Lure of the Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  He wasn’t close enough. She couldn’t tip him off now.

  “Sure,” she said, too brightly, and looped her arm through Phin’s. More lights, more voices raised in a cacophony of shouts and names she didn’t recognize.

  Brick chipped into uneven edges over her head. Shards scattered, rained to the ground, to the opposite wall. A fleck skimmed over her forearm, and adrenaline slammed into her system as a thin red line blossomed in its wake.

  Miles’s voice echoed from wall to wall. “Get down!”

  Without looking, without even thinking, she tightened her grip on Phin’s arm. She wrenched him around, kicked the hem of her gown away from her delicately heeled foot, and swept Phin’s legs out from under him with the same fluid movement. He hit the pavement before surprise had time to form in his eyes, on his face.

  Naomi was a breath behind, pinning him.

  Sparks flew from the wall over their heads, shards of brick scattered like shrapnel. All concern, ignorant of the danger, the maitre d’ hurried out of the warm safety of the restaurant.

  He flinched when a tiny chip of brick sliced open his cheek.

  “Get back inside!” Naomi shouted, but the idiot raised his fingers to his face.

  She didn’t hear the rapport of gunfire. Couldn’t separate it from the roar of a crowd half a block away, but the man went down like a broken doll as crimson bloomed like a gory flower over his chest. The glass around him puckered. Shattered.

  Too late.

  Naomi was already moving. Rolling away from Phin, she snatched the hem of the gown in her hands and leaped to her feet. “Miles!”

  The missionary plastered himself against the opposite wall. “Sniper!” he shouted, and threw the small black case he carried with effortless strength. It slammed into her chest, knocked the wind out of her, but she caught it safely.

  Finally. For fuck’s sake, a gun!

  He caught the rainbow purse she hurled back at him. “Clarke is priority one,” he ordered. “Get him to safety.” Miles took off, back toward the lights. He’d circle the building, she knew, leaving her to get Phin out of the area. Knowing she stood in the bright pool of light from the restaurant, as obvious a target as if she’d doused herself in neon and painted a target on her back, Naomi ripped the case open.

  “Naomi!” Phin knelt over the unconscious man he couldn’t help if a bullet found his skull first. His jacket was torn at the elbow, smeared with mud and moss.

  Andromeda’s beautiful dress would never look the same, even if she could have gotten the grime out.

  “Leave him,” she ordered, steeling herself from caring. From worrying about the fragile silk and lustrous color. Her skin, his life, was more important, damn it. “Phin, get out of the light!”

  Her fingers closed over the grip. A Beretta—not her favorite gun on the go, but oh, the relief. For a single fraction of a second, Naomi let herself heft the gun in hand. She felt its solid, cold weight in her palm. The trigger at her index finger.

  An extension of her arm.

  Another rapid hail of bullets scattered the glass at her feet. She danced back, jumped away from the interior lights. This time, there were no screams of excitement, of attention, to hide the sound. Gunfire crackled like a muffled clap of thunder, like sound sucked into a padded room. Muffled, but not silent.

  “Damn it, Phin, get over here.”

  “But—”

  She sprinted across the pool of light, fisted a hand in his collar, and jerked him to his feet. He staggered, rolled into her. One fragile heel snapped loose from her delicate shoe as Naomi braced his weight, as she tried to keep Phin from falling back into a perfect target.

  His expression was shocked, grim, his eyes somewhat glazed as he caught at her arms with bloody, angry fingers. “What is going on?”

  She pushed him, gun in one hand, hard enough to break his hold. “It’s— Fuck!” She spun with the weight of it, with the velocity of a bullet tearing a furrow over her shoulder. Too close to the artery. Too damn close to her fucking throat.

  Exactly where Phin at been a half second before she’d pushed him out of her face.

  She caught herself on the wall, rebounded as pain tore strips of gold and red out of her vision. “Run!” she gritted out through clenched teeth. Move. She just had to go, and keep going until they were safe.

  No time to bleed.

  Gritting her teeth, she jerked Phin off the sidewalk. Shoved him toward the flashing lights and chaos of the reporters and arrivals. She didn’t give him any time to speak, to ask questions.

