All Things Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  Silas glanced up to the ceiling. “West.”

  “Better?”

  “Ow! Cripes, that’s my— All right, all right,” he said hastily. “Uh, hi, Silas. I knew you weren’t dead.”

  “Now,” Naomi said flatly.

  “Right,” he said, just as Silas murmured, “Jonas.” The expression on his face puzzled her. Part pained, part regret. Irritation and something that looked nostalgic. Pleasure?

  Juliet’s fingers pressed into her temples, focusing her gaze on the comm intently. “I’m so confused,” she said uncertainly. “Who are you?”

  The man chuckled, as if he didn’t have Naomi’s frightening shadow looming over him. “You must be the Wayward Rose. Nice to meet you, I’m Jonas Stone.”

  She raised her eyebrows at Silas, who shrugged evasively.

  Naomi’s voice crackled. “Missionary, witch. Witch, missionary. Good? Great. Can we please get to the part where the missionary recalls the fucking gun shoved in his spine?”

  “Missed you too, honey,” Stone muttered, and Juliet slapped a hand over her mouth before hysteria bubbled to the surface. “Fine, fine, here. This is everything I’ve been able to compile in the day since Director Adams set me on this.”

  Silas’s eyes narrowed, but Naomi beat him to it. “What does little Miss Parker have to do with this?”

  “It’s a Mission task,” Stone replied simply. “Operation Wayward Rose.”

  “That’s me?” Juliet asked, blinking.

  “Know any other Juliets?”

  Silas only looked blank, and Juliet shook her head. “Just me,” she said, and murmured as an aside, “Old story. Not well-known anymore.”

  “The director has a rarefied sense of humor,” Stone said wryly, his grin clear even over the static hazing the line. Keys clattered faintly. “Anyway, long story totally short, she had me dig into the Church mainframe to figure out why you, Madam Rose, suddenly hit the top of the list.” He paused. “That’s the list that—”

  “She knows what it is,” Naomi cut in. “Tell her what you told me.”

  “Impatience only— Hey, jeez! Okay!”

  “Naomi,” Silas growled.

  “Sorry,” she said silkily, sounding anything but.

  Stone sighed. “God, I miss you, woman. All right, at the same time, Director Adams had me investigating two new boys on the block. I didn’t think there’d be any correlation, but lo and behold, that’s why I am the master of the wave.”

  Juliet’s eyebrows inched higher. “Is he for real?” she whispered.

  A rueful smile tugged at Silas’s mouth. “As a bullet,” he rumbled back, then asked louder, “What did you find?”

  “GeneCorp.”

  Pressure lanced through her ears, leaving them ringing. Rocks crunched beneath her shoe as Juliet staggered a step, suddenly dizzy. Silas caught her arm, pulled her into a crouch. His thumb stabbed a button. “Are you all right?”

  She stared at his face, lips moving soundlessly. GeneCorp. Why? Why did that word seem so familiar?

  The comm crackled. “Hello? Guys? Did I lose you?”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Fine,” she whispered.

  Removing his thumb from the mute button, Silas said flatly, “Continue,” but his gaze remained on her.

  She shook her head, brain turning over and over. GeneCorp? Had she ever heard it?

  No. Not that she could recall, not in any sort of relevance that stood out. On the news feed, maybe? In the gossip rags?

  She pushed shaking fingers against her forehead.

  “It’s a laboratory,” Stone continued. “Not your everyday experiment on mice, either. This thing was buried so far into the Holy Order mainframe that I’m pretty sure I violated six federal laws getting to it.”

  Naomi muttered an impatient curse.

  Juliet pinched the bridge of her nose, unaware that she held her breath until her lungs clamored for oxygen.

  “We’re talking airtight security and about a hundred dead ends,” the missionary continued, sounding more than a little pleased with himself. “Someone took a lot of time to set up a series of redirects and bypasses. It took me all night and a crate full of energy boosters, but I got in.” His tone sobered. “Silas, dude, you aren’t going to like this.”

  “Lay it on me,” he said, eyes flicking to Juliet.

