Sacrifice the Wicked (27 page)
His eyes flicked to the porch.
“She died.” Eyes flashing, Naomi tore Phin’s hand from her mouth. “You shitfucker son of a—”
Parker tensed, ready to throw herself at the woman—risk the ass-kicking she knew the ex-missionary could level on her. But Phin grabbed the woman by both arms, more daring than she would have given the topside playboy.
“Stop it,” he ordered. “Naomi, let him finish!”
“I’ll kill him,” she snarled. “He practically just admitted to killing her!”
“No.” Simon stepped back, hands raised. But he didn’t square up. Didn’t meet Naomi’s challenge with anything but raw honesty. “I came here, it’s true. But by the time I arrived, she was already—” Pain flickered in his expression. “She chose to drink poison. I’m not lying.”
“We couldn’t fucking tell if you were,” Naomi shot back.
Juliet flinched.
“He’s got the scar from where she shot him,” Phin said, and somehow, when he spoke, even Parker felt soothed. The man had a way about him. He spoke, and she wanted to listen. A real charmer.
“It just proves he was here,” Naomi spat. Her eyes flashed. “Why are we trusting him?”
“Why
are
we trusting him?” Juliet echoed, but quietly.
Parker couldn’t let this degenerate into something worse. “Please,” she said.
All eyes turned to her. Sudden and direct.
Simon’s banked, pain to anger. Anger to the cold, shuttered edge she was starting to associate with some misguided attempt to
fix things
.
What could she do? Please what?
She didn’t know, but she had to give it her best shot. And she knew how to crack Naomi’s edge. The woman had been the best missionary Parker had ever seen.
But she’d softened.
Slowly, Parker sank to her knees. The black sand shifted underneath her.
Simon rocked back on his heels, expression pained. Shocked. “Parker, no—”
“Matilda Lauderdale knew her husband still controlled the witches from his lab,” she said over him.
Juliet watched her, worrying at her full upper lip.
Simon took a step toward Parker; she threw up a hand. “No,” she said flatly. “Stop. I’m not doing this again.” Let Naomi see the ex-director on her knees. Let her see how far Parker would go.
What it would cost her.
Pride didn’t mean that much when the city—and Simon—was at stake.
“Laurence Lauderdale is the man behind all this,” she continued, her gaze on Naomi now. Challenging. The woman’s too-full mouth twisted as her tongue slid out to lick the jewelry in her lip. “He’s been creating witches by the dozens, maybe even the hundreds.”
“We know,” Juliet said tightly.
“I know you do,” Parker replied, gaze shifting to her. “But what you don’t know is how bad it really is. The Mission is now run by his witches. His daughter—a respected geneticist in her own right—is trying to crack the code that will fix the thing that’s breaking his army. And if she’s half as smart as her parents, she’ll have it done within weeks. Maybe sooner.”
As one, every eye turned to Simon.
His fists clenched by his sides. “It’s true,” he said quietly. “I’m dying. So are all the subjects. They call it degeneration. I’m thirty years old and my generation has lasted the longest, but we’re still—”
“Broken.” Juliet shook her head. “We know.”
“But you aren’t dying now,” Parker said, her eyes on the woman who’d started it all. Juliet Carpenter.
Eve
. “I need . . . Please, can you help us?”
“You had the fucking syringe,” Naomi pointed out, but even her volume lowered. Tense, her posture rigid, but her fists remained at her sides.
“It wasn’t her fault,” Simon growled, not for the first time.
“Of course not.”
“Of
course not,
” Phin replied, more firmly. Sincere where Naomi bled sarcasm.
“Shitfuck.” With that snapped judgment, Naomi shook off his hand and stalked away from the group. Within moments, she vanished back around the house.
Phin tucked his hands into his pockets, smile crooked. “That, for Naomi, is polite.”
“I’m well aware,” Parker murmured, but without heat.
Juliet knelt, gathered her basket and the odd purple tubers that had spilled from inside. “So the Church has the last of the serum,” she said quietly.
“It’s my fault,” Simon said before Parker could.
She glared at him. “No, it’s—”
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is.” The witch with the pale green eyes looked up, her expression sad. “Simon, I’m sorry. I can’t help you. Jessie and I used the other two syringes Matilda left us. Whatever she needed from me, it’s locked up in my chemical makeup, not my power. All I can do is—”
“I know,” he repeated, his arm tightening at Parker’s waist. “You boost others’ powers.”
Juliet glanced at Phin. “Then why are they here?”
“You didn’t say we were coming?” Parker narrowed her eyes at Phin.
