No Rest for the Witches (2 page)

 

Chapter Two

R
eactionary. That's what Naomi had said; they were too damned reactionary.

And here they were, reacting again. Drenched to the skin and crouched outside the compromised safe house.

Naomi knelt beside him, a shadow clad in black, her face a pale, tense blur as they watched the complex. It was one of half a dozen on this block alone, a ragtag gathering of broken-down buildings, most held together by the crumbling remains of old mortar and stubborn brick. The alleys between them were infested with refuse, squatters, rats, and worse—and the moldy, rotten smell rising from the black strip where they waited wasn't doing him any favors.

Naomi didn't shift; didn't even so much as breathe loud enough to cut through the rustle of rain as it dripped to the pavement. Her features were set in a mask so tight, so filled with lethal intent, that her lips were white beneath that silver ring pierced through her bottom lip. Her eyes glittered—
rage
. Fear.

He understood it.

Silas didn't want to leave Jessie in that bed—Christ, the thought of her still haunted him. Frail, pale, her eyelids flickering rapidly, and looking so damned fragile beneath the multicolored blanket.

He'd never seen a vision hit her like this. Hell, he was still getting used to the concept of her
having
visions at all. Six months ago, he'd been ordered to secure her cooperation on an ongoing Mission operation. Before he knew it, he'd rescued Jessie from a pack of witches all intent on killing her—helped by the same brother he'd been ordered to execute—and it still seemed like a bad dream when he thought about it.

But then, he'd spent his life killing witches.

The fact that he
loved
one was still so damned surreal.

Finally, Naomi stirred. “Fuck this,” she muttered. “Nothing's moving. I'm going in.”

He caught her arm, holding up one finger and drawing it across his eyes. He didn't have to say anything—she knew the silent signals in the same way she knew her own language. They'd grown up on them.

She shook him off, her black-gloved fists clenched against her thighs.

She wanted in that safe house, and she wanted in
now.
He didn't need to be a mind reader to know her stone-faced calm was a thinly drawn veneer.

If Jessie's last warning had been right, Naomi's boyfriend was in there.

And the amount of blood Silas saw smeared on the tenement's entry door wasn't reassuring.

His fingers flexed around the haft of his pistol, slick with rain. The upper levels of New Seattle had to be getting a pounding. This far down, it didn't patter steadily so much as stream, collecting run-off sliding down the buildings in sheets and tinged with an acrid odor. All of the city's rain picked it up. Part of it was the atmospheric residue of a dozen volcanoes giving up the ghost over five decades ago. The rest was all crap the water collected on the way down through the maze of New Seattle streets and layers.

Deep in the lows where the last dregs of people scrapped to survive, the rain turned to battery acid and the electricity shorted frequently. The alley where they crouched nestled between two dilapidated tenements, only vaguely lit by the hulking metropolis reaching for the shrouded sky above them.

The electrical grid wired through New Seattle was powered on a metric shit-ton of voltage. There were levels so deep that daylight never reached them.

On days like this? That proved beneficial.

Naomi shifted. “I see one. I'm going—”

He flattened a hand on her shoulder.

The operative was almost invisible in the faded luminescence oozing down from higher streets. Wrapped in black and as still as Silas had ever seen anyone, he was just another shadow in a network of them.

Naomi's fists dropped to the broken pavement beneath them, every muscle practically vibrating in a line along his shoulder and arm.

Not for the first time, Silas wondered if she ever regretted giving up her gun. Once upon a time, she'd been the best agent the Mission had. After she'd been sent undercover to New Seattle's most exclusive resort—after the rogue agent she'd been sent in to execute had murdered his way through the compound—she'd walked out
changed.

Not just turned into a witch, though that had floored him all by itself. But she'd gone softer. Chosen to give up killing for a living, killing at all.

Maybe it was the magic she'd wound up inheriting, some kind of healing gift, that kept her from stomaching the kill. Maybe it was watching her boyfriend get knifed.

It wasn't a bad decision, but as her shoulder all but vibrated beneath his hand, he knew she still struggled with whatever war she waged in herself.