  Knowing he was white with shock, shaking with the same fear and the wild adrenaline that coursed through her own system, Naomi fisted a hand in his jacket and pushed him ahead of her. Up the street.

  Priority number one.

  She deliberately placed herself between him and the sniper who wasn’t too good with his aim. Or, she thought as pain burned a throbbing line all the way to her trigger finger, exactly good enough.

  Sparks flared on the wall behind them, more brick shrapnel. She didn’t know if they hit her, couldn’t feel a damn thing but adrenaline and the bullet crease the bastard had already given her, but it gave her the strength to shove Phin around the corner. She pushed him into the chaotic knot of people sealed behind hip-high grating and Swann’s uniformed security.

  Phin slammed to a halt. Before she could argue, he tore the gun from her grasp, jammed it into the back of his pants, and wrapped fingers like vises around her arm. “Stay close.” He jerked her hard against his chest as the first of the mob turned to look at them. “Smile,” he ordered tightly, and draped his arm over her shoulder.

  Right over the bloody, burning crease. She nearly buckled under the pain.

  It barely registered when he seized her arm and wrapped it around his waist. He gripped it there, supported her weight as it flagged.

  “Smile,” he repeated urgently.

  She did. Somehow, through lips that felt icy and too tight with strain, she smiled.

  “Hey, it’s Phin Clarke! Who’s the new lady?”

  “Pretty girl, Mr. Clarke, has she had too much to drink?”

  “Hey, Phin, man, let’s see you kiss her!”

  “Is this one the one?”

  Phin said nothing, simply guided them deeper into the crowd of hungry journalists, past the photographers who spun like startled deer, caught between Phin’s presence behind the security line and whatever wealthy person Naomi couldn’t see at the front entry.

  Swann’s security hastened to unbuckle the gate, swing it wide to let them through. He cupped her arm tightly, kept it hard against his ribs as he navigated toward the front gate. They passed the stream of cars stopping one by one to discharge famous, rich, ignorant passengers.

  “Keep smiling,” he ordered from the corner of his mouth. The photographers, sharks to blood, obviously hesitated. Almost as one, they swung like pendulum from their retreating backs to Swann’s welcome carpet.

  By the time they stepped out of the lights, the crowd a dull roar behind them, Naomi could breathe without seeing spots in front of her eyes. “Stop,” she said. “Stop, we need—”

  “We need to get you back to Timeless.” Phin pulled out his comm, dialed swiftly. “Martin, we’re one block left of the restaurant. Make it fast. Call ahead, let my parents know we’re coming.”

  He didn’t look at her as he clipped the unit back to his belt. Not really. Instead, his sleeve drenched with her blood, he shrugged out of his coat and draped it over her cold, shivering shoulders.

  His expression was a hard, impenetrable mask in the dark.

  “Stay out of the light,” she said, cradling her arm. “Stay back in the shadow. You’ll be a harder target.”

  “We’re going to discuss how you know this.” His voice mirrored the unyielding planes of his face, as hard as the fingers he kept wrapped around her uninjured arm. “Soon.”

  Naomi’s smile razored a line in the dark. “No,” she murmured, pain making it tremble. She
sucked in a hard, clearing breath. “We really won’t.”

  She didn’t know what he paid the man, but Martin knew urgency when he heard it. The car came tearing up the street, slowed to a halt just in front of them. Phin opened the door and put her inside it as if she were a small child needing help with the buckles.

  He was gentle. He didn’t have to be, but Naomi felt his care with the way he handled her, watched the shape of his mouth twist as he gathered the hem of her ruined gown and tucked it by her feet.

  Her arm burned, too wet for her to assume she was in the clear yet. She shifted, forced to bite back a sound of pain, of bitter anger. “Towel,” she muttered.

  Phin pulled one from the cabinet with the champagne. He brushed aside her hand when she would have taken it from him, then knelt at her feet and shifted his body between her legs.

  Her laugh broke against her clenched teeth.

  Gentle, too demanding to deny, he slid his fingertips along her jaw. Tilting her head shot sparks through her vision. His gasp when he peeled back the collar of her coat told her it was exactly as messy as she’d assumed.