Running a hand through his curly hair, Phin shrugged. “Jonas got in touch. Jessie planned the rest. I just figured if there was a way . . .”
“I came to say I’m sorry.”
Parker’s heart swelled as Simon’s words settled over the small group. Quiet. Earnest.
Honest.
“Before everything, all I wanted was the Eve sequence. I intended to steal it, cure myself, and get the hell out of this city no matter what it took. When Matilda died, I—” He took a deep breath, let it out on a whoosh of unspoken frustration. Anger. “I didn’t care about any of you, any of this, until Parker, and I failed her. I failed all of you.” He looked down at Parker, his jaw shifting.
“You didn’t fail me, Simon. You’re the reason I’m not in an interrogation cell right now. Maybe worse.”
She cupped his cheek. “There’s time.”
“No, there isn’t.”
A new voice fractured the tenuous peace. “There might be.”
T
he foliage rustled, large, tropical fronds swaying as another man strode out of whatever lay hidden behind it.
Parker’s eyes widened. Blond hair, incredibly blue eyes. His features were unmistakable. It couldn’t be. “Caleb Leigh? We thought you were—”
“Dead?” He turned his head.
Parker swallowed a gasp.
Scars climbed up his neck, tendrils of ropy flesh carving wefts over his jaw. His cheek. It slanted his mouth into a permanent smirk. He wore long sleeves, but his left hand gleamed in the daylight, shiny skin and corrugated edges.
Wordlessly, Juliet reached out.
Caleb took her hand. “That was the point,” he said. His eyes, uncomfortably sharp, settled on Simon. “You son of a bitch.”
But there wasn’t any heat to it.
Simon nodded. “You of all people know what it means to do what we do.”
“I know where your head was,” Caleb confirmed, but rigidly. As if he didn’t like even admitting that. “Doesn’t excuse it. For either of us.”
Juliet frowned. “Caleb doesn’t have to act alone anymore.”
“Neither do you,” Caleb said to Simon, finishing her thought with ease. His gaze landed on Parker. Slid over her, from her braided red hair to the skimpy pink dress, her scuffed coat and stained jeans.
His permanently slanted mouth twitched. “I expected you to be more imposing.”
“Caleb,” Juliet protested.
“I get that a lot,” Parker replied evenly. “I have a file filled with the names of people you murdered in my office topside.”
“It’s true.” Brutal candor. “I’m not excusing anything.”
She blinked.
Phin shifted his weight, an awkward gesture.
Simon watched it quietly. Watched them all as he stood solid and still against Parker’s side.
“Let’s go sit down,” Phin suggested. “There’s tea and food. We can talk there.”
“Okay.” Parker spoke before Simon could refuse, aware of the sheer will he expended to stay upright. Show no weakness.
They didn’t have that luxury anymore.
“You know what I do,” Caleb said to him.
Simon nodded. “Most of the new Coven of the Unbinding witches are Salem Project operatives. You and your sister’s . . . abilities are known to Sector Three.”
“Then you know I mean it when I say there’s still a chance.” Caleb plucked the basket from Juliet’s hands, caught her hand as she tried to grab it back and brought it to his mouth for a kiss too tender for Parker not to look away. A gold ring on Juliet’s finger flashed.
Juliet’s features darkened. Uncertainty. Mistrust. “Another vision?”
Worry, most of all. Parker knew the feeling.
“It’s okay, Jules,” Caleb murmured.
What Parker didn’t know, didn’t know how to really name, was a strange feeling of . . . solidarity unfolding within her. Of sympathy, shared knowledge.
Caleb’s gaze seemed to take everyone in, studied them all, catalog them. File them away.
They settled on Parker again, briefly.
Understanding flashed there.
Simon’s hand flattened on her back. So possessively that Phin tried and failed to hide a grin.
“I saw a vision,” Caleb confirmed. “I saw two paths.” He tucked the basket under his arm. “At the end of each, I saw death standing with a scale.”
“A scale,” Phin repeated. “What?”
“The future is a mess of riddles,” Juliet said wearily. “Signs that aren’t what they seem. Or maybe are.”
“He’s seeing the future?” Parker demanded.
“Saw it,” Caleb corrected. “Ask him.” His chin thrust at Simon in a kind of acknowledgement. “He knows how it works.”
Simon looked away.
The blond witch’s smile quirked at the scarred edge of his mouth. “In this vision, one path led to a slaughterhouse. Hundreds dead, hanging from hooks. Infants lay strewn upon the floor, forgotten. Everything’s dark. And cold.” Caleb recounted this quietly. Grimly. Phin scowled. “The other path leads to total destruction. Thousands of corpses,
hundreds
of thousands, piled high. Men, women, children all scattered over the broken ground.”