  She firmed her shoulders, fingertips braced on the ground, and nodded. Not because he needed her to, but because she needed herself to confirm that she could.

  A sick knot gathered in her stomach.

  “It started as a turn-of-the-century theory, near as I can tell. And I mean last turn of the century, folks,” he added. “Over a hundred years ago. Scientific speculation graduated to some pretty hard-core stuff. From mice to monkeys to . . .” He hesitated. “Humans, man. Not just regular cause and effect, either, we’re talking biology on a macro level. Genetic therapy. Cultivating— Jesus, this isn’t good stuff.”

  “Gene therapy.” Silas’s expression clouded. “They’ve been experimenting with the witch allele.”

  The what? Juliet frowned hard.

  “Yeah.” The speakers clattered. “I’m looking at lists of numbers, man. Thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands. Most are listed as failed. Don’t quote me, but I think that means dead.”

  “Numbers?” Juliet whispered.

  “Er . . .” Stone’s voice trailed off on an uncertain note.

  Naomi’s rose. “Numbers, kiddo. Bar codes. Each one of these subjects gets stamped, dead or alive. Looks like it’s been going on for decades.”

  Juliet sank to the ground, legs wilting beneath her.

  Subjects. She was a . . . subject? An experiment?

  Her fingers dug into the pitted cement.

  Was she human?

  Was she worse?

  “What’s the status of this thing?” Silas asked grimly. One hand settled over her shoulder, awkward comfort, but she barely noticed.

  She was a number.

  A freak, even among witches.

  “I found a report,” Stone told him. “An old one, about two decades old. It talks about moving a lab site from one address to an undisclosed location for security’s sake.”

  “What address?”

  “Don’t know where it went,” Stone said. Something creaked, as if he leaned back in a chair. “But I can tell you where it was.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I have it here,” Naomi said, and read off an address that Juliet didn’t recognize. Why should she? She’d never been there.

  Had she?

  Impossible. The location was somewhere in the lower levels, what used to be the industrial sector before the city got taller and needs changed. Only empty warehouses, forgotten refineries, and the skeletal remains of old buildings were left.

  And squatters.

  She pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling.

  Stone drew in a deep breath, barely audible over the line. “Hey, Silas?”

  “What?”

  “About your girlfriend.” He hesitated. “I nailed a handful of correlations, some commonalities, and I have to tell you that—”

  “Let me guess,” Silas interrupted, staring at Juliet, his expression inscrutable. “She’s numbered, too.”

  “Yeah. Not all of them are, most don’t have names associated with ’em, but I can tell you two things. One, the new boys Director Adams has me scoping out are part of this thing. And two, it’s been edited lately.”

  “How lately?” Juliet asked, her voice thready. She cleared her throat. “How recently?”

  “Three months ago.”

  Silas shot her a questioning glance, but she shook her head helplessly. “I don’t know anything.”

  “Who edited it?” Naomi asked, her voice tinny on the line.

  “Can’t say,” Stone replied, apologetic. “Ow! Come on, Nai, I mean I literally don’t know—it’s encrypted. Give me another week and maybe I can bypass it. What I can tell you is that it�
�s got Sector Three written all over it.”

  “Sector Three?” Juliet asked, frowning.

  “Sector Three’s got the kind of clearance that makes government espionage look like a game of jacks,” Silas said. “There were always rumors about plants and secret projects and shit.”

  “Rumors,” Jonas added, his voice crackling as the frequency flickered, “and now fact. We’re looking at a genuine conspiracy, guys. Massive cover-up operation.”

  And was she part of it? Her tattoo, Jessie’s . . . they had to mean something. Marked. Numbered. To what end?

  Silas stood, taking the comm with him. “Thanks for your help, Jonas. I . . .” His shoulders squared. “I’ve got no right to ask you for anything, but—”

  “Hey, man, this has been one hell of a strange dream,” Stone replied easily, laughter sliding through his pleasant tenor. “That’s the last time I mix an energy boost with tequila.”

  Juliet watched Silas run a hand over his face. “Jonas.”

