Only this time there"d been too much blood. All over her. All over him.
Covering the whole G.o.dd.a.m.n cage.
Over the flurry of latex-clad hands and b.l.o.o.d.y smears of cloth, Phin"s dark eyes caught hers. Held.
Her heart squeezed, vicious, pointed agony as accusation filled his eyes. Accusation and fear, pain and horror. She"d have been worried if there hadn"t been revulsion.
He wouldn"t be Phin if he"d been all right.
Smiling, knowing how crooked, how tight and twisted it really was, Naomi touched her lower lip with two fingers and flicked them in his direction.
His eyes narrowed.
Wordlessly she turned and walked away.
Chapter Twenty-One.
Silas found her, just as she"d known he would.
It didn"t take long. Naomi didn"t have very many places to go, not without surrounding herself with crowds of people. Not without wrapping herself in synth-leather and metal and s.e.x and throwing herself into the hungry, frenetic beat of desperate people.
She didn"t want people.
So she sat on the roof of her crumbling apartment complex, buried in the heart of the city she loathed as night broke on the back of a rainstorm.
High above, where the clouds all but obscured the topside towers, a golden glow pulsed and flickered. A fiery heartbeat in the night.
Gravel crunched behind her. "The wind"s down. No chance of spreading."
Naomi said nothing. What was there to say? That"s nice seemed somehow empty, disingenuous. Suggesting the city was better off burning seemed . . . harsh.
"You got Agatha and the other two. If there were any more of the Unbinding, they"re either dead or in hiding again."
Naomi stared into the black wall of towering city blocks and still said nothing.
Behind her, he sighed.
Silas was a man who took up s.p.a.ce. Even if she hadn"t heard his voice, she would have recognized him just by the pressure at her back. The awareness of his big body and the intensity that shrouded him like an electric charge.
Even after years separated, a missionary never forgot the people she trained with. She"d lived with him, learned with him night and day. Her feelings for Silas simmered into hatred, blame, and a fierce, protective friendship.
Family. He and Jonas and Eckhart had been all the family she"d known. As Mission supervisors came and went, as other missionaries died or transferred, even when Silas had left for fourteen years, that stuck.
So when his warmth filled the s.p.a.ce behind her back, Naomi tensed.
Large hands settled at her shoulders. "Hey."
She shuddered.
"You can"t go back," he rumbled, his version of quiet.
She almost laughed. "Back," she bit out. "Back where? To the place that"s now on fire or to the place that should be?"
He squeezed her shoulders, as close to comfort as she"d known from him in so many years. Her throat ached with it, with the certainty that she"d lost so much.
And ruined anything else she may have found.
More her parents" child than she"d ever wanted.
"Nai, you have somewhere to go."
Her snort faded on the edge of thunder. Slowly, fat drops of rain trickled to the gritty cement she perched on. Clattered into the gravel.
Onto her head.
This was her life. p.i.s.sed on by a sky that couldn"t care less in a city that tried too d.a.m.n hard to pretend everything was all right.
"Nothing is all right," she said aloud, her gaze dropping to the cold, matte black gun on the ledge beside her.
Bullets and blood. That"s the life she"d known.
"Phin Clarke is all right," Silas said gruffly.
"Phin Clarke is an idiot." She shrugged off his hands with sudden, violent anger. "Phin Clarke nearly got himself killed because he can"t be bothered to-"
"Naomi."
She tipped her head back on her neck, closing her eyes as rain spattered over her face. "What do you want, Silas?"
There. A modic.u.m of normal.
He shifted. When he eased to the ledge beside her, his feet planted firmly on the gravel side, she frowned at him expectantly.
His foggy green eyes didn"t reflect sympathy. They edged, challenged. "I want you to give up the life of a missionary."
She laughed. It broke.
Turning her head, she struggled to swallow the rush of emotion, of pain and fear before it overwhelmed her.
She"d be lost without the Mission.
She was lost if she stayed with the Mission.
Silas bent, bracing his elbows on his knees, and continued, "I want you to join us. Help us."
"Us." A flat note.
He nodded. "Jessie and me. And Matilda." He hesitated. "She"s . . . this old lady that took us in, gave us a safe place to hide. It"s not a bad life, Nai."
"Really." Naomi wiped at her nose with one wet arm. Lightning eased through the dark clouds in a purple sheen, clashed with the gold heartbeat of the fire slowly devouring Timeless"s beautiful walls.
h.e.l.l of a metaphor for life.
"Thing is . . ." Silas said, easing back to his feet. Gravel crunched beneath his weight. Rain splattered off his rough denim, shook off his hair as he sc.r.a.ped both hands through it. "I guess everyone thought this fountain of life would be a thing. Turns out it"s a person." He shot her a smile that wasn"t kind.
Naomi"s fingers itched for the gun.
