Blood of the Wicked, page 15
“Jesus, Naomi.” Silas jerked the sealed plastic bag of bloody swabs from the duffel. Practically threw it at her.
She caught it easily. “You trust her, obviously.”
“The only family she’s got is going to get killed as soon as she leads the way to him.” Silas slammed the truck closed, locked it with stiff, sharp movements. “She knows that.”
“She what?” Shock twisted her features. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit.” Light glittered at her studded ears as she scraped back sodden tendrils of purple-streaked hair. “I’m stranded topside, gearing up for some kind of surveillance operation—with Peterson for fucking company, let’s not forget—and you’re down here telling her how you’re going to ice her brother? And you think she’s just fine with that?”
Silas stared at her. She’d always been exotic, even as a kid. He had vague memories of her, lost and alone, too fucking serious at six years old. Too proud. But the fascination with piercings, or maybe with pain, wasn’t something he remembered.
He swallowed back a nasty surge of guilt. Pocketed his keys. “She’s not stupid, whatever you think. It amazes me how much of a bitch you are sometimes.”
She said nothing, worrying her lip ring as she followed him back to the apartment. Her stride splashed in the swampy water of the courtyard. Then, her voice sharp with the tone that said she wasn’t laying off, she said, “Silas, maybe—”
He rounded on her, one finger raised under her silver-ringed nose. “Look, no matter what, no matter where we go, they’ve been finding her. That makes her useful, right?” Naomi’s blue-violet eyes flickered. “It means that they want her bad. I get it. It also means that they’ll keep coming. That’s an in.”
The crease in her lower lip deepened as she twisted her mouth. Her eyes flicked to the door. Back again. “You’re going hunting.”
“Yeah.” Silas reached back, palmed the doorknob. “But not without more information, and I sure as hell am not going to drag her into the nest. So either you can ride my ass and point out everything I’m doing wrong, or you can call Jonas right now and put him to work.”
A flicker. Maybe worry? Maybe irritation. Naomi wiped the rain from her face with both hands. “Shit, Silas, you should do that.”
He couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Jonas had enough to cope with without Silas’s input. “I’m out of here the instant that kid is dead,” he said, forcing down the guilt, the crushing press of responsibility. “You do what you need to, keep Peterson happy and off my ass. I’ll let you know where to be and when. That should be a nice promotion for you, right?”
Naomi’s eyes narrowed. “Typical. In alone and out alone.” She flicked her fingers through the air, a vicious slice through the hot swell of words in his throat. “What do you need?”
Silas gritted his teeth. What didn’t he need? “Painkillers,” he said, and didn’t smile when she snorted. “Test the blood, ID the bodies, and let me know what the hell we’re dealing with. Figure out what those tattoos are on the woman’s hands, and whether or not we can duplicate it.”
Naomi’s eyebrows shot up, winking more silver. “Duplicate it? The tattoo?”
“Yeah.” Silas pushed open the door. Grunted at the visual punch, the olfactory miasma, of crimson.
Red was a color that didn’t match anything.
The shower had stopped, which meant Jessie would be out any second, so he spoke fast. “If they can use tattoos as a focus, maybe you can crack it. Use it like, hell, some sort of signature or something. Isn’t my thing, so pull Vaughn out of wherever he is and get him on it.”
“Vaughn’s dead.”
He winced. “Shit. How?”
“Heart attack, four years ago. Silo’s our new librarian.”
“Well, then, get whomever that is on it,” he said grimly. “We’re ass-deep in alligators.”
“Oh-kay,” Naomi said, in that long, drawn out way of hers. It meant she didn’t agree. Or didn’t like it.
And he didn’t care.
He shot her a glance, found her picking up the stained cloth he’d used to mop the blood from Jessie’s neck. A curl of anger spiraled deep in his chest. Burned white-hot. “I’m not going to let her get killed,” he said tightly.
She shook her head, just once. A curt gesture. “I don’t want her dead, either.”
“Her appreciates it.”