  “La la la,” the man said loudly. “Oh, no, the connection appears to be losing— Ouch, Nai, come on, it’s his fault . . .” His voice faded into hurt muttering as the speakers clattered, fuzzing briefly.

  Naomi’s voice intensified, as if she held the comm to her ear again. “You headed over?”

  Silas met Juliet’s eyes, his own intent. Thoughtful.

  Worried, she realized, and dropped her gaze to her hands, tightly clenched in her lap.

  “Yeah,” he rumbled. “If anything’s left over in that place, I want to find it.”

  “Be careful,” she said. “It’s smack in the middle of the old refinery district. The place has been shut down for years.”

  “Which makes it prime squatter ground,” Silas finished. “No worries. I remember how to avoid curious eyes.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t have a badge anymore,” she said, “so watch your six.”

  “Will do. You too. There’s a bounty on your head big enough to tempt anyone.” The sound she made was scornful. Silas didn’t smile. “I’m going back to the sanctuary, first,” he added.

  “Everything all right?”

  “I can’t get a hold of Matilda. I’ve been calling for the better part of an hour.”

  Naomi blew out a hard sound. “Oh-kay. I’d meant to drop by and check on Phin—”

  Silas winced. “Sorry.”

  “Nope, no problem. I’ll go to the sanctuary, check on the princess, and meet you at the lab. Don’t do anything stupid.” She paused. “Is Juliet coming with you?”

  “Yes,” she said loudly before Silas could answer.

  “Good. Be safe, keep the comm on. Oh, and hey, girl?” Juliet glanced at the comm in Silas’s hand. “Stick to his side. There’s no one better in a fight.”

  “Right,” she replied, with a hell of a lot more nerve than she felt.

  Silas snapped the comm closed. For a long moment, neither moved. The heavy, still silence of Old Seattle pressed around them; loud in its own cotton-thick way.

  Silas grunted. “Hey,” he said, his voice like sudden thunder. The ruins sucked at it, feeding it back in muted, baritone echoes. “Hang on a second, Rosy.”

  She blinked, startled. “Me?”

  “Listen,” he said over her. “I don’t know exactly what Caleb did or why—”

  She flinched. “I don’t care.”

  He stared at her, mouth a thin, grim line. “Shut up and listen.” Her teeth abruptly clicked together. “What I do know is that the kid—the man’s never done anything that didn’t somehow turn into protecting his sister. Jessie’s everything to him, like she is to me. Like fucking sunshine, you get it?”

  Juliet stared at him, eyes wide. Emotion rolled off him in waves, anger and resentment. A fierce worry. Intensity like she’d never seen from anyone except. . .

  Caleb.

  She closed her eyes. “I get it.”

  “Whatever he did, he’s the worst kind of idiot.”

  Her gaze snapped open. “What?”

  “We hated his type in the Mission, too,” Silas told her, his gaze inscrutable. “He’s the kind of agent who always plays his hand close to the chest, never does anything as a team. He takes it all on his shoulders. Figures, hey, only one of us needs to deal with the shit that comes with the job.” He offered his hand, palm up. “Caleb’s like that, Rosy. He thinks his secrets will save the rest of us the pain.”

  She stared at his hand. Shook her head, once. “He killed my sister,” she said, struggling to sound as matter of fact as he did. Failing. “I hate him, Silas. I hate him so much, I can’t hardly stand to think that I—that we . . .”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I think that’s why he’s so goddamned desperate to die.” He pocketed his comm, hand still waiting. Ready. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Juliet slid her fingers into his and gasped as he lifted her easily to her feet, a solid flex of broad muscle and effortless strength. She swallowed the lump in her throat, forcing it down into the chest-tightening ache tearing at the hole that was all that remained of her heart.

  Caleb Leigh wasn’t her problem. Not right now.

  Not ever.

  “Great,” she managed, a reasonable facsimile of calm. “How do we get there?”

  “The same way we get anywhere.”

  She smiled faintly. “Hoof it?”

  “Hoof it.” A beat. “At least until we get to my truck.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The complex crouched under a ghostly net of emergency and ambient city lights, squat and ugly. Gritty cement walls boasted graffiti too tangled to interpret more than the occasional letter trailing from industriously overlapped ink.

