Lure of the Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  Lure of the Wicked

  A Dark Mission Novel

  Karina Cooper

  Dedication

  For Lisa Marie and Cherry,

  who inspired me, encouraged me,

  put up with my insanity,

  and still love me anyway.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Teaser for All Things Wicked

  About the Author

  By Karina Cooper

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Naomi West was a damn good missionary. Her Mission file lauded her as one of the best witch hunters in New Seattle.

  Nice to know that the Holy Order of St. Dominic had faith in her. At the very least, her fellow Mission operatives thought she was hot shit.

  If they only knew what crawled under her skin and sent her heart pounding hysterically within the cage of her ribs, they’d yank her off the streets faster than a bullet to the head.

  The voice in her ear faded and she tucked a finger against the tiny comm speaker. Alan Eckhart’s voice sharpened into crystal clarity as he continued to outline the operation specs. The team briefing after the Mission briefing. Blah, blah, fucking blah.

  Naomi’s muscles vibrated, taut with strain as she listened to the team lead drone while studying the panoramic view from the top floor of her lavish hotel suite.

  She touched the surface of the floor-to-ceiling windows, her fingers silhouetted to shadow by October’s dying sun. It turned the thick smog blanketing the lower levels to burnished fire, seeped into the rat-infested shithole that was New Seattle’s barely civilized foundation, and vanished in the ever-present miasma. Most of the metropolis was too far below her to see, but Naomi didn’t have to see it to recall the acrid stink of rotting garbage.

  Anxiety, thick and vicious, curled in her throat as she turned away.

  “Look, I don’t care what the Mission says,” she said into the tiny mic inset into her ear. “I am not going to be stuck up here forever. This is bullshit.”

  “A week, tops.” Eckhart’s voice aimed for soothing.

  It scraped over Naomi’s raw nerves like a serrated knife. “If I’m lucky,” she muttered.

  “You don’t have to be lucky, Nai, you’re good.”

  Good, nothing. She was trapped. Stripped of her piercings, scrubbed and buffed, wrapped in designer clothing, and locked behind the walls of a gilded fucking cage.

  “I’m better than good,” she told him flatly. Not ego. Fact.

  “Exactly. Which is why you were chosen.”

  Give me a fucking break. “Aside from the security check coming in, I’m not seeing much by way of surveillance. I told you, anyone could do this job.”

  Eckhart chuckled. Or choked, she wasn’t sure.

  “Of course there isn’t major surveillance, Nai. It’s a spa,” he replied dryly. In the background, she heard the familiar white noise of the mid-low Mission offices. Where she should be right now.

  Where she desperately wanted to be. She took a deep breath, held it for a long moment before easing it out on a carefully modulated sigh. “I still don’t see why Parker couldn’t get someone else to play dress-up.”

  “No one with your credentials.” It came out a sigh. No matter how many times they’d had this argument, she wasn’t going to eat it any easier. She grimaced, opening her mouth, but he cut her off. Wheedling, for fuck’s sake. “Come on, Naomi. It’s not exactly a maximum security prison.”

  It might as well have been. She turned, saw sumptuous furnishings and bold color, and closed her eyes against the insistent pressure in her head.

  It was as if she’d gone back in time. Only she wasn’t a child. And her name hadn’t been Naomi Ishikawa for almost twenty-five years.

  Except now it was again. Because the Mission said so.

  She flinched. “Shitfuck.”

  “You’re so pretty when you go blue.” Eckhart sighed again. “All right, give me the rundown on the place.”

  Naomi’s fist clenched over the hard metal of the comm. “The city to grounds elevator takes eight minutes to get to the top. Surveillance is minimal and discreet, but hard to hide with all the glass. One camera at the lobby doors, one camera in the main elevator inside the resort, and that’s it. The lobby’s full of money and empty of people. Eckhart, I need those goddamn blueprints.”

  The man whistled a distinctive three-note tune. “Jonas is still working on it. Says the blueprints are locked up tight.”

  “Why?”

  “Dunno, but smells like money or politics to me. Probably both.”

  “Great,” she snarled. She shoved her free hand through the glossy strands of her black hair, took the three steps to the divan, and turned. “What you’re saying is that the Church doesn’t have a legitimate in, which is why they whored me up and sent me up here.” It lashed out, a vicious whip of anger too sharp even to her own ears. She jammed a thumb and forefinger into her eye sockets, squeezed them shut until the pressure ate away at the light searing the inside of her skull.

  Politics. Goddamn politics.

  “What I’m saying is—” Eckhart began sharply, only to cut himself off. She knew why. It was another old argument, one that they circled like wary dogs. He lowered his voice; his version of soothing. “Look, not everything can be handled with a gun and an attitude.”

  Except Naomi knew he was wrong. Almost anything could be handled by just that, and right now, she was missing one half of the fucking equation.

  Naomi paced to the window again, already knowing what she’d see as the setting sun sank toward the smudged horizon. A shimmering pool of polluted air ate at the dark spaces long since gathered between the towering skyscrapers. It hid the filth, the desperation, the shoulder-to-shoulder chaos that lived—no, that existed miles below her.