Naomi’s eyes flicked beyond him. Banked. She folded the cloth neatly into a square. “Hello, Jessica,” she said, her voice an even slide of silk. “Feel better?”
Silas turned, had to keep himself from reaching out as Jessie walked out of the hall. She was pale, her hair freshly brushed back in its mass of dark gold. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but her gaze was steady and clear.
She’d been crying.
“Jessie,” Silas corrected, and when it earned him a faint smile, he mentally kicked his own ass. He had no business responding to that smile.
Basking in it.
“No time for arguing, so here’s how this will go,” he said crisply. “That witch hauled ass. If he survives, it’s a sure bet he’s going to report Jessie’s existence. Naomi, take the blood, get it labeled. Will you be able to be where you need to when I give the word?”
Naomi shrugged, pocketing the square cloth as she surveyed the remnants of carnage that stained the living room. “One way or another.”
Jessie frowned between them. “What?”
“Chin up, prin—” Naomi corrected herself. “Jessie. He’s going to dress you pretty and dangle you like a carrot. If he’s good, which he might be after all these years, you’ll survive. Any issue with that?”
“Jesus, Naomi!” Silas rounded on her fiercely, but Jessie didn’t rise to the bait. Didn’t argue. She simply shrugged her shoulders in that beat-up neoprene jacket that hugged every curve she had.
If he didn’t know better, he would have pegged her for a veteran hunter in that flinty, effortless movement.
And that wasn’t right.
“No problem,” Jessie said as she brushed by them both. “Let’s go.”
The fist of edgy worry in Silas’s chest flattened to annoyance as Naomi caught Jessie by the shoulder. She towered over Jessie’s shorter frame, but to Jessie’s credit, she stared back without flinching.
“Why do they want you?” the missionary asked. “What are you hiding?”
Jessie’s smile tightened. “One, your subtlety sucks. Two, my brother probably knows I’m in your hands and wants me out of them. Three, the witch mentioned some sort of ritual, but as I don’t have a black book of magic or a death wish, I can’t help you there. You tell me.”
Silas pushed between them, forced them apart with a hand on each shoulder. “Naomi, Christ, lay off already.”
“No,” Jessie said. “It’s fine. She’s just doing her job.” As if to prove she had nothing to hide, she leaned forward, rose up on her tiptoes until she was eye to eye with the woman.
Honey to violets.
“I don’t know why they want me, Miss West,” Jessica assured her. “I don’t know what they plan. As far as I know, I have nothing they want. Okay?”
For a long moment, Naomi stared at her. Then, a short, tight smile. “I’ll go see about those errands, then, shall I?”
She left without another word, sauntering out the door and into the rain. Silas closed his eyes before he did something rash.
Like punch something.
Or grab one hell of a stubborn blond in both hands and kiss her stupid. “Jessie.”
Her shoulders stiff, she whirled in a sudden fit of hot temper. “Don’t even. I don’t care.” Her eyes flashed at him, warned him off.
And he wanted her anyway.
Silas ignored every signal his brain sent him, every warning, and closed the distance between them. He grabbed her by the front of that damned jacket and hauled her mouth to his.
She resisted at first. Tried to move away. To disentangle her lips, his hands. Then she moaned fiercely, raggedly, and seized his hair in her fingers. Met his kiss, returned it.
Feeling her melt in his hands warmed him down to his goddamned rain-soaked toes.
As abruptly as he’d captured her, he let her go.
“Okay,” he said on a hard breath, unable to disentangle his fingers from her jacket. His forehead bumped hers, rested there. “That was one for the road.” One for the rest of this operation, and to sustain him when he left her somewhere safer.
It wasn’t enough.
Jessie licked her lips, color high in her cheeks. Her eyes gleamed, but with none of the anger they’d spat moments before. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to kiss an angry woman?”
His lips twitched. “I never knew my mother, and no, in my experience, angry women kiss like the world’s on fire.”
“You’re an ass,” she accused. It lacked any sting.
Silas nodded, tucked tendrils of her drying hair behind her ear. “Yeah. And I’m going to protect you.”
Her eyes widened. Darkened. “Don’t say that.”