"You have a choice. You can start running now, and you"d probably do all right for a while, but between the Mission and the Coven of the Unbinding, it won"t be easy."
"Are you threatening me?" And if he was, why the f.u.c.k hadn"t she moved? Why didn"t she step away from the ledge, where it"d be so d.a.m.n easy for Silas to push her over?
End it all on a single, b.l.o.o.d.y splat.
"No, Nai. Just laying it out for you." He flattened one hand at her back. She stiffened, heart exploding into a furious pulse, but he only rested his large hand there.
Careful, manly comfort.
"Like it or not, you"re a witch, now. But you don"t have to go it alone. We have a place," he explained quietly. "It"s safe."
She swallowed. Her eyes closed, but she said nothing.
The warmth of his hand left her back, and she heard as much as felt him sigh. "There are a lot of questions, Nai. A lot of things that aren"t adding up. Like how the old Mission director could be a witch-"
Naomi"s eyes snapped open. "What?"
"-and why the Church sent a missionary after another missionary," Silas continued over her shock. "Why he claimed someone else in the Church sent him."
"I didn"t tell you that," Naomi said quietly.
"You didn"t have to. Nai, what I"m saying is- Christ. I"m no good at this s.h.i.t." He got to his feet, gravel crunching beneath his boots, and looked down at her. "Look. It"s pretty simple. Jess and me, we could use a hand. If you don"t want to, fine, but you better get off your a.s.s and start running."
Again, slowly, as if afraid she"d spook beneath the weight of it, Silas laid his hand on her shoulder. "n.o.body"s going to let this lie," he finished, his voice a dark promise.
Naomi chewed on the inside of her lip as Silas turned away. Rain dripped off the end of her nose, and she sc.r.a.ped her sleeve over her face with a sudden, harsh breath. "Silas."
He hesitated. "Yeah?"
She didn"t want to be lost. Closing her eyes, her fingers clamped tightly together, Naomi sat on the ledge that could end everything she hated, end the dull ache eating a terrible hole inside her chest, and knew above everything else, she was tired of being lost.
But could she fix it now?
She licked at the center of her lower lip. Took a slow, ragged breath and opened her eyes again. "I don"t want to kill anymore."
"Yeah." One callused hand eased into her peripheral vision. "I figured."
Laughter battered away a twisting threat of tears. Hysteria and relief. She slid her fingers into his. "You wordy jacka.s.s. That"s all you had to say."
Chapter Twenty-Two.
"Naomi, wait!"
The door swung hard on Silas"s unhappy order, cutting off the bevy of voices that had been drilling holes into her brain for the past hour. Jumping off the porch jarred every ache and bruise she"d sustained in the last few days, but Naomi staggered only once, caught her footing, and strode the h.e.l.l away from the weird green house and its weird, irritating occupants.
This was s.h.i.t. Bulls.h.i.t, horses.h.i.t, any kind of s.h.i.t. They could take their pick.
Come join us, he"d said. Be part of a team.
And do what? Sit around for three days and talk about all the things they couldn"t do?
Naomi crossed the rocky sh.o.r.e, a sharp glance taking in her surroundings out of sheer habit. The crescent-shaped canyon inset into the Old Sea-Trench had been surprising enough. A small bay of crystal green water filled the basin, as still and smooth as gla.s.s, and the entrance to the sanctuary was so cleverly carved even she couldn"t see it.
Silas had told her about the witchcraft-wards, he called them-that kept it hidden. It would explain why no flyovers had ever reported seeing anything but the shattered remains of rock and struggling vegetation around the city. h.e.l.l, she didn"t even know how far down the fault line she was. A mile? Less?
The place was a secret hideout. Admittedly that was pretty d.a.m.n astounding, all things considered.
But then he surprised her with the volcanic hot springs. Astounding wasn"t even a word that could describe it. Heaven, maybe. Exactly what she needed to wash off the blood and dirt and soot and memory that clung to her skin. The first thing she"d done was soak in the vivid green water until her fingers got wrinkly.
Getting used to the persistent smell of sulfur wasn"t a problem.
Getting used to an all-new team-if she could even call it that-was the issue.
Naomi pushed through a thick ma.s.s of green foliage, palm leaves and fronds bigger than anything she"d ever seen in the city. The fragrant leaves slapped back at her, smelling like wet earth and something rich and alive. And, of course, that thick, sulfurous note that filled everything.
It was alien and mysterious, as if she were in another world. Another time.
Another life.
One still without Phin.
Her chest ached; she tamped down on the thought as firmly as her boots stamped into black volcanic sand. Leaving a trail of deep footprints behind her, Naomi marched blindly toward the far cliff wall, fists tight at her sides and every muscle trembling in leashed . . . something.
Tension. Anger. Impatience.
Heartache. "s.h.i.tf.u.c.k."
"That"s a new one on me."