Karina Cooper - [Dark Mission 05]

by One for the Wicked

  Cool and mysterious like fog?

  Why did it matter? The obvious answer was that it didn’t, but Shawn didn’t usually make a habit of lying to himself. Not about women. He liked them or he didn’t.

  He liked this one. Maybe since the moment she’d made him laugh in that car.

  How did this woman worm her way under his skin so fast?

  Was that why her words hurt so damned much?

  Up on that ledge, Kayleigh Lauderdale was filthy and covered in the same dirt that coated him, her nice topside clothes long since ruined. She hadn’t complained of anything, not hunger or cold. She’d taken his jibes and dished out her own, held her ground even when he scared her.

  And he knew he scared her. He’d gone out of his way. He’d scared himself, too, just now. The violence that had filled him, the burning need to lash out, to shut down her cruel barbs, to . . .

  To not hear what she had to say.

  He scraped both hands over his face, but it did nothing to wipe away the guilt. The only women he’d ever handled so roughly had been trying to kill him as part of thinly stretched Church doctrine.

  Kayleigh Lauderdale came from that Church, but he’d stepped over the line this time. Fuck.

  Still. She surprised him.

  I don’t hate you, Shawn.

  Damn, he wished she would.

  He rose, rotated one of the rocks in his grip, and drew back his arm.

  A clatter somewhere in the dark held his throw.

  Settling debris?

  Every instinct denied it. Shawn crouched, eased back behind the teetering shield of half-crumbled walls and out of the light. Just in time. As the lantern flickered gently thirty feet away, motion drew his attention to the shadows just to his right.

  He tensed, fingers tightening around the rocks.

  Why didn’t he have a weapon? Oh, right.

  Because he’d left it in his goddamned jacket, which was buried somewhere at the bottom of a newly formed chasm.

  Swearing silently, Shawn ducked his head, braced one hand against the damp earth as the rain picked up in earnest. Droplets bounced off the broken brick and bent steel, splattered across his shoulders.

  A figure slipped just out of sight, a whisper of black on black.

  Shawn eased around the corner, eyes straining. Part of him wanted to call out, demand confrontation, but he hadn’t survived this long being the kind of idiot who relied on a fair fight.

  Quickly, weight balanced on the balls of his feet, he moved through the shadows. Another pale flash on the other side of a broken wall gave him his target.

  The rain, smelling earthy and coppery and acidic, dripped into his eyes. He blinked hard, jerked his dripping hair off his forehead.

  Surprise was his weapon of choice.

  He lobbed one of the rocks across the wall, heard it thunk in the shadows where the light couldn’t reach.

  The figure straightened, turned.

  Shawn palmed the wall, leaped over it in a smooth motion that belied the exhausted, abused ache screaming from shoulder to hip, and landed beside a petite figure clad in black.

  The operative turned.

  Shawn’s opportunity for surprise shifted into a strangled shout as the hooded woman—too trim to be anything else—ducked his grasp, sidestepped, and nailed a foot square into his back.

  Shawn grunted as he planted face-first into the wall, pushed off it, and ducked, dropping to a crouch as a fist whipped through the air where his head had been.

  The cowled figure looked down, tanned features twisted into a scowl, just as he looked up from his squat, leg muscles braced, ready to lunge.

  Shadowed brown eyes widened. “Shawn?”

  “Amanda!” He stood so fast, Amanda Green danced backward, her feet sliding in the rapidly thickening mud beneath them.

  She found her footing with help from the broken remains of a chimney pipe, gloved fingers tight against the rusted metal.

  He took a step, hesitated when she flung out a warning hand.

  Amanda Green was a witch. The kind whose power had stopped bigger men than he in their tracks.

  She was also supposed to be locked up topside.

  “I thought you were dead!” The words tumbled out of him, surprise and confusion and—hell, elation. “Amanda, where are the others? Are you with them? Are they okay?”

  Instead of answering, she stared at him, rainwater turning her naturally tanned skin to a golden shine. Beneath her hood, her sandy blond hair dripped across her forehead in neat spikes.

  It was short. She’d always liked it short.

  “Shit,” she whispered. Her gaze flicked up, to the pipe rain as it sparkled and caught the light, then back to him. “They didn’t say you were here.”

