All Things Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  He knew that body.

  Knew the feel of those legs around him, the heat of her skin beneath his palms, the sound of her voice as she climaxed— For God’s sake.

  He’d killed her sister and still lied about it. Destroyed the coven she had relied on. Screwed her and left her and dropped out of sight for over a year. Sacrifice and failure.

  And then to find out that something about her, something in her magic, called to his?

  Fuck. Shit. “Asshole,” he muttered under his breath. Caleb was exactly that. An asshole. He had to be.

  Because in order to find out exactly what Alicia and her remaining witches were up to, he was going to have to wrench open whatever vault sealed his power away.

  Juliet Carpenter just might be the only key he had.

  The pain in his head, the angry sound of hornets droning in his ears, had started with her. Her magic had reached out, feeling, extending. He could sense it. Something in him had responded, hammered at the invisible barrier that walled his magic off. Struggling to meet hers, merge with it.

  Use it.

  How, why? That, he didn’t know.

  Why did she share the same bar code tattoo as his own sister? That, he also didn’t know, and he didn’t like not knowing.

  He’d find out. He had to. Everything depended on his visions; everything always had. Juliet, Jessie. The city.

  The future.

  Caleb tore his eyes from the tempting insanity of Juliet’s hips and gritted his teeth, focusing his burning, watering gaze on the patch of ground separating them.

  Fate was a bitch.

  Trapped in a red mist of concentration and pain, he misjudged a step.

  He stumbled, toe snagging on the ragged edge of a protruding metal cylinder. The next step barely made it off the rubble-strewn path, caught against something his blurring eyes couldn’t see anymore and he pitched.

  The ground was a hell of a lot closer than he’d thought. Grunting, joints cracking loudly in the endless, stifling quiet, he fell to his hands and knees. Sharp gravel gouged into his palms; excruciating pain lanced through his spine, his brain, out of his mouth on a four-lettered objection, and his sight crackled to white.

  Splattered by flecks of red where drops of his own blood blurred into rivulets of water.

  Weakness battered at his defenses. Exhaustion plucked at his resolve. He couldn’t go on like this.

  He couldn’t stop, either.

  Juliet sank to her knees beside him. “You’re bleeding,” she said sharply. “How long have you been— Damn it, Caleb!”

  God, her voice, all sweet and breathless. Even when angry, even while poking at him in the middle of hell.

  Caleb’s laugh stuck in his throat. He shook off her restraining hand, forcing himself to sit back on his heels. He immediately regretted it as the world spun wildly around him, a thousand shades of black outside the tiny path of light the flashlight gave them.

  He shook his head, swiping his forearm over his eyes. His vision cleared on her face. Concerned. Tired, hell, exhausted, but she’d always been a fighter.

  Never tough enough, but determined as hell.

  His fingers dug into the grit. “We can’t stop,” he said, but the words came out thick. Wrapped in fog.

  “Yes, we can.” She caught his unwounded shoulder, digging her fingers into the jacket to pull him back down as he struggled to stand. “And we’re going to before you pass out. Take your jacket off.”

  “No.”

  Frustration etched grooves into her mask of concern. “There’s no reason to be a hero here. We’ll rest.”

  Caleb reached up, shackled his fingers around her wrist and tugged her hand away. “We keep moving,” he said, and summoned every last ounce of willpower he had left to surge to his feet. The ground yawed wildly under him. He staggered, swore.

  And found five feet and five inches of warm woman tucked against his side.

  Juliet’s fierce green eyes crackled a warning as she wrapped her arm around his waist. The other hand curled around his wrist, securing his arm over her shoulders and pinning him neatly to her side. “If you’re going to be an idiot,” she huffed, bracing against his weight, “I may as well help.”

  Warmth collected somewhere behind his breastbone, insidious and sweet.

  He swallowed it down. “Can do it myself.”

  “Just shut up, please.”

  “It’s not—”

  “Caleb, I swear to God, if you don’t shut up—”

  He straightened so fast, she stumbled over her own feet. Without pausing to work it out, to think it through, he grabbed her shoulders. He told himself it was to steady her. To keep her from falling, to keep him from falling. Her eyes widened, her lips parted.