  “Stay with me,” he said, his voice urgent. She nodded, a tiny gesture, and he pressed the towel against the bleeding, ragged furrow. Searing agony slipped her neatly into numb and black.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lillian was waiting in the garage. Phin pushed the car door open before it even rolled to a full stop, tires screeching. “Where’s Mother?” he demanded.

  Martin, white-faced but calm, hurried around the fender to prop open the hall door.

  “She’s prepping everything in the clinic,” Lillian told him calmly. “How bad is she hurt?”

  “I don’t know.” He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to see the amount of blood soaked into his coat sleeves, or feel Naomi’s fragility—cold and breakable as glass as he cradled her against his chest. Lillian held Naomi’s head still as he maneuvered her out of the vehicle, splaying one hand over the towel wadded at her neck.

  “Easy, love,” Lillian said. “Hold her steady. Martin, thank you.”

  “Ma’am,” the older man said solemnly.

  Phin didn’t spare him a glance. Everything he had was focused on the white edges of Naomi’s slack lips. On the blood smearing her cheek, Jesus, the shortness of every breath.

  She had to be okay.

  “Hurry,” Lillian ordered, walking awkwardly beside him as she held the towel in place. “Gemma has a bed ready.”

  His arms tightened. Naomi moaned, cheek turning into his chest, and Lillian braced her head with her other hand. “She’ll be fine,” she told him. “Phin, love, listen to me: it’ll be fine. There’s nothing your mother can’t do, okay?”

  The painful slam of his heart wanted to argue with her; he wanted to argue, to yell, to shake the fragile, pale—God help him, the beautiful, brave, foolhardy woman in his arms and demand to know everything.

  To know why she did what she did.

  Who was she?

  Why did she protect him?

  Throat tight and dry, he let Lillian trigger the brass elevator and held on to her warm, motionless body as the mechanism climbed to the clinic suite.

  Who the hell was she? God damn it, why didn’t he already know?

  Swallowing the angry knot in his throat, he looked up as the elevator doors opened. He met Gemma’s warm brown eyes, filled with so much worry.

  He couldn’t stop himself. He broke.

  His shoulders sagged, grip tightening over Naomi’s ribs. Her legs. “Mom.” The word, the plea, broke on a note he hadn’t heard from himself in too many years to recall now.

  A note he didn’t know how to define.

  Gemma’s eyes narrowed, sharp as a general in the field, and pointed to a ready bed with clean, white sheets. “There.”

  Phin hastened to obey, striding to the bed and laying Naomi carefully, God, so gently on the bed.

  “Lily, keep that towel close. Phin, baby, get her some clothes from her suite.”

  “I’m not leaving her.”

  “Phin—”

  He straightened so fast, the bed jostled. Naomi moaned again, breath catching.

  Instantly contrite, face pale, he all but leaped back from the bed, hands raised. “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely.

  “She’s fine, she’s okay,” Lillian said. “Phin, calm down.”

  “She won’t stay here,” he said, shaking his head at Gemma as the woman rifled through a wide white armoire. “She’ll refuse to stay in the clinic.”

  “Fine,” Gemma replied simply. “Go get her suite ready.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Phinneas Clarke.” Lillian didn’t have to raise her voice. She barely even had to look up, her fingers tight at the wrapped wound still seeping sluggishly from Naomi’s shoulder. “Do as your mother says.”

  “Please,” Gemma added, much softer.

  Somewhere between his panic, his fear, and his fury at being sent away like an underfoot schoolboy, he saw his mothers trade knowing glances. Lillian dropped her eyes, focusing on the bloody towel, but Gemma crossed the room and took both his hands in hers. Her grip was warm, tight. Dry.

  Insistent as she pulled him around, back toward the elevator doors. “She’s going to be okay,” she promised softly. “I will do everything in my power to ensure it.”

  “I just . . .” What? He just what?

  “When she’s all bandaged,” she said over him, letting his hands go to cup his cheeks, “we’ll put her in her own bed, and you need to look after her. She’ll want someone she trusts. Are you hearing me?”

