All Things Wicked (26 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

S
ilas carried her to the grave site. Juliet wanted to walk, but every limb felt as heavy as cement blocks. Just sitting up had taken everything she had.

Now he set her gently on the ground beside the small, packed mound. One of the obsidian flagstones had been placed at the head, and Juliet stared at the symbol until it blurred beneath a wash of tears.

“Jessie says it means home,” Silas rumbled. He loomed over her, over the grave, his arms crossed over a chest miraculously healed from Naomi’s efforts.

Juliet nodded. “How?” she asked, and had to clear her throat to add, “How did she die?” She didn’t know exactly what happened, or when or why, but she’d been out long enough to make her throat scratchy and rough.

It was Silas who had been sitting beside the bed, staring absently off into space. So he stood beside her now, his expression grim. And sad, she realized.

She hadn’t known Matilda at all. But he’d obviously liked her.

Juliet touched the earth as he said over her head, “I don’t know. Naomi’s witchcraft—” He hesitated. “Her magic doesn’t work on the dead. We found blood spatter on the side of the house, so maybe . . .”

He trailed off, and Juliet closed her eyes, her fingers digging into the dirt. Maybe when they’d all come after her, it had left the witch alone. Defenseless.

Hard fingers closed on her shoulder, squeezed gently. “The last thing she told us,” he rumbled, “was that you needed to be found and brought back. At all costs, Rosy. She knew what that meant.”

She shook her head. “No life is worth mi—”

“I suspect,” he said over her, cutting her off with a warning flex of his fingers, “that she always knew more than she let on. If she died this way, it’s because she meant to.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say.”

“Is it?” The foliage whispered and rustled around them as Silas crouched, his hand warm and solid on her shoulder still. “I think she went out the way she wanted. That’s not so bad. We all should be so lucky to get that choice.”

Juliet closed her eyes. But silently, unable to get words past the sudden lump in her throat, she covered his large, callused hand with hers. Gratitude. Comfort.

She didn’t know.

Footsteps crunched on the ground behind them. “Hey.” Jessie’s voice, soft.

Juliet took a deep breath, but any intent she had to stand wouldn’t make it through the weakness dogging her every movement. “Hi,” she offered.

“How are you feeling?”

Silas shifted away, moving around the fresh grave to stand on the other side. Probably, Juliet thought wryly, to keep an eye on his woman as much as on her.

She tipped her head back enough that she could see Jessie. Her expression was sad, but an edge clung to her features that made a faint, weary smile tug at Juliet’s mouth.

It reminded her of Caleb.

Determination, right down to the core.

“Fine,” Juliet replied finally, and Jessie’s eyes rolled. “All right, mostly exhausted and feeling like none of my body parts are doing what I’m telling them to do,” she amended, but with a sigh. “I don’t know what happened back there, but I think it . . .” What?

Stole a piece of her?

She shook her head. “Can we settle for
fine
?”

“For now.” Jessie raised a small satchel. “While I was out,” she said, “I got to
see
a whole hell of a lot more than I ever wanted.”

Juliet blinked. “See?”

Silas coughed, once.

She felt her face go up in flames. “You saw us—”

“Aside from that,” Jessie said hurriedly. Shooting Silas a look that promised a sharp word later, she circled around Juliet to sink to the dirt beside her. She set the satchel gently on Matilda’s grave, smoothing the dirt with a gentle finger.

For a moment, only silence filled the quiet calm that symbolized the sanctuary. Even after the attack, after blood had been spilled in its borders, Juliet still couldn’t help but feel safe here.

Maybe it was the people.

Maybe it’s just a nice, quiet place to die.

Jessie sighed. “You know I can see the present. You know that our magic has been going haywire.” Juliet nodded wordlessly. She knew. “You know where we . . .” Her glance darted to Silas, who shrugged in helpless uncertainty.

Juliet rubbed at her face, even that effort feeling as if she pushed through water to do it. “I’m a test subject,” she said, too exhausted to mitigate it. Any of it. The hurt.

The revulsion.

“Case Subject One-Three-One-Zero-Zero-Nine,” she repeated bitterly. “A genetic mash-up of missionaries and witches thrown into a test tube and shaken thoroughly. I get it.”

