All Things Wicked (27 page)

The ring glittered warmly in the monitors’ cold light.

He twisted it, turned it over and over; a delicate thing, wildly incongruous against his larger, callused fingers. Silas had given it back without a word, but Caleb understood the message loud and clear.

Do your own dirty work.

The gold winked at him, warm from his pocket. Warm like the woman who had worn it; the woman who had loved her sister so much that she’d given up everything for her. Her life. Her secrets.

Her magic.

Screaming and yelling poured through the tiny speakers, and his glance flicked to the monitors again. A woman with short blond hair plastered herself against a wall as orderlies hurried by, smoke billowing from somewhere out of the security feed’s view.

As it had each time, Caleb’s chest squeezed at the image of his mother. So much younger than he remembered, but there. Right in front of him.

And still so out of reach.

His fingers clenched on the ring.

“She was pretty.”

Adrenaline slammed into his body, but Caleb forced himself to tamp it down. Willed himself not to move even one muscle as the voice licked out from the dark.

He curled the ring into the center of one, white-knuckled fist, his eyes steady on the monitor.

“Get out,” he said curtly.

It hadn’t worked the first time. Caleb didn’t expect it to work this time, either.

Juliet stepped out from the shadows and into the pale light afforded by the screens, her hands in the pockets of an oversized sweatshirt. She ignored him, her gaze fixed on the feed.

Even in his peripheral, even drowning in clothes too big for her, she was beautiful.

Caleb’s heart pounded. Adrenaline. The scare she’d given him by sneaking up, that was all.

God, what a liar.

He didn’t need Delia’s voice to tell him that.

“Was that her?” Juliet asked, her voice soft. Oh, fuck, gentle. “Was that your mom?”

He didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded once.

“You look like her,” she observed. “You and Jessie both have her fine structure. And her hair.” She glanced at him. “You have her eyes, though.”

He flinched. “What do you
want
, Juliet?”

She went still beside him. Then, slowly, she took one hand out of her pocket and rested her fingertips on the desk beside him. Lightly.

Cautiously.

“You left.”

Guilt kicked him between the eyes. Again. “The data Jessie tried to take was corrupted,” he said, his tone even. Calm. Everything he fucking well wasn’t. “I thought I’d come back here and see if there was anything left.”

Alarms rang out, causing Juliet to visibly jump, but they only echoed from the feed as it played. She shook back her hair from her eyes, and he hated the fact that he wanted her closer.

That he wanted to search her gaze, to soothe the hurt he knew she must be feeling.

Would only feel stronger.

The silence stretched between them, thick enough to choke on. Too heavy with everything he knew he should say, and couldn’t.

She’d find out.

Right . . . about . . . He closed his eyes.

“Oh, my God.” Three words, edged on a strangled sob.

Caleb didn’t have to look to know what she saw. He opened his eyes anyway; forced himself to turn his head and study Juliet’s shocked profile.

She was pale, but thank God, not as pale as she’d been when he’d left her in that bed. Not as fragile.

But hurting, still.

She raised a shaking hand to touch the closest of the screens. Between her fingers, a young child crept between six-by-six-by-six-foot cells. Her closely buzzed hair was blond, lighter than the color it had turned when she got older. A bar code blackened the skin at the back of her head, lightly dusted with golden fuzz.

She glanced up, around. For a brief, shattered second, her dark green eyes met the camera’s.

Met Juliet’s.

Her knees buckled.

Caleb reached for her, unable to keep himself from trying, but she stiffened, bracing her hands on the desk. Her jaw tightened. “I don’t understand,” she said raggedly.

“She was there.” Every nerve screaming to take her in his arms, to soothe her, Caleb forced himself to drop his hand. It fisted with the other against his thighs. “Delia was one of the children in that lock-up.”

Visibly trembling, Juliet watched as smoke hovered near the ceiling. As children of all ages clambered out of cells suddenly unlocked, some grabbing infants, others sobbing for help.

And the little girl eased between two incubators, reaching down into the open top to gather a tiny bundle into her arms.

Tears slid over Juliet’s lashes.

Caleb’s jaw clenched so hard, pain shredded through his temples. She had to see this. She had to know.

But God, it killed him to see her cry.

Chaos filled the screen; alarms and screams, crying and shouting and orders. He assumed the rushing noise he heard behind it all was the fire that had scarred the interior corridors they’d passed through earlier.

It would take this room, too.

Without warning, Juliet sank to the floor. She landed on her ass, lips parted on a sob, tears tracking silver down her cheeks. “She was there,” she repeated brokenly. “She was a witch, like me? Why? Why didn’t she—Oh, God, why didn’t she tell me?”

Caleb dropped to the floor beside her, reaching out.

