His eyes narrowed, suspicion etched into every line of a face she’d always considered handsome. And why not? He had the best of her. Carefully, she drew the glass tumbler up between her gnarled palms, watching him over the rim. “I’m alone,” she offered. “More or less.”
“What game are you playing this time?” he asked sharply.
She only smiled, sipping the rich wine.
“You know why I’m here.”
“Humor me, dear boy,” she replied, stretching out her overall-clad legs and hooking her ankles together. Her yellow galoshes squeaked loudly.
“What did you steal?” he demanded. “We’ve got you on camera—”
“What makes you think I stole anything from you?”
Simon approached the porch, but he didn’t climb it. His eyes tracked the surroundings, picking out shadows. Shapes.
Sensing.
“You’re a good boy,” she added, raising a faded red eyebrow, “but too suspicious. There’s a sick girl that I suspect interests you greatly, and she’s asleep in my bed. Other than that, we’re alone.”
She knew his senses would confirm what she said. Heedless of the gun he continued to train at her chest, she watched the play of light in her glass instead.
Jessie wouldn’t wake up for this. Very little would wake her up now. She was too busy seeing, trapped in an endless stream of visions. It overwhelmed her, forcing her consciousness outward to witness God only knew what.
This, perhaps.
To see the present. What could be more terrible? Except, perhaps, seeing the future.
Her poor children. All of them. She had so much to make up for.
Mentally apologizing, Matilda drained half her glass before Simon lowered his gun. “I need your research,” he told her.
“As I thought.” She laced her bent fingers around the glass, bracing it on her stomach, lazily comfortable. “Is this your game, then, or are you still playing on someone else’s board?”
His mouth tightened. “Don’t do this. Just give me the codes so this can be done.”
Her smile was slow. “Ah, so. Laurence is still pulling your strings.”
“I don’t answer to him.”
She shook her head sadly. “No? He’s still got your soul, baby.”
Simon’s grip tightened on the gun. “Just give me the goddamned research.”
“What were your orders?” she asked slowly. The wine moved rapidly through her head, it always did. It polished the world into a pretty, unfocused shine. “Let me guess,” she continued as he only stared at her. “Get the data, then kill me. Or, if at all possible, kill me anyway.”
His lips compressed, and a wash of longing, of regret, slid over her. She sighed. “Don’t fret, my darling. Consider your duty discharged.”
Confusion tightened the skin around his eyes. He studied her, studied the wine she lifted to her lips, and his foot hit the first step. “You took poison, didn’t you?” he demanded.
She sipped delicately.
He leaped to the porch, snatched it from her hand. The remaining dregs sloshed over the lip, spattering to the ground like watered-down blood as the glass shattered in the fire pit.
Matilda didn’t get up. She wasn’t sure she could. Instead, smiling up into Simon’s angry eyes, she said thickly, “You can’t disobey him.”
“God damn it, Mattie.”
Mattie. Not many called her that anymore. Not for years.
Mustering every reserve of energy she had, Matilda tucked her hands into her overall pockets and studied the shape of his features. The square line of his jaw, his strong, slightly hawkish nose. He had her cheekbones. Her mouth. Familiar, and so alien all at once.
“You won’t be lying now,” she said, her tongue struggling to shape the words. “You did your job. But you won’t,” she added carefully, “you won’t get the data. I’m so sorry, baby.”
“Fuck the research,” he said roughly, his fingers digging into the sides of her throat. Checking for swelling. Trying to figure out what she’d taken.
He’d never stop it now.
Her chuckle was bone dry. “Foolish.”
“Parrish will deal,” he muttered, tipping her face up. His eyes swam in her vision. Dimmed. She withdrew her hand, and Simon froze as he found himself staring at a small, old-fashioned revolver. “Mattie.”
“You know how he thinks,” she said softly. She pulled the trigger. The muzzle flare lit up the porch, gunshot echoing from canyon wall to wall.
The recoil jerked the weapon out of her hand, and Simon spun with the momentum of the impact. He hit the dirt, swearing. Crimson spattered the wall beside the porch steps.
