Before the Witches Read online

  As soon as the employee door closed behind her, Jessica Leigh hit the hall running. Shit. Shit. Shit!

  Her hands shook with fear and adrenaline as she pushed into the changing room. A missionary. A witch hunter, right in front of her. She’d known who he was, what he was the second she’d seen that damn tattoo. It had taken everything she had to bluff it out. Wait out her shift. No sudden moves.

  No sudden screaming.

  She’d never seen a hunter up close before, never smiled into flinty eyes like he wasn’t anything special. Tonight she’d done both. For a solid hour, she’d worked under the steel green edge of his blatant scrutiny.

  Now she had to go.

  “Damn,” she hissed as she swung open her locker. The only three women in the back room weren’t paying any attention. Mickey was flying high again, and Ramona and the new girl she didn’t know yet were too wiped to do more than wave halfheartedly at her.

  Jessie smiled brilliantly back, slinging her heavy black backpack over her shoulder. “Night, girls,” she called. She forced herself to head casually toward the bathroom. Shift over, time to go home, no big deal.

  She wasn’t new at this. Just short-term stupid, apparently.

  Slipping inside, she locked the stall behind her and kicked into overdrive. She stripped off the black wig and shoved it into her pack with shaking hands. Slow down, she told herself. Fear and adrenaline could lead to mistakes. She couldn’t afford to screw up now. Breathe. Think.

  She had to get out of here.

  Regret clutched at her throat as she peeled off her corset and shimmied out of the matching gold shorts. She should have left two weeks ago, and she knew it. She’d gotten lazy. Complacent.

  She’d made friends.

  Jessie blinked back a sudden sting of tears as she shook out a pair of faded jeans and stepped into them. “Don’t be stupid,” she said aloud, striving for steady. She’d known better. Decent pay and a few friendly people wouldn’t keep her alive.

  Running would. It’d keep her one step ahead of the damned witch hunters and three steps ahead of the rest of the world. It was the only way to survive. Off the radar, out of the system.

  Exhausted, run ragged. Downright paranoid. And for what? Certainly nothing even resembling peace and quiet.

  She pulled on a gray tank top, wriggled into a matte black neoprene jacket and zipped it up to her throat. In the lower edges of New Seattle’s civilized levels, she’d fit right in. It was the work of moments to shake out a short, choppy red wig and pull it on.

  She scrubbed off every trace of makeup, flushed the damp wipes down the yellowed toilet, and tucked her sky-high shoes into the backpack. Shoving her feet into plain, thick-soled black boots, she checked the plastic watch on her wrist and frowned.

  The whole process had taken less than five minutes. She was too damn good at this.

  Jessie creaked open the door, checked the hall. When she didn’t see anyone there, she stepped out and made short work of disabling the alarm on the emergency exit. Two seconds later, she was in the home stretch.

  The alley flickered dimly under the purple and pink neon light flashing overhead. Girls, girls, girls. “Minus one,” Jessie murmured, and shut the door quietly behind her. It clicked with a finality that made her chest squeeze.

  It really wasn’t fair.

  But then, she understood that life hadn’t been fair since Mother Nature had flipped a gasket and unleashed rampant destruction on most of the planet. Jessie hadn’t even been born when the San Andreas Fault had split so far that Seattle had slid right into the crevasse, but that didn’t matter to a world full of terrified, struggling people.

  Pre-quake, witches had lived on the fringes of a world that didn’t care. They didn’t have to hide. They weren’t always welcomed everywhere, but they weren’t stoned to death in the streets, either. Then the world had gone to hell and the Holy Order of St. Dominic had stepped in to lay down order. Spread some so-called morality.

  Five decades should have been enough for the worst of the witch hunts to die down. It wasn’t; a fact that Jessie acknowledged every damn time she packed up what few belongings she owned. Instead the Church had slipped into bed with the federal government, and suddenly they were best friends over the barbecue of innocent people.

  Worse, the radical Mission—once considered a brand of extremist terrorism—had turned into the Order’s right hand. Sanctioned killers at the end of a very deadly leash.

  These days, life for a witch was injustice and persecution in a very real sense. It was survival in a society desperate to blame something—hell, anything—for the devastation of fifty years ago.

  Hadn’t Jessie spent her whole life running? Seen her own mother murdered? Didn’t she learn anything from the streets that had tried so hard to chew her up and spit her out?

  Hadn’t she taught her baby brother the very same thing?

  Which was why, she reflected grimly as she raised her collar against the rain, she knew better than to stay in one place for as long as she’d wallowed in the Perch. Stupid.

  Jessie could have been the next notch on the Mission’s docket tonight. When the hunter had looked her in the eye, she’d have sworn she saw her own death there. It had been damned hard to play at calm, not to panic then and there, take off running right over the bar.

  She took a deep breath, barely noticing the familiar stink of rotting garbage and the faint tang of the cold rain. So she couldn’t work at this particular club anymore. So what? She’d find another. These lower city levels were chock-full of dives like the Perch.

  If Lydia Leigh had taught her children anything, it was how to rebuild.