“Save it, sunshine.” He touched her bottom lip with an index finger. “That’s the way it is.”
Whatever fear made her eyes cloud in nerves or trepidation, it faded under a smile that cocked one corner of her mouth into a teasing challenge. “We’ll see who’s protecting whom. So let’s get on with it before that guy comes back with help.”
He scraped back his hair as she strode out the door, rubbed both hands tiredly down his face. Tried not to think about how fucked he really was.
Jessie wasn’t going to like being left behind. He wasn’t going to give her a choice.
Hell. At least Naomi left the first-aid kit. He grabbed the dented metal box and his jacket, bit off a curse when denim hit the bullet graze carved shallowly into his shoulder. Wouldn’t be the first crease he’d ever earned.
He figured there’d be more, at least until the one that killed him. He’d bandage it later. Until then, aspirin would have to do. He swallowed two bitter pills on the way to the truck.
Jessie had already strapped herself in. She stared into the rearview mirror, prodding at the thin, crusted scabbed wounds at her neck. Seeing the raw, red lines crisscrossing her smooth skin was like a slap to his control. “Leave it alone,” he said, raw vehemence a low growl in his voice. He slammed the door, emphatic punctuation to all the gentler, frightening things he couldn’t say.
Like how bone-achingly empty he’d be if she had died.
She rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t yell at me.”
Silas jammed the key into the ignition, turned it hard. The engine sputtered, hitched, before turning over, and he gritted his teeth. “Leave it alone,” he repeated tightly, “please. And don’t touch my mirrors.” Grimacing, he twisted the rearview mirror back into place and knew it wasn’t the mirror riding his ass.
He hated this. Hated her being there, in danger again.
Jessie dropped her hands. “Sorry.” She didn’t sound it. “Distract me, then. Where are we going?”
Silas guided the truck out of the ruined parking lot. He left the nav system off as he worked his way down old blocks, past knots of street punks, bums, loiterers. There were more than he expected.
Or maybe just more than he remembered.
When he’d gone too long without answering, Jessie turned in her seat to frown questioningly at him. Her thin eyebrows knotted. “Is there,” she asked slowly, “I don’t know, a plan?”
“I’m working on it,” Silas muttered, and was relieved when she fell silent. This wasn’t going to be easy. Naomi was right. Damn it. The Coven of the Unbinding wanted Jessie, apparently for a ritual. There were a dozen offhand that came to his mind, but without more information, Silas didn’t have shit to go on.
Any number of rituals spiked in power when the blood of a relative got added to the mix. It had to be a big one. The witch bitch had said they’d been hunting for her. Specifically.
Silas glanced at Jessie, relieved to see color creeping back into her skin. Her drying hair waved gently around her face, strands of gold that made him remember how it looked spread over his chest. Clutched in his hands.
Shit.
“Okay,” he said. Jessie turned an expectant gaze to him. He had to ease into it. “All right, let’s go over our questions. See what stands out. What does the Coven of the Unbinding want?”
She shook her head, her expression wry. “Me, apparently. But why?”
He turned his attention fully to the road. The rain drizzled, a faint mist of water over the windshield, and he flicked on the wipers. “A ritual,” he replied. Too grim. Too damned anxious. “According to her. So what kind?”
Jessie spread her hands. “You got me. That’s your specialty.” She shifted. “Who’s the leader?”
“Caleb?”
A beat. Jessie spoke slowly, thoughtfully, “I’m not sure. That woman didn’t say he was. I—” She blew out a hard breath. “I still don’t think so, but I know he’ll tell us who is.”
Silas didn’t voice his skepticism. Instead he reached under the seat and hauled the duffel to the space between them. “Front side pocket,” he said. “There’s an extra comm there. My number’s keyed into it. Keep this on you from now on. We can track the frequencies, a kind of beacon to find each other when teams get separated.”
“Are you planning on leaving me?”
Silas frowned at her. Yes. “When I have to.”
“Have to?” She retrieved the unit, checked it over with quick, sure fingers before sliding it into her jacket pocket. She zipped it closed and slanted him a look designed to piss him off. “Good luck with that.”