  “They?” He pulled one boot out of the mud, jumped the distance to rockier, less swampy ground. She watched him, mouth a white line beneath her hood. “Did May rescue you?”

  “No.” A faintest slash of a smile. “Not this time.”

  May had been instrumental in both of their histories. Shawn had been saved from the Mission orphanages, one of a small group of newly made “orphans” destined for the Holy Order’s witch-hunting boot camp.

  Amanda’s family had kicked her out. Too kind to feed her to the witch fires, cruel enough to let her die on the streets.

  May’s people found her first.

  As far as he’d known, she’d never looked back.

  “Tell me you’re all right,” he said quietly, hands fisted at his sides. “And then tell me why you’re here. How you found me.”

  She blew out a hard breath. When she looked down at herself, he followed her gaze. Picked out the flak jacket, the traces of body armor sewn into the unique brand of uniform he’d only ever seen on one kind of person.

  Cold sweat replaced the acidic tang of rain. “Amanda.”

  “Thirty-eight days.” Her eyes flicked to the side. “You have no idea.”

  Oh, God. “They didn’t,” he said roughly, as if force of will could undo what he desperately hoped wasn’t true. “Tell me they didn’t turn you. Nothing could turn you!” Shawn took a step forward; she raised one hand. The sleek black weapon she held wasn’t one of the resistance’s usual castoffs. This was menace given metal form, a machine gun merged with a pistol.

  “Stop,” she warned. “They didn’t brainwash me, Shawn.”

  She didn’t need a gun. He’d seen her strange witch powers work with just a flick of her fingers. The fact that she held a gun on him now was a riddle he didn’t know how to unravel.

  Courtesy between fighters? Laughable. If it didn’t hurt too damned much.

  “Come home with me, Amanda.”

  “Home?” The word was a sneer. “Which home? The safe house over the First Avenue whorehouse or the moldy, shit-stained studio outside the Second Capitol ghetto?”

  The force of her scorn, her hatred, fisted in his chest. Sucker-punched him, until he couldn’t breathe. “How can you say that?”

  “How can you?” Her eyes flashed, lighter than his but angrier than he’d ever seen them. “We live at the bottom of the pile, rolling in filth. Trying so hard to fight the system because why?”

  “You know why!”

  “Because you think it’ll make your parents less dead?” The words Amanda flung scored harsh furrows across his senses. Left him raw and bleeding. He flinched, teeth baring. “Look,” she snapped, “I didn’t want to come here, but it was either that or I join the rest in the fires.”

  He jerked, as if slapped. “The fires? Did they all—”

  “That’s enough.” Her gun lifted, eyes flinty over the matte barrel. “I don’t care about the resistance, Shawn. I never did.”

  Shit. Shit. The rain hammered, soaking him to the skin, and all he could do was stare. At his friend. His partner in so many things.

  “I was going to rescue you,” was all his numb brain could think of to say. “I had a plan. You know I always have a plan.”

  “Yeah. I know yo
ur plan.” Her gaze slid beyond him. Up, past the leaning wall he’d used as cover, beyond the light. The gun dropped a notch. “Problem is, I wanted something more than just revenge and a new order.”

  “Jesus Christ!” She raised the weapon again; he froze mid-step. But he didn’t shut up. He couldn’t. His chest squeezed painfully as he flung his empty hand at her. “Why didn’t you say something? We were friends!”

  “We were friends because we had no choice,” she said, jaw firming. “We were friends because they put us in the same goddamned room and told us how it’d have to be. Fight or die on the streets, remember?”

  Yeah, he remembered. “Way I recall it,” he replied evenly, “you were just as eager to fight as I was.”

  Amanda snorted. “You never could see past your own hate.” Her finger tightened on the trigger.

  A woman screamed.

  Kayleigh.

  The sound shattered the numb shock freezing his nerves, his muscles. Cut through the chains of disbelief.

  No.

  It didn’t make sense; it didn’t have to make sense. Amanda Green wasn’t his friend, his partner, his sister-in-arms anymore.

  Maybe they’d gotten to her. Thirty-eight days of torture could break anyone.

  Maybe she never had been the woman he thought. The soldier he’d trusted.