“
We
,” Jessie said softly, but with such intensity that Juliet blinked at her. “We are test subjects.” Her smile was faint. “Case Subject One-Three-Zero-Nine-Eight-Four. Lydia Leigh was my mother—my donor,” she prompted when Juliet looked blank. “Caleb’s mother. We’re  . . .” Her jaw shifted. “Half siblings. Caleb’s all natural. Or . . . was supposed to be. I have the same tattoo.”

Silas shifted, crouching again to clasp his hands loosely between his knees. He balanced easily on the balls of his feet as he shook his head. “Nothing unnatural about either of you,” he told them flatly.

Juliet smiled at him. Still tired.

Still disbelieving.

But he got points for trying. “Nice guy,” she murmured to Jessie beside her. “You should totally ask him out on a date.”

“Nah.” Jessie’s smile was opposite of Juliet’s in every way. It hurt to look at, so full of love and tenderness that Juliet looked away. “He’s a pain in the ass.”

Silas snorted. “Point being, so what?”

“Well, nothing,” Jessie said, inhaling and exhaling on a long sigh. “Except we’re left with the knowledge that the Holy Order is running the Coven of the Unbinding, at least in this city, and we technically aren’t supposed to exist. We’re products of some kind of genetic experiment, and somehow, we got out.”

Juliet looked down at her hands, clasped tightly together.

“Nadia Parrish and her goons are dead,” Jessie continued, shaking back her hair from her shoulders, “and we’re slowly losing it. Even now, I feel like there’s a million things out there all trying to get my attention.”

Silas’s jaw hardened.

“Some of that is your fault,” she added, and Juliet flinched. “Not on purpose, I know. Matilda once said that you’re a teacup, and it’s cracked, and now all the tea is leaking out. Being near you makes my power go all . . . wobbly.”

Juliet straightened, planting her hands beside her as she struggled to her feet. “I’ll leave,” she said immediately. “Anything I can do to—”

Jessie’s fingers settled over her shoulder, same as Silas’s had before. “You don’t have to, Juliet. Matilda made sure of that.”

Juliet frowned. “What?”

Silas reached for the satchel, upending its contents over the grave. Three syringes fell out, making Juliet flinch, and a sheaf of papers. Real papers, yellowed with age and frayed at the edges.

A plastic card sliced through the air, tiny metal links glinting from one edge, and landed at Juliet’s feet.

She picked it up with shaking fingers. On one side, a strong-featured woman with long red hair smiled out of a small photograph. Over it, the word
GeneCorp
had been emblazoned in thick orange and black. “Matilda Lauderdale,” she read slowly. “And an ID number.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Dr. Laurence Lauderdale was a man,” Jessie said, as if reading her thoughts. “Was he her father? Her husband? A brother? I don’t know. Is he even still alive?”

“Matilda was old,” Silas rumbled.

“Which means maybe not,” Jessie allowed, and she picked up the capped syringes. In each, a brownish-colored liquid oozed slowly. “Among everything else I could
see
, I saw this, hidden behind a panel in the house. I saw the ID, and these. I didn’t know exactly what they were, but she explains it here. Listen to this.”

Juliet’s fingers tightened on the card, its plastic edges biting into her flesh.

She didn’t want to listen. She didn’t want to hear what the woman who helped GeneCorp had to say.

She didn’t
care
.

But, oh, God, she did. And the memory of the tortured voices in that lab needed closure. Peace.

“Okay,” she whispered.

Jessie smoothed out the papers. “The genetic composition for each child is destabilized by the very nature of its origins,” she read. “Although progress has been recorded, Nadia isn’t looking at long-term stability. Why should she? She’s too focused on pleasing the doctor, and my concerns are going unheard. Or at least unanswered.”

Juliet closed her eyes. “She calls us children. Not subjects.”

“It goes on like this,” Jessie said after a moment, “talking about how she’s positive that our bodies won’t be able to sustain the demands that the magic puts on it. She talks about you, too.” The witch continued on before Juliet could say anything. “She talks about how she worked on you specifically. How she spliced your—”

“I don’t want to know!” Juliet flung out her hands. The ID card slid through her fingers, slapping against the gravestone loudly.

Jessie stilled beside her. Then, slowly, she put down the papers. “Juliet.”

Tears filled her eyes. Juliet shook her head hard.

“She talks about how she read at your cradle. She says that your potent genetic composition could be enough to stabilize all of the children.” Jessie paused, then translated softly. “You are the key to saving us. Your DNA or something holds the sequence that will keep us from dying young. She named you Eve.”

