Read Online Sacrifice the Wicked by Karina Cooper - Free Book Online Page B

scraped his forearm across his forehead, grimacing as it came away damp with sweat. The rain didn’t fall in straight sheets. It hit the upper streets first, pooled and gathered in gutters designed to siphon the puddles away. It slid down buildings like the one he leaned on, fell like streams from gouts overhead.
    Whole different worlds. Of course, he couldn’t judge. He’d spent most of his life down here, and even he had to admit he preferred the open spaces topside.
    Too bad the walls surrounding the whole city still made it feel like the largest mousetrap in the world.
    Simon checked his watch. It’d been exactly twenty minutes since the last missionary had left the diner. Seth Miles, recognizable everywhere by his usual fedora, didn’t see him around the corner. Simon made sure of that. The kid was a fine missionary. One of the good ones.
    Exactly the kind of guy who’d try and interfere with Simon’s objective.
    Not that he could blame Miles for it. Missionaries were sworn to go after witches, not other missionaries.
    Of course, like Simon, Jonathan Fisher wasn’t just a missionary. He’d recognized the name on the list this time. Part of Simon’s own generation. His own rapidly disappearing generation.
    He blew out a breath, scraping his sweat-damp hair back from his forehead.
    Now or never.
    He ignored the front entry, following the alley back around the building. The neighboring structures sat close enough to give the alley a three-foot span, cramped together so tightly that he had to turn sideways as wall-mounted pipes narrowed his passage. He stepped over piles of refuse, the forgotten remains of rotting garbage and discarded crates. Algae and black moss clung to everything, climbed up the base of the building to spread slimy green fingers through pitted and corroded brick. The smell permeated everything—decomposition blended with the festering miasma of old cooking oil and worse.
    The diner, as far as Simon could recall, hadn’t always been a place that served food. Or what passed for food for those prices. The building had remained untouched for years, probably hosted more than just squatters in its time. It had picked up a great deal more of New Seattle’s charm than was strictly charming, but it had somehow turned into one of those places where people went to eat, waste time, and have a pint of bathtub beer.
    The alley opened into a wider square. The smell seared through his nose, pungent fingers of decaying moss and burning oil. Black clung to the edges of the diner façade, spread out from the kitchen door as if it had long ago caught on fire and nobody had bothered to scrape the soot off.
    Simon approached the entrance, shoving his hands into his pockets. Jonathan wasn’t exactly a friend, but they knew each other well enough. And they sure as hell both knew the score. If Simon asked, the man would follow him. Just out into this alley, which was all the privacy Simon needed to—
    Somebody was coming.
    His senses picked it up seconds before the door flew open, slammed back into a discarded pile of bottle-filled crates, sending glass ricocheting into the wall. A man staggered through, tripped over the jagged lip where building merged with asphalt. Hacking, choking, his arms flailed as his legs gave out from under him.
    Cursing, Simon looped an arm around Jonathan Fisher’s stocky chest. Blood speckled the air, red-tinged foam spattered Simon’s arm as he braced the man’s body weight against his own.
    The smell of iron undercut the choking stench of oil and refuse, and a seismic roll of magic power jammed into the narrow alley around them.
    “Son of a bitch,” Jonathan gasped. He clung to Simon’s arms, flecks of foam spraying.
    Not good.
    Simon’s magical gift wasn’t among the combat-ready. Useful as a rule, it nevertheless couldn’t compare to the more practical applications of fire-calling, lightning-wielding, even the telekinetic abilities that had ripped Carver