  She stepped off the broken stoop as lurid purple light flickered through the dismal drizzle. Each do-over just got harder and harder, but hell, she didn’t have much choice. Witch hunters killed witches.

  Exclamation point.

  Her boots splashed in stagnant puddles, stirred up loose grit and gravel. She barely noticed when a wide shadow detached itself from the mouth of the alley, then hesitated when it stepped into her path. She didn’t have time for this.

  Pink neon outlined his heavy build, the blaring smear of tattoo ink and the light-catching saturation of beaten synth-leather spiked with metal. Big. Grabby, probably. He seemed the type.

  She’d dealt with it before. A casual smile, a flirty wink, a breezy reminder of the bouncers right around the corner, and he’d be back inside eyeballing someone else.

  “Nice.” The burly man spread his arms to block her way. “Way nice. Easiest score I ever made.”

  Vapors washed over her; alcohol and the spicy afterburn of something less than legal, even in the Perch.

  Just her luck.

  She shaped her mouth into a sassy smile and made damn sure it reached her eyes. “You’re in the wrong spot, honey. All the best girls are—”

  “Right here,” he drawled, bending until he was all but nose to nose with her. The scent of sweat and beer wafted over her face in a nauseating combination.

  She stepped backward before she could stop herself, giving ground she knew was going to cost her.

  Never show weakness.

  “I’m on a break,” she lied smoothly, praying he was too far gone to notice the heavy backpack slung over her shoulders. “You want to see me dance, you’ll want to be inside in five minutes.”

  “Maybe I’ll just see you wiggle right here.” He took another step forward. Jessie’s body tensed, mouth dry.

  Shit. She didn’t have time for this. Any minute, that hunter was going to come sniffing. The back of her neck itched with the certainty.

  Neon popped overhead, highlighting the alley around them in vivid purple. It bled through his full brown beard, glittered off his array of facial piercings and toothy smile. It picked out a lot of sweaty, veined muscle.

  And the leering jester inked into one thick arm.

  I see death and a laughing joker.

  Her heartbeat leaped into her throat. “Fuck,” sh
e whispered, and jumped when he laughed.

  “Not yet, baby,” he said, reaching for her. Her vision tunneled in on the biker’s stained, shit-eating smile, and without warning, Jessie’s patience guttered out.

  She felt herself go. Almost like when she tapped into the power that simmered beneath her conscious mind, but this was sharper. Angrier. Focused.

  He was every man who’d ever leered at her. Every man who’d ever groped her in the dark confines of every bar she’d worked at. The ones who’d laughed at her and her baby brother on these goddamned merciless streets.

  Jessie’s body surged into motion before her brain made the call. She stepped into him, into the wild clasp of his arms, and pure satisfaction rippled through her as his smile cracked into surprise. Her fist collided with his smirk and sent him reeling.

  His flat features contorted into shock. Rage. “Bitch!”

  Adrenaline pushed her forward; she tried to dart past him, choked on her own collar as a meaty hand snagged the back of her jacket and hauled her back into the alley. Slammed her back against the broken, pitted brick, hard enough to force the air from her lungs. Jessie’s vision dimmed as she swung again, connected with something metal on his coat, and yelped as her arm went numb from fingers to elbow.

  If the joker gets his hands on you, Jessie, that’s it. That’s the beginning of it all. Don’t stop for him.

  Her brother’s voice, the memory of it, rang sharply in her head. Too damn late.

  She tried to jerk away, cried out again as his fist tagged her mouth. Pain exploded inside her skull, lights flashing violet and pink and red as she dropped to her knees.

  Blood pooled on her tongue, coppery and warm. Jessie choked on tears of pain, of humiliation and fury, even as she struggled to get off her hands and knees, and hit him again.

  And again. And—

  “What the fuck,” she heard, and a riot of energy roiled around her. For a dazed moment it looked as though her attacker split into two, dancing awkwardly away from her like two halves of a broken mirage. One staggered upright, thick and meaty, the other long and lean as they wrenched apart. With a bellow, the biker swung at the second man who was nothing more than a trim, fast-moving shadow dancing just out of his reach.

  Jessie shook her head hard, forced herself to her feet. She stumbled hastily for the alley mouth. Get out, run like hell. She couldn’t get caught up here, not as long as that hunter was— Oh, God.

  Her knees buckled violently. She whirled to plaster her back against the wall, grabbed rough brick for support as she stared at the fighters. Him. Shocked, she jammed her fingers against her bleeding mouth.

  Neon flickered, seared, and she saw tanned skin, black ink, and rough denim as the witch hunter blocked with his left forearm, snarled something, and curved out a wicked right hook.

  His body moved like an oiled machine, brutally efficient as he followed up with two jabs to the drunk’s nose and an elbow that crunched loudly on impact.

  Blood spurted, near black in the neon light.

  “Run!” The witch hunter threw it over his shoulder, only to twist awkwardly when the biker stomped hard on his knee. Jessie saw his face go shock-white, heard his agonized grunt of pain.

  Fury and fear forced her to move. She caught her backpack in one hand, swung it with all her might. The black canvas bag sailed through the violent neon air, graceful as a brick, and slammed into the side of the biker’s head with a dull crack.