He shoved back to his feet, hand splayed over his side. Blood glistened wetly on his fingers. His teeth clenched. “Motherfucker.”
Her hand hit the porch floor beside her chair, fingers trailing limply against the rough wood. Her head lolled, eyes drifting closed as the poison slid like acid and silver through her body. Sweet, painless, but so clear she could all but feel it as it filled her.
Killed her.
“Mattie?”
Strong hands grabbed her shoulder, pulled her upright again as the chair rocked forward. His palm cupped the back of her head, and she smiled. Slow and warm.
Simon seized her chin. “Don’t you dare. You don’t get out of this that easy. I have questions. You knew.”
She sucked in a breath through lungs already constricting. “Tell,” she began, and choked. Her throat swelled. “Tell him,” she managed hoarsely, “I was dead when you got here.”
“Mattie!”
Dying, she reflected, wasn’t so bad. It was a long time coming. The nearly daily pain of her creaking joints and old bones receded on a comforting swell of golden light.
The feel of his hands at her face, the sound of his furious voice faded.
Everything was in place. Her role in the tale was over.
She had faith in these children. Faith that they would do what was right, faith they could fix the past. Fix the future.
That they could right her wrongs.
Bless them.
Smiling, the old witch let go of her tenuous bond to this world, to this time. Now it was up to them.
Chapter Seventeen
There were more ways than one to track a witch. A trail of blood worked as well as any magical crystal.
Caleb’s flashlight swept side to side, picking out the grisly signs of someone’s torturous passing. Blood speckled the ground, smeared on rocks in lurid red only just fading to brown at the edges.
He knelt, angling the light toward a sharp edge of broken, rusted metal. Frowning, he touched the surface. His fingers came away red.
Even if he weren’t standing in the bacteria-filled filth of an abandoned ruin, this much blood was a problem. He didn’t know who it belonged to, had no way of knowing without magic to call on, but he knew a mortal wound when it left a trail like this.
One of his quarry was running. But which one? Clearly, there was no love lost between Alicia and Tobias.
Had one of them killed the other?
He could only be so lucky.
Caleb rose, stepping over the pipe, and arrowed the flashlight along a bank of half-buried walls. Nothing moved in the still air. His nostrils flared, senses fighting the mustiness clinging to everything.
Clatter.
There. Turning, the light skated from wall to wall, filling the dark corners of the remains of some sprawling structure. There was no roof, no doors or windows, as if something had sheared it in half and left the waist-high walls to molder in the damp. Rubble filled half the rooms.
Caleb clicked off the light. The tomblike stillness of the underground filled the space like a blanket, packing the darkness into every spare inch and swelling. He turned his head, closed his eyes, and listened.
Somewhere in the shadows, a breath caught.
Caleb’s smile was grim. He turned the flashlight back on, dimmed it to a dull golden glow, and picked his way over scattered de
bris.
The pale line of a dirt-smeared arm gleamed like a beacon as he rounded a wall. “There you are.”
Alicia looked back sharply, body jerking, but the pain pinched into her face told him what the trail of blood already had. Time was running out.
His jaw clenched.
“Figures,” she said on a half laugh, slumping back. Her long legs sprawled in front of her, jeans nearly black with the blood oozing through her fingers. They pressed against her abdomen, and despite himself, Caleb winced.
Gut shot. Son of a bitch.
“Rough day?”
“Fuck you.” Her voice strained, features ashen. “You love this.”
“Not really.” Caleb tucked the flashlight under his arm and crouched beside her, surveying the wound as best he could. He whistled, low and long. “Have a falling out with your witch?”
She spat out a laugh, blood flecking her lips. “He’s not my witch.” Every breath gasped, short pants that he suspected were all she could handle. Struggling for air.
He wondered what time it was.
How long she would last.
His fingers flexed. “What do you mean,” he asked slowly, “he’s not your witch?”