  She was anonymous down there. Unknown, a damn good witch hunter in a team of them.

  But up here, she was just a tool of the Church who had run the show since the earthquake had eaten the old city. Fifty years of guidance, of planning, had raised New Seattle from the ashes of the old ruins. Fifty years of powerful Church support had installed the Mission to a place of prominence; each operative was trained from childhood to protect humanity from the murderous practitioners of the witchcraft that had killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in one devastating sweep.

  Naomi had been a missionary for over twenty years, and she still didn’t play the political game. That was why she was just an agent, and not a team lead. Or a desk jockey, like the director.

  She was an operative.

  A killer.

  And Naomi liked it better when she could pull out her gun—which she didn’t fucking have—and get to work the way she worked best.

  “Whatever,” she said tautly as she whipped around and stalked back to the fancy sofa, “can we just get to the part where you get me a gun?”

  He whistled again. The three-note tune that said he was working it out. That
it was complicated. “Nai,” he said slowly, “what’s going on?”

  “It’s a rich-bitch haven—”

  “No,” he cut in. The sound of voices faded in the background. His voice lowered. “I don’t mean right this second, I know you hate topside. I mean, what’s going on with you? You were in jail when we went looking for you.”

  She snorted. Trading one jail cell for another didn’t warrant any kind of gratitude. Pitted cement walls or sleek wallpapered hallways, it was all the same to her.

  Naomi dropped her hand, stared at the sectioned, gilt-framed mirror hanging over the polished snowy marble fireplace and didn’t recognize the naked face staring back at her. Lavish mouth, high cheekbones sharp enough to cut, straight black hair without a trace of the electric blue streaks she’d worn until yesterday. No piercings.

  God, she missed her piercings.

  Aside from the crusted scab slashing diagonally over her nose, she looked rich. Pampered. Soft.

  She looked like her mother.

  It was enough to send her pacing again. Windows to sofa, sliding bedroom door, and back to the sofa.

  Damn the Mission. Damn the new Mission director who’d decided that locking her up behind the polished doors of New Seattle’s premier resort and spa was the only answer to a problem they’d all decided was going to be hers.

  And damn the panic riding her so hard, it hummed like an electrical current inside her chest.

  Abruptly Naomi sank to the arm of the sofa. “Alan,” she said wearily, “why the fuck am I here? Joe Carson isn’t a witch, he’s a missionary. Why do I have to execute him?”

  “Joe Carson isn’t your average missionary, Nai. You remember that mess with Smith? Imagine if he’d survived long enough to go rogue.”

  Ice pooled at the base of her spine.

  It had been only three months. Three goddamn months since the missionary she’d first known as a boy in a godforsaken orphanage had turned on them.

  Turned on her.

  Missionary Silas Smith and his witch lover had gone up in smoke, caught in an inferno set by a coven of witches deep in the ruins of Old Seattle. There hadn’t been anything more than rubble and charred, unrecognizable flesh by the time the Mission had gotten through the chaos.

  The new Mission director had some serious questions to answer, and another rogue agent on her turf wasn’t going to help her do it.

  Naomi pressed her fingers to the front of her designer jeans, to the spot low on her abdomen where the seal of St. Andrew lay dormant. Protective.

  An early warning signal that arced with blue flame when witchcraft was used on her, calling on the holy energies of St. Andrew to combat whatever malicious intent a witch’s magic would cause. Which came in handy when she was on a mission to kill witches.

  There were no witches here to kill.

  She rose again, strode past the decorative awning that separated the bedroom from the parlor, and surveyed the too-large bed with its lavender and gold silk bedspread. Her nose wrinkled. “The sooner I do this, the sooner I’m out, right?”

  Relief tinged his voice as he replied, “Right.”

  “And little Miss Parker isn’t planning some sort of bullshit extended operation?”

  “Director Adams knows how much you don’t like this op, Nai,” Eckhart said, correcting her with a sigh. “You made that extremely clear. Just get the job done, and you’re out.”

  “Okay, lay it on me.”

  “Joe Carson is a murderer.”

  “So am I.”

  He hesitated, just a fraction of a second. It was enough. Her mouth twisted in edged, cutting humor. “It’s different,” he finally said. “Carson’s wanted for the murder of two Church officials and four civilians, and he’s a suspect in the disappearance of Mission evidence.”

  She frowned. “Wait a damn minute, this wasn’t in the briefing. Mission evidence? Was our vault compromised?”

  “No, thank God, not ours. We don’t keep anything really dangerous there, anyway,” he said. “The director’s headquarters got hit sometime last week and they only just found the breach. Be glad you weren’t there yesterday. Adams damn near froze the place out.”

  “Nothing pulling the stick out won’t fix,” Naomi muttered. She rolled her eyes when he cleared his throat in pointed reprimand.

  She didn’t have to like Director Parker Adams, but she did have to work with her. For her.

  “Sorry,” she added. “What was taken?”

