Blood of the Wicked (25 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

H
eat wrapped him in a velvet blanket. It seeped into his bones. Into his abused muscles, his battered body. It was heaven, pure heaven, and he wondered what he’d done to get him there.

A nice, gentle change from the hell he remembered last.

Silas’s eyes fluttered open. Slowly focused. Color coalesced into lush foliage. Brilliant green water.

And the shining gold of Jessie’s honey eyes filled with tears. One spilled over even as her wide, sweetly kissable mouth split into a smile.

His heart jerked hard in his chest. “Don’t,” he rasped roughly. He reached out, freed his arm from the hot, sulfurous water, and skimmed the tear away with a wet thumb.

More followed it. “Thank God,” Jessie breathed. “Oh, Silas, I thought— Christ.
Shit
,” she managed through laughter and tears. She caught his hand, raised his bruised knuckles to her lips. “Matilda!”

Silas shifted, found himself laid out on a sandbar built into the hot pool. The currents rippled over his wounded, naked body, soothing his wounds.

He struggled to sit up.

Jessie grabbed his elbows, slid through the water to help him. Her shades of ocean skirt swirled around her like a lush flower, clinging to his skin. When she would have let him go, he grabbed her waist, dragged her over his lap, and into his arms so he could bury his nose in the soft curve of her neck.

She laughed, hiccupping, but she didn’t pull away. Instead she twined her arms around his shoulders. “I’m so glad you’re awake,” she said fervently. “So, so glad.”

“I’ll never leave you,” Silas said roughly. “Fuck me, Jessie, I’ll never leave you again.”

“I can come back if you’d like to make good on that,” said a dry, familiar voice.

Silas raised his head to grin wickedly at the red-haired woman standing on the shore. “Would you mind?”

“Silas!” Jessie palmed her face, reddening even as she gazed imploringly at Matilda. “Ignore him.”

The woman’s eyes crinkled, sparkled merrily as she set down a basket draped in an old-fashioned checkered cloth. “Among other things, I bring food. Silas, my dear, how are you?”

Silas opened his mouth, hesitated. He looked from woman to witch—witch to witch, and it was so fucking clear now—and smiled. Slow. “I feel good,” he said simply.

Matilda cleared her throat in quiet amusement. “Good. You gave us all a turn, but you seem healthy enough for a few tomorrows, at least.”

Jessie cupped his face in her hands. “I was scared. You got us out, and then—”

And then nothing. Silas shook his head. “What happened?”

When Jessie’s mouth pursed, he cupped her hand over his cheek. It was Matilda who answered, filling in the blanks Silas’s mind couldn’t. “You managed to get as far as you could before you collapsed. Jessie brought you to the trench. And,” she added crisply, “to me.”

“I thought that was it when we got to the edge of the water,” Jessie admitted, flinching at the memory. “Matilda came along in her boat just in time.”

The older woman put her hands on her hips, surveying them both from head to water-logged toe. “You, my dear boy, are too stubborn.”

Jessie chuckled. Watery, but warm. “She picked us up. Took us back to the valley. I—” Her eyes clouded. “I don’t know what happened with Caleb. I think— He just . . . stopped. Stopped being there.” With one shaking hand, she touched her heart. In the valley between her breasts, obsidian stone gleamed beside a silver leaf pendant.

Silas bit his tongue before he said anything, bit down hard enough to make himself flinch.

“Things are rarely so clear when prophecy is involved,” Matilda warned, and withdrew the cloth from the basket it covered. “You need to eat, the both of you. I didn’t go to all that trouble just to lose you to starvation, now, did I?”

“No,” Silas said quietly, but it was Jessie’s face he watched. The downward curve of her mouth, the sadness shimmering in her eyes. He’d helped put that there.

Knowing he’d meant to all along didn’t make it any easier. The fist of regret in his throat ached.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Matilda turn and quietly retrace her steps along the path.

Jessie laid one hand over his heart. It thudded in answer. “I know you . . . think he’s terrible,” she whispered. “And maybe he did terrible things, Silas, but I—”

Silas touched a finger to her lips. “He’s your brother, sunshine. I know.” It was the best he could do, under the circumstances. Knowing Caleb had planned to kill her, or didn’t stop it. Knowing he’d killed others, it was all he could say.

“Yeah.” Jessie sucked in a deep, shaking breath. Kissed his finger.