She laughed, choking it off on a painful sound. “Fuck you,” she managed between gasps. “You must have seen this coming.”
Caleb took the flashlight from under his arm, set it gently on its end by his feet. Then, thoughtfully bracing his elbows on his knees, he studied her face. Her scars were white with the effort she exerted to hang on to life, to consciousness, her permanent grimace strained. Her eyes flickered, so pale in the gloom they looked ghostly. And afraid.
He didn’t smile. “What would you say if I said yes?”
Her breath caught in her throat. Wrenched spasms through her body, her heels digging into the rock and grit until it scraped away. Blood flecked her chin as she forced out, “Full of shit.”
Caleb pulled up his pant leg. “There you go. Tell me what you meant about Tobias.”
Her lashes fluttered wildly. “Hell, no,” she croaked.
Fishing the switchblade out of his boot, he thought about the rotting corpse pile. The shadows, the chains.
Shadows in the dark. Rough hands.
Hands like Tobias’s.
Her breath, ragged and short, filled the silence. Overflowed it, one desperate inhale into each painful exhale.
He flipped the blade open.
“Fine,” he said, and ice slid into his voice. Crystallized every word into a murderous edge. “You’ll tell me anyway.”
Her eyes settled on the blade. Filled with sudden, brilliant tears. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Please. Please don’t kill me. I’ll help you, I swear I will.”
“Really? After everything you’ve done?” He reached out and she wrenched away, collapsing like a paper doll as blood oozed from her stomach. Her lips.
She flinched, nearly screaming with it as she hit the ground. “Please! Please let me help you. I’ll tell you everything!”
Are you sure about this?
The knife gleamed in his hand, but to his disgust, he found himself lowering it.
She was as good as dead anyway.
One less death on his conscience.
In his soul.
She grabbed his arm. Caleb tensed, but all she did was pull herself up, inch by trembling inch, sobbing against his shoulder. Wracking, wild tears. “Thank you, thank you,” she said, over and over.
He pushed her away, sickened. “You can find your own way out,” he said flatly, getting to his feet. He unhooked the small medical kit pinned to his belt and dropped it beside her. “Just tell me where he’s taking Juliet.”
He shouldn’t have stooped to pick up the flashlight, he realized, but the thought came too late. Sobs shifted to a sudden, ragged burst of laughter as her bloody fingers skated across the black canvas of the underground. The sigil flared in the naked air, brilliant red, and Caleb threw himself to the ground a nanosecond before a fiery inferno enveloped the very spot where he’d been standing.
His skin prickled, edges of his clothing curling as the vortex seared the air. Alicia screamed, fury and venom, and with adrenaline scorching through his veins, Caleb reared back and slammed a fist into her temple.
She reeled, bowed backward and couldn’t balance. Her head crunched into the wall. Loosened rock crumbled to the ground around them as she sprawled.
“Motherfucking son of a—” Caleb leaned over, snagged her shirt collar, and wrenched her back up.
She screamed as the motion tore at her ruined stomach.
In the fire’s wild radiance, Alicia’s eyes gleamed. Pain, fear. Malice. “I’ll tell you!” she shrieked, throwing up her bloody hands. Soot clung to the tips of her fingers. “Please, I’ll tell you everything!”
Anger fed anger; determination slid through him like molten steel. I can handle her.
So could he. Caleb grabbed his discarded switchblade. “Yes,” he said evenly, every breath a harsh rasp. “Yes, you most definitely will.”
Fear etched wild lines through her distorted features. “What are you going to do?”
“What you wanted all along, Alicia.” Caleb pushed her to the ground, ice and rage and crystal clarity battling beneath his skin.
Whatever it took. He’d have to do it. Better him than anyone else, better him to carry that weight to the grave.
There was only one way to learn what Alicia refused to share.
I’ll rip it from her spirit.
His head pounded. That voice echoed, hard and angry and alien. And yet, so damned typical. Was he cracking?
He shook his head, fingers tight on the hilt. “I’m going to teach you the ritual.”