“Why?” Juliet said, the word breaking on a sob that made Silas’s eyes widen. His big body tensed. “Why does it matter? Stabilize them so they could keep torturing them? So they could fill them full of drugs and carve out bits of their brains and—” She jammed her fingers against her mouth as the sobs wrenched through her.

Jessie slid an arm around her shoulders, grip tight. “Shhh,” she soothed. “No, honey. You’re like . . .” She gestured expansively. “You’re made of everything we are. You’re the best of us. Matilda made you so she could free us. She tried to unlock the genetic codes of your magic, peel out the bits that made it so the others could live, but she was caught. She only got half the data.”

Juliet turned her face into Jessie’s shoulder, clenching her eyes shut.

“You were less than a month old when Matilda went on the run. These are the only batches of the serum she could make.” Jessie cupped her chin in one hand, raising Juliet’s eyes to hers. They were steady, golden brown, and filled with tears. But calm. Reassuring. “She wanted us to use it.”

“More testing,” Juliet said, but it lacked heat.

“I think,” Silas said carefully, in the cautious tones of a man surrounded by weeping women, “that she wanted to fix everything.”

Juliet eyed the syringes in Jessie’s hand. A shudder slid down her spine. “I hate needles,” she muttered.

“I know.” Jessie’s mouth quirked. “Funnily enough, so do I.”

Juliet swallowed hard. Swallowed the fear, the tension. The deep, raging fury that couldn’t all be hers. Squaring her shoulders, she said, “This will fix us?”

“No,” Jessie said, cupping Juliet’s hand in hers. “But it’ll make sure that our magic doesn’t kill us anymore. We can’t be
fixed
. Just . . . stabilized.”

Juliet nodded slowly. “It’s a start.”

“Silas?”

He took the syringes Jessie offered, taking a deep, long breath. “I hope she knew what she was doing,” he said.

“Reassuring,” Jessie replied wryly, and tipped her face up for his kiss.

To Juliet’s surprise, as he turned to her, his eyes were kind, and he touched her cheek. “You’re a good kid, Rosy. A good
person
. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

Her smile was wan. “Just . . . stick me before I have a total freak-out.”

“Close your eyes,” Jessie encouraged, and held Juliet’s arm for the needle.

Her mind screamed. Her body stiffened, and Silas’s hand closed over her other arm to hold her as a sound strangled in her throat. They were going to shove a needle in her skin. In her body.

They were going to—

She sucked in a breath. “Where’s Caleb?” The needle punctured through her arm, and Juliet all but climbed out of her skin. “Is he here?” she demanded.

“Easy,” Jessie said softly. “He’s not here.”

“Where?” she gasped. Her arm burned, like liquid fire being pumped into her vein. “Does he know?”

“And done,” Silas rumbled, smoothing a thumb over the tiny hole.

Juliet opened her eyes, her breath coming too fast, too hard.

Jessie’s expression was torn. Hesitant.

The liquid, whatever it was, traveled up her arm, burning everything in its wake. Her skin throbbed, her muscles contracted hard enough to make her grit her teeth. Juliet clamped her hand over her arm and closed her eyes. “He’s gone,” she said tightly. “Isn’t he?”

“Yeah.” Jessie’s fingers, smooth and cool, cupped her cheek. “Breathe, honey. He left while you were recovering.”

She nodded. Once. “I . . . thought so,” she managed, just as darkness came crashing down around her.

“It’s okay, this is expected!” she heard Jessie say, and then nothing.

T
he computer screens glowed, luridly bright as Caleb sat back in the chair. He watched the feed play, tinny voices and a cacophony of constant, rhythmic beeps undercutting the silence of the forgotten chamber.

It had been two days since they’d escaped from this building.

Two decades, he thought grimly, since his sister and Juliet and God only knew how many others had escaped the first time.

There should have been more activity here. Missionaries, Church people, hell, he didn’t know. Someone. There’d been four teams—whatever a team was made of—arrowing in on this spot just two days ago.

But nothing had moved in the twenty-four hours since he’d begun his vigil. Everything was empty, quiet.

Including his head.

Cordelia was gone.

Babies cried through the tinny speakers, but he tuned it out. He’d already watched it play through twice. Now he let it unfold again, background because anything was better than the echoing thoughts within his own head.