  Phin closed his eyes. In his mind’s eye, he saw blood and flashing cameras. Naomi’s mouth, pinched tight with so much pain.

  She didn’t trust him.

  He hated that he wished she would.

  His mother’s hands tightened on his jaw. “Phin.”

  “I’ll go get it ready,” he said, forcing his voice to sound stronger than he felt. To sound purposeful. “Bring her when she’s bandaged.”

  “I will.”

  “And, Mother . . .” Gemma tilted her head as he covered her hands with his. “Be careful. I—”

  “Gemma!” Lillian’s voice, sharp with worry.

  Phin let his mother push him back into the elevator, but his eyes remained fixed on Naomi as the doors eased shut. She was so pale around the blood smeared over her cheek. Her pins had long since scattered, leaving her dark hair pooling over the side of the narrow pillow, and all he could think was how she’d half held him as she’d shoved him into the shadows.

  Stay out of the light.

  Hands clenching into white-knuckled fists, he hurried to see to her room.

  She slept like she fought a war in her dreams. Even in her sleep, she frowned tightly, her brow furrowed.

  Phin watched her from across the darkened room, his elbows braced against his knees and too many emotions roiling through him to work out now. All he dared acknowledge was that she was safe.

  The rest would sort out in the morning.

  God, there had been so much blood. So much of it on his jacket, on the clinic bed. On her. Phin dropped his head into his hands, scraped rough fingers over his hair as exhaustion clawed at the back of his mind.

  But he needed to see her breathe. To watch her chest rise and fall and rise again beneath the ivory sheets.

  To know she was alive. With him.

  Whoever she was.

  The sliding door eased open behind him. He didn’t have to turn to know it was one of his mothers. Lillian had checked in about an hour ago, bringing his favorite tea and admonishing him to sleep.

  It didn’t fail to register that they were taking shifts.

  For him, not her. They’d seen to her. She was safe.

  Thank God.

  “Baby,” Gemma murmured softly, her hands warm at his shoulders. They smelled like lavender and sage, peppermint and that indefinable something that was pure Gemma. Pure magic. His neck tingled under the
brush of her fingertips, and without a word, he reached up to lace his fingers with hers.

  “She’s going to be just fine, you know.”

  He shook his head. “She just . . . took it,” he said roughly. “Just got hit with a bullet and kept going.”

  “I know, baby.” Gemma sidled around the chair, her eyes smudged by exhaustion and worry. She threaded her free hand through his tousled hair and smiled. “But she’s going to be okay. By tomorrow she’ll barely feel a thing. Not even a scar.”

  And Naomi had so many of those. Each one older than the last, some barely a blotch on her fair skin. Others still shiny and pink, like the one at her arm.

  Phin tore his gaze away from Naomi’s sleeping form, but he could only frown into Gemma’s so-sure smile. “Who is she, Mother? How does she know how to move like that?”

  “I can speculate,” she murmured, “but I don’t know.” She bent, pressed her lips to Phin’s forehead. He closed his eyes, drawing in a long, slow breath that smelled of all those ingredients and more. Like love. Familiarity.

  Everything was going to be okay.

  “Get some sleep,” she said, pressing her cheek to the top of his head. “You’ll have a busy day tomorrow.”

  And wouldn’t he just? He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “It’s the fountain, isn’t it?” he asked wearily. “All of this with Alexandra and the sauna and, hell—”

  “Phin,” Gemma admonished gently, but she dropped a kiss into his curls. “Sleep. We’ll all need you tomorrow.”

  She left him brooding in the dark. The bedroom door slid shut behind him, and Phin knew she was right. In the morning he’d have to start scouring the halls, bringing in even more security, even think about closing the resort for the duration.

  Two people were missing. A principal guest nearly killed. Things malfunctioning. Naomi attacked.

  It had to be about the fountain. Or, and he didn’t know which was worse, about the underground Timeless supported. Somehow, someone suspected witch activity, and this was the fucking price they’d have to pay.

  Damn it.

  They’d take a massive hit to the books, of course they would. But he couldn’t risk the privacy of the people inside. Possibly even their lives.