Call Me Wicked

by Jamie Sobrato

  “You know the uprising can’t happen without blood being shed.”

  “I guess I never thought of it that way. I’d hoped there would be a public outcry from the mortal community against our persecution.”

  He cast a scornful glance at her. “Don’t be naive.”

  She blinked. Sebastian never talked to her that way before. He’d always been kind to her. He’d always made her feel loved.

  “What’s happened to you?” she whispered.

  She was looking at him now, instead of the photos. She wasn’t sure she wanted to identify the men, if it meant her cousin’s hands getting soiled with more blood.

  He leaned back in his chair and regarded her wearily. “Maybe I sold my soul,” he said. “Or maybe I never had one in the first place.”

  “You had me fooled,” she said. “The Sebastian I know has both a heart and a soul.”

  “You had me fooled, too, cousin. I never thought I’d see the day when you were more loyal to a mortal than you are to me.”

  She reached out and took his hand, and she looked him in the eye, hoping to reach that place she used to know so well. “It’s not about loyalty. It’s about doing what’s right. I love you, but I have a duty to protect Carson. It’s my fault he’s in this mess.”

  “You’re going to have to lose that moral conscience if you want the uprising to succeed,” he said.

  “No, you’re wrong. We can’t have our freedom at any cost. We have to achieve it justly, or not at all. Otherwise we’re simply a version of The Order.”

  “Is it just that we have to live in hiding, in fear of persecution?”

  “Wasn’t it Gandhi who said ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’?”

  “Spare me the bumper sticker philosophy, Lauren. This is the real world, where we will die if we aren’t careful.”

  They stared at each other, neither willing to back down. An awful feeling settled in Lauren’s gut. Was she being naive? She’d never considered the real cost of their freedom. She’d never made herself look hard at that problem, and she’d never asked herself before if she could live with the answer.

  For the first time she could remember, she wished she’d never had a vision of an uprising, or a victory, or a sense that they should have ever strayed from the elders’ rules.

  She suddenly longed for her old life, which was so simple by comparison—her old life, where she knew all the rules. Now it appeared they had to make each rule up as they went along, and she wasn’t sure she was up for the task.

  LARS DETESTED Los Angeles, but he held a special distaste for West Hollywood. As he and Noam walked the streets of the neighborhood that probably held more witches than any other place on Earth, he could not help but look at every face and try to sense if they were mortal or witch.

  And the more beautiful the face, the more suspicious he was about their true identity. It was a cruel joke that witches were more physically beautiful than mortal women, as if their physical appearances were designed to fool and distract normal men.

  “You want to stop looking for a while and get some lunch?” Noam asked, glancing at his watch. “It’s getting to be that time.”

  “I saw a sandwich place down the block. We can go there.”

  They headed in the direction of the deli, and five minutes later, they had each ordered lunch and were sitting at a table waiting for their food.

  “Two days and no luck. What do you think that means?” Noam asked.

  He was too young and impatient. He would have to learn that the hunt never ended, so there was never a need to be in a hurry.

  “I think it means we haven’t found Lauren Parish yet.”

  “What if she’s not here?”

  “It’s like always—if we have enough patience, we’ll find what we seek.”

  Noam’s gaze followed a thin, beautiful blonde along the sidewalk as they stared out the window. “You ever slept with a witch?” he asked.

  Lars did not know how to answer. While it was officially forbidden for a member of The Order to have sexual relations with witches, it was also commonly accepted that many among them took liberties with their captives before they killed them.

  He was torn between wanting to warn the boy about his firsthand experiences with the addiction that came along with having sex with a witch, and wanting to brag that he had indeed taken some of the most beautiful women in the world before killing them.

  He chose his words with care. “I’m sure you’ve heard rumors of the pleasures that come with taking a witch.”

  Noam nodded. “Sure. It’s all the trainees talk about almost.”

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve been a trainee. In my time, we didn’t dare discuss such things out in the open.”

  “I guess we’ve gotten bolder over the years.”

  “Once you’ve had a witch, mortal women will feel inadequate to you,” Lars warned.

  Noam made a whistling sound and shook his head seemingly in appreciation. “I can’t wait.”

  “Shh. Don’t say such things so boldly.”

  “Hell, nobody around here even knows what we’re talking about,” the kid said, now in his native Czech.

  Lars responded in Czech, as well, to be safe. “It’s a dangerous addiction, worse than any drug.”

  “So you have had sex with witches?”

  “Many times.”

  And now he could not even make love to mortal women. His cock wouldn’t even get hard for them. It was shameful to admit, but true.

  “Then you can’t go around telling me not to do it.”

  “I can at least warn you that you will regret it,” Lars said, but he knew the lure was too great.

  It was the shameful secret of The Order, that many of its members were addicts. Some had even dared in the past to hold their witch concubines hostage so that they could continue to enjoy the physical pleasures of them. But that had proven too dangerous, and now, as far as Lars knew, the policy was to kill every witch captive.

  Their sandwiches arrived, and they went silent as they ate. Then Noam broke the silence with, “What’s so great about it? How do they make you get addicted?”