She flinched, and he froze.

Then, slowly, he lowered his fists to the floor. He couldn’t touch her. Not again. But maybe he could give her the closure she needed. “She didn’t tell anyone,” he said quietly. “Believe me, she didn’t let on in any way. Nobody knew, Jules. Not Curio, not me, not . . .”

“Not me,” she whispered. Juliet fisted her hands against her mouth, struggling to hold back the keening sound he knew was building inside.

He knew, and he felt it, too.

He kept talking, faster now. Intent. She had to understand, before she broke. Before it shattered her forever. “When she came to me, I thought she was just some ho . . .” He hesitated.

“Prostitute,” Juliet said around her white knuckles. “She was never . . . She didn’t care.”

“She was your sister,” Caleb said fiercely. “She was just some powerless sister to a witch I knew”—she flinched—“and I didn’t have any time for her until she offered me a deal.”

The remaining blood drained from Juliet’s face. “Did you . . . ?”

It took him a moment. “Oh, Christ, no,” he growled. “Fuck. What do you think I—”
Am?

Her sister’s murderer, obviously.

He dragged a hand down his face as the feed speakers crackled. “I never slept with her,” he said from between gritted teeth. “She was dying, Jules. She knew it, and I think it was the same thing killing you and Jess now.”

“Before,” she whispered.

Caleb slashed a hand through the air. “She made me promise,” he said over her. Get it out. He had to get it out.

The whole story.

Her pain.

“If I harvested her heart’s blood, then I had to promise to get you out of the coven.”

Her eyes jerked to him, wide. Shimmering pale and green with her tears. “What?”

“She made me promise,” Caleb repeated, and sat back on his heels. “I already had a plan for the coven. I’d made connections, set the timetable. All I had to do was get you away from that damned gathering, and then it’d be done. I wouldn’t have to worry about the rest of it.”

Her eyes narrowed, even as a tear trickled down the smooth line of her cheek. “What rest of it?”

He took a deep breath.

“Caleb, what else did you promise?”

And let it out on a hard, angry sound. “I was never to tell you.”

Her fists clenched. “I don’t care if—” She stopped. “Wait, what? That was it? She made you promise never to tell me? Tell me what? That she was a witch?”

“None of it,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t tell you about the ritual, about her deal to secure your freedom, about her voice in my goddamned head—” He lurched to his feet, swiping a hand through the air. “Nothing. Ever.”

“But why?” she demanded, and in the question, he heard every wound, every hurt. Every empty, aching, sleepless night.

He shuddered. “I don’t know.”

In the feed beside him, fire licked at the edges of the room. The girl with the wide green eyes carried the baby, almost too big for her little arms. She picked her way over tangled wires and melting cords.

Juliet covered her mouth with one hand, muffling her tears.

“I never realized she was a witch until now,” Caleb said quietly. “I didn’t know how unusual it was to have a remnant of that person stay in your head until—” He caught himself, bit off his words with a vicious, angry curse. She didn’t need to know how much of Cordelia he’d carried around.

How often he’d heard her voice when Juliet had nothing.

He stalked away from the computers. Away from Juliet, hunched over the hole he knew filled her chest. How could it not?

She’d spent her life being lied to.

And he hadn’t helped her. Ever.

But someone had. Since the beginning, Cordelia had guided things. Manipulated things. Just as bad as that red-haired witch in the trench. As bad as he did. Connivers, the lot of them.

Cursing savagely, silently, he spun again and closed the distance between them. She was damn well going to see this.

He wrapped a hand around her arm, jerking her to her feet. “Look at this,” he said, every word a growl.

She shook her head, hair sticking to her damp cheeks in lines of faded black ink.

He shook her hard enough that her eyes widened. Hoisted her closer to the monitors, until they all but filled her vision. Until she had no choice but to see.

The child they knew as Cordelia held the bundle close to her chest, coughing as she scurried away from the flames. She cradled the baby’s head in one hand. “There, there,” she said lightly, even as the world turned to flame and chaos around her. “It’s okay, baby. We’ll be safe soon.”

The screen fuzzed as fire ate at the camera, but Caleb wordlessly jerked Juliet closer to his side as the second monitor showed the six-year-old carrying the infant down the hallway. Orderlies fled. Screams filled the speakers; trapped subjects, injured technicians, he didn’t know.

Juliet trembled in his grip, shook violently as the child passed under a camera. “I’ll take care of you,” whispered the tiny voice, all but drowned out by the madness around her. “It’s just you and me, now.”

Familiar emerald eyes glanced up at the camera as they passed under it. Protectively, the little girl’s skinny arms tightened around the white blanket.

