All Things Wicked (3 page)

He looked down at her finger, then at the bandage she’d wound around his shoulder. His smile lacked anything even remotely close to humor. “You can’t give me over, Jules.”

She jerked. “Don’t call me that.”

“You’re too soft.” His eyes flicked back to hers, gaze filled with something she didn’t know how to label. Something raw. Something angry. “You always were. Even Cordelia—”

She didn’t recall raising her hand. The crack of her palm against his stubbled cheek echoed like a gunshot, shooting aching little bursts of pain through her forearm to the elbow.

In the oppressive silence that followed, Caleb slowly turned his head back, a lock of honey gold hair curled over one eye. His cheek glowed red, contrast to the ice in his gaze as he finished, dangerously soft, “Even your sister knew it.”

“My sister is gone,” she said through clenched, aching teeth.

A flicker. Pain? Anger? She didn’t know, but he didn’t apologize. Why would he? He’d screwed Juliet up against a wall and then betrayed them all.

“Not,” she added, so quietly that she marveled at her own brittle calm, “that you were there for me to ask for help. Not that you cared.”

“You’re absolutely right,” he told her, and Juliet wasn’t sure what she’d intended to do. The world flashed red, her skin itched with the pressure of it as anger crawled through her veins. It burned, throbbed behind her eyeballs. Like fire and ice and—

The door swung open behind her, cracked into the wall.

Juliet lurched away, spun in surprise and relief that faded as a tall, thin man barreled at her. Caleb threw himself toward her as Juliet yelped, but the man grabbed her jacket, yanked hard even as one booted foot slammed into Caleb’s chest.

She hit the ground on her knees. The rough hand transferred to her head, shoved her down, kicked out her knee as she struggled. Pain twanged through her legs. Rage subsided to confusion. Fear.

“Get them both!” a raspy voice yelled over her head.

In her peripheral vision, Caleb strained at his bonds as a thin man dressed in stained brown corduroy struggled to subdue him.

“I got the girl.” The voice was like a rusted razor blade, completely unfamiliar. “Damn it, Louie, just kick him in the head!”

Juliet wrenched free. A fragrance both sharp and sweet filled the muggy air, and she launched herself at the discarded knife, closed her fingers on the cold edge of the blade.

It skittered out of reach as something hard and unyielding slammed into the back of her head. She sprawled, crying out, earning a taste of grimy carpet. Yellow fireworks slid behind her eyes, joining the pop and crackle of orange neon.

Adrenaline flooded her veins, gave her the strength to push herself to her hands and knees, but the room spun wildly. Sickeningly.

“We have to have her alive, man, watch the dosage!”

Someone grabbed the back of her coat and hauled. Her back arched, knees aching. In the wobbling field of her vision, a tattooed face leered at her.

“Motherfucking Christ, little girl,” he grunted, shaking her hard enough that her head snapped back on her neck. “Where the hell have you been hiding?”

He didn’t give her time to answer, shoving a dirty blue rag over her mouth and nose. He clasped the back of her head with his free hand, forcing the cloth harder against her face.

More figures pushed into the motel room, hazy silhouettes that ignored her as she clawed at the callused hand at her mouth. She gasped for air around the soaking material, gagging as something chemical and acrid seared through her nostrils. Stung her eyes.

Across the room, Caleb lurched to his knees, fighting off the hands that struggled to hold him. She watched his lips move, eyes flashing blue fire and muscles bulging as he fought the ropes she’d tied herself, but she couldn’t hear him. What was he saying?

Was he yelling? At her?

A hand slid over her jaw. The tattooed face was back, dimming now. So muddled. Ink smearing. Running, oozing across his teeth.

He said something, shaped something with a smile that sent ice sliding down her spine, but her limbs dragged. Refused to move. The rag tasted bitter as she opened her mouth—had she intended to ask something?

It didn’t matter. Her muscles gave up, gave in with a fluidity that sent her sliding bonelessly to the dirty floor. Sleep closed in.

And with it, peace.