Killing made things so much easier to solve. And that was the problem with it.

He crouched lower as the operative's head turned. “Do you see an insignia?”

She shook her head.

Right, then. Missionaries didn't sport anything but the holy tattoo stamped somewhere on their bodies, but he'd been hoping. The thought of coming face to face with a Mission team made his stomach twist into a knot of bile. “I'll take him. You get through the door.” Her body snapped to attention. “I'll meet you in the—”

A gunshot split the quiet street. The additional muzzle flash in the third-story window of the safe house made anything he had to say worthless.

Naomi leapt to her feet, panic harshly drawn on her too-pale face.

The operative raised his gun, a sleek matte black piece he couldn't pick out in the dark, and Silas pushed her hard enough to send her staggering. Brick splintered into shrapnel, just where her head had been seconds before.

Gunfire erupted from the operative's shadowed niche. Diving out of the alley, he crouched behind a faded blue car missing two tires and returned fire in the direction of the muzzle flashes. “Go, go!”

Naomi was a blur behind him, a slick shadow moving with all the grace of a panther on the hunt.

She'd been a hell of a missionary.

He popped off two more rounds, ground cover to keep the operative off Naomi's ass, and pressed his back to the rain-slick metal. It creaked and pinged as bullets tore into the siding, shredding the rusted metal.

His heart slammed in his ears. Adrenaline spiked through his body, tightened his muscles, turned him into the hyper-focused machine the Mission had made him. Bracing one hand against the gritty, broken pavement, he held his breath as he counted the shots.

One man, he thought. Situated at his ten. Squeezing off rounds nice and measured. No real gaps, no rush.

Standard tactics. Was he facing down an old Mission teammate?

Eckhart? Or that kid, what's his name . . . Miles?

He gritted his teeth, forcing himself not to go down that mental road. He'd made his choice. He'd protect Jessie until the end of the earth. He'd keep Naomi's ass covered and do his part, no matter what.

They'd had to make their choices, too, and they chose the Mission.

Fine.

Safety glass shattered out in a spray of glittering shards, raining down on him. Silas rose, gun tight in one hand, and sighted down the length of his arm. One squeeze, and a bullet sheared through the dark.

Vaguely, he heard a cry, a muted thud, and he slammed back to his knees as another round of gunfire splattered the car. It rocked back on its only two wheels, shuddered.

What the hell kind of gun was the operative using? Not semi-automatic, but it packed a kick his old Colt didn't.

Shaking his head, he turned, dug his feet in, and sprinted for the tenement door. Gunfire peppered his wake, and as he barreled through the unlocked door, the wood splintered around him.

Musty air and gloom enveloped him. Silas braced himself against the wall, one hand flattened on a bloodstain still damp on the peeling paint, and gasped for breath.

Goddamn, his joints hurt.

At thirty-five years old, most of it spent straining his body to the breaking point, he was getting too old for this shit.

The gunfire stopped. He'd have been more relieved if it hadn't, but the fact the operative had ceased fire meant he was trained not to waste ammo on an impossible shot. Unless Silas had done more than just tag him, which was a possibility.

They'd have to hole up in the safe house and hope to hell no one was dying.

Given the smeared red streaks on the wall beside him and the gunshot earlier, it was a thin fucking chance.

Damn it. Silas cupped both hands around the gun stock and hurried down the hall.

The safe house was one of two he kept maintained in the city. He, Jessie, Naomi, and Matilda all knew about them, and so did Naomi's boyfriend. Phinneas Clarke was a topsider, under investigation for the events at Timeless that culminated in nearly a dozen bodies, including the rogue missionary who was responsible for the murders.

Naomi had come out of it looking like hell, and he couldn't blame her. She'd had her heart ripped out and wrung out, and it hadn't been until Clarke went looking for her weeks later that she'd started to act like the Naomi he'd known.

The fact that Jessie had
seen
Clarke in all this blood was a frightening concept. If Phin died . . . Hell,
Naomi
.

A thud rattled the ceiling above him.