Caleb caught a glimpse of a tiny, round head, capped with a fine tuft of light brown hair, and they were gone.

Slowly, he let go of Juliet’s arm.

Her head lowered, shoulders shaking. “I never—” Her voice broke, and Caleb’s heart shattered with it.

“Here.”

She didn’t look up, so he picked up Juliet’s slack hand and pressed Cordelia’s ring into her palm. Her fingers closed over it. Fisted.

“I’m sorry,” Caleb said, so quietly even he wasn’t sure he’d said it aloud.

Juliet didn’t move.

He didn’t expect her to. She needed to say good-bye. He understood that.

More than she even knew.

Silently, he withdrew from the flickering light. Left her there in the crackling silence of the ended feeds.

His footsteps echoed down the empty hall, clattered back at him in a thousand recriminating words. He pushed open the double doors, turned up his collar against the summer rain, and strode into the dark.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“C
aleb!”

He froze at the edge of the empty lot, rain already soaked through his clothing and sliding down his collar.

“Wait!”

Footsteps pounded the broken, pitted ground behind him, and his heart echoed the frenetic rhythm. Barely even daring to breathe, he turned.

Juliet sprinted across the dark lot, her pale skin gleaming beneath the faint lights the city always cast. Her eyes were shadowed, and within moments, she was as soaked as he was.

“Go back inside,” he told her sharply, “it’s— God damn it!”

It was all he could say as she threw herself at him. He caught her, but it wasn’t to fight her this time. She didn’t flail at him; she didn’t try to hit him. Trembling, gasping for air, she threw her full weight against his chest, and he staggered.

He meant to peel her off. To pry her away from him and send her back inside, but his traitorous hands splayed over her wet back. Crushed her to him. “Don’t,” he said, even as his fingers slid beneath the wet sweatshirt. Found warm skin and that damned bra.

She grabbed fistfuls of his coat. Tipped her face to his, eyes flashing. “You don’t break promises,” she said fiercely.

“I don’t—”

“I know you,” she said over him, even as her hair dripped into her eyes. Her fingers tightened. “You never break a promise.”

“You’re wrong.” But oh, God, her skin felt good against his palms. She sucked in a breath, her breasts flush against his chest, and he groaned. “Don’t,” he said again. “You’re wrong about me.”

“I’m not,” she shot back, as if reading it in his eyes. In his thoughts; fuck, his heart. “You promised her and you kept it, even when you knew how badly I needed to know. I understand, Caleb.”

God damn it.
“You don’t understand anything!”

She flinched at his shout, but she pulled herself to her toes. Pressed her lips against his wet jaw, and murmured, “Everything you’ve ever done was to protect.” He shuddered. “You love your sister, you want to help, you
see
things—God, such terrible things—and you want to stop them. I know.”

Groaning, one hand left her back to fist into the wet tendrils of her dark hair. He wrenched her head back, her mouth away from his skin. Her eyes met his, haunting and sweet and filled with—oh, fuck, with
trust
.

With understanding.

Sympathy.

He meant to yell at her. To push her away with words and action and any weapon he could, but she met his eyes, licked the rain away from her top lip; he was lost.

A savage curse wrenched from his chest as he hauled her mouth to his. She met his kiss eagerly, opened her lips to slide her tongue between his, and made a sound that may as well have grabbed his erection and squeezed.

Spinning, he pushed her back against the chain-link fence; grabbed the wire at either side of her head, and crowded her. His mouth never left hers, feasting. Devouring. God, her lips were soft, warm. So giving.

She
was so damned giving.

She understood?

Could she? Really?

His fingers tunneled under her sweatshirt again. Found warm flesh and soft curve; she arched into his palm. He nipped at her lower lip. She gasped, and the sound became his name.

Something wild filled his head. His heart. Something sweet and sharp and bloody and soul-deep.

Say it.

“I love you,” he said against her mouth.

Rain slid over her face, sluiced over them both, and she laughed. He swallowed the sound, pressed his hips firmly against hers to lock her in place and leaned back to capture her head in both hands. To frame her face, wet and flushed.

Her eyes blinked into his, hazed with lust. But was that all?

Smoothing back her wet hair, he said again, “I love you. I wish I didn’t,” he added, frowning, “but I have since the first time I ever saw you watching me.”

Her breath shuddered in her lungs. Again, her tongue slid over her rain-slick mouth and the muscles of his arms clenched as he fought the urge to lean in, to taste the same top-heavy curve her tongue just had.

She said nothing. For a long moment, only the wild rush of rain and his own heartbeat filled the silence, until he thought his veins might explode from the wild beat.

“Say something,” he said hoarsely. “Anything. Tell me you hate me—fuck, Jules, I don’t care, just say—”

“You’re the worst type of idiot.”

