Sacrifice the Wicked (3 page)

Not now.

As pain fractured through the back of his skull, Simon staggered out through the lobby doors, grabbed a fistful of brick. The ground shifted out from under him. The folder slipped from his fingers. Pale in the stark fluorescent lights surrounding the complex, it fluttered as if in slow motion. He squinted at it.

It blurred.

Degeneration
. That’s what the scientists called it. What Kayleigh called it. A sign of the end.

In about eight seconds, his sight would go. With it, the sensory radar that constantly pinged the back of his head, where his witchy ability lived.

Where the worst of the headache screamed.

Shit. Not the time. Not the place, either.

The street beyond the carefully manicured strip of fake grass dipped and swayed, rolling inward on itself as he struggled to think through the screws drilling through his skull.

Time was running out. In a very terminal sense.

“Hey, man.”

The voice sheared through his overwhelmed brain. Slammed into his senses like a thunderclap.

Masculine. Grating. Simon jerked, surprised when his back straightened and he fell against the side of the building. He didn’t realize he’d bent over.

Squinting, he couldn’t see more than the vaguest impressions of a shoulder, a muted face. Black on black.

He clenched his teeth. “Operation number,” he managed.

“Oh, man.” A hand grabbed his shoulder, steadied him. “You look like hell. Just lean right there, okay?”

The brick wall dug into his back. Simon braced his hands against it, felt the gritty surface but couldn’t see it. “Who are you?” he demanded. His voice locked down on a taut edge of pain.

Of anger.

This
sucked
.

“Don’t strain yourself.” The man patted him on the shoulder and let him go. Simon jerked his head around, searching vainly through black streaks for the owner of the cheerful voice.

Paper scraped along cement.

When it spoke again, it seemed farther. Or his ears were tunneling from vertigo. “Thanks for this. You saved me a lot of work.”

As if Simon weren’t buckling in pain.

“Fuck you,” he growled.

“Aw, and here I thought we were friends. Oh, well. Take care of yourself.” The sound didn’t come at Simon from in front, or beside him. It slammed into him like a wall. All-encompassing. Overpowering.

Sensory overload.

“Get back—” He choked. Coughed as blood filled the back of his throat. His tongue prickled, like he’d licked an exposed wire, harsh and metallic.

As his knees buckled, as his back grated against rough brick, Simon coughed into his cupped hands and realized they cooled, tingling and wet, in the dark.

He didn’t know if the thief was gone. Couldn’t see, couldn’t open his senses.

Couldn’t do anything but hemorrhage from the nose and wait for the worst to pass.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

S
he was late.

At half past nine, Parker strode out of the mirrored elevator and into the interior offices of the Mission. The din of over two dozen voices conferring lowered as every eye shifted to her.

Damn it, she was
never
late.

She resisted the urge to pat down hair that didn’t need patting. The reflective elevator walls told her that she looked exactly like she always did—confident, polished, and untouchable. She’d bound her copper hair in its customary smooth coil, her makeup was perfectly applied. Not too heavy, a few subtle passes to highlight her features.

Under her tan trench coat, her navy blue pantsuit covered her neatly from neck to ankle, tailored to her body, accompanied by a cream-colored blouse too high-necked to be inviting. Although overall damp from the summer shower pattering the walkways outside, she didn’t look anything like the disheveled woman Simon had accosted.

Exactly the point. She wasn’t that woman, and she’d be damned if anyone else saw her that way.

Parker strode past the first three rows of desks, aware that the missionaries watched her go out of the corners of eyes not completely focused on computer screens and field notes. Even the dialogue around her quieted.

She didn’t like speculation. Speculation led to questions, at a time and place no one could afford them. If she’d learned anything in her years in the Mission, she’d learned first that trust wasn’t just essential—it could save a missionary’s life. These missionaries needed to obey her every word. To have no reason to doubt her.

Nothing Parker did—or wanted to do—would be allowed to jeopardize that. Already in the hole due to her predecessor’s betrayal last year, she had to tread extremely carefully. Over a year of dedicated service had made dents in the agents’ collective armor, but she wondered if she’d ever stop struggling against the tide.

Probably not. And she couldn’t blame them. Peterson had served over a decade as director. To have him exposed as a witch had been a terrible blow for the men and women who’d followed him. And to have had her appointed by the bishop didn’t help. At twenty-eight, she was young for a director. That counted for a lot of the doubt.

Head held high, she crossed the fake wood floor. Her heels clicked with every step, authoritative enough to announce her approach and loud enough to give her agents warning.

It was a small favor but one she didn’t mind giving them. Parker remembered what it was like to be a cubicle jockey. Her missionaries worked hard. She didn’t mind straddling the hard-ass line now and again.

The cubicle area served as the information hub of the Mission. Most of the missionaries here were information analysts, technical specialists, and a few street-level operatives catching up on paperwork. Topside didn’t see as many active witches as the streets below the security line, though it wasn’t entirely unheard of.