Chapter Two

M
aybe the Coven of the Unbinding had been more than killers and thieves in the past. Maybe years ago, it had struggled for equality and peace and whatever noble bullshit principles the oppressed spouted, but Caleb had never known it to be anything more than what it was: a gang, worse than guerrillas in an urban jungle.

Thugs. With
magic
. How had everyone else been blind? Were freedom and power so seductive? They must be. There wasn’t any other excuse for Juliet’s willful ignorance.

He’d known that Curio sheltered her. Known, also, that he’d used her single magical ability for himself. Her inherent gift to fuel others’ magic became Curio’s own personal battery.

He’d suspected that Curio kept her as a mistress, a lover.

The man was old enough to be her grandfather.

Killing him had been cathartic in so many ways.

But Caleb didn’t know why. Why did Juliet Carpenter stay with a coven that only used her? Why did she let herself be sucked dry, again and again, as Curio reached for more and more power?

Why did she play with the younger witches the coven sheltered, why hadn’t she taken her dying older sister and gone somewhere? Anywhere?

Anywhere but near him.

Yet here she was again. Near him. Tied up, yes, and unconscious; lashed to a chair in a dark basement deep below the bowels of the city, but too. Fucking. Close.

His fingers flexed, already aching from the loss of blood flow, but it was a small pain in the scheme of it all.

He’d promised Cordelia Carpenter anything she asked for, and had been fool enough to be relieved when she’d demanded only two things: get her sister out of the Coven of the Unbinding, protect her from Curio’s madness. And never, ever tell Juliet what she’d done. What she’d asked him to do.

It seemed easy. After he destroyed the coven, he never expected to see Juliet again.

So he’d sworn it. He’d repeated it as Delia lay bleeding out in front of him, reassured her as he’d taken the worn gold promise ring from her finger, and said it again as he drew the last vestiges of her life from her dying lips. It was part of the bargain, the deal she’d offered him. Her heart’s blood in exchange for her sister’s safety.

What an idiot he was.

He’d done his part. Killed Delia, arranged to have Juliet sent on a wild-goose chase guaranteed to keep her the hell out of the way, and wrecked the coven while she was gone.

It should have been enough. Should have, and wasn’t. The coven was obviously rebuilding, and they hadn’t forgotten him. Juliet wasn’t out of his life at all, and that damned meddling sister of hers still lived on in his mind. His memories, his every waking moment. He could have happily gone his whole life without knowing she’d called Juliet her little rose.

Fragile. Sweet. Beautiful.

Fuck it.
Over a year had passed, but as Caleb listened to Juliet’s even breathing, he couldn’t help but think about all the ways he’d failed.

Spectacularly.

The room they’d been unceremoniously dumped in had nothing going for it. The witches had dragged them inside, tightened his ropes to make sure he couldn’t so much as wiggle a finger, and left, shutting a heavy door behind them. Silence reigned, broken only by the faint
drip, drip, drip
of water echoing from somewhere in the dark around them and the soft, even breathing of his fellow captive.

It was cold, dank like all subterranean basements seemed to be, and tomblike. It stank, wet mildew and stale air, and he shivered, goose bumps rippling across his naked chest.

To make matters worse, they’d left him facing Juliet Carpenter—the one bright spot in a sea of black shit memory—across the expanse of a dirt-crusted cement floor.

His own personal brand of hell.

They were in Old Seattle. He knew that much—the tomb of the ruined city had a smell that infected the brain. Like time fallen apart, all moldy and decrepit.

That meant that this was one of many abandoned basements under New Seattle. One of countless structures that hadn’t collapsed when the earthquakes hit decades ago. He’d made use of his fair share of dilapidated buildings and tunnels when he could, and the coven had maintained a handful as a base of operations. So did squatters, or at least those too stupid to go anywhere else.

This cellar was nothing to boast about: cement walls, cement floor, cement ceiling. All of it lined with decades of dirt and the silt remains of old flooding.

In the circle of light provided by an old camping lantern, Juliet sat slumped against her bonds. His fists clenched behind him. They’d traveled through the black expanse of the underground city for an hour; it worried the hell out of him that she hadn’t surfaced from the chemical cocktail they’d served her.