He froze, every muscle locked as the words kicked him squarely in the gut. “What?” He shook his head, bewildered. “With the who?”

Her eyes held his, so goddamned steady, he felt like the one falling apart. The one who needed comfort.

Damn it, he just needed her. Didn’t she see that?

“I can’t imagine,” she said, her body trembling against him. “I can’t even begin to think what you must have gone through.” Her fingers touched the scars at the side of his mouth. Traced the ridged edges along his neck, and he flinched.

Her smile turned crooked.

“You try all the time to do everything yourself, to carry the crap so no one has to. You make promises and do these things and you just go wandering off hoping that the rest of us will just let you.”

That hand dipped into his collar. Curled in, fisted so hard that it dug into his neck as she hauled his face close to hers. He was forced to let her go, to grip the chain link around her for balance as light green eyes filled his vision.

“Don’t,” she said, voice taut with strain. “Don’t ever make that mistake with me, Caleb Leigh. I’m not your sister. I’m not your coven mate, I’m not anyone you knew before.”

A tiny seed of hope germinated in his heart. A flicker, a faint glimmer of light.

She raised her hand, and gold glinted between her fingers. “You both used me. You
and
Cordelia.”

“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely.

She shook her head. “Don’t
handle
me,” she told him. “Don’t
maneuver
me. I can’t—” Her voice shook, and she blinked. Hard enough to wipe the rain from her eyes. Or tears. “I love you, Caleb, but I can’t do it. I can’t be used again. I can’t just be some kind of—”

He plucked the ring from her hand. “Shut up.”

Her lashes flared. “What?”

She loved him. She
said
so.

It was enough. Caleb shrugged out of her grip, stepped away from the warm, soft heat of her body and pulled her upright. The fence clanged, water spraying from the wire as it swayed.

He sank to his knees in front of her, ignored the broken cement digging into his flesh. Ignored the rain, warm and insistent as it soaked through every layer to the skin. He captured her hand in his, met her wide gaze, and demanded, “Marry me.”

Her mouth opened. Rain slid along her lip, but she only stared at him. As if he’d lost his mind.

Maybe he had.

“You aren’t like anyone I’ve ever known,” he said, knowing his voice came out too rough and unable to control it. To control himself. “You’re everything. You’re sweetness and light and softness in a world I never expected to have those things.”

She bit her top lip.

“I never
saw
this. I couldn’t have ever seen anything like you. Marry me, Juliet. Stay with me forever. Be my light.” With hands that trembled, he slid the warmed gold ring onto Juliet’s finger.

It fit. Glinted warmly against her skin.

Her fingers shook. “I didn’t say yes,” she whispered, but she made no move to take it off.

With his heart in his throat, Caleb laced his fingers through hers and said, “You didn’t say no.”

“You conceited—!”

He tugged her hand so hard, she folded, colliding into his chest, knees straddling his waist and her words smothered against his mouth. He tangled his hands into her hair, held her still for a kiss that tried to put into words everything rioting through him. His heart. His soul.

He loved her. He wanted her, he
needed
her in every aspect of his life. Every day. Every night.

He had no world without her.

When he lifted his head, she was flushed and gasping. His thumbs stroked along her temples. “Say yes, little rose. I swear to you, we’ll find a cure.”

She blinked rapidly. Her smile, slow to start, filled her eyes with sunshine. Flowers and spring rain and all those things he never expected to think about. “You idiot,” she said, laughing. “Yes. And I’m already fixed.”

He reeled.

Juliet threw back her head, her laughter wild and husky and free as the rain beat down on them both. Before he could ask how, when, she pressed her mouth to his. No unruly kiss, she slid her lips slowly, tantalizingly along his. Like a drug his body craved, every sensor slammed into overdrive; from dick to heart to brain and back again.

When she leaned back, it was his turn to blink hard. To shake away the fog of lust, of love, hazing his mind.

“Come home,” she whispered, tunneling rain-cool hands into his coat. “We’ll explain it all.”

Home. How long had it been?

For either of them?

Caleb wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close enough that her heart slammed against his. His cheek rested against her hair, and he didn’t care that they were soaked through. That the gravel was cutting into his knees or that her hand was resting on the corrugated scars of his side.

She said yes. Yes to him, yes to his past. Yes to the scars of his body and his heart.

Yes to marrying him, even.

He pressed his mouth to her temple. Her cheek. “I’ll love you forever,” he said.

Juliet’s eyes shimmered. “And you always keep your promises.”

All except one. But as he helped Juliet to her feet, linking his fingers with hers, as the metal band on her ring finger settled against his skin, he knew Cordelia—wherever her soul was now—would understand.

Love her.

He promised.