  Caleb reminded himself that he was a liar.

  He pulled her close enough to fit her body to his, to mold her curves from chest to thigh and invade every last inch of her space. She sucked in a breath.

  He tightened his grip on her shoulders and dragged her up on her toes. The semihard ache between his legs strengthened to blinding lust as he rasped, “Just once more,” and covered her mouth with his.

  Short circuits shifted to fireworks. Sparklers of heat and need and fear and frustration shot through his veins and lit every nerve he had left. Her mouth opened helplessly beneath the onslaught of his kiss, her soft lips clung to his, rubbed until static became fire became savage need. He devoured her breath, her sweetness, swallowed her gasp and skimmed his fingers up the curve of her shoulder as she shuddered.

  His thumbs slid along her jaw, tightened as she pushed herself harder against him. Angling her head, he swept in for a deeper kiss, tongue thrusting between her teeth to taste the dark heat of a craving he damn well didn’t want to acknowledge.

  Pain simmered into longing, satisfaction with the raw edge of a bone-deep anger. He growled deep in his chest, slid his tongue along hers. Her arms twined around his neck, her nails skimming his nape and forcing another rough sound from his throat as she bit at his lower lip.

  The small pain, rough and surprising, slammed straight to his dick and squeezed.

  He’d done this before. He knew how easy it would be to sweep her off her feet, haul her into his arms, and plaster her body against some wall somewhere; spread her out on the wet ground and sink into her until he didn’t have to remember anything but his own name as she whispered it in the dark.

  You’ll break her if you try.

  Guilt sliced through his conscience, leaving bloody furrows that tore his mouth from hers and left him reeling.

  With a low sound of impatience, Juliet twisted his shirt in her hands and slid the hem up. Logic and desire clashed. Burned. “Not again,” she whispered, but her eyes were heavy-lidded, veiled by the lacy fan of her smudged lashes. “Heaven help me, but something about you—”

  Groaning, he threw back his head as her fingers slid over the clenched muscles of his stomach. Her touch left a trail of fire in its wake, shimmers of wanting and impatience and, hell, raw lust that shot straight to the pulsing erection trapped beneath the confining rasp of his jeans.

  “God.” Her voice caught as her hand curved over the ragged tissue at his left side.

  The scars he bore. The scars he’d created himself.

  He wrenched back from that touch, jerked away before her single syllable could turn to revulsion. Moved too fast, too eager to put distance between them; his body fought him, and he sank to a knee as pain swamped his synapses. It overwhelmed everything in a flurry of craving and agony and fatigue.

  The buzzing in his head was back, like rusty nails on glass. He panted for breath.

  Juliet staggered, her cheeks flushed in the dim light, eyes hazy as she struggled to help him and keep herself from pitching over at the same time.

  The world turned orange and white. A column of flame arced overhead, lighting the ruins like a comet, and she jerked, startled. As effective as a bucket of ice water.

  Caleb lurched back to his feet with
more intensity than he had the energy for. “Coven,” he hissed, as if it wasn’t obvious. He tried to push her behind him, but Juliet caught his arm, draping it around her shoulders.

  He couldn’t argue. It beat falling on his face in front of the enemy.

  They slipped out of the shadows around them. Caleb fought to keep from swaying as one of the figures stepped into the light. He managed to put together a face covered with tattoos and grimaced.

  A faint gleam of blue winked out as the witch tucked something small and glassy into his pocket. He raised a silver revolver in his other hand, pointing it at them with steady ease. “Well, damn. It worked,” he said, and grinned. “How about that?”

  Caleb’s chin drooped. “How many are there?” he murmured. “I might be seeing double.”

  Juliet shifted under his weight. “Two.”

  “That’s all?”

  “So far,” she told him dourly. “Give them time.”

  No kidding. “Get ready,” he murmured, tensing as the tattooed witch stepped closer.

  “So this is how it goes,” the tattooed witch began, only to swear as Caleb snapped out a hand and flung the flashlight at him. The light spun, end over end, and Caleb shoved Juliet to the ground just as a gunshot cracked through the false night.