He didn’t want her to think of her own brother as a murderer. She needed Caleb to be the man who had traded his life for hers, in the end. He wanted her to remember that.

“No falsehoods, right?” he said softly. He pushed his hands through her tousled hair. “So, I feel like I’ve jumped from a high ceiling, went fist to magic with an insane witch, been beaten, bloodied, shot at, and dropped into a boat to be ferried to heaven.” He searched her eyes. Studied them.

Praying he didn’t ruin it all. That somewhere, despite his anger and his stupidity, his violent denial, she still felt what she claimed.

“Silas,” she whispered. “There’s so much between us. So much
around
us.”

“There always will be,” he said, and shook his head slowly without breaking eye contact. Wanting her,
willing
her, to read the words in his soul. “It’s new ground for us both, but we’re as good as dead to the outside world. We can start over.”

Her lashes flared. “As good as dead,” she repeated, and something raw slid behind her eyes. She captured his face in both hands, leaned in to press her lips gently, move them softly over his. And shimmering in a molten sea of whiskey, shining in her eyes, he read her grief. Her uncertainty.

And a love so fragile, it took his breath away.

He could work with that, he thought, and fit her mouth more firmly to his.

Later, much later, when he’d thoroughly explored every inch of warm, wet skin beneath the easy access of her voluminous skirt, when they’d sat stiffly, achingly, on the sandy beach and shared a meal of nameless vegetables and cold fish, they returned to the cottage hand in hand.

Matilda rocked gently on the porch, a wooden pipe held loosely in her fingers. Her smile warmed as she saw them.

Silas helped Jessie ascend the steps, grinning at her groans of pain. They were so different from the moans of pleasure he’d coaxed from her earlier.

“I’m glad those fit,” Matilda said, critically eyeing the jeans resting low on Silas’s hips.

“Thank you.” Silas gestured at the lake. At the cliffs. “For everything.”

“Ah, well.” The woman smiled. “Sit yourself down before you undo all the work I put into you.”

Silas sat, feeling somehow warm inside. Aglow. Christ, was this what happiness was?

Was this what normal felt like? What it could be for him?

Jessie scooted into his arms, and he rested his chin on top of her soft golden hair. “So, what now?” she asked. She twined her fingers with his, squeezed. “What does a former witch hunter do?”

Matilda’s chair creaked as she set it rocking. A thin trail of smoke wound from her old pipe. It smelled, to Silas, like herbs and something . . . faded. Nostalgic. He rubbed his chin gently against Jessie’s hair and said, thoughtfully, “I guess I
am
retired.”

Matilda’s rich dark eyes flicked between them. “Retirement,” she said slowly, a long, drawn-out sigh, “has its advantages. And its disadvantages.” She raised the pipe to her mouth and added around it, “It’s damned boring, if you ask me.”

Jessie’s laughter thrummed against his chest. “Matilda, if you’re looking for excitement—”

Her eyes flashed. “I’ve had more than my share of excitement,” Matilda said evenly. “I think I’ll leave the rest to you children.”

Silas pursed his mouth. A seed, a faint idea, bloomed inside his head. “Matilda.”

“Mmm?”

He studied her. “Knowing what we know, what you’ve said about lies, I’m going to ask you a question.”

The older woman’s eyebrows knitted. “Ask, you impertinent ex-hunter, but I reserve the right to say nothing at all.”

Jessie squirmed, wriggled around so she could study his face. “Are you sure you want to ask?” Her eyes searched his. They were lighter, but she would need time to heal. Time to grieve.

He touched her cheek. Slid his gaze to Matilda’s lined face. “You didn’t just stumble on us, did you?” Silas asked. “Both times, you were in the right place. How?”

In the lengthening dark, Matilda’s eyes took on a mysterious sheen. Almost animal, they gleamed at him now, a brilliant reflection of her smile. “I have an interest in Jessie,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact.

In his arms, Jessie stiffened. “An interest?” she asked slowly. “What do you mean?”

Matilda tapped the sweeping curve of the pipe’s bowl against her palm. “It’s nothing personal, baby girl,” she said with a quiet chuckle. “Don’t get your back up. Young witches like yourself are a rare thing. I know a good soul when I see it.”

Jessie covered the strange obsidian pendant with one hand, and Matilda’s smile deepened.

“I’m looking at two good souls here,” Matilda said. “A fine start for redemption, don’t you think?”