  “It’s impossible to describe until you experience it. I think that’s why so many of us are unable to resist the temptation, and why some of us have died trying to have that pleasure.”

  “Damn,” Noam muttered. “Pussy worth dying for…”

  His time would come soon enough. Lars would let him have his way with Lauren Parish if he so desired—after Lars was through with her of course.

  “I’ve heard some of the prostitutes here are really witches,” Noam said. “You think we could, you know, check it out?”

  “I don’t want to waste time with such pursuits.”

  “Couldn’t we consider it another way of finding witches? You know, if the sex is that great, then they must be a witch?”

  Lars sighed. “Maybe tonight, if we have no luck this afternoon.”

  “Hey,” Noam said, pointing at a man across the street. “Is that the guy we saw on the camera from her apartment?”

  Lars stared at the man, then withdrew from his chest pocket a photo that they’d produced from the video footage. The man on the sidewalk wore a baseball cap, dark glasses and had the start of a beard, but he had the same brown hair and the same bone structure as the man from the video.

  “Let’s check him out,” he said coolly, and they stood quickly and left the deli. From the opposite sidewalk they followed the man as he headed west, and when he made a left at the next corner and disappeared out of sight, they started across the street. But traffic was heavy, and Lars noticed too late the red Mercedes coming toward them.

  The car screeched to a stop, but not before it bumped against Noam and sent him sprawling. Lars’s first instinct was to leave the kid behind and run after the man. But when he looked down and saw that Noam wasn’t getting right up, he paused.

  The kid was his responsibility, and one rule he would never v
iolate was abandoning his apprentice. He knelt beside the kid, who was wincing as he tried to bend his leg. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” he said as he grasped his knee. “Just a little scraped up.”

  “Let me help you up and let’s make sure you can walk.”

  The driver of the Mercedes, a woman in her fifties, looked horrified as she got out of the car.

  “Don’t worry, ma’am,” Lars called out. “He’s fine.”

  The last thing they needed was filing a police report or making a trip to the hospital. Lars knew how to splint a leg himself, if worse came to worst.

  “Come on,” he said to Noam as he stood up. “You steady on your feet?”

  He nodded.

  “If we hurry, we might still catch up to the guy.”

  Noam took a few tentative steps, dusted off his pants, and said, “I’m fine.”

  The two men crossed the intersection and broke into a jog as they hit the sidewalk again. Around the corner, the man they’d spotted earlier was nearly a block away now, and they ran to catch up, slowing down only as they came close enough to draw attention from him.

  On the next block, he paused at a store window and eyed some lingerie on a mannequin, then continued on.

  “I’ll grab his wallet if I can, and you keep following him to see where he goes,” Lars whispered to Noam.

  He nodded his agreement, and then hung back as Lars hurried ahead. He pretended to bump into the man, and as he’d practiced hundreds of times, he slid his fingers quickly into the rear pocket and withdrew the wallet in one fluid movement.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he passed by, trying not to make eye contact.

  Lars tucked the wallet into his pants and continued on. When he’d reached the safety of their van, he sat in the driver’s seat and inspected the contents of the wallet. The driver’s license said the man’s name was Carson McCullen, and his home address was in San Francisco.

  They had found the man they were looking for, and they were one step closer to Lauren Parish.

  Fifteen minutes later, Noam returned to the van.

  “Where did he go?” Lars asked.

  Noam looked sheepish. “I guess my leg wasn’t as fine as I thought it was. My knee gave out and I had to stop and let it rest for a minute. I lost him.”

  “Damn it! He’s the man from the video. He lives in San Francisco. You just ruined our freaking chance of grabbing the witch today.”

  “Well, why the hell did you leave me alone?”

  “I thought you could handle it,” Lars said, tossing the wallet at the kid.

  But the truth was, he’d been careless. No more. From now on, he would leave no stone unturned, and he would not leave the job of a professional to a mere baby.

  CARSON HAD SPENT five solid days indoors, and he had been going stir-crazy. He was an outdoor kind of guy, and far as he could remember, this was the first time in his life he’d spent this much time inside.

  Lauren was a pretty damn good reason to stay indoors, but when she was busy conspiring with her cousin Sebastian, it left Carson bored as hell. He hadn’t seen any harm in going out for a quick walk around the neighborhood, especially when he’d never even seen the neighborhood before—and the sunshine and fresh air had been well worth what had seemed like a small risk. However, he knew he was in big trouble when he saw Lauren’s face upon arriving back in the hotel room.

  “What the hell did you do?” she said coldly.

  “I just wanted to go for a walk. I’m so damn sick of being stuck in this place, I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

  Her eyes widened. “You went for a walk. In broad daylight.”

  “Last time I checked it wasn’t a crime.” He took off the stupid hat and sunglasses that had been included in the parcel of clothes Sebastian had had delivered for him, and tossed them on the dresser. “At least I wore a disguise.”

  “Oh yeah, that hat and glasses transformed you into an entirely different person.”

  “Look, I wanted to experience normal life for a half hour. I’m getting a little tired of being locked up in freak world, where everyone but me has at least one tattoo and a supernatural power.”

