Blood of the Wicked Read Online Free PDF

passenger door over her head. “We’ll stay for the night,” he said. If he noticed her jumping around like a scared rabbit, he didn’t show it. He shut the door, shoving hard against the recalcitrant hinges, and took the lead without a backward glance.
    He probably earned that limp killing someone.
    The cold thought helped Jessie regain her mental balance as she hurried after him. “Is this your place?”
    “Belongs to a friend.” He pulled open a metal faceplate screwed into the wall by the plain side door and punched in a code. There was a click, a hiss of air, and the door popped open.
    She raised an eyebrow. “Fancy.” And expensive. She’d seen her share of mid-level security, and this blew most of it out of the water.
    So the Church wasn’t stingy when it came to its own. Great.
    The elevator had another code, and she noted he carefully angled his body so she couldn’t see it. Smart. Annoying, but smart.
    “This is going to be the safest place, so do me a favor,” Silas said once they were inside. The elevator groaned, dipped once, and then jerked upward.
    Jessie grabbed the railing. “What?”
    “Stay here, at least long enough to get some rest. Tomorrow we’ll meet up with the others and find your brother.”
    Others? Alarm bells clanged in her head. “Wait a sec—”
    He caught her arm. Her stomach somersaulted all the way up into her throat, smothering every mental alarm with it.
    “One night, Jessie,” he said quietly. “Give me that much.”
    It sounded like a promise. An offer. One night of gasping, twisting, sweaty carnal pleasure. She knew, just knew without a shadow of a doubt, that he could give it to her.
    She stared into his eyes, suddenly very, very glad that he wasn’t capable of reading her mind.
    Agent Silas Smith raised one callused finger and gently touched the fresh scab at the side of her mouth. “At least let me make up for this.”
    Her blood, sluggish in her tired body, warmed. His voice rasped over her skin like whiskey and velvet. Inches. Mere inches were all that separated her mouth from his.
    What would a witch hunter’s kiss taste like?
    The fact she was even asking herself forced her to muffle a yawn she didn’t feel. One night alone with him? And then meet up with more witch hunters?
    He was out of his goddamned mind.
    “All right,” she lied. “One night.”

Chapter Three
    J ust one night, and then his role in this charade would be done. The witch’s sister would be delivered to people better equipped to play nice, and he could wait for the kill orders to come down the line.
    Or, better yet, get the hell out of this wreck of a city and away from anything to do with mile-long legs and dark honey eyes. He wasn’t equipped to deal with civilians. He never had been.
    Silas shut the door behind them, touched his thumb to the electronic sensor, and waited for its distinctive click.
    “Just out of curiosity, why are we meeting more of your people?”
    He turned to find her studying the apartment, hands splayed around the denim stretched over her trim hips. There wasn’t much in the place to study. The carpet was threadbare and patchy, and its grainy noncolor didn’t match the shabby red couch taking up most of one small wall. To her left, a change of flooring from carpet to cracked and scarred linoleum led to a kitchen barely wide enough to fit two people beside the old appliances tucked into the single counter.
    A few end tables devoid of anything and two doors took up the rest of the space between narrow, curtained windows. He watched her take it all in with a dubious raised eyebrow, then slanted him a skeptical look from under her fringe of fake red hair.
    “This is it,” he confirmed to her silent inquiry, but his lips twitched. Picky stripper. He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over the back of the couch as he limped to the tiny kitchen. “At the heart of it, the Coven of the Unbinding is your standard terrorist organization. It’s worldwide,