  He toppled, slowly.

  Jessie stared in horror. He didn’t move. God. Had she killed him? She had enough problems without adding murder and cops to the list. She panted for breath, unable to suck in enough air to keep spots from mottling the corners of her vision. Was he dead? She didn’t know if a thirty-pound bag could kill someone of that size, and she desperately didn’t want to check.

  She reeled.

  Strong fingers curled over her upper arms. “Hey!”

  She blinked. Stared into a face carved from something even more unyielding than the brick surrounding them. “Can you walk?” he asked. Demanded.

  Jessie’s brain flailed. “Is he—?”

  “Try,” he ordered, and hauled her bodily out of the alley.

  He was limping. It was the only rational thought she managed to form, and wordlessly she ducked under his arm and slipped it over her shoulders. He hesitated, resisting her, but she dug her fingers in to his side and held on. She felt the flex and slide of hard muscle as she fisted her hand in his shirt.

  As much as Jessie wanted to slip away from him, use his injury to put as much space between them as she could, she couldn’t just leave him there. He’d helped her. She had to help him.

  And the truth was, she needed something to hang on to, just for a moment.

  She followed his lead as he pointed to a rusty orange pickup truck. He wrenched open the door, half lifted, half shoved her inside the driver’s side, and pushed her farther over as he swung up painfully behind her. He wasted no words, and she had plenty of time to study the implacable set of his features as he gunned the engine and slammed it into drive.

  Talk about a rock and a hard place.

  A witch hunter. And a hero, at least for the five seconds it was taking her brain to process and reboot.

  He’d saved her.

  She’d saved him, too. She wondered if he’d have been so heroic if he knew who and what she was. She’d bet her tip money that he’d have left her there to die if he’d had any real clue she was a witch.

  As the truck pulled a U-turn, tires squealing, Jessie twisted to see if the drunk had moved. She glimpsed him facedown, dead still, exactly where they’d left him. And her bag. Shit!

  The hunter took a left, swerved around a trailer. “He’ll live.”

  “Lucky him,” seemed harmless enough. Vacuous enough. Jessie glanced at the witch hunter as he adjusted the rearview mirror with one rough hand. Despite his terrifying vocation, he appealed on some deep level. A rough shadow darkened his angled jaw. It framed a mouth that bowed at the top, which she’d noticed the instant he’d sat down at her bar.

  She’d briefly toyed with the idea of leaning over the counter and tasting it. Now she was glad she hadn’t. Not even for the extra tip money that flirty act would have netted her.

  His hair curled in short waves, dark brown and shaggy, and Jessie couldn’t help but admire his easy strength as he’d hauled her down half a city block, even despite his limp.

  It was the same strength he’d probably developed strangling innocent people in the night.

  She set her jaw.

  Anger rolled off him in palpable waves, an aura of fury that she didn’t need preternatural senses to recognize. Long, all-too-capable fingers gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled intensity as he drove with purpose.

  Drove where?

  Death and the laughing joker. Two different people? Shit. Caleb’s prophecies never made sense.

  Jessie scraped back the fringe of fake red hair with one shaking hand. “Thanks for the help and all.” His mouth twisted. “But,” she continued lightly, “you can drop me off here.”

  He didn’t reply, didn’t slow down. Didn’t acknowledge her. She bit her lip, winced when it throbbed in protest.

  It had to be a coincidence. She’d never heard of a witch hunter saving a witch just to kill her himself. Unless he was a real freak of nature.

  Or didn’t recognize her in her disguise.

  Short red hair, no makeup, street clothes designed to blend; it was a far cry from the vamped-up brunette bartender he’d met. The alley had been dark. He’d seen a woman in trouble.

  Could she stake her life on a witch hunter’s good intentions?

  Would she be heading to her own death if she did?

  No. It was still a risk, and the laughing joker hadn’t killed her. That didn’t mean she was safe. She’d just toppled the first domino of her baby brother’s worst prophecy. Christ. Shit.

  She wasn’t going to die, damn it.

  Jess
ie casually draped her hand on the armrest, her thumb resting on the door release. The second he slowed down, the moment she saw her chance, she’d be gone.

  “Don’t even try it.”

  “Try what?”

  “We’re going sixty. In half a minute, we’ll be on the carousel. You’ll be a smear if you jump, and I’m not slowing down.”

  What was he, psychic? Her temper spiked. “I’ll take my chan— Let go of me!” His hard, cold fingers were implacable as he gripped her forearm.

  “I didn’t haul you out of that bastard’s rape fantasy to lose you to asphalt,” he said flatly.

  Jessie’s teeth clicked. “I don’t need a hero,” she gritted out. “Let me go.”

  He did, but only so he could put both hands back on the wheel. “Stay fucking put.”

  Her heartbeat roared in her ears. Her lip throbbed, but the small pain was going to be the least of her problems if the jump out of a moving vehicle didn’t kill her first.

  Steeling herself, she reached again for the latch on the door.

  “Your friend was right,” he said. “You’re a better blond.”

  Credits

  Cover design by Mary McAdam Keane

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  BEFORE THE WITCHES. Copyright © 2011 by Karina Cooper. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.