  Hammered by incessant rain and squatting silently in the middle of a vast, empty lot, it looked as if it had been abandoned for years.

  GeneCorp. He didn’t know what it was, or why the word had stood out so prominently in Alicia’s consciousness, but this was the place. Juliet was meant to be brought here. Why?

  Because the Church is behind the Coven of the Unbinding.

  How obvious it was. No wonder Curio had managed to be in both factions at once, how he’d known things. He’d held all the cards.

  But why?

  Alicia’s memories were fragmented at best, shredded by the slow, acrid burn of her own insanity. She’d been in so much pain.

  He knew that pain. He’d inflicted that pain. Been cured of it.

  It wasn’t an excuse.

  She didn’t suffer long enough.

  “Shut up,” Caleb said between clenched teeth. He knelt, working the tips of his fingers into the slatted metal fence. Rust flaked off, ran like blood as rainwater washed it away. Iron groaned, screeching an ear-blasting warning as a segment of the fence peeled away from its moorings.

  If it was a coven hideout, they should have maintained it better.

  Twisting, he angled his body through the narrow gap and crouched at the edge of the lot. Potholes littered the crumbling asphalt, overgrown with resilient strains of moss and weeds. Here and there, yellow and black stripes outlined speed bumps long since worn through.

  He rubbed at his jaw, squinting.

  New Seattle loomed high overhead, mazelike streets and tangled levels reaching higher and higher and shedding a permanent, muted glow over the lower layers. He wasn’t sure if it was daylight or night. Down this far, only the occasional unbroken streetlight provided anything to see by.

  Beneath the drumming rain, he could hear the continued rush and thrum of vehicles, that indefinable snap of constant electricity as it simmered through the grid.

  Compared to Old Seattle’s tomblike stillness, it screamed.

  Eerily warm rain slid past his collar, soaking him to the skin. Rubbing at the back of his neck, he gauged the shadowed doorway a hundred feet away.

  No noticeable security cameras. No guards. No signs of life.

  What the hell did that mean?

  He eased to his feet, ducked low, and sprinted across the broken lot. Gravel tumb
led and cracked underfoot, but as his back came up hard against the awning wall, he couldn’t hear any other sounds. No pursuers. No spotters.

  Were they really this stupid?

  Caleb slid a hand along the door, testing the release bar as he scrutinized the dark fringes of the visible lot. It creaked under pressure, but gave with a suddenness that swung the door wide.

  Whipping around, he caught the edge of the pockmarked metal panel before it collided with the wall behind it. Echoes pinged along the empty corridor, vanishing into the shadows.

  Blowing out a silent breath, he eased inside, shutting the door gently behind him.

  The air was cooler inside. Even still as it was, his body hummed, crackling, as if he could feel it pushing against his skin. Electrical. Alive.

  That was the power talking. The stolen magic.

  The rush was always so much more intense when a real witch was—

  Pay attention!

  Flicking his wet hair from his eyes, Caleb withdrew a flashlight from his inner jacket pocket and clicked it on.

  The shadows fled, leaving behind nothing more than dust and silence. Every step he took echoed faintly, rasping between walls as worn and mottled as the façade outside. There was no graffiti here, nothing but the faded impression of paint and nearly illegible lettering.

  GeneCorp.

  A company. But what kind of company?

  Holding the light between two fingers, Caleb traced the letters. Its color had long since leached to a stained impression on the wall. A factory, maybe. A refinery of some sort, long since abandoned when the resources dried up. An old hospital, an orphanage, hell, he didn’t know.

  He didn’t care. He was here to intercept a meeting.

  A trade-off.

  My Juliet.

  He flinched. Turning away from the wall, he strode down the corridor on nearly silent feet, following the hall past moldering piles of refuse and stained rings leaving trails of brown slime in its wake. The dark closed in behind him, stale with neglect, ominous.

  The first exit boasted double doors long since fallen off rusted hinges. The narrow beam of light tracked across empty, dusty floors. No footsteps marred the layer of grime, no traces to indicate that anyone other than he had ever been here in years. Possibly decades.