Blood of the Wicked Read Online Free PDF Page A

Silas pointed out, as implacable as granite. And as sympathetic.
    “He’s not a man.” She gestured, wishing she could shove him out of his own damn moving truck. “He’s my brother, and he wouldn’t change that much. I’m telling you, even if he’s where you think he is, he’s not one of them . Whoever they are.”
    “If you say so.” He still didn’t look at her as he changed gears again, shifting down, and Jessie wanted to scream. Instead she sat back, gritting her teeth.
    “Like I said, we want to use his ties to infiltrate the group and tear it down. There’s a lot of flexibility for a kid who helps that happen.”
    Pretty talk. Jessie recognized the curt evasion for what it was: just shy of a promise. If the Church was after Caleb, and if he’d turned stupid and joined an honest-to-God coven, they’d never offer leniency. No matter how useful he tried to be. Not, she reminded herself as she kicked both feet on the dash and deliberately ignored his frown, that she bought any of this.
    She tucked her hands under her arms, staring sightlessly out the window as the truck turned onto one of the many mid-level off-ramps.
    For a whole year, Caleb had managed to dodge her. It was as if he’d dropped off the face of the planet, swallowed by the Old Sea-Trench that cracked wide beneath the city’s foundation. Even her powers were useless to her.
    Her gift was the present. She should have been able to find him, but wherever Caleb was, whatever he was doing, either he’d figured out how to block her . . .
    Or he was dead.
    And she knew, just knew , that he wasn’t dead.
    Which meant that he was blocking her. That worried her more than anything else. He needed her help.
    I see death and a laughing joker .
    Six feet and some inches of smoky-eyed, rangy witch hunter qualified as death. But was it her death that Caleb had really seen, she wondered, or his own? Someone else’s?
    Damn, she wished she had a future decoder ring.
    Jessie had heard of other covens over the years. There’d even been a few when her mother had been alive, but they’d never joined. Lydia Leigh had called them poison, neon lights just begging for the Church’s attention. The ones that gathered in the big cities tended to last longer, but only just.
    Populations all over the world had come too damned close to Armageddon to tolerate a second go.
    Whether it was in the heart of New Seattle or deep in the isolated wastelands of middle America, Jessie’s mother had never given them the time of day. Bands of witches garnered interest.
    Interest eventually led to hunters.
    Witch hunts never ended well.
    Now, a Church-funded killer was telling her that Caleb, the baby brother who had inherited their mother’s magic, was wrapped up in a coven. And not telling her what Jessie knew; Caleb was as good as dead as soon as they finished with him.
    Except Caleb had said that he’d seen her in the flames. She rubbed her eyes with both hands as frustration clawed at her brain. She hated fortune-telling. With a passion.
    It hadn’t done her mother any good.
    “We’re here.”
    Jessie pulled her attention back to the present, back to the uneven parking lot that spread out from her window. She blinked. “Where?”
    “It’s a safe place.”
    “Descriptive,” Jessie muttered as she swung open the truck door and leaped lightly to the ground. The hinges squealed angrily, echoing across the near-empty lot. Only the occasional car took up space in the gritty asphalt, most of them run-down and battered. He circled the fender, his stride severely hampered by the limp that twisted his left knee.
    Jessie flinched under an unwanted wash of sympathy.
    But his eyes gleamed at her as he approached, deadly, even. Dangerous. Compassion? She doubted he knew the word, and she’d have to keep reminding herself that. Especially as warmth gathered in places she had no business thinking about anywhere near him.
    She ducked out from under his arm as he palmed the