  She yelped, pained sound cut short as he landed on her, barking his elbows and one knee. The breath knocked out of her, she gasped as the gunshot echoes slammed back from every direction.

  Real guns, real bullets, real magic. They had to be out to kill.

  Or were they?

  Maybe not.

  Juliet shifted beneath him, and he closed his eyes.

  Gentle. He didn’t have the luxury.

  Firelight flickered into sudden, vivid life. It threw shadows across the wicked orange panels of light dancing over every ruin, every crumbling wall and twisted remnant of structures gone to rot. Fire outlined them all in stark radiance.

  He didn’t have any other options.

  Rolling off her, Caleb jumped to his feet, seized Juliet by the arms, and yanked her up. Wordlessly, ignoring the shocked flare of her eyes, he spun her around, pinned one arm behind her back, and locked his forearm at her throat.

  Juliet froze in his arms, every muscle clenched. “Caleb?”

  He didn’t look at her. He stared at the two witches, each outlined by the fire witch’s flame. “The way I hear it,” he said, almost conversationally, “you’re not supposed to kill her.”

  The tall, lanky man with a shock of bleached hair over one eye took a step forward. Fire pooled over his palm like water. It dripped to the ground, liquid flame that sizzled out as it hit wet rock and dirt.

  One wrong move, and that magic could engulf them both. Just the thought of it made the skin between his shoulder blades itch in memory.

  Caleb wrenched Juliet’s arm higher, forcing her to cry out.

  The fire witch stopped mid-step, but the tattooed witch watched him calmly. “Where will you go?” he asked, the black line of his lower lip set into a smirk. “You can’t run, soothsayer.” He patted his pocket. “Not from us.”

  “You think,” he lied, forcing Juliet to take a step back with him, “that I haven’t seen this? Go ahead, gentlemen. Ask me how you die.”

  The younger witch glanced at the tattooed one.

  “I can’t believe I trusted you,” Juliet hissed. Her voice cracked on the arm he lodged against her esophagus. She clung to his forearm with her free hand and spat, “I hate you.”

  Let her.

  Caleb shook his head as the pressure in his temples mounted. Pulsing in his ears, the droning hum thickened; he fought back the pain.

  The knocking onslaught of Juliet’s magic.

  Focus. He had to focus.

  The tattooed man sighted down the length of his extended arm. The gun winked, catching the light and reflecting it back to his wild grin. “You think I can’t make this shot?”

  “I think you’re not stupid enough to try,” Caleb replied. Please, God, don’t be stupid enough to try.

  Juliet shuddered, her skin suddenly clammy under his grip. “Oh, no,” she whispered. The pain in her voice was worse than any bullet could ever be.

  Caleb locked his jaw.

  “Alive doesn’t mean unhurt,” the witch said simply.

  “I hate you,” she said brokenly, voice scratchy and raw. “I’m so stupid. I let you do it again, I can’t . . . I can’t—”

  Sweat pooled at the base of his spine as Caleb met the leader’s eyes over the glinting weapon. “You hurt her—” he began, so softly, so dangerously that even he didn’t recognize his own voice, but the man winked.

  Bang, he mouthed silently.

  Shit.

  Caleb was already moving as the witch pulled the trigger. Juliet shrieked as he whipped her around, locking his ankle between hers, and sent her sprawling to the broken ground. Pain detonated through his left side; too-tight skin and ligaments shrieked as they stretched and popped and tore.

  A new pain sliced through his right, meeting somewhere in the middle and culminating in a rough, ragged breath as Caleb completed his spin. He lowered his head to charge, but the buzzing noise in his head turned to something white-hot and frenetic.

  His feet scraped over rubble. His legs gave out, sent him sprawling.

  Juliet sobbed something behind him, and he struggled to push himself to his feet. His elbows folded, dumping him face-first to the ground and earning him a mouthful of grit. Swearing, gasping, he struggled to push through the feverish pressure.

  His limbs weren’t working.