  That made both of them, didn’t it?

  It didn’t matter. Not at the moment. As anger clawed at his throat, he flung out his other hand, threw the rock curled into his fist with unerring aim. Amanda’s eyes widened.

  Her boots skidded in the mud, and though he heard her cry out—heard a bone-deep thud of flesh and stone—he’d already turned away. Leaped over the broken wall.

  It took him less than thirty seconds to clear the distance. His skin itched as he waited for the flare of Amanda’s witchcraft or the sharp report of a gun, but it didn’t come. Every step away spiked his rage higher, pounding it through his chest.

  Missionaries, Church soldiers, always ran in packs—pairs or more. That had been drilled into him since day one in May’s camp.

  Why hadn’t he paid attention? Shit!

  He scrambled up the steep incline and earned a boot to the face for his trouble.

  White lights and every foul word in the book detonated through his head as pain crunched through his cheekbone. He slid down the hill, fingers scraping and clawing as he fought for purchase.

  “Stop!” Kayleigh’s cry. “Don’t!”

  Hang on. Shaking off the haze, he threw his weight back up, shoes sliding, kicking rocks and hand-sized hunks of rusted metal to the ground beneath him.

  This time, there was no painful greeting.

  Only Kayleigh, her sodden hair streaming like a whip as she bent double, her feet flailing, thrashing in the grip of the whipcord-lean man who held her back to his chest. Her face was bone white, the silver cuffs Shawn had wrapped around her wrists glinting as she brought both hands up over her head.

  They collided with the man’s nose. He cursed, muffled against her hair.

  Shawn didn’t know what the black-clad agent bit out, what command, but Kayleigh jerked sharply.

  Shawn scrambled to his feet. “Let her go!”

  The man spun, staggered as Kayleigh’s weight pulled him to the side. The gun he held in one hand wavered with the momentum. Her eyes widened as she saw him.

  “No, wait!”

  The operative grinned, his bearded features masked beneath his hood—dressed the same as Amanda. Even carrying the same gun. “And there’s mission goal number two,” he said cheerfully.

  Shawn’s gaze dropped to Kayleigh.

  Her mouth flattened. “I said . . .” She planted her feet, locked her knees, and twisted with all her weight. The man’s gun arm swung with the effort to hold her. “Stop!”

  The operative wrenched her to the side. Let her go so fast that Kayleigh spun, lingered on the edge of the outcropping.

  No!

  Shawn lunged for her. Earned an armful of tensile muscle as the Church soldier met him halfway. Over the man’s shoulder, Kayleigh toppled.

  Her scream as she tumbled out of sight rang in Shawn’s ears. Ended abruptly enough that for a long moment, neither man moved.

  Shawn gasped. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t take in enough air. He sucked in a lungful, recognized shock as it settled into his gut. Shook violently.

  She wasn’t supposed to die.

  The arm in Shawn’s grip flexed as the man frowned at the spot where she’d just been. “That’s going to suck in the report.”

  Red sheared through Shawn’s head.

  Amanda, a traitor. Kayleigh, somehow something more. An innocent victim?

  His own mistake.

  Everything.

  Everything demanded blood. Every hurting thing.

  The man grunted as Shawn tackled him over the edge.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The impact should have rocked them both.

  As the man struggled to shake off Shawn’s grip, they hit the side of the outcropping, rebounded off the jagged remains of pipes sheared by the force of the toppled building.

  Agony seared through his side as they rolled, over and over, a thousand different shades of pain popping like fireworks through his body. The man in body armor had to be faring better, but as they hit the ground, a soft, squelching thud of flesh and bone told Shawn it didn’t matter.

  Tangled in a horrifyingly twisted mass of arms and legs, it took him too fucking long to drag himself from the muddy pit sucking at his weight. The Church soldier was still, face-up in the muck, his eyes wide and staring.

  The side of his head bled into the earth, washed pink by the steady patter of rain. It leaked into the concave ruin of his skull.

  Nausea welled in Shawn’s guts. Splashed bile into his throat.

  Death happened. Of course it happened.

  And it never got easier to handle. No matter who counted on him. Or why.