“Oh, God,” Parker whispered.
Juliet flinched, cheeks paling. “I hate this.”
As if he couldn’t get enough, as if he both offered comfort and demanded a touchstone, Caleb laced his hand with hers. His scarred hand.
Parker’s throat closed as Juliet didn’t pull away.
Love. Real love, the kind that would last forever. She was surrounded by it.
Was this what it could have been?
No, she wouldn’t think like that. She’d made a promise. Wordlessly, she rested her head against Simon’s shoulder.
Caleb shook his head. “I’m not done. At the top of the corpse pile stands a man I’ve seen before, but this time, I see his face.” His eyes pinned on Simon. “It looks like yours.”
Parker stiffened. “There’s no—”
“It’s allegory,” Caleb said over her.
“It’s crap,” she shot back.
Simon said nothing.
The witch smiled faintly. “The point is that those are the things I see. But it’s not a total wash. Last night, the vision became clear enough to recount, but as I watched it, I realized something.”
“What’s that?” Simon asked, but cautiously. Resignedly.
“It’s
not
you. Not really.” His eyebrows raised. “It’s the same man I saw in the vision that led me to Juliet, the man in the shadows holding the chains that bound her. It’s your father.”
Shocked silence filled the group. Filled Simon beside her.
Then, with a low, strained “
Fuck,
” he turned away. Strode past Caleb and Juliet, his fist clenched.
Parker took two steps after him, hesitated when Caleb put that scarred hand on her shoulder. “Give him a minute.”
She looked up at his face, the twisted edges of his burn-marred flesh, but all she saw was compassion. And a dangerous kind of determination.
Beside him, Juliet touched her arm. “There’s been a lot of secrets, decades of the stuff. We’re still sorting it all out.”
“We need a plan.” Parker closed her eyes briefly, drew on the Mission training—her own strength—to lock her knees. Keep from tearing after Simon, holding him. Reassuring him.
The urge nearly took her breath away.
When her lashes lifted, she found Caleb smiling at her. “You’re a tough lady, Parker Adams.”
“You have no idea,” Phin said behind her. It was almost a complaint.
Parker stepped away, smoothed the pink dress without hope of getting it to lay right over her jeans. “What does your vision have to do with any of this?” she asked, calm now. Steady. She was good at useless information.
“I’m not sure,” Caleb replied.
“It sounds,” Juliet mused, “like there’s going to be sacrifices on both ends.”
“It’s war.” Parker glanced at the emerald green water, still as glass. Her mind churned, filtering through what she knew.
Focus.
This would help. Anything would help. Help her, help Simon.
Help New Seattle.
She frowned. “Miss Carpenter.”
“Juliet,” the witch corrected with a small, cautious smile. “It’s okay.”
“Juliet,” she repeated. “Thank you. You used the serum?”
A nod.
Parker glanced at Caleb. “And you saw Lauderdale standing on the pile of corpses in your vision.” Was it strange that she wasn’t discounting images from a witch’s imagination?
No. At this point, she’d use anything she had.
Caleb nodded. “But he wasn’t anywhere on the first path.”
Phin hummed a thoughtful sound. “Because he’s dead?”
“I don’t know.”
Parker nodded slowly. They had one shot at this. And maybe, just maybe, it’d come through. “What if I could get you the one person who could unlock everything?”
The other woman frowned. “Who?”
“Kayleigh Lauderdale. Laurence’s daughter.” Parker’s gaze touched on all three of the coconspirators she never would have imagined herself standing beside, unless it were at an execution. The world was a funny place. Varying degrees of uncertainty looked back at her. “If we can get her, we can force her to extract the sequence from you, Juliet. Or even Jessie. We can cure Simon
and
give ourselves leverage against Laurence.”
She recognized the glint in Caleb’s startlingly blue eyes, but she also noticed that he glanced first at Juliet.
All right. She could respect that.
But it was Phin who surprised her. “We’re not going to hurt her.” It wasn’t a question.
Missionary, once. But never that kind. Parker shook her head. “Not if we don’t have to.”
“Jules?”
The witch leaned against Caleb’s shoulder, her hand clenching over the front of his T-shirt. Her gaze locked on Parker. “What about the vision?”
“We have two choices,” Parker said slowly, glancing beyond her. To the foliage Simon vanished into. “One, the director lives. Two, he dies. If I have to choose between New Seattle’s citizens”—
Simon
— “and being
good,
I’ll pull the trigger myself.”