All the blood drained from her already pale skin. “You can’t. You have no silk or iron.”
“They’re only focuses,” he told her. “Useful, but not necessary. Now pay attention. You’re only going to see this once.”
“No . . . No!”
He pinned her arm to the ground with his knee. “First,” he said grimly, his voice a harsh croak, “the symbols of power.”
Alicia threw back her head and screamed, ragged and savage and with such malevolence, it was as if a thousand echoes took it up and spit it back, shattered shards of bloody glass.
The knife gleamed.
She came to fighting.
Large hands circled her wrists, shackling them to her sides even as she fought through the tangled threads of unconsciousness. “Juliet!” The baritone voice rumbled over her head, solid and real in ways every image sliding through her head wasn’t. “It’s Silas, it’s okay. You’re safe.”
Juliet wrenched away from the dreams, the nightmares; came to awareness, gasping.
A single flashlight painted Silas’s face in gold and wicked shadows, but sympathy softened his expression. And worry. “Welcome back,” he said, fingers loosening. “You’ve been out for about an hour.”
Her heart slowed its frenetic beat. Swallowing hard, Juliet elbowed herself upright, shoving her hair from her face with a shaking hand.
Everything hurt. Her legs, her feet. Her body.
Her heart.
She swallowed hard. “Where are we?”
He passed her a canteen, steadying it for her as she raised it to her lips. “Almost out of Old Seattle. We’re about five minutes away from the barricade.”
As she drank, he glowered at the comm unit cradled in one large hand. He stabbed at the buttons, raised it to his ear, and waited.
Juliet washed the grit from her throat.
Had he carried her all this way? What about Caleb?
She fingered her temple, wincing as it spiked a painful note through her head. Had he . . . hit her?
Of course he had. What was hitting her compared to murder?
“Right,” Silas said darkly, snapping the comm closed impatiently.
She pushed the canteen away. “What?”
He stood, slinging the flask back over his shoulder
, and glanced up instead. The light glittered off a maze of rusted, tangled pipes. “I don’t suppose you want to know where Caleb—”
She stiffened. “No.”
“It’s just that he—”
“No,” she repeated, and clambered to her feet when the word, her voice, trembled. She knuckled her eyes because it was better than looking at him. Seeing the sympathy, the concern, on his face.
She didn’t care what Caleb did.
He was a murderer. A user. She wanted nothing to do with him.
He lied to her.
“Right,” he said again, slowly. “No. Got it.” Shifting back on his heels, he fell silent while Juliet struggled to put a cap on the raw edge of her nerves. Struggled to lock the grief behind a wall until she could sort it out.
She wasn’t going to just sit here and be helpless, damn it.
She inhaled deeply, opening her eyes. To her surprise and relief, they remained clear.
She could cry later. Much later.
“What’s the plan? Where are we going?” she demanded.
“The plan is to keep you safe. They’re tracking your blood.”
“My blood?” She frowned. “How did they get my blood?”
“I don’t know, but we’re not safe at the sanctuary. We’re headed to the lower city,” Silas replied. Forever grateful for it, Juliet read nothing but impassive determination in the man’s face.
She could do that, too. “Then?”
“Then we lose them in the rat maze—” He tensed, glancing at the comm as it buzzed softly. “Fuck me for a doorknob.”
Her chuckle didn’t quite loosen the struggling knot in her chest, but it earned her an apologetic grimace as Silas slid the case open.
“Smith,” he said into the unit. “Yeah? Sure.” He glanced at her, expression suddenly on edge again. Soldier mode, she thought. Stabbing another button on the unit, he pulled it away from his ear and said, “Go.”
The speakers crackled. “Are we all here?”
“Naomi?” Juliet frowned at the box. “Where are you?”
“Topside,” Silas rumbled. “Spill it.”
“You heard him,” Naomi’s voice said, and Juliet’s eyebrows winged upward as an unfamiliar tenor, clear and even despite the worry infecting it, asked, “Could you remove the gun from my ear, Nai?”
All Things Wicked Page 20