  Kayleigh. He turned, struggled to his hands and knees. Blood stained his sleeve, or maybe it was mud coloring the dark blue fabric black. He couldn’t tell. Everything hurt, and his eyes wouldn’t focus.

  A concussion? Maybe. Wouldn’t be his first.

  “Kayleigh.” It was a croak of sound. He cleared his throat, tried again. “Kayleigh!”

  The rain hammered his back, driving fat droplets into his scalp and dripping off his nose. He shook his head hard, swayed on his hands and knees as the world tilted around him.

  A soft, ragged groan from his right sharpened his focus.

  There! A pale hand. He half crawled, half dragged himself across the rock-strewn ground. As he rounded the outcropping, he saw her. Splayed like a broken doll, one arm flung wide, the other crossed over her body.

  Was she breathing?

  Please, God, let her be breathing.

  He dragged himself to her side, cursing as his body resisted. It hurt. Damn, it hurt bad enough that he wondered about the state of his ribs, his skull.

  Hell, even his sanity.

  But his muddy fingers, trembling, reached for her throat. Tucked beneath the tangled, sopping wet mass of her hair to search for a pulse.

  His teeth bared, grim triumph, as a hard, steady knock thrummed beneath his fingertips. “Good girl,” he rasped, and forced himself to his knees. When the world didn’t tilt over, he grasped at the crumbling wall, hauled himself all the way to his feet.

  His head reeled.

  No time. He didn’t know where Amanda was, if he’d taken her out or if she waited for reinforcements. He didn’t know what else could go wrong, didn’t even want to consider what would happen if he passed out here in the ruins.

  Carefully, slowly, he bent. Hoping she hadn’t hurt anything serious in the fall, he fisted a hand into her jacket, hauled her upright. Her head lolled back on her neck, hair caught in her lips.

  Shawn closed his eyes.

  His legs shook. Arms trembled.

  Why he paused, he wasn’t sure. Except so
mehow, for some reason his cobwebbed brain couldn’t figure out, it became very important that he drag his thumb across her mouth. Free the hair glued to her lips by rain and mud, smooth it back from her face.

  “Please be okay,” he murmured thickly.

  Her lashes, spiky with rain, fanned over her pale cheeks.

  Gritting his teeth, Shawn tucked his arm under her legs and groaned with the effort it took to stand.

  Somehow, everything had gone to hell.

  Consciousness hit like a truck.

  Kayleigh groaned at the first cognizant pounding in her skull, winced when it blossomed into a bitter symphony of aches and pains. It started in her head, traveled down her neck, and plucked nerves in her shoulder that she hadn’t even known existed.

  Her back hurt, her hip felt brutalized, and oh, of course, her leg and wrist still played a jaunty melody together.

  She raised a hand to rub at her forehead; didn’t even consider how strange it was she could until warm fingers banded around her arm.

  Fight!

  Her eyes snapped open, adrenaline surging like an electrical whip. Her wild swing locked, forced back to her side as another hand flattened over her shoulder and held her down.

  “Careful.” Dark and rich, Shawn’s voice pierced the rest of the fuzzy cotton clinging to her head. “It’s all right, don’t— Kayleigh!”

  Her body went still, every limb shaking with effort. She blinked rapidly as his face, all hard lines and whiskered edges, shimmered into focus. He bent over her, the ends of his drying hair curling over his forehead. His grip gentled when she didn’t try to hit him again, and over the streaks of mud coating his cheeks, his eyes searched hers intently.

  He looked so worried. A mask of grime and concern. For her?

  “I think I liked it better unconscious.” Hoarse, but she managed it.

  The drawn tension carving brackets into his mouth eased.

  Kayleigh turned her head, blinking in the faintest glimmer of light, a needle-fine pinprick that nevertheless burned like a torch in the vast, devouring darkness tucked around them.

  She sucked in a sharp breath as his fingers grasped her forearm, let it out on a cranky “Ow, stop it,” when a cautious squeeze sent shocks of pain up her arm.

  “It’s not broken.” He didn’t look back at her, focused intently on the limb he cradled gently between his callused, filthy hands. The faint penlight—jammed into a crevice and pointed at her—picked out dark smears of dirt, highlighted his bare chest, and painted his broad shoulders and wickedly contoured arms in shades of blue shadow and dusky skin.