  Somewhere to his right, a column of fire erupted into a geyser of flame. A thousand shards glittered back as it licked the ceiling pipes, rusted stars in his pulsating vision. A man shrieked; was it him?

  No, Caleb couldn’t breathe deeply enough to scream. Agony shredded his head, lanced through his nerves and filled every reduced breath with something thick and wet and torturous. The ruins turned orange, flickered violently to an eerie, demonic blue as Juliet screamed behind him.

  Another voice rose. Long and loud and excruciating. Caleb scrabbled at the rock, his fingers too thick, his body slipping and sliding as he half crawled, half dragged himself toward her.

  Pale skin, wild hair, lunatic eyes; her features branded themselves into his mind as the fire guttered out. Juliet screamed. Screamed and screamed until her voice became claws piercing into his brain, digging and scrabbling and wrenching until something tore.

  Corpses. Twisted limbs and no faces; numbers. Only numbers, burning to ash.

  Caleb collapsed. As the world went black around him, as something warm and wet pooled beneath him, the droning died to blissful nothing.

  Chapter Seven

  Juliet was dreaming. She had to be. Nothing else could explain the blissful comfort soaking through her weary muscles, or the softness she buried her head into.

  Warmth. It settled over her skin like a blanket, sweet and all but alien, while her body drifted aimlessly through nothing.

  She didn’t hurt.

  Of course it was a dream.

  She opened her eyes.

  The sweet intensity of summer sunshine speared through her head like a diamond spike. Juliet sat up, yelped as her forehead scraped against blue canvas, and rolled over so quickly her head spun.

  She stared at the downy pillow trapped under her braced hands while the world settled back into place. Beneath her face, the patchwork pillowcase was soft, worn from repeated washing.

  Wholly unfamiliar.

  She turned her head. A few feet from her covered bed, giant swaths of green fronds fanned out in a lacy frame. She inhaled, smelled a fragrance that was all at once thick, oddly suffocating, and spicy at the same time, and shook her head hard.

  This wasn’t a dream, but where the hell was she?

  Where was Caleb?

  And why, she thought as she pulled herself gingerly to her knees, didn’t she hurt?

  She stared down at the worn brown
skirt wrapped around her hips, plucked at the snug, short-sleeved yellow T-shirt now doing its best to contain her braless chest.

  Who had undressed her?

  “Where the hell is my underwear?” she asked aloud, cupping her breasts in each miraculously clean hand. It felt odd to be without a bra. She’d always worn at least a sports bra, even when she slept. The street didn’t usually give her enough peace to strip down for anything longer than a quick shower in a stolen room, so she’d gotten used to the support.

  Of course, now someone had seen her naked. Someone unknown.

  And taken all her clothes!

  Heat singed her cheeks as she gathered the skirt in one hand and eased out from under the canvas. The sunlight struck her full in the face, blinding her. She let go of the skirt to shade her eyes with both hands, then stared down at it as the material floated to her calves. How long had it been since she’d worn a skirt?

  She had been twelve, she remembered suddenly. A baby to Delia’s eighteen. Her hair had still been light brown and soft, pinned up by garish ribbons and bows while she’d strutted around in drooping layers of fake silk and worn lace. Delia and the other women at the club had thought it adorable.

  Now it seemed like a lifetime ago.

  She shook her head. The streets of New Seattle didn’t leave room for adorable. So, what? Pushing aside the wistful thought, she studied the patch of open dirt surrounded by towering plants that looked like pronged, flat fans.

  There was the tent—little more than blue canvas strung taut between thick stakes and a waterproof tarp beneath it—and a path behind it. The plants, the smell, the humid air all made her feel as if she’d stepped into a tropical paradise.

  And somewhere in the distance, she heard voices. They were indistinguishable, but it meant she wasn’t alone.

  And if she wasn’t dead. . .

  Juliet crossed her fingers and followed the path.

  Carved stepping stones had been placed at regular intervals, worn smooth and gleaming against the dark earth. They were warm against her bare feet—where the hell were her shoes?—and oddly glassy. Each had been carved, and she bent to run her fingers over one with speculative interest.