Read Online Blood of the Wicked by Karina Cooper - Free Book Online

focused on the bright room with the ancient furnishings. Both men stood silently until the room emptied, Silas’s posture as uncompromising as the set of his angled jaw.
    “Silas Smith,” Peterson said slowly, mulling over the name as if working out a particularly offensive problem. Slowly he set a digital readout on the table between them. “Orphan. Lone missionary. Wounded soldier.”
    Silas jerked back. “Not interes—”
    “Sit down .”
    He didn’t. But he didn’t move, either. He wrapped white-knuckled fingers around the back of a chair and waited.
    Jessie itched to pick up that readout and throw it in the smug bastard’s face as the man said in low, menacing tones, “I am watching you. I have been watching you since Miss West threw your name into the ring. I do not tolerate lone wolves, and I will not tolerate you for any longer than I must. Do you understand?”
    Silas stared at the folder, a tic leaping at the side of his jaw. “Yes, sir.”
    “When your mission is complete, I will be requesting a full physical. I expect that it will prove what you and I already know.”
    “What’s that?” But Jessie thought that Silas didn’t sound curious, as if he already knew. Had expected it.
    What the hell kind of politics was this?
    “That you,” Peterson explained slowly and with great relish, “are well beyond your prime years. That you’re a liability in the field, and a tragedy anywhere else.” Silas’s eyes burned holes into the innocuous digital panel. “I am well aware of your history, and rest assured, you will not be given a chance to repeat your mistakes. Once this mission is completed, you’ll never again work in any Mission in this country. Am I clear?”
    Silas didn’t stop to mince words. “Crystal,” he bit out, and turned away. Jessie’s sympathy welled up, thick and unwanted. Choked her anger.
    “I have not dismissed you, yet.” Peterson’s tone hadn’t changed, but suddenly Jessie could taste the menace in the air. Feel it sting her skin.
    No, not hers. Silas’s.
    Back ramrod-straight, he roiled underneath a thin veneer of control. Jessie gasped, knew she did, but she only heard Silas’s teeth grinding.
    Felt it as if it were her own.
    She struggled against the pull. The magic resisted her. It wanted .
    “See that you are in touch frequently, Mr. Smith. Your team will be watching you. Carefully.”
    Red speared through her mind, through her vision, as Silas stalked from the room. She cried out, spread her arms as if she could catch herself on something, anything else.
    Her control failed. Resentment, a bone-deep fury so great that it drew her in like a sparkling net. A vortex of emotions too damned complex for her to work them out now, but all Silas.
    His need called out and the magic answered, roiling on its own. It all but pulsed in her blood. The scene dipped, darkened, all in the space of a second. She tried to apply the mental brakes, to cut the flow of power and withdraw, but the magic unfurled like a banner and snapped into place with an audible, soul-wrenching click . Power to passion; emotion was a hell of a focus.
    Suddenly she was inside Silas. Inside his head, his skin. Jessie gasped with the force of his anger.
    Crimson rage mottled her vision, closed her throat until it ached.
    Bitter memories filled her mind, her chest, too fast to catch anything more than blood and fire, vicious words and a splatter of blood on white plaster.
    Too close. Too fast.
    More than she ever wanted to see of the witch hunter who’d rather see her kind dead.
    Jessie struggled to free herself from the tangled skeins of his fury. Mentally she pulled away, thrashed free of the threads of magic. Pain flashed along her wrist. No, damn it, his wrist. A bright seam of blue light seared flesh both hers and not hers, burned through the magic so fast that Jessie’s awareness lurched back from the room. It ripped away from the man that jerked his angry gaze up to the bright sunshine. His lips