Caleb shifted, gingerly testing the knots cutting off the circulation in his arms. His body hurt, but it always did. Some days were worse than others.

This one was going to be a winner.

If
he managed to survive it.

He didn’t have the strength to tear through the constraints Juliet had so kindly tied for him, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to carry her out if he did.

Leaving her wasn’t an option.

He’d already done that once.

Look at her
.

He didn’t want to. But the insistent echo in his head, in what he would have once upon a time called his soul, couldn’t be ignored.

You promised.

Against his will, his gaze flicked back to the woman who haunted his every waking dream. She was slumped back in the metal chair, her arms pulled behind the metal frame and secured in place. The position arched her back, thrust the shape of her full breasts out from her open jacket in ways that suggested it hadn’t been on accident.

Caleb knew a grade-A fuckwad when he met one, and the tattooed witch qualified.

He shook his head hard enough to jerk the ends of his hair out of his eyes. He didn’t know the witches of the coven anymore. They hadn’t rebuilt, not really—he’d have known if they’d managed anything more than campfire troupes in the dark—but there were enough new faces to make him worry.

A year was a long time. Things were bound to be different.

Who led them?

He closed his eyes, caught himself straining to see something—
anything
—in the darkness behind his eyelids. It wouldn’t work. He already knew there was nothing to
see
.

Hadn’t been since he’d woken, his body nothing more than a smoldering mess of ash and carnage, deliriously wandering the lowest streets of New Seattle. Stripped of magic. Stripped of everything that had made him who he was.

Hounded by the too-strong vestiges of his final victim.

That was the price he’d paid for his betrayal.

“Fuck,” he seethed between clenched teeth, sweat gathering over his shoulders as he wrenched at the ropes. How the hell was he supposed to protect her—protect
anyone
—without his magic?

What would his sister do?

What she’d taught him to do. Run.

Impossible.

He glanced at Juliet. Her chest rose as if she could shift from the position that strained her shoulders, but she didn’t open her eyes. He wished she would.

He was going to need help. And he didn’t need the visual reminder of her open jacket to remember what her generous curves had felt like in his hands, warm and soft and—

“Give me a break,” he muttered. The faintest echoes rebounded from the shadows, hollow and ghostly. He shook his head harder, wincing as it pulled at the scarred tissue at his jaw.

He would never get used to that feeling, as if bits of him had been peeled off, rolled like dough and super-glued back onto the rest.

He wondered what Juliet had thought when she’d seen the scars.

Then remembered the knife and let his head rest against the chair back in grim humor. He didn’t have to wonder, did he? She wanted him dead.

Even if she couldn’t do it herself.

Too damned soft.

Metal creaked, and he raised his head again as her lips parted on a sigh. Ear-length black hair framed her pale skin like a velvet curtain, hanging awkwardly over her closed eyes. Her mouth curved downward in sleep, fuller top lip slanted in a deep line of sadness that scored a brand through Caleb’s conscience and set it on fire. Great. It matched the excruciating pain in his shoulder where she’d plunged the knife.

This wasn’t going to be easy. But then, when had it ever been?

The dark fan of her lashes fluttered open. Her gaze, as light green as the rare jade she’d cut from his wrists, was hazy, shadowed. Uncertain. It glittered in the dim light as she searched the dark corners of the room.

He watched awareness slowly fill the vacant uncertainty of her expression. Watched her lips twist as those pale, soul-wrenching eyes settled on him.

He opened his mouth. Hesitated.

What the hell could he say?

Nothing.

Slowly, firmly, he shut his mouth on the words that filled his head. They weren’t his.

Taking Delia’s life had left him with far too many of her fringe memories. The others he’d killed were in there somewhere, he could sense them sometimes, but Delia was by far the strongest. It surprised him at the time, but there was always a price for power.

The side effect to the transfer ritual was something he’d damn well learn to live with.

By himself.

Juliet stiffened, jerked on her ropes, and bared her teeth as the metal legs of her chair scraped against the cement floor.

“Son of a bitch!” Her voice shattered the near silence, bounced back in a flurry of sibilant whispers.