The décor, at Parker’s insistence, was tasteful. Expensive because it had to be, and as harmonizing as the decorator could safely make it without losing its working edge. The floors were kept clean by routine maintenance, and even the faux wooden cubicle panels gleamed.

Agents came here to work, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be comfortable. Missionaries led hard lives. Harder for the active operatives. Among the offices, jail cells, and training facilities in the Mission side of the Holy Order’s quadplex, there were suites of recovery rooms, isolation rooms, and a whole floor of suites specifically for those agents on the brink of mental breaks. Parker did her best to make sure her agents found some solace between operations.

“Agent Trapp.” Her voice snapped across the open floor.

A sudden, muted flurry of determined industriousness followed.

Henry Trapp, a slight, dark-skinned man with a propensity toward outlandish ties, half stood from his station at her left. “Ma’am!”

It was time to get to work. Late or not. “Is there an update on last night’s surveillance?”

“The report is compiled and in your in-box,” he said smartly. “Patterns suggest that activity is climbing. We’re up thirty-seven percent over last year.”

General surveillance, the kind the Mission kept up to study patterns over the long term, was the lifeblood of the Mission’s success. Fully half of her analysts were assigned to day-to-day maintenance, and Trapp had been nominated the de facto spokesperson for the month.

Parker didn’t begrudge them the efforts to minimize contact with her as a whole. She just made sure to keep track of who drew the short straw.

“Climbing?” She stopped, facing him directly over the head of another analyst who didn’t seem to be paying attention. A glance at her screen showed four columns of figures. Statistics.

Last year around this time, the Coven of the Unbinding—a semiorganized cell of witches with ties throughout every major city in the Church’s fold—had only just been decimated by the collective efforts of the Mission. It had put a massive dent in witch activity figures for the next few months. A successful raid.

Well, successful with the aid of rogue elements the Mission had never found.

Maybe an internal coup from the coven’s own ranks, maybe external sources. All the investigative team had been left with were a lot of charred bodies and a dead operative.

And one traitor director turned into so much melted flesh.

Maybe it didn’t say much that activity was up this far. The Coven of the Unbinding—or at least the city’s witches—had plenty of time to rebuild.

“The mid-lows have reported no less than two separate sightings in a six-hour window,” Trapp explained. He adjusted his tie—today’s offering was electric orange stripes on a field of sunshine yellow. “Both known heretics. Although teams attempted to take down both, the witches and the individuals they’d met with were gone by the time they mustered.”

Parker frowned. “They’re not mustering fast enough. Send out a notice to keep two teams and three analysts per district on round-the-clock standby.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Director?”

She turned, followed the raised hand three cubicles away. “Agent Neely. What do you need?”

If Peter Neely could have chosen any other field of work, he’d have served admirably as some kind of waiter or catering staff. He was plain, not unattractive, with brown eyes and thick black hair he kept fashionably styled. His build was average, his height was average. He didn’t stand out. He didn’t have to.

It made him an excellent candidate for those operations requiring close-quarters surveillance.

He spun around in his chair, adjusting his thin black tie with one hand. A nervous habit she’d long since learned to ignore. “Eckhart from the mid-lows got back to us. He sent the files you requested,” he said, as matter-of-factly as Parker could have wished.

Straight to business always made her day.

She shrugged out of her damp trench coat. “And?”

“I went through all the operations for the past year,” he continued, gesturing with his pen. Parker’s gaze flicked to it. Neely lowered the offending utensil. “Topside and below the sec-lines. I highlighted all the markers that
might
link Operation Ghostwatch to other cases, but it’s looking pretty slim.”

“We know he’s been working with various members of society, heretics and otherwise. We need to find our leads where we can.”

“Yes, ma’am. But without knowing how he operates, it’s all guesswork on my part. I’ve sent the files up to the profilers for verification,” he added.

“Make sure they get in touch with Mr. Stone. He’ll have the best tools to get you what you need.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Has Agent Silo reported in?”

“Early this morning.” Neely tapped his computer screen. “There’s a list of new reports in your in-box. Over half are marked as urgent.”

“I’ll handle them immediately.” She folded her tan coat over her arm, glancing toward the dubious safety of her office. Slatted blinds in the same off-white color covered the glass window.

She never closed her blinds.

Her eyes narrowed. “Who is in my office, Mr. Neely?”

“Not sure, ma’am.” Neely’s gaze flicked to the side. Just enough. “I’ll get to work on these links.”

“Do.” Damn it. Parker turned, but she only made it five steps before another voice rose in her direction.

“Director Adams?” A petite woman with pixie-short light brown hair waved a bangle-ridden hand from across the room. The sound jingled and clattered through the operations floor.

Without hesitation, Parker detoured. “Agent Foster. News on Red Balloon?”