  “How about talking to me? Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “I went out and enjoyed the sunshine. I saw some people who aren’t witches. It felt good. I’m not so stir-crazy now. Big freaking deal.”

  “It is a big deal. You have no goddamn idea.”

  “You know, you ripped me out of my everyday life, took me away from my job and my friends and told me there was this whole underground world I didn’t know about and now I have to live in it. And you expect me to just sign up for the whole damn vacation to hell package without a second thought?”

  She glared at him and said nothing, her arms crossed over her chest.

  He flopped onto the bed and sighed, feeling guilty now. “I’m sorry, Lauren. I’m not used to being inside all the time. I’m the outdoorsy type. I need fresh air regularly or I start going insane.”

  “So go up on the rooftop deck! Don’t go out walking around West Hollywood when we’ve got people who are hunting us down!”

  She slammed her fist against the wall for emphasis, then winced at the pain of it.

  “Don’t you think maybe you’re being a wee bit paranoid? There are thousands of people on the street out there, and we’re hundreds of miles south of where you last came in contact with the witch hunters.”

  “I told you, there are rumors that The Order has a network of people here now because they’ve figured out that witches gravitate to this area. Witches have been disappearing recently.”

  The guilt twinged stronger. He hadn’t intended to put Lauren in danger.

  “I’m really sorry,” Carson said. “I won’t do it again. I promise to follow all the rules from now on.”

  “Don’t you dare let Sebastian know you went out, or he’ll be furious. I’ll have to tell him…” She appeared to be thinking. “This is bad,” she said, running her hand over her face.

  Carson resisted rolling his eyes. He was getting the slightest bit tired of having to live under Sebastian’s rule, but he said nothing because he was responsible for this particular incident.

  “Aren’t you maybe overreacting a little? Do you really even need to tell Sebastian?”

  “I’m going to have to tell everyone, damn it! The whole place is going to have to be put on alert, with heightened security.”

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  “Knowing Sebastian, he won’t let anyone out of the building for the next month after he hears this.”

  “I didn’t realize how big a deal it would be.”

  “Did anything strange happen while you were out?”

  “Not a thing,” Carson said, but at that moment he noticed the lack of an uncomfortable lump in his rear pocket that was normally created by his wallet.

  Then he recalled the man who’d bumped into him. He reached around and felt his pocket, and realized nothing was there.

  Damn it. He kept his expression neutral, not sure if it was worth alarming Lauren over.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Just looking for the package of gum I bought while I was out. Guess I dropped it.”

  No, there was no sense in worrying her. She was already on edge about every little thing, and maybe he’d left his wallet somewhere in the room. Or maybe it had fallen out here in the hotel. Yeah, and maybe little elves had come and taken it away.

  He had to be sure his wallet was really stolen, though, before he risked freaking Lauren out. Hearing that he’d lost it to a pickpocket might have put her off the deep end.

  10

  WITH NOTHING ELSE TO DO and no one allowed to so much as breathe in the direction of the outside world now, Carson and Lauren tended to hang out at the club every night, where the other witches displayed varying degrees of hostility about his presence, especially since the leaving-the-hotel incident.

  He’d gott
en enough scathing looks and disgusted glares to last him a lifetime after Sebastian ordered the entire place to go on lockdown and forbade all witches from setting foot outside. One guy had even attacked Carson in the elevator, slamming him up against the wall and clenching his hand around Carson’s neck, but Lauren had stepped in and explained how Carson hadn’t understood the gravity of leaving the hotel.

  A woman sidled up to the bar next to Carson and waited for the bartender to notice her so she could order a drink. When Carson glanced at her, she smiled wickedly.

  “Stupid human,” she whispered. “You’re lucky to still be alive.”

  And she was right, apparently. He was. He finally understood that.

  How Lauren heard the woman’s words over the loud music in the club was beyond Carson, but she had. “Shut the hell up,” she said to the woman, who glared at Lauren for a second, then turned and walked away.

  Lauren took Carson’s hand and tugged him toward the dance floor, so he downed the last of his scotch and let her lead the way. In the darkness of the pulsing crowd, she was all he cared about. He could ignore the weird vibes from the witches surrounding them when she was in the room.

  He pulled her close right before they reached the dance floor, and said, “You are stunning.”

  She smiled coyly back at him. “So are you.”

  He watched her ass in the skimpy white fringed dress she wore. In a sea of dark colors, she stood out like a vision from heaven. And it enticed him all the more that he knew she was anything but.

  The way she moved was so natural, so fluid, so full of raw sexuality, that when she found a place for them among the other pulsing bodies and began dancing, there was no point at which her walking had stopped and her dancing started. She turned to him, her hips swaying to the techno-tribal beat of the music, and her gaze was heavy with what he had come to recognize as desire.

  For him.

  Amazing.

  He started dancing with her, against her, their bodies moving in time, and the heat of the bodies all around them immediately drenched him in sweat. Carson ignored the feel of his clothes sticking to his body and let the music entrance him along with Lauren.