They scraped at his nerves, tightened his already edgy voice to something rougher. “Shut up. We don’t have much time.” He forced himself not to look away as her gaze once more tangled with his. Narrowed.

“Where the hell are we?” Her shoulders shifted. The open zipper of her coat slid away, baring more of the thin material of her tank top.

The pale line where her skin met black fabric.

Caleb’s eyes drifted lower, to the shadowed juncture of her thighs wrapped in black denim. Something uncoiled deep in his veins.

Something deeply buried hummed in approval.

Not on his life.
Or hers.

“Cellar in the Seattle ruins,” he said shortly. “Old coven ground.”

“How long was I out?”

“An hour and change.” He wrenched a shoulder, growling as tightened loops bit into his flesh. “Jesus Christ, Jules, what the hell were you thinking?”

Her head snapped back as if he’d slapped her. Her eyes glittered, and he watched the skin around her mouth go white with strain.

Suddenly, his head throbbed.

“Not really sure,” she bit out, every word as precise as if she’d carved it with a razor. “I think it had something to do with seeing you dead.”

Amusement cut a bloody swath through the buzzing pressure in his skull. “Then you should have killed me yourself.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”

“If you’re lucky.”

Escape looked downright unlikely. No tools. No excess anything. They’d left him with two chairs, a battery-operated light, and a lot of empty space. He knew this kind of space.

Sweat trickled down his temple. It was too cool beneath the city foundation for the summer heat to travel far, but it wasn’t heat that caused him to break out in a cold sweat now.

“Shit,” he muttered.

Juliet sighed, frustration clear as a candle in the dark. “Don’t you have any rituals stored up?”

Not for a year.

He’d be damned if he told her that now. Without bothering to open his eyes, he said wearily, “Neither one of us can cast anything while tied up.”

“Oh. Right.”

“If you didn’t want to die here,” he pointed out, finally opening his eyes, “you shouldn’t have called them. Haven’t you learned
anything
about coven solidarity?”

She stiffened, cheeks turning red. Damn, but she heated up fast. “Are you even
human
?” she demanded. The word broke, and she jerked hard enough at her ropes that the chair rocked. “Do you even think about the crap that comes out of your—”

Muffled voices filtered through the dusty air, a murmur that gathered intensity and cut her off. Caleb jerked his head around, craning to look back over his shoulder.

“Whatever happens,” he told her, “you keep your mouth shut.”

“But I—”

His head snapped back. “
No
,” he cut in. Her eyes narrowed. “Shut up, be silent, don’t even breathe.”

Juliet tipped her head back to look at the ceiling, hidden somewhere out of reach of the light. Her throat worked silently to swallow the verbal dagger he was sure she’d meant to fling at his heart, and he cast a fervent prayer to whatever the hell kind of demon watched over people like him that she would obey.

The door scraped open behind him. His pulse spiked a staccato tempo in his ears.

Keep her safe.

“Oh, finally.”

Two words. Breathlessly spoken. And even at a near-whisper, more than enough volume to set off every alarm he had and send them howling with dread.

Across from him, Juliet’s eyes narrowed, her jaw tight. This was going to take some serious verbal footwork, and Caleb wasn’t sure he had it in him to try.

He didn’t have a choice.

He looked away. “There’s a voice I haven’t heard in a while,” he said, tilting his face until he could just barely see the outline of the door in the corner of his eyes. “Alicia. I’m surprised you aren’t dead.”

“One whole year.” Alicia’s voice was the same as it had ever been, sharp and effortlessly seductive.

“Fourteen months,” he corrected with deliberate calm, “but who’s counting?”

She moved silently, suddenly behind him, her warm, bare thighs bracketing his twisted hands. Her palms slid up his arms. “Oh, I’ve been counting.” Her left hand dragged over his scars, and he flinched. “I’ve been counting every. Single. Day.”

Curio had always favored Alicia for her raven-haired beauty and wicked mind. She’d hated Caleb for the attention his visions had given him, schemed and plotted to unseat him from her master’s esteem, but Caleb had been more than secure in his power.