  “Let’s see. Some old newspaper clippings and a pot full of odds and ends. Prequake junk, as far as we could tell.”

  “Helpful. I still think instead of hunting him, we should just bring him in for processing.”

  “Not our call.”

  “But if his team had done their job—”

  “Again, Nai, his local missionaries tried. As soon as the flag landed on his file, he vanished.”

  And they couldn’t process what they couldn’t find.

  Naomi grimaced. No one knew what processing really meant, but the rumors persisted. Everything from chemical lobotomy to brainwashing; torture disguised as cleansing to simple disposal.

  Dangerous, heretical rumors. The Church didn’t like rumors. Or questions it couldn’t answer.

  “This has been going on awhile. A missionary doesn’t just wake up one day and decide to murder six people.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Get your attitude together and do what needs to be done. They’re watching you, Nai.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “I’m serious.” Eckhart hesitated. “Naomi, you’ve been flagged by the Church for surveillance.”

  Flagged. Like Joe Carson.

  Anger wrapped itself into a tangle, a knot of fury and sudden fear. Naomi blew out a hard, laughing breath. “Well, that’s great. Guess I’ll run off and murder for them some more.”

  “Jesus, Nai, don’t say that. That’s the kind of stuff you’re always getting in trouble for. The only thing saving your ass right now is your success record. You’re a damn good missionary, but you’ve been pushing it and you know it.”

  Translated, if she didn’t toe the line this time, she’d be out on her ass, no matter how fucking good she was at what she did.

  Same old song and dance. “Whatever,” she said not bothering to try for sincere. She turned away from the pile of luggage that stored a fortune in exclusive clothing and stalked back out of the bedroom. “What I meant was, I should go tend to this mission that the Holy Order of St. Dominic has found to be necessary and just.”

  Eckhart paused. She could practically hear him grinding his teeth. “Naomi. You’re cracking at the seams. Get it together, or you’re going to get us all flagged.”

  “I’ll be in touch as soon as I’ve got something worthwhile to report.”

  “Naomi—”

  “Understand this.” Naomi tucked her index finger against the tiny black mic at her ear, pushed it in closer so that he couldn’t possibly miss a single note. “One way or another, I’m going to put a bullet in this shitfucker’s brain. When I get out of here, I’m going to get my piercings back and get laid.” She smiled at his snort. “You are welcome to come along for either.”

  “You need help, West.”

  “Yeah. Get me a Beretta.”

  “I’ll see what we can arrange,” he said, and didn’t waste his time saying good-bye.

  As the line clicked off in her ear, she gave in to the fury licking at her every breath. She tossed the palm-sized unit savagely across the room. It rebounded off the brocade settee, thudded to the carpet.

  It didn’t make her feel better.

  Watched. She was being watched by her own fucking team.

  Flagged.

  Fine.

  Smoothing her hair back over her shoulders, she yanked her crumbling concentration firmly back into focus. It didn’t matter what Carson was. Missionary, witch, or other.

  The Church said kill.

  She’d get right on it.

  She took one step towa
rd the bedroom and froze as the oiled metal doors of the suite elevator hissed open behind her. Sudden, visceral awareness lifted every hair on the back of her neck.

  Nerves prickled; a circle of fire searing through the tattooed seal low on her belly. Witchcraft.

  Instinct took control of her body, launched her to the side as pain and power converged inside her skull. Sheer adrenaline ate away at the last vestiges of confusion, and she hit the ground rolling.

  She collided with a polished end table, saw boots and a sage green uniform in the corner of her eye, and swore as a lamp crashed to the floor by her head. Pain made her slow, sticky under the hammering of magic and the protective burn of the Mission tattoo. The edges of her vision wavered in black and excruciating red.

  “What the fuck,” she gritted out as she struggled to get to her feet. Her knees wobbled, shredded by the witchcraft drilling through her skull.

  “Jesus, she wasn’t kidding.” A masculine voice, gritty. Focused. “You’re tougher than I thought.”

  Sucking in air, her lips peeled back from her teeth and she came up swinging.

  His curse fractured as her fist found his ribs; she cursed hard enough for both of them as her knuckles collided with bone. He bent double with the impact and she stepped in, grabbed his wrist, and slammed him viciously against the back wall. Naomi locked her forearm against his throat, panting with the effort.

  A painting swayed, crashed to the ground in the sudden silence of his constricted airway. The pain receded.

  He was old, she realized. Older than she’d thought, underneath stocky muscle and hands made of calluses. The fingers he locked around her arm in desperation were work-scarred, nails clipped to the quick. His hair was cut in severe military lines, liberally peppered with gray. A full bar mustache covered his upper lip, but it couldn’t hide the scar puckering the skin just by the side of his mouth. His bulbous nose and bushy gray eyebrows should have conspired to give him a harmless, kindly demeanor.

  The wild glint in his deep blue eyes betrayed the truth.

  Even as one part of her brain cataloged his description, the rest of her battled back the too-fast surge of her own heartbeat. Too much adrenaline. Too damn fast. Pins and needles prickled at her face.