“No, ma’am.” The girl—woman, Parker corrected silently—beckoned her to come around the chest-high cubicle divider. Elizabeth Foster’s records put her in her mid-twenties, even if her freckled cheeks and wide blue eyes gave her the appearance of a teenager. “I’m looking at Operation Domino.”

Damn. “Tell me it’s good news, Ms. Foster.”

“Sorry, it’s bad.”

Parker leaned over her shoulder, bracing one hand on the cubicle lip for balance. She was acutely aware of every ear on them.

Sign enough that
bad
didn’t begin to cover it.

The images on Foster’s screen . . . screamed. Vivid red. Mottled pink and gray. Streaked brown.

Blood and brain and bone.

Parker steeled herself, forced her eyes to glide from one photo to the next. There wasn’t anything left to identify the operative with. Not without scraping it all together and dropping it into a man-shaped bucket.

“Who am I looking at, Ms. Foster?” she asked coolly.

“Jesus,” came a whisper from somewhere beyond Foster’s desk.

Ice bitch
. She didn’t have a choice. If she let herself think about the face, the personality, the mind behind all that smeared gristle and paste, she’d be as useful as a two-legged chair. The men—
her
missionaries—deserved a foundation stronger than that. She’d learned long ago to compartmentalize her emotions from the job.

All good missionaries—all successful ones—did.

“David Carver.” Foster’s voice wasn’t quite as steady. “Rookie, ma’am. Came in on the last recruitment drive.”

She searched her brain. On cue, an image of the rookie surfaced—pale skin, dark blond hair cut close to his scalp. Green eyes?

No, blue.

Her frown tightened. “Where was he on the training regimen?”

“Level three,” Foster said quietly. “He was training under Eckhart’s crew.”

“He flew through level two,” another voice offered, and Parker glanced across the divider to meet Neely’s serious gaze. “Bright kid. Real talent. Scouted him from the selection myself.”

A hush fell over the office. Parker straightened, her hand coming down on Elizabeth’s thin shoulder. Brief. There and gone. “Neely, Foster, put a rush on the samples from the scene. Where was he found?”

They exchanged a glance Parker didn’t miss.

“His home, ma’am,” Foster said when Parker’s eyes narrowed. “The bastard got him in his home.”

Parker nodded. “That makes five.” She turned, pitched her voice to carry. One by one, the agents she knew had been watching her met her eyes. “Five of our agents have been murdered, missionaries. Five of your friends and teammates. Do I need to make any clearer the importance of Operation Domino?”

“No, ma’am,” came at her in a rippled chorus. A few headshakes.

A lot of hard-eyed stares.

Parker met each set of eyes in cool appraisal. “Those men and women below the sec-line are counting on us. Let’s not let them down.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“You have your tasks. Everyone get back to work.” The sudden flurry of activity that followed jangled. “Make sure all the evidence is given highest priority,” Parker added to Foster. “I want the labs on this immediately.”

“Ma’am,” Foster replied, already lowering her attention back to her computer screen.

Parker strode to her office. Every step earned eyes pinned to her back.

Anger? Probably. Confusion, she was sure. Fear among the non-street teams.

Carver made the fifth dead operative in the past two weeks. The nature of each varied. Carver, so much meat. Hannah Long, another rookie, had been nothing but ash. The other three had been shot, one in the back and two execution-style in the forehead.

The only connection seemed to be their occupation.

Someone was hunting witch hunters. Many someones, given the differing MOs. And those someones, she thought, her mouth set into a grim line, were very good at it. Operation Domino had just blown the rest of her priorities out of the water.

But she couldn’t ignore Ghostwatch, either.

The former was an obvious problem. The perpetrator behind Domino’s string of murders needed to be found. But the latter was an ongoing issue. Initially, Ghostwatch began as a shadow in her lead technical analyst’s radar, then morphed into a monster of a problem within weeks. A hacker was infiltrating previously secure systems across the city and causing her lead tech specialist unending amounts of trouble.

Jonas Stone was a fine missionary, the best tech the Mission had. Possibly anywhere. He could go into any database, learn anything, filter out data from the most complex systems. Parker didn’t understand it all; she’d tried for a while, but that language belonged to a whole other, much more foreign world.

What she did know was that when Jonas talked about the Ghostwatch hacker as if the second coming of Christ was on its way, there was a major issue.

Ghostwatch and Domino weren’t the only dockets on the Mission’s collective desk, either. The city’s witches weren’t being kind enough to wait their turn. The lower-level teams had their own problems, and according to the reports flooding her in-box, they were all contending with a spike of witch-related activity.

To say nothing of her murdered missionaries. If they didn’t get a lead on this soon, she was going to lose more men. She couldn’t afford that.

She pushed open her office door, schooling her features into a mask of cool appraisal as she found it unsurprisingly occupied. A blond head lifted from a digital readout; artfully tousled waves slid off shoulders clad in a stunning red designer blazer. Cheerleader perfect.