“Come on, Jess,” he growled, too tired, suddenly too stretched to bother with nice. “Think smart for a second. You’re a civilian, these are killers we’re talking about here, and we don’t have the first clue of what they want or where to find them. I can’t drag you all over the city and hope God sends a neon sign, and I can’t protect you by myself.”
She twisted in her seat, slammed one foot up on the dash in a way guaranteed to make him cringe. “I’m not stupid,” she said, icily pointed. “Didn’t you listen to her? I’ll bet you they’re holed up in the ruins.”
“Well, that’s great,” he replied flatly, shifting up to a higher gear as they turned onto the carousel. The highway gleamed in the barrage of headlights, rain-washed and misted. “It’s only several dozen miles of ruins in any direction, complete with fifty-year-old death traps and canyons that drop to the center of the fucking earth. Where should we start?”
“I’m just saying—”
“Stop,” he snapped. “I can’t just drag you down there on a hook and wait for them to come biting!” He glanced at her, ignored how anger turned her eyes to molten gold.
Pretended to ignore it.
Damn it, she was hell on his concentration. “There’s too many factors at play here, and no one expected the coven to want you. So we need to know why.”
“I told you, my brother—”
He cut her off, slashing his hand in the air between them. “That witch almost killed you, Jessie. Doesn’t leave me feeling secure about Caleb’s intentions.”
She jerked her chin up. “You had a gun on her, what was she supposed to do? Ask nice?”
“Fuck!” Silas set his jaw, staring back at the road winding in front of them. “Look, I’m not going to just hand you to them. We’re partners. That means my number one priority is your safety. That’s it.”
She sucked in a breath hard enough, sharp enough, that he knew he’d struck something. A nerve? A soft spot?
And could he play on it again?
“Okay.” She straightened, slowly. Raised one hand to her neck, caught herself and deliberately lowered it again to her lap. “So you’re going to, what? Dump me somewhere? On some poor sap’s front porch? I appreciate the sentiment, Silas, but that’s bullshit.”
“It’s not someone’s front porch, Jessie, it’s topside and surrounded by more security than anywhere else in this city. You’ll be safe there, trust me.”
“You, I trust.” The thought warmed him in places he didn’t want to think about. “But what about your people?” Desperation crept into her voice. “What about the fire at your safe house?”
“It’s you.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“They’re dialed into you somehow,” Silas explained, watching the road closely. Traffic slowed, a sea of red brake lights as a flurry of police sirens suddenly split through the muted cacophony of rain and car horns. “Shit,” he muttered. “Look, maybe they’re using your brother’s blood, maybe it’s some kind of tail I can’t shake. Witches can do a hell of a lot, and you’re not protected by St. Andrew’s Seal like we are.”
“But leaving me alone with strangers—”
“If it keeps you safe,” he began, only to grip the wheel tighter when she cut him off with a barbed laugh.
“Christ, listen to you. You’re like some sort of martyr, wandering in to save the girl and wander right back out again to die.”
“I’m not going to die.”
“You don’t know that,” she retorted. “You’re the one who says witches are so nasty—”
“Says?” He reached out, caught a fistful of her hair in a grip designed to make her gasp. To force her to look at him. “Were you there when that bitch cut your throat?”
Jessie wrenched at his grip. Winced when it pulled at the fresh scabs just under her jaw. “You’re hurting me.”
“No, I’m not,” he said flatly, every word an angry, even tone. She had to understand. She had to get it. “But they will hurt you, Jess. They’ll kill you. When they want something, witches will stop at nothing. Do you need to be reminded?”
Because she wouldn’t be Jessie if she didn’t, she slammed her elbow into his arm. He let her go, cursing.
Proud, despite himself.
Annoyed as hell.
“I get it. I do, I see what you’re saying.” She rubbed at her elbow. “Some witches are bad. Fine. You want to abandon me to other people for my own protection, great, that’s very noble of you. But they want me, Silas. I could bring them to you, end this sooner that way.”