Silas sprinted for the stairs, took them two at a time, and burst out of the stairwell door in time to see Joel Evans, Clarke's right-hand man, hit the wall beside him. The whole sloppy tenement rattled, dingy plaster falling like dusty rain. The operative who'd thrown him raised his head—definitely a broad build under all that black body armor and face plating—and Silas raised his gun.

“Don't move,” he ordered.

The operative froze.

Did he recognize Silas? It was impossible to tell; no light made it through the faceplate to reveal who stood on the business end of Silas's gun. And he said nothing.

Silas hoped to hell it wasn't anyone he knew.

Joel pushed himself off the wall, cradling his face in one hand. Blood dripped from his nose, down the front of his steel gray button-down shirt. His curse growled.

“You okay?” Silas demanded, glance flicking to him.

A mistake. And the only chance the operative needed. He reached behind his back, turning away, and Silas saw the wicked gleam of a knife thin enough to throw. Sharp enough, if it was standard issue, to pierce through bone.
Fuck.

So much for questions.

Silas squeezed off a shot. Then a second.

Body armor, even the hybrid plasteel kind this man was wearing, wasn't meant to stop a bullet to the throat. They didn't make armor that way, and he knew it. The shots cracked, shockwaves causing plaster to shake loose from the ceiling, and crimson glinted in the flickering hall light. The operative dropped, gurgling.

“Oh, my God,” Joel gasped through the hands over his face.

Silas didn't holster his weapon. Not yet. “Two down,” he said. He wanted to check the face behind that mask, didn't dare take the time. “Stay away from the windows.”

Joel was a shorter man, just under six feet, with dark, nearly black hair and green eyes framed by the lurid beginnings of double bruises. The bridge of his nose was crooked, blood dripping from his fingers as he covered it, but his jaw was set hard enough to break teeth.

Silas didn't give him a chance to decide between pissed and afraid. He knew that line all too well. “Freak out later,” he advised. “Where's Clarke?”

“Inside,” Joel told him thickly. “It's bad.”

Shit. “How bad?”

“Silas!” Naomi's voice, pleading. Panicked.

Shit.
Silas blitzed into the shabby apartment, the door slamming open under his elbow.

Like every other safe house he'd ever used, it wasn't much. Dilapidated furnishings provided the barest minimum of livability, the sofa was a strange shade of green, and the brown curtains hanging from the windows were threadbare.

The normally mud brown carpet had seen better days, turned nearly black underneath a tall, lean man wearing designer clothes. Compared to Naomi's worn black denim and fitted shirt, he looked like a slummer taken a bad turn. His clothes would get him jumped in the middle of a crowded street down here.

Or would have, before his blood had colored his light blue dress shirt vibrant red.

Even with his basic first aid training, Silas knew the man wasn't in any shape to be fighting off Naomi's weight as she knelt at his hip and pushed his shoulders flat to the floor.

Phinneas Clarke still tried, his lips white with strain as he struggled to get to his feet. “Get off!”

“Stay down,” Naomi gritted out, her own skin ashen. “Phin, fuck,
stop
.”

If he didn't, he'd do himself some serious damage. Silas didn't dare put away his gun, not yet. Not until he knew they were in the clear. “You.” He motioned to Joel. “Pin him down, quickly.”

“But he—”

“
Goddamn it, Joel, just do it!
”

Even Silas blanched at the anguish in Naomi's order. Circling around them, he stepped between the bloody, rabid struggle and the window, placing himself at an angle guaranteed not to offer a clear shot.

He wasn't that far out of the game.

Phin all but snarled as Joel caught his hands, holding them to the floor. Anything he said was lost in the thick-tongued gibberish Silas knew meant the man had lost a lot of blood. The hole in his shoulder and matching graze on his thigh must have made getting down here a bitch.

Naomi tore a strip out of the bandages she'd taken to carrying, fighting to bind the worst of the two. His shoulder still oozed sluggishly; a bad sign.

Silas glanced at Joel, who met his eyes over Clarke's weakening struggles. The man's mouth turned down into a hard, desperate line. “They got her,” Joel said, voice cracking. “They got Lillian.”