygen. “Give me the transfer ritual.”

  Juliet’s chair scraped. “Leave him alone!”

  Caleb choked out a laugh, drowning out Juliet’s wild cry. Shut up, damn you. “And what,” he rasped, “would you do with it if I did? Take my magic?”

  Her smile curved upward, so angelic on the one side. So monstrous on the other. “You think you’re so clever,” she purred. “You think you can get off pretending it’s just about living magic? Oh, baby.” Her other hand stroked his face. “She doesn’t know yet, does she?”

  Despite his efforts not to, his eyes slid to Juliet. She stared at them both, her mouth set into a thin line. Spots of angry color turned her otherwise pale cheeks blotchy.