A ghost of a smile touched Caleb’s mouth. A faint nod.
“Let’s talk about it with the others,” Phin offered and touched her bare shoulder gently. “You should go check on him.”
She didn’t need to be told twice.
S
imon’s fist collided with the cliff wall. Pain shredded through his knuckles, his elbow, but he didn’t care.
He was going to kill something. But he wasn’t anywhere
near
the man he wanted to take apart with his bare fucking hands.
And Matilda was already dead.
She’d
known
.
“Simon!”
Parker’s voice. Urgent.
Concerned.
He spun, just in time to catch her as she launched herself into his arms. A flurry of intent and red hair and—Christ, every inch the woman he loved.
His head throbbed, warning that he was pushing it, but it didn’t matter.
His hands sank into Parker’s hair, cupped her head to hold her for his kiss. Angry and raw, but it softened as she eagerly raised her mouth to his. Gentled as her lips opened for him, cooled his fury. Channeled it.
Carried it with him.
She clung to his shoulders as he drew back. “It’s okay,” she said urgently. “It’s okay, Simon. This doesn’t change you.”
“I should have known!”
She winced as his fingers tightened in her hair. But she didn’t pull away. As the strange mist curled over the emerald green bay, the only bit of privacy he’d been able to find after Caleb’s announcement, he stood in the center of Matilda’s secret sanctuary and felt so alone.
And yet, with Parker’s body pressed to his, so very not.
His head ached as he closed his eyes.
“Kayleigh isn’t just my half sister.
Laurence
is my father.” He laughed. It broke. “Why would she mix the genes in a vial if my parentage is the same as her daughter’s?”
“Are you sure Kayleigh’s natural-born?”
“I don’t know!” He jerked his hands away, too raw to risk hurting her in his anger. His confusion. “I’m a test-tube creation, Parker. I wouldn’t be degenerating if I wasn’t.”
“Maybe you are. Maybe you aren’t.” She caught his face in her hands, stared up at him with so much in her eyes. Love, reassurance. Concern.
Fear.
“All I know,” she said, every inch the authoritative director that had haunted him, “is that I love you. No matter where you come from.” Her wide mouth quirked. “And I also know that you got played badly by the people you were trying to play.”
It shouldn’t have made him laugh. But it did. As humor welled up beneath the anger and pain, Simon’s hands mapped down her back. Molded her to him, shaped her body against his. Perfect in every way.
“You said Matilda had a plan.” Parker’s fingers traced his jaw. “What if she didn’t really? What if all she wanted was for you to be free?”
“You can’t know that.”
“You’re right. But the way it sounds, she concentrated on two of you. One to help break the genetic fail-safe, and one—you—she made from her own body. Test tube or not, Simon, she wanted you.”
“She wanted someone to fix her mistakes.”
Parker’s smile undid him. Slow, so sweet. “That’s the beauty of being human, Simon. You get to choose your own path.”
“Why bother?” He broke away, didn’t get far before she caught his hand and hauled back with all her weight. He stiffened, barely managed to keep from stumbling.
“Caleb’s vision isn’t absolute,” Parker told him sharply. She laced her fingers with his, wrapped her other hand around his wrist and held on as if afraid he’d vanish if she didn’t.
The way his head knocked, he might. Out with a bang.
“And the way I’m reading it, it’s saying that Lauderdale is going to end up on a mountain of bodies if we don’t do something.” She tilted her head. “May wants our help, the people here can help us, so we’re going to help them. We have plans, Simon.”
“I can’t keep fighting, Parker.”
And there it was. The truth, on a ragged growl.
She raised her chin. “Then don’t. I’ll fight for you.”
She would, wouldn’t she? She really would throw herself into the fray—join these outcast witches and their overwhelming goal to take down Sector Three.
She really would risk it all. Risk time with him. “Why?”
“Because I love you.” Her eyes shimmered, unshed tears bright enough to send a knife through his chest.
He hated to make her cry.
He never would have thought that. Tears didn’t bother him.
Her tears, though.
Ah, hell.
Simon pulled her to him, step by step; tugged her into his embrace and nuzzled his lips into her hair with a long, shuddering breath. “Then stay with me here,” he said, appalled to find the words coming from his own lips.
He didn’t want to die alone.
“No.”
His heart stalled.
Parker braced one hand over it, raising her face to his. Her cheeks gleamed, damp with her tears. “I refuse to sit by and watch you go. Kayleigh has that damned serum. Maybe she’s got it cracked now. Maybe not. But your cure is up there, and I will get it.”
“I don’t know what I have left,” he insisted roughly. “I could break
any
time.”