Silas frowned. “Redemption for what?”

“Oh,” Matilda replied with a long sigh, and jammed the pipe stem once more between her teeth. Around it, she added, “That’s a long story, and not one I’m telling now. Go on inside, now. You’re tired, and I like my evenings to myself.”

When it became clear she was done talking, Silas nudged Jessie to her feet. Despite himself, he accepted her help to stand as his muscles throbbed and twanged.

Jessie slipped inside the front door, eased it gently closed behind him. “I have no idea what that was,” she whispered, shaking her head, “but I like her.”

Silas caught the front of her soft, cream tank top. Yanked her to him, soft to hard. Her warmth to his need. “I don’t care what that was,” he said against her lips. “I love you.” He said it again at her throat, willing her to hear him. To understand. She gasped, clutching his shoulders.

Somehow, they managed to make it to the bed. Their borrowed clothes scattered over the floor, and Jessie arched breathlessly into his hands. His mouth.

His heart.

Later, wrapped around her, her legs tangled with his, her heart beating strongly against his own, Silas stroked the smooth line of her back and murmured, “We’ll figure it out, sunshine.”

She stirred, sleepy. Soft as silk as she rested her chin on his chest and blinked at him. “Hmm?”

“Don’t worry about anything.” He skimmed his fingers over her bottom lip. Her cheek, and the thin, scabbed line there. It was healing quickly, but still there. His chest tightened. “We’ll be okay.”

Jessie tilted her head, speculative. But she yawned. Shook her head, and stretched to touch her mouth to his. “I know. I . . . I love you, Silas. I don’t think I should,” she added with a crooked smile, “but I do.”

“I’ll never doubt it again,” he promised with such intensity that it rumbled through his chest.

Jessie braced herself on an elbow. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Oh, no.”

“So funny,” she drawled, tweaking his nipple in reproach.

He hissed, caught her hand with his. “You’ll get yourself in trouble,” he warned, flattening it against his chest. Against his heart. “Go on.”

Amusement faded. “I don’t know if Caleb is dead.” The words slipped from her softly, husky with emotion. With things that twisted him up inside. Her eyes were luminous in the semidark. “I just don’t know. But I’m going to hope he isn’t.”

Silas frowned. “Jess—”

“I know.” Her fingers tightened over his chest. “I know. He did— It’s just that I think there’s good there still. I hope so. And if—”

“Enough.” Silas twined his free hand in her hair, drew her head down for his kiss. Her lips trembled over his. Parted on a soft exhale, a whimper of a sound. His heart aching inside his chest, battling with the fury that pressed hard when he thought of how close he’d come to losing her, he drew her closer to him. “I have a lot to learn, I know. I hope to God that I can undo what a lifetime of Church teaching has turned me into.”

“You’ll never have to figure it out alone,” she murmured, her fingers warm as they stroked over his chest.

“It won’t be easy. I’ve spent my life believing that all witches deserved to die. Some do, we saw proof of that, but—” He cut himself off, tried hard to moderate himself, his anger at the man who had betrayed his own sister. Finally, unable to get enough, he touched her cheek. Her lip, soft and warm. “We’ll keep an eye out,” he said. “If he shows up, we’ll . . . talk.” It was all he could promise.

All he could force himself to promise.

“Thank you.” She sighed. “It isn’t over. I know it isn’t.”

He nodded. “We’ll be okay, sunshine. Whatever you need, we’ll do it together.”

She murmured something wordless, sensual, and uniquely feminine, completely Jessie. She curled up against him in the narrow bed, and Silas couldn’t stop himself from touching her. Gliding his palms over her back. Her shoulders. Her hair.

He’d almost lost her. Christ, it had been so fucking close.

And as Jessie drifted off to sleep, her healing cheek pillowed on his shoulder, Silas stared into the dark. Stroked her warm, silken skin, and ran it all back through his head. The fire that ate at the Mission safe house, the magic that had sent them over the trench and her blood, an obscenely bright smear on her skin and still so terrifying that his grip tightened protectively at her waist.

Peterson’s face, his power-hungry eyes as he’d stared at Silas across the Mission table, then again as Curio in the depths of the ruined city.

How did a witch get to be a missionary? How the hell did the leader of the Coven of the Unbinding become the Mission director?

And would the Mission team think Silas was dead, too? Would Naomi try to find them?

He didn’t know. There